Rex hit Gerald’s shield like a battering ram. The force of 120 pounds of dragon falling from a tall tree should have been enough to smash Gerald to the ground, but it didn’t. Instead, Rex bounced off the shield like he’d hit a brick wall, and with supernatural strength, Gerald leveraged Rex over his head and sent him sprawling to the forest floor behind him, twisting around so he never exposed his back.

Idea protested,

Unbeknownst to Idea and Rex, Gerald had defense affinity, which gave him knockback resistance as well as increased toughness. In practical terms, so long as Gerald successfully braced himself for an attack, even the massive talons of a full grown dragon could have failed to move him.

“Ambush!” Gerald shouted. “He’s breathing some sort of smoke!” He added, stating the obvious. The cloud of smoke billowing from Rex’s mouth was rapidly obscuring the sight of the three adventurers.

Gerald’s companions reacted quickly, though in different ways. Nightshade invoked her shadow magic and faded from view, while Toby called upon his wind and ice affinity to blow a powerful icy blast of air at Rex.

The arctic wind rapidly blew away the obscuring smokescreen faster than it could pour out, leaving Rex exposed as he struggled back to his feet.

Rex observed. Rex shivered as the wind tore at him and forced him to shut his eyes against the icy sting. Idea calculated that the wind chill factor dropped the temperature of the air around Rex to below fifty below zero. The dragon was already starting to shiver in the few seconds since the hurricane force winds started hitting him and driving him backwards away from the mage.

Idea told Rex, feeding the data from the AI’s sensors so Rex could continue to fight despite having his eyes closed.

Inside Rex’s body, the tiny red blood cell sized nanobots began rapidly converting electrical power to heat, mostly by using their tiny electric welding tools and rubbing their grasping arms together.

Rex snarled, his claws digging deep trenches into the now frosty forest dirt, as he advanced towards Toby, crouching low to the ground and folding his wings as tightly as he could to better resist the air trying to send him flying. Step by step, he gained speed as he pressed his full strength against the wind and charged towards the blizzard mage.

“Shield Bash!” Gerald yelled, naming the martial skill that gave him a sudden burst of speed and let him fly across the intervening distance to slam his shield into Rex. The sudden blow sent the young dragon tumbling back down. The only silver lining was that as Gerald was now between the dragon and Toby, the mage had no choice but to stop blasing the deadly icy jet of wind, giving Idea enough time to bring Rex’s body temperature back up to normal.

“How is he still able to move like that? He should at least be numb from hypothermia.” Toby said, shaking his head in disbelief. Toby had fought much larger, much deadlier creatures than a three month old dragon. He’d always been able to subdue them quickly with his “Blizzard Gale” spell, but that wasn’t the only spell he could use. “Get out of the way and I’ll try an “Ice Prison” spell.”

“Relax,” Gerald said, “We don’t want him frostbitten. I’ll try to knock the fight out of him.” Gerald ran towards Rex with the intent to simply slam the dragon repeatedly with the heavy shield he held in both hands. The mid level paladin’s defence and melee combat affinities meant that he was actually considerably stronger than Rex despite the temporary effects of “overdrive” boosting Rex’s muscles. The magical enhancement provided by Gerald’s levels simply outpaced the dragon’s own enhancement.

Rex watched Gerald rush towards him, but at the last second, before he could be flattened by the heavy metal shield, he snarled and lunged out of the way with unexpected quickness. Overconfident, Gerald hadn’t expected such a burst of speed, so he stumbled at the lack of resistance as he swung his shield at the dragon.

Surging past the paladin, Rex slashed his claws across the back of Gerald’s legs, trying to hamstring the Paladin. The magic enhanced toughness of Gerald’s armor was beyond the ability of Rex’s hardened steel claws to peirce, but only on the parts that had steel plates. The back of Gerald’s legs were only covered in leather, and Rex’s claws tore through that to score deep gouges.

“Poison!” Gerald gasped as he felt himself go numb and fall to his knees. It was at this moment that Gerald’s holy affinity showed it’s worth as he grasped the tiny golden hand holy symbol around his neck and croaked out a spell; “Purify!” The holy magic created a pillar of light that engulfed Gerald and then spread through his body, counteracting the poison from Rex’s claws. Gerald then muttered “Cure wounds” to heal himself before climbing back to his feet. The paladin was back to full health, but he’d lost time, and Rex had already rushed past him.

Rex didn’t look back, he was focused on Toby. If only he could get to that mage and subdue him, he thought to himself, he could then use smokescreen and sleeping gas to disable the other two adventurers.

Toby wasted no time in defending himself, conjuring a thick wall of ice. Toby’s staff glowed a deep iridescent blue as he channeled his mana through the engraved runes to speed and empower his magic.

Idea commented as Rex climbed up and over the sudden wall, digging his claws into the ice for traction.

Rex leaped down from the top of the wall, lunging at the terrified mage who was desperately trying to interpose his staff between himself and Rex’s outstretched claws. Rex chided the AI.

But, Rex’s single minded focus, combined with Idea’s momentary distraction had given the invisible Nightshade an opportunity. She nimbly slashed Rex’s left hind leg with a quick dagger strike even as he flew towards the mage.

“That’s how you hamstring someone,” Nightshade told the dragon.

Rex’s own attack missed, spilling the dragon to the floor next to the mage, his trajectory thrown off by the force of Nightshade’s skilled strike.

<8 % health damage.> Idea informed Rex, since Rex couldn’t feel pain. Idea helpfully updated the HUD display to show a chunk missing from the red health bar and an icon showing an outline of Rex with a flashing red limb. Idea had borrowed from video games rather heavily when deciding how to present the information.

Rex snarled internally as he sat up on two legs, barely holding his balance as his left back leg spasmed limply rather than follow his commands. He then put both front paws on either side of the metal reinforced staff Toby was gripping and holding between himself and the angry dragon. He ordered Idea.

Idea released a huge surge of electricity, interrupting Toby before he could finish his spell and causing the mage to convulse in pain as the current ran through his hand. “Argh!” Toby yelled, letting go of the staff, leaving it in Rex’s grip as Toby fell backwards on his butt cradling his hand.

Rex told his AI, exhaling in Toby’s direction to try to put the mage to sleep. But where was that assassin, Rex wondered. Nightshade was nowhere to be seen.

Idea warned. The AI had analysed Nightshade’s previous use of invisibility to figure out how to track the invisible assassin, but it was already too late.

Rex tried to lunge forward, willing to trample the now unconscious mage, but he stumbled a bit as his crippled leg gave out. In that moment, he felt something being yanked around his neck like a thick leather garrotte. Rex struggled, still releasing invisible sleeping gas, and for a moment, Nightshade’s grip began to loosen as she started to succumb to the sleeping agent.

“Purify”, “Purify” Gerald chanted, spamming magic on both the assassin and himself as they started feeling the effects of unnatural sleep. He’d never seen or heard of sleeping gas before, but he could guess what was happening from the sound of gas coming from the opened mouth dragon and the fact that Rex had already used poison once. He’d finally made it around the ice wall and now he used shield slam to get in range and help Nightshade pin the struggling dragon.

“Got it!” Nightshade exclaimed triumphantly as she managed to buckle the dragon sleep collar onto Rex.

Powerful magic surged outwards from inside Rex, pulsing from his beast core outwards, instantly flooding the dragon with an overpowering sleepiness. Both the dragon and the AI tried to resist, but the magic was just effective on circuits as it was on tissue. Errors began to cascade through the AI’s programming as repeating pulses of electromagnetic disturbances caused tiny electrical pulses to short circuit Idea’s processors. It was all Idea could do to prevent permanent damage by disengaging it's own power supply.

Perhaps if the spell had come from outside, Rex’s magic resistance and aura might have been enough to prevent one or the other from being affected, but an attack from within was beyond their ability to resist. The resonance between the beast core on the collar and the beast core within Rex overwhelmed them.

Was the last message Rex saw before darkness claimed him.