They had finally gotten the last of the steel frames into place on the new tower, and Neo found himself sitting down with his lunch box in hand, eating some sort of fish pasta dish.

He'd made the dish after visiting the market, a unique experience he had absolutely no idea what the meats were, and there was a noticeable lack of vegetables and wheat at least to human standards anyway.

Bethany said that the market only dealt with bubble foods which were sourced locally and sustainably hunted.

So he had decided to check it out, finding many interesting fishes, one with 6 eyes, Meat from a Forest Whale which tasted good and a glowing mushroom which he didn't touch.

He didn't buy many foods as he had no idea that either he'd survive the encounter, definitely when he saw a Troll take a bite of an apple looking thing and then collapsed. A group of Medics from several different species came marching through within minutes muttering about being a busy day.

Neo decided to scroll through the soul shop, for something to do. Oh, how he missed his phone scrolling through pages and pages of mainly pointless posts that would waste time.

It was a long list of items, he wandered through them finding out what items and abilities, what they did and how much they cost.

He ended up going past the telekinesis when he noticed that the number of souls needed to buy it had decreased slightly to 98.

Neo wondered how that could have happened, suddenly a siren screeched causing Neo to jump.

Putting his lunch down and walking to the stairs he could hear shouts, the padding of feet and heavy breathing of beings rushing up the stairs.

Neo stood back from the stairs as the rattling of what Neo thought sounded like plate armour.

Confused with what was happening Neo grabbed his bag placing it on his back. The soldiers ascended up through the entrance with shields on their backs and crossbows in their hands and wearing full plate armour they spread out across the roof.

Neo had no idea where all the soldiers came from there didn't seem to be any barracks built nearby.

Following the troops on to the tower was the mist lizard from the last tower that had warned him against poking his nose in.

The lizard-like mage nodded towards him but was being followed by four other beings with a similar badge on their chest the only difference was their colours.

They set up position equal spaced around the tower Neo was about to ask what he can do when Hal heaved his way through the entrance looking a little flustered

“Ah there you are lad, the sirens went off got to get back to the city before they put the shielding up!”

The lizard mage heard what Hal had said and spoke “No point Hal they have closed the city shield by now. There is no way you can get back into the city in time, no point in risking it with some of the towers out of action the people won’t take another incident even with the cost activation!”

“What!” Hal ran to the corner of the tower where he shouted down to the workers “Boys, get in the tower there closed the inner circle, no point in going.”

Neo looked down seeing that some of the workers were halfway up the hill, the workers turned and started rushing back towards the tower.

A deafening boom rocked the tower making Neo reach out to grab the wall.

Neo looked up and saw in the distance a reddish glow with a cloud of dust shooting into the air, Neo thought he could see a shadow moving within.

The mage spoke from behind “Oh, no not the Atlantean bubble! May the Gods save our souls.”

"Hal, What's happening, what’s in the Atlantean bubble?"

From behind him, Hal whispered "Dragons!"

There were wails from the soldiers and mages alike from those on the tower, A Captain shouted "quietened down lads, back in line."

A roar brought everyone's attention to the gleaming white scaled Dragon that glided out of the dust cloud and headed towards the tower. The remaining workers that where too far out could be seen diving behind wagons and trees as the fanged demon with its red eyes and white light filled mouth approached.

“It’s a Mad Elder dragon those red eyes!” The lizard mage had collapsed onto the floor, defeated “How did this happen!"

"What happened?" Neo questioned.

The Mage turned towards Neo "Mad Elder Dragons are beyond rare, There is no known reason why they go mad but one of the main signs are those blood red eyes. They lose their logic, reason and they will attack anything and they are near impossible to kill with their toughened scales and their resistance to all different types of magic. The city will be destroyed even if the city has its shielding up it'll tear through it as if it wasn’t there."

Neo looked back at the dragon and wished he hadn’t. He had only glanced away for a few seconds, but the dragon had tripled in size now the height of two double-decker buses and getting bigger. As it was getting closer, Neo could see white light pouring from its mouth. The effect was visibly seen as men and buildings either disappear in a cloud of dust or just vanished without a trace.

Neo was terrified his legs felt weak the image of himself just disappearing into nothing having accomplished little in his life.

The dragon roared as it flew over their heads to land, flashes of light from the mages and archers shooting seemed to have little effect. Ignoring them, it tore up the soil where the remaining workers had just been deleted. The dragon's magic appeared to distort the space around it a pulsing light could be seen oozing from under the dragon's scales. The Mages magic clashed with the dragon's chaotic energies which flew in all directions, Neo dived to the floor as a horizontal slash of magic was flung towards the tower.

Neo shivered as a cold fear of death drilled itself into his core. The realisation that death was just a breath away and not a computer screen away.

Blind luck, Neo wasn't caught up in the next one as it passed through the wall unhindered and hit half a dozen soldiers.

Neo saw some of the soldiers had grown longer whiter beards others seemed to have shrunk in their armour it wasn’t until Neo heard a sound like a baby's cry from within a crumpled suit that he took a closer look and saw a baby.

Looking around he found Hal keeping his head down "Hal what exactly is a white dragon?"

"It's a dragon that has influence over time and space. So, yeah we're screwed unless we get help. Hey, Mage do we have any reinforcements?”

The Mage was helping another much older robed mage "Yeh, their gathering, but as they will only move once they can deal with the dragon, it’s going to be a while before they turn up. Where is it now?"

Neo poked his head out to check on the dragon finding it swivelling its head back and fore "Mm, It just seems to be destroying the ground and looking around." As he watched the dragon again tear up the ground where the men had been.

"As it has some control over time, then the dust would mean that the men had been aged into dust and the ones that have just disappear had been reverted into nothing?"

“That’s right” replied the Mage

Neo's hair stood up when he saw the dragon staring right at him, he ducked back behind the stone wall.

He stayed quiet hoping that it hadn’t seen him but alas he heard the dragon’s heavy foot stomps and then silence before the sound of great wings beating, as a shadow was cast over the tower.

Neo Spoke “Sorry guys, I think he saw me!”

This had no effect on anybody around him as the Mage had closed his eyes and was praying while Hal was looking at something in his hand, kissing and hugging it before putting it back into his pocket.

As he looked around him, he saw others preparing themselves to face Death. As the sergeant called them to ready themselves, they turned and stood crossbows primed.

It gave Neo a strange calmness to know that good men were standing next to him. He’d never been one to give up, a tear starting to roll down his face as he got up. He was sad that he’d have to fight never liked fighting or hurting people, even though he had been given a second chance at life.

It made him think which would he prefer to fall off a cliff or go out fighting a dragon? He knew which one was cooler as he looked up at the dragon, it gave an allmighty roar that shook the sky, and a new wave of chaotic magic was flung in every direction.

The shards of magic streaked past Neo with nowhere to hide, Neo did his best to moved out of the way of the magic.

The Dragon roared again, and through the distorting magic, it started its dive.

Neo’s heart and mind raced what he could use as a weapon? He looked down from the tower and saw the steel beams.

Neo ignored the cries of pain and fear around him as he focused on the Dragon as it grew ever larger.

Neo’s heart wanted to burst out of his chest as the dragon opened its mouth, Neo could see the red staining of blood on the dragon's teeth. It was huge and magnificent the beating wings blocking out the sun and giving off a cooling breeze. (Neo gave a small smile funny what you notice when death approaches.) Once it was within a hundred feet of the tower, Neo lifted the steel beam and swung it at the dragon as hard as he could.

The steel beam hit the face of the dragon, and it let out a deafening roar, Neo drop the steel beam as he reacted to the roar by covering his ears.

The blow somersaulted the dragon. Neo realised that it was going to hit the tower. He quickly focused and grabbed the fallen steel beam, he didn’t have enough time to move it toward him as the dragons huge tail came swing down Neo jumped off the tower as the dragon's tail destroyed the tower taking one half with it.

‘So much for the reinforced wall’ Neo though. As he hit the beam the air was pushed from his lungs and rubble rained down on his back, the steel beam dropped as he tried to get his breathe back. He pulled himself up into sitting, his legs dangling either side of the beam.

Scanning the area to see if he could help. He saw the soldiers that where next to him had fallen off the tower, and they was nothing that he could do for them, so he glided back up to the tower roof to see that the Lizardman had lost an arm and was unconscious some young lad was kneeling next to him trying to stem the bleeding.

“Ow lad, you survived the fall, I saw you fall and thought that you were a goner!” Neo was confused as the young lad spoke.

“Hal?”

Neo said shocked

“Yes lad, I am a little younger. Good job on slowing are demise maybe some of us will survive.”

“No, we will all survive this I will go and distract the dragon while you run, I can at least fly to escape.”

“That’s all good lad, but the stairs were taken out by the dragon's tail we can’t get down!”

“I’ll use the steel beams in the gaps and hope it will be enough to get you all out.”

The younger Hal nodded his head “Well, Good luck to you and I hope I can buy you a drink later.”

Neo reached the ground and quickly grabbed the steel beams and manoeuvred them into the gaps in the stairs that the dragon had made.

Neo heard the roar and jumped out of the way of stray energy he'd caught from the corner of his eyes “All done here, they should be able to get down' he thought.

Jumping onto a new beam, he flew into the sky avoiding more stray magic. Looking down he saw the dragon had gouged out the ground, it seemed like a meteor had crashed landed. The dragon spotted Neo, and his red eyes followed him filled with anger as it stared into Neo's soul.

As Neo stared back he thought he saw the scales on the dragons face that had been crushed and broken move and repair themselves, Neo swallowed hard.

One of its wings had broken as it was pointing in a different direction also seemed to be repairing itself slowly as it inched back into place. Neo realised he would not have long before the dragon could fly again.

Neo drew in closer weaving in and out of random energy he landed a few hundred yards away, the dragon growled.

The only steel beam left was the one he was using. To use it as a weapon he would lose his ability to fly. If Neo remained grounded, he had to keep his distance and control the steel beam and be aware of anything magic coming towards him. He didn’t like the odds, suddenly Neo had an idea maybe he could hang from his flute and fly at least in an emergency.

Neo grabbed his flute from the bag to Neo surprise this seemed to grab the Dragons attention as he moved the flute around the Dragon’s eyes followed it.

An idea formed away from ending this without any more bloodshed. ‘time to pied piper this bloody dragon!” Neo thought as he brought the flute to his mouth.

Neo had no idea how long he’d been playing he’d lost count of the songs he’d gone through, it seemed that his pied piper had worked pretty well. He had moved the dragon away from the tower and into an adjoining field. There was one problem the fact that the dragon had slowly crept up to him and had made itself comfortable with it ferocious head lying directly in front of Neo with one of its giant eyes staring at him.

He could smell the foul stench that cascaded out of its mouth that made Neo gag. But he fought through it with minimal interruption in his music, but the longer he played, the calmer the energy around the dragon had become, the scales were now glowing dimly.

But Neo was not in a good position, his fingers were sore and blistered he needed the toilet. He realised that if he stopped playing, he was but a few inches away from death.

Neo looked around and saw the once buzzeling tower had been abandoned. He looked back to the dragon still finding the frightening eye glued on him, but before looking away, he noticed a tear rolling down its face.

‘What happened to you?” Neo thought. He took in the surrounding area and found that it was calm over the music, the birds tweeting and Insects buzzing, it was serene and complete opposite to the earlier chaos. It made Neo quite sad that it was such a tormented being that it revelled in the serenity of things.

“Hello, is that Neo the one blatantly sitting in front of a dragon as if it was an everyday thing!” a voice spoke within Neo’s mind

“mm,” Neo thought “aaa Hello?”

“Yes brilliant the reinforcement are here to help, We are planning a bombardment of the dragon with high tiered magic.”

Neo heart pounded “Wait! I think we could capture it if you had a few very strong chains you could capture while I am still playing as it is so engrossed I don’t think it’ll notice if people start chaining it up.”

“Hold one moment!” the voice replied and everything went quietly in his head again

Neo wished hard that they could save the dragon as something must be very wrong with it.

“Hello Neo, we have agreed that while it is under your control we can't let this opportunity go, We need to kill it now! Sorry Neo but even if we did capture it what the hell do you think we can do with it. It's too dangerous to keep around, so you might want to start plan how you're going to move away as we'll be blasting the area to ashes before it gets too dark.”

Neo looked around noticing that it was dark, but the dragon produced its own light which brightened up the area enough that Neo hadn’t noticed the sun dipping over the horizon.

"Pst, Neo it's me again, good job getting it to sleep, time for you to start backing away we'll be waiting for you to get 100 metres away from sleeping beauty before we start our attack." The voice returned to his mind and shocked him as surely the dragon was still awake.

Coughing he replied in his mind "Mm mister mind mage, I'm sure that the dragon is quite awake."

"How so."

"mm, It's staring right at me," Neo replied sarcastically

"Well, we as in plural, know it's sleep if you really don't trust us why don't to find out."

Neo shrugged and move to the side, the eye didn’t follow. "Its eye is still open, but it's not moved or tracked me."

The voice replied "See it's a natural deterrent against attacks so do you believe us now? "

"mm," Neo wondered if the dragon was just tricking him, so he walked up closer and gave it a kicked the side of the head.

All Neo accomplished was a sore toe, he felt like he had just kicked a wall and got no reaction from the dragon 'hmmm…… really must be asleep.'

However, he did get the person on the other line to have a reaction. Neo's mind was suddenly overwhelmed "What do you think you're doing! Has no one ever told you not to kick a dragon."

Neo winced "No, maybe a few stories about letting sleeping dogs lie but it's definitely asleep." the reply Neo got was simply stunned silence "Um guys I'll be making my way out standby."

An exasperated voice replied to Neo "Confirmed we will wait for set distance to be reached."

Neo slowly backs away from the Dragon who was sleeping peacefully in front of him. As the music started becoming quieter, the dragon began stirring from it serene dreams when he thought he had reached about 50 metres Neo stopped playing, relief flood through his finger, arm, lips and he turned and ran.

The dragon moaned and moved as the dream turned in to a nightmare. It wasn’t long before the Dragon was writhing in its dream, Neo pitied the dragon as it screamed awake.

Roaring maddeningly at life as explosions after explosions from the reinforcements hit the dragon, magic ripped through the air, blinding multicoloured lights streaked through the sky anywhere else this could have been a joyous firework display, but all Neo could hear was the painful cries of the dragon.

Neo stopped and turned the dragon had fallen silent, confused the Dragon seemed to of calmed down and stopped crying, Neo’s anxiety rose, something told Neo that it was doing something as his hair on his skin stood up.

He turned and ran as a greyish white light formed around the dragon it could be seen through the bombardment of glowing explosions from the Mages, it lasted a few minutes. As he made his way up the hill, glancing over his shoulder constantly, he saw that the greyish light distorted the area around it, Looking closer Neo saw through the light , straight into the red pain filled eyes of the Dragon, a shiver went down Neo's back.

With a triumphant roar, it tore free off the explosions.

Neo lifted the flute into the air intending to use it to pull himself with his telekinesis to fly away, but a bright flash lit up his shadow, and loud explosions rained, he felt a sear pain from his shoulder to his hip, He screamed as the pain spreading throughout his body his legs going numb.

He felt a deep pulsing beat and a smell of rancid air around him that brought his awareness away from his pain and numbness. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the tongue and red stained teeth of the Dragon.

’I’ve been bitten why the hell am I not dead!’ he thought, he noticed that the Flute was still in his hands above his head it had lengthened slightly and stopped the jaws of the dragon from snapping him in two.

His breath was ragged as the pain was causing his body to go into shock, the Dragon tried to close his mouth again, but the flute remained unbending.

Neo saw an opportunity pulling his pen from his pocket the only thing on him that could help and waited for the dragon’s mouth to open using his telekinesis to keep the flute in the position he pulled himself up further into the mouth of the dragon.

He pointed the pen to the back of the dragon's mouth noticing at the same time that the mouth was brighteningNeo assumed the dragon was going to use its breath-ability to get rid of him.

Neo focused his will on the pen and impaled the dragon in the back of the throat. Neo was deafened by the pained roar had to ignore everything and solely focus on the pen as he pushed it through the soft tissue. Neo had to make sure the pen would hold together under strain, split his mental effort in forcing the pen parts together and pushing it forwards.

Neo felt he had hit something bumpy and hard as he travels up assuming it to be the vertebrae of the dragon until he was stopped by what Neo thought was the skull.

Focusing on pushing the pen through the pen creaked and splinter as it slowly and painfully broke through the skull with the full force of Neo telekinesis exploding into the Dragons brain

‘Sorry.” Neo thought as he killed the dragon

‘Thank………you!’ a feminine voice spoke in his mind.

Neo collapsed exhausted, weakened by the blood oozing from his wounds.

‘Neo it’s Death here if you want to live you need to eat the dragon's soul now! Don’t bother replying just do as I say, put your palm on to the Dragon’s tongue and imagine the Dragon being sucked through a black hole into a sphere, once full eat it!”

Neo not wanting to die again he tried moving his arms but he failed, panic flooded his system as he couldn't move anything his head could bearly move back and forth, his eye had the recognisable black edges.

Neo gripped his remain mental fortitude and grabbed one of his arms with his telekinesis and brought it to eye level, wishing he hadn’t looked. He moved the malformed arm until his palm was touching the dragon's tongue he did as instructed and imagined a black hole drawing the soul from the dragon, once he finished he turned his hand over.

The mouth of the dragon was brightened by the pure white ball of the Dragons soul, Neo could even see the dragon within, its fiery madness flashing occasional red flecks, a part of Neo worried that this might be dangerous if not stupid, but he was aware of his disappearing strength and will. “Be damned the consequences, I don’t want to die!” he thought

He bought the white Dragons soul to his mouth, even though the sphere was bigger than his mouth it slowly got sucked in, it never even touched his lips before it was gone, but Neo couldn't wonder at this pheromone as his consciousness had faded.