The snow soaked her feet and legs as she trudged up the side of the mountain, but Ezmeralda refused to stop. This was going to end, and it was going to end today. As the sun set further on the horizon, and the sky became darker, she kept going, till she had reached the summit. There she stopped and took in the sight for a moment.

There was the caldera-like basin, and then the massive hole in the mountain. The hole itself was larger than anything that Ezmeralda imagined it to be. Just like Rolf had said, it was the size of a whole town.

Rolf. The reminder brought back the sting of his loss, and the memory of her parents sprung to the forefront of her mind. That horrific day. Her struggle to survive after the event. It was a horrible memory.

Then she began preparing her battlefield. She held her hand up to her shoulder, and a light appeared that continued to hover in the air near her as she walked about the Caldera.

She drew runes into the ground with her staff, which she infused with magic. She approached rocks upon the ground and wove fake souls into their being using her presence, turning them into golems. She reached out into the snow and did the same as she had with the stone, creating small creatures which she sent heavenward, where they waited as spirits of vapor and water that was not quite frozen.

When dawn came the next day, she stood on the side of the Caldera opposite of the Door, and waited. Her battlefield was prepared, the snow that previously covered it had vanished, to be replaced by runes, golemns, and cover for her to hide behind.

As she stood observing it all, Axel approached her. She had not seen him all night, and wagered that he must have either been resting, or just been unable to make it up the mountain. The sight of the Caldera, free of snow and covered in all manner of magical creatures, monsters, and runic patterns, caused him to stop in fascination and awe. It gave Ezmeralda a bit of pride as she watched him look over it all, but she was disappointed that it did not last, and soon he opened his mouth again.

“So these are the instruments of your revenge?” he asked. A particularly large stone golem walked over to Ezmeralda, its joints flaming and glowing like hot magma. It stood beside her obedient, waiting for orders.

She looked over it for a moment, proud of the creation, before addressing Axel. “Yes. They are.”

“Don’t do it.” Axel said.

This time she did not hold back from scoffing at the man. “And who are you, talking to me about what I should and shouldn’t do? Do you think now is the time to lecture me upon morality?”

“Revenge never leads to good things, Ezmeralda.” Axel said. “It is never wonderful. It achieves nothing.”

“I was given this power by-”

“Not for this.” Axel said. “I was thinking about it, and I don’t believe that a star gave you your power to do this. And for that matter, you didn’t even know who this dragon was before you came here, did you?”

“Her illusions are still working on you. “Ezmeralda retorted. The truth was she wasn’t sure, but she hoped it would keep the man from arguing with her. It did not.

“No. You didn’t. That was why you did not know that it was a she, and when I described what she looked like you did not recognize her.” Axel replied. He looked out across the caldera, eyeing the Door, and Ezmeralda wondered what he was looking for. She followed his eyes, but saw nothing.

“Of course! I’d just never met her in that form. The last time I saw her, she was a raging dragon destroying everything I loved and-”

“We haven’t met before, Ezmeralda.” A voice said. “I was not the one that burned your home.”

Ezmeralda whipped around, and Axel followed suit. There she stood. A woman of golden hair and eyes, standing taller than Axel or Ezmeralda, and with little yellow and red stones underneath her eyes - scales. However, she did not wear any divine garments or beautiful jewels. Rather, she was covered in nothing but a ragged old robe, torn in many places. It was hardly a garment at all.

“Then how do you know my name?!” Ezmeralda shouted, and in a reflex released a blast of fire. It struck the woman, setting her clothes alight, but she herself did not burn. “Axel, leave.”

But Axel wasn’t paying attention to Ezmeralda. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him, looking up into the sky at something.

“Axel?” Ezmeralda asked.

He sighed. “Ezmeralda, look.”

She did, and followed his hand pointing towards the sky. There was something flying there, a tiny dot in the sky.

“It flew out of the hole.” Axel said. “I think it was another one of them.”

A blast of fire nearly flash roasted both of them, but Ezmeralda’s rock golem jumped in the way, stopped the blast.

They were standing on the end of the basin opposite of the massive abyss, and Ezmeralda grabbed Axel and began running across it. She didn’t even look back as she sprinted, while rock golems swarmed towards the golden haired woman.

“Axel, you have to get out of here!” Ezmeralda said. “This is not a fight you can help in. Go up the side over there, and hide behind the caldera edge. I’ll cover you until then. Run!”

Axel did as instructed, though his running was slow due to his weariness and his injuries. Ezmeralda, now standing near the middle of the caldera, turned back to face her dragon foe. The place where the golden haired woman had been now burned with fire too bright to look into directly. A moment later, it exploded with concussive force. Pieces of rock golemns went flying, raining around the arena that Ezmeralda had created. One of her golemns ran over to her, and sheltered her from the blast. And the falling rocks.

Then, when the dust and light cleared, Ezmeralda got her first look at her foe. It was a dragon just like the one that had burned her village. It was as large as she remembered, the size of several houses, and it towered above her at the height of castle battlements. In single leap and a bat of it wings it swooped into the air.

The moment it did so however, the spirits of water that Ezmeralda had created in the air, froze around its wings. It arched over Ezmeralda, and then fell down, crashing into the ground just in front of the down. It breathed fire upon its wings frantically, melting away the ice. However, once the ice was melted, it did not fly away. Instead, it stubbornly stood at the Door, as if waiting for Ezmeralda to come closer.

“Hmmm? Aren’t you going to try and fly away again? Or is you pride to great to not face me?” Ezmeralda taunted. It had just landed, exactly where she had wanted it to be, where she had planned for it to be when she had created her battlefield. Yet now, it would not move. It had given up its advantage of surprise.

The dragon glared at her, at least, she thought it was a glare. Was it angry? It didn’t matter, and Ezmeralda decided to spring her trap. The runes beneath the dragon’s feat activated.

The earth cracked and sunk in, as if it was trying to swallow the dragon. As this happened, several of the ice spirits high above in the sky crystallized into spears of ice, which then fell downwards. The dragon briefly struggled with the dirt, but then beat its wings and leaped upwards. Once more its wings were frozen solid instantly, and it fell back downwards, only a short distance from where it had been before. The broken earth once again began to churn around its feet, like it was trying to grind up the dragon. The dragon breathed fire upon its wings as it pulled its feet free. Then, it tried to leap upwards into the air to escape the angry ground.

This time its wings did not freeze, but they were violently impaled by the falling icicles, smashing the whole of the dragon to the ground, and pinning its wings. The dragon roared in pain and anguish, and then roared again in frustration as it tried to free itself while the ground began to swallow it.

At that moment, golems rushed the creature. The massive stone creatures jumped high into the air and then fell down upon the massive beast. Ice crystals fell from the sky, but shattered helplessly off the dragon’s jewel like scales. The scales are quite beautiful, like sunset, Ezmeralda thought. They could be sold later for a high price.

The callousness of the thought didn’t faze her in the intensity of the moment, and she continued to rain crystals down upon the dragon while the rock golems beat upon its scales. Some of the rock golemns were successful in bashing away a scale or two, while one ice crystal found a tiny chink in the dragon’s armor, and buried itself in the monster.

The dragon cried out in pain, and attempted to pull itself out of the trap. Its wings jerked back and forth, tearing themselves free of the ice that pinned them. However it was too late for it to run, and with torn wings it could not fly. The beast began to sink into the earth, its limbs caught by the ground, helpless.

“Now, you die, and never see the sun again.” Ezmeralda growled, as the beast sank lower. Every moment of time in her life preparing for this moment rushed to her then. She felt joy as the realization of all her time spent studying magecraft, often alone without friends, came to fruition. Even the lack of friends and family, the difficulty in making it by day by day, had prepared her for this moment. It had caused her to learn how to make the golems she now used, and the runes she usually just simplified her life with.

Now, she would give the killing blow. She raised a hand towards the dragon, which had stopped moving, and was glaring at her.

She gathered power in her hand, as the dragon sank deeper and deeper into the earth. She would unleash sunfire upon the beast. Fire and rays of light so hot that even its scales would melt away, like the avalanche had yielded before her.

And then, she noticed that the now quiet dragon was glowing. It was glowing from within. It was a bright white light. The very earth around the dragon began to fall away, melting into a red glowing slag, and then hot lava.

Ezmeralda eyes grew wide, even as she gathered power for the killing blow. Then, just as she was ready to unleash the fire, the dragon leaped out of the way, trailing hot magma and fire int its wake. Ezmeralda tried to follow its path, but the power she had gathered was too much to control, and when the dragon landed the shaking of the ground caused her to misfire the blast.

The sunfire tore into the sky like a meteor. Its brightness rivaled the noon-day sun, and forced Ezmeralda to close her eyes to it.

As she closed her eyes, she felt the dragon running forward, running forward towards her. She panicked. No, she wasn’t going to die here. She wouldn’t allow it.

In an instant her thought called down all the ice spirits left in the sky. She wouldn’t need them anymore. The beings froze around the dragon’s joints, tripping it. At the same time rock golems that were left charged the beast, and another scooped her up in its arms and carried her away. She was bruised in the process, but alive.

Now, it was on to her second plan. As she was placed down again, and stood to see the dragon standing up - the ice melted away from its joints and turned to steam, she reached into a pouch at her side and took out several small bottles. These alchemic mixtures had been a gift that had been given to her by a Sukarram alchemist that had visited her fathers house many years ago. Her interest and her genius had caused the young alchemist to teach her, and over the years she had duplicated his formulas and recreated them to be even better.

She threw two of the bottles ahead of her, between her and the dragon. The dragon reared back from them, and eyed them cautiously. For the moment, the bottles did nothing, before they exploded violently, and left a massive cloud of white smoke in their wake. As they exploded, burning pieces of the mixture inside showered the area, making even more white smoke. Ezmeralda was careful to not be hit by these, and then began running as the entirety of the basin began to fill with the smoke. The dragon, realizing that she was trying to remain hidden, began rampaging. It charged forward through the smoke to the spot where she had stood, but by that point she had vanished.

Ezmeralda ran clockwise around the caldera. The hope was that the dragon would start to follow her based on its sense of smell, which she had been told was good. The smoke mixture must have proved too thick however, and it just started rampaging. She could catch glimpses of it, with how massive its size was, now and then through the smoke. The air burned and stung her lungs, but she endured it, and waited for the dragon to fall on another of her traps.

The situation wasn’t ideal, as she was hoping for the dragon to follow her and be lead into the runes she had prepared, but this was enough.

Sure enough, it landed on one of the runes, and the magical crest exploded violently, throwing up dirt and rock. That type of rune had been another gift from the well mannered young alchemist, who had been far too fascinated in things that exploded than was healthy for a normal person. Ezmeralda hadn’t minded though, and he had been more than grateful that her and her uncle had rescued him from being beaten or lynched in the streets of Aruslan.

The dragon would be uneffected by heat from the explosions, but as Ezmeralda had learned from experiments that explosions were not dangerous because of their heat. They were dangerous because of their concussive force. She had hoped this would hurt a dragon, even through its tough scales.

Sure enough, it did, and she heard the dragon roaring in pain as it was blasted. She had planned originally to put these runes at the entrance to the Door, but she had been unsure if their power would be great enough to harm the beast, and so she had not made her first plan rely on them.

The dragon would continue to rampage for a couple more minutes, looking everywhere for Ezmeralda, while she prepared yet another trap. During this time, it struck another explosive rune, but Ezmeralda presumed that this did not hurt it as badly, since it did not roar in pain after this.

Meanwhile, she got set up for her next plan. After she was done with these preparations, the smoke was beginning to clear out of the basin. Some of it, Ezmeralda knew, would continue to linger for quite sometime, since the basin was sheltered from the wind, and for her next plan to work she needed that smoke gone.

Thus, she called on one more golem she had made. It was the hardest to make, but she had spent some time creating one just for this purpose. It was a wind, woven with presence to create an artificial soul, and therefore a fake creature made of the air. At her mental request, it destroyed itself in one large gust of air, sweeping the whole caldera with tremendous force, and blowing away the wind.

When this was done, the dragon stood on the left side of the door, opposite where Ezmeralda was on the left side of the caldera like basin. The dragon roared at her, and for the first time since the start of the confrontation, it spoke. The words were hard to make out, since they were low and gutteral, but they were words in Aerician none the less, and ezmeralda understood them.

“You think this will end me?” it cried out.

Ezmeralda smirked. Her emerald green eyes stared into the dragon’s gold wreathed pupils. The dragon was talking big, because it was injured. On its front foot, several claws had been shattered and two fingers hung limp - torn from their place by an explosions. The dragon’s wings were in tatters, and steaming blood oozed from them. Still more blood oozed from the open wound that had been caused by one of the ice crystals - the crystal had melted and the wound was now free to bleed.

“You’re are very large.” Ezmeralda said, and then started walking forward towards the dragon. The dragon growled, and started to charge forward. Every step it made caused the earth to thunder. As it crossed the Caldera, Ezmeralda stopped in place. The dragon continued, and then also stopped. It was thinking, as Ezmeralda hoped it would. It realized, or at least it thought it did, that it was being baited towards Ezmeralda.

The dragon eyed the ground, and then a fire built into its mouth. It spoke again. “This shall all burn.”

Then it unleashed its fire upon the ground in front of it and all around it. The flames were far more intense than any it had breathed so far, and the very ground began to melt in front of it. Some of the flames were shot as far as where Ezmeralda stood, but in response she just raised a hand and created a transluscent magical ward. The flames were weakened at this distance, and passed over her ward like water, and did not harm Ezmeralda.

When the dragon was finished, the ground in between it and Ezmeralda had turned to a thin layer of lava. This would destroy any runes or traps that Ezmeralda had placed. However, that itself was Ezmeralda trap. This would make the dragon think that there was nothing left in front of it.

In that knowledge, it charged forward again towards Ezmeralda.

The ground erupted with fire. The dust which Ezmeralda had once spread around camp had been laid all over the Caldera before the battle, and it was the seeds from which the fire fae grew. The fire the dragon had given them had nurutred them even beyond what Ezmeralda normally could do for the creatures. She remembered when she had first found them, when as a child she had discovered them inexplicably following her. They were wonderful, playful, mischievous little creatures.

The dragon roared as it was swarmed by its own fire, now in the form of people made out of flame. Normal fire would not have hurt the dragon, and even the extreme heat of magma was nothing for it. However, so much attacking it so quickly, and with the same intensity as the flames it had just breathed, it was overwhelmed. It roared as it swatted and extinguished the creatures, or consumed them to try and get rid of them. It batted them with its tail and rolled to crush them - further injuring its wings in the process.

Ezmeralda steadied herself against the shaking ground, and once the dragon was dancing in sudden pain to protect itself, readied her next and final trick. It a was a rune, or rather multiple runes, in the side of the Caldera, pointed towards where the dragon now rolled on the ground. When Ezmeralda triggered this trap, it first activated a run that grew a massive, sharp, rocky spike from the caldera wall. This happened in a mere second. The next few runes were the explosive type, and when she triggered these it launched the massive spike across the Caldera and a speed no current seige engine could ever hope to match.

The massive projectile howled with a deafening whine as it crossed the distance towards the dragon.

It struck with terrible force, and ripped through the dragon’s scales, tore open its side, and took off one arm. The dragon convulsed in pain, but since the blow had only been glancing, it wasn’t enough to kill it. As it writhed on the ground, once more unmoving, and Ezmeralda activated the second set of runes. It was the last she had, and if this did not kill the monster, she would have no choice but to try and call up the power of the sun again, and that could very well kill her if she lost control.

The dragon saw the new projectile extend from the caldera wall, and it struggled to get up. It struck its stump upon the ground, but could not bring itself to stand up before the explosive runes were activated.

In that instant though, Emzeralda met eyes with the dragon, and a moment later, she was blinded by a flash of light.

A implosion tore Ezmeralda from her feet, and caused her to fall forward on to her face. She heard her massive stone projectile crack against the stone on the other side of the basin, and when when she scrambled to her feet, the dragon was nowhere to be found. Instead, it had transformed back into a woman, and used that transformation to dodge the artillery-shell-like stone projectiles.

She was lying naked in the middle of the charred and burnt land. The wounds she had sustained in her dragon form, followed her into this human form, but had become much smaller in some cases and worse in others. The wound that had left her dragon form with a stump had now taken her entire arm to the shoulder, where as the wound that had torn open her side was now just a deep cut. Her fingers on her other hand were hanging loose, not quite removed, but nevertheless destroyed.

Ezmeralda approached with caution hands raised to cast more magic if necessary, to either protect herself or attack.

Yet the woman did not move, which caused Ezmeralda to wonder if she was dead or not. The rising and falling of her chest however, proved that she had not quite passed on.

“Please.” came a whisper from the dragon in human form. It was faint, and accompanied by rattling breaths. “Please leave.”

“No.” Ezmeralda replied, as celestial fire lit in her hand. She would kill this creature, once and for all. It would not get sympathy for just taking on the visage of a human. She imagined that this was what her mother or father had looked like, just before being burned alive themselves.

“I didn’t deserve this.” she whimpered. “I said it was a terrible thing. I didn’t want to do it.”

“Said? Said what, to whom?” Ezmeralda demanded.

“My mate.” the woman said, as tears began to fall over her eyes. She drew another rattling and labored breath. “My beautiful darling. He’ll come home soon, someday. I won’t be here for him. Please, my sunlight, come home for me…Save me.”

Ezmeralda felt a chill run down her spine. “Mate? Who? What is this about?!”

“The one…the one who killed your family. I’m sorry.” she said, her tone regretful to Ezmeralda’s ears, at last. Part of Ezmeralda felt a victory in this regard. Her anger had not yet died. “We are the descendants, the children of Apotheos. He thought it was his, his duty…to uphold the curse, because our mother had visited your parents, and blessed their little village.”

“The curse against the sun?” Ezmeralda asked.

The dragon nodded, and then coughed, red blood staining her lips and the ground in front of her. It was evident that she had taken more damage than was visible on the outside. Ezmeralda still couldn’t tell where the damage to the dragon’s wings had manifested in this new form, if it had manifested at all. By the woman’s labored breathing though, Ezmeralda estimated taht the wing damaged had manifested internal damage.

“He would not listen.” she said.

Now, Ezmeralda felt conflicted. She was angry, but at the same time a voice in her head was telling her a terrible truth. It was telling her that Axel had been right, wondering how he had known, and that she was wrong. It had been telling her to leave this place. Then the dragon spoke again answering her thoughts.

“I tried to tell the paladin, last night. I tried to tell him the truth while he slept. I had hoped he had already done so, when I tried to speak with you.” she said. The words were so faint now that Ezmeralda could not hear her speak. This creature, without help, was going to die very soon.

“I have one question.” Ezmeralda said. “Did you help him?”

She paused, and smiled up at Ezmeralda. Her tear ceased, as if something very joyful had just occurred. For a second, she just stared, unmoving.

And then, a terrible sorrow, worse than what she had been experience before, crossed over her face and her eyes. Hot, steaming tears fell down her face, and when she spoke it was as if every word brought her terrible pain. “Yes. I told him about them. And I am so, so sorry.”

Sunfire was unleashed from Ezmeralda’s hands.