“It appears I have visitors.”

“It’s over.” I held my sword up, pointing it toward the man. “There are two of us here. You’re outnumbered.”

“And you believe that concerns me?”

I looked over at Tez, who gave me a weak shrug.

Well, it was worth the try.

“Why do all this? What was the point?” Tez spoke up, her bladed staff held at the ready.

“Why? First off, the fact that it’s two dumb kids here worries me that my investment in paying those raiders was quite wasted. Second, it would also mean you dealt with my two business partners. A shame.”

I felt a surge of unease at how the man seemed so flippant and unbothered to see us before him.

“What have you heard of the mythos of Sun-splitter peak?”

"Excuse me?" I stared at the man, confused at the sudden change in subject.

"I said, what do you know of the stories of Sun-splitter Peak?"

“A part of the sun fell here long ago.” I answered before flicking my sword. “But what does any of that matter?”

“You see, I was once a humble historian, or perhaps an archeologist, looking into ancient times. I discovered that there was some truth to that legend.”

I raised an eyebrow, unable to deny my own curiosity.

“What the legend describes as a piece of the sun fracturing and falling here was not a part of the sun, as obvious as that should be. No, it was something else. A True Dragon of the Solarus.”

I shared another look with Tez before coughing awkwardly. “A what?”

“I shouldn’t blame you for your ignorance. You are just kids, for that matter. In our world, there are humans, there are magical beasts, monsters, but what most don’t realize is there is another group, the dragons.”

“And those aren’t magical beasts?”

“Hah, as if.” The man scoffed. “A dragon is simply the family for beings whose existence defy common magic and the rules we understand it to operate from. As for a True Dragon, those would be the supreme of the dragons, much as an elevated magical beast is the Supreme of the magical beast family.”

The unease inside me only grew as images of my former mentor flickered before my mind.

“The True Dragon that landed here long ago was wounded. Unable to recover, what do you think it did? Simply pass into the void?”

Before Tez or I could answer, the man snorted.

“No. It reformed a portion of its body and soul into a lesser form, the form of a human. Further legends suggested that this dragon, in the form of a human, would go on to mate with a human from ancient times, and a bloodline would be born between them, a special rare breed. A bloodline with the heart of a dragon, but the magic of this family. And you know what I discovered?”

“I’m not sure I care, honestly.” I readied my sword as the man smirked, the beaten girl behind him and next to the makeshift altar moaning in pain.

“There was truth. I found a single final tale that the bloodline that this ancient dragon bred into was not just a random bloodline. No, they held fascinating Kin magic. You see, they could invigorate the magic, the essence, of others. By breeding with this human, the dragon was doing nothing more than looking for a way to return to its former glory. Alas, it would fail, and the original body of the dragon would be lost, turning to stone within the very heart of Sun-splitter peak.”

I was beginning to put the pieces together, as was Tez, her hand pointing to who could have only been Rosalina.

“Then she is-”

“Yes! I discovered that the bloodline still remains to this day in the area, a hidden secret only known directly by those within their family. Of course, as humans, we have loose lips, so the hints were there if you knew where to look. This girl, she is the key, the catalyst for my emergence as a god.”

“Right, I’ve heard enough.” I said, tired of his theatrical spiel. I launched myself forward, my body like an arrow from a bow as I drew upon the full extent of my ruptured body.

I’ll end this before he has a chance to do anything.

I covered the distance in the blink of an eye, swinging my sword with all the speed and power I could muster as I aimed directly for his neck, intending to take his overly talkative head from his shoulders.

Got you!

I felt a moment of elation, my blade a hair’s breadth from his neck, but it was wiped away instantly.

My sword was suddenly stopped, held in place as if stuck in a vice.

It wasn’t just stopped, though.

The man had caught it between two fingers.

“Incredible speed.” The man nodded, his dark hair hanging loosely around his eyes. “But you fail to realize just how out of your depth you are.”

Color. Pain. Light. Sound.

I felt and saw everything and nothing, my world inverting in on itself as his fist connected with my chest, just below my ribs.

Then, like he was showing me what real speed was like, I was launched backward, crashing into a boulder with a tremendous thundercrack of noise. The boulder shuddered and fractured as my body sagged listlessly against it.

Not good.

Part of my mind had escaped from the reaches of the pain, taking note of everything in a detached manner.

Not good at all.

My bones were broken. It would be faster to list which ones weren’t busted.

My top speed, everything I had, the man had dealt with me as if I were a petulant child.

Not good.

My eye slowly drifted to the side, just in time to watch as Tez was swallowed up by a pillar of fire, a shade of hateful crimson.

Not good.

I needed to heal, to fight, but I couldn’t move.

C’mon.

I closed my eyes, terrified that my body seemed eager to drift away, but I forced my mind to stay alert and not drift away to whatever came next.

Come to me.

I had once considered that my body, formed in part through the reincarnation magic of a Great Sage, could regenerate faster than most. If I was right-

C’mon, come to me!

The mana around me rushed forward, and in such a bad shape, I couldn’t even feel the familiar pain of mana being rejected; I simply pulled more in to replace it.

C’mon!

The good news, the surprising news, was that I was right. Mana flowing into me, I felt my body respond, healing as I hoped, blazingly fast.

The bad news was that blazingly fast simply meant that the cuts covering my body healed in seconds instead of days. At this rate, it would only take a few short weeks for my bones to stitch back together rather than months or years.

The worse news was I highly doubted I had minutes, much less days or weeks.

Damnit!

Tez was dead.

I was more than likely moments from dying as well.

The man wouldn’t be stopped.

Justice wouldn’t be brought.

It would all end for naught.

“Well, isn’t that interesting.”

I cracked an eye open, looking to see what the man was talking about.

There, where I knew I had seen Tez be swallowed up by a pillar a flame, the girl stood, no worse for wear.

How?

My mind scrambled for an answer, but I saw it a second later. Hanging around her neck was one of the scale-like rocks she had picked up.

It was glowing, steam rising from it as cracks formed.

Scale… scale… No, no, it couldn’t be?

Could it?

The strange rocks that looked like scales didn’t just look like scales.

They were.

What was it he said about the true dragon?

Its body had turned to stone within the heart of Sun-splitter Peak.

Damnit.

I felt lost and disoriented. It was as if I had been picked up and dropped into the final pages of a storybook, fighting against some grand villain.

Except, unlike the hero of one of those stories, I hadn’t gone through some epic journey to uncover lost secrets or find the weakness of the evildoer. I’d come to a village, helped fight the occupiers, then went straight to confront the bad guy. I’d rushed in without a plan, too busy thinking about how I felt rather than being smart. I’d tried so hard to remind myself that people of power like my master were rare.

And yet, somehow, I’d run into someone who had that same domineering aura that all those powerful figures seemed to have.

Damnit!

The pillar of fire reappeared around Tez, and I watched as she fell to her knees, clutching at her neck.

“I didn’t realize there was still a scale with some juice left. How lucky for you.” The man seemed unbothered, enjoying the sight. “Unfortunately for you, and something I learned some time back, those scales, when used to dampen magic, need to release that energy somehow. A true dragon would be unbothered by their heat, but you are just a human. So, I wonder, how long can you hold out before your lifeline ends up being the thing responsible for your death?”

Magic dampening?

Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

There was just too much I didn’t understand.

Then think you moron!

A True dragon turned to stone within the mountain. Magic dampening scales. A bloodline created to be capable of somehow preventing the petrification of the injured true dragon.

Think!

My eyes widened in desperation, and the synapses of my mind fired all at once.

According to his story, the true dragon had created a vassal with a portion of its power, but what if it wasn’t a choice but rather a desperation? Unable to tap into its former strength, it crossbred with a bloodline to facilitate the reclamation of its former power. For whatever reason, it had failed, and ages had passed.

The man wasn’t powerful because he was naturally powerful; he was pulling it from elsewhere, trying to make it his own.

He’s drawing it in from the mountain, and he uses her to do it!

There was still much I didn’t know, but something about my theory felt right.

New plan.

The mana which I had been trying to use to repair my body I redirected all to a single location.

My mouth.

Thankfully other than a locked jaw, nothing seemed too damaged. Within moments I felt it loosen up as I turned my eyes to the girl.

She was beaten and broken, her eyes lifeless as she lay chained next to the altar-looking thing.

She’s the key.

It would be through her if there was any chance of getting out of here alive.

How?

In a perfect world, I could give her a nice pep talk, have her release her power on the man, or however he was using her, and depowered, we might have a chance.

Minus the fact that I was a broken mess, but I’d fret the details later.

The issue was, the moment he saw me trying to get through to her, the man may simply choose to end me then and there.

I needed to get through to her in one stroke, a way to galvanize the girl.

I wracked my brain, looking for something, but thankfully, my slow-moving brain was unneeded.

“Your father!” Tez screamed from inside her pillar of fire. “Your father sent us!”

The girl, whose eyes looked so dead, suddenly stirred as if she had just remembered that she had a father.

“What are you-?” The man narrowed his eyes, watching Tez on her knees within the pillar of fire, clutching at the scale and screaming.

“We’ll bring you back home to your dad!” I shouted, following Tez’s lead.

There!

The girl mouthed the word, wrapping her mind around it.

“Father?” I could almost imagine the word slipping from between her lips as she looked toward me.

Yes!

“Enough playing.” The man looked between myself and Tez in the column of fire, wordlessly assessing who to deal with first.

The state of my apparent injuries convinced him, as she strode toward Tez, through his own fire as he picked her up by the throat.

The scene was like a horrific flashback; the memory of my mother held up the same way.

There was no Sage to save her like there had been for my mom.

There was no one.

I felt a flare of warmth burst up around me, and for a split second, I thought I was within a vortex of fire, but rather than pain, power, and relief rushed through me.

What?

I looked toward the one person who could have done it. She still lay on the ground, battered and beaten, but in an act of defiance, perhaps her first act since she had been captured, she held a hand toward me as I felt my body surge with power.

Wow.

There was still someone who could save Tez, I realized.

Me.

Mana coursing through me, I instinctively felt it was different, a savage edge to the ordinarily tranquil flow.

It was just a taste of the power of a dragon, but I let it course through me, my broken bones snapping back into place as the world slowed. I could see his fingers tightening around her throat, the life in her eyes moments from being crushed.

Flow!

Mana roaring within me, I activated my ruptured body. Unlike anything I’d experienced before, the rush that overcame me made every prior ruptured body look like nothing more than a sugar rush. Flying forward, I absentmindedly noted the trail of crimson flames flickering behind me like the tail of a comet.

The look of surprise in the face of the enemy mage as I appeared before him was only made better as I kicked him straight in the chest, sending him crashing through boulders as I caught Tez, who gasped for breath.

“You okay?”

She looked up at me, the same look of surprise at seeing me standing that the mage had, before she nodded, patting my arm, signaling me to put her down.

“What happened to you?” Tez eyed me as I turned to face where the man had crashed through a boulder, slowly standing up.

“The girl. Rosalina. I think…. I think she shared with me some of the power that he has been drawing from.”

“Hmm.” Tez nodded, and I waited for her to exclaim that there was nothing she could do then, that she would take the girl and leave as I distracted the mage.

Instead, she looked between the girl and me. “Think you can get her to share some with me?”

“W-what?” I sputtered. “Don’t you see this isn’t the time for jokes?”

“I’m not joking.” Tez answered firmly. Grabbing at her shoulder, she ripped away the billowy over-shirt she had been wearing. As the only piece of clothing not directly touching her, it had been outside the protective influence of the stone dragon scale. Beneath it, I got a good look at her tightly muscled arms as she spun her staff in her hands. “We’re doing this together.”

Before I could protest, I saw as red flames began to envelop her, a gentler glow compared to the hateful flames that the mage had used earlier.

“Huh. Neat.”

“Watch out!”

I shoved Tez out of the way, barely noticing the disturbance within the mana in time as a black metal spike shot out from the ground, where it would have skewered her through the heart had I not shoved her in time.

“This is what I get for gloating. I feel like sharing my accomplishments with someone who isn’t one of those idiotic raiders for once, and this is what I get in return.”

The enemy mage had pulled on a pair of metal gauntlets with savage-looking talons tipping the fingers.

“Once I deal with you two, I shall return to my work.”

Tez looked at me as understanding passed between us without a spoken word.

Tez rushed in from his left as I shot forward toward his right, our weapons blurring through the air. Even with our sudden rush in power, the man was still faster, drawing from the draconic power for longer than we had. A clawed hand catching each of our weapons, he sent a kick flying into Tez as she went bouncing along the ground. Only me to focus on, the man sent a flurry of strikes in my direction, which I desperately fended off, until he managed to catch me in quick succession with several finger jabs, my mana suddenly faltering.

Shit!

Before he could take advantage of my faltering mana, a staff swung out of nowhere, catching him in the head and tossing him off the side of the peak, crashing further down.

“We’re even now.” Tez smiled at me from where she had managed to catch him by surprise, recovering faster than the man had anticipated.

“I will not be defeated by a bunch of children!”

An explosion rocked the ground beneath us as the mage shot towards us from down below, using an instant explosive burst of fire to propel him up, followed by a second burst of fire to land him back on the flat ground of the peak.

I can’t lie; that was cool.

Back in the fight, he flung a hand forward, shouting.

“Rentorz!”

Instantly a wave of magma formed before us, threatening to wash over us and swallow us whole.

“Behind me!” I shouted as Tez, for once, did exactly as I commanded. I sheathed my sword, closing my eyes as I focused all the raging mana within me.

A strike so fast it can part the sea.

Those words laid the foundation of northern-style swordplay. The idea was that if one mastered the way of the sword, one could part even seas with a single strike.

Not a sea of water, but close enough.

I wasn’t a master swordsman, not by a longshot. But what I was, was absolutely brimming with more mana than I knew what to do with. It wasn’t the same as within the slip dimension, where I could use the mana freely in the form of externalized magic.

But mana was mana, and who needed overly showy magic when you had a sword?

Flow!

With the same surge of mana and speed that I had drawn upon earlier to reach Tez in time to save her, my sword arced out from my sheathe, through the wave of magma as it was about to bear down on us, and back again.

The pure ferocity of the speed of my strike didn’t so much as split the magma wave as it blew a hole straight through, the magma crashing harmlessly to the sides and spilling down the jagged rocks of the mountain peak.

Free of obstruction, I saw the enemy mage staring at us in disbelief, huffing with visible exhaustion.

Thought so.

The mana I’d felt from him was oppressive, but it wasn’t endless. He had made it a point to say that he had yet to fully realize his endeavor, to draw the dragon mana within himself and make it his own. Not just that, the wave of magma had been formed from pure mana rather than utilizing the elements around. It was sure to have taxed him heavily.

It was our chance.

I sprinted forward, directly toward him, as my sword began to clash against his claws in an explosion of sparks.

“Damn… kid!” The mage panted before jumping back and whipping an outstretched hand toward me. “Scortar!”

A black metal spike was launched toward me, but his mana usage grew sloppy and televised. I smacked the spike out of the air before it reached me, thrusting at him as he continually backed up, eyes widening and desperately scanning for an out, occasionally throwing more of the metal spikes in my direction that never got close.

Almost!

He was gassing out, desperate, and all but at the breaking point.

Almost!

A desperate animal.

Almost!

The thing about desperate animals.

Almost!

Is that is often when they turn the most reckless, lashing out at anything and everything.

“If... I can’t… have the power…. No one can!” The man shoved away from me before charging straight at the girl.

No!

I began to chase, but I heard a desperate final shout as the man thrust a hand backward.

“Scortar!”

I’d grown used to the black metal appearing as spikes bursting from the ground, so I was surprised as a wall of bars erupted before me, cutting me off.

I wouldn’t make it in time.

A clawed hand reached out for the girl, her eyes wide in fear.

No!

I reared back with all my strength before launching my sword between the bars, where it spun through the air. My aim was off, missing his chest, but that wasn’t to say I missed entirely. Leading him too far with my throw, rather than catching him through the chest, it flew through the air before passing through his outstretched arm, cutting it off at the elbow, before finally smashing into the strange altar.

Where both it and my sword exploded into a million pieces.

The mana rushing through me vanished instantly, but it wasn’t the loss of the mana that I found myself focused on.

My sword!

The metal bars were still before me, conjured forth using elements found within the ground; they wouldn’t vanish with the loss of our dragon mana. Not just that, the man, even after losing an arm, was still hell-bent on killing the girl, reaching forward with his other clawed gauntlet.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

“Tez!” I shouted, knowing I couldn’t be the one to end this.

Tez, though, was a step ahead of me, as from behind me, I saw the girl slam her staff into the ground, using it to pole vault over the bars. Eyes glued to her, I saw her body twist midair like a trained acrobat, pulling back her bladed staff before slamming it straight down.

Directly through the man’s chest.

Eyes bulging, the man twitched, impaled by the staff and reminding me of a fish flopping on dry land.

One, two, three twitches.

Then he was still.

No final words. No promises of revenge. Nothing.

He was dead.

It was over.