Chapter 58: Electric Fist

Spike and I started walking once he caught his breath. The sun is high in the sky, and the dry sand we've been walking on is starting to change. The ground is rockier with patches of vegetation, and in the distance, there are mountains covered in snow.

"Sio, on our right," Spike whispers to me. I don't sense anything, but I still turn and strain my eyes. 

"I don't see anything, Spike," I reply and continue scanning.

"Look at the ground, idiot," Spike says while shaking his head.

I drop my gaze and notice a large depression in the ground. I could lie in it and make snow angels without touching the edges.

"Is that what I think it is?" I ask, a smile breaking out on my face.

"I think so," Spike answers with a matching grin. 

We walk to the depression and jump down into it. The edges come up to our waists. Ahead of us are four large claw impressions in the ground, with another to our left. We've dropped into a dragon's footprint.

Spike crouches down and runs his right hand along the compacted dirt and crushed stone. But I can only think of one thing.

"Spike, how the hell are we bringing the dragon back if its foot is bigger than both of us?" I ask.

"We won't, we'll just take back one of its eggs," he answers confidently.

"How do you know it will have eggs?" I ask, and Spike stands up.

"It'll have eggs," he replies calmly.

I think he's just hoping for the best, but whatever, so long as I get to fight a dragon.

We leave the footprint and continue in the direction of the snowy mountains. I focus some of my magic on the terrain to search for more footprints, but find something else. There's a cliff up ahead, and it must be significant, because I can't sense the bottom of it. Spike and I walk up to the edge of a several-hundred-meter-tall rock face. Below us, the land looks fertile and grassy, except for a large crater with something crawling around inside it.

"Spike, I think it's inside that crater," I say, and Spike strains his vision. His red and black hair has lost its characteristic spikeyness, and his similarly colored armor has lost its shine. But his expression is as serious as ever.

"I can't tell from here, but there weren't any reports of a cliff.. I don't think we have the gear to climb down it," he says with a frown.

I hum and think. Just how confident am I with my water magic? 

"I've got an idea, but you're not going to like it," I say, and Spike turns to me with an uneasy expression.

"Is it a way to get down the cliff?" he asks, and I nod once. 

"I'm pretty sure we won't die, but it might be better if you just close your eyes and hope for the best. If I explain it, I think you'll say no," I reply.

The hair on his head stands up a little, like when a cat is scared. 

"How sure are you that we won't die?" he asks and grimaces.

"85, no, 90% sure," I answer with a grin.

"Fuck.. what do you need me to do?" Spike asks.

"Close your eyes and cross your arms over your chest," I reply, and Spike does just that.

I jump behind him and pick him up. Spike's eyes and mouth open to protest, but I jump off the cliff before words can leave his lips. His head turns to look down, and his face loses all color.

"WHAT THE FUCKKKK!" he yells as I start shooting high-pressure water from my feet. Our descent slows considerably, but we're still in a free fall.

"THIS WAS THE BIG IDEA, PRICK?!" Spike shouts again, but I can't reply. Balancing in the air with wind magic took a little practice. The same is true for using condensed magic. I'm learning to fly with water magic in free fall. We're halfway down, and it's not going too well.

Our path down jerks from side to side. We're top-heavy and trying to balance on two little force vectors. If I push the water streams any harder, my legs won't stay under us, and we'll start spinning through the air.

I bend my knees to lower our center of gravity and increase the volume of my water magic. We slow further, but the concussion from landing will scramble Spike's brain at this speed. 50 meters above the ground, I adjust the plan. I condense magic under my armpits and create two additional force vectors to counteract our fall. Our speed slows and slows until we land gently in the oversized puddle my magic has created.

I let go of Spike, and he falls to his knees in the puddle.

"Hate.. you.. HURLAHH." Spike vomits up everything he's eaten in the past two days, but the wind on the way down has returned his hair to normal.

I make cold water for Spike to clean his mouth and splash his face. We continue to the edge of the crater we saw from the cliff top.

A large red dragon is curled up inside it. The bottom of the crater must be 100 meters lower than the edge we're peering over, but if the dragon stood up, I suspect it would be at eye level with us. Its body is covered in thick, shiny scales. Its head is the size of a house, and it's radiating magic as bright as Victoria's. But its claws seem special. They're long and sharp, but the magic detection I use is being absorbed by them like they're spell stones.

The dragon opens its mouth and exhales lightly, then stretches its wings out and reveals what it's protecting. Beneath its right wing are six baby red dragons. They look a little smaller than humans at this distance, and they're piled on top of each other like a fresh litter of puppies. 

I turn and look at Spike. I've never seen him so focused. His eyes are glued to the dogpile of little dragons, and every muscle in his body seems to be tensed.

"Want me to lead the big one away?" I ask, breaking Spike's concentration. He looks at me and squints his eyes.

"You want to fight it alone?" he asks in disbelief. 

"Yea, it's a red dragon, so it probably uses fire. I use water, which is a good counter to that," I explain.

"It's a fucking dragon, and you want to fight it alone?" He asks with his eyes closed in frustration. "It'd be better to wait for it to leave, then we can go after the little ones."

"Alright, we can try that," I reply, and let off a strong burst of magic. The dragon's head lifts up, and it claws at the ground in front of its children to cover them in rubble. It looks around the rim of the crater until it zeroes in on our position.

"Fuck fuck fuck," Spike says and ducks his head down.

"GROOOOOOOHHH," the beast roars, and its magic swells. 

Spike's eyes dart all around, but there's no cover and no easy escape route. Only an idiot would start a fight with a dragon in a place like this, but that's exactly what I've done.

"I'll draw it away, you nab one of the kids," I say, and stand up on the rim of the crater. "COME AND GET IT, SCALY!" I yell while releasing another wave of magic. I run to the right along the crater's edge and drop our pack. The dragon's head follows my movement while baring its teeth - but it doesn't attack.

"Sio, get the fuck down!" Spike yells, and I stop. 

Why isn't it attacking? If it was sensitive enough to magic to notice Spike, it should've spotted us earlier - is it just worried about protecting its kids? Right.. its kids.

I reach down to the ground below and pick up a small rock. The baby dragons have started to claw their way out from the rubble pile provided by their parent, which gives me an easy target. I pitched for a summer in my last life before a broken hip ended my baseball career. I'm pretty sure I can nail one of the little bastards. The crater's edge is like an oversized mound. I draw the rock back in my right hand and lift my left leg. I shoot my leg forward, twist my body, and rocket the stone at one of the little dragons. It connects to the body and shatters a scale beneath one of the little dragon's wings.

"GREHH GREHHH!" it cries and falls from the mound of rubble it just climbed to the top of. 

"GRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" 

Its parent roars as its claws dig into the ground and its wings flap. Dust shoots up all around the dragon as it flies towards me. I jump back from the edge of the crater and release more magic so it can follow easily. It clips the edge of the crater, pulverizing the rocky terrain and creating another storm of dust beneath it. I look over my shoulder and see Spike jumping into the crater. Without a spectator, I can cut loose.

I draw the creature into the grassy land past the crater's edge, then turn and draw my sword. The dragon drops to the ground in front of me violently, its claws tearing the ground open as it lands and comes to a stop. Let's see what you've got scaly.

I jump between magic footholds and approach its head as I turn my sword to swing with the flat of my blade. The dragon's eyes are slits like snakes have, and they follow my every movement. I reach the height of its head and accelerate. I swing the flat of my blade into the dragon's left cheek, causing scales to shatter and fly through the air. Its cheekbone caves in where my sword made contact, but its head is so large that the damage is barely noticeable. 

"GRRRROHHHHHHH!" The dragon roars as it recoils back from the blow. Without turning its head back, it swings its claws at me with a left hook. I stand firm on a magic foothold and place my sword in front of me to intercept the attack. The force of the dragon's swing should lop its own claws off on my blade, but my blade meets something just as tough as it.

My sword is pushed back into me until it chips my collarbone, and I'm sent flying backwards faster than we free-fell from the cliff earlier. I use wind magic to slow myself and come to a stop on the ground several hundred meters away from the dragon.

"GRRRRRRRRRRROHHHHHHHHH!" Its roar is deeper, and its eyes are focused. The dragon takes off into a run while pushing its speed faster with flapping wings. I run my hand over the wound on my chest and use healing magic to stop the bleeding. My eyes drop to the sword in my right hand. It's not chipped or broken, but it's not sharp enough to cut through the dragon's claws.

I let magic spill out of my body and send commands to the energy all around the battlefield. Stone spikes shoot at the beast's underbelly, denting its scales and slowing its run. Blasts of wind filled with shards of ice bombard its wings and tear holes in them.

"GREHHHHH!" It cries as blood spews from its wings, but it doesn't stop its advance. 

The dragon stabs its claws forward at me. This time, I dodge to the sides and slice into the scales above the claws, but my sword isn't long enough to remove its feet. I start wrapping a magic shell around my blade as the dragon turns and swings its tail at me. I jump over it and cut into its flesh, but I didn't make the shell long enough to slice through a passenger-jet-sized tail. 

"GREHH!" The dragon cries and steps back, its tail spraying blood around like its wings. Maybe a sword isn't the best tool for this job..

I sheath my sword at my hip and wrap my body in layers of condensed magic. I compress the layers into each other until I can barely see my limbs through the dense magic. The bloodied dragon steps forward, and I jump into the sky. I create a violent, sparking electric current around my magic shell and dive down toward the beast's head. A sonic boom vibrates the air as my electrified fist smashes the space between the dragon's eyes.

Scales shatter then melt from the electricity. The dragon's slit-like eyes shoot from its skull, and its teeth break from its jaw snapping shut. Its head rockets into the ground and makes a 20-meter-wide crater. The dragon's wings flap violently and shower the area in blood while its tail digs a trench behind it. 

"GREHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

I focus magic over my shoulders and use it to push myself down, then expand the shell around my feet to the size of the footprint I stood in earlier. I slam this replica dragon's foot down on the beast's neck, flattening it into the ground as electricity arcs over its head and back.

"GREehuuhu.." the beast croaks and falls limp.

I scatter my magic shell and walk in front of the dragon. Its eyes hang from their sockets as blood pours out of the holes. Teeth and scale fragments are strewn about, and it's no longer glowing with ultra-bright magic. I walk to its feet and examine the claws I was unable to cut. They absorb more and more of my magic the closer I get. 

I've carved and shaped spell stones a hundred times. Never once has it required significant effort - but I can't cut these claws with my magic-infused sword. Just what the hell are they?

I declaw each of the dragon's feet and toss the claws into storage. They could be a revolutionary battery, or even a weapon if I can figure out how to shape them into a sword.

I wonder if Spike is done yet?

I fly to the edge of the crater and scan with my magic, but I don't sense Spike. One of the baby dragons is bleeding out in the center, but the other five are behind the pile of rubble in a semi-circle. I sprint down to the center and remove the bleeder's head as I circle around the rubble. The baby dragons are two meters tall with large heads and sharp teeth, plus claws; they only looked small compared to the big one. The first dragon has an armored arm in its mouth, the next a leg, the next a torso, the next another leg, and the last-

"HURGLUU," the last pukes up Spike's head.

"Fuck.. I thought they were smaller," I mumble and raise my sword. I form a shell of condensed magic around it, then swing from right to left. It sounds like glass breaks, then five dragon heads fall to the ground. I release a wave of magic, and their claws absorb some of it, but nothing like the bigger one. I don't have any use for them.

I don't know if the parent dragon would've left the kids alone at any point, but if Spike and I stuck together, I could've kept him alive. I was always using him, and I don't feel bad about that, but I let him die so I could box a dragon, before I could get any more information on the church. 

Fuck. I just fought a dragon, but I feel like I need to blow off some steam. I look around at the pieces of Spike and grimace. I look at the smaller dragons and remember the one I was fighting. I fly out of the crater and land at the tail of the large beast. I stab my sword through it and start pulling. I use magic to create footholds that won't shatter under the strain, but I let my body do the work.

I drag it into the crater and pull my sword from it. I don't want what's left of Spike to be food for some other creature here. And I need to practice large-scale magic. It's time for a cremation.