375 - The Guardian Pt. Final

With a furious roar, the great beast bears down upon the Guardian with the full might of its aura as it gapes open its mouths, unhinging their jaws. An emerald blaze wholly envelops the Guardian’s comparatively tiny silhouette, then implodes upon him, running through a spectrum of unearthly colours in the same manner that mundane fire would grow brighter and paler with greater heat. In a flash, the Guardian’s form vanishes, leaving only a darkly iridescent ember. Light rises in the back of the dragon’s throats, and flame comes spewing forth, swiftly focusing into beam-like torches.

Only, the ember changes. Its iridescence becomes bright, its surface cracks, and white flames burst forth. Just as the dragon turns its breath upon the ember within which it has imprisoned the Guardian, he bursts free, yet he makes no effort to evade the dragon’s breath! Riding atop a roaring pillar of flame, the Guardian furls his cloak of revenants about himself and becomes a scarlet arrow piercing through the vile beast’s might, flying directly into the open maw of its middle head!

The dragon responded in the only manner it could — by focusing all its strength into that head’s breath. But it wasn’t enough. Its own flesh and bone rose up in revolt against it, tightening its throat to the utmost and erupting in jagged spurs. Wherever the Guardian thrusts his spear he finds purchase, he the dragon’s flesh yielding to his blazing force of will. After carving out a place for himself deep inside the dragon's throat, he begins the next step in his plan. While the middle head twitches in place, countless bone-centipedes begin crawling out of its mouth and out of the many spots where bone spurs erupt from its scales. They latch on, enveloping the head all the way down to the root of the neck, and somehow, their feeble candle-flames devour the mighty flame-breath of the left and right heads. Even when the dragon bites itself, the tiny constructs refuse to buckle, acting as a second layer of scales. Soon enough, the dragon’s middle head is fully enveloped, and the centipedes begin melting together, forming an articulated outer shell, and even as this takes place, the middle head fights with the others, savagely biting into the left head’s neck — so savagely that its neck snaps, and the left head goes limp.

Enraged, the dragon reaches for its middle neck at the base and uses its right head to bite down as best it can, but its fangs fail to find purchase. Somehow, the feeble bones of humans, blended with only a small proportion of dragonbone, have become tougher than a true dragon’s teeth — it is beyond the great beast’s comprehension. It manages to score the shell’s surface, and the source of its surpassing strength reveals itself: Through the bones of feeble men, their scarlet-burning spirit of resistance flows, and even now, it lashes out, drawing the gouged-out bone back into place.

A last resort, the dragon wrenches its own neck. With screams so loud as to send shockwaves through the air and set it alight, the god-beast rips its own head off and moves to crush it underfoot, but the moment the middle head fully detaches, it comes fully and undeniably under the Guardian’s control, sprouting spindly centipede-legs. In this absurd manner it skitters about, evading the dragon, while innumerable bone-servitors swarm towards it. Some fall upon the dragon, or otherwise act to distract it, while the overwhelming bulk join with the middle head. In moments — impossibly quickly, in fact — the Guardian constructs a dragon of his own, shod in scales of bone and burning with white-black flame. It stands astride two digitigrade legs, with the usurped middle head protruding directly from between its shoulders. Its arms are many-jointed, built more like spines than anything else, and hang down past its knees.

The Guardian emerges from within his construct’s mouth, standing atop its head. He wills his helmet’s faceplate to open, and begins gesturing with his staff as he taunts the two-headed dragon. A sigil begins taking form on the middle head’s forehead.

“At the moment I came to the realization of what exactly is taking place, what this struggle represents, you lost all hope of prevailing over me, foul dragon!”

The sigil is never, at any point, unfinished. It seems to instantly transition from the beginning stages to total completion, already suffused with an overbearing strength of meaning, visibly distorting the air around it with representations of its meaning in all forms.

PURIFICATION

The Guardian grins in a manner entirely unlike him, for he is not the Guardian. 

The two-headed dragon charges, meeting his construct in battle, only to find itself utterly outmatched, and its true target gone. The dragon is stronger, faster, more durable, and yet it seems as if at every juncture, something goes wrong. A slip here or there, an inopportune obstacle.  The objectively inferior construct quickly begins to overwhelm the dragon, not attempting to slay it, but instead using its head and arms to bind it.

Meanwhile, a bone-armored silhouette rises into the sky, and with it, so does a cloud of bone, be it solid or mere dust. At the apex of his flight, hundreds of meters up, he raises his staff. Ten thousand drill-like stakes of bone take shape, and his staff grows in kind, forming an enormous point and a great spiraling detonation engine at its top.

He bellows, and his voice carries throughout all lands, beyond the horizon, shaking the earth and scattering the clouds.

“I AM VICTOR KHESTUN, DESPOT OF SELF, KING OF FLESH AND BONE! MY BODY IS MY KINGDOM, AND MY RULE IS ABSOLUTE! THUS, I COMMAND THEE, VILE DRAGON, MAKE YOUR TRUE FORM KNOWN!”

The two-headed dragon erupts into a pillar of emerald flame, racing skyward towards Victor.

The heir of Koschei the Undying swings his staff down, and, joined by ten thousand Devil’s Teeth, meets the pillar of dragonfire in kind, crashing down faster than sound, faster than lightning. A crimson drill-comet with a tail of bonefire, the staff-spear’s bonewrought point at its very tip. 

SPIRALING DETONATION SIGN

SPEAR FROM THE HEAVENS

METEORIC ONBASHIRA

For a moment it appears as if two pillars of flame are clashing, reaching from the earth to the heavens. 

Then, in an instant, Victor splits the green pillar down the middle, and even before he reaches the ground, already his bonefire is ravenously devouring its remnants.