Chapter 13: The Dragon’s Might
The roar from Mephistopheles arrived like a thunder storm. It swept through the area, making the other beasts flinch and some even trembling in fright.
The air changed.
The pressure changed.
Even the light seemed different.
For an instant, every person in the arena understood the same thing. This was not a beast pretending to be a dragon.
This was a dragon.
Arthur’s voice cut through it. "Remember the plan!"
Vedas gripped his spear with both hands. "...trying not die first."
Arthur nods. "Good. Step two is hitting it."
Vedas sighs. "...One impossible thing at a time."
Then Mephistopheles disappeared.
Not literally.
The eye simply failed to follow something moving that fast. One instant the Golden Dragon stood at the center of the crater. The next was its tail was already halfway through a killing arc.
Vedas barely got the shield into position.
The impact landed.
The shield held but Vedas did not.
The force punched through steel, through muscle, through bone, and through every part of him connected to the point of impact.
The world blurred.
His boots carved two deep trenches through the crater floor. Dirt and broken stone exploded around him as he was shoved backward until a boulder finally stopped him.
The crowd recoiled.
Several students realized they had been holding their breath.
"Too fast."
"I didn’t even see it move."
Vedas pushed himself upright. His shield arm hung uselessly at his side. And the worst part was the dragon had not used a skill. It had flicked its tail and Vedas was halfway across the crater.
And this was the result.
Mephistopheles tilted its head and came forward again.
The rear foot shifted. The tail coiled slightly. Arthur had been watching every part of it since the moment the fight started.
"Left!"
Vedas moved without waiting to understand why.
The tail missed his head by inches.
The stone beside him exploded anyway.
He was already moving on his way down, rolling and recovering and charging forward into the space the dragon had opened with its own swing, spear aimed at the neck.
Mephistopheles tilted its head by three degrees.
The spear passed wide.
The claw came next. Vedas twisted and it missed his chest and found his arm instead, and three lines opened across the armor with a sound like tearing metal. The force spun him sideways and he went down again, and when he came back up there was blood on the side of his face from where he had hit the ground.
"Shield!"
The wing came from the left, and Vedas barely raised his shield before the impact arrived, and he was sent across the crater in the wrong direction. He was bouncing twice off the broken earth, and came to rest against the far edge.
Silence settled over the crowd.
At the edge of the crater, the girl with green hair and the owl on her head had her notebook open and her pen moving steadily. The pen paused, then resumed. The owl looked down at the page and then back at the fight and seemed, in its way, to be in agreement with what was being written.
The young man who had been collecting betting slips nearby was not collecting anything. He stood with his arms at his sides watching the same thing everyone else was watching.
Mephistopheles stood at the center of the crater and waited for Vedas to stand up again. It was not making mistakes.
It wasn’t trying.
It wasn’t angry.
It wasn’t frustrated.
The dragon fought the way a storm moved. It simply happened and everyone else dealt with the consequences.
Vedas got up.
Blood ran down the left side of his face and the right side of his armor was carved open and his shield arm had gone from numb to something past numb, and he stood up anyway and raised his spear and looked at the Golden Dragon across the crater.
Arthur’s eyes moved without stopping. The rear foot, the wing position, the angle of the neck, the way the tail moved when it was about to become relevant. He was not watching to admire it. He was watching for the space between the next attack and the one after that.
The left wing adjusted. The neck lowered by a degree. The jaw opened slightly.
"DOWN!"
Vedas dropped flat as golden fire crossed the crater. The world disappeared behind it as stone melted, and the ground split apart. A shockwave swept through the area, forcing all of the students to block with their arms. When the flames passed, half the crater looked different. The smell of burned stone spread through the area.
Some students trembled, others had stumbled backwards or fallen. Several beasts lowered themselves instinctively.
And silence fell in the area.
Vedas was on the ground. He pushed himself up to one arm, then two, and the smoke cleared enough to show the right side of his armor, which was blackened and in three pieces and had stopped existing as protection in any meaningful sense.
He stood up.
The fear in the crowd arrived slowly, moving through the gathered students in stages.
One of the followers said quietly that it was impossible.
Another shook his head and said no, that it was an SS Talent, which was the same thing said differently.
Cassian had not spoken, but his hands, which had been folded across his chest, were now at his sides and his fists were closed.
Behind him, the Taurus was shaking, a fine full-body tremor that was not from anything that had hit it, but from the older part of its instincts that understood what it was standing near.
Arthur laughed.
The sound was so out of place that every head in the crater turned toward it.
Vedas turned toward it too.
Arthur laughed. "You haven’t hit it yet!"
Vedas stared. "...working on it."
Arthur pointed. "But you’re still standing! That’s progress!"
Vedas could feel every instinct inside of him telling him to run away or give up now. But then he remembered Arthur smiling when everyone else laughed. He tightened his grip on the spear and nodded.
Several students laughed before they could stop themselves, and the tension in the crater cracked for half a second, which was the only reprieve available.
Then Mephistopheles moved again.
Vedas kicked dirt upward as the dragon closed the distance, the same trick that had turned the fight with the Taurus. The cloud of debris spread toward the dragon’s face.
Mephistopheles closed one eye and came through it.
The next claw was faster and Vedas barely escaped. The ground behind him didn’t as when he looked back, a chunk of the crater was simply gone. Arthur had already seen the attack but didn’t say anything as Vedas was already moving.
The only thing he could do now is keep watching.
The rear foot told him when the tail was about to engage. The left wing position told him which direction the next attack would push from. The angle of the neck told him when fire was about to become a consideration again.
None of it was obvious.
Arthur smiled. "Everything leaves clues."
He didn’t look at the dragon anymore.
He watched its feet.
Then its wings.
Then its neck.
People watched the dragon.
Arthur watched what the dragon did before it attacked.
"...It’s learning." He frowned. "No..." Arthur’s eyes widened slightly. "I’m learning."
Each exchange made the dragon feel a little less impossible than before. Not because Mephistopheles had become weaker. But because Arthur understood it just a little more.
He smiled. "Even a dragon can be studied."
...
Across the battlefield, Leon watched Arthur.
He had been watching Vedas at the start. The Goblin Warrior was the one fighting. The Goblin Warrior was the one taking everything Mephistopheles applied and finding a way to be upright when the smoke cleared.
That was where the story appeared to be.
But the story had another piece in it.
The lethal exchanges kept missing by margins that were exactly as narrow as they needed to be. They kept happening at moments that required knowing the attack was coming before it arrived. Leon had spent enough time training to recognize the difference between luck and timing.
What he was watching was not luck.
He shifted his gaze to the battlefield and saw Arthur was still smiling. He suddenly remembered something his father once said.
"The most dangerous Beast Tame isn’t the strongest one. It’s the one who learns faster than the world can kill him."
Leon looked back at Arthur. For the first time since arriving, Leon wondered what Arthur would become in ten years.
...
Mephistopheles stopped moving. The wings spread, and the golden light that began to rise from the scales blinded everyone. The pressure that accompanied it spread outward from the crater’s center and kept going, and the response it produced was involuntary.
Every beast in the area lowered itself. The black hawk pressed against the earth. The Taurus’s legs bent at the knees. The research girl’s owl spread its wings flat against the top of her head.
Students stepped backward into each other.
But Melo stepped forward. Her three eyes were open, and she did not lower her head. Mithra didn’t flinch either but her face was flashing with concern.
Mephistopheles launched from a standing position.
Vedas charged.
The crowd held everything as they watched them clash again.
Then the tail came from outside the line Vedas had been tracking. It was faster than before and wrapped around Vedas, and the world stopped.
The Goblin Warrior’s eyes went wide.
Then Mephistopheles took flight.
Higher.
Higher.
Higher.
Vedas struggled but the dragon continued rising as the crater shrank beneath them.
Students began shouting.
Followers stepped forward.
Even Cassian moved.
Nobody could look away.
Then Mephistopheles dove straight into the crater at swift speed.
SLAM.
The impact when it landed shook the ground in a radius that extended past the crater. The stone where they struck exploded upward. And dust swallowed the entire center of the battlefield in a cloud that rolled outward and did not settle quickly.
Complete silence.
The research girl stared into the dust, her pen motionless for the first time. "Is that it?" she said, to no one.
The brown hair boy stood with his slips of paper in his hands and said nothing.
At the edge of the crater, Mithra stood with her hand resting on Melo’s head. The fox had stepped forward to the edge and her eyes were fixed on the cloud. Mithra looked at her. "Believe in them," she said quietly. "Our friends haven’t given up."
Melo looked at the dust. Then she looked at Arthur and slowly nodded.
Across the battlefield, Leon was gazing at Arthur. He expected disappointment, frustration, or despair at how outmatched his beast was. Instead Arthur was still smiling and looking exactly as confident as before.
A quiet sound escaped Leon that had not been planned. He looked at the dust cloud, at the thing moving inside it, and then back at Arthur.
Arthur looked toward the dust. His smile never disappeared. "One day... We’ll tell Mom we fought a dragon."
Vedas couldn’t hear him.
But Arthur laughed anyway. "After we actually hit it first. Now make it reality, partner!"
Inside the cloud, something moved.
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