Chapter 24: Mr. Super Evil Dragon
Iskander
The air in the Volcano Zone felt like an hot iron in my lungs, a suffocating blanket of superheated ash and searing air.
Each breath was a conscious effort, scraping against my lungs, tasting of brimstone and sulfur. And standing at the heart of this inferno was Gawain Indrath, no longer a man-shaped puppet but a monument of scaled, draconic wrath.
His form was colossal, a living mountain of obsidian-black scales, each one the size of a shield, with veins of molten lava pulsing beneath like a subterranean river of fire.
On his head, three pairs of massive, curled horns, like those of some infernal goat, framed a maw that could swallow a house whole. And his eyes… those same vacant, frozen blue pools, but now on a scale that made their emptiness infinitely more terrifying.
They held no malice, no fury—only the chilling, absolute obedience of a weapon pointed at its target.
"Welcome to the Crucible, Being of Aether and Flesh." Al-Hazred's voice boomed from high above, his aetheric form shimmering like a violet star against the roiling, smoke-choked sky.
"I have spent countless centuries perfecting this environment, waiting for a subject of your… unique potential." The pride in his tone was academic, detached, like a scientist unveiling a long-awaited experiment.
"As you have undoubtedly deduced, this is Gawain Indrath in his truest form. My first, and most potent, Drone. Consider him your… sparring partner. Your whetstone. Or, to use cruder terminology, your punching bag."
My eyes scanned the nightmarish landscape—the steep, unstable slopes of the volcano, the rivers of lava below offering no escape, only a fiery death.
Even if I could outrun a dragon—which I severely doubted—where would I go? And now, he could fly. A disadvantage I had no answer for. The sheer scale of his power was a crushing reality.
'Child, you cannot fight this!' Sylvia's mental cry was a desperate plea, laced with a grief that felt older than the mountains around us. 'He toyed with you in his humanoid form! This… this is his true might! He was the strongest combat instructor, the most feared warrior under my Father's command before his disappearance! You are no match!'
I am not just going to stand here and let this Djinn Brainiac play with the dead like toys, Sylvia! The thought was a furious snarl, defiance burning hotter than the volcanic air.
Even in the remote possibility that it was Gawain personally to have slaughtered every last Djinn with his own claws, hands or sword, this isn't justice! It's desecration! It's a fucking insanity!
Punishing a corpse for the crimes of its life? He's your clansman! You should be the first to want his rest, not his eternal slavery!
A wave of profound, aching sorrow washed back through our bond. 'I… I thought you would hate me. Hate my Clan. After knowing the truth…' Her voice was a whisper of shame and fear.
I only hate the God of Misfortune, Sylvia, I thought back, the conviction absolute, a rock in the storm of her doubt. The one who twists good intentions into weapons, who turns legacies into chains. That's not you. That's never been you.
My gaze was locked on Gawain as his massive, serpentine neck began to coil, muscles like forged steel cables rippling beneath the lava-veined scales. But it wasn't pure mana gathering this time.
The air around his maw didn't just warp; it crackled. Jagged, blood-red lightning—visible, terrifying—arced around his jaws, grounding itself in the rock beneath his feet with explosive pops. This was something else. Something worse.
I didn't wait. Pale gold aether flooded my legs, and I launched myself into the air, a desperate, arcing leap aimed at putting distance between me and whatever hell he was about to unleash. Below me, Gawain's head snapped forward.
There was no visible beam, no stream of fire. Just a silent, concentrated voiding of space in the direction of my previous position.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The air itself seemed to scream as it was torn apart. A crater many meters wide wide and twice as deep exploded into existence where I'd been standing, the edges glowing white-hot and glassy. The red lightning that had heralded the attack now danced across the newly formed pit, sizzling with residual, annihilating energy.
Sylvia, how do I fight a dragon in his dragon form? The question was frantic, a soldier begging his general for a strategy against an impossible foe.
'I… I don't know!' Her admission was filled with helpless frustration. 'My people… we are the pinnacle of this world. We didn't have wars for centuries, we ended them. The last true conflict… was over before I was even born. I was taught history and theory, not draconic combat tactics!'
Perfect, I thought, the irony as bitter as the ash on my tongue. I landed hard, my boots—the boots I kindly stole from Sevren—cratering the black rock, the impact jarring my teeth. I didn't pause.
I pushed off again, breaking into a desperate sprint, circling the behemoth. My only conceivable advantage was his size—he was a titan, twenty meters of scale and muscle at a minimum. Surely, he'd be slower to turn, to react…
I underestimated him. Profoundly. I saw ambient aether—the deep, bruised purple—begin to coalesce around him, drawn by his will. I tried to pull at it, to siphon it away as I had before, but my control was a child's grab against a master's grip. The aether flowed into him unimpeded.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the massive dragon pivoted. Not with the slow, grinding motion of a colossal beast, but with a fluid, spatial shift that defied physics.
One moment he was facing my previous trajectory; the next, his cold blue eyes were locked directly on me, his right front leg already rising, claws like obsidian scythes gleaming in the hellish light.
It descended. Not with a swing, but a stomp. A meteor strike given draconic form. There was no time to dodge. Instinct took over. Creation flared between my shoulder blades, a sun igniting in my spine.
Pale gold aether erupted from my palms, flowing upwards, solidifying into a thick, domed barrier above me—a shield of pure will and energy.
It held for a microsecond. The sound of the impact was beyond sound—a pressure wave of pure force that slammed into me even before the claw connected. Then the dome shattered. It didn't crack; it disintegrated into a million glittering motes of fading light under the sheer, unimaginable weight of the blow.
The force, only partially mitigated, drove me into the ground like a nail. Rock exploded around me. Agony blazed through every bone, every joint. Before I could even process the pain, a shadow blotted out the fiery sky. His tail. A whip of scaled muscle and bone thicker than an ancient tree trunk.
It connected with my side.
The world became a blur of motion and pain. I was airborne, hurtling backwards like a discarded ragdoll, the volcanic landscape spinning in a nauseating whirl of black rock and orange fire.
The impact against the far wall of the caldera was a final, brutal exclamation point on the sentence of my defeat. Stone cracked behind me, and I slumped to the ground in a heap, my body a symphony of screaming nerves and shattered bone.
"You fight naively, Being of Aether and Flesh." Al-Hazred's voice was a calm, disapproving echo from above. "All power, no finesse. A hammer where a scalpel is required. But do not despair. Should you, against the statistical probability, manage to subdue Gawain, I have prepared a gift for you. A relic, perfectly attuned to your… unique Godrune. To Creation."
Through the haze of pain, I managed a weak, bloody cough. "Do you… really think you'll win me over… with the promise of a toy?"
Sylvia was already at work within me, a torrent of pale gold aether flowing from my core, seeking out fractures, knitting splintered bone, mending torn muscle. The process was agonizingly fast, a relentless burning sensation.
"Of course not," Al-Hazred replied, his tone that of a lecturer addressing a slow student. "You will come to embrace my vision when your naivety has been burned away in this fire. When you see the necessity of the path I lay before you."
I forced myself to my feet, my body protesting every movement. I leapt sideways just as another silent, lightning-tinged breath attack vaporized the spot where I'd been lying.
He was impossible. Unpredictable. His Spatium mastery didn't just extend to his sword; it allowed his entire colossal form to teleport in short, blinding bursts. Fighting him was like trying to box a thunderstorm.
'Child, you lack the raw power to harm him directly,' Sylvia reiterated, her voice tight with strain as she directed the healing energies. 'Even with aether's superiority, his natural draconic defenses, augmented by whatever arts Al-Hazred has woven into him, are too great. You cannot overpower him.'
That might be true, I conceded, ducking behind a rock spire as another invisible spear of pure force—this one accompanied by a thunderous boom of displaced air—obliterated it a few inches from my face. Rock shrapnel peppered my skin.
But the Djinn Brainiac doesn't want me dead. He wants me… tempered. He'll keep me on the edge of destruction, but he won't let me fall. Not yet.
"Standing still will not aid your progress, Being of Aether and Flesh," Al-Hazred observed, as if commenting on the weather. "Allow me to offer a critique: your aetheric efficiency is abysmal. You utilize mere droplets from the ocean you possess to augment your physique. You are a prodigy trying to perform a symphony by banging rocks together."
The criticism, delivered in that cold, analytical tone, stung precisely because it was true. I knew it. I felt the wastage with every movement, the clumsy expenditure of vast power for minimal effect. The technique Sylvia had taught me, adapted from mana to aether, was a child's primer. I was an untaught savant.
"And how," I gritted out, dodging another tail sweep that carved a canyon in the ground, "am I supposed to do better?" I was asking my torturer for advice.
A faint, pleased smile touched Al-Hazred's spectral lips. "Experience, Being of Aether and Flesh, is the only true instructor for such an intimate art. My kind were scholars, architects, weavers of reality. Not brawlers. I can provide the crucible, but you must learn the metallurgy yourself. Continue to apply your head to this particular wall. Repeatedly. You will learn, or you will break. We have all the time in the world at our disposal."
On that, at least, we were in agreement. Time was a currency I could spend. I didn't need food, water, sleep. My sustenance was the aether I breathed, the energy Sylvia and I could draw from this hostile environment itself. And every second spent in this hell, every bone-shattering impact, every near-miss with oblivion, was a lesson paid for in pain—a currency devoid of inflation in my case.
A lesson I would learn. I would learn until I was strong enough to smash this arrogant fossil's face in—wherever his real, crystal-bound body was hidden.
Sylvia, I thought, the resolve crystallizing into a cold, hard point in my mind. I am so sorry for the spectacle you're about to witness. The pounding I'm going to take.
A sigh, weary but laced with unwavering devotion, traveled down our bond. 'I believe I must simply grow accustomed to watching you be dismantled and remade, my reckless child.' Her light pulsed with resigned affection.
'Very well. I will maintain the aetheric flow through your channels. Focus on the fight. On survival. On learning. If you lose pieces…' She left the sentence hanging, but the promise was there. I would rebuild myself. Aether would stitch me back together.
Al-Hazred wanted a weapon to bring about the "Twilight of Epheotus." He wanted to use me, the perfect fusion of Asuran flesh and aetheric potential, to enact his ancient, genocidal revenge on Sylvia's entire race. He saw my compassion as a flaw to be burned out, my connection to Sylvia as a tool to be exploited.
So be it.
I would play the role. I would be his eager student in this school of pain. I would let him believe he was forging me into his perfect blade. I would learn every lesson this brutal curriculum had to offer. I would absorb the power, the control, the efficiency.
And when I was sharp enough, when I understood aether not as a blunt instrument but as an extension of my own will, I would turn the blade.
On him.
I would use his own crucible to temper my new body into something he could never control. And then, with my newfound power, I would find a way out. I would take Sylvia, and I would make her wish come true. We would go to Dicathen. We would find the person she longed to see.
The dragon before me roared, a sound that shook the very volcano. Lava bubbled in response. I settled into a ready stance, pale gold light flickering around my fists, my eyes fixed on the vacant blue orbs of my tormentor and teacher.
"Alright, Mr. Super Evil Dragon," I whispered, a grim smile touching my lips. "Round two."