The arrogance of man

The man scoffed at me. "Well. You certainly have the attitude of a so-called 'Great Dragon,' despite being... well, unimpressive." He laughed, and a couple of the men around him joined him. "You see, it's been a very long time since anyone around here has seen a Great Dragon, and you're not what we were expecting."

I shook my head with a sigh. The kitsune girl had managed to catch my eye. Pretty enough, perhaps, that I'd want her for my collection. It would be a shame to have to kill her. "That doesn't much sound like surrender, or an explanation for why you are here. They are very strange last words." I looked at each mage and soldier in turn as I spoke, and found nothing but grim determination on their faces. Except for the kitsune. When our eyes met, she looked away as if ashamed. She lowered her shield arm completely, opening a small gap in the group's defensive wall.

The man clenched his jaw, irritated, and a few of the mages began preparing spells. I could feel the mana gathering within them. Almost taste it. "We have come to bind you, Dragon, and take your power for ourselves. Or kill you, if necessary."

It was my turn to laugh. "And you thought to accomplish this feat all by yourselves? I should slay you all where you stand for the insult." I flexed my claws, tearing deep grooves into the stone beneath them. I wondered how well their armor and shields would withstand my talons.

A flash of offensive magic arced from one of the mages at me like a bolt of lightning. I didn't immediately recognize the spell, but the shimmering dust around my body reacted and the attack rebounded sharply, retuning to the mage. It struck the man in the chest before he could throw up any sort of defense and he burst into white flame, screaming briefly before the sound simply ended. Before anyone else could even turn to help him, his whole body had vanished. Scattered ashes on the wind.

Whatever that spell was, Azralynn had been right that they were serious about hunting dragons. Powerful magic. But the rebounded attack made the whole group pause in surprise and uncertainty. Another of the soldiers lowered his shield, perhaps seeking some personal goodwill by means of surrender. I took the opportunity to buy a little bit of time for the dust to reform around me. "You think your second-rate spells can kill a Great Dragon? I gave you too much credit when I said you were simply misguided. You're fools. Outside of your depth."

Before anyone could loose another attack at me, I opened my mouth and breathed my bright blue mana breath over the whole group. The magic runes of their portal stone went dark as soon as the rolling wave of pure mana washed over its edges, and countless smaller enchantments and defensive spells throughout the troop evaporated as the mana holding them together was burned away. The soldiers in the front row hid behind their shields, which proved an effective barrier to the spread of my mana wave, but some of it managed to leak through the two gaps in their formation and touched the personal mana of another mage.

He would burn to **** in minutes if not aided, but he panicked and tried to cast a spell to save himself. He didn't even have time to scream before his entire reserve of mana ignited and he exploded with a strange whooshing popping sound and a sizzle of blue flame, leaving no remains behind.

In the confusion of the second mage's ****, the group's morale was shaken.

Casting Alter Size to suddenly grow to the size of a house, I darted forward, unleashing another, much larger, wave of my blue mana breath to pool around everyone's legs like flames made of mist. The kitsune, heedless of the fog, threw herself to the ground and covered her head with her hands, her weapons skittering across the ground. I made a note of her location and did my best to avoid stepping on her while I darted around and between the shifting lines of shields and blades.

My drake body was quick and agile, and I used that speed to unleash my breath weapon again and again from several angles until every scrap of magic these hunters had brought with them was burned from the world. The soldiers held as best they could, but they weren't equipped to defend against me. I flooded the battlefield as I tore shields from their hands and raked huge claws at anyone who raised a weapon against me.

The whole encounter lasted perhaps forty seconds. When the mana breath dissipated, there wasn't a mage still standing. Four had simply ceased to be, and the other two were ****. They must have realized the mana breath would kill them if they tried to use any magic at all, and simply let their mana burn out rather than die. It would have been excruciating, but it saved their lives.

The soldiers that were still alive all scattered, but they would have nowhere to run to. No reinforcements were coming, and there was no refuge in this corner of the land. The kitsune woman was the only opponent I considered to have genuinely surrendered to me. She was curled into a small ball on the stone floor, peeking at me from behind the tail she'd curled around herself like a security blanket. If not for the hesitation I'd sensed in her when she'd first arrived, I might have simply killed her, but I would allow her a chance to explain herself.