Paragon of Destruction

Arran had captured the goat a few hours earlier, snatching it off the side of a cliff half a dozen miles from the valley. The chase had been more difficult than he cared to admit — the goat navigated the cliff side with surprising ease and agility — but in the end, he had managed to catch it alive.

And it was necessary that the goat was alive for the plan to work. While the dragon might decide to eat a dead goat if they just left it in the valley, the dragon might just as well ignore it entirely, or so Crassus said.

If the man was right, dragons relied almost entirely on their sight, and while their hearing wasn’t too bad, their sense of smell was almost non-existent. Because of that, the goat would need to be moving for the dragon to recognize it as food.

With that in mind, Snowcloud had concocted a potion she said would keep the goat unconscious for the next several hours. If her skill was as good as she claimed, the goat should only come to a few minutes before sundown, right around the time the dragon returned.

If all went well, the dragon would eat the goat — and along with it, the pouch with poisoned spirit crystals they had tied around its neck. After that, they would merely have to wait for the poison to do its work.

But simple as the plan was, Arran could not help but feel anxious.

While Snowcloud had prepared a good amount of the poison that had been used on her grandfather, there still wasn’t enough for more than a few attempts. If the dragon failed to eat the goat and it got away, the loss would be a painful one.

And then, there was the matter of whether the poison would be strong enough. Even if Snowcloud said it should easily disable the dragon for a week or two, Arran had a hard time imagining a handful of poison affecting a creature so large.

Still, the trap was set, and all that remained now was to wait and hope it would work.

The hours passed slowly, but even so, it wasn’t long before the sun disappeared behind the mountains and dusk approached.

"It’s moving!" Snowcloud said suddenly, and indeed, Arran saw that the goat was showing some signs of movement.

They looked on anxiously as the minutes passed, with the goat twitching a few times, then slowly getting to its feet. It stood at the center of the valley in a dazed, looking around as if it was trying to find its bearings.

Just then, the familiar sound of a rising storm sounded in the distance, and Arran knew the dragon was approaching. He kept a nervous eye on the goat, still worried that it might sense the danger and bolt.

Yet as the dragon’s colossal figure appeared in the sky, the goat merely took a few unsteady steps, completely unaware of its impending doom.

The dragon briefly hovered above the valley, but after a moment, its eyes fixed on the hapless goat that had so foolishly ventured into its lair. At once, it dove down, moving even more rapidly than usual.

Even as the dragon’s clawed feet slammed in the rock, its jaws opened, revealing rows of sword-like teeth. Then, in a movement almost too fast for the eye to see, its head shot forward. An instant later its maw closed around its prey, and just like that, the goat was gone.

Arran took a moment to breathe a silent sigh of relief, then turned to Snowcloud.

"Now what?" he asked in a low whisper.

"Now we wait," she whispered back. "If the poison works as intended, the dragon will barely be able to move by morning."

Arran gave her a short nod, then turned his attention back to the dragon.

As usual, it wrapped its wings around itself, falling asleep within minutes. Only this time, Arran hoped, it wouldn’t fly off in the morning.

They waited through the night, Arran and Snowcloud keeping nervous eyes on the dragon as Crassus slept. Not that there was much point to their vigilance, of course — if the poison failed to work, there was nothing they could do about it.

Still, with a search that had taken many months now finally nearing its end, they could not help but be filled with anxiety.

The night passed excruciatingly slowly, with every hour seeming to last days, and when the first signs of morning came, both Arran and Snowcloud were completely exhausted.

"It hasn’t moved yet," Snowcloud said softly. "I think the poison worked."

Arran shook his head. "It’s too soon to tell. There’s still a good half hour to go until it normally departs."

When the sun’s earliest rays began to hit the mountain peaks around them, the dragon stirred. A moment later, its head rose up as it inspected the valley around it, and slowly, it spread its wings. Although it appeared to move slightly slower than normal, it clearly wasn’t unconscious.

Arran felt his heart sinking at the sight as he feared the plan had failed.

Yet a moment later, a violent shiver went through the dragon’s body, and it sluggishly lowered its head again, then folded its wings around its colossal bulk once more.

"I worked!" Snowcloud whispered, voice filled with enthusiasm.

"Maybe," Arran replied. "But let’s wait a bit longer, just to make sure."

Another few hours passed before Arran was as convinced as Snowcloud, but by then, there was no denying it anymore — the poison had incapacitated the dragon.

"How long until it’s at its weakest?" Arran asked Snowcloud.

A studious look appeared on her face, and after a moment, she replied, "The poison’s effects should steadily grow stronger for the next two weeks. After that, the dragon will gradually begin to recover, and with another two weeks, it will be fully restored."

Arran nodded thoughtfully. "Two weeks until we attack, then," he said. "And after that, I suspect we’ll have to starve it for at least a month before it’s weak enough to kill."

"Is there anything we should do before that?" Snowcloud asked.

"Not really," Arran replied. "I already prepared the cliff before you arrived, so all we must do now is wait."

From his first day in the valley, he had planned to use the single steep cliff it held against the dragon, so naturally, he had begun to prepare it as soon as he finished scouting the area. By now, there were several barn-sized at the top of the cliff that could be dislodged with minimal effort and sent plunging a thousand feet to crush whatever was beneath them.

Other than that, there wasn’t much that could be done by way of preparation. While there were some weapons of war that could help them in facing the dragon, neither Arran nor Snowcloud knew enough about engineering to make those — even if they had the materials to do so.

So all they could do now was wait and plan, and hope that their own powers would be enough to face the giant creature when it was sufficiently weakened.

In the days that followed, Arran kept good on his promise to Crassus, trying as best he could to teach the man some magic.

He was surprised to find that Crassus had no interest whatsoever in learning about body refinement. Instead, all the man wanted was to gain a Realm, and Arran obliged him by giving a Fire Realm Scroll and what little advice he could provide on opening the Realm.

Still, for all Crassus’s professed desire to become a mage, he seemed to lack both the will and the drive to do so. Rather than focus his attention on opening the Realm, the man would spend perhaps an hour each day halfheartedly working on it, then spend the next few hours complaining about his lack of progress.

It wasn’t a sentiment that was wholly unfamiliar to Arran — he could hardly be called a diligent mage, after all — but Crassus took shirking in his pursuit of magic to a whole new level. If Arran didn’t know any better, he’d have thought the fat man was barely interested in magic at all.

The days steadily passed like this, with Crassus failing to open his Realm while Arran and Snowcloud spent most of their time making plans on how best to face the dragon. Most of the plans they made were quickly discarded, but even so, by the end of the first week, they had some rough ideas on how to go about the whole thing.

But then, one afternoon, Crassus suddenly interrupted his unenthusiastic magical pursuits, interrupting Arran and Snowcloud as they were discussing yet another strategy.

"If you still want to attack the dragon, you should do it now," the man said matter-of-factly. "It’s already been recovering for the past two days. I thought you’d have noticed by now, but..." He shrugged.

Snowcloud gave him a puzzled look. "Why do you think so?" she asked, doubt in her voice.

"Experience," Crassus replied indifferently. "Look at its chest. Two days ago, it was barely moving with each breath the beast took. But now..."

Arran and Snowcloud quickly looked over, and Arran was shocked to see that Crassus was right. The difference was a subtle one, but now that he knew what to look for, it was plain as day.

He quickly turned to Snowcloud, whose expression was as shocked as his own.

"He’s right," she said, a pained look in her eyes. "We can’t wait any longer. I don’t know how we missed it..."

Arran cast a suspicious glance at Crassus, but he quickly turned back to Snowcloud. Right now, they needed to cripple the dragon before it could recover any further, and every moment they wasted, it would grow stronger.

"We have to attack," he said. "Right now."