Chapter 138: Dance of Stone and Storm
The beastkin stopped dancing.
He planted his feet, his bushy white tail going still. The playful light in his amber eyes hardened into something focused and utterly cold. He had learned the dragon's rhythm. Now he would change the music.
The dragon's head shot forward, jaws gaping wide enough to swallow a horse. This time, the beastkin did not leap away.
He sprang forward, meeting the charge.
His small form darted inside the arc of the closing stone teeth. As the massive skull snapped shut behind him with a sound like a quarry collapsing, he was already on the dragon's lower jaw. He ran up its length, his furred hands slapping against the smooth stone. The runes on his arms glowed brighter, not with flare, but with a concentrated, piercing light.
He reached the joint where the jaw met the skull. He didn't punch. He placed his palm flat against the stone and pushed.
A sharp, crisp crack echoed through the dome. A web of fractures exploded across the dragon's cheekbone. The creature recoiled, a shudder of grinding stone running through its entire body. It was the first real damage it had shown.
The beastkin used the recoil to flip backwards through the air as the dragon's other claw swiped at him. He landed on the swinging limb, his momentum canceled perfectly. He ran up the arm toward the shoulder.
The dragon tried to shake him loose, thrashing its neck. The beastkin leaped from the arm onto the side of the thrashing neck. He dug the fingers of one hand into a crevice between stone scales. With the other hand, he formed a knife hand strike. A soft white silver aura, sharper than any blade, coated his fingertips. He stabbed down into the joint where the neck vertebra met the skull.
Stone dust erupted. The dragon's movements stuttered, becoming jerky. It whipped its head sideways, trying to slam the beastkin against its own body.
He let go, dropping straight down. The dragon's head smashed into its own neck, shattering scales. The beastkin landed in a crouch on the dragon's back, already moving before the creature could recover. He sprinted down the spine toward the base of the tail.
It was a brutal, surgical dismantling. He wasn't trying to destroy the dragon. He was targeting its mobility, its ability to attack. He was a sculptor, and the dragon was his block of stone.
The tail rose like a falling tower to crush him. He didn't break stride. As it descended, he jumped, not away, but onto the side of the falling tail. He ran vertically along it as it smashed into the ground where he had been. The impact shook the chamber. He reached the tip, leaped off, and landed back on the main body near the hips.
The dragon coiled, trying to wrap its body around him, to crush him in a spiral of stone. The beastkin stood his ground until the last second. As the stone walls closed in, he jumped straight up, thirty feet into the air. The dragon's body constricted beneath him, grinding against itself.
He reached the apex of his jump, hung in the air for a moment, and then dropped like a meteor, both feet aimed at the dragon's spine between its wings.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap inside the dome. A massive chunk of stone vertebrae shattered. The dragon's entire rear section went limp, its tail slapping uselessly against the floor.
The beastkin landed lightly on the now motionless hindquarters. He looked up the length of the crippled guardian toward the head. The Stone in its forehead pulsed, and the cracks around its face and neck began to shimmer, slowly knitting together. It was healing itself.
"Persistent," the beastkin murmured, his voice the only sound besides the slow grind of repairing stone.
He started walking up the dragon's back, toward the skull. His pace was deliberate. The dragon could only watch with its empty sockets, its head struggling to lift as the healing energy focused on the critical damage to its spine.
Neralia gripped my arm, her whisper frantic. "The Stone… it's powering the guardian. It's a self sustaining ward. He has to destroy the dragon faster than the Stone can repair it, or disable the Stone itself."
The beastkin seemed to reach the same conclusion. As he neared the skull, the dragon managed to lift its head, gathering the last of its functional momentum for a final, desperate lunge.
The beastkin didn't speed up. He waited.
The stone head shot toward him, jaws open for a last bite.
The beastkin leaned back, letting the jaws snap shut inches from his chest. As they closed, he slapped both hands, palms flat, against the outside of the upper and lower jaws. The runes on his arms and chest blazed. He didn't try to hold the jaws open. He held them shut.
The dragon's head, driven by its own lunge, tried to pull back. The beastkin held on. A tremor ran through his lean frame, the muscles in his arms standing out like cords. The stone teeth, locked together, began to grind. A low, tortured groan came from the dragon's throat.
With a final, focused surge of power, the beastkin twisted his entire body. The dragon's head, trapped by its own closed jaws and his unbreakable grip, was wrenched sideways.
There was a sound like a mountain breaking. A deep, catastrophic crack shot from the dragon's jaw up through its skull. The entire head tilted at a grotesque, impossible angle. The glow in the Stone flickered wildly.
The beastkin let go, dropping to the dragon's snout. He walked the last few steps up its face, calm as a man walking down a garden path. He stopped before the Philosopher's Stone. The dragon was still, its body a broken ruin, the healing light sputtering and fading as the connection to its stone body was severed by the broken neck.
He reached out one furred hand. His fingers closed around the glowing orb.
He pulled.
It came free with a soft, crystalline chime that seemed to vibrate in the center of my own chest. The light in the chamber dimmed, the gentle radiance collapsing inward until it was contained solely within the stone in his hand.
He held it up, peering into its shimmering depths. His amber eyes reflected the swirling colors. A slow, genuine smile spread across his vulpine face.
"Finally," he whispered, a note of deep satisfaction in his voice.
He tucked the Stone into a small pouch at his waist. The light was instantly muffled, leaving the vast dome in near darkness, lit only by the faint, fading glow of the broken dragon and the soft silver luminescence of the runes on the beastkin's skin.
He turned and looked down at us from his perch on the dragon's ruined face. His ears twitched.
"Now," he said, his voice conversational. "About you two."