Transforming from such a gargantuan form, was the dragon. It appeared back down to human scale, taking the form of a short man with medium length blond hair.
"Do you smell the Scent of a Traitor?" Arthur asked.
"That's right. Surrender your life, or I'll take it from you."
Arthur wielded his cutlass in his right hand, pointing it at the dragon from a distance. "You better. If you don't, who knows what'll happen?"
And just like that, the battle began. A portal appeared above the head of the dragon, and he grabbed a handle that stuck out from it, pulling it down and holding his gargantuan blade.
It seemed to be around 6 feet tall, taller than Arthur, in fact, and was thick, weighing over 15,000 pounds.
Without further dialogue, Arthur rushed at him, using the speed of his smaller weapon to behead the dragon. Yet, it was unable to do so.
With speed that far exceeded expectation, the dragon parried the strike with that giant heap of metal.
'Nk. Stupid bitch!'
The dragon attempted to counter, but Arthur was too quick, unleashing another strike. However, this time, rather than being parried and feeling a reverb in his hands, Arthur instead heard a crack, and a consequent shatter.
His weapon, the cutlass, shattered.
Before his brain could even process his next words, he faced immediate decapitation. His neck shattered, the flesh and skin of his throat being pushed down with the blunt force of the mass, before it was torn off of his body.
His head slammed into the ground, still conscious. And as such, he shattered apart the cutlass, using the blood to create a new body which attached itself to the head.
Arthur got up, reforming the cutlass, unbroken, before looking at the dragon with wide eyes.
"Oh wow. That's some awfully good healing magic you've got," said the dragon. Arthur swallowed his spit, taking a glance at his sword.
'What was that? It's never shattered without my consent before. No, it didn't shatter, it broke into two pieces when I hit that thing. Yet, before that, it was capable of cutting through fully transformed dragons with ease.'
"Is that thing unbreakable?" Arthur asked.
"Hm? No, why'd you think that? It's just a Kagure sword. What's it to you?"
"Kagure? Hm."
Arthur stood up straight, looking at the dragon blankly, without intention to fight.
"I've never heard of that metal. Is it stronger than iron?"
"Huh? Oh, hell yeah. Awfully heavy, tho'. How do you not know it? Are you that broke? Most military equipment has this stuff, since it protects against magic quite well."
'It seems this new world has different things to it as well… son of a gun. And why'd he say "hell" instead of heck? Is that another term I'm not familiar with?'
"What's a 'hell?'"
"What… you're stalling, stop it."
The dragon burst towards Arthur with a loud boom following him. The sword was swung up into the air, before cleaving Arthur nearly in half, from his collarbone down to his genitals, he was split.
His right side of his body was no longer attached to the rest.
Initially, he startled a laugh, looking down and seeing his body in such a gory state. It was the kind only seen in cartel videos.
He replaced that body with blood, patching himself back together.
"What's so funny?" Asked the dragon.
"Ah, it's just…"
'Why am I so afraid? Is it my helplessness?'
He recognized what he felt in his heart as "fear." Whether or not it was accurate, was unknown. But regardless of the legitimacy of it being "fear," the fact remained that he felt a negative emotion in his heart.
He considered it "fear," as it was a painful sensation brought on by nearly dying. As for what he was afraid of, it was partly of death, of ceasing to exist, and no longer being alive.
After all, everything he'd ever experienced up until now had been "life." To leave "life" behind and enter "death" was something new, and therefore scary.
But, as well, it was helplessness. Currently, he was facing a much more powerful dragon.
And the emotion that surged within him, which he judged as "fear," was only partly true. The actual part of what he felt was not just fear, but "despair."
Despair over the fact that, yes, he'd evolved, and done really well on earth. But now, in this new world, he was not as strong as he believed. In fact, he was now, without doubt, weak.
'Dang it, I'm so weak. Nothing's changed, nothing at all. In the end, I'm just as powerless as I always was. Again…'
The curses stirring within him, curses that hexed himself, that afflicted others, that were placed upon the world, were great indeed, and all he could do was smile painfully and look down with sorrow.
"That face of yours is awfully ugly. But I gotta say, that sulking of yours only makes it uglier. It's wrong for a dragon to be so damn sad."
Arthur fell to his knees, slinking back and resting. Though his mind should have made him cry, tears didn't come out.
"Eugh. Don't you have any pride as a dragon?"
Arthur shook his head. He dropped his cutlass, covering his face with his hands and speaking softly.
"I don't."
The snow was cold on his knees, and the wind was very loud, as the snowflakes rushed around him.
"Well why the hell not? You're a dragon, fucking act like it."
Arthur shook his head, keeping his face covered.
"I don't know if I am a dragon anymore. I don't know anything. I just want to stop everything, freeze the world and rest eternally."
"Don't go spitting metaphorical or philosophical bullshit or whatever at me. This is a fight. You're being a bitch right now, so get up and fight. Or have you surrendered?"
It was silent. The rushing wind continued, banging against his ears with great force continuously.
"Do you ever think that it's all worthless in the end?" Asked Arthur. "Maybe the dragons in this world have an answer. Please, tell me, is there anything meaningful one can do with their lives?"
"Shut up, I don't wanna answer any of your stupid questions."
The dragon dropped his gargantuan sword, and rushed over at Arthur, kicking him in the head with great force, launching him into a brown tree. Arthur slammed into it with great force, cracking the skin on his skull open.
His shoulder was dislocated from the hard impact and the sudden stop, and blood began to leak down his head.
Yet, he was limp, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to fight back.
The dragon went over, looking down at him with balled up fists. "Screw a sword. In this kinda state, you might as well be like a dead demon."
The dragon crouched and grabbed Arthur by the collar of his shirt, reeling his fist back and punching him in the face. The force from the knuckles sliced apart Arthur's eyebrow, dribbling blood down into his right eye.
It should be noted that initially, Arthur wore glasses due to his left eye being nearsighted. His right eye was his strong eye.
But that problem was fixed when he replaced his eyes after they'd been torn apart from his head.
"Hey now, this ain't too bad," said the dragon, punching Arthur and knocking his head against the tree bark. The dragon let out faint, childish giggles, bashing his fist into Arthur's head, knocking it against the tree and spraying his blood against the white snow, dyeing it red.
"Where's all that 'oomph' you had earlier? Was it because I broke your shitty-looking red sword?"
Arthur's face was battered, as he didn't bother to heal it.
He nodded his head softly. "Really now? What did that sword mean to you, then? A gift from grammy?"
"No. It was… the proof."
"Proof?"
"Of my friendship, and my growth in strength. My friend used a cutlass, and I modeled it after the one I saw him use. That cutlass, it'd gotten stronger with me. In fact, it was the only thing I could truly call 'my strength.'"
"Okay, and?"
"And for it to be broken so easily by this new world… it'd never shattered before. That was like… a wakeup call. That I really am so weak."
Immediately, the dragon groaned and flung his head backwards to the side with a loud groan, before turning back and punching Arthur in the nose twice, breaking it.
"Holy shit, you really are a piece of shit, huh? People like you, who are just fucking miserable for no damn reason, it all really pisses me off. Your only saving grace is that you understand just how weak you are. But instead of trying to get better, you just wallow in it, make excuses for it, use it as an excuse. That's it."
The dragon grabbed Arthur's shoes and ripped them off his feet, before taking the pinky toe of his left foot and bending it backwards until it broke.
Arthur whimpered in pain after it had happened, yet he didn't move.
"Do you feel pain?"
No response.
"Answer me. Do you feel pain?"
Arthur nodded his head, looking down at his own stomach.
"Then you're still alive. And as long as you are still alive, you're gonna hurt. Because you're weak. You weaklings always suffer. So why, why don't you try to get stronger? Because of fate? Or because you're stuck this way? Or because it's too hard? Well? Will you answer me?"
"I am stuck this way. I've tried… I've really tried to get stronger. I worked out, I abused drugs, I ate, and ate. I fought until I cried in pain, and I killed until I was defeated. But in the end, don't you see this? All of that hard work, accumulated into a singular sword, where I put everything into. And it broke. Nearly instantly."
The dragon grabbed all of Arthur's toes and bent them backwards until they broke, leading to Arthur sharply inhaling in pain, before exhaling, revealing a white, icy breath.
"I don't care about any of that. What I'm talking about isn't your physical strength alone, but your mind too. Why did you give up so damn easily once I broke your sword? Instead of opting for another method of attack, instead of seeking allies, or even running away, you simply stopped moving, and accepted me."
"There was nothing I could do. I'm still so, so weak. Everything I had, my strongest essence was made utterly inferior. What do you expect me to do instead?"
"Anything but sit there. If you opted for nonviolence, that would be one thing. I could at least respect that, as you'd be following some sort of belief for yourself. But instead, you wanted to fight, and gave up as soon as you tried. That shows weakness; not of the body, but of the mind."
"I know that. I know I'm weak mentally. My heart is weak, my mind is weak. Do you think I don't agree with you? Or that there's some truth you have that I don't? I'm not crazy. I can see things rationally just as well as you can. No one knows how much the weak suffer more than the weak themselves. I know my own fragility, and I also know that I just can't change it."
"Then you understand that you deserve to die, don't you? For your weakness, for your cowardice, for everything that makes you, you?"
Arthur nodded his head.
"You make me sick," said the dragon in complete honesty.
"I understand. It's mutual," replied Arthur quietly.
The dragon got up, raising his foot and stomping Arthur's head in against the tree.
'It hurts. It always does, doesn't it?'
As his head continued to smack against the tree, Arthur's mind flooded with the stories of people sent to other worlds in fiction.
'Usually, when the protagonist is at his lowest, someone arrives, or something happens that changes him, and refills them with hope.'
'But I'm not that, am I?'
Blood covered his entire head, leaking from his skin, nose, lips and teeth.
"It'd be shameful if I killed such a lowly opponent. I'll let some weaker thing finish you off."
The dragon left Arthur alone, before sprouting massive wings, spanning perhaps 50 feet wide, before flying out into the winter night.
Arthur was left alone in the woods, holding himself in the cold, using his own blood to clothe himself, as he leaned to his side and closed his eyes in exhaustion.
Entirely alone. Such a lonely existence is what Arthur Graves was met with.