Reverse Chronicles

The Undead Dragon

The decaying dragon at the far side of the dungeon reeks so much that my HP would decrease whenever I could whiff the revolting smell. There are no monsters in the area. Do they also hate this smell? It was dead silent, not a single wail nor cry from a monster is audible.

What piques my interest the most is the carcass of the dragon. From the looks of it, the corpse seemed to have decayed recently. The hide around the stomach part of the dragon is torn revealing its bones and organs filled with maggots that wriggled.

“Strange,” Syrena remarks as she takes a closer look of the dead creature. “This is a fire dragon, and they can only be found in the mountains beyond Dalamir. What is this one doing here?”

“Squires, I may have found a way out of here!” the archer suddenly shouts. His voice echoes in the dungeon.

“Great work,” I reply as I turn back. Then suddenly, the Knight who is in front of me as I turn shoves me to the side. “What the?” I turn back as I crash against the rubbles, only to see the knight melted to a lump of flesh and blood as the dead dragon was not so dead, after all. The scene shakes me as my vision blurs.

“It’s an undead dragon!” Syrena shouts. “Don’t get hit by its Decaying Breath. Alan, stand up!”

Syrena’s voice realigns my senses as I use Feint Attack to escape from the Decaying Breath that headed my way. I regroup with the archer, who is also shaken seeing his ally’s demise. Syrena joins us casting Fire Storm to stop the undead dragon from chasing her.

“What’s the plan?” Syrena asks as she readies a flurry of spells.

“I don’t have any,” I reply as I change my weapon equipping the spear.

“We’re done for! It’s over,” the archer breaks down as he kneels on the ground. “Lieutenant Linda, she’s gone; Mikael, he’s dead. It’s all your fault! Some Squires you two are,” he looks at me spitting on the ground as he did.

The dragon rushes in and attacks us, but we were able to dodge before it could close the gap. Syrena grabs the archer and puts him to sleep. She hides him inside an isolated cell that not even the dragon can reach.

“Alan,” Syrena readies a flurry of spells again. “What’s the plan?”

What’s the plan? How can we defeat a dragon by just the two of us?

Suddenly, Wisterion’s words reverberates inside my head, “Wisterion’s Squire is the Squire of destiny.”

The Squire of destiny. Does destiny dictate that we are going to defeat this dragon? No. Destiny doesn’t have to. We just have to do it!

“Syrena, pull back for now,” I say to her as the dragon opens its mouth for a Decaying Breath. At that split second when it opens its completely before its breath comes out, I notice a green sparkling gem inside its mouth.

Could that be?

Syrena and I run to the area where the dragon original lay. The dungeon is big, but it was not big enough for the dragon to fly. It could only crawl towards us, which gave us time to evade.

“Syrena, the Eye of Xinfonia, what color is that jewel?” I ask out of the blue.

“It’s certainly not the time to…” the dragon lets out another Decaying Breath. The rocks where the breath hit slowly melted.

“Just tell me!” I shout to her from across the room.

“It’s an emerald green jewel,” she replies.

“I know where it is!”

“What?”

“It’s inside that undead dragon’s mouth.”

The dragon chases after me and attacks with a powerful talon thrust that broke the wall behind me. Fortunately, Time s***h allowed me to evade and attack at the same time. I run towards Syrena who cast Fire Storm burning the dragon’s already decaying wings.

“The Eye of Xinfonia, it’s in that dragon’s mouth!”

“How do we get it? The only way to defeat the undead is through holy magic and I don’t have holy magic spells.”

“We just have to defeat it,” using the strings, I hurl two boulders at the dragon, but it was able to thwart the attack with a flick of its tail. “It can only crawl around this space. If we keep moving around while attacking, we may be able to defeat it. We just have to keep our distance.”

“The undead are weak to fire, light, and holy magic,” she says as multiple magic circles appear overhead. “I just have to bombard it with my specialties?” The spells that Syrena cast are Fire Storm, Fireball, Needle, Radiance, and Explosion. She casts them indiscriminately hitting the dragon and the area around it. What resulted is more rubble as the dungeon begins collapsing.

“The ceiling is collapsing!” I shout pulling Syrena to a safe area.

The dragon appears to have been buried under the debris, but a roar resonates from the area above the dungeon. It was the dragon; it evaded the debris and flew to the upper area which is a part of the palace.

Syrena levitates us including the unconscious archer to the palace. He continues her barrage of spells not giving the dragon a chance to counter. However, the dragon was faster. It zoomed around the palace evading Syrena’s spells.

“Syrena, stop!” I prevent her from casting another spell as the palace’s crumbling structure deteriorates further. “We’ll be buried under the rubble you cast your spells recklessly. You should only use them when you have a clear shot.”

“But then, we can’t defeat it if we just evade or perhaps are you saying that you will fight it head on?”

“That’s exactly what I have in mind!”

“Are you crazy? Its Decaying Breath will literally disintegrate you!”

“Then, support me. I can’t fight it head on without your support.”

“Okay, I will.”

“First, we have to prevent it from flying,” I reveal the first step of my plan. “We must cut off its wings.”

The dragon flies down toward us with its breath ready. We evade the attack jumping to the sides. Before the dragon can fly away, Syrena casts Levitate on me and pushes me to the dragon. Using the strings, I attach myself to the dragon as I slowly move towards its wings.

“Alan, look out!” Syrena warns me as the dragon pounds its back to the ceiling in an attempt to thwart me.

The strings enabled me to swing down from its back. As I swing down, I notice that it’s left hind leg is severely decayed. Using Fireball, I burned the rotten leg to a crisp. The move prompted the dragon to fall down.

“Syrena,” I shout for help. She casts Levitate, but I still continued to fall down.

The strings! The strings are still attached.

I cut them with the spear; Syrena levitates me toward her. The dragon looks hurt even though it was already dead.

“This is bad,” Syrena says. “The more you damage the undead, the stronger they become.”

It is getting stronger? It’s already dead! The more we make it more dead, the stronger it gets?

Smoke and mist begin coming out of the dragon. Anything that they touch melts as the rubble and the palace floor gradually melted. It let out a Decaying Breath which disintegrated everything in its path.

That mist, it’s dangerous to get close. What should we do?

The dragon lets out a roar. I notice spots where the mist did not reach, its tail and under its head.

Syrena uses Fireball as a distraction as I move in to attack. When I got closer, I use the Feint Attack and Time s***h combination. While time stopped, I attacked the dragon’s tail slashing it repeatedly until I used Gravity s***h which completely cut it off. Before time could resume, I retreat back at a safe distance.

“Syrena, Alan!” a familiar voice suddenly shouts. It was Mark and the remnants of the party. They enter the scene through a door from outside the palace. “This way!”

Syrena and I sprint to the exit. On the other side is a garden with an overgrowth of weeds and wild plants. It appears to not have been maintained for centuries.

“You got out safely,” the unconscious archer surprisingly made it out. “Mark and the others rescued me while you were battling the dragon.”

“That was an undead dragon!” Mark exclaims. “We should get going before it gets out.”

“We can’t,” I tell them.

“Why?” Mark asks his left eyebrow lifted.

“The Eye of Xinfonia is inside the dragon,” I explain. “If we defeat it, we will be able to retrieve it and complete this quest.”

“It’s true,” Syrena affirms. “I saw the jewel inside the dragon’s mouth before it can use Decaying Breath.”

“We must defeat it!”