Legends all make a big to-do about the toughness of a dragon's hide, and armorers alike. And sure, for a leather I suppose drakeskin does its job as well as any other. (Give me a good thick plate armor any day, just don't tell Leliana I said so.) But the hardness of the hide has nothing to do with how hard it is to kill a dragon.
It's the quickness of them, fast as a racer snake after basking all afternoon in the hot summer sun. It's the jaws that bite and the claws that catch. There are no other Grey Wardens left alive to describe it, so the task falls to me – the insanity of seeing a creature that large move that fast, it can paralyze you, as sure as a mouse under the gaze of a viper.
That's without even mentioning the fire-breathing part.
But they are not unkillable. Heinous, staggering, but they die like any other thing. After twenty minutes on the battlefield after a fight that seemed to last twenty years, we have the wretched thing on its last legs. It bleeds black smoking blood from a hundred different wounds, more than half of them mortal to any other beast. Still it roared and stared us down, a terrible engine of destruction, some malicious brooding force which had been only waiting all this time for us to meet it. Waiting to snatch the one good thing I had left.
I would not allow it.
Without realizing what I was doing, I started towards the beast one last time, stalking with purpose as I gained speed. As soon as Alistair saw what I meant to do, he began to follow, running beside me. I stuck my foot out and he neatly tripped over it, tumbling to the stones in a clatter of armor. I looked over my shoulder long enough to see that he was unhurt by the fall, scrambling to his feet so as not to leave himself vulnerable to the darkspawn. His expression was one of pure childish insult and shock. No fair! that look said. It startled me into a laugh and I turned to run at the archdemon again.
"On my order, stay back!"
I heard him scream my name behind me as I lifted my blades and the dragon reared its head back like a snake about to strike. Heat baked off it like a furnace.
I managed to jump up just as the beast's jaws cracked shut in the place that I'd most recently been, sounding like a series of heavy twigs beneath my feet snapping all at once. As I fell, I put all my considerable weight behind my daggers, driving them through the burgundy drakeskin, through the surprisingly thin and fragile skull of the thing, and into the twisted matter that passed for its brains. I sank them to the hilt and twisted as hard as I could, hoping for the best.
You see, it isn't really the toughness of a dragon's hide that is the deciding factor.
Location is everything.
The dragon whipped and shrieked in its death throes – only my grip on my daggers kept me abroad the beast, and at one point I narrowly missed being dashed between the archdemon's muscular jaw and the streets of Denerim. I rolled to the other side of its head and held on for dear life as the thing thrashed more wildly, then finally grew still and rolled over onto its side. I released my white-knuckle hold on my sword and dagger and rolled off of the thing's massive head, being sure to roll well and clear away in case it decided to bite one last time. I remembered the genlock's head, you see.
But it didn't. Its huge yellow eye began to glaze. Smoke curled from its silent nostrils in two charred black lines.
The archdemon was dead. And although I hadn't given myself a proper pat-down yet, I seemed to be alive.
I'd barely been able to register this fact when I found himself being scooped half off the ground, armor and all. Alistair was also alive, which I dazedly thought made us something of historical anomalies. I will admit, some hot secret part of me was jealous when he spent the night with Morrigan, but I have no doubt who possesses his heart. He hugged me to his chest like a drowning man, peppering hard, almost angry kisses across my face. He whispered to me whenever his lips weren't against my cheeks or forehead or lips. The remnants of the darkspawn horde could have fallen on us like wolves and we wouldn't have noticed.
"You're crazy, you're insane, I love you but you are certifiable, do you know that?"
I grabbed the collar of his breastplate and pulled him close to meet my lips again. When I pulled away, I replied:
"What can I say? We do good work."
