Jaune had come to the sudden realization that he was on a dragon without wings. Which really was just a giant lizard, albeit still a fire breathing one. The issue was of course that lizards can't fly, and both he and said lizard were very high up in the air. It felt almost cartoonish how they fell, just dropping vertically. The dragon thrashed around, spewing out snarls and growls that Jaune was sure a long string of profanity in whatever language dragons spoke. They fell at an alarming pace, becoming akin to a red comet falling from the sky. Jaune clung to dear life as the dragon careened off into the side of the snow covered tower. He couldn't help but scream as they fell into the world below.
The crunching sound that happened once the dragon collapsed was deafening. The stone tower crumpled under the additional weight, falling into a massive log. Jaune was thrown from the dragon's back and onto the collapsed mound of bricks and ice. Tumbling along the ridges, a series of pained grunts came from him as he slid against the rough bumps of the bricks. With a long groan, the dreamer pulled himself up to his feet. He reached for his belt, pulling out another dark brown bottle to drink as fast as possible.
He threw it to the ground, making a satisfying shattering sound upon the bricks.
"Oi, land a little easier next time!" Jaune yelled at the dragon, who was trying to shake off their most recent concussion. "You could have killed me!"
"That-" the dragon growled, refocusing on Jaune's form. "Was the goal." The petulant pest just shook his head, almost disappointed that the dragon failed.
Jaune nodded, pursing his lips against the cold frost laden winds. "Solid six out of ten. Bonus points for the creative use of your ability to fly. You lost points for getting your ass whooped." He rattled off, much to the dragon's chagrin. Roaring, it breathed flame at Jaune. A gout of red fire rushed over the stones, melting and then evaporating the frost and ice on them. It rushed towards the ranger, threatening to engulf him as well
Who just yawned. With a flick of his wrist, almost casually, summoned a protective ward around him. Such a feat in the real world would have taken no small amount of effort, but thankfully he wasn't in the real world right now, was he?
Jaune decided to go a little further while he still had some time. With his free hand, he pulled a book of scriptures out from his side pocket. Flipping through to find the scripture he wanted.
Passage of Durthain, Page. it was one of the pages that was a little smudged, but the holy incantation Jaune wanted to use was still there.
"Carved from the flesh of God, I wished to be like my father, Creator Almighty. So from the flesh of the earth I ripped my own children, first to this world. Arise, oh Golems!" Jaune yelled out, raising his hand into the sky. The stones underneath him rumbled to life, almost like magnets connecting together into roughly humanoid shapes. They frankly looked quite a bit like lego abominations more than the classical golem, but you made do with what you had. The lego-like lumps shuffled forward as the flame ended, moving to batter the dragon's remaining shins.
"Is this all you have, conjurer? Cheap tricks and powers?" The dragon snarled, opening its jaws to try and eat the dreamer. Jaune felt an instinct take over, from a long lost hero. Knocking his knuckles together, he could feel the cold empty energy flow into his arms. It was a solid, almost stocky kind of force. Jaune pushed it out, giving it shape. A large sphere of the purple light was forced into existence, protectively surrounding Jaune. The dragon bit down on it, and was disappointed when its mighty jaws could not break it.
"This is how you fight mage? By hiding behind walls and magics?" The dragon snorted, slamming its claw into the bubble, clearly testing the new found waters. Jaune looked up, watching the dragon prowl around him. Taking the time to patch himself up, muttering holy words and popping corks, he felt just about as good as new when the dragon went for another bite at the globe. He could see cracks starting to form in the purple light. Feeling down into the earth, he pulled swelling up, preparing it for when he made his move. He could count down the moments before the bubble burst.
Three
Two
One
… Jaune looked up at the bubble, which was thoroughly cracked and fractured, but still standing. It was clearly just a little stronger than the dreamer thought it was.
One… Jaune thought again, looking up expectantly at the dome. It did shatter, with a satisfying, light crashing sound. It was quickly overpowered by the sounds of a pillar of earth erupting from the ground, punching up. Jaune hopped onto the pillar, rocketing upwards. In the few moments it took for the earthen pillar to reach the dragon, Jaune had jumped off to the side, grabbing onto the side of the dragon's face. His grip was tested when the lizard's head suddenly snapped up as roughly a half ton of concrete slammed into its jaw moving at speeds matchable only by most greyhounds.
"Woah, mama!" Jaune yelled as the dragon recentered itself. Moving his way up the titanous head, the dreamer saddled himself atop the head. Pulling out his newly acquired hammer and chisel, he aligned the sharpened blade to the dragon's head. Raising his hammer high, he struck the metal flat head.
The dragon roared as the metal bit into its head. Rearing, it shook like a ragdoll to get the persistent thing off of him. Jaune held on for dear life, blowing a layer of frost and ice onto his hand to keep him tied to the dragon. Holding on as his legs flailed behind him, he wrestled for control, battering his hammer into the side of the dragon's head.
"Woah there, easy, easy" Jaune said in an oxymoronic tone, considering he was trying to bash the dragons head in with a mallet. Eventually the dragon was concussed enough to stop its thrashing, letting the dreamer have a moment of rest. Shaking his head back into clarity, he planned out his next course of action.
It consisted mostly of hitting the dragon with his hammer again. And he had every intention of doing so. His hand raised high in the sky, the hammer was dropped upon the ice that had glued Jaune to the dragon. It shattered with a resounding crack as Jaune struck the now frozen chisel. It was hard to explain, but Jaune knew that the chisel stroke bit deep. Its bloodlust causing it to seek to cause as much pain as possible. Without hesitation or concern, Jaune struck the chisel again.
The dragon, upon feeling something bite into its skull, bucked forward. It succeeded in its goal of launching the tiny human off of it. It screamed as it flew through the air, magically slowing his descent until he hit the ground with an unceremonious poofing sound against the snow. Groaning and shaking the snow and ice out of his face, Jaune stood back up.
"That-" he partially panted, partially yelled, "Was entirely unnecessary." He pointed at the dragon, before dropping to rest his arms on his knees. "Now if you would give me a moment-" dropping to the ground, Jaune narrowly avoided the dragon's tail. Looking up from his prone position, Jaune growled at the dragon. With a flick of his hand he sent a tidal wave of snow at the dragon, the moving wall battering against the dragon, almost knocking it off its feet. Jaune took the moment to stand up, brushing off the snow that was clinging to him. "Honestly, you are so rude." He said, already preparing his next spell. Lightning crackled in between his fingertips, like little tesla coils. Thrusting his hands forward, Jaune let out a yell of utmost potence.
"UNLIMITED POWER!" He cried as the lightning flew from his fingers, arching into a warding cone, just tickling at the dragon. He marched forward, tasing the massive lizard in front of him. Said lizard had decided that it was having none of that, releasing another bout of fire to cover the snowscape, its head low to the ground and roaming. Pulling a large warhammer from his backpack, the dreamer readied to enter melee range with a being several magnitudes larger than he was, with big vicious claws and large sharp teeth. It's not that it mattered, as Jaune had faced bigger dangers before. He hadn't, but he was ignoring that fact for now. Jaune jumped forward, blinking through the air and past the fire, right underneath the dragon's low hanging jaw. With a full bodied heave he swung the hammer upwards in a motion he was sure he had seen Nora do at least once. It slammed through the motion, battering into the dragon's large head and forcing its way past to complete the full arcing circle. It embedded itself into the ground with a heavy thud, absolutely not moving without significant effort. But that didn't matter. Jaune could feel the pulling, no, the resonance that the mated Hammer was giving off. Reaching out with his free hand, he tugged on that resonance, feeling it, pulling it back to him.
The chisel, lodged deep in the back of the dragon's head, responded. It answered the hammer's call, flinging itself through bone, brain, and flesh to meet its mate. It exploded through the throat of the dragon, forcing itself into Jaunes hand.
Jaune looked upon the sudden carnage in utter shock, surprised at how suddenly the battle had ended. He looked down at the chisel in his hand, practically vibrating with joy. Well, that was anticlimactic. B said.
I know. Jaune responded. I had a whole thing I was going to do. I was going to kneecap him with the warhammer and then hit him with some magic. I was going to drop a pillar of salt on his ass!
B raised his eyebrow. A pillar of salt? Jaune just shrugged, looking at the carnage fueled bowling ball sized cylinder that was punctured through the dragon's brain.
Sure, why not. He shrugged. It was in the dwarvish bible he had nicked, and he had managed to summon the elementals. So why not.
"Wow, you are thirsty, aren't you?" he asked the blade as he watched it lap at the blood laden on it. That was concerning, but frankly everything in this hell hole was concerning, and increasingly so.
He would worry about that later. For now, he had a dragon to harvest. It would be a long and arduous process, but it was going to be worth it. The dragon hide would be worth an incalculable amount of money. And it would make a rather dashing dress and or vest. A suggested, already visualizing how it would look. Slick shiny scales glittering almost iridescently in the artificial dance light. Jaune ran the length of hide he had through his fingers, the blood dripping onto the snow. They were almost the same color.
The second dilemma Jaune faced was what to do with everything that wasn't the hide. The bones, and more annoyingly, the flesh. Jaune eventually decided to go back to the dwarvish mountain city and raid as many pots, jars, and other materials necessary for pickling two tons of dragon meat.
I think two tons is a bit of an exaggeration. A commented as Jaune slapped on another time stasis seal on a jar, preserving the meat so that it would be as fresh as the day it was slain for whenever he decided to open it again. The dreamer gave him a withering look waiving an open hand to the venerable mountain of pickled meat. He hadn't even bothered to pickle the organs, with exception to the heart. He had done his early science teachers justice and meticulously documented the entire dissection and harvesting process. An entire book was written in painstaking and meticulous detail as Jaune cut his way through the lizard corpse. Notes on the organ composition, bone density, muscle structure and everything else was documented in a bloodstained leather bound tome sitting next to him in his makeshift camp. Several pikes and a thick cloth protected him from the weather in a makeshift tent. He himself had layered up some amount to further protect him from the elements. He looked back up at the mountain of jars before him. He wondered if his storage would fit all of them. He hoped so, because if it didn't, he wasn't sure what he was going to do with all of them. Maybe he could leave them with an AFDA somewhere?
Jaune wasn't sure how, but he had managed to fit the entirety of the dragon's corpse, including all the organs he had packed away in stasis warded boxes, into his little dreamspace subspace. He had attempted to read into the possibility of it in the waking world at the school's library, but quickly found the mathematics and physical principles over his head. However some online digging revealed that there was someone up in atlas with a similar ability. He would have liked to meet them, but had written it off as neither possible nor pressing for the moment. Wiping his brow, he looked at the seemingly crowded, but not bulging bag. As it always had looked like.
Standing up, he made his way back to the ruined town at the foot of the mountain, where the portal back to the eternal city resided. A apparently had something to say about that, as he was much more eager to explore the more shunned parts of the mountain.
Wait, wait, wait! What about the tower in the mountain? The one the Thespian told us to be wary of? Aren't we going to explore that first? He asked frantically. Are we not going to explore there? B looked at him, his brow furrowed. Wouldn't that be a reason to, you know, not go there? The fact that the rather mysterious merchant warned us of that place?
A clapped his hands together, grinning. I mean, do we need a better reason than that? He asked. B nodded vigorously.
YES! B said. Yes! That is a good reason to not go there.
Jaune sat in front of the portal, brushing away the snow on a particularly large stone. It was probably once a part of a column or pillar, maybe a supporting shaft for a larger building. A place of business or governing? The dreamer found himself wondering quite often about the past lives of the ruins. Who lived there? What did they do? He wondered often how they felt when the plague warped them, slaying an entire dreamscape of existence. Turning it barren and hollow.
It was an overtly ugly place, no matter where it seemed he wandered.
"I think I am going to wake up." Jaune decided. When faced with the choices of various evils, he had decided to avoid all of them. Standing up, he set off to find a gravestone. He paced the ruined town, doing his best to find a gravestone to take him back. He found his way to atop a mostly collapsed wall, looking over a rather sudden drop. Peering down, he saw a steep slope down to a small jut, where what appeared to be a private graveyard laid. It was a small collection of stones raised. There were of course ghouls wandering around the small alleyways formed by the stones. Jaune chewed on the inside of his lip, trying to decide how he wanted to dispose of them. He could take them out from a range, or he could go in and hit them with a lump of metal.
I vote for the lump of metal. A suggested. It's faster, and more satisfying to use.
B shook his head. No, you take them out from a distance. We have the high ground, we have bows and arrows. It would take time to get down there and hit them with our chosen lump of metal. It would be faster and safer to dome them from here.
Jaune pulled out his bow, agreeing with B's philosophy. While melee combat was fun, it was something Jaune preferred to keep to a minimum, particularly when his life was on the line. Which in the dream he always had to assume it was. Drawing back the bow, he could hear it creak as the arrow was primed.
The arrow flew, piercing through the air down to the graveyard. It hit one of the stones, shattering a weathered cross. Jaune tisked, notching another arrow. The ghouls flinched, looking up at Jaune's high up position. The began to dash, scamping over the stones and climbing up the rocks that made the arduous pathway down. Jaune drew up another arrow, launching it into the leg of one of the ghouls. It collapsed to its knees, falling down and tumbling past the rocks. Switching targets, the dreamer shot at the other. The first arrow struck that ghoul in the shoulder. He quickly notched another one and drew it, pointing down at the advancing ghoul.
This arrow found its head, stopping it in its place. The ghoul just kind of fell down, collapsing as it was dead on the spot. Jaune looked at the other ghoul, which was still stumbling on the ground as it tried to stand. Jaune put it out of its misery with a quick shot to some part of its torso. Seeing that there were no threats, he packed away his bow into his quiver. Clambering down the rocky pocked path, Jaune made his way to the gravestone in a most goat-like manner, carefully treading on solidly rooted stones until he made it to flat ground. He let out a sigh of relief, glad that there hadn't been some freak avalanche of something that just killed him by flinging him off a cliff. His breath turned to that fog you get during a cold day, evaporating into the frosty air. He hunched his overcoat, which was a rather thick blanket right now, over his shoulders to keep out the bitter cold. The frost on the ground crunched under his feet. Then there was a much larger crunch sound. One that was not from Jaunes steady footsteps. A ghoul had been laying in wait, covered in frost and rime. It leapt at Jaune, propelling forward in ambush. Jaune could barely turn before he was jumped by the lunging ghoul. Years, perhaps even centuries of harsh survival in the Dream had trained Jaune to have reactions tighter than most tripwires. His hammer and bloodthirsty chisel were in his hands in a flash. Lining up the chisel on the things chest, Jaune swung the hammer.
The resounding clang seemed deafening as the stopping power froze the ghoul in place. There seemed to be a wave rebounding through the damned thing. Jaune back stepped away, looking at the bleeding ghoul. It looked down at its chest, with the chisel embedded in it. It then looked up at Jaune. The muscles in its jaw had withered so much that its mouth hung open, creating a morbid and ironic shocked expression. Jaune wished to see such a face no longer, so he hit it with a hammer.
It collapsed like a sack of potatoes. Shaking his head he pulled the bloodthirsty blade. It reluctantly allowed itself to be returned to its partner in Jaune's belt. Giving the graveyard one last scour to make sure that there was going to be no more unpleasant surprises, he found it at satisfactory levels of safety. Which is to say not very. Sitting down and leaning back against the cold gravestone, Jaune ran his fingers through the set of wooden coins on his belt loop. He listened to their soft clattering as they collided with the beads on the string.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
The sound of clacking slowly faded away, being replaced with the soft rumbling of an engine. Cracking his eyes open slightly, he saw that the van was moving, and he was truly awake again.
Merry Christmans everyone! Another chapter done! I know that this one took, ah, quite a bit of time. I had a hard time getting back in the swing of things post Finals, but we passed all the important ones. But I got it done, and that's what matters now, isn't it?
So, in other news, Jaune is the leading expert on dream dragon biology, considering he pickled one in the equivalent of a russians back yard. And for all those who were wondering why the dragon didn't drop a Spirit for Jaune to drink, it's because the dragon was never "infected" with the Madness that we see the ghouls having. But looking forward, we have the long awaited Jaune Vs. SSSN fight. Place your bets as to how that goes. winner gets bonus reader points (they're worth the same amount as the average NFT.)
Thank you for reading, and sticking with this project of mine. it's absolutely been the biggest project I've undertaken yet. Tell me what you think of both it and this chapter. I wanted it to feel a little bit like God of War, as Jaune has evolved past the Dark Souls "Oh shit" feeling of the dream. Until he finds another place that is not welcoming.
Again, Happy Holidays and thank you for reading!