Chapter 53 – A fecking dragon

“Is that a Dragon,” muttered the princess.  SueLeeta didn’t need to check, she already spotted the thing heading here and sent her message over to Fenris.  Jim was right, the Dark Overlord did have a wildcard.

In theory, a dragon was terrifying.  In reality, they were soul crushingly terrifying.  They were mountains that moved, horrid creatures that at one point had nearly ended all human life on Ordinal.  The only reason they stopped was apparently war badger’s found them delicious.  

This one didn’t look delicious.  His, and it was very obviously a he, wings stretched out far enough that flying through the gap was going to be some work.  The creature was all black, with shadows pouring off of him like smoke.  It was the largest creature SueLeeta had ever seen, and she’d been on GloriousRobert’s boat a few times hunting beasts of the ocean.  

“That’s MegaDevestator, but he’s even bigger than he was in the stories,” whispered Julia.  SueLeeta wasn’t sure if the princess realized she talked to herself.  Everyone else might ignore it, or at least pretend they did, but it got annoying after a part.  If SueLeeta had to hear ‘I am a banner’ one more time she was going to slap the girl.

SueLeeta did what came naturally, and shot at him with her crossbow.  With her skills and perks, she had the range but even as she launched the bolt the creature whipped around, causing the automatically tracking bolt to miss widely.  

“Oh, that’s not good,” said SueLeeta.  

“Do something else then,” said Julia as she began firing off the golden blade thingies and Lance holding up a staff and casting balls of plasma at it.  Even the bloody Duke, bloody both because he was an idiot and because he’d gotten injured fighting the undead, was blasting at it.  

The wave of spells and arrows finally began striking the creature, for all the good it did.  MegaDevestator took two of Julia’s blades and a plasma blast across his broad chest without even acknowledging he’d been hit.  SueLeeta fired a bolt tipped with an abomination horn directly into the dragon’s eye.  It shattered, and the dragon smirked at her.  

The dragon inhaled and aimed directly at the top of the wall.  Julia held up Jim’s amazing rod and generated a massive barrier the instant before the blast struck.  The barrier shattered mid blast, discharging the stored contents right back into the energy stream disrupting everything but not harming the dragon.  

“I am a banner to my people,” said Julia as she wobbled there, blood pouring from a nostril.  A chunk of masonry was sticking out of her chest.  SueLeeta was mildly impressed she was still standing.     Batista injected Julia with a combination healing and mana potion.  The stone popped out and the princess came out of her stupor.  Julia inhaled and screamed, “Is that the best you got!”

“No,” bellowed the dragon.  

“Not again,” said the hunter turning to HarDragon as Julia tried to block more dragon fire as MegaDevestator hovered and blasted the top of the wall.  “Any ideas on how to kill one?”

“Get a War Badger?  They like to eat them!” replied HarDragon causing several people to scowl at him. 

“I have a hard time believing a war badger could kill that,” said Lance as he leveled his staff and began gathering more plasma.  “Fillidelphia, do you believe those old tales about war badgers?”

Julia was concerned.  There were stories about Filly and dragons. Filly was just standing there, drooling from shock.  Finally the legend spoke, “Dragons, why did it have to be dragons!”  He rushed back towards the rally point.

“Oh, yeah, he has an abnormal fear of dragons,” said SueLeeta, shaking her head.  Something about him falling into a tomb where a dragon lived and being nearly killed, or something.  In some versions he’d managed to outsmart the dragon, because some terrible monster had clearly eaten it, but in any case.   

The dragon hovered there, ready to blast them into oblivion so SueLeeta continued, “Anyone else have any ideas?”

 “I don’t know, all my skills are about protecting dragons,” said HarDragon, the dragon protector.  “Maybe hit the same spot with a variety of magical and physical attacks?”

While obvious, that was at least something.  Several golden rods slammed into the Dragon, shattering against his hide as a bright blue ball of plasma exploded into the same spot.  SueLeeta fired her best Adamant tipped bolt into the weak spot with several other archers and still the dragon ignored them.

Until the engineers showed up.  Science based attacks were a new variable, and they both had ‘dragons’ provided by the progenitor.  The long tubes belched smoke and fire and there were two explosions on the dragon.  One struck the dragon’s wing, with no obvious effects.  The other struck the weaken spot, and the explosion left a tiny crack in the dragon’s scales.    

MegaDevastator roared and whipped his tail around towards the engineers.

Sir Dalton’s broad back and manly shoulders were there, slashing up with his powerful sword in a vicious stroke.  It cut into the flesh of the dragon and knocked it away from his girls.  Such a move was incredibly stupid, but Sir Dalton was going to Sir Dalton.  

The dragon’s wings flapped so hard that it seemed like even the air pressure dropped painfully.  SueLeeta dropped to her knees, clutching her ears. They were doomed.  It would take a miracle for them to survive this.  That’s when she saw Hansa’s contraption begin to glow.  The dragon paused, curious at the new magic.  

The Mayor stepped out and Badgelor hopping up on his shoulder.  He took in the situation, his icy eyes taking in all details at the same instant.  There was a fire, and purpose in his core that belayed his approach.  

Of course, it was still Jim.  He was holding an eastern club, and Badgelor was drooling on his shoulder so badly that he would have given Filly a run for his money.  

Where did Filly go?

The mayor shouted, his voice loud enough to be heard over the entire battlefield.  “Badgelor, destroy MegaDevestator.”

The dragon’s head snapped towards Jim.  No, not Jim, Badgelor.  The dragon was the size of a mountain, could breathe some sort of shadow blast, and had scales that were apparently resistant to magic, physical and even science based attacks.  It was the most powerful creature on this or any other world.  

The expression of pure terror when MegaDevestator saw the bulldog sized war badger riding on Jim’s back was laughable.  The dragon immediately began flying backwards and pushed itself away in a desperate attempt to escape Badgelor. 

“Me Badgelor love a challenge,” said Badgelor, chomping his teeth like the angry dinosaur right off of the city’s symbol.  He jumped off Jim’s shoulder and landed on the nearby catapult.  The whole battle paused while he waited for whatever it was he was waiting for, then he blasted the catapult with his laser vision.  

“Alright fecker, round two!” yelled the Badger as he flew.  

Badgelor expanded to his War Form in midair and landed on the dragon’s back.  MegaDevastator rotated, trying to brush off the massive furry tick using the nearby mountain, but Badgelor was already tearing at his neck and wings.  

SueLeeta watched the Mayor as he walked over.  “So out of all of your possible weapon choices, you brought that?”

Jim nodded, “Seemed appropriate.”  

“The army is marching and some of the undead champions are already climbing back up the wall.  We think the dragon was supposed to clear it so they could position archers to attack the courtyard,” said Julia.  

“Sound tactics,” said the Mayor, spotting 20 Grebthars.  It took a moment, but SueLeeta realized that Jim could see through the illusions to find the real Grebthar.  

“Sound Tactics?” asked Julia.  “You are the Mayor, you are supposed to be leading us to victory.”

“Not true, Fenris is doing that,” said Jim as he walked over to the edge of the wall.  “I’m supposed to defeat the Dark Overlord.”

Julia starred in wide eyed horror as Jim hopped over the side.  She turned to SueLeeta and said, with all the dignity and poise she could muster, “Bitch just jumped?”