Commander Briggs watched with mixed fascination and instinctual fear, as the fight between the commandant and the green dragon began. It was unnerving how quickly such a large beast could move, and with such precision. It had the best reflexes of every reptile the empire had catalogued. The dragon did not use fire, instead he seemed to want to bite Rieven to pieces. Every attempt at harming him was made with his jaws and with his teeth. This was made difficult, however, by the fire raging in the centre of the stone arena. It appeared, by the way the dragon avoided it, that either the flames were harmful to him as well, or they were sacrosanct and could not be touched. Hard to say.
Rieven, for his part, was moving wildly around the room. To those who had no knowledge of the fighting style of the Void Spectres, it must have seemed he was wasting his energy and time in a frantic attempt to avoid death. However, Briggs was certain that axiom was being threaded through his body. It was beginning to fuel his movements and soon it would begin to affect how his body interacted with the laws of physics. They weren’t called the Void Spectres for nothing.
Suddenly Rieven’s strategy shifted, his left hand going behind his back and drawing the kukri he kept there. He continued dodging all of the dragon’s attacks, but he was now expending only the minimal amount of effort required to accomplish the task. The dragon roared and snaped his jaws faster and more recklessly every chance he got. His claws began to make appearances in the fight, never to rend, but to divert attention and effort to allow his jaws to land. Even his tail would strike out, cracking against the stone at his feet or behind his heel. He was clearly growing frustrated at his lack of success.
All at once the dragon scurried back, a sharp yelp carried through the air. Rieven’s shadow had disappeared. It hadn’t got up and walked, it had simply vanished. The dragon narrowed his eyes at him and considered, then sprang forward with jaws wide open. Rieven did not move. He did not ready himself. He did not bring about his weapon. He did finish threading axiom through his body. The moment he was done was clear because Rieven faded almost instantly to black. His body ceased reflecting or producing radiation. All photons and particles that touched him or were normally produced by him vanished – they were simply gone.
In their place was a black silhouette, darker than anything he had seen. It had no definition or contour, looking like a two-dimensional outline of a body and a kukri, because it was all one shade of black. Briggs knew from archived data ship’s captains had access to that Rieven was still three-dimensional, he merely appeared flat. It was a trick that made it difficult to know if you were looking at the front, back, or side of the man. It must wreak havoc on the mind in combat. That archived data also showed that when you weren’t wasting energy through systemic entropy you would be much more efficient in your thoughts, movements, and abilities. Things were about to get interesting.
As the dragon’s maw reached him, Rieven jumped up and landed on the ridge of his snout and, without losing momentum, began to run along the neck even as the dragon’s jaws finally closed on empty air. Rieven’s new form gave him much better balance, his brain now had the time to make all of the micro calculations necessary for it, and his axiom threads provided the strength needed. It was a thing of beauty. Rieven struck his kukri through the translucent membrane of the dragon’s wing and ran down the length of it, leaving a spray of golden blood and severed membrane flapping in the wind.
The dragon screeched and snapped its head around in time to see Rieven grab on to one of greenie’s spinal ridges and hop over to the other side, making his way towards that wing. The green dragon howled in anger and pain and before Rieven could damage that wing, the dragon was spinning around, flipping his back towards the floor in a move that reminded Briggs of a snake’s lack of spine. Rieven pushed off the dragon’s back and rolled to a stop, hopping back up as the dragon righted itself. Golden blood painted the floor and the walls of the arena, though the viewing gallery was spared as a result of the axiomatic shield working.
The commanders around the holocom table were cheering and urging him on, well most of them were, Briggs noted. The obvious few who weren’t were to be his potential supporters. Briggs let out a heavy sigh. It looked like it was time to admit defeat and scrape together whatever win he could. He began to plan.
-x-
Rieven was exhausted. This fight had been going on for twenty minutes and it had been one long high intensity cardio slog. He looked at the dragon. Pieces of him were littered around the arena, not one of them touching the fire or the firepit. Greenie’s wings were in tatters, and his scales were slashed in places – wherever he could safely reach, there was no pattern there. The axiom-laced kukri cut through the scales much more easily than he had imagined they would; less like cutting through butter and more like plasma melting metal. It took a moment or two but then all at once they would give way without warning and that was that. Once he knew that’s how it worked, he had begun to plan around it. The only issue was that all the cuts were non-vital. That dragon protected his vitals more strongly than anyone else he had fought.
Stolen story; please report.
The real danger was the axiom exhaustion that was soaking into his body and his mind. He could feel himself start to become more sluggish as the fight went on. At the same time, he didn’t feel any tiredness at all. It was the dual nature of manifesting the void spectre – endless energy combined with limited capacity. Both perspectives shouting their thoughts at you simultaneously. I don’t want to do this for much longer, Rieven thought, but I must maintain the void spectre until the end. Once I drop it, I’m dead.
Greenie refuses to use his fire. I wonder if the fire comes from an axiom working? Or maybe it’s supplemented by it? That would explain why he hasn’t used it yet. Rieven looked at the dragon opposite him. He was trembling with exhaustion and was becoming less and less precise. He met his eye, murky blue and swimming with hatred. That eye’s not protected, he thought, I can get him through that eye. I won’t have to worry about the few moments it takes to part his scales, or lining up my attacks perfectly to hit the openings I have made. A plan began to form in his mind. That’ll do. The eye.
Greenie came for him then, striking forward. When Rieven dodged this time, he made sure that his head hit the axiom shield working. It rang like a bell, the tone a warning to not crowd the edges of the arena. His axiom laced head was perfectly fine. As he stood, he bent down and grabbed his sword with his right hand, and cradled his head with his left. From greenie’s perspective it hopefully looked like Rieven was struggling with paid and had his back to him. He didn’t. Rieven thought, I’m so glad the void spectre interferes with depth perception, it’s going to make this so much easier.
He looked up as the dragon approached and saw the moment greenie decided he was not bluffing. This strike was meant to end him and he could see that there was nothing held in reserve. There was no defence, for he was springing on unsuspecting prey and would soon be victorious. As the correct moment presented itself, Rieven smoothly stepped aside and thrust his sword into the outer corner of the dragon’s eye against the orbital ridge of the skull. As the dragon snapped his jaws closed over nothing, his momentum carried him slightly forward. Rieven, grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands now, pushed for all he was worth, driving the hilt into the side of the dragon’s head. With a sloppy pop the eye shot out of the socket and dangled at the side of his face, near his jaws.
Greenie screamed with rage. This sound was different than any before, more guttural and with more whale-like moaning at the end. Rieven laced extra axiom through his eardrums and sectioned off his hindbrain in an axiomatic cage. He couldn’t freeze up now, not at the end of the thing. The dragon appeared to lose all reason, throwing himself at Rieven without thought or grace, the tattered remnants of his wings fluttering behind him, his loose eye swinging with every shift of his head. It was all that Rieven could do to avoid them, his lungs were sucking in air as fast as they could get it, his shoulders shook as he tried to get enough oxygen to his body. He stumbled slightly.
Then the dragon started to breath in deeply. Rieven’s tired mind had no issue making the connection; dragon’s fire was coming soon, once this longer than usual breath was done. He gathered the last remnants of his strength and jumped at greenie’s empty eye socket, kukri leading, body spinning around his vertical axis, the gaping wound growing larger and larger in his sight. Greenie was still breathing in, but he managed to smirk cruelly, and shifted his head up slightly, moving his wound just out of reach of Rieven’s arc.
He could have attempted to eat Rieven, he might have even succeeded, but he wanted to cook him alive instead. That cruel impulse was what Rieven was counting on, for when Greenie lifted his head, he brought his eye level with Rieven, still dangling from its optic nerve. His kukri sliced through that nerve, and Rieven grabbed the falling eye by it as he too fell to the floor. Greenie attempted to catch him mid-fall but his newly developed one-eyed state combined poorly with Rieven’s two-dimensional appearance and he missed. Badly. Rieven gathered his feet underneath himself and sprang under the dragon’s arm and out the other side, dodging the flailing tail as he went. He could feel the heat of the flames behind him as he fled. Even with them missing, the temperature was brutal, especially with the void spectre active.
When he turned, half of the room was molten stone, the walls were dripping down and pooling on the floor in superheated ripples. Greenie was breathing like a bellows, blowing air in a desperate attempt to recover what was spent. Huh, thought Rieven, looks like dragon’s fire is legal, but he must have given something vital to make that happen. That must be the only time they can direct axiom into their body? Or do their bodies produce chemicals? He breathed out raggedly and the train of thought was lost. He looked down at his hands. In his right hand he held his kukri, and in his left, he held Rising Sun Ahknahten’s eye.
He looked up and saw the viewing gallery past the trembling dragon. Ono’s squad were jumping up and down and hollering something, he couldn’t tell, the blood was rushing through his ears too loudly. He couldn’t tell. He looked back down at his hands and saw the eye again. It was huge, nearly thirty centimetres in diameter, and a beautifully depressing blue, if one looked past the gold blood schmeared all over it from the dragon’s flailing, but the blood had a beauty to it too. Even detached from the dragon, his eye still had a mesmerising quality to it. He breathed deeply again, thinking through his next step. If he did this, there would be no going back. This story would follow him for the rest of his life and probably his children’s. In that moment Ono’s last words to him before he entered the Room of Rites played in his mind, and he wondered: what would Ono do?
Rieven exhaled. He decided. He would do as he had planned moments ago and enrage greenie so badly that no other consideration would sway him from irrational action. It was the only path Rieven saw forward, disgusting as it was.
He raised the eye, looking straight at master sergeant Ono, and opened his mouth.
-x-
Briggs looked on in horror as Rieven raised the eye to his mouth, or at least to where he guessed his mouth was. It all looked the same to him. No, he thought, surely not! That, that. He vomited as a bite-sized part of the eye vanished into the black of the commandant’s void spectre.
