AN: If you like what you are reading, you can help by giving my novel Rating.
When Thryz buried his head in the snow and begged for forgiveness, I danm near lost control of the fireball I held above me.
Before Thryz started begging, I was about to drop the huge fireball on top of him, but I held myself back at the last moment when I remembered I was just supposed to kick the shit out of him, not kill him with a huge fireball.
But now, I was just standing here with my metaphorical dick in my hand, stunned. What was I to do when I was misidentified as an Elder Wyrm? I could play into the misunderstanding, but that would defeat the purpose of teaching him that the weaker races were capable of kicking his ass. He would end up thinking that the only reason he lost was that he was facing an older and more powerful wyrm.
No, it was better to stick to the script. [Thryz, son of Elder Frost Dragon, Vruulkthaz Skraeghrimm. In honor of your mother's name, I will not slay you here.] I said in Dragon Tongue and saw his body visibly deflate from releasing the breath he was holding in. [But what I cannot ignore is you infringing on my hunting ground.] I looked back at the nameless village I came from. [and the damage to my host's property.]
Keeping his head in the snow, Thryz roared. [Thryz thanks the elder… May I have the honor of hearing your name?]
Hmm… do I reveal my name or use my alias?
Screw it, I will just use my name and keep my alias for the civilised world. Professor Sageira already said that she was going to introduce me to the rest of her kin, and I do not think it is a good idea to use an alias in case they find out my real name down the road. I may come off as disingenuous.
[You may call me Luke]
***
'Luke… does not sound like a dragon's name. Must be the name he uses while he is among the weaker races.' Thryz thought.
[But first, before I let you off,] Luke's voice brought Thryz out of his musings, [You will repair what you have broken.] he said as he pointed back to the village a couple of hundred meters away, where Thryz could see the section of wall that he crashed through on their first exchange.
Hearing that, the only thing Thryz could do was give the supposed elder wyrm Luke a blank stare while trying to comprehend what he just said.
[What the hell are you waiting for?! That wall is not going to build itself, get stepping!] Luke shouted as he brought the fireball hanging in the air menacingly closer to Thryz.
***
The village chief had seen a lot of things in his life out on the frontier of the Valorhelm Dominion, but he had never seen what he was looking at now.
The mercenary Liam, whom everyone thought had gone to sacrifice himself to buy them some time, was now berating a dragon in an unknown language that sounded similar to the dragon's roars. Meanwhile, the dragon was picking up logs from the collapsed part of their wall and stacking them back into the ground.
He and the other villagers had to make sure they were not hallucinating what they were seeing. For all they knew, the dragon had already killed them, and what they were seeing was some form of vision to ease their passing into the afterlife.
But no, it was real, and honestly, they did not know how.
When the village chief gave the order to escape, it was just a formality. He knew that most of the villagers were old and would not be able to run very far or fast before the dragon was done with the mercenary and came after them.
So while the rest of the villagers were running around in a panic, the village chief went back to his home to perform his last duty as the village chief. He would light the signal to alert the Valorhelm Dominion army. They may die, but at least the army would know what happened to them, and if they were lucky, some of their people would survive.
As he came inside his house, the village chief picked up a pair of metal tongs, grabbed a glowing ember from the fireplace, and made his way to the attic of his home. In the middle of the attic, there was a tube that went straight up and through the roof. At the base of that tube was a fuse. He placed the hot ember of the fuse, and the moment the fuse started burning, he quickly made his way down, just in time to run into his wife with two satchels. She passed one to him and ran out of the house with him.
They made it out the door just in time to see fireworks shoot out the top of his home, high into the sky, and explode in a shower of red sparkles. This firework was set up to shoot ten shots at five-second intervals to make sure that the army would notice.
When the village chief looked back down, what he saw made him pause. Most of the villagers were out in the street with what they could carry, but they were not running. Instead, they were looking in the direction of where the mercenary went to fight the dragon.
"What are you all waiting for?! We need to go!" he shouted at everyone.
That snapped a few people out of their stupor, only for them to point off into the distance.
"The… The mercenary… he is holding his own against the dragon, maybe even winning." one of his villagers said.
"What are you talking about?! You must be delirious from fear if you think-" the village chief shouted as he walked far enough to look out from the demolished section of wall, and his jaw locked at what he was seeing.
The visibility was poor due to all the snow that was kicked up, but he and every villager saw enough to know that the mercenary was trouncing the dragon with might and magic.
It all eventually came to a head when the mercenary summoned a huge fireball the size of his house and was about to drop it on the dragon, when the dragon buried its head into the snow, and was subsequently marched back to their village by the mercenary to rebuild their wall.
How was he going to explain this to the army when they arrived?