The Demon and the Dragon
The Demon and the Dragon
By Thomas McGee A.K.A Soung
Chapter 1 Meeting
(Note to readers and my teacher, during points in my story I will add links to music, for example during the opening of this story I request you look up "Once upon a troubadour" by Nightwish, to extenuate the story)
A bottle shatters on the wall above the heads of the two kitsune as they waited for the one who they were hired to meet. The elder kitsune, a silvery white furred fox with twin scimitars at his belt, silvery grey leather armour fashioned after the style of elven leather armour, ignored the glass and the din around them, thinking on what would happen if the information they had been given about the risks were correct, if Draco Lee was to attack his nephew, the younger black fox beside him, as well as the Dragoness they had been hired to meet and bring to Reignhart for her role as the lead in a film by Xavier's other uncle. Xavier, the younger kitsune twitched and nearly drew his own mithril silver scimitars as the bottle shattered, on edge because he may soon have a chance at the head of Draco lee, the black Dragon who started the human-anthro war over a decade ago, who was thought to have been killed by the vixen Hikari Shade, a void kitsune like Xavier, who was the grand daughter of Inari and current mate of his friend Volcan. It seemed that Draco had either not been killed or had been resurrected by some one, most likely Zado'Urhamee, the demon naga who had been trying to kill Xavier since he was still part of the Corinian military special projects, under the codename project SHADOW.
"Why must she be so late, my head-fur is soaked through with ale and who knows what else." He shakes his shoulder length hair to extenuate his point, spraying beer and glass from his head.
Xanril shrugs and goes back to his nap while replying, "She is a star dragoness and older than I am, she deserves respect not ridicule, son of my brother. Be patient she is only five minutes late."
"She better be..." Xavier sniffs the air and smells an alluring female scent on the air as a dragoness enters, calmly walking through the chaos of the bar fight as if it was not there. Two white, slender horns adorned her head, pointing behind her, the underside of her neck, as well as her underside scales down around her tail, were cream white, as was her muzzle. Her elegant silver white robe accents her lighter scales and perfectly contrasts her darker scales on her back and wings. She also had the scent of a female warrior hanging about her, something that was intoxicating to the younger Kitsune. His jaw drops and he tries to think of something to say that would neither be a pick up line nor something obviously stupid and his mouth flops like a beached fish. Xanril settles this dispute by welcoming the dragoness to the world and the realm around them.
"Welcome to Mysticaria, and this country of Malkhari, Kiriana. I am Xanril Stread, Weapon's master of the mercenary band "the Brotherhood of Darkness." This is my nephew Xavier, the leader of the band, we were asked by the uncle of Xavier to escort you to Reignhart where you were hired as the female lead for the new film by Rio, correct?"
"Who else would walk into a back-water tavern such as this of those who do not live in this city?" she bows, dodging a third bottle of ale, letting it bounce off Xavier's forehead. The blow brings him to his senses and he sets his jaw firm, scowling.
"Why are you so late O she who is too regal for this good bar?" Xavier sneers sarcastically, "and should you not have weapons of a warrior if you have the scent of one?"
"Children should let the elders speak before interrupting, as you may have the nine tails of an eight hundred year old kitsune you have not the self control nor the skill to face me in combat." She snaps back, annoyed at the young fox for his insolence and she turns back to Xanril, just a flash of silver as Xavier drew his scimitar, a well crafted, deadly edge blade that was held with perfect balance at the dragoness' pearly white scaled throat.
"You are speaking to the leader of the brotherhood of darkness. I have killed many just for calling me an eight tail, so be thankful I am being merciful in letting your slight slip past me, for if I mar your skin I lose my pay." Xavier growls and snaps the blade back into its sheath at his belt. His eyes start to wander as he waits for her to continue to speak. But Xanril interrupts.
"I beg forgiveness Lady Kirianna, Xavier may be hot blooded, but he is correct, he is the leader of the brotherhood, not me." Xavier turns to look at her square in the eyes, his left eye showing a machine eye with a red light as the pupil and three scars across the eye, the middle straight through the centre. His scars and eye showed a darker part of his mind and body. A piece of his body given to his will to help others, seemingly.
"I will let his slight pass only because he has shown me he is a warrior with pride and intelligence." She brushed aside her growing anger with her curiosity for how he had his eye removed and why. Xavier cracks his neck, standing, and grabs a fourth bottle of ale that has bee thrown in his direction out of the air as it flies at his chest, revealing the skull pattern on the black T-shirt under his open black scaly leather trench coat, the skull reminiscing of the way he has three scars across the left eye, and crushes the bottle neck with two of his fingers and takes a draught before throwing it back at the one who threw it to begin with.
"We will leave now, she is who she says she is and time is wasting. The faster we get to Corinia the more likely we will have no trouble with Draco." Xavier does not stop to wait for the others until he reaches the armoured green three ton truck, a military surplus of the Corinian military from before Xavier was thirteen, when Corinia was a true free country and not own by the council of twenty-four, the twenty-four greatest crime lords of Corinia, not including Draco Lee, though he was more a terrorist than a Crime boss. Xavier jumps into the drivers seat and sets it roaring to life as the other two walk out, Kirianna walking in front, dignified as if she walked out of a country club, setting Xavier back on his heels again, until he regained his composure seconds later, and Xanril behind, like a bodyguard they were being paid as.
Xanril leaps into the back, and straps himself into the thirty millimetre tri-barrel turret that was in the cargo box, and Kirianna climbs gracefully into the passenger seat right beside Xavier. Before she could get her belt on he punches the gas and rumbles out of the parking lot of the spaceport side tavern and towards the black mountains to the east, towards Corinia and home.
Chapter 2 Project 10, Fear
(Once Project 10 appears please look up Disturbed land of confusion)
Despite how close the mountains seemed to Reihse spaceport, it had taken a day and a half journey with their current vehicle to get to the mountains and then another daylong journey to the Citadel of the Brotherhood, home of the Brotherhood of Darkness, where they would pick up a new armed transport or one of the modified Sports cars Xavier had for speed and reconnaissance. They had decided to keep the wart hog because it was perfect for their job, reliable, fast, and tough. A few hours into the ride from the citadel Xavier decides to break the silence.
"Xanril, you filled the ammo for this monster's turret before we left?" Xavier calls back to his uncle over the roar of the wind and engine.
"No but I checked it, we have three quarters of a drum and another besides so we have eight thousand rounds, more than enough for ten minutes on full auto." The elder fox replies, also calling over the wind and engine. Kirianna pulls the slit in the side of her robes and pulls her maces free to set the behind her seat. They had been digging into her spine since she sat down here in the truck.
"How long until we reach Reignhart?" she calls over the roar to Xavier.
"Seven days, two and a half to The Citadel, so another half day from here, four and a half from there to Reignhart, if weather is perfect." He drops his left paw back behind himself, rummaging until he pulls out a M.R.E. a meal ready to eat. He punctures the top so he could smell it; a ham steak and mustard sauce M.R.E. and gives it to Kirianna. "Here, it may not but the best smelling food but it is edible for what it is."
"You've had these before?" Kirianna cocks her head as she looks at him, thinking that only soldiers even think about these, let alone know which ones are able to be eat with out bringing them back up in an hour.
"I am one of the nine living-weapons made by the Corinian military, I am Project XIII, or Project SHADOW, each living-weapon has their number tattooed on their bodies, for example mine is on the small of my back, project VII "GIANTESS" has her mark on her shoulder and project III "JUGGERNAUT" has it on the back of hir head. We three are the three free living-weapons. The other are Project X "FEAR", whom I never met, Project VIII REAPER, whom I killed two years ago, Project 18 DEATH V2, whom I have also not yet met, and three other who I were hidden even from the other Projects." He pauses to let the information sink in.
"What did they do to you to make you more special?" she inquires as she nibbles on the meat-like ham steak.
"Any modification, like my tattoos, my added arsenal, even my seal had to be finished before I hit puberty, so for canid anthros about age nine or ten, and then they mixed a symbiote with my blood, enhancing my regeneration and allowing me to "conquer death" as I can regenerate from any instantly fatal wound, such as decapitation or something similar, thrice." He pauses again, though this time because of a scent on the air, the scent of death, despair, hunger, and fear permeated the very stone they drove upon. The dark sides of the mountain loomed around them and the sun, Solaris, was dying in the west.
"Did it just get colder?" Kirianna asks shivering.
"No, but we are having a sense of dread, you notice the scent too, didn't you Xavier?"
"Hard not to, though the underlying scent is one I do not know, but seems familiar, like a half remembered dream."
"I can't be sure but I can smell a Male, human... near middle age... and five hundred meters in front of us and twenty above. That is the source of the dread, though why I do not know." Xanril pulls the crank back that would shove the first round into place, watching above them between the cross hairs of the turret.
Four hundred meters later Xavier brings the truck to a stop and jumps out, drawing one of his scimitars and the pistol in a hip holster. He then snaps the safety off and motions for Kirianna and Xanril to follow behind, quietly and to draw their respective weapons. His black, steel capped combat boots made no sound as he trots down the last hundred meters towards the spot his uncle said the human would be.
Kirianna slides the slit in her robe back and draws her maces, being careful so the chain connecting them would not make noise. Xanril unhooks himself and leaps down, drawing his own blades as he lands and strides up beside the dragoness as she starts off after Xavier. As they come up beside the young fox they see a look of pure terror gripping him. Xanril follows his gaze and looks up and sees the upper body of a human male, about the same age as Xavier, dressed in grey plate mail armour, but his lower half is that of a giant grey black spider. The Drider draws a cross bow off his back.
"Welcome to my parlour says the spider to the flies." He cackles madly, and fires at Xavier, but Kirianna tackles him and knocks him out of the way. Xanril explodes into action, snapping his swords back into their sheathes and draws twin hand held crossbows, each with a dart dripping with venom from a demon serpent, a deadly neuro-toxin meant to cause paralysis and a quick death. Both shots miss as a net of webbing is dropped on him, sticking him fast to the rocky ground, as Kirianna stands, silvery ribbons attached to her foot claws as she spins her maces about her. She unfurls her wings and leaps at the Drider with all her strength, snapping a foot forward and sending the steel ribbon at one of the unprotected legs. The strike stings but does little damage until the lightening bolt hits, burning the leg off at the point where the ribbon wrapped itself around. The enraged dragoness flicks her other foot forward, snapping the other ribbon toward the anchoring thread, channelling another bolt of Lightening through it, but the drider drops before it hits and scuttles down the mountainside.
"Pretty dragoness is a warrior witch, we must be careful of her stinging white fire and crushing maces." It throws aside the crossbow and pulls a great sword off its bloated back. It swings down as the dragoness lands, and she is barely able to block the blade with the chain connecting her maces. "I am project ten FEAR, but in one as beautiful as you I can make an exception, what do you say, will you dump the fox and take up a real man?" Kirianna growls at his remark and snaps both feet forward, the ribbons entangling around the neck and upper body of the drider.
"How about I give you a shocking answer?" she lets lose her strongest lightening spell, melting the drider and its armour into a burning paste. The smell of burning flesh and ozone wakes Xavier from his comatose position and he looks around to see what happened. Her finds Xanril trying to cut his way out of the steel cable like webbing and Kirianna untangling her steel ribbons from the puddle of paste at her feet. Xavier stands shakily and walks over to his uncle, drawing a scimitar as he walks, so he can help Xanril extract himself from the net.
"I am sorry for my actions Xanril, I did not remember my extreme phobia of spiders; please forgive me."
"I should have noticed the scent, we are both at fault."
"Could you boys get a move on, Xavier, you need to learn to control your sub conscious better so it won't let you fall again, and Xanril you need to focus your aim." Kirianna walks over, pulling Xanril to his feet. "You owe me one, Xavier."
"I am sorry to you too, I am sorry I froze, my fear of spiders is enough to make me useless but let us leave it behind; you saved the two of us and we need to get to the warthog and get moving, we have a four day journey ahead of us still and it is past moonrise." He runs back to the truck, tearing up the mountain road to get back to the others faster.
Chapter 3 project 18 Death V2
The last leg of the journey, from the mountains to the plains just outside of the suburbs of Reighart was completely uneventful, a perfect ride. But on the night they entered the plains, wind, rain and thunder whirled around them. For an hour they drove on in the storm until a blade of light, silvery white and glowing in the gloom, knifes past the truck, hitting a tree, cutting it down the middle and lighting it on fire. Xavier slams on the brakes and the vehicle screeches to a stop and a thin you looking bone white vixen walks forward into the light of the headlights. Xavier shuts off the engine and drops to the pavement before the vixen speaks.
"I am Project eighteen, I have been sent by Master Draco to either kill you or impede your progress as project ten had tried to. How ever, I will not hold back on any of you, especially not against brother Xavier, as our Brother had done, and subsequently failed, two year ago." (Please play "Chop Suey" by System of a Down or "Master Passion Greed" or "Whoever brings the night" by Nightwish) Her silver white scythe glows again, she takes at the truck as Kirianna and Xanril get out as well, and the white blade of energy slices through the truck like an electric knife through butter. The shock wave from the truck exploding knocks Xanril and Kirianna from their feet but Xavier stands firm despite the rain slicked road, drawing his scimitars from their sheathes smoothly, his right eye changing from dark, cold blue to Violet.
"Combat release restriction, release level one, release level two, release level three, chaos sequence initiate, release level four, darkest sequence initiate," the area turns black, as if the shadow stole all of the light in the area, "release level five, Endscape sequence initiate." The darkness recedes, showing Xavier seeming stronger, more powerful, and having an air of darkness and chaos around him. His movements seemingly slow until he is not moving; the moon appears from behind the clouds, pale, bright, and full. "Reaper's twin sister, well pale rider, do you wish to dance with your harbinger?" he disappears, a blur appearing behind the vixen, only to have his slashing blade block by the haft of her scythe.
Kirianna slowly stands and looks over to Xavier and the white vixen trading blows faster than any natural being could without tearing their limbs by the force. Xavier's spinning, slashing, and weaving a graceful and deadly dance, matched equally by that of the vixen. The sparks generated by their masterly crafted weapons lit up the night. She then crouches and goes to where Xanril was laying and shakes him softly awake.
"How is Xavier fighting so fast?" she blurts out.
"Some of the stronger vampires and Dhamphyr have their power sealed until it is needed, Xavier is one such Dhampyr, more due to the military tampering with his genetics but also due to his blood itself. He is part demon, part vampire, and part kitsune. The demon side gives precision, strength, and endurance. The vampire side gives strength, speed, and takes away the need to breath much, though he needs to breath at least once every half hour or his blood will feed on him to get to oxygen. And finally the kitsune side gives him control over shadows, flight when he uses his wings, and he can also create illusions." He groans and looks down, seeing a spike of jagged metal stuck in his leg, right in his calf. "**** My leg, why did I not notices this when I woke up?"
Xavier ducks under the slash of the scythe, and jumps to the side as it arcs low to take his head with its deadly tip. "Eighteen, why are you fighting me, should we not be working for the government together?" he lies, trying to make he think he was still part of the military.
"We are both not of the Corinian military any more, I am under Master Draco and you are soon to be dead." A flash of light and the blade of the scythe snaps forward, gutting Xavier and tearing him in half. His black blood does not spray, but oozes out of the wound as he falls to the ground.
Eighteen looks away, towards Kirianna and Xanril as they try to extract the metal spike. Kirianna looks up in time to see Xavier rent in half and redouble her efforts to remove the spike, to no avail. Eighteen calmly stalks forward, thinking she would have time to kill these two. The shadows dance and the blood from Xavier roils and reforms the fox.
"Combat release restrictions, Full release, Reaver activate." A white half mask melts from the air onto the left half of Xavier's face, the eye turning violet but pupiless, similar to his right eye. "Finally, after two years I am free again, free to wage war on anything I choose once the one in front of us is gone, and the other two as well, just for good measure." the last statement had a second voice melding with Xavier's normal voice. An air of madness roiled from him like a cloud bringing a sense of dread as he takes a step forward. His black fur waves as if in a windstorm, making it look like black fire coating his body, the same with the white fur along his hands, tail tips, and what can be seen from under his muzzle and throat. Xavier's eye glows violet, and his left hand snaps up and grabs the half mask, trying to pull it free.
"What are you doing, weakling, I am helping you, as I did before with the other, let me fight for you, we will win if you let me." A crack sunders the silence, and the mask shatters into glittering fragments.
"I need no help from your darkness and chaos, only our power." He growls as if to nothing and turns back towards Eighteen. "I am sorry for that display, my demon does not know who is master of this body. Shall we continue?" he drops to one knee, scooping up the dropped scimitar and holds them in an "X" above his head, stopping the down arcing scythe and turns it off to the side, extracting one blade and sweeps it across Eighteen's side, cutting the thin leather armour and deeply biting into her side.
"Damn you brother, I will kill you." The vixen spits through clenched teeth and spins the scythe before her, blocking Xavier's next flurry. Off to the side, Xanril and Kirianna finally extract the spike and Xanril uses the light from the flames around to heal the jagged wound.
"I must help him, she is using the dance of light, a battle style I know, as well as the counter. If he continues he will die again. You must run once I beat the vixen, grab Xavier if you have to but you both must leave." He struggles to his feet, the wounds not fully healed, and trudges through the mud to the patch of rock the two younger foxes fought upon.
"One thing, dear Eighteen, I am not your brother, we may be of the same project creation but not of blood, I am not known for my number, but my name." He notices his uncle trying to approach quietly and attack Eighteen from behind and end the fight and thinks to play along with his uncle's plan, until a dark form grabs him and pulls him into the sky, towards Reignhart.
"Child of Science and magic, how well you fight in a style known well to me." The elder Kitsune hobbles onto the rock, which was slick with blood and rain. "I wish to see who is better, my self, an old Kitsune, or you, a young sprigh vixen?" he snaps the scimitars he wields out of the scabbards he was using as canes due to his leg.
"I was ordered to kill anyone who got in my way, and you are in my way, you must die for this."
***
Xavier realises that Kirianna was holding him, and they were flying away from the vixen and he could just make out, even with his vampiric vision, his uncle, fighting favouring one leg. "We must get back and help them Kirianna!" he struggles in her arms, but she pushes on claw into his back to calm him down.
"He told me to get you away to save you..." a flash of silver white light, like an explosion, shatters the gloom. "...I am sorry, he said you would not be able to win, so he intervened."
"I know who I can kill, given the chance at his head, the one who sent Eighteen after us, Draconis Lee."
Chapter 4 The Demon and The Dragoness
A few miles away they set down and Kirianna rests her wings. Night was falling around them and the sun dyed the horizon blood red, as if to signal Xavier to strike out one and for all against the one that had been giving the world pain for the last two decades.
"Kirianna, I must warn you," he begins as he strikes a flint stone against his steel knife produced out of a sheath in his boot, "If we are to stay this course we may both be killed, as I believe my uncle has. Draco is a formidable swordsman, owns his own army and is probable in partnership with my true nemesis, the demon lord Zado'Urhamee." He bows his head over the fire; his hair falling to cover the left half of his face while the right is facing away from Kirianna.
"Between my maces and your scimitars we can win."
"Maybe, but if Zado and Draco are together we face an army of eighty thousand demons, anthros, and humans all trying to kill us while a demon resurrects our most hated foes from the past. The only way I see we could win is if I let my demon come forth, but he could kill you, which I would never let myself allow. I may have seem like an ass when we first met but I would never have had the nerve to strike, even if I was completely unemotional." She was taken aback, as she never had anyone speaking so truthfully about his or her feelings toward her, nor has she seen one as strange as this young fox, barely a child compared to her, having such a worldly view and grasp of his enemies.
"Can you not make a deal with your demon? Is it just a heartless killing machine?" she tries to keep her voice straight because of her struggle to keep herself from taking the kitsune up in her arms and dragging him off to the bushes so they could know each other intimately before one or both possibly dies.
"Once I realised his true name, or at least his chosen name, I researched him, I am his descendant on my father's side, as he is a corrupted Nogitsune, a demonic spirit fox, who was one of the first children of Inari Okami on Mysticaria. Because of his birth he is Mysticharia's Kitsune god of war and chaos, as well as the god of the assassins and thieves for our planet. He is my great, great, great, great, great grand father on the side of my father. Because of his chaotic nature I may or may not be able to entice him to spare you if I set him lose but I have only been able to contact him directly when ever I have been kill twice, which I can not guarantee he will save me just so I can speak with him."
Suddenly a white mask oozes out of the air, forming in front of Xavier. "I can contact you any time I wish young fox, I just can't be free unless my carrier lets me." The mask chuckles evilly before turning to the dragoness. "I will spare you if you do something for me, he, he, he." The mask reforms with a lewd grin.
"If you have been watching anything through my eyes you would know she is a dignified female and would never let something so disgraceful happen, either lend me your power during this fight or we will both die. Understand?"
Reaver is astonished that Xavier would speak to the one who holds the most power in their body. Reavan was sealed in Xavier so despite his power Reavan would have no choice but to listen, as a mask without a body and no true form is useless as a god of destruction. "Very well Child, I will lend my powers to you on one condition, I have the enjoyment of removing the head of Draconis Lee." The lewd grin becomes a sinister smile, the smile of a heroic sociopath bend on killing.
"That is the only offer I can not refuse, what do you think Kirianna?"
"I think you are both a certain kind of crazy, but this is the kind of Crazy I like." She smiles and pats Xavier on the shoulder. "Let us go now, and get that bastard."
"Good thing I keep tabs, three of my best infiltrators are working in his army and they last reported Draco was hiding out in Silver District, an abandoned district of Reignhart that is reported to be haunted." He removes both his dragon leather trench coat (note: black dragon leather) and his tee-shirt and growls in pain as his wings grow, like the black wings of a fallen angel, out of his back. "I will finally get to pay Draco back for the death of two of my best, Assassin and his brother, Scout, two years ago, as well as his role in starting the human-anthro war a decade ago."
Kirianna unfurls her wings, like silken bat wings with patterns of stars and galaxies coating the underside. She slides the slit back on her robes to draw her mace-chucks and takes a moment to give Xavier, who was standing silent and grim staring towards the city of his birth, a city he had been protecting years now, both with and without the payment of the Council of Twenty-four, a loving look, meaning to get him to ask her a question she had longed for a true warrior, one who could watch her back when she could not, to ask her for the last sixteen centuries, If they survived.
At moonrise they left the small camp, flying low and swift, the last leg of the journey to Reignhart, city of three billion humans, Anthros, and many other creatures. Compared to a human city it would be similar to Tokyo if it were set both on land and on an Island, like New York city. The sub-urbs stretched off into the distance, days away from the city proper, though the district they needed to get to was only an hour of flight, as a dragon could fly.
Silver district seemed just as Xavier had described it, barren of life and a pall hung in the air, a dread that permeated worse than that of project ten, the dreaded chill of undead. As the dragoness and the kitsune land atop a derelict office no spectres greeted them with dead hands grasping, more a sense of receding as Xavier moves ahead, his wings retracing back into his back.
"Spirits fear me as much as they would fear a Coven lord vampire as my blood line is that of one, my father, the second last leader of the brotherhood, had possessed a coven lord vampire before he met my mother, and after he lost control of he who he possessed my uncle, Rio, had to kill the vampire in order to save my mother." He explains somewhat bluntly, meaning to get to the building that still had living occupants.
***
It took little time to find the current base of operations, as it was the only building that could hold at least an army and survive for a few years. That, and it had a wolf and a human standing guard wearing black body armour and the insignia of a skull with daggers in its eye and its mouth spewing fog. From Xavier's past knowledge of the Dragon, he knew Draco would be on the top floors, near the middle so that only something that could fly could get to him, or fight through his personal army from the strength segregated lowers ranks on the bottom, highest ranking soldier near the top, common sense pattern. Xavier does not bring his wings out, but draw his pistol from the holster on his side, aiming at the wolf first, knowing that he would be faster than the human to react, and squeezes the trigger, firing a twelve mil. round straight through the right eye and out the back of the wolf's head, before snapping the pistol to snipe the human before he could realise what happened.
Kirianna leaps to the sky as Xavier releases all but full combat release as he bolts to the wall, sliding the gun back into its holster as he leaps half way there and grasps a ledge jutting out of the side of the building, climbing up the side as a cat would climb a tree. With in second both Xavier and Kirianna are on the ledge that held the windows of the top floor.
Xavier gestures for Kirianna to go first, in a gentlemanly manner as if he was holding a door open for her. She grins and smashes the window with her mace, crushing the skull of the poor fox that had the job of guarding the window. Xavier slides in beside her brutal smash and draws his scimitars so swiftly to one with out the eye of a vampire one would not see the movement. Two wolves with heavy maces try to overhand chop Xavier, only to fall in half as he walks in between them, slashing them in the gut and cutting though bone, muscle and tissue as if it were paper. Two more attack Xavier from behind, only to have their neck snapped by the force of the two ribbons on Kirianna's feet wrap around and yanked back from their throats.
Twelve heavily armed and heavily armoured guards blocked the double doors that lead to the main chamber, only to have their shadows reach up and crush their soft bodies from inside the armour.
Xavier kicks in the left door as Kirianna does as well to the right, to a lesser extent. The left door breaks from its hinges and flies into two guards, killing one and sending the other into unconsciousness. Kirianna snaps her ribbons and flicks lightening bolts from them as she spins to dodge any attack sent at her in the confusion.
Draco sat atop a throne of obsidian; an expression of evil glee covered his smug muzzle. "Xavier, we meet again and for the final time, and I see you brought me a gift to try and placate me, how thoughtful."
"I am here for your head Draco, and so is she." Xavier growls, his right eye flickering violet and blue as he tries to restrain Reavan for the moment.
"You forget I am in my own domain while you are not, I hold every advantage and you have nothing. Each time you kill me and Zado brings me back, stronger than ever. You will never win as I will never truly die."
"What if we take your head?" Xavier growls,(Note: play invocation of apocalyptic evil by Dragonforce now, then play Master Passion Greed, the instrumental version by Nightwish) a white mask slowly forming around the left half of his face, encroaching towards the right too slow to notice. He spins his scimitars and closes his eyes, the mask crawling until it covers his entire face. In the now Violet, pupiless eyes madness could be felt. Draco smiles and draws his longsword, its hilt a skull with two daggers coming out of its eyes to serve as a crossguard.
Kirianna surprises both by taking a sidelong swing at Draco's head, giving Reaver the time to snap a flurry at the black dragon's unprotected side, only to see Draco pull a sawn off and unload it into Xavier/Reavan's stomach while he blocks the mace and slides his blade behind the swing, so that Kirianna could only block with the mace used as the handgrip. Xavier/Reavan uses the momentum of the blast to do a backflip and land while regenerating and attacking Draco again, from behind.
The black dragon uses his sawn off to block the first blade, but not the second as the magically sharpened edge parts his flesh and scales like water, just before he spins away to make the wound non life threatening.
"Damn you, you stupid fox. In the end I will enjoy having your skull as a trophy, along side that of your bitch of a dragoness." He slashes wildly at Kirianna, who spun her maces to block the manoeuvre, as Xavier/Reavan smiles, known the fight to be at an end soon. He slid a scimitar into its sheath, dropping into a shadow and coming out of Draco's, right behind the dragon. A blade pierces his spine just as a ball of soul burning foxfire is slammed into his chest. Xavier/Reavan holds Draco close as the light fades from the dragon's red eyes.
"I win and you lose your soul, your power and your chance at redemption." He whispers as the mask recedes and then shatters as it becomes a half mask again.
Epilogue
Xavier and Kirianna return to the small beach side villa he had bought four years ago after his wanderlust had taken him away from the city he protected. They had just been to the premier of the film she had starred in. A year had passed with out any destruction and the mercenaries that Draco had hired had been drawn into the brotherhood, all was well for the time being.