Beneath the Dragon's Scales
Grinding, grating, beating , bashing. The boiling blood was coursing madly through it's young veins. The metallic razored solid plates were an impenetrable barrier for anything but the inhumane.
The boiling acid coursed without to no avail as it did nothing to it's massive powerful body.
Many cruel appendages wrapping around him fought and warred, now fighting to escape with their tiny insignificant lives.
But came another wave, thousands upon thousands of small flailing bodies crowded in. It was being buried beneath thousands of mirthless souls. Alive!
It cowered shrinking into a protective ball of massive grating steel.
Then the glowing blasting light flew and in an instant that time could not record it was bursting out like a roiling volcano, it's greenish tongue dripping acid as it flailed back and forth.
The minute droplets bursting into bluish shards of flame and destroying instantly as they came touching lightly upon the tender flesh of the foe leaving penetrable gaping holes.
It's greenish bloodstained pinching claws tore neatly, rending the flesh of the strangely humanoid figures assailing him.
Then it belched pure white hot flame at the rousing crowd sending a sickening smell of smoking flesh into the stagnant air. As the flesh of the creatures turned stingingly to liquid and flowed down it's frame onto the ground it revealed horribly twisted skeletons of tendon and bone.
As the mighty beast swung hundreds of proportionally small creatures pounced on the assailing appendage while hundreds more died under the devastating stroke.
Nevertheless the great mass of relatively minute leeches succeeded on offweighting the terrible beast and bringing it to the ground. Hundreds of their kind were trapped beneath the tumbled goliathan and had their lives snuffed out by the mass of it.
The gargantuan beast had unfortunately had it's arm trapped betwixt itself and the ground when it made it's folly. As a result it's battered limb lay beneath him, maimed and misshapen.
Due to this new event of excruciating agony the giant lizard-like monster of destruction and death could not bring itself to move its huge scaly body into a mobile position.
It kicked and flailed as the small knotted animals climbed upon it's armored body with their weapons to kill. But it was over for this beast. It soon moved to a state of submission and longed for the end to come.
But as fate crept upon it the earth broke and split wide beneath leaving an abyss of seemingly endless flight.
As the varied beings hung in limbo a faint scream was uttered, one that no one could claim as their own but was felt by all.
As the suspension was broken and they dropped the steel beast shot a deadly concoction of fire and acid. As it fell it spun radiating the deathly mixture through the crowd of plunging forms maiming everyone within it's span.
Below a shining crystal emerald circle came into view. It grew in perspective as they plummeted.
As the dragon regained it's calmness it quickly spread it's wings and watched as corpse and living fell away from it. The maimed forms made small ripples upon the mirrored surface of the stagnant lake throwing greenish black puffs of smoke into the air as the beings' frames were consumed by the highly corrosive acid.
Horrid blood curdling screams echoed about the vertical unnaturally sheer shaft as the entities' fates were realized and all hopes were lost. They felt every fiber of their small frame being overtaken and painfully destroyed in an excruciating eternity as they sunk below the roiling plate of awesome green.
The dragon dived with a mighty rush of air and lighted gently on the hollowed black tunnel aside the pool.
As he lay deep in agony as his piercing ears encountered a sound, a token of movement toward the end of his long scaly barbed tail.
Again came that odd scuffling and whimpering. As he raised his mighty head and peered into blanketed darkness, searching the moss-covered wall for the trespasser his sharp eyes beheld a shivering figure huddled in the corner.
A deep growl of spite and malice bubbled out from between his coarse lips. The whimpering from the huddled form grew louder.
With a long cruel claw he neatly hooked the creature's thick armor and lifted him into the air hovering in front of his face.
As it turned to a hopeless wail the creature's tears fell, lightly splashing upon his plated chest.
This was no warrior, it was practically a child. As the dragon's brow was raised in contemplation the "child" curled up into a small unguarded ball.
Out of compassion he lay the figure on his broad chest. "Who be you," came a rumbling clash escaping his heavily teethed mouth.
The sobbing intensified and it was shivering uncontrollably.
"I will not hurt you," he said in the most convincing voice he could muster, even though he had not entirely decided what he would do.
The child peered up through slitted bloodshot eyes at this strange foreign monster. The eyes of the creature were like bluish gems from the richest treasure.
The child, he realized had a strange look in its eyes, not the look of a courageous confident man but of one who had made a mistake.
The child stopped crying and gaped at the awesome scaly lizard before it.
"Where are you from and why did you come here?" came a commanding gruff voice.
"I... I...," as it spoke it's feelings of fear and terror took over sending it into a scared sobbing fit.
"Calm, child rest yourself," he said, "we will talk at a future time." With that he scraped a large section of moss from the aged chipped walls and nestled it in a corner. Then carefully lifting the child he breathed a silent breath upon it and placed it into the soft green moss.
With the youth snoring softly the dragon rolled his eyes back in deep concentration.
As the darkness of night fell the aperture above softly grating sealed shut.
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