Memories.
Of distant past.
Fragments. Images. Colors and sounds.
A blue sky, after months of heavy clouds and endless rain.
The sea, its level rising, day after day. By feet.
Me. My name lost to my memory, and never recorder to myth.
The top of the mountain, yet the waves touched it. A strange man, like I never saw before. Short, bulky, big bony eyebrows.
His leg broken, after his boat washed ashore by the storm. A big marine crocodile threatening him.
I killed the beast, big as five men. I saved the strange man, he became my friend and counselor.
It began then. The curse.
To live the same thing through ages. Each time a new person, a new hero, each time the same man, that I discovered immortal, at my side.
Each time battling and killing the serpent.
I was Ninurta, killing Kur. I was Herakles, killing the Hydra. I was Perseus, killing the Orca. I was Bellerofonte, killing the Chimaera. I was Cadmus, killing the Draco. I was Krsna killing Kaliya. I was Sigurd killing Fafnir. Now I am the Raptor, and one day I will kill the Leviathan.
Edulcore Cicciotto shook heavily, like a chilling wind had blowed around him.
"Dragon Slayer, what bothers you?" asked Psidon.
"Don't you feel it? Don't you feel the smell of dragon's blood over his hands?" roared fiercely Pyra.
Drake was looking at Euro in terror. His teammate's form was phasing in and out reality at very short intervals, each time replaced by different peoples, all of them armed with menacing blades.
Then it ended. Euro fell on his knee, but then raised his face, to look directly at Pyra. "My hands can be soaked in dragon's blood, and if that is a guilt, even if it were other times, and others dragons as well, I will pay for it, I promise to you. But we are here not to ask you to help us. We are here to ask you to fight for your world. To end the age of terror Godbolt has started, and that is embracing the whole of this planet as a cold winter of the souls.
I can't tell you if men and dragons will be friend one day. But I can tell you a thing: there will never be THAT day, if you don't fight today".
Euro got up, standing in front of the dragon, sweating for the struggle endured to keep his past incarnations away, his body minuscule under the raised neck and heavy head of the winged reptile.
Boiling columns of steam erupted at intervals from the nostrils of the ancient being. The head, the size of a elephant, lowered until the yellow eyes were at the same height of Euro's one. Pyra spoke: "Agreed, mortal. Today we fight. Tomorrow we'll judge your sins!"
And then, the whole place glowed in a blinding blue light. Before they could open their eyes again, Ed and Drake felt the wind over their faces. They were riding over the back of Psidon, among the clouds.
The land, below them, was far and confused.
The dragons, behind them, were hundreds.
