It heaved a sigh, and fla sprung from its mouth, onto the floor around Oliver. It danced, and twirled, and Oliver flinched away, as was any mortal’s reaction to fire. He feared it as much as he needed it. Only when he did not feel the searing upon his flesh did he dare to look with one eye and see.
A canvas written in spiralling flas. Oliver recognized clouds. He would have been a fool not to. Flas might have been the dragon’s paint, but it was an accomplished artist with it. The flas moved, and the painting it had drawn changed. A creature soared through the sky. A bird Oliver assud it to be, until it grew larger, and Oliver recognized it to be the dragon. It heaved another sigh as the dragon ca closer to the forefront of the picture, and its breath sent Oliver’s hair backwards like the breeze. Like the rushing of air he might have felt as he was soaring through the sky.
The canvas changed, and flashed. The scene of a battlefield. Thousands of corpses laid low. A man on horseback. The breeze ca again. Oliver didn’t recognize the picture until it ca coupled the sensation. A strange clicking in his heart – a mory of a feeling, rather than of a mont. He closed his eyes, and dreamt it. The mont he had erged victorious against the Ersons, after so many weeks of agonizing thought, and after a gruelling, impossible battle. He had felt like he was amongst the clouds then, soaring. As if the wind itself swirled in his favour. When he opened his eyes again, he was not surprised to see the picture that the dragon had drawn was that of itself once again, flying high.
Oliver understood the ssage, understood the similarity that it wished to paint. The fact of the dragon’s understanding was the more shocking thing. That it could peer inside his mories, and understand him well enough to draw parallels.
And then the sentint changed. Fla was still the paint, and sohow the image grew darker. A man in a cage, a dragon in a cave. Both with the world blooming around them, both unable to effect against it. Their imprisonnt all the more tragic for the fact that they had tasted the heights of that sky. For just a ti, they had both been able to fly.
Oliver was crying without realizing it, his tears washing away the grubby soot that had coated his cheek from his fighting with the dragon.
"I hope one day soone will be strong enough to set you free," Oliver told it. Though he knew the terrible truth, implicitly in his heart, that for that dragon, the only freedom it could ever taste, would be that of death.
It huffed one final ball of fla. It struck right next to Oliver’s head, and singed his cheek. It caught the Pendragon crown, and turned the silver of it, and the dancing dragons on it, the colour of molten red tal.
The dragons ran, and changed. Sadness afflicted Oliver from the sight of it, as he saw Asabel’s crown lt before his eyes. It was a necessary thing, a final thing, but still a painful thing. To destroy that which was his reason to live, just before the dragon was to kill him. A wise, and rciful ending.
The fla abated, and when Oliver looked to see the molten remains of the crown, he was surprised to see that it had still largely retained its shape. It was thicker than it had once been. The points of the crown had all fallen into a single band. The dragons too that had once decorated it had vanished. What replaced it were twirling lines, and intricate spirals. It looked more like a pattern than anything concrete to anyone that might look at it.
But Oliver understood, for what the dragon had already shared with him. The wind was inscribed on that crown, and the dragon’s rune of a spiral along with it. The wind, and the storm.
The dragon took a step back, retreating.
Oliver waited, looking at it, uncertain. It seed to expect him to stand up. Hesitantly, did he get to his feet. He’d already been defeated. He couldn’t understand the dragon giving him another attempt.
He reached for the crown, even without the dragon’s permission. He just wanted to feel it. Sohow, it looked more ancient than even the Pendragon crown had been. It was as if with its flas, the dragon had breathed thousands of years of life into it. The symbols on it oozed with aning.
He played with it, and like when the Gnos had taken Dominus’ sword from Oliver, it seed lighter. Lighter, yet there was sothing else there too – more significant. If sohow that was possible. Imnsely significant, but pure.
He dared to put it on his head, doing so slowly, with his eyes fixed upon the dragon, waiting for its disapproval. It did not move to stop him. The crown sat amongst his hair, clinging to the shape of his head, perfectly fitting it.
The dragon snorted. Oliver thought it might have been a snort of satisfaction, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t understand now what the dragon was trying to tell him. Before, the crown had not been his – he was not Asabel. He could never be Asabel. It was corrupt to carry on in the sa way that she had. But this crown could not have been more him. He knew that from the feeling that it gave him to wear it. It didn’t reduce him with its weight, it made him feel stronger, freer. This crown was more him than anything he’d ever worn, or held. This was firmly the crown of Oliver Patrick.
"You honour ," Oliver said, not understanding. "But I am your foe?"
The dragon observed him with a snort, its wings furled around itself protectively. For all its strength, there was an imnse hurt to it. To have lived underground for as long as Oliver suspected that it had, he supposed he could not bla it.
"For how long have you dwelled here?" He asked.
He waited for a response, but there was none. Another question followed the first. "How was it that you did not succumb to resentnt? You should have firmly been a creature of Pandora by now... and yet..."
The dragon didn’t exist in corruption. Sohow, despite its suffering, it was still pure, and still necessary. It carried out an important function, even being confined as it was. And it continued to carry on that function, for the good of the land around it. And still, Oliver could not claim that he knew what that was.
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