Chapter 45: Dragon's Teeth
The grove of Ares wasn't a welcoming place.
It sat in a shallow valley, shielded from the sea winds by jagged, charcoal-colored cliffs. The trees that gave it its name were dead—massive, petrified oaks and pines, their branches skeletal claws against the grey sky. The air hung heavy and still, smelling of hot stone, dry rot, and something older, a metallic tang like blood left in the sun. In the very center, hanging from the lowest branch of the largest petrified tree, was a shimmering, impossible splash of color: the Golden Fleece. It glowed with its own soft, buttery light, a heart of gold in a corpse-grey world.
Between that heart and the edge of the grove stood the guardian.
It wasn't a lizard. It wasn't even a beast, not really. It was a monument to wrath made flesh. The dragon was the size of a small hill, its body a mass of overlapping scales the color of tarnished bronze and dried blood. A crest of serrated spines ran from its wedge-shaped head down to the tip of its long, powerful tail. It wasn't sleeping. Its eyes—great, slitted orbs of molten gold—were open, unblinking, fixed on the three figures who had just stepped from the tree line.
It didn't move. It didn't roar. It simply watched, the absolute stillness more terrifying than any charge.
---
Olympus.
"It's time."
"Yes. Finally."
"Ares, maybe… maybe this is too much?" Artemis's voice was small, her fingers nervously twisting the edge of her silver chiton. She reached out and grabbed the armored goddess's gauntleted hand. "Call it off. Please?"
Ares, resplendent in her crimson war-plate, her fiery hair braided for battle, sighed. The sound was like grinding stones. "You're the one who sent him after my Fleece, little moon. Changing your mind now seems… indecisive."
"That was Athena's idea!" Artemis protested, pointing an accusing finger at the grey-eyed goddess lounging nearby.
Athena merely smiled, serene and untouchable. "I merely presented an option. The choice to pursue it was hers. And his."
Artemis huffed, turning her worried gaze back to the large, clear scrying pool that showed the grove in perfect detail. She watched Cyd take a step forward, Medea and Medusa hanging back at the tree line. "I'm going down there. I'll tell him it was a joke. That he doesn't have to do this."
Ares's hand shot out, catching Artemis's wrist. The grip was firm, unyielding. "No. You cannot."
"Why not? If I tell him the 'curse' was a lie, that I don't want the Fleece, he'll turn back!" Artemis tried to pull free, but Ares held her fast.
"Like he said himself," Ares's voice was low, intense. "Everyone has trials they can't avoid. You save him from this one, another will find him. A harder one, perhaps. This path is his now."
"Exactly," Athena added, gliding over to the pool's edge. She leaned down, her reflection blurring Cyd's image for a moment. "I told him the only way to earn the blessing of the War God was to please her with war. But this boy… he has a peaceable soul. He won't start a war. So the only war left to him is the one against monsters." Her finger traced the surface of the water, the image zooming in on Cyd's left wrist, on the bracer with its three faint glows and ten empty sockets. "He has so many trials ahead. Can you shield him from all of them?"
Artemis fell silent, her shoulders slumping. She chewed her lip, a very mortal gesture. She had the distinct, frustrating feeling she'd been outmaneuvered by Athena's calm logic. Again.
"Then let us watch," Ares said, releasing Artemis's wrist. She leaned forward, her crimson eyes alight with a fierce, hungry anticipation. "Let us see… what he's truly made of."
---
Back in the grove, Cyd suppressed a sudden, inexplicable shiver. Someone's watching. Of course they are.
"Listen," Medea whispered from behind him, her voice tight with anxiety. "It's not too late to reconsider. We could… I could try a diversion. A fog, something."
"Trust me," Cyd said, throwing a thumbs-up over his shoulder without looking back.
"I'm not Jason!" she snapped, then immediately winced, realizing her own nerves were making her shrill. She took a steadying breath. "Blind trust is for fools."
"Then trust yourself." Cyd turned slightly, pulling aside the collar of his tunic to reveal the necklace she had crafted through the night. Strung on a braided leather cord were dozens of the Nemean Lion's teeth, each one carved with minute, glowing runes. They felt cool and heavy against his skin. "Trust the 'Blessing of Victory' you made for me."
"That… that's just a focus! An amplifier! It can't make you win against that!" She gestured frantically at the motionless dragon.
"You have to believe in your own work," Cyd said, his voice softening. He reached out and ruffled her lavender hair, an oddly brotherly gesture. "Today, you're my goddess of victory. So act like it."
High on Olympus, Athena felt a sudden, petty, and entirely uncharacteristic spike of irritation. She smoothed her expression back to neutrality.
"Alright then," Cyd said, cracking his neck. His eyes, pale and focused, locked onto the dragon's golden orbs. "Medusa. Keep her here. Don't let her cross this line." He scuffed a mark in the dry earth with his heel.
Medusa nodded silently. With a fluid motion, she unwound a length of heavy, dark chain from her waist—part of her sickle's apparatus—and looped it around Medea's middle, tethering her to the thick trunk of a petrified pine.
"Hey! What are you—" Medea struggled, but the chain, forged for a Gorgon, didn't budge. She was anchored.
"You," Cyd said, pointing at Medusa. "You too. This line. No further."
"I am here to protect you," Medusa said, her voice firm. She pushed back her hood, revealing her face and the chilling, beautiful twilight of her eyes.
"I know. But this… this is my fight."
He turned his back on them and walked toward the dragon.
The creature watched him come. It didn't stir until he was twenty paces away, well within the range of a single lunge. Cyd stopped, looking up at the colossal head.
"My objective is the Fleece," he said, his voice calm, conversational, as if addressing a large, potentially unfriendly dog. "If we could come to an arrangement—"
The dragon's response was immediate and wordless. One moment it was a statue. The next, a bronze-scaled forelimb the size of a ship's mast was sweeping down, not with a clumsy smash, but with the terrifying, precise speed of a scorpion's strike. The air screamed as it was parted.
"CYD!" Medea shrieked, lunging against her chain.
WHUMP.
The impact kicked up a volcano of dust, dirt, and shattered stone. The ground shook. Medusa didn't blink, her enhanced sight piercing the cloud.
When the dust settled, the dragon's claw was embedded deep in the earth. And standing, unharmed, in the narrow gap between its massive talons, was Cyd.
"Well," he said, brushing a clod of dirt from his shoulder. "I guess you're not the negotiating type."
The dragon's golden eyes narrowed. It lifted its claw and brought it down again, faster this time, aiming to crush the insect between its digits.
CRUNCH.
This time, Cyd didn't end up between the claws. He ended up under the center of the footpad, a mass of cracked scales and calloused flesh bigger than he was. The impact drove him a foot into the compacted earth. The dragon leaned its weight forward, grinding.
A tense silence hung over the grove. Then, from beneath the colossal foot, a voice, slightly muffled but utterly unstrained:
"Lovely day for it, isn't it?"
The dragon's eyes flew wide. It could feel it. The pressure on its foot was reversing. Something was pushing up. With a snarl of disbelief, it snatched its foot back, reached into the crater, wrapped its claws around Cyd's torso, and with a mighty heave, yanked him out and slammed him back into the ground with earth-shattering force. Once. Twice. A third time, for good measure, creating a new, deeper pit.
Satisfied, it turned, its long neck swinging towards the Fleece tree. A nuisance, dealt with.
"Hey."
The voice came from behind its tail.
The dragon froze. It turned its head, slowly.
Cyd stood there, coated in grey dust, one hand wrapped around the very tip of the dragon's spiked tail. He looked up, meeting its bewildered gaze.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A low, incredulous rumble started deep in the dragon's chest. This human couldn't possibly be thinking…
"Let's try this again," Cyd said. He planted his feet, shifted his grip, and heaved.
His muscles corded, the pale skin stretching taut over bone and sinew. The dragon felt a tremendous, undeniable tug at the base of its spine. It was a sensation so alien, so impossible, that its body instinctively fought against it. Instead of being swung, it overbalanced, its haunches buckling, and it sat down hard on the petrified forest floor with a ground-shaking THUD that snapped dead branches for a hundred yards.
"Okay," Cyd said, releasing the tail and shaking out his arms. "Not as easy as I'd hoped."
The dragon's shock ignited into pure, volcanic rage. Its tail, now free, snapped forward like a whip, coiling around Cyd before he could move and slamming him into the ground once more. Then it began to methodically, viciously pound the spot where he lay, each blow a localized earthquake. It wasn't just trying to kill him; it was trying to erase him, to pound him into the bedrock.
---
"NO! The difference is too great!" Artemis cried, gripping the edge of the scrying pool. "He has no allies there! No weapon that can pierce its hide! Only skills meant for men and a body that won't break! He can't win!"
"He has almost no chance," Athena agreed, her brow furrowed in genuine concern. This was pushing even her calculations. "The variables are overwhelmingly against him."
"But it is because the chance is so small," Ares breathed, her eyes blazing. She was leaning so far forward she was almost in the water. "Because the victory seems impossible… that the taste of it will be truly divine." A fierce, expectant grin split her face. "Show me, Cyd! Show me how you seize victory from the jaws of impossibility!"
---
In the crater, the pounding stopped. The dragon, chest heaving, peered into the dust-filled hole. Surely, nothing could—
A hand shot out of the debris, grabbing the rim. Cyd hauled himself out. He stood, cracked dirt falling from his hair and clothes like brown snow. He patted his torso, more annoyed than injured.
"Doesn't hurt. But it's getting really, really annoying."
The dragon stared. It had hit him with enough force to flatten a bronze fortress. Repeatedly. He looked… inconvenienced.
"See, from your point of view, I'm just a very persistent bug," Cyd said, dusting himself off. "The difference is, you can't swat me. And that means I've already won. The only question is… how long it takes."
The dragon, enraged beyond reason, swiped at him again, a horizontal blow meant to bisect him.
Cyd didn't dodge. He didn't even flinch. He just watched the talons come.
And as they were about to connect, he moved. Not away. Up.
He leaped, his hands finding purchase on a rough, upturned scale on the dragon's passing forearm. He swung himself onto the limb and began to climb, using scales and crevices as handholds, moving with a speed and agility that belied his size.
The dragon felt the weight shift, felt the tiny prickles of movement on its arm. It shook its limb violently, trying to dislodge him. Cyd held on, climbing higher, onto the shoulder, then up the thick, corded muscles of the neck.
The dragon bucked and thrashed, its head whipping side to side.
CRACK.
A scale Cyd was gripping, weakened by age and the dragon's violent motion, broke off in his hand.
He was flung into the air, tumbling head over heels.
The dragon saw its chance. Its maw, a cave lined with swords, gaped open. Deep in its throat, a furnace ignited. The air shimmered with pent-up heat. It drew in a final, massive breath, aiming at the helpless, falling figure.
Cyd twisted in mid-air, facing the dragon. There was no fear on his face. Only a cold, focused intensity.
"I've been waiting," he said, his voice barely a whisper lost in the gathering roar.
The dragon's throat glowed white-hot.
"For you to open your mouth."
I should have done it. I should have slipped that potion into his wine while he slept. Something permanent, something binding. Then he'd be safe in my tower, not… not being swallowed whole by a dragon.
The thought was a cold, hollow ache in Medea's chest as she stared, unblinking, at the monstrous creature. It had snapped its jaws shut with a final, bone-shaking clack, a gout of smoke and steam hissing from its nostrils. Now it was turning, its movements almost leisurely, ambling back towards the petrified tree where the Fleece shimmered. It was done. It had dealt with the nuisance. The grove was quiet again, save for the ringing in her ears and the frantic hammering of her own heart.
Beside her, a change was happening.
Medusa's cloak, already dark, seemed to drink the light around it. The heavy chain around Medea's waist went slack, clattering to the ground. A low, sub-audible vibration filled the air, making the fine hairs on Medea's arms stand up. She glanced over.
Medusa was growing. Not much—just enough to tower over the princess by a head. Her long, violet hair, usually lank and hidden, was alive. It lifted from her shoulders, undulating like a nest of serpents sensing prey, each strand possessed of a sinister, silent energy. The air around her grew sharp and cold.
"If I open its stomach now," Medusa murmured, her voice no longer soft but layered with an ancient, petrifying resonance. She took one step forward, her bare foot sinking into the dry earth. "…he might still be in one piece."
The dragon, twenty yards away and climbing back onto its perch, froze. Every scale on its body seemed to tighten. A primal, instinctual warning screamed in its lizard brain—a threat older than fire, older than flight. It whirled, massive wings snapping open with a sound like tearing canvas. It launched itself backwards into the air, putting distance between itself and the small, suddenly terrifying figure, its golden eyes wide and fixed on Medusa.
ROOOOOAAAAA—!
The dragon's challenge roar was laced with something new: not rage, but alarm. It threw its head back, throat pulsing with a building, white-hot glow. The air rippled with heat. It would scour this new threat from the earth with purifying flame.
Medusa's head tilted. Her eyes, now fully unveiled, were pools of shifting, hypnotic violet. The strange light within them intensified, swirling outwards in a visible, distorting haze.
Kill it. Now.
The dragon tensed to unleash its breath.
And then it choked.
A thick, hot geyser of black-red blood erupted from its gaping maw, not fire. The liquid sizzled as it hit the air, extinguishing the gathered inferno in its throat before it could be born. The dragon gagged, a wet, strangled sound. Agony, sharp and profound, lanced through its body. It wasn't a surface wound. This pain originated inside, deep in its chest, a searing, cutting sensation that traveled up its esophagus and down towards the core of its being.
Pain!
What—?
The human!
CRASH!
The internal agony short-circuited its muscles. Its mighty wings faltered, then folded. The dragon, a titan of the sky, dropped like a felled tree. It hit the ground with an impact that sent shockwaves through the dead grove, toppling stone-like trees and raising a dust cloud that blotted out the sun.
"Huh?" Medea blinked, her mind struggling to process the sudden reversal.
Beside her, Medusa let out a soft sigh. The terrifying aura vanished. Her body shrank back to its normal, petite size. Her hair settled limply around her shoulders. She looked pale, drained, but her eyes remained fixed on the twitching dragon.
---
Inside the Dragon.
Darkness. Pressure. A deafening, rhythmic THUMP-THUMP-THUMP that was less a sound and more a physical vibration shaking Cyd's bones. The air was thick, hot, and reeked of copper and ozone. He was submerged, not in water, but in a churning tide of viscous, steaming blood.
The moment the dragon had inhaled, he'd acted. Not to dodge the fire, but to use it. He'd let the suction of its breath pull him in, tucking himself into a ball as he shot past teeth like ivory pillars and down the slick, muscular tunnel of its throat. It had been a calculated, insane gamble. One wrong move, and he'd have been incinerated or ground to pulp by peristaltic muscle.
Now he was somewhere in its thoracic cavity, guided only by the overwhelming, pounding beacon of its heart.
"Annoyed, aren't you?" Cyd's voice was a grim rasp, barely audible over the cacophony of biology. He braced himself against a spongy, pulsing mass—a lung, maybe. In his hand, he clutched a long, dagger-like fragment of the dragon's own scale, broken off during his climb. Its edge, honed by centuries of friction against rock, was razor-sharp. "But you never saw me as a real enemy. Just a pest. That's why you've already lost."
He spat, the saliva mixing instantly with the blood swirling around him. With a powerful, two-handed thrust, he drove the scale-shard into the wet, fibrous wall before him.
It wasn't skin. It was the wall of a major artery. Hot blood, under tremendous pressure, jetted from the wound, a crimson fountain in the darkness that slammed into Cyd with the force of a battering ram. The shard was torn from his grasp, lost in the torrent.
Cyd snarled, the sound animalistic. He lunged forward, fingers scrabbling against the slick tissue. He found the ragged edge of the wound and, without a second's hesitation, hooked his fingers into it and pulled, tearing it wider.
No weapon?
Then I'll use my nails. My teeth.
Every damn part of me that can cut or tear.
He lowered his head and bit down on the torn flesh, ripping a chunk free with a savage wrench of his neck. The coppery taste of dragon's blood flooded his mouth, thick and burning.
Destroy the heart. Nothing lives without its heart.
The dragon's body convulsed around him. A roar of pure, brainless agony vibrated through every molecule of fluid and flesh. Its survival instincts, ancient and powerful, kicked in. Around the terrible gashes Cyd was inflicting, the tissues began to writhe. Pale, fibrous tendrils shot out from the wound edges, seeking each other, knitting together with visible, nauseating speed. The great, wounded heart itself, a chamber the size of a cottage, pulsed violently, and the gaping hole Cyd was crouched in began to close around him, new muscle and membrane knitting across the opening.
Regeneration.
The repair was rapid, desperate. The half-healed flesh closed snugly around Cyd's waist, trapping him inside the heart's wall. He was embedded in the organ, a parasite in the very center of the dragon's life.
"You want to heal?" Cyd gasped, blood dripping from his chin. His world was reduced to heat, pressure, darkness, and the overwhelming thump-thump-THUMP of the dying giant's struggle. "Then let's have a race!"
He ignored the burning fluid, the crushing pressure, the terrifying intimacy of being swallowed by living meat. He reached out blindly in the claustrophobic darkness, his hands finding purchase on the shuddering cardiac muscle. He bit again. And again. He tore at the fibrinous strands trying to bind him. He was a cancer, a bullet lodged in the dragon's soul, and he would not be expelled.
Which dies first? You… or me?
---
Olympus.
Ares was transfixed. She wasn't watching a scrying pool anymore; she was leaning over a cauldron of blood and violence. Her crimson eyes were wide, pupils dilated, her breath coming in short, excited pants.
"Yes… yes! Snarl! Bite! Tear your victory from its still-beating heart!" she breathed, her voice husky with arousal. She reached a gauntleted hand towards the bloody image, as if she could feel the heat, smell the iron tang. "Cast off the shackles of form! Tactics? Strategy? Meaningless! This is war! Flesh against flesh! Will against will! The purest form!"
Artemis had turned away, her face pale, one hand pressed over her mouth. She'd been capricious, yes. She'd wanted attention, a game. She hadn't wanted… this. This was a slaughterhouse prayer, not a hero's trial.
Athena watched, a deep frown etched on her face. This was not the cunning victory, the clever exploitation of weakness she appreciated. This was brutish, visceral, ugly. It was the antithesis of wisdom. It was raw Id.
"Are you… satisfied?" she asked Ares, her voice carefully neutral.
"Satisfied?" Ares let out a short, sharp laugh. She straightened, and with a decisive clang, she unbuckled and removed the armored vambrace from her right forearm. The limb underneath was a tapestry of war—crosshatched with old, silvery scars, the muscle defined not for beauty but for enduring violence. "I am thrilled." She looked at her own scars with something like fondness. "It's been too long since I've seen a fight like this."
"Ares, are you going to bless him?" Artemis asked, her voice small, looking from the gruesome scene to the war goddess's exposed arm.
Ares didn't answer immediately. Instead, she knelt by the pool. She reached down, not to touch the water, but through it, her scarred arm plunging into the vision as if reaching across the world itself. Her fingers hovered, almost caressing the image of the blood-drenched, struggling figure within the dragon's heart.
"I am the God of War," she said, her voice losing its feverish edge, becoming solemn, declarative. "That is all I am, and all I can be."
"Apollo gave you the sun's fire. Hermes gave you a truth that cannot be broken. Poseidon gave you the sea's patronage. I… the incarnation of strife… have only one blessing to give."
Athena's eyes widened. She understood. Of course.
Ares's lips curled into a fierce, proud smile.
"From this day forward."
The words were not loud, but they carried the weight of an immutable law.
"YOUR WARS SHALL KNOW NO DEFEAT."
---
In the bloody, pulsating darkness, Cyd's left wrist erupted with light.
It wasn't the gentle glow of the other blessings. This was a searing, violent crimson, the color of arterial spray at dawn. The bracer burned against his skin. From it, jagged, bloody lines—not elegant runes, but savage, tribal-looking scars of light—raced up his arm. They clawed over his shoulder, up his neck, and across the left side of his face, etching a mask of crimson luminescence onto his skin. Power, not of strength or grace, but of absolute, relentless conquest, flooded his veins. It was a mandate written in pain and sealed in violence.
The despair, the blindness, the crushing pressure… it all clarified into a single, white-hot point of purpose.
"I…"
Cyd's left arm, now sheathed in bloody light, moved. He didn't punch. He didn't claw. He simply pushed his hand forward. The regenerating heart wall around his waist, tougher than steel, parted like rotten cloth. His fingers closed around a thick, pulsing cord—a ventricle, an artery, it didn't matter.
"…will not lose."
He clenched his fist and ripped.
---
The dragon, lying in the dust, gave one final, shuddering convulsion. A sound that was neither roar nor whimper escaped its lips—a wet, terminal sigh. The fierce light in its golden eyes guttered and went out, leaving only dull, glassy orbs reflecting the uncaring sky. Even in death, it could feel the last, feeble gnawing sensations from within its own chest.
CRUNCH-CRACK-SQUELCH.
A series of wet, tearing noises came from the dragon's sternum. Then, a hand, coated in a thick carapace of drying black blood, thrust out from between two shattered ribs. The fingers curled, gripping the bone.
A moment later, with a sound of breaking cartilage and a final gush of fluid, Cyd hauled the upper half of his body out of the dragon's chest cavity. He hung there for a second, gasping, painted head to waist in gore. The morning sun hit the white-gold of his bracer.
Where the sunlight touched the blood on his skin and hair, it reacted. The viscous liquid didn't drip away. It sublimated, turning into a fine, rust-colored mist that boiled off him in seconds. The savage red lines on his face and arm faded, leaving no mark. The blood matting his hair dissolved, restoring its stark white purity. He was clean, as if the horrific internal battle had never happened, save for the fact he was emerging from a dragon's corpse.
He blinked, squinting in the sudden brightness. He saw Medea, her face a mask of shock and dawning relief, standing frozen a dozen paces away. He saw Medusa, watching him with her ancient, knowing eyes.
He raised a hand towards Medea, wanting to signal he was alright.
"Stop."
The word came out flat, cold, utterly devoid of the warmth or humor he usually wielded. It was the voice of a man who had just spent too long in a place without light or mercy.
Medea flinched, her relief turning to confusion and hurt.
Cyd looked down at himself, at his bare, bloodless torso. He managed a weak, utterly exhausted version of his usual grin.
"Right now, I'm…"
He pointed a thumb at his chest.
"…not wearing any pants."