There’s nobody left here. I’m running up a staircase toward a cathedral at vesper hour, the sky orange and filled with red dragons, whose shadows slide across the flagstone steps like sperm in war regalia. I have been running up these steps for the past five days. They were once guarded by giants in black armor with swords and shields as big as their bodies. There were also horn-headed men covered in gold carrying curved swords in each hand. A reanimated dragon lies at the end of this path, a city-block-sized cross between cat and lizard, mysteriously brought back from the time before time began, the last remaining life form in this world that I haven’t yet killed.
For days I climbed these stairs, slowly chipping my way through the scorched hulks, before coming to the top, passing through one last misty arch and finding the precursor of all life in the universe there on a stony circular pedestal with nothing but sky behind. And for days he killed me dead in one move, leaping into the air and spraying a pool of fire down in a circle so wide I couldn’t get out of its way, no matter how fast I sprinted. So large was this beast that when I was close enough to attack the toenail of his forepaw, the rest of his body would be impossible to see. The few visible cues he gave in advance of his fiery leap would go unseen, and then I’d be dead and thrown back to the bottom of the stairs, only to run back up through the gauntlet to be killed again.And then, as if exhausted from seeing me caught in the same loop again and again, those soldiers began to disappear, bored by the predictability of my appearance, or in merciful recognition that repeated battle with the same enemy in the same place had begun to lose its meaning. And on the fifth day, at 3AM, after having branded every microsecond of the dragon’s movement into memory, I’m finally able to trick him into moving in whatever way I want and at just the time that I want. Then, finally, after pantomiming with the computer code operating his limbs and head, I swipe away at his body with my sword for another few minutes and kill him.There is no mystery to it. I’ve known since the beginning what I would need to do in order to kill him, but like the gap between understanding how to hit a homerun and being able to do it, I have finally transitioned from observer to practitioner, and my prize is a small token that highly suggests this god dragon, progenitor of worlds, is an impostor, a mimic built from the husk of another species and mutated through sorcery into a replica that has actually been dead form the start.The last living creature in the highest point in the world has been mastered and killed, and now there is nothing left here except for me. My reward for this murder is emptiness. And so I look at the wind disentangle the clouds on the horizon, swing my sword through the air a few more times for old time’s sake, then walk back down the staircase alone, every square inch of the world belonging to me, along with every inanimate thing remaining in it, not a single soul left to contest my claim.
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