He should be laughing. This nagging thought kept biting at his thoughts, a cerebral bulldog pounding through the shadows of his brain, tearing at his focus as he raised his scimitars high. He should be laughing! He, Kenri-Toka, had won. His family would be resting in the Great Sky, watching him as he made it all worth it, paid his debt. Beneath his boots lay that infuriating breeze-welp they called the Flower Prince. Without his voice, the futile treaties would fail and the peace movements would quail without their idiot leader.
He was an idiot, right? Why didn't that word seem quite right? Did he need something stronger? Peace couldn't last. If it could, why hadn't it come three years earlier?
RAAAAAA! The Slayer forced a loud scream through his head, summoning memories of smiling scaly snouts and warm nuzzles to banish doubt. He was right! He was avenging! He brought his blade down.
There was no feeling of rending flesh and bone. There was nothing. He looked down, his mind whirling, the bulldogs beginning to nip at his thoughts once more. There, under his blade, was a boy. A stout, pudgy child holding up a log of firewood, the blade buried deep inside, nearly cleaving through and into the youth's head. "NO." The boy said in a quavering voice that held the conviction of a soldier over the youthful tone.
A human?.....Defending magic? Kenri didn't know what to say. Just this morning, he had seen boys playing dragon slayer in the village. He could not remember this boy there. Had there been people who did not play that game?
He shook his head and clenched his fist, planning to chop down again. His hand did not move. It refused. He forced his lips to speak. "All.....humans.....hate....magic. Why?"
"M-my name is Toby, not All!" The boy stammered. "And I don't hate dragons! You won't kill him. I-if you do, who will bring flowers to my old ma? She can't walk anymore to get her own!" He said this in the plaintive whine of a child protesting injustice, the sort of sincerity only belonging to the innocent. "My friends tell me....tell me that you won't listen. But if a dragon can bring my ma flowers, then I'm pretty sure you can not kill me. It can't be that hard right?" There was a desperate blaze in Toby's eyes, a reaching for truth, like a drowning man reaches for a floating plank.
And the great Slayer of the Veils fell. He was not pushed, nor did any magic work on him. His fingers just released the sword and his knees refused to stand.
The killer of hundreds lay there as if felled by a stone. He did not move, hardly even breathed. Yet tears soaked his face, his raven hair, the grass beneath him. And his lips opened to let out a scream. It was a scream with no message in it, just a scream. Primal sound as if the entire world were crying.
There was no more warrior. Just a quivering, broken pile. Two children in a field. One standing, one weeping. And Toby held out a hand to the black heap without a word.
