He was in a terrible shape. His eyes were like glass orbs looking into nothingness, there was blood all over his body. His clothes were torn, so was his skin underneath. I approached him. The look he gave me was one of confusion and maybe some sadness as well. His mouth moved as if he was trying to say something, but there were no words coming out. I wasn't sure what to do, so I waited for him to do something.
He started running towards me. The look in his eyes turned into determination as he unsheathed his blade. It was the real deal. Crying silver. Despite his form, his movements showed no sign of weakness. I managed to dodge his blow and I pulled out my sword. That was, until I realised that there was no sword for me to pull out.
I concentrated my spiritual energy into my right lower arm, trying to parry the following blow. I managed, the sword leaving no bruise on my skin. I was confused. It was true that Fafnir had his phases where he just wanted to kill me, but this was different. There was no hatred or grudge in his eyes, nor did he look like he was going insane. It felt like he was doing just what needed to be done. It was a truly strange feeling. Because I could tell that Fafnir wasn't doing this for himself. There was some wort of longing in his eyes as he continued to deal blow after blow after blow.
My arms started getting sore. I was struggling to deal with his attacks, there was no gap to launch one of my own. Additionally, I felt my power weaken, rapidly. I noticed something was up with his sword. It wasn't ripe yet. It didn't have any innate spiritual energy. Instead, he drained mine. I had never seen Fafnir use that sword.
As my strength weakened, The humming of the sword grew louder. It was hungry. It wanted to feed on my spiritual energy. Suddenly, I got a genius idea. If I used my arms to parry his blows, I could use my legs to attack. I temporarily led my spiritual energy into my right leg, kicking out as powerfully as I could. The kick sent him flying away. This gave me a total of two and a half seconds to catch a breather before I felt his cold blade against my neck.
I spun around, pushing his sword away in the process. I couldn't help but wonder why he hadn't just killed me then and there. He was holding back, and I didn't know why. I was standing my ground, but I knew full well that he wouldn't have any difficulty killing me if he seriously tried. Maybe he was testing me? I didn't know. In my mind, it had only been a couple of days since Fafnir had died, yet there he was, trying to kill me, or not.
The pace of his blows started picking up. It got harder for me to parry everything, and his constant push didn't allow me to find solid ground under my feet, making it virtually impossible for me to kick him again.
That was until I remembered I could fly. I stretched out my wings, trying to flap or something in the similar. I didn't take off though. I was too focused on the battle at hand to, at the same time, try to find out what my wings could do, so I retracted them. I didn't even know I could do that, but I did. It felt like the bones and feathers were melting into my skin, not a very enjoyable experience.
Fafnir released his spiritual energy. The pressure in the air instantly started increasing, my eardrums almost bursting from it, combined with the constant humming of Fafnir's blade. I released my own spiritual energy. It helped to deal with the air pressure, but when I realised my mistake, it was already too late.
Fafnir had intended this all along. His hungry blade instantly sucked up all of the spiritual energy that was released, using the ongoing flow of energy to almost completely drain my body of spiritual energy. Then, he dealt the killing blow, my head coming off clean.
I was getting sick of it. I kept dying. All the time. It was a constant flow of dying and obtaining information with no time to process it. My head was a total mess. I didn't even get to find out where I was this time before I died. It was frustrating. I didn't wake up for a good while. For a change, this gave me some time to think. After all, my current state was just a consciousness floating in a sea of thoughts.
I summarised all I knew to this point. Fenrir had murdered my family. I woke up in a different world. I met a guy who tried to kill me and found out about dragons. Then, I found out that I needed to kill dragons. Then, I found out that I was a dragon. Then, the big bad dragon killed that guy, who was also a dragon. None of us look like a dragon. I woke up next to the big bad dragon. I found out that I literally did not matter. I found out that the big bad dragon wanted to be a good boy by doing bad things. Then, I woke up in a different world where a bunch of people that looked like me worshipped me. By the way, I do not look like me. Or at least, the original me. Then, Fafnir, who was supposed to be dead, killed me. Now here I was.
It didn't make a lot of sense, no matter how hard I tried to wrap my head around it. Although, I am not denying that thinking about it too hot made a lot of sense. After all, I was dead.
I thought back to the people who kneeled before me. I tried to remember their faces. They all looked the same, but different. Some were old, some were young, but I believe I said that already. I had a relatively good memory of what they looked like, but part of it was likely my imagination. I felt like I could see their souls shimmer through their skin.
One of them seemed to look a lot like Fafnir, but they all looked the same, including Fafnir, me, and the Ruler, so I didn't think about it too much.
Then, after what felt like a couple of decades, and a couple of minutes at the same time, I woke up.