Boom.

  The scattergun blast caught it mid-air as it sprung from magical concealment.

  Light, heat, and so much more pain.

  Hot gore and all the weight and fury of a dying monster hit me like a runaway stud horse.

  I was pinned beneath the strugglin’, seekin’ coils of the snake-man. One arm grabbed for it's throat. My mutant anatomy working well ahead of my dulled reflexes. It gripped the monster just in time to keep the fangs at bay as it struck with a buckshot mangled jaw, its ruined frill twitchin’ as it snapped and snarled.

  My scattergun had caught it high, but the consecrated ammo was made to kill the undead, not a living, breathing Anasisi.

  "Fuck... You..." I hissed through gritted teeth as it looped me up and began to squeeze.

  It choked something out in a string of hisses I could only guess were words. It's eyes, once yellow, were filling up with an oily black that matched the awful it bled.

  I squeezed tighter, determined to choke the motherfucker out before he did me.

  Slowly.

  Squeeze-

  Crack.

  I lost my breath as its tail broke something in me, something I could no longer feel right. Just the ghost of pain.

  We were locked in a desperate struggle, two wicked men trying to throttle the other. In a fair world, both us monsters would die. We'd rid all creation from one another's sin.

  But the world ain't fair.

  It's cruel, it's sick, it's sadistic.

  It gives some folk fangs and evil magic.

  And give some mean sons-a-bitches big, rusty, knives.

  I reached for my boot. Straining as the world went dark.

  Shhkk.

  The sound was everything. It was my whole existence. And that feeling as it came free?

  Heaven.

  When I pushed it slowly up and into the monsters side? Partin’ scales and muscle and fat like butter?

  Bliss.

  It began to choke and spasm. And mortal fear colored its darkening gaze.

  Exaltation.

  I live. You die. And I'll live again.

  Shkk. The knife tore up, sliding open his long belly, and causing his grip around me to fail into twitches and fits.

  We stayed like that for a heartbeat, too tired to do more to the other. Both knowin’ who’d won.

  And then it was done.

  The last Anasisi, as far as anyone could hope, went stiff, the yellow light of his eyes gone to black and dull.

  By the time its tail went slack and the jaw stopped snappin'-

  I was ruined.

  Barely any breath left in my punctured lungs. The pressure on my chest and guts had left a sea of bruises and broken ribs in its wake.

  I tried stayin' up, tried fighting off the tired and the hurt.

  But I just didn't have much left in me.

  And you know what?

  I was okay with that. Death had never scared me. Being left behind? That rattled me good. Being alone when it came? Yeah that too.

  But dyin' in the dark, under the earth?

  That just seemed right. Felt right.

  Goodbye you broken ugly world. There's one less evil son-of-a-bitch.

  I waited for the could touch, for the pain to fade away.

  Waited and exhaled one final breath.

  And then-

  Well fuck.

  The world lit up like a lantern on a dark night, the dark corners and deep shadows filled with a soft, blue light. Bright enough to shine through my haze.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I was so close this time.

  "Roche?!" cried Miss Laticia, "gods, you're still alive."

  Been gettin' that a lot.

  "Mismm..." I mumbled as she grabbed an arm and pulled.

  My groan became a screaming, somehow both keening and weak.

  "Oh, hells. I'm sorry. I'm sorry but," Laticia swallowed, and as she came close I saw the blood on her face. The ruddy red trail of near miss that scored her weathered cheek, "she left me."

  "Shor-ty?" I croaked.

  "Yes. The girl is lost, Mister Roche. There's... She tried to kill me."

  No. No you're wrong. She wouldn't. She was good. You all were...

  But. Why couldn't she?

  Why couldn't anyone fail when it mattered. I always did.

  Yeah. Maybe so.

  But did it matter?

  This was their story now. So why you draggin' me in? Why the fuck did this even matter?

  I just wanted it to be done.

  "I can heal you. More. It will hurt but," she bit her lip, soft brown eyes wet and wide, "you will live."

  No, I won't, I wanted to tell her. No I don't need your godsdamned help.

  Just let me go and meet-

  She took my knife.

  She slit her wrist. Oh gods no.

  She dripped her blood on my chest.

  Warm, wet, power on my bare chest. I could feel it flowin', see the transfer of power, of life.

  It was a gift, and it was a curse. A blessing and a damnation.

  She grit her teeth and groaned as her skin went pale as mountain snow, her peppered hair turning full on white.

  I could feel my ribs knit. Feel my leg mend. I could feel-

  I could fuckin' feel my legs again. A lot more than just a numb tingle and a dull hurt.

  Laticia whithered over me until enough was restored that I could finally protest.

  "Stop!" I snarled and snapped my hand over her bleeding wrist, cutting the exchange mercifully short.

  She looked like she had aged a decade in scarcely a minute. Whatever dark magic the biomancer knew, it was a powerful, terrible thing.

  Her hands shook, her skin was pale and drawn.

  "I'm cold," she muttered, "I'm cold."

  But I was hot enough to cook in. She'd given me a gift that couldn't be repaid. I owed her my life. A debt I never wanted and could never make square.

  Why?

  Why do you people keep seeing so much in me? Why you all gotta be so damn good?

  "I got you," I said and bundled the shaking woman in my arms as I rose, "I got you. I'll get you out of here."

  We walked.

  We walked into a distant, ardent light.

  I knew it for what it was.

  The burnin' fire that fueled this wet, green hell. Somehow I knew.

  In the next chamber rested the heart of that false sun.

  When I saw it, I found that I could break again.

  Over and over and over...

  I learned that there is no bottom to the depravity of man. To that well where despair grew and dwelt.

  You can always go deeper. You can always see more.

  There's no such thing as too much.

  I looked into this new rotunda, this new chamber in the Vaults of Death.

  And I saw horror made manifest.

  Before us stood a creature of myth. Locked in a fine gloss of dark glass. Trapped since before the age of Myth, there sat a true, living, dragon.

  It was a thing of beauty and of terror.

  Though lookin' on, that all felt like the same thing.

  It was a being that should have been long freed from its immortal curse.

  I knew the story, even Northman spawn did. A great hunter went into the woods, looking to right a wrong against his clan. He hunted every beast that had feasted on sister or brother's flesh. Raptors. Aardwolves. Manticores. Even Giants.

  He carved a blood swath all the way into the deepest part of the wood, where the mana was so thick it warped and changed him.

  He suffered the agony of mutation, over and over again. He let madness take his mind. He embraced his own, horrible destiny.

  And why?

  Well, for better reasons than I ever did.

  Turned out, that was where the Dragon made her den.

  All before were but fleeting sins. To eat and consume is an animal's, a monster's lot.

  But a dragon?

  Their cruelty was so much more than that.

  They hungered for cruelty just like a man.

  It was said those cursed daughters of a damned Southern prince, that they took lasting vengeance on the soul of every man. When a dragon killed a son of the North, his soul did not go to the Eternal Hall, did not go to be with his father's and theirs.

  He was trapped. Locked forever in the belly of the beast.

  That part always scared me the most.

  That ill fated Northman. He didn't much like that. He didn't much like that at all.

  So, he did what any good man would, he took a strong bow. Made from the bones of a long gone enemy. He knocked an arrow and laid in wait.

  Using all he had killed and delicious bait.

  Wonder how much she ate? Never enough, I'd bet.

  When the dragon drew near, he did not flinch nor falter.

  He fired and struck true.

  Pierced the dragon's heart.

  Stole it from her breast.

  You might guess that was the story's end. That was how the curse was broken. How he saved his people and their souls.

  But you'd be wrong.

  It was only when he went to claim the hide of his prize that he discovered his gravest sin. That he learned his mistake.

  He had killed the monster.

  He had just slain the woman inside.

  His hunt marked the start of a terrible, blood war. He'd plucked the heart from all her kin, left them with but a hole where a soul should be.

  And they burned the world, until he put the final dragon to rest.

  Yet...

  Here was proof that that old myth, the one mama had whispered so many times before bed, it was fuckin' bullshit.

  There was at least one left.

  The true treasure of this damned Vault. Power, dark terrible, no glitterin’ gold. A weapon, and a battery.

  One last daughter of a demon prince.

  "It's a fucking dragon," Laticia said, the curse even more wicked on her ragged breath.

  "Yep. And that's Shorty walkin' right up to the hole in its chest."