Gerard Segremors
A rush of oncoming air, buffeting like hurricane wind. His teeth, gritting, grinding, as his enchanted blade sought purchase.
The self-assured rumble of the massive creature's voice, smirking from on high.
Then pain, blinding, white pain.
It was as though his whole body had been struck to the earth by Cyrus's hammer. He was a castle gate, hammered upon by a siege engine. Breath had left his lungs. Hearing had left his ears. Feeling, vague, beneath a blanket of fuzz, was mainly vertigo. Resistance at his heels had given way to the feeling of rushing through the air. Flying.
And his hand was feverishly, furiously closed around a white horn of bone, a spike upon the redwood log that had all but crushed him. Not flying. Clinging to the tail. To his prey.
His golden eyes burned.
"Empty-headed snake," the lowborn knight spat, the cloud of red that came with each venomous word lost against the sea of ruby in his view, lit by another torrent of that red-white flame. In his other hand, true as ever, was his blade. He squeezed the pommel. Response. The body was subservient to the will. So long as the will persevered... he could still move. He could still act. If he still had enough to hold on?
"Doubt the judgement of the Order again,"
He shoved aside the agony in his torso, replacing it with a familiar burn that had driven him forward so often in the past, before he had forgotten fear, before he had anything else to push it back. It was a part of him. It could not be removed... but he could use it. He could breathe. He could move. It didn't matter if he was a bloody mess.
There was life in him yet!
"And you will rue this day!"
They had earned their places here. To even be in this place, outside time, his companions had proven the all the valor in the world twice over. They had, to a man, been selected for it to even be in the running to join at all.
He had endured much willingly, espousing the newfound virtues of a clear mind, and a tight lid, frosty virtue guiding thoughts clear and true. He had endeavored twice over in his time here to cultivate that within himself. Faultlessly, strategy had subsumed him, and his cohesion with the whole had held against their first two trials—
He wrenched his bones to bear, and drove the point of his blade down into the mass of meat below, a silver fang in obstinate jaws. Solid in scale this dragon may have been, but he had it right in his hands. He could strike, strike, strike with every last drop of his being!
—But every man had his limit. There came a point where Gerard would always find himself, with no other recourse, squaring his stance and accepting a vulgar brawl. It was the hunger, the fury, the desperation of man that lived so close to every one of their still-human hearts. That was what this dragon demanded. That was from where "valor" that had yet to be self-evident was born— That was what they had yet to prove. Where those limits lie. Where they were exceeded.
It wanted valor?
His always came with a dash of recklessness.
A wheezing, rictus grin belied shattered lungs and a bloody gullet, but his gaze did not err, and his arm did not waver.
