The Innkeeper

Far, far away from the preliminary tournament, and the champions tourney, and even the known realm, there was a White Dwarf. White Dwarfs, basically, were just dead stars that hadn't blown up after their fires burned out, and instead cooled down.

White Dwarfs were not all that uncommon, and this one too would be nothing more than another lifeless piece of rock, no different from any other in the Origin realm. Except that the 99 planets that orbited this White Dwarf were all on fire, as if there were 99 stars orbiting a planet.

The countless burning planets all around the White Dwarf made it so that it experienced perpetual daylight, and experienced incredibly high temperatures, without actually being lit on fire.

The unique circumstances around this dead star had been artificially created to serve a very particular purpose. It was an incubation planet, where dragons came and left their eggs - the ones from which they had particularly high expectations.

It was also a kind of nursery for newborn dragons, where they would be trained in the absolute basics before being sent out into the Origin realm to fend for themselves.

Yet, on this day, this particular White Dwarf was visited by someone other than a dragon. A devil appeared, not in her mundane humanoid form, but in her fully displayed devil form.

Her purple skin was smooth and lustrous, and carried a certain charm that could entice the hearts of whoever laid eyes on it. Her two, large wings, were fully opened behind her back, as if she needed them to fly, and her long, slender tail swung gently behind her, like a dancing snake.

"YOU A TRESPASSING ON DRAGON TERRITORY, DEVIL!" a voice boomed even in the vacuum of space, as a formerly invisible dragon revealed herself.

Her scales were dark, like space itself, and seemed to bend light around it, helping her camouflage herself. The effectiveness of her scales was remarkable, considering the size of her body was so massive, that it hugged the entirety of the White Dwarf!

"A thousand pardon, mighty dragon," the devil said politely, a mischievous smile painting her enchanting face. "I have no ulterior motives. My name is Valarie, and I came here to claim a certain bounty. I have knowledge about where Dragonsbane will be soon."

The dark devil let out a deafening roar that threatened the integrity of space itself within the region. In fact, Valarie strongly suspected that if there weren't formations protecting this place, then that roar might have destroyed the entire star system that the dragons had carefully developed. Clearly she was not a fan of the name Dragonsbane.

"In the Champions tourney, he will make an appearance in the Trials of Eternity," she said, before promptly disappearing from the area. But even after she had disappeared, her voice lingered. "I'll be waiting for my bounty once you've confirmed my intel. Please have someone prepare it beforehand."

*****

The contestants were stunned. The abominations were stunned. Everyone was stunned save Lex, who just kept walking forward. With each step he took, his flames formed into various creatures around him.

The first, naturally, was a dragon. His dragonsfire took on the form of a dragon, and it looked completely identical to Pelvailin. The flaming dragon did not need to bellow, for the raging flames that made up its body were in a constant state of roaring.

It spread its magnificent wings, scorching earth and air together, cremating the corpses it stood on, before taking to the skies. Up above them, the heavy curtain of clouds was actually an illusion. There were no clouds, only an endless legion of flying abominations, and now, amidst them, a flaming dragon.

The next creature to be born of flames was a wolf, and it looked much like Fenrir. Yet while Fenrir could disappear from view, this wolf demanded to be seen. It raced into the darkness, leaving behind a trail of fiery footprints that slowly grew into a blazing inferno.

Next came peacocks, and when they spread their feathers, each one was formed from a different colored flame. It was like a living work of art, meant to kill, and that's exactly what it did.

Rabbits, butterflies and pigeons came next, each of different sizes and shapes. The only thing they had in common was that they were made of fire, and that they each fought alongside Lex.

Then, another figure began to form. It had not even taken shape yet, but those who viewed it felt a different kind of fear just from its silhouette. It was a beast, nay a monster, meant specifically for war. But before it could form completely, Lex dismissed it and placed a hand on his seals.

This was his limit right now. If he tried to do more than this then he risked undoing his seals.

Then Lex summoned his sword and looked at Naraka. A piece of him yearned to let loose, but then reluctantly he put the sword away.

Finding a worthy foe for his sword had turned out to be more of a hassle than he imagined. But if there was ever a place he found a worthy enemy, it would be at the tourney.

Instead, he summoned his recently acquired hammer.

It was a pretty big, double sided hammer that looked like it belonged to monsters of legend. Considering it had been used by an oversized minotaur, that actually ended up being true. What was more important, however, was that it granted Lex a boost in physical strength.

Lex looked out in front, and noticed that his little warm up had garnered a strong reaction from the abominations. Like a tide of darkness they were coming to smash down on him.

Instead, wielding the hammer, Lex smashed down on the corpse in front of him. Yet the hammer never touched the corpse.

Instead, space cracked under his mighty blow, and the cracks spread far and wide, before they began to quickly heal.

Yet why would he let them heal?

There was nothing in the description of this trial that said he couldn't destroy the whole graveyard itself, and that seemed like a much quicker way of killing all the abominations than killing them one by one.

The tide of darkness crashed down, trying to stop him, but the flaming monsters came in their way. There was no darkness that could survive the light of dragonfire.

Someone in the discord said that the previous cliffhanger was criminal, so I took that as a challenge xD

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