A Curse of Competence

19

^^ Gresham / Gresham's Last Flight ^^

— Gresham —

Braving a Thunderstorm on the tail end of winter and the beginning of spring, when storms reached the peak of their intensity, would normally be the height of stupidity. The danger involved was not simple rain and a small chance of being struck by lightning, no, not this Storm, this was the Lethal, Fatal Tempest that had ended millions of creatures over the six millennia that Gresham had been alive. He watched as they fell, one by one, and then he ate them, as charred prey was the prey he most enjoyed. He was not exactly a gourmet, but he did like the crunchy texture of his charred prey. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing superior to this taste. He did not feel any moral qualms for eating them and adding their belongings to his Hoard, for, as he had already thought of, it was simply their stupidity in attempting to approach his Lair, where a constant thunderstorm raged due to his magical presence, during the most dangerous portion of the year, and so they had brought their deaths upon themselves. Some of them even managed to reach his cave, and these he treated as guests, politely offering them a hot meal and a fire to rest by while they told him stories; stories about the outside world, which he so rarely managed to visit any longer, or legends of the past he'd never heard before, or even local myths. He wasn't picky at all about the stories shared, he only liked to listen to them and archive them all in his mind. He dreamed, sometimes, of taking a human form and entering a library, but such Magic was demanding, difficult, and painful in the extreme, and so he was forced to reconsider every time he thought of it. He was happy to simply wait for death, listening to stories and providing a challenge to those who would approach his home. Yet here, in front of him, was a small Forest Walker, unbothered by the lightning and entirely undaunted by his presence, her aura suppressing his Lair's Storm with a bare minimum of Mana, and most importantly: bearing the Mana of a hundred Kirin, a Sea-Dragon, a Tauron Bull, and one terribly familiar Alicorn King in her shadow.

She had approached on a flying ship that was around half as long and wide as he was, with wings of blue light stretching out into the sky on each side of it and above that made even his wings in his prime, even with his own Barrier Magic Extensions, seem puny in comparison. Nearly two kilometers across, the ship hadn't been able to approach further, and had hovered a few kilometers away from the cliff face he lived in while a much smaller craft flew down in front of his incredulous face and landed, releasing from it the small Forest Walker, who had immediately looked up at him with a grin and declared without preamble, 'How would you like to fly with me in the sky, Old Man?'

He'd been staring rather rudely for a few minutes before he slowly shook his head, clearing the dust and ash off his jaws as he moved them and growled at the young creature below him. His voice was creaky with disuse, as it had been dozens of years since he'd last spoken, but even with the massive volume and screeching consistency of his voice, she was somehow, impossibly, inconceivably unafraid. He felt like a newborn dragon attempting to threaten its mother, and the feeling caused his threat to lose momentum swiftly. "Why is Cenir in your Shadow-... Little Creature?"

Then the voice he hadn't heard in two hundred years responded in his mind as if it was only a day of parting. 'Hello, Master. You have gotten fat.'

He couldn't resist letting out a bellow of laughter, his slightly overweight gut shaking from the exhalation which also created a burst of super-heated ionized air. He halted the laughter immediately, afraid he'd harmed the small creature, only to find her impossibly unharmed, with not even a big of char on her at all. "How did you survive that, little creature?"