Saint

Just a drop of blood and the mountain let out a fearful roar.  That was all it took.  One small stone to nick the man's cheek, pulling at flash to rend a gash shorter than a fingernail.  His hand touched it, felt the drop of wetness on it, and for an instant, thought nothing of it.  Then the air moved, pushed out of its calm doldrums by the creatures of the deep, those who dealt in gold and bones, those who dealt in fire and claw.

He was running, fully terrified of the passageways that he so carefully had walked down in the day earlier.  A glint in the darkness, a wet wall shimmering in the lamplight, jerked his eyes and stumbled his legs.  The third scare was the one that ate him, devoured him whole along with the lamp, licking its lips of the blood oozed off its teeth that were as black as the tunnels it lived in.  Its brothers and sisters were too late, showing up to lick at the walls and floor the man's sweat, blood, and tears fell upon.

Once woken, they hungered.  Each belly that had lain dormant for decades in the darkness rumbled out a demand for meat and metal, for bone and blood.  A rumble in their stomachs that inched up through their neck and mouth and rumbled the whole mountain so hard a volcano might have been ashamed.  They poured from the summit like a cloud of smoke, a legion of wyrms that ranged from the size of a cow to its barn.

Many eyes were drawn to the moon that night, most in terror, some in confusion before the legends of old woke in their hearts.  One man and one man only smiled.  A grim smile surely, but a smile nonetheless.  In his steel skin he watched the sky and stood atop a rocky hill, propped up upon his lance.  He would be of use this night more than any other night in his life, he knew.  There were too few bandits and wars in this land, too few enemies that could be met with a sword.  The royal palace fought its wars in ink and compliments and secret meetings in back rooms.  He had moldered there these last few years and now, when he had set himself out upon a journey of discovery, he had found a battle to fight.

The first descended upon him as he stood, lone and broad of wing.  It overshot its dive in anticipation of his flight.  The tip of his lance raked its belly, drawing sparks off the hardened scales of melted metal, reforged in dragonfire from within.  On its second pass, its eyeball found the lance.  Through the brain and out the back of the skull, it still shone silver in the moonlight.  The man had made his first kill.

If man's blood had stirred the beasts to wake and hunger, dragon blood stirred them to rage and revenge.  Like a swarm of locusts, they descended on that hill, belching their flames and gnashing their teeth.  Some took one stab of the lance, others took two or three.  A large one that lagged behind took four stabs to the chest and flapped away to survive the night.  The man himself was scorched and scratched, torched and torn.  His metal skin was rent in one pass and melted down in another.  When two or three passed by his eyes, six more approached from the darkness.  It was never fated that he might survive the night, not alone and not against such numbers.

As the morning light peered out across the land that still smoldered in the dragon's wake, a small child climbed the hill.  His house was gone, as were his parents and their brothers and sisters and their parents too.  The nine black corpses that lay bleeding on rocks and dirt were a sight of wonder.  They fell in a circle around the peak where a single silver lance lay stuck in the charred ground.  Legends would spread of an agent of God that had descended there, leaving behind a mark to show mankind the way.  Much would come of that story, but for all the wars and heroes it would spread, it lies founded on this one.