The dragon’s cruel eyes finally dimmed as death’s cold grip clasped its soul. A monstrous shudder racked its scaly frame from head to tail, and its iris rolled back into its skull. The dreadful mouth which had closed around so many souls with curved fangs, darkness, and fire, now gaped in one final paroxysm of confused pain. A sad plume of its extinguished fire billowed a moment from its spread jaws and faded into nothing.
The dragon was dead.
The oozing wound where its scales had been pierced still trickled with the swollen corruption which had slowly festered there. The man, or the army, which had done it, which had sent that dreadful spear into the dragon’s side, had not lived to see this final issue of bile seeping from the corpse. The dragon had conquered the armies of the nations which had gathered in one host against it, had conquered and subjugated, and even a mortal wound as grievous as this had taken five years to do its good work.
The world had been unified under one terror, and that terror was dead. Was not this death also too dreadful for man? To be conquered by the dragon was one thing, but now, in the course of things, who was our conqueror and ruler but death? And like this monstrous corpse, will not the world grow rank with corruption?
Who could bury this? What pit was deep enough?
I gazed upon the dead remains of that which my soul loathed and hated, and I feared a great fear. Was this not too great for us?
