And so the battle raged on for all of the day and through the night. The dragon tearing with tooth, shredding with claw, and searing with the lightning bolts it breathed. The hideous man in the silver mask did his best, but; never had he faced a foe of such immortal power and while he gave no quarter his very skin was being seared from his body. Ever closer to the shack edged the dragon, determined to uinnerve the man. And when at last they hung above the simple home of the small and pretty woman, the dragon again began to taunt the man with threats of unmasking him. But this proved to be the dragons undoing. Summoning all his magic and the last of his stony strength, the man gripped the dragon's lower jaw and tored it from its skull. Then the man behind the silver mask flung himself down the dragon's throat and struck the dragon from within when he reached its gullet. Then he went to the dragons heart and with his blade did he ruin it.
Soaked in his own blood as well as that of his foe, the man with the hideous face who wore the silver mask sliced his way through the dragon and spilled himself onto the pebbles and sand of the beach, just outside the door of the shack and much like the fish and turtles he so often left there he lay in a stupor approaching death.
But, death did not find him. Instead his nostrils were filled with an unfamiliar odor and he drifted to consciousness to find himself on a soft mattress and on the floor beside him sat a tray with a bowl of steaming broth. Uncertain of the bowl, for he had never had food cooked and served to him, he slowly picked up the bowl and sipped from it and so delighted he slurped greedily from the bowl.
Hearing the loud slurping, the small and pretty woman slowly, so as to not startle the man, entered the room with a bundle in her arms. It was only then that the man with the hideous face behind the silver mask realized that with the exception of many bandages, he was naked. Holding forth the bundle the woman offered it to the man. At first the man was confused for while he had seen cloths, he himself had never owned any and had instead always worn the bones of his enemies woven between the rags he had been wearing when he left the temple so many years ago. The woman smiled when she saw that the man had drank all the broth and, as he dressed, she offered him more. Reluctantly he accepted and, though he did not make well with the talk of the human beings, he inquired as to how long he had been there asleep. The woman recognized that the man had trouble speaking, and told him that he had slept there for many days and that she and her father had carried him in and cleaned and dressed his wounds. Once again she reached forward to embrace him, but this time something too powerful stirred within him, and already disconcerted, he gently but firmly pushed her away. Bowing respectfully he left the shack and returned to his cave. There he cut a swath of moss from the cave wall and made himself a blanket and fell into a deep slumber.
