Note: A short bit of prose written 6/22/20.

You have before you a painting, older than it appears, older than the pyramids of Aegyptus, a masterwork depicting a dragonslayer- though the creature isn’t a dragon, not yet.

The fire writhes on the canvas, weaving in and out of cracking reptilian hide, through the three legs- including the aborted, dying front leg- and out from the two arms and three eight clawed hands of the daemon. Its teeth turn to fire and back as you watch, reaching out of their own accord to grasp at the knight.

Lancelot is knelt low before he beast, his once finely detailed armor dripping in metal stalactites from his back, cooling into shackles around his skeletal calves for a moment before the daemon flame once more turns it to white water and fuses Lancelot’s exposed ankle bones to each other in steel casing.

The knight’s black hair floats in the wind now, sheets of it crackling and breaking as the air buffets it to and fro, some little of it coming to rest on the snow not fifteen feet behind the knight.

The daemon screams and rages, knotted cords of flame rushing through its warping flesh as it strikes downwards, the two hands of its left arm merging into a single club of scales and half- exposed claws. A pillar of fire follows behind the strike as the nitrogen in the air ignites, then a moment later the air is cold as the heart of an iceberg fresh to the ocean.

The first of the knight’s axes is upraised to hold aside the blow, the metal of the haft and blade a frozen cascade of molten steel blown back towards the knight. The second axe lodges deep in the flesh of the daemon as it screams, and even as the axe immolates upon itself and the metal gas coalesces into steel sand which rains down upon the knight, the daemon implodes upon itself, its arm still falling even as the great club evaporates.

The knight is a corpse locked in place by the frost a few seconds later, but were any of his face covered in flesh, a smile would adorn his lips.

Below the painting are scribed his last words: “And shall a daemon stand ‘gainst he whom the King has sent?”