Ia and the Dragon

Ia and his disciples traveled through a forest which had grown tall and thick over many long years, and one day they were set upon by a powerful Dragon of great age. The ancient beast breathed its deadly breath, and many of Ia's disciples were left slain in its wake, but Ia stood tall and fearless in the face of the beast.

When the Dragon saw that Ia was unharmed by its murderous breath, it banked overhead and settled down on top of a nearby hill. The beast craned its neck and spoke, and while none there could understand the beast's words, Ia grasped its foul tongue.

'I stand before you as I do because I am not bound to the laws to which you hold. A higher power buoys me, the power of Being, and so long as Being allows me to hold its blessings, no force, not even one as dreadful and feared as you, may lay me low.'

The Dragon hunched its vast shoulders and let loose a roar that shook the hills and sent those disciples who survived its first attack tumbling to the earth, but Ia stood motionless and calm.

'You are bound by laws. If you do not yield to them, you shall cross them, and should you cross them, you would be broken by them.'

The proud Dragon snarled a response, scorching the very earth with its vitriol. Its talons churned up the hillside and the beast bellowed again at Holy Ia.

Ia replied, 'Your spite and pride towards the boon I offer is unbecoming. You do not yield to the chains of Being, you do not permit it to hold and to guide you, and you would survive and you would prosper, yes, even so proud and powerful, had you relented.' Dragon hurled itself through the air with one final roar, intent on raking its deadly claws through Ia's flesh and breaking Ia's bones with its vast jaws.

But the Dragon, in its sudden wroth, did not consider that Ia stood in a forest, surrounded by tall and strong trees, their roots sunk deep and their trunks older and larger even than the wyrm. Ia gestured, and the beast was stricken.

As the Dragon threw its bulk forward in blind rage, it pierced its own scaly hide with the tops of those trees, and the trunks snapped off in its body, and the Dragon crumpled to the ground, its heart skewered and its blood draining into hot pools in the dirt from dozens of wounds.

As the Dragon bled and the Dragon died, Ia turned to his disciples and gestured to the beast's great twitching body. 'See here that even the mightiest creature is laid low by the smallest of things.'

'Of which small things do you speak, Holy Ia?' asked Preston. 'The trees here are vast and old, as large even as this Dragon.'

'The trees were the mechanism, but they did not cause the slaying. The Dragon slew itself, through its lightly kindled rage and ignorant, prideful beliefs.'

'Dragons hold beliefs, Holy Ia?' asked Creassin. 'Are they not mere beasts?'

'All things believe, though not all things may have ability to explain what and why and how they believe. This Dragon clung to its mistaken belief that it possessed immortality of the body, for had it not until this point overcome all adversity? Yet you know well that nothing is eternal and that Destruction follows in the wake of all Being. Illusions of the body spring from illusions of the mind, for the mind is that which guides the body. Illusions of the mind spring from illusions of the soul, for the soul is what Being has placed within all rational creatures to burn as fuel for the mind, and only through witnessing the Truth of all Being can the soul become pure fuel.

'The pure soul is one which holds no illusions. Such will never fall sway to misdirection and deceit, and a soul which cannot fall sway to this may not lead the mind to to follow its path, and a mind which cannot be brought low will not drag the body along with it.

'Work always to make your souls pure, and this sad creature's mortal troubles will not be your own.'