red eyes black dragon

​The air grew thick with the smell of sulfur and ash as the lone figure crested the final ridge. Below them, the world bled into a landscape of jagged, black rock and flowing rivers of orange light. This was the domain of the Obsidian Dragon, a place of constant, simmering fury that seemed to breathe with a life of its own. ​They had been warned to turn back, told that the dragon Ignis was not a beast to be reasoned with, but a force of nature. Yet, they had to see for themselves. They descended into the oppressive heat, their boots crunching on cooled lava as the rhythmic rumble of the earth grew louder, a sound that was less a tremor and more the beat of an ancient heart. ​And then, they saw him. Coiled atop a spire of rock that jutted from a lake of molten lava, Ignis was a monument of black scales and silent power. His colossal form was a silhouette against the fiery glow of his home, and from his nostrils, wisps of smoke curled lazily into the hazy sky. The adventurer felt a profound chill despite the suffocating heat as Ignis’s massive head turned, his two red eyes glowing with a patient, ancient fire. ​There was no roar of challenge, no hostile movement. The dragon simply watched. He was not a beast to be fought; he was the land itself, and the intruder was a mere dust mote in his fiery kingdom. With a slow, deliberate movement, Ignis began to uncoil, a silent and terrifying warning that the time for observation had ended.