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"So, tell me, little ones," he said. "Why should I keep the last of you alive?"

It was a difficult question to answer, given the events of the last half hour. A simple drill had turned into a full on red-alert for the squadron, as this two hundred foot tall blue-and-black dragon appeared. He towered over us like a statue, a modern colossus, wearing nothing but a heavy loincloth to cover himself. His body glistened in the light of the afternoon sun. Rather than a roar, he announced his presence with a low, rumbling chuckle and a sadistic grin. "Oh, this is gonna be fun," he said, "Care to surrender now, before you start taking casualties?" Of course we refused. We were soliders. We were meant to defend not just our people, but also each other. But while we were trained for plenty of threats and had him outnumbered 500-to-1, this situation was nowhere in the handbook.

We fired away, but even our armor-piercing ordinance merely lodged in the thick scales of the dragon's body. Explosions barely singed his scales. A powerful flap of his wings knocked other missiles and aircraft off course, sending them crashing harmlessly to the ground. Meanwhile, his body was the only weapon he needed to deal with most of the troops. He lashed out with hand and swatted at a sniper's tower, knocking the building over and sending the few people within to their deaths. I'd later decide they were the luckiest among us, as they did not have to bear witness to the rest of what this dragon had in mind.

I was on the back lines, further out of the combat, but it just meant I was able to bear witness to what this giant could do. He stepped forward and rested one, black-soled foot atop a tank, pinning it down like a predator capturing prey. The tank's treads spun in place, digging it further into the ground; smoke arose from the turret as it tried and failed to spin around and fire at anything useful. Then, with a single flex of his powerful leg muscles, he crushed that vehicle into the ground like it were a cheap aluminum can. The tank was meant to take a direct hit from a tactical nuke and allow the troops to survive, but it still crumpled into nothingness; all that remained was the azure-scaled foot and a few faint wisps of black smoke coming from the ruined vehicle beneath it. The dragon ground it into the ground, extinguishing the flames as if the tank were nothing more than a discarded cigarette. And then, to our collective horror, he stepped forward.

Most of the infantry was still trying to fire upon him, despite the ineffectiveness of the attack. Command couldn't even imagine failing this spectacularly against a threat that should not exist, so retreat was never considered. Instead, the tightly packed lines of soldiers just provided an all-too-convenient target for the dragon to place his other foot. For dozens of men and women, the sky turned dark with the sole of a creature that was far higher on the food chain than they. He let it fall slowly, savoring the panic slowly rising from the crowd, ignoring the few minor hits against the fleshy sole before it sealed against the earth, sealing all those beneath it into their tomb. The sounds of crunching were muffled by gunfire and, increasingly, the screaming of the crowd that now realized that retreat was the only option that gave them any chance at all of surviving the day.

Even without a command from anyone in particular, the soldiers started to retreat at once. The group simply moved away from the dragon as quickly as they could, as if a school of fish fleeing a ravenous predator. But unlike a mere sea being, the giant looming above was far too smart to be fooled; he chuckled coldly and began to walk along. To him it was a slow, casual walk; to us it was a frantic run for our lives. He was without mercy, aiming directly for the densest parts of the group and crushing them into the ground. The bodies of a hundred people weren't enough to even slow his footsteps; they offered no resistance to the power of this sadistic titan. He let us run, thinning our numbers with each passing moment until less than a quarter of the original group remained. Some had the sense to scatter in other directions, but they couldn't get nearly far enough in the open area in which we'd made camp.

"Now, all of you, come here," he said. We had no such intention, but he had other plans. He crouched down. covering a number of people beneath his loincloth, then reached out with both hands to scoop the scattering crowd back toward him. Those powerful hands swept just above the ground sliding a hundred soldiers to him like nothing more than a fistful of insects. He gave us a moment to recover... no, I realized, he was just digging out a trench in the ground to ensure none of us could quickly escape. His talons carved a dozen feet into the dirt and carved out a pit that we couldn't cross. The last hundred or so of us were on this makeshift island, with nothing to protect us but our uniforms and a few ineffective rifles. Meanwhile, the dragon's grin just widened as he regarded us. And then, the question. That terrible question. That question none of us could imagine an answer for.

"So, tell me, little ones," he said. "Why should I keep the last of you alive?"