He nodded in agreement to the summaries, letting him finish. "Setting myself up as a target was sort of the idea though. No one else was good enough to take their attacks, and after Meridia got hit, I couldn't wait any longer, the necromancers made the massed zombies too damn dangerous. As for the earth movement, yes, I agree that was a waste of power, though I kept the trenches to the outer perimeter, a bit from the allies, so it shouldn't have fouled them too badly. But it did prevent the zombies from charging us after the necromancer controlling them died, so I am not complaining about it, because they would have walked right through the allied soldiers with minimal problems, and I would have lost at least some of the diplomats."<br/><br/>He paused, as the waitress refilled the pitcher of ale, and nodded in thanks as he refilled his mug. "That was me being too stupid and ignorant to know better, making a draogn. Sapphire is the result of someone with WAY too much power trying something new because no one had told them that it should have been impossible. I, however, am not going to complain about the rather pleasing result. At least not until I get back and the Summer Queen decides I need to spend a century as a flower in the middle of a meadow filled with deer. Or something equally pleasant, if I am lucky.<br/><br/>The basic idea behind it was to get him on the ground, preferably with broken bones, and a flying dragon skeleton would be a nightmare if left alone too long. So, from the game that the dragon I showed you came from, I knew that it was undead, and that the difference between a basic heal spell and the highest level healing spell, true resurrection, was a matter of degree. Or so I thought. I formed a ranged heal spell, and 'tossed' it at him, for want of a better word.<br/><br/>As the skeleton began dissolving under all the life energy, I realized I had quite a good bit of raw material and power up there, and tried to make something that could finish him off for me. I was exhausted, fighting a magic drain headache, and flat out pissed because the idiot would not figure out that I didn't want to play, so I wasn't exactly thinking clearly on what I was trying to do. I intended to make some sort of magical construct, similar to the dragon skeleton but sustained by the magic so I could draw it back once it finished the now falling mage, but I am sort of obsessive compulsive about certain kinds of details, and most of the dragon skeleton was still intact. So I mentally made a blue dragon, though I did guess that everything I didn't add wouldn't be there, so I imagined muscles, organs, nerves, tendons, bones and scales. The end result was what I thought a blue would look like combined with the basic sleek outline of a gold dragon, being the only dragon I had seen that wasn't best described as pathetic, like the white.<br/><br/>As I released the modification to the spell, I suddenly realized I had forgotten something. The veins and capillaries of the circulatory system, which is what moves the blood around, and the tiniest linkings of the nervous system, which is how it would move. So I would have ended up with something that looked and felt like a dragon, but was trapped in its own head with a barely functioning body, dying even as it was created. That was when something ELSE, I still don't know who or what, but it was more power and... presence is the word I will use, than even the Summer Queen and Meridia's mother combined grabbed the spell. It modified the released spell as it went off, adding the bits and pieces I had forgotten as well as hundreds of thousands of other details that I did not think of and can't grasp for the life of me. I was still conscious, but was already collapsing as the other power released the spell, and it created Sapphire.<br/><br/>So, there you go, you know as much about making a dragon as I do about what I did. Also, I will cheerfully admit I am NEVER going to try that again, no matter what incentives are offered or who orders me to do it. The thought of what I almost did is likely to give me nightmares in a week, once I am able to relax and actually absorb what I did. Right now, I am still somewhere between denial and shock about what happened, despite being able to rationally discuss it. A side effect of my training, no doubt."