How Do You Kill a Dragon?

 

In fantasy, it is dangerously easy to write yourself into a corner. Take the dragon: vast, ancient, armoured, and almost impossible to kill. If such a creature has no weakness, the story can quickly lose its edge. The beast sweeps across kingdoms, burns cities to ash, and leaves armies broken in its wake. Terrifying, yes — but without a way to fight back, even terror can become predictable and the tale becomes stale.

So how have other storytellers solved the problem? Myth gives us brave knights such as St George, charging into legend with lance and sword. After a mighty clash, the dragon lies slain, and statues immortalise the hero standing triumphant over the body, sword raised in glory. It is stirring imagery — but is it enough? Dragons have scales like armour and breathe fire, acid, or worse. How could any knight survive long enough to strike the killing blow?

In The Hobbit, Tolkien found a brilliant answer: a flaw. Smaug, magnificent and vain, reveals the one gap in his jewelled armour when he shows off to Bilbo. That vital secret is carried to Bard by a speaking bird, and Bard, armed with his final black arrow, takes aim at the exposed patch. One shot. One weakness. One legendary fall.

On television, House of the Dragon offers a more brutal solution: dragons destroy each other. The result is spectacular — fire tearing through the sky, wings beating against smoke, monsters colliding in battles that feel both devastating and inevitable. The series also turns to massive crossbows and vicious dragon-slaying bolts, proving that when brute force fails, ingenuity must sharpen the blade.

In my own book, The Prophecy of the Kings, I wanted the same problem to feel immediate, dangerous, and almost impossible. Ariome, a sorceress fighting on the Trosgarth side, finds herself in the chaos of battle. Above her, a dragon ridden by Kaplyn is carving terror through the forces of Trosgarth, her allies. Around her, sorcerers are summoning demons but the dragon holds them at bay. The allies, her enemy, are holding — barely — and much of their hope rests on that dragon. If Ariome can bring it down, the reward could be immense. A kingdom, perhaps. But first she must answer one terrifying question: how do you kill a dragon?

Ariome relishes a challenge, but this one is no simple puzzle. The dragon is airborne, so no knight can ride it down on a trusty charger. She cannot simply strike it with raw magic; in this world, magic has rules, and Ariome does not possess the power to overwhelm such a creature head-on. Around her, the screams of battle is terrifying, the clash of swords rings out, spells crackle, arrows fall without mercy, and the battle lines ebb and flow. She has no time for grand plans. She must think — and think fast.

Imagine yourself standing there: battle roaring on every side, counter-spells flashing through the air, arrows raining down indiscriminately, and a summoned demon threatening to turn on its own master. How would you survive? As an author, it would have been easy to cheat — a wave of the hand, a burst of magic, and the dragon falls. But that would rob the moment of danger. Like Ariome, I had to find a clever way to defeat a dragon in flight: a creature superbly protected by scales, without Smaug’s fatal gap and with no obvious flaw to exploit.

How does Ariome do it? Does she succeed at all? Read The Prophecy of the Kings and discover the answer. 

In a later Blog I will tell you how I came up with names for my characters and Ariome is one of my favourite.

https://davidburrows.org.uk/

Dragon Rider, Book 2 of the Prophecy of the Kings


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Feel free to comment on my posts on anything Fantasy. I am a big fan and my books were influenced by Tolkien, David Gemmell. Moorcock and many other authors.

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