There was pain of a type he had never felt before radiating through his body. He staggered away from the still-twitching corpse of his enemy and into a cave mouth that would lead him down into the bowels of the mountain, where his cavern lay, where he could recover in safety.
Safety. It was not a concern he had had to consider in a very long time. A full-grown dragon need only fear another full-grown dragon, but Midz-Aset was wounded, broken; humbled. All he could do now was sleep and hope either to recover his strength, or to die peacefully.