05-24-2016, 11:45 PM
Brands of fire streamed from Volvagia’s mouth, enraged sparks spluttering outward to dance upon the jagged plain. A scream of fury blown far across the landscape sent infernal vibrations shuddering through the air, the frenzied beast hardly registering the innumerous and trifling attacks that continued to pelt its side.
The long spirals of the serpent’s length were sinuously scaly, ripped open in minuscule patches, and oozing viscous lifeblood. Even under such apparent duress, its proud head stayed wholly fixated on the scattered Gorons, grinning maw golden and gleaming by the glare of a million torches, monolithic against the roiling sky. The winged figure with obsidian-glass skin seemed to absorb all of the light from Volvagia’s guttering fires, desiccated silt and glossy hazes churning up around it in a sanguine mess that obscured it from the drake’s every breath, but the Maker and Destroyer continued to try and set it aflame nonetheless.
That is, until agony struck like a cannon blast across the skeletal ridges of Volvagia’s helm, the world churning in a swirl of molten gold and green so bright that it was painful to look upon. A shrieking whisper of pain, paradoxical and terrible and burning into the divinity of its skin, surged throughout its already overextended nerves. Gusts stung like knives against its injured side, ichor trailing in thick, heat-radiating streaks along its unspooling body.
All at once, Volvagia was rendered mostly blind, its eye sockets dribbling with all the brightness of morning and the remnants of the flash bang grenade. The lower steppe was soft, ground down into a gorged bed of fire and embers by the dragon’s rampage. Nonetheless, something crunched beneath its coiled mass as it messily crashed to the ground. The burned wrecks of homes, no doubt having succumbed to crackling, fiery ruination.
An insistent frequency defined the writhing movements of the fire drake, its confidence upended by the sinister darkness that blotted out its vision. Unseen enemies, shivering about in the resulting cataclysmic tremors that ruptured through the ground, circled ceaselessly and struck with blows that had the great beast thrashing with an undercurrent of disbelief that was indescribably hard to swallow.
Sharper than any blade, a screech that was both high and thin rent the air, causing the head of any sentient thing within the Steppes to ring. Slavering trails of gelatinous sludge and napalm flared fiercely within its wide-stretched maw, the serpent’s jaws endowed with far too many teeth for one living creature. The sclera of one eye burned a bright white, pulsing with a vicious, feral light that squirmed in living tendrils about its ridged snout at last affixing resolutely upon the God Hood.
While it could not see its most perplexing adversary thus far, Volvagia had a very unsettling notion that it had just been bumped down a tier on the food chain. Or, rather, that it finally had something settled comfortably upon the highest rung alongside it.
This was good. Volvagia was not opposed to a challenge, every now and again, though it was accustomed to having the advantage belong to itself alone.
Unseeing, the world stirring around it like the augmented depths of a boiling cauldron, Volvagia could still smell the acrid stench of sweat and desperation that trailed its opponents. Its thoughts slackening to a meticulous, magma-like crawl as it considered its options, Volvagia mercilessly snapped and snarled at the lesser Primes with its great mouth ringed about with fearsome, scintillating fangs.
It was seemingly all for naught, unfortunately. The Primes it was dueling were far, far too nimble-footed, and although Volvagia would have laughed at every attempt made to pierce the impermeable shields tightly wound over its body, its tail looped fast and secretively around one wounded side in a haphazard effort to shelter it from their attacks. Enraged and in pain, Volvagia wrenched itself instinctively downward, homes and boulders alike crumbling like eggshells beneath the sheer immensity of its plunging, serpentine form.
Firelight sighed through vortexes of hazy mists and dense storm clouds of ash, shredding in acrid spikes across Volvagia’s fluid spine so that it seemed more like a bizarre, luminiferous eel than a dragon. Its skull crashed hard into the heat-cracked trough below it, a burst of jewel-like lava and gaseous fumes spewing forth as the dragon burrowed within the resulting cloud of dust to evade the onslaught of the Primes, the membranous tendrils that shifted along its sides receding below the sooty plumes.
A roar like the tearing of tissue, awful and sickening and wet, cascaded down from directly above a cluster of Goron villagers still attempting to abdicate their homes. Overcome with a quaint desire to defend, the Gorons swarmed about below the wyrm's undulating, copper-tinted coils like a horde of particularly hard-edged ants, their collective fright stampeding across the ground and whipping up an immeasurable morass of smoke.
Volvagia allowed for the small group of Goron secondaries to run hither and thither for a moment, desperately searching for a way to slip between the tightly-packed barricades of its scales. Unluckily, they found themselves to be thoroughly ensnared, the malevolent gleam of Volvagia’s helm hovering in ill-omened bemusement.
Struggling against the coils with fists and weapons had no effect— they only wound tighter still, constricting like some kind of gargantuan ball python, and the hot drag of the fire drake’s breath made their prison fierier than any oven they had ever known. Masses of cannibalistic flames, tangled and warring against one another to lap within the colossal noose-shaped Sicilian Bull the dragon had created, sizzled and popped along the underside of Volvagia’s belly.
The villagers’ terror was a crescendo that built and built, overloading the dragon with a rush that shivered under its iridescently scaled hide. Tumorous cracks cut into their forms, the energy siphoned off from their failing bodies feeding into the drake’s ravenous flames but not consumed by them outright. Though the knitting together of fibrous tissue was sensitive and prickly along Volvagia’s twisting flank, it did something to reduce the rising frenzy in the massive beast’s mind, acting as a salve for its discomfort.
Satiated at last, the fire drake’s throat hummed with a chain of low, contented clicks.
“Hey, grass snake!” was all the warning Volvagia received before what felt like the entire roof of a home careened through the air and slammed right into the side of its face, cracking outward in a hail of fragmented tiles and slate.
The dragon jerked its head backward and uncoiled, a pained hiss curling out from its fiery nostrils in thin, greyish strands of smoke. A hemorrhage of light crackled to life behind its eyes like a dozen firecrackers, incandescently intense and shattering whatever relief Volvagia had drawn from the Gorons. Said group of unfortunate stone people wisely fled while the immense reptile was distracted by whoever had flung the piece of roofing.
And there, with his arm still upraised from heaving the slab of rock towards its head, was Darunia. Once again, the Goron chieftain had managed to come barreling out of nowhere and take the fire drake by surprise. Volvagia snarled savagely, an interminable smolder building within its breast and culminating into the orange-gold fire that sieved out from between its jaws, prismatic gleams quavering across its scale-clad hide as it readied another jet of flame.
Yet, instead of engaging Darunia directly, the colossal wyrm swept upwards into flight. Ruddy embers ignited viciously in long, redly glowing streaks across the ground, spiraling behind Volvagia as it trailed skyward and merrily left destruction in its wake.
Senses concentrated into a perfect arrowhead of focus, Volvagia continued to articulate its grand design upon the landscape. Effluent cinders wept in purplish heaps in countless balding spots across the plain, wretchedly lacking in enough potency to rouse themselves from their eddying slumber. Visibly absorbed by whatever task it sought to perform, Volvagia deftly wove throughout the bruise-colored clouds in all its golden-scaled glory, caring not for whatever projectiles were pitched its way.
With a discharge of fire streaming forth from its lungs, the wind-scattered and feeble piles of ashes were kindled anew; bright flares mapped a constellation across the stygian darkness of the Ashen Steppes, snaking soundlessly about the footprint of Death Mountain.
Soundlessly, save for the rising miasma of blistering heat and drooping terrain.
The long spirals of the serpent’s length were sinuously scaly, ripped open in minuscule patches, and oozing viscous lifeblood. Even under such apparent duress, its proud head stayed wholly fixated on the scattered Gorons, grinning maw golden and gleaming by the glare of a million torches, monolithic against the roiling sky. The winged figure with obsidian-glass skin seemed to absorb all of the light from Volvagia’s guttering fires, desiccated silt and glossy hazes churning up around it in a sanguine mess that obscured it from the drake’s every breath, but the Maker and Destroyer continued to try and set it aflame nonetheless.
That is, until agony struck like a cannon blast across the skeletal ridges of Volvagia’s helm, the world churning in a swirl of molten gold and green so bright that it was painful to look upon. A shrieking whisper of pain, paradoxical and terrible and burning into the divinity of its skin, surged throughout its already overextended nerves. Gusts stung like knives against its injured side, ichor trailing in thick, heat-radiating streaks along its unspooling body.
All at once, Volvagia was rendered mostly blind, its eye sockets dribbling with all the brightness of morning and the remnants of the flash bang grenade. The lower steppe was soft, ground down into a gorged bed of fire and embers by the dragon’s rampage. Nonetheless, something crunched beneath its coiled mass as it messily crashed to the ground. The burned wrecks of homes, no doubt having succumbed to crackling, fiery ruination.
An insistent frequency defined the writhing movements of the fire drake, its confidence upended by the sinister darkness that blotted out its vision. Unseen enemies, shivering about in the resulting cataclysmic tremors that ruptured through the ground, circled ceaselessly and struck with blows that had the great beast thrashing with an undercurrent of disbelief that was indescribably hard to swallow.
Sharper than any blade, a screech that was both high and thin rent the air, causing the head of any sentient thing within the Steppes to ring. Slavering trails of gelatinous sludge and napalm flared fiercely within its wide-stretched maw, the serpent’s jaws endowed with far too many teeth for one living creature. The sclera of one eye burned a bright white, pulsing with a vicious, feral light that squirmed in living tendrils about its ridged snout at last affixing resolutely upon the God Hood.
While it could not see its most perplexing adversary thus far, Volvagia had a very unsettling notion that it had just been bumped down a tier on the food chain. Or, rather, that it finally had something settled comfortably upon the highest rung alongside it.
This was good. Volvagia was not opposed to a challenge, every now and again, though it was accustomed to having the advantage belong to itself alone.
Unseeing, the world stirring around it like the augmented depths of a boiling cauldron, Volvagia could still smell the acrid stench of sweat and desperation that trailed its opponents. Its thoughts slackening to a meticulous, magma-like crawl as it considered its options, Volvagia mercilessly snapped and snarled at the lesser Primes with its great mouth ringed about with fearsome, scintillating fangs.
It was seemingly all for naught, unfortunately. The Primes it was dueling were far, far too nimble-footed, and although Volvagia would have laughed at every attempt made to pierce the impermeable shields tightly wound over its body, its tail looped fast and secretively around one wounded side in a haphazard effort to shelter it from their attacks. Enraged and in pain, Volvagia wrenched itself instinctively downward, homes and boulders alike crumbling like eggshells beneath the sheer immensity of its plunging, serpentine form.
Firelight sighed through vortexes of hazy mists and dense storm clouds of ash, shredding in acrid spikes across Volvagia’s fluid spine so that it seemed more like a bizarre, luminiferous eel than a dragon. Its skull crashed hard into the heat-cracked trough below it, a burst of jewel-like lava and gaseous fumes spewing forth as the dragon burrowed within the resulting cloud of dust to evade the onslaught of the Primes, the membranous tendrils that shifted along its sides receding below the sooty plumes.
A roar like the tearing of tissue, awful and sickening and wet, cascaded down from directly above a cluster of Goron villagers still attempting to abdicate their homes. Overcome with a quaint desire to defend, the Gorons swarmed about below the wyrm's undulating, copper-tinted coils like a horde of particularly hard-edged ants, their collective fright stampeding across the ground and whipping up an immeasurable morass of smoke.
Volvagia allowed for the small group of Goron secondaries to run hither and thither for a moment, desperately searching for a way to slip between the tightly-packed barricades of its scales. Unluckily, they found themselves to be thoroughly ensnared, the malevolent gleam of Volvagia’s helm hovering in ill-omened bemusement.
Struggling against the coils with fists and weapons had no effect— they only wound tighter still, constricting like some kind of gargantuan ball python, and the hot drag of the fire drake’s breath made their prison fierier than any oven they had ever known. Masses of cannibalistic flames, tangled and warring against one another to lap within the colossal noose-shaped Sicilian Bull the dragon had created, sizzled and popped along the underside of Volvagia’s belly.
The villagers’ terror was a crescendo that built and built, overloading the dragon with a rush that shivered under its iridescently scaled hide. Tumorous cracks cut into their forms, the energy siphoned off from their failing bodies feeding into the drake’s ravenous flames but not consumed by them outright. Though the knitting together of fibrous tissue was sensitive and prickly along Volvagia’s twisting flank, it did something to reduce the rising frenzy in the massive beast’s mind, acting as a salve for its discomfort.
Satiated at last, the fire drake’s throat hummed with a chain of low, contented clicks.
“Hey, grass snake!” was all the warning Volvagia received before what felt like the entire roof of a home careened through the air and slammed right into the side of its face, cracking outward in a hail of fragmented tiles and slate.
The dragon jerked its head backward and uncoiled, a pained hiss curling out from its fiery nostrils in thin, greyish strands of smoke. A hemorrhage of light crackled to life behind its eyes like a dozen firecrackers, incandescently intense and shattering whatever relief Volvagia had drawn from the Gorons. Said group of unfortunate stone people wisely fled while the immense reptile was distracted by whoever had flung the piece of roofing.
And there, with his arm still upraised from heaving the slab of rock towards its head, was Darunia. Once again, the Goron chieftain had managed to come barreling out of nowhere and take the fire drake by surprise. Volvagia snarled savagely, an interminable smolder building within its breast and culminating into the orange-gold fire that sieved out from between its jaws, prismatic gleams quavering across its scale-clad hide as it readied another jet of flame.
Yet, instead of engaging Darunia directly, the colossal wyrm swept upwards into flight. Ruddy embers ignited viciously in long, redly glowing streaks across the ground, spiraling behind Volvagia as it trailed skyward and merrily left destruction in its wake.
Senses concentrated into a perfect arrowhead of focus, Volvagia continued to articulate its grand design upon the landscape. Effluent cinders wept in purplish heaps in countless balding spots across the plain, wretchedly lacking in enough potency to rouse themselves from their eddying slumber. Visibly absorbed by whatever task it sought to perform, Volvagia deftly wove throughout the bruise-colored clouds in all its golden-scaled glory, caring not for whatever projectiles were pitched its way.
With a discharge of fire streaming forth from its lungs, the wind-scattered and feeble piles of ashes were kindled anew; bright flares mapped a constellation across the stygian darkness of the Ashen Steppes, snaking soundlessly about the footprint of Death Mountain.
Soundlessly, save for the rising miasma of blistering heat and drooping terrain.
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