Chapter 81: Wings and Wounds (Patreon)

Hi all! Finally got this one to feel how I wanted, and before I say anything else, I'm going to make sure you aren't left with this cliff for too long I promise! Now then, please enjoy!

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The wyvern was terribly, dreadfully bored. He hadn’t ever really thought about it before, but the Creator had a way of making life just so terrifically fast, and with Them incapacitated and the wyvern fulfilling his self-imposed obligations, there was just too much time to think and not enough to do. Perhaps it was because the hall he found himself in was narrow and linear, the waters so mild and temperate, and the prey little more than tiny target practice; he supposed that framing it that way made the whole ordeal sound about as tiresome as it had been treating him, which explained things.

It certainly didn’t help that there had been no impudent invaders that he could use to let off some steam. For well over a day now, the wyvern had spent his time alternating between running down any creature that looked enticing enough and resting on the warmest corals he could find. Unfortunately, the hottest coral on the floor was just about as warm as his own body temperature, at rest no less. He’d carved any coral that seemed like it could raise the temperature even a few degrees right off the hardened limestone floor, but all he wound up with was a large, rocky nest just before the dungeon’s entrance covered in slowly dying polyps and barely a wisp of steam.

Thankfully, there were a few tiny elemental crystals around that were congealed out of fire or steam or searing light, and they made for a comfortable addition to his perch, but… it just wasn’t the same as his pride, the sprawling spirit coral resembling an angry staghorn was so inviting. He was already deeply missing being able to wind his serpentine form around the twisting branches, to stay submerged in water that would cook most creatures in seconds if they dared approach it and let himself soak up the torrent of fire mana the thing outputted. Sure, he needed to focus on turning that fire mana into an element more usable for him, but the experience was almost meditative and he could often lose himself in the activity for hours at a time, should nothing interrupt him.

Trying that with the dregs his current roost was spitting out, the wyvern could barely tell he was getting anything at all, and couldn’t really muster the attention necessary to convert the pitiful stream of mixed mana before his thoughts returned yet again to the magnificent Ocean that the Creator had shown him, the vision of raw and overwhelming power and the sense of such glorious freedom was obviously a gift of some sort. The Creator knew the wyvern needed a path forward, an idea of who he needed to become to better protect Them and had delivered that in spectacular fashion. The wyvern just needed to figure out what it meant, to take apart the feeling and become the tyrant of that blistering sea and make it manifest.

That wasn’t what it was supposed to be doing though. It couldn’t focus on making everything into a great watery inferno with the draff he was getting from his current throne. Instead, he should be figuring out how to be so perfectly uninhibited in the water. He could move so fast, had such precise control over his body and yet, these tight and half empty hallways just felt cramped and limited. He knew there was more he could do, some way to move through even the claustrophobic tunnels as easily as he rocketed around his own domain, but it just wasn’t coming to him yet. He was able to launch himself across entire halls, execute turns that’d make anything with a spine shudder, change directions or add and bleed momentum on a whim, he just couldn’t do this freely and reliably, and more than once he’d smacked against a wall or the floor, or gone sailing through air with no way of controlling his “flight”.

Unnervingly, a few of his impacts were still dully hurting, and he wasn’t used to having bruises to deal with, no matter how minor or out of the way they may be. They were fading quickly at least, and anywhere with a dull ache was currently glowing a faint grey while the area bubbled freely until the pain ended. A minor annoyance to the wyvern, only more reason to get better at controlling his body like he was sure he should be able to.

So, with these thoughts in mind, cycling between the Ocean, the mana, the movement; the wyvern was bored and mildly annoyed, having nothing to carve apart the monotony. Soon, he’d be back to the point where he started leaving his nest and looking for something to amuse him. The loud crunchy things were, all things considered, very helpful in practicing his aim with his tail. They were small and stayed in holes in the walls- cowards, the lot- and the wyvern enjoyed stabbing his tail at them and seeing if he could skewer one first try. 

All too often, the bladed appendage simply clinked against the wall, or even got bogged down by lesser corals. Normally he just swung his tail at things and they’d stop being a single object afterwards, so being shown how lacking he was at actually coordinating his own body was a good indicator of how lacking he was, and surely the Creator knew he needed to learn this lesson.

Straining his senses, he could almost hear some clicking and clacking in the distance, a sure sign of the popping shrimp. He was just starting to think that maybe it was time to get up again after all, when he felt something that gave him pause. Filtering in through the entrance to the dungeon, a noise could be heard, different from the ever-present drone of potential invaders and their incessant talking. No, this sounded much more like when those same invaders made it to his floor and one or two of them lost a few limbs or lives; they were screaming.

That was unusual, at least he was pretty sure. They didn’t start screaming until things started to go wrong, and he wasn’t there to make them go wrong, so that meant that something weird was happening. Weird was usually bad but could be exciting. Listening closer the wyvern could make out a rhythmic thumping that was steadily and swiftly growing louder, and his head cocked to one side in puzzlement.

That’s when he started feeling things. The noise went quiet, save an odd crack, and then the slight bit of mana filtering into the entrance dried up outright, and mana was even being pulled out by some unknown source. This was very odd, such a thing never happened, and the wyvern backed up tentatively. The screaming had gone silent, and everything was very, very still for just a moment, before a new feeling burst into his head.

Magic, the sort of magic he’d never experienced before came flooding in. First was something heavy and domineering, shiny and demanding of respect and obedience. The wyvern almost capitulated right then, his draconic blood demanding as such for a superior member before a new aura burst forth. This one sent him skittering to the end of the hall, where the ambient mana was overpowering enough to drown out the sense, but the brief taste he’d gotten was more than enough to tell him that whatever was going on out there was bad.

It was like he was a seahorse all over again, staring down a hungry shark prepared to swallow him right up. His blood ran cold- cold! - and he knew that whatever it was, would rip him apart. The wyvern hated acknowledging weaknesses and admitting inferiority, but he was unable to feel anything but, when faced with these two forces, and apparently so was everything else. The screaming started in full once more, and things grew very loud very fast as some of those screams started coming his way.

Very swiftly, fear turned into anger, whatever was coming in was doing so to get away from those two monsters above, and it was insulting. He may not have been able to compare to whatever it was that came by, but to think that he was safe, that they could escape when they came stumbling, floating, dropping, or dragged in? The Creator was under his protection, and he would fight a suicidal battle to keep it as such, but for ten random morsels of prey to think that he’d offer asylum was truly infuriating.

They came in a few different shapes, bumbling about in the two-meter-deep water like clumsy oafs. Some had four limbs, some had two top limbs and a tail, and a pair had both legs and tail, but they were all small, and all confused. The wyvern had returned to his pile of warm rubble towards the front-middle of the hall by then, thankful not to be subjected to that same feeling again, and his scarlet gold gaze was measuring all ten individuals harshly. 

His disdain only grew as all of them needed a second to gather their bearings, such pitifully slow creatures were right to run after all, and the first of them turned his way. His eyes met those of one of the fish-tailed scaleless kobold things, and the thing in question immediately froze up once it realized who was looking at it. Slowly, it nudged another fish-thing next to it, who also turned and followed their gaze back to the considerably agitated wyvern. With hackles raised, wings flared out, and razor-whip tail curled over his head to point at them, he looked magnificent and deadly, and everyone present fully recognized this fact.

Swiftly, the other intruders realized that something was amiss, and one by one their heads swiveled in his direction. The crowd wasn’t very organized at all, so it looked like a crowd of nearly a dozen, clustered disorderly, all frozen in time while they looked at some impending disaster. It didn’t just look like that, though, that was basically the situation they found themselves in through their foolish decisions, right down to looking frozen to the wyvern. 

The wyvern voiced his discontent, a rumbling hiss filling the hallway and finally snapping the disorganized cluster out of their stupor. However, being in motion was hardly much better for them, apparently, since three turned heel and scrambled right back to the exit, two stayed stock still, and the remainder jumped into a laughably bad formation. Weapons were drawn, and magic flared to life to fuel spells and augmentations, and the five came at the near-dragon as fast as they could manage, which was not inconsiderable, in the case of the ones with tails who weren’t just trying to beat the water into submission to move.

The wyvern, however, was faster. Significantly so, even, but streaking into the midst of the armed and armored opponents who were taking up the entire width of the hallway probably wasn’t very clever. At least, not while he was still so cold. He would rectify that, of course, but it took time for him to start properly burning, but tiny bubbles were already starting to form on his skin and slip upwards in wisps of steam, which was a good start. Instead of flying into the midst of the collective, the wyvern instead launched off his roost, shot forward until he was just before them, and then flapped his wings to shoot backwards, letting his tail keep the momentum forwards.

With an audible pop, the wyvern’s tail bit into the leading invader’s torso. It wasn’t deep; the man was wearing scalemail that blunted the blow considerably, but the wyvern was disappointed for another reason. In the split second that the razor-sharp tail remained in their stomach, the wyvern lamented that his attack hadn’t punched through their head like he’d intended. Still, the blow was hardly minor, and the fast-swimming interloper wasn’t quite so fast anymore.

The group was further stilled when the water in front of them was kicked up into a frothy, searing hot wave with the force of the wyvern’s momentum change, and while the heat wasn’t enough to leave more than a minor heat rash at worst it was more than enough to give them all pause. The wyvern used that moment to shoot backwards at speed, then come to a stop less than a meter from the wall of the first turn, turning the water into a boiling hot cushion. 

His probing attack left the group in a weird state; any semblance of coherence was shattered but after the wave of fiery foam had settled all seven members who’d stayed behind exploded into motion with greater fervor, even the man whose blood was painting the water red. The wyvern wasn’t entirely sure what possessed them to not just run like the smarter three, but it brought no small amount of dissatisfaction to watch the new leader smash apart his impromptu nest and let the clumsier followers trample what remained.

The wyvern gave them all another warning hiss but wasn’t overly surprised when a harpoon was launched towards his head in response. The weapon met nothing but limestone and coral in response, and the reptile it had been intended to brain was already ten meters deep into the next hall, contemplating how best to handle the unusual situation. He was glad he’d chosen to watch the entrance in the Creator’s absence- the intruders were all the evidence he’d needed to justify the decision- but now that he was actually faced with an incursion, he couldn’t deal with it as effectively as he’d imagined. 

He excelled in hit-and-run tactics, so having only a single direction to run in limited him greatly. However, the narrow and constrained halls were hardly the worst environment he could have found himself in. The group had just started rounding the first corner when the wyvern almost casually fluttered forward to meet them. Instead of trying to precisely stab anything this time, his tail swung out in a wide arc, tip unfurling with an audible pop and carrying enough momentum to cleanly slice through even tempered steel.

Fortunately for the victim of the wyvern’s tentative first stabbing, the open wound in his gut meant that he needn’t test the integrity of his armor for a second time, against a strike with much more energy behind it. The second strike was carrying much more force than the first- more than enough to sever an arm or even lacerate a lung through, say, the tempered steel chestplate that one of the bipedal invaders was wearing.

The biped in question tumbled forward, impacting the wall in front of himself, with a satisfying look of dumb disbelief no less. The enraged mob beside him spared hardly a glance- aside from one other biped who promptly burst into hysterics- but the wyvern could see some trepidation in a few of their gazes and he relished it as he zipped backwards out of reach once more. Unlike the first victim, the new one was much more grievously wounded, and the companion was too slow to force some concoction into him or even slow the bleeding before the dungeon claimed its prize.

The wyvern wasn’t in a position where he could admire the lightshow though; a second harpoon was hurtling through the water and a few other sharp projectiles were trailing close behind. There also seemed to be a spellcaster in the hodgepodge, if the beam of light that had lanced down the hallway was any indication. That made the wyvern nervous, and deservedly so. It was comically easy to avoid being hit by the sluggish weapons wielded by the more martially inclined invaders, and most uses of magic were as slow and unimaginative as their users. However, the dragon-hopeful had a healthy respect for anyone who could throw around pillars of light fast and hot enough to leave him seething with envy.

This was only the second offensive light mage he’d encountered, but knowing the attack was rendered entirely inaccurate thanks to the water was only a small relief; he hadn’t even been aware of the attack until it’d seared a new hole in the wall and left a fleeting afterimage in his vision. He singled them out swiftly after that, committing the strikingly red leather armor to memory. From there moving so that the rest of their party was between him and them, hopefully before they could get the hang of how the water bent their light.

The wyvern wasn’t happy with how the fight progressed from there, mostly because it actually had the time to progress. The wyvern was utterly superior in terms of speed and mobility, and he could’ve simply left the group behind in a matter of moments, but he was reluctant to leave the quintet to their devices in the Creator’s hallowed halls. The emotional sixth had the right idea: cry over the vanished corpse of their companion until an impressively slow shrimp finally got around to showing them something louder than their incessant wailing.

Settling at five, the wyvern was forced to tread especially lightly with the group, even after they’d expended all their ammunition save the mage’s. The initial wounded had long since recovered, and now the varied creatures were actually settling into something of a formation, split between pursuing the wyvern, or ignoring him and gathering the crystals when he strayed too far.

They’d wizened up some time after the third turn, and now if the wyvern wasn’t actively prodding at them, they’d simply disengage. That they had the gall to ignore him, focusing on making an even bigger nuisance of themselves while keeping a careful eye on their scaley bulwark was appalling. But they were ready to respond any time he approached, and not being able to approach from more than one direction was probably the best defense he’d encountered thus far.

What made it worse, they didn’t even have the nerve to try retreating. No doubt the second their backs were turned they’d find themselves moderately flayed, so not having the dignity to just get it over with made the battle into an excruciating affair, one the wyvern refused to concede. He couldn’t let them gather or kill things unmolested, so he was constantly having to goad them into a chase, avoiding spears and spells alike as he tried for a lucky hit, and only managed a few superficial lacerations.

In a testament to the wyvern’s willpower- and the invaders’ obstinance- the wyvern managed to coax them down multiple floors after over half an hour of effort, and even managed to scare off one of the weak-willed legged things after merely amputating beneath one of their knees. It was likely the most satisfying use of the coward-charms the wyvern had seen, and things went steadily downhill for the remaining four from there.

By this point, the wyvern was glowing, with so much sterile, light grey mana pouring out of him that he outshone some smaller corals. The water around him was screaming at his presence, and the air above anywhere he lingered more than a moment could almost be called suffocatingly thick with steam, were it not for the fact that anyone foolish enough to breathe it would be cooked inside-out instead.

Despite his prodigious outpouring of mana, he was nowhere close to running out. The halls around him were thrumming with power and he was devouring it faster than he could turn it into power. The opposing mage was having a harder time, needing to make an effort to take the Creator’s mana and taint it thoroughly enough to use themselves. In practice, it meant he was dealing with steadily fewer blasts of light- though they were getting worryingly more accurate- and could give back more abuse himself. Unfortunately, this still wasn’t enough to overcome the advantage they got simply by hanging around in a narrow corridor, but he would be able to deal with that soon enough.

The benefit of the long, labyrinthine entrance floors were that the wyvern needed no sense of direction to know where he was going, and as he raced along towards the downward entrance to the fourth, there was nowhere for the invaders to go but after him, unless they wanted to risk letting the wyvern pursue instead. If the growing concern in their eyes was any indication, they didn’t want that.

Finally, he plunged downwards, streaking out into the delightfully wide-open arena of the fourth floor, taking it all in at a glance. Mostly, it was unchanged from his visit just days earlier, but there was a decidedly unusual caravan of carapace toddling along the floor. Normally, he’d give the shrimp more attention, but the approaching voices were a much greater concern to him, and it seemed like the shrimp were also much more interested in his pursuers than they were him.

The wyvern was glad he wouldn’t even need to go back up and stab them into reluctantly chasing, and the first combatant emerged with little fanfare, followed immediately by the other three. The mage stared wide-eyed at the floor, possibly realizing what they’d gotten themselves into, but the wyvern wasn’t about to let them talk the rest back up now he had them in a place he could work with. 

The mermaid who’d been most fervent in their pursuit was first, them surviving the wyvern’s initial attack was already too much to excuse but they’d almost gotten him with a lucky stab back. Their eyes were locked with the not-quite-dragon’s, but that hardly mattered when the reptile moved. Launching to the right, then up, then moving left faster than they could follow, his tail was once more rolled up then whipped out fast enough to break the water around it, this time further propelled by a few directed steam explosions in the cavitation behind the tail’s blade.

There was no resistance as the blade, superheated and supersonic, bisected the invader from shoulder to hip. He was ready to hiss his satisfaction when he was blinded. There was almost no noise as the mage unleashed a bolt of light, and despite the water bending it off course, he was still too close to get off freely this time. In an instant, his left side went numb, then started screaming in pain. His left leg had been completely wiped away, and the flesh around it was steaming in a completely foreign and unwanted fashion.

His tail was still attached, but he couldn’t move it, and his abdomen up to his ribcage was a charred wreck. There was no blood coming from his wounds, though, the blackened edges of his injuries almost exploded, pumping out enough steam to render the water completely grey. He flapped his wings to push himself away, but the wound was severe enough that his left wing was almost rendered lame, and the webbing was also partially vaporized. He still rocketed back, but with no dignity, and he hit the back wall with a thud before collapsing, mouth wide in an unmade roar.

The remaining three came racing out of the haze of heat, but with the wyvern floating weakly near the floor, a new cloud of steam had arisen, and the three weren’t able to see through it. Still, they were committed to finding him; seeing him wounded was too good to be true, and they disregarded everything else as they raced headlong into the fog. 

Unfortunately, there were things between them and him that were best being very well regarded, and as the light mage closed the gap, she heard what they were. A pop rang out, then a second, then three more, before the line of rifle shrimp who’d been marching along began firing in full. The light mage didn’t even have time to face the firing squad before bones were shattered, organs liquefied, and brain hit with enough force to turn grey matter to soup.

The two behind didn’t fare much better, and the one closest to the third leader of the night was blasted into motes of twinkling light almost immediately after. The other one at least had time to about face frantically, but legs weren’t suited to the task of underwater maneuvering and it wasn’t long before they were given a very noisy sendoff. The wyvern was barely able to see through his own trauma, both literally and figuratively, but he was able to clearly make out the sound of revenge, and he welcomed the painful noise, for once.

However, knowing his aggressors were reduced to scraps of luminous dust did little to heal him, and he was growing increasingly worried as he realized the grievous wound wasn’t being fixed. Nearly a quarter of his skin had been scorched, a sizeable portion of that completely burnt away, and his torso felt like it was being dunked in boiling saltwater. The fact that his torso was being dunked in boiling saltwater, then, didn’t offer much comfort, even if he knew the heat should be truly luxuriant.

A cocktail of emotions were swimming through his head, from rage to fear to joy and plenty more, but what came to overwhelm it all was simple exhaustion, and he finally had an idea of what the Creator just might have gone through before Their own slumber. He put his head down on the closest piece of coral that wasn’t directly lowering the temperature and watched as what seemed like dozens of the little shelled avengers clacked their way towards him slowly. 

As he drifted to sleep, he couldn’t help but wish he’d had his perch.