Chapter 50 - Shattered Skies [Part 1]

  “One does not simply slay a Dragon.”

  - Attributed to Seraphina de Sariens.

  The great Wyrm Balalazanga, the Mother Hive Tyrant, should not have been able to fly at all. Yet four broad, semi-translucent wings, each sprawling wide enough to blanket a small town, beat in slow, thunderous rhythm and kept the black and pink leviathan aloft, giving it the unsettling grace of a lizard-shaped dragonfly. Down its spine ran a honeycomb lattice of vented hollows, each ring whispering with the rush of displaced air. Two serpentine heads, eyes glowing a baleful amber, scanned the skies in opposite directions while four long legs folded neatly beneath its armored belly, their claws gleaming like polished onyx. Jagged spikes and interlocking bone plates, thicker than any tank’s armor, shielded its immense body, and twin tails cracked through the wind behind it like living whips.

  It was a DLC boss creature… no, it was an entire DLC campaign.

  Seraphina realized that she had perhaps picked off a bit more than she could chew. What was she doing here, anyway? She was never a fighter… surely there would be others? She shook her head. One way or another, she had always been a fighter. If she did not stop the flying catastrophe, then all of her schemes and plans in Meridian would burn and go up in smoke.

  A quieter, secret part of her, the golden heart of song, nursed this thought. Turned the selfish need into a desire to protect. If not her and the Ballista, her weapon of war from a bygone age, could not stop the Dragon, then no one could. Many would die. Power, once claimed, demanded that it be wielded for those who conferred it. That was the price of privilege—the essence of noblesse oblige.

  Seraphina had always believed herself exceptional; now fate offered another stage on which to prove it. Her magic repeated the invitation in her own voice, soft and seductive. Eyes closed, she listened to the Nex Frame’s reactor thrum and felt its latent ferocity straining for release. The choice was made. All that remained was to cast the die.

  She would need to play a perfect game.

  “Adjust Sensorium to third-person view…” she commanded, and the Nex obeyed.

  Her vision shifted, overlaid now with an external projection of the Ballista—as if she were observing the suit from a floating camera just behind and above. With a thought, she refined the angle and focus, rotating and zooming until the image aligned precisely with the familiar perspective from the game. It was perfect.

  Seraphina rocketed toward the great dragon, her resolve hardening to iron. Sensing the Ballista’s approach, the beast loosed its deadly passengers: from the honeycomb hollows along its spine burst a swarm of bat-winged shapes. These Wyrm-drones were not hatched from an Egg but gestated inside those living chambers. They were stunted creatures that would never become true Dragons. They lacked a Dragon’s breath, a Dragon’s cunning, and a Dragon’s nearly impenetrable scales, yet each one still posed a menace even to veteran adventurers.

  The living cloud shrieked their challenge and streaked toward her in a ragged cone. Reluctant to waste precious ammunition so early, Seraphina shifted her grip on the Ballista’s colossal two-handed sword and braced for the first strike.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She gauged the closing distance, then pushed the thrusters to their absolute limit, starting a roll. Reactors howled, white exhaust flaring as the Ballista became a spinning comet of steel. She hit the swarm head-on—a living blender that scythed through false Dragons in a vortex of metal and flame.

  The kill notifications flooded her inner vision in a cascade while she carved a tunnel straight through the swarm. Only when she burst out the far side did Seraphina cut the thrust, letting the Ballista slow amid the drifting fragments of wing and scale.

  Fighting without a proper synchronization harness wracked her body with crushing g-forces, yet Seraphina’s prodigious Constitution absorbed the punishment, the stunt costing her only thirty points of Health. Still, it was not a thing she wanted to repeat.

  “You all right?” she asked between measured breaths.

  “Sleepy,” Cornelia mumbled, the Hydra’s voice thick with drowsy contentment—she had been eating far too much of late.

  Greedy thing, the young girl mused.

  A thin, gleaming thread of strategy flashed through Seraphina’s mind. That very greed, that raw hunger, would save her, she hoped. Slim though it was, it offered a chance.

  She allowed herself a fierce grin, slammed the throttles open, and hurled the Ballista straight toward the Mother Hive Tyrant Balalazanga. Her metal titan drove forward, engines roaring, armor trembling beneath the immense pressure of acceleration. The titanic shadow of Balalazanga loomed over her, blotting out the sky as the creature's twin serpentine heads turned in eerie unison. As one maw snapped open, Seraphina's vision blared with warnings of urgent red. But she remained calm, for she knew exactly what was coming.

  The dragon unleashed a torrent of white-hot flame, a searing river cascading toward her, incandescent with heat. Seraphina counted heartbeats. Thrusters ignited, pitching the Ballista into a flawless spin, evading the Dragonfire with a perfectly timed roll. Heat warnings flashed as molten air washed over her frame, scorching but not harming. It was a perfect dodge she'd mastered through countless hours of combat in the game.

  Balalazanga whipped both of its immense tails next, twin scythes slicing the air with earth-shattering force. Again, Seraphina pivoted expertly, each thruster pulse precisely choreographed, avoiding lethal blows as if following steps in a familiar, deadly dance.

  The young girl launched a salvo of missiles at the sky beast, a miniature swarm of bees. They exploded along its length with ardent fire, their flaring explosions a counterpoint to Balalazanga’s great roar.

  She had the Dragon’s full attention now, and she guided the enormous creature away from Meridian, steering the confrontation westward. The city's towers, vias, and canals diminished behind her, giving way to sprawling marshlands, an expanse of dense bogs.