Basic Monster stats (so that you can still know what I'm talking about if you haven't played these games)

Deviljho: Basically a T-Rex with a spiky chin. Constantly hungry due to high metabolic rate. When it gets mad, its muscles swell up and it gains the ability to breathe a mysterious "dragon breath". Excretes corrosive saliva when hungry. In cases of near-starvation, it enters a state of advanced physical strength, with it's appearance and abilities becoming similar to when enraged. When enraged in this state, its eyes glow crimson and it gains a mane of "dragonbreath" which covers its head and neck.

Length: 27m (max) Weight (approx): 10 tons (20000lb.)

Agnaktor: Lava dwelling leviathan. Similar in body shape to a crocodile, but with an axe-like beak, a large fin running the length of its back, and a wide, flat tail. It can swim through lava and, using its beak, tunnel through solid rock. It is large, but incredibly fast. Because of a special organ in its chest, it can fire beams of heat or magma from its mouth, but only after creating a spark by clacking its teeth together.

Length: 32m (max) Weight (approx): 15 tons (30000lb.)

Night is fast approaching, as the day's final rays of sunlight glimmer over the summit of the volcano. A Deviljho stalks the lava-streaked foothills, continuing his everlasting hunt for prey.

The past few weeks have not been good to him, as he had caught little while searching the sandy plains, and thus had decided to explore a new range as all of the local fodder had caught wind of his presence.

He had almost considered tackling a Diablos or Barroth, as the hunger had nearly driven him to the savage rage that accompanies starvation, but he knew the resulting battle would be more wounding than worthwhile. There was no doubt that he would have slain his foe, but all it would take is a horn through the lungs, or a bash on the skull, and his days would be numbered.

He was shaken from his thoughts when a loud clacking pierced his ears. He looked up to see several Uroktor harassing a lone Rhenoplos. His long tongue dangled over his fanged chin as the caustic saliva began to ooze from his maw. He would wait for the Uroktor to slay the herbivore and peel off its carapace with their beaks, and then, he would strike. The Rhenoplos itself would slake his hunger for now, but he would not miss the opportunity to grab a couple of Uroktor. Their hides are soft and fatty, and their flesh is relatively free of bones, save the arms and spine. Just the thought of such a delicious treat nearly sent him into a raging bloodlust, but he calmed himself. If he let loose a stream of the mysterious dragon breath, the flesh would melt and the bones would burn away, leaving nothing left to eat. Such a mishap would be unacceptable, save for in matters of life and death.

As he began his loping march towards the young leviathans and their kill, he noticed a pair of sky blue eyes watching him from the nearby magma, but they vanished under the surface the moment they were spotted, followed by a slight tremor in the rocky ground beneath him, so the Deviljho ignored them, assuming it was simply a bathing Uragaan.

The eyes were not of an Uragaan, however, as the Deviljho soon realized, when the ground beneath his feet shone white hot, the tremors intensified, and a hooked beak sprouted from the center of the molten circle, like a demon bursting forth from a pentagram. He leapt sideways just as the mighty Agnaktor, wreathed in flame, burst forth from the ground on which he had been standing. The Fire-Pike Wyvern landed, glaring at the Deviljho and snapping its jaws together. The intrusion was unforgivable. The Deviljho did not care if this beast was the mother of the Uroktor, or if it was simply looking to eat them itself. She had come between a Deviljho and his quarry, and as beasts and hunters alike had learned, the punishment was death.

She released a mighty screech, but Deviljho stood his ground. First, he would kill this foolish leviathan, then, he would eat her, and then, he would hunt down every last Uroktor in the area, and tear it limb from limb. The Agnaktor had become intimidated by the brute's disregard for her warning shriek, and she began to tunnel through the infernal strata. However, Deviljho would allow no escape, and he let out an earth-shattering roar. This startled the Agnaktor and sent her bursting forth from the ground, dazed, but relatively unaffected.

Deviljho turned his side towards her and charged, but the leviathan was fast. She slithered out of the way, and turned to face him before making her own charge. The Deviljho could not react in time, and the open maw slashed his stomach a moment before the long, flat tail whipped sideways and struck his leg. The crimson magma covering the tail seared his flesh, causing the outer layers of hide to peel and blacken as he was sent tumbling to the ground. He recovered quickly, however, and stomped the ground in fury. The magma had done little more than singe his slimy hide, and the muscle beneath was still strong. He turned to his opponent just in time to see its hellfire overcoat harden into black stone. He let loose a growl, and she responded with a long hiss, punctuated by her clacking beak. Deviljho lunged forward, his maw opened wide as it scraped the ground, scooping up a boulder-sized chunk of stone. He flung his projectile with the force of a bullet train, and yet, the infernal serpent whirled around and knocked it aside with a flick of her tail.

He was getting close to rage now, but he knew he must keep his calm long enough to remove that tail. If he succeeded in that, the battle would be his. Deviljho lunged past the leviathan with lightning speed, and clasped his jaws over the paddle-like tail. The Agnaktor shrieked in pain as several of his fangs pierced the thick stone. However, the attack was not a complete success, as several of his teeth had shattered on the hard armor, sending electric pains up his jaw, but he did not release his prize. He began pulling on the tail, trying to rip it from its owner's body, but the Agnaktor recovered quickly. She turned towards him and began to coil herself around his torso, her long, serpentine body slowly squeezing the life out of him as she grasped his tail in revenge and began to tear at his flesh with her ironlike talons.

That was all it took to push Deviljho over the edge, however, as he released the leviathan's tail and bellowed a tremendously loud scream of rage. His muscles swelled and took on a blood-red hue. The sudden expansion caused Agnaktor to lose her grip on the slimy, scaly hide. She slid away, and burrowed into the rocky earth. Deviljho was too furious to rationalize how to halt her burrowing, so he fruitlessly snapped at her disappearing tail. Several seconds later, however, she burst from the ground close to a hundred metres away, leaving the lower half of her body still buried. Deviljho began to charge towards her, aiming a bone-shattering shoulder slam at her exposed chest, but as he closed in, he heard the clack of her beak, except this time, there was something different. It was a hissing, fizzing sound, similar to water on a hot stone, and he raised his head towards the sound just in time to catch the Agnaktor's superheated magma beam full in the face.

The beam exploded on his face, causing thick smoke to cloud the area. However, there was a piercing red glow which shone through the choking ash, and as the dust settled, its source became clear. Deviljho had entered the "savage" state. Black-red lightning poured from his head and neck like liquid fury, and his eyes shone blood red with indescribable hatred. He lunged at his opponent, plunging his fangs through her armor and into her left shoulder. He immediately released, however, and let loose a torrent of the black-red dragonfire that spewed from his mouth, causing the opposing wyvern to shriek in utter agony.

But the battle was far from over. Both sides had long forgotten what they were fighting for, yet neither combatant showed any desire to leave until their enemy's ruin lie smote upon the mountainside. The Agnaktor loosed her own raging howl, piercing the night, but Deviljho still stood defiant. This only made Agnaktor angrier, as she turned herself sideways and tackled the deviljho with the entirety of her massive bulk, causing him to be overturned and momentarily helpless. She turned towards him and proceeded to repeatedly slam her axe-like beak into his chest, before delivering a slashing beak-sweep followed by a devastatingly powerful tail smack to the struggling head of her helpless opposer.

That combo of devastating blows would have been a guaranteed Coup de Grace to any other beast, but not to a Deviljho. However, he did not escape unscathed. several of the fangs in his chin had been broken off, if not entirely uprooted, and a massive gash split his scaly underbelly from the transitional area between chin and throat, all the way to the base of its tail. He rose, saliva pouring from his titanic maw, before delivering a dizzying tail slap of his own to the head of the gloating Agnaktor.

As his nemesis lie dazed on the ground, Deviljho reverted to his calmed state before loping off in search of food. This was a retreat, but only a temporary one. He would finish this fight once he was sure he had the strength to do so.

The Agnaktor awoke moments later, just in time to catch a glimpse of the alpha predator's massive tail disappear around the corner of a nearby tunnel. She knew where that tunnel lead, and she would not allow him the chance to regain his strength. She loosed a heat beam from sheer fury, before plunging her beak into the ground and tunneling towards her enemy's destination.

Deviljho had now exited the tunnel, into a large, Y-shaped expanse surrounded by bubbling lava. He spotted a small group of Rhenoplos and began to sprint towards them, when he was knocked sideways by a blazing torpedo of magma-coated fury. He began to grind his teeth together from annoyance when he saw his assailant standing before him, beak snapping in rancor.

He charged towards her, mouth hanging wide, and she countered by jamming her large beak between his cavernous, fang-filled jaws and locking the muscles in an open position, driving its sharp points into the fleshy inside of his mouth. He tried to pull his way free, but only succeeded in driving the points deeper. the only way he could escape is if she were to release him, and that was not going to happen. He tried to kick her, but her neck was longer than his legs could reach, and she responded by slamming his chin into the ground. Deviljho cursed his stubby arms, not for the first time, either. He looked into her eyes and saw a glimmer, almost as if she were laughing.

Without warning, she began to clack her teeth together at a blindingly fast speed, each time driving the razored points of her beak further and further into the so called "Great Devourer"'s mouth flesh, thereby preventing him from escaping before the battle could reach its climax, and as the sparks of Agnaktor's flint-and-steel beak ignited the surrounding air, she caught one last look at Deviljho's eyes.

They were filled, not with rage, but fear, genuine fear. He knew he had lost the chess match, and that his life was forfeit. But in the next instant, the fear was gone, replaced by a look of insufferable agony, as the laser of magma expelled from his vanquisher's smiling beak tore through his soft insides, boiling his blood and reducing his organs to ash. The overwhelming heat, having nowhere else to go, exploded out of its victim through the only possible openings, and Agnaktor was thrown backward by the recoil of her own attack, tearing a matched pair of gashes in the dead wyvern's jaws, and the look of agony was replaced by two intense blasts of heat, blackening the flesh around the now-empty sockets.

Victorious, Agnaktor raised her head to the skies, roaring a challenge to any and all adversaries that wandered the infernal wastes of the volcano, before plunging her fanged beak into the boiled of her victim, and feasting on the charred flesh within. She had earned this victory, and no one was going to take it from her.

*Meanwhile*

I looked out across the fiery landscape of the volcano, when a loud howl caught my ears. I turned to face the source of the noise, when I witnessed one of the most startling sights of my career. An Agnaktor had brutally and viciously killed a Deviljho, and had started EATING it! I looked down towards Cha-Cha, my young Shakalaka companion, and asked to see the hunt request form. I skimmed over most of it, the usual villager banter that it was, until I saw the terms at the bottom:

Hunt 1 Deviljho.

I handed Cha-Cha the paper and asked him what he thought, to which he replied:

"It look-alompa like a freebie to me, minion. Either way-alaka, Cha-Cha not going anywhere near that thing-thing!"

I nodded in agreement, and we set off for the boat home.

If you've made it all the way here, then that must (hopefully) mean you read the entire story, and then liked it enough to listen to me blabber for a couple of minutes. If this applies to you, thank you. If not, I'm sorry that you did not like my story, hopefully my later ones will be better. Anyways, I would just like to make a couple of announcements about this series.

1. This is but the first chapter in what I hope will be a popular and successful series.

2. I will consider any and all suggestions, including battles that involve elder dragons, except for Jhen Mohran and Miralis, as they are far too big too logically fight anything. I also currently have a few ideas already in mind, but so long as the suggestions involve interesting and logical matchups (no barioth vs lagiacrus or other such nonsense), then I will do my best to make it happen.

3.I am happy to say that I will have a LOT of spare time to work on these stories, as I am in the final days of high school, and thus I find myself with a great deal of spare time (minus working weekends and pre-diploma test cramming)

*edit* I know the killing blow was kind of a longshot, but what I was going for was the pain from the Agnaktor's beak driving further and further into the flesh of its mouth as well as clacking at a high enough speed that the Deviljho would be unable to withdraw from it before being struck again. However, from now on I am definitely going to try and be more descriptive if I use an attack like that in my future stories.

Finally, I'd just like to thank you all, even if you didn't like this story, because you can still make a suggestion for a fight you'd like to see!