A/N: And here's the next chapter, just in time for Christmas as a present. :)
Chapter 15: Fire and Shadow
…two dragons flying at each-other in a clash…
…an explosion of white upon the globe…
Piper gasped as her amber eyes snapping open to a ringing sound. She was half-expecting to wake up in her room on the Condor, half-expecting to wake up in a gigantic stone fortress beside red-and-gold scales and warmth – half of her was satisfied and the other half disappointed as she turned her head and took in her room, alarm clock ringing. The woman who'd gone to bed in her uniform lazily shut the bedside clock off and got up. That was right, she'd set her alarm to wake her up in the morning today, whereas yesterday she'd slept longer than she should have. Today was the day. Today the Daynight would come.
Piper arrived on the bridge with a hexagonal cup of coffee in hand. The Storm Hawks and chicken who were already present silently looked up from whatever they were doing, no doubt concerned about her mental state after what had happened two days ago – their concern both touched Piper and grated on her inward nerves. Aerrow in particular had a look of both concern and something close to but not quite sternness, as Piper noticed he'd trimmed his beard and hair back to their usual length and had re-donned his gold earrings.
"Has Blacktalon said anything?" Piper asked.
"Nothing," Junko replied, shaking his head.
"Just the same old," Starling said on Piper's side, the violet-haired Sky Knight looking grim as she removed her bandages – after the events of a couple days ago, she'd come out with a minor head-injury, which it looked like the ship's resident Zhiliajing Cloud-Wraith had finished fixing up. "The goddess will bring the dead back to the living. We don't know what he means by that. Since you're up, there's something to talk about."
Stork wordlessly hit a switch at the helm which replayed the Crystalvision recording.
"Oh, by the Strato-Elf," the Mikonosuinesh whose head dominated the recording gasped desperately, the sounds of a panicked crowd muted in the background. "I don't have much time. Sky-pirates, at least a dozen of them are looting the place. There are explosions in the streets!" The Mikonosuinesh gasped audibly at something offscreen. "I've got to go!" The transmission cut.
"We're near the area, so we thought we'd check it out," Aerrow said as he approached Piper's flank. "But with everything that's happening, we wanted to talk with you about it first." Piper blanched, stunned this even warranted considering.
"You can't be serious?!" she exclaimed. "The Daynight is in less than two hours and we still don't even know what's gonna happen!" Aerrow shifted his eyes thoughtfully, his arms folded.
"You, me and Cyclonis can stay with Stork on the Condor working on that, while Starling and the others go check it out," Aerrow said thoughtfully. "But right now, there are people who need our help." Piper winced, then lowered her eyes, shamefaced. Had she spend so long with him that she'd forgotten how to give a damn about other people? Starling and several others looked sympathetic, as if they knew what she was thinking at that moment. Piper sighed, then her face hardened, finding herself all too ready to dive into work. "Then we'd better get started. We're running out of time." She glanced almost on impulse, out towards the windshields. Diagonally high in the sky – which was an uncharacteristic milky-orange like a fiery-coloured candlewax – the white sun looked a lot like a crescent moon with a small chunk bitten out of its left side. A missing chunk that would expand across the whole sun as the invisible moon moved in, until they together became a black sun with a shining corona, in a sky that was both night and day yet belonged to neither.
The reptilian Mikonosuinesh deactivated the Crystalvision projector. Standing by the desk, something in his yellow-scaled face was off, his eyes glazed and seeming to stare at something only he could see. Beside his head, the open window had a view of the street outside the squid-themed building, where figures were sprinting in a single direction, all screaming, a couple occasionally pointing at the sky.
While this was happening, the lone Mikonosuinesh moved with a slow deliberateness as he carried out his next task. He held a red-and-white patterned, pointed crystal against his warm-clothed chest as he'd been told to, instructed to, had the command to do pushed and wired into his brain, and the crystal began to hum.
Then there was a blinding flash.
When the Condor burst out of its Dimension Drive shunt, Nazowanas was in view – the usually-overcast sky was clearer than on most days, giving a view of the half-eclipsed sun. In two hours and forty minutes, it had gone from looking like an unrealistic cartoon of a gibbous moon to a moderately-thin crescent, rendering the sky a darker shade of green than was normal. The Daynight would be in twenty-five minutes. Three of the Skimmers disembarked and the carrier swerved away to land in hiding. On their three rides, Starling, Finn, Junko and Radarr were eager to get this over with as fast as possible.
In the Condor's Skimmer bay, books and scrolls were littered about the floor as Piper and Aerrow read. Piper tossed a scroll to the side.
"There's nothing and yet there's everything," she said.
"How?" Aerrow asked.
"There's at least three cultures that have completely different references to something like what Blacktalon described and what you saw him worshipping," Piper exclaimed. "The Death Goddess of Bundarlika, the Absolute Darkness of Budhamka-Ghor, the End of Night and Day on the Twin Terras. Different parts of it match completely unrelated cultures!"
"Huh." Aerrow lowered his head thoughtfully for a second. "Maybe it is just a myth."
"More like the truth behind all of the myths," Piper thought grimly. A decade ago, she would've thought what Aerrow had said, but after the things she'd seen and learned since then, she was no longer that person.
"It's not just on Ionos." Stork's voice made Piper and Aerrow's gazes snap to where the Merb was sauntering forward, old browned scroll in hand. "There's the Dark Vomit-Mother of Terra Wallop, on Atmos."
"So bits of this Final Daynight or Blacktalon's death-goddess are mentioned on Atmos and Ionos?" Piper said, perturbed and increasingly troubled.
Aerrow looked at his wrist and told Piper, "The Daynight is in twenty minutes." It made Piper's face shift anxiously. Stork hummed thoughtfully, then shrugged grimly.
"I've got nothing," he said, his tone grave. Piper and Aerrow looked at the research below them, and Piper almost felt the dullest headache coming on with her dismay. "Some of these places on Atmos and Ionos have minimal history." Suddenly it was as if a lightbulb had turned on.
"That's it!" she hissed.
"What?" Aerrow asked.
"What if this… entity Blacktalon is serving isn't really the god of death, it's just impersonating it?" Piper exclaimed as she rounded to face Aerrow. Aerrow's eyes widened at the thought of that being true.
The three Skimmers flew low over the street, then upon coming within a few metres of the ground, they switched to bike-mode and shot ahead. Leading the formation with Radarr's co-pod attached to her Skimmer, Starling knew almost immediately that something wasn't right as she glanced around. There were no signs of carnage, shouting or blasting in the air, no business-owners nor tourists anywhere in sight; the buildings were vacant but undamaged. Since the Storm Hawks' last visit, it was now coming to the time when Nazowanas' tourist-season started up. Had the sky-pirates already left, or (and Starling thought this more likely) were they lying in wait for an ambush?
"Where is everyone?" Junko inquired – he seemed slightly on edge because of the approaching Daynight, and Starling couldn't blame him.
"Good question," the Sky Knight replied, hazel-green eyes narrowed. Not two seconds later, something caught her sight overhead. Rolling towards them was one of the tallest shops in Nazowanas with an extra storey – the three Skimmers skidded to a halt, all four pairs of eyes looking overhead as Radarr chirped quietly in concern. Finn lifted his energy-crossbow, looking through the scope at the overhead sight. At the building's balcony, the scope saw a Jimūzunin was standing alone, gazing outward, face blank.
"Well, he sure doesn't look like a pirate," Finn murmured to the others – from the sound of his voice, one wouldn't think he'd been badly skewered by a dragon just a couple days ago, still wearing bandages wrapped around his torso. Starling's decision was made in an instant, as in voiceless communication, she revved her Skimmer forward, Finn and Junko's rides promptly following. The amphibious figure above them craned his head fluidly so he was looking directly down at the group, the eclipse-dimmed sky above him. Starling couldn't quite see at this distance and in the eclipse's quality of light what the look in the Jimūzunin's eyes was, concerned as something was clearly amiss. Then the figure on the overhead balcony suddenly pointed outward. The Storm Hawks followed his finger, to a low outcropping of jagged peaks that were barely visible above building-tops, framed against the dark-green and cloudy sky. Part of the tourist-drawing mountain range, though lower than most of Bakarech Owai's peaks.
"I don't like this," Junko murmured barely above a whisper, tapping his beefy hands' fingertips together nervously. The balcony figure brought out something glowing, sharply drawing Starling's gaze back. She saw the red-and-white patterned, pointed crystal which hummed as he held it to his chest, she knew immediately what it was.
"WAIT!" she screamed, whipping out her energy-nunchuks to try and throw-
An explosion of rippling white energy tore outward, swallowing up the balcony's occupant. The four Storm Hawks were left staring in wide-eyed horror up at where the figure had just died. A pause passed before Starling's horrified gaze shifted back towards Bakarech Owai. Her face hardened.
"Let's go," she murmured quietly before her ride took off.
Less than a minute later, three Skimmers were shooting in their flight modes towards the crooked, shadowed peaks under the increasingly-darkening sky.
The squadron didn't land as they entered the mountain-range, shooting alongside the mountains and high above sharp, barren slopes. Starling kept her senses sharp as she glanced around, quite certain after the suicide in Nazowanas that they were dealing with worse than sky-pirates. The region with lower peaks that they were in was barely considered part of the main range, though that was all the more reason why someone who was wary of the haunted range or the nearby inhabitants would choose to base themselves out here. The Skimmers were over three leagues into Bakarech Owai when, a league behind them, a large shadow swooped over a slope of the terrain. Starling glanced over her shoulder, hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. Radarr scented the air, but behind them was downwind of them so he got no scent.
"Keep an eye out," Starling ordered. "Something's not ri-"
The terrible roar exploded, less than a second before a carrier-sized blur of dark bloodred scales shot diagonally through the Skimmers, harshly brushing and unbalancing Finn and Junko. Starling yelled and Radarr screeched as they fought to regain control of their shared Skimmer, horrified eyes glancing in the same direction. The huge dragon twisted his airborne body so his gleaming golden-yellow eyes pierced them, spreading and beating his wings to halt himself before he nosedived into a high-velocity glide.
"Fall back!" Starling yelled urgently-
Smaug's huge body came on them faster than Starling could react, brushing and smashing the sky ride in a blur.
"Starling!" Finn yelled, as he and Junko watched the smashed Skimmer fall. Knowing better than to hesitate in these circumstances, they started firing their Skimmer-mounted weapons. Starling's Skimmer crashed hard, kicking up a cloud of dust. Not two seconds later, the female Sky Knight was getting Radarr loose from the crashed ride.
Finn and Junko continued firing, until Junko broke off to dive his Skimmer towards their friends on the ground. Ahead of Finn's volley of energy-bolts, Smaug was circling to come back around, his speed frighteningly fast – he completed the turn in just five seconds, roaring. Finn winced, blue eyes bulging, and with a grunt twisted his Skimmer into an evasive roll. The giant dragon shot straight through the space where Finn had been, hot wind whooshing under his vast wings, stocky hindquarter noisily brushing metal – sparks fizzed and Finn screamed as his Skimmer fell in a diagonal nosedive. The bandaged blonde grunted as he pivoted hard, and his ride levelled out of a quick and crushing collision with the barren valley floor.
Junko shot straight towards Starling and Radarr. With a grunt, the wallop caught them both with one arm and soared back towards the sky. But Smaug was flying unnervingly close behind them, fiery-golden eyes piercing their backs, before he twisted away while Finn's energy-bolts continued flying – as the carrier-sized dragon's huge body twisted, his long and powerful tail deliberately smashed Junko's Skimmer with a terrible noise, thick smoke instantly trailing as the three started losing altitude. Finn lifted his horrified blue gaze away from his scope. The Skimmer fell like a flameless comet towards the shadowed valley's floor, and it crashed head-first and tumbled over itself viciously in a centisecond. Ahead of that, it came to a violent stop with a noise, leaving Junko, Starling and Radarr splayed ahead on the ground. The sound of Smaug's terrible roar made Starling lift her head towards the sky.
"Run!" she yelled, and Junko and Radarr promptly got to their feet, the three sprinting fast in different directions in the split-second before a molten inferno consumed the downed sky-ride, orange flames rushing after them. Smaug didn't waste any further time on the now land-bound Storm Hawks – in the moment Finn was distracted staring down from the air, the great dragon's silhouette was swooping fast upon him, hind-claws splayed, and Finn moved to swerve. He barely missed the dragon's clawed attack, the blast of wind from Smaug's passage almost buffeting Finn's Skimmer. Smaug roared back, flame-like eyes bright, and twisted to give pursuit. The dragon let loose a torrent of orange fire from his maw which seared the bearded sharpshooter's skin and bandages as it raged too close. The Skimmer's wings on one side were too close to the molten inferno, paint peeling and metal blackening. Smaug cut off his fire and roared a blood-curdling sound, and Finn banked fast to escape – the wrong way, Smaug smashing the sky-ride with a brutal swipe of his wing-claw. Finn yelled, eyes wide as the ground rushed toward him. He deployed his parachute on impulse. A second later, Smaug shot above him, hind-claw seizing the parachute and violently ripping the sharpshooter through the air with his flight path.
"FINN!" Junko screamed, grey eyes widening.
"Junko, now!" Starling yelled urgently as she and Radarr got their battered Skimmer back up and, with Starling at the lead, they sent it blasting forward and taking off to the air. They were up in the air for five minutes, before Smaug cut through it crossways, violently smashing and rolling it along his side. It was sent careening out of control in the air, all three yelling.
The sun in the dark-green sky was a thin crescent, less than ten minutes from total eclipse as the black dragoness's head glanced up. Dragon Cyclonis growled lowly, clinging by all fours atop a rock next to the equal-sized hovering Condor, at the same time Aerrow and Piper emerged from the Skimmer bay onto their carrier's ramp.
"What is it?" Aerrow asked her.
"They're taking too long," the dragoness murmured in her resonant voice, grim and brooding. Only the briefest pause passed, before Cyclonis hissed as she moved to glide forth, "I'll go and-"
She didn't get to finish before Piper pointed and said, "There!" In the distance, a new shape was piercing the thick clouding, shining like a distant torch in the darkening daylight. It was a Skimmer, on fire and trailing flames as it shot in a blind beeline. Piper's amber eyes were wide, whilst Dragon Cyclonis bellowed in alarm and flew forward with a wing-thrust. Passing a couple more pointed peaks and the landscape of Nazowanas on a beeline, Cyclonis slowed and reared her steel-scaled hind-legs, catching the bullet-like flaming sky-ride in one paw but with enough fluidity in her muscles that the impact didn't shatter it. The dragoness was sure to glance quickly towards where the sky-ride had come and then behind herself, before she twisted and glided back the way she'd come. Coming back upon the Condor within a few seconds, she slowed herself, hind-paw held low as she gently let the paw's load slide along her toes to the Skimmer ramp. Starling lay on her side, bruised and sooty.
"Starling!" Aerrow exclaimed, he and Piper immediately sprinting and crouching before the injured woman – Cyclonis hovered on her beating wings above them, casting them in her shadow almost like a protective mother-bird. As Piper held the violet-haired Sky Knight's head by one hand, noting the slight groan and breath she produced, Starling suddenly spasmed forward with a loud cough. The battered woman, face half-sooty, looked around in alarm, hazel eyes immediately widening.
"Where are the others?!" she all but yelled, taking in Dragon Cyclonis for a second and landing straight back upon Aerrow and Piper. At that moment, Cyclonis' eyes widened as her nostrils flared, and a vicious growl reverberated out of her.
"He's here," Piper whispered dreadfully.
"We'll buy you time to continue working the Daynight crisis out," Dragon Cyclonis hissed, voice low and quiet as if she was afraid unwelcome ears might be listening in. "Go inside!" There was something between outrage and indecision on Piper's face for a second, before she and Aerrow nodded their heads firmly, then sprinted into the Skimmer bay which shut behind them. Starling whipped her green gaze to Cyclonis'.
"We have to stop him-" she began to say, but then a draconic silhouette flew fast and fluid into sight seemingly from nowhere, making the Sky Knight and dragoness snap their gazes in unison. Smaug beat his spread wings to slow and hover, then he landed upon two close-together rocky spikes with all four limbs. No, not all four – his wing-claws gripped the narrow spikes' tops, with his torso, neck and head looming in the gap inbetween, but only one hind-paw was on the spikes while the other remained lifted. Smaug's scaly lip was curled, fiery golden-yellow gaze piercing Starling and Cyclonis.
"I'm going to make this very simple for you," he growled in his deep, resonant voice. Starling's eyes widened as she beheld Finn, Junko and Radarr in the grip of Smaug's huge hind paw, heads or faces poking between or visible past the scaly toes, all of them battered and writhing to varying degrees. "Your treasured ones – for mine."
"You hypnotised those others in Nazowanas, and you lured us here!" Starling said.
"Guys, don't-!" Finn was cut off when Smaug sharply increased his toes' pressure, making them all groan and yell in pain, Finn especially with his not-fully-healed injury. Immediately, Starling whipped out her ignited crystal-nunchuks – any desperate thing to save her squadron-mates, hesitation be damned – while Dragon Cyclonis roared threateningly. But before either female could move, Smaug sharply and noticeably eased his hind-claw's pressure again, roaring back at Cyclonis and showing he was not backing down. Starling glanced from Cyclonis to Smaug, face hardening as she refused to show any weakness to the dragon whose intelligence, strength, ferocity and malice she knew well. Cyclonis likewise forced herself to calm despite her raised hackles. This close to Smaug, they could see a large, ugly, scabbed-over wound where the Storkurd Slayer's harpoon had pierced him near the collarbone, as if a spear had almost plunged at an angle into his heart.
"Oh, by all means, take your time to make up your minds!" Smaug spat after a pause.
The great dragon's deep, powerful voice was heard through the Condor's glass and metal walls – Stork who was wincing at the helm, and Aerrow and Piper inside the Skimmer bay looked at the sealed door; "And don't bother trying to fool me, Dame Starling, because I can smell that she was here not one minute ago."
Starling's eyes shifted momentarily as she thought – very blatantly and obviously to Smaug. She might as well have been holding up a sign reading 'I'M SCHEMING'.
"What are you going to do with her?" Starling asked, hazel eyes hard. Smaug's lips peeled back from savage teeth, and his fireball-like eyes blazed frighteningly. Starling winced as she momentarily regretted her choice of words, but the gold-and-bloodred dragon seemed to reign himself in by a hair's breadth. This did not bode well.
"I will convince her of her place at my side," he growled, all but ground out in his bestial voice. Suddenly, Smaug found an unsettling, almost faux-sincere sense of calm as he added, "Bring me my wife – and I will let you and your rabble live for today." Starling was seriously worried – she'd seen Smaug's propensity for violent mood swings, but something in his mannerisms now was off. Smaug didn't yet give his immediate audience a chance to reply as he shifted his fiery gaze, raising his growling voice's volume so it would be audible anywhere as he boomed, "Piper! My lawful wedded wife." Smaug rasped the last sentence in a low, demented tone as he grinned manically. Every word he spoke was certainly heard within the Condor's walls. "You don't need me to tell you that when something is mine, I will NEVER be parted from it! So if you will flee my dear, so be it. Flee with your little friends! You may fly from me for years, you may hide for years more. But know that every innocent, every bandit, every child and orphan whom you happen to pass by, will BURN because you were there! And I. Will NEVER. STOP." Starling held her nunchuks-holding arm straight.
"We're not letting you take her again," she said seriously.
"Not even for the lives of everyone here?" Smaug purred, a dark smirk on his reptilian face. Baring his teeth menacingly, he slowly started amping the pressure in his hind-claw again, and despite Finn, Junko and Radarr's efforts to maintain face, Starling got a sense of their bones threatening to creak when Junko let out a pained wheeze. Starling's hazel-green eyes widened, and she was aware of Dragon Cyclonis' glowing gaze snapping from the sight straight back onto Starling's head – a part of the female Sky Knight was immediately tempted to just leap at Smaug if it would save her squadron-mates at the cost of her own life, but she spent a second-and-a-half first scrambling for any better ideas.
"Do you think Piper wants you to do this?"
Smaug's eyes widened, and his crushing grip was stayed – that had apparently surprised him. Though Piper hadn't been in the mood to talk too much about her months of amnesia to anyone except Aerrow, Cyclonis had told Starling what Smaug had said on the Snow Rookery about Piper being his mate. Starling had little to no doubt that Smaug couldn't be capable of feeling anything other than perverse lust for Piper, remembering the savage glee in his eyes and the way he senselessly destroyed wherever he went for little reason other than showing off his might in the most monstrous way (and that wasn't even going into what she thought about Smaug brainwashing Piper into lying with him) – but maybe it would still affect Smaug's ego, keep him distracted. Starling almost prayed this would work.
"Whatever you told her when her memories were gone to make her think everyone else is her enemy, she now knows the truth," Starling went on, as Smaug's crocodilian face was unreadable, piercing fiery gaze focused on the female Sky Knight who was barely taller than one of his head-spurs. "Threatening her friends, trying to kill everyone in the world that isn't the two of you – because everyone here knows that's what you want to do sooner or later – it won't make her love you, or want to be within a thousand miles of you. It'll make her want to fly to the furthest corner of the world if she thought that would keep a single soul safe from you!" A brief pause passed as Smaug glared at her and his lip quivered with a deep growl – then Smaug launched forth with light in his open jaws, roaring viciously. Dragon Cyclonis charged with a roar to stop him, but Smaug twisted his flying body in just the right way that his whip-like tail lashed out.
SHANG.
Cyclonis screeched from the deep furrow raked through her brow and her eye socket's ridges. Smaug was already upon the Condor, smashing a foreclaw against the Skimmer ramp hard enough to make the whole carrier – and everyone inside – violently shudder. It threw Starling off her feet. Cyclonis recovered, and whirled her purple gaze back, immediately remembering what she'd been trying to protect. Her eyes saw Smaug looming near the downed Starling with a foreclaw ready to rake her to ribbons the moment that Starling, Cyclonis or anyone else moved.
"What do YOU know of such things?!" Smaug raged at Starling almost at the top of his voice (the volume alone making Starling visibly cringe in pain at the assault to her eardrums), molten eyes blazing. Seeing, hearing the dragon explode like this made a part of Starling that she had to shut down want to dig a burrow into the metal with her fingernails in the hopes of escaping the incensed predator. "NOTHING! You, wretch, were so keen to spy me on Atmos – yet you failed to save your own mate when he was in danger…" Smaug purred that last sentence out slowly in a deep, rich and venom-black tone. Starling's eyes widened, and Smaug could smell the change in her hormones, the shift in her emotional state, though he wasn't much in a state of mind to care for it. "You think you know love?! Pathetic! Are you ready to watch your friends DIE again?!" Smaug's captives yelled in new pain as his hind-claw squeezed them again. Dragon Cyclonis, atop the nearest hill, was growling and ready to launch herself at high-velocity. But Starling's eyes were wide, seemingly transfixed and watching her friends in pain. Any second of that pressure continuing, and there'd be a sudden wail to indicate a bone fracturing…
"Fine," Starling said. Smaug rumbled slightly at her answer, and eased the pressure in his claw. She was glaring hatefully, sourly, defiantly back at him. "You win. I'll tell her to come out." Which she was doing technically, a hand working at a small communication device behind her back.
Inside the Condor's Skimmer bay, a device bleeped on Piper's waist and she removed it, reading the message: 'MAKE A BREAK'.
Smaug grumbled, narrowing his eyes in a dissecting way as the dragon studied her for any sign of a lie.
"A wise choice, Dame Starling," Smaug said, his voice reverberating in the mortals' chests as he flexed his wings and reared his body – he sounded only vaguely pleased, something which disturbed Starling. Cyclonis growled nearby, but Smaug hadn't taken his attention wholly off of her. "Well, Storm Hawks," Smaug crooned, drawing his grunting and strained captives' gazes towards his head as he grinned savagely, seeming more like his usual self in that moment. "It seems apt to return you to your kith." Suddenly, Smaug threw them from his hind-claw like one might a ball in a game, sending Finn, Junko and Radarr harshly clattering and tumbling painfully over the Skimmer ramp. No sooner had Starling rushed to tend to them than Smaug's voice re-drew their immediate attention back to him; "After all…" Suddenly, Smaug's fiery golden eyes brightened and fixed on Starling in particular as he snarled, "No Sky Knight should go down without their squadron!"
Cyclonis roared and launched, but Smaug had been calculating how to escape her for some time, and he thrust his wings downward to lift himself, then looped his huge, snakelike body in the air so that she ended up sailing through his curving loop, which in turn brought him ramming straight into the Condor. While Cyclonis was taking time making an urgent U-turn to get back around, Smaug immediately started bathing the ship's bow, metres from his jaws, in orange fire, twisting his neck so the flames would next consume every exposed mortal on the Skimmer ramp-
A bright-blue blast suddenly tore through the ship and flying figures wreathed in blue light shot out – Smaug's jaws shut and his gaze tracked Aerrow and Piper in the split-second they shot past. He violently shoved the carrier away and gave chase, into the peaks.
Eyes blazing bright, Smaug's vast wings pumped relentlessly as he followed the bullet-fast glowing figures into the jagged shallower peaks of Bakarech Owai, whilst the shadows rapidly thickened.
"Up there!" Starling exclaimed in sudden realisation. In the deep-green sky, the last glaring spot of light on the sun faded, leaving in the sun's place a single ring of light, a ball of blackness surrounded by a shining corona.
The Daynight was here.
Whilst everyone dragon and Storm Hawk on the Condor's Skimmer ramp was distracted staring wide-eyed after the fleeing duo and their draconic pursuer, no-one noticed the subtle pink flash from inside the opening where one of the Condor's turret-door had been blasted away, nor the metal-winged humanoid figure shooting out in a blur of chrome until it was gone.
Glowing blue with the Binding, Piper and Aerrow were ramrod-straight with their glowing bodies horizontally pointed as they shot away. Roaring, Smaug unleashed a torrent of bright orange fire from his gullet, surging forth at such speed that it would catch up to the glowing figures in seconds.
"Steel's Shield!"
Piper shot the white blast into Aerrow, who promptly filled up with the power and his glow's colour changed accordingly. He pivoted his still-speeding body and outstretched an arm to throw up a shield, deflecting the roaring flames. But Piper knew this trick. The second the flames in front of Aerrow dissipated was the second Smaug was revealed suddenly much closer to Aerrow. Piper brought two crystals fresh from her satchel together with a yell, sending out a pure-white beam which electrified all the air around it. Smaug banked enough to prevent the beam hitting his head, but it still caught him near the shoulder, with enough force to violently throw him backwards several hundred metres; roaring furiously before the beam cut and he regained himself on his wings. While Smaug's bone-shuddering roar filled the crooked valley, Piper was glaring for a moment, when she and Aerrow floating nearby suddenly noticed the considerable-sized load attached to her leg.
"Stork?!"
The Merb was here – he was clinging to Piper's left leg, arms wrapped around the thigh and legs around her foot, marsupial-eyes wide on his green face.
"Ah… maybe next time you're gonna blast out of my ship, you use more care?!" he exclaimed, hissing the last part. Smaug roared again, bringing all three gazes back to him. In the dim light of the eclipse, he looked almost like a bestial shadow stained with blood, except for his hypnotic, fire-like eyes as he flew forward. Piper and Aerrow shared a glance with each-other and a nod, eyebrows low.
Aerrow raised his arms, ready to throw the move as Piper yelled, "Storm's Fur-!"
Aerrow cried out as he was suddenly tackled by a human-sized shape in a blur. Piper gasped as she tracked Aerrow's path, watching as the redhead and his metal-winged assailant descended together like a falling angel holding a human comet, crashing to the valley floor in a cloud of dust. Smaug's bright gaze also snapped towards the new development. When the dust faded, Aerrow was in a crater, and a completely-thawed and none-worse-for-wear Blacktalon was atop him, their faces inches apart and baring teeth at each-other as they wrestled with their hands locked. Aerrow threw Blacktalon off himself, and the white-haired body-snatcher landed on his feet and drew his energy-guandao before launching back into the fray. Aerrow barely drew his twin lightning-blades in time to block. Watching them from where she hovered, Piper's eyebrows came together darkly at the sight of the thawed body-snatcher, remembering the last time he'd taken Aerrow, a true anger and defiance welling inside of her like a bomb. But she hadn't forgotten Smaug as she turned-
"PIPER!"
-and heard Stork's cry in the centisecond before Smaug swooped fast upon them, too late for Piper to dodge as he reared his front. Piper threw up a shield by crossing her arms, and Smaug's hind-leg kicked into it, sharply sending her and the Merb flying away.
Aerrow pushed Blacktalon back with a block, then he turned his concerned gaze overhead.
The crystal-mage's body lit up as she halted her fall a metre short of the ground, glowing bright in the Daynight. She heard Stork's yell coming towards her, the two having been torn loose, and she fluidly caught him bridal-style with a thin, half-cheeky smile. Then her gaze turned back to the skies. Only now did she notice they were in a valley walled by crooked peaks, having gone much further into Bakarech Owai than the outskirts. Smaug swooped in and made a running landing across the valley; his glowing, fiery eyes immediately on Piper. Aerrow, though well-aware of the threat, was occupied with fending off Blacktalon's attacks at him, and Smaug knew it. Putting Stork down, Piper glared back at Smaug, realising how uncomfortably familiar this place was to the rocky valley where she and Smaug had first met on Atmos, many years ago…
"Piper," Smaug purred slowly in his rich, deep, growling voice, molten eyes fixed on Piper. Piper said nothing, but her scowl deepened slightly. A particularly grim yet unreadable scowl spread on Smaug's face in response to her silence. A pause passed, but no more than a second, lest Smaug sense it coming. Piper let loose a war cry, crystal-shard necklace shining bright and casting shadows before the flash of light engulfed her and she let loose a magic pulse. Across the clearing, Aerrow was also transformed and enlarged as the pulse rolled over him – what had seconds ago been a bearded, red-haired man duelling Blacktalon had suddenly become a gigantic dragon, arched neck looming over Blacktalon.
As Piper fully transformed into her dragoness form, she roared furiously and challengingly at Smaug, her smaller head-spikes flaring. Smaug roared back, his entire stance shifting and tail lashing. Then to dragon-Piper's surprise, Smaug grinned at her in a way that was both animalistic and charismatic, molten eyes drinking in her dragoness form.
"How lucky am I to have a wife who makes saying goodbye so hard," he growled. Piper felt those words sting at something inside her, enflaming fires that had nothing to do with her dragon-breath. "And how lovely!" Smaug's gaze had suddenly transferred to the wide-eyed Merb within the dragoness's shadow on the valley floor, little more than a mouse to the gigantic serpents. "Piper has brought a friend for dinner. What a pity I don't eat…" Smaug's face sharply twisted from a pleased grin to a murderous, bright-eyed scowl as he ground out hatefully, "…rotten goods!"
He suddenly pounced towards Stork, forelimbs' claws extended and deadly jaws opening.
"EEK!"
Snarling, dragon-Piper leapt to intercept immediately – though she couldn't halt the larger and stronger dragon's trajectory, she knocked him off-course in the air, latching onto Smaug as they hurtled together, long tails trailing amid bloodred and morning-indigo scales, spikes and wing. The twirling dragons crashed to the valley floor, a tremor ripping through the area as the rocky ground splintered and broke, whilst the Merb who was so tiny compared to the great serpents took off along the ground, panting as he removed his chest-plate and activated a switch without stopping. With a small flash from a miniaturised Dimension Drive, the Stork-Mobile arrived in two seconds with an engine-rev, and Stork didn't waste any time in switching it to flight mode and beelining away from the valley – all the Storm Hawks who weren't Aerrow or Piper knew better most of the time than to be caught up without the others in a scrap involving multiple dragons.
Dragon-Aerrow meanwhile shifted his gaze to where the two dragons were hissing and roaring at each-other amid the dust – he would've dived in to help, but he knew how dangerous Blacktalon could be and couldn't afford to release him from under his claw. The body-snatcher's gaunt face was something resembling awestruck as he too observed. Dragon-Aerrow.
Smaug and Piper twirled together as they ascended in a vicious scrap, snarling and roaring, fiery golden-yellow and amber-orange eyes blazing. Their wings were spread as they twirled and their hind-claws locked together or clawing viciously at each-other's chest-scales, then Smaug lunged his crocodilian jaws at his female opponent's serpentine neck. With a screech, Piper threw Smaug off with a powerful blast that rippled over the entire darkened valley. Smaug spread and beat his wings to slow and halt his backwards trajectory. Dragon-Piper roared again, then she leaned forward and flew at him. The indigo female clashed with the larger red and gold male in the dark sky above the dark peaks, scrapping and screeching and snarling under the black sun. Piper bit at Smaug's neck furiously, got an advantage. Smaug bellowed furiously as he writhed and twisted his muscular neck like a caught serpent, pierced scales screeching under Piper's serrated teeth as he pulled free, dextrous hind-claws seizing her smaller torso as he roared with light in his gullet and she roared back at him.
GHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…
Dragon-Aerrow snapped his glowing green gaze to the earth, then started looking around, including at the battling dragons, in alarm. The vibration wasn't like the impact of a dragon crashing to earth, it was the constant rumble of a true earthquake, like a jackhammer were being held against the world's crust and its vibrations muffled through rock.
"Yes!" Blacktalon rasped as his mauve eyes bulged, then he cackled madly, more like a maniac from an asylum than anything else. "They did it. YES!"
Overhead, Smaug and Piper's battle saw Smaug smash the indigo dragoness's back against a crooked peak, causing a shattering rockfall. Dragon-Piper roared up at him, but then something caught both dragons' attention and her gaze shifted sharply, sensing the vibration through the rock.
Dragon-Aerrow's head whipped around in growing alarm at the persistent tremor, and the way something tickled his scales the wrong way. He promptly grabbed the cackling Blacktalon in his hind-paw and took to the air. Overhead, Smaug was deathly quiet as his piercing gaze roved around, the larger male and the indigo dragoness hovering on their wings as all the vast peaks around them shook. Piper's molten orange eyes flashed and she clenched them shut with a sound momentarily, quickly shaking her serpentine neck to rid her head of the feeling. Not far away, a crooked peak collapsed, crashing out of sight among its brethren.
Junko and Starling were tending the fresh and reopened wounds of Finn and a particularly-exhausted Radarr, when they noticed the rumbling vibration forming in the air, making them lift their heads and look around under the darkened sky. In the distance, at the nearest, shallower peaks of Bakarech Owai, rockfalls were starting from the unnatural tremor that could be felt through both earth and air.
Dragon Cyclonis was flying to the edge of Bakarech Owai to help the other dragons when something made her reel back to halt and hover, glowing purple eyes wide as she felt and heard the quake. More than that, something in the air, like a primordial song which she'd never known anything like before, was tickling her scales the wrong way.
The paved ground was vibrating, and objects in neighbouring Nazowanas stores' fronts were audibly tinkling and clattering. A lone figure who'd escaped the dragon came charging out of his building's front door, wielding a storm globe like a grenade.
"Our Dome-Beaver might have run, but you're not taking me without a fight, you son-of…!" Sugamatsi trailed off sharply. The reptilian showman's pale eyes were looking upon a sight that would've had most of his neighbours screaming it was the end of the world and praying. Maybe it truly was the end, Sugamatsi thought, as the trembling, rumbling haunted peaks of Bakarech Owai began to crumble one-by-one beneath the darkened green sky.
"WILFORD!" he screamed urgently at the top of his voice, frantically hitting the button on the whipped-out remote control, pleading that the damned dome-beaver would come soon.
The change in Bakarech Owai's landscape was so vast that as it occurred, its full scope could've only been viewed from the stratosphere. Across dozens of kilometres of crooked, haunted and largely barren mountain-range, everything began to collapse into the bowels of the world like powder crumbling through a sieve, leaving thick, gaping shadow where earth had once been.
KA-KRAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The deafening crack from the geological collapse forced the three dragons to open their jaws in barely-audible shrieks at the assault to their ears – for a dragon as old and battle-hardened as Smaug it wasn't quite so bad, but Aerrow and Piper despite their experience were still young by human or dragon standards. Blacktalon merely grit his teeth in a twisted grinning shape, even while thin red trickled from his body's ears.
Nearly twenty seconds of the terrible noise passed before it ebbed enough that the dragons could focus again. Smaug was the first to look outward with his piercing fiery eyes at the devastation, and Piper followed, all conflict on standby in light of this new development. Something crept over the dragons' scales, a feeling of magic – dark magic – that managed to make the fire-drakes' hot blood cool. Smaug's hackles rose as he snarled. Overhead, blackened clouds were rolling forward under the black sun. At least half of the outer-more peaks surrounding the three hovering dragons had survived the shattering collapse intact, but beyond that, the innermost part of the haunted mountain range had sunk away, leaving the surviving distant outer-peaks to encircle the gaping black hole in the world at the horizon. It was dark inside the pit, to the point that Smaug's draconic eyesight keen for seeing in the dark could only see a certain distance in before a wall of shadow-like blackness merely halted it. The darkness down there wasn't natural – the eclipse was passing, but there was no brightness for kilometres around, the rolling and billowing clouds above saturated dark-grey, and Smaug could almost see the ghastly, dark substance that his instincts didn't like one bit, rising in billowing wisps from the pit. The great dragon was racking his great mind's knowledge from across Middle-Earth, Ionos and Atmos to learn what this might be, but the only thing he could think it to be was something that should've died long ago.
The dragons heard a grumble – dragon-Piper hissed slightly as her orange eyes widened, and Smaug's lip quivered as he summoned light up his neck. A couple more seconds passed, the three dragons hovering and staring. Then the thing emerged.
Despite the dragons' sharp senses, the thing from the pit seemed to emerge a mere, indiscernible dark blob like an approaching figure in an unfocused and blurry vision, only solidifying and gaining form as it crawled on multiple shifting things out of the unnaturally-dark hole. Whatever unnatural magic cloaked the creature was falling away, and it became clear it was insectoid, vaguely spider-like, with multiple-jointed legs as thick as Smaug's chest shifting and moving to climb it up the mountain-side, slowly and hungrily like a predator stalking unawares prey. It was roughly three times Smaug's size, was definitely arachnid as more of its vision-impairing cloak of magic fell away and as it continued crawling up towards the precipice. All over, the monster's hide was a mix of mottled, mostly charcoal-like colours, but Smaug saw on closer inspection subtle studs and rivers of crystal running through the flesh. The largest mass on its body was most certainly the bloated abdomen, its ugly texture varying from smooth to mottled and incapable of being hidden by the coarse, coal-grey hair. Adding to Smaug's wariness and disturbing the draconic Storm Hawks greatly, was that the layers of mottles like many layers of scars on the abdomen formed shapes resembling skeletal forms or merely skulls, varying in sharpness of detail like the varying weathered states of gravestones. The monstrous creature had eight spindly, huge legs in total, but in front of them were four smaller, no less spindly arms which dangled below its central thorax, each equipped with three-fingered, claw-like hands. The monster had many, many eyes, each beady and milky, though they had cloudy pupils – Smaug counted fifteen beady eyes atop the creature's head which were randomly dotted around and squashed in asymmetrically, like stones stuck into soft clay by a child, and he counted three to five more eyes (the number varied asymmetrically) on each of the legs' patella and a cluster of three atop the abdomen. This creature, depending on whether or not it relied on sight for locomotion (and Smaug was doubtful given the stench of its sense-confusing power), could see in every direction around itself at once.
Despite dragon-Piper and Aerrow's bestial forms, they gaped in quiet horror at the eight-legged monstrosity that had just crawled forth from the belly of the world. The three dragons almost didn't notice Blacktalon's manic, high-pitched giggling as his wide, ecstatic mauve eyes beheld the monster, nor the tears streaking along his face.
"A thousand years in this accursed undead state, and at last it bears fruit!" Blacktalon was screaming. "After all this time, I will see her again."
True fear was not an emotion Smaug was inclined to, and he didn't feel fear now, but… he was very wary, and he knew anything other than caution could be the death of both him and Piper.
"Yes… things between us will be as they were," Blacktalon almost breathed out wheezily. The goliath spider-creature observed the dragons with the many eyes scattered across its form. Seeing the other two drakes were still goggling, Smaug roared a barking command over at dragon-Piper, then he leaned into a glide across what remained of the valley. Dragon-Piper followed him after two seconds indecision, and Smaug was within seconds latching upon one of the larger surviving spiky peaks with all fours. As Piper landed a deliberate distance across on another peak, the large male dragon roared at the vast spider monstrosity – not a threatening call yet, but very much a wary one.
The monster responded by emitting a hiss-like noise from its mouth and the air rippled with its exhalation – its horrific, drooling jaw of a mouth with pike-like teeth, surrounded by two thin mandibles resembling jointed blades and four huge mandibles almost resembling a crab's pincers. It was hardly what mortals would've considered a natural sound, hissing and rattling with a metallic taste to it. Defiantly, the monstrous spider shifted its front-most legs – each equipped with a three-clawed foot – further into the valley, a sign of disrespect to Smaug's defensive display which made the great dragon burn hot with a desire to fight for that. Then they all felt the psychic presence attempt to press into their minds, prompting Smaug to throw up his great mind's mental defences; Piper was pulling on their bond, ready to use its power offensively if need be. But the psychic intrusion never went beyond the immediate edges of their consciousnesses, and it felt like this presence couldn't breach their mental defences unless they were lowered; dark, cold and slimed as it felt, like the most haunting cave in the darkest depth of the world.
"Have hungered… for so long…" the voice whispered (more like hissed) in the dragons' heads like a harsh, cold wind brushing flaking wood. It sounded female, but male whispers accompanied and echoed its words perfectly. The spider-abomination craned its ugly head to the dark-grey polluted sky, parting its monstrous mandibles as it screeched terribly and triumphantly, the psychic voice changing with each repetition into something harsher and devoid of the echo: "Free… I am free. Free. Free! FREE!" Even uncloaked from the canyon's unnatural darkness, the giant spider seemed more cloaked in shadow than it would've been if no magic were at work. Its head was larger than its torso, looking like it should've been unnaturally heavy, though the undersized thorax supported the head and abdomen regardless. The monster re-focused its many beady eyes on its audience.
"Dragonssss," she hissed almost ferally, in a threatening tone. Her voice was no longer the spirit-like echoing sound it had been at first – it was now a singular voice. Still somewhat female-sounding, but shrill, piercing and unpleasant, rather like the sound of a sword scraping on a whetstone. Dragon-Aerrow narrowed his green eyes and growled softly. The abomination gaze looked directly upon Smaug and Piper, and Smaug's hackles rose. "Smaug of the winged serpentsss, the one who died and did not and lives again, the remnant of dayssss long past. And the daughter of Men who donsss dragon-skin. I shall… thank you." Piper gasped a hissing gasp of surprise. "Ssso long did I wait in the dark. Waiting, planning. Agonising." Dragon-Piper subtly glanced at Smaug, before she dared reply.
"Who are you, and where are you from?" Piper's tone was gentle and neutral, not judging this creature as hostile or without reason just yet, but still her scaly brows were subtly low. The spider hissed, and Piper thought it was almost seething at her, glistening drool falling from its lipless teeth and pincers which were large enough to easily fit a grown dragon's head inside.
"The ssserpent who sullied you can tell you of my hissstoryyyy," the spider-abomination rasped in its awful voice. Though the abomination didn't press into the valley, Smaug was still agitated as he bared his teeth, long tail lashing behind him. "I have slept and waited in the darknessss for ssso long, waiting to come to thisss worllld." The gigantic spider-abomination was glaring directly and almost singularly at Piper and Smaug, and the dragon-Storm Hawks got the impression that if she could grin, she would. "Ssso long have I waited to see the light again. To take it into the darknessss's belly. Jussst asss I devoured the mightiest gemsss of the Elder Daysss!"
"Ungoliant…" Smaug growled the name in a worryingly low whisper, his fiery eyes wide yet his thickly-built jaw was half-locked and his facial muscles relaxed-looking – hearing Smaug talking like that and seeing that expression on his face made Piper want to turn to stone. The name he'd spoken sounded familiar, and Piper took only two seconds to recall it from the stories Smaug had told her. A great and terrible spider-demon of the Elder Days, the mother of all spiders; most notably the big and wicked ones which had once plagued the world, both hateful and gluttonous for the light. Depending on the version of the tale, Ungoliant was mythically the poisoner and devourer of the Two Trees which preceded the sun and moon. The spider-demon hissed nigh-inaudibly, almost snidely.
Seeing all three dragons were distracted, Blacktalon in the space of a second slipped out a humming orange crystal and slammed it against the scales of the claw holding him. The violent blast made dragon-Aerrow screech and somewhat reel back – though his current form's indestructible scales protected him from harm, the damage was done. Blacktalon fluidly landed on the valley floor in a crouch, so tiny compared to the other four beings currently present.
"Great lady death," Blacktalon murmured, his eyes wide, unperturbed despite his bleeding ears. Despite the lingering measure of composure in his body language, his gaunt, stolen face was wet with tears. "You are here at last."
"Yooou…" the spider-demon Ungoliant hissed in a whisper as some of the eyes on her legs shifted onto Blacktalon. "You have done well…"
"Yes," Blacktalon all but whispered, and the grinning, joyous look on his tear-stained face disturbingly made a couple of the present dragons think of a devout priest – or fanatic – seeing their deity in the flesh. "I brought about the conflict between the two dragons, when the time was right. And now the worlds of the living and dead are together as one." The sound that Ungoliant's telepathic voice pressed into everyone's minds caused Blacktalon's face to fade into confusion. The great spider-demon's mandibles split apart from her maw which she bared to the world as shrill, rhythmic screeching-sounds belted in close-together intervals into everyone's brains – she was laughing.
"Poor, poor fly," Ungoliant's voice rasped into all their heads. "There are no dead-onesss coming back. There isss no resurrection. No reunion. No great goddessss. There is only food, and I hunger."
"What…?" Blacktalon mumbled softly, as if his mouth and vocal chords were working on automatic. Dragon-Piper's and Aerrow's gazes shifted back to Ungoliant.
"Do not be ssso glum," Ungoliant hissed awfully. "You have saved usss from a terrible fate." As Ungoliant finished that sentence, Smaug noticed the suddenly-clear scuttling sounds behind the valley wall she sat atop, like a tidal wave was approaching – Piper also heard it. Not two seconds later, smaller arachnid monsters came swarming over the precipice like fire-ants from a disturbed colony, keeping a clear distance around Ungoliant as they surged into the valley below. Dragon-Piper and Aerrow cried out in surprise. As the spiders poured forth in the hundreds of thousands, Ungoliant shrieked terribly, and with a single spring of her spindly legs the spider-abomination shot into the sky – despite being nearly as large as a small Leviathan, the spider wasn't as slow as one would think. The dragons reeled back with terrible roars, before the eldritch monster landed fluidly in the valley, frighteningly close to the fly-sized body-snatcher who was thrown by her impact.
"You…" Recovering quickly, Blacktalon's face snapped from a look of lost bewilderment to a burning glare of outrage. "You LIED TO ME!" he screamed, promptly unleashing an energy-wave from his crystal-guandao. The pink blast exploded on one of Ungoliant's spindly arms looming two storeys above him, making the spider-demon screech an ear-piercing, terrible sound. Aerrow and Piper were taken aback as they stared. Ungoliant furiously brought a spindly leg hurtling downward. The leg's house-sized claw pinned Blacktalon to the earth, his wing-apparatus not even extending before he was hit. Among the smaller spiders pouring into the valley – they varied in colour from black to grey to brown, all with mottled colours, and were vaguely more like various species of giant normal spiders than their brood-mother – two fixed their beady black eyes on the dragons and hissed, which alerted more of the horde to the airborne creatures. Some of the spiders even excitedly, or dumbly, began firing strands of their web into the air like projectiles. Dragon-Piper acted immediately, roaring as her leathery wings lifted her higher into the dark sky, blue light flowing along her scales, before with a powerful wing-thrust she released a mighty blast into the valley. The blast shot down, and exploded in a ball of light extremely close to the colossal spider-demon's legs as she hissed and backed away, having seen it coming. The oncoming swarm likewise screeched and cringed at the flash of light. Ungoliant, who now had Blacktalon held by one of her four hanging arms and half-cocooned in dull-grey webbing, was already turning her focus to Piper with a screech, cloudy eyes burning with hate. Despite the chill in the dragoness's bones, reptilian orange eyes glared darkly back before dragon-Piper roared, chest glowing and preparing to unleash another blast-
When Smaug swooped upon her like an eagle upon a mouse from behind, strong legs tackling the surprised smaller dragoness. All of this occurred half-a-second before Ungoliant's bared abdomen fired a stream of web like a projectile-
-which met mid-air with a blast of light from the disoriented dragoness.
KA-BOOM.
An explosion of light and noise erupted throughout the valley. Two carrier-sized shapes were propelled at high-speed backwards from the light, one directly behind the other, before crashing with a terrible noise into a surviving peak which immediately triggered a rockfall upon them and the surrounding peaks.
Elsewhere in Bakarech Owai, Dragon Cyclonis halted her flight and widened her purple eyes as she saw the brilliant flash of light above the crooked peaks, heard the blast of noise.
In the valley, smaller spiders screamed their horrible shrieks and turned heel from the blinding light, back towards the pit they'd come from. Their colossal brood-mother shrieked as she staggered amid the agonising, searing hot light, like powder burning the skin yet needing to be more properly ingested. Then the lines and studs of crystal through her flesh lit up varying colours and hummed, up until the blast dissipated and Ungoliant was the only source of light beneath the cloud-darkened sky. Cloudy eyes glowing slightly, Ungoliant lifted her oversized head and hissed as she recovered.
Far down the valley, dragon-Aerrow screeched in his backwards trajectory from when the blast had knocked him, crashing with a sound and several rockfalls into a large peak. What spiders hadn't retreated back into the black pit were swarming and closing in on where the red-and-silver dragon had been buried, two carpets of the spiders merging into one as they closed in. With a clap of sound, the pile of rocks exploded, sending spiders fleeing, as dragon-Aerrow shot skyward with a terrible bellow, leaf-green eyes blazing bright. Aerrow glared at Ungoliant momentarily, then twisted his serpentine neck. Neither Piper nor Smaug were anywhere in sight, but Aerrow did see the trail of flattened and carved rock left by what must've been their beeline passage under the blast, and the dust-cloud and rubble where they must have fallen. Whirling his blazing gaze back at the spider-monster, Aerrow roared terribly. Ungoliant responded with an awful scream of her own that could've pierced eardrums, baring the chrome teeth her mandibles usually half-concealed – as she screamed, Aerrow noticed the way the air around her seemed to grow ever-darker, like there was a pollution cloud made solely of grey shadow permeating out of her. The bigger the effect rapidly got, the harder it became to see Ungoliant or her surroundings except for near the edges, only her eyes standing out until those too vanished amid the materialising, dream-like darkness. Aerrow stared in astonishment and worry, but didn't reel back. With Piper down, she couldn't grant him any Binding spells, though Aerrow was still currently in his dragon form. He hissed in breath as he leaned his body to fly forward, green light shining between his chest's scales and up his neck, before he let loose a torrent of green-and-red fire. Spiders on the ground screamed and tried to escape, but were caught and disintegrated by the flames in droves as the dragon passed over, tracking the fire through the horde. Then the grey thing surged like a cloud upon Aerrow, and his sight and hearing were all subsumed.
It was difficult to describe what happened for Aerrow, as he breathed his fire and could register impressions of the flames' green-and-red light in his mind, but not where they went. He was aware of his body parts and of what was within a few inches of him, but beyond that, everything however hard he tried to perceive it was just clogged and blocked off from him by a veil of endless darkness of both the senses and the mind, a shroud that would only draw him deeper into a neverending void if he went through it. In other circumstances, he might've wondered if this was what it was like when certain parts of one's brain related to sensory information were shut down by misusing the wrong crystal or by a mind-worm infestation that Stork could describe. He tried firing off torrents of flame left and right, hoping he might burn Ungoliant by chance or light up even a patch of the darkness to give him an idea of his surroundings. Trying to ignore the way he started feeling panic threaten to swell inside him – something he was not used to experiencing at all while in his dragon form – as he increasingly felt like he was choking or drowning in an endless black sea that would swallow him up but not grant him the mercy of death by water filling his lungs. Aerrow felt it, he could contain the fear for the moment but it was like a filling, boiling geyser that would burst inevitably. He banked in a certain direction, hoping it was the right one. He flew and flew, on and on, he felt like he could've been flying through the dark, obscuring cloud for half an hour or a chunk of his lifetime.
Then he was bombarded by colours and shapes in his vision, wind on his scales and below his wings, sound in his ears and smell in his nostrils, and he welcomed them. He almost didn't see the other dragon until they almost flew into each-other, barely pulling back with surprised roars and rearing the fronts of their bodies momentarily as they hovered and observed each-other.
"Cyclonis?" Aerrow exclaimed, surprised.
"What's happening?!" Dragon Cyclonis all but shouted in her sibilant voice after a brief pause, and Aerrow promptly turned his leaf-green gaze back. Below the broiling, dark clouding that was spreading through the sky, black as a thunderstorm but devoid of noise or lightning, Aerrow could vaguely pick out the distant bits of movement from more of those smaller spider-creatures, swarming out of the dark canyon that had once been Bakarech Owai. Swarming onto Ionos. And much closer to home, that grey cloud he'd almost been lost inside had engulfed the valley and all its occupants, billowing out like smog.
"Long story short, a giant spider-monster came out of Bakarech Owai along with millions more, and is making that thing, and even I can't navigate when I'm a dragon. Now let's go!" Aerrow blurted out quickly. Cyclonis only briefly glanced at the billowing void-cloud, then twisted and followed the smaller red dragon, flying away.
The two dragons came upon the Condor in minutes, the carrier having been hurtling with a howl of its engines in the direction the dragons had come from but now arcing to meet up with them whilst they slowed to hover. On the bridge, Stork and the others' eyes widened at the mass of dark-greyish nothingness beyond easy description that was visible past the dragons, seeping like monstrous fog past the ridge they'd come from.
"We need to find Piper!" dragon-Aerrow shouted. "Now!"
Sugamatsi growled out a groaning sigh when he saw the winged rodent flying towards the street.
"Where in the underworld have you been?!" he snapped, raising his arms as the dome-beaver came to hover in front of him. "I could've been killed because of you!" Wilford squeaked, all but shrieked, in fright of something he saw past Sugamatsi's shoulder, making the cheap-suited reptilian tourist-trapper turn his head. Despite his penchant for selling psychic bogus which he didn't believe an ounce, Sugamatsi could swear he felt a stillness and lack of wind that told him something was truly, truly wrong. Just off the terra Nazowanas was situated on, a towering fog-bank which appeared made of shadows with nothingness at its centre was crawling forward from what remained of Bakarech Owai. Sugamatsi's hearing caught sounds like chittering, making him lower his gaze somewhat. Ahead of the enclosing dark mass, on a slope of land below the terra but just above the cloudline, Sugamatsi saw scores of black spider-creatures, each at least as big as him, swarming forth, straight to the terra. Once Sugamatsi's brain fully processed this new mind-numbing information, his mind acted on its first priority – he hit the button on his remote, prompting Wilford to squeal and abruptly envelop them inside a small, green bubble.
The spiders came upon Nazowanas ahead of the dark fog in moments, crawling up the terra's side en masse, hissing and screeching as they swarmed over the spooky-themed buildings and flooded the wide roads, smelling and hunting for food. Sugamatsi and Wilford were reduced to crying out and hugging each-other in fright when several spiders, mostly the size of carts, were upon and rasping at their protective green orb, dozens upon dozens of spindly legs scrabbling and scratching furiously, mandibles hissing and spitting drool. All across the terra, spiders were all too happy to smash and break their way into the abandoned stores, snarling and ravaging over glowing or shining goods or anything that emitted energy. Most of the terra's defences had been destroyed and disposed of by the giant bloodred dragon when he'd attacked, but a couple Crystalmatons designed to look like squid-abominations acrobatically emerged to start firing on the spiders, successfully blowing a couple to bits – which only prompted more to swarm upon the Crystalmatons in a furious frenzy, and they quickly went down under the hairy and mottled bodies.
THUMP.
A small, subtle tremor that could've been caused by a distant jackhammer jolted through the ground, jarring the bauble-shaped forcefield slightly, making Sugamatsi and Wilford readjust their gazes. The dark shadow-bank was upon Nazowanas, half-swallowing a row of shops from the back. A second gigantic, tower-height, spindly leg with eyes on it materialised alongside its earlier counterpart from the dark thing, followed by a monstrous head out of a mental patient's nightmare – over a dozen beady eyes and a horrible maw, and two pairs of spindly forearms with claws. After some time beholding the colossal monstrosity, Sugamatsi's fear collapsed into something else, and he began sprinting inside the forcefield to make it roll under his soles like a hamster's ball, to a certain destination, screaming at the top of his lungs.
The spider-monster hissed and snarled as she observed the disappointingly empty, food-free terra below, the smaller spiders rightfully knowing to scatter from their mother's immediate presence lest they wind up becoming snacks. Ungoliant's front leg lazily brushed through a dwarfed house, shattering it. A few of her children dare scuttle closer to the fresh ruin when she didn't immediately show interest, investigating to see if there was anything inside. The spider-demon was quick to dismiss this place as barren, only linger as long as she took to lay here while her spawn scrounge on whatever scraps were worth eating. Food. Food other than her offspring, after so long in the darkness without anything more craved than meat and light and anything other than what was down there. Ungoliant fully climbed onto the terra, the tallest buildings barely reaching the height of her legs' lowest joints-
WHA-BASH!
Ungoliant screeched in surprise and staggered sideways from the tiny thing that had shattered on her with a small burst of energy, a swirling cyclone of fog looming near her head. The newborn storm suddenly began expanding and grumbling with the sounds of a powerful typhoon as it wrapped part of the gigantic spider-demon in itself. The building storm started pelting Sugamatsi and his surroundings with a sudden downpour and a howling wind blew at his clothes, whilst the spider-titan screeched in pain as lightning in the storm-cloud lashed her, winds inside the funnel tearing at her flesh. She scuttled away from the storm that was now half as big as her, mottled flesh partly torn. But the crystalline veins-studs running through the monster glowed, and the flesh began closing its wounds. She turned half-a-dozen of her many milky eyes on her attacker and hissed, threateningly.
"Nazowanas, people!" Sugamatsi roared at his station with a box of his merchandise outside the shop, getting out another storm globe, while the dome-beaver cowered terribly close to his leg. "Ready to face the end of the world!" Ungoliant seethed, glaring at the puny but tasty little treat of a worm who'd dared to defy her. Then she charged and lunged forward, drool dripping from chrome teeth, screaming a sound that might've driven weaker-willed mortals insane just from hearing it exist as she made sure this was the gnat's last stand.
A/N: Dun-dun-DUNNN!
The Daynight has come.
Please do comment and tell me what you think of everything that happened and the reveal. :)
I apologise that there wasn't more dialogue between Smaug and Piper in this chapter – there was originally going to be a pre-asskicking chat between them in Bakarech Owai, but I decided to move and delete it for the next chapter.
With midnight less than an hour away here in the UK, I'll wish you all a Merry Christmas, and I'll see you in the New Year! :)