CHAPTER 10: RIDE THE WIND
Sonic raced toward a cliff. He saw something up ahead. It looked like a water-wheel, but there was no water in sight. -Fucking conveyer belts, how do they work?- Shaking the thought from his mind, Sonic stepped on the spinning contraption and used it to launch himself across a gorge into the cave.
"This is it," Caliburn pointed out whilst Sonic was dashing deeper into the cave. "Are you ready?"
"Yup." Sonic answered, smashing through crystals.
Sonic dashed into a narrow area in the cave, and several enemies stopped him. Sonic made short work of them all, shield or not. As he exited the narrow area, he entered a large open one, with enemies scattered along his path. He looked up and saw giant falling stalactites from the ceiling of the cave.
He didn't feel like swinging Caliburn at these enemies. He charged them. He jumped and placed both feet on the first one's chest, knocking him back and onto the ground with Sonic on top. Sonic quickly stepped off and turned around, to see the underworld knight be impaled to the ground from the stalactite. He continued on, rampaging his way through the cave.
Sonic came across a large enemy with a ball and chain. Sonic made short work of the enemy, but kept the ball and chain. -Could come in handy.-
After several minutes spent rushing around the cave which was illuminated by glowing crystals -Cool.- and glowing fungus. -NOT COOL.- He found an exit to the cave, where civilians were caged. -Strange. That wasn't there before... whatever.- There were no enemies to be seen. -CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER...-
And then a dragon popped out.
"WELL DON'T THAT BEAT ALL." Sonic said aloud in disbelief, as he ran behind a rock. -THAT WASN'T THERE BEFORE, WHAT THE HECK.- He swung Caliburn into his holster and swung out the boomstick.
"Sir Sonic, how do you think we should combat the dragon?" Caliburn asked worriedly.
Sonic shook with energy, sighed, and then glared upward. "Efficiently."
Sonic dashed out of cover and ran toward some higher elevation to get even with the dragon. The dragon spat fire at Sonic, but the dragon anticipated a slower foe. Sonic had run on top of a large rock by the time it finished up with the first spray of fire.
"Hope you like your left one better."
With a thundering boom, the eye of the dragon erupted in blood, splattering some on the shooter. -REMEMBER KIDS: When using firearms, stay as far away from the target as possible.- Sonic gagged at the sight.
"Woah, that's gonna need one hell of an eyepatch." Sonic ranted as he watched the dragon wither in pain. He almost felt sorry for the thing, and he would have if it hadn't just tried to incinerate him to a slow and agonizing death by fire. -I wonder if Blaze's servants have the same problem.-
"What are you waiting for?" Caliburn questioned. "The dragon will get its senses back soon enough! Get on it and start attacking it from on top of it!"
Sonic flinched in realization of this. He would have to ride on a dragon whose eye was just shot out by a shotgun. -Well, fuck. I was never known for flying skills, but...- With a bit of hesitation, Sonic stepped back, and launched himself onto the dragon. He swung the boomstick away and pulled out Caliburn.
"Finally, you're on. Stab its wings, make it crash!" Caliburn ordered.
"Alright..." Sonic replied as he got up and began rushing over to the dragon's wings. It was stable as the dragon had landed to regain its senses.
The dragon shook its head to regain control, it took off, shaking Sonic a bit.
"Don't you DARE fall!" Caliburn shouted.
Sonic lunged for the wing, sword posed to stab it. The dragon flew very fast, however. The dragon almost flew so fast that Sonic almost lost his footing when jumping. "OH MY GO-" Almost. The sword pierced the dragon's wing, making it scream in pain and begin to coil its wings. "OH YEAH!" Sonic shouted in relief. Sonic quickly withdrew the sword and grabbed onto the dragon's thick scales as the dragon looped around once or twice before balancing out again.
Sonic staggered to his feet, and again, lunged for the other wing. The dragon anticipated this, so it flew sideways to make his jump turn short. Sonic landed just feet away from where he needed to be to fully stop this dragon's flight ability. Sonic tried crawling and stabbing Caliburn into the wing, but the dragon flipped yet again. This time Sonic was able to get up, jump for the wing and grab onto it, barely.
The dragon began to barrel roll a dozen times, before finally stopping upside down. Sonic quickly recovered, and made no hesitation to stab the dragon in its good wing. The wings coiled again, sending Sonic right back onto the dragon. A bit dazed, Sonic got up and ran toward the head of the dragon.
As the dragon was falling, the dragon began to roll upright, and Sonic ran along with it to make sure he didn't fall off. As he ran there, he remembered about the chain he had taken from the underworld soldier. He pulled it out and began to swing it over his head like a lasso. After enough speed was gained, Sonic threw it in front of the dragon's nose from the right. It soared from the right of the dragon to its left. The ball swung around while the chain tucked into the dragon's gums, the spots where it couldn't chew. As the ball came around and threatened to knock Sonic off the dragon, Sonic dodged and sliced it off the chain.
Sonic grabbed the free end of the chain and gripped the other one greatly as he pulled up. The dragon was in a lot of pain, first the eye, then the wings, now his teeth would be shown no mercy. The dragon managed to muster the strength to pull up in reaction to his oral pain.
"YES!" Sonic cheered as he changed the dragon's direction to head for the cage. "I AM AWESOME!"
"Sonic..." Caliburn worried. "I don't think this was part of the plan."
Sonic scoffed. "Of course not, I follow my own plans. If I think something you say is the way to go, it's the way to go. Not this time though. Hey, do you think this would understand orders?"
"Why?"
"I want to pick the cage up and bring it back down to the girl, all while riding the dragon."
"I wouldn't try i-"
Sonic veered toward the cage of civilians. They were screaming as the dragon drew closer.
"PICK THOSE GUYS UP!" Sonic ordered the dragon. The dragon didn't seem to care. Sonic noticed it was about to spit fire, and pulled up. The pain inflicted on the dragon from this caused its head to fling upward, along with the rest of the body, and as a reaction, its claws clenched around the cage, lifting it off the ground with everyone inside.
"Ha HAA... man I cannot believe this has worked for this long."
"Don't forget we have to land!" Caliburn loudly notified Sonic in an attempt to rain on his parade. "With torn wings!"
"I'm sure they'd take a twenty foot drop if it meant freedom."
"Guh," Caliburn groaned. "Whatever. Are we sure that's all of them? It doesn't seem like a lot..."
"Think logical. Would a fire breathing dragon somehow manage to cage everyone in town and bring them up here, without a single one dying, either being eaten, burned, or falling out of the cage?"
"I agree that although it is good logic, but..." Caliburn paused. "That's some cold logic, there."
"I'm Sonic, not Mister Brightside."
After shortly training himself to dragon-ride, he flew back to the pathway. There, he saw the girl standing there, mouth agape, as Sonic barely managed to get the dragon to drop the cage and settle down. As Sonic got off, the girl walked up to him.
"Oh my... oh my goodness! Thank you so much!" The girl thanked, hugging Sonic around the waist.
"Can't really say it was no problem, but I got something out of it too." Sonic remarked, pointing to the dragon with his thumb. Sonic quickly jogged over to the cage, and cut the lock, and jogged back.
The girl took a moment to examine the dragon, and let out an "ooh" in amazement. Sonic used this moment to clear his throat. "I need to ask you something."
"Yes? What is it?" The girl asked in excitement.
"Are you Nimue?" -Oh yeah, who's the man with the plan?-
Her jaw dropped again. The little girl stared in complete shock at the blue hedgehog like it was changing ten colors a second. Sonic blinked in slight confusion to her response, but in the blink of an eye the little girl changed into Nimue. Nimue walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders, leaning in with a confused look on her face.
"How did you...?" She said, blinking with the same confusion that was on Sonic's face a moment before.
Sonic rolled his eyes and lightly pushed her arms off. "Well, at first I thought it was too much to be a coincidence. A entire town being kidnapped by dragons and taken to a mountain, EXCEPT this one lone girl who was crying on the path I traveled to your place on, at the same day and time?" Sonic began to explain. "I swore it was you at first, this being your 'true test of heroism', or a test on my naïve-ness. Either way, I guessed if I turned it down I'd fail, and so I went looking for a people and a dragon that I didn't think exist. BUT THERE THEY WERE. I was confused, but I still held onto my first thoughts tightly." Sonic shrugged. "I just thought I'd find out if I really did help this kid out or if I just did the last test."
Nimue stepped back for a moment. "Smarter than I had thought you were... and I already thought you were pretty clever."
"Thanks!"
"Hey, blue guy!" said a male voice. -HE SOUNDS LIKE BILLY MAYS. AWESOME.-
Sonic turned to this and saw the civilians getting out of the cage. "Thanks for the help, man! You're our hero!" the man in front said, holding his wife by her shoulder.
"Welp," Sonic chuckled, and, once more, pointing to the dragon. "Can't say it was no problem!" -ANYTHING FOR BILLY MAYS, MAN.-
"You know what sucks? The village burned down. We can't give ya what you deserve for that."
Sonic noticed the wife was holding a child, the exact child Nimue disguised as.
"That's okay..." Sonic reassured, less optimistic.
"Goodbye, and good luck fighting that nasty old king!" The man said, as he turned around and began to walk with the leaving crowd, bringing the wife and child with him.
Sonic turned back to Nimue, who had her head slightly tilted. "Something wrong, Sir Sonic?"
"Ah. Where do I begin?" Sonic began, triggering his sarcasm. "Oh, I know! First off, I had to fight a dragon that I did not expect! Second, I got wounded recently. Shit fucking hurts, you know."
He noticed Nimue was giving him a look. Not a happy look.
"And third, I know that the mercenaries I hired will wimp out by the end, leaving me to do all the work. Sure, there are some nice folks, like Billy Mays over there, but you just can't expect one man to have all the motivation do all of this stuff on his own free will by himself."
"Well..." Nimue began, leaving the sentence unfinished. She never really expected a hero to say that. The honestly had no clue what to say to that.
"No one else, even the king's own knights are too blind or too scared to fight back. Not even your son." Sonic sighed, shrugged, and began cracking various areas on his body.
After a silence for Sonic cracking his body, Sonic finished and looked at Nimue. "Anyway, about that secret about the Scabbard..."
"Ah, yes..." Nimue responded, refreshed at the change of subject."Come back to my home to discuss this, first." The lady of the lake turned and began walking, her eyes still on the hero.
"Alright." Sonic answered, and began to follow, but immediately halted. "Wait."
"What is it, Sir Sonic?" Nimue asked. She turned around to see Sonic sitting on the dragon.
"Wanna ride?"
Nimue looked scared for a moment. "... No thank you."
"Alright."
As Nimue led the way, Sonic rode the dragon behind her.