~Dragonslayer~
~801. M30~
~Segmentum Obscurus~
~Medusa~
~The Emperor of Mankind, Hero with a Thousand Faces~
A jetbike was one of those technologies pioneered by the nomad clans of Terra, similar had been available in the days of the Federation perhaps, but he was ignorant of them. They were in essence a one-man pseudo-aircraft composed of an anti-grav device, an engine, a main thruster, and some auxiliary thrusters. Dangerous yes, but also dangerously effective when used properly. The nomad clans had been convinced to his banner several hundred years into the unification of Terra, and their learned engineers had been constructing such vehicles for his soldiers to use since.
War-models also carried forwards-facing weaponry, typically bolt or las-guns. As part of the Great Crusade, many gifts had been given unto him by many clans, each seeking his imperial favor. One such gift was from the Nomad clans, a cooperatively-made jetbike for his personal use and new height.
The average man's jetbike was perhaps three meters in scale. The larger warbikes given to his custodians, the 'gryfalcon' models, were perhaps six meters in scale.
His new personal jetbike, made by their master artisans and clad in golden auramite, was as long as a knight-armor was tall, nine meters in length and humming with power. Running an armored hand across its frame, he smiled as its systems made themselves open to his mind. Its powerful engine, its mighty thrusters, its forward-mounted, twin-linked, las-impulsor ready to fire a barrage of sundering laser-fire. Such weapons were normally reserved for tanks.
He had named the warbike Gringolet, named for another horse of his distant youth. Malcador sometimes commented that he needed a better naming sense, but he found that simple and effective names were usually the superior choice.
Similar reasons were why he still used the same symbol he always had, the twin-headed eagle of gold.
Gringolet had been a fine steed, a war-horse that he dressed in red and gold livery, particularly gentle with children and rough with sorcerers. He had ridden Gringolet in the service of an ancient king with a fine looking sword and a persuasive grin. That kingdom was gone now, torn apart by the treachery of the bastard-sons of two entirely separate sorceresses. Two! He still grumbled to himself about that ridiculous affair at times.
He pulled himself from sour memories and made Gringolet roar, engine revving and allowing him to examine its current state. Fully functional, no particular wear, weapons ready, power at full. He nodded to himself, taking stock of the weapons upon his body.
Spear in right hand, sword at his belt, bolt-gun carried in his left hand. His lighter set of aurichalcum-mail covering his body, servos active and field-generator lightly humming. He had left his power-claw off this time, remaining in the care of one of his custodians. He would need both hands for this hunt.
Rolling his shoulders atop a steed of burnished gold and red livery, he looked to his assembled audience, his daughter, his custodians, the Archmagos, the procession of techpriests, and spoke. "Beware of stray fire. I know not what weapons the silver-wyrm wields."
His custodians saluted. The techpriests bowed in prayer. His daughter stared in silent judgment.
He grinned. Gringolet's engine roared, and off the lip of the frozen ridge he rode. The wind rushed past, his hair and cloak whipped behind him, and Griongolet fell in a nearly vertical manner.
He focused his will. The great limit on how fast an object might travel was one of air-resistance. Without that factor, such as in the void, objects could accelerate indefinitely. So gathering up a portion of his will…
He simply cut a path through the air before his steed. Gringolet roared with joy as its path was cleared, and continued to accelerate far past what it might be able to achieve without his will to aid it.
His will still interfaced with its systems, he commanded it to activate its additional thrusters.
The landscape was devoured under the trample of his warbike, hundreds of meters vanishing in moments as he sped forwards towards the vast bulk of the silver-wyrm. Gringolet's las-impulsors began to fire, instantaneous beams of hot light appearing and disappearing with sharp booms of ionized air.
The silver-wyrm was barely beginning to uncoil as the first barrage of laser-fire impacted its form. Immense bulk not staggering with the force, but sensors twitching in his direction and coiling shifting to face him. The beast was enormous, perhaps a kilometer in total length, and judging from the flashes of green-tinted light that appeared each time his lasers struck its hide, shielded by some manner of field generator.
The weapons on the side of its central 'mouth' glowed for a moment. He reacted at once, cutting a path to the side and leveraging his will over Gringolet to turn almost in an instant. Like a massive golden hare, Gringolet changed direction, forcing him to reach out with one armored leg and stomp against the ice to prevent himself from tipping over entirely.
The groove of shattered glacier his boot left on the surface was not as wide as the groove left by the twin-beams of emerald that the silver-wyrm unleashed, nor as smooth. Some manner of disintegration-weapon, similar to the Adrathic weapons of Terra. He grunted, remembering those unstable nightmare-things and all the trouble they caused him.
A tunnel in the surface of the ice nearly a hundred meters long, left by a single devastating moment of the weapons on either side of the silver-wyrms mouth. Best to not be struck by such a weapon then.
Gringolet straightened out as he continued to sail to the side, the silver-wyrm beginning to track him unerringly. Lifting his boot off the ice, he aimed his bolt-gun and fired off a shot. Just as with Gringolet, he carved a path through the air for his rocket-propelled bullet to travel through.
Being selective about how he cut through the air allowed him great mobility in how Gringolet moved. The next beams of emerald green were avoided by shaving an upwards path and making Gringolet leap off a ramp of thicker air.
The bright green sundered a bold trench into the surface of the glacier. Gringolet descended to its standard height again as he continued to race forwards.
In the distance, a moment later, his bolt landed upon the side of the wyrm's face, a great explosion visible even from a distance. Yet again, the shield he couldn't observe before the moment of impact flared to life, and pale green prevented any damage to the creature. He would need to discern the mechanism behind its shielding to inflict proper damage, else he would simply be wasting ammunition. His bolt-gun only had eleven shots remaining.
He grinned. This would be a far simpler matter than the last time.
He fired two more shots, but carved the paths through the air in reverse order. Nine shots remaining.
Emerald beams were avoided with another heavy-handed change in direction, air carved and boot smashing into the relatively delicate ice. His path changed, now heading directly for the silver-wyrm again.
Two explosions burst to life, bullets hitting simultaneously against the side of the creature. Pale-green shielding-force flared to life at the point of impact.
In that moment, he commanded Gringolet to unleash a barrage of laser-fire. Beams of instantaneous light sliced through the air and crashed against the lower-body of the immense creature. The beams of the barrage crashed against unshielded armor for a moment, some seemingly to disappear entirely instead, before it was covered by the pale green once more and protected from further harm.
The shield had difficulty when dealing with multiple simultaneous strikes on different sections of the body. An energy-saving function most likely, the last wyrm had a constant shield about its form.
The armor-panels at the section he had struck were warped and discolored, slowly beginning to correct itself. An automatic-repair function, yet more energy he was forcing it to waste.
He forced Gringolet to the side once more, avoiding another barrage of emerald-green. At this the silver-wyrm began to move its colossal bulk, a thousand legs beginning to revolve and sending it forwards. A great leviathan of metal rearing up and forwards into a dive.
It wasn't aiming for him though, but the ground. He narrowed his eyes as its head crashed into the ice… and passed right through without disruption, a green halo heralding its descent into the glacier below. He steered Gringolet to aim at the body as it descended, firing off yet more laser-fire and crashing against pale green shielding.
He passed over the sight of its burrowing just as the tail disappeared into the ice below him. The ice was undisturbed, indicative of some manner of phase-shifting to allow it to pass through matter undisturbed. Yet another layer of protection he would have to deal with. Three in total so far, two of which clearly required energy to maintain and a third, the armor itself, required energy to repair.
Considering the weapons it had been firing upon him, his earlier estimate was correct. Its reserves of power must be incredibly vast.
They were, however, not unlimited.
He raced across the plains of ice, and counted the moments. The creature was currently hidden from view beneath the glacier, the most tactically sound option it would take would be to angle itself to aim at him from below, and fire its main weapons when under him.
He forced a heavy-handed turn yet again, boot carving an immense channel in the ice and sending him racing to the side. Straight towards one of the few tower-like structures of the old city still remaining. Cutting the angle of the air before him, Gringolet ascended up the side of the immense pillar, and well-away from the glacier-ground below.
This gave him a better angle to view the ice. Something required as the glacier tinted soft green.
He cut a new angle, forcing Gringolet off the tower in an instant, just in time for the twin rays of disintegration to slice the icy pillar in twain. Gringolet's engine roared as he raced through the air now, pushing off the sides and tops of towers and steering through carving his intended path through the winds.
He simply had to wait for it to emerge again, nothing much else to be done for the moment. Every moment it decided to remain under the ice and fire at him was yet more energy he was forcing it to waste. Each time the glacier glowed pale green, he forced a new angle in the air and turned in ways jetbikes simply were not capable of on their own. Often smashing himself into walls of recurrent air-resistance. He was certain his flesh was getting bruised.
Beams of annihilation bored a dozen holes in the glacier-ice, and cut their way through the tops of a dozen more towers of ice and federation-stone. It was good Medusa was so dark, the glow was far easier to spot in this dimness.
He grinned as the silver-wyrm slowly emerged from the glacier, perhaps two kilometers away from his current position. It was enormous, so it was quite easy to spot from his current place in the sky. Changing his angle of flight once more, he descended down the side of an icy pillar in approach.
Straightening out in a hard brake against the floor of the glacier and racing forwards, he kept a consistent barrage of laser-fire booming out. The silver-wyrm changed its tactics, directly approaching now and occasionally sending forth beams of emerald light. Now that he was head-on, it was rather easy to avoid through specific tunneling in the air and commands issued to Gringolet.
Weaving through lances of destruction on approach, the head was consistently shielded by pale-green. Only on rare occasions did his laser-shots breach the field, most of which passed directly through the beast and crashed into icy mountains in the distance, and some of which crashed into plates of silvery armor. Said plates of silvery armor warping and distorting, but then slowly putting themselves into order afterwards.
Three entirely separate layers of protection acting in unison to render the massive las-impulsors, normally used to destroy tanks and buildings, almost ineffective against it. A formidable defense, he was quite impressed by it.
Gringolet roars forwards, hundreds of meters passed in moments. The silver-wyrm met his challenge with a charge of its own, a thousand limbs digging into the ice and hauling its immensity forwards. He adjusted his position on Gringolet, and his grip on his spear. The twin weapons on the silver-wyrm's 'head' glowed.
He jumped. Mind still connected to Gringolet, he commanded it to turn away.
Twin beams passed through the air where he and Gringolet would have been. He soared forwards and up, raising his bolt-gun to fire thrice upon distant sections of the beast's body, carving a path for the bullets to travel through. Six bullets left.
It raised its head to follow him. He hurled his spear at its underbelly. Yet another path carved through the air. The force of his throw halted his momentum in part.
The silver-wyrm's weapons glowed green. He grinned.
His hand caught Gringolet's side as it passed through the air in front of the silver-wyrm, carrying him out of the path of the twin beams with great strain on his arm. It had been simple to command it to circle around to pick him up again.
His bullets crashed into the far-section of its body in fiery blossoms. Pale green formed to protect it. At the same moment, his spear crashed into its midsection. The spear was one of two he had wrought during the unification wars, the other had been given to Valdor.
He had given this spear a name for a particular spear he had known in his youth. One wielded by a rather obnoxious sorcerer-king he had been acquainted with.
Gungnir.
A tremendous boom heralded a newborn sun bursting to life against the underbelly of the silver-wyrm. Unlike all other attacks he had landed thus far, this one forced it to stagger back.
Righting himself upon the saddle of Gringolet once more, he raised his hand and focused upon the specific psytech-beacon in the distance. Once located, he carved a path. A few moments later, his spear raced back to his hand, called by his will and a lack of air-resistance. He forced Gringolet to twist into another sharp turn, avoiding yet another set of annihilation-beams, and firing upon the silver-wyrm as the mist of melted-ice surrounding it began to clear.
A significant chunk of its midsection was simply gone now, although the silver-frame was bubbling and attempting to repair itself with each passing moment. If he waited long enough, it would be entirely corrected. He had little intention of waiting.
The shielding had trouble with simultaneous blows, the phasing was on a specific interval, the armor was not insurmountable, the self-repair was slow. The riddles of its defenses were known to him now, its defeat was inevitable. It's a shame it wasn't making any noise, the roars from such a beast would be wonderful to hear.
Still, if he wanted to defeat it quickly, he would need to inflict yet another simultaneous blow. No… two more simultaneous blows, four in total, just to be safe.
He focused on avoiding more emerald beams for a time, pondering on how best to approach such a task. Eventually, a plan crystalized in his mind, and he nodded to himself.
Forcing another near-impossible turn with Gringolet, he swerved to avoid yet another set of emerald lights and began to race forwards, and then down the side of an immense canyon in the ice. He'd need height for this. Down into the icy gorge he went, the silver-wyrm above shifting to follow with manifold legs, and heat increasing with each passing moment.
Forcing another turn-correction, feet trailing against the molten stone at the bottom, he began to ascend the side of the canyon and straight up. The thousand-eyes of the silver-wyrm glared down at him as he raced upwards, swerving around emerald lances as they attempted to annihilate him.
Readying his spear for a throw, the wyrm reacted, immediately moving back and away. This was, of course, a diversion.
Gringolet roared as it carried him high into the air, screaming as it and his will cut a path through the air. Adjusting his legs, he leapt upwards and commanded Gringolet to turn away. He floated up for a few more moments, feeling the wind race against his hair before slowing his descent with another exertion of his psychic power. Turning his head down, he locked gazes with the immense silver-wyrm.
It glared hatefully at his relatively tiny form. He grinned in gigantic mirth, and raised his bolt pistol.
Six shots against the bulk of the creature. It would take them some time to land.
Now exhausted of ammunition, he set his handgun against his thigh and let the magnets hold it in place. His spear was still adjusted for throwing, he readied himself for the precise moment, and allowed himself to fall quickly again.
It aimed its head at him more squarely. Gringolet completed its wide turn, and weapons glowed in preparation. His bullets approached its body.
The weapons on the side of its head began to glow green. He reached his mind out, far into the sky above him, and searched for a particular connection.
Twin beams of emerald annihilation carved a path through the atmosphere above the kilometer-long silver wyrm.
Archeotech lightning took hold of his form, and in a boom of thunder he was many meters to the right. Disintegration rays passed through where he used to be.
He threw his spear straight down as a bolt of golden lightning.
That was three blows. The wyrm began to shift, doing its best to avoid the hurled weapon. His grin escalated into laughter. His connection with the Imperial Teleportation Array was still active. He reached down for his last weapon.
In another flash of archeotech lightning, he vanished.
His golden boots crashed into the spiny back of the silvery wyrm. It immediately began a massive convulsion in an attempt to twist away.
His bullets crashed against its midsection, hundreds of meters away. Pale green protected it. His hands grabbed hold of his sword's hilt.
Gringolet's laser-fire crashed into its underbelly. Pale green flickered against the new threat. His hands drew his blade.
Gungnir crashed down against its head. Pale green flickered and died against a newborn star. His hands swung his blade.
His grin escalated into booming laughter. He poured the sum-total of his will into his blade. Its systems caused it to ignite in blinding-white flame.
It crashed against the weakened section in its center, where his spear had hit earlier.
The Lands of Shadow, a fearsome and frigid place where metal-fleshed monsters roamed and ghosts wailed, bore witness to a tsunami of golden-white flame. The death-throes of the greatest monster upon the world called Medusa. And with this city-wide wave of psychic flame came the booming laughter of an ancient warrior, carried up and across the mountains by gigantic lungs, heard and witnessed by an awestruck delegation of machine-ministers, golden-clad demigods, and a young woman with light brown eyes.
For he was quite the old hand at dragonslaying.