Wrath of the Dragon 2, page 22
I let out a roar of triumph, and the Water Lands’ creatures roared back as they kept on slaughtering our enemies.
Then there was a deafening rumble from the cliffs, and the Demon King finally emerged.
But he didn’t come from the highest cave. He burst through one of the lower cave entrances right at ground level instead.
“Fuck,” I snarled.
I hadn’t expected him to come out there. I’d hoped to have the height of the cliffs on my side for this one, but I was ready to slaughter the bastard either way.
The king clearly had to bend over to cram his way through the tunnels, but then he uncurled his grotesque body to tower at about twenty feet tall. And he smelled like a cesspool of death and shit, even from way up in the air.
His skin was a murky mix of greens and blues, and it was covered in barnacles, fish bones, and even a small octopus squashed onto his right shoulder. There were slime-covered spikes running down his back, and he had large gills flapping at the side of his neck. As he lumbered below me, I could see his face was a squashed, ugly mess of teeth and lumps. A thick, moss-covered tail dragged behind him, and it was blotched with rancid seaweed.
He was a disgusting mess of a monster, and it was time to show him who the fucking boss was.
I dove down as he looked around, and I planted my claws deep into his head as I breathed a cloud of darkness down into his face.
The Demon King made a noise so piercingly loud that my entire body shuddered.
My talons scraped off thick flesh, and I soared upward as he swung his arms around. But the black cloud engulfed the huge beast, and he spluttered and cried out as he tried to stumble away. Then the dark cloud began to fade from the king, and his gray eyes were bulging as he furiously rubbed them. He had started to stumble into the battlefield, but I circled above him ready for another attack. I felt the gentle tickle in my throat as I spat another wave of blackness into his ugly face, and darkness cocooned his massive head a second later.
Now, he swayed so much that he brought his foot down directly onto a shelled demon. There was a sickening crunch as the underling died, and the king roared as he tried to blindly walk in a straight line.
I soared down toward the king as he slowly regained his sight, but some of the demons had started throwing their orbs aimlessly into the sky to try and stop the invisible threat. I dodged them all until they’d missed me by yards, and then I circled back to plan my next strike.
But the Demon King had turned his sights to the angels now, and he screeched as he pointed up to them.
“Aaangels,” he cried. “Get me the aaangels. Down to my swamp they will go.”
The king was maniacally drooling now, and demons of all sizes were still rushing out of the caves around him as I soared over his head to spew darkness into his eyes once more. My plan was to disorient him as much as possible and then transform into my fire dragon form. I would use my flames to kill the fucker, and it seemed it was almost time. The Demon King swayed as the cloud of blackness enveloped him, and he lashed out so hard that he sent several stones tumbling down from the blue cliffs behind him.
Not far away, Cyra and Nisha were battling against the demons that piled out of the caves, and they kept a close eye on each other’s backs.
The fire angel plunged down to press her burning palms over the demons’ eyes, and most of them toppled over the edge of the cliff as they ran off in a screaming frenzy. Bodies plummeted to the ground and landed in bloody heaps of explosive flesh and organs. The red-haired angel smirked as each corpse fell, and her golden freckles shone against her firelight.
Nisha used her night powers to vanish and brought down the axe into the skulls of every demon she could reach. She swung the blade into the throat of an orb thrower, and the beast was left with a gaping wound that produced a waterfall of blood. The night angel flew behind the dying creature and gave it a hard kick to send it tumbling over the ledge to its messy doom.
The king screamed as he watched his army being slaughtered, but then he turned his focus to the angels as he waved his arms.
“Bring me angels,” he bellowed out over the land. “Aaangels are mine!”
“Fuck you,” I growled deep in my scaly throat. “They’re mine.”
The king looked up then, and as I swooped over his head, I focused on my fire dragon form. I let my fury at this giant, nasty bastard fuel the warmth that shot right down my invisible body, and my black scales rippled as they were replaced by golden ones. The transformation ran down from my face to my tail like a fiery tidal wave, and my slender snout turned into a sturdier one as my throat burned pleasantly with fresh flames.
The Demon King’s ugly face twisted in shock and fear as I emerged right above him, and I lit up the night sky with my fiery presence.
Several of the Water Land creatures stared up at me, too, but they quickly got back to fighting after they took a moment to admire my new form.
Then the Demon King screamed as I flew right toward his ugly face. His yellow teeth snarled at me, and he swung a taloned hand at my wings, but I dove down quickly to avoid his hit. Then I breathed a stream of fire right at his chest.
My orange flames lapped at the barnacle-covered flesh, and the Demon King howled in pain as his skin warped and ignited in an inferno. I dove upward and flew over his head to drag my talons over his open wound, and as my thick claws scraped the tattered skin, I felt warm blood cover my claws.
The king smacked his hands down onto his burning chest until the flames were put out, but the fire had clearly done a shitload of damage already. His torso was now made of scorched, leathery skin, and there was a rancid smell of burning flesh carried on the wind. The wound on his head gaped open enough to reveal his skull, and blood poured into his eyes while he screamed louder than the whole battlefield.
“He’s almost dead,” Cyra yelled. “Ryan, you’ve done it!”
“We all have,” I shouted as I circled over the king’s head. “You’re all doing fucking amazing. Keep fighting!”
A group of Puddle Pixies below me had descended onto a shelled demon like flies. They piled all over the beast and swung their oversized swords down into any exposed bits of flesh they could find. The demon howled as its skin was cut up brutally, and one of the pixies screeched as it plunged its blade into the beast’s eye socket. Then the tiny fighters cheered as the demon toppled over, and they raced over to an orb thrower with manic battle cries.
I turned my attention back to the king, and the giant creature was a mess of burned flesh and oozing blood. His eyes were half-shut as he spun around, and he desperately tried to swing toward the angels who were far from his reach.
“That’s what you get!” Cyra called. “For messing with our sister!”
“Finish him, Ryan!” Nisha shouted. “Spill every drop of his evil blood onto the land he tried to destroy!”
“Yeah!” Cyra cheered. “Fucking kill him!”
“As you wish,” I laughed as I circled over the king.
“Draaagon,” he gurgled through a mouthful of blood.
The Demon King tried to take a step, but he didn’t seem able to lift his foot from the ground. He dragged his leg forward, and I positioned myself right in front of his face.
The powerful heat was already building up in my throat, and I sent an enormous stream of fire straight into the king’s face.
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Every inch of his bloody face was suddenly ablaze with dancing orange and red. His eyeballs melted into little puddles of soggy jelly, and the fire quickly spread down his throat. The barnacles and seaweed that were stuck to his skin crackled into black ash, and his massive body stood still like a flaming beacon for a moment.
Then I spat another cloud of fire into his belly, and it only took seconds for his entire body to go up in flames. The Demon King’s bumpy skin melted off the bones as he fell, and the people on the ground scattered as the massive body tumbled down.
“Fuck yeah!” I yelled as the evil fucker fell.
His burning corpse hit the ground with a thud that echoed out over the cliffs, and the creatures of the Water Lands erupted into cheers. Cyra and Nisha screamed with laughter as they did somersaults in the air, and I soared upward for a victory lap before I flew back down to the angels.
“He’s dead!” Nisha sang. “The Demon King is dead! I can go inside and bring Brooke out!”
“Yeah,” I said as I looked down at the battlefield, but I had a strange sense that something was wrong.
“Ryan?” Cyra asked. “Why aren’t you cheering? You just slaughtered the fucking king!”
“They’re still fighting,” I said. “They haven’t run off.”
The angels looked down, and we watched as the bloody war continued on below us. In the Night Lands, the demons had all fled the second their king had been killed. The moment he had died, the entire castle full of the bastards had raced out as fast as they could to run and hide. Not having their king to protect them had scared them to death and given them nothing to fight for.
But the demons below us continued the battle as if they hadn’t even noticed the king’s death.
“Maybe they’re braver than the Night demons.” Cyra shrugged. “Or way more stupid. They might not have realized that the burning pile of bones was once their leader.”
Nisha stayed quiet as she studied the scene below, and she shook her head as she watched the demons fight.
“Ryan’s right,” she said. “Demons have no honor. They would not stay to fight once their leader has been killed.”
“What are you saying?” Cyra asked. “He was the king! Obviously, he was the leader!”
The fire angel looked uncertain as she spoke, and she eyed the cave suspiciously.
“Should I go inside?” Nisha asked. “Maybe they really are just guarding Brooke. They might be using her powers, and they know they have to keep her inside to survive.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I have this bad feeling that--”
I was interrupted by a sound so horrific that my whole body shuddered, and the battle below me seemed to freeze.
It was a howling scream that was so loud, I thought it had actually deafened me for a moment. The scream made the lake ripple, and the Puddle Pixies fell over as they clutched their tiny ears. Even the demons spun around to look at the caves, and they all suddenly broke out into excited shrieks. The web-footed ones jumped up and down with manic howls, and they raced in circles as if they couldn’t physically contain their joy.
Then the orb throwers launched their glowing weapons into the sky, but it seemed like it was more of a celebration than an attempt to hit anyone in particular. Every shelled demon screeched up at the sky like wolves, and the air was filled with the sounds of demonic celebration. Even though the ground was stained with their blood, the evil fuckers were clearly elated with whatever was about to happen.
“Something’s coming!” I yelled over the battlefield. “Be ready and look out for each other!”
Even the Kraken was frozen with three tentacles in the air, and the Selkies paused with demon heads in their mouths. Then the sound came again, and this time I could tell it was coming from the same central cave.
“Another king?” Cyra asked nervously as we stared at the dark entrance.
“Maybe,” I said. “Whatever it is, we can fucking kill it.”
My fiery powers pulsed over every inch of my scales as I waited, and the king’s dead body continued to burn below me. His skin had completely melted away, and he was now just a pile of fiery bones laid out on the ground. The smell was awful, but I barely noticed it as I waited for our next enemy to emerge. My heartbeat quickened, and I readied myself for whatever the fuck was coming.
The demons had gone absolutely feral, and they didn’t even seem to care about the creatures of the Water Lands who kept fighting. I could hear huge footsteps approaching from the tunnels, but there was also a definite group of smaller feet with them.
“More are coming out,” I warned everyone. “It sounds like a whole new group is about to appear.”
The two angels stared with narrowed eyes at the upper cave, and Nisha vanished back into her night form.
Then a group of demons emerged from the doorway high above the battlefield, and they were a breed I had never seen before. They stood on their hind legs at about ten feet tall, and they were built like steroid-filled bodybuilders. Every inch of their murky-blue bodies was made of muscle, and their skin rippled as if it was actually formed from water. It was such a bizarre sight, their black eyes darted around the battlefield as they came to a halt outside the cave entrance.
I knew these must be the guards for whatever was coming, so I shot a fiery stream right toward the new demons, but before the flames could hit them, they raised their arms in front of their bodies.
Suddenly, a wall of water formed and blocked them from view. My flames hit the shield instead, and even though the angel fire was strong enough to evaporate their water shields, it meant that the flames did not reach the demons.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “They have some serious powers.”
The water-skinned demons stood stoically as the huge footsteps grew louder, and I could already tell that this thing was even bigger than the king.
“Get ready!” I yelled out to my fighters.
Then the creature finally emerged from the upper cave, and I could see that it was not another king.
It was a Demon Queen.
I could tell by the barely visible hints of a feminine body, but she was even more horrific than the king.
Her skin was gray with rancid mold all over it, and she seemed to have an entire shawl of dead fish plastered to her torso. The bones and rotting scales stuck to her tightly, and her body wobbled violently as it moved. Her snout was long and filled with green fangs, and her dark eyes stared out onto the battlefield like massive black beetles. The Demon Queen wore a cape around her neck, too, and horror set in as I realized what it was made from.
The material sat around her bulky shoulders, and it was stitched together crudely with black rope. Each piece of it was a different color, but they all had little hairs and moles on them.
I felt nauseous as I took in the sight. She was wearing a cape made from her victims’ skin. The creatures she had killed in the Water Lands had been sewn together to create the vile garment.
“Fuck,” Cyra breathed beside me. “Is… is that…”
The fire angel stared open-mouthed at the horrific sight before us, and her golden eyes were fixed on the cape. Her face began to flush pink as she curled her hands up into fists, and she started to tremble with silent rage.
Nisha’s silver eyes were filled with tears, but she gripped her axe tightly as she glared at the queen.
The demons below had begun to fight the creatures of the Water Lands once more, and the queen let out another ear-shattering scream. She waved her hands into the air and began to laugh as she spotted the angels, but her chuckle was even more unsettling than the scream as she showed off all her green fangs and pointed at the winged women.
“Pretty little angelsssss,” she hissed. “Come and play with your pretty little dead friend.”
Nisha gasped, and Cyra screamed as my heart dropped.
“She is not dead,” I spat. “We know you’re just hiding her, you evil piece of shit.”
“Oooh,” the queen laughed. “She looks dead to me.”
The huge beast suddenly reached into her cape, and she pulled out the limp body of what could only be an angel.
Brooke had turquoise skin and a tumbling mass of golden curls. She reminded me of the sun over the sea, and I could tell from here that she was just as beautiful as her sisters. The water angel’s wings were a bright cerulean blue, and she wore a shimmering blue dress that clung to her as much as Nisha and Cyra’s garments did.
But Brooke didn’t move as the queen waved her around, and I felt my heart pounding in my throat.
We couldn’t be too late. It wasn’t an option.
“She’s alive,” Nisha breathed. “I can feel her. Ryan, please. We have to save her.”
The sound of desperation in my angel’s voice lit an inferno in my chest, and my vision went red with rage.
Then I nodded just once before I flew directly at the queen with sparks cascading from my wings, but the demon guards swung their hands to create a barrier of water right in front of my snout.
The Demon Queen cackled, and I unleashed a wall of my own fiery wrath to pierce through the shield. I was about to launch another attack of flames at the queen, but she snarled, and a huge bubble appeared around her.
I swung my tail around to break it, but the bubble simply bounced back against the impact as if it was made of rubber.
“What the fuck?” I growled.
I spewed another torrent of fire at the protective cocoon, and relief flooded my veins as the flames started to melt away the shield. The victory was short-lived, though, because the bubble instantly repaired itself and became whole again in seconds. The flames hadn’t reached the queen inside, and she continued to cackle and wave Brooke around like a rag doll.
Then another wall of water was thrown up to batter me backward, and the guards held it strong against my next bout of flames.
Rage coursed through me with every beat of my heart as I circled back to plan my strategy. The guard demons stood like statues, and they didn’t even seem interested in joining the full-on war going on below them. It was clear that their sole purpose was to protect their queen, and their rippling muscles glistened under my fiery form as they kept their eyes focused straight ahead.
“What do we do?” Cyra cried as she flew around in a frenzy. “We have to get her while she’s still alive! Ryan!”
“We’re going to save her,” I said. “But we need to get rid of those fucking guards first, or they’ll keep blocking our strikes before we can fully focus on the bubble.”
“What if--” Nisha started, but she broke off as a strange sound drifted our way.
It was feather-soft, but it somehow rose above all the snarling and roaring of the battlefield, and my entire body seemed to glow from within just from hearing it.
