The great firedrake’s tail swished through the air as he watched the island draw ever closer. With an idle thought he let the tail graze the upper deck of the vessel behind him. Lightly, just enough that the miserable beings inside remembered the power of what they sought to tame.
Call for help indeed.
His taloned forelegs twitched as the scribbler bonded to him sought yet again to interfere. Her inflated perception of her stature drove her to needle at his thoughts like a buzzing insect. She had all but demanded his obedience with her earlier petulance. It was an insult of great measure, but there would be time enough for revenge, against her ignorance and Syntech’s arrogance both.
For the moment, his target lay ahead. An assembled array of weaponry, with an embankment to shield them from retaliation. No small part of him was tempted to leave the fleet behind entirely, to descend upon the unmade with a tempest of sound and fury, destroying them utterly and without mercy. But it would not serve to waste his energies upon the first prey to cross his path. This campaign would be long, and no shortage of opponents would present themselves.
Neither would there be a respite from annoyances it seemed. Smaug exhaled a plume of smoke as the scribbler once again interjected her opinion into his work. Their role was diversionary, to appear menacing where they would suffer from a direct assault. She interpreted this task as a signal to deceive, as was the nature of her small-minded kind. Smaug saw a deeper purpose to their place in this fight. If they sought to impress themselves upon the foe ahead, they needed to break the will of the defenders.
Therein lay the first challenge, for the Unmade did not fear a dragon as they should. Their illness stripped them of much, rendering them down to mere puppets. Unworthy tools used to grasp at distant strengths from safety. They lacked much of what made mortals entertaining. They did not cower, they did not mourn or curse misfortunes. They cared only for the orders given them, even above their own survival.
But they did still need to breathe.
With a faint rumble, Smaug leapt from the prow of the vessel, wings extended and beating slowly. He flew low, trailing merely feet above the water. A surge of elation prickled his brain, as the scribbler took in the feeling of their flight. She was so smitten by a simple action, it was almost pitiable. For all her pretenses at importance, she lacked focus of her purposes or control of her impulses. She would be easy to manage.
As they crossed into the firing range of the fortress, the hills began to erupt with rockets. They were half-hearted efforts, only somewhat targeted. The defenders knew as well as he did that his angle was too shallow for an airborne assault on the fortress’s heights, and similarly too low for their bombardments to catch a mobile target. This was a gesture of warning, an effort to drive him away without expending ammunition they would need when the full assault came. But Smaug the terrible would not be so easily dismayed.
With a billow of his massive wings, he swept his legs forwards, impacting the island’s cliffside with a solid crunch. His massive claws dug into the rock face, and he began to crawl, his movements almost serpentine as he worked his way up the island’s side. The fortress was well defended, overlooking the nearby trees with presumed impunity. But they failed to reckon with a dragon’s wiles.
Once he crested the edge of the island, Smaug roared, exhaling green-red flames into the trees below the fortress. The blaze caught on tree after tree as Smaug swept his head in a wide arc, The wood was wet, but it still popped and hissed, belching horrible smoke where his fire claimed it. A soot-stained cloud soon rising into the sky.
As he leapt into the air, the scribbler finally caught onto his aim. Arcing away and behind the cloud of smoke, Smaug righted himself in the air. He hung there, his massive wings beating with effort, sweeping the smoke in gusts towards the fortress. The black cloud rolled over its walls, obscuring views and choking lungs. This assault now spurred the base into retaliation, but they could do naught but fire blindly into the smoke, and Smaug did not fear their missiles' aim.
He would have lingered here uncaring, circling in the air as he waited for his destruction to drive the fortresses defenders from their hovel. Such was his plan when a spray of bullets peppered off one of his glorious flanks, a small nick grazing in his left wing. Roaring with outrage, Smaug beheld a pair of mechanized beings, one a shining green, the other an equally metallic orange. They raced through the smoke undeterred, flanking him as they continued to fire. Their machine guns glanced off his hide, singing a melody of metal on scale as they fell into the blaze below. Smaug’s great tail lashed out, sweeping the green Cybertonian head over heels into the fiery mess of the forest.
The other mechanical stopped firing, instead emitting a small laser from a mounting on its wrist. The new weapon did not burn, only tracing Smaug’s motion as he writhed through the cloud of smoke, and Smaug laughed in scorn at the meager weaponry they brought to bare against him. The scribbler’s warnings went unheeded, until the base’s artillery began to assault Smaug’s surroundings without hesitation. His position was laid bare to the weaponry of the fortress, and stripped of his obscuring smoke the Dragon's height was left exposed. The air around the great beast began to erupt in fires not of his own making, and for the first time in many years, did Smaug fear his safety in earnest. With a roar and a trailing plume of smoke, he broke and turned, fleeing off the side of the cliff he had first appeared, away from the hateful weaponry of the fortress cannons.
Shells cracked above his head and splashed into the waters below him as he sped back towards the Fleet’s position. The Scribbler was still speaking insistently of something. A glance behind him told him that the architects of his retreat were not yet satisfied. As he watched they leapt from the side of the island, twisting ghoulishly in the air, one taking flight in pursuit, the other splashing into the waters below. To the Scribbler’s untrained eyes, this diversion had gone awry, but Smaug considered it well in hand. They had taken measure of the enemies defenses, and now could draw out its strongest defenders into conflict.
Once he had sufficient distance from the artillery fire, Smaug banked, twisting in the air. He flared out his wings, accepting machine gun fire against his gem-encrusted underbelly as he intercepted the rapidly gaining aircraft. Then did it squeal with the desired fear! His claws grabbed hold of the machine with terrible strength, drawing long gashes in the metal. It hissed and buzzed, attempting to shift its form into one less helpless, but Smaug held it like a vise, locking it in the air as he bore it towards a nearby rock. One arm only, did his foe manage to free, and it punched ineffectually at his breast before he drove the malformed aircraft into the rockface with cruel purpose.
At an urgent bidding from the Scribbler, he sprang away. The water-bound foe surged up from the depths in a spray of brine, transforming from a cylindrical vessel back into a more humanoid shape. Its charge evaded, the green transformer clamped a hand upon Smaug’s retreating tail, borne aloft as the Firedrake swept away. It clung to his tail, a blade emerging from its flank to drive home. Smaug roared with defiant fury curling over upon himself in the air, and billowing molten fire full into the face of his erstwhile tag-along. The former submersible released its offending grip. Partially slagged and sparking, it transformed once again as it plunged towards the water. Smaug banked about to intercept it, but the airborne transformer renewed its assault, machine guns firing once again.
Harrier’s tactics. Despicable trickery. Neither foe was capable of opposing him in earnest, but they would not let him the room needed to decisively dismantle either of them before retaliating. Growling at the sting of machine gun fire, Smaug swept away from his pursuers, soaring nearer still towards the halted fleet. Retreating too far would lead them to break off pursuit. Yet dancing the thin line between safety and glory would perhaps afford him a chance to even these odds.
