Thrashing, roaring, screaming, Karakul struggled against the titanic chains that dug into her armour. The hooks were reeling her further and further into the fog, farther and farther from Smaug. The pair had no fondness for the whelp, but there was still a sense of duty there. They were his queen, they should be protecting him.
Whipping her head over, the reforged dragon snapped her jaws shut over the chains. Impressively, the bite wasn’t enough to snap them, forcing her to wrench her head back and forth like a predator tearing meat from a carcass. Soon enough, the torture implements gave way, snapping into metal fragments and disappearing into the fog.
Hovering in place for a few moments, the now-freed dragon glanced around, trying to get her bearings. Within her molten cocoon, Eszter felt violently ill for reasons she couldn’t quite place. She was baring her teeth instinctively, hackles raised and fists clenched as the duo scanned for any sign of their opponent.
“Where are you?!” Karakul bellowed into the darkness, punctuating her demands with a blast of flame. “Stop hiding in your fog! Face me, coward!”
In response, a bassy bellow rumbled out immediately behind her. The dragon whirled around, lashing out with her tail, inexplicably missing the target who was a few mere metres behind her. The sensation of watching the wild strike simply fail to reach the opponent that was
right there made Eszter’s head hurt, like when she looked at those ‘magic eye’ pictures as a kid.
The beast before her was gargantuan, towering above even the massive Karakul, but more so than that it was a nightmare made manifest. The reincarnations of Yucatan couldn’t tell if she was looking at leathery black hide or some kind of kaiju gimp suit. Nor could she decide which she would prefer, as the outer layer was clearly not connected to the flesh beneath, instead kept in place by countless pins the size of telephone poles.
The beast rumbled again as it regarded her with cold indifference, and the ache in Eszter’s skull rose to a crescendo. The dragonkin choked back a scream as she clutched her skull as if her were trying to hold it together, all the while a strange voice boomed in the shared mind of herself and Karakul.
“You have already been touched. You have experienced some small shade pain.” the voice rang in her skull, even as the forest of needles began to light up with a radioactive blue. “Such sloppy work, though. We have much to do.”
As if a switch was flipped, the monster turned from cold observation to white-hot violence, opening its mae and unleashing another stream of blue energy. Pushing through the pain, Karakul wheeled to the side in an attempt to escape. She only got a few metres before she held herself snap back like a dog on a leash, three more hooks finding purchase in the gaps between her scales.
Lashing out with her tail once more, the dragon queen managed to snap the chains and get a little further away right before the energy hit her like a truck. Fire breath and similar breath weapons were familiar to Karakul. She had used them, she had been hit by them, but nothing in her scattered memories compared to the stream of energy projected by this creature.
It’s destructive power was undeniable, but as it glanced off her scales, it became clear that this was not the intent behind it. Rather, the beam was
agonizing. Even just receiving a glancing blow, Karakul felt as if her scales had been pried off and the tender skin beneath had been sandblasted.
Overwhelmed with fear, pain, and fury, the berserk dragon struck around wildly around her with jaws, tails and claws. Her opponent seemed unphased by her tantrum, and by the draconic roar of pain that rang out from the fog. The dragon queen couldn’t help but pause as she heard Smaug’s wail. Their foe was right in front of her, so what was happening to him?
Before she could investigate, or even consider the possibilities, more hooks shot out of the mist. Karakul attempted to corkscrew through the air to avoid the chains, but they seemed to possess a malign, predatory intelligence as they pursued her. The reforged dragon could only delay the inevitable, darting this was and that before a dozen chains struck home and pulled taut.
Eszter’s stomach dropped as she felt her bond get yanked into the nothingness, shooting into the fog like a titanic, scaly bullet. Desperately trying to free herself, Karakul bellowed furiously, starfire blasting haphazardly into the mist. Moments later, the pair emerged from the fog into… something.
The sights before her were incomprehensible at the best of times, all hard edges meeting at corners they shouldn’t be able to. To that end, it was almost a mercy that the draconic duo were rocketing across the landscape too quick to get a good look at anything in particular.
Dragged from the sky by the monstrous hooks, Karakul slammed hard against the ground, but her impact didn’t give her the mercy of stopping. The chains, extending endlessly towards the horizon, continued to drag her across the ground at breakneck speed. As if the road rash wasn’t bad enough, the area before the dragons was hardly an empty plane. Barbed wire tangled around her limbs, worsening her condition in her chains, while the brutalist architecture provided plenty of surfaces for her to get slammed against and promptly dragged over.
One such surface provided either a desperate escape from the situation or a death sentence for the pair. The reincarnations of Yucatan were racing towards a large, flat wall, featureless barring a large square hole, about three metres across. The hole would have been innocuous had the chains not led straight through it to the other side, threatening to make dragon pate of the two.
Flying into a frenzy, Karakul began tearing manically at the chains binding her, trying to shatter as many as possible before she reached the hole. She worked quick, but every second mattered, and each tense moment that a chain held a little better than expected and refused to break was one moment they came closer to a horrific parody of an industrial accident.
By the time she had snapped about half of her bindings, the dragon queen realised that time was up. Changing tack, she did her best to swivel around in midair, facing her underbelly towards the wall and bracing for impact, all the while flapping her wings desperately to slow herself even just a little.
The crash was savage, alabaster concrete shattering beneath her bulk as she slammed into the wall. Karakul’s legs buckled but did not break, defiantly holding her up against the surface even as the chains struggled desperately to pull her through. To a distant observer, the scene may have looked deceptively peaceful, the great beast simply clinging to the wall. In reality, it was anything but.
Karakul’s vision swam, her breathing short and fast. Within her cocoon, Eszter could hear her past self’s heart jackhammering away from the mix of adrenaline and exertion she was experiencing. The dragon fought desperately just to stay in place, the idea of gaining ground seemed impossible.
But ‘impossible’ was no excuse to lay down and die. There was no chance, in this world or the next, that she would let the bastard controlling the chains get the better of her.
Starting as a low, almost gurgling rumble in her chest, Karakul’s voice quickly rose to a defiant roar. Drawing on all the strength she had in her body, she continued to fight with strength and stamina beyond what should have been possible. It was
torture, painful beyond belief, but she had survived worse. It was nothing compared to the state that Syntech had both found and then put her in.
Against all odds, one by one, the chains began to snap. Buckling under the unbelievable strength of their victim and their own inexorable tug, the torture implements proved to be the weaker link.
Bellowing triumphantly, Karakul pushed off from the wall, tearing the last hook free with the final shove. In spite of it all, the pair had survived,
they had won! Using her push-off to take flight, Karakul shot upwards to get some height and try to find Smaug. No doubt the lesser dragon would be struggling against their foe and needed her to go help him.
Rising up, the dragon queen continued past several more flat faces, flying at strange, unnatural angles to get to the top of the bizarre mess of a structure she found herself fighting by. Then, as she created the top and came to a colossal plateau, one that should have been utterly impossible on the geometry of the cube, and she realised her arrogance. She had not won, and she was no safer than Smaug.
Eszter’s heart froze as she drank in the sight before the pair. At the centre of the plateau, hovering silently a few dozen metres in the air, was… something. It was gigantic, larger than even their monstrous opponent, a diamond-shaped prison that sat motionless in the air.
And it was fucking looking at her.
It was an absurd thought to have. The thing not only didn’t have eyes, but it didn’t have a face, or any other body part to speak of. It was just a big shape just kind of floating there. But there was no amount of logic or reasoning that could convince her that the thing wasn’t
looking at her!
It wasn’t just a sensation of being watched, it wasn’t even the feeling that it was looking at Karakul. The geometrical abomination was looking at
her hidden within her bond’s chest.
Evidently feeling a similar sensation, the reforged dragon wheeled around and tried to run, only for several more chains to strike like serpents from nowhere. The hooks dug in tight from all angles and pulled taut, forcing her to splay out spread-eagle, or perhaps spread-dragon, before the
thing.
Karakul glanced around for any sign of her enemy, the pin-cushioned freak that had started all of this, but saw nothing. A dozen explanations ran through her mind in an instant.
Was it invisible? Were there more? Did it’s influence just extend this far?
Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter. As if in response to the paranoia of the dragons before it, the prism stirred ever so slightly. It did not move, but black energy coursed down its edges to reach the corner facing towards its victims. The substance moved strangely, switching chaotically between gas-like floating and arcing like lightning, but it raced towards the dragons all the same.
Eszter’s vision snapped into sharp focus that she hadn’t realised she was missing as she lost contact with Karakul, staring helplessly towards the jaws keeping her safe in her bond. Even through the intense light of her cocoon, she saw the strange un-light shining through the teeth of the contraption.
Then, it all went black.