141 – Fire-breathing lizards

141 – Fire-breathing lizards

I stared at the beautiful creature, watched as it landed on a nearby island and roared. Compared to Ka’Bandha’s roar, this one was ... cute.

Not that I care. A lizard-like build, four muscular clawed limbs covered in jagged obsidian scales, a large head ending in a snarling snout and a mouth filled with serrated teeth.

Oh, and the eyes. Beautiful flaming orange eyes with slitted pitch black pupils. Fuck Trazyn’s fancy silver noodle, this was a real fucking dragon.

It probably couldn’t fly, but I could solve that later. Anyway, I still wanted a dragon of my own.

“A SALAMANDER?! Here?” The captain of the Marines shouted, but I decided to ignore him and his silly name.

It was a dragon, my dragon, and not a damned salamander. Nope.

“You are so pretty,” I cooed, hopping over the river and walking up to the beast. “Aren’t you just majestic? Here, who’s the good dragon? You are! Come to mommy.”

The dragon snarled and its jaws shot forth, widening to gobble me up in a single bite.

“That’s right! You’re a good dragon, give mommy a hug!”

The world went dark as the maw of the dragon closed around me, then I felt it swallow me whole. Well, that wasn’t too nice of him ... or her.

“Bad dragon,” I mumbled, getting a mouthful of dragon saliva in my mouth. Bad dragons get eaten by mommy. Should have been a good dragon.

My body dissolved into a mass of ravenous white tendrils that shot forth and buried into the flesh of the beast. I heard it screech in agony even from inside its throat.

Tendrils burrowed deep, devouring its flesh, organs, bile, bones and even the scales with startling ease. It hadn’t even been five seconds since the dragon swallowed me, and I was already reassembling my humanoid form with tendrils writhing around me devouring the last scales and droplets of blood coating the surrounding ground.

My eyes focused on the next dragon, it roared, as did the other ten of them that made their way out from the volcano’s depths while I was busy.

“Are you a good dragon?” I hummed, and perhaps predictably, the dragon barrelled towards me with its jaws wide open and clawed feet readied. Obviously, it was also a bad dragon, as were its friends. “Don’t you worry, when I remake you, you’ll all be good and proper dragons.”

Sadly, it was apparent that these dragons of mine were as dumb as a basketful of kitten-shaped rocks. That was something else I’d have to remedy when I remade them.

I shot off nine spikes filled with still active eldritch flesh, all of them piercing into one of the nine dragons while I myself jumped into the mouth of the closest one and repeated the previous dragon’s treatment.

Once I was done with him, I quickly pulled the nine globules of eldritch flesh remaining in the place of the five other dragons and allowed myself a grin of satisfaction.

Dragon: get. Selene’s going to love these.

The ground rumbled again, stronger and much louder this time. Cracks formed on the cavern walls and two of the colossal pillars holding up the ceiling fractured and crashed down, crushing hordes of daemons beneath them.

[Reminder: you counted a dozen approaching foes. That means twelve. You have only neutralised eleven of them.]

“I can fucking count, thank you very much.”

[You are welcome.]

I’d have given a snarky reply if the ground didn’t buckle underneath me just then. Large cracks formed just beneath my feet and I belatedly realised that maybe I should get the fuck away from there. Which I did, and just in time as the moment I kicked off the ground, it caved in, large granite fragments falling down into a deep chasm.

The body didn’t turn into dust, nor did it remain unharmed. Instead, it swivelled up like a mummy and slumped over, slamming face first into the floor.

“Got it, no getting hit by the beam,” I mused, making Trazyn whirl around with his obliterating staff pointed at me. “What?”

“You can teleport?” He asked, lowering his staff. “Ah, of course you can. So? What do you think about your chances of getting that artefact from the beast?”

“Pretty good, I’d wager,” I said, my eyes lingering on his staff. It looked cool. As that thought swam through my head, I felt a wave of discontent press up against my awareness just as my fingers had been forced open and a smooth white staff materialised between them. It pushed itself into my grasp like a needy cat nuzzling my palm for some head scratches.

I smiled subconsciously, rubbing my thumb over the marble-like body of the staff, making it hmm in happiness. Silly staff. You’re still the bestest staff around. No need to feel jealous.

The dragon rounded on me, a primal anger burning in the depths of its slitted eyes. It growled, a deep rumbling sound like rocks crashing and rolling on each other. It pointed its horn at us again, and I likewise pointed the tip of my staff at it.

Atiesh, a weapon of my own making against one of the greatest masterpieces of Vulkan, one of the greatest weapon smiths mankind has ever produced. I saw a movement in my peripheral vision, a hint of gold glowing in the low red glow of the cavern and I grinned.

The beam shot forth, sizzling and hissing as it tore through the air, aiming to kill me where I stood. Atiesh hummed in my grasp, practically drowning me in its naked need to be used. I complied with an indulgent smile, drawing on my diminished soul energy reserves, and let it feast on it.

It devoured about 5% of all that I had remaining, which almost made me grimace, but the results were so very worth it. Space bent the beam’s path, diverting it to the side and sending it racing right towards that green form I’d seen sneakily crawling out of the magma river just a few dozen metres to the side.

To my immense disappointment, the Custodian rolled out of the way just in time, leaving the beam to smack into the ground without effect. I clicked my tongue in annoyance, then stared back up at the big angry dragon.

It tried to make its horn glow again, but it was not working very well. Its ruby horn flickered like a lightbulb on its last leg, its glow appearing uncertain and powerless, unable to fully light up the horn. No shooting beams for that guy for a while.

The dragon looked constipated, its scaly hide pulled into a grimace and its eyes glowing with annoyance and growing rage. It shook its head like a wet dog, then threw its head back and let out a loud roar.

It didn’t waste any time after that. Its head came down, its gaze locked in on me, then its claws sank into the granite floor and then it rushed me. Muscular legs stretching and straining as it pushed and urged its body to be faster and faster, to reach me just nanoseconds earlier so it could rip me to shreds that much sooner.

I smirked, feeling and seeing all that play out in the ancient beast’s mind. Its eyes were surprisingly expressive, and its emotions clearly broadcast over its powerful aura. The emotions of beasts and animals were usually less than a fart in the wind, their flimsy animalistic souls too weak for even some of the better psykers to sense. That wasn’t the case for this dragon, as I suspected even non-psykers could feel its tremendous fury radiate throughout the cavern.

Its jaws parted, plumes of flames licking across its lipless mouth as it moved to devour me whole like its lesser kin tried before. Alas, I wasn’t that willing to go along with that idea this time, seeing as its insides were on fire. I might be a powerful eldritch alien shapeshifter thingy, but even for me, bathing in flames that could melt rock wasn’t conducive for my health.

So I dodged, fluttering over to another island and away from Trazyn and the probably gawking Salamanders. I saw the Custodian follow as the dragon’s claws tore into the ground to arrest its momentum. It slid for a few metres, claws tearing long gashes across the ground before it once again sent itself bounding after me.

Its jaws fully opened and a plume of flames shot at me. There was no psychic power in the flames, not a lick of warp energy, so I just swung my staff and, with a slight application of Telekinesis, parted the flames down the middle, making them sweep past me on both sides but leave me unharmed.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Ka’Bandha trying to disengage from the silver Wyrm to join the fray, its eyes practically alight with glee as it stared at the fire-breathing dragon. Alas, the Wyrm had other plans and a titanic tail-slap sent the Greater Daemon crashing into the wall.

Then I had to hop to the side just as the flames died off, deflecting a vibrating power-spear that came for my neck with Atiesh. I gave a narrow-eyed smile to the custodian, conveying that I wasn’t too happy with him jumping in on my fight.

He didn’t seem to care, letting my parry carry his spear along before he brought it back from the other side with a spin. I flooded my body with bio-energy to parry that strike, still sliding back a bit and then the dragon was upon us, its jaws shooting to bite my head off.

On the other side, the Custodian had his spear aimed at me and I saw the moment the bolter shell ignited in its barrel. How rude, shooting a girl in the face from this close.

Seems like I’ll have to make use of that new stash of bio-energy I got from the little dragons after all. Letting my avatar get destroyed here would be pretty embarrassing. I glanced at Trazyn, the Necron overlord just standing there with his hands behind his back as my drones left behind held off the Salamanders trying to take advantage of him being ‘alone’. It’d also look pretty bad on my resume, wouldn’t it? Getting killed on my first job. Yep. Let’s show these fuckers why they shouldn’t have messed with me.

Bio-energy flowed through my body in droves and I used up just about every lick of energy I had left to reconstruct my newest Psyker Form. The one that I would have trusted to keep me alive in a fistfight with a Primarch.

Let’s get started!