[ The City Without Name - Stone Flushed Bloody ]
It's nine tonnes and fifteen feet of physical span was trapped back across a low apse mounted on the Chapter House's haunches, swaying about its smooth-cut tail and stapled pike-barred tail end high, a mimic scorpion, rock-teeth grinding while it chuffed and scuttled back and forth. Seydon harried it, crossing Winterfang through its fore-paws, trying to drive it back off the apse-roof. Doggedly, the Rock-Dragon refused any yielding, slamming as much length of tail it could bear over its arched, pitted spine. The Dunaan stepped back with curt leaps. Wickedly sharpened and heat bent, the spiny tail-club ploughed through a low cross of merlon and embrasures, erasing six meters of ancient battlement. He was watching it hop forward and trot into a run, glass-liquid wings unfurling with a suck of stone-flesh. Bio-mechanical musculature gave power, flapping the webbed pinions with enough gain to lift the beast clear.
Seydon watched it spin round the House perimeter, Winterfang held up flat in a long guard protruding from the hilting resting by his throat and chin. That unearthly silence had died, replaced with incessant slaps of rainwater felling across the cabled grooves in the black, waxy spider-bracken coating the tiling underfoot. He watched after the Beast. It was winging hard, aping for a killing strafing run. His agility was mitigated by the forest of risen pinnacle spires and small, stooped companile towers. The wind was whistling through slit-thin chevron windows, raising weeping notes across hanging brass-bells. As the Rock-Dragon shifting and began its attack run, the skies began pelting hail. Some assailed through parts in the companile resin-work, pinging grievous gnells off the hanging vine grape-bells.
The Rock-Dragon opened wide its maw and shrieked. The sound filled Seydon's ears. Natural vocal chords, regardless of species, could not produce that pitched note and timbre. It was the sound of heavens snapping in half, disgorging dead angels. It was the sound of the mortal coil being plucked by reavening crop-blades. It was the death-howl of white dwarfs. Seydon was nearly thrown off the roofing by sheer dint of the rolling subsonic belt that whipped and licked over his shoulders. He threw himself into a long roll, diving out of its raking hind-claws. Stone collided with stone, knocking aside another handful of spindly, worn pinnacle spines.
It roared, gaining altitude with a few short wing-beats, driving down again. The Dunaan twisted round, covering behind a wider companile, just to have the Rock-Dragon plough itself through. It'd tucked in its wings and formed a bending torpedo, ploughing through waxen granite, plastic-like interior arcade frames, collapsing alternating support pillars in a black, explosive debris mist. Stricken bells flew out, ringing mournful notes, jangling a long falling, discordant song. The companile simply disintegrated. Its fall initiated sympathetic collapses across the Chapter House roof, until a third, disassembling bell-tower shifted. It sunk low through a blazed ravine notched through the tiles, iron-sheeting beneath, and alien plaster. Hot, necrotic air steamed into the chilled rainfall.
Seydon rose from a puddle gouged against the roofing, his left temple and brow bleeding from a long gash. A spine of faux-wood was lodged in his shoulder. The Dunaan plucked it out and tossed it aside, retrieving Winterfang. Neither stain nor Sithspawn ichor managed to fade its pale and snowy moonlight glow. Overhead, the Dragon-thing whooped with triumphant yowls.
The Dunaan kept one weather eye on the beastling. He'd loped into a quickening run, powered by mutant musculature. In an insane sprint, he crossed an approximate seventeen meters in a three second count, huffing misting breath. There was one bell companile still yet standing. He tore up its tubed and carved siding, punching finger-holds through where there were none, mind setting against two-score calculations trying to factor wind-gale, strafing speed, and how much power he could bring to bear in an unorthodox blow. Seydon clambered onto the steeped tower roof, hanging off a rung of iron with one hand.
Coming abreast, aligned flatly with the harried tower, the Rock-Dragon came on. Its scorching roar sounded, blitzing his senses with unnatural notes, vibrating pain down his sternum, backbone, and stomach. Scabbing blood tore and ran afresh down his cheek and jaw. The beast flapped harder now, gaining an almost mach speed. Air and rain broke off its sonic prow. Now, time slowed. Seydon measured down. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Another ten. Five.
Three meters.
One.
The Rock-Dragon clipped the segmented dome free from the tower neck. Dripping brickstone and capital-bases went sailing. Seydon had levered his legs out and jumped a split quarter second before the wing-edge decapitated the bell companile. He was twisting into a hazed spin, Winterfang cocked hard in his hands. It scythed through the skull and detached the front carving of lobe and snout free, then its neck, shoulder blades, wickedly auguring.
He saw its frame come apart in eight pieces and still, tossing out into frozen air, still propelled by impetus. Down on the micca-snowed grounds some one hundred meters below, the corpse-rubble impacted and rolled, furrowing out grooves of sticky earth and glassy, clastic jetsam. The Dunaan completed a three point landing, on feet, knee, and fist. Seydon then simply rose and replaced Winterfang back into its shoulder scabbard, strolling for the torn open wound across the Chapter House's spine whilst tending to his split cheek.
