A Tale of Ashen Wings - Chapter 6: The Doom Viper
"Few have encountered them, and lived to speak of their
horrifying visage: a great skull as their head and scales like bleeding flesh,
and long enough to wrap around a group of five two times over."
Akalgan walked through the dark sewers
without a torch. He forced his eyes to adjust to the darkness that was sparsely
populated with sewer grates that filtered light into the tunnels. The sewers
were cold and wet, seemingly isolated from the world above as the faint whisper
of town life barely drifted through the grates to ease the atmosphere. Akalgan
carefully made his way through the tunnels, his hands at his sides but ready to
act. The sound of dripping water echoing everywhere became the pattern in his
mind, as Akalgan blocked out sounds coming from the over world. Every now and
again, he briefly recalled the words of The Euraiyan Bestiary he once read, but
only the ones that described his quarry.
"This can only be a nightmare among monsters, because it
lives not on meat nor blood, but rather the terrified screams of its victims."
Rats scuttled and distracted Akalgan
for a moment, he stopped and waited, watching as the squeaking rats passed. He
grunted at the annoyance and returned to his search, when something else
unusual could be heard. He froze and listened carefully, it was the sound of
water being disturbed rather than the sound of water dripping. Akalgan put his
hands to his blades and kept his feet planted on the mossy stone floor, the
sound grew louder and louder as his mark slithered closer.
"It follows warmth of life and smells the breath of fear,
and if it has you, then only Divines will save you then."
Within a moment it was behind him.
Akalgan leapt over the channel and dodged the serpentine lunge. The viper
hissed and coiled at its prey's defiance. The horrifying nightmarish form was
constantly moving as it reared back its ugly skull of a head. Akalgan grunted
with disgust and started into a run through the tunnel. The viper screeched
violently and chased after him through the waterways. The lengthy body of the
viper surged and kicked up splashes of sewer water.
Akalgan just smiled.
"Let's
see what you've got, you savage!" He shouted as he drew
blades before he planted a boot down and slid across the mossy floor. With a
great beat of his wings, Akalgan launched himself over the waterway and onto
the viper's body. His boots slipped on the slick surface of the fleshy scales
and Akalgan fell to his knees, but as he did he planted his shortblades in the
viper's body. The viper hissed and writhed in pain, and Akalgan pulled one
shortblade out after the other as he climbed up the fiend's flailing body. The
doom viper smashed into the wall of the tunnel, the sudden crushing force stole
Akalgan's grip away from him and dropped him to the floor with a groan.
Hissing, the doom viper wasted no time
in coiling up around its prey. Akalgan stifled any sudden utterances of agony
over the excruciating acid the viper sported from its flesh that touched his
own. The acid slowly burned and ate through his armour as he struggled against
the constricting grip of the doom viper. It hissed with triumph as it slid
along into a cistern. Akalgan opened his mouth and breathed a vicious jet of
fire all over the serpentine body that imprisoned him. For that moment, it
sounded as though the doom viper screamed in pain. It let go of Akalgan, but
only when it was above the water filling the cistern. The Dragonian fell into
the pool with a splash and tried to quickly move out of the water without
inhaling any of the foul liquid.
He broke the surface of the pool, and
wasted not a moment more to draw his sword as the viper dived upon him. Akalgan
took his deepest breath that he could before the viper's weight pushed him down
to the bottom of the cistern, before coiling up around him again. The acid did
not work well in the water, but Akalgan knew that the viper meant only to drown
him now as it coiled up around his struggling form. The viper raised its head
out of the water and hissed triumphantly again, as though taunting its victim
with its ability to breath.
The viper suddenly jerked and screeched
in pain. It lashed and thrashed in the pool as to bash the insolent Dragonian
and keep him down. It jerked again and seemingly gave up. Akalgan broke the
surface of the water coughing and spluttering as the viper slipped out of the
cistern and into the waterways once more. He shook his head with a smirk.
"Oh
no you don't." He muttered as he swum over to the
walkway and climbed up, before making chase after his quarry.
He followed the pitch-black blood that
the creature left in its wake, caused by a deep wound that Akalgan made within
the cistern. His longsword was ready in both his hands at his right side as he
hunted the fiend. He could hear it; slithering still in desperation to flee.
That feeling just made him run all the more faster. Rats scurried about and got
out of the way of the pursuit, and Akalgan could feel his quarry closer and
closer to him.
Akalgan turned the next corner, but
before his next foot landed, he was taken off his feet by a sudden force
tackling him. Akalgan tried to raise his sword, but in a sudden instant the
viper grabbed the blade in its fanged jaws and flicked it out of the
Dragonian's hands. Akalgan's heart pounded as he only had a vision in the next
instant of the viper ripping into him without hesitation. He rolled over
instantly and just missed the jaws of the viper that smashed into the mossy
stone floor.
Akalgan fell into the channel of the
waterway and he scrambled to climb out. The fiend shook its head angrily and
targeted its prey once more. Akalgan climbed onto the floor and rolled to the
left, narrowly dodging the fiend again. He searched for his longsword and found
it a small distance from him. A small distance, but still too far for the few
seconds he would have left to live as the viper reared up behind him. Akalgan
got up and turned around quickly to grapple with the fiend's face. He grunted
and groaned under the strength of the viper as it tried to push its jaws
towards him. He then saw the shortblades he planted in the beast's body from
the earlier struggle. If I can just... Get to them... Akalgan
thought strenuously as he saw the flick of the beasts tail and gritted his
teeth.
Akalgan let the fiend's pushing force
move right past him before leaping over the sweeping tail that was meant to
catch his feet. The fiend tried to move and curl around to get back at Akalgan,
but as it did, he pulled one short blade out and dragged the other by holding
onto it whilst the creature moved. It caused a severe wound in the creature's
body and the doom viper screeched deafeningly. Akalgan pulled his shortblade
free and ran under the viper's rearing upper body.
The fiend roared deeply in anger before
lunging at its annoying prey for the last time. Akalgan slid across the mossy
stone floor and when he was next to his longsword he turned tail to face the
viper. It was very close to reaching him, and Akalgan only had the split-second
to do something. He raised his shortblades and plunged them into the mouth of
the viper. The fiend screamed and pulled away from Akalgan, its mouth hanging
agape because of the two shortblades planted inside it. In those few moments,
Akalgan could pick up his sword safely and without delay he lunged up at the
viper with a draconic roar.
The screams of the viper were cut off
in an instant, and the fiend's skull-like head fell to the floor with a thud.
Black fluid gushed from the decapitated body of the doom viper, and Akalgan sat
down against the wall near it to catch his breath. After a few deep breaths, he
wiped the blood off his sword and then stood up. With a scowl, he kicked the
serpentine body into the channel of the waterway with disgust.
"If
I didn't need your head, it would go in as well where you belong, you trash." Akalgan
muttered as he planted a foot upon the skull. He grunted as he rolled the head
over, and kneeled down as he sheathed his longsword, Akalgan opened the jaws of
the fiend wide and pulled his shortblades out of its mouth. He wiped the blood
off them too before sheathing them with a sigh.
He laughed a little at the look on the dead viper's
face. "You think you're hungry? I'm
starving." Akalgan remarked with a smirk. He picked up the head of the doom
viper and carried it under his arm as he made his way out of the sewers. "Let's put you to good use and head back to
the inn for a nice bath." He murmured to the head.