Destination: Thataway!

by Hawattie

Round One!

"I stood with a cool demeanor, facing down the charging blight dragon with my mane flowing majestically behind me in the nonexistent breeze. At the very last possible second I dodged fluidly out of the way so fast it looked like I was in two places at once. Sparkles glittered in my wake and a chorus of fangirls gushed my praise.

"My counterattack was both graceful and deadly. In one fell swoop I..."

Fphantom interrupted my story with a smack to the back of the head. I rubbed the spot he hit and gave him a petulant glare. "Stop lying and tell us what really happened," he said.

"Fine," I relented.

~~~Ohey, a flashback!~~~

Skithiryx was charging me. I had no idea what the appropriate response to being charged down by a dragon was, but the response my panicked mind fixated on was, "jump to the red tiles!"

I looked left, nothing but grey and white tiles.

I looked right, there! three tiles over and two tiles to the side was the nearest red tile.

After waiting a couple seconds to time the dodge right, I leapt towards the red tile with all my might. For a split second I soared gracefully like an eagle through the air.

Unfortunately, I hadn't timed my dodge right and Skithiryx's claw bit deeply into my flank. The deep gouge it left in my hide wasn't so much a problem, since my healing had it all patched up in no time, but the blow knocked my leap off course and I ended up landing face-down on the grey tile next to my target tile and sliding on my face over two more tiles.

"Owee!" I squealed when my entire face got the nastiest friction burn I'd ever suffered. "You meanie!" I shouted at Skithiryx from my uncomfortable position on the ground, "You made me mess up my 'floor is lava' game!"

In a flash of healing magic I was on my hooves and had drawn my axe with a flourish. Skithiryx wheeled about and was swooping in for another pass. I spotted an opening just between Skithiryx's outstretched talons and jumped towards it for all I was worth.

Amazingly my luck held out as I slipped right between Skithiryx's swiping claws and twisted about so my axe gouged a great blow to his belly. A spurt of black fluid shot out of the wound behind me, narrowly missing my tail and coating the floor, decreasing the amount of room I had to work with. Then, by some miracle of physics I did a double front flip over Skithiryx's hind claws and a one-eighty twist around his tail and stuck a landing on all four hooves back on the same red tile I'd started the fight on.

I smirked triumphantly and turned about, expecting to see Skithiryx crashing to the ground from my blow. My face fell when I instead saw the dragon's necrotic flesh knit itself back together. "No fair!" I whined. "I should be the only one allowed to have regeneration."

Skithiryx's only response was to roar in my face.

"Rude!" I yelped. Then I jumped backwards to avoid a swiping claw. Skithiryx didn't let up though. He pressed his attack, taking advantage of his long range and OP regeneration to press me back into a corner. The large swathe of the room behind Skithiryx was slowly filling with glistening oil, and by my guesstimate only about half of the room was safe to stand on now.

"Resistance is futile," Skithiryx informed me. "I will kill you for the necromancer and then he will return me to my lady and my home." I tried to back away further, but found my back against a wall. I was only just able to roll out of the way as Skithiryx slammed a claw into the stone wall, pulverizing the spot I'd been a moment before. "Die!" Skithiryx screamed. Bits of rubble rained down and a cloud of dust obscured my position.

As the dust cleared, it was revealed that my roll had allowed me to get to Skithiryx's side; away from all of his pointy bits. I paused for dramatic effect. "You first!" I shouted back.

Then I jumped up into the air, axe raised above my head for a powerful downward swing, and chopped Skithiryx's wing right off.

The dragon roared out his pain and the floor trembled with his agony and rage. Great globs of glistening oil spurted from his wing stump immediately, splattering all over my axe. I landed expertly on a red tile, but my high spirits at landing such a definitive blow fell right down as I saw the black gunk coating my weapon. The oil sizzled as it interacted with the magic on my axe, then started to eat away at the enchanted bone. I watched with dismay as my trusty axe melted before my eyes.

"You melted my axe," I said blankly, looking at the amorphous blob of black oil that used to be my axe.

"You cut off my wing," Skithiryx countered.

"Yeah well..." I hemmed and hawed for a good two seconds before coming up with, "Your name sounds like Skittles!"

Skittles reared back his head in disgust. "Does not! I am the great and majestic Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon! You will respect me and die!"

I rolled my eyes and, after easily dodging an attack which nearly interrupted the flow of the dialogue, replied, "Does too, Skittles!"

My infuriation tactic worked brilliantly, as Skittles roared furiously in my face and blindly rampaged in my general direction. It was simple to jump from red tile to red tile out of the way, -at this point pretty much the whole room had at least a little bit of glistening oil,- and flank him again.

Skittles rampaged until he hit a wall, shaking a few stones loose from the ceiling. The impact snapped Skittles out of his fury-driven rampage and he focused his rage into a furious glare directed at me. I responded by shooting a laser into his eye.

Unfortunately for me, Skittles' regeneration was able to reverse the damage I'd done. Fortunately, this triggered another blind, fury-driven rampage.

I frantically hopped out of the way but wasn't quite fast enough. Skittles' long, bony tail whipped about wildly and one particularly vicious swing smashed into me as Skittles rampaged past. The sudden impact threw me off my balance and for several tense seconds I teetered on the edge of my red tile over a pool of glistening oil. My hooves cartwheeled about comically, and it was only by the seat of my pants that I avoided falling into the deadly oil.

I breathed a sigh of relief once I'd regained my balance and wiped a bit of sweat from my brow. Then Skittles' rampage collided with a wall, shaking the entire room yet again and causing some glistening oil to splash all up over my front.

"Ah!" I shrieked, trying to wipe the oil off and only succeeding in getting it all over my hooves. "Get it off!" The oil didn't exactly burn nor was it icy cold, but instead it was an odd mixture of the two sensations that was distinctly unpleasant. I grit my teeth and screwed my eyes shut as the sensation overpowered my senses.

And then the whispers started.

Author's Note:

Oh my! Another chapter with a different chapter ending! Ner's doing his mindfuckery again!
Anyway, the real reason for no Thataway is because this was initially the halfway point of a much longer chapter that I split into two, and maybe three, chapters, and I didn't want to change the flow at the end here.
And I'm lazy.

Either way, expect the rest of the fight soon!

Stay awesome. Try not to die.

Comments

[Legion222]

What is this, some kinda story where the chapters don't always end in thataway?

I feel bad for taking so long to read this update. On to the next one!

Write on,
Legion