Chapter 36 The Fury of Fire
Typhon, the dragon, soared through the crisp air, his emerald scales gleaming in the sunlight. Far below, hazed through layers of cloud, the sparkling sea winked. Goading him.
Freedom ignited the furnace of his lungs.
The clouds sizzled over his burning belly, his vast wings churning their misted bodies like a riptide.
His limbs still ached from centuries of confinement, but the agony of his grating bones in flight was ecstasy after being cramped in the watery depths of Tartarus.
Typhon thought of the smouldering bones of his captor and felt joy.
The dragon beat his wings and surged higher, up to where the air was thin and frost cold. Never again would he succumb to a body of water. Never again.
The world had sickened since his imprisonment centuries earlier. He had sensed it as he flew through the cavernous space beneath the earth. Even in the deep, so far from Gaia’s skin, he had felt her pain echoing up to the silver stars.
Typhon looked to the west, where the men that called themselves gods had built their palace of stone.
A rumble rippled through his gut. It had been too long since his last meal. If he did not eat soon, he would perish. And perish he must not, for he was the last of his kind. He felt the truth of it in his bones, in the heat of his molten marrow.
He was the last dragon.
Typhon understood now why the Mother doted so on her undeserving children. To give life, to see oneself reflected, even in a shattered mirror, was better than not being able to perceive oneself at all.
He sniffed the air and followed the verdant scent of a forest, diving down below the cloud line. The earth was bathed in gold, the sun ripening before relinquishing its watch to the pale moon.
Then a dash of movement caught his eye. He dipped lower, salivating at the thought of more fresh meat after centuries of mouldering scraps.
Yet he paused before unleashing his flames. He knew that scent. It had been his constant companion during his imprisonment.
Below, lumbering towards the trees, were three giants who, like Typhon, had found their way above ground.
Ravenous as he was, he could not bring himself to feast upon his ancient companions. They were united in suffering at the hands of the gilded men.
The dragon flew on, until another scent snared his attention: a herd of cattle, burnished bronze in the Hesperides light.
He swooped.
The delectable scent of charred flesh filled the air as he unleashed a bellow of fire across the field. A few cows escaped the blaze, lowing as they cantered away from his flame’s reach.
He growled in frustration. Despite weeks in the open air, his heat was dulled from his imprisonment, his body still riddled with the murky waters of the Underworld. He must be patient. Sure as the tide of life ebbs and flows, he would regain his strength. And take his revenge.
His thoughts were drawn to more pleasurable musings as he devoured the smoking cattle caught by his blaze.
As the flavours burst over his tongue, he dug his claws into the earth and exalted in the tingle of the tapestry of life working through him.
He had been drowned for so long, there were so many joys he was only just remembering.
Newly revived, Typhon launched into the air, sending a plume of fire to clear the clouds in his path. But his victory cry turned to a roar as pain lanced through his right wing. He turned his head to see a bolt of lightning sizzle through his scales like a glowing thorn.
The sky was no longer his.
A golden figure rode across the clouds on the back of a winged ebony steed. Recognition sparked in Typhon’s mind as he recalled a man with eyes of sun-drenched sea casting him down, down, down into the depths of the earth.
He twisted, soaring towards the little godling with a burst of fire.
But the man anticipated his movement, darting up into the treacherous clouds that swallowed him from view.
The dragon pursued him, rage blunting his progress as the man flitted through the sky on his horse like a golden insect.
He would end in smouldering ashes just like his kin.
Typhon filled his lungs once more, blasting flame across the dusky sky.
It was only when a great body of ocean opened up beneath him that he realized his mistake.
His fire was all but spent, and now there was no earth to hold him if he tired, only inked sky and sea. Twin conspirators with the golden man.
But the dragon had a few tricks of his own.
Typhon let his wings sag and tumbled towards the ocean, as though he were exhausted enough to let it swallow him whole. The little god left the cover of the clouds and flew after him, no doubt eager to watch the dragon be claimed by the watery depths.
At the last moment, Typhon twisted, the chill of the sea almost at his wings, and sent a blast of boiling air shooting towards his attacker. It caught the wing of the godling’s steed, and the animal screeched, careering through the air as its rider fought to say astride.
The dragon surged upwards, snatching the golden man from his wounded horse.
Typhon flew towards a landmass on the horizon, crushing the man’s metal shell beneath his claws.
The creature squirmed in his grip, forcing his stolen life force against the might of Typhon’s talons.
But the dragon had centuries of vengeance in his veins, and he met the man’s power with his own.
He landed on the peak of a snow-swathed mountain and held his foe out before him.
‘You have lost your way since last we met.’ Typhon’s cavernous voice rumbled across the land, sending plains of ice sluicing down the mountainside. ‘You have grown weak, Titan.’
The golden man smiled, baring each of his minuscule teeth.
‘You are mistaken, dragon. You may have wings, but I am master of the sky.’
Rage ensnared Typhon and, despite his dreams of an exquisitely lengthy revenge, he opened his jaws to deliver the man a swift end.
The dragon hesitated at a sudden crackling sound above his head. His jaws snapped shut, and he looked up to see a storm roiling above him. Thunder rolled across the heavens. Then came the lightning.
Rods of agony shot through him as he was stabbed again and again by searing bolts, slicing through his armoured scales as if they were soft clay.
Typhon loosened his grip, and the golden man burst from the dragon’s claws, glowing life-threads crackling around him as he rose into the air on nothing but the wind itself.
‘I am Zeus, the Lord of Thunder, and I will send you back to the darkness from which you came.’
The dragon tried to draw air into the furnace of his lungs, but the barbs of lightning robbed his breath.
Then the earth groaned. The snow-encrusted crag split open and swallowed Typhon whole.