Chapter 16
The world eater was enraged, its cries rending the air with a volume that threatened to deafen Vilka, but they were in the right realm now.
Massive teeth snapped behind him as Avastias gave chase, intent on destroying him.
The smallest miscalculation now, a false move of a wingtip would be enough to end him.
But Vilka did not intend on making a mistake.
His fear had gone, replaced with a battle focus that did not allow any kind of emotion.
He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the world eater’s ferocious form, and behind that, clear sky. Kate must have been successful in closing the portal, just as he had known she would be. Her inventiveness knew no bounds.
He flew alongside the great creature, dropped beneath its sweeping, crushing claws and sank his teeth into the softer belly of the thing.
He held fast as Avastias roared with anger, his talons grasping fast as Vilka’s teeth tore into the world eater to reach a source of its blood.
It was cannibalism of a kind, the taking of flesh, the drinking of blood.
This was what the dragons had come from.
This was the creature that had taken the creature of man and infused it with something more.
As Vilka drank, he felt himself expanding with a pure reptilian power.
It was as it felt when he took his dragon form, but in a far more extreme and invigorating way.
He felt himself transformed by the world eater’s blood, growing, glowing, the bright red of his body becoming a crimson arc against the blue sky as he expanded to a size that was comparable to the great bulk of Avastias.
The world eater snarled and slashed at him with its vicious claws.
Vilka fell to the side, avoiding the great scimitars of death, plunging a few hundred feet before regaining his balance and swooping back up and around to face the world eater.
They were on a direct collision course now, the great nightmare creature and the dragon with human blood coursing through his veins.
This battle had been played out a hundred times before, and a hundred times the world eater had consumed his challenger and taken the bones of his victim to the grave beneath the mountain, but Vilka had no intention of losing this battle.
Avastias was ancient, a singular mind set on defeating his challenger, but Vilka was lit with the determination to protect everything that was his—two kingdoms to which he laid equal claim.
He was more dragon than he had ever been, but he was more human too.
They met jaw to jaw, wrestling with massive teeth, bodies rolling ferociously in the air as they fell toward the ground at terminal velocity, wings tucked back to allow for the dive that would come down to one element: which of them would fail first, which nerve would give way and attempt to save itself.
Boom!
The world eater hit the ground hard enough to leave a crater, Vilka atop it, his teeth in the creature’s throat, finding the semi-soft flesh below the plates of the world eater’s chin.
Dust hung in the air about them, suspended with the force of their impact.
In the minutes it took to clear, the entire world seemed to shake with the fury of their battle.
Avastias’ roars of pure rage made the grass turn white and die, blades scattering for miles, blowing on the winds of the world eater’s battle.
There they wrestled, teeth flashing, claws slashing, their great bodies rolling over the landscape, carving it anew with raw ridges and valleys. They wounded one another repeatedly, blood flowing in rivers down the valleys made from their battle.
With a screech of fury, the world eater took to the air again, but Vilka would not allow that.
He launched himself on the creature’s right wing and shredded it into a hundred pieces that fell across the land.
Everywhere they made ground was immediately alight with fire, black billowing clouds and brilliant flames consuming the territory.
Into the earth. That was the only place the world eater was going.
Vilka fought fiercely, standing the heat and the pain, biting and slashing until finally he laid his jaws at the world eater’s throat and tore with all his strength.
His jaws were immediately covered in a cascade of ancient blood and the world vibrated with the agony of Avastias.
It was the final wound. Avastias did not attack again. The great dragon dragged itself back to the ruins of the mountain from which it had emerged and began to burrow, scales flashing as it buried itself deep into the earth, a new mountain forming above his defeated form.
When the skies cleared, Vilka lay in human form upon the scarred ground.
His body was marked with deep wounds from which he was bleeding all too profusely.
He had bested the ancient, but the victory had come at great cost. His body was broken in a hundred places, bones and flesh ripped and torn and he could feel his soul slipping away.
“I am going to be so fucking angry at you if you die.”
He heard Kate’s voice coming to him as if from another world.
He could not see her, for she was not there, but he could feel her as surely as he could feel his own bloodied wounds.
She was at the very core of him. She was his heart and his soul.
She was the cord that connected him to this realm and the next and he held fast to her memory as his eyes closed and the darkness flooded in.