Wyrm 6

Struggling to collect my thoughts, I grip the steel lattice-work and feel the building splinter in my claws, raining glass and rubble on the crowds below. Fire and smoke explode around me, rattled out by one of the hovering machines; I strike and it plummets in a smoking spiral. More shouts, more fire, more whistling lumps of metal ricocheting off my scales.

One minute I was gliding over a mountain top in a clear cold sunrise, the next I was sucked through a shimmering window and hurled forward in time and space, to emerge in this sterile jungle of glass towers and oil fumes. Only the screaming is familiar, helping to stoke the angry furnace inside me.

I spread my wings and glide down towards the thundering devices that are hurling fire at me. Fire? I’ll give them fire. The pure heat of my breath turns them red before they burst in a spray of lava.

I can only be killed by a hero, but there are no heroes in this world where men hide behind their metal tubes throwing destruction from far-off places of safety. I should be pleased to be immortal but all I feel is empty dissatisfaction.