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The rapid beat of wings echoed in the air.
Jacaerys dashed out of the volcanic cave with agile movements. Making use of the terrain's height difference, he leapt directly onto the dragon saddle on Vermax's' back.
The entire motion was smooth and fluid, a testament to the extraordinary coordination between dragon and rider. Their bond was evident in every movement.
With a powerful gust of wind, Vermax beat his wings and soared into the sky, swiftly giving chase to the fleeing the Cannibal. The air howled past Jacaerys' ears as the cold night wind tore across his face. Narrowing his eyes, he focused intently on the large, looming shadow ahead of him.
Night had fallen deep, and the Cannibal's jet-black scales blended effortlessly into the darkness, giving it a natural camouflage. If Jacaerys lost sight of the beast now, it would vanish into the shadows, and there would be no way to track it.
That dragon was cunning. If it managed to slip away tonight, there was no telling when another chance to strike would present itself.
The Cannibal was nearly the same size as Meleys, stretching somewhere between seventy and eighty meters from head to tail. By contrast, Vermax was scarcely a fifth of that length.
Yet whether it was due to injuries inflicted earlier by Vermax's flames or some other unknown cause, the Cannibal's speed was clearly slower than Meleys', falling behind in both reaction and momentum.
Just as it began to dive into the cloud layer above, Vermax had already closed the distance, drawing near enough to unleash a burst of dragonfire.
"Dracarys!" Jacaerys shouted the command without hesitation, his voice resolute and filled with killing intent.
He had never planned on capturing the Cannibal alive.
With a roar, a stream of blazing orange-red flame burst from Vermax's gaping maw, shooting straight toward the rear half of the Cannibal's massive body.
In an instant, the dazzling light lit up the night sky, illuminating the clouds and casting both dragons into stark, striking contrast.
Yet as though it had sensed the danger at the last moment, the Cannibal suddenly beat its wings with frantic force. It surged forward, accelerating in a sharp burst of speed, and disappeared into the thick layers of cloud above.
Something was wrong.
Jacaerys' heart skipped a beat as he watched the sudden increase in speed. A chill of foreboding crept into his chest.
Was the Cannibal burning through its strength for a last desperate sprint, or had it been deliberately flying slower from the start to lure them into a trap?
He could not be sure.
But once the arrow has been drawn, it must be released.
With that in mind, Vermax charged headlong into the cloud bank after it. All the while, he continued to spew his searing dragonfire forward into the swirling mist.
The sound of sizzling steam echoed as layer after layer of dense clouds were scorched away by the flames. A circular tunnel, glowing with fading embers, was carved out of the thick clouds, granting them a narrow but clear path of vision.
Flying through this newly formed corridor, Vermax soon reached the uppermost layer of the clouds, just about to enter the starlit heights of the open sky.
However, at the exact moment Vermax emerged from the cloud layer, a burst of eerie green flame suddenly swept in from the right.
It was the same color as wildfire, cold and ghostly.
At that moment, Vermax's upper body had just broken through the cloud layer, but Jacaerys, still seated in the saddle, remained shrouded within it. He had no visibility to either side and was completely unaware of the attack closing in from his right.
A shrill cry tore from Vermax's throat.
The green flame struck the joint where Vermax's neck met his right wing. A wave of agonizing pain surged through the dragon's body, forcing a raw, wounded roar from deep within his chest.
Fortunately, Vermax had been flying at full speed. His momentum carried him beyond the range of the green fire almost immediately after the strike. Even so, the searing pain lingered, and smoke curled up from his scorched scales.
Jacaerys was seated just behind the point of impact. Even with the resistance granted by their [Fire and Blood] trait, he could still feel the intense heat radiating from the flame. It was no ordinary fire. Its burning heat was unnatural.
And this was not its only horror.
Dragons, by nature, possessed a strong resistance to flame. In battles between them, it was rarely the first breath that caused any real harm.
What truly inflicted damage was the sustained burning of dragonfire—the prolonged exposure that gradually wore down their otherwise impenetrable scales.
This was exactly what had happened when Vermax first ambushed the Cannibal. The orange-red flames did not wound it immediately. Only after repeated blasts did the Cannibal's scales begin to crack and fall away, allowing the fire to reach its flesh and cause real pain.
Now, at the connection between Vermax's wing and shoulder, a patch of green fire roughly the size of a human head continued to burn. It did not spread outward, nor was it swept away by the fierce winds at this altitude.
Instead, it clung tightly to Vermax like a leech gripping flesh.
Just like wildfire, this green flame refused to be extinguished.
CLICK! CRACK!
A faint, brittle sound echoed through the sky. The scales near Vermax's wounded wing began to splinter and fall. As they cracked and dropped away, the green flame crept into the exposed flesh and burned deeper with each passing moment.
If it continued like this, Vermax's combat ability and flight speed would be severely affected.
Yet Jacaerys had no time to help put out the flames.
In just these brief one or two minutes, the roles had reversed entirely.
The Cannibal, once the hunted, had now become the predator.
A fiery roar burst from behind. Like an assassin cloaked in darkness, the Cannibal chased close at their heels. The eerie green flame poured from its jaws, striking again and again at Vermax's tail.
"Damn it!" Jacaerys cursed, his expression grim. "I underestimated this beast."
He finally understood.
When the Cannibal had flown upward after the initial ambush, it wasn't out of panic or a desperate bid to escape.
It was a calculated move, designed to appear weak, to lure him and Vermax into believing they had the upper hand. It was also a way to confirm there were no other dragons lying in wait.
Then it had slowed down, not because of injury, but to lure them into the cloud layer where it could strike from the shadows.
It had never planned to flee. From the very beginning, it had intended to kill and devour Vermax.
How fitting. Jacaerys had the same goal in mind.
Now under heavy pressure, his mind raced as he searched for a way to fight back.
After the brutal dragon battle above King's Landing, he had come to understand dragons far more deeply than before. The Cannibal's green dragonfire was indeed formidable, and its speed was nothing to take lightly.
But it lacked the wing membranes of Caraxes, meaning its ability to turn sharply and maneuver mid-air was limited.
If the Cannibal was like a predatory hawk, then Vermax was the rabbit it pursued.
And to survive, the rabbit must rely on the rabbit's way.
With a whirling sound, Vermax, having received Jacaerys's command through their mental link, abandoned its direct ascent. Instead, it began weaving an S-shaped path across the sky, darting left and right like a serpent in flight.
As expected, the Cannibal, large and lumbering, could not turn quickly enough to keep up. Each time it tried to follow Vermax's sudden shifts in direction, its movements became stiff and unbalanced for a brief moment. Little by little, the distance between the two great dragons began to grow.
The Cannibal, having breathed its ghostly green flames for quite some time, saw that Vermax had escaped its range and finally stopped spewing fire.
CRACK! CRACK!
A tormented roar burst from Vermax's throat.
The dragon scales on the right side of its body, where the wing meets the neck, shattered one by one, burned away by the eerie green flames. The searing heat had pierced its flesh, and the dragon's agonized wail tore through the night sky.
The pain clearly affected its ability to fly. Vermax's speed plummeted, and it nearly hovered in place, suspended in the high air as if frozen in agony.
The Cannibal, sensing its prey was wounded and slowed, instantly surged forward with a burst of speed, expending its energy for another rapid, explosive charge, just as it had done before.
But in that very moment, Vermax abruptly folded its wings against its body. Like a spear loosed from the heavens, its entire body plunged downward, aiming directly at the ascending Cannibal.
There had never been much distance between them to begin with. Now, with both dragons hurling themselves toward one another at breakneck speed—
BOOOOOOM!!!!
They collided before either could even open its mouth to breathe fire.
Screeching and tearing sounds split the sky.
Vermax's powerful hind legs slammed into the Cannibal's thick neck. Its massive, hooked talons—sharpened like sickles and strengthened by the [Dragon Slayer] trait, which granted fifty percent increased damage against draconic creatures—sank into the black-scaled throat where the Cannibal's defenses were weakest.
The Cannibal dipped its head, roughly the size of a small carriage, and opened its mouth wide. Rows of jagged fangs gleamed as it tried to bite down on Vermax.
But Vermax, with its smaller and nimbler frame, quickly wrapped its wings around the upper half of the Cannibal's neck. Its body clung tightly to the lower half of the neck, just above the chest.
Like a koala locked in a death grip, it clung firmly to its enemy's throat and chest, refusing to let go.
CRUNCH! CRACK!
The Cannibal's thick neck, trapped by Vermax's embrace, could not lower completely. Its head strained but could not find the proper angle to bite.
Its gaping maw snapped uselessly at the air, producing loud clacking noises as its fangs struck each other with force.
WHOOSH!
As the Cannibal flailed its head and tried to tear Vermax away, the talons embedded in its neck tore deeper. The wounds ripped wider with each movement, and crimson dragon blood surged from the gashes in thick spurts.
But Vermax, too, was paying the price.
That ghostly green flame still clung to the joint where its wing met its body, searing its flesh without relenting. Scalding blood erupted from the wound in waves, hissing where the flame touched it.
Some of that blood was burned away in the heat, but much of it spilled downward, cascading through the clouds and falling like droplets of fire onto the island of Dragonstone far below.
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[Chapter End's]
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