Chapter 3
The Chase
The searing lance of dragonfire filled Kai's world. Time didn't slow this time; it screamed. The focused beam of incandescent plasma, hotter than a forge's heart, painted the tree trunk behind him in stark, blinding white. The bark instantly blackened, then vaporized.
The air itself sizzled, superheated to the point of ionization, tearing at his lungs even before the fire touched him. Death wasn't approaching; it had already opened its maw.
Then, in the instant before annihilation, his eyes ignited.
Not a reflection of the fire. Not a trick of the light. His pupils, deep pools of liquid obsidian, flared with an internal, molten gold.
It was a light that held no warmth, only a terrifying, ancient intensity. It blazed for less than a heartbeat, a flash of impossible color against the backdrop of white-hot destruction.
And Kai vanished.
He didn't dive. He didn't leap. He simply ceased to occupy the space against the burning tree. One moment, a figure braced against annihilation, the next – empty air.
The dragon's focused breath struck true. Where Kai had been, the massive pine trunk ceased to exist. Not shattered, not burned erased in a microsecond. The beam continued, unimpeded, carving a trench of vaporized earth and molten stone fifty yards long, effortlessly shearing through ancient trees like a god's scalpel.
The shockwave followed, a physical wall of superheated air and concussive force that flattened everything within a hundred-foot radius. Lesser trees were ripped from the ground, their roots snapping like twigs.
Burning debris was hurled skyward in a devastating pyroclastic surge. The ground trembled, and the roar was the voice of the apocalypse itself. The dragon's pinpoint strike became an act of localized, terrifying deforestation.
Kai reappeared on the scorched, trembling earth, nearly two hundred yards away, just beyond the immediate blast radius. He landed in a crouch, boots skidding slightly on the smoldering, glassy ground. His eyes were back to their familiar, fathomless black. His chest heaved, not just from exertion, but from a deep, disorienting vertigo that felt like his insides had been momentarily scrambled and reassembled.
A thin trickle of blood leaked from his left nostril, warm and metallic on his lip. The price of the jump. The gray coat bore new scorch marks, and the acrid stench of ozone clung to him, sharp and alien.
He didn't pause to marvel at his escape. Survival was a reflex honed razor-sharp. As the thunderous echo of the dragon's strike rolled over him, shaking the ground beneath his feet, Kai snapped his fingers.
Not a casual gesture. A sharp, precise crack that seemed to shear a piece of the chaotic air itself. From the empty space beside his right hand, shimmering heat haze coalesced.
Crimson sparks, mirroring the dagger's first creation, flickered and died almost instantly. In their place, solidifying with unnerving speed, was the metal dagger. Not the conjured fire-blade, but its cooled, hardened successor the lethal length of dark, polished steel he'd lost moments before.
It dropped neatly into his waiting palm, its familiar, solid weight a grounding anchor in the maelstrom. His left hand already gripped the unnervingly cold white gun.
High above the expanding cloud of smoke, ash, and burning debris, the dragon hovered. Its vast wings beat powerful, slow strokes, maintaining altitude amidst the thermal chaos it had created.
Its molten gold eyes, narrowed to furious slits, scanned the devastation below. The focused strike had annihilated its target point, leveled a significant swath of forest, but the unique, sharp tang of the human's energy signature… it was gone from the epicenter.
A low, rumbling growl vibrated through its massive frame, shaking loose ash from its scales. It wasn't confusion; it was predatory annoyance. Prey shouldn't vanish. Prey shouldn't defy the inevitable. It cast its senses wide, filtering the cacophony of heat signatures, the roar of flames, the settling groans of shattered timber.
There.
Not where it should be. Far to the southeast, near the edge of the devastation. A flicker of that strange, contained energy part heat, part something colder, sharper. And the distinct, defiant pulse of a living heartbeat.
The dragon's head snapped around. A roar tore from its throat, not of fire, but of pure, primal fury. It was a sound that cracked the air, silencing even the roar of the inferno below for a split second.
It banked hard, massive body slicing through the smoke-choked air with terrifying agility for its size. Wings folded partially, it became a dark, streamlined comet plummeting towards the source of that infuriating energy signature.
Kai saw the shadow descend before he heard the roar fully resolve. The dragon wasn't just pursuing; it was hunting. Its trajectory was a straight, terrifying line aimed directly at his position. The ground vibrated with the sheer force of its descent.
He ran.
Not a sprint born of panic, but a surge of preternatural speed that blurred his form. His legs pumped, muscles burning with unnatural power, propelling him forward faster than any human athlete could dream.
He wasn't running on flat ground; he was weaving through the shattered remnants of the forest floor leaping smoldering logs, skidding around the glassy edges of molten rock trenches, ducking under fallen, burning branches. The air whipped past his face, hot and thick with ash. The gray coat streamed behind him like a battle flag.
The dragon adjusted mid-plummet. Its jaws opened, not for another focused beam, but for a torrent. A wide cone of searing orange flame erupted, aimed not directly at Kai, but at the path ahead of him, cutting off his escape route. Trees directly in the path exploded into instant infernos, creating a wall of fire thirty feet high.
Kai didn't slow. He angled sharply left, boots kicking up sprays of molten gravel, heading perpendicular to the dragon's descent path. As he changed direction, his left arm snapped up, the white gun barking silently. Not at the dragon itself, but at a massive, half-uprooted oak tree directly in the fire-spread's path.
The concussive blast struck the trunk with a sound like a giant's hammer blow. The ancient wood groaned, splintered, and toppled sideways, crashing down into the path of the spreading dragon fire. It didn't stop the flames, but it disrupted their advance, creating a momentary barrier of collapsing, burning timber.
The dragon, enraged by the maneuver, leveled out its flight just above the treetops, its shadow engulfing Kai. Its head swiveled, tracking his weaving form. Another gout of fire spewed forth, this time a scything horizontal blast meant to clip him as he ran.
Kai felt the wave of heat before he saw the fire. He threw himself into a desperate forward roll, tucking his shoulder and rolling through a patch of low, burning shrubs. The searing heat licked at his back, singing the coat, as the fire blast passed inches overhead, igniting the canopy above him. He came out of the roll running, the smell of singed hair in his nostrils.
He couldn't outpace it in the open. He needed cover, disruption. As he ran, dodging another smaller gout of flame that turned a mossy boulder into bubbling slag, he raised the white gun again. This time, he aimed at the pursuing leviathan.
Thwump. Thwump. Thwump.
He fired rapidly, three times. The silent concussive blasts streaked upwards, invisible projectiles aimed at the dragon's underbelly, its wing joints, its massive head. The impacts were audible even over the roar of fire and wind sharp, percussive cracks like boulders hitting armor plate.
The dragon flinched. Not a cry of pain, but a visible, irritated jerk. A scale near its left wing joint cracked, spiderwebbing under the force. Near its throat, another scale showed a deep dent. On its lower jaw, a third impact scraped off a layer of soot, revealing the duller rock beneath. It was like throwing pebbles at a tank. Annoying. Stinging. Barely registering as damage against its mountainous bulk. But it felt them. The sheer audacity of being struck by the insignificant spark fueled its rage.
It responded instantly. Instead of a sustained blast, it unleashed a rapid series of smaller, superheated fireballs, spat like incendiary cannonballs.
They rained down around Kai, exploding on impact with devastating force, showering him with shrapnel and superheated earth. One detonated barely ten feet to his right, the concussive blast lifting him off his feet and hurling him sideways.
He hit the ground hard, rolling with the impact, the breath knocked from his lungs. The white gun skittered from his grip, landing in a patch of glowing embers. The metal dagger remained clenched tight.
Fire bloomed around him. He scrambled, lungs burning, towards the fallen gun. His fingers closed around its cold, smooth surface just as another fireball slammed into the spot he'd just vacated.
He was back on his feet, running again, weaving through the hellish gauntlet. The dragon was relentless, matching his speed effortlessly from above, its shadow a constant, oppressive presence.
It strafed the forest around him, turning it into a deadly obstacle course of fire, falling timber, and molten ground. Kai's world narrowed to the next five yards: the gap between two burning ferns, the fallen log he could vault over, the slight depression offering a fraction of cover.
He returned fire whenever he saw an opening, snapping off shots with the white gun. Thwump. Thwump. Aiming for the eyes, the joints, the softer-looking membrane where wing met body. Sometimes he scored another minor impact a flinch, a cracked scale, a puff of dislodged soot.
Once, a shot struck near the dragon's nostril, causing it to snort a gout of sparks and shake its massive head with a growl of profound irritation. But it was like chipping at a cliff face with a chisel.
The damage was superficial, negligible against its colossal vitality. It was buying him milliseconds, forcing the beast to blink or adjust its aim, nothing more.
The chase became a deadly ballet of fire and evasion. Kai, a gray ghost streaking through the inferno, propelled by desperate, superhuman speed, his movements a blend of desperate scrambles and impossible leaps.
The dragon, a dark god of the sky, raining annihilation, its golden eyes fixed with predatory fury on the insignificant, stinging insect below. The forest between them was being systematically erased, replaced by a churning landscape of fire, smoke, and devastation.
The air thrummed with the dragon's roars, the crackle of flames, the thunderous impacts of fireballs, and the sharp, futile cracks of Kai's concussive replies. Each dodge was a hair's breadth escape. Each shot was a defiant sting against impossible odds. And the dragon, though barely scratched, was learning the frustrating persistence of its prey.