Savage Awakening 536. Man vs. Dragon (VII)

The Prince must’ve felt the massive amounts of Law hemming him in. He skidded to a halt mid-air and snarled at the nearest length of chain.

Then his eyes found Zane. Standing near the center.

And just like he’d done all fight, he lunged.

At the same time, Zane flexed.

That cage reversed direction.

From a great expansion to a great contraction. All those chains rushing for the center, the Magnetism and Gravity Laws thickening as the links grew closer, started overlapping—

Haxorax must’ve sensed danger. He put on a burst of speed. All that Empyrean Golden dragon essence went to Stormwings, went to those Solar Storm Laws. He blurred as fast as he’d gone all fight, nearly supernova.

But the chains went faster.

There was too much force going through them now.

Haxorax met the edge of that contracting cage just a few dozen feet from where Zane stood.

And hit a wall of pure force.

The cage trembled, but that was all.

This was a structure built to cage creatures just like Haxorax. It took far more than a body slam to break it.

Then the prince was dragged screaming into the center. Dragonflame spinning wildly, blasting uselessly… and for the first time, Zane felt like he’d properly gotten his hands on his enemy.

Chains wrapped Haxorax one by one. Even as he bucked—wrapping those vast wings, the arms that had so wrecked Zane’s body, the legs that’d made the him a nightmare to hit. Haxorax thrashed again and again.

But there was no getting out of this hold, especially when Zane was the one at the end of the chains.

Skill learned!

Chainstorm Cage [Mythic (D)]

There we go.

He grinned as he bore down, riding out each wave of thrashes, letting that wild force crash against the iron of his muscles. Bringing the dragon to heel.

He might be vastly outstripped in speed, in Law. He might even be edged out in regeneration; that Haxorax brimming with pure dragon bloodline.

But in physical strength Zane knew he was at least his match. In a straight wrestling match he’d bet on himself, ten times out of ten. 

And this was no straight wrestling match. 

More and more chains slapped on. Haxorax started hurtling from the sky. 

Then phantom chains shattered down Zane’s physique. 

He limit-broke into the final stage of the fight.

That gaoler, the Faceless One—he’d wielded this thing to bind foes and bring them to captivity.

But Zane had another use in mind. Something he hadn’t explored much before, something a little more crushing.

He’d realized one last thing about Chainstorm Cage… it left him in prime position to combo into something else.

He chained it into an old favorite.

Prometheus Noose!

Haxorax thrashed and thrashed. It was no use. The Prince seemed shocked just how tight the bind was.

That wasn’t an accident. 

Zane threw on the base Prometheus Noose, but this time he gave it a boost. He kept the gravity from Chainstorm Cage heavy in there. Just to make sure he held that crush dead to rights. 

Skill Evolved!

Prometheus Noose -> Titan Prometheus Noose [Common (D) -> Rare (D)]

He grinned. He was making out like a bandit with all these new Skills.

The bite took hold. A bite of bloody red that ran through every last chain link, and it looked as though the dragon prince was clamped in the fist of some angry god.

A god that began to crush with Limit Breaker Rhino strength.

The howls turned to gasps, turned to chokes and crunching—hissing—

The sounds of crushed dragon.

And Zane felt a host of scales all over Haxorax’s chest shattering. Felt the wings crunched up as far as they could go. And they were brittle things, those wings. Even Haxorax’s.

They just couldn’t take the force Zane was giving.

CRUNCH-CRUNCH!

Haxorax wasn’t even thrashing anymore. He didn’t have the space to do even that much. His howls were as much pain as they were fury. Dragonflame rent the air again and again, slashing wild lines through the sky, but even that was growing thin. The chains choked him off.

Zane didn’t let himself relax. He just kept cranking.

The job wasn’t done just yet. 

Haxorax’s health cratered before his eyes. Slowly at first—but as that bite grew deeper, he had to be shedding 10, 20% health a second—

The dragon howled. This time his voice doubled, tripled, as though a horde of ancient dragons were howling with him…

Haxorax’s eyes lit up like beacons of gold.

Then his whole physique burned with that light. 

His neck grew longer, lankier, rippling with scales. His legs thickened, gaining new sinews, new claws. His arms, too, swelling massively—

Haxorax was dragonforming. Zane narrowed his eyes. He knew the dragon was down to his last resort. By far Haxorax’s most dangerous state, if the myths were to be believed.

Two Ten Million Year Bones and a small ocean of purest True Dragonblood, gathered over twenty-odd grueling years in the Sacred Rites…

It all went berserk in that moment.

Pouring into each crushed bone, searing the scales together with lines of gold light, swelling the prince’s muscles with the vigor of True Dragons.

When Haxorax thrashed this time, Zane almost lost his grip. 

He was wrenched forward a good few feet; he found himself fighting ferociously just to keep that cage locked tight. 

This was the True Dragon’s answer to his Limit Breaker. And Reina had told him, looking quite worried, that it could well make or break the fight; standing in its presence, he knew what she meant. Just looking at the sheer size of the prince made him feel he was wrestling some ancient deity. 

Fine, then.

He still felt he had this.

The wrestling grew more violent, more shaky. But with lash after lash Zane wrestled that beast down again, snarling as he did. Reeling back a wing, binding up a claw even as Haxorax’s wildness sundered through mountains…

Zane felt more strain than ever on his physique, true enough. But soon it grew apparent it’d only challenged him there because it’d surprised him.

He didn’t care what form this dragon took. It still wasn’t about to break him. Not when he had a hold this strong, not when his new gravity kept it locked this tight. 

And with how much Bloodline that dragon was burning Zane had another reason to be confident. He knew his Limit Breaker would outlast this. He just had to ride it out and hold on—

“UNIVERSE EXPANSION,” snarled Haxorax. His pupils had gone white. “RAGE OF DRAGONS!”

Zane blinked at the sky. A sky suddenly blotted out with balls of golden fire.

…Haxorax definitely hadn’t shown this Skill before.

Zane considered his chains, strung with incredible tension, a tension going through his whole body, rooting him to the ground. Then the meteors.

That…

That was not good. 

Then they fell, and he did all he could.

He threw up gravity cores in an effort to deflect them.

The meteors crushed right through them.

He shifted so he’d take the worst of it on his back, a back still half-wrapped with chains, and flared some spare Destruction through.

But there was only so much a man could do when he was this tied down.

Two meteors struck in quick succession, and he spewed blood.

The next staggered him pretty badly. Another took him off one foot.

Then another meteor struck, and another—you couldn’t add this kind of force to a high-pressure system and expect nothing to give.

Muscles started tearing all over Zane’s body. First a bicep, then a lat—Zane groaned. Then another meteor, and another meteor, and another...

A meteor wrecked his just-healed nose, making him spew blood again. Another shattered his jaw.

But he kept that jaw clenched tight.

He’d done all that work to get the Prince here. He still had that Prometheus Noose going—still biting deep into Haxorax even as he thrashed. He’d never have the Prince this compromised again.

If he let go now… this fight was done.

But at this rate those meteors would knock him out.

He had to change tactics. Blunting with Destruction and Gravity just wasn’t working. He couldn’t take these to the face, but he couldn’t move much either.

 The only way he could think of to block this onslaught, or to move at all… was to let go.

He had to admit, this Haxorax had him in a bit of a bind. He took another meteor to the face—almost went down to a knee.

“No,” Zane growled.

An idea struck him just then. An answer, like he so often found in these critical moments.

He knew how he could end this fight. He just had to—

The gravity in his new Titan Prometheus Noose broke loose.

“…”

He had to admit, he hadn’t seen that one coming.

Granted, it was the most gravity he’d wielded in quite a while… he wasn’t sure how that’d even happened. He didn’t even know it could happen. 

He figured it was probably just a first-time kink. The kind of thing you’d iron out with practice. It was his first time not only using this new Skill, but also chaining it with another new Skill, after all… Actually, put it that way, it wasn’t that surprising that something broke. It was a lot of new stuff all at once.

It was unfortunate timing, though.

Because at that precise moment, Haxorax gave one final, full-body thrash.

And nearly every big muscle on Zane’s upper body—already badly weakened by those meteors—exploded.

So did the big muscles in his legs, which had been straining to their limit to keep the dragon in check. A fair few ligaments went too.

Zane frowned at his now-shattered physique.

…Those were quite crucial for his plan, actually. He’d rather been counting on being able to move.

Then the chains exploded off of the Dragon Prince.

Zane was rather displeased about this. Another two seconds or so, and he was certain he had this in the bag. 

Then the fight had turned. The chance was far gone.

Haxorax was smoking. His biggest wing bones were shattered, and a line of black streaked his great throat… but for all that, he looked as hearty as ever. Literally shining with raw vitality, raw power…

And he was enraged almost beyond belief.

And as though to emphasize just how bad things had gotten, two more meteors slammed into him from the back in quick succession. One to the back of his head.

***

“Zane’s down!” said Jake. “He’s down—truly down, for the first time this fight!”

“He’s got to get up, now,” said Mox, a sudden urgency in his voice. “He’s got no time!”

“Get up on what, exactly?”

Zane struggled up to a shattered leg.

It just wasn’t enough.

To be fair to Zane, he could’ve had two hale legs, and it would’ve still been almost impossible to get out of the way of the blast Haxorax hit him with next.

Haxorax’s full bloodline burned. Gold-black swamped his throat, shining with an intensity the Prince hadn’t shown all fight.

“Zane can’t be more than 40% health right now,” said Jake. “He’s just got to take this—!”

Dragonflame swamped the continent.

From space, it would’ve seemed like the sun cresting the horizon.

The last thing anyone saw of Zane was him wrenching at his chains, throwing them over his heart.

When the light faded, all that was left was smoke. Smoke, and the miles-long furrow carved deep into the star core, and the shattered river of void striking deep into space.

“…Hells,” said Mox.

Zane lay flattened on the ground.

Somewhere in the stands the Patriarch roared in triumph.