Private The Hydra Taunts

[MrTophat]

Swerve and scorch, wrist twist and quick dump the mana acculminator's spite. Thick belch of ash and powder spark, choking, corrosive, seconds from pressurised internal detonation yet released in time to delay the arrest. Heels that kicked the pedals one two, sidepump thrash in knuckle attack, hard to ground and dip in the drift speed manifest. The ultimate stress test to the magitek skychariot was the ultimate test of the one within the throne, hard harnessed, hands working continually, brow soaking the bandana that marked their allegiance to the machine's potential. That potential declared, challenges thrown and intent made manifest. The raid was on, the gauntlet had been thrown, the farmland was a lure, those who would appear were the real target. The mana acculminator had empited corrosion that now withered the vines below, scorched the soil turning to sand, trellises tormented.

None had proven audacious or capable enough to save the farmland. The sky duels had been short, intensive, and all who had appeared had been quickly outclassed and dominated. Tauntingly. Decisively. Parachutes and luft safety weave techniques had been employed liberally. The fields wide with crops were littered with the torn open rib cages from magitech birds plucked and grounded. The gauntlet had been thrown down via combination of brass horn clarion call to defend the skies from the rider's sabotage of the soil below, and weaveshout declaration to turn up fast or the fields are ash forever. The crops were to be salted, scalded, and any were welcome to act as fertiliser in spiting his announcement. A windmill's burning did provide landmark and smoke column to mark the raid on the map and sky, rotating loyally in it's final hour of service.

The skychariot frothed with sizzling ichors that would make an engineer howl for more reasons than the extreme speeds and velocity spikes. The violent shifts in center of gravity as the absurd was made performed. The belly of the chariot was a blur of blue fumes, but one who could peer correct as something so dastardly violent in it's quickness. A regeneration chamber burning ten times as bright as they ought to. The machine would not fade away. It blazed it's defiance to destruction with each belly show it made as it tilted away from sights of the dangers.

Destruction had been handled in the moments between the demands of the skychariot's attitudes and want to explode by it's own hubris. A half second window had sent snarl of metal tarnishing snares. A full second a reprieve afforded a luft denying smog, belched from aft and starboard volley of blackened gremlin faces. The latest sky warrior had been grounded by both landing true, a gleaming white of precious metals unspooling as silkweave cloth sputtered open to save the pilot.

Purple hypercompelled weave trails screamed into the intakes, as if mocking the ejection, the weavetrail pressed into visible sight by the glare lining the intakes. The thrice fractured shroudstone wreathes flaring in drumbeat calls for acceleration. Amber circles and lines of infused components that made much possible at such velocities grew more tarnished by the stress, bubbling with reds and the purples of the weavetrails.

Voracious and snarling those two wide maws did feed the beast keen and cruel. Each surge of air and weave, taken as the drowning taking in air, a thousand surfacing needs for atmosphere gasped deep a second. More, more to the engines, more the throne's command. More, we must have more.

Tall sheen of copper of a ramming implement gleamed with wicked intent as it pitched and lanced the plot of the horizon, dipped, dived, stabbed. Not yet bloodied. Required to become.

The length of three horses, the width of canal boat, the magitek beast, The Hydra, was a work of malice to the laws of the weave and the safety of it's rider. A taunting display of galling engineering power fantasy that consumed itself to make itself exist as it should. Feeding claws scraped what the intakes did not vortex into itself, tiny teeth that chattered as praying mantis against the frayed weave that escaped. Hyper attentive wide angled scoops balanced the ichors with fresh antidotes of cold mottled solutions, alchemical countermeasures quick procured from the sky and flash boiled to inject at the rider's peril. The three engines were a declaration of anarchy behind the throne, bulbous and appearing as heads that snapped out flashes of blue white red luftthrust mocking those that gave chase. They were tearing themselves apart from their roaring impulse of shock flare snarl velocity dare, acceleration addiction chasing any dragon.

Below, the belly held two underhanging secondary engines that were silent and choked out, dipped inside the regeneration chamber in quick cure like a burning blade tempered over and over. The oraculum catalyst tanks gave siren call and banshee wail as the regeneration was haunted into the carcass of an engine. Tanks that gargled and laboured to supply medicine to the self immolating. Pushed exactly to their limits, the two engines under repair had been burned out. Repairing now at the direct expense of the user. A blue sheen creep of fire that did forge more means of thrust to chamber into the engine array. The orcaculum replicated by the toll of the user's sacrifice of themselves. Spider mesh wrapped about the back of the rider. The throne was dissociating and desiccating a soul to provide the Hydra it's regenerating engines back to service.

A gloved hand wrenched a speaking device as if it had done the pilot wrong by existing.

“Who's next? Who fucking dares face the Hydra?” The headbanner wearing rider did scream into the brasswork speaking horn, which sent his words barrelling out wide into the endless skies as performed spirals. The sound did shatter past clouds and thinness of air. The rider was a mesh of white robes, leather harnesses that locked them in, and goggles that gleamed purple in time with the intake inhalations. Leaning back was rarely a choice in such a throne, the speed did make one more and more entrenched in the mystique of blazing speed.

The vibrations were as a shivering beast of airborn tectonic wrath, pistons clanking, compressing the weave, tapestry of speed choking the oraculcum amalgam components, the hybrid mesh of the wings of black scale and tight wrap mystic mail refusing any limit to it's beat downs. There was no negotiation. The Hydra model was singular, mad, free, and as quick as it's system did regrow from the pace of the panic it made, refusing to stay still, refusing to hold onto anything that wasn't it's speed gauge.

Circular did the The Hydra wheel around in long taunts, gasping another corrosive measure to the ground, the wreck of a downed flying machine given further insult as it became torched.

“Have to hit something worthy of people mourning, this isn't enough, have to get something big, otherwise, otherwise...” Mandle, the skychariot rider who had been assigned the Hydra to test it's potential, did breath to themselves, their eyes scanning the horizon feverishly as the beast did snarl in disgust at lack of quarry.

@Petra Darthinian

 

[Petra Darthinian]

Desperate reports had flooded in from the farming plateaus of the east, of a strange singular airship that spat fire like a rabid dragon of old and grew more monstrous with every airship it gunned down in its path, the sun glinting off it like some vengeful metallic god who sought destruction at the world's end. In response, the Knights had dispatched their own aerial assault, for if airships weren't the answer to taking this fucking thing out of the sky, then perhaps something more dangerous, like a dragon, would suffice.

So it was, Syr Darthinian on Norvyk and a fellow Knight of the wing, Syr Montbank, a Dusker had finally arrived to deal with the disaster before it took more lives.

The farmland below was already half-razed, black scars striping the green, smoke columns twisting skyward in noxious warning. Petra pressed herself low to Norvyk’s saddle, winds screaming past, stinging her cheeks raw. Now that they had their eyes on the ruin below, she could see that the reports had undersold it— the Hydra as it was called, was smaller than she expected, but fuck, the way it spat and shrieked and rattled hellfire into the world was fit for a warship from one of the flotilla cities.

Norvyk rumbled beneath her as his storm-born wings carved their own thunder into the air, each beat driving them closer as they approached from high above. To their flank, Syr Montbank steadied in the gale and Petra’s shout tore itself free, caught and carried by the wind to him, "Can you do something about the fires down there? I’ll try to end this bastard from above. Whatever you do—be careful. We don’t know what it all can do yet!”

No more words wasted. If the Hydra wanted the sky, she would drag its screaming carcass from the heavens herself.

Norvyk surged, a living tempest lancing down from the clouds like a spear thrown. The stink of hot brass and molten ichor hit Petra’s tongue like biting a hot coin fresh from the forge and she braced with a bare-toothed scream as her dragon struck.

Claws scraped across the Hydra’s rails in a groaning shriek of tearing metal, the weight of Norvyk’s body slamming into the beast and wrenching both into a plummeting spiral. Wind tore at her, the horizon spinning in chaos—then Norvyk’s wings cracked wide with snapping leather, catching, twisting, turning the momentum into violence wielded. With a savage heave, the storm dragon flung the skychariot across the sky.

Ozone prickled the air and Petra tasted static. Blue light seared up Norvyk’s emerald throat and Petra watched as the lightning torrent broke free from his roaring maw, white-hot and wrathful, hammering into the Hydra as it rolled through the air.

Her dragon steadied, stormwinds curling around them. Petra’s breath came fast, her eyes locked on the writhing machine, partially screened by the roiling clouds of it's own pistoning black caustic smoke, her ears ringing with the howling of the Hydra's engines.

@Syr Montbank @MrTophat

 

[MrTophat]

The Syr of white wing nodded at the command, pitched and did not fail the expectations of his plumage. Armed with dousing manners did the diamond of white attend the scorching farms, smoke rising a flare for his attentions. Montbank cast eyes back at the approach of Darthinian and Norvyk, and admired the overwhelming retort as it blossomed out in explosion.

It was as if, he thought as he retrieved deep pots of dousing flame fighting ichors from his harness and the first pronouncement of violence made course, it was if the mechanical joyrider had offended the legend of living lightnings. Two known as one here, now, pairs of eyes serving the wide wings beating down. Souls entwined in dive and destructing, indeminity to the burning below with obligation to enact retort to the magitect luft pretenders. The true ruling force of the sky knew their dominion, Montbank saw. With thunder, scale, talon and authority had they played out their charge. Montbank secured the sight in his memory, knowing bold of what was possible by those with brawn beyond him in skies above, and turned to his duty.

And so with diamond shimmer of white did Montbank soar as a dart away, as titanic spear of blue white shock made interruption to the skychariot's brash bravado.

Mandle, the rider of the skychariot, had dared the skies to present their best answer to his challenge, and now, his eyes scarce understood this flash of violence against all he held onto for control and power. So sudden and comprehensive was this thunder that roared through and before his throne that he scarce understood the implication. Gauges he had no time to read flashed out contradictions and complaint. He was awash in deafness and lash back sensation, palms dug deep of controls that slipped response from him as all became roaring confusion and wrathful rip of the Hydra's externals. His face faced ablation, jagged debris from his pride of place thrown against him.

Flush metals became fraught and panicked, shimmering and unravelling. Prangs of compressed crystal ichor released their holdings, unravelling concepts of the luft in exasperated hissings. The spiral set riggings to strain and buckle, what could be understood to be adrenaline in the defensive matrix of the Hydra triple coursed in survival pump to keep from choking out the will to exist. This response automatic. The force of velocity set the throne to dig into the user, keeping him prisoner to the sky chariot's demands. This too, instinctive from the prison he flew to keep him just so, no matter the lethality.

Bandana fluttered wildly upon the rider's head, eyes scarcely understanding what had emerged from above and set upon him. The shimmer of scale, the roar of vocal folds of monster, a meeting of eye contact between Mandle and Petra, however brief in the chaos, informed him. The Hydra itself, sideswiped and heft in spiral, the deep grin of damage did widen as if growing gleeful at the demands did look back the dragon Norvyk. Already the tendrils of capillaries crawling out in lurch grapple of the damage, as if possessive of pieces that were being sundered.

A cry out from rider. Not of pain. But of rejoicing madness.

"Ah hah!" Mandle screamed out, now jubilent despite the onslaught and velocity as they did spiral. A wide manic glare of teeth, a mouth that made sound to know his own rejection of policing. As if he were defeating his own physical shock and pains with the daredevil thrill of his demands being answered so completely. No submission from this, he knew not to shirk his purpose. Too late for that. The die was rolling on.

He twist the controls as blood seeped from his face in pock marked damage, punching down on the panel that clutched him, as talons released him into the void. At this command, The Hydra's engines set their countermeasures and self preservation protocols, a howl triplicate as pain gushed into passionate combustions of luft thrust and repair.

The drake and rider's melee strafe would have felled a skychariot not made to resist and crawl back to purpose quick. The Hydra, much like it's name, was built to recover from the vital brains severing. Brains of magitek and deep corruptions and bargains.

And much had been severed, made mockeries of by this devastating rush from true champions of the sky. And much was it's cost. Already, the rider's internal soul weave within flesh and bone and blood was being rerouted to the soul of this chariot. Surges of webbing green did course across where blood did flow. Not a jot of healing to the rider, but fuel to keep the chariot spiteful and hanging in the delicate airs of arrogance it clasped to. The parasite meant to live on, fight on, prove itself worthy to warrant another created in it's image.

Ballasts below inhaled in shudders. The engines rotated, lurch click and reload of vitalities as the other engine was given reprieve for the surge that kept it aloft. Recycling spite, redoubling will, the Hydra made effort to pivot as it was flung. The prow of the chariot rushed point at the Hydra, to gain velocity command. Spinning, spinning, wildly spinning as it made efforts to point correct.

Mandle's hair grew on end, his neck craned to the open maw of the Drake as the chariot whirled.

"Face it!" Mandle screamed out, twisting his hands so that the skychariot did present battering ram towards the shock growing within the dragons' teeth. Controls resisted, but the Hydra knew the intent beyond what the steering did afford. The meaning was known, through cage and tendril dug down deep, through possession of the possessor. It fought on.

"Face!" Mandle let out again, both a plea to himself and desperate threat to the Hydra.

In full wild roll that was the Hydra, a spin that threatened black out of it's rider. But no longer was the Hydra sideways leaning, spilling it's guts out. The debris was being clawed out, retrieved, the prow of the skychariot now facing the dragon as it whirred like a spinning top. Much left to land on field below, the vitals held and clutched and snatched back in. Mandle would have given way to fading from thinking, but the Hydra knew how to support it's host from the demands of sky combat.

Control this was not. Counter measure of the predator against predator did the Hydra reveal it's weapon. Underbelly did the tusk of a battering ram present. Jagged thing of shimmering brass, held aloft by green tinged metal hands that seemed almost like the battering ram were a rude gesture.

Spat forth did thunderbolt come arcing forth against the Hydra.

The lightning lay down the hammering in deafening pronouncement.

The battering ram was not quite ready nor perfectly aligned, for the fought velocity had not been cleanly won. Still spinning, the lightning did singe, and burn, and shock, and sizzle across and within the Hydra. While the conductive nature of the Hydra's weapon snared much, it was far from siezing all. The flash of white conduction against the prow doing baleful damage, but dissipating plenty through the breaching tools. The lightning rod did it's best to steal the thunder from the dragon, and found itself barely capable of capturing such power. Mandle's laughter was engulfed as his world exploded and his eyes became blind to his own fate, his hands feeling grip of the Hydra, and life as the rolling shock raced across them both.

Montbank heard and felt and saw even without attention to what had happened. Ozone burning, flash of thunder rolling, creak smash of siege weapon connecting, like ramparts crushed and buckling. Yet a sound of what almost seemed like a factory digesting, churning thunder within a church as if gulping the heavens shock within the aloft metalwork. And a laughing, that laughing horrible and mad as the dervish was embraced for all it's sways and pivots and crashing chaos. He wished he did not hear so clear, that he could not pick out the details with his gifts of sharp perception.

Montbank threw down the dousing vials as gouts of scorched offerings coughed out of the Hydra.

The caustic black smoke abounded about the skychariot, as if the smoke were black sails of sea vessel full of winds snapping wide and open to the world.

The laughing became choked out, smothered, acrid air stealing his voice.

Triplicate whine of resonate rebuffed and replenished from the engines did rise up, pleased, even as fires broke out on board, as wooden boards were discarded in favour of maintaining the hearts of this skychariot.

This thing seemed as if a wild animal's ribcage were ripped open, splayed. Internals revealed, that did by ebb and throb of will to live on did seal, breath and by shakening rattling breath, close this horrid display of damage. Not regenerating. Sutering, triage of terrors, ventricals and capillaries webbing out to keep this Hydra in this fight.

Mandle drew in ragged breath, coughed, wiped away blood and sweat and he knew not what else. A series of commands from shaking fingers as blooded brow wet his eyes, vision pulsing in after image hypnotic.

The first commands were futile. Commands to harpoons that no longer existed. Spindles of metal and wood descending to the earth.

The second commands equally futile. Net throwers that jammed, still repairing, refusing to muster courage or wit to ensnare dragon.

The third, punched down with knuckle, eeked out their demand obeyed.

The engine flared in unison, giving pressure to means to puncture back. Across the battering ram still sparking with conduction, modification to the nature of the weave, the stomachs of magic of the Hydra digesting with their manners to turn what volatile energies were stolen outwards. It could not be stored. It would be converted, into volley back. Half charged for how sudden the manuevers performed with perfect compunction by Petra and Noryck's synchronised performance.

From the battering ram, as the Hydra refused the spin now, held aloft and hovering, withdrawing backwards, did the lances of crimson, the colour of fresh pumped blood mingled with the volcanic, did erupt out. Spat out just as the dragon had done, but altered in nature. Lances of lava as whips that seemed to grasp, vomited out from the prong of brass still held defiant as rude gesture. Where the lava lost cohesion as it did drip down to the fields below it did set further fires when it would eventually reach the earth.

A cry of pain from Mandle, grimace and holding on, as the Hydra did make Mandle feel every pain for what was being sacrificed with this answer. His eyes barely able to register if the lavawhips had successfully rendered, let alone lashed true.

@Petra Darthinian