Who: Angel and OPEN What: Somebody very unlucky is about to get impaled out of the blues in place of the Dragonlord. (Maybe Spike? Somehow seems fitting for a comic encounter...) When: Early hours of the morning with the songbirds chirping and all that jazz Where: We're not in Kansas anymore...or are we? Rating: PG-13 Status: In Progress
2004, Los Angeles.
Madness.
The great dragon's scales shone an angry crimson green, gleaming with so many colours beyond the meagre descriptives of men. Its breath was a furnace of behemothic proportions, each scorching fume out of its nostrils withering the animate and the inanimate so unfortunate to be within its all-consuming reach. The overgrown reptile was a travelling desert--and it hadn't even begun to bring out the fire yet.
Having carved out some semblance of a path in the endless sea of Hell's minions, Angel made a sweeping stroke with his favourite broadsword (in all probability his last broadsword) to clear the area and leapt a hundred feet onto the sagging skeleton of a once impervious glass and steele structure. The blazing leviathan was too preoccupied playing Godzilla to notice the dark speck of a vampire fighting its way towards it, allowing the Powers That Be's champion to spy its movements. After all, it was the unspoken law of the universe that no creature was without some semblance of a vulnerability. Balance of powers. It was what made the world go around. All creatures, apparently, except for the one casting one spectacle of a silhouette across the skyline: a colossal dark blotch against a sky painted in sanguine red below the rumbling grey clouds. Its impossibly thick hide glistened like the plumage of a magnificent peacock in patches where light fell and its two eyes burnt with an intense ferocity that threatened the now absent sun. Its predatory frontal limbs ended in hook-like claws that curled menacingly into the empty air, its impressive wings unfurling with enough power to keep the full weight of the creature afloat against gravity with no apparent effort.
And, curiously, a gleam of metal pressing deeply against its throat. That same gleam of metal trailed back down to ground zero, a misleadingly thin sliver of a chain with the strength to hold the specimen captive. Some heavy duty enchantment right there. That put things in a new perspective. Angel's vision trailed back to the beast. All its galvanising about, all its pent-up rage...maybe, just maybe, it wasn't about destruction or an arbitrary show of its power and might. It wasn't even about the apocalypse or hell breaching the surface. It was about escape from imprisonment. Freedom. And Angel understood a little something about that, especially where it involved the Senior Partners. The dragon let out a rumbling, high pitched wail which could be heard all across the rain-soaked city. It echoed somehow pathetically to Angel's ears despite the distance it carried.
That was his way in. It was a slim chance and more like to backfire on him than not. But hey, a dragon roaming free was going to do its former captors more damage than to anybody else, right? If the creature became a problem, it was going to become a problem for everybody. That was more than he could say for driving a steele toothpick into its unbreakable hide and hoping for the best. Turning his focus from the dragon to the chain, Angel wielded the familiar leather grip of the broadsword in his hand and followed the moss-coloured metal straight to the Dragonlord. Less impressive looking than he'd expected. Well, all the better for him then. The army surrounding the procession might pose a bit of a problem. But on the contrary, they had seemingly lulled the Dragonlord into a false sense of security and complacency.
Was this going to work? He honestly could not tell. He hadn't exactly been making the best judgement calls lately, what with the Circle of the Black Thorn and all. Backing up a few steps, the figure in the dramatically billowing black duster took off on a run and leapt off the ledge of the crumbling construct with the blade raised high above his head. As though he sensed the danger plummeting towards him, the Dragonlord lifted his head just as the hard edge of the sword drove cleanly into its target.