I Wyvern

AK510-37 Cool Summer End Week 1
[Charon Guiding, Shale Resting, Cycles Watching]

Cogaday

The wind felt cold and wet against his skin. Not that it mattered. Far below the countryside swept past. The forest was teaming with lizardfolk. Yeuch! He couldn't understand how the dragon could eat them. He shuddered, then unconsciously adjusted a wing tip to correct his flight. The lizardfolk were clumsily driving all decent prey to ground. While he slipped through the clouds like a hulking ghost, they clambered noisily through the trees. The sooner they went home to their reeking swamps the better.
With all other prey being particularly timid today, humans would be worth a visit. Sweep in out of the clouds from behind the trees and then up and away. The thrill of the ground speeding past, their puny voices screeching in panic, the bleat of a panicked sheep, warm and bleeding, in his powerful talons. The pleasure of plunging his stinger into the soft helpless flesh. Mmmm. A few drops of dark green poison fell towards the earth. Even thinking about the kill made the venom rush. Shouldn't be dripping like that he thought, momentarily disquieted. Then he turned his mind back to the kill. A new human settlement had formed and humans meant prey. If they ran, he took their animals. If not, he took them instead. Both died just as easily.
After a while the settlement came into view far below. There were no humans in the outlying fields and no animals either. Damn. They must have been scared off too. These lizardfolk were a nuisance. He was hungry. He was always hungry. Even when he had eaten so much meat he could barely fly, there was always room for just a little more. But now, hunger gnawed insistently at him. When he was hungry he liked to kill. Attacking a human settlement could be risky though. They were feeble but occasionally cunning. He would have to be careful. To avoid detection he put some distance between the settlement, then exited the clouds and swept down to cruise in just above the trees. He beat towards to village out of sight and quiet as breath.
The he spotted them. A small group of humans outside the protection of the village. Easy prey. And they had horses too. Horses were so hard to find out here and delicious, not too mention the way they panicked when snatched up from the ground. This would be fun.

As he broke cover he was spotted. But that was of little consequence: humans tasted better than they fought. He beat his powerful wings and accelerated. The humans were all praying to The Gods, which was normal. One offered up a prayer to Naduir, a good idea but it wouldn't help. They were also shouting loudly at one another, again perfectly normal. He wasn't sure if he could read human expressions correctly, they all looked the same to him, but they did appear to be quite enthusiastic about his appearance. That was not normal. That was very worrying. But he was hungry. Then a ring of metal weapons sprang into existence around one of the humans who was covered from head to toe in shining metal hide. Metal-hide then jumped off it's horse and stood ready for his attack. He immediately struck metal-hide off his list of potential prey. Magic and a metal hide made prey harder to kill and worse even harder to eat. And the metal hide ruined the taste. Last time he attacked a metal-hide he almost broke his stinger. He felt a twinge in the stinger at that memory. Focus on the kill, he reminded himself. Another one of the human's finished praying and aimed his bow at him. He changed his course slightly to confuse the prey but was confident that a clumsy human bowman would have to be very lucky indeed to penetrate his thick dragon-hard scales. The first arrow almost took him out of the sky! It flew from the bow like a viper straight into his chest. It lodged between two of his scales just above his heart. It hurt like hell. He would rip that human's legs off!

Then a particularly muscular human stepped forward away from the safety of his herd to challenge him. What an idiot! That weapon would be useless against his bulk. He flexed his talons. A ferocious but surprisingly musical bellowing issued forth from the human's small body. Not bad. He roared back, almost deafening the human and drowning out his scream. The hair on the human's head was pushed back by the passage of his roaring breath and the beating of his powerful wings. The human lashed his flail at his chest with all his might. Inevitably, it was just a glancing blow. Then it was all over. He snatched the fool from the ground and was beating away into the air before it's herd could help him. The meal struggled weakly as he stabbed it with his stinger. Oh that felt good. It survived the initial effects of the venom. Not to worry, there was plenty more where that came from. All too easy.
He watched the air for a swift breeze to take him home and shifted his course to ease the pressure in his chest. He was already looking forward to returning for that archer once he'd recovered his strength.

Then it all started to go wrong. Metal-hide was praying again. A mace of solid air appeared in his path, it swung, it connected with his jaw and pain seared through his skull. Then the archer fired again. This was familiar ground though and despite the pain he could deal with that. He nimbly moved the meal to protect himself and heard a satisfying combination of thud and scream, as the arrows plunged into the meal. He could barely follow the screamed exchange between the meal and the archer due to the ringing in his head but the meal was obviously very unhappy. Then a hippogriff appeared in mid air right in front of him! What the hell was going on? This was not good. Another arrow hit him and his wing faltered. The pain in his chest grew worse as he tried to stay aloft, his vision was beginning to blur from the painful blow to his head and his wing was flailing around uselessly. He began to panic and decided to drop the meal and flee. Then the mace swung back into view and all went black. He never felt the hippogriff snatch the meal from his talons or even the bone shattering impact with the ground far below. His spirit was already on it's way to Seilig, to hunt without hunger in the heart of Croi.