Dragons of War - Rising Storm

*Final* Chapter 32 (1/2)

The land rushed towards me with every passing second. Moving bodies like ants raced across the ground below me but I cared little for them. My eyes searched for the one target that mattered. The one that had taken everything away from me. The Lightning Tower.

I spotted it blow me. A fresh tower, untouched by dragons, it powered forwards past the remains of the one tower we were able to destroy. A hum in the air around it, it was ready to strike the moment a dragon got close enough. 

A feeling built within me at the sight of it that spread like wildfire. It seared its way throughout my body and every part of me it touched, I changed in the flash of an eye.

White scales enveloped me. Claws sprouted where fingers had once been. My bones shifted and changed for the larger form, and wings sprung from my back.

Omega lost his hold and I saw him from the corner of my eye, duck, and dive after me. But I was already fully transformed.

My head felt heavier than before, but I quickly adjusted to the difference, and as the land below me grew closer and closer, so too did the lightning in my veins. It spread throughout my body in a jolt of energy.

My eyes locked upon my target ahead of me, and I leveled out in my flight. There were a few dragons still flying through the air, and a few of them called out to me. I ignored them. They were pathetic excuses for dragons.

Human soldiers raised their guns and shot at me but the bullets had no effect, even on my wings. Not anymore.

I felt a hum in the air, as the Lightning Tower ahead of me charged for it's next strike. But it wouldn't be hitting anything again. I would make sure of that.

A warmth built in my chest until it became uncomfortable, and once the Tower was in range, I opened my maw and a stream of blue fire struck against it. The heat was so intense I could feel it through my scales, but the fire lasted as long as my breath did, and I had large lungs.

The blue fire melted a path through the tower like a hot knife through butter and in mere moments the whole structure came tumbling down.

But I wasn't done yet.

My wings beat against the air and I gained enough height to swoop down and race above the land. Every tank that came into range, I rained fire down upon it. The people below me, they ran away with screams of terror but I hardly cared. I knew already the battle had been won.

Time seemed to slow for me, the more I destroyed and the fire I used. My energy drained with every breath of it but I kept going. Until every last hunk of metal in that desert had been melted to a pile of smoldering alloy.

When I saw not a soldier, tank, or Lightning Tower remained, I returned to the site of the very first Tower and clung to it's peak. The view around me seemed like a dream. Because I had seen it before, many times.

Heaps of metal smoldered and flames sprung from piles of debris. The bodies of the fallen were scattered in every place between.

It was the same image I had created, every night, before sleep as a child. It was the same that I had created in that machine.

Was that even possible?

Inside I felt little for the destruction around me. All I knew, was that it was just the beginning.

The fire inside of me slowly died down, and the cold within my heart overcame me once more.

The pain, the loss, the memories. It was all around me.

The world tilted around me, and I lost my grip on the steel below my claws. I fell towards the ground but when I hit I was no longer a dragon.

In the exhausted haze of my mind, I saw Omega landing right above me. He shifted back into his human form, in what seemed like no time at all. When I looked past him, to the sky above, all I saw was empty air.

Where had everyone gone?

I saw that battlefield over and over again in my dreams. The scene repeated, time and again in my head. A sea of red and ash, a white dragon standing above it all. Me. I felt sick inside, that I had done all of that, with little a thought in my mind. And then I felt pride. I had done that, alone. And then sadness. Pain, fear... Over and over again in my head, the scene repeated until the sickness of my own thoughts and feelings overwhelmed me.