The Outsiders: Year Three (pt. XI)

Hara moved to the right, diving out of the way of an incoming lightning bolt.  The wyvern roared again, flame erupting from its maw.  I have to keep moving, he thought to himself.  He took to the sky, avoiding the fire and trying to hide himself in the cloud cover.  The sounds of large wingbeats followed him.  Given the extraordinary circumstances, Hara was feeling strangely calm.  Sure, he had never had to slay a wyvern, but to him, combat was combat.  How hard could it possibly be?

Having the high ground would help him analyze his opponent, Hara thought, but Thestus was fast.  The wyvern was gaining ground and snapping at his heels.  Hara hesitated, waiting until the jaws were almost upon him before darting downwards.  Plummeting towards the volcano, he turned and dragged his blade along the wyvern's belly, hoping to find a gap in the scale armor.  Failing that, he twisted, trying to elevate, but Thestus was ready, and the wyvern's tail hit its target.

The collision knocked the wind out of him and the force of hit slammed him into the mountainside.  Hara bounced into the air, narrowly avoiding another lightning strike.  Hara swore to himself, gritting his teeth as he finally came to a rest.  The weather was a huge problem.  The lightning, he was pretty sure, was under Thestus' domain, and if he were to stay still, he would be fried.  But constant movement was starting to strain his fuel reserves.  He had to end this quick. 

Looking upwards, he saw the wyvern above him, its large wings unfurled and beating slowly as it watched it's prey below.  The dark clouds acted as camouflage, masking most of its features.  As it dove towards him with an angry roar, the red eyes and the fiery maw stood out.  As did the yellow diamond on its chest...

Hara leapt away as Thestus' claws slammed into the mountainside, taking to the skies once more.  Twisting and turning, trying to evade the beast below, he ducked under its head and, grabbing the hilt of his blade tightly, drove the blade into its left wing.  Dark blood erupted from the wound and Hara had a brief moment of exultation before, with an incensed scream, Thestus' teeth closed around Hara's new leg. 

He felt himself slam, back first, into the ground again.  Thestus reared upwards, readying to strike towards his downed foe.  In that moment of desperation, Hara sat up and sprang upwards to meet him.  Narrowly avoiding the bite that would end his life, he drove his blade towards the diamond on Thestus' chest.  He felt the blade connect and with a tremendous flash of lightning, he was thrown backwards. 

For a moment the world was in chaos.  Lightning emanated wildly from the bewildered wyvern, a torrent of light piercing the darkness.  Thunder like the very fabric of reality torn asunder seemed to pierce him to his core.  Somewhere, a scream of anguish rent the air around him and Hara was reacquainted, headfirst, with the side of the mountain once more.

When he came around, Hara leapt to his feet, blade at the ready.  The sun was shining and he could see the curvature of the world on the horizon.  The view would have been, in any other circumstance, breathtaking, but, as a hardened soldier, Hara knew that every second without sight of his enemy was a distinct disadvantage.  Turning, he found the wyvern hunched over the remnants of the gem on the edge of the crater.  At the sign of movement, it looked up and Hara felt its gaze fall upon him.  Hara raised his blade and waited.  The voice caught him by surprise, coming from within his own head.

"Killing me is not enough for you it seems.  You are cruel to destroy the last link to my departed sister."

"What does it matter to you?  You'll be seeing her soon," Hara spat, suddenly angered by the hint of sadness in the god's voice.  Who was he to expect sympathy in the midst of an attempted murder?  He leapt once more into the air, and raced up the side of the mountain,  Dodging the snapping wyvern, he flew up, turned, ready to strike...and realized with horror that his fuel had run out.  Giving into gravity, Hara fell, blade downwards, towards the crouched beast below.  He could almost see a smile on the wyvern's face as it turned to meet him, pulled back, and unleashed a geyser of flame.

The fire engulfed him completely.  The Vector offered him no protection, though it should have. Burning, screaming, in indescribable pain, he fell into the throat of the beast, piercing the flesh within.  He couldn't think.  The pain was overwhelming.  But it wasn't just his own.  He felt Thestus inside him, the agony of the dying god threatening to consume his very being.  The carcass of The Great Wyvern, with the last son of Thestus within it, hurtled into the heart of the volcano.  

Hara was trapped inside his own head.  He didn't know where he ended and Thestus began.  In some way, he felt like the real battle was only just starting.  He couldn't feel anything anymore - the brief, yet intense, suffering of the flames were strangely missing.  Instead he felt threatened to lose himself in eons of memories.  He could suddenly see it all.  Across all time and space, the fires called to him.  From the birth of Agraea, to the end of creation, across the universe, everything was made plain to him.  And it almost drove him insane.  Fire was everything.  The flame was all there was.  Every lick of it called to him, every tendril summoning him.  Consumed, and undone, flashing throughout time, existing everywhere and nowhere at once, Hara O'Ans would have been lost...if it weren't for screams of a friend in need, pulling him back to his own.

He had a moment to register Aela's cry.  The wyvern was gone, replaced by the broken body of Thestus and his human form, upon which Hara now stood.  He somehow felt her then, fallen before Namala, who was closing for the kill. In a flash of rage and flame he was gone, and, for the first time in centuries, Mt. Otun came to life.