The Silver Dragon (Unpublished, unedited version)

Chapter 4: A Broken Peace

The first wave of planes hit hard. Silver's heart hammered in her chest as she twisted and dove, leaving her back facing the hailstorm of bullets that rained down on the dragons. Cries of pain and roars were thrown through the air. Explosions lit up the sky and different elements lanced across open space, catching planes in mid-air. A few bullets caught her shell, bounding harmlessly off, but she still felt the impact and peeped slightly against it.

Levelling off she grew metallic tail spikes on her tail. She looked up to the sky to see one of the planes flying towards her at quite a substantial speed. She flicked her tail once, sending a storm of spikes towards the plane. They hit their target, but hardly did anything do damage the plane. Growling in annoyance she took a large flap of her wings and sawed once again into the air, turning so she was flying upside down. The plane couldn't follow such a tight turn and sped away, trying to get out of her range. She sent another volley of spikes after it but missed.

She turned quickly to see what was becoming of the rest of the battle. The first wave of planes had passed and it seemed that the numbers of dragons had dwindled slightly. Her father stood out amongst the chaos because he had adopted what Silver liked the call the 'full metal' state. It meant that the metal shell had grown so that it covered his whole body instead of just part of it. Metallic dragons were nearly invincible in this state, but it slowed them down considerably and exhaustion came much quicker.

Silver decided to follow her father's lead however and let her own metal shell expand around her until it encased her whole body. Instantly she felt the extra wait and was forced to flap her wings much harder to keep up in the air. No sooner had she done this then the next wave hit. Bullets rained upwards from the forest from human ground forces that had somehow snuck into the valley while the planes had attacked. The bullets rang harmlessly off the metal shell on Silver's stomach but other dragons weren't so lucky. They cried out in pain as the bullets penetrated scales and disabled wings. Many plunged from the air at the sudden onslaught.

The metallic dragoness felt anger course through her. Who were these people to attack their valley? What had they ever done to them? Tucking in her wings Silver dived down towards the humans below, crashing through the trees without a second thought. She landed on two soldiers who were stalking through the trees towards a downed earth dragon. She whipped out her tail at the other assailants around her, striking them down. She hadn't bladed it so all it did was knock them down, even if it did cause quite a bit of damage in the process. She opened her maw and shot out a stream of liquefied metal towards the soldiers. They cried out as the metal encased and trapped them. She switched her metal stream to a volley of small spikes, which acted nearly the same as bullets, cutting down the rest of the attackers.

Once she was sure they were all dead she took a deep breath and shook herself out. There was blood staining her shell from when she had landed on the two humans. She shivered as she looked around her, looking at the damage she had caused. It was her first time killing an intelligent creature, and the thought of it made her start to second-guess herself. Was what they were doing right? Her answer quickly came as a volley of bullets rang of her metallic shell. Growling she formed a spike on her tail and flung it towards the human without a second thought, impaling him through the heart. Another kill. It was all too easy.

Shivering she trotted through the forest to where she had seen the downed earth dragon. She smiled when she saw him slowly getting up, recovering from the fall. He saw her and nodded a little painfully before hauling himself to his feet and looking to the air. A sudden growl of surprise shot from him as something shot from the forest and towards the green earth dragon. It was red in colour, and before any of the two dragons could react it landed right in between the dragon's horns. He screeched in pain as wires that led from the bottom of the device sunk into his head. Silver roared out her surprise and raced to the dragon to help him but it was already too late and the dragon fell to the ground, unconscious.