Tales of Teramagos: The Cove of The Cannibal

Dahrinn (Groucho)

The Wizard
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per week
Writing Levels
  1. Intermediate
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
  4. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Primarily Prefer Male
Genres
Fantasy, Sci fi, anything in which the world itelf is extremely interesting.
Hundreds of feet above the wind whipped canopy of a primordial jungle, a man named John Caine, a famed dragon hunter, and the brave crew of his DHV “The Beowulf” fought for their lives against a terrible dragon amidst a tropical storm of unprecedented magnitude.

“The claws! The claws lads! Get it's claws out of the hull!”
John shouted into a speaker device, he squinted his eyes and tried to use his free hand to shield the heavy rain from the device, but at once, the ship turned sharply to the side. He lost his balance and slipped, his hat flying off as his head flew toward a railing.
“Shit!”

Before his head hit anything, his fall was stopped by a jerk on the jacket from his First-Mate, a thin man with a gauze-wrapped face who saw the world from a single, adjustable spectacle, and was renowned, who gripped his shoulder and handed him the dark, wide-brimmed hat which had accompanied him his entire career.
“Thanks, Enki…”

Enki responded with a single nod.
“Yes, sir.”
He spoke in a hushed voice.

There was another jerk, and the sound of screeching metal followed by a deafening shriek. The dragon crawled upward from its previous position clung to the side of the ship. A black horned head on the end of a serpentine neck rose upward over the starboard beam, roaring furiously as it snapped at men firing rifles. It's wings were folded tightly against it's back, it's claws sunk into the hard metal like hatchets striking a log, displaying destructive capability unnatural even for dragons. It was Daggerfoot, who had come with the storm to challenge John Caine once again. The two have fought since the dawn of John's career, when both terribly wounded the other. They have never came so close since. Daggerfoot could not kill John and John could not kill Daggerfoot, it seemed.

John put his hat back on, drew his hunting rifle from his back, and opened fire, rushing down the steps of the helm to meet the beast, if he and Enki could divert it's attention, the crew on-deck would be far safer. Enki rushed forward with a smoking shotgun and frightening speed.

As lightning shredded through the black clouds and torrential rain, the beast's roar cut through the roar of the wind, spreading far across the swaying jungle canopy between cracks of thunder, accompanied by the echoes of gunshots.

In it's spot in the raging heavens, smoke billowed off in black plumes the ship as fires raged defiant of the heavy rain. Grey smoke drifted from the barrels of firing guns. The Beowulf was badly wounded, rocked by the furious wind and savage beast clinging to it, and it seemed doomed with the ease the Dragon was shredding it's armor plating with overgrown, glistening claws.
 
"Captain. What are you staring at?" Harsk asked, watching his captain as he stared through the heavy glass dome that was the viewport for the Captain's deck. The Cannibal was compact to the point of impracticality. Everything was so condensed that a single well aimed shot could turn him to ruin. Mason didn't mind, though. The fear kept him sharp.

"The rain." He stated out simply. It was raining so much that there was a near permanent stream of water streaming down the steel reinforced glass. "Makes me realise that we're all just ants when God decides to take a piss on us."

"That's.... very positive, Captain"

He snerked, scratching the side of his head where the piece of steel met with his skull. A stray shot from some navy grapshot turned a good chunk of his skull into mulch and gave him a far more literal reason to be called "Scraphead."

Shame the thing always itched.

"So, Cappy, wanna g-"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Wha-"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP"

His gunnery chief promptly shut up, scowling as Mason leaned forward, eyes staring at a couple of dark figured through the storm.

"Oh you gotta be.."

He grabbed his telescope, glaring through the lense to find a ship sinking down to the earth, a massive dragon fighting its crew.

Wait.... that looked like...

"OH FUCK ME" He screeched, ignoring his startled gunnery chief as he grabbed the microphone "Oi you runts! We've got a dragon hunter fighting his mark! It's the fucking Beowulf, lads!"

He looked at his Gunnery chief, pointing to the hatch that led to the ordinance room. The Cannibal didn't have a lot of guns, opting for four front mounted artillery canons. He could move each gun seperately, and he's going to bank that the scaly bastard trying to kill Caine isn't going to worry about a giant steel teardrop with folding sails and standing on two giant legs.

"Guns! You see that big black pile of pissed off scales? Aim at the handsome bastard with our heaviest anti armour. Fire on my mark."

The two legs shifted, one resting in front of the other to make the entire thing tilt back for better aim.

"On my mark..."

The guns pivoted, pointing to the dragon. The flags that showed his guns were ready pulled up one by one, ringing the bell as the gunners pulled the ready lever.

"FIRE!"

Four explosions sounded out as four sheets of solid steel, tipped with dragon claw, raced straight towards the best, glinting black against the stormy night.

"God have mercy on us, laddies!"
 
The daggerfoot's ears pricked at the sound of a distant boom. It fell, almost limply, from the side of The Beowulf. Two shots punched halfway through the ship's strong armor plating. One plunged into the gundeck, and by incredible luck, failed to detonate any munitions. The last struck, and bounced off of Daggerfoot's hide. The Dragon was knocked through the air, and after a brief moment of clumsy flight, it regained complete control, veering to the side and dissapearing into black clouds at lightning tore across the sky.

John reloaded his rifle with haste, as Enki marched to the railing among shouting men. He adjusted his spectacle to zoom in, before turning to see the Munitions Officer, or, more accurately, an extreme closeup. Enki zoomed the spectacle out. A formal, stern man with blonde hair and blue eyes, a very closely trimmed beard, and his old military jacket from when he served in the colonial guard, until the leg wound,
"Mr. Lewis?"

Mr. Lewis responded.
"Definitely another outlaw ship. Not a lot of guns..."

John rushed forward, appearing at Mr. Lewis's other side as the ex-soldier continued, looking through a telescope and zooming in.
"I know this ship. The cannibal, see those? Those are legs."

"Those"re wot now?"
A young, female voice with a tomboyish inflection rang out behind them. Eleanor Banister. An urchin with a natural talent for maintaining the more complex and difficult-to-access parts of the ship. She held her flatcap down tight on her head with one hand and swiped the telescope with the other.
"Looks kinda goofy t' me..."

A tall, burly man with grey hair, considerable mutton chops, a bloody apron, and first degree burns on his face and arms looked through the telescope with murder in his eyes.
"Bloody bastard!"
It seemed the shots that hit may have been responsible for a kitchen accident.

John Caine took the telescope as an odd albino woman in a nurse outfit led the cheft, Alton, back below deck.
"Hey! have to get you some medicine for that! You're handling our food!"
Squeaked Anastasia, Dr. Chapman's trusty assistant.

Cained caught the moving black shadow behind the clouds.
"Daggerfoot! Starboard bow! Forty-five degrees! The nets! The nets! The nets!"

A man in a gasmask at the bow of the ship turned a turret on a swivel, as did another on the starboard stern of the ship.

Daggerfoot weaved between then, sweepint between the main deck and the balloon, and severing one of the thick connecting wires with a sharp crack.
 
"Oh fuck me." Mason muttered as he saw the ugly beasty hear the artillery shots. He shouldve timed the shots with the lightning, but then he wasn't sure how long the ship would survive.

"Captain?" Harsk started through the intercom. That voice of his the same voice he used whenever something fucked up from his side.

"I saw, Harsk. Let's not do that again, shall we?"

"Understood."

Mason scowled, taking his telescope and staring towards the deck of the ship. He found someone looking right back at him, covered in bandages with some artificial eye meeting mason's through the telescope. He gave a cheeky wave to the man, before he shouted back to the intercom "Alright, Boys. New plan: Load the chain shot."

"Yes Captain."

He scratched his skullplate as he squinted through the lens. He found the dragon swooping down "Take aim, the things gonna swoop past the port. Spread the aim out. I want this thing to run into a shot either way -and dont hit the ship sompelace soft!-

THe four bells rang out, before the dragon snapped the wires of the balloon likke string. The moment the dragon swooped into postion, his canons sounded off, flying straight towards the best.
 
As the chain shot whipped through the air, the dragon pulled it's wings close to it's body, flying for a short time on momentum and avoiding the shots. It's wings unfurled and it swept around to the front of the beowulf, avoiding shots from the fearsome front guns to rake a claw across the armor of the balloon before racing once more into the swirling clouds.

A bolt of lightning struck the beowulf, arcs of blue light coming dangerously close to the exposed hydrogen cells.

As the ship was being battered in the wind and rain, John struggled to maintain his footing. Daggerfoot was a dim blur in this damnable storm, and he swept beneath the balloon again, briefly seizing Mr. Lewis, who struggled out of the beast's talons and disssapeared falling through the sea of foliage beneath them.

"LEWIS!"
John shouted as he fired shot after smoking shot at the racing Dragon, which shrieked like a monstrous hawk as it closed in again.
"Fuck!"

From behind the tinted lens which concealed it from the open air, Enki's single tunctioning eye focused on the advancing beast, and his gloved finger lightly caressed the trigger of the grappling gun in his hand.
 
"...Captain...?"

"You're assisting Hetman for a fucking month, you hear me?"

There was a bit of silence, before a choked "Yes sir." Came from the intercom.

"Alright, boys. Seems we can't shoot this thing for shit. So we need a new plan."

He leaned back, thinking for a moment before a saw a figure falling off the deck of the ship. With the velocity he'd reach when he fell to the ground, Mason couldn't do much...

"Alright.... so while you guys figure out what the fuck to do... Let's just figure out where they're gonna crash
 
Lightning struck again, a heavy shock rocked The Beowulf as a hydrogen cell burst into a cascade of flames at the side. As Captain Caine reloaded his rifle, the black figure rushed by again and the man was swept off his feet by the winds that followed. More wires snapped, and the Beowulf began to shift to the side, forcing many men off their feet.

There was a crashing sound as Eleanor fell out from the billowing smoke of the balloon, along with a large quanity of miscelaneous objects and two drawers full of who-knows-what. Unlike a Lewis, she managed to deploy a parachute before she was lost among the trees.

A bright explosion high above heralded the sound of a scouting plane, it's fuselage and wings marked by gashes, before it too plunged into the forest below.

As John struggled to get to his feet, men jumped from the sides, opening their chutes and being swept away by the roaring winds.

Daggerfoot swept around once more, but as it flew forward, it too was struck by a blinding bolt of lightning, it plummeted some distance before it's wings caught the air again. The creature began to flap madly in the air now, losing it's stability as the winds grew ever fiercer.