My wings flared slowly as I prepared to get moving. We only had to wait about an hour before Savannah joined us. She jumped up onto my back with Ethan, and we leapt into the air. My wings felt amazing as they held us in the air. I headed straight for where I'd seen the last wyverns.
It was a good two hour flight from the front line. I spotted the corpses of the ones I'd killed fairly easily even though they'd been half covered in snow. I didn't see anything particularly interesting there so I continued my flight north. The tension in my limbs increasing with each wingbeat closer to the nest itself. I switched to infrared, and saw the edge of the tunnel network clearly.
They were noticeably cooler then the last time I'd flown over them, but the lack of activity below was disturbing. I fell into a near silent glid. Scanning below cautiously. The heat signatures were moving or at least it seemed like they were. It was hard to tell with the way the heat intensified, and receded seemingly at random.
Then everything started moving at once as the ground cracked open. The tunnels caving in on themselves as over a hundred wyverns emerged from the ground as a single powerful army. The alpha female clawed her way through the center of the underground complex. Dwarfing even the massive male that had wounded me so badly before. Her head was as massive as my entire body.
Even before she took to the air all three of us knew. We couldn't beat that. The mana she'd been giving off below the ground was nothing compared to her fully unleashed might now. A trill of excitement, and fear went up my spine. I roared challenge at her.
Her roar back seemed to shake the entire universe. The fear I felt increased significantly. My heart pounding, and my scales trembling. I could feel the blood draining from the faces of both my bonded as their ears began to bleed. The alpha was quickly surrounded by a dozen other females.
Most were larger then any of the males taking to the air around them. There were a few smaller weaker looking ones. One of which had taken quite the beating. She had multiple nips throughout her body. Only her membranes were spared.
They followed the alpha female into the air as she rose from the ground. It was time to choose. Fight, maybe die, or run. An attack was coming from above. I glanced at the massive male as he entered the range of my spatial awareness.
His wing hadn't healed completely. There was an obvious lean to his flight. I took advantage of that as I shot between his legs, and through the damage on his wing. He roared as he tried to round on me, but I was already on him. My teeth digging in to a gap in his scales near his wing.
It felt like I was biting into wood, and I had to wiggle my head violently to get my teeth through enough to taste blood. His tail tried to wrap around my body, and throw me away, but I'd begun injecting my venom. I'd filled both of my venom glands completely with basilisk venom. Injecting all of it into this massive pain in my ass wasn't a difficult decision to make. The shock of it might even discourage the other males from attacking me when I killed the biggest one of them.
The massive male completely forgot about me as the burn of the basilisk venom collided with his insides. It wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling for your blood to turn to stone. It was a feeling I remembered well. His screams as the stone spot just beyond the edge of his wing membrane expanded slowly. His tail lashed within inches of my body. Slamming into the muscle of my right wing, and breaking the bone as I was thrown clear.
I fell a few hundred feet before I managed to heal the broken bone. Catching myself, and leveling out as I was attacked by three smaller males. I unleashed a blizzard directly around me. Startling, and blinding all three. My hands latched onto the neck of the closest one.
My teeth getting hold of his horn as I twisted his head sharply. The pop of his neck breaking was mostly ignored as another clipped me with his wing. Savannah was nearly hit by the outer edge of the wyverns wing. Fear, and a little anger cause her to thrown out a ball of darkness. It seared into the wyverns wing with ease.
Drawing a pained scream from him before my teeth found his neck. I yanked a large chunk out of his neck, and knew he was going to die as soon as I saw the think stream of blood spray out like it was being shot out by a water pistol. My tail hit the wing of the third, and wrapped around it tightly. I beat my wings harder to combat the resistance he gave me as I tightened my tails grip. Breaking his wing similar to the way I'd broken the tree back in camp before letting go so he wouldn't knock me out of the sky.
When the blizzard around me cleared I was happy to see that the air directly around me was clear. The alpha female had stopped, and was hovering above the downed alpha male. He screamed in pain as more of his body turned to stone. The tension that ran through the wyvern's in the air as they debated on whether they wanted to be the one to attack me first. They could all see how painfully the alpha male was being killed.
None of them wanted to be poisoned like he'd been. I was out of venom, but they didn't know that. I roared challenge again. Seemingly without any fear of my own. Making many of the smaller males flinch away from me.