His fall was stopped abruptly, the darkness around him shifting into a wide, grassy field. It was so flat you could see for miles, even with the slight flurry of snow blowing through the air. The grass was green in spite of the freezing cold, melting any snow that touched them.
The implications of the grass' evolution would've been enough to impress Fate, if he wasn't surrounded by a horde of hundreds of angry monsters.
They were tall and dark, covered in the same black scales Fate was covered in. Each stood seven feet high or higher on all fours, gazes looming down on Fate from above.
Their faces were those of lions, their bodies that of goats, and their tails were snakes. This was the most common look, but he also spied bear torsos, eagle heads, cat tails, every combination one could think of.
Chimeras.
Chimeras, like Dracoks, were the descendants of dragons. But while Dracoks kept their blood relatively pure, chimeras went out of their way to mate with powerful species of other bloodlines. The result was them having a little bit of everything, a terrifying mishmash of abilities that were as gruesome as their appearance.
"Your first task is to kill every last one of these chimeras," boomed Kravoss' ancestor, voice coming from everywhere at once.
"Each one of these is Tier II," Fate said. "How am I supposed to kill one of these, much less all of them?"
"YOU won't. I wish to judge your true character, not this poor facsimile conjured by that conniving witch."
"What are you talking about….?" Fate's eyelids suddenly grew heavy, the dark sclera of his eyes hidden from the world for a brief second before they snapped open.
Fate took one glance at his surroundings and cursed. "What the fuck did I get myself into this time?"
"A chicken with the blood of dragons flowing through his veins has found your other self a worthy master," said the disembodied voice.
"But I wish to see what you are capable of. I have looked through your other self's 'memories' and found them lacking. Pride is a good thing in a dragon's master, but pride at the expense of family and friends is nothing but foolishness."
"Wait, so you woke me up? Or unsealed me or whatever?" Fate asked the air.
"No, nothing of the sort." Fate could hear the conflicted emotions in the Dracok's voice. "A Dracok like I is immensely powerful, but even I cannot undo the work of the witch. She is stronger than any of the Nine Races.
"You are here because this is, for all intents and purposes, a dream. A dream with touch and taste and smell, but a dream nonetheless. You are in the world of my blood, and as such I have dominion over you."
"So, I'm still stuck in whatever situation I'm in, and I'm going to change back once I leave here. Great." Fate flexed his hand angrily, finding the way his claws sheared through the air immensely satisfying.
"This is not the time for that. Here, you are at full power. Kill all of these chimeras and move to the next trial, or fail and perish."
"Easy enough." Fate rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, waggling his clawed fingers to get used to the length of his new weapons.
"Begin."
At once, the chimeras shot forward, some a blur of black and white and others as sluggish as a snail.
Fate jumped just as the first one arrived, sailing over the creature's head just as it swung its massive paw. He landed on its back with a light thud, piercing his hand into its neck and grabbing its spine as it bucked and kicked.
The snake tail tried to bite him, but he caught it mid-strike and yanked, hard. The tail came off in a rain of gore, acid blood splattering over the other chimeras, who howled in pain as their skin bubbled.
Dragon strength. He could get used to this.
With a flick of his wrist, he tore the spine out of the poor chimera's neck, the beast's head lolling to the side without the support. With another thrust of his hand, he smashed through its skull and smooshed its brain into paste.
"If you wanted this to be hard, you shouldn't have given me these cool scales!" he shouted at the unseen Dracok.
"The worst is yet to come," was all he heard in reply.
He hopped off the fresh corpse and eyed the other chimeras, who had stopped with their heads down and their hissing tails between their legs.
"I don't know. I think I already smell fear," Fate gloated.
A screech sounded behind him, like two cats in heat singing a symphony among two sheets of metal scraping against each other next to nails being drawn along a chalkboard. It was a horrible sound, one that didn't make your ears bleed, but made you wish you could tear off your ears and burn them.
A sense of dread filled him as he turned around, finding the corpse he had created rising to its feet. Letting out another ear-piercing screech, it exploded.
Thousands of abominable, fleshy tendrils partly covered in those same black scales lashed out, catching the chimeras, who had tried to run, and dragging them kicking and screaming into the mound of flesh and blood and feathers and scales that was brought into the world.
As Fate watched, the dead chimera observed its living brothers and sisters, growing larger and larger until it towered at the same immense height as Kravoss' ancestor. Not a single other chimera was left, all subsumed into the beast before him.
While before, it could pass for some genetic experiment gone wrong, now it could hardly be written off as an animal at all.
It was as tall as a mountain, covered in goat heads, scorpion tails, bear claws, tiger fangs, and every other animal body part one could think of. It let out another cry, all of its heads yammering at once in a hellish cacophony of sounds that made Fate's currently draconic blood run cold.
And then, the many heads turned their attention to him.