Valin (Book 3 of the White Lily Trilogy)- first draft

Chapter 35- It's over

Hi guys, its been a long while, months in fact.  This is a chapter i've struggled and dreaded to write since i started this book, I've re-written it hundreds of times, and settled on this for now, this is a super rough draft, it may change again. Please let me know if you like how this turns out, or should it be different somehow. 

Isi continued to let her wings thump hard against the air, thrusting herself forward as fast as it allowed. However, she was beginning to feel the strain, the burn of the muscles and several times she dropped a few feet in height. She had to keep going, to at least to get away from the battlefield. She didn't want others to get hurt if they came to blows, it could ruin the landscape and the lives around them.

She could hear the second set of wings thumping equally hard behind her. He was fast and he caught up easily enough. But he made no move to attack her, even as she could feel his breath against the tip of her tail. Just what was he trying to do. She theorised that he was just waiting, just wearing her out, that he wanted to follow her, but not attack her at all. That wasn't good, she couldn't allow herself to get worn out and captured, but she was still formulating her plan in her head.

"You can't keep flying away from me." Valin shouted at her. She was beyond the battlefield now, enough that it was just faint noises and a dangerous orange glow in the darkness. Now she had to plan fast. Without warning, she tilted her wings so that she filpped up in a loop and aimed to come right down on top of Valin, he seemed to predict that move and swerved to the right. Isi had to flap her wings hard to avoid hitting the trees below, her wings skimmed the top of a few oaks, no harm to her there. But the seconds spent to correct herself left her vulnerable and just as she began to rise back up, she saw a flash of green and something hard collide into her side. It was like being hit with a boulder and the force of the impact sent her tumbling. She struggled to catch her breath as the sky and ground flipped around in her vision. She had to tuck her wings in before she fell and crushed them. She managed to get one in, but the other got caught in the wind and stayed open, meaning it was impossible to right herself before she hit the floor and tumbled.

She dug her claws in to stop herself rolling and got up onto her stomach. She had to take a few seconds, her vision was spinning and she was still trying to work out which way was up. The second was precious and easily wasted as she felt a hard weight land on top of her, pinning her down.

"An admiral effort," Valin said between laboured breaths. "But you are far to inexperience in your technique, even with your minds joined once again, you've only a few months on what it means to be a dragon, then you were stuck in that human form. I, on the other hand, has had far more experience on the matter." She tried to twist her head around but she felt a paw press down on her neck.

"Now why do you keep fighting me, we could be so much more together. We could be at peace, with the humans under us. We have them right where we want them."

"And....the humans fight...ing for you now?" She asked.

"You think they'd argue with me?" He stated. "I had them in my claws the moment I killed that bastard magician. Even that general bowed under me quickly enough when he realised who the true master was. Once we're done here, I don't need them anymore, I'll get rid of them, all of them. It's time for the plague of humans to be gone, for us to cure these lands once and for all." She could feel his hot breath behind one of her ears, which made it twitch without her control.

"The lands will not grow... from all that blood," she said.

"You managed it, with the Dead Lands, and we together can do it again," he proclaimed