When Destiny Burns, Ep. 1: A Halo and Inheritance Cycle Crossover

Chapter 3. 6 Patience

Then his left side erupted in pain and he spun around with his rifle at the ready, prepared to shoot and kill anything that could have snuck up on him.

There was nothing. His motion tracker indicated nothing in close proximity and his shields hadn't been damaged in the slightest. Nothing had happened...and yet his ribs were burning and itching as if something had mauled him with a series of knives.

Then the Spartan heard screaming and growling in the distance and exploded into movement. Pain was nothing but a nuisance to him; he had long ago learned how to banish out all forms of discomfort with a near hundred percent effectiveness. But he knew that the hurt had no origin on his own body; he was mentally linked to the dragon that much he knew. Whatever had caused a sudden bout of pain in his body would have also caused his ally to feel that and judging by the violent fighting sounds in the forest, it had gotten to it at the worst possible timing

The armoured soldier sprinted through the dense foliage, crushing thorny bushes and smaller trees as if they were rotten twigs. It took him no more than a minute to reach the place where he had located his dragon, but as the Spartan knew, one minute too late might as well be an hour too late when it came to reinforce someone.

He jumped over a fallen tree and stumbled upon a small clearing, where the black dragon was busy fighting off three wolves at once. Two of them were wounded, but the third one was not and that was the one who was the most active in harming his companion.

Its scales hadn't been breached, but not for a lack of trying. Long scratches ran down the dragon's side and even though he didn't see any blood, he still understood that the creature must be hurting.

He ignored the faint throbbing in his own side and got to work. He flung his combat knife at the wolf that was just about to flank the dragon and hit it in its side, knocking it off balance and sending it falling to the ground.

The Spartan had never stopped moving since entering the small clearing and by the time the wolves knew that he was there, he was already upon them.

The fallen canine barely had time to register the heavily armoured soldier that had appeared near their prey, before a gauntlet shot out and punched it in its skull, killing it instantly

With the lead wolf killed, the two remaining wolves had a harder time attacking the dragon and the black creature retaliated with savage fury, flinging itself at the nearest predator and burying its dagger-like talons deep into its flanks./

While his dragon was killing the second wolf, the Spartan turned to look at the remaining canine. But the wolf was smarter than its unfortunate allies and it turned around to run away, oozing blood from a dragon-inflected wound all the while.

He witnessed the black reptile ripping into its kill and he reached out to retrieve his blade. It was amusing to see how the scales of his dragon almost seemed to match the colour of his blade. However, the animal's scaled hide shone brightly whenever a source of light was around to illuminate it, while the stainless steel of the combat knife was nonreflective.

"Status report," He asked the creature.

In return, the Spartan received a garbled message consisting of visions, smells and emotions concerning the dragon's rage and indignity.

He shook his head and sat down near a log, looking at the savage bodies of the slain wolves. They didn't look like the kind of animals that would attack a dragon head-on. And he had only heard one of the canines howling into the night...had he made a mistake? Or had his dragon made a mistake?