Here I stand,
Surrounded by steel-clad soldiers
Bent on killing me.
Armed with the most deadly weapons man will ever manage to make.
Guns.
The word brings a savage sneer to my scaly face.
My fanged maw grins evilly.

I spin, raking savagely with my clawed hands;
All four of them.
The soldiers just jump back.
Anger boils within my blood,
My heart,
My soul.

I flare my wings.
The hard bone hits two faces,
Catching them off-guard.
Then I jump and slash.
My lower arms shoot forward,
Clawed hands clasping powerfully.
Two soldiers’ armour plating are in my grasp.
I throw them over my folding wings
And they collide with their comrades.

Then my tail slashes through the air.
The ornate ivory blade that caps it as sharp as a rock cleaver.
Two more are decapitated,
One other with his chest hewn open.
Organs spill to the ground.
Blood is everywhere,
Its smell sweet to me.

Then I spring forward,
Large claws of my upper hands raking,
Slicing,
Ripping,
Shredding armour and flesh,
Stripping their skin from their bones,
Mincing organs.
More blood flows.

I jump,
Clawed feet smashing into the faces of two others.
I touch the claw of my heel-toe
To the tips of those of my other toes,
Leaving barely any brain left in their heads.
I launch myself away from them,
Wrecking their crania.
I fly through the air towards the last soldier,
Fanged maw gaping.
In all this time he has only just managed to pull that trigger.
Fear,
Of much, even the supernatural,
Clouds his senses and slows his reflexes.
And my indescribable speed has left him to fire but three bullets.
These pathetic balls of metal,
They ricochet harmlessly off my chest scales,
Thicker and tougher than any armour these soldiers will ever wear,
Except, perhaps, for the earth that will cover their coffins.

My mouth clamps around his throat,
The fangs sinking into his flesh.
Two especially long ones pierce his voice box,
Which is still vibrating with his scream.
I can feel his outrageously fast heartbeat,
From the blood that his arteries in what is left of his neck pump into my mouth.
I drink it as if it were the greatest sustenance I have ever tasted,
And replace it with poison from the glands in my jowls,
Which scrunch up into half-empty sacs.
Venom that is not only potent enough to kill a hundred people,
But also that will digest him from the inside,
Which would make ingestion easier
Should I choose to consume his flesh.
Which I am seriously considering.
His life ebbs away,
He passes into a void beyond this world.
Only then do I release his body.

...

They say that men only think with their genitals…
At times I admit, it seems that I do.
But mostly I think with my stomach,
My teeth,
My brain,
The essences of my dark soul.
In the deep confounds of the last two lie a driving force;
I think with the desire for revenge,
Against all the pain,
All the suffering,
I have ever endured.

Be that as it may,
There is still a modicum of peace,
Hope,
Happiness,
And even love,
That lurks within my black soul.