Chapter 94: Two Kings

Ethan stared at the light screen, and his face changed the moment he recognized the shape on the horizon.

At first it was only a dark mass, far off, easy to call a shadow. Then it moved closer. The ground trembled under its weight, and a thick cloud of dust rose behind the body. Dark brown scales glistened in the sun, overlapping plates of armor from the head to the tip of the tail. Twenty meters. Maybe more. The thick body dragged across the ruined streets, crushing abandoned cars and shoving broken concrete aside. It moved with a slow, deliberate confidence, as if nothing in the city had the strength to stop it.

Ethan’s stomach tightened. He knew that silhouette. The Snake King had come into Silvermont.

The enormous viper raised its head above the surrounding buildings. The skull was larger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex’s, and the narrow eyes gleamed with a hostility that did not need translating. A forked tongue slipped between the jaws and tasted the air.

Hissss.

The sound carried across the ruined streets. The scales were the worst of it. Each one thick enough to pass for armored plating, with a faint purple glow tracing the edges. That glow was not decoration. Ethan remembered the corrosive venom that could eat concrete and metal like paper. The Snake King was not only enormous. It was a walking disaster.

"The Snake King actually came into the city..." Elena whispered beside him, staring at the screen. "When we saw it outside Silvermont, it was already terrifying. It’s grown since then."

"How much larger?" Rose asked.

"Enough that I don’t want to find out what it can do now."

Ethan did not answer. His attention stayed on the King-rank mutant. It had entered the city for a reason, and the direction said the reason was the rex. Aria glanced at him. "Do you think it knows the other one is here?"

"It would be hard not to notice something that took half a building down." He watched the Snake King lift its head higher. "Whatever pulled the mutants to the Museum, it just put two Kings in the same street."

He did not like what that meant. The rex had already shown it could nearly kill the Hornscale Beast. The Snake King had devastating venom and a body wrapped in hardened scale. If the two of them fought, the district became a battlefield. If the fight reached the rubble over the Survival Space, his escape plan died before he could use it.

The Snake King stopped. Across the ruined street, the Tyrannosaurus Rex slowly lifted its head. For several seconds the two monsters stared at each other. Then the Snake King attacked.

Its head shot forward. The jaws opened, curved fangs stained with purple venom. The throat expanded as a violent surge of liquid gathered behind the teeth. The next instant, it spat. A thick stream of purple venom tore the air with the force of a high-pressure cannon and struck the ground near the rex before spreading across the broken pavement.

The result was immediate. Concrete hissed and dissolved. The shells of abandoned cars buckled as the venom splashed them, eating metal and leaving steaming pools of sludge. White smoke rose off the street. Even through the screen, Ethan could almost smell the sharp, acrid edge of it.

The rex reacted at once. Its body lunged sideways and narrowly missed the main stream. A few droplets hit its hindquarters, and faint wisps of smoke curled off the dark golden scales. It roared. The sound shook the buildings around them. Then it charged. Hind legs drove into the ground and sent cracks racing across the pavement. The distance between the two monsters vanished in seconds.

Boom.

The rex slammed its massive head into the Snake King’s body. The impact sounded like two heavy trucks meeting. The Snake King’s frame twisted sideways and smashed through the front of a nearby building. The structure groaned. Upper floors sagged, then collapsed in a cloud of dust.

The Snake King was not finished. Its body whipped around the rex with a speed that did not belong on something that size. One thick coil wrapped the dinosaur’s torso. Another took the hind legs. The Snake King tightened. Muscle bulged under the dark brown scales as it tried to crush the rex with constriction alone.

The dinosaur roared and fought. Claws scraped the pavement and carved deep furrows. Neck and shoulder muscle strained as it tried to force its way out of the coils. The Snake King kept tightening. For a moment the two of them locked, neither willing to give.

Then the rex opened its jaws and bit down on the Snake King’s body.

Crunch.

Dagger teeth hit the viper’s scales. Sparks scattered across the dark brown armor. The teeth left several shallow grooves and failed to go deep enough to matter. The Snake King answered with a furious hiss. Its head swung, and another stream of purple venom sprayed straight at the rex’s neck. The dinosaur twisted its head away and still could not dodge every drop. Several splashed the scales. White smoke rose at once.

For the first time, the rex looked like it felt genuine discomfort. It roared and drove its head against the Snake King’s skull. The impact forced the viper to loosen one coil. The rex took the opening. It planted its feet, twisted, and threw its weight sideways. The Snake King was dragged with it. Both monsters crashed through another building, their combined mass tearing the ground floor apart and bringing the upper levels down around them. The whole structure disappeared under a storm of concrete and dust.

Ethan stared at the screen. The Snake King had been forced to let go, but the rex had not walked away clean. Purple venom still smoked against its scales. Dark blood seeped from several shallow wounds along its body. Neither creature could land a decisive hit. Neither was willing to retreat. The fight was turning into a contest of endurance, of who could take the other’s worst attack longer, and Silvermont was paying for every second of it.

The fighting spread across several streets. The Snake King slithered through the ruins, its body carving a winding trench through the pavement. Whenever the rex tried to close, the viper used its coils to redirect the dinosaur’s momentum or lash at its legs. The rex answered with brutal charges. It rammed its head into the Snake King’s body, snapped at the neck, and used its claws to tear at the overlapping scales. Each collision sent a shock through the surrounding streets.

An abandoned apartment building shook as the rex slammed into its lower floors. Cracks ran up the walls. For one terrible second it looked as if the building might hold. Then the supports gave. The upper floors came down in a deafening cascade. The Snake King’s tail swept the falling debris and scattered concrete across the road. It coiled the rex again, trying to pin it before the dinosaur could get its feet back. The rex fought with its jaws. Teeth scraped the armored body and produced a harsh metallic grinding. Sparks flickered wherever the two sets of scales met.

Neither attack was enough to finish it. The Snake King’s venom could corrode the dinosaur’s armor and still struggled to reach anything vital. The rex had terrifying strength and could only leave superficial wounds on the viper’s thick scales. Their advantages and their holes lined up almost too neatly. That made the fight worse. Every failed attack became another collision. Every collision took more of the city.

Soon the streets around the Museum were a wasteland of broken buildings, overturned cars, and deep trenches gouged into the earth. Dust filled the air and turned the sunlight into a dull orange haze. Ethan watched it with a growing unease. If the two Kings kept this up, there might not be much of Silvermont left when they were done. He also could not ignore the chance that the fight was covering something else. The Snake King had followed an energy signal to the Museum. The rex had come up out of the ground under it. Whatever had drawn the mutants might still be there.

There has to be something under that building worth this. His thoughts went back to the pit the rex had crawled out of. He had noticed unusual energy fluctuations from underground before the battle started. At the time he had not dared go look, because the Hornscale Beast was still close. Now the two Kings were moving farther from the Museum. If he wanted to see what lay under the ruins, this might be the only window. He needed to be sure they would not turn around. He kept watching. He was not about to risk his life for an unknown object without a reasonable chance of getting back.