Steel and Mana

Chapter 557 – Ignis (7)

When our minds connected, I mean, Ignis and I, for a short heartbeat, Ignis got frozen in the sky like a puppet whose strings had been replaced with wet spaghetti... on the verge of snapping. It was all thanks to me uploading my browser history into her mind in under a second... Then, the next moment, her wings jerked, then her tail spasmed behind her, and her eyes dilated, almost rolling back into her mind, and finally... she fell. Her entire, pretty massive body plummeted, with the surprising secondary effect of her wings simply winking out of existence. It showed that, in the end, all those ashy, smoky wings were nothing but magic, turning off as she crashed like a falling meteor.

“Fuck!” I grunted in pain as the connection between our minds got broken, and the backlash finally hit me as if someone drilled into my brain... FUCK!

“Leon!” Sasha yelled, seeing me curse and that my nose was bleeding, but I just waved at her to stay where she was and wiped it off.

“Focus!” I wheezed, “I just made her watch all my memories in order, along with everything I have ever read! She’s lucky if she remembers how to breathe! Don't mind me, just keep hammering that fucking lizard!”

The ground shook as Ignis slammed into the battlefield like she was here to kill off the dinosaurs... well, kind of she was. Although I was seeing flashing lights everywhere, my head was hurting like hell, I still could see the massive cloud of dirt shooting into the sky where she landed, along with the mangled bodies of beasts, as everything exploded outward in a rolling shockwave. Multiple of our troops, along with the Vasas, were knocked off their feet; even the mechs staggered, and half the flying monsters still alive screamed in confused panic as their main drive was finally broken, beginning to fly away, clearing the skies for us. With nothing to herd them, the waves of beasts were pretty much over.

What remained was the main boss and hopefully, her last phase.

"She is still not dead!" Sa'Ith cursed under her breath as she saw how Ignis tried to rise the moment she was on the ground.

But she wasn't well, and her body was confused, as she failed to get a grip, her limbs slipping out, trying again, faceplanting in the crater she made a second and third time... Perfect.

“ALL UNITS!” I shouted, fighting through my headache and the feeling of wanting to faint, “CONCENTRATE FIRE ON IGNIS! Push her toward the marker!”

Dozens of Avalonian Knights, closest to Ignis, turned on her as one, their cannons firing, and if they were made for melee, they were rushing towards her body without thinking about the consequences. That thing had to go down. With every beast now fleeing or dying, her connection broken to them by my son and the Subjugators, we couldn't let her reestablish that.

Gulping down the blood in my throat, I watched a barrage of heavy shells, followed by our most potent spells, land on Ignis's head, hitting her scales one after the other... And it seems that she was still struggling, destabilized by the brain overload I put her under, because each direct hit made her yelp or recoil like an injured animal.

I saw how a Vasa beast mindlessly charged and rammed her body, biting, slashing, using its spells of fire before blowing itself up, just to cause another injury and weaken her scales. By the time that happened, all our airships, including the Ishillian ones, were surrounding her from above, raining down fire... but there was no blood spurting out from under her skin. Yet.

"Tough bastard..." I grunted, because even in her current state... she was still withstanding all of our spells and physical shells.

"Start attacking from the western side!" Lucca's order came through, as our fire began focusing on that end, trying to nudge her confused mind to move to the opposite direction, exactly where we buried our trump card.

Luckily, it was working, because the moment her body was getting hit from a certain direction, Ignis inadvertently began rolling onto the other, doing her best to stand back up, her wings sometimes reappearing only to wink out in the next moment.

“All dive squadrons, begin your attacks!”

That was Lazlow's voice in the intercom I picked up, along with the scream of sirens as I watched how our dive bombers up in the air now began their attack runs, dropping everything we had on Ignis's head. The first volley, when it fell, slammed straight into Ignis’s upper spine, where its head was resting on her neck. I don't know which of our pilots was at the front, landing the pinpoint attack, but I had a feeling it was Rashira... Still, whoever marked it first hit did a great job, because the blasts made her thrash and roll, sending monster corpses flying in all directions and also sending Ignis towards our target position.

I watched as the bastard lifted her head, still staggering, her eyes trying to focus, getting bombarded, confused... But she wanted to get rid of some of the troubles. So, as best as she could, she locked in on our planes that were turning around for a second dive. Her jaws began to open as she tried to gather her magic... damn it!

"Tell them to scatter!" Kustov yelled, and while most of the pilots were doing that... one plane wasn't.

One of the bombers, despite the apparent danger, still dove sharply, almost vertically, coming down at its maximum speed. Then, her second payload was detached, and I watched as she went into a spiral, turning sharply while the bombs fell straight into Ignis's mouth.

The explosion from our bombs came before she could release her spell. Subsequently, it probably also interrupted her casting because a shockwave erupted from inside her maw, spraying flame and blood out of her mouth and nostrils. With a sharp moan and cry, the bastardly dragon lurched sideways again, collapsing onto her front limbs one more time, looking as if she was coughing and vomiting, staggering... whining. Yeah... she was whining hard now. Well... Get fucked!

“Direct hit,” came Rashira's voice, gasping for air and probably exhausted and hit with the receding adrenaline, crashing a little in her cockpit. Or maybe it was the incredible g-forces she had to withstand.

"BWAHAHAHA!" Brask screamed over comms, that everyone could hear, “RASHA, YOU SHOW-OFF! GIVE IT HELL, GIRL!”

“KEEP HER MOVING!” Oleg's voice cut in, as we couldn't celebrate just yet, “She must reach the marked coordinates! We will celebrate when she is down!”

By then, the artillery under Seltana's command was falling in a repeating sequence, like a massive fireworks-and-military-parade mix, pushing her closer to where we wanted her. The dive bombers and fighters strafed her back, targeting her joints and damaged scales, along with our airships or mechs' bombardment. However big she showed herself at the start, at this moment, Ignis fought wildly, panicked, her thoughts unfocused and marred with all the information I had given her. I could tell that whenever she was trying to think, she was barely able to get a proper thought through; instead, she couldn't help herself from remembering something I 'told' her... When she was trying to cast spells, no matter how innate it was to her, now an Ishillian magic spell came to her mind alongside it... Something she didn't understand, having no time to learn it or train it, or even the proper runes in her bones, in her blood, so it just caused her magic to go awry at once. More than once, she tried to flap her wings only for them to materialize, then wink out of existence again.

And then... From almost nowhere, she launched an attack, not physically, but mentally, which, well... hit me, clean and simple. It seems our connection wasn't broken, and she found a way to finally strike back. Ah... Oh fuck... The moment I realized what she did, the pain had already entered through my mind so sharply that I almost bit my tongue off. My vision went white for a moment, then red, then a spiraling kaleidoscope of nonsense colors, making me vomit, while I fell out of my chair. I think I heard voices, maybe Sasha... Kustov? Merlin? Damn if I know, all of them sounded the same, slowed-down, alien-like voices.

“LEON!”

“SOVEREIGN!”

“GET THE MEDICS—”

“I'm fine,” I huffed, swiping my bloody mouth with my sleeve. “Kill that bitch first! I’m fine..”

I was very much not fine... Even if I managed to push myself back into a sitting position, and I was trying to show that I was alright... It was clearly visible that it wasn't the case. My head felt cracked open, and it felt as if my exposed brain was being prodded by someone. My nerves felt flayed, and my thoughts came in a jittered, disjointed mess, making me nauseous. However, I was absolutely refusing to pass out while my family, friends, and entire homeland were in the middle of killing the greatest threat this world had ever seen. With that in mind, I forced myself upright, gripping my chair so hard my knuckles cracked as I pulled myself back into it.

“LISTEN TO ME—” My voice came out raw and forced, “IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE. IGNIS ONLY. GET HER... ”I coughed, fresh blood coming out of my mouth, “...TO THE SPOT.”

The bastard... mother... fucker... I wanted to curse more, but she finally found a way to fight back... through me. With her mind in a jumbled mess, her magic failing, her body being hammered, she did adapt and found the one sure way to do damage. Hmph! So what? She can hit my mind, but who cares about that? I will withstand it as long as I must... then she will die.

"Die?" I heard her scoff, huffing for air, "You will die... YOU! You...! NOT ME!"

"Blah, blah, blah," I answered, "You will. The Vasas didn't believe you could be hurt, yet here we are. Where are you monsters? Where is your bravado? Invincible? You? You are whining on the ground! We brought you down from the skies! Fuck you! Hell, we are fucking you right now, and you are moaning like the bitch you are!"

"I'LL RIP YOU TO SHREDS!" She yelled, and another wave hit my mind, but this time I was somewhat prepared, not letting myself be knocked around, but it still was like taking a punch from an iron-fisted golem.

"Yeah, I heard that before. What's taking you so long...? Hm?"

Maybe I shouldn't poke the literal dragon... But it was too late when another backlash hit me. She was not only learning how to exploit the connection between us, but she was also trying to come into my head, and I could feel that she was doing her best to dominate me.

"You are the issue... You... you monster!"

"Pft, that's rich, coming from you," I scoffed, holding my ground as best as I could.

"BOW!"

"No." I pushed back, "Fuck you. I bow to no one!"

"YOU WILL BEFORE ME!"

"Make me!"

She was trying her best... But I can be stubborn. Very stubborn, and even if my head explodes from this, I didn't care. Fuck you, fuck you, and for a good measure, fuck you!

"Dad..." I heard Arthur's voice, coming from far away, barely audible, "Pull back! You are hurting yourself!"

"Just get her into position..." I answered to the best of my abilities, "Let me handle her mind."

But that minute fluctuation was enough for me to get punched again. Whatever Ignis did, it was... horrible. For a moment, I felt like I had forgotten who I was before coming back to my senses. Worse, when I did, I wasn't sitting anymore, I was looking up at the ceiling of the bridge, while the Camelot was shaking and Sasha was trying to wake me up. Damn... I was knocked out... for how long?!

"What...?" I tried, only to have blood spill out from my mouth.

"The bastard is releasing a new kind of magic!" Merlin yelled, up on the bridge, his artifact floating above his head, arms stretched out as runes were floating around him.

"It is the same EMP-like spell! It's disrupting our magics! I don't know if she felt our trap, but the moment we pushed her into place, she began vibrating like the stupid toys you designed!" Yuri's voice came in from the comms, somewhere down below, distorted as all hell, barely recognizable.

"I am trying to push back..." Merlin grunted, also bleeding from his nose, biting his lips, "But we are going down... as every other ship... and every mech... It's blocking everything..."

As for Ignis, the creature, from what I could see with my swimming vision... She was crouching, her whole form pulled together like a cat ready to jump, visible ripples coming off her body as it distorted the air around her, buzzing and droning. Tsk...!

"We can't get close to her..." Sa'Ith grunted, helping Sasha to pull me up, "Our warriors are going numb and fall over the moment they enter her vicinity...

"Fuck... fuck! We were so close!" I cursed, trying to think, but my head was hurting so much that I couldn't think straight.

"I can open a way." Another distorted voice echoed it, and as far as I could tell, it was Mirian. "My spear can cut through her magic."

"Do it. I'll be there..."

I wanted to say it, but those were not my words... Those were... My son's voice... Damn it, Arthur... What are you planning?!