novelraw Chapter 253: The Neverending Nightmare Part 1
Chapter 253: The Neverending Nightmare Part 1
Zuzia pities Verbert, her gatonine friend, as they ride in the second shuttle. They convinced Ethuvere’s son to act as his proxy and observe the mana fire with his own eyes, and thankfully, Zuzia was allowed to ride with the mercenaries in their shuttle. It’s clear Ethuvere is still playing at delay tactics, and Zuzia doesn’t know why. It’s not like there is an emergency broadcast system, government emergency SMS messages, or even highways and mass transportation to get people out of the city in a timely manner. They’d be fighting the clock if they started evacuations a week ago, and yet, he’s acting like it’s a problem that will simply stop on its own or be solved by the Empire or the King of Ahmpur.
For his part, Verbert is motion sick, in spite of the ginger that was given to all of them. Zuzia knows that ginger is pretty reliable, but sometimes, even the best medicine simply doesn’t work on everyone. She has travelled on trains, boats, buses, automobiles, airplanes, and even a helicopter once in her life, so Zuzia is rather unaffected. But, she can sympathize with the feline man not being used to the equivalent of a jet-powered chinook and its agile, relatively high-speed movements compared to anything he would have experienced on the ground.
If anything, carriages are a hundred times worse in her mind from how rigidly their wheels deliver bumps to the passengers due to a lack of suspension systems, in spite of the massive difference in speed.
But, the Fievegal had dried and ground ginger at the ready, meaning Daniel has already tried to help as much as he knows how.
If only I was a pharmacist, I could make medicine and extort that lecherous clown from heaven to hell and back.
The brunette sighs to herself, immediately reprimanding her own irritation with him.
No evil thoughts, Zuzu. He has deployed a lot of resources to deal with it, even if he’s late to the party. I would’ve never known if I didn’t get dragged into it indirectly by the Grand Psycho.
“I can get you some water if you need it, Verbert,” offers Zuzia gently. She doesn’t want to mock him, since he’s one of six of Zuzia’s closest companions now, maybe even seven if she counts Sundenelle, who helped her a fair amount so far as well, but for a shorter period of time.
“I think I’d prefer some of that liquor…” grumbles the feline man, while Halkadon and Wulfsten chuckle.
“That’s probably one of the worst things you could do,” insists Zuzia warmly. “On top of dehydrating you, alcohol tends to make you dizzy anyways, which would compound the effect.”
Verbert hears ‘dizzy’, and he groans, doubling over towards his makeshift bucket from an extra helmet for small heads with proportionally large ears at the sides of the head. The goblins have mostly deployed with the other groups to do menial tasks, which makes Zuzia feel a little relieved. They may not be the little barbaric terrors she knows from fantasy media, but just judging what she has seen, they are Daniel’s pint-sized berserkers with machine guns. While relatively civilized out of combat, she can already hear their cackling bloodlust mixed in with bursts of gunfire, which gives her a shiver.
Zuzia should be bullet-proof, but she doesn’t need or want to find out at the hands of little green murder gremlins.
“Do you have any unique abilities from the Divine Summoning, Zuzia?” asks Halkadon, the most relaxed about talking to her as a human rather than a lady. “Something to use against that?” He gestures his wolf-like muzzle towards Zuzia’s window directly forward of her from where she’s sitting. It’s obvious what he means either way, since the hot topic of the moment is the mana fire.
Zuzia replies a little dryly, “Let me just try something real quick…” She slides her palms together for a moment as if to polish them in preparation for her biggest feat to date. She then clears her throat and dramatically holds up her right hand, thumb pressed to her middle finger.
With the dramatic climax of a soap bubble popping, she snaps her fingers.
Not a single thing happens after the snap.
“Ręce opadają,” blurts out the Polish woman as she gives a quick shrug with her hands up before plopping them back down onto her seat’s arm rests. She truly can do nothing from the shuttle, since she was made to be a nigh-invincible brawler capable of being an unstoppable force against the mysterious “Anomaly” she was summoned to face, only to find out Amalaskae got overzealous in pretty much every possible way.
But, either missing her sarcasm or intentionally trolling her, Verbert asks wearily, “Aren’t you supposed to chant the spell before the somatic part?”
Zuzia narrows her eyes at him. He’s still green around the gills, so to speak, and lacked all energy in his question, meaning it’s impossible to know for sure if he’s joking in turn or not.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she can only chuckle at how her own joke was so swiftly derailed by an apparent, innocent question. As someone who has lived in this world of magic his entire life, he likely would know better than her.
Rather than surrender, though, Zuzia takes the only truly logical choice.
“Ah. You’re probably right. But, I’ll have to try that later. Now that I’m thinking of it, if my ability does work as intended, it might vaporize this entire shuttle around me.”
She can tell from how Halkadon and Wulfsten glance at each other with only side-eyes that she went beyond what was plausible to almost certainly a fabrication. Even if they don’t understand her mother tongue, she didn’t exactly try to hide her sarcasm.
And, again, whether or not he was sincere or in on the joke, Verbert simply nods and doubles over to dry heave into his bucket once more.
Zuzia sighs sympathetically. Laughter is supposedly the best medicine, but she can’t help if he doesn’t have the energy to laugh.
She then answers Halkadon sincerely, “I actually only learned while fighting Neith that I can use magic, but I have very little practice using any, let alone to fight a force of nature. My main goal was to try to figure out how to get people to evacuate, and maybe rescue anyone that gets trapped in the fire’s path, but seeing the scope, I worry I won’t be of much use.”
“Hah! If that’s true, then we’re no better than spectators,” retorts Wulfsten. “True enough, a good mercenary learns when he can help and when he can’t. A great mercenary gets paid a dragon’s horde to figure out a way anyways.” He then muses, “Huh… we’re actually being paid by dragons now…”
“Mana… is believed to be a factor… for monsters,” mumbles Verbert, trying to speak loudly enough to be heard, in spite of his personal struggles. “I don’t remember if it’s supposed to be… they appear or gather…”
It doesn’t take more than a moment for Zuzia to understand. Whether the monsters are made by abundant mana or attracted to it, they may end up surrounded with monstrous creatures before they know it.
“So, what I’m hearing is… We’ll slay whatever monsters come our way and clean up on the parts, am I right?” asks Zuzia. She’s still worried about the danger the populace of Urflasdat is in, but knowing that she is merely one person. If she can’t break it with her fists, she is still too lacking to be able to outright save a whole city.
And, if she were to try to chase the city’s population out, she would end up an enemy of a whole kingdom.
The mercenaries, of course, are amused by her question. After all, one of their brief bonding moments was breaking a rakehorn’s antlers to be sold as extra cash for the mercenary trio during an escort mission. Wulfsten answers, “It is in our contract with the Fievegal, since they gave us many of the same benefits of the soldier units.”
“Huh?” asks Zuzia, unsure of what he means.
Halkadon clarifies, “The Grendel Six leader explained it. Any enemies defeated by Fievegal soldiers, as long as they’re definitively enemies, can be… uh…” The shenwulf realizes how it sounds, and Wulfsten has to clarify using more diplomatic wording.
“Their belongings can be claimed,” replies the human leader of the trio a little bluntly. “Personal effects like lockets, photos, and other obviously sentimental items must be left with the body.”
“But monsters and their parts are completely fair game!” cheers Halkadon with a big grin as he rubs his palms together.
Zuzia smiles. She understands the logic, especially because this world doesn’t have the same level of economy as Earth by far, such that a person can’t readily apply to twenty different jobs in three different cities on the same day and receive correspondence shortly after to progress to the next steps. Selling the spoils of war earned at one’s own risk isn’t just logical, but likely necessary for a mercenary to ensure that those risks are worth the danger and effort.
The flight is relatively uneventful, and Zuzia can tell they’re already starting to descend.
And then, a sudden bout of intense turbulence hits the shuttle, and all four of the beings in the troop bay cry out in surprise as they’re jolted in their seats. Curses fly, including a couple in Polish, before Zuzia realizes the abnormality of this turbulence.
There’s a deep, primal roar that drags out long after the collision of unstable air against the shuttle.
The more tiger-like dattakorien piloting the shuttle shouts to the back, “Left side! Left side! Dragon!” He immediately turns a somewhat primitive-looking switch on his console, which is obviously far behind modern fighter jets, but does the job with this magic machine. And, the pilot starts shouting, “Silence on the line silence on the line! Red red red! Red target approaching command post alpha, southeast! Repeat, Red target approaching command post alpha, southeast!”
The radio starts making noise from various voices repeating and giving orders, sparked to chaotic life from the comparatively ‘calm’ string of exchanges that were occurring for the fight against he mana fire.
For their part, Zuzia, Wulfsten, and Halkadon have scrambled to the left side to look out the windows, and Verbert is on his hands and knees, unable to straighten himself out for the moment.
Zuzia witnessed Neith only for a short time in his true form, so his impressive size was quickly surpassed by his bravery, durability, and willingness to fight Zuzia long enough to receive backup.
The creature on the ground roars again, and the suddenness of the roar’s volume rattles the shuttle’s hull once more, even from nearly a kilometer away.
Zuzia can see the first shuttle changing course to the right, which is the direction of the airship, which is slowly hovering forward towards the mana fire. According to Sundenelle, they’ll have to be careful not to get caught by the upwards-floating embers, meaning they’ll likely have to try to fly in reverse, which is much slower and comparatively blind for the bridge, since it is a relatively unprecedented vessel on Zenkon, and they didn’t really consider the need to fly backwards.
Zuzia catches a glimpse of gold in the dragon’s foreclaw, and it was distinctly gold on a person.
The enemy dragon does distinctly look like a dragon, but many things are wrong with it. Its scales end almost suddenly at the upper torso, where the color changes from a snowy grey-white color with blue splotches to a distinct, stone-like dark grey. And, if it were simply a ‘paint’-like change in color on a fantastical being, she wouldn’t bat an eye. The problem is, Neith looked every bit a reptilian super-predator with scales from the underside of his chin, which was visible under his custom, enchanted helmet that can form-shift with him, and to the tip of his tail, which was much less-armored. Though plated more obviously with layered scales like a karp, but on fancy-steroids for texture, Neith’s arms and torso had certain, more distinct shapes closer to an alligator’s scutes.
This dragon’s torso stops having the colorful pattern of every part of its lower body, including its arms, legs and tail, and instead, has a more stone-like aesthetic, like a sloppily carved statue of a dragon from the transition of its chest, to its shoulders, and up to its head.
A sickness fills Zuzia’s stomach as she looks at the dragon. It’s every bit familiar to her, and every piece of its current appearance except its current size is the same, save for what should be missing entirely.
It’s Sayrdarralouche, the dragon captured by Serrentuk after decades or centuries of cat and mouse. His upper body exploded upon being released from Serrentuk’s gate, and she thought the evil dragon was no more; a direct result of Zuzia’s reckless behavior inside of Serrentuk’s Gate spell.
“I-... Impossible…” whispers Zuzia.
Still, she notices the flicker of gold again, possessively being gripped by the dragon while it fends off other comparatively tiny attackers and their magic barrages, and she realizes who it has to be.
She seems like she’s a muscle-headed idiot enamored with Daniel and shameless about her flirting, but is the only one of the four female dragons Zuzia met that don’t refer to him as Mukori, in spite of speaking of him as her children’s father.
The golden dragon known as Jeavana, which sounds suspiciously like Dziewanna, the Slavic goddess of nature, is an idiot. But, she’s one of Zuzia’s current allies and a theoretical powerhouse that will be necessary in one way or another.
When the pilot starts to bank towards the right, Zuzia calls out, “Wait! Stay high, but take us over the dragon!”
“What!?” “Zuzia!?” “My Lady?”
Verbert is the only one who doesn’t cry out in surprise, but only because his surprise causes him to cough on his own spit or remaining bile.
“I’m serious! Like we just said, trophies are allowed by contract, right?” She does her best to psych herself up. Preventing Sayrdarralouche from escaping was her responsibility. She was certain he was dead, but whether he’s an undead version of himself or somehow regenerated the disintegration of three-quarters of his most vital functions to life, it’s irrelevant. He can’t be allowed to continue to exist. As a dragon, he committed heinous acts that she suspects, if she asked, Serrentuk could show her through magic. And, if he’s an undead, the very nature of necromancy is an affront to God’s authority on the most basic of levels; the veil between life and death that only God should control.
Zuzia punches her palm as she gives a confident grin to hide her fear and disappointment that she failed to erase such a monster. “I’m going to go score us some trophies.”
There’s a minor delay as the others remain awkwardly silent, including the pilot. There are too many orders being called over the radio, so he can’t exactly ask for permission. It seems they haven’t established channels, yet, meaning the radios are still limited in their effectiveness.
Zuzia adds, “Empress Ryuogriar personally stated that I’ll be made a noblewoman. I don’t really want to pull this card, but are you defying me right now?”
She can see from the way his posture shifts that the dattakorien just let out a sigh. He could check verify the claim, assuming it’s as easy to make contact with the supposed rulers of this strange little Empire, but in general, a rank and file soldier wouldn’t necessarily know every single noble, anyways, so the safest route would be to accept it as truth and try to verify later, rather than risking disrespect or insult of nobility and, depending on the structure of the Fievegal, Lèse-majesté, if the insult extends to the authority of the Crown.
From what glimpses she has so far, though, not even the Empresses who seem to take being sovereign seriously seem to overly concern themselves with petty insults or unintentional disrespect.
Regardless, her semi-bluff works, and the shuttle banks to the left. Zuzia pops up from her seat, saying brightly, “Thank you, sir! When I kick Daniel’s butt into making beer, your entire first night’s rounds are on me!”
“I don’t know what beer is, but I’ll hold you to that, my Lady.”
Zuzia laughs, and she says, “Keep altitude. I’ll handle my own landing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Zuzia, don’t be crazy. I know you’re tough, but…” Wulfsten has hold of her bicep as she approaches one of the side doors.
She gently takes his hand off of her arm. “I already owe you guys some drinks. I’ll try to get us some dragon parts.” She slides the door open, calling out, “Keep the engine running!”
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Zuzia takes one last breath, unable to cap her exit line with a perfect exit, but she does manage to close her eyes and step out into the wind.
The brunette can feel the air rushing around her, and the rumbles and roars of the battle she’s rapidly approaching.
Neith’s, Serrentuk’s, and Amalaskae’s brutal assault to stop Zuzia in her tracks long enough to be able to incapacitate her with some sort of divine ability makes a mere fall seem like a simple trip.
Please don’t be as strong as Neith… thinks the Polish woman as she descends rapidly towards her target.
The dragon is driving back all resistance from soldiers on the ground, and the sounds of firearms are drowned out by its roars and stomps. Fire flares out of its foreclaw where Jeavana is trying to escape, but can’t seem to break its grip.
Just land the first punch, Zuzu, then go from there.
Zuzia pulls her arm back as she gets closer. The dragon is moving, but it is absolutely massive, meaning she has a good chance of landing somewhere near its back while it’s distracted.
She failed to kill Sayrdarralouche the first time, and the method wasn’t how and what she intended.
Now, she is more prepared to do the job right.
And, who doesn’t want to be a dragon slayer?
***
Not long before the appearance of the abnormal dragon, Daniel studies the mana fire in the distance from his seat on one of the command post’s crates. He can see where Senn, still in her Yuna appearance, and Serrentuk are casting their weather spell based on the huge magic circle in the sky growing in complexity with each glyph added. Near Daniel himself, Rikuto is trying to teach Hekate and Jeavana the spell he used to hold back the mana fire directly. He has it written down, but something Daniel has noticed from Hekate’s personal studies, but chose not to press her on, is that she reads fine, so long as the writing is clear and uses simpler words.
Rikuto is trying to teach her a spell in whatever language it is, which is not Eastern Imperial Trade, and he’s writing it skillfully like someone who grew up on complex characters among the kanji, katakana, and hiragana of his native language, which is admittedly more like Eastern Imperial Trade’s lettering than Zenkon’s common language is to English. Hekate often struggles to read Daniel’s handwriting, and he still writes a bit like a kid himself. Rikuto took to writing the language quite quickly, amplified by the magic translation, and now trying to translate another language into his well-written script.
And, Hekate doesn’t like to admit her flaws, especially to people she doesn’t particularly like. Rikuto represents an enemy only recently established as a neutral party, and he seems to believe he’s the most serious and mature about the mana fire, though Daniel is stuck on one thing.
He knows, fundamentally, their best answer is going to be the atom bomb. Yet, their best efforts would be laughably inadequate to try to evacuate everyone in danger from Daniel’s proven Devourer-killer. It has the range to overkill the fire. But, it will obliterate the city. And, with a few days at most, even without the nuke, very few people will be far enough away.
If Hekate and any combination of the others can prove to have enough power to use Rikuto’s strategy, Daniel would happily bury his atom bombs deep within the most forgettable memory he can find.
There has to be more that I can do, thinks the mechanic as he watches, doing his best to listen and write phonetically what he hears for the parts of the spell. Rikuto obviously has to take intentional care not to recite the full spell, because it’s part of the spell that activates the “Divine Summoning”, which Rikuto claims is a massive mana draw once activated, unless, of course, it’s done such that the mana of the false-inferno is fueling the spell for the caster, it would drain a lone powerful spellcaster in seconds.
The American looks at the elemental that his daughters Jieka and Tekten ensured he brought with him via the scarf she’s bound to. She’s hovering near him in a form Daniel hasn’t yet seen. It has some similarities to her “divine” form, which has only appeared during the “Hallowed Ground” spell, and would likely appear with Byleathea’s saintess spell. The current form of Luceniel is a bit more ‘mature’ looking than the other forms, which had more of a cute, cherubic ‘chibi’ look to them, with proportions more like an infant, big, bright eyes, and an innocent look about them for the most part. But, presently, Luceniel looks more distinctly like a young priestess with a serious, regal look. It is her color-palette that sets her apart from a subtle, divine messenger or acolyte. She looks like an embodiment of spring, with asymmetrical ‘halves’ of each of her traits possessing its own, floral color of a violet-toned pink like the majesty of a near-perfect sunset, sharing dominion on the small being with a vibrant yellow color that promises the warmth of the sun, the joyful color of flowers, and a general warmth in tone. This “floral” version of Luceniel is the first one Daniel has seen to have dual-tone hair, half the purple-kissed crimson and the other the golden yellow, swapping sides with which eye is the respective color, making her eyes heterochromatic. And, her more elegant, ceremonial gown alternates in the same way, splitting portions of each section between the distinct fuschia color and its sunny partner.
Given that Luceniel takes on an appearance related to the strongest elemental magic present, and even non-standard elements can still affect her, Daniel would be a fool to assume anything less than the possibility being a strong likelihood that Luceniel’s current form reflects the intense strange mana present from the mana fire, which is dull at this range, but clearly present enough to effect the pure magical elemental being. She hovers less with childish curiosity and more of refined elegance, like a miniature version of Ryukana.
Daniel asks idly, “Any ideas for me to do something, Lucy?”
The small fairy-like being gives Daniel an apologetic look. She hovers down to his hand, gently touching his palm, which is bandaged. He has been slipping sips of rum to help hide the pain, but if he keeps going, he’ll be drunk before their battle is over.
But, the small elemental seems to be urging him to rest. He replies gently, “Thanks, but, I need to write at least.”
He notices Rikuto saying, “It’s not especially complicated. This is ‘aruka’, and this is ‘kashi’. I know they look similar…”
“Try this, Hekate,” states Daniel as he leaves his seat to approach them.
The feldrok girl’s frustration has become more and more apparent, and Daniel’s intervention instantly perks her ears back up as her tail relaxes. “Daniel!? You understand Rikuto’s spell!?”
“You do?” asks the Japanese man, equally surprised.
“Not exactly. Here.” Daniel hands over his notebook.
Hekate studies it, and then the characters Rikuto was just trying to explain, written in a very pristine, elaborate Eastern Imperial Trade script, which, as Daniel still struggles with, has far too many similarities to Japanese kanji, especially when written by someone who grew up writing the complex written language, and likely had even more elaborate studies in college.
Daniel did the only thing he could think of; adapt the very little he knows about Japanese and the syllables the language uses and write them phonetically in the much simpler text both of them know; English.
Daniel points, saying, “These are three different pronunciations of a few of the words that sounded suspect to me. Rikuto, please answer which one sounds right when she says it.”
Hekate’s ears had just folded back in irritation to match her growing discontent with the revelation that Daniel’s notebook implies that Rikuto was tricking her. However, several syllables in Japanese can sound very different to western ears, especially depending on the accent of the speaker. Hekate’s language spell absorbed Daniel’s dialect, and Daniel only knows about the possibility because he learned a touch of Japanese to try to understand animes in their original language, but he gave up when it was too much of a time commitment that he didn’t have to spare.
Hekate studies the three words, saying aloud, “ah-ru-ka… ah-du-ka… ah-lu-ka…”
“The last one,” replies Rikuto, seemingly surprised as well. He looks at Daniel with confusion, asking, “Are they really that close?”
Daniel explains, “The Japanese syllables that are somewhat interchangeable can be difficult for Americans, at the least, to distinguish between. Just like the first time we hear a thick British accent as well. You were emphasizing the partial syllable as ‘ru’, but it appears to be closer to ‘lu’ for us.”
Perking up with excitement and pride, Hekate declares as she points at Rikuto with Daniel’s notebook, “That’s right! I learned from Daniel! Plus, I’m his wife, so I’m an American, too! So, don’t just repeat the same thing!”
Jeavana adds, “For the record, I didn’t have any issues…”
The feldrok teen scowls at the dragon, but thankfully, it doesn’t spark a fight.
For his part, Rikuto is momentarily perturbed with Hekate’s sudden attitude, but he lets it go rather quickly. “Fine. I’m sorry, Hekate. Then, what were the other ones? We need to get to work…”
While Rikuto is speaking and before he can finish his thought, motion catches Daniel’s eye; pink and yellow shuddering and then whirling. Daniel quickly looks at Luceniel, following her gaze as quickly as he can, since she’s looking off towards the left.
As always, Daniel would be nothing if he didn’t trust his instincts. He is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. And while ‘trade’ isn’t the right word, since he was never earning a living from it, he played plenty of video games. In those video games, he can’t recall a meaningful time when perfect invisibility distinguished an enemy that he had to fight.
In one of his favorites, there was a tell-tale shimmer. It was often a glassy line like spider-silk taking the gossamer shape of the enemy; nowhere near as distinct as a comic book’s black line, but for the practiced eye, it might as well have been a glass figure moving towards the player.
In this world, Daniel has seen Neith and others activate stealth magic, which generally has little trouble hiding their massive forms, only showing the faintest signs of existence from how their invisible bodies interact with their surroundings.
Just like the Stalvaltan infiltrators when they mistakenly believed Daniel needed to be “rescued” from the Citadel.
Neith and Magnir are at the fire’s edge, Yaulwembor is nearby, napping, and Roetta would be too small.
And, the Empresses know better.
The American’s hand moves before the words even formulate in his mouth, and he shouts, “CONTACT CONTACT CONTACT! DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON!”
The unorthodox emperor immediately fires his revolver as soon as he can. His hope is that, if the revolver doesn’t kill the target, it breaks its stealth. Unlike a video game, where it’s a balance mechanism, Daniel has to break an actual mage’s focus. This can be achieved with surprise, with pain or shock, or by draining the target’s mana. He doesn’t have any anti-magic rounds loaded right now, lest he be a walking field of mana suppression. But, if nothing else, sparks and blood can become the ‘markers’ to give it away for others.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang!
Daniel empties the heavy revolver he usually carries towards the southwest as his mind races up to speed. He knows the Mana fire’s general direction is southeast from the camp, and the direction of an attack is absolutely crucial for coordinating a speedy response.
The mechanic is just calling out, “Contact south!” when he hears it being said by others, “Contact south!” “Incoming south!” “South south south!”
Aramellianna instructed any Stalvaltan Guardsmen to compensate for any mistakes Daniel makes in battle, since he has very little experience in combat, especially as a leadership position. Regardless, the most important factor is the coordinated fire. And, though there aren’t many on the ground right now, the few Stalvaltan Guardsmen sent to reinforce the command post, as well as a handful of goblins and dattakoriens, are all equipped with assault rifles.
Daniel shouts, “It’s invisible! The footprints! Target above the footprints!”
He knows he hit something, but given the direction of the sparks and the streaks of light, he hit the underside of a massive creature. The assault rifles drown out any further conversation as the first soldiers open fire, and Rikuto immediately starts ordering his troops to find cover.
The Emperor flings his revolver back with the cylinder ejected, dumping the spent rounds as they continue smoking. He wants to make a void-system that feeds and reclaims shells, similar to the chain bomber he designed with the dragons in mind. But, as often as Daniel needs to switch to anti-magic rounds, he hasn’t put it high on his priority list. So, he’ll have to hopefully remember to reclaim the shells after the fight.
Regardless, he has bigger things to worry about as he quickly surveys what’s going on. Blood splatters and sparks are each scattering from dozens of impacts per second, and the ‘shape’ of the invisible solid that the bullets are ineffectually striking shifts along with the pressure points represented by ‘current’ footprints that are more clear and distinct than the residual steps.
Daniel can hear Hekate call out, “Hee-yaaahhh!” Her spell flies forth; a glowing white orb of energy that leaves behind a trail of mist, similar to an atmospheric comet.
The orb hits roughly ‘center-of-mass’ as far as they can tell, and it explodes with a flash of ice elemental magic that leaves a frosty appearance to reptilian belly scales…
… nearly forty feet off the ground.
If Ryuogriar is akin to an international airliner in her natural form, and Neith is closer to a double-decker jumbo-jet in his, then whatever this creature is has started to approach proportions rivaling a modern naval destroyer, based on how wide its belly is and how high off of the ground it is. It may not have the mass of an actual ship, but it certainly starts to contend with certain movie and live-action fantasy dragons.
The frosty “marking” moves as it draws in a deep breath from the way the posture shifts, and Daniel yells, “Barriers and cover! Now!”
Hekate and Jeavana take the front lines, while Yaulwembor all but literally materializes beside Daniel, snarling. The former two create their own barriers, with Hekate’s being similar to the Citadel, and Jeavana’s being more distinctly fire-resistant and ‘plated’ with visible mana.
A rush of fire erupts towards the camp, splitting around them as cries and screams ring out. The two are doing their best, but Jeavana’s barrier noticeably breaks, and she cries out, leaving Hekate’s force field to be slammed by the intense heat and…
…Liquid.
Daniel recoils a couple of steps when he sees the lingering splashes landing just a few yards ahead of him. If he didn’t know better, and actual horizontal volcano just exploded lava towards them. Hekate strains to keep her barrier up, even as the intense heat crackles and screeches with the collision of traditional thermodynamics with some sort of Leidenfrost effect from the surface of the barrier; the molten liquid slag skittering across its own impossibly hot gases like water droplets on a frying pan.
The creature’s form comes into view as it abandons its stealth, and Daniel’s heart skips a beat for a moment.
He has been told that dragons continue growing for their entire lives, their length slowing down, but never stopping. And, Yaulwembor is living proof that a draconic related-species can certainly get much bigger than Neith, given time.
But, this dragon makes even Yaulwembor look small, taking on the more “quadrupedal” shape of the dragons, though they can easily stand on their hind legs in most cases.
However, unlike either sapient species or the non-sapient drakes, this titan has a strange, mineralized texture, like the ancient whale bones or shark teeth Daniel sometimes found on scuba dives. Or rather, it looks almost perfect, but not quite right, like petrifaction, yet still ‘flexible’.
More strange is that this effect starts at its nose, and it ends “inside” of the shoulders and about halfway down what would be the dragon’s sternum, leaving its head and down its chest and back as a dark black mass with bone-like wings rising rearward like tools of fear more than flight.
The dragon inhales again, but this time, it lets out a roar that is more akin to an explosion or even a volcanic eruption, creating a shockwave that rips outwards and slams across the group.
Daniel braces, but his helmet and armor are slammed by the sheer force of pressure. For his more sensitive companions, including Jeavana and Yaulwembor, it is a painful, stunning attack that causes them to scream. Hekate recoils away as she lets out a voice-cracking scream, covering her sensitive ears as well as she flails in agony.
The mechanic instinctively tries to run to the ravenette, but he is yanked by the chest as an arm swoops around him. Yaulwembor forcefully just scooped her arm across him and launched into flight away from the dragon, and Daniel is caught off guard. He’s unable to stop the faormyr, and he watches as Hekate and Jeavana try to recover their senses.
“Wait! Yaulwembor! … Hekate, move!” Daniel tries to stop his pseudo-dragon companion, but quickly remembers she doesn’t understand speech yet, if she ever will. And, more important is for Hekate to snap out of the hearing pain and move.
But, his greatest fear materializes before his eyes.
With frightening speed, the aberrant dragon launches itself forward with a sort of “pounce” that looks almost exactly like a titanic crocodile taking off into a bounding gallop, defying logic and shaking the ground with its forward jump, let alone its foreclaws slamming down with terrifying precision.
Its reptilian ‘hands’ are nearly ten feet across, each.
This makes it even more heartstopping when the gigantic palms crash down on the golden dragon, who only narrowly manages to react at all, and Hekate.
Daniel knows Hekate can take punishment. She was pinned down in a similar surprise attack by Neith when he first engaged Daniel’s companions in Shiaulvolgarro’s Hoard, believing they were allies of Morthybargaron.
But, exactly how durable the deceptively tiny little fox-eared girl is remains to be seen, and Daniel would trade virtually everything to never have to find out the limits of durability on his superhuman companions, especially Hekate, who is far too young to be the one in actual danger.
When the enemy dragon rises to its mostly-upright position, standing bipedally more like a T-rex than Yaulwembor does while in her true form, since she can stand and move almost completely upright, it takes with it a very important being.
Though tiny in its massive claws, its goal seems to be less obvious than rampant destruction.
The gold shimmering from a much smaller dragon’s tail in her humanoid form gives away Jeavana as a hostage, with no signs of Hekate in its grip.
Yaulwembor “finally” lands almost a hundred feet away, dropping Daniel to his feet as she growls and ignites her pilot flame. She roars at the dragon, though her normally impressive snarl is more akin to a house kitten versus a lion with how small she is presently. The enemy dragon roars at her in turn, and it’s all Jeavana can do to struggle against its titanic grip, biting, clawing, and breathing fire quickly to try to force her own escape.
Ice shots flash out of the dust cloud where its claws slammed the ground to snatch the dragon woman, erupting on its scales, but it hardly seems bothered. Daniel feels a little relief, because the only person it could be within the cloud is Hekate, and she stumbles out of the cloud, firing one more shot before scanning around. She spots Daniel and Yaulwembor, instantly using her short-range teleportation to regroup with them.
Whether they see Jeavana or not, the rest of the battle mages and soldiers are firing on or casting spells at the dragon, but many of the hits spark and ping off of its stone-like torso.
With the spells the American has already seen, he wouldn’t be surprised if a dragon could simply armor itself in stone the way the mana-mutated monstrous rakehorn did on the island where the kobolds and selkethia live, but something still seems off about this one.
Familiar.
Its eyes seem hollow, not just recessed behind a stone helmet.
And, another detail finally catches his eye amidst the chaos.
It has a light, almost blue-grey coloring to its more natural body parts, with patches of the stone like material showing through. But, more importantly, the dragon has splotches in its coloring, and the pieces all start to fit together.
Senn and Serrentuk both took keen interest in the fate of one very specific dragon, with Senn nearly panicking when Doephluev spoke his name after seeing its headless form reanimate and run away from the Centerhold fortress.
That dragon, who should be very much a headless corpse at Zuzia’s doing, is known as Sayrdarralouche.
And, if even Daniel was firmly not a gambling man, which he typically isn’t, he would still be willing to bet heavily on that very dragon standing before him.
That connection, along with his own recent desperate action against a horrific crime against life, nature, and the agency of a sapient being, culminating in the abject desecration of his corpse, seems to indicate only one thing.
The eldritch lurker is growing stronger and stronger, and she is no longer worried about hiding that influence.
Multiple doomsday clocks seem to be ticking.
And, whichever one Daniel looks at, time is running out.
***
A/N 1: Ręce opadają is a Polish phrase that literally translates to “hands are falling”, and is used to mean or imply things like “It’s hopeless,” “I give up,” or in Zuzia’s sarcastic context, along the lines of “Welp, I’ve done all I can do.”