Argh! The chain about my wrist yanks forcefully, as more attempt to ensnare my ankles. Glancing back, I see the cowardly archwizard from earlier—the one who fled after I broke his timestop—snearing, so I snark, “Look buddy, I’m not into bondage.“

The archwizard virtually howls as he commands, “Not so fast, whelp!” Tapping his temple, and pointing at the bindings, he claims, “Chains of the Fel,” and he continues in a voice he probably thinks sounds menacing, “You aren’t going anywhere! You’re mine now. And soon, your life’s essence, Dragonforce, and soul will be mine as well.”

Rolling my eyes, I simply grumble, “You absolute outhouse! I’m. Busy. Here!”

The inconvenience of having had this fecal repository’s magical bindings spring into existence around one of my limbs while in motion mostly irritates me, but it does give me pause. Glancing at the chain binding me, it’s translucent, ethereal, and seems to extend deeply into the soil of Rayileklia. More than that, it’s smoky, and I can tell if I were anyone else, that it’d be charring my wrist, and slowly reeling downwards to drag me presumably towards hell.

Well if it’s Fel he wants, it’s Fel he’ll get. The archwizard advances on me, so I turn my own sneer towards him and growl out, “Fel off pal,” before uttering a guttural acronym, “F F S!”

Caught offguard, he begins to laugh at what he assumes the acronym means, but only for a split instant before my Flash Freeze Storm, my FFS, manifests. Ever since the chaotic reincarnation magic, I’m tied to the archdevil of the Frosty Fel on Rayileklia. The Ice of Rage isn’t the only one with hellishly cold powers around here jerkwad. Sure, Terrorzin’s frost aura might be more menacing, but he can go suck an egg. Wait, what’s the etymology of that phrase? I hope it’s nothing offensive. Wait. Why do I care about a private thought about Terrorzin being off—never mind.

I don’t manage to do more than stupefy and inconvenience the archwizard—and about a hundred random troops, casters, and human-form dragons—for a bit as a layer of frost coats my vicinity. But I do manage to make the magical chains binding me brittle. This allows me to shatter it with my equipment, specifically Frostburn. The shorn chain unleashes a sound that makes me wince. It’s far too like the sound of a Can’Z’aasian derezzing into polygons for my comfort.

The archwizard is smug, but as far as I can tell, he’s not going to risk meteors with so many allies around, if he’s even capable of bringing them. The rest of his offenses are seemingly at most an inconvenience. Deciding he isn’t worth my efforts when Teuila is in peril, I turn to leave once again, but yet another subtle spell manifests. I can feel its tug on the weave, but I don’t have the SP to waste on this geek. The spells he’s flinging haven’t been battlefield crippling, but this one is suddenly sending shivers down my spine.

Tenebrous tendrils, tentacles of inky blackness reach through cosmic tears in the fabric of space into our realm. They lash to-and-fro, seemingly striking yet passing through everything in range. Everything in my senses goes off-kilter just perceiving them, as if my eyes were moved aside and rotated away from each other forty-five degrees.

My vision wavers and wobbles, bent and skewed at incomprehensible angles. The deafening sounds of the roar of battle are replaced with hissed whispers that somehow blot out all else, filling my mind in a confusing, brain-melting alien tongue. The tendrils have nearly imperceptible eyes and mouths, simultaneously like a squid’s hooked tentacle suckers, yet also nothing alike to anything in our realm. The sheer cosmic horror of simply perceiving these impossible entities would drive anyone mad. Getting snatched by any of them? Let’s just say it’d be bad, really bad. That’s putting it lightly.

As if I were trapped in a child’s kaleidoscope, everything feels like it spins and fractures into mosaic versions of itself, fractal patterns endlessly repeating, dizzying me. With how my perceptions are skewed, I can’t tell where or what to target if I wanted to dispel the effect conjured by the archwizard’s spell. In fact, I’d probably be entirely incapacitated already if it weren’t for my psi-blocking circlet. Fine, he wants to prove he’s worth my time before I rush to Teuila’s aid? He’s succeeded. And I’m going to make this witless knave, this cantankerous cur, wish he hadn’t.

The cackling idiot screams, “Hahaha, reel as the horror breaks your mind, feel your sanity slipping away along with your grip on reality! As your brain melts out your ears I’ll—eh. What,” and his tirade ends in a flub as he stares at me in disbelief that neither do I have brain matter oozing out my ears, nor am I hindered from acting.

I snarl, and hurl an insult at my foe before roaring my titles, “You complete jackanape! I am Reggie Shellcracker, a Hero of the Order of the Onyx Dawn, an Archmage Aliased ~-VOID the CEASELESS-~ Schism! And I! Am! The! Void Dragon Honoris Causa! You want to see mind-breaking horror? I’ll show you mind breaking horror!”

For some reason, I think I blacked out for about five seconds. My senses just sort of distorted and faded away to nothing, before coming back full tilt. My silent sonar senses pick up something weird, a heavy drip between… Did… the archwizard just wet himself? Also… did I say something between Alias and Schism? My brain fritzes for a moment, and BSODs. What was I thinking about? Okay, uh, what happened? Dozens, maybe hundreds of foes around me seem virtually petrified. It’s almost like they’re quaking in terror. Did I—huh. When did I manifest my Honoris Causa like this? I can’t recall.

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Speaking of Honoris Causas, Teuila’s is manifested in its full physical form, and foes are swarming atop it. Her real body is safe within, and she’s—hah. She’s in her mirage-flash stance. She’s honing it, charging it up, holding it longer and longer. Things are about to get ridiculous. How many hits can she unleash during mirage-flash at this point? Plus, they’re *Teuila* hits, so they strike with the force of a fighter jet gone sonic. My guess is she’s probably got it up to a multiple of eight. Either eight, sixteen, sixty four, or something like that. We’ll see when she’s done charging up the stance, how many booms she unleashes.

Still, something’s up, and not in a good way. What happened to the archwizard’s mindbendy spell? I don’t sense chaos-tentacles anywhere any longer. Was it a short duration spell? I don’t want it sneaking up on me and popping back up at an inopportune moment. For now, let’s hack away at this archwizard’s defenses. He’s got a ton of warding spells and abjurative magics up.

Too bad that that Wardbreaker I found in Al’pa’ca’s domain was single use, and that I had to use it on Al’pa’ca. I’m not willing to blow through resources into unsafe SP expenditures for the day whittling away and dispelling this guy’s buffs. I am however willing to ping him with a few frosty rays the size of ballista bolts, and necrotic blasts.

Each cast of a spell, even these little—well, okay, my ties to the Frosty Fel enhance frost rays about sixteen times potency—cantrips, provide myriad effects. Since I innately have subtle-spell metamagical rigor, they engage all the procedural effects from my runic clips relating to metamagic, I get a thin film of mana as a temporary slight shield, I clear my own mind of mental effects, and unleash a rapid cavalcade of random additional annoying little bursts of elements along with each spell.

Why am I still holding Mindfire, when I could use it to get closer to Teuila? Well, or I could use it to end this jerkwad, so that he doesn’t use another spell that sets me back yet again. Throwing Mindfire, I redirect it midair to curve around my target. He appears perplexed that it seems my deadly-accurate throw suddenly went wide and missed. He had even brought up a temporary shield in front of himself to deflect it. With another telekinetic grip, I slip it along the back of his neck, teleporting to its position, with it in my hand momentarily until it disappears for the day.

From nowhere, nowhere at all, for some reason I utter, “Nothin’ personal, but omae wa mou shinderou,” before shanking and shiving this archwizard with four telekinetically lifted elemental daggers from my elemental bandolier, Mindfire, and Riptide, and I headbutt him in the back of the skull for good measure. The random elemental daggers, oddly, happen to be cold, fire, lightning, and acid, in that order. They happen to be the same order as my elemental powers achieved on Can’Z’aas. The same order of my first dragonforces since the open start of the dragon war.

Wait. Did I just say something just now after teleporting? What was it? Why can’t I remember it? Or maybe I imagined saying something. My brain feels like it’s fritzing out. I try to keep it encased in a protective EM field so that when I’m getting struck by millions of volts of lightning nonstop, it doesn’t get fried.

Maybe I’ve been failing? Regardless, I stride away from my foe as he internally begins to frost over through his veins. With my thermal senses, I can virtually feel the frost as it spreads through him icing his veins. He then combusts, then spasms from electricity, then begins melting from the center outwards. Gruesome.

Boom! Followed by boom after boom sends forces flying as Teuila drops the physicality from her Honoris Causa, leaving it ethereal. Wow. She even predicted their exact positions they’d fall in—gravity. Smirking, I shake my head ruefully. Te’s not in any danger from these bozos. I’ll try to keep the adult and ancient dragons off her back while she plows through the horde. After the sixty-fourth sonic crash, and clump of flying foes, there are no more, but I can tell Teuila’s sweating harder than she ever has before. My thermal senses pinpoint that she’s at something like a hundred fifty degrees fahrenheit externally, which worries me for her. My Wings, Te, please be alright.

I know she has elemental resistances and boons from Iceyhot and her Seasonal Gi, and runic clips, but burning hotter than a fever can’t be good for her regardless. You’re one to talk though Reggie. Eh? Well, I mean, yeah. Lightning is hot as hell. Though something like ninety nine point nine nine percent of the heat dissipates in convection. Or something like that anyway. Still, my externals are still something like a hundred twenty degrees, even after frosting myself and the area around me non-stop since I stopped using the Worldstorm and cursed-greaves combo.

My externals had been sitting around eight hundred for most of the duration of the fight, between being covered in fire, lightning, and whatever else. Wait. Is acid even a danger to me if I keep myself coated in fire and lightning? If the air around me is near a thousand degrees, which I think is my maximum safe limit for prolonged exposure, can I just boil off or evaporate acid on its way to me?

Depending on the chemical composition, the water in the acid might boil off as the acid breaks down into its constituent components. Especially if we freeze it first. I really don’t feel like taking pointy acid ice chunks to the face though. So I might stick to boiling it off with the convection from my own lightning. Huh. More science for safety I guess. In that case, more work for ya EM field organ.

Alright then. Reggie Shellcracker, immune to Fires, Lightnings, Colds, Acids, Poisons, Sands, and capable of softening the impact of Thunderer booms. You really were made to take on dragons weren’t you? I mean, the immunities to Poisons and Sands are because of the amulet, but they don’t need to know that. Oh, and if there are any other psi-dragons like Butterfly of the Evil Claws, we’ve got that covered too as long as we keep our circlet in place. Well, don’t get cocky Reggie, but it’s time to show these people why we’re Kinzul’s Void Dragon Honoris Causa.

Hopefully we can keep the heat off Teuila if we start engaging swathes of foes out here. Maybe I can even snag some dragonforce to top off. Wait. My dragonforce seems to be topped off again. What the crap? Have I just been subconsciously siphoning it from all the human-form dragons and such that I’ve been slaying? Have I… been ripping out and eating hearts without noticing it? Eugh. Well, whatever the reason, I guess we can go all in on going all out. Pft. I can’t tell if that was an aphorism or a malaphor, or whatnot.

When at least half a dozen ancients line up to take me on, I sigh while slumping my shoulders. Cracking my neck side to side, I lamely mutter, “Fine. Alright. Bring it.”