“Those look… weak,” Pride growled, shaking his large head. Idle appraised his dragon for a few moments, finding it fine in every way. He was not as large as she was-- his forty feet compared to her fifty-- nor was he as well armored compared to her carapace, which was as thick as half a foot in some places. Instead, he had larger wings than her, as well as a sleeker design overall. By contrast, she was massive, bulky, armored, and incredibly slow. Compared to Pride, she was like a drunken toddler trying to walk in terms of speed. “Do we really need to worry about those?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t take any chances,” Idle growled back, “But can you please focus on the massive cannons currently trained on us? No matter how hot the fires of these Long Ears get, I doubt they’d hurt as much as being on the business end of those cannons. If you’re really worried about them, I can take care of the batties,” she said, sending a spark of mana into her throat.
Before her evolution, mana was an abstract, distant thing that only the mistress or Pride or Jel could do anything with. After it, however, she suddenly could not only feel it, but could also understand it. It was definitely weird, being essentially a thing that responded to the thoughts of people, but it was a welcome kind of weird.
She turned it into the ‘Dragon’s’ mana she suddenly learned to make, and sparked it with a bit of her stored power that she had accumulated during her meditation, turning it from normal ‘Dragon’s’ mana into her specific type of ‘Dragon’s’ mana. No matter who’s it was, however, it was still an accumulation of raw power, and it cleaved through the swarm of bat-like Clockworks like an axe through the sands below them. Swaths of the bats fell down, torn to pieces, but the mana did not stop at just them. It slammed into the Cyst with a deafening boom, tearing chunks of armor from the floating fortress’ hull.
Pride shook his head at her miscalculation, “Please do not endanger our siblings,” he said, “I will take care of the cannons.” He opened his jaw a few feet and spat a ball of fiery mana that flew through the swarm of Long Ears without stopping. It sailed directly into the Cyst, slamming into a cannon and erupting into a massive fireball that tore another three around it from their places.
“‘Don’t endanger our siblings’ you say,” Idle mocked, “What the hell was that, then!?”
Pride turned to her with an annoyed expression, “That was the ammunition within the cannons. The things that are shot at us. The things that are, if you did not know, highly explosive and, according to the clock lady, extremely dangerous. They tend to explode when roasted, though not with that level of effect…”
“Yes, I know what a damn cannon shell is,” Idle snapped, flying up a few dozen feet and flapping her wings in the direction of the Long Ears all at once, adding a bit of dragon mana into it. The resulting gust of wind slammed every single one of them into the ground, tearing some of the Clockworks’ thin metal wings but leaving a few still flightworthy. It was to be expected, since she did not put that much power into it, so Idle copied Pride’s fireball, letting loose a large, airy fireball. It pushed sand around it and ripped the remaining Clockworks apart, but did little else. She did not want to cause a cave-in, so she held back. She watched as the Cyst turned its bulk around, facing them at an angle with one of the corners so that they were faced with a whole five cannons, though one of them was knocked out.
“Dodge!” Idle roared just as the Cyst was lit up from cannon fire. Bright shells lit up the night sky as they sailed towards the two dragons. Idle was not naive nor stupid enough to assume that the shells would only explode on contact, and opted to instead fly backwards. Pride had another idea, and instead flew upwards. With bated breath, Idle watched as the shells came within a few dozen feet of Pride and exploded with multicolored fire and fury.
The flames licked and then enveloped Pride and his hastily constructed shield in an instant. Idle watched with an anxious gaze as the fire petered out soon enough, and Pride was revealed to be, while not unharmed, healthy enough. Idle zipped over to him and put herself between the Cyst and Pride, “You alright?” she asked.
Pride groaned, “I have been better, but I can take it,” he remarked, “Though, as much as it pains me to say, I think I should ask Jel for her regeneration mana type. It could be useful in the future,” he remarked, shaking his head.
“Suck it up, little guy,” Idle said, “We’ve got a whole battle to get through.”
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Pride flew silent for a moment, “Did you really just call me ‘Little guy?’” he asked, incredulous. He growled and turned away, making Idle smile. If he was energetic enough to get mad at her jabs, he was energetic enough to not die from being flambéed from a third-dozen highly volatile shells.
*=====*
Jel walked through the halls of the Cyst in silent awe. The halls were, despite what she had expected, beautiful. Arches, columns, and tiled pathways all made of clocksteel, it was almost like an art exhibit. It was also intimidating, with everything being designed for something even less than half as large as Jel’s dragon form. The ceiling was just under ten feet above her head, fifteen or so feet high, and the paths were massive.
The most intimidating thing there, however, was the utter lack of any sign of resistance. She had been wandering around, finding massive ramps upwards, for ten minutes and there was still nothing. The Cyst had shaken worryingly not once, but twice, but nothing roamed the halls. If she was being honest with herself, she was almost certain that the core of the Cyst had seen her and was just waiting for her to reach a spot impossible to escape from.
She shook her head. She was a damn dragon. She could understand a million systems of value and understand how mana based on every one of them worked. She would not cower in front of an empty hallway. That was when a rhythmic thudding reached her ears. She froze, waiting for a second and confirming that the thudding was becoming louder and louder as the moments passed.
She waited until the source of the noise made itself known, and it did not let its footfalls down. It was a massive fourteen foot tall, knight-like mech with a glowing, dangerous-looking lance, and a tower shield as wide as a man was tall and twice as tall. Its armor was so thick that the Clockwork could only make constrained, limited moves. To Jel’s eyes, it was simply a massive wall of metal that could walk.
She waited for the mech to pass, staying still to a degree that only an undead could accomplish. She could take the Clockwork, but she was not going to jeopardize her mission to do so. Once the massive thing passed, she continued on, through the halls aimlessly. She was becoming frustrated when she found something that looked important. It was a massive room, with a floor made of glass showing a fiendishly complicated series of runes, pipes, and liquid mana that gave even Jel a headache with her increased mental functions.
In the center of the room was a large arm connected to a glowing ball made of a dozen pieces of clocksteel. It thrummed with orange, red, and steely gray light every second. Pipes supplied the ball with liquid mana, with nothing leaving. Jel immediately eyed it warrily. At best, the ball was a backup core that the normal core used as bait and at worst it was nothing but bait.
She ignored it in favor of looking for a way to disable the massive dynamo beneath her feet. Observing it a bit more revealed that the mana left the flat dynamo through a single outflow pipe which, oddly enough, funneled through right under her feet. She got to work immediately, using an elongated nail to carve a very large rune into the glass. The ball eventually snapped its front to her and let out an ear-piercing screech, but Jel had already finished the rune. With a grin, she clogged the pipe with a barrier that used the mana blocked to reinforce the barrier. With the amount of mana being funneled through that pipe, there was no force on Granulous that could break the barrier.
The ball lunged towards her rune, spitting a mist of mana in front of it as it approached the rune on the floor. Before Jel could do anything to react, a scaled fist smashed into the ball from the air itself and sent the metallic orb flying. It was torn from the hydraulic arm and sailed across the room, crumpling as it hit the far wall. Fury suddenly appeared beside the orb and stomped it into the ground. Jel tried to figure out how to disengage her invisibility without punching something, eventually finding the runes on her body and taking the mana from them. She appeared beside the rune on the ground and smiled, “Good hit,” she called across the room.
“Thanks,” Fury said as he approached, “So, how long until this damn thing falls-” The ground beneath their feet suddenly shifted, tilting to one side, then they began to float, “I shouldn’t open my mouth, huh?” he asked.
“No, probably not,” Jel agreed, “But come over here, I’ve got an idea.” They met in the middle and before Fury could ask what her idea was, Jel reverted to her slime form and wrapped him up in a cocoon of her body. He barely noticed the force when they hit the ground, and she was barely hurt. The dynamo was not damaged, and they survived. With a smile, Jel pulled away from Fury and morphed back into her normal form, “How’s that for a cushioned landing?”
Fury shook his head, walking out of the room despite the slanted floor, “Jel, please never do that again. That was disturbing on multiple levels and I don’t want to experience being in your gelatinous mass again.”
“I can take that in so many directions, you know,” Jel said, smirking.
“You could,” Fury admitted, “But are you really going to stoop to Eva levels?”
Jel laughed, “I might.”
“Gods help us, then,” Fury replied as they walked through the ornate halls of the destroyed Cyst.