Chapter 17 I’ll Eat You
“Take your shot, elf.” Chatohsha ordered Lenna with a sneer that seemed to transcend the crackling rumble of her mana created voice.
“Not, until, you, say, my, name.” Lenna growled back. “I can understand humans hating me because of the pain my people have caused, so I let them release some of their pent up frustration. You are a dragon, an apex creature, you have no excuse. I have just survived your most potent attack. You owe it to me, to say my name.”
Chatohsha lowered herself and growled so deeply that bits of brimstone-like saliva dripped from her maw to the ground where it began sizzling. “Lenna V’Nova.” The she-dragon rumbled. “Get your limp and poultry attack over with so I can end you fairly.”
“Isaac, I need to see, only for a moment.” Lenna told her mate. “Can you do that?”
Isaac smirked. “I think I can manage that, for a moment.” He told her. “Shamesh, help me up.”
Shamesh flew out of the trees where he had been waiting to fire a Disintegration beam at the dragon. Shamesh offered Isaac a hand which the dark mage quickly took and was hauled into the air. Once above the dragon and paladin, Isaac felt a sense of weightlessness overtake him. Isaac looked down at Lenna but before he could even ask she nodded as if she could feel his gaze on her. “I’m ready.” She told him.
Isaac took deep breaths of air as if he was trying to oxygenate his entire bloodstream at once. Shadows gushed out of him in all directions as he tried to blot out the sun for his wife. Isaac quickly surpassed his regeneration rate as the sun mercilessly cooked off his shadows. The ground below him darkened but it was not dark enough for his Innerworld-born future demigoddess. “Darken!” Isaac ordered his color of mana as it floated in the air around him. The mana itself was the focus of his command. He was the greatest authority over black mana, not just in his mind but in the mind of everyone who had witnessed one of his absurd feats. He refused to be denied. He refused to let the mana drift uselessly through the area he was trying to darken. He refused to let the passive power of the sun prevent him from exercising his power as he wished. He refused to let anyone who witnessed what was happening think that he could possibly be anything other than a demigod. He had traded his memories of his entire previous life for power and he refused to let it let him down. The intensity, focus, intent, and refusal to be denied was felt and heard within a mile as mana echoed with Isaac’s will.
The small misting dark cloud that had begun to hang over Chatohsha and Lenna suddenly darkened to an impenetrable blackness. Chatohsha’s eyes shot up in shock and surprise as she realized that she was suddenly cut off from the sky by a force that even red dragons feared. Black and platinum dragons were the true pinnacle of dragon immortality and a human wielding that power as if he was a dragon, of equal age to her, lording over her sent a chill down her spine. She instinctively shrunk in on herself slightly and braced to dodge or even flee. If he made even one move against her then she would leave them alone. There weren’t very many things that a red dragon truly feared but an invulnerable, unresting, unrelenting, unstoppable force that ignored pain and could leap out of one’s shadow to gut them was one such thing.
“Your fight is with me.” Lenna spoke which immediately arrested Chatohsha’s attention as the elven woman began to glow. “How many mortals have you killed, Cha’sha?” Lenna skipped the syllable that adult dragons added to their own name when they became an adult. It was an insult in a way that mattered. For Lenna to call the dragon a child in her own words was one thing but to use the dragon’s own culture to insist that she was still a hatchling was a step too far. If there hadn’t been a wall of shadows dark enough to swallow her whole, she would have disregarded the challenge and pounced on Lenna immediately.
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As the paladin started to emit a dull orange glow, she started whispering to herself an incantation. It was at that moment that Chatohsha realized that she had greatly underestimated the woman. The lack of shiny armor or white cloth led her to believe that Lenna was just another warrior. She assumed that a warrior would not have enough strength to do much more than draw blood even with an adamantine sword. A paladin was an entirely different story. If paladins were good at any one thing, it was ending a fight in one blow. “Ten, maybe thirty. I didn’t count, paladin.” Chatohsha answered. Lenna started dragging her sword along the ground next to her as she cemented the entire image of Chatohsha into her mind.
While Chatohsha and Lenna were having their final talk before Lenna put the arrogant dragon in her place, Isaac was struggling. His mana regeneration rate bottomed out as soon as the word had been spoken. His mana reserves were plummeting as not only was he trying to maintain the cloud of shadows but also Shamesh’s consciousness. His chest felt raw like a scuffed knee on gravel, on the inside. It felt like his core was trying to flow backwards, as he forced the underlying magic of existence to listen to him, on a scale that was so far out of reach for every other mortal on the planet. Even the gods that were watching were surprised. He knew that he was at his breaking point and that if he kept trying to force it, he would tear himself open on the magic level, maybe even the physical one as well. “fade.” Isaac whispered to the mana so it would gently bring everything back to normal.
The cloud above Lenna and Chatohsha started to fade as Lenna continued stalking towards the dragon. Blazing embers burned under an armor of shadows that covered Lenna. Her sword danced with orange flames that seemed to trail an otherworldly darkness behind them. Her silver eyes began to glow orange bright enough that her opponent could see them through the slit in her helmet. “For those lost, for those you would one day slay.” Lenna spoke the eulogy for the dragon in front of her. Chatohsha would not be permitted to exist until the next dragon surge.
Instead of trying to do a crazy leaping strike or something else out of a mural or storybook Lenna stopped right in front of the dragon. Chatohsha’s back foot slid back slightly as she tried not to take an unconscious step back. “Get it over with.” The dragon told the paladin with defiance in her body language and bonfire-like voice.
“What did you want with Isaac?” Lenna questioned.
“Enough, I’ll eat you if you don’t take your swing now.” Chatohsha shot back.
“Answer, or I’ll aim for your sigil.” Lenna threatened. Losing the part of the dragon that allowed for the elemental breath was worse than dying for any dragon, regardless of color or subspecies. It was a permanent scar that served as nothing but humiliation until the day the dragon was finally slain or starved themselves to death.
“He felt tasty.” Chatohsha replied as the dirt under her started to harden like clay just from the heat that she was giving off.
Lenna gave the dragon one curt nod. “I am glad that you are as braindead as you appear.” She spoke one final insult before she brought her sword up in an uppercut. Lenna’s uppercut, powered by all of her natural, physical, and mana enhanced strength turned into a thrust once the blade had cut thoroughly through the dragon’s upper throat and into her mouth. The thrust went straight for Chatohsha’s brain but at the last moment she jerked away and upwards leaving a spray of near boiling blood to cover Lenna.
Chatohsha had chosen to flee rather than to die. Her arrogance as a dragon was thoroughly crushed and she would have a scar for all of time to prove that lesson learned. That was, if Lenna and Isaac decided to let her leave.
Isaac slumped in the air just as the cloud of shadows broke apart. He watched as the dragon tried to run from Lenna’s strike that would have removed her from the gene pool. “What?” Isaac questioned in a semi-delirious state. He had just done the normal person equivalent of picking a roof off of a person or holding a crumbling mine shaft up with nothing but their own strength and willpower. He had greatly overestimated his willpower in relation to his mana regeneration rate and was still actively suffering for it.
“Get back here!” Lenna ordered the dragon and shifted her sword and stance into position to throw her weapon at the dragon that had just beat her wings to try and flee.
“You win, this time, mortal. Lenna V’Nova, I will remember that name.” Chatohsha swore as she turned in the air to leave. Just then, a blazing sword made of the hardest metal in the world punched through her wing before its hilt tore its way through the webbing. Orange liquid exploded out of the injury as sulfurized iron blood was blasted free of its containment. An agonized wet, throaty, rumbling honk sounded out across the treetops as Chatohsha missed her next wing flap. She was old enough to be able to fly with nothing but her mana control but the massive amount of force that her wings could generate was still useful and she had been planning on making use of them. The sudden lack of an aggressive upwards force that was supposed to happen caused her to tip and plummet to the ground. The challenge had just turned into a fight for survival, for the dragon.