Chapter 18 Ground Her.
Chatohsha hit the ground like a sack of bricks. Lenna could barely make out her silhouette through the blinding light of the midday sun. Isaac and Shamesh hung in the air, the former trying to regain his bearings and the latter waiting for orders. A dozen horses were unconscious from the repetitive magical trauma of being within a hundred feet of a draconic conversation. Half a dozen mortals were unconscious as well though most of them were at least in the trees and not out in the open. Only time would tell if any of them had been standing behind Lenna when the dragon had attempted to incinerate her. The rest of the mortals were trying their hardest to get as far away from the dragon as possible. And worst of all, Lenna’s sword was somewhere in the general direction of the rearmost wagon.
The dragon rolled to her feet with a powerful shove off of the ground with her good wing. She landed with a slight slide as she was more focused on getting upright than being graceful. Her claws dug tiny trenches through the packed dirt and stone of the well traveled road.
“Hellflame Strike.” Lenna chanted with an upwards gesture that released a geyser of black and orange flames directly upwards and into Chatohsha’s underbelly. At first the dragon was confused but then she felt herself start to burn. It was not the burn of fire cooking a lesser creature but of draconic scales turning brittle and beginning to necrotize.
Chatohsha launched herself at Lenna in an attempt to end the paladin before she could make another attempt on her life. It was clear to both parties that neither had planned on letting the loser escape. Just the slash across the neck from Lenna’s strike would have been enough for her to claim the victory but Lenna had always planned on killing the dragon. Chatohsha hadn’t been any better when she had opened with an attempt to turn Lenna to ash. Both three century old, prideful, pinnacle females were out for blood for one reason or another. Lenna had had enough of Chatohsha’s arrogance and that wasn’t even mentioning the fact that, if Chatohsha lived until the next dragon surge, she would be an ancient powerhouse by then. Chatohsha would have leveled cities while tearing through younger and less experienced gold and silver dragons as if they were mere playthings. It was better to end her while there was a chance to do so. Chatohsha simply hated lesser beings talking back to her.
Lenna caught the motion of something darker than everything else as the dragon shot towards her. She leaned into her opponent’s attack while she strengthened herself as much as she could. Chatohsha caught her in her mouth and clamped her jaws down as tight as she could. Lenna felt her armor start to buckle under the pressure as the physically strongest subspecies of dragon tried to pop her like a grape between her mythical jaws. A shadowy whip snapped out at the inside of Chatohsha’s mouth to little effect as the shadow armor tried its best to ward off the crushing force. Lenna shifted and barely got her hands into position against the roof of Chatohsha’s mouth as her head and shoulders hung out one side of the dragon’s maw and her legs hung out the other. As soon as she started to push, Chatohsha snapped her head back and forth before abruptly letting go and launching Lenna at breakneck speeds into the forest.
As soon as Lenna was out of the picture, smashing back and shoulder first through a tree, Chatohsha braced herself and then shot into the air. She had no delusions of her attack killing Lenna and she knew that any injuries the paladin had taken would be gone in a matter of moments. She also knew that the only reason she even had the upper hand for that moment was because the dark elven woman could barely see.
Chatohsha had barely gotten twenty feet off of the ground when her incredibly sharp hearing caught something that suddenly reminded her that the paladin was not alone: “Shamesh, ground her.” Chatohsha rolled in the air out of the way of an invisible force that attempted to latch onto her. She had felt the stirring of mana and moved entirely on instinct. The problem was that the roll had prevented her from gaining any more altitude. A moment later a branch of reality magic that would have proved lethal missed her by a mere inches. A quick glance downwards saw the bone creature aiming another at her but by then she was out of range, or so she thought. What went flying at her was not a branch of reality but a lightning bolt. She would have known what it was going to be if she had bothered to learn the hand signs mortal mage’s did while casting.
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Lightning coursed through the red dragon as she tried to maintain her controlled flight. Her throat injuries had already stopped bleeding but they were still slowing her down. That combined with uncooperative muscles, due to the entire lightning strike coursing through her, spelled another sudden plummet to the ground. A sudden updraft caught her and forced her upwards just in time to prevent a collision with a pair or trees that stood a few feet above their kin. Generating an updraft with their heat was one of the many reasons red dragons were so feared by humans. It meant that they could glide at an extremely slow speed and rain down endless waves of dragonfire without falling out of the sky.
Just as Chatohsha had saved herself from another sudden meeting with the ground a shadow appeared under her and stabbed with an equally dark sword at her previous throat injury. She yanked her head to the side at the last moment and kicked out with her front claw. She felt it make contact with something before any resistance vanished. She took that as a sign and put as much of her mana control as she could into forcing herself forwards. As she sped up even further, she angled upwards and tried to make for the relative safety of the sky. She had achieved a height of a hundred feet before she felt the shadow appear again. This time it was aiming for her wing. She rolled and batted the shadow away with her other wing in one motion that happened so fast that her attacker could only grunt as he was launched sideways through the air. Up and up she went, as high as she could go as quickly as she could do it. Even so, it was not enough to save her from the man built like a black dragon.
Every time he appeared she countered him. She rolled, kicked out, snapped her tail, sent a puff of dragonfire in front of her that she would then fly through, and so on. After the seventh time she realized how he was continuing to appear under her. Her shadow, the one formed from the giant ball of fire in the sky, was being cast almost straight downwards. Crossing the distance of her long shadow, that reached from her underside to the ground, would be like taking a simple step to a black dragon. She twisted again in midair and ushered forth a torrent of fire beneath her to sever her shadow before she launched into a shallow dive to pick up even more speed. The farther away she got from their camp the better her odds of him giving up were. She had finally managed to get almost a mile of distance from her ill fated curiosity when suddenly the sky began to darken above her.
Her eyes widened in shock and surprise as thick magic ritual rings formed in the air overhead. They were purple and orange and the runes read out a tale of death and destruction on a continental if not planetary scale. All at once, five boulders as wide as she was long began falling through the portals closest to her. They rapidly picked up speed but they had started at an almost neutral velocity. Chatohsha launched herself towards the ground in a steep dive that took her away from the falling meteors. She was back down to a measly hundred feet above the ground when the meteors struck behind her and exploded. Trees, rock, dirt, fire, and only the gods knew what else was catapulted out in a wave from the impact sights. Half of a fully grown tree hit Chatohsha at the base of her tail and yanked her down with it back into the forest canopy. She hit a tree and blasted through it with her forehead. She knew that it was the hardest bone in her body and she had absolutely zero faith in any of her other bones surviving the impact.
The next thing Chatohsha remembered was waking up as the sun was going down. Her head was pounding and her right wing was broken in addition to the hole taken out of it by the paladin’s sword. Her left wing’s shoulder was sprained as was her right front ankle. She definitely had a skull fracture and she could feel the shattered vertebrae in her upper tail. She knew that if the dark mage was after her then he would have already killed her. She had no idea why or how she was still alive but that was good enough for her. For the first time in her draconic life, Chatohsha had felt the sting of defeat. What made it all worse was the fact that only in hindsight did she realize that a massive expenditure of mana like the one that she had felt could have only been a trap. The duo had lured her in and tried to use her for training. If they had simply wanted to kill her then she would have died in the first exchange from a disintegration spell to the head. Chatohsha huffed a sigh and then immediately regretted it as she felt her broken ribs.
The defeated red dragon forced herself to her feet through her shattered body’s protest. She grit her teeth and started walking. Every step sent a shock of pain through her from one injury or another but she knew that even just one night’s rest could lead to her head being mounted in a mead hall. It would probably even be one with a stupid name. Even though Chatohsha escaped with her life, she couldn’t be happy about it. Her pride was in tatters, her body was in even worse shape, and she had definitely made an enemy of someone that an older, smarter, dragon would have avoided. And of course, she was on her own. Dragons were solitary creatures after all.