Hoshun
Hoshun Village
The battle went well. The humans dealt with the undead well enough, but the Orcs stymied their resistance. Having several skilled melee-focused mages helped them where the Brotherhood of Man fell short with their inability to create mages. Ominek watched with patient confidence that a smug parent might as his children struggled against a bully before overwhelming them.
Sure enough, the Orcs responded to the threat the air warriors provided. Even from as far back as he was, Ominek watched as the massive green-skinned brutes lumbered into the fray, trampling friend and foe alike. He grinned as the orcs proved themselves to be the perfect shock troops, crashing into the enemy lines and breaking them almost instantly. The Orcs lacked real magic training, but they made up for it with near-draconian levels of strength and toughness. Massive sweeps of emerald arms hurled Hoshuns into the air like cut grass.
A massive bolt of lightning crackled in the distance, and an orc body plummeted from the sky, landing on its back several meters from where Ominek was observing the clash. His grin faded, along with some of his smugness. More bolts crackled, along with the sound of thunder. Ominek allowed his body to shift, as he morphed back into his draconic form, and took to the air on powerful wings. His red scales caught the morning sunlight just right. His yellow eyes narrowed to slits as he focused on the cause of the disruption down below.
The clan chieftain was batting away threats as though they mattered little to him. Worse, he did so with an eagerness that showed he was a true warrior who enjoyed a good battle. Ominek sighed inwardly. Great. Another punch monkey. At least I’ll get to play with my food first. He swooped down towards the battle, his wings splayed wide to catch the air. A moment of fear nearly paralyzed him until he realized he was well out of reach of the massive forest on the opposite side of the village. Had this been Anazzi Prime, he’d have presented himself as a prime meal for the Amphipteridae dragons. He allowed smug satisfaction to chase the fear as his massive talons dug into the finely tilled farm soil.
“You might have stood a chance if your dragon mother or father yet still lived. But they stranded you here. Alone! You will make a fine offering to Saruidius!” Ominek bellowed, his deep voice echoing across the countryside spoken through magic. He inhaled deeply, his chest distending as his neck curved backward. Then he breathed out a fire that burned all in his wake in a massive cone before his toothy maw. Yet when he swiveled to catch the chieftain, a powerful blast of air struck him square in the snout, snapping several short sword-sized teeth in half. The clan chief has blasted him with a ball of concentrated air clean through his fire breath attack.
Ominek lowered his head to the ground and snarled. Blood trickled from the fresh injury as the scales already began to slowly knit themselves back together. The broken fangs fell free of his snout with fresh replacements lined up behind them. “I will pick my teeth clean with your bones!”
“Perhaps so, beast, but I will die protecting my people while you will remain a soul-shackled tool,” the large warrior said, squaring up to confront him.
The hubris of this human, to think that he stood a match with him. It caught Ominek in a moment of temporary amusement, and a rippling chuckle shivered forth from his flexing jaw. “You have given me a fleeting moment of amusement, human. For that, I will honor you with a swift warrior's death.”
The human smirked, “Funny, here I was about to say the same thing to you.”
Ominek surged forward, slashing out with a clawed hand. Sparks flew as his talon clashed with the human's blade, an elder weapon in its own right. They spun around, and this time Ominek used his spiked tail to attack, its wicked spiked oozing venom that sizzled on the ground. Sparks flew as the chief blocked and parried the attacks. The two warriors gained some space from each other, circling, as the other spell warriors fought the orcs and shacklers around them. The others knew well enough to stay clear of the two apex combatants.
Another brief flurry of exchanges happened in the blink of an eye, but the human was tiring. Ominek capitalized on the advantage and speared the human in the side with his barbed tail. The human howled in pain, and Ominek allowed himself a satisfied grin at his victory. The human chief stumbled drunkenly from the venomous barb as poison coursed through his body. Soon the human would find breathing difficult and suffocate, allowing him to devour him at his leisure.
A blinding spark of concentrated lightning gathered in the human’s cupped hands, prepared to fire down Ominek’s gaping maw. Ominek turned his head at the last minute and took flight. A spear of lightning shot out at 435,000 meters per second. Scales boiled away and meat seared to a crisp on his neck as his body went rigid in the air. Every nerve activated and Ominek’s entire body clenched and shook from the human’s attack. Wings, talons, and tail tumbled in a heap as he crashed into the ground near the human and rolled into a nearby house.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of torment, but in actuality only mere seconds, the attack abated. Relief flooded him as his heart thundered painfully in his chest. Had the blast caught him in the mouth, he wasn’t confident he could have survived the attack had he taken the full brunt of it head-on.
He had magical resistances, but not to such an extent that he was confident about eating a ball of concentrated lightning of that magnitude down the throat. Ominek roared in anger and burst free of the shattered hut. He could leave the chieftain to die slowly. He found a trio fending off his forces that would need to be dispatched. Several powerful flaps of his wings in tandem with a few spent AP in void magic and he vaulted into the sky, gaining altitude rapidly.
Something tickled him as he gracefully banked to begin his dive, and he realized this was where his divinations went vague. From here forward, he was in uncharted waters. A nervous thrill raced through him. He let out an eager howl that shook the landscape, before coming in to land just shy of the surviving party. Cowering pathetic humans and an Eryn? That made him grin eagerly, sets of foot-long razor-sharp teeth encircling his maw. It wasn’t often he devoured elves. The dust he’d kicked up around him settled slowly, blowing away gently with the wind as he slowly loomed forward.
The lead in the small trio was a grimy, sweaty, crimson-haired mage with a blade. A weaver priestess with black hair in white robes, and an elf dressed in the typical Order of Aeryn artificer’s gear with a gold staff. He was going to enjoy digesting these morsels. He reared back to lunge, but before he could strike, the damnable chieftain jumped from out of view and struck his snout with a massive spell blade.
Ominek recoiled with a pained howl. He spun and lashed out with his tail. Spearing the Chieftain and the red-haired man behind him together on a single barb of his tail. He grinned, eager to enjoy his prize when a magical pulse billowed outwards from the crimson-maned boy. Confusion set in immediately, and his scales crawled as something powerful loomed just ahead of him. Realization set in too late as he tried to withdraw his tail. Survival instincts kicked in and he suddenly realized he’d miscalculated. He was in grave danger now.
A brilliant violet light descended from the heavens and covered the man with red hair. Frost crept outwards around the boy as a menacing glow burst from his eyes. Ominek glimpsed a seal on the human, a seal that was cracking. A gold superhuman strength seal. One of the three most powerful divine shackles. A sound just beyond hearing of chains shifting echoed.
A god shackled him? But who? It saturated the spell, covering the young warrior with void energy. Bahumet or Xanofex perhaps? But they were both dead. Then who else possessed that much void magic to fuel such a spell? Ominek watched rapt with confusion as the wound he’d just inflicted on the younger spell soldier healed immediately. Steam hissed from the wound it’d closed so quickly with speed that even a light god would blush.
The surrounding ground cracked and erupted skyward. Ominek spotted various shields and wards rippling around the man. The complexity of them went well above and beyond what he was personally capable of. A cold shiver crept across Ominek’s scales. Realization and fear set into him in equal measure. This was why his father sent him here.
The mage floated up to Ominek’s eye level. His long mane of red hair whipped about wildly in surging aether currents. Ominek developed a rapidly deepening sense of dread. Whatever he’d triggered, it was too late to avoid it. Some kind of protective spell, no doubt. Three powerful thrusts of his wings and he’d created enough stand-off distance between him and the young mage that he could comfortably cast a portal spell. He spent the 3 AP and waited as he slashed reality open. A ragged violet and black doorway opened before him.
As the portal swallowed his massive draconic body, he watched as the spell soldier swiped his sword several times back and forth in rapid slashes. Ominek watched curiously as the warrior blasted several razor-thin blade projections of air that chopped the landscape up, chewing up orcs and shacklers alike as the human howled a vengeful and sorrow-filled cry. Several air blades hurled from the mage raced for him but the portal closed around him, sealing him off in the void realm.
He closed his eyes for a moment and allowed himself a moment to catch his wits and breath. Most found the “void realm” to be unnerving and dangerous. Devoid of light, and populated by creatures of undefinable age and danger. The Denizens of the Dark, or in some circles the Voidsent or Voidspawn as they were known. In comparison, the dragons were mere infants, if the rumors were to be believed. Wiser elder dragons feared whatever lurked in the umbral realm. Ominek was no different, but he also knew it took a fair bit of effort to catch the attention of anything dangerous enough to pose a threat to himself. Already his void wards triggered and wrapped him in a canceling field of void energy to nullify his presence.
Ominek swam in the muted black of the plane, charting a course for Leviathan. He would have to report his actions to dragon's father. There would be a reckoning of some sort. But he wasn’t sure how or when Leviathos would exact his pound of scales. As he settled in for the long flight home, he allowed his mind to wander back to the glowing violet shields, the air warrior, his wound healing, and the pulsing power surging from the young man. Just what was he?
His thoughts raced at the danger his father had sent him into without nary a warning. Vast power and intense danger lurked within that mage. Ominek was certain they would run into each other again and doubted he would enjoy the follow-up encounter any more than this one. A being like that was trouble, and being pitted against him meant bad things for Ominek’s future. It was going to take a whole army to kill that one. And even then, Ominek wasn’t certain the death would stick with the amount of power that seal was bottling up. Leviathos would have much to explain later when he could cast spells again.