The vast expanse of the simulated desert extended as far as the eye could see, the sky above a flawless canvas of blue dotted with sparse clouds. The stillness of the air, undisturbed by any wind, made the scene almost eerily calm, especially with the lack of actual life barring simulated plants such as cacti.
At least, that's what it had been, prior to the ongoing assault conducted by the five people within these barren wastes. The serene calmness had been a stark contrast to the chaos that was about to unfold.
Marilyn stood at the edge of the dunes’ skies, in flight, her eyes fixed on her target. A dragon with three heads accompanied by its army of smaller flying beasts, phantom griffons, numbering in the hundreds. It was massive, its wings casting a shadow that swallowed the western-esque desert below, the very air trembling under the weight of its presence.
But she would not fall back. The plan of action had her act as the signal for the assault’s beginning, to serve as the vanguard and distraction. It was not aware of the other four, only her.
And that would be enough.
With a deep breath, Marilyn began to weave her spell. Her hands moved gracefully along with her staff pointed towards the sky, channeling essence energy not towards herself nor her vicinity, but towards the sun itself.
“Sol Confundens!”
With that incantation voiced, the already searingly bright sun intensified in its glow. The people below her closed their eyes as the spell commenced, a disorienting sun shining a blinding light toward the dragon and its army.
A hybrid of both evocation and illusion magic, the spell she had cast was considered by many to be one of the pinnacles of mediocre spells. Borderline above mediocre, some might say. Lacking in effective offensive power or complexity, its niche of disorientation and relatively cheap essence control was more than enough for the task she had been given.
The intense and blinding glow had clearly been noticed by the dragon and its army, with the three headed beast roaring out a sudden cry of pain, descending towards the lower altitudes to avoid the sunlight even for a little bit. Its army followed suit, a signal for the others to follow up on the attack plan.
However, this was not all, without incantation Marilyn would cast multiple light lances at the flying army, vaporising several of them at once. It forced a portion of the army to pursue her instead as she charged against the dragon along with her friends.
Tracking incoming targets. 48 different signatures designated as hostile.
"Thank you for that!” She yelled out, sending more light lances against them. They were several dozen in number, and a dogfight on her end would soon begin.
“That's our signal!” Adrian yelled out, who had been running alongside Cecilia across the dunes, their velocity reaching thrice the speed of sound.
Both Vincent and Elysia were not far behind, in fact they're catching up fast, with Vincent riding a spectral orange horse and Elysia jumping vast distances as she ran.
With that said, out of the four Cecilia flew up first, casting fire upon her palms and feet to boost herself upwards, unleashing her sword and then stabbing at the large beast’s skin, running towards its back.
Adrian followed behind, unholstering his whip and jumping high enough to have him lash at one of the dragon’s claws, pulling himself upwards towards the creature so he could run up to the same location Cecilia went for.
The two of them were the first to land upon the massive dragon, and the entire remaining army of said beast began to surround them, some of them even landing upon its back.
“Cecilia, you know what to do, I’ll keep them at bay!” Adrian yelled as he would then pull out his sword in his off-hand, immediately lashing out the loop of his whip against each and every one of the creatures facing them.
The whip was nothing special barring a much tougher yet flexible material, but his own strength made the weapon deadly. A single strike managed to knock back one of these creatures off of the dragon and force them to reorient themselves in the sky. And another attack was enough to decapitate one that attempted to attack him.
But with no hesitation, Cecilia went forward with his command, leaving him behind and unleashing her flames and blade dance against the incoming landing griffons along the way. Her fire was enough to burn them alive to ashes, and her ballerina-like sword play was enough to make a fool of them in combat.
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Sure enough, with a jump and spin to decapitate her final assailant, she landed upon the middle head of the three headed beast she's riding.
“Please don't let it be too hard to pry open!” She yelled out. Her blade would stab into the person-sized crystal afterwards, as this was her role in this entire battle.
“Don't be a slow poke, Vivi!” Elysia would announce from below towards Vincent, immediately jumping towards the black dragon and using her claws to climb its back.
“The hell is Vivi!?” Vincent only growled in frustration at her sudden tease, but would eventually find himself an ascending cliff to climb up on. He urged his familiar horse spirit to go faster and towards it, being the last one to go up to the dragon.
He readied his shotgun and revolver as he did, and as the horse would reach the end of that cliff and jump off he used the spiritual creature as a platform to reach his destination. The horse safely landed on the ground below, desummoning itself afterwards.
On Adrian's end, the battle became more desperate as he kept multiple phantoms at bay and even killed some of them in the process, only for multiple to take their place. He was even forced to use his sword to slash at the necks of a few of them during the battle.
But with the arrival of Elysia to his left side, who split one of the creatures in two with her claws, and Vincent who shot several of them at once to his right with his guns, the battle became more even.
“Glad you all can arrive in time! Let's clear this and finish the exam, yeah?” Adrian said to them.
“You got it, Mr. Leader!” Elysia responded.
“No arguments here!” And Vincent replied as well.
The sight of all four people that Marilyn knew here further motivated her, it caused her to want to finish this with nothing going wrong. On her side, so far out of the many, and she meant many, griffons chasing her, she had killed around more than fifty of them. Either with light lances or light missiles, the number struggled between going up or down in their counting.
To add further to the burden, the other two heads of the dragon did not stand idle either. And to protect Cecilia from attack Marilyn casted spells against those two heads, stronger ones. It did little damage to those heads, but they're enough to draw focus onto her instead, firing their shadowy lightning breath against her.
“Must keep fighting! Don't let up!” She said to herself as fired her attacks again and again against the swarm of enemies around her.
Some of them began to actually claw and smack at her barriers, causing her to tumble in the sky and forcing to redirect essence energy to regenerate them. But she mustn't give up nor let them gain ground, her task was to divert as many enemies as possible after all.
All the five of them were fighting to complete this objective at hand. Everyone was doing their utmost in their roles. From the vanguard and distraction that was Marilyn, the bodyguards that were Adrian, Vincent, and Elysia, and the one to complete the task at hand being princess Cecilia herself.
It was essentially controlled chaos, led by Adrian with his plan of action. He came up with it around twenty minutes ago, and so far it was going decently on his end.
Despite this though, the dragon’s attempted at getting them off its back by manoeuvring, gaining altitude, and spinning around became more erratic the longer it went. Throughout the battle it caused the group on the dragon to struggle in holding on, and as of now they were succeeding in that endeavour.
“I can't pry it off…! This damn thing is too tough!” But a complaint had now been sounded off by Cecilia, who had only managed to budge the crystal by a small margin, not enough for her to grab with her fingers.
“Keep going, Cecilia! We're giving you as much time as you need!” Adrian yelled out in response as he stabbed a griffon by the neck and kicked it off of him.
“You ain’t gonna succeed if you kept complaining, princess!” Vincent said too, kicking a nearby griffon off of the dragon’s back and obliterating the head of another with his shotgun.
“Could you please shut up!?” The girl gets more frustrated by that comment. He was right, but the stressful environment is not giving her time to calm herself down.
The argument was halted by those words, and Cecilia growled in anger as she forced her blade deeper into the dragon’s middle head skull.
The number of smaller enemies are gradually decreasing here, so Marilyn could further focus herself on protecting the princess from the other two heads. But her tactic grew to be less effective as time went on.
In fact, the beast adapted to ignore her, instead focusing on the ruby-eyed girl specifically.
“No…!”
The maws of the two heads began to glow and crackle with energy, as they would attempt to launch an attack on Cecilia. And in desperation to try and defend her, Marilyn could only do one thing.
“Tonitrus!”
The clear sky of the desert suddenly darkened, as a bolt of yellow lightning was hastily called out. It clashed with the black lightning breath of the two dragon heads, and it resulted in a massive explosion from the combined energy of the three bolts of thunder.
The princess of the royal family became the victim of it. As in the middle of pulling out her sword to try and jam it into another location, she was struck and knocked off of her footing, causing her and her weapon to fall from the sky and onto the dunes below.
And Marilyn had realised her mistake, “Cecilia!”