Shadowshields covered the umbraquins, preventing them from choking on the chalk dust. Niana was protected by Matimeo’s ward and the insectoid hulks stood motionless, making Liam wonder how exactly they breathed, or if their physiology was far more foreign than he initially thought. But medical curiosity would have to go unanswered.

Pandora thrashed against the chalk castle, fighting the collapse. Yet, every stroke of her claws or slash of her tail unveiled another cloud of chalk.

“Infidels! I’ll kill you all! I’ll find you Green, pull off your limbs and drag you in front of your family! Then I'll kill them one by one by burying them in a pit of this very chalk.” Said Pandora.

Her voice resonated in the chalk cloud, each syllable pounding against Liam’s heart. Not if we kill you first. Was his reflexive response. He waved to the umbraquins and as a unit they began to retreat, Matimeo and Niana in the lead. Thirty souls slipped beyond Blackwood Castle, taking cover along the outside of the defensive wall. Ten solid feet of stone separated Pandora’s chalkpit from the umbraquins and remaining hulks.

“Soren, she blasted the southern gate–” Began Liam.

“Already sealed.” Reported an earth mage whom Liam had never spoken too.

Though it was rather difficult to guess, considering Liam had never spoken to any large cats before. The fact that they were able to talk in a human language was already baffling enough.

“Close the gates!” Shouted Liam.

How the enormous panthers worked the gate’s mechanics was beyond Liam’s knowledge, all he knew was that the gate slid shut, portulus and bolts falling into position behind it, firmly locking it in place. Though that wasn’t enough for their plot, an earth affinity umbraquin approached the wall, channeling mana into the nearby earth. In seconds the gate was sealed with a wall of quartz. It was foggy and dull, a quick job meant for expedience and not beauty. Liam approved Rhendal’s cunning, finding his instructions to Soren had been exceedingly thorough.

“Prepare to ignite the chalk! Once everyone is inside we’ll incinerate Pandora!” Shouted Liam, praying that the so called ‘old god’ knew nothing about dust explosions.

She did not. And responded to his jeer by unleashing a bolt of lightning directly at him, coincidentally teaching her what a dust explosion was. Fire is a reaction between a substrate –like wood– and oxygen, meaning the limiting factor for many substrates, chalk, flour, sawdust, or even pollen, is the lack of sufficient surface area for oxygen to mingle with the substrate and for the reaction to sustain itself.

But if one was to smash, grind, and otherwise powder a compound then disperse it into the air, even chalk would possess adequate surface area to become flammable, though the heat and fire would only last for a brief instant.

Of course that would require a massive initial input of energy. Liam had planned to use his own lightning, but Pandora’s worked splendidly. Her bolt ignited a cascade of fire, peaking at her mouth and extending into the atmosphere. The roar alone was reportedly witnessed by Duke Hamilton’s wife, safely tucked away in the Duke’s castle, several counties away. Had the umbraquins been unshielded, they would have been blinded and deafened, but their shadowshields held firm.

While Pandora’s two intact heads screamed in agony, her third toothless head gummed the air in a daze. Blackwood’s city lay in ruins, the explosion slaying those within a half mile of Blackwood Castle. Rooftops were blown inward, windows shattered, and farms flattened.

Then Pandora fell for the second stage of their trap. Her blue head sought to clear the air, spraying an endless barrage of lukewarm water, a strange ability, but one recorded in ‘Cody’ the Teutonic Codex. Her water-breath saturated the airborne chalk, promptly humidifying the air and filling the wreckage of Blackwood Castle with tepid water. Chalk clumped, sticking to Pandora’s armored scales and turning the water into a pseudo-solid lake with a white crust on top. Churned into an immiscible solution by Pandora’s mighty claws.

Yet her water-breath continued, sprayed in every direction to wet the world. Eventually elevating til her blue head was pointed skyward, spraying a jet of water high into the air where it dispersed into rain.

Liam was left to wonder how long Pandora could breathe for, but lacked a watch or hourglass to time the dragon. And there was a small problem of her possessing multiple heads. It might be possible for her to inhale through two heads and exhale from the third. Though he was certain she sprayed an impossible amount of water, going on long past what was within the realm of sanity.

But that fits… Pandora is a God… So long as humanity exists, she will exist. Reborn again and again from our calamities and strife. Cmon Taloc, right now would be a great time to show up, maybe ride the sun like a hamster wheel and taze that geyser with some XXXXL lightning bolts.

When no aid was forthcoming Liam took matters into his own hands, and used the power of cardiovascular training to run around the exterior wall. Along the way he gathered mana, leeching it from the staff of Avignon into himself. Drawing the raw energy of this world into his soul and began to hammer it into lightning within the forge of his soul. Despite one blinded head and one head busy water-breathing, Pandora took notice.

Such a massive collection of mana could not pass unchallenged, using her obsidian skull she aimed at the congregating energy. Then unleashed a ball of dark energy, sufficient to level a castle.

Though her aim needed work.

Powerful as she was, and omniscient as a dybbuk, Pandora lobbed the shot, arcing it fifty feet over the wall. If there had been a pack of umbraquins atop the wall it would have slain them all. But for lonely Liam the shot plowed into a nearby house, melting the structure and popping it in a concussive shockwave that flattened the farmer’s once neatly walled field. Rock and slag exploded in all directions, peppering Liam with shrapnel.

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His Shadowshield took the brunt, but flecks of rock embedded themselves into his back. Shards of pain, yet he had no time for healing. Spikes of agony dug into his back as Liam sprinted around the wall and up one of the prepared ladders. Not bothering with his hands in a mad ascension, [abbreviated cast] skipped the chant for another Shadowshield, a necessary precaution for what he intended. The staff of Avignon, charged and sealed by Father Sebestian for years, was partially unusable to Liam. Still, Rhendal had taught him a way to employ the staff’s energies. He crested the wall and reared back –staff held like a javelin– aiming at Pandora’s unknown weakness.

In a pantheon that valued strength above all else, Pandora’s blue head seemed unremarkable. Yet, its centrality hinted at Pandora’s origins. Liam couldn’t be sure, but hurled the staff of Avignon with all his might, liberating the full power of his lightning to propel the shaft forward.

A second sun was born. Unparalleled light filled the world, so bright that Taloc himself was forced to blink. Pandora saw the bolt of lightning coming for her sapphire throat, and moved her yellow –lightning– head to intervene.

“Fool.” Said her obsidian head.

Confidence comes before the fall. Thought Liam, not deigning her worthy of a verbal reply.

His lightning arced into the yellow serpent’s skull, stripped away by the deity’s profane mockery. With the influx of mana the yellow head began to heal, glassy eyes clarifying even as the staff hit home, stabbing into the golden scaled head’s tongue and sticking. Liam had hoped, but never expected, to hit the sapphire head.

With his own mana Liam focused on the portion of Lightning he had ignored, creating a new chant.

“Bang.” He said.

Thunder, the aftershock of lightning, resounded through the county. Matimeo’s signal. The old father heard the sound and released the lock put in place by Father Sebestian, allowing the staff of Avignon’s mana to be fully utilized. Pandora understood their ploy then. The purifying affinity of light was irrevocably irreconcilable with her own core affinity. Even the flesh of her sapphire and lightning heads weighed heavy with her dark taint. A corruption the staff had been manufactured to counteract.

Holy energy surged through her lightning head, purifying the tainted flesh in a sunburst of mana. Violently causing the skull to burst, and causing a cascade of golden liquid mana. It flowed over Pandora’s lightning stump, corroding her twisted lie of Therun Perun Taloc’s element and shattering her armored scales.

Pain spurred Pandora, and she retaliated with another black sun, this time her aim was true. The sphere rolled from her obsidian maw and skipped across the chalk lake before finally plowing into the wall Liam was standing on–

–Until a second prior. Guessing what she intended, Liam counted on his borrowed dark affinity, leaping from the wall and praying the Shadowshield would be sufficient cushion. He landed on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs. Shrapnel from Pandora’s previous blast thrust itself deeper into his back. Hammered into him by the world.

“Aaahahhhhhh!” Shouted Liam, rolling reflexively to make the pain stop.

This was the single luckiest roll of his life, since Pandora’s blast leveled the wall in front of him. Limestone exploded in a lethal cone that extended a hundred feet into town. Homes, businesses, and even a church fell victim to the cone, riddled with stone hail or blown off their foundations entirely. The cone’s apex began where Liam had once lay, and would have bisected him. Split him from groin to skull in spite of the Shadowshield.

He staggered to his hands and knees, crawling away from Pandora’s next blast. She would be coming for him soon.

Slllluuurrrrppp

Bllooopp!

One of Pandora’s legs slipped free of the chalk lake, coming free with a moist pop. Water rushed over the broken wall, draining around Liam. It propelled him forward, pushing his damaged body headlong into a wall.

“Ah!” He groaned, head connecting with stone.

His Shadowshield cushioned the blow, but shattered, expended. Stars danced in front of Liam’s eyes, dazed at best or concussed at worst. It didn’t matter. He kept crawling away.

“Yes, crawl away you little worm. Come to your senses.” Said Pandora.

Her supreme confidence made his heart skip, they had wounded her, why was she so confident? Because she’s already died and been resurrected. Even if she is slain here, it’s only a matter of time before she rises again…

Or maybe she can heal…

Pandora’s two remaining heads poked over the castle wall, watching Liam crawl with delighted grins. Soren and his earth umbraquins saw their opportunity and ran wild, exhausting the last of their mana to dig four pits.

One for each of Pandora’s armored legs. Her focus on Liam was all consuming, too delighted by her swift conquest of Taloc’s chosen Lightning Lord, to care about the actions of a few former slaves. They had no families left to torment, nor did they care for their own safety. Thus she had no means of extracting their suffering, but Liam had everything left to lose.

“I’ll make you a deal Light-nimrod,” Began Pandora, “I won’t harm you as long as you are crawling. But if you stop, I'll tear off your limbs one by one. If you keep crawling after that, I’ll let you go.”

Liam kept crawling away, coughing up bloody chalkwater. Some of the shrapnel must have pierced a lung, untreated he would only last a few more minutes, maybe even seconds. Not pausing, he began to recite the incantation of healing, staunchly putting one hand in front of the other as he tried to escape Pandora.

“Oh no no no, healing is cheating.” Snarled Pandora.

Her sapphire head extended past the broken wall. To interrupt Liam’s mana with a single thought. He felt his mind forget the incantation, lose the very sensation that allowed him to heal with magic.

Pandora laughed, a cacophony of sound that closely resembled a thousand fornicating trombones.

Which was mercifully interrupted as the umbraquins completed their four pits. Digging from underneath her feet the magi had supported her weight until they could pull the rug out, and submerge all four at once. Caverns swallowed Pandora’s legs, causing her body to jerk downward. The sudden shift caused the outer wall to smash into her lower jaw, snapping it shut. She roared, trying to rip herself free and finding that the holes extended above her knees, locking her in place.

“Insolent mongrels, wait your turn!” Snapped Pandora, extending her wings.

“How about you shut up and die.” Snarled Rhendal.

Light shone across the murky chalk water, cast by the largest fireball any of the magi had ever cast. Fifteen fire affinity magi, all trained by Rhendal, leant their mana to the sphere, creating an orb larger than a semi truck. Had Pandora not been focused on Liam, she might have noticed the spell’s build up, but their council of fire had planned well. Causing her to underestimate the umbraquins.

Rhendal released the fireball with a flick of his wrist, sending it on a collision course with both of Pandora’s heads. Like a hydra she plunged her heads underwater, dodging the fireball completely.

“Ha! A thousand years of hoarding mana and you MISSED?” Howled Pandora, laughing so hard that King Aldric –safely within the capital– shivered.