I needed to keep the behemoth off Zirilla: her role now was to remain aloof from the fight for awhile, building up a stock of mana that we could both use to form a double-bolt that we sent into the creature’s face, hopefully killing it.
I leapt in front of the wyvern, putting myself squarely between it and Zirilla. It rammed its snout into the rock in front of it, shattering a patch of the slope and then flicking a dozen stones that were the size of my head into the air and launching each of them at Zirilla with its [Earth Magick].
But now I reached out with my own [Earth Magick] and push each of them off-trajectory, the stones all shattering harmlessly on the icy ground around us.
I rushed at the wyvern, unclipping my axe from my chest and hefting it in both hands. It lunged for me with its jaws, but I leapt to one side of its teeth as they snapped down on empty air. My momentum carried me forward past its neck, where I called the wind to give me another push—onward, inward, I slowed my momentum by falling to my knees and skidding to a halt beneath the main mass of its body.
There I stood, springing to my feet and planting my heels to put all my body’s strength into a mighty upward thrust that I aimed at the groove where the plates of its massive armor met, the point of my axe digging into flesh beneath, drawing blood when I pulled it free a moment later.
But I was only distracting it, meaning to make an opening….
It beat its wings and sent out another wave of air, but I simply crouched down and let the winds pummel me from all sides, using only a little mana on my windsleeve to keep myself safe. My position meant that only the weakest part of the wind-wave struck me, the rest pushing out to either side of the creature, and my [Aegis] meant that the bone-snapping force of the blast was merely jarring.
The behemoth above me hissed, and I crouched low, getting ready to spring forward…
It beat its wings and lifted a leg to move backward, putting me in front of it, and I lunged, again putting the wind at my back to move quickly, then planting the front-facing spike of my axe in the bottom of its foot, at the crux of its talons.
It howled, raised its foot—and I surged my [Strength] and tore the axe free, mangling the foot with a spray of blood.
The wyvern’s howl became a furious shriek, and it lifted both feet off the ground and folded them under it, intending to drop its weight on me. I put the wind at my back again, reaching out with one hand to grab at the side of the falling wyvern and launch myself out from under it, landing belly-down and sensing, with my gaze, that its tail was coming round to crush me against its body.
I had just enough time to push myself up on my hands, bring my heels up under my palms, and launch myself backward, the tail rushing past beneath me as I sailed through the air, turning over once before landing against its shoulder and thrusting the point of my axe into the soft armor there. The behemoth cried out and shot to its feet, its body tilting unsteadily beneath me, and I surged my [Strength] to tear the axe free, hot blood following me as I leapt down to land on the ground beside it.
Its tail struck me a split-second later, smashing me back across the plateau, where I half-rolled, half-bounced for dozens of meters before I steadied my movements with a few pushes of wind and rose to my knees, skidding to a stop.
Okay? Zirilla asked.
Fine. I’d seen the tail coming in the split-second before it struck, had managed to surge my [Aegis] to soften the harm of the initial blow.
?—Mana 1335 / 1950, 48% Primeval
About halfway there, she said.
I grinned, tasting my own blood as I looked up at the wyvern—which rose and turned toward me, blood seeping from the wound at its wing-socket, its gait limping a little, favoring its healthy foot.
I felt its hateful anger in my [Wild Bond] as I began to heal myself with my [Life Magick]. It was wholly focused on me, now.
Pain. I needed to cause it pain. If I’d wanted to kill the beast like this, I’d have brought a bigger axe and gone for the shoulders first. But with Zirilla here, merely enraging it would suffice.
The wyvern spread its wings and rushed toward me on a magic-fueled wind, dropping to the slope before me and skidding to a halt with its wings and legs as it snapped at me with its jaws. I avoided these with a lunge to one side, only to find it swinging one clawed, winged forelimb at me, which I blocked with my axehead, the point sticking between the creature’s claws as my planted feet slid across the icy, stony ground below me.
It buffeted me with a blast of air that it gathered under its other wing, driving me to my knees and making me plant the butte of my axe in the stone to stay rooted. Then its jaws came down again, and I leapt back, jabbing the upward point of the axe into its snout with enough force to push me further away from the creature.
It beat its wings, pushing itself away from me and almost throwing me back with another wave of concussive force. Then it leaned forward and belched out a thick cloud of poison, one that it immediately blew towards me using [Air Magick].
But I had mana, and Zirilla was almost there—so I stood my ground and fought, wrapping myself in a tight windsleeve that made the acidic poison flow around me and rushing forward to jab at its neck with my axe.
The wyvern reared back and shrieked in full fury as it struck at me with one wing, then the other, then its jaws… but I was truly dancing, now, its movements more familiar to me with every step that we took. I spent my [Surge Pool] sparingly, lunging and rolling out of the way of its blows, occasionally blocking one of its clawed wings with the steel of my axe.
All the while it pressed against my claim, trying to seize the stone beneath me and the air against my skin. I had too many of the relevant [Air] and [Earth] skills for its assault to work, but in many ways it didn’t matter: with one forceful, cacophonous use of [Earth Magick], the behemoth shattered all the stone beneath its feet except the small circle that I’d claimed, creating a field of broken stones that it lifted a few inches and dropped a moment later to leave me fighting in a field of uneven, treacherous ground.
I did what I could with my own [Earth Magick] to tighten the stones beneath me when I tread across them, and with my [Air Magick] I batted myself around like a wind-tossed leaf, still set on avoiding its blows. But all this meant that my mana was depleting quickly—I wouldn’t be able to hold for long.
It didn’t matter: soon, with my gaze, I saw a stream of mana stretch toward me.
It was time.
I measured the mana with my mind, gauging its volume, its density as Zirilla made the line that stretched halfway between us thicker and thicker, until—
There, I said.
Zirilla relinquished her claim on the mana in the very moments that I extended mine through it, and suddenly I was both battling the behemoth wyvern and holding more than half of the mana for a powerful lightning-bolt.
The mana did what all mana does in the air: bunched up into small, sphere-shaped whorls that spun and began to move away from each other, but with my incredibly potent channeling and my [Lightning Magick] I could hold it close enough in place, keep the line intact with a thousand small pushes and presses against the mana, let it drift so long as it didn’t drift too far… I was dancing with the behemoth and conducting the mana at once.
?—Mana 581 / 1950, 35% Primeval
?—[Surge Pool] 71/100
I was spending much of my [Surge Pool] now to be certain the wyvern didn’t score a blow and break my concentration, dodging with small rushes of motion that were assisted by the force of my blows. We’d fought long enough that I could predict its strength, it’s speed, that I knew how to move just by seeing the minute movements of its muscles, the shifts of its weight.
And as I did this, Zirilla drew another line of mana, snug next to the one I held with my [Channel], and then began to fill the remainder of the air leading up to the wyvern with even more mana—mana that she’d channeled into a series of circles. So much mana… I saw how much we were using and realized that the bolt we were building was mighty indeed: we could kill this creature, here and now.
The line extended until it almost reached me, and I struck the wyvern in its bloodied nostrils again and then leapt back as it tried to crush me beneath its clawed forelimb.
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The wyvern hissed, began to advance… and then froze.
Through the [Wild Bond], I could feel a sudden fear in it. Somehow, it knew what the line of mana in the air meant.
It raised its wings, gathering air under them to pull itself back and away from us. All of our mana was going to be wasted….
Hold it, I said, knowing that I was giving Zirilla an insane task, almost impossible. But it was the only chance I saw for us: I sprinted forward, then surged [Strength] and leapt into the air, diving straight for the wyvern’s head as I put the wind at my back, focusing all my attention on the beast as I smashed bodily into the top of its snout and drove the upward point of my axe deep into its eye.
The wyvern let out a choked cry as my momentum flattened me against its snout, but I knew I didn’t have the power remaining to pull my axe free and get away at the same time—instead I spent the last of my [Surge Pool] to push off with my hands, throwing myself backward into the air.
I felt something massive collide with my side almost as soon as I’d left its snout—its wing. The wyvern had dropped back to the mountaintop and slapped me down through the air, where I struck the rock surface of the mountain, then rolled.
I reached out with my gaze, ignoring the pain and disorientation. It didn’t matter where I landed—all that mattered was the plan. I reached into the wyvern’s mind with my [Wild Bond], found it frothing and boiling with rage and pain as the wyvern saw me roll across the stone before it, then spent a huge swathe of mana in a flash, stoking its anger, its hate, its predator instincts.
It rushed back toward me, intending to break my tiny body between its teeth….
I searched for Zirilla’s bar of mana, knowing that I needed to move to its endpoint now, that I had to bait the behemoth… and I saw that the bar of mana that we’d formed was right overtop of me.
I reached out with my claim, feeling Zirilla relinquish her own to let me manage a few key locations where the line had drifted too far… but she’d held it well, extraordinarily so: we could still do it.
Okay? Zirilla asked as I dumped the remainder of my mana into the air in series of quick connecting lines, pushing other mana that drifted to far back into place. I rolled myself onto my back so that my body covered my skysail, then covered my eyes with a forearm.
Fine.
With my gaze I saw the wyvern lunge toward me… and then the world became light and sound, an explosion pressing me back against the mountaintop and singing my hair as the mana ignited in a jagged, twisting line, its form wide and winding from how much it had been allowed to drift. My ears rang, my mind reeling. I felt a few pieces of stone fall down around me.
No, not stones: charred flesh.
I pushed myself to my feet, my face breaking into a grin… but my smile vanished a moment later. Through a haze of smoke and steam, I could see the wyvern still moving, alive. It had backed away, moving unsteadily—but we hadn’t killed it.
Gods damn it, Zirilla cursed. Retreat?
The wyvern shrieked, then drew its head in arc in the air high above it, belching out a thick stream of concentrated corrosive emission, a protective blanket of poisoned breath. I could see its face: tattered on one side, marred with scorched skin: lumpy, misshapen… the crest on its forehead had cracked away.
I looked at the hunk of flesh beside me, at its strange, curved shape, at the absence of scales and the cooked flesh that coated it in an uneven patina. I remembered the lighter sound it had made when it landed against the rock….
“Skull,” I hissed.
My grin returned to my face almost instantly.
I pushed myself to my feet and charged.
The wyvern raised its wings and brought them down with a thunderous beat, creating wall of compressed air that sent the falling line of acid forward in a wave while the wyvern leapt back.
I picked up speed, my legs hammering the ground beneath me, and drew on the dregs of my mana with my [Air Magick]... but not to cut the acidic wind before me.
Instead I put all the air I could call at my back, windrunning through the wall of concussive force that accompanied the blast of poisonous breath, stumbling as it struck me but still carrying enough momentum to continue toward the behemoth.
The corrosive fluid covered the front of my body as the wind of its wings washed over me, and I jammed my eyes shut while it began to eat at my face, my ears, my eyelids. I was fighting blind, using only my gaze while my ears filled with the sound of their own hissing, spitting flesh.
I pushed my mind into my connection with the behemoth, bathed its mind in my own pain and fury as I gave chase.
It would not escape me.
It reared its head back as I spent everything to leap, my feet leaving the ground just before its wings made another thunderous, downward stroke and it rose into the air.
But I could feel its fear now, feel it past the agony of my burning eyes and face, past my own panic that this creature would manage to escape. I knew that it was acting purely on instinct, had predicted just the way it would rear its head back while it took flight, and so my leap carried me through the air to land almost directly on the crest of its broken forehead and grab at the haft of the axe that was still embedded there.
The wyvern felt my weight on its head, then howled and snapped its head upward, trying to throw me—and the corroded haft of the axe snapped off in my hand so that I fell forward toward its back.
In a flash of panic I reached back and grabbed the scalding hot edge of its broken skull….
The wyvern shook its head to one side, and the force of its motion threatened to throw me from its head and down the mountainside. My panic crescendoed, and my grip tightened as I gritted my teeth, my fingers slipping, my body flailing in the air.
Then I managed to reach up and grab the corroded blade of my axe, which still jutted from the flesh at the edge of its broken skull. I pulled my weight forward, the rusted blade digging into my palm, and managed to plant my feet above its nostrils.
The wyvern began to shake its head to the other side, and for a single heartbeat I simply held on, waiting for the perfect moment of least acceleration, of surest footing….
Then I let go of the cracked edge of its skull, brought my arm up as I balled a fist, and loosed a cry of terror and fury as I drove my hand into the gap in its skull, my fist punching a hole in the inner lining of its cranium to push through into the soft brain beneath, my motion carrying my hand through until my knuckles rammed into the stem of its spine.
Beneath me, the wyvern shuddered, its wings faltering mid-beat. I tore my hand free in a spray of soft matter, my lungs rattling as I drew in a breath.
Then I leapt backward, a gentle leap that was only meant to ensure that I hit the ground beneath me after the now-falling corpse of the behemoth. I turned once in the air as my arc brought be through a slow, backward flip to land on my feet just after the beast had crashed to the stone, then stumbled in place.
+ 448 927 Essence!
+ 3 [Boon]!
+ 1 [Behemoth 1]!
I sucked in my breath through my teeth, my skin itching and burning from the wyvern’s poisonous breath. I channeled a little more mana into myself, then reached up and siphoned the air above me into a fresh windsleeve as I stumbled out of the cloud.
Zirilla pushed the remainder of the poisonous gas away from me. “All right?” she asked.
My eyes were still jammed shut, burning and tearing up, but I nodded. “I’ve enough [Life Pool],” I said. My healing magic terminated the substance that burned at my flesh, and the itching pain slowly subsided.
Eventually, with almost no healing remaining, I opened my eyes, looked over at the behemoth wyvern’s carcass, and sighed.
“Fighting with you is the stuff of life, Aziriel.” Zirilla clapped me on the shoulder.
“Likewise,” I said, thinking of how she’d held a lightning bolt so big I couldn’t have even constructed it in five seconds.
“You’ve got some gunk on your arm,” she said.
I rubbed some of the wyvern’s brain matter between my fingers. “Feels good,” I said. “Call it the goop of victory.”
“You got the essence, right?”
“Of course I did,” I said, giving her a strange glance.
“Look, I’m just surprised, is all,” Zirilla said, raising her arms. “By my reckoning, that was mostly me.”
Now it was my turn to clap her on the shoulder. “I saw you hold that lightning.”
She jerked her head in the direction of the rising slope. “Come on. We’re the first elves to climb this peak. Let’s go stand at the tallest point and look down upon the world like conquerers.”
“We didn’t climb it,” I said, letting her lead me along.
“Ascend, then. Sounds better anyway.”
“You think the scavengers will get it?” Zirilla asked, jerking her head toward the carcass as we walked by it.
“The frozen, multi-ton carcass in the least accessible area we’ve found for miles?” I asked. I shrugged. “In this place, who knows? Maybe.”
She made a noncommittal noise. We walked on, and soon enough we’d reached the top of the summit.
We looked out over the sea of glowing cloud.
“Red mist,” I said. “Something of a surprise, that.”
“Aye, but look,” she said. She pointed away into the distance. “There, on the horizon. More red mist.”
We both laughed far too hard at her joke, embracing the elation of the battle’s end. Zirilla sat, and I sat beside her. The view before us was nothing but cloud-filled sky, no other peaks in sight despite the fact that the haze was clear, here, and we could see for what like forever, a flash of lightning occasionally punctuating the expansive view before us.
“Serene and eerie,” I said.
“Beautiful, it is,” said Zirilla. She tilted her head back, looking at the uppermost cloud layer. “Even if it’s in the way.”
No stars. Elves needed the night sky like fish needed water. “We’ll figure something out,” I said, looking up at it with her. “We have to.”
“Aye.”
“But not now,” I said, looking back to the sea before us. “Now we’ve got to scout locations for settlements. Find a permanent home.”
“Aye,” said Zirilla. She lowered her gaze to join mine. “A permanent home.”