Sean’s POV
“Gamma ray burst.” I muttered as I sent the invisible blast towards the dragon. I needed to see just how much energy the scales could absorb.
“Ooh, that tingles.” The dragon chuckled as the crystals embedded in his scales lit up like a Christmas tree. His spinal fin went rigid and pumped so much electricity into the air that I could see small sparks.
“Earth spike.” The massive boom after starting my spell let me know the plan was successful. I had never really expected a ground based attack to strike a flying creature, but it did get close enough to discharge all that electricity. I mentally shuddered at the thought of taking the world’s worst static shock.
“What’s next mortal?” The dragon asked. “You seem to have quite the range of attacks. Do you really think you can come up with one that will hurt me?” he taunted.
“Let’s find out.” I growled, sending a few mana bullets his direction. They actually pinged against his armor, but didn’t do enough damage before the mana they were constructed of was absorbed. Figures. I need a physical attack that is fast enough to hit a maneuverable flying creature. Ok, let’s see what happens when we put a stone tip on a mana bullet and smash it against the big crystal on his forehead. Smiling as a memory of pointing a fake gun at an animated dog laughing at me for missing some ducks flashed through my head, I took an extra second to line things up.
Crack!
Eyes widening in shock, then immediately narrowing in anger, the dragon focused his attention on me. My second and third shots were blocked by a blue barrier, much to my disappointment. “Seriously? Barriers too?”
“Only a fool has one line of defense, and fools don’t live as long as I have.” The dragon answered.
“Yeah, yeah.” I snarked back, already ready with my next attack. Let’s see what the void can do against this guy. Slinging an arm in a horizontal slash, I sent a blade of void slicing toward the dragon. His eyes glowed red with rage, and he did, something. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what happened, all I could tell was that my blade disappeared as if it never existed.
“MORON!” He thundered. “Are you seriously so stupid as to open a hole to the void? Why wait for Apophis? Let’s just serve up this entire realm to creatures that make his hunger look like nothing? Who trained you? Tell me their name, so that I might hunt them down after I destroy you and end their idiocy!”
“Even if I had a trainer, I wouldn’t be telling you.”
He stopped his rant at my remark, staring at me for a few seconds. “Very well then, mortal. I suppose I shall believe you, that you discovered the void and its siren call all on your own. However, the ease with which you called upon it and created a moving hole as an attack tells me you have used its powers before. To that end, you are now vermin in my eyes and must be exterminated. As a parting gift, I shall at least show you the proper way to utilize the void.” With that, he started a massive inhale, as well as using a claw to carefully slash the air in front of him. Sticking claws from each hand into the slash, he pulled apart several of the dimensional membranes, though he never actually tore a hole. Not wanting to see what attack the dragon was confident would erase me, I used everything I had to take to the skies. Gravity well above my head, wings, as well as jets of air magic from my feet. It was barely enough as the dragon sent his flame breath through the membrane, and what came out can only be described as voidfire. As it passed beneath me, I could swear I felt its hunger and rage at missing its meal. As the black cored flames that gradually changed to purple passed, I saw the devastation left in its wake.
The ground looked like it had been heated to glass, then instantly shattered. Cracks edged in a faint purple glow crisscrossed like spaghetti noodles, though these ones slowly grew as time passed on. My distraction by the sight nearly cost me my life, as I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“AAAAH!” I screamed as a bolt of black lightning tore through my wing. Had I not hurled myself to the left with a gravity well, that shot would have gone through my solar plexus. Before the dragon could send another bolt in my direction, I sent several mana bullets in his. The first few missed, but around half of the bullets managed to go through whatever portal he had opened, and they took on the glow of the void as they slammed into his arm and chest, making him bellow in agony as the scales cracked under the assault.
Even with the counterattack, I was easily coming out the worst in this exchange. Needing another chance to regroup, I created several spells that simply shot out fog. Sending them in different directions, I moved backward as well as up and to the right. That was the right choice, as I saw the fog I had just left roil as a massive body shot through where I just was. Despite the agony of using my wing, I hurled myself higher, changing directions every few seconds as I sent off more fog. It took nearly a minute that felt like an hour, but finally I reached a point where I felt safe enough.
The first thing I had to do was fix my wing. I could still feel the energy lingering, fighting against my wings attempt to regenerate. Using a simple gravity well above my head to hold myself in place, I tried something new with my shapeshifting ability. I left about an inch of wing material around the injury, then slowly cut it from my body. The last thread that held it on was some of the worst pain I had been through, but I was never more glad than when I saw the excised part drop away and quickly burn into nothingness from the leftover energy.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Vermin! Where are you vermin?” I heard the dragon calling from below. Twice now he had gotten the better of me, and I wasn’t about to make it third times the charm. If he didn’t have that ability to absorb magic attacks, I would have ripped him apart. Rip? I stopped myself from chuckling, but didn’t do anything to stop the evil grin from growing. While I started working on my plan, the dragon used a pulse of his magic to clear out all the fog that I had been hiding in.
“There you are Vermin!”
“Meteor shower.” I replied, sending a continuous barrage of small chunks of iron and nickel at him. Unfortunately, he shrugged it off, simply charging through and trusting in his scales to protect him. I stopped the meteor shower, instead focusing on creating a massive hammer. As he tried to crush me in his jaws, I used several gravity wells to both pull me out of range as well as speed up my swing to have the hammer smash into the lower fangs of his jaws. His head deflected slightly, but the hammer I had formed shattered. I didn’t even get to see how much damage to his tooth I did, as he hit me with the mother of all backhands.
Once again I found myself hurtling through the air, but that actually helped me. I used a small gravity field to slow my retreat while simultaneously charging up a double spell release. I increased the gravity to stop myself as I felt my spell finish, and knowledge fill my head on the chant required for unleashing it.
Immense gravity, crush your atoms to negate the charges.
Slow your spin and create unheard of fields.
Add a third partner to your circling dance,
Ripping from him the metals he plundered.
Celestial magic: Binary Magnetar!
Circling the dragon were two much smaller versions of magnetars, and judging by the bellows of agony coming from the dragon they were each trying to rip the metals he had incorporated into his body from his scales with their immense magnetic fields. As they spun around him, his body was locked in place by the opposing pulls, but small bits kept breaking away. Sadly my mana plummeted the longer I kept the magnetars, and they only managed two rotations around him before dissipating. That was long enough for quite a bit of metal and shattered scales to fall down to the ground below.
“You bastard. I don’t know what you summoned to do what you did to me, but I will ensure the knowledge dies here with you!”
“You can try.” I said, smiling at him as I sent a massive bolt of electricity at him. His pain filled roar let me know that he was vulnerable. A quick burst of fog hid me, and I sent an illusion towards him as I shot upward. As he lunged toward the illusion, shattering it, I blinded him as I plummeted feet first towards his back. In my hands was a modified boar spear. Point down, I was standing on the crossbar as the strongest gravity well I could muster pulled us toward the wing shoulder.
“WHY WON’T YOU DIE VERMIN!” He screamed in agony as the blade plunged deep. I let go of the shaft, allowing four poles with iron netting between them spread out and form a shield between myself and the erect fin spine. I could see the crystal tips of the spine charging up, and I used a blinding spell on myself as I ducked down by the base of his wing. That saved my eyesight, but my hearing was absolutely demolished by the roar of multiple lightning bolts striking my makeshift Faraday cage and getting channeled into the dragon’s own flesh.
The devastation was amazing. The small air pocket I had left inside the base of the spearhead had superheated, and blown a crater in the flesh of the dragon. His wing was holding on by a few tendons that looked more like steel cables, the joint fully exposed. It was truly a devastating blow, but I wanted more. I wanted dragon wings.
It might have been the mana depletion, but I found myself chuckling as I thought of a silly chemist rhyme. Wally was a chemist, but Wally is no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4. Using the dregs of my mana along with the majority of the mana regeneration, I conjured a stream of sulfuric acid and let it slowly corrode the tendons. As I felt like I had weakened the last one enough, I cut off the stream and looked around as I felt a twitch in the wing. We were still falling, though I could see reason starting to reform in the dragon’s eye, followed quickly by panic. I felt the rumble of sound in my chest as he strained to slow our fall. That’s when I grabbed the base of the wings.
“Remember kids, lift with. YOUR. LEEEEEEGS!” I groaned as I put everything I had into pulling the wing apart. As my legs straightened, I felt a few stinging slashes as the tendons snapped. Then I was airborne as the dragon fell away. Slowing myself with my wings, I watched as he spiraled down out of control to disappear in a cloud of dust. As I slowly glided down, I felt my ears pop as the drums closed themselves off again.
“Gah, that’s unpleasant.” I grumped as I opened and closed my jaw trying to equalize the pressures. I landed, only to be surprised as I saw the dragon look straight at me.
“Vermin.” He groaned out. “Looks like you will be the one walking away after all. Will you at least make the final blow quick?”
“Of course.” I agreed, already feeling a bit better as my mana recharged. I looked over the dragon, and grimaced in shared pain as it was obvious the majority of his bones had broken on impact.
“Before I go, I must ask. Are you really going to Beatha to battle Apophis?”
“I am.”
“Beware an ambush when you arrive.” He said, before stopping as a coughing fit wracked him with discomfort. “As we were fleeing the planet, the eldest of our race stayed behind to buy us time. I was the last one through, and felt when he detonated his life force so I know he has passed, but who knows what evils Apophis has managed to do with his body.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
“The only thanks I want.” He winced, “Is that you let the other dragons return to our world if you defeat Apophis.”
“I will.” I said before cutting open a slash in his throat. Before he could pull away, I shoved in a super condensed ball of air, leaping backwards as the resulting explosion ripped apart his neck clear to the spine. A few twitches was all the dragon had time for before I saw all his muscles relax in death. Stumbling down to his chest area, I used a mana blade to hack apart the weaker scales and cut my way into his chest cavity. Stepping around a rib, I saw his heart hanging in its membranous sack. Cutting it free, I couldn’t help myself as a ravenous hunger I had never felt before descended on me.
My jaws widened and my teeth sharpened, allowing me to rip off huge chunks of the heart. It had the chewy density of a chicken gizzard, but it wasn’t nearly as tough as I was expecting it to be. Instead it almost seemed to melt on my tongue as I tore into the organ. As I consumed the heart that was literally the size of my own torso, I felt an unusual torpor flow through me. I felt myself slowly lowering to the ground, curling up around a large crystal that had been hidden in the pericardium and had gone unnoticed as it fell to my feet.