“Oh, Boys! I left you unsupervised for two hours, and you already managed to steal some food.”
The Boys, much smaller than they should be and already belly up in submission in an attempt to placate my ire, let out a small whine in unison.
“Boys, Hopper, Ribbette, follow those two dragons. Once you get to your fighting area, try to kill them. If you are in danger of dying, let me know and I will unsummon you. And Boys, I see the peach juice on your mouths. We will talk about this later.”
Four tongues licked at their respective lips, each trying to hide the evidence of their misdeeds and savor the last remnants of their snacks. The frogs, after a delay, simply nodded and stood ready to obey.
The two smaller dragons, the smaller around a thousand pounds and the second half again as large, took wing and rose up to the ledge we were on, neither one attacking but clearly on guard. The larger one pressed a single claw into the wall, and a section of the wall lowered to reveal a tunnel behind it that sloped upwards. They beckoned my pets to follow with a wave of the hand, and then they walked into the tunnel.
My pets, obedient and combat ready, followed behind at a distance. Though they are but beasts, or “magical beasts”, as is the technical term, they still have significant intelligence, and though they had the advantage of fighting two dragons that could not turn to face them in a tunnel, they had the presence of mind to know that a cave-in triggered by a struggle would not be worth the ambush. Being that they are not animals, they would not fall prey to the plethora of Abilities that could charm or control them. Such a distinction works well to my benefit, but no doubt there had been a few [Druids] or the like in the past who attempted to form a bond with a beast when mistaking them for an animal and found that [Calm Animal] did nothing to protect them from getting mauled.
Now alone with the remaining dragon, I transformed into my true form. Golden-yellow scales, each with black borders, graced all onlookers as I sauntered over to the ledge. Sadly, I looked a little young, having only a stubble of bony growths and horns protruding from my head, so I did not quite capture the majesty that my form could bring to bear. Conversely, my opponent in red scales with much deeper crimson borders had ample horns and protrusions of bone. Clearly, he was older than me, but hopefully he lived a pampered life and was not an able fighter. Unfortunately, he was about half again my size, so I would be at a disadvantage in terms of reach and weight to throw around.
I lept off the ledge, my wings spread to control my descent. I glided into position in a large open area of the cave. The magic lingering within the walls and floor, along with the less natural appearance, suggested that the cave had been hollowed out and enlarged extremely recently, perhaps even in preparation for this very fight. The whole time we had been talking, I had been scanning for traps or other ambushes, but I found none in the ‘arena’ area of this cave. My opponent walked to his edge of the fighting area, tall and proud as he eyed me up and down.
“I am Count Vladislav of The Blood Keepers. You have accepted my challenge. Now we fight. To the Death!”
I expected more of a monologue, but instead he opened with a great gout of flame, one much bigger and hotter than my own. I had never specialized in any particular element for my breath attack, and while I could perform all of them, none of them were as strong as they could have been had I specialized. Combined with his increased size and older [Age], and there was no way I could contend with him by countering with my own flame breath.
Instead, I focused on my versatility, countering his breath with one of frost. I specifically focused it to create a wall of ice between us. While it would not hold for long against his flame, it would buy me time to move out of the way and create a screen of mist when it melted. I moved to the right, readying a quick breath of acid to follow. Normally, I would also have denoted several traps on him, but I didn’t want him looking for traps nor did I want to risk accidentally detonating my two earlier traps that were about halfway to their destination. Considering how a good chunk of my combat kit was tied up in traps, this would be a dangerous fight.
He used a wing to block my acid, and it looked none the worse for the wear. Such was a common misconception about dragons, the notion that their wings were a weak point. In reality, they are the toughest part of a dragon, extremely difficult to damage, and easy to heal. He shook off the acid casually while looking smug.
“That the best you got, whelp?”
It was not my first time fighting a large opponent. The Boys and I sparred from time to time, and they dwarfed me when I released them to their full size. I was already beginning a second attack before my acid even hit, and likewise already moving to circle around the Count. Fortuitous, for a great spike of rock erupted where I had just been standing, foreboding in that I did not even sense the magic creating it until it was unleashed.
Taking a leaf from Skull’s book, I unleashed a flurry of swipes and bites in his direction, trying to look menacing and intimidating in my flourish. However, the distance between us was far too great for me to reach him. I had hoped he would think I was just posturing like an amateur in an attempt to intimidate him, but he was wise to my ways. He took a defensive stance, hunkered down, ready to leap out of the way or block with his wings. A few moments passed as I continued my assault, the very air in front of me the only victim to my strikes.
As I finished my combo, another rock spike jutted out of the earth, but this one found purchase as it scraped a long gash along my left leg. It was shallow enough not to draw blood, but strong enough to rough up my scales rather unpleasantly. The attack struck much harder than simple rock should, for my scales were normally hard enough to block such unpleasantness. Another good strike or two in the same spot would punch through, and considering he said he was of The Blood Keepers, I didn’t fancy allowing myself to bleed near him.
Nothing happened on my end as I bided my time, struggling more and more to prevent my attack from unleashing as the pressure built up. Finally, he let his guard down and moved to close the distance and strike me. As he did, shadows of me moved forward and repeated the attacks I had made earlier, each one after the other in order, but the timing between their strikes was far shorter than when I had performed them.
Surprised and hurt, he roared in pain and anger as his blood flowed freely over his rent scales. Some of the blood vaporized, a fine mist spreading around his wounds, while the rest hardened like instantaneous scabs. Either I packed more punch than I thought, or he had far weaker scales than I had.
Not stopping to admire my work, and almost in tandem with my shadows, I opened my pocket dimensions above him, each raining down their respective cargo onto him. Boulders, tree trunks, chunks of ore, water, and sand poured down upon him, hoping more to knock him off balance than to finish him off. To his credit, he dodged some, but I soon lost sight of him as he became buried in it.
I repositioned and planned my next attack, but a red mist rose from the debris of my attack. The mist, composed of blood, seeped out towards me. I set my wings to work to blow it away as I breathed air attacks from my mouth to try to corral it over on his side of the room. Rock shattered and tree trunks withered and splintered as the blood did something that I sure don’t want happening to me. Unfortunately, my wind had little effect, more nudging it around than stopping it, as if it resisted air currents. Concern growing, I created a wall of rock in front of me, my power bidding the very earth to move at my command and to spring up to seal the blood mist away.
But the mist ate through the wall without issue, rock melting away as if consumed by acid. So distracted by the mist, I failed to see the Count rise up out of the earth to my right, his body springing free as if moving through water rather than stone. Leaping up and over me, a great gout of blood mist spread from his open maw and down towards me.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Ice, Shadow, Acid, Space, Air, Earth; these were the elements I had used and the order I had used them in. My passive Skill, [School’s Out], gave me bonuses for using different schools of magic in succession, but penalties for repetition. I had invested in that Skill back during the war, and I had since put more towards it. The longer the chain went on without a repeat, the stronger it would become, instead of capping its beginning limit, which I had discovered through trial and error was three schools deep. I needed a way to evade the attack without a repeat, and with a fraction of a second to decide, I found my answer.
With Nature magic, I sprouted coiled springs of vines beneath my feet, each compressed and angled in a favorable position. With a mighty leap on my part, the springs pushed outwards and launched me backwards at great speed. Turning while in the air, I spread my wings and angled myself upwards, careful to avoid the blood mist but otherwise on an intercept course for the Count.
The Count could not continue straight on unless he wanted to crash into the rock wall in front of him, and while I saw him swim through the earth before, such a Skill could not be cheap or without risk. He would need to turn, and no matter which way he went, he would be at a disadvantage. Towards me, and he would not be able to angle his body fast enough to retaliate. Away from me and I could get him by the tail. Down and he would be penned in by the ground. Up and he would have no cover, completely naked to a breath attack of my own.
Impossibly, he tucked his head under himself and rolled over midair, his momentum completely reversed without inertia either carrying him the way he had been going or ripping him apart. Some bullshit Skill if you ask me. Completely unfair. I totally need it.
Now the one in a bad flight path, I closed my eyes and held my breath as his foul blood mist washed over me. To say it burned is an understatement. I felt foul, unclean, corrupted, the very darkness of it seeping into me, sapping my strength and corroding my reserves of magic. I banked around to face him, and being smaller, I had a tighter turning radius. Using [Overseers] and [Observers] to guide me, I oriented myself towards him for a collision.
Using Poison magic, I excreted poison from my scales, the yellow-green gunk mixed with necrotic clumps of crimson stained black. While dragons generally have Skills for high resistance or immunity to mundane poison, magical poison upped the playing field. Crashing headlong with claws rending and teeth gnashing, we tumbled down to crash hard into the cave floor.
The poison expunged his corruption admirably, and furthermore it coated me in a protective layer and greased me up like a pig at that one game at a county fair. More often than not, his fangs and claws failed to find purchase, and when he did, he traded a nasty dose of poison for a minor scratching on my person. Despite our size disparity, it quickly became clear that I was physically more durable and stronger. However, my magic was far more depleted than I would have liked, so things were not going entirely my way. I released waves of healing magic through me, focusing on closing wounds before I could bleed and curing the rest of the corruption within me. That took care of the wound on my leg, but no more active healing would be forthcoming for a while if I wanted to continue benefiting from [School’s Out]. I did manage to bundle several healing Skills so they counted as one effect, and the one that gave me continued regeneration above and beyond what I could accomplish passively would have to hold me through this fight.
I was coming out on top of our exchange, the Count bloodied and seemingly running out of supply of his mist and scabbing material. Anger welling within him in equal portions to his magic. I struggled to disengage as power erupted from him in an explosion. Caught in the blast, I was sent sailing to the far wall, crashing hard into the stone, shattering a nice dragon-shaped crater where I impacted it. Dazed, I fell out of my crater and down to the floor, where a new and slightly less impressive crater greeted me as I crashed down.
I was close now, I just needed to buy some time, but there was one hang-up. I was bleeding, my regeneration having been insufficient for just a moment. Wounds closed quickly, but the damage was done. My blood stained my scales in places, and those places felt like a vice gripping me, and not in the fun way that Chooka and I use them in the bedroom. Pain lanced through me as my blood pressed me to the floor. I looked up in time to see him take a deep breath, and while I thought of a solution, he breathed another gout of flame at me.
First of all, how dare he make me bleed my own blood. Second of all, it seems cheaty that he can breathe such powerful fire and blood. Surely he specialized in one or the other. But as I watched, an idea clicked that maybe he was extra cheaty. Blood has a high water content, and water is made of two gasses, that if separated, were highly flammable if ignited. I will just gloss over how I know about atoms, oxygen, and hydrogen, those exact terms coming to me in the moment that I needed to think about and know them. What if he had found some way to do that with the water in his blood, some sort of magical [Bullshit Electrodialysis Blood Voodoo] or something and ignited it to get the flame breath?
I unleashed water magic to create a shield around my skin, both to protect me from the flame and to wash off the blood and gunky poison. It held for the most part, but some of his breath did get through. While hot, it lacked that magical umph to it. If he was cheating like I suspected, then he was only physically turning the blood magic into real fire, not magical fire. I had ample defensive skills to deal with real heat and fire bereft of magical fuel, so it actually didn’t do much but soften my scales from the intense heat.
While freed from his control of me due to washing or cooking my blood off of me, he conjured forth his own tendrils of blood to grab ahold of me just as his breath abated. Hoisting me up into the air like a ragdoll, he slammed me into the wall, the floor, the debris pile, and really just anywhere that looked like it would hurt. It truly was a cunning ruse, and while slamming into the rocks hurt, it didn’t cause much damage. However, such a continued beating would eventually chip away at me, and with my scales so soft, it would only be a matter of time before he punctured me on something pointy.
A good minute passed like this, him gloating in some monologue I could barely hear over the rather rude din of someone slamming into everything and anything. I managed to catch key words that villains like, such as “foolish” and “worm”. I used physical enhancement magic to make myself tougher, hardening my body and giving me more physical might. While it did wonders for the beating, I could not free myself from his bonds.
“Any last words?”
He looked puzzled, then angry, then amused at my enquiry.
“I think you misunderstand your place, whelp. It is you who is on the verge of defeat.”
“I beg to differ,” I replied as I released a buildup of magic into those two traps I had placed earlier.
He glared at me for a moment before turning to look behind him. Back at his hoard, under the two pillars that confined the woman, twin pillars of fire erupted from the earth. For those of you counting at home, that is 12 schools of magic that I had used in order; Ice, Shadow, Acid, Space, Air, Earth, Nature, Poison, Healing, Water, Physical, and finally, Fire. I had performed a manual reset of the combo before the fight, which was not something to be done for free, but it cleared up the counter from my stealth, scouting, and trap Skills I used before the fight and at the beginning of the fight proper.
Fueled by my long school combo, pillars turned to slag as chains melted away, the energy and heat of the magic focused inward so that the women would not be harmed by it. The voice had told me that the key to my victory would be found in her freedom, so I had taken it to heart.
“Oi, bitch!” The woman cracked her knuckles and neck as she approached, stretching her arms and rolling her shoulders as she loosened up. “I’ve had several years to think about your offer as you tormented me. I am ready to give my response.”
From the point of view of an [Observer], I had the pleasure of witnessing the Count’s expression wilt as icy fear devoured his smug confidence. He hastened to flee, his blood grip on me going slack and his hoard abandoned as he scrambled to be anywhere but here. Everything slowed down to a snail’s pace as the woman activated some sort of Haste Skill, which triggered my Skill, [Fools Rush In]. It took me along for the ride, granting me an even stronger Haste, at the cost that I could not activate such a Skill myself.
The Count almost appeared frozen in time, his body moving oh so slowly, like a glacier sliding along during a thaw. The woman casually walked over to him, paying me no mind as she walked underneath the Count to be standing right under his chest. She punched upwards with a jab, her finger penetrating through the Count’s scales like a hot knife through blubber. Wait, I think that is the expression; I would need to double check with discrete sources. Anyway, she yanked her arm back down, and within it, I saw a heart. The Count’s heart. Ripped from his chest while still alive.
Time still slow, she walked over to me and stood beside me, turning to stand and watch before time crashed down around us with its normal flow. The Count made it all of two steps before his body gave out and he toppled. No bitter last words followed, no tirade of threats, curses, and pleas, for he was dead on the spot, his body unable to regenerate from such a massive blow.
“For what it is worth, I think you could have taken him in a straight fight if you had not focused on freeing me.” I returned to my human form to stand next to her, a little exhausted but not nearly as drained as I had expected I would be. Most of my mana expenditure had been from his corruption effect. “I do appreciate the consideration,” she continued. Though wearing little more than rags, she held herself with a regal posture. She curtsied as she spoke once more. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Princess Nanu of the defunct flight, The Secret Stalkers.”