"Beg, squirm, run. I care not. You dirty my home, so now, you pay the price." The Dragon Turtle bellowed, as its massive eyes scanned the two ships on either side of it, as all across its body shadows flowed. Like a wave of darkness descending out of its shell and into the water around it.
Erika gawked up at the being before her, massive beyond compare, and just as intimidating as the one she called father.
Fear, it filled her, as she felt it emanating from Wytar too.
Breathing heavily, she briefly met eyes with it, when suddenly an explosive crash resounded from the other side.
Cannonfire, it filled her ears as smoke rose from beyond the creature's mountainous shell.
A foolish choice, made by foolish creatures, in a foolishly absurd situation, she thought.
As she heard, the rise of a flipper from the water, as Deijolv's attention turned to the demonic vessel.
"Pest." It mused, as a blaze burst out from its nostrils, and suddenly the temperature all around it dropped.
The water, air, and everything else around the flipper it raised, had frozen over in an instant.
Erika and the rest, they could only see the waters around them being turn to ice, as the air around it also began to turn to mist.
The water around the demonic vessel, also freezing over, contacting the magma that flowed all around it and cooling it down to stone. Blocking it from moving entirely...
Deijolv then raised its frozen limb, before crashing it down like a merciless comet upon the foolish demons.
Pillars of water and ice rose, high enough that Erika could tell what it had done.
Following the crash, Deijolv turned its attention once again to the second ship, now the only one afloat.
The ice had now fully surrounded them, holding the ship in place entirely.
The Dragon Turtle, began to raise its other limb beside them, water all around it frozen into a cataclysmic fist of ice.
"Bring to me, one reason. Why should I not, erase you from this life?" Deijolv offered, its voice echoing through the shore.
"I...I've only heard the...myths..." Zen whispered, falling back on the Draem's wide saddle, he too stared up in disbelief.
"I assure you, I am no myth." Deijolv mused, its large eye turning to the, minuscule in comparison, group. "And my hearing, is of equal standing. Children, the ones to my left, and the ones below still breathing. If you please." It spoke, as suddenly shadows began to flash about beneath the frozen waters around Wytar and the ship.
Much smaller than the Dragon Turtle, Erika thought, affixing herself onto the word 'children'...
As each then broke out of the ice, their bodies sizzling with heat they used to tunnel through.
Serpentine, akin to eels with sectioned armoured bodies, yet much larger. Each easily half the size of Wytar, the creatures Deijolv called children rose out and surrounded them all. Slittering over the ice around Erika, Zen and Wyter, or coiling their way up the ship and lining the edge around the rest.
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Erika reached for her blade upon Wytar's side, only to be reminded that...it was gone. Grimacing, she made the mistake of meeting one of their gazes.
Eyes of black, quickly turned to a swirling of stars.
Erika, as had the rest, found themselves transfixed by the creature's eyes. Lost in the sight, lost in the magic behind them, as each of their minds was sent back to the beginning.
Each one of them found themselves forced back in their lives, reliving every single moment as they rushed past them.
Forced, to see it all back and forth.
Forcing Erika, to remember what was sealed away.
To remember, why, her father did not teach her magic.
As those memories, were glimpsed into by the Dragon Turtle, a mere moment of darkness.
It caught it, its expression suddenly freezing into a cold gasp, its gigantic eyes focusing down on Erika as its minions wrapped around them all.
It saw within her mind, a warped creature.
A storm of lightning and flame raging around it, as its body rushed with a dark blue aura.
Deijolv saw the duality within her mind, for merely a moment, before a different visage replaced it.
Smoke exhaled out of Erika's mouth, a cold breath, yet more.
The smoke expanded and took form before her.
Two legs, two arms, humanoid yet with a collection of tails growing out the back.
The Fox came to stand, his form a shifting mist.
Yet the grin was all too recognizable.
"Will you simply stand by and watch, as this despicable beast murders your comrades?" He asked her, gazing back as she lay entrapped by the eels.
"What...what am I supposed to do...against that?" Erika asked, eyes wide in terror as she gazed up at the looming monstrosity.
"Oh? Is that all you had then? All that spunk about becoming a legend, merely moments ago. Oh how the young die young." The Fox chuckled.
"Who-" The Dragon Turtle began to ask, rising to overshadow the group, its gaze piercing down upon the form of mist.
"Oh where are my manners." He gives a quick bow, "God of tricks, beast of the veil, lord of time. Pleasure you make your acquaintance. Or well, a snippet of my persona at least." He rises, then gesturing at Erika. "And this here, my chosen, who shall proceed to wipe the shoreline with your body."
Puffs of permafrost exhaled out of Deijolv's nostrils at his words, as a furious blue fills its eyes. "What?"
"My you sub-drakes are such meat heads." He sighs, turning to see Erika's paper white expression. "Truly, must I give a demonstration?" Sighing once more, he shrugs.
"I...I don't know what you want from me!" Erika exclaims, glancing inbetween the ghostly deity and the dragon turtle seemingly charging up its breath above them all.
"What I want from you is simple, child of storm." The Fox says as he approaches her, his grinning expression merely overlapping the sight of Deijolv's maw growing colder and covered in blueish mist.
"I taught you how to hold it in, but there is indeed exceptions. Now," He says, raising his hand and pressing the palm flat onto her forehead.
"Is the time to let it out." He mused with a sudden cackle.
"To release the beast." As a light pierced out of her forehead where his palm lay, dividing into two right after, a bright crimson burning on one side and a dark blue flowing out of the other.
Her face, it began to crack, as her eyes went wide with their individual colors.
Going down her forehead, over her nose, over her lips and down her chin and then neck, the crack went across her visage before suddenly spreading open shining a blinding golden light out on everyone.
The light, sending the fox's form fading away.
Briefly it encompassed everything, blinding even the Dragon Turtle as the sound of ripping flesh, cracking bone and something expanding filled all of their ears.
And when it faded, all their eyes lay rest upon what lay instead.
A four legged beast with half its body coated in a flowing shadowy fur, a blue energy fuming out of it like frost, and half a scaled smooth white, golden energy sizzling out of it like electricity. It stood as tall as Deijolv, its clawed paws resting lightly upon the surface of ice.
As its eyes, then opened.
The right, a black serpentine slit surrounded by a golden flame.
The left, a white iris surrounded by a dark cold blue abyss.
Standing on four legs, the beast lay with its forebody raised like a wolf, yet with a longer neck taking to a similarly snouted head, where upon the forehead lay growing a dual-coloured tri-corn. Begining as a single horn, it divided halfway into two curving spikes, divided in half once more by the black and white colouration.
Erika, felt the energy flow through her. She felt the ballistic rage burn away at her right half, whilst a friggid cold dread sank into her left.
She stood tall, her dual gaze rising to meet the Dragon Turtle.
As Deijolv's gaze rose to meet her's, the Daughter of Storm.