There are only two things more dangerous than a dragon: A Valkyrie, and a pissed-off mother. Trisha happened to be both as she unfurled her wings and used her telekinetics to burst forward and spread her broad feathered wings. She feels her completed transformation of gleaming silver and azure banded scales, and equally flashy feathered wings and feather accents. Her armor has morphed to accommodate her physiology, and Luminari rings like a crystalline violin. She could feel its radiant power surging through her.
Her attackers stand no chance.
Armored scales stopped determined bolts and deflected them harmlessly away. Deadly fire rays were dodged as she whirled and adjusted her aim, guided by her broad tail and wings. She was the epitome of grace, and a desperately fired rocket roared past, harmlessly.
The driver knew with a horrified look they had made a grievous miscalculation when she landed on the hood of the vehicle and crushed the front end, only to spring upwards, and back aloft. The resulting force blew the vehicle upwards from the recoil, then it rolled and skidded out of control, the occupant's feeble spell barriers insufficient for the impact force as the vehicle crumpled around a tree at great speed.
Half a second goes by as she lands in a graceful tap of her clawed toes, the second vehicle seeing what had happened to the first. They know they’ve underestimated this threat, and try to accelerate, closing the space against an opponent they had not anticipated.
But their forward momentum is far too slow, She deftly sidesteps before the car can ram her, and with one massive telekinetic blast, along with an arcing slam from her powerful tail, the vehicles joins the first car on an express trip to the scrap heap.
One man flies and screams in mid-air, having been ejected from the vehicle, where he’d been trying to aim a mounted heavy caliber machine gun. She isn’t going to let him go that easily.
Trisha concentrates and lashes a plasma lasso at the man, saving him from a deadly fall. She reels him into her waiting claw, and he’s still screaming in terror. The other three cars have stopped and are dislodging passengers, and taking up covered positions by the trees–as if that would do them any good against her.
All it takes to shut the screaming mercenary up is one venomous glare from Trisha, and he’s reduced to a whimper and uncontrollable sobbing. “Names,” she threatens.
She scans the rest of the remaining mercenaries just up the road, all carrying standard weaponry. But they have nothing to indicate specialized munitions for killing dragons. Those had been her biggest worry, not that they wouldn’t have an incredibly hard time chipping past her barrier. She knew very well how to create space against overwhelming odds, by splitting up groups and taking control of the terrain. “Names. Now.”
“Eat shit, dragon bitch.” The soldier pulls a grenade off his belt and tries to remove the safety, but her slashing claws make short work of the futile effort, and she tosses the dying man aside. This is kill or be killed now. No one threatens her family.
No one.
She grabs the radio off the man and patches into the frequency with a rapid kinetic grapple. Multiple men are down, and there are no serious threats. The men on the road are now unloading and holding fire–all dark armored and no insignias and the remaining soldiers numbering a dozen. They are well armed, but not for a mage battle–this was a tactical team meant to target a high-profile non-mage VIP, but where is the backup team?
Her danger sense goes into overdrive and she dodged with her springlike legs just as a bolt of fire pierced the heavens and turned the roadway to molten tar. The source was dragon fire–and judging by the temperature, and extremely precise aim through the cloud cover, an Alterian Nightwing.
Their back-up team should have been their primary team, she notes shrewdly. She sees a squad of four dragons diving down, along with a lone drone hovering just above, as if trying to keep its existence hidden, watching the fight unfold. Two dragons were Nightwings, two were Nevarran Reds–all of them much better equipped, with armor plating in addition to their scaly hides, and flying in a delta formation. They were flying low, and she saw the trajectory–they were in pursuit of Eddard, and they would close in less than a minute.
Reaction took hold and she took a brief sprint to gain enough speed for flight, all the while being peppered with automatic fire that barely phased her. They’d need to fire something a little more powerful to even breach her arcane barrier. Every single one of them has to die or be grounded.
She focuses her telekinetics across her body to give her an incredible burst of agility to get to flight speed, feathered wings beating–this armor was so lightweight, it barely encumbered her. She of course had her instant teleport, but she saved it for only truly desperate situations. She needs to prioritize targets.
The Nevarrans are the bigger problem, her plasma isn't going to work on them as effectively. But, she could still knock them out of the sky with her kinetics and her decades of combat prowess. By her ear crest, her radio is picking up multiple radio intercepts.
“What the hell, why is a Valkyrie guarding this guy?!” one screams out. “This wasn't in the Intel brief!”
“Who cares?! I want corpses, and I want them now! Aerial assault team, deal with the dragon closing on you! Yates, don’t you dare lose a bead on that SUV, or your carcass is going to be added to the pile!” one radio message echos while she closed the distance to the dragons. “Waste that vehicle, once you get a lock with the drone!”
“Magitech jamming, can’t get a lock!” That’s a problem, she realizes with a trickle of dread.
She's outnumbered four to one, and the Nevarrans break off to circle while the Nightwings pursue the car–they would intercept in less than a minute. She times the predictable fire blast, and angles her sudden turn just right so she harmlessly evades the jet of flame. This time she responded in kind with a quick blast of rime frost–not to freeze them solid but to freeze their wings, causing them to stagger mid-air and lose altitude. She was buying space. And time.
The Nightwings however, take heed of this and swerved upwards into the cloud cover and out of sight. She could barely hear their wing beats over this driving rain and the sound of her wings. They were, after all, the equivalent of owls when it came to stealth flying. But she also had a trick of her own and tapped the visor over her face. A thermal image override popped up and she could see them as clear as day. Two more quick blasts of rime frost slowed them down, and now she was in the lead, catching up to the car.
“Eddard they’re throwing a sizeable force, I still can’t reach outside the jammer radius! Just keep driving, I’ll give you air cover,” she relays over her headset to the car communication suite, and she hears a crackle of static. This signal is getting through, barely.
“Oh, don’t mind me Trish, driving at breakneck speed trying to outrun a bunch of zealots trying to turn my ass into a carcass. Just saying, when we get home and get the kids to safety, you owe me Korean barbeque,” Eddard states firmly. She matched speed over the vehicle, and the remaining pursuers were now distant and unable to present a threat.
“The first place we’re going is Valhalla,” Trisha bristles, and glances back. The other dragons have not stopped pursuing, and she could indeed hear the drone buzzing nearby, over the sound of rain and wind. Whoever had retrofitted this particular device for this task of surveillance in the middle of a rainstorm had been no amateur mage, that was for sure. She tapped her visor again and the image shifted to thermal false imagery, and she finally saw it–just in front and to the right, a modified–
She recoiled in horror. The drone was US Military and looked like a modified reaper drone armed with a variety of upgrades and mana-tipped missiles slung on the hard points. This was a serious weapon and an immense risk to civilians, the power of these weapons could be devastating for an errant hit.
“Lights out,” she roared and got close enough to the drone, plasma arcing in her claws. One hit disabled the engine, and once she was able to direct it upwards with a gentle nudge from her, she zapped one of the missiles with another jolt of plasma. It went up in a spectacular blast of energy, and bits of detritus pinged off her scales.
“Trish, Trish you okay?! What was that?!” she heard Eddard scream out.
“Taking out the trash. They have access to US mil-spec. I got close enough to get a serial number, we’ll analyze it once we get somewhere safe!” She pondered this for a moment, how did they acquire a predator drone? Someone wasn’t messing around. Her arcane radio pings–it looked like the drone was the jammer source. “Malena, Kiera, sending out a general distress call, how far are you?”
“Gearing up Trish, we knew something was up because comms were spotty in the city. What’s the sitrep?” she heard Kiera finally announce on the radio.
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“Grossly outnumbered, high-value tactical team of at least forty, multiple dragons! They’re after Eddard, something about the Gaia’s Cradle!” she roared into the radio. “Mobilize everyone!”
“Done! Hold tight Trish, we’ll be there!”
She has to deal with the dragons, first. None of these bastards are getting out of here alive, not after this. She alters course and banks around, seeing two of the dragons on intercept, the two wounded ones trying to catch up. She braces her claws, her telekinetics charging along the length of them, and beyond. A kinetic blade of incredible strength. She waits for them to commit and throw a blaze of fire at her–amateurs.
She blinks out of existence and times it so that by the time they realize she’s closed the distance too fast, the first dragons right wing and right arm are severed, and several deep wounds are trenched along their side from the incredibly swift attack. The dragon screams as it plummets to its death, blood raining down as it impacts and she hears a distant thud as it lands head-first into a forested patch, its neck bent at an unnatural angle.
The second one fares as well as the first, having tried to swerve and grapple to avoid the same strike, but her claws are more lethal than theirs, and pierce through armor and scales alike, deep into the meaty tissue, as they fall to the ground.
She slices brutally through their torso and a gush of blood comes out, and the dragon roars and clutches at the wound, plummeting down and meeting its companion in death. Trisha unfurls her wings and banks with incredible efficiency as the gee forces press on her, leveling out from a terminal dive and gaining speed to catch the other two who have seen this effort and roar in outrage, both of them launching fiery rays at once.
She swerves and feels a sizzle of feathers–a near miss, and she feels the burning sensation on her flank. She uses her aether slip, but this one has a surprise–a focused spell barrier deflects her claws, and she skims along the side, trying to grapple from the underside and her claws slide off. So she drew the one thing sharper than her claws, and more deadly than her elemental plasma.
She grabs Luminari with a kinetic grapple off her back, and lands a gruesome slice that severs part of the dragon’s neck. Her foe gurgles as the blow registers. Target number two needs to be taken care of immediately, and she focuses her mana down her clawed arm.
The runes on the weapon glow a bright green before she fires a powerful beam of energy that pierces through the adjacent dragon before it could aim a decidedly dangerous autocannon scaled to dragons–and caught it right in the chest and sheared straight through its heart. The dragon went limp and its wings locked, plummeting to the ground, and she felt the sear of pain through her arm.
That trick always took a lot out of her, and Luminari was in part fueled by her own power. Careful to not slice into her own wing by mistake, she sheathed the blade and dove after Eddard’s car. She sees a new threat–several vehicles have just come from the pass where she couldn’t see anything beyond the sharp hills, and had men already pouring out and aiming weapons–including a portable mana battery. Her eyes widened and she tapped the radio.
“Eddard, they’re boxing you in on both sides, I’m coming to you for a pickup! Keep driving!” she barks out and tucks her wings close to her body to gain speed, the vehicle just below her. “I’m going to land on the car and rip out the driver-side door, keep the vehicle steady!”
“And then take off into the sunset?! Trish, this isn’t one of your trashy novels!” he exclaimed. The vehicles behind him were catching up again, and they had opened a hatch on the top of one and pulled out a–
“Eddard, evade, heavy machine gun!” she screamed out, and used her telekinetics and surged through the air like a missile. Her wings strained from the force of the wind pushing back on them, even as strong as she was in this form. Kiera had suggested that they all add a jet engine to a dragon’s flanks, and she’d dismissed it as a risk of tearing her wings from her body.
Looks like the reality was she could meet in the middle as her limb ached from holding rigid. She cast down a bolt of plasma, missing as the vehicle swerved and disrupted the gunner’s aim.
Bullets ping off near the car, and someone taps the gunner's shoulder to point at the dragon that just obliterated their air support. Now they’re all shooting at her. Bullets ping off her barriers, but she drops them to take the hits with her armor scales, and Valkyrie armor that stops most of the impact. But that doesn't stop it from stinging like dozens of wasp bites. Dragons might have living armor, but that doesn't mean it doesn’t hurt when people try to punch through it.
The miniature mana battery one of them fires off is a bit more dangerous, and she swerves to be between Eddard and the hostiles. She throws another bolt of plasma that miraculously impacts the driver. The driver is dead before his flesh is done cooking from that overkill, and the wheel swerves and the vehicle jackknifes and tumbles. She can see the men ahead bailing out of the other vehicles, and an unhealthy amount of ordinance is about a half mile up the road. She surges forward and lands on the hood, denting the structure, and the car wobbles, but he holds it steady.
“Get ready, I’m ripping the door off!” She manages to tear the door at the hinges with ease, but those mercs aren’t waiting and open fire. Bullets ping off her barriers, which she flares to maximum force, and grabs Eddard while he’s holding the wheel steady and flooring it at maximum speed.
“Courtesy battering ram, assholes!” he screams out–as if they could hear him from hundreds of feet away, in a rainstorm. She launches off and the car skids just a little bit, then swerves to the right and into the guard rails–where it finally breaches through and goes into a gully, before crumpling into a battered scrap heap.
Insurance is going to give me so much shit for that one, she thinks as she pulls up, taking fire and more munitions ping off while she cradles her husband against her protectively and she struggles to gain altitude–
She sees the threat too late. A massive man, a full two meters tall and clad in magitech armor, wielding a focused elemental incinerator beam–a tech that very few possess outside of the mage's military.
SAF equipment. Either stolen, carelessly lost, or given to them. She tries to evade, but that man is a trained killer and the beam of intense bright light still sears into her wing, burning feathers and leaving her screaming in pain as it defeats her magical protection and armor.
The only way is down and she crashes down into the ravine, slamming into rocks and small saplings and bouncing down. She pins her wings against her side and finally skids to a halt, with Eddard looking dazed.
Her world is pain and she groans. That had hurt, and one wing is badly injured, based on the way she felt something crack on one of the impacts. She glances over and the knuckle joint is bent at an angle indicating it’s broken. She hears shouts from above, and she scrabbles to her claws.
She can’t fight them all, and expect her husband to survive. She grabs him and places him in a carry hold and dashes through the woods and down the embankment, magical fire and other mundane munitions pinging off in their general vicinity. “Keira,” she pants as she claws past a tree, and notes more than a few cuts on her scales where the weapons breached, “Still grossly outnumbered, we’re on foot, my wing is broken. Headed west along Gilford Ravine!”
Static is her answer. The arcanlink on her armor is damaged and not receiving anything.
They’re on their own for now.
The attackers pursue them. with the rough terrain giving them cover, she limps and slips back into her human form, and screams as that broken wing merges back with her body.
"Trish, we need to get you healed--"
"We need to shake these bastards, first." She grabs a compact autobow off a holster, and grimaces at the ammunition. but with the telekinetic and plasma she imbues into the rounds, they'll pack a punch. She points to large rocky cliff face and several boulders, and motions for him to hide. "If you see an opening, you run Eddard. They committed an overwhelming force for just you."
"Don't die, Trish." She grabs a spot in cover, and throws back an alchemical flask--one that should give her one freebie, as her skin and body turn transparent. It will work to limited extent, but gunfire and large motions disrupt it quite easily. It also only lasts a minute.
She prepares her ambush by throwing two more canisters--proximity mines. She is outnumbered, and knows it. She cannot take all of them head-on, even as powerful as she is. She waits by an outcropping, and sees the armored soldiers--and one using an alchemical thruster, on overwatch, and wielding a formidable weapon.
"Trail through the mud, spread out, eyes open. Terminate with extreme violence," one man growls out in a magitech armor suit, and they fan out through the rocks and trees spaced through. the hillside keeps them funneled. She's only going to have to one chance at this. They need to keep thinning their attackers, because outrunning them isn't going to happen with her wing broken and her back radiating pain.
One of them throws on a pair of goggles, and motions to the rest. "Mana scope picking up a trail, they stalled here, check your corners--"
Its too late for the lead man who gets too close to the canister, and the device explodes in a spray of shrapnel--perforating him and the two nearby. They go down, bleeding and dying, and she makes her move, firing off at the one with the goggles.
the bolt goes through his eye with an overwhelming kinetic charge, and keeps sailing. the blood hasn't hit the ground by the time she fires a few more rounds, with six attackers left--the aerial man's thruster is pierced and he screams feebly as the thruster swerves in circles, and slams him into the cliff in a fiery roar. Two more go down with multiple shots. Eddard fires off from cover and pins one down, and she is in motion as they fire on her position.
Mana piercing munitions trace through the air with blue streaks, and impact her armor a few times, like getting hit in the chest with rocks. Luminari is already out, with three left, with a spaced out formation. The second proximity mine triggers as one man tries to push forward, and becomes shredded human meat. the other two have the shrapnel pierce off their barriers--too far away to fully overwhelm it.
But Luminari has no problem slicing through the chest of one, in a blow that showers the ground with blood. the other opens fire at close range in a full automatic spray, and she swerves to the aether, with her world becoming a bright white for a split second.
She takes the head off the last standing foe, and the body slumps for a second, blood mixing with the rain, and she rubs at the wound that pierced through her side. a joint of the armor didn't hold, and she's bleeding. She staggers over to Eddard, already reaching for an alchemical potion.
"Trish, are you--"
"Keep. Moving. More are coming," she pants. He wastes no time in putting her arm around his shoulder, and they limp down the trail, as more attackers open fire distantly, pinging nearby.
They have to make it.
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