Blue dragons like to live in arid lands, as heat is also prefered to the cold they are more common in deserts than tundra. Their hereditary magic focuses around lighting, wind and earth. This makes them very dangerous as they like to create sandstorms to tire out and soften up those who tread in their domain before ambushing those who have become their prey. Their control over electricity is beyond what mortal mages are considered capable of.
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Adrian
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Just after dusk and after climbing to the roof of the hotel I look over to the rest of my friends. I don’t know how large an adult void dragon is supposed to be nor if there are going to be any problems due to what I did but it is time to find out.
I send the desire to shift inwards as before but rather than the shifting of before I feel as though I take a step sideways instead, as if I were pivoting. The world shrinks as I watch what parts of me I can as they change, my skin darkens before the cracks of the lines between my pores shift, my skin turning into impossibly fine scales before they thicken and grow as my bones shift around contorting to the quadrupedal form of a dragon.
I forget about the clothes and lament that I am going to have to go get more later. The change finishes and I look down at my friends, this form seems to be around half again as tall as I was before. I shouldn’t have any trouble flying with someone on my back anymore, two maybe but one should not be a problem.
“So, who gets to play dragon rider?” Bryan asks.
“Not you, I was thinking Kythia.”
“Why? I’m an Undead Hunter, I should be more useful for what we should end up fighting” Bryan counters with some disappointment.
“I just don’t want to have another man on my back.”
Bryan looks dejected but seems to understand. K however smiles as she walks over to me. The twins have some envy on their faces at how K is getting more time with me. I’ll have to make that up to them later, a leisure flight in the morning maybe?
K climbs onto my back and sits down between my wings and holds onto my neck. I stretch a bit before jumping off the roof and flapping my wings. I don’t hear any screams of terror so no one must have noticed my dark scales against the black of the night sky.
I begin to circle around over the city as I search for where these deathspeakers are supposed to be set up somewhere to the north. I see Bryan lead the others out to the still unsecured parts of the city as I head northwards. My Infravision does not see any amassed creatures only stray goblins but as I try to feel for the energies of death that very much changes.
Not very far to the northwest as I fly is a football field where lots of dead things are moving around. No undead army my ass, there are at least a few hundred. Shouldn’t they at least have given me accurate information? I fly fairly close to Bryan’s group who are barely more than just wandering out of the gates set up and will a message made of glowing lights to appear in front of them.
It ends up being a bit sloppy and overly bright but I manage to give them a map with the football field swarming with undead marked. It doesn’t last long but I do see the four of them nod their heads before it dissipates. It only takes me a few minutes to fly back to the amassed undead and there seems to be a high school attached though it has parts collapsed, I can see that there was already a battle including something more dangerous than just orcs here.
I circle and watch as the undead set up some sort of ritual, some of the better maintained undead directing what I assume are more recently animated workers. I can hear a light growl from K as she wants to start fighting already but are still waiting on the others. A circumscribed triangle and hexagon inside of two more circles with runes between them. The points of the hexagon are bisected by three lines that converge in the center of the formation withing an inner circle of runes making some sort of altar.
Four men dressed in dark robes end up walking out of the damaged school and halfway down the field, while avoiding stepping on the lines their undead slaves have carved into the earth. Behind these humans? are a few more undead carrying three individuals.
One of the involuntary members of the gathering was undead but dressed as a business man, the others are two man and woman in the rags of ruined tunics. They also had odd shapes on top of their heads and what might be a tail.
The three men are bound and dropped into the outer circles atop of some runes while the woman is dragged to the center with the four robed men. Should I keep waiting or interfere?
The four men begin to chant in what I can recognize as a mix of necrol and another tongue but something prevents me from knowing the words that they are saying. I continue to watch as one of the men in the outer circle gets his head removed, as the blood spills into the ground it begins to glow in a reddish hue that I know is not necromantic, some other energy is being generated.
Within the center of the main circle a glowing rift opens, growing ever so slightly as the first blood sacrifice of their ritual bleeds out. His circle glowing as its light seems into the larger connecting circle of runes and shapes.
“We have to act now, that is demon or devil summoning” K growls and prepares herself to jump off my back if I do not start acting myself.
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No time to wait then, I begin to swoop down and let out a breath of condensed light as I pass over the thickest part of their undead forces. The men begin to chant quicker and each cut their hand. I turn the beam of deadly light at them but something about the circle in which they stand prevents it from reaching them.
I shift back to human form, landing next to K as she strikes down some sort of skeletal abomination. I let out a wave of strange purple fire that burns negative energy over the area. The lesser undead quickly begin to fall apart though many rush to attack us. Those that I assume are their masters continue their ritual, the dead man that they have chained up is yelling at me to break him free as a skeleton spills the blood of the other sacrificial victim.
I am not sure I should but he is hostile to my current foes, I back up towards him as I begin to twist the negative energy held within these undead and tear it from some of them. They collapse but it feels difficult. It will be easier to kill them another way.
One of the undead that I attempted to destroy was unaffected, a towering abomination pieced together from several skeletons. I manage to react in time to evade the attack, but I cannot feel any death inside of this creature when I try to sense it.
A golem, I swear as I see three more of the bone constructs begin to join the undead surrounding K and me. The waves of purple fire handle the undead but do nothing to these constructs. I see a flare shoot upwards into the sky a few streets over, the others will be here in a few minutes then.
My claws leave gouges in the bones of the golems but the damage is negligible. K has moved backwards striking down the undead the purple flames spreading through the battlefield do not quickly kill. Her sword is covered in a silvery glow instead of the scarlet flames she normally conjures.
Another golem has joined the melee between me and the first one to arrive before I reach the chained man. He seems to be weaker than before and as much as I think this could be a mistake I grab the rune covered shackles and find my claws breaking the brittle iron.
I hear a roar of some sort and glance towards it in the middle of the ritual’s circle, a pair of black claws is trying reach through pulling whatever being they are attached to into this world. The man begin to laugh and yell as he tackles the nearest golem to the ground, his nails extended into claws.
I move behind what I think may be a vampire, leaving him to deal with the golems as I rush at the four infernalists. Their chanting comes to an end as the rift begins to widen and the circles dim, the man with the fanciest robes begins to call out to the gargoyle like creature as it crawls through the portal.
It feels dangerous to me, I release my void breath at it before I reach one of the robed men. Once the glob of blackness that is the void reaches the monster and portal it begins to erode whatever monstrosity that thing is and the portal closes almost instantly severing the legs from the likely ten-foot-tall monster.
My claws tear through the back of the head of the nearest robed men who have now turned around and are yelling at me. I ignore their words and throw lightning at the one in the fancy robes, he collapses on the ground. I find myself disappointed, summoning demons and they don’t even set up protection spells?
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Ria
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I watch in silence as my masters drag the others and me from our cages. I can’t cry or show pain as their sharp splintered bones cut into my arm. They just torture us more when we do. They talk of how I’m blessed to be an offering for their god as they have for days.
I try to hold in my tears as they kill one of us but I can’t, the men kick me as they keep chanting and I can’t breathe as pain shoots through my broken ribs again. Silent tears fall as I whisper silently to Mother Earth asking for them to die and the pain to go away. Something that is always running through my mind, I just want the pain gone. I've been good why do they make me hurt?
A light appears behind me but I can’t see it, only that it became bright all of a sudden. I can hear bones fall to the ground. The sounds of combat begin just outside of my view, my ears twitch as that begins to drown out the sound of the robed men’s chanting.
The darkness of night gets cast away again as purple flames spread to the walking corpses that serve my captors as they are running towards where I can hear battle. I still just cry as the ground’s demonic glow grows.
The chanting stops, and I brace myself for the embrace of death that I know is coming. It doesn’t but I feel something warm splash on me. I open my eyes to see a man with the blood of one of my captors dripping off of black claws as they return to being normal hands.
He spits something at where the demon should be and lightning pours from his hands towards something on the other side of me. Half of a metal crossbow appears in his hands and pain fills my ears as it makes thunder. I struggle against my bonds, I don’t want to die if there is a chance to live.
The man who is killing my cruel masters moves past me and I roll over, and cringe at the pain of my weight against my broken tail. I whimper and try to pull free of the shackles that are draining my magic.
A black gargoyle with no legs, the black blood of demons dripping downwards and sizzling on the ground is what greets my view. The man’s black claws are back and he is tearing into the demon before it falls into the shadows. The man turns looking around with a frown.
[Sweet little thing, I’m coming for you.]
I scream and the man turns towards me, the demon reappearing behind him and knocks him to the ground. I struggle and let out another scream, this one of pain. Something in my hand broke and it slips out of the shackle.
The demon is on top of the man who slew my masters, a bleeding claw raised. I want to run but my legs are broken. I want the pain to stop but it won’t. I push myself up, my still shackled arm holding me up as a greenish fire forms in my broken hand. I throw it at the demon, maybe if I help the man he won't hurt me.
It doesn’t do much and the shackle takes half of the energy from the fire as I make it but I keep doing it, again and again.
The demon turns to me and a beam of light erases one of its arms, I blink blinded by the purple line that now fills my vison. I fall back to the ground, tired and hurt.
All I can do is watch as the corpses of my captors stand up and join in attacking the man who slew them. Then they burst into purple flames, the demon also covered in them as the man keeps fighting it.
The demon laughs as it falls and the man catches his breath as blood trickles out of closing wounds. The sound of combat begins to die down, I see the feet of the man who killed my masters and flinch as he touches me.
Then he picks me up and the pain goes away, it’s over the pain is gone. I jump into his arms, sniffing him as I wrap my limbs around him. He smells different, and rub my face against him after licking his face before I recognize one of the scents on him. A werewolf’s and hear a growl behind me.