Interlude Battle of Dragons (Patreon)

Day 16 Month 12 of the Year Eight Hundred and Seven, Third Era of Man; Inner Wall of Accipitor Day 44 of the Siege:

Two days had passed since she’d cast her spell. Above her, Aurora continued to fight the Dragons of Hell. Not just the Elder Hell Drake that had initially began to battle, but its mate and three children. Well that was how Ria had chosen to interpret the battle anyway.

Ria glanced up from the wall, as Aurora let loose another elemental breath. It lanced across the air to strike a drake in the sides, its magical shields flaring bright, yet even those weren’t enough to prevent the powerful elemental magic from scorching its scales. 

That hit might not seem too impressive, until one truly understood the magnitude of the magic being tossed. Mortal mages could project defensive shields around themselves as well, but they paled when compared to those used by dragons. Dragon shields were thicker, tougher and stronger than even the strongest magical wards used by mortals. Even her best ward spell wouldn’t have stopped that dragon breath. Dragon scales weren’t weak either. There was a reason the shed scales were often used in high end armor. Yet those on a living dragon were stronger by far, and yet here they had just been marred by an attack through some really really strong shields. Something that went to show how much real power Aurora packed in her body.

Ria knew full well there was little she could do to help Aurora. Certainly not against five dragons, she might have been okay against a young Hell Drake, but those elders were in another league. It was strange, feeling so weak, but there honestly wasn’t much for even an archmage of her caliber to do. Still she wasn’t idle, her mana hadn’t fully recovered, but she’d recovered enough that she could help reinforce the shields of the inner city. A task she wasn’t alone in. Every mage in the city, even the apprentices, had been recruited to keep these shields going. Without them, one stray breath would kill hundreds and reduce entire buildings to molten slag.

Not that many of those came this way, she thought as she watched both Hell Drakes unleash their breath. Aurora let out a powerful roar, magical wards forming in mid air to block the streams of fire. The sky lit up. Aurora beat her wings, using the seconds her wards held, to maneuver out of the path. All while remaining locked on her initial target. Bolts of lightning formed and shot from her wings. Dozens of them formed before seeking nearby targets. In return, a drake cast a spell that formed a ring of blue green fire, which shot off bolts of fire at Aurora. Her shields flaring to block it.

Aurora shrugged off the hits, closing on her target. The same Drake she’d scorched moments ago. Lightning slammed into it, corralling the large lizard, forcing it into a flight path Aurora wanted. Seeming to realize the danger, the drake abandoned defense. Turning to counterattack with a powerful breath. Another stream of elemental energy lanced off Aurora’s shields as she charged through it. Two more breaths coming from the side. One missing but the other raking the Dragon God’s side. Her shields flared brightly but her scales remained pristine.

The distance continued to shrink and then it was gone. Aurora lashed out with her claws, talons and teeth, each glowing silver white with mystical energy. They sliced through the drakes shielding and scales with deadly force. Even down here Ria could see the ferocity of the melee. The drake didn’t stand idle, trying to bite and claw Aurora back, but its claws and teeth glanced off her scales harmlessly.

The other four didn’t stand by idly. The growled, roared and screeched, in response before unleashing their breath on both Aurora and the stricken drake. Aurora twisted, barely evading the streams, while tearing into the drake’s throat. Breaking from the now dying drake, she let it fall towards the ground below and let loose with a dragon breath of her own. This one struck an elder drake in the belly. Not the first such hit she’d seen in the last two days, but this time, Ria blinked as the Elder’s shields shattered, the elemental energy burning into its scales, which cracked. It screamed in pain and retaliated with a breath of its own.

Aurora flapped her wings, ceasing her attack and spun out of the path. Magical circles formed around her and the world itself shook, the sky cracked. Blue lightning rippled across the skies and Ria felt herself going pale. She knew instantly that this wasn’t small magic like she’d seen in the last two days. Well, small for Dragons that was, they’d been slinging around Zeta and Eta class magics as if they were mere Alpha and Beta class spells. And in all honesty it was much like that for them. In contrast Theta class magic was advanced magic for a Dragon and that was what Aurora was working now.

Ria bellowed to the other mages, “Attention! All hands on deck, a big spell is coming!”

A booming voice echoing through her head confirmed that impression: Wrath of the Heavens. 

With those words naming the spell, all chaos was unleashed. Thunder cracked, blue and yellow bolts of lightning fell, fire filled the skies and ground exploded in fire, thunder and lightning. Entire sections of the fallen city were erased in an instant, the trees, grass, the very bunkers the hellspawn and fiends had dug vanishing as the ground was scoured clean of every structure, every soul, every blade of grass. Leaving naught but dust and glassed craters behind.

In the skies, the Drakes kept fighting, trading breaths, spells and claws with Aurora, but it was a dying gasp. Before everything was lost in the hail of lightning and fire, she saw an elder struck by a blue bolt from the sky. Its body torn asunder in a brilliant explosion after impact, then nothing but dust and hail obscured her vision. The city shields whined under the bombardment straining against the stray bolts that rained down upon the inner city. Ria groaned as her mana pool vanished rapidly, leaving her once more on fumes. Seconds stretched out into eternities, and then suddenly the sun shone down on the city, the skies cleared and she froze.

For as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but wasteland. The outer city, the farms and houses beyond the walls, the camps of the hellspawn. All of it gone, scoured clean from the land as if it had never been. Beyond the walls there was no life, the ground was cratered and melted with the sheen of polished glass. Nothing had survived, not even corpses. Aurora however remained, and so did the broken remains of the five drakes but they were hardly recognizable. Reduced to scales and bones, broken, shattered, and scattered across the ground.

Aurora, large as a hill, settled by the most intact skull, and crushed it. Throwing her head back, she let out a mighty roar. In the distance, eleven voices answered with mighty roars of their own. In that moment, she felt the natural magic of the world... shudder. Ria knew not what that meant, but something significant had happened.

Before she could puzzle on it, Aurora’s voice echoed through her head. “I enjoyed that workout. Get some rest and take care of the small fry. I’ll be back in a month to collect you.”

Ria shuddered at the excited lilt in the tone and for a second she regretted agreeing to this, but then she recalled the five dragons. The personal cost was definitely high, but she knew it was worth it. She’d not have stood a chance against five hell Drakes, especially not when two of them were Elder Drakes.

Nearby General Bell commented. “By the gods! There... there’s... nothing!”

Ria didn’t say anything. Her mind turning to other matters. The five enemy dragons told her one thing. Their intel wasn’t good enough. Her mana was drained and they’d need time to regroup. Still, the siege was won. Finally she said, “Get me every master alchemist in the city, and any mages with experience using Spiritwalking spells.”

Bell blinked, “What for?”

“We need to do a little recon. See what our enemies are up to. We need to scout the towns of Kir and Yksi and maybe the surrounding villages as well.”

“Right...” said Bell, still a little out of it, then nodding, “I’ll arrange that. You are right, we do need that intel. While you are doing that, I’ll see about regrouping our forces.”

Bell then glanced out, “Shame about the outer city, we could have used that wall.”

Ria knew full well what that meant. Accipitor was strategically important, the gateway between the northern most tip of Sivia and the rest of the floating isle. If it fell, numerous towns would be open to attack.

______Day 18 Month 12 of the Year Eight Hundred and Seven, Third Era of Man:

Ria lay back on the bed, setting the potion she’d just consumed to the side. She knew the spell for Spiritwalking but she was trying to recover her mana, not waste it. When the army started marching she’d need as much mana as she could get. Aurora had left, the powerful dragon was leaving the rest of the suppression to them. Not hard to guess why, her reasons weren’t that different from why Ria had used the potion instead of casting the spell. Incidents like this weren’t the only ones out there, Aurora was conserving resources for when she was needed most. Not that Ria had to like it, but she did understand it.

Her thoughts drifted to something else as she felt the potion taking effect. She glanced to the maid standing by in the room. Here to guard and watch over her mortal body, while she was elsewhere. Ria wasn’t alone, dozens of other mages were preparing to spiritwalk or had already started. It was a powerful method of reconnaissance, allowing one to project their spirit elsewhere. In such a state they’d be largely invisible, only powerful mages could detect them and they’d be equally invulnerable. Even fewer were the mages that could harm a spiritwalker’s spirit. Conversely while they were spiritwalking their mortal bodies would be especially vulnerable, hence the need for people to look after and protect them. Another drawback was that projected spirits couldn’t truly interact with the world. In other words they could observe but they couldn’t lift a feather or harm even the weakest of insects.

Stepping free of her body, Ria cast her mind adrift. With a thought, she slipped beyond the physical and in moments she returned to awareness elsewhere. Spirits weren’t bound to the physical plane the way mortal bodies were. Now that she was one, she could easily teleport, assuming she knew where she wanted to go, that was. 

Taking a moment to center herself, she took in her surroundings. Her spirit form stood on the outskirts of Kir. The town walls still stood but the usual celestial guards were gone. Hell fiends walked the walls, while Avia Harpies flew in the air alongside their lesser brethren. She’d never actually seen one outside of the books.

Ria noted one in particular. The Avia or Hell harpy wasn’t too different from its mortal cousins at first glance. The harpy girl she was watching was young, her wings feathered mainly in the usual black and purple of her kind, along with a few golden ones. She was perhaps a hundred and twenty centimeters tall. Pretty normal for a harpy, they tended to be smaller.

The girl landed by the gate, her gaze looking up at the sky, while her barbed tail flicked behind her, and her wickedly sharp talons left furrows in the earth. The girl had red and gold facial markings, large naked breasts, painted with arcane symbols in red and silver. Like most harpies she wore no clothes, giving Ria a good view of her belly, breasts and pussy. The girl was actually rather cute, and she’d styled her hair into a braid. Yet the evil green glow of her eyes and her facial markings made her look rather fierce.

Ria glanced where she was looking and noticed several Avia Maledictus approaching. Their dark forms stood out in the light of day. Each one had a squirming bundle clutched in its talons. Ria gulped as she noted what that bundle was. Clutched in their talons were small celestial children, babies mostly, but she did spot a toddler, wrapped in torn clothing.

She took in the toddler in a mere moment. It was a young celestial about two or three years old and clearly female. Her small wings fluttered as she squirmed in the grasp of the large bird. It sent her down right before the harpy, but the toddler didn’t do much.

The harpy girl smiled and moved toward the toddler, resting a wing on her head, while her tail wrapped around looking poised to strike. “Welcome to your new home. I’ve been waiting for you, and you’re such a cutie too!”

Ria couldn’t do anything but watch as the Harpy stung the little one. A quick jab in the rear with her barbed tail, in and out. A little bit of blood dripped from her tail as she pulled it back, the little girl’s eyes changed almost instantly, going from dazed to glassy in a second.

The harpy rustled her hair, still smiling, “Alright, let's get you out of these rags and get a look at you. Be a doll and hold still. I wouldn’t want to accidentally cut you.”

The girl didn’t even react, merely holding still. That harpy raised her talons and slashed twice. What was left of the girl’s torn clothing fell to the ground. Revealing her naked body along with a few half-healed cuts, several bruises and a nasty rash. She was also bleeding from several wounds that looked much more recent. The harpy inspected the wounds, sticking her talons into the bleeding holes a couple of times and then said in a cheery voice, “You will do nicely. Follow me, and we will get some food in your belly and salt in those wounds. Okay?”

The girl nodded, and the harpy looked to the other birds, still holding their cargo of squirming babies. The harpy girl gave them an appraising look, then said, “Get those worthless babies to the altars, the Priestesses are expecting them.”

The birds cawed and flew into the town. A moment after they left, the harpy walked through the gates past the two fiends guarding the open gate. Ria watched the girl follow obediently behind her. Not planning to stay out here, she floated behind them. Keeping close while she took in the changes to the town. The hellspawn hadn’t been idle with their time.

Many of the original structures were gone, but the roads remained in place.  Some of them were now bridging over yawning pits in the earth. Several tower aeries sat around the town, their entrances up high, Avia Harpies could be seen flying in and out of them, sometimes carrying babies or toddlers. Toward the center of town, Ria noticed the massive Hell Temple. A large pyramidal structure of dark stone carved with glowing red glyphs, wide stone stairs passing a series of tall obelisks, each one carved with its own glyphs. They rose right out of the stone every five meters, starting a good twenty meters from the base of the temple, at the entrance of a small courtyard in front of it. The obelisks ran up the temples side stopping at the flat top of the structure, and spreading along the rim at set intervals. In the middle of that flat space was an altar, where several birds carrying babies could be seen landing. No doubt they would be sacrificed for some foul ritual and soon.

Ria tried not to think about that. In her spirit form she couldn’t do anything but observe. By the time she could send her spirit back and bring her mortal body to the town, it would already be too late to rescue them. All she could hope to do is learn what ritual they were doing and seek to counter it before it became a problem. Those lives were already lost.

Floating past one of the pits, she noted the old shop still standing beside it. A fresh sign now hung on the door: Tepra’s Blades. The front of the shop had obviously undergone some recent renovations. Fresh dark stone with wide barred windows and a heavy metal door marked the store front. Two celestial girls stood outside, dressed in nothing but rags that concealed nothing and wearing a thick, banded collar with dark metal bands around their wrists and ankles. Both of them bore numerous cuts, some of them actively bleeding and had a few bruises.

The girl on the left was older; her large breasts looked heavily abused and had turned a nasty shade of purple. A ring pierced the nipples and was attached to her collar via a short set of thin chains. Another chain hung from each nipple with a heavy-looking bell at the end. Meanwhile, the younger girl had a strange belt around her waist, hooks dug into her swollen, bruised sex, spreading her labia. A ring had been inserted into her clit, a thin chain ran through loops on her waist belt, then up to her collar and back down to her waist belt. Using a second chain, a weighted bell hung from her clit. Neither girl showed any sign of pain on their face, but she couldn’t imagine they were comfortable. Still the wide happy smiles on their faces seemed... out of place.

The harpy barely gave the place a glance and walked past it, deeper into the city. Ria followed after, and then followed her into a passage that led down into a part of the town that had been walled off. Wooden fencing blocked the views of the area from other parts of town.

Stepping into area, she paused for a second as she took it in. It was a wide flattened area with patches of grass, a pond sat in the center, a small hut next to it. Yet most of the area was hard stone and dirt. At one end of the fenced off zone, stood a massive towering aerie. Birds regularly flew in and out of the aerie, while at the other end of the area stood an elegant yet forboding manor built of dark stone and wood. Ria couldn’t help noticing the yawning pit next to the manor and the complete lack of fencing around it.

Wandering the wide open ground were dozens of young celestial girls between the ages of two and six from the look of things. Ria couldn’t help noticing how common injuries were. Almost every girl she looked at sported multiple lacerations, and bruises. Some girls had far more serious injuries. Not far from them, one girl ran by with a hellspawn chasing her. She had dozens of bleeding cuts, several on her legs looked infected. A nasty rash spread across her back side, and her left wing was twisted unnaturally, clearly it was broken. Meanwhile her right wing was just missing. Elsewhere Ria spotted another girl being picked up in the talons of a harpy, who lifted her a couple meters off the ground before dropping her on some rocks. The toddler screamed as her leg twisted wrong, the bone poking out of the flesh.

While she was still screaming in fresh pain, the Harpy landed beside her and began pulling at the exposed bone with her talons. Ria didn’t stick around to watch and hurried after the harpy she’d been following. Who went down a winding path, taking the new girl towards the manor. The pair went inside and Ria was only a step behind.

The inside was elegantly decorated. With a pair of servant girls working to clean the floor. Neither was given more than a glance by the harpy who led her charge down the hall into a modest room. She pointed at a spot on the floor and had the girl sit. Returning moments later with a jar filled with some kind of jelly, a bowl. “Eat this.” then she indicated the jar, “I’m going to rub this stuff into your wounds, it will sting, a lot.”

The girl started eating and let the harpy apply the stuff with her talons. Several times cutting the girls skin as she rubbed it in. Each time eliciting cries and whimpers. When she finished, she set the jar down, and sat to the side to watch the girl eat, tears in her glassy eyes. 

Ria was just thinking she might want to look elsewhere for clues, when the door opened. Turning, she took in the newcomer. The creature was female, standing at approximately a hundred and fifty centimeters tall with pale grey skin and a slight purplish tone to it. Long silky orange hair framed her face and cascaded loosely down her back. A pair of dark black horns sat on her head, ending with silver tips. Her large pointed eyes were a radiant shade of bright blue, the sclera a deep black. A pair of sharp fangs poked out from her lips. She had large teardrop shaped breasts capped with fat purple areolas and light grey nipples.

Silver markings featuring a pair of crescents flanking a menacing sword piercing cracked earth, sat emblazoned on her lower belly, which looked swollen. The woman looked about ready to give birth. Yet her pussy seemed ready for sex, as it gaped invitingly, dripping bits of moisture onto the ground.

Dark leathery wings sat half folded against her back, while a long supple tail wagged lazily behind her. She stood there, tapping her talons against the floorboards, while a jar of something was clutched in her clawed hands.

Her gaze fell on Ria, a smile appeared on her face. “Oh, I do love unexpected guests. Do stay a bit, and chat. I’m Mitsu Rel Yelshari and you are?”

A knot filled her nonexistant stomach, even as the harpy stood there looking confused, while the young girl still dazed, merely whimpered.