Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 57 - The Bomb (Patreon)

Masasha watched the pitifully small thing weave through the battle, but she didn’t think much of it.  Obviously, it was meant to be important to the defenders, but she simply assumed that it was nothing more than a last resort before their fall.  Her forces had been bombarding that little island fortress for days, and before that, they’d assassinated many of their most important people.

Their short-lived resistance would fail.  They would fall.  It was only a matter of time. 

The only thing standing between them and total victory was Illska, who still hadn’t made an appearance.  The other Vyrin deities put up a fight as well, but the weight of numbers was not on their side.  They too would fall.

Many would even die.

Masasha regretted that.  She had spent most of her life fighting for the empire, in one way or another.  Certainly, she had her own goals – finding her father chief among them – but her path of progression had coincided with defending her people.  So, killing them came with a distinct note of bitterness that even the surety of her mission failed to disperse. 

But she wasn’t there to make moral judgements.  She had been tasked with leading the expedition, and that was what she would do.  Not just because it was her mandate, but also because it was the only way to accomplish her true goal.  War got in the way of that, so she intended to end it before it got out of hand.

That – along with the very real possibility of losing control of the expedition – was why she had chosen to attack.  It was far from her preference.  Given a choice, she would have waited until Illska was off the table.  Or even better, she would have made peace so that they could focus on what was truly important.

Although that was no longer possible, and for more reasons than she cared to consider.  Some were personal, a response to the actions undertaken by the group who’d splintered from the main expedition.  Others were broader, like the fact that the Vyrins had planted themselves on the wrong side of a looming civil war.

None of that mattered.

Just like that little aircraft the humans had built to mimic draconic flight.  It was quaint.  Almost adorable, the way they tried to make up for the obvious shortcomings of their race. 

Masasha was no true dragon supremacist.  She had seen drakes and serpentors rise above their supposed station.  And she had heard tales of powerful civilizations elsewhere in the multiverse.  She even respected the vespirans, after a fashion.  Hated them, certainly.  No dragon could escape that ingrained enmity.

But she respected their power nonetheless.

However, she couldn’t find it in her heart to respect the humans who’d set foot in a trial for which they were woefully unprepared.  How they’d managed to enter Orveth Kaal was still a mystery.  Her spies had spun tails of Druids and dragons, trees and fungi, each story more unlikely than the last. 

One name kept cropping up, and it was the very same that had overtaken the rankings on the Ledger.  Elijah Hart.  He stood at the top of the list.  A demigod, according to all her information.  He’d been left behind after the previous trial, which should have been a death sentence.

No matter how powerful the stories made him seem, the tyranny of the tiers was well-known.  People didn’t just leap from one to the next.  Not without help. 

And yet, that was the only explanation. 

The same could be said for the demigods currently entrenched in that mountain fortress they’d stolen.  It would be easy to dismiss their efforts as being built on the backs of better craftsmen from the previous trial.  After all, the so-called Vengeance had been built mostly by K’levehars.

And if anyone knew how to build, it was them.

However, the reports she’d received from her spies told her that the humans from Earth – or Dirt, as her translation system kept calling it – had changed the ship so fundamentally that an argument could be made that it wasn’t even the same vessel anymore.

It was a grand accomplishment, but ultimately, it would prove useless.  They wouldn’t stand up to her forces.  They couldn’t.  Not for much longer.  Either they would break and retreat, presumably the same way they’d come to Orveth Kaal, or they would die.  Some might be taken prisoner.

Hopefully, they would be dragons.

Hostages could be useful in the coming conflict outside the ancestral world.  They would be well treated, but they would remain captives all the same.  Sometimes, that was the only way to get some of the more powerful deities or even transcendents to acquiesce.  Keeping their favorite grandchild captive under the threat of harm could do wonders to make them act more reasonably.

As those thoughts skated across Masasha’s mind, she watched the silver-and-gold vessel draw ever closer.  The much smaller craft surrounding it were far faster, and they managed to annoy her forces enough to clear the way.  Aside from big, dumb Kolahak, who’d planted himself directly in their path, there were no casualties. But the fervor with which the Earthlings fought was proof enough that they believed they could actually accomplish their goals.

Whatever they happened to be.

It was only when the vessel drew within a mile that alarm bells began to ring in Masasha’s mind.  She could scarcely sense the nature of what was within that winged ship, but what she could feel was enough to set her heart to racing.  It was a bundle of ethera with a strong enough signature that it could have been mistaken for a deity beast.

Was that their plan?

Had they captured some powerful animal that they intended to drop onto the forward command center?  Subduing a creature like that would be annoying, and it might create a little chaos.  But it wouldn’t do much to alter the course of battle.

And then, the vessel was above her.  She craned her neck upward to see that the entirety of the underside had opened, revealing terrifyingly dense ethera.  And it was all contained in an oblong fuselage.

Then, it fell.

The second it passed through those doors, Masasha knew she had underestimated her opponents.  She acted immediately, casting Exodus.  Bands of ethera snapped out, wrapping around any dragon within her range.  That was most of the command structure, though there were a few who preferred to stay closer to the surface of the island upon which it had been built.

A hundred or so tetradrakes, too.

About half that many serpentors. 

They were lost.  She knew that from the moment she’d cast her spell.

Once the bands of ethera wrapped around the dragons, she flooded it with ethera.  They settled into a series of runes, each one signaling a different vector of space.  Then, just before the object hit the top of the tower, Masasha’s spell reached a crescendo.

The object exploded on the slightest impact, and she barely felt the first hints of heat and force before she was suddenly somewhere else.

She slumped to the ground, her core nearly empty.  Moving so many dragons all at once was the most demanding spell she could cast.  Not surprising, considering she was moving people without their express consent.  It was only due to her incredible talent and strong spatial attunement that she could even manage that much.

Then the shockwave hit her.

Her scales blistered, and her bones felt like they’d turned to mush.  Some of the others nearby were better off, though only because they’d spent more time on body cultivation than she had.  However, Masasha was far from the worst off. 

More than a few had gone tumbling across the landscape, felling trees and digging massive grooves in the turf. 

And they were over a hundred miles away from the blast – the extent of her range while carrying so many people. 

She looked back toward the forward outpost.

And all she saw was a cloud shaped like a blue mushroom, blistering with ethereal lightning.  The swarm of dragons that had surrounded that tower were all gone, swallowed by that unnatural cloud.

“W-what was that?” wondered one of the dragons.

“I don’t know,” Masasha croaked, her throat soar from screaming.  She didn’t even remember doing so.  Had she blacked out for a moment?  “Healers!”

The ones she’d rescued were already working, though not on her.  Instead, they’d quickly assessed the damage and were healing the most egregiously injured. 

Masasha distracted herself from the pain of her blistered scales and broken bones by craning her neck and taking stock of the situation. She hadn’t had time to count the dragons she’d saved, but a quick count told her that she had gotten most of her allies.  A few had been just out of range, while the bulk of their forces had surrounded the Vengeance. 

All in all, the draconic casualties weren’t as steep as she had feared.

A dozen.

Maybe twenty.

Given the power of that…device, she felt they’d gotten off easy.  How in all the multi-verse had the humans gotten ahold of such a machine?  And more importantly, if they could do something like that only a century after integration, what might the future hold?

Masasha’s brow furrowed.

Her mission had just transformed from a vague proxy war into something far more important.  She couldn’t let that technology get out.  If they continued to develop…

A shudder ran up her spine as a Healer’s spell enveloped her.  She barely noticed her scales mending or her bones knitting themselves back together.  Probably because the Healer had used some sort of pain suppressing skill.

Even if they hadn’t, the lack might not have changed her mindset.  Such was her horror when considering what she’d just witnessed.

Then, suddenly, she saw something she hadn’t expected. 

The silver-and-golden portent of doom circled in the distance, losing altitude with every passing moment.  One of its wings was barely attached, while a good portion of its fuselage had been torn free of its skeleton.  That revealed dozens of people inside, scurrying here and there as they panicked.

“To me!” she growled. “Everyone capable, to the sky!  We hunt the monster that did this to us!”

Masasha spread her indigo wings, casting everything in shadow.  Then, she launched herself into the air.  A hundred dragons followed, each one brimming with absolute fury.  As her wings beat against the still-unsettled air, Masasha felt the heat rising.  There was something else in there, too.  Something she couldn’t identify but definitely found terrifying.

Whatever it was, they soon passed through the unseen cloud and bore down on the flying vehicle.  Someone inside pointed and shouted.

It banked, clearly trying to outmaneuver the flight of angry dragons.  But it was just a machine, and its mission was doomed.

Cylinders descended from the bottom of the fuselage, swiveling in their direction.  Then, they barked. 

And suddenly, there was a hole in Masasha’s wing. 

What followed was a cascade of fire that ripped holes in the other dragons’ wings.  If they’d been dependent on them for flight, then they might have fallen. But each and every one of them was a deity.  Creatures of magic as much as muscle.  And they wouldn’t be brought down just by a few holes in their wings.

Masasha descended upon the vehicle.

Then, something hit her.

For the second time in the last few minutes, she found herself spinning through the air, completely out of control.  Only when she righted herself did she see what had happened.

And it was her worst nightmare.

Literally the worst thing that could have happened. 

“You tried to fight a war without me?” demanded Illska, hovering in place. She maintained her humanoid form, but her ethereal black wings extended two hundred feet in every direction.  More importantly, she bristled with power, even with her massive sword still strapped to her back.  “A lesser dragon might take that as an insult.”

Masasha teleported to within a few hundred feet of her foe.  “We need not fight.  The humans have developed some sort of bane weapon.  They will –”

“Oh, how wrong you are, little Masa,” Illska said, finally drawing her weapon.  It glistened with pure obliteration.  “We definitely need to fight.”

Then, she launched herself at Masasha, forcing another teleportation. 

As she reappeared, she conjured a black hole meant to keep Illska at bay while she dealt with the humans.  But Illska’s charge would not be denied.  She tore through the miniature celestial body, cleaving it in two with her sword as she bore down on Masasha.

The message was clear.

She couldn’t do what she needed to do unless Illska was out of the picture. 

So, she refocused, knowing good and well that she couldn’t win if she didn’t give the battle her full concentration.  The humans would still be there when she emerged victorious.

Then, there would be a reckoning.