“We—inside—on!”
Jay wasn’t entirely certain what Meli was screaming thanks to the ringing in her ears, but she felt decently confident that it was probably something to do with the fact that they were both inside the mouth of a dragon.
“Working on it!” Jay shouted before immediately casting Mirror Magnification on herself.
Jadis’ already throbbing head swam as her perspective abruptly shifted thanks to the spell doubling her size. With both her vision and her hearing impaired, she was having a miserable time trying to reorient her multiple selves. The only one of her bodies she didn’t need to worry about on that front was the one in the most danger. Sure, being crushed between the jaws of a dragon was a terrible position to be in, but at least she didn’t have to spend any time trying to figure out where she or anyone else was. All Jay needed to do was flex her legs and push.
“Gah!” Jay exclaimed as her enhanced muscles strained against the force of the beast trying to eat her.
A month ago, Jadis had sacrificed some of her physical attributes in order to empower her Eldritch stat by changing the focus of her duplication ritual. It had been a logical choice to make at the time, since it not only empowered her own spells and her Agility, it also greatly enhanced the power of her lovers thanks to Lewd Lover’s Bond. However, as Jay felt the incredible force of the dragon’s maw press down against her, she truly missed having a higher Strength stat.
“Dodge!” Dys heard Severina’s voice shout over the deafness still hindering her.
Instantly obeying the Seraphim’s command, Dys spun and dove. She was still trying to blink the blinding light out of her eyes and all she could see was a confusing jumble of colors and shapes flying around her. As she threw herself towards the ground, Jadis realized that part of the issue was likely her Succubus eyes spell interfering with her normal vision. Making the internal effort to cancel the skill, she immediately noticed a reduction in the visual noise that had been hindering her sight. The increased clarity came just in time for Dys to see the massive cloud of ice shards passing just over her.
The ice blue dragon’s breath attack washed across the sky like a billowing wave of destruction. Millions of tiny ice shards cut through the wind while random blasts of bright blue lightning crackled through the cloud. Dys felt her hair stand on end while small bursts of static electricity crackled across her joints even as the cold of the ice storm frosted her black armor white.
From a different perspective, Syd watched as the blue dragon’s incredible cold lightning attack spread out for what had to be hundreds of meters. Even though the electricity cut off as soon as the dragon stopped breathing out its magic, the ice cloud remained. It floated in the air, obscuring sight lines as it slowly spread, and Jadis had to wonder if the frost would coat the forest below like a winter storm once it eventually settled.
Syd was flying high, having chased after Halvor in the initial run. Overlooking the scene, she could see that the red dragon had caught her Jay self in its jaws and was flying upwards as it struggled to deal with the suddenly enlarged mouthful. Halvor was still with Syd, and she could see Severina flying next to Dys below and to the east of the ice cloud, but it took her a moment to find the rest of her allies. After a couple of seconds, she spotted Noct’s black wings as the bound woman circled behind the start of the ice cloud, and far to the other side she saw the crackle of Tiernan’s lightning disc. Wilhelm, Rein, and Tacitus were nowhere to be seen, though Jadis guessed that they were all three caught inside of the cloud. A moment after that thought came to her, a movement caught Syd’s eye. From out of the top of the cloud burst a shining golden figure riding a winged beast.
Wilhelm was glowing bright, his sword raised high to his side as he rode Taube upward at a steep angle. The ice blue dragon burst from the magic cloud, right on the clawed heels of the griffon, jaws snapping. Before the colossal beast could get its sharp teeth around the feathered mount’s hindlegs, Wilhelm waved his sword and a crescent-shaped wave of holy light slashed through the sky behind him. The light struck the dragon in its face and Jadis heard the monstrous lizard let out a screech of angered pain. While Syd couldn’t see any outward signs of damage on the dragon’s head, she saw the quilled beast change its direction as it pulled away from chasing after the Hero and his griffon.
Syd would have let out a breath of relief on behalf of Wilhelm’s safety, if it weren’t for the fact that the dragon’s new direction had the beast heading straight for the Leviathan.
Multiple things happened at once after that. First, Jadis realized that whether the ice blue dragon was pregnant or not, she very well might have to kill the creature in order to protect her own child. That was an unhappy choice, but it was one she would make without regrets. The second thing she came to notice was that she might not have a choice in the matter regardless, since she could see Halvor, Wilhelm, and a second later, Rein and Tacitus, all diving at the blue dragon from different directions. The third thing that happened was that Jay finally noticed that there was a giant spider on her chest.
The way the red dragon had caught Jay in its mouth meant that the top of her head was angled towards its throat while her arms and legs pushed up against the top of its mouth. Even with her increased size, she was still entirely inside the dragon’s maw. Meli had been protected against her chest, but Jay had released her hold on the Dryad while she pushed against the monster’s jaw strength with all of her might. At some point, without her noticing when, her sweet yet sort of weird lover had transformed into… a wooden spider.
“I will try to talk to it!” Meli’s voice came from the horrifying visage of clacking wooden pincers. “Try not to hurt it!”
“Sure!” Jay shouted back, her voice cracking a little. “No problem! Take your time!”
Skittering off of her chest and slipping out between the gaps in between the beast’s toothy jaws, Meli crawled outside and onto the dragon’s face. Jadis lost track of what happened to Meli after that since her other two selves were focused on other matters, but a moment later a deafening screech came from the red dragon, rattling Jadis’ head inside of her metal helmet.
If a giant spider had crawled out of her mouth, Jadis was pretty sure she would have had the same reaction.
The ice blue dragon let out its own ear-splitting roar as it dove after the Leviathan. Mouth opening wide, Dys and Syd could see the power charging up inside as it prepared to release another blast of ice and lightning. Jadis couldn’t let the airship be struck by such a devastating attack, so the two of her dove at the beast with all of her speed in an effort to stop the dragon’s breath, or at least redirect it.
The Hero struck first. Leading his dive with a golden light, Wilhelm struck the side of the dragon’s head like a cannonball, knocking the beast to one side as the divine power crackled like shattering glass. A moment after, Rein shot through the dragon’s right wing, his spear leading as he drilled through one of the long finger bones. At the same time, Halvor landed on the dragon’s back, just at the base of the beast’s spine, and let out a roar of his own as he began chopping away at spikey scales.
Jadis did not want the blue dragon to die, not if it was a healthy member of its species, and especially not if it was pregnant. She could barely imagine what she would say to Villthyrial if she killed one or more of his favored beasts when she hadn’t even visited Vetregin on his behalf yet. Desperate to find a way to stop the dragon from attacking but also wanting to stop her allies from killing the creature, Dys and Syd dove down onto the back of the enraged beast with their arms and legs spread out to maximize impact.
Every bone in the two of Jadis’ bodies shook as she slammed into the dragon, but the effect of her attack was about as good as she could have hoped for. The huge blue beast was jolted hard, and the stream of ice and lightning that poured out of its open mouth flew in wild directions. Wilhelm and the rest of her allies fell back to avoid the magic attack, except for Halvor who continued to hack away at the dragon’s spine with his axes.
“Stop!” Dys shouted as she lunged at the raging barbarian. “I don’t want to kill it!”
“Hva!?” Halvor roared as he surprisingly displayed the strength to bat away her hand with one of his axes. “What are you talking about!?”
While Dys tried to explain her reasons to the Berserker, Syd rushed past him and half ran, half flew up the beast’s neck so that she could latch onto the blue dragon’s face like an oversized limpet. Taking a cue from what was happening to her other self with the red dragon, Syd did the reverse and got her enlarged arm span around the beast’s jaws from the outside. She figured that if it worked on crocodiles, there was a chance it would work on dragons as well.
Jadis’ gambit proved right as the huge ice and lightning dragon let out a muffled roar, unable to open its jaws and Syd squeezed her arms and legs around it as tightly as she could. What she had not counted on was the fact that the dragon didn’t need its mouth to cast spells.
Abruptly spinning in the air, the blue dragon dislodged both Dys and Halvor from its back. Before either could recover, the beast spread its wings wide and let out another muffled roar. Crackling blue lightning radiated around the dragon in a wide circle, striking at everything and everyone within range. Both Dys and Syd shuddered under the assault, electricity coursing over and through her, though she held up better than she would have in the past thanks to her vastly increased Resilience. Dys could see that others being struck by the lightning fared similarly to her as they recoiled from the attack but did not appear to be mortally wounded.
Except, it wasn’t just her and the Hero’s companions who were struck by the lightning. Great arcs of destructive electricity stretched out for the floating airship, unstoppable by any means Jadis possessed. She let out a scream of panic as the lightning trailed along the sides of the Leviathan. Only…
The dragon’s magic attack did not touch the airship. Instead, the arcs of blue electricity rolled across a huge golden barrier that had surrounded the starboard side of the vessel. Jadis could see the divine light cracking and splintering, yet it held strong and did not break under the assault. When the dragon’s magic ended, the barrier was still in place, and the Leviathan was undamaged.
“Thank fucking D,” Syd growled while giving the dragon’s snout that she was latched onto a whack with the pommel of her sword staff. “Stop fighting us you giant piece of frozen shit! I’m trying not to kill you!”
Whether the dragon understood her words or not, Jadis couldn’t tell. However, the massive beast did abruptly angle away from the airship. Or rather, it was pushed away from the airship, as a gale-force wind suddenly flared into existence. Looking around, Dys spotted Tiernan on his lightning disc, a magic sigil floating in the air before him. She didn’t even need her Succubus eyes to see the immense amount of magic that was being poured through the hovering rune circle as the gnome powered his spell. A hurricane of wind pushed the ice blue dragon away from the Leviathan, sending it back the way it had come on an unsteady wing thanks to the injury that Rein had inflicted.
It was at that moment that Jay was spat unceremoniously out of the red dragon’s mouth. The move was so unexpected that she was completely unprepared for it, and she flailed about in the sky for a moment as she worked to reorient herself. Getting her bearings, she saw that the dragon had flown them hundreds of feet higher into the sky above the battle below. The red beast was diving, and from the angle, it looked like it was chasing after the ice blue dragon.
A second before she dove after the beast, Jay spotted an eight-legged figure falling through the air. Swooping after her, Jay caught her transformed Dryad lover, who quickly used many legs to latch onto her.
“Did you talk to it?” Jay shouted as she angled her course back around to chase after the red dragon. “Will it back off?”
“I am not certain,” Meli shouted back, her voice unchanged by the odd shape change. “It is angry and I do not think it trusted me!”
“Are we going to have to kill it?”
“No!” Meli insisted, her voice as forceful as Jadis had ever heard the woman. “Lead them away! They will not chase the Levithan so far from their nest if we lead them away!”
“How am I supposed to lead them away!?” Jay cried out as she came up next to the diving dragon.
“It should not be a problem!” Meli claimed confidently as she used one of her many legs to point at the ice blue dragon. “They are both extremely angry at the one of you holding onto the female’s face! They are going to try and kill you!”
“Perfect!” Jay’s laugh was a little hysterical, even to her own ears. “How could this day go any better!”
“I think the day would be better if they gave up their chase without trying to kill you!” Meli answered. “Don’t you think?”
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