Jadis was reminded of an old saying she had read once in a history book. The context was eluding her in the moment, but she recalled that the gist of it was that when one held a wolf by the ears, one didn’t like it, but one didn’t dare let go. She had always understood the phrase to mean that sometimes people had to do things that they didn’t like, but if they stopped doing that thing, things would get a lot worse. It was a reasonable simile, except that Jadis had never quite understood how one would get into a situation where one was holding a wolf by its ears in the first place.
As she held tightly onto the snout of an enraged pregnant dragon, Jadis felt she finally understood the old saying in its entirety.
Syd had to actively suppress the urge to throw up every time the ice blue dragon shook her head in an attempt to dislodge her. She regularly moved much faster than the dragon’s long neck was capable of; however, the fact that she was being tossed about at high speed by another being’s will, while also spinning through the sky hundreds of feet above the ground, was doing terrible things to Syd’s stomach. It didn’t help that she was facing towards the beast rather than away, so every time Syd raised her head, she looked directly into the angry red eyes of the probably pregnant dragon. Those moments did not help her comfort levels.
The real issue wasn’t the headshaking, of course. Unlike wyverns, dragons had front legs separate from their wings, and thus it was entirely possible for the dragon to simply reach up and pluck Syd from its snoot and flick her away like a particularly annoying booger. Or, the more likely reaction, claw her to little pieces before eating her. If Syd had been the extent of the force Jadis had to bear against the beast, that would have undoubtedly happened already. However, as always, Jadis had more means than the average beautiful giant woman had at their disposal.
Diving past the dragon’s left wing, Dys bodily slammed into the clawed paw of the blue dragon, preventing her from swiping at Syd. The massive beast let out an angry screech, which was blessedly muffled thanks to her mouth being forced closed. When the dragon moved to swipe at Syd again, Dys struck once more, pounding her paws with high-speed collisions that cracked scales and kept claws away from her other self.
From above, the sight of her Dys self attacking the much larger dragon with quick fly-by strikes reminded her of a crow attacking an eagle. It would have been an amusing spectacle, if not for all of the surrounding circumstances. Also, the fact that the second, even bigger red dragon was diving towards its threatened mate knocked all humor out of the situation.
Catching up to the huge beast thanks to her incredible flight speed, Jay swung her hammer with one hand against the side of the dragon in an effort to distract. She still didn’t want to hurt either of the magical flying lizards, but not at the cost of her own life. Unfortunately, the red dragon ignored the slam of her weapon against its scales entirely as it focused its full draconic attention on rescuing its irate mate from Dys and Syd.
Just before the red dragon reached the blue, a flash of golden light swept past its head like a diving falcon. A burst of divine power sparked off of the dragon’s horns as Severina used her smite on the beast in a dizzyingly fast fly-by. Jadis wasn’t sure if much damage was done, but the attack was at least enough to distract the colossal creature for a moment as its dive went slightly off course.
“Thank you, Sev,” Jay called out before using her momentum to whip around to the front of the dragon and smash the end of its nose with her hammer. “Keep your eyes on me, big guy!”
Almost as though the dragon could understand exactly what she had just said, he let out another teeth-rattling roar before snapping its jaws mere feet away from Jay’s boots.
“He does not like you very much,” Meli called out, though Jadis couldn’t tell if the comment was a translation or an observation.
“Okay, that’s fine,” Jay shouted as she took evasive maneuvers. “Just tell me he can’t breathe fire!”
“I do not know if he can or cannot!” the Dryad tightened her eight spider legs which were wrapped around Jay’s torso. “I hope not!”
Jadis hoped not, too. She had been cooked alive far too many times for her liking, and she didn’t want to relive the experience again. Especially not with her very flammable lover riding on her back.
Taking a quick look around her three selves, Jadis realized that both her distraction efforts and the strong winds that Tiernan had conjured had led the dragons a good distance away from the Leviathan. She could still see the glowing barrier surrounding the starboard side of the vessel, but otherwise the ship seemed to be wholly intact and more importantly, out of range of the draconic attacks. The Hero and everyone else capable of flight were currently either chasing after her and the dragons, or in the case of Tiernan, staying by the airship. Jadis didn’t know how much magic it took to conjure a windstorm powerful enough to blow a dragon off course, but she guessed the Arch Wizard was probably low on reserves after such an impressive spell.
Since they appeared to be far enough away from the Leviathan, and they were already headed in a different direction, Jadis made the snap decision to release her hold on the blue dragon’s muzzle. The moment she did, Syd shot away as fast as she could fly. The sound of snapping jaws followed her, but her speed was too great for the dragon to match. Which, unfortunately, put Jadis in a position where she had to purposefully slow down her flight. She needed to lead the two dragons on a chase, which wouldn’t be accomplished if she sped off at her top speed and left the angered beasts behind. Chances were, they would turn their frustrated fury onto anything else nearby, which would be putting her allies back into danger.
Converging together into a trio of soaring giants, Jadis flew in a weaving pattern just in front of the two dragons. Blasts of lightning and frost blew behind her as the female dragon raged, but no breath of fire came from the red dragon. Jadis began to wonder if the brightly colored beast had any sort of breath attack at all, when the spectral image of a third dragon roared up from the ground in front of her.
Jadis flinched in shocked fright, but only for a moment. While the third dragon looked real, she was also able to see through it in a similar way to how Sorcha’s wand could make people translucent. However, the effect didn’t come across as a purposeful attempt at subterfuge. Instead, her brain tingled with the distinct impression that the unexpected third dragon was nothing more than an illusion.
As Meli screamed in panicked fright, Jay dove directly through the new dragon’s open maw, passing through the phantom without so much as a ripple to disturb the image.
“It’s a fake!” Jay called out in an attempt to calm the Dryad. “I fought a hydra that did the same thing! That red dragon is using illusions!”
“If you—if you say so,” Meli gasped. “I could not tell!”
Jadis had to admit that she felt a little proud to hear that. Her low Resilience stat had been a problem for her against many enemies in the past, and she had suffered repeatedly due to that vulnerability. While it was still her overall weakest defensive attribute, her Resilience could no longer be considered weak since the stat was over one hundred points strong. It was nice to know that she couldn’t be so easily tricked by illusions anymore, not even from a powerful magic beast like a dragon.
“Holy shit!” all three of Jadis cursed as a chaotic flurry of dozens of dragons, mountains, strobing moons and stars, and formless swirling colors appeared all around her.
Jadis dodged and weaved through the illusions, her brain able to tell what they were for the most part. And yet, the overwhelming mental stimulus of so many shapes and lights flying at her faces confused her sense of perspective and direction. Even if she ignored the obviously fake and non-physical objects, the flashing lights and colors were blinding. It wasn’t until she felt the snap of tree branches break against her armor that Jadis realized that her bodies had somehow ended up descending to nearly ground level.
Realizing her mistake just in time, Jadis pulled all three of her bodies up in a sharp ascent as a wave of ice and lightning blasted through the air where she had been a moment before. Through the confusing jumble of illusory shapes and colors, Jadis saw the forest below disappear under the destructive storm cloud of the ice dragon’s rage.
“I’m sorry, Meli,” Jay shouted over the sound of lightning crackling through ice. “I’m going to try and get you somewhere safe!”
Putting on a little more speed, Jadis split her three selves into different directions. Since there were three of her and only two dragons, she figured they could only chase two of her at most, which would give her third self time to fly Meli out of danger. The plan worked exactly as intended, for once, as Dys and Syd led the red and blue dragons away while Jay dodged out of the line of fire. However, before Jadis could celebrate her quick thinking, the one flaw in her scheme became apparent.
Jadis and the dragons had flown so fast and so far that she was no longer in range of the Leviathan. While her bodies could go much further apart than they used to be able to, she was still constrained by the need for proximity. Glancing around, Jay saw that her flying companions were still chasing after them, but they were also out of range. Jadis could try decreasing her speed so that her Jay self could connect with the closest of her ally, Severina, but that would put her other two selves back into more direct conflict with the pair of enraged parents, and she really didn’t want to cause any more harm than had already occurred in the encounter so far. Dropping Meli off in the forest below was also an option, but then Jadis would have to worry about finding the Dryad later, which didn’t sound great, especially when the landscaping being blasted by dragon breath was still on the menu.
Speeding up into the sky so that she was above and behind the two dragons, Jay took a moment to get a good view of the situation. She and the angry beasts had flown most of the distance back to the mountain peak that the red dragon had been circling before. The Leviathan had also been moving steadily to the west and away from the mountains, possibly far enough that the dragons would no longer see the airship as a territorial threat. Still, Jadis didn’t want to race back to the Leviathan only to discover that the dragons were still willing to keep up the chase. So, coming to a decision, Jadis did what she thought would serve the situation best. She employed evasive maneuvers.
Swooping low, Dys and Syd began to whirl through the air just above the tops of the pine trees that covered the side of the mountain. Keeping up high speeds and using her relatively smaller size to her advantage, Jadis kept just ahead of the dragons chasing her. Spinning, rolling, looping, and crossing paths, Jadis turned the chase into a knot of high-speed aerial maneuvers that kept the two beasts focused in one area. Furious roars and more illusions and destructive breath attacks followed, but she noticed that there were less and less of those as time wore on. Dragons were not people, Jadis knew, and thus did not have classes, but they were magic beasts and thus had magic specific to their species. At a guess, Jadis figured that the dragons were running low on their magic reserves thanks to the constant casting that they had been doing for the past several minutes. Weakening the dragons suited Jadis just fine, so she continued to use two of her selves to distract and dodge past the pair as they circled over the snow-capped peaks of the towering mountain tops.
Right up until disaster struck.
Sweeping across the back of the red dragon, Syd spun to the side to avoid a slashing attack from the beast’s claws as it rolled over. Since she had her Jay self watching the flurry of action from above, Syd was able to easily dodge not only the red dragon, but the blue dragon who had taken the opportunity to whip her long tail at her as well. However, while Jadis had nearly supernatural levels of coordination, the dragons did not. A pained screech came from the red beast’s toothy maw as its mate’s tail slashed across its neck, just under its jaw.
A huge gout of dark red blood sprayed into the sky as the colossal red dragon hurtled away from both Syd and the ice blue dragon. At first, Jadis wasn’t even certain of what had happened, nor did it seem as though the female dragon realized what it had done. However, seconds later, the spinning red dragon fell like a meteor out of the sky, crashing into the side of the mountain in a spray of red-tinged snow.
“Shit!” Jadis chorused as her three selves rapidly pulled up and away from the crash site.
The moment the dragon’s massive frame impacted the peak, a sheet of ice and snow broke free and collapsed down the side of the mountain. The red dragon’s crumpled form was rapidly lost in a rumbling avalanche that swept across hundreds of acres of rocks and pine trees. In moments, Jadis couldn’t tell where the great beast had landed, much less where he might have been carried to by the implacable and uncaring forces of gravity and snow.
Without so much as a glance at any of Jadis, the ice blue dragon dove down onto the mountain and immediately began to dig through the snowdrifts and broken trees. Even from her vantage in the sky high above the mountain, Jadis could hear the mournful cries of the dragon desperately searching for her mate.
“Villthyrial is going to fucking kill me,” Jadis cursed before diving out of the sky to help search for the fallen dragon.
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