Chapter IV.LIX (4.59) - Dragons

  Kizu formed a barrier under his feet. He stood a kilometer over the academy. Winds battered at him as he scanned the horizon. Beneath his feet, the island sprawled out. The volcano loomed behind him, blocking his view. But he didn’t need to look in that direction. Not unless his enemies decided to circle around. Kizu kept his eyes westward.

  The three palm trees he’d climbed earlier in the semester for Basil’s challenge were perched on an island in the distance. They looked small from this far away, as if they were of height with him.

  Nothing yet.

  Then Kizu flared his spellsense, enhancing it as greatly as possible. The trees immediately lit up with their chaotic energy. Not what he was looking for. But…beyond that. Something far in the distance. It flickered in and out of his spellsense. That…that might be it.

  Not wanting to be spotted in the air, Kizu jumped down to the island’s west-most beach. Sand softened his landing as he fell half a meter.

  Now a bit closer, Kizu refocused on the point he noticed earlier. It grew on the horizon. Rapidly.

  Kizu’s first ever sight of Dragons. The magnificent reptilian beasts became visible overhead. Three of them. A green one, a black one, and a red one. Beautiful and terrifying as they tore through the air at a tremendous speed.

  Before anything else, Kizu downed a fireproofing potion. Then another. Then a third one. He let the empty vials thump to the sand as he prepared himself for the upcoming fight. His heart was in his ears. But he only needed to buy a minute. Maybe even less. He was the first defender, but would be far from the last.

  Arm outstretched, Kizu formed three solid chunks of rock with elemental magic. They spun around his closed fist. He stretched space. Further and further.

  The Dragons approached. Still so high in the sky, but close enough now for Kizu to hear the thump of their wings in the air overhead.

  Kizu took aim at the smallest of the three enemies, and let the spatial stretch snap.

  Propelled not only by Kizu’s spatial magic, but also his normal push of elemental magic, a stone the size of Kizu’s head rocketed up. His breath caught. The Dragons didn’t even bother looking down at him.

  Not until the stone pummeled into the black Dragon’s wing. Shards of stone rained down from above, utterly obliterated. But the wing did not exit the exchange without blemish. The Dragon hollered in surprise as the beat of its wing went off tempo. It swayed in the air.

  Then it plummeted.

  Not in a wild fall, but rather a controlled dive. Centered on Kizu.

  The beast’s black scales glinted in the sunlight. And it opened its jaws. Even from afar, Kizu could see the sparks igniting in the Dragon’s mouth as it planned to cremate him alive.

  Kizu snapped a second stretch of space, hurling the next stone at the swiftly approaching Dragon. But it planned accordingly, now aware of Kizu’s presence, the Dragon shifted its weight to the side and dodged the attack with ease. Unfortunately for it, it didn’t expect Kizu’s final attack. This one concealed by illusions, it saw it too late as the final stone rammed into its shoulder.

  Again, the Dragon clearly took damage and its descent wobbled, less controlled. But gravity still tore it down at Kizu.

  Flames erupted overhead, completely obscuring everything from view.

  Kizu jumped.

  His feet touched down on the beach a hundred meters away. His ronin costume burned, on fire. He tore it off. Thankfully he still wore his usual academy uniform underneath, the enchantments keeping it safe from fire damage. For now.

  The black Dragon’s wings beat down, sending out a blast of wind that nearly knocked Kizu over. The wings slowed the Dragon’s fall and it remained airborne, scanning the beach for Kizu.

  “I smell Dragon on you, insect,” the growling voice of the Dragon boomed. “More than those of my homeland. Your sins will be purged by flame and that piece of you extracted from your ashes.”

  Kizu’s monster leg twitched and his eyes widened. This leg had been a smaller, human sized version of a much larger foot in one of the necromancer vats they’d found. The implications that it might be related to Dragons…well, it was something to consider for later. At the moment it just reassured Kizu that this leg would remain fireproof no matter the heat of the flames. Nevermind the fact that the rest of him wasn’t so resilient.

  Overhead, the other two Dragons had paused to wait for their companion. That was such a blessing. There was nothing to stop them from beginning their assault on Shinzou Island. Nothing but curiosity.

  The black Dragon finally located him. Smoke billowed from its nostrils and it opened its mouth, more likely to bathe Kizu in flames than to continue chatting.

  Kizu jumped, this time behind the Dragon as the fire consumed the position he’d stood a second earlier. He quickly stretched space and launched one of his potions at the Dragon. It burst on the beast’s underbelly, the Dragon’s scales.

  Kizu designed the potion after one of the petrification brews the crone had taught him. But even her recipes had little effect when placed against a Dragon. Maybe a meter squared solidified into stone before the petrification faded. And a single flex of the Dragon’s muscles caused the majority of the stone to flake off. He hadn’t expected it to contain the Calamity for long, but this fell short of his already low expectations.

  “Going to need a different tactic,” Kizu muttered to himself.

  The Dragon jerked its head in Kizu’s direction and engulfed the area between them in burning flames. Kizu raised a barrier over himself just in time. Kizu felt the pressure of the flames against his barrier. Even with it between them, the heat drenched him in sweat and his lips cracked and his eyes stung. He raised a hand and stretched space once again, forming another large stone from elemental magic.

  The sand on the other side of his barrier bubbled under the heat of the Dragon. Kizu kept on his feet through an act of pure will. Every piece of his body wanted to collapse from the heat surrounding him.

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  His barrier waned. It had lasted only seconds under the assault. Dragons truly were in a league of their own in regards to brute force. Kizu let the barrier shatter, let the space snap together to slingshot the stone, and jumped. All simultaneously.

  He collapsed in the sand a ways away. The heat was still horrendous, but he managed to gasp for clean air. His burned throat greedily sucked in what it could.

  The Dragon roared as the stone smashed into its face. It fell to the sand and shook its head back and forth. Chunks of newly formed glass on the beach split and crackled as the Dragon flailed about, righting itself. Then its gaze fell on Kizu standing off to the side and its eyes narrowed. It bore its teeth. Teeth stained with blood. This time, Kizu had truly wounded the Calamity. Kizu’s already rapidly beating heart somehow picked up pace further. The Dragon bled. Kizu saw a path forward. An idea.

  Kizu resisted falling into a fit of coughing. Instead he quickly uncorked and downed a healing potion.

  “Are you the Harbinger?” Kizu shouted at the Dragon. He could jump to the side if he needed to and continue their game of cat and mouse. But he wanted to get it to speak.

  “Harbinger?” it roared. “You think I am a Harbinger?”

  “Well, you are smaller than the other two circling above. So I thought you might be part human,” Kizu taunted. It was true. This black Dragon was half the size of the two overhead.

  “My brother has nothing on my might! He is a weak sack of flesh! You insult me with your final breath, human! Bow down and accept your worthless death!”

  The world spun as Kizu released his final gambit. His blood dangerously low after reinforcing that barrier earlier.

  Kizu let space snap one final time. This time though, he released two objects at once.

  If the Dragon had wised up to his previous attacks, it showed no sign of it. The damage he’d dealt to it seemed to have already healed. It didn’t bother to dodge his attack, thinking it knew the limit of his capabilities.

  In a way, it was right. Kizu himself had no spells that could permanently damage this creature. His most powerful attacks were the equivalent to a child punching an adult. But he had drawn blood from its gums earlier. And Sojan drank blood.

  The knife flew into the Dragon’s mouth, getting caught between two teeth.

  Kizu watched the Dragon’s body stiffen. Then, in an attempt to free Sojan from its mouth, it bit down, shattering the multi-colored potion vial that rested in its mouth.

  For a moment, all was still. Then the Dragon beat its wings and struggled to take flight. Instead, it slammed downwards into the sand.

  “What…what is this foul taste?”

  It opened its mouth to blast Kizu with fire. He instinctively created a barrier to separate himself from the Calamity. But he didn’t need to worry. The flames dribbled out of the Dragon’s mouth like molten puke, scorching the sand around it, but harmless at Kizu’s distance.

  Kizu spared a single glance over at the three trees in the distance, silently thanking them for their contribution. Then he jumped forward, right in front of the Dragon’s eye, and doused it in a soul destruction potion.

  Its body spasmed and the Dragon yowled in pain as the potion sizzled through its eye. An effect Kizu had never before seen from the potion. The potion’s contents attacked the Calamity from within at the same time Sojan struggled to seize control. Kizu jumped back, outside of the biting range of the downed Dragon.

  Overhead, an earsplitting wail rang out. The red Dragons split off from its companion and dove in Kizu’s direction.

  “Mother…” the black Dragon growled, its remaining eye pointed skyward. “Avenge….” And then nothing but a garbled jumble of syllables as it attempted to fight back against Sojan’s control.

  Kizu had no other means in which to fight. No tricks left. He had used them all up on the smallest of the three Dragons.

  He stared up at the Calamity descending on him. Then back to where the black Dragon twitched with Sojan still caught in its mouth like a fishbone. He tried to think of a way out of this that kept his friend by his side. Kizu’s heart fell when he realized he once again needed to leave the dagger behind. He saw no means of retrieval without risking himself by crawling into the Calamity’s mouth. He started to apologize to his friend.

  And a brilliant blue comet struck the red Dragon’s neck with a crunch and bounced off it.

  The red Dragon struggled midair as a flaming turkey flew proudly in front of the Dragon.

  Then, a split second later, another figure rammed into the Dragon. Professor Arclight’s laughter boomed across the island, nearly as loud as the Dragon’s cry. She stood on the Dragon’s crown, a brilliant fist raised and gathering light from the sun above. Then she brought the fist down on the Dragon’s eye.

  Midair, the Dragon flipped itself over and snatched its jaws closed around Arclight. Arclight continued to laugh, but now there was an edge of pain mixed in as the red Dragon struggled to snap her between its teeth.

  Professor Oasaji switched from the roar of flames to the crackle of electricity as he dove at his enemy’s wounded eyes.

  Twisting again, the Dragon dodged the professor’s attack and tail whipped around. Oasaji took the brunt of the attack and plummeted from the air. The sea erupted at his impact.

  But in a blink of an eye, Professor Oasaji now descended on the Dragon from above, a lake’s worth of seawater at his beck and call.

  “How?” Kizu marveled. Then he spotted it. On a barrier up in the sky where Oasaji fell from, stood Wakino. She’d portaled not only the professor, but enough water to turn the academy grounds into a swamp.

  “You handled this one alone?” a gruff voice asked.

  Kizu whirled around to see Taroe standing behind him. The disheveled man’s eyes hard as he studied the downed black Dragon. It still twitched.

  “I used a soul destruction potion,” Kizu said, his voice hoarse and painful. “And Sojan is inside it.”

  “Hm. You have another? Looks like Sojan could use more help.”

  Kizu handed the ex-Elite his last vial of the potion.

  Taroe slapped a hand on Kizu’s shoulder. Kizu doubled over, unable to control himself as he puked into the sand. Everything spewed out of his stomach, black and lumpy. But, once out of his system, his insides felt fine. His throat felt fine.

  By the time he looked up, Taroe had already smashed the potion vial into the black Dragon’s mouth.

  “It’s not designed for Dragons,” Kizu said, his voice completely returned to normal.

  “I figured,” Taroe replied, not looking back at him. “Why would you have something like that lying around? But combined with its youth and the damage from your dagger is currently inflicting on its soul, this should be enough.”

  “Enough to kill it?” Kizu asked.

  “No.” Before Kizu could press Taroe to elaborate, something else caught his eye.

  Riding on a rainbow of color, Professor Ignis had joined the fray alongside Oasaji and Arclight. He’s managed to replace Arclight with a copy of herself. He somehow warped the Dragon’s flames with screeching noise and colors.

  Wakino sliced space. Everyone in the air jerked around under her control, as if puppets. Barriers flickered about, combining with Ignis’ illusions to create enemies of space. Oasaji manipulated the seawater Wakino had gifted him, creating cages of ice and steam. Two summoned Dire Sharks swam through the seawater, biting into the Dragon’s side.

  But still, all four of them fought a single Dragon. Its strength overwhelmed every obstacle placed in its path. It took damage, but healed from the attacks nearly as quickly. And blasts of flame sent them into retreat time after time.

  “Are you going to join them?” Kizu asked Taroe.

  “I specialize in healing,” Taroe grunted. “Up in the air with them, I’d be nothing more than a liability. If they get hurt, I’m here to put them back together.”

  “But the third Dragon,” Kizu said. If all of them were focused on the red Dragon, then who would stop the last Calamity? Professor Knoff and Professor Grove? That hardly seemed like a defensive force.

  He craned his neck around and spotted the final Dragon. It had flown on, intent on destroying the island rather than helping its companions.

  But it had encountered a roadblock. A single mage hung in the air between the Calamity and Shinzou Academy. Even from this distance, Kizu could see the figure’s tall hat.

  Headmaster Ballarfulur stared down the Dragon.

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