47 Chapter Forty-Seven - Swords and Dragons (1/2)
”Weeeeeeee!”
Brownie Mikle's shriek of glee sounded next to my ear as I zipped through the forest. He was standing on the top of my Masspack, hanging onto my hair and his hat at the same time, although my Vajra had cut down wind resistance to nothing more than a fair breeze.
However, he obviously didn't have a lot of experience at shooting through the forest at a base 90' move, the equal of a riding horse at full gallop, and I could maintain this pace a long, long time.
We were whizzing through the forest, trailed by the patient mass of Forge and my belongings anchored to my belt. He might have ridden animals before, but the smooth skating of my lightfoot technique was something completely different, more like power-gliding then running, and the way I swayed back and forth to avoid the forest giants around me drew more whoops from him. If I took some sharp turns and spun entirely around a tree or two just for the fun of it, he wasn't complaining at all.
I danced headlong down mountain slopes, or just plain threw myself off of a cliff or two, sliding down the air to an open area to resume my run. Mikle was whooping and laughing the whole while, even as he pointed here and there towards open areas to run through.
Startled flocks of birds flew into the air. Rabbits ran away. Deer herds scattered. Bears huffed and looked up as we streaked by. Clouds of pixies roiled in our wake and tried to catch up, failing. I blew by a couple trolls fishing in a river, extended my lightfoot down a bit, and caught both of them right in the face with a spray of water. They roared in fury as Mikle's gleeful laughter mocked them.
I ran across a lake, and found a couple giant otters trying their best to pace me as I did so. I reached down once, twice, and scooped two pike out of the waters before they could dart away, holding them up as I glided along on forward momentum.
”Lunch?” I asked the otters archly, as their heads broke the water, looking hungrily at the fish.
I tossed both kicking fish into the air. Lean brown forms lunged up to snatch them in midair instantly, and I laughed and picked up speed again.
Just running like this was immensely cathartic. The main use of my enhanced physical ability had been just using it as a better way to butcher things. Just flat out running at inhuman speed for miles and miles was just so… refreshing.
Of course, I was running towards a big fight, so there was that…
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I tilted my head sharply.
Something was roaring… in two-tones. And something, things, was shrieking in response.
I panned the whole sky, flipping around to skate backwards across the water.
Blurs of black at eight o'clock. I fed Essence to my Mask of Clarity, and my view leapt forwards by a factor of ten. Miles became mere hundreds of yards.
Griffons. And… a dragon?
A two-headed dragon, with a rider...
I swerved, altering course urgently. ”Goodbrown Mikle, I've got a fight coming, you'll probably want to get off until I'm done.”
”A fight?!” He sounded excited. ”Fighting what?”
”A two-headed dragon. It's probably attached to the incursion you were telling me about.”
”Oooooh…” His emerald eyes were sparkling with excitement. ”Can I stay and watch, m'lady?”
”Stay tight in that pack and don't move.”
He crouched down promptly, taking my words very seriously.
”Not the griffons?” Tremble spoke up. Mikle nearly jumped out of the pack.
”Who was that?” he exclaimed, looking around wildly.
”Those griffons sound like recruits to me. Goodbrown Mikle, that's my Sword, Tremble.”
”A pleasure to meet you, Goodbrown Mikle,” Tremble said cheerfully. He peeked over the edge of the pack and stared down at her in her sheath. She waggled her quillons at him.
”Ohhhh, a talking Sword!” His little eyes went wide. ”A pleasure to meet you too, goodblade!”
”Just keep your head down, and Sama and I will take care of this overgrown mudworm,” Tremble said confidently. He nodded dumbly at her words, and turned his eyes back forwards.
”Can you really kill a dragon?” he asked in my ear.
”Yes. You're probably going to be uncomfortable when I extend my Null, so be ready for it.”
”Your Null?” he asked, and then gasped as I extended it out for one heartbeat.
To a fey, having their intangible connection to the land and magic severed so smoothly and completely was like being smothered in a wet, heavy blanket. No use of magic was possible in my Null, magic was as silent and still as iron. Despite himself, he gasped, and I felt him shiver on my shoulder.
”What is that?” he asked nervously.
”It's magic going silent and still. The magic is still there, but it is not and will not move, or change, or condense, or anything. It's a Null, basically forcing magic to stay magic, and not allowing it to be wielded by other powers.”
”That sounds very powerful,” he admitted meekly.
”It comes with the side effect of not being able to use or project magic at all. So, great defense, but misses out on all the real fun of magic.”
”You can run on water…”
”That's my Tats. I can use magical items that are bound to me. I can also use ki, as long as I don't project it or spend it. I basically have to treat myself like some sort of magic item, rather then a spellcaster or something. No magic for Sama.”
”Oh.” He kind of squinted up ahead, where griffons were swooping and circling around the dragon, trying not to be caught by the much bigger beast and its greater threat range, but also clearly very pissed off it was present. The thing just looked wrong. The spikes weren't symmetrical, the scale patterns were irregular, and one head looked nothing like the other, to the point it was kind of a grayish-black thing with mismatched horns, a cancerous thing grown on the body of the real dragon, an infection slowly spreading across it as it got stronger.
Did it have three claws in front? Eesh. Scale, wingspan about sixty yards, pretty impressive, although it didn't satisfy physics at all, but who cared about physics in Magic Universe, right?
Two-head mutated dragons. Those usually came from… Klaw?
Eff me. And that freaking rider was wearing spike-festooned Demon-patterned dire harness skinplate. This was a Dark Gods incursion?
They were doing their aerial ballet in the air over a rising cliffside, trees below, swooping this way and that as the dragon changed direction.
I aligned my ki and screamed out in proper Celestial, ”Get him higher in the air and over a clearing!”
My voice wasn't hugely loud, but it carried like a bullet out ahead of me, not dispersing. It didn't matter that it was in Celestial, except to the dragon and its rider. The likelihood they could speak the language of Heaven was infinitesimal, given where they came from.
But I had the Whiskers of the Wild up, giving me a cat-face paint job with whiskers and a black nose, and my words could be understood by any animal… and that included griffons, the sacred magical beast of Aru.
I saw great golden eyes glancing my way, easily making me out since I was definitely the fastest thing on the ground around… and the only thing on the water, as it were.
The dragon saw me too, but that didn't mean much to it, as it could tell scale, and, well, I was pretty short. Running across water that fast was neat, but c'mon, I just couldn't be that much of a threat, could I?
The griffons heard, and the sheer fact they could hear and understand me across that range must have had an effect. The big one with the dark crest that seemed to be the leader began to shift their formation, moving up higher and to one side as they made their runs. The dragon obligingly shifted direction to both meet them and evade them, rapidly shifting as their belly runs raised scratches on its thick scales, snapping and clawing off feathers in passing.
The rider didn't have a ranged attack, but was waving around a sword worthy of an ogre, as if holding it would incite the griffons to attack him personally and get themselves chopped in two.
Despite how fast they were moving, there was a lot of back and forth motion, so I was catching up to them very quickly. I left the shoreline with a hop that took me fifteen feet into the air, Mikle whooped despite himself, and I was hurtling past the forest giants and the sparse undergrowth, alternately skipping falling trees and hopping off them, zigzagging a path through the green and brown at breakneck speed, gradually getting enough height to take it right to the major lower branches, so widely spaced they were like a very long-stepping road above the ground, and actually faster to travel then the ground.
If you were fast enough and had good enough balance. +35ish Balance modifier said this was like an open road to me. If it seemed a bit Narutoish, I could only pout that I couldn't get to soar for ten seconds between steps, and I definitely wasn't letting my arms drag back.
Forge carried on in my wake like a champ, magically keeping tight to my tracks.
Clearing up ahead. I gained two tiers of height as I shouted towards the skies, ”Griffons, break in all directions with a power glide!”
I tore out of the branches of a big old maple fifty feet above the ground, heading for the ground as the aerial melee up above was arriving at the center of the clearing.
They all reeled as one, breaking off in dives and swoops in every direction away from the dragon, leaving it looking in every which way in confusion, wondering which one to chase.
I slammed down to the ground, and blew my Null Interdiction out.
Gravity woke up, looked around, and wagged its finger at these creatures that had been ignoring it. The Veil snapped to attention, and locked down like steel.
The dragon a couple hundred yards above me began to fall. So did the griffons, but they were rapidly moving away from my Null, and were power-gliding as the effect washed over them. They began to drop with squawks of surprise, but reached the edge two hundred yards out and regained normal flying ability before they hit the tree tops.
Not so the dragon, much heavier relative to them, and when I hit the ground with a power-slide, I resumed my run to keep up with what remained of its forward momentum as it began to drop very quickly. Behind me, I let Forge's link with me fade, and it rapidly lost all ability to move, sinking down to mere inches above the ground as the Interdiction hit it, yet still glided for some ways on momentum behind me.
Multi-ton flying reptiles don't have a lot of time to think when the normal rules of lift and mass suddenly click into effect again.
It beat those great bat-like wings frantically, but couldn't generate the lift to stay airborne. Its forked tails lashed, it roared in very discordant fashion, even vented some acidic cloud and black-shot flames out as it fell. The rider swore and pulled at the useless reins as the dragon rolled uselessly, finally tried to just stretch its wings out and glide down at uncontrollable speed as I chased it… oooh, was it going to hit the edge of the tree line there? Damn, all those widespread wings and moving at that speed…
The crash was everything you might imagine a huge reptile with its wings spread that wide might have running into trees over seventy yards tall and girths big enough for half a village to dance around, or something. I heard it scream in mismatched voices, saw wings fold over and back in unnatural ways, and large branches breaking off like cannon shots, bending and twisting the main body as it ricocheted off the trees like billiard bumpers. The screaming roars of pain cut off with the surety of ramming head-on into an oak tree that didn't have the good sense or lack of tonnage to move out of the way, and it opted to just take the hit and ignore said dragon's crushing impact.
Roots did flex a bit, though. Took it like a champ.
Tremble was now fully in hand as Mikle sucked in what passed for a deep breath on my shoulder.