Senn has been in far more than her fair share of battles and wars over her long life, and as a mage, the ability to stay focused during absolute chaos is a must. She’s not immune to being startled, to fear, or even to psychic magic attacks, like hypnosis and illusions.

But, she has time-hardened nerves when she already knows a battle is taking place, and she has a high degree of situational awareness when it comes to determining when to get out of the way of an incoming attack.

The lava raining down across the plains of the Imperial exclave near the border to Ahmpur and its capital city and spearing the airship from the sky did give her a moment of start. The roar was heard for miles, but it wasn’t clear what’s happening in the direction of the forward operating base until the molten liquid proved that it was an enemy.

Now, in the corner of her field of view, the airship is billowing smoke as it slowly lowers towards the ground. It recovered partially, but is still losing altitude. Not many things weaponize lava as an attack. Yaulwembor likely can as a spell, just as Serrentuk and Senn both could. But, the dragons don’t normally waste the extra energy trying to combine ground magic with their fire breath, because dragon fire is one of the most destructive forces in the world, given how hotly ignityal can burn. The heat alone can strain magic barriers of most casters, and direct contact with the burning substance can ignite metals and even cause explosions simply from the rapid vaporization of many materials.

The booms and roars of battle suggest the other dragons and Yaulwembor have joined the fight, but they’re still far away from the two elves prepping their long-casting weather spell. To gather and organize such large scale mana takes time, so even if they want to change the final effect of the storm they’re casting, they’re still hours away from complete.

Something feels very wrong, though.

As the minutes tick by painfully slowly, Senn does her best to stay focused on her part of the casting, which is primarily constructing the parts of the spell that will determine the target and range, while her father focuses on the more intricate part of defining the weather effect itself, the duration, and the intensity. Weather magic can be performed by large teams of people that lack the large mana pools elves develop over their long lives, but even with a lot of people, it is a slow and lengthy ritual that many races find too inefficient with their time, particularly learning to use it. Drought, permafrost, or other inhospitable environments might see larger gatherings of weather mages, but generally, the specialty is not widespread simply from the complexity, delicate nature of the spell, and grueling focus it requires from all involved casters.

Yaulwembor’s titanic form slamming through the countryside, launched like an acorn across a mile and a half of dirt and hillsides, gives Senn a moment of near-attention-breaking interference. The Faormyr is titanic, likely representing the third eldest being in the Fievegal by at least a millennium, as long as the divine beings are excluded.

And, she was just sent flying by the enemy.

She doesn’t want to waste the mana when she’ll need so much of it, but the elven sorceress diverts a small portion of her attention to briefly cast the split mind spell, allowing her to look away from the weather ritual while her mana-doppelganger continues on.

Senn’s eyes widen when they take in the truth of the battle raging far away, and yet, all too close given the sizes of the titans in play.

At first, she doesn’t recognize him. Something is off about his form, possessing a texture like some sort of petrified wood or ancient stone. But, the elf quickly realizes it when she sees the parts of his true scales and their fairly distinct patter, in combination with his titanic size.

Sayrdarralouche!? But… But Zuzia…

“[Focus on the ritual, Senn.]” Serrentuk’s voice is serious and unwavering, like a mountain.

“But, Father!” exclaims the younger sage.

“[It took everything in my power just to imprison him once, and it cost me gravely. The dragons are driving him towards the mana fire, and our task must be completed for the sake of the world. We must find a way to stop the mana fire and trust our backs to our allies.]”

“But,... It’s…”

“[Sayrdarralouche is dead. I can feel it in my bones. That thing is only a simulacrum; a mere shadow of his former self. Whatever necromancer brought his body back to life gave very little focus to the spell. We will be in the same boat if you drop focus, my dear child. Have faith in our allies or in me. But, do not ignore the collapse of the castle for the wolf at the door.”

Senn feels it in the very core of her ancient being. For a moment, her resolve faltered not because she is weak, but because she allowed herself to soften while surrounded by so many reliable people.

And none are more reliable than her father, whose wise words he just said via telepathy were last heard centuries ago.

Sayrdarralouche is a major threat, but the mana fire, if the most pressing Dawnsight available at present is to be believed even with caution, could mean the end of the world.

The problem is, if Daniel does use the superweapons he used on the Devourer, the result becomes just as unknowable.

That said, Senn’s own hope was restored by the first ones he and his core companions used before the Fievegal even truly took any shape at all.

The only way to prevent the otherworldly devastators is for everyone to work together and find another way.

Not to mention, if a single ember of the flames remain, they must be prepared to stop it before the conflagration can get so far out of control once more.

Senn takes a breath and returns her attention to the spell, merging her casting seamlessly with her own doppelganger as she reclaims the portion of her ‘mind’ that was isolated through magic. As her father said, and she knows very well, it will drain her mana too quickly to try to keep the split-consciousness magic going, and it can be easier to break focus if something does demand her attention, such as a shock, an incoming attack, or if something else changes for the worse.

Sayrdarralouche is still locked in battle with Jeavana and Neith, particularly, and the two dragons are obviously the most experienced battlers of the four, combining their draconic strength with their powerful magic.

Regardless, even if Sayrdarralouche is a simulacrum, that doesn’t mean the creature he became lacks a motive.

***

Jeavana stays in the air as she bombards Sayrdarralouche with spells in tandem with Neith. He’s using a combination of venom and ignityal on his claws, which aren’t very effective against an adult dragon, typically, but can drastically increase the damage done when wounds contaminated with the concoction are hit with dragon breath. Dragon venom works as a necrotic agent that can prevent the wounds from healing properly, and even small amounts of ignityal expands violently when it burns.

The problem is, Magnir seems to be out of the fight, and Yaulwembor was thrown across the battlefield. Whatever stone-like material it is that the regenerated parts of his body are made of, it doesn’t dampen the titanic dragon’s mobility in the least. And, even if it takes damage on par with dragon-flesh, there is no blood. It’s likely Neith’s venom won’t be useful against the parts that have since regenerated.

Additionally, the longer the fight continues, the more magic Sayrdarralouche chooses to unleash.

“[Neith, we’re running out of steam, and we’re not even half way there!]” urges Jeavana via telepathy.

“[I know, but he’s no longer in his decline. He seems to be getting stronger, if anything.]”

The grey knight manages to parry a massive slash using his sharmelkolle armor on his forearm. The air booms with the shockwave of the impact, and Neith does his best to swoop in and slash the remaining flesh around the upper left part of their enemy’s torso. Jeavana uses ice magic to try to freeze Sayrdarralouche in place, buying extra time for Neith to ignite the accumulated wounds with his fire breath. There are crackling pops and blasts, but it only takes a moment for the grievous-looking slashes to close completely, regenerated with the same ‘flexible stone’ that emulates flesh, but has the texture and durability of condensed minerals.

“[His regeneration is accelerating as well!]” calls out Neith.

“[Just back off, Neith! He seems to want me, so I’ll try to bait him myself!]”

“[No!]” snaps the grey dragon. He is so passionate about his answer, it startles Jeavana. Both the volume and his momentary glance away from Sayrdarralouche emphasize that he knows something.

“[What!? Why!?]” Jeavana can’t imagine what could go wrong as long as she manages distance better than she did in her human form. She’s a bigger target now, but that grants her more resistance to being knocked out of the air and more force she can wield to defend herself.

Before the elder male can respond, his own momentary distraction granted Sayrdarralouche just enough time to spring forward. Neith reacts as quickly as he can, but the enemy dragon is much larger, and it takes every bit of Neith’s power just to deflect the full mass of the colossus and the resulting momentum off to the side so that he isn’t completely pinned down. Regardless, Sayrdarralouche manages to capitalize, snatching the smaller grey dragon by the neck and slamming his head into the ground a second time.

Neith lets out a roar as he claws and struggles, and every single impact hits harder than the Fievegal’s tanks and artillery blasts. Almost completely unfazed, Sayrdarralouche stabilizes himself and reaches with his other clawed hand with the obvious intention of taking Neith by the head and snapping his neck.

Jeavana tries to dive to his rescue, since she hasn’t been able to generate enough force, but the free hand that is almost as large as her torso sweeps back around, catching the golden dragon off guard. She’s caught in much the same way, and in spite of her strength, she can feel his fingers crush down on her ribs and throat as Sayrdarralouche pins her to her back next to Neith. The colossal dragon inhales deeply, smoke rolling off of his flesh and an orange glow building in his throat in premonition of his powerful magma ‘breath’.

Neith is still desperately clawing against the larger dragon’s arm, trying to use any leverage he can gain to break free, growing more urgent and violent the moment Sayrdarralouche captures Jeavana. She can barely think from the pressure squeezing in on her, and her lungs are burning from a need to take in a new breath that is being denied by the titan’s unbreakable grip.

The seemingly reincarnated dragon aims his glowing maw at Neith, and the dragon tries to shield his head, but it’s clear his own breath is slipping away from him along with his strength.

Magma jets forth, and Jeavana’s heart screams, but the words can’t even be squeezed out of her lips. Nooo! Neith! Please, no!

Neith’s head disappears behind the jet of lava and Jeavana’s own poor line of sight, and the golden dragon has one last surge of strength. She manages to push her arms against Sayrdarralouche’s palm. She can feel her wing bones crack, and she all but simultaneously gasps in a breath and screams it right back out from the pain. She blacks out for an unknown amount of time, but she is still held tightly in the titan’s grip when her consciousness returns.

That said, she hears a peculiar sound. It sounds like a voice, but belongs to a tiny being compared to Jeavana’s true form, and it’s very familiar.

“I am Hekate fell Lawson! You’ve ignored me for the last time! By my infinite authority as Empress, say your prayers and be sentenced to die!”

With this strange, taunting threat, magic flares powerfully somewhere below Jeavana’s chin on Sayrdarralouche’s forearm. A thunderous crack comes from the left, and the dragon shrieks loudly as he flinches back, leaving his hand and Neith behind on the ground.

Before his weight shifts too much on his remaining left arm, the magic streaks outwards in a powerful blade of ice, and the pressure immediately relieves from the golden dragon.

“Haha!” shouts Hekate, teleporting to the top of Jeavana’s muzzle as she clings to the golden dragon. The reptilian being shoves the remainder of Sayrdarralouche’s claw off of herself, flopping onto her side to cough, scream, and otherwise catch her breath. Hekate lands on the ground from the dragon’s nose, asking quickly, “Jeavana!? Are you alright!?”

The golden dragon can’t speak. She’ll live, that much she knows, but her wings are definitely broken, and her back and ribs are in pain as well. While most greater dragons like her can fly without using their wings, it will be impossible for her while they are in agonizing pain. If they catch even a slight draft or turbulence, she’ll likely be paralyzed with pain and fall from the sky, unable to glide and disrupted from continuing to use magic.

“Jeavana! Talk to me!”

“R-Run…” chokes out the dragon.

Hekate whirls and looks up at the colossus. She is essentially to Sayrdarralouche what a flea is to a human. Hekate can obviously do far more damage than any biting parasite through her impressive magic, but she’s still tiny and easy to smack away.

The colossus reaches for them, or specifically, Jeavana once more. But, before his gigantic claw makes contact, it passes through a strange hole in the very air itself.

When Jeavana remembers Neith being blasted with lava, she looks to find him also doing what he can to catch his breath, his head distinctly not melted off. When Jeavana looks at Hekate again, the tiny fuzzball in her adorable little human-like form is the one casting a magic so condensed and powerful, that it swallows the titanic arm of an ancient dragon that had started what dragons refer to as the ‘decline’, where they slowly lose their physical strength and mobility. If a dragon survives the long period after their decline, it is said they are reborn anew, but with their previous level of mana.

Neith and Jeavana are a few thousand years too early to worry about that. Hekate closes the portal, which severs Sayrdarralouche’s arm cleanly. He doesn’t even register pain the same way it would with a slash, since it was such a perfect, instantaneous, and clean cut.

The colossus rears back, preparing to use his other claw. Even having just lost a limb to an incomprehensibly powerful little firebrand, the dragon’s fixation on Jeavana is at the expense of all other things.

Jeavana does her best to shift so she can move, but she has to be careful not to disrupt Hekate, who is defending her while the winded dragon tries to recover her ability to fight.

Just as Hekate starts to cast another spell, Sayrdarralouche looks at her for precisely one second before letting out a roar directly at the tiny being. Even Jeavana screams from the powerful blast of concussive sound, trying to flinch away. And, if she could hear it, Hekate is likely screaming as well, having possibly the most powerful ears in the world.

At least, that was true prior to today.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Jeavana’s vision goes blurry, and she sees the colossal dragon reaching for her once more. Yaulwembor’s form is in the distance, trying to rise to rejoin the battle, and Neith is trying to claw across the ground to intercept.

But, one more wave of defenders still exists.

Or rather, one more major hitter that, like Hekate, defies what her comparatively tiny size can do.

Sayrdarralouche is yanked backwards, stumbling in a way that slams his foreclaw down just short of Jeavana. When the dragon looks over his shoulder at the attacker, he tries another roar, but nothing is apparently there.

Of course, the golden dragon matron is still struggling with unclear vision from the pain, but she has a pretty good idea who just saved her this time.

***

A few moments earlier, Hekate severs the arm gripping Jeavana’s neck after shielding Neith from the lava attack. The little girl is ridiculously powerful, possessing magic that seems like it could directly rival the Grand Odcrywca herself in ways Serrentuk and Neith together struggled to achieve.

The two ancient men have skill and restraint.

Hekate has sheer, unadulterated power that she’s still learning how to use, and seeing her sever Sayrdarralouche’s semi-truck and trailer-sized forearm with raw mana is inspiring.

So inspiring, Zuzia feels a moment of competition at that same time.

She punches the base of Sayrdarralouche’s wrist with as much force as she can, exploding it in an effort to free Neith from his grip. Her plan works, and Sayrdarralouche is driven back momentarily, but his violent, humongous movements inadvertently launch the human through the air. She yelps, slamming into the ground half a kilometer away and tumbling several meters at a time. But, the battle isn’t over, and though her borrowed clothes have taken a serious beating, she scrambles back up to her feet to resume the battle.

As she runs, she studies her titanic enemy. Hekate is still parrying him with magic as he tries to attack Jeavana, but the dragon uses a roar.

Zuzia winces sympathetically. Hekate’s ears can probably pick up radio signals from Earth with their size, and Sayrdarralouche can make some powerful shockwaves just from his roar, which doesn’t quite have the same biological feel to it anymore, having heard Neith, Jeavana, and Yaulwembor roar in return. Though each dragon’s voice is different, they sound exactly like variations of what Zuzia would imagine. Or rather, she can believe they came from a dragon.

Sayrdarralouche’s roar sounds more like metal shearing metal or rock screeching against rock.

Thankfully, Amalaskae gave Zuzia durable ears alongside everything else. She is limited because her strengths primarily require melee combat, where Hekate, Serrentuk, and Neith can unleash devastating power at range.

But, Zuzia’s abilities don’t require careful concentration or casting time. Just reach.

And, as Sayrdarralouche is trying once more to grab Jeavana, the ends of which are unknown, Zuzia reaches his massive tail.

The dragons each have their own somewhat unique appearances, and the ones she has seen so far mostly have the more tapered tails like snakes or monitor lizards, though the tip isn’t as thin and whip-like as those two terrestrial creatures.

For Sayrdarralouche, his titanic tail is more like an alligator, remaining broad all the way to the end, where it rounds off in a rather blunt manner. He is supposed to be an extremely old dragon, so it could be a sort of growth trait of even older dragons, like salamanders that look very different as juveniles from their adult forms.

As such, even the tip of the titan’s tail is almost as tall as Zuzia. But, she doesn’t need to grab all the way around it.

I’ll need barriers for my feet, so let’s do this again. Just like my double-jump…

Zuzia flexes and moves quickly, taking hold of Sayrdarralouche’s tail and focusing the tingling mana she has. Even if she tried to use the barriers to block one of Hekate’s attacks, the brunette is unsure she would be able to actually defend with them. But, she should be able to create ‘perfect’ foundations to prevent her from simply sinking into the ground when she tries to move five thousand tonnes or so. Earth logic says that the dragons shouldn’t exist, because they are too large. But, “shouldn’t exist” won’t remove the one she’s holding onto now.

And hopefully, an attempt to launch him by his tail won’t simply snap it off like a gecko’s before she even gains any momentum.

“Hrrraaaahhhh!” screams Zuzia as she pulls with all her might. She can hear her foot-barriers crackle and crunch, forced into the ground in spite of their magic existence. Regardless, the ‘living’ monolith jolts backwards with her vicious pull, his powerful feet and legs digging deep into the ground immediately. She can feel his weight shift, and she keeps her feet anchored with her simple –but robust– barriers to avoid him launching her into orbit with his tail. She looks up to make eye contact with the unnatural head and glowing orange eyes of the dragon as it looks down on her from over 150 meters away from her.

The dragon inhales swiftly, while Neith positions himself to try to defend Jeavana. But, Sayrdarralouche’s momentary target is Zuzia, and he lets out a second roar just like the one that clearly incapacitated Hekate, if only for a moment.

Zuzia winces, bracing herself in case she is wrong.

The waves rumble through her entire body, rattling her bones like a chaotic subwoofer cranked to the deepest possible level of bass. She can feel the echoes within her chest cavity, and her skin tingles from the vibrations.

And with all of that, as the ground wavers and dust swirls, her ears process the loudness, but…

“Heh! I to ma być wszystko, głupia jaszczurko?” <A/N 1> [Heh! And this is supposed to be everything, you stupid little lizard?]

Zuzia grits her teeth and clenches her muscles. She takes a breath,

listening as Sayrdarralouche’s roar fades. He just figured out that her own grip didn’t falter even the slightest. While she would be annoyed at hearing his roar continuously, with her heroine's blessings, she could probably fall asleep in spite of it.

For all she knows, it’s good for her joints and muscles like one of those expensive vibration tables she’s seen online are supposed to be.

“If only you had a spiky shell and red hair. This would be a perfect reference!”

Zuzia digs deep and pushes with all her strength, stepping away from Sayrdarralouche’s body while holding his tail. She accelerates rapidly, feeling like she’s forcing a cartoonish magic stairstepping exercise with her barriers, lest she be the one to simply sink into the ground.

Sayrdarralouche screeches in surprise, losing his grip as she tills canals, rather than mere trenches, using a titanic dragon as her eldritch farming equipment.

She starts an arcing movement, gaining speed with the dragon in tow.

She can feel the tension starting to give, like a rope about to break. “Hekate!” shouts the Polishwoman, maintaining her momentum. Her arc has started to claim Sayrdarralouche’s grip on the ground, in spite of his size, and it will be crucial to her next phase.

Hekate appears in a teleport, likely after several misses behind Zuzia, where she smacks into Zuzia’s chest, yelping in surprise. Zuzia can’t stop, though, and Hekate clearly figured out the best thing. “Reinforce his tail!” shouts the brunette over the wailing and snarling dragon.

“What!?” asks the raven-haired teen.

“His tail! Use magic to keep it from breaking, or this will fail!”

“R-Right!” yells Hekate. Her ears are bleeding some, but she seems to be able to hear at least.

Zuzia only just met the little fox-eared girl, but she’ll gladly cradle and pamper Hekate if this all works.

The teen casts magic from Zuzia’s shoulders, while the dragon’s tail begins to glow. It seems to be some kind of healing magic, but if it keeps his tail from snapping off too early, Zuzia couldn’t care.

“Great! Keep it up!”

“How long!?”

“Until it stops making sense!” shouts Zuzia with a bit of jovial energy. She’s slamming through the countryside with impossible force, pulling a humongous beast faster and faster. And, as she starts to feel the force she was waiting on, she shortens her arc until she can come to a stop, spinning axially with simple, fast-tapping steps. Hekate cries and whines as she clings to Zuzia, and the human woman accelerates the hapless dragon, unable to stop her while near-hurricane force winds whip up around them. If she continues too long, Zuzia might inadvertently create a massive tornado.

Assuming Sayrdarralouche’s velocity doesn’t create one anyways with eddy currents.

That said, he is akin to an oversized aircraft or a moderately sized naval ship that will be sailing through the air, so even though he’s massive, it shouldn’t create a force of nature simply by his body tearing through the air.

The Polishwoman calls out, “Tell your master Koshei he’s next, you non-turtle dragon king!”

The honey-haired brunette releases Sayrdarralouche with the best she can do towards timing his launch towards the mana fire. She calls out as she does, “Yeet!” That was always the goal with fighting him, and Zuzia is just doing her best to take the biggest shortcut she can. There are still a few kilometers to the leading edge of the mana fire, but if she can close at least some of that distance, the fight will get significantly easier and shorter.

Hekate gasps and cries out as she dumps the intense mana she was using to reinforce the dragon’s hulking tail. Likely, his magic that constantly regenerates the rest of his body prevented his tail from simply sloughing off like a hand caught in a high-speed machine or a person’s grip slipping while rock climbing; the ultimate ‘degloving’ that would have robbed Zuzia’s intentional throw, and Hekate ensured that a sudden fracture didn’t snap it off like a gecko’s tail letting it escape a predator.

Zuzia relaxes for a moment as she watches the enemy dragon move at a couple hundred kilometers per hour at an upward angle for now. There’s no supersonic cone, since it’s far from reaching the speed of sound, but the sheer force would be staggering to think about with how gigantic the dragon truly is.

And, Zuzanna Czesława Kołodziejczyk, a regular old tax accountant for a day job and hiker for a hobby, just threw that very titan with her own bare hands.

She smiles as she exhales in relief, moving her arms to support Hekate as the teen catches her breath. Given the arc, Zuzia just shortened the battle by minutes or even hours in one relatively easy movement, and she saved Jeavana and Neith from Sayrdarralouche’s retaliation and strange obsession with the golden dragon herself.

That said, the long arc is already ten or fifteen seconds in before Sayrdarralouche’s momentum starts to head back towards the surface of Zenkon.

And, while that happens, she starts to feel like something is off.

The Polish brunette’s feet feel weird, and she looks down. Her new, borrowed boots have melted from fusion forces with her barriers, intense pressure on par with that which creates diamonds applied to a pseudo-rubber that someone mentioned comes from a different source other than rubber trees.

The soles of her boots all but vaporizing hints at how much energy she was handling, and which felt like the Earthling was merely throwing a 20 kilogram sack of potatoes. She’s effectively barefoot, now, and she looks up at the dragon sailing through the air while Hekate slumps completely on her shoulder.

The raven-haired fox-girl murmurs, “Nice throw… But, you could’ve told me…”

Zuzia doesn’t say anything. She can’t. She is watching a colossus as it arcs through the sky, reaching at least a kilometer in the air.

Dragging Sayrdarralouche backwards was easy, and it was necessary. The choice was an absolute must. She did it to stop him from grabbing Jeavana while the golden dragon was vulnerable.

Throwing the titanic dragon towards the mana fire was also an easy choice. Zuzia is the only one who can do so, and it’s the fastest they’ll be able to drive him towards the mana fire. In a perfect world, her throw would and squarely in the midst of the magic embers themselves, which, according to everyone, can dissolve even the most ‘indestructible’ material on Zenkon, which Neith is wearing for armor, and which Zuzia can destroy.

But, what happens if Sayrdarralouche doesn’t land in that mystical false-fire that is currently threatening the world?

Zuzia casually watches movies and shoes, including anime and cartoons that stretch the very fabric of reality. She knows of some of the news reports on the various countries and their boasting about military prowess, especially the United States and their MOAB, or ‘Mother of All Bombs’ as it became known, which is the largest non-nuclear bomb ever detonated at the time.

But, as she watches Sayrdarralouche’s arc start to turn back down towards Zenkon itself, it’s no longer a “featherweight” dragon she is seeing.

She is observing a massive meteor descending from the heavens.

A meteor Zuzia herself sent to those heavens.

Horror grips her as the realization fully forms within her mind. Sweat starts to form on her nigh-inexhaustible body. A deep terror starts to grip her heart.

She only wanted to save the day, and more specifically, her friends.

But, instead, she just synthesized a disaster.

*** 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

“Keep mana depletion patients and mana overexposure patients separate!” calls out Rikuto. The triage area is being assembled in a hurry, since both conditions are serious enough to warrant medical attention, and their effects are becoming serious. Depleting one’s own mana does provide some relief from mana overexposure due to the intense mana waves coming off of the false-inferno, while others are physical injuries caused by the airship’s ongoing destruction and collateral from Sayrdarralouche’s attacks, from debris flying with hurricane force to his very ear-splitting roar that harms the shenwulves, gatonines, and dattakoriens more than anyone.

Rikuto’s own “cure” ability can reduce the strain of mana overexposure, and it can reduce the hearing loss injuries in those who have lasting tinnitus after receiving healing for the ruptured eardrums or wounded inner ears.

Meanwhile, Daniel is nearby, instructing the goblins who had to retreat in the wake of the mess of dragons. There were some casualties among them, and they’re hastily building what looks to be a bomb.

Aramellianna, for her part, is helping run water and bandages around the triage center for the wounded alongside Sundenelle, Heralesse, Veiranoei, and the Count’s Son.

Rikuto realizes the Count’s son is crucial to getting the city of Urflasdat to evacuate, and he’s not accomplishing that by helping with medical triage far outside of the city.

Rikuto starts to move towards them, calling out, “Lord Nortaer, we need you to report the current state of…”

A voice only just breaks through Rikuto’s peripheral hearing from behind him. And, though his ears know a much more urgent exclamation of a sort of “Japanglish” loan word that is meant to emulate the English pronunciation more than the true loan word for the person it references, ‘Jiizasu’.

In this case, Rikuto’s attention is captured by an ear-worm effect when the sounds of a muttered English phrase connect to the few instances the Japanese man knows it would be used.

“[Jesus Christ…]”

Spoken in an unmistakable American accent, meaning it’s an English far more naturally fluent than Rikuto’s when he was at University, and from which Rikuto’s own magically-transcribed English accent comes, he drops his train of thought towards Nortaer kos Ethuvere, the Margrave’s son, in order to look at the fellow Otherworlder that just spoke.

Daniel is frozen as he watches the sky towards the south, leaning against his “barrel-bomb”.

Rikuto knows that two simultaneous calamities are already occurring to the south, but so does Daniel.

When the Japanese man turns his gaze, his hands slowly lose strength as they fall to his sides in absolute awe, and he drops the water skin that he was using to hydrate one of the mana-depleted soldiers.

The American starts moving his hands again, but this time to withdraw one of his magic bags, working to fumble its activation with the mouth aimed at the bomb. Whatever happens, he doesn’t want to be standing next to the dragon-killer he just made.

The reason being, Sayrdarralouche, the titanic, seemingly-unkillable dragon that appeared out of nowhere to attack, is cruising through the air against his will, rising in an arc that peaks at a bare minimum of a half-kilometer off of the ground, likely more, given the distance and scale of the dragon himself. His own size diminishes his height.

But, then, his own size underscores the problem.

What goes up must come down.

And, in this case, a creature on a scale closer to Godzilla than to Smaug is just finishing its ‘up’ journey.

Rikuto’s stomach twists in knots.

The glowing white inferno is a cataclysm from which the world may not be able to escape.

Sayrdarralouche’s ‘reincarnated’ form is a colossal destroyer typically only spoken of in prophecies about the end of times.

And now, the latter is about to cause a tectonic event in proximity to the grievous geological maiming that is already in progress.

Given how the dragons and Yaulwembor were fighting, none of them could throw Sayrdarralouche, leaving Hekate, the most powerful mage in magical capacity, as the most likely culprit for someone who could blast him into the air and be short-sighted enough to actually do it.

Rikuto was never keen on Daniel using the nuclear option or ‘the Manhattan dance’, as his coded message worded it; not when the crust is already being dangerously stripped away to depths unknown. The fire is a slow stripping-away of material in a sense, even though it’s lightning fast in geological terms. But, it’s smooth and not ‘shocking’ to the rock underneath.

Rikuto isn’t an expert, and he never really dug into it, but the “Rods from God” concept featured occasionally in fiction, especially sci-fi, is arguably possible with Earth’s technology even prior to the 2020s. But, he wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that they avoided ever using it because the force would be largely delivered to the ground, meaning its destruction is limited almost entirely to subterranean targets, with a more limited scope against surface targets, while a nuke can wipe out a city, and with a bunker buster shell, wipe out a subterranean mountain just as easily, where the cost of using a Rod from God would be potential geological and tectonic damage with untold repercussions for decades or even centuries. At least, that’s what Rikuto would guess.

Some theories hybridize the extinction event for the dinosaurs between the classic meteor theory and the more modern volcanic activity theory, where the meteor was a powerful “punch” to the earth that then triggered the volcanoes to erupt; a double-whammy of light-shielding dust, poison gas, and non-nuclear fallout that ‘starved’ and ‘suffocated’ the plant life, which destroyed the ecosystem from there.

Sayrdarralouche isn’t likely to kill everything on Zenkon from the mushroom cloud of dust created by his impact.

But, that’s not the only possible extinction-level event in play.

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A/N 1: The brackets should contain the translation as best as I could verify in a vacuum. As always, if any of my Polish readers object, please do let me know xD.