[Ouroboros' End]
Upon arriving on the battlefield, Neandra wasted no second before charging through the enemy lines. Already familiar with the leader of the smuggler group from their short exchange at the start of the war, she wore a confident grin as she rushed toward him. Clearly still remembering the exchange, the man's expression twisted when he met her gaze.
"So you're finally showing yourself." Neandra said, her voice echoing across the plains.
The twitch in the smuggler's expression told her enough to guess he didn't enjoy hearing the joy in her voice. Not that Neandra was particularly surprised about that. Even with just what she had shown during their last exchange, she had been his superior by far. Her estimate of their power gap was, in fact, so bad that a part of her hoped he had prepared something for this fight, or she feared it would be over far too soon for how long she had to wait for it.
However, her confidence in her hope being proven correct quickly plummeted with the man's next actions. A quick hand motion that briefly made her prepare for an attack instead resulted in five of his subordinates moving into her path with clear intent to block her from reaching their leader.
Though barely a moment after the first enemy had come close enough to block her, Darganth was already moving past Neandra. While moving in slow motion to her enhanced senses, in truth he closed the distance fast enough that the unfortunate foe that had become his target didn't even have time to pivot from preparing an attack against her to defending himself before Darganth already came bearing down on him.
The assault that followed was ruthless. Opening with a sweep of one of his front legs, Darganth sent the aura user hurling backward. This was then promptly followed by a volley of spells that chased after the man, slamming into his forearms as he barely raised his arms in time. Each impact tore into the aura flowing around his body, ripping through its protective layer and battering the skin beneath with shockwaves and explosions.
Yet even under this onslaught, the aura user remained vigilant enough to notice it in time when Darganth opened his maw to unleash his dragon's breath. As the beam tore through the air, the smuggler twisted out of the way at the last moment.
That didn't mean he was suddenly safe from Darganth's attacks. Just before Neandra had moved far enough past him to no longer see the fight in the corner of her eyes, Darganth dashed after the man's retreating form, his maw already open and snapping at him.
But before Neandra could see the results of this exchange, she was forced to focus ahead as two more smugglers reached her. Even though Venrie rushed forward to meet them, her first attack didn't force them away as perfectly as Darganth had managed, as flames rose up to meet the two massive roots that burst forth from thin air to her sides.
About halfway between them, the two bolts of fire struck the roots. The spell of Venrie's opponent tore through the pointed tips of her wood constructs, tunneling deep into them before erupting in a fiery explosion that tore apart their frontal sections.
This left an opening for the second smuggler to rush at Venrie. Aura flared around his sword as he sent a crescent slash of energy her way before charging in himself. Venrie countered by conjuring a web of thick, thorn-covered branches that interwove tightly to form a wall in front of her, swallowing the energy slash but bursting apart when the aura user slammed into it.
Venrie was already prepared for this. The moment he burst through the branches, she brought down her staff in an overhead swing, loosening a swarm of hundreds of tiny petals hovering around its head at the man. As they struck, each unleashed its own spell at point-blank range, creating an all-consuming eruption of magical energy that briefly blinded anyone looking toward it.
Before Venrie could follow up on this success, a beam of white light tore through the cloud of smoke and lingering magical energy. Slamming into her shield spell before she could throw up additional defenses, it burned through her magical reserves and scorched the wooden surface as it ricocheted off it, being diverted somewhere to Venrie's left.
Though the attack left Venrie unhurt, it made it obvious that she wouldn't be able to finish the fight quickly. It was a realization she herself seemed to have made, as not a moment after the beam of light magic faded, she raised her staff and unleashed a massive surge of nature magic toward the ground below. In response, the ground burst open as a tree rapidly grew, quickly reaching a staggering height that made its top push past even the altitude they were all flying at.
But while this tree would allow Venrie to utilize more of her nature magic arsenal, especially when it comes to offensive spells, it also grew right in Neandra's path and forced her to evade to the side. It wasn't much, and it also ensured that the two smugglers wouldn't reach her in time to intercept her, but it did allow the fourth and last smuggler to still make it in time before she reached their leader.
Luckily, she still had Yldra accompanying her. The dragoness reacted similarly to how Darganth had done earlier, quickly overtaking Neandra with a burst of speed that saw her also move higher than the altitude the approaching enemy was flying at, allowing her to dive down moments later and crash into him with her claws extended.
Massive draconic talons struck his raised shield. The metal-plated wood screeched as Yldra's claw cut into it, shortly followed by the full mass of her palm landing on its surface. The impact sent the smuggler flying back amid a shower of wooden splinters as the undoubtedly heavily enchanted shield he carried shattered under the first strike of the fight.
With her path thus cleared, Neandra pressed ahead further as Yldra chased her foe. Already honing her focus on the impending fight, she only heard the dragoness' triumphant roar as tens of spatial magic flashes registered to Neandra's mana sense in quick succession. Yet even without this, she would've been confident that Yldra could handle herself, leaving Neandra herself free to completely focus on her part of the fighting.
For his part, the leader of the smugglers hadn't been idle in the few dozen seconds it took her to reach him. Nor would she have expected him to be. As such, it was no surprise when the moment she set upon the final stretch of her approach, mana flared outward from his form before coalescing into the familiar silver of spatial magic.
Not immediately recognizing the forming spell, Neandra answered more defensively. Wind surged around her body as the air around her answered her call, encasing her in a protective layer long before the smuggler's spell struck half a second later.
Not even a fraction of a second later, Neandra's vision was filled with a cloud of silver as the spatial magic shattered against her wind barrier. Tiny shards and streams of rushing energy flew out from what probably would've been a mighty construct had it not been she who had been targeted by it, forming a massive cloud that scattered as she soared through it.
From the look on his face, she took the smuggler by surprise when she burst out of the other side of the cloud a mere fraction of a second later. To her annoyance, though, that surprise only lasted as long as it took her to ready herself to unleash her breath attack.
The moment the concentrated beam of flames then shot forth, her opponent was already massing mana for another spell. From it, space twisted in front of him, breaking in two along a perfectly straight vertical line. To its sides, the distant landmarks appeared to have shifted, with a mountain that had been nearly straight ahead disappearing while others further to the side moved into its place. When Neandra's spell struck a moment later, it too was split into two by the line, with the two halves diverting slightly to the left and right respectively and cutting past the smuggler's position in a V-shape as the very concept of what was a straight path had been thrown into disarray.
As the flames died down a few moments later, the bend in space seamlessly folded back into its natural state. Like turning mirrors, the landscape blurred and shifted until the smuggler came back into view, arm already outstretched by the time the line that had marked the fold vanished. From his hand, three silver chains then burst forth, spiraling around one another as they shot toward Neandra.
The first chain that struck Neandra did so on her wing. Glancing off the shoulder joint and sailing over the membrane of her wing, it came back down somewhere far behind her. The second and third chain then struck just a moment later and in unison. One barely missed her head, passing by just below her eye before its spiral motion carried it upward and around her neck. The other came in flying far higher and in a descending trajectory, leading to Neandra not paying any attention to it until it struck her lower back.
But not even this strike as much as slowed Neandra down. Feeling the chains shift around her as the smuggler flailed around his arm to send waves of motion through the spell, she simply let her massive form absorb the forces that tried to move her. At least she did at first, as after over half a dozen attempts the constant tugging grew annoying.
Once it did, Neandra decided to rid herself of the chains. A snap of her teeth tore through the one holding onto her neck. The claws on her wing then shot out and tore through a second one, leaving only the one on her back to be shaken off when she rolled around her own axis a moment later.
Still mid-spin, she then grabbed after the falling chain with one of her legs, catching it between her talons before reversing the situation against the smuggler and tugging on it. This apparently wasn't something the man had expected. As such, the sudden pull caused him to lurch forward, his eyes widening as she surged toward him.
It took only a blink of an eye for the two of them to collide. The moment the smuggler was within range, Neandra snapped after him with her teeth but missed barely as the ever-elusive spatial mage teleported mere meters to the side.
But while this saved him from her bite, it wasn't enough to bring him clear of Neandra's wing. A barrier barely formed before it slammed into him, her body too large to be caught in the distance-warping barrier and thus simply passing through it, as the areas outside kept her anchored to the normal area of space. The resulting strike bashed the smuggler downward as it struck at an angle.
Neandra twisted her body after him not a moment later. Her lithe neck allowed her to snap after the falling smuggler mere moments after she started her turn, though the bite missed ever so slightly and only grazed the smuggler's billowing clothes. The rest of her body took a moment longer to turn, winding around itself with an agility no creature her size should possess.
Diving after the smuggler, Neandra sent beam after beam of searing flames at him. Each time, the man either teleported just barely out of their path or conjured spatial distortions to divert their course.
Yet no matter which he did, Neandra would always twist after him to unleash another barrage. Second after second she unleashed fire upon the falling smuggler, chasing him ever lower.
Only as the ground started to rapidly draw close did she pull out of the dive. The constant stream of flames she unleashed still didn't end, but once she pulled into level flight, they quickly became little more than a show as the smuggler pulled away from her.
For his part, her foe used that newfound relief to catch his descent at the last moment. By the time Neandra cycled back around, he had landed next to the broken remnants of a spell engine.
Staring up at her and mustering her for a moment, his attention soon drifted past her as yet another dragon's breath tore through the skies above, prompting him to let out a sigh. "What a fucking mess."
Then he turned back to Neandra, "I had a good thing going here, why did you have to ruin it? I brought my wares down in the wilderness and sold them in the city while my men spent their coin in the town. I circumvented the fees our three oh so benevolent overlords impose, and they had regular customers. Had you just come to me, you could've benefited like that as well. But no, why would a dragon be satisfied with just a piece of the treasure?"
"If I can have all of it with such ease, why not? Though in this case we're not actually interested in your operation or wealth, not that we won't gladly take them too." Neandra said.
"Ease? You might outmatch me, but my army is holding the line well enough even though you allied with those monsters. You might still win, but I'll bleed your forces enough that nothing you could get out of this would make it worth it."
Neandra shook her head with a laugh. "You did some damage to the town's forces, yes. But I'd not call what your troops are doing holding the line, not now that my people are finally joining the battle in force."
Only then did the smuggler glance toward the battlefield, with the sight causing his eyes to widen. Flames raged wherever his gaze jumped, with new infernos cutting across the battlefield each second and consuming entire swaths of land along with any men and women unfortunate enough to be caught in them. Even mythic ranks didn't escape unscathed, creating chaos not just among the common soldiers but also in the true might of the army. And at the center of all of this, a massive figure of flames leisurely walked across the plains, swatting away the mythic ranks bombarding its form with almost bored swings of its arms.
When the figure had appeared, the smuggler could not tell. But with each second it roamed, the situation turned increasingly dire for his forces. With dragons and even a phoenix also tearing through their ranks, he watched in horror as he sensed his mythic ranks die without even a minute to bridge each death.