The huge fiery thunderstorm whirled in the sky, with blue and red flashes of light illuminating everything. Whirls of red flames and blue lightning kept dancing across the sky, hitting and annihilating each other in colourful fireworks.
The dragon surrounded by thick crackling clouds of smoke flapped his wings, his black armour covered in cracks, with whole chunks of it missing. His golden eyes looked at the demon as red flames kept searing his armour, droplets of molten stone raining down.
The demon stood amongst the destruction, his red glowing ruby-like eyes unfocused, occasional lightning striking and damaging his shadow body.
“Is this everything you got? This way, you will not even be qualified as my mount. Maybe a post of my guarding dog would be more fitting for someone of your skill.” the demon’s taunting and a distorted voice entered directly into the dragon’s mind, the rage quickly building up in him.
“I don’t have the whole day for this. Let’s speed things up a little bit.” Dozens of red glowing letters formed behind the demon, floating in the air and quickly arranging into five circles.
Seeing that Vesuviuse’s golden reptilian eyes flashed, knowing that it was time to start his plan. The dragon flapped his wings. His enormous black body, covered in glowing yellow swatches and crackling with electricity, moved forwards, winds loudly blasting around him, pushing him forward while uplifting the heavy body.
“This again?” the demon’s left hand transformed into a giant flaming fist, ready to swath away the incoming dragon.
Vesuvius kept accelerating, the world around him becoming blurry. The waves of red fire kept blasting against him as if he was swimming against a tide. His armour kept disintegrating and distorting, slowly turning into black dust.
A magical circuit ignited in the dragon’s mouth. His mind strained from controlling the lightning around him and constructing the magic simultaneously.
The glowing red symbols forming the five circles started to pulse, their glow intensifying with the air in the circles already distorting and shivering.
Vesuvius flapped his wings more, accelerating even more, quickly closing towards the demon with his horns brightly sparking with electricity. A black pyroclastic cloud erupted from his throat, quickly forming a growing and rotating sphere in his mouth. The thick clouds around his body hid it from the eyes of the demon.
The red light started to flash inside the circles behind the demon moving his fist backwards, preparing for an overhead strike.
The dragon flew forward, all of his black armour gone, his scales enveloped in red flames, the glowing runes brightly pulsing with their surface twisting and breaking apart while constantly regenerating.
The dragon felt an intense headache, reaching a limit of how long he could control all of the mana needed to power his nanites that kept fixing his scales, to supply mana into his scales to mitigate as much damage as possible, to control all of the lightning around him that held the flaming storm of demon’s domain from him and finally to power the magical circuit rotating in his mouth.
The sphere of pyroclastic smoke kept growing as a second circle ignited, and the sphere immediately moved into it to keep growing.
Red lines already formed between the circles, quickly forming the glowing silhouette of a pentagram. The dragon reached the demon and closed his eyes, praying it would work. He moved his head forward, pointing his horns at the demon without slowing down, ready to ram him.
The demon’s fist moved, turning into a red blur, moving to intercept the incoming ram-like head.
A loud bang resounded through the air, clouds getting pushed away as the fist and the dragon’s head collided, and a powerful shockwave erupted.
Both of them got pushed backwards, their bodies flying through the air. The dragon’s head slightly caved in, his scales cracking and bending, his whole vision darkening. Vesuvius focused his last piece of will and opened his mouth.
The large black sphere of twisting and whirling pyroclastic cloud launched out, hitting the surprised demon. The black smoke hit him with a great force, sending him even more backwards, his body blasting through the air. At the same time, the large pentagram flared up in the air, and a massive twisting and whirling portal opened up behind the demon. The demon’s body fell straight to the portal, vanishing in its depth.
Suddenly a black hand reached from its twisting surface, its large fingers grasping for the world outside. However, the portal, without a powerful demon, keeping it open, collapsed, vanishing in a flash of red light and severing the shadowy arm.
The still twitching arm fell down towards the ground.
The dragon’s visions turned black, his consciousness falling apart as he spread his wings widely with the last piece of it, ignoring notifications that flooded the corner of his vision. His unconscious body slowly drifted towards the ground.
POV BoobaFet’s party:
Dozens of black-robed and dragon-masked players stood without moving, watching as the demon vanished into the portal and the giant wyrm fell from the sky. Immediately the everpresent red light vanished, the white daylight returning to the world. Soon after, the flaming red clouds disappeared as if they had never existed.
The tall pillar of red energy blasting from the tower vanished, the whole fortress collapsing in dust clouds and loud bangs.
Suddenly all the players became unfocused, reading through the announcement they had received.
Ding!
//Critical Faction Mission
Objective: Find and protect the heavily injured elder wyrm Vesuvius from the remnants of the demon army until they recover.
Reward: Increased trust of the elder wyrm; 4000 XP; 100 gold; The wyrm might offer you an additional reward
Failure: ???
//
Without even needing to say a word, the crowd of masked players started to run, clouds of ash and dust rising in their tracks.
Booba bent his knees, ready to run into the forest remnants, but suddenly hand touched his shoulder. Lili stood behind him, her long hair moving in the draft, her tender palms on his shoulder.
‘Is she gonna confess to me? Isn’t this kinda bad time for this?’ Booba felt his heart beat faster, his body sweating from the romantic situation
Suddenly the gentle female voice cooled down his head as if put it into an ice bucket, “We have a mount, you dummy!”. As if his heart shattered, Booba straightened and lifelessly touched the tattoo of the dracodactyl on his hand.