A Match of Monsters

Chapter Thirteen

She could feel the magic blooming in her chest as she infused her incantation with more of her aura. The unnatural energy of it thrummed and pulsed through the atmosphere, she could feel it through her scales with every beat of her wings.

Hidden behind her, along the rim of her enchanted shield where she had called forth shadows to distort the border where it reached the ground, the human girl and her hatchling hid.

There was so much power sizzling through the air that her Ladyship was tempted to call forward one of the great forces of nature mortals were so fond of fearing, she wondered how her second would feel about a lightning storm to drain his magic with every bolt that struck his scales, or a erratically twisting tornado to pull the air out from under his wings.

Too long had Manasseh been a thorn under her scales, but she believed that soon it would all be changing. Killing another ranked dragon like herself or the male she currently faced off, was severely frowned upon and punished by all of the immortal councils. From the Council of the Sunlit Immortal Entities, to the Council of Superior Dragons, all the way up to the Council of Elders, where the few rulers that had survived long enough to retire were seated. But with such a blatant rebellion, Manasseh could not get away with only a – as the bipedal mortal races like to say – slap on the wrist for the crimes he was committing. Not to mention that she couldn't allow him to spread the news of her illicit clutch, for even if he disposed of the four unhatched eggs resting in the cavern beneath them. Amongst the rest of her trove, there was the human girl and the young heir of whom she cared for. Shadowcast or council members, it did not matter. Any that found out about them became a treat that they did not need, for the Shadowcast already tried to kill any dragon kit they could before it matured, and she could all too easily conceive what horrors would happen to a known blood-heir of one as powerful as she.

Finally, her Ladyship completed the spell. She was able to feel the metaphysical closing on the drawing of her aura, whilst all of the magic she had released audibly hummed as it had been forced into the atmosphere. She arched her head and tail backwards as she felt the infused particles sliding along the sensitive edges of her scales. When she opened her jaws, the dragoness could feel the tingling reach her exposed teeth from the points still bloody from her hunt, to where they entered her numb gums, dancing along the sharply forked tip of her tongue. It tickled, but she felt it was rather too inappropriate to laugh.

She wasn't in the mood to, anyway.

Her Ladyship released a powerful roar, bellowing out her victory, managing not to taint the sound with the ocean of worry she felt inside; each wave pressing harder and harder against her heart.

The vibrations echoed throughout the room, contained only by the enchanted dome she had built. They shook the ground beneath the dragons and knocked over items of her trove that had already been moved in previous quakes earlier in the battle. Until they fell, many of the items had been swaying precautiously where before that morning, they had been firmly fixed to whatever mountings held them.

The loud clatter punctuated the snap of her jaws as she finished, her wings beating a quiet gale as she carefully untangled her mind from her enchantment, removing each layer of her elaborately crafted protection so that she could reach beyond and untangle herself from the elaborately knotted web she had woven with her magic and the strength of her aura.

Silence once again reined dormant in the cavern, the magnitude of it felt deafening and crushing to the dragoness, increasing exponentially the longer it continued on unchallenged. Breathing in the comfort of such deadly stillness that it had brought to her, turning her head back around as she deeply inhaled to look once more at where she had last seen Manasseh before the spell had taken too much of her concentration.

Where there was nothing.

As her Ladyship began to move her head, to look around for her rogue second, she instead let out a small yelp of surprise when her eyes had just begun to turn. There was a heavy impact on either side of her spine, between where the base of her wings connected to her body. In her mind it took a long moment to process the hit, but it wasn't until the claws in her flesh twisted where had pierced her thick scales that she recognised the pain she was in, until she was unable to hold back her scream of absolute agony. If the claws had been only a couple of inches over, then she might never have flown again.

Going out of her mind with pain as she was, she still heard the shouts of the human girl and her young kit beneath her own bellowing. She had to remind her pain-ailed mind to continue expressing the torment on her flesh until after the two had stopped themselves – it would all be for naught if Manasseh found them now.

As her mind lost control over her own body and her wounds slowly bled into an acidic puddle beneath where Manasseh held them both stationary in the air, she slipped from his claws and not even the jagged, broken tips could hold her body back when it began to fall. Grunting out "dishonourable curr" to the male as she slowly accelerated towards the broken stone ground, her insult comparing him to dragon kind's greatest enemy from before even the time of riders, a werewolf.

She stopped remembering as she was still falling, she could not recall landing.