Chương 22: Interlude 2

Outskirts of Duram-Mandom Teg the fairy Another screaming howl of wind burst to life somewhere behind her, matched in ferocity by the rumble of the earth and the vibrations that she could feel ripple through her entire body. She quaked in the air, flight pattern thrown off by the force of distant impacts, making her face scrunch up irritably as she righted herself. Those jerks! Didn't they know how hard it was to fly when you were small like her? It took a lot of effort!

She continued to zoom away, mana filling her wings as she struggled to reach a distance she wouldn't be interrupted at. Another hurricane and swordquake behind her- shaking her whole body but not throwing off her flight path again, thankfully. She glanced behind herself as she zoomed along the road. Towers of spiralling winds and spurs of earth rose up occasionally, quickly followed by the rumble of air and earth and great booms left in the wake of their clashing.

She grit her teeth, turning around and quickly swerving to avoid the great troll-warriors running ponderously in the opposite direction- towards the battle taking place and directly in her way.

"Watch where you're going, you brats!" Teg roared out, shaking a fist behind her. They didn't seem to notice, making her growl and focus on the road ahead again. She needed a clear, flat space to summon the portal- otherwise a hundred tiny things could go wrong and then she'd split her bigger self in half or something. She'd never live it down. A branch cutting down the tree, that's so stupid that it becomes a joke.

Another grinding rumble and roar of wind and earth smashing into each other from the quaint little city in the distance. She could feel it vibrating through her tiny bones, but it wasn't enough to throw off her flight any longer- good indication that she needed to start looking for a place for her ritual soon. What an awfully contrived bunch of events- it made her mad to think about.

First her hotheaded baby runs off, then he gets kidnapped by something horrible up in monster country, then it turns out that horrible thing just so happens to be Mala the Dragon. Then Mala just so happens to be- as far as she could tell- simply hanging around town with her baby's smells all over her like some overgrown neighborhood cat! A quake of wind and earth in the distance.

And of course, she just so happens to be visiting town on the SAME DAY as they were, the day BEFORE her greater half would've already been summoned and ready, for apparently NO REASON! Was this a thing ancient dragon sorceresses did? Wandering around town in disguises and smugly laughing at how clever they were? It made her want to scream. So she did.

"AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!" She curled up and roared her little lungs out in the general direction of the ground beneath her. As she was very small, this didn't accomplish much, but it vented a little bit of her current frustration. She blew a blond lock of hair out of her face and descended to a wide and flat section of road, reaching back into her nice bag and pulling out the lone object inside. A piece of chalk, as wide around as she was at the waist and about half as tall.

She growled as the ground shook again, pressing the tip of the chalk upon the flat stone and starting to mark out a wide circle. The process was slow, slightly obnoxious, and all in all a pain to do. It was a requirement, however, because she didn't have the mana of her larger self. She was very small, and that meant she could only fit so much mana inside her body.

Another rumble in the earth and howl of winds almost threw off her chalk-work, making her freeze in place until it was over, face scrunch up in frustration, and eyes shoot over in a hot glare towards the stupid little town.

"WILL YOU STOP THAT?! I'M WORKING HERE!" she roared, huffing at the lack of response before quickly getting back to the drawing. Ungrateful dragons, ungrateful dame-captains and their giant tits letting them store all the mana they could ever need, ungrateful ground shaking around and trying to throw her off, ungrateful air being hard to fly through. She was trying to get her baby back, was a little peace and quiet while she worked so much to ask?!

The ground rumbled again, making her freeze in place and her eyes widen in maddened fury. She exhaled slowly, forcing herself to calm down once more before getting back to writing the circle out. She was very small, and the waygate spell took a large amount of mana to cast. She couldn't cast it, therefore. She could, however, create a marker for her larger self to cast a waygate to. Big-Teg had more than enough mana in her much bigger body to cast the spell.

No need to send a message either- Big-Teg was already getting ready for the fight back home, Teg could feel it in the back of her mind, like a catchy tune that wouldn't shake loose and fall out of your ears no matter how you wiggled and smacked at your head. One of Rasil's silly tunes, probably. Oh, she forgot, he was going by the name 'Mal-lorn' these days wasn't he? Teg rolled her eyes as she paced out the circle. Honestly, that boy wasn't right.

He was either declaring his unashamed love for his mentor, or declaring that he was a lost and terribly lonely sort, or just thought the name sounded good. And she knew her baby well enough that it was that last thing and he hadn't even noticed the other implications. His brain was full of swords and monsters. Not the dangerous kind of monster that abducted little boys like him either, the big monsters that roared a lot and had honorable duels against knights. Animal-knights.

Her boy was obsessed with animal-knights and people-knights. Correction to reduce redundancy, he was obsessed with knights. She groaned despondently, leaning back and cracking her back before getting back to writing the marker. No wonder he had run off, he was probably doing something pea-brained like trying to have a real life chivalric adventure as a boy-hero. She should've never bought him those books, they gave him stupid ideas like this.

Look where that got him- captured by an ancient, wicked dragon and probably being tormented by her in ways that she'd scream and cry about if she let herself spend any amount of time thinking about it. And there was no time for her to sit down and cry, because her baby needed her to be working as hard as she could right now. Being a mother was hard. His sisters were so much easier to manage.

They spent eighty years being kids and twenty years badly pretending that they weren't still kids- she had to wrangle them into attending lessons. Rasil was somehow the exact opposite, pretending he wasn't a kid from the start and doing a very good job of it, she had to push him into play and he was always vaguely disdainful of it. Kids should enjoy being kids! Stop acting mature mister, you should be having fun! You should be looking for beetles and throwing mudballs at girls with other boys your age!

It was enough to make her yell! The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. So she did.

"GAH!" she shouted to no one, face scrunched up tightly and eyes closed as she finished the marker.

"GET OVER HERE- YOU BIG FATTY!" The marker glowed. Reality fell inwards with the crash of glass and flowed with the roar of a river. A flash of light blinded her for a moment, before the stone roared and shifted- lifting from the earth and slamming together like the links of a centipede. Wind whipped around shearing off chunks of stone, polishing their surfaces flat, and carving grooves into those surfaces.

Then- the motion stopped, and the space before her was different that the space behind the archway of freshly wrought-stone. Lady Greenwood in full regalia stepped through the portal, followed by a dozen knights of Greenwood. Atop her head was a crown of stars, and around her neck were emeralds that shone with inner light, suspended on silver threads. Her dress was woven from threads of her own golden hair, and caught the sunlight in its passing.

About her shoulders was the midnight green mantle of Lord Greenwood, and in her hand was a spearstaff carved from the heartwood of the world-tree's saplings, capped in a long mithril blade and carrying an amber jewel abrim with timeless life.

"Teg, to me," Lady Greenwood commanded, moving forwards without delay in step, flanked by her knights. Her eyes were cold enough to burn. In this distance, Duram-Mandom rumbled with the clash of earth and wind. — Duram-Mandom Lady Tylwyth of Greenwood Long strides and longer grievances carried her easily to the crumbling city of men and drachmen. A dozen great leaps over rumbling roads and shaking winds, propelling her into the air and then letting her glide on familiar wings to the battlefield.

Her features were clad in a placidity that she did not feel, a rolling turmoil behind her long-practiced facade of serenity. It would not do for a matter such as this to disrupt her face, to imply that this piteous thing had the ability to reach into her heart. No base lizard would have any power over her or her children, perceived or otherwise. The towers of the city were crumbling as she approached, spires of rock jutting high over the tumbling foundations of a once humble home.

The bellows of drachmen echoed inconsistently over the airs, and fearful inhabitants fled in all directions. If she and her noble guard spent any more than brief instances on the base earth, the fleeing men and drachmen would interrupt their pace. As they galloped, however, they simply traveled over head and gaze, except for bursts of power that cracked stone and rang out over fearful exclamations.

A great and hateful roar rang out over drachman bellow and warsong, as three giants heedlessly stomped their way through little buildings and over crumbling streets, towards a center where hurricane and mountain shattered against one another time and time again. The smell of blood and death was thick on the wind, enough to nauseate and stagger. A twisting, snakelike head curled its way up, growing and expanding like a great ivy.

The head was followed by a body, then wings and talons, and covered over in thick scales and scratches and little tears in the hooked wings. Golden and red like blood over coinage, standing taller than any tower or giant and screaming in hateful, maddened expression. Sorceress Mala, easily recognized by the ugly break where the righthand horn should be. Furious and gore-stained, reeking of death and corruption, screaming of perceived wrongs and obligations owed to her.

The bitch had taken her husband twenty years prior. She deserved nothing. Not treasures, not justices, not righted wrongs, not anything. Certainly not her son as a captive.

"Wretches, defilers, thieves, every one! I will feast on your gore! I have dined on the flesh of lords and kings, and presided over the death of nations! I was old when the kingdoms of man were young! I bore witness to the rise and fall of a hundred Demon Kings, and have received their favors by the thousand! None of you- none of you are worthy of me!" How loathsome, a woman losing her composure. And in such a public location too! She was more than wizened enough to act better.

The dragon twisted on herself, even as she rose high above the giants that approached her with weapons of bone raised, and her wings cast a shadow over the collapsing city. A lash of her tail cracked the air itself, and cleared a district from the world's surface. A beat of her wings tore saplings from the ground and toppled towers. The giants clashed against her great claws fearlessly, long-bearded and roaring against the wyrm twice their height. They served excellently to keep the scaled whore in place.

Such an immense target she could hardly miss. Perhaps a change in diet would be beneficial? She leapt again, bringing her staff forwards and sending forth a star from her crown. A precious jewel of immaculate craft, one of four that hung above her head, a gem she had been filling with mana for three hundred years. Be smote, worm. Mala twisted down to bite one of the giants who wrestled against her. The moment was interrupted by a gleaming star impacting her flank, just before the hind legs.

The world was filled with white. A blooming light that covered not just the worm, but the giants, and the town, and the whole world for a full league. This light vanished just as readily, followed by the rolling shockwave of a star's death, which shattered building and street and earth, which toppled the remaining towers of the town and knocked over the walls, which turned the lake into a rolling wave. The shockwave passed just as quickly, leaving a bloom of smoke and dust in its wake.

A great flap of wings sent dust and ash scattering to reveal a long trench carved in the earth, passing through streets and walls and ending in the fields that surrounded the township. A scar in the world large enough to support a new river, stripped of soil and clay and revealing rock beneath. A scar that terminated in the great scaled form of Broken-horned Mala, with a great gash torn in her side, staggering the beat of her wings.

Her left flank was crumbled inwards, hind and forwards legs hanging uselessly and thoroughly shattered, body supported by right-side limbs and tail. The dragon's eyes were as wide as they were frenzied and hateful. She leapt again, and sent a second star forwards. The great dragon twisted as it flapped its wings, shrinking in a grotesque manner and slinking out of the way of the rushing star.

The town-sized lizard curled itself up and emerged as a house-sized thing, wings flapping in a rush to pick itself up and away. The second manastar passed it by, impacting the ridge of the hills behind the dragon. The world was filled with light and force a second time. A flash of instant power as the star cracked, then died. The shockwave, more distant, was easier to bear. The hill it had impacted had ceased to be thereafter.

She landed again, this time well over the walls and among the ruins of the city, watching the scaly twisting shape of a battered dragon ascending and fleeing by wing. From this distance and angle, she had neither the ability to keep pace or strike her down with one of her prepared manastars. She had no other magic capable of both the range and power required.

"Teg," she commanded coldly. Her familiar sped off through the air, burning gold as she raced after the limping dragon. Another marker at the dragon's retreat would bring herself to it, no matter where she tried to hide. The scaled whore died today. She turned her gaze to the city itself, the waves of gore that stained it and the giants that now lay strewn across rubble and tortured earth. They were breathing, from the immense inhales and exhales of their mountainous lungs, but faintly.

They had been close to the manastar as it died.

"Guard, disperse. Seek out survivors and heal them," she ordered sharply, the dozen knights flanking her saluting and leaping away, towards whatever living scents remained.

"Lady Greenwood." The staggered and weary voice of Lady Titania greeted her. She turned to observe the Dame-Captain, kneeling promptly before her with shattered sword still in hand. One hand, as the other had been taken from her at some point, the stump stained in gore. Lady Titania showed nothing on her face, despite the injury and the shaking of her limbs, despite the gore and ash that stained her face and armor, despite the blood that saturated her hair. Lady Titania was quite the lady, after all.

"Dame-Captain Titania. You appear troubled."

"I apologize, I believe I may have fallen ill with something." A magnificent understatement. Admiration of the prodigious dame was natural.