Chương 61: Unstoppable

POV: Evelisse Ardentia I drove a gauntleted fist into the wyvern's blue head, then twisted in the air and snapped a kick across the red one. Both heads rocked with the impact, whipping sideways on their long necks, but the beast didn't fall. The red head lunged, jaws gaping to close around me, and I kicked off the empty air and rose just out of reach to avoid an ice blast from the blue head. Nyx swept in from the side and fired a bolt of black lightning onto the wyvern; I knew that spell, the immobilization spell.

It struck, and the wyvern seized up, both heads jerking rigid, dark current crackling across its scales. Nyx caught my wrist. But before she could pull us clear, the wyvern's tail whipped up and coiled around my ankle. I looked down. Even with the immobilization spell, heads spasming, lightning webbing over it, the thing kept its wings beating, kept flying, and then it hauled, hard, a savage downward yank that ripped my wrist out of Nyx's grip and flung me toward the earth.

Nyx spun in the air, turning to dive after me. The wyvern spat a fireball at her before she could; she twisted and managed to avoid it, but in the same instant the blue head loosed an ice blast at me. The force of the tail's pull had left me tumbling, and I couldn't get my flight under control while spinning. I fought to right myself, to bring my legs back beneath me since I needed them down and braced to steer the float, but as I twisted around, the ice caught me.

It sheeted up my legs and froze solid from the knees down. That was bad. I dropped. Flight was almost impossible now, my legs a dead frozen weight dragging me down, and I was falling fast. At this height, with nothing beneath me to break it, the landing would not be one that I can walk away unscathed from. So I threw up a durability buff, layering what protection I could over myself; enough, maybe, to survive the impact if nothing else.

And I kept working, hammering at the ice with my gauntlets, cracking it away shard by shard until my legs came free. But the red head had already fired again, and the blue one was still pouring ice down on Nyx. I could see her weaving through it, throwing lightning, even a few lances of ice of her own, but none of it doing much. The wyvern shrugged it off. It would take something far stronger to hurt this thing. Luke's blasts might have managed it, but she wasn't here.

I got my gauntlets up just in time to catch the fireball, the heat of it searing through the holy light and stinging my palms. The impact worsened the fall; as I glimpsed below, it seemed like I was falling toward the mid-slopes. I finally wrenched my body straight and got my legs under me, managing to float and slowed down the fall. I began to rise, but right before I could propel myself up, the buff was gone. The flight window was over, and I could not cast it again in such a short interval.

I looked down at my own feet, straining to squeeze even one more second of the flight buff, and there was nothing. I fell. I looked up. A second fireball was already on me, point-blank. I threw my gauntlets up on reflex, but I couldn't raise them fast enough. It hit me square in the chest. The impact drove the air clean out of my lungs, a wall of force and heat slamming into me all at once, and the world lurched as I was flung down faster than before, the wind tearing past, the wyvern shrinking above me.

Then the trees. I crashed into the canopy of the lower forest, branches raking and snapping around me, whipping across my arms and face, and the light broke apart into shattered green as leaves obstructed the sky. I tore through one layer, then another, until the ground finally caught me and the fall stopped. For a moment I just lay there in the dirt and the broken foliage, staring up at the fractured canopy far above.

Most of my body hurt; my chest seemingly aching, my palms stung with burns, and a dozen smaller cuts and scrapes sang from where the branches had caught me. But I was breathing. Fortunately, nothing felt broken thanks to the durability buff and the trees. I had been lucky. If I'd come down on bare rock, or an open slope, it would have ended differently. Somewhere far above, past the canopy, I could still hear it; the twin shriek of the wyvern, the crack of Nyx's lightning answering it.

Then, before long, the sounds thinned and fell away, And something replaced them; A heavy rush of air, vast and fast, something enormous carving down through the sky toward me. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. I pushed myself up against the nearest trunk, dragging in breath after breath, trying to force my body back into working order.

Then a shadow dropped through the trees and struck the ground in front of me, and the impact threw up a spray of dirt and dead leaves. The wyvern. Both heads reared up over me, and it let out a low growl that pushed a wall of hot and cold air out in front of it at once. I got to my feet. The holy light of my gauntlets and greaves was gone; the blessing had run out somewhere in the fall, but there was no running from this in the shape I was in.

So I raised my fists, dropped my weight low, and set myself between it and the trees at my back. Flame gathered in the throat of the red head, a molten glow climbing up its neck, while the blue head exhaled a curl of freezing vapor, both winding up to fire at once— Black lightning slammed into it. The wyvern locked rigid, heads snapping still, and in the same breath a volley of ice lances and fireballs tore in from my left and hammered into its flank, driving it back a full step. I turned.

Nyx was striding out of the trees, a ring of fading magic circles winking out around her, likely where the lances and fire had come from. Without slowing, she launched herself at me, caught me around the waist, and hauled me off the ground; that sent a spike of pain through my ribs and I bit down on a wince.

"Milo's coming," she said.

"What?"

"That two-headed nuisance is more than we can handle." She banked us up hard, the wyvern shrinking below.

"It's mythical-class, has to be. Unlike Milo, I can't just teleport us home the moment things go bad."

"How did you even reach him?"

"That's none of your—" She didn't get to finish. A shadow fell across us both, and the wyvern was suddenly above us. How had it climbed that fast? Had all the hits only made it angrier? It dropped in front of us, wings beating, and I was slung over Nyx's shoulder with nothing to do but watch it over her back. She cut left; the wyvern turned with us and spat ice the instant it lined up, and Nyx twisted clear of it. Carrying me like this seemed, oddly, to let her move sharper.

Then she increased her speed, and the wyvern matched her.

"Can we make it back to the kingdom?" I asked.

"Probably not, but we can stall, and if we keep flying toward the kingdom, we'll run into Milo much sooner." So that was the plan. Close the distance from our end. Come to think of it, Milo and sis had wrapped up their half of the day awfully fast. Was he really that strong? Or had they just not run into any threats? Nyx wove through the wyvern's fire as we flew, and the wind screamed past us, hard enough that I had to squint against it, tearing at my hair and my cloak. Then one of the ice blasts clipped a wing.

The strain of carrying me was catching up with her, slowing her reactions, and after the hit she slowed further, listing slightly as she flew.

"Nyx, put me down. I can try to draw it off again."

"You can float already?"

"I think so. We've been flying a while. Milo should be close. One more distraction and we—""No, we fly." She didn't even let me finish.

"You couldn't beat that thing before, and you can't hold its attention long enough now, not in the state you're in. All you'd do is give me one more burden to rescue like last time." She wasn't wrong, but I couldn't stand being pure deadweight either. I glanced back, the wyvern was closing, a fireball already building.

"Fireball!" Nyx pulled up sharp and it screamed past beneath us. It kept firing, and I kept calling the angles, left, right, low, and even slowed as she was, she threaded through them. Somewhere in it she managed to shed the last of the ice caking her wing.

"He's here," Nyx said. I looked ahead. Across the open sky, a figure was coming at us fast, growing larger by the second, and as he closed, I could make him out plainly. The plain white shirt. The orange blur of the sword. Milo. I didn't know whether he could actually bring the thing down, but the sight of him coming made my chest lighter, and I realized that what I felt was simply… gladness.

Then I caught the blue head drawing back for another ice blast, and I shouted the warning, and Nyx slipped sideways out of its line. Milo didn't. Apparently, his reactions were not quick enough, and the blast hit him completely, sheeting over him and freezing him solid mid-air. He dropped. Oh no. If he fell while being frozen from this height—"Nyx, we have to get to him, he's—" But Nyx didn't turn for him. She simply pivoted, threw the immobilization bolt into the wyvern, and locked it stiff again for a few beats.

"He's fine." She was already dropping altitude.

"Honestly, let's just land. I'm getting sore." What? She dove, and the wyvern peeled after us, and as we fell toward the tree line, a shape shot up past us, fast, close enough that I felt the wind of it. I turned my head, and Milo was already back above, the sword blazing in his grip. He caught the ice blasts across the blade, one after another, and the moment the wyvern was in reach, he swept the sword clean through the blue neck and took the head off. I couldn't look away from him.

He got smaller as we sank toward the ground, but I could still follow it all; the wyvern flinging fire, Milo slipping most of it, taking one full in the face and not so much as slowing. Then the sword came around again, and the second head was gone, and the great body pitched sideways and fell. Then, as if he'd somehow felt me watching, Milo turned in the air and threw me a thumbs up.

I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding, and, despite everything, the burns, and the aching ribs and the wreck the day had been, I found myself smiling.