Dragon Gods Reign

[Monster territory]

Running through the forest, Alicia constantly threw worried glances behind her. Two days ago her pursuers had found the cave she used as home and ever since she had been on edge. If not for the changes her new body caused in her thoughts and attitude, she would have undoubtedly broken under the pressure.

As much as the high order trained her, they didn't prepare her for months of relentlessly being hunted. With the exception of the few days where she had gotten lucky and managed to create some distance from her pursuers, she had never been able to sleep for more than an hour or two, further worsening her mental state.

It had gotten so bad that she didn't even dare to transform out of the new form that she found herself in after having learned the hard way that the power it granted her only partially carries over.

Thus she did her best to wave through the trees with her full dragon body, which had grown to nearly fifty meters in length. And due to the height and especially the bulk that accompanied it, she regularly knocked over trees while running.

Adding her inexperience meant she had more trouble with this than Darganth, despite their builds being similar. Even more so than the comparatively slimmer but taller Locis or the wider but smaller Tempust who already closely resemble him.

Amidst her escape she suddenly caught a glimpse of a familiar canyon, prompting her to turn to the right and heading directly for it. As a side effect of this, at least one of the groups pursuing her managed to come closer as they could cut the turn she took.

Forced to duck as a beam of frost came flying her way, she started emitting a repelling field around her. Spells aimed directly at her were slowed, and those that were slightly off were pushed away from her, keeping the bombardments pressure to a minimum.

This allowed her to rapidly progress towards the canyon, something that didn't escape her pursuers. The first to act on this was an aura user, suddenly turning his path further toward the canyon in the hopes of intercepting her.

By the time Alicia noticed this he had already eradicated most of her head start and was poised to arrive at around the same time if not earlier. Realizing the danger this brought her, her immediate reaction was to try and stop him.

Turning her head in his direction, she aimed her dragon's breath at him. When she unleashed it a moment later, a concentrated wave of kinetic energy exploded out from her mouth. Uprooting every tree in its path, it traveled straight for the lone man.

But despite her best hopes, he managed to react in time. Reinforcing his defenses by turning his external aura into an aura armor, he swung his sword towards the approaching attack.

With the sword gliding through the empty space before him, it left a wide streak of energy in its wake. This piece of aura quickly started gathering, forming a series of arrow-like projectiles with wide heads that flew toward Alicia's attack. And not even a second after the process began, the three arrows impacted Alicia's breath and tore it apart vertically.

Only needing to shield himself from the splinters of trees that were flung his way by the breath, the aura user continued mostly unimpeded.

At his sight Alicia gritted her teeth, taking a quick look around her before making a consequential decision.

As soon as she came across the next slight opening where she wasn't hindered by the trees, she went low before pushing off the ground with as much force as she could muster. Her jump carried her barely above the tree line, but it was enough to unfurl her wings and keep her from falling.

Ecstatic at the first flight she had in months, she nonetheless didn't forget the reason why she hadn't flown in that long. Preemptively swerving to the side, she thanked her instincts when her previous position became filled by attacks of four different elements.

Despite this she continued towards the canyon, making noticeably faster progress towards it. But even though her wager had seemingly paid off, Alicia still didn't dare to relax. And quickly her worries turned out to be justified when all over the forest mages rose into the air.

Caught in the open amidst tens of her hunters, Alicia could only trust in the shield she constantly kept active around her to block as many of their attacks as possible before breaking. And initially, it managed to do this well, with her mana reserves falling but at a sustainable pace.

This allowed her to reach the canyon without further obstruction. Diving behind the cover of the trees as soon as she could, Alicia landed on the small strip of unobstructed stone next to the sharp decline.

Already hearing the stream of water that ran far down at the bottom of the canyon, she kept from directly diving down. Leaning over the edge as far as she could, Alicia looked to her left along the ravine.

Opening her maw, she used the second version of her dragon's breath. This time, instead of sending a wave of repelling energy from her, her maw became something akin to a black hole. And by limiting her breath to a straight line, she created a beam that dragged all matter in its vicinity toward her.

In just a couple of seconds, a few tons of stone were hurling toward her. Waiting until the last possible moment before stopping, she hurried to push herself towards the river down below.

Behind her the rocks that she had dragged towards her scattered into a cone shape as her breath was no longer there to keep them from diverting too much. And due to the speed at which they traveled, they slammed into the walls, carving gashes into them and weakening the stone.

Gliding with mostly folded wings, Alicia took one more look upwards only to see the chain of rocks still continuing. Along with it the start of the cone also moved further and further to her left as the furthest stones captured in her beam had started fanning out further away.

Ignoring the constant rain of small pieces of stone that rained into the river, she slowly glided into it before fully submerging herself within. Holding her breath, she took a few seconds before growing accustomed to a somewhat working way of moving underwater.

Slowly working her way up the stream, more through the usage of gravity magic than her ability to swim in her new form, Alicia was just thinking about whether to transform into her human shape to speed it up when her pursuers started indiscriminately firing into the river after realizing that the walls had become too unstable to reliably climb down.

With strong wind currents making magical flight risky, the loose stone preventing them from climbing down the walls, and the water potentially being too shallow to catch their fall before the seabed, they had no way to get down.

Thus Alicia only needed to dive deeper until she stood on the river floor and wait out these attacks. Occasionally a lucky one would hit her, making her flinch but failing to reveal her position.

With minutes turning to hours, her hope slowly rose again. Using what little air and water magic she knew to bring her a regular supply of fresh air, she managed to hold out until night started to set in.

At that point the groups that still kept watch above had fallen drastically, with many choosing to follow the river into either direction and find where she emerged from it. And even those that remained drastically lowered the frequency of attacks they launched into the water, choosing to conserve their strength and watch.

But with the night quickly approaching, it started dawning on them that Alicia wouldn't emerge on her own. And with the darkness heavily favoring her, even giving her a solid chance to win against their shrunken group, they knew that they had to act first.

The first to do so was one of the vampire groups. Grabbing one of his subordinates, its leader threw the fellow vampire down the canyon.

His screams alerted every other group, prompting them to rush to look at what happened. Upon seeing him, they watched his fall with curiosity for its result.

And a couple of seconds later they would get it, with the vampire crashing into the water and sinking deep enough that its darkness consumed him. A few moments later the water around him turned red, resulting in quite a few disappointed sighs.

Just as his boss was about to complain about his uselessness, the man's arm broke through the surface of the water. Seeing him moving and attempting to claw his way up the stone walls, the vampires present started grinning.

With the knowledge that the water was deep enough that they would survive the fall, they started jumping down into the ravine without caring for the injuries. Only the vampire that had initially thrown his subordinate down was an exception, knowing full well that he would quickly be torn to shreds if he did.

Not because he didn't value his subordinate's life, but because if he wasn't made into an example, other leaders would become emboldened to treat their men similarly. Thus it was in their interest to use the chaos to kill him with impunity, a state of affairs that permeated the entire culture of this planet's vampires. Leaders killed openly but would always have to fear the retribution that hid in the dark.

And with the vampires jumping, the high orders forces knew they also had to act. They may have agreed to a temporary ceasefire with the vampire and monster forces, but that also meant that whoever caught Alicia would keep her. And they were well aware that if the vampires do so, she would end up in Lucius's hands.

And compared to their blood which had phoenix blood flowing inside to keep vampires from empowering themselves with it, hers would allow him to grow even further. Thus it was of grave importance that this case was averted, something all of those present were aware of.

“What now?” The first group leader asked.

“I am not going to jump, we phoenix-blooded are too important to risk like this.” Another one said, something the rest begrudgingly agreed to.

Erupting into a discussion, the different leaders tried to push anyone but themselves to risk their lives in the attempt.

When the first vampires managed to fully recover a few minutes later, one of them finally had enough.

“An incompetent bunch you all.” One of the aura users among them said.

And with this he acted, following the example of the vampire by jumping down. But contrary to them who just dropped into the water, he jumped all the way to the rock wall opposite of him, crashing into it to slow his fall before jumping and repeating the same on the other side.

After a moment the other aura users and the mages also started to join the fray. While the mages used whatever means they had to block the strong wind currents that had kept them from just flying down, most aura users started using the walls to get down.

From her hiding point, Alicia could see all of this and realized that it was now only a matter of time until she was found out. Quickly deciding to instead use the vulnerable state her enemies left themselves in, she burst out of the water and towards the nearest enemy.

Completely taking the vampire she chose as a target by surprise, she smacked him into the water. Unfurling her wings as much as possible, she used her momentum to rise as high as possible before digging her claws into the wall.

Amidst the shouts all around that alerted everyone of her position, she slowly started scaling up along the stone wall. Quickly the spells resumed raining down, this time being well aimed at her position.

Having no option to dodge, Alicia started pushing every last bit of her mana into the shield surrounding her. Focusing fully on climbing up, knowing full well that the aura users and vampires couldn't follow her quickly, she only caught a glimpse of the figure jumping at her.

A moment later a female vampire smashed into her protection with enough force to leave small cracks in her shield.

Widening her eyes in fear at this development, Alicia looked down just in time to still react to another vampire following the woman's example. Swinging her tail and flinging him hundreds of meters downstream, she increased the pace with which she scaled the canyon.

After a few meters more she also started coming across the first aura users, with one deciding to stop jumping from wall to wall. Instead, he let himself fall freely, dropping down from straight above Alicia.

Hurriedly jumping to the side, she saw and felt him rushing past her before crashing into the water with a scream. But despite escaping his attack, she slithered down multiple meters when her claws didn't fully dig into the stone after her hasted dodge.

Still, she didn't have the leisure to be angry about this and was instead forced to continue climbing.

Doing her best to make up for that loss as quickly as possible, Alicia decided to copy her enemy. Turning around and jumping to the opposite wall, she easily jumped over the easily thirty meters that separated the two walls.

Noticing the efficiency of this tactic, she quickly started gaining height as she constantly jumped from one wall to the other while using her wings to glide. Dodging the occasional aura user with relative ease, she soon reached the halfway mark to the edge.

“Stop going alone, encircle her.” Someone suddenly shouted, doing his best to be loud enough to be noticeable despite the wind.

The first few aura users she encountered after the shout were still more of the same, but slowly they started adapting their tactic. It started with multiple one jumping after another, always aiming for her landing spot.

When that proved unsuccessful, they started jumping with large groups at the same time to force her to dodge down. But even though this worked, they quickly realized that the effect was smaller than hoped and with each person having only one chance, they soon gave up.

“Mages, form a net with the aura users. One person together with as many spells as you can!” Someone outside the canyon shouted when he saw this.

The order was quickly implemented, with the aura users doing their best to stay above Alicia and jump at her one by one. Whenever she would dodge the person that aimed for her, she would find at least ten spells impacting her shield.

This quickly wore it down even further, resulting in it being completely covered in cracks. With each new one, Alicia would rotate it to bring a fresh spot into the direct line of fire, though that only delayed the inevitable.

After another coordinated attack, her shield buckled under the pressure and allowed the first couple of spells to land on her body. Flinching from this, Alicia stared into the sky with hopeless eyes.

Losing all strength to resist, she failed to react in time to the following salvo. Accompanied by the howls of celebration above and below her, over a hundred spells landed on her body.

With her scales being ripped off, her skin punctured and cut, and the effects of nearly every element afflicting her body, she lost strength in her limbs. Freely falling back down towards the river, she barely found the strength to curl herself into a protective sphere under her wings.

After what felt like an eternity to her, Alicia impacted the water's surface with a thundering splash. The pain of the impact flashed through her entire body, rousing every last bit of defiance she had in her.

Freely letting herself sink until she managed to dig her claws into the stone beneath the river, she held on tight. Gathering every last bit of mana she had, Alicia unleashed an enormous repelling push from her maw.

The dragon's breath forced itself against the current, momentarily creating a small spot without water. Bracing herself, Alicia prayed as the massive wave that had formed came crashing down on her. Closing her eyes, she completely ignored the screams of her pursuers behind her.

But to her complete surprise, the expected impact never came. As this reality set in, she also started noticing that the screams behind her had grown considerably quieter. Slowly opening her eyes, she saw that the river before her had mostly returned to its normal flow. The only exception to this was the area immediately around her where the water just vanished only to reappear a few meters behind her.

As she looked at this, she slowly realized that there was another difference. Behind her, the river water ended far lower up the walls, with the stone floor seemingly being multiple meters lower. The part of her enemies that survived whatever caused this seem to be as puzzled by this as she was, though she could hardly focus on it.

Instead, she spun around to face the new presence that had appeared behind her. As soon as she did she froze, looking at the familiar face with total disbelief.

“Victor?” She asked in a shaking voice.

“I'm glad that your safe, sis.” Darganth replied to her.

Hearing his words, Alicia slowly walked over to him with trembling steps, her form returning to her human one along with it. As soon as she reached him, she fell into his arms as tears of relief and happiness started trailing down her cheeks.

“Everything will be good from now.” Darganth said in a low tone, returning her embrace.