Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Divine blood gushed out of Selene’s neck, forever cursing the ground on which we stood.

Gods and goddesses typically manifested ‘in the eye of the beholder’ so to speak. Iona and I saw them as humans, in spite of the limited number of human deities. Night saw them as vampires, and so on and so forth. It was a comforting lie.

Selene and Lunaris didn’t have weapons and armor. Their domain wasn’t a martial one, and they had never used them in life.

They hadn’t needed them.

Everything happened both fast and slow. Slow, for our perception and desire not to flatten everyone around us, and have either one of us utterly dogpiled by thousands of angry Classers. I understood now why the battle between Lun’Kat and the Guardians back then had been so ‘slow’, going ‘only’ around Mach 2-4. Enough to flatten most of a country.

Fast, because my ‘normal’ body topped out at mach 26, before I went [Lightspeed], and I was the slowpoke of the Eventide Eclipse.

Lunaris’s form twisted and morphed into a dragon’s, and the exhausted goddess rammed Lun’Kat off her lover’s bleeding body. I went [Lightspeed] and went straight to Selene, laying hands on her. Black Crow landed on the Goddess’s body, ready to take her on the next great adventure.

Divine anatomy was strange, foreign. It had given me literal headaches for centuries until I vaguely worked it out enough. My images were poor, my knowledge wasn’t sufficient.

But I had just enough for my skills to take hold, for [Panacea] to work. And where I lacked in efficiency in this one moment, I more than made up for in sheer, raw power.

Over 15 billion magic power when healing. My main limitation was ‘only’ having around 600 million mana… which didn’t really matter when I was regenerating around 18 million mana a second.

[*ding!* [The Elaine] leveled up! 4091 -> 4093! Only 3 levels to go! +1073 Strength, +1073 Dexterity, +4302 Speed, +4302 Vitality, +10757 Mana, +53783 Mana Regeneration, +21512 Magic Power, +21512 Magic Control per level!

We can do it!]

I disabled notifications. All except the final level.

Not even a heartbeat after Lunaris jumped on Lun’Kat, Fenrir crashed into the fighting dragons. His armor was already on, and he fought with frozen teeth and electrified claws. Iona leapt into the fray with her sword, and Auri was swooping down from the sky with a high-pitched battlecry.

Selene’s injury closed, and a number of gods dematerialized, going back to the divine realm instead of sticking around to help.

“Thank you.” Selene gasped out at hyperspeed, and I helped her up. My runes glowed to prevent a large sonic boom. “I’m sorry, we need to leave. The hit by Erebus has completely drained us.” She narrowed her eyes at the draconic brawl.

The first supersonic event was Fenrir snapping particularly hard at Lun’Kat, and the fight escalated. I activated the runes on my bones that past-me had so carefully inscribed. She’d been forward thinking, and the small percentage boost that activated throughout my body was worth the years of forgoing a flat boost. I was stronger, faster, tougher, and I needed every bit of it this fight.

“[Let There Be Light]” I intoned, infusing my voice with Radiance, and lit up the world like a second sun had arrived in the sky. Dazzling Radiance burst out of me, stripping away all illusionary lies and showing the bare truth of the world.

To my great disappointment, nothing much changed. No hidden injuries appeared, no grand deception was unraveled. Lunaris, Lun’Kat, and Fenrir remained in a tangled ball on the ground, rolling and clawing against each other. Lun’Kat had her teeth deep in Lunaris’s side, and doggedly refused to let go. Iona darted in with her weapons, scoring narrow scratches against Lun’Kat’s tough scales, and Auri simply remained hovering overhead.

The burst of Radiance from me had been like a signal to everyone else that this fight was getting Serious. Nearly everyone was fleeing as quickly as they could. Only a few gawkers stayed, along with the entire set of eight Guardians. They formed a loose ring around us, an unspoken threat that dramatic escalations on either of our parts could result in their intervention. The people running away looked like they were moving so slowly, a result of their vastly lower stats compared to us.

I know back in the day six full Guardians had been able to drive Lun’Kat to a stalemate. Add in the Eventide Eclipse, and the battle should be far more one sided. Selene shimmered out of existence a moment later, returning to the divine realm to rest. As much as we all wanted her here and now, it was better that she didn’t present a second target to the cunning dragon. That was with Lun’Kat holding the Guardian’s children hostage, and she’d had additional leverage on the Guardians of the era.

To the best of my knowledge, she didn’t have hostages from us. No children of ours adorned her lair, no friends of ours had Lun’Kat’s claws wrapped around her neck.

“Brrrpt!” Auri trash-talked, finally able to insult the dragon to her face. “BRRRPT!”

Egg-smasher. Nest-burner. Kidnapper. Monster.

Auri had quite a few words for Lun’Kat, and the mere fact she was in a position to trash talk showed that, for now, we were all taking it easy in the fight. No matter how much the dragon was seriously trying to kill Lunaris.

It was a weird tension.

With the bit of extra knowledge I had, with the little extra experience, I was trying to heal Lunaris as well. Lun’Kat’s vitality-reinforced teeth deep in her side couldn’t be removed, and I couldn’t heal an active bite like that. I hovered in flight nearby, not wanting to be the first to break out the heavy skills as the Guardian’s circle steadily grew as they slowly backed away from us.

Iona managed to grab onto Lun’Kat’s jaw in the rolling mess, and started to roll along with the three draconids. Empowered by Dragonsbane’s buff, she steadily pried Lun’Kat’s mouth open, and the moment she got her teeth free for a fraction of a second, Lunaris escaped back to the divine realm. The most update n0vels are published on 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝕟𝕖𝕥

The Guardians rapidly backed off, and the fight escalated.

Her mouth free, Lun’Kat breathed dragon’s most famous weapon point-blank at Iona. A woven tri-color stream of silver, red, and black fire washed over my lover, and the heat was enough to instantly glass sand a half-mile away. The fire had only a moment with Iona before splitting apart and weaving around her, Auri looking disdainfully down on Lun’Kat.

From there, the fight got ugly.

I went straight to my go-to move. [Judgment With the Condensed Focus of Sunfire]. The light flashed, blinding everyone looking, as a beam of Radiance as thick as my wrist burned through Lun’Kat’s left eye. The dragon immediately flickered into her elemental form, turning into a glittering starfield. The escalation prompted all of us to do the same. Fenrir turned into a roiling mass of Lightning. Iona turned into moonlight, and drew Dragonsbane. Auri was already Inferno.

Lun’Kat called down the stars.

Meteors of starfire, condensed to the point they were metal, rained down on all of us. Each hit left us battered and bruised, each one sent up a geyser of sand and glass over half a mile tall.

Each one animated itself into a small dragonling after landing, and began to fly around us in a massive flock. Lun’Kat’s continuing starstrikes managed to completely avoid them, but the attack was focused on us.

Auri flickered, then flickered again, as she cloned herself hundreds and hundreds of times. Each one was a slightly different color of flame, eventually ending up going through the entire rainbow. From pure white flames through pink, every color of red, orange, and yellow, all the way to the deep blues and violets so dark they looked black. They engaged in a fierce aerial dogfight with Lun’Kat’s Celestial dragonlings. Fire against fire, phoenix against dragon, Auri was just barely winning - but it was most of her attention versus a single skill from Lun’Kat.

Without focusing on Lunaris, the dragon was able to out-muscle Fenrir. Even in the form of elemental Lightning, the starry form of Lun’Kat was able to grab him and pin him down. It was a testament to how long I’d been on Pallos that it made perfect sense to me. The skies rumbled as a blizzard rolled in. Nevermind that it was summer in the desert in one of the hottest regions of Pallos.

“We just need to stall!” Iona shouted out as she darted in with her blade. Lun’Kat contemptuously ignored it, until Dragonsbane sliced through the starscape that made up her body, digging deep into her side. Not an immediately fatal blow, but it was deep enough that, unattended, it could be fatal. A howling blizzard began to roar around us, and that was the last I saw of any gawkers. “She hit 4096! Stall, and she’ll be forced to ascend!”

Lun’Kat, bleeding the void between the stars, with one foot firmly on Fenrir’s head, roared and whirled on the [Paladin]. Cursed black flames poured out of her mouth onto my wife. Iona threw her arms out to the side, keeping Dragonsbane out of the blast but taking the flames head-on. They only barely managed to lick her before Auri grabbed control of them and diverted them away, but it was too late. The black flames were stuck to Iona, burning everything but her gauntleted hands.

I had a flashback to the mountain. Where I’d been forced to amputate my own arm after the very same flames had gotten stuck to me.

There was no amputating Iona’s arm or anything. The flames were powerful and vicious, and already covered her from head to toe. It was fortunately trivial for me to heal through the damage being caused, but Auri would need significant time and focus to wrest the cursed flames away.

Undeterred by being lit on fire, Iona swung for Lun’Kat. Her blade blurred, and the speed let out the loudest crack I’d ever heard. Fire, sand, glass, snow and hail went flying in every direction from the shockwave of the sword’s passage. The dragon proved herself crafty and experienced, she made dodging the blow look effortless.

The snowstorm had continued to intensify, and Fenrir vanished from under Lun’Kat in a flurry of snowflakes. Iona and Lun’Kat continued to trade blows and dodges for a moment, then Iona leapt back.

We’d lived together and fought together for thousands of years. We didn’t need to yell out coordination like amateurs, we’d drilled similar moves and situations hundreds of times. Auri could [Burn Everything], and took the moment to engulf Lun’Kat in a hopeful firestorm.

Dragons were beings of Fire. The Stygian Deceiver took a moment to flicker herself back into mortal form, and Auri’s flames slid right off her scales like water off a duck’s back. The gash along her side looked nasty, and her blood hissed as it hit the ground. Then she went back to Celestial form, looking none the worse for the fire that had been ravaging her body.

Useful trick to force her to briefly drop out of her elemental transformation though.

Part of me felt useless, but I was also used to being the support. My job was to keep everyone alive, and to banish Lun’Kat’s Mirages. I’d already gotten one level doing nothing but keeping [Let There Be Light] up, suggesting that she was constantly trying illusionary tricks, but the searing light of [The Dawn] was burning it away.

The light of the Dragoneye Moons burst through Fenrir’s roiling cloudscape, shining down on Lun’Kat. The dragon became more. She grew in size, moved faster, and hit harder. Iona, even with a sword designed to go through Lun’Kat, was being rapidly forced back. Her swirling storm of blades flying around her weren’t doing much, and the dragon had greater leverage to hit the [Paladin] with.

Fenrir rematerialized out of the howling blizzard in a fury of thunder and Lightning, and hit Lun’Kat from the side. The two wrestled and rolled before the ancient dragon managed to pin the smaller wyvern down again. A slash of her back claws briefly had Fenrir’s entrails spilling out, before my healing snapped them all back inside his body, where they belonged. He vanished in another flurry of snow, literally melting back into the storm.

Lun’Kat finally took wing, and was before me in a flash. The initial dragonfire washed over me, and I’d never been more thankful that Auri’s companion bond was pure immunity to fire, not just high resistance.

The Stygian Deceiver’s tail was next, snapping through the air so quickly I didn’t have time to react. It obliterated my chest, hitting me so hard and fast my mithril chainmail turned into a fine spray of mist, nevermind what happened to everything below the neck. Thank goodness it wasn’t larger than I was.

I instantly regenerated, and snapped off a [Teleport] higher into the sky. Cheaper than going [Lightspeed], and more importantly, it didn’t leave an obvious trail for Lun’Kat to follow.

Not that the dragon needed it. She clearly had her own perception skills, and brutally followed after me with tooth, claw, and magic. It felt like every move was predicted, that attacks were going to locations before I teleported there. It wasn’t the case, I wasn’t an amateur, she was just so damn fast and strong.

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A wild game of cat and mouse erupted in the air as Lun’Kat tried her very best to kill me. I frantically [Teleported] around, knowing nothing I had could harm an incorporeal elemental transformation. I also knew this was how we won.

We didn’t need to kill Lun’Kat. We simply needed to wait until the System forced her to ascend. However she was holding herself back, we believed it wasn’t something she could do whenever. Iona would’ve alerted me if it was something in her System, and she was level 4096. Her trying and failing to murder me was us slowly winning.

Assuming she failed to murder me. I somehow doubt she'd be stupid enough to leave a piece of me behind if she hit me again.

One of her classes crippled, immune to her strongest weapon, but Lun’Kat had been around since creation. She knew how to handle annoying regenerators, and I didn’t have the moment needed to go [Lightspeed]. Not that I thought anything could hurt light, but she’d effortlessly pinned down and disemboweled Fenrir when he’d been made out of Lightning. I assumed the same trick would work on me.

We danced through the air, Lun’Kat barely snagging me before I flickered out to a new location. I didn’t dare run away or try to be tricky. I had to stay near the rest of my team, otherwise she could either start picking us off one at a time, or unleash her full Mirage might on Iona. I had no illusions about how weak they were - the dragon could make them real. Anything she could imagine, she could hit us with.

Better to stay close. I’d accepted the reality a long time ago: in a battle, kill the [Healer] first.

I got smashed, sliced, mauled, and stabbed. At one point Lun’Kat bit me in half, and I was literally tumbling down her throat before I got the [Teleport] off. I tried to get off a Radiance shot, but the inside of a starry field was just as invulnerable as the outside of one.

Fenrir managed to reform himself out of the blizzard and hit Lun’Kat again. The massive Celestial dragon outmassed the wyvern by a significant amount, but he was no fool. He went for her wings, the delicate membranes he could actually hurt and disrupt. It didn’t cause her to tumble out of the sky - no dragon was flying purely under their own power in the first place, nevermind thousands of levels in [Draconic Dominance] - but it did slightly disrupt her. Enough that I could get my bearings in the howling blizzard, enough that Iona could catch up and begin to menace her with Dragonsbane again. She was careful enough not to take another blow, but her inability to go through the [Paladin] meant I had some breathing room.

“Mana check!” Iona shouted, loud enough for us to hear over the howling gale. “Fenrir and Auri are going down slowly! The rest of us are steady at full!”

I cursed to myself. Trying to manaburn Lun’Kat and removing her bag of tricks wasn’t going to work. It made sense, she was mostly sticking to physical attacks on us right now, although elemental transformations could be a massive drain. Ah, who was I kidding, it was Lun’Kat. She probably had the skill close to free.

The world remained chaotic. The Stygian Deceiver’s [Starfall] skill hadn’t ever stopped, the skies continuing to rain down on us. The slowest I saw anyone move was Auri at around mach 15, when she was deciding what to do next. Our every movement caused gigantic shockwaves, making all of the sand, glass, hail, snow, stars, clouds and fire ripple and fly around. A tornado was slower and less destructive.

Then the skies parted. Fenrir’s blizzard was blown apart like a dandelion puff.

The Dragoneye Moons, full and clear in the night sky, glared down on us. The chunks that had made up Erebus were still drifting through space, but the Eyes stared through them, an illusion making them huge.

A heartbeat later, and it was like we’d been punched by the moons. A crushing weight hit me and drove me out of the sky, pulverizing me against the ground. Fenrir and Iona were similarly affected. Auri swooped down, but then started to burn more brightly and pushed up against it, [Burning Everything].

I slammed at a terrible angle into the sandy beaches of Ankhelt, the ocean a stone’s throw away. My neck snapped, and my entire body contorted as my healing un-snapped it, fighting against Lun’Kat’s gravitational presence. She was the queen of the moons, peerlessly powerful with them.

I was [The Healer], and my [Oath] looked disdainfully on her. It denied all those who would cause others harm. I even managed to heal Iona and Fenrir.

It took half my mana, but I outlasted Lun’Kat’s attack, the crushing weight of the moons. The dragon stared down at us, flapped her wings once, and started to flee.

“After her!” Iona yelled. “She’s almost out of mana!”

Unsaid was her regeneration rate, and Lun’Kat being ‘almost’ out of mana was presumably a very, very temporary state of affairs. We all started to chase the dragon. I went [Lightspeed] and paced next to her, going down a dangerous train of thought.

This was it.

We were at the end of our journey. At the end of our adventure.

Lun’Kat was fleeing, and I was the only one who could catch up to her right now. She wasn’t fighting. She was clearly disengaging and leaving. The dragon had tried to assassinate the Moon Goddesses and failed. She gained nothing from this fight.

Attacking her, right now, wouldn’t be protecting my patients anymore. It wouldn’t be self defense. It was shooting someone in the back. Sure, the person had sucker punched me first and taken a few shots at my patients, but they were leaving. It wasn’t self-defense, not by most definitions. Most importantly, not by mine.

It would be so easy. A blow to her head at the speed of light. I didn’t think it would kill Lun’Kat, she was far too tough, but it would slow her down. It would let Fenrir catch up and work on harassing her. It would get Iona close enough to start using Dragonsbane again. I’d take a bad, nauseating hit, but [Persistent Casting] would let me keep up my important skills. Auri could strap me to Fenrir’s back to keep me moving, and I’d have just enough presence of mind to keep functioning. The lost levels were nothing, I was gaining more in the last day than I usually got in a decade or two.

All I’d have to do is violate my [Oath].

All I’d have to do was betray my most important principles.

All I’d have to do was betray myself.

I couldn’t do it.

I wouldn’t do it.

I kept pace with Lun’Kat, the moons still staring at us but no longer pressuring us, as she swiftly traveled north. Iona summoned her bow - twice the size she was now, and her arrows were akin to ballista bolts - and started firing after the fleeing dragon. The tips of the bolts shimmered, and the Celestially transformed dragon effortlessly dodged the wave-generating, earth-shattering bolts.

I noticed the rocks tumbling through orbit starting to look bigger a moment before the first of them whizzed through the spot Lun’Kat was. The dragon deftly dodged around Auri’s new and improved [Meteor Strike] - why summon a rock when millions of them were right there - and her brief slow down let the rest of the team catch up.

“She’s avoiding her lair!” I shouted to Iona, who was still burning with black flames. We didn’t need to talk back and forth about it.

Thank goodness. For whatever reason, Lun’Kat wasn’t going home, and I was glad for it. No endless bag of tricks to pull out. No divine artifacts that had been piled up for tens of thousands of years. No fairies trapped in crystals, ready to play whatever mischief when they were freed. None of her tough armor or deadly weapons. Seeing Iona versus Lun’Kat, glaive against glaive, might’ve been interesting, but I was far happier that she was fighting with a massive handicap.

Even with the handicap, Lun’Kat started to beat us like rented drums. Auri was constantly pushed back, getting more and more overwhelmed by Lun’Kat’s summons. She outmassed Fenrir, and neither Lightning nor Ice were causing a single scratch on her body. I was locked in a stalemate on the magical front - I was stopping her from doing so much, but by the same token, there wasn’t much I could do to her while she stayed in her elemental form. Iona needed to hit Lun’Kat to harm her.

The battle raged.

We traveled around Pallos quickly enough that day became night, and night flipped back into day. The stars hid from the blinding light of the sun, and the Dragoneye moons were eternally staring down onto us. Ocean became land. Summer became winter. The rocks that made up Erebus were tumbling around Pallos, turning into a beautiful ring. A ring that Auri continuously looted to throw more meteors at Lun’Kat.

Divine fire met cursed flames. Radiance banished illusions. Lightning and Ice met Pyronox. Sword met with claws, glaive met with teeth. Arrows snapped against scales. We danced as Lightning and as the stars. We danced as sunlight and a moonbeam. We danced through fire and flames.

All of our defenses were too strong for each other’s attacks, a not unheard of problem for Immortals battling it out at our level.

Skills met stats. Biomancied bodies met the most perfect creation of the Gods.

People and animals tried to flee before the cataclysm that was our battle, only to realize we’d already left them behind before they could start moving. My healing washed over them in our wake, leaving behind destroyed property and perfect bodies.

Except for the animals. They died by the thousands, so quickly as to not feel a moment of pain.

Three times, Lun’Kat flew over a dense population center, trying to shake us. The devastation left in her wake could’ve been enough to force us to detour. I couldn’t leave behind a collapsed building filled with people - the moment I left, the building would crush the people inside to death, a flagrant [Oath] violation. Iona had to help people stuck in a similar position, or risk being found in violation of her [Vow].

Auri saved us. She could [Burn Everything], and she burned everything. Collapsed buildings vanished in smoke. Weakened bridges had the missing support burnt out, the very concept of the damage getting burned by some of Auri’s most advanced bullshit, fixing the bridge. The little phoenix couldn’t do much direct damage to Lun’Kat, but between handling dragonfire, summons, meteor strikes, and cities, she was keeping us in the fight.

One of the larger elven cities got burnt down, and a number of Classers buzzed out of it like angry bees. Most of them had the good sense to avoid the conflict, a couple fired off weak potshots we entirely ignored, and the entire fight moved so quickly we rapidly left the rest of them in our wake.

We pulled out every trick we had. From my shield working both as a mobile platform for Iona to jump off of, to using it to absorb dragonfire. From Fenrir creating Ice javelins as weapons, to Iona making a cage of energetic sword strikes. Auri pulled out her ‘hummingbird in a meteor’ trick, and at one point coated Lun’Kat in sticky burning sugar. I cast spells and wrote new ones on the spot. Every weapon, every trinket that might be brought into play from [Manor] saw use.

Lun’Kat, The Stygian Deceiver, created by the very gods, powered through everything we had.

We slowed her. We harried her. We forced her to use her entire bag of tricks - the ones we hadn’t neutered.

She seemed surprisingly unprepared in many ways. Where were the great artifacts? Where were the gigantic gemstones? Why wasn’t she grabbing her armor and weapons?

Why was this a fight just against a dragon?

At the same time, the four of us matched her in level, with blue or greater quality classes across all our classes. We’d had a similar quality for nearly our entire run. We had a divine weapon, pocket dimensions, and multiple restriction skills boosting us, and by most metrics, we were losing. We’d only gotten the hint of a chance because Lun’Kat had jumped the Moon Goddesses.

But apart from the initial first blow with Dragonsbane, a wound that had already scabbed over with the gas from a forming nebula, we weren’t able to land a scratch on Lun’Kat. Not even when Iona handed the weapon off to me, and I tried to hit her at [Lightspeed].

And then the notifications came.

[*ding!* [The Elaine] leveled up! 4095 -> 4096!

WE DID IT!]

[*ding!* Congratulations! You’ve reached level 4096! At this level, you will ascend to become a goddess in the pantheon you are most closely associated with. Class up whenever you feel ready! You will automatically begin classing up in: 511:59:56]

It looked like there was no end in sight to the fight, and the ascension timer was generous. Over 500 hours - right around the three week mark. We just needed to slip up once, and she’d be able to escape and remain on Pallos. We had no such stopgap. If she escaped and managed to reset, a stall would turn into her favor.

All of us were experienced and battle-hardened. But with four of us, we had four times the chance of making a mistake as Lun’Kat did. We had four times the ability to cover for each other’s mistakes, while Lun’Kat had nobody.

“I’ve hit the level cap!” I yelled at my team. Iona was constantly watching Lun’Kat’s skills, not sparing a moment to check on us.

“Understood!” She glanced at Fenrir. “We’re close!”

We skirted near Xyris, skimming along the hurricane walls of the living storm. A single wayward twitch, and we’d lose one or more of our skills, gaining a random one in exchange. With how close the battle was, with how nearly every skill was being used, a single wing, claw, or toe could ruin us. Fenrir tried to seize the storm, but the Oddity objected. Thankfully, it didn’t choose to retaliate. It could’ve chased us far and wide across Pallos, entirely ignoring the fact that it was supposed to be ocean-bound.

We battled in space, weaving between the tumbling rocks of Erebus, forming a new ring around Pallos. Auri grabbed countless superheated chunks of rock and flung them at Lun’Kat.

We battled underwater, where my lungs could last for hours and Auri knew the secret of burning while bathed in water. Careful use of my pocket dimension let Iona and Fenrir steal a breath of air here and there until Lun’Kat was forced to battle us in the air once again.

The cursed flames on Iona seemed to laugh when they were drowned, roaring to greater heights. Thank Selene and Lunaris that Iona had an anti-pain skill.

The smell of pork was eternal, haunting me, all the worse knowing it was my wife’s flesh that was being cooked alive.

Iona rotated through dozens of different strategies. An entirely defensive strategy was met with derision and Lun’Kat ignoring her, focusing on the rest of the Eventide Eclipse. It rapidly forced Iona back into the action.

Various strategies blending defense and offence resulted in stalemates, neither one managing to land a critical blow on the other.

The most aggressive berserker strategies showed some promise. She flung herself at Lun’Kat, letting a terrible claw skewer her chest, the full expanse of the night sky somehow trumping the soft glow of the true moons. In exchange, she got a shallow gash against her oversized paw, one that bled moonlight from the darkest night.

The risk was far too great, and after two nearly-fatal injuries - even with my healing - Iona scaled back.

It all came to a head over the south coast of what had once been the Nostrum Sea. Iona pretended to overextend on a swing - we’d sparred enough that I knew the move - and Lun’Kat lunged at the [Paladin]. With a swift move, Lun’Kat bit down on Iona, severing her arms and legs before jerking her head back. Iona’s weapons fell - including Dragonsbane - and Lun’Kat proved she was smarter than a young wyvern by starting to chew. Bite after bite carved straight through Iona, her body regenerating back to picture perfect health every time Lun’Kat opened her mouth to bite down again.

I [Teleported] Dragonsbane back into Iona’s hand, and the [Paladin] struck swift and true, thrusting the blade deep into Lun’Kat’s mouth, straight towards the brain. The mouth-brain barrier was thin, but Lun’Kat was massive. It didn’t reach that deeply in, but the wound was deep.

The dragon spit Iona out of her mouth, removing the chance for a follow up blow. Fenrir managed to leverage his bulk and weight, and forced the injured Lun’Kat down. The two titans crashed on an aged ruin, and we all flashed over, ready to take advantage of the situation. Iona positioned Dragonsbane over Lun’Kat’s head.

“Ascend or die.” She demanded. Lun’Kat dropped her elemental transformation, turning into flesh and blood once more.

“Ascension is death.” She rumbled out in pure Creation. Iona snorted.

“Selene and Lunaris are too weak to try and slay a nascent godling.” The [Dragonslayer] put a bit more pressure on Dragonsbane, parting through some head scales. The dragon’s malicious eye locked onto me.

“Heal me.” Lun’Kat half-demanded, half-pleaded. For however much a dragon could plead.

Iona closed her eyes and swore.