Chapter 49: A Sister’s Pyre
A crack in the air tore like seedlings of chaos, part of Adrei’s scaled arm drawn in to meet a million slices, bloods tainting her golden scales. Yet the scales retaliated as they breathed fire, a mere crack ’burnt’ to nothingness as Adrei’s flame swung, the void scattered in the air as if never a sully to nature itself.
Coriel’s eyes blinked, then blinked again, before her stuttering steps dashed for east, her knees creaking like rusted metals. Adrei followed with a dash, neons of gold and white surged and arced, mapping soils that failed to register even footprints. Adrei sighed as with a leap, her arm stretched to catch her sister’s arm, before a scaled fist once again rushed, the reddened cheek edited with a further red that fractured the bone. Roots sprawled out beneath as Adrei’s waist was held up in the air, before the Queen’s flamed arm burned the daring roots as Coriel jumped back with a newly tinted bruise, the Queen’s arm slapped the ground as she curled her waist before standing, unyielding gazes burrowing into the quivering emeralds like a tiger to a rabbit.
Speed won’t do, Coriel remarked, as her arms stretched, a compass for the thickened roots to dash. A flood of greens overwhelmed even the Queen’s vision, as she swung her flame, the roots melting again to reveal a clearing. Adrei narrowed her eyes as they darted rightwards, Coriel with a palm quivering of an earthly explosion now at hair’s distance, until it was slapped away, before the Queen’s heel raised and dug into Coriel’s stomach, sending her flying again.
Coriel the pitball grew tired of the trip as she hurled white orchids towards her Queen, gliding through paths the petals illuminated before they were once again slapped away, an annoyed groan from the Queen for her repeated gestures. Coriel landed with steady steps as she dashed rightwards, orchids hurling to distract the Queen’s palms, as mana surged to her other arm, now pulsing living leylines, each stroke containing a cataclysm.
<Disenchant, bind, mellow>
The leylined arm slammed into the ground, as floods of wetted muds rushed like moving walls. Adrei glanced before she swung her flame like usual, her eyes widening a little, however, as the whip of flame sputtered and submerged into the mud’s embrace, the very structure of her flames dissected. Yet unwavering, she merely dashed, her mantle of ash flickering a deeper crimson as her shoulder collided against the mud wall, emerging with her robes untainted by any but her own embers.
Yet her eyes blinked as she met not her sister, but a rock giant with stumps as legs and leaves for a head, as its rocky arms collided into Adrei, a sheer show of force...only to meet a palm with a shockwave. Force, what a laughable charade for the Dragon Queen, as her fingers merely tightened and squeezed the arms into crumbling, no strains or spectacle in her scaled bone as she walked around the nature’s giant before hurling a fireball behind, an uncaring gesture of disrespect with a mere sound of boiled boom and dusts crumbling, a blackened funeral site that welcomed no visitors from the royals.
"Haha..."
This is ridiculous. Coriel uttered a curse in her mind for the first time in this decade. Her knees threatened to buckle as she faced the unstoppable force, except she is far from an unmovable object, her will to ’test’ her strength chipping away from the Queen’s dismissive claws, but a lingering doubt, one that whispered ’just a little further’, scathed away her urge to escape, the curiosity flaring again. How much more...before she herself breaks before her sister? The frozen time is surgical table, and she had no tools for dissection, no instruments of perfecting precisions, no materials of convinient taboos, but the genius scientist dared to loan out her vessal as numbered datas, for a paradox that yielded no results but satisfying her itching curiosity.
<Vines, Coil, Teeth>
A planted monstrosity spawned, a tange of vines, lush and emeralds, thorned tendrils blossoming as flower bloomed, teeths cackling to unfurl glimmering ivories, hungers apparent in the roars that followed. Coriel heaved a deep breath, before she reached into her pocket, grasping out a vial of blackened red, each bubbling liquid spoke of a malice etched by translations of near-hundreds dead vampires, as Adrei’s eyes narrowed in disgust, her ash mantle blaring to mirror her rage.