At the same time I moved forward and snapped out a pair of punches at the already injured brute. The magical knuckles did their work and each blow landed like a sledgehammer. I felt bones break beneath my hands and knew instinctively where best to hit him. Sure, his regeneration would fix his injuries eventually, but he wasn’t like a troll—he couldn’t regenerate from a fatal blow.

  With a push of my will, I triggered my racial ability, Project Image. An exact duplicate of me, down to the way I now moved as a trained martial artist, appeared before the second were-tiger as he was scrambling to his feet. For now, the image could only mirror what I did—but I wasn’t letting up my attack on the injured were-tiger. I landed blow after blow, which went off in a flurry augmented by my haste and the divine strength granted to me.

  The blows from the projected image also made contact and, unlike normal illusions, they actually had some physical substance. Each one was only hitting at somewhere between five and ten percent of my actual power, but it was enough to confuse my second foe for a critical moment.

  I landed an uppercut on my main target and rocked his overly wide head so hard that his neck snapped back and his brain rattled within his skull. Concussed, his hands came down and that was all it took. One, two, three more blows and his head caved in—what had been inside it was now leaking out.

  I turned in time to see the second were-tiger land a blow which depleted the minimal durability of the image. Someday, I’d learn to make images which could cast their own magic and fight nearly as well as the original me—but that was far in the future. Still, I had a grin on my face as I started to square off with my second foe.

  I could take him. I knew it. He knew it. Now, it was just time to deliver.

  Chapter 25 - Call it a Draw

  The were-tiger moved first as he launched himself at me with his claws extended. Before I would have tried to dodge, maybe counter with a punch, but now I drew in a breath and let the instincts crammed into me by the magic of the system and my transformation take over.

  I pivoted on my instep—except I pivoted into him, briefly cutting his momentum short with an elbow as I latched onto his wrist before flowing with it. His remaining momentum went to work for me and he flipped over my hip. My foot came up and stomped down, but he was fast enough to avoid getting his head caved in—if only just barely.

  He still yelped when the heel of my foot drove down into his ear. As he rolled away, he lost a piece of that ear and now had blood freely running down the side of his face, matting his fur. He growled at me, but some twisted kitty cat wasn’t going to intimidate me.

  Taunting was part of any good battle and I couldn’t help myself. But, then again, was it really snark if you were a dragon?

  “What’s the matter pussy cat? Feeling too slow?”

  “I don’t know how you’re doing this,” the tiger-man hissed. “Even with buffs, a human shouldn’t be faster than me.”

  I laughed deeply. “Who said anything about me being human?”

  Then I went on the offensive. I launched forward firing off a flurry of blows, but it was only meant to distract him. He blocked them and I felt his claws slice into my skin more than once. Such petty concerns were beneath my notice. He was losing and I was pushing him right to where I wanted him.

  A second later his feet bumped up against the corpse of his friend and he lost his balance. It’s only natural to slightly flail your arms when that happens. A master fighter might not have done so, but I got the feeling this one was more of a kill you in your sleep assassin-type, than a hand-to-hand expert.

  As his arms went wide, I fired off a side kick with all of my weight behind it. The force drove into his midsection and crushed the spot on him where the xiphoid process would be on a human. Since I assumed they were at least partially human, I hoped it would have the same affect. Sure enough I felt something break beneath my foot as all the air was driven from his lungs.

  Hopefully, he now had a chunk of cartilage bouncing around inside him, lacerating his organs. He deserved the pain after what his friend did to Cami. No one touches my serv… No. No one touches my friend.

  It was another odd admission but I drew power from it. I could feel that she was still alive but was fading. I needed to end this quickly.

  I capitalized on the fact he couldn’t breathe and landed a blow to the side of his head. The magical knuckles caused extensive damage, resulting in a shattered jaw. Then I laced my fingers behind the back of his head and yanked downward introducing his face to my knee—repeatedly. Since his jaw was broken and he couldn’t bite down, I felt safe doing so.

  Within seconds, his face looked like raw meat. I wanted to make him suffer for his sins but couldn’t waste the time. I drove a foot up into his groin and felt his body crumple as I drove that particularly sensitive piece of anatomy back up inside him. Then I smashed my foot down hard on the top of his foot, crushing the bones there.

  His body reflexively jerked back, but he was in pain everywhere. This resulted in his throat being exposed. I drove my fist into it and once again the knuckles did their job; his windpipe was completely crushed. For good measure, I punched it twice more. I wanted to make sure the damage was so severe that he wouldn’t be able to regenerate before he suffocated.

  When he hit the ground, I spared two seconds to slam my foot down into his rib cage. With my dragon empowered and magically buffed strength I twisted that foot and knocked loose the ribs I had just broken until they punctured his lungs. I could see that he was trying to cough up blood, but his throat was so completely crushed that nothing could get though. Now, it was only a question of whether he’d suffocate or drown in his own blood first.

  I turned my back on him like the trash that he was, and raced over to Cami. I wished I had magic which would heal her. I cursed the world for making me care about someone only to have to watch them slowly fade away in my arms. I did manage to wrap her wounds, to slow the bleeding, without injuring her further.

  “I’ve got you, Cami. Just hold on. Lisella will be back soon.”

  She tried to say something back to me, but I placed a finger against her lips.

  “No, save your strength. I’ve been stupid. We have a lot to talk about. I can’t be controlled by the past. The dragon dream is meant to give me knowledge, not to set my path. I’m sorry it took you getting hurt like this to make me realize that.”

  I saw hope in her eyes but also felt her fading. Dammit, what was taking the adventures so long? Serius had made it seem like they had things all in hand.

  I even contemplated calling out to Miseria. Maybe the goddess of healing would amend our deal and save Cami. I shuddered at what she might demand for such a boon, but knew I was ready to pay almost any price.

  Before I could call out, though, someone stepped through the portal in the air. Or something. He was a good seven feet tall and slender, in light robes of white and silver--robes which were torn and covered in blood. Only some of the blood seemed to be his own. He was panting and leaning heavily on a staff which had the head of a wyvern on the end of it.

  Wyvern weren’t dragons, but they were our distant cousins. I didn’t feel any particular fury about his staff, but was curious about what he was. His features were humanoid, but also somewhat like an ogre—if an ogre was skinny and emaciated. Atop his forehead he had a single curved horn that extended upwards for six inches.

  When he saw the scene before him, his eyes darted from me to the dead and dying were-tigers. “Ah… so they had proteges they were protecting. This makes more sense now.”

  Then, I felt a buildup of magic from the other side of the portal. He must have felt the same thing, because one second he was just barely on our side of the doorway ,and the next instant his body flashed behind us in a blink.

  I tried to react quickly enough, but holding Cami made me far too slow.

  A supernatural chill started to fill the air around us and I sensed the aura of ice magic. The cold would quickly kill Cami in her state, and might very well do me in, too. Whoever—or whatever—this was, he wasn’t to be underestimated. My memory was tickled by his appearance but I couldn’t place it for sure.

  Then fire exploded through the portal. A second later Galbrecht rushed through. His sword was up, but his shield arm hung limp at his side. Modessa and then Serius followed behind the paladin.

  Serius snapped, “Let them go. Your troll is nothing but ash now. You are finished.”

  A blade of ice grew from the creature’s hand—a hand which I now noticed ended in clawed fingertips. It went straight to Cami’s throat and only stopped after indenting her flesh. His other hand wagged a finger at the wizard.

  “I admit I wasn’t prepared for the five of you today, but I don’t think you expected us either. We’ll just have to call it a draw. Hopefully, your archer can learn to shoot a bow with only one arm and one eye.” The creature laughed in glee at the last of its words.

  “This isn’t a draw,” the wizard snarled. “You can’t stop us. My magic will fry you where you stand and these two are eager to draw your blood. Face it, you’re out classed… but if you let the children go, we will show mercy and give you a quick death.”

  The creature gestured with its head to the were-tiger who was thrashing about weakly on the ground behind us in the final throes of its death. “Mercy like that? No, I don’t think so.”

  The creature’s twisted grin made me sick, and I gathered myself to take its head off.

  “You probably don’t recognize the spell I cast,” it continued. “I created a twenty-foot ice spear. Sure, it seems to only be a couple feet long now, but that’s because I’m holding it back by willpower. If my concentration is broken in the slightest, or I simply let go, her head will be freed from her body by a spear of ice and then I’ll kill this other child.”

  I froze, lest I distract him.

  The being cackled. “Are you willing to lose the two of them just to keep me from leaving?”

  Modessa started to make another threat, but Serius cut her off. “Fine, we’ll call it a draw. Cast whatever emergency evacuation spell you have ,but if your hand slips and either of the children die, there is no place you can go that will be far enough away to keep you safe. This I swear upon my name as a grand magus of the Imperial University. We will find you and your death with be something for the legends, as we allow students to slowly dissect you to teach them about the processes of pain, necrosis, and healing.”

  The creature growled at the threat but then I felt him shift back. His body dematerialized into wind and ice and was soon ripping away faster than even a dragon could fly.

  A fireball launched from Serius’ fingers and exploded in the midst of the creature’s blizzard form, but it wasn’t enough to stop the being’s escape. It coalesced briefly and then was off with a howling scream.

  Galbrecht stared at the wizard. “You told him he could leave, but then attacked him.”

  Serius simply muttered, “Oh… grow up.”

  Modessa had already rushed to Cami and was kneeling next to where I cradled her in my arms. Her eyes were darting all over the wounds and my crude attempts to bandage them. She looked back over her shoulder and snapped, “Get Lisella. Now!”

  She needn’t have worried, as a moment later the priestess came through the portal. Liam, their half-elven ranger, leaned against her for support. His injuries were much as described by the creature, but I didn’t care. The only sympathy I had in the world was all reserved for Cami.

  Galbrecht took over supporting the ranger while Lisella ran to Cami. A part of me expected her to demand that I accept her as my mentor in order to heal the girl. I would immediately have agreed, and then killed her the first chance I got.

  But to her credit, she didn’t even so much as glance at me. All her attention was on Cami. “Oh, you poor girl, you really are tougher than you look.”

  Then, her hands glowed with golden light and the wounds I could still see beneath the bandages began to close before my eyes. I tried to pay attention to the magic, but the twists and swirls of the spell’s pattern were far too complex for me to understand. The spell must be at a tier beyond my capability.

  Cami let out a sigh. The pain on her face faded and through our connection, I sensed she was no longer in danger of dying. Her wounds were not entirely healed, but she had pulled back from death’s door.

  I unwrapped the bandages and saw that the deeper wound in her neck was still there—although it wasn’t bleeding and had at least partially closed.

  “Can’t you heal her more?” I pleaded.

  Lisella looked tired. “I’m pretty drained and some of the others still need more healing, at least as much as she does.”

  “Yes, but they’re adventurers. They knew the risks. She is a student and to be protected.”

  The priestess’ face flushed, but she didn’t move or cast another spell.

  I knew I was getting to her, though, and wasn’t above manipulating her a bit further. “If you want to be my mentor, you’re just going to have to trust me. Use another healing spell on her, but nothing above Tier 3—preferably Tier 1 or 2.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “Does this mean that you’ll accept me as your mentor and learn divine magic?”

  “Not yet, but you’ll have to extend to me some trust and give me an opportunity to trust you.” What I didn’t say, was that I couldn’t see how I’d ever be able to fully trust her—not after her role in killing my sister.

  “Okay. I don’t know why it’s that important right now. Cami is resting easy, now. But as a gesture of good faith, I’ll cast one more spell on her. Then I’ll need to check on Liam and Galbrecht some more.”

  “Can you tell me the name of the spell you’re going to cast? Oh… and what Tier is it?”

  “Fine,” she shook her head, “you are a student or will be. Teaching is never a bad thing. For this situation, Cami doesn’t need a powerful or quick heal like I just used. Heal over time spells are more like regeneration. They are mana efficient, in that they provide a greater amount of healing for less mana, but the healing occurs over a longer period of time. That could be anything from a few seconds to a few days… depending on the caster’s specializations, what god they follow, and the tier of the spell.

  “In this case, I’ll cast Lesser Regeneration. It will cause her to regenerate as much health every minute as she normally would in an hour. Thus, it works better on those with higher Durability but also is very mana efficient. Oh, and it’s Tier 2.”

  With that, she set her hands on Cami’s face and shoulder and I saw the golden glow surround her hands once again. It was much more subdued this time, but I could also follow the flow and pattern of the mana. The pattern made sense to me. I committed it to memory and, sure enough, a second later got the notification I was hoping for.

  You may choose to add the spell Lesser Regeneration to your Tier 2 Innate Spells. Do you wish to do so? Note you may only ever know six Tier 2 Innate Spells and while it is possible to change them out later it will cost you DKP to do so.

  Given that as I aged my durability would become fairly impressive, I knew this was the perfect spell for a dragon. More than that, it was the first healing spell I’d gained access to. The fact that I could learn it confirmed that I did have an aptitude for divine magic.

  I didn’t know if that was because of the interaction I’d had with Miseria before, or if it was something I was born with. My memories indicated that the number of dragons in my lineage who’d had healing abilities was limited, and mostly it had been from a rare variant of our breath weapon.

  Lesser Regeneration - Tier 2 spell. This spell causes the target to regenerate as much health as they would naturally heal in an hour every minute. Limbs and other things which cannot be regenerated naturally by the creature (unless it has such an ability) will not be healed as a result of this spell. The spell may be stacked up to five times. The spell is automatically successful against any target which will not be harmed by the effect, and will thus bypass any magic resistance. This spell comes from the domain of Miseria.

  Mana: 12

  Cast Time: 6 seconds.

  Cool-Down: 30 seconds.

  Range: touch.

  Duration: 5 minutes per caster level.

  Even with casting Force Darts and Identification three times each in a short period of time, I still had half my mana. The regeneration rate for my mana was a bit worrisome, because I don’t think I had regained more than a single point during the entire conflict. I’d need to search the dragon dream for more information about that.

  I smiled at Lisella, who had smiled at me after casting her spell. In a tired voice, she told me, “That’s all I can do for now. By all rights, she should already have died. I’m not sure what kept her alive.”