Something was very wrong with him. His soul seemed anemic compared to the other elves, almost as though he were dying. Then, as my gaze pierced deeper into his soul, I saw a second black and red energy connected to it, almost like a tumorous growth upon it.

  Dragon Fear spilled off of me reflexively and I opened my jaws and roared with so such force that it blasted the sand from around the elves’ feet. The elven guards and Namis all drew their weapons, while the two druids in front conjured some type of protective magic. The weaving of it was different enough that I didn’t immediately see its patterns. The elisatudae took three running steps and then leapt to the ground.

  “What treachery is this, elf?” My voice was like thunder and I felt the storm within me surge.

  Namis stood tall. He resisted my dragon fear and had wrapped himself in more than one spell. “You dare attack us after pledging our safety? I’ll see you ended if it’s…”

  His voice died away as he heard the gurgling sounds of the two druids next to him. They had both been speared through by what appeared to be pitch black roots. The roots pulsed with an inner crimson light and seemed to absorb the druids’ blood as their bodies were ripped asunder.

  Gory flesh splattered all over Namis and his guards, who had already moved to stand between him and whatever monstrosity was ripping its way free of the third druid. A deep hollow voice echoed out of whatever it was, but it was clearly not the voice of the elf. His flesh was so ruined that he couldn’t possibly be alive.

  “I am death given root. I come for blood at my master’s behest, but a dragon’s blood is the sweetest of all,” it hissed.

  Chapter 23 - Blood and Curses

  The beast's birth was a horror to behold, a grotesque perversion of nature that seemed to glory in the chaos it caused. Its body was a writhing mass of darkness, roots, and vines—all of which pulsed with a sinister crimson glow, as if the lifeblood of the earth were corrupted by a shadowy poison.

  At first I couldn’t see how it was speaking to me in that raspy voice, but eventually I saw a few of the tiny mouths spread out all over its sinuous body. I might only have lived a little more than 50 years, but the genetic memory provided by the Dragon Dream had shown me a great number of monstrosities—the most awful of which were eldritch horrors whose very existence threatened to warp the minds of mortals.

  Somehow, there was something more vile than that in this thing before me. It was both alive and not, both a part of Ileria and yet something from beyond. I could sense the necromantic magic involved in its creation, but also the horrors’ touch from beyond. Even worse, the wisps of the elf’s shattered soul were woven into this unnatural being. If I did not permanently kill this thing here and now, the elf’s torture might continue forever.

  Instinctively, I cast Identify on the monster and burned the DKP necessary to elevate the spell, all while keeping Soul Seer active.

  Blood Curse Beast Level: 22 - Legendary

  Health: 8,012/1000

  A blood curse beast is wrought by a fell magic which corrupts the very nature of Ileria. A combination of three sources is necessary for its unnatural creation. Necromantic magic defies the bonds of its life, magic not born of Ileria must reside within the host, in which a sliver of an immortal horror has been implanted.

  Beware, these beasts were created to battle dragons by desperate foes during a long-gone era. Consult the dream for further knowledge.

  "Cami, see to the elves. This abomination is mine," I sent the command through our bond, feeling her affirmation and concern pulse back at me before she took flight.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw she had summoned her wings and watched as she leaped from my back to swoop down on the elves. Behind me, I knew my minions were gathering themselves to fight—as they should—but it would annoy me to have to replace the ones killed by this monstrosity. That meant I needed to deal with it quickly.

  The waves of Dragon Fear pulsing from me seemed to feed the beast’s power, so I cut it off and opened my mouth to unleash destruction. The creature was shaking off the remnants of the elf whose flesh had birthed it when a bolt of lightning so brilliant it could sear the cornea blasted from my mouth and struck the monster.

  The ground it stood upon was ripped apart, and a storm of sand and rock flew high into the air as the monster was blasted backward, nearly falling into the sea. A hissing shriek escaped its many tiny maws, but I didn’t get a sense it had taken any damage.

  There were so many things which didn’t add up about this creature. Even its oddly displayed health baffled me. There would be time to ponder such things after the battle was over.

  From amidst the falling debris, the creature leapt. Its form expanded with a sickening fluidity that mocked the laws of physics and magic. I reared back, my wings catching the air as I tried to gain some distance between us to leap into the air. The last thing I wanted to do was to fight this thing on its terms—especially seeing how it seemed to be immune to electricity.

  That brilliant arc of blue-white power should have obliterated any foe before me, yet the blood curse beast only appeared to be cut and torn by the force of ricocheting bits of rocky shrapnel. There wasn’t even a hint of any electrical burns.

  My attempt at gaining some distance failed as it twisted in the air, sending its roots out to latch onto me and spreading itself wide like a disgusting net. I roared in pain when the barbed appendages snagged my wings, ripping into the relatively fragile membranes and preventing their movement.

  A cold realization slithered through me–this was no ordinary foe. My lightning, the proud herald of my wrath, proved useless—the very idea was an affront to nature. Dragons breathed and their foes fell, that was the natural order.

  Even as the creature latched onto me, its barbed roots sought the gaps between my mighty scales. They probed with an alien intelligence, searching for a way to sink into my flesh. I roared again, not in fear, but in defiance. It would take some time for this creature to get through my scales.

  I had grown greatly in power since bonding with Cami. But I was annoyed that neither Shocking Aura nor Call the Charge had any effect upon it—further proof of its resistance to electricity.

  I hissed, “We are prepared for you. I am slayer the magic trapped in flesh.”

  Twisting my massive form around, I sought to dislodge the fiend with brute force. Its roots scraped against my scales with the screeching of metal on metal, sending shivers through my body. I felt the pressure as it bore down, the sharp tips of its tendrils threatening to pierce my scales.

  Refusing to be bested by this horror, I shifted tactics. Poison was my next thought; toxic breath could poison any living thing, even if it didn’t breathe. Mere contact with a green’s noxious gas should be enough. I exhaled a miasma of virulent green, the air hissing as it turned into a deadly fog, but the creature once again ignored my attack. Even worse, my poison seemed to fuel it, as it suddenly pulsed with even more fervor.

  “Yesss!” it hissed, “feeed meee.”

  Desperation was a foreign feeling, but it gnawed at the edges of my concentration. I thought to try acid next, but realized that was foolishness. Even in the haste of battle, I couldn’t afford to be stupid. If dragon breath weapons, no matter how improbable it was, seemed to feed the beast, then I had to find another way.

  I swallowed the acid which churned in my throat and locked down on the creature. It might be against my scales, but that meant it was still within my Sphere of Controlled Speed. I slowed its motions while speeding up my own.

  Whatever bizarre resistance it had to dragons’ breath weapons or elemental forces, it didn’t seem to be protected from my magic. I was glad that we had cast our buffs before engaging with the elves.

  With renewed vigor, I fought against it. My claws raked its form, four times faster than it could possibly move. I shredded its roots, ripping some of them off of me. My claws dug deep into it and a foul odor rose up, a mixture of corruption and fetid earth. The creature reeled, but only slightly. It seemed to have almost instantaneous regeneration, its wounds closed as quickly as they formed, even as they spread a foul, black ichor over my body.

  Fury fueled my strength; I would not be undone by this unnatural spawn. My claws, each the length of a grown man's arm, swiped with deadly precision, tearing at the roots that attempted to invade my sanctimony. I ripped through the tendrils, shredding them, scattering black and red ichor that smoked where it touched the ground.

  The creature was relentless, its limbs growing back with an unholy rapidity that seemed to mock my efforts. My own blood, a royal shade of sapphire, mingled with the black-and-red of the beast's as it managed to wedge a root under a scale and pry it up, hot pain lanced along my side.

  The world was a cacophony of noise: the thrashing of our bodies, the guttural hissing of the creature, and the splintering of the earth beneath us. My roar only added to the strident sounds, a blast of primal anger that echoed across the shoreline.

  I tasted blood, thick and coppery, along with the acrid tang of the creature's ichor. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I drew upon every strand of strength woven into my body. The bond had made me strong and I would not be denied.

  This beast, this anomaly that dared to challenge the supremacy of my kind, would not have the satisfaction of seeing me falter. The Sphere of Controlled Speed was my domain… and as that thought hit me, something else occurred to me as we surged back and forth. This thing was a creature magic.

  The magic of all Ileria was mine to command, and now, I willed that there be no magic around me.

  Anti-Magic Domain

  The creatures tensed and pulled against my scales with a desperate tension. I grinned as its root-like limbs spasmed. This was its end; I had created a void of magic around me.

  Its mouths began making a strange gibbering sound. The noise was laced with words that I couldn’t make out. Then, to my horror, I realized that it wasn’t spasming in pain or death. It was laughing at me.

  “Foolish lizard! Oh no, you seek to harm the spawn of that which exists in the void between worlds by depriving me of your world’s feeble magic. Life has no power in the face of oblivion. The physical cannot match the ethereal.”

  Rage coursed within me. Attack me and try to kill me, those were things I expected. Dragons had experienced and fought the envy of others for millennia beyond counting. But laugh at me? No dragon would ever endure such an affront.

  My mind reeled. I needed an option to free myself. Even now, I felt the tips of some more of its roots starting to inch under my scales. I knew without being told that if this thing infiltrated my flesh, I would be my end. Then a pair of small, glass vials smashed against it and its body sizzled and thrashed in true pain.

  I dared open my eyes for a moment and saw Cassandra fishing out more vials from the satchel she always carried. Seeing my gaze on her, she shouted, “I thought that might do the job.”

  The knights rushed forward, but were blasted back as new tendrils sprouted and knocked them over. That reduction in the mass holding me allowed me to move, and I seized the opportunity this created to leap into the air. My domain fell away as I called upon the power of Ileria to lift me ever higher.

  As we rose, the beast began to squeeze me again. “What, you think a fall will hurt me?” it hissed.

  I didn’t bother answering as I felt the wind rushing past us. That was the answer that had evaded me. I called upon one of the abilities of my new class, but I would have to push it to the extreme.

  I am the Storm.

  Rather than allowing great blasts of lightning to surge forth, I constrained the power of the storm within myself. For a moment, I found myself wrestling two foes—the magic within me and the power of a monstrosity specifically created to slay dragons.

  The creature was immune to lightning, but a storm was so much more than just lightning. I’d realized that before, but old habits die hard. For the first time, I would truly become the storm.

  You have gained insight.

  I am the Storm has reached level 2.

  Personal physical transformation is now possible.

  My hardened scales faded away as my flesh became as intangible as the wind. I was truly the storm. Lightning crackled where I flew, but that was only a side effect. I was now vapor, actually a part of Ileria in a more tangible way than ever.

  I felt the connection between the world and me resonate deeply. I was a part of something beyond me... no, not beyond me… an extension of me. My very life was connected to the life of Ileria. As I exulted in the feeling, a deep voice spoke in my mind. “Now you begin to see what it means to be a dragon monarch.”

  With nothing solid to latch on to or find purchase with, the blood curse beast fell. It flailed in the air, but the last thing I wanted was for it to land on my minions. They had bought me the time I’d needed and besides, it would annoy no end to have to replace them—especially a valuable minion like Cassandra.

  As the blood curse beast fell, I pondered its words. If it wasn’t a part of the magic of Ileria or only slightly so, then it was out of balance. This was not where it belonged, and I had a spell for that.

  Banishment

  The power of 7th Tier magic surged through me as I am the Storm faded and I became flesh and blood once more. The spell form rolled from me and latched on to the horror-spawn.

  It laughed again. “Do you not understand? I am not subject to the magic of your physical world.”

  But this time, I sensed panic in its hissed words.

  Pushing more of my mana into the spell form, I felt something within me activate.

  Banishment has been cast by a Balance Warden against a creature subject to the Pact. The power of Eternity flows through you.

  Balance Warden has reached level 3.

  The spell locked onto the creature, and its descent to the ground suddenly halted. A hazy aura formed around it as reality itself seemed to deny it.

  That was the key—I had to deny it.

  “Be gone from my world!”

  My words came out as a roar and a great emptiness swallowed the blood curse beast. An instant later it was gone and a part of my mind reeled, trying to understand if it had ever been here at all.

  Chapter 24 - Clearing the Air

  The rush of what coursed through my body as I cast that spell made me shudder. It was something I’d never felt before. I simultaneously never wanted to feel it again and couldn’t wait to experience more of it. For just that instant, I had a sense of how small I was in the grand scale of things.

  It wasn’t something I could properly describe. Dragons weren’t small. We ate small things.

  Yet as the power of Eternity flowed through me to banish the creature born of a curse, I felt the connection to so much more. It wasn’t even the magic of Ileria; that was something I was comfortable with. The world’s magic was a massive ocean of power, but I felt as capable of riding it as I did coasting on thermals.

  This was beyond that. The sensation of being everything and everywhere all at once was intoxicating. Then as quick as it had appeared, it was gone. And the world seemed dim and muted. Where there had been vibrant color, now I only saw gray. Where before I sensed the vibrancy of life, now I only found existence.

  Fortunately, that sensation faded almost as quickly as the perceived loss had appeared. I shook my head to restore my equilibrium and was soon myself once more. I was a dragon, after all.

  No… I was something more. I didn’t know what it meant yet, but I was a dragon monarch. Already a noble to my minions, there was more to come. I could feel it.

  Perhaps that had been a taste of it, yet the memories of the Dragon Dream carried nothing about it. None of my ancestors would have forgotten something like what I had just experienced. If I dwelled on the memory for long, I felt like I might start drooling. So I bottled the memory up and banished it to the far recesses of my mind before pushing back into being myself.

  I forced myself to push it away. I needed to be present.

  Looking at the beach that had turned into a battlefield, I noted that Cami and my minions had disabled the remaining elves. They’d mostly been knocked unconscious. Only Namis was still on his feet, but he had a deep gash which bled through his shirt and his hands were raised above his head.

  He didn’t look like he was eager to move at all, given how Cami’s spear pricked into his throat.

  I could now sense the power of her spear, since it had grown from a sliver of her whole and our souls were connected in a spiritual way. Her spear longed for the elf’s blood and Cami had to restrain it. I wouldn’t have minded if she killed the elf, though it was likely the right decision to hold her bloodthirsty spear back.