Chapter 14-396: Force, Thrice (1/2)

Urmryxigorz the Wise was on alert.

It wasn’t that much different a mindset from that of a normal dragon, merely wound up with more paranoia. It made sleeping and even dozing rather impossible, but that was fine, as a dragon could stay awake for weeks and even months if need be.

All five of its mahar Pactbound had been eliminated, smoothly and precisely. There was no sign of what or who had killed them by the other mahar who had hurried to investigate the disappearances of them and their cohorts.

They couldn’t even find intact corpses to examine, which indicated something all by itself.

The dragon elder, a millennium old and having seen and experienced many things in his long life, knew that such a strike was a mere precursor to something more direct, a way of removing pawns and agents in other places.

He expected the children he’d put into place among the mahar to be removed next, and was a bit surprised when they were not. One of the upper-worlders had come here, a demonic female with fantastically improbable strength, and literally slaughtered her way entirely through the Empire that had been founded and grown by foul Grobirundlarsh’s brood, burning them away in white fire and leaving an emptied landscape where tens of thousands of the Demon Dragon Elder’s Bloodline, humanoid and sauroid alike, had once ruled with savage impunity.

He could not Divine any surviving member of the older dragon’s Bloodline still alive in this Hollow World, save the Elder himself.

The demoness had also destroyed the inert Gate back to the Realm of the Cold Blood, which indicated that she might well know its purpose. It would be much more difficult to arrange transport to here or back to his home in the Realm without the Gate’s power there to anchor such magic, and certainly they were lost among the Planes and unable to forge a path back since the other worlds had been cut off.

He had checked all his Wards several times, making sure they were intact, and kept his sons rather more active than they preferred to be, ready against the intrusion of any outsiders into his lair.

He had only worked on this place for a mere handful of decades, but its improvements had been steady and thorough, and if he was distracted sometimes by ensuring that it was a place worthy of being a longer residence of an elder of his status, he had still done the job properly.

When the attack came, it still came without any warning, despite his senses and magic meant to forewarn him of danger.

And it was a Force attack.

His surprise and astonishment at the sheer arrogance of attacking him, of all beings, with a Force attack, gave way to stupefied astonishment, and then, of all things, pain.

Incredible pain, like nothing he had ever experienced!

First was the Dispelling effect, as wild magic crashed into him, and all his Contingencies, his Mantle of Wards, his long-duration Buffs, and even the magical items he was wearing were struck by crazed spiraling arcs of magic and silver shimmers. The spells were ripped apart in explosions of pure arcane energy, searing and battering him simultaneously, while his magic items were overwhelmed with magical static and suppressed instantly, depriving him of their protection and the magical effects stored inside them.

The waves of force came a mere instant later, smashing into him right through his scales, liquifying the cells and shattering the bones beneath, fountains of internal bleeding exploding through his mighty body in eruptions of agony.

He had felt all kinds of Elemental attacks before, experienced ripping psychic damage to mind and soul, and fought with tooth and claw as all dragons must, but never had he felt the vibrating, shaking agony of having parts of his body shattered from within.

It was impossible! Shards, Shards of Force could not harm him! Yet the ringing, bell-like impacts had nearly broken his eardrums and were still echoing in his skull...

He was over a hundred feet long from nose to tail, and the impacts of those Shards and their many flights picked him up and hurled him ten yards back like a doll, slamming him into the fresco of his discovery of this cloud island where he had made himself a temporary lair. He had intended to leave it to some of his children when they finally arrived here, but that didn’t seem like it was going to happen now.

That first volley had blown through all the Health Qi he had managed to accumulate after arriving in this place, and more.

Silver. Those Shards are burning with silver Light...

Divine power!

His violet eyes opened as the second volley manifested, and it was even bigger than the first. Six salvoes of Shards... eighteen Shards in each salvo, so many different energies swirling around their jetsilver display he couldn’t even discern properly how they were arranged, and he knew Force Magic backwards and forwards.

But he was able to see that Divine power girding them, gathered around every Shard, elevating the Force magic to something empowered by another, even higher energy, and so completely bypassing his immunity to Force and Thunder damage.

They leveled at him, and shot out, one hundred and eight Shards in a swirling geometric wave, singing with precise notes, the whole field of magic resonating with them and a Caster Level he had simply not believed was possible for any mortal, let alone a slip of a half-human hybrid.

Instinct alone made him expend psionic power to offset their impacts, and they slammed into him, bypassing his draconic immunity completely, and the magic meant to defy Elemental energies was turned into wild magic lashing at him instead.

He was smashed back against the stone wall behind him repeatedly, crushing and cracking the stone as waves of force pulped and pounded his insides, a sensation he had never thought he would see or feel in his lifetime.

His psionic Reserves were gone in an instant, of course, totally overwhelmed by the amount of incoming firepower.

The searingly cold pain flaring up from his heart was above and beyond even that, driving arcane wedges into his soul. From where he was sprawled limply against the wall, his spine shattered, he could look down and see a staff wrought from the femur of a Jotun buried deep in his chest.

She was after his Dragonheart...