[Ouroboros' End]
Seeing Darganth carry the battle further and further away from her, Serania hadn't been in a hurry to pursue. Because even if she did, she doubted it would shift the tide. The constant spatial distortions that surrounded the female mage would make sure of it.
Instead, she waited until she felt the spell's area of effect move away from her. Finally back in a stable and constant area of space, she followed only slowly, taking care not to move back into the spell while she studied its pattern from afar.
Even as Darganth was battered by attack after attack, only irregularly managing to fight back under the onslaught of two opponents, she held back the urge to race after him and immediately rejoin the fight. Not that it was easy. Every flash of time magic, every arc the spatial blade cut through the air, and every flicker of fire magic that streaked across the skies made her fingers twitch with the desire to respond with a spell of her own.
But she kept her cool. Soon, this was rewarded with the first insights into the spell obstructing her. While the effects that ultimately stretched and compressed reality varied greatly, that variety only came from the interplay of the different center points from which the distortions radiated outward. On its own, each of these was constant, making the distortions predictable once one understood their position and movement.
With that understanding, Serania was quick to unravel the rest of the spell. Starting from the edges where there was often only one distortion active, she needed only a few seconds to get a full understanding of how many centers there were to the distortion effects, how strong each was, and where they were. From that, it was easy to get accustomed to the pattern behind each one's movements. Waiting another second to confirm that the predictions this allowed her to make were accurate, she then finally readied herself to rejoin the battle.
Noticing when Darganth slowed down, Serania readied herself to strike. Delaying a moment as she calculated space to soon contract above their enemies, she waited until the perfect moment when the distance between the edge of the spell and the mages had been cut by almost a full third before finally calling down two bolts of lightning from the clouds above.
When it struck, Serania surged upward herself. Clad in lightning that trailed after her as she rose to join Darganth at his side, she watched as a full volley of fire magic followed her attack with just a moment's delay, exploding against the already strained shield spells of their enemies and bathing them in fire and smoke.
Arriving next to her husband a second later, Serania only then noticed his missing arm.
"When did that happen?" She asked worriedly as she stared at the space where the limb would've been with wide eyes.
"It's from the second strike of the time mana construct. Took me by surprise, both the fact that the spell struck twice and how strong that second strike was."
"Strong because you didn't take it as seriously as you should've, right?" Serania asked, her voice carrying an edge of worry in it.
"I'm still transformed, that alone shows how little I am worried about those two. But yes, I also wasn't using my emergency defense spells. Worst case, I'll be forced into my true form, and they activate then." Darganth said.
His answer both reassured and frustrated Serania. Former because it meant that he hadn't been in as much danger as she briefly feared, latter because of how he didn't seem to change his approach to the fight.
"Watch out nonetheless, I don't like seeing you hurt, no matter how little it ultimately endangers you." She said after a moment, voicing her concerns.
"I'll play it a bit safe." Darganth assured her in response. Content with the promise, Serania gave him a short nod.
With this brief conversation done, the two of them turned their attention back toward their foes. The smugglers had, in the meantime, held their own strategy discussion, one that was still ongoing when they finished, as the two mages only turned away from one another when Darganth and Serania let their mana surge in preparation to resume the fight.
By the time they locked eyes with him, Darganth was already moving. Dashing forward, he had crossed half the distance separating him from their foes when Serania's spell manifested around him. Lightning surged from his back, winding around his body while gaining mass and hardening into an armor construct that encased him. This was supplemented by two wings of lightning that took shape between his shoulders, while on his right shoulder the armor extended into a replica of his arm.
A moment later, Darganth collided with the spatial mage. The lightning construct that had formed in place of his right arm slammed into one of the woman's blades as she blocked his punch, sending arcs of electricity flying to all sides as its magic clashed with the enchantments in the sword.
Quickly twisting to the side when the second blade came at him a moment later, Darganth morphed the construct's lower arm into a blade and drove it toward his foe's ribs. However, the mage responded just as quickly, twisting her wrist to shift her left blade enough that it intercepted the strike.
But the impact still pushed her back. This created an opening for Darganth to punch forward with his empty hand, sending a fist clad in lightning armor flying into his opponent's torso. The impact sent electric currents surging into the woman's chainmail, halting the attempt to counter with her right hand's weapon mid-strike as her muscles seized up.
Pressing his advantage, Darganth flew up and slammed his knee into her chin before she recovered. The hit sent his foe reeling backward, though that didn't stop him from keeping up the pressure. Mana gathered into his left hand as he aimed it toward her, erupting with lightning a moment later.
"Lightning surge." Darganth chanted as dozens of lightning bolts were discharged from his palm.
Darganth pressed forward without giving her time to breathe. The lightning bolts converged into a torrent that arced and split as it closed the distance, chasing after her staggered form even as she tried to twist away. Even with dozens of bolts being intercepted by the blade raised in front of her body, many more soon struck true. Hundreds of smaller bolts bit into her shoulder, hip, and thigh, leaving trails of scorched links in the chainmail and causing a final layer of defensive shields to activate whenever they latched onto exposed sections of skin.
Yet the woman's spells held on. Even while reeling back from the earlier strike, she managed to channel enough mana into her shield to block the onslaught. When she then regained control over her momentum, she quickly turned her trajectory downward, escaping out from under the spell beating down on her.
At first, Darganth readjusted his aim to follow after her. Though his reaction was slightly delayed, the speed at which the lightning flew allowed his attack to catch up with her the moment his arm did, forcing the space mage to turn sharply to the right to avoid being hit again.
Having now expected it, Darganth was already back on her tail when his other opponent burst onto the scene. Having broken free from the onslaught of spells Serania had fired his way at the same time as Darganth had collided with the spatial mage, he rushed at him, sword in hand.
The attack forced Darganth to cancel his spell. Bringing up his lightning arm to meet the strike, his eyes widened when the counter didn't meet steel but cut through empty air instead.
His instincts immediately went on high alert, with the world around him slowing down even further as he honed his focus. Artificial arm still outstretched, he waited with his muscles tensed for any sign of the time mage, knowing full well that attacks might arrive the instant they became noticeable.
However, the attack never came, at least not before Serania intervened.
"Lightning cocoon." As she finished her chant, the smell of ozone momentarily filled the air before a curtain of lightning formed all around him. Splitting off from a single bolt that descended from the clouds above, hundreds of individual bolts appeared all around him like bars of a cage, preventing anyone from reaching him.
Not a moment too soon, only a fraction of a second later, the time mage reappeared, his sword already mid-swing and having been halted mere centimeters away from the lightning bars. Barely having stopped in time, this left the mage wide open for Darganth's following counterattack and forced him to scramble when he sent a burst of flames his way.
"Scatterflame." With his chant, Darganth sent forth hundreds of glowing red motes. A few collided with the bars of Serania's spell as they passed through, causing flashes of fire to erupt wherever it happened. However, the majority managed to squeeze through the gap between the bolts, soon encasing the time mage in a swarm of hundreds of them.
The reaction came swiftly. A swing of the blade tore through tens of them, causing the motes to burst into flames as the spell tried to ignite the blade on contact, but without success. A second swing again destroyed similarly many, with the third one doing the same and buying the time mage a few moments before the swarm reached him. By the fourth swing, however, enough motes were surrounding him that even though each strike was destroying multiple dozen, there were simply too many to block them all.
Soon, the first few landed on his hand and forearms, igniting clothing and clashing with the shield spell that arose to block them. Each new hit only added to this, first destroying sleeves and shoes as they struck the more exposed body parts before assaulting his shield in a constant barrage of fiery eruptions.
Sensing the spatial mage rushing to her ally's aid, Darganth turned his other hand toward her. Additional lightning gathered around the artificial arm in preparation for an attack, only for it to linger there when he felt the buildup of Serania's spell.
"Call of the dragon." Already having sensed her drawing on the small reserve of his draconic mana he was by now always lending her, Darganth didn't need to hear her words to know what would follow. With a small grin, he held back his spell from manifesting and instead waited with anticipation for Serania's spell to finish forming.
Lightning sprang forth from her form. Not in a focused bolt or even a torrent that erupted from her palm, but as an uncontrollable storm that seemed to surge out of every pore of her body. Clothes were ignored as if they didn't exist, with electric currents shooting through her billowing robes without leaving as much as a singed spot as they raced to join the raging mass of lightning that was quickly taking form in front of Serania.
And with each new bolt that joined it, the unstructured storm of electricity was slowly given form. Its initially round form first stretched lengthwise while gradually hardening into a solid construct. From this, six limbs formed before the main body had even finished taking shape. Four legs and a pair of wings burst forth from what was slowly becoming apparent to be a reptilian body shape, their appearance at first rather vague and unrefined but soon sharpening when another change flowed through the body as mana construct gave way to real flesh and scales. The change soon also spread into the wings and legs while finer details appeared all across the figure, with horns growing from the head and spikes appearing along the spine.
Yet, even without these last steps, the two smuggler mages recognized the figure for the dragon it was. Not a construct shaped like one as many mages could conjure, but a real dragon of flesh and blood, if only of a low-tier species.
"Join your king in battle." Serania ordered amid the resulting pause in fighting.
Those words were all that was needed. With a roar that caused even the lesser battles below to briefly pause, the lightning dragon set into motion. Within a few beats of its wings, its great frame blurred into little more than a streak of lightning left in its trail, leaving the time mage barely a moment to conjure a shield before a massive maw already snapped shut around it. Teeth ground against the shimmering wall that he had called forth, with lightning arching from the dragon's body and burning across all sides of the spell.
But Serania knew that it wouldn't hold for long. Surprise and the onslaught that followed would only keep the mage busy for a few seconds, so they had to make these count. With that in mind, she raised her staff toward the other foe.
Almost perfectly in unison with her, Darganth moved out of the cage protecting him. Pieces of the lightning bolt bent out of the way as he burst forward, a spell already forming in his palm as he shot toward the spatial mage.
His opponent met him halfway, twin blades flashing up to intercept the spell gathering in his palm. Lightning clashed against the metal before being pushed aside by the force of her swing, leaving the spell to fly off past her into the distance.
Serania's attack followed not a moment later. A brief chant announced a blast of air that came rushing toward her foe, its raging currents slamming into a barrier the woman managed to erect in time with devastating effect. A sharp blade of wind scraped across the conjured wall of spatial magic, cutting wide gashes into its silver surface.
Evading the barrier, Darganth utilized the moment of these two spells clashing to launch his own offensive. War magic gathered around his hand, with the crimson red element of power itself briefly pulsing between his fingers before being unleashed in a volley of two dozen sword-shaped constructs that forced the spatial mage to split her focus. Mana gathered into her hand before quickly being unleashed in a wave of silver that rushed toward the incoming attack, slamming into it with pure kinetic force that caused enough of an impact to let much of the attack unleash its destructive potential in explosions of magical energy.
However, this shift in focus presented an opening to Serania. Recognizing the momentary weakness of the barrier blocking her, magic quickly gathered into her hand before bursting forth.
"Lightning fang." Three short bursts of spellfire followed her chant. The first slammed into the spatial barrier with enough force to shatter the flimsy piece of spatial magic that remained between two of the tears left by her earlier spell. The second and third attacks then slipped through this gap.
Two spatial slashes tried to meet them, but Darganth was faster. Dashing to the side, he slashed apart the first projectile before slamming into the second, causing both to burst into a small explosion in his path.
An explosion through which Serania's attack cut a moment later. Scattering the cloud of silver as they tore through it, the two lightning projectiles slammed into the mage before she could react. With no shield spell to stop them, they pierced her robes and chainmail, tearing through metal and fabric alike before ripping through her skin. The first bolt tore open a bloody gash through a third of her stomach. The second one struck higher, grazing the smuggler's ribs and cutting into her biceps with enough force to sever the muscles in her upper arm.
The impact caused the woman to howl in pain. Her hand instinctively twitched toward the cut on her belly. A mistake. The shift of her upper body that accompanied the sudden motion caused the skin and flesh around the wound to shift apart around the perfectly clean cut, immediately sending a torrent of blood flowing from the wound.
Yet as the smuggler dropped one of her swords and placed a palm on the wound to stem the bleeding, Darganth didn't wait. Rushing forward into the opportunity Serania had created, he didn't bother with masterful technique and instead pressed into her foe's guard with brute force. Lightning blade in hand, his first blow slammed into the sword his opponent barely raised in time. The impact made the woman's face twitch with visible pain as the pressure undoubtedly sent a jolt of pain into her wound.
The second swing, she wisely dodged instead of parrying. A small dash backward saw Darganth's strike pass by just centimeters before her chest, leaving him dangerously overextended. But just as quickly as the opening appeared, it closed again as Serania finished another chant and twin spells of raging air curved around Darganth to both sides, forcing her to focus on defending herself.
Darganth was about to follow up on this when he sensed the other foe to his back. Further back, the dragon Serania had created was struggling with the spatial distortions that characterized the battlefield and made it impossible for it to keep up with its retreating foe.
Abandoning his offensive, Darganth twisted around and met the man's charge with a spray of flames. This forced his attacker to dodge low, flying past beneath the cascade of fire heading his way.
Yet even as this attack was prevented, Darganth was quickly forced to defend himself again as the spatial mage dashed at him. A small turn brought him face to face with her as their swords clashed half a dozen times within just a few short moments, only for the woman to pull back when Serania's voice echoed out along with the formation of her next spell.
Darganth's pursuit was in turn blocked by the time mage interposing himself between him and his target. Though his attempt at formless magic rolled off his innate resistance with little effect, a rapid change in tactic toward area-of-effect spells found Darganth slowed almost to a crawl, interrupting his momentum and giving the two smugglers time to regroup for a coordinated assault.
Not just healed but actively supported by time magic through enhancement spells, the spatial mage pressed Darganth as the two clashed again. Steel clashed against lightning blade while silvery barriers and short-range teleportation spells blocked bursts of fire and lightning or caused them to miss entirely. Their clashes were filled with raw violence, with any form of subtlety or art in either the bladework or the spellcraft being replaced with pure power and destructive results that tore into the ground even from multiple thousand meters above it whenever attacks strayed toward it.
Simultaneously, a raging storm tore through the clash, with howling winds and bolts of lightning racing toward the two smugglers whenever they believed they had even a moment to recuperate. Any building momentum was quickly shot down by them while openings were exploited with surgical precision, with few spells doing less or more than precisely what was needed in any given moment and even fewer coming in ways that their targets suspected.
Yet Darganth perfectly fit into this chaos Serania was acting as, seemingly predicting her actions before she made them and adapting to them with uncanny flexibility. Amid all of this, he grinned like a madman and let out the occasional laugh, unsettling their foes even as he thrived in the battle.
Only occasionally did the time mage step into a more active role amid this chaos. Temporal shifts halted or reversed spells, obstructing Darganth and Serania and tripping up their rhythm by replacing their chaos with a different one, one they couldn't predict. Though as the fighting dragged on, even this became less frequent, with his actions gradually becoming less grandiose and more focused on the most important moments.
As the minutes passed, the reason for this became apparent. With each look Darganth or Serania got of the time mage, he was panting more, and his presence felt weaker, both symptoms of a mage trying to draw more power from their reserves than they are accustomed to. While his state wasn't bad enough to imply that he was close to fully expanding his mana reserves, it would only get worse for him.
In part because of this, Darganth saw it as a good opportunity when the two smugglers gathered together after the latest exchange, briefly retreating to buy a second to exchange a few words.
"It should be time soon, right?" The spatial mage asked.
"A minute at most."
Overhearing the exchange, had to force down the laughter that rose through his throat. In its stead, he pushed forward, keeping up the appearance of the same offensive momentum he had before but secretly readying himself for the decisive moment.
A bit over half a minute later, it came. This time sensing the small flare-up of temporal mana around the stump where his right arm had been after having discovered its lingering signature in the aftermath of the spell's second activation, he used the split-second of forewarning this gave him to close the gap between himself and the spatial mage. Even throwing up his left hand to block her blade with his bare palm, causing its edge to sink deep enough into his flesh to nick the bone, he managed to be within arm's reach of her when the time mage's construct spell activated a third, and ultimately last, time.
As before, a massive blade of emerald green manifested, one end anchored at the mage's position and the other one reaching past Darganth a meter or two away. And like before, its sharp edge was already cutting toward him at full speed.
But this time, it wasn't just him facing its onslaught. A quick shove in the moment of shock when the spatial mage registered what was happening sent her flying into the approaching blade, forcing her to draw on a massive surge of mana as she scrambled to defend herself. Spatial magic tried to warp the already distorted distance between them, its effect colliding with the woman's own spell that still blanketed the battlefield. Simultaneously, space hardened under the effect of barrier spells, each resisting the approaching construct only briefly before shattering into thousands of pieces.
In total, the smuggler only managed to interpose four such shields before the attack reached her. Not even visibly weakened, it struck her despite her best efforts. The sharp edge then easily tore through the armor on her legs, the hardened leather not even offering any real resistance.
The spatial mage's scream tore through the battlefield as the blade severed her legs. Blood sprayed as it cut through flesh and bone, with gravity soon reasserting itself on the severed limbs and causing them to plummet down.
By the time the blade had finished this, Darganth had long since escaped its trajectory. Rushing toward the time mage, he reached the other foe just as the pained howl echoed out, blocking him the same moment he set into motion toward his ally.
A swing from his lightning blade forced him even further away from her instead, with Darganth positioning himself between the two as he pressed the attack. One strike after another cut into the man's shields, lightning sparking against a mixture of time and fire magic with each contact. In between, short volleys of magic struck the mage as Serania circled their duel.
Within seconds, these exchanges wore down the mage's shields, causing Serania's next volley to explode against his back. The impact sent the smuggler tumbling forward into Dargnath's waiting sword. The first thrust tore into his shoulder as he twisted away enough to avoid the worst of it.
More on instinct than anything else, the mage then tried to counter with a punch to Darganth's ribs, only to receive an elbow to the face for the attempt. Darganth then swiftly followed this up with a swing that cut a shallow wound across the smuggler's chest. Simultaneously, his hand also rose, releasing a torrent of flames that encased his foe a moment later.
This time, the mage didn't try to counter. Instead, he threw himself backward, turning in midair and accelerating toward the spatial mage's wounded form.
A moment later, Darganth dashed forward in pursuit. The two crossed the two dozen meters separating them from their target in well under a second, with the smuggler reaching his colleague just a tad bit earlier and dragging her along as he continued his flight. Spells shot past them as Darganth kept up his chase, his attack forcing the pair to repeatedly veer to the side to avoid being struck.
But once the spatial mage regained her composure and moved on her own, they were slowly but surely gaining distance from Darganth. And with that distance came more time to dodge the incoming spells, briefly giving the two smugglers hope that they might actually manage to escape.
However, that hope shattered when death magic suddenly fell over the battlefield. Not because of the phenomenon itself, with the two smugglers not even managing to sense what it was doing, but because it was almost immediately followed by a shift in attitude from Darganth as he stopped holding back.
Abruptly, the spatial mage he was facing felt ownership of the spell shaping the battlefield being ripped from her. It happened so fast that she didn't even have a moment to start processing what was happening before Darganth not just took over powering the spell but started shaping it, something she couldn't do herself.
The moment he gained control of the spell, space in front of the two smugglers stretched while compressing behind them. With this, the almost a hundred meters of distance they had managed to bring between themselves and him evaporated almost instantly. Spinning around as he reached them, the smugglers' eyes widened in fear as they saw him rush at them with his transformation partially undone, his wings, scales, horns, and claws on full display as he charged at them.