Chapter 16: Ascending Thunder
Drakan’s staff had not spared many from the flash and hemispherical shockwave.
Russell looked around, his greatsword still in hand. His eyes burned with more intensity than ever.
The carnage was horrific. Of the hundreds who had survived the initial shockwave, barely a hundred remained.
Some found protection in the wards of nearby wizards. Several city-affiliated wizards and a few mercenary wizards bore bloody noses, eyes, ears, and mouths as they held their barriers. Among them was the redhead. She was in somewhat better shape, but her face was pale and bloodless, and her features were as hard as a doll’s.
The mere luck of having a warding wizard nearby had saved others. They sat near the corpses of those who had stood mere feet away, unprotected, their faces white.
No, corpses was too kind of a word. They were not corpses, but rather scraps of metal, leather, and gore. Just traces. A scream echoed out. It was the sound of a survivor seeing the remains of a comrade, a friend, who had been alive moments before. Some wept as they held up severed hands or arms that had failed to make it inside the barriers.
The knights were among the others. They had shielded what they had sworn to protect when the drakan appeared and brought his staff down. Zeona stared blankly at the knights who stood over her.
“Are you alright, My Lady?”
“U, Uncle Bjorn. B, Blood.”
“It’s alright, milady. It’s just a little. . .Just rest for a moment. . .”
The knight collapsed before he could finish his sentence. One by one, those who had been standing began to fall. All of them coughed up blood; their faces slacked. Zeona, who was in the center, could only look in horror at the knights who had fallen around her.
“. . .Dragonkin. I never expected to meet someone like this here.”
Lexi muttered, kneeling on one knee in the grass. She held two daggers in reverse grips, both broken in half, leaving only the hilts intact. She had managed to deflect the shockwave by expending her mana and swinging her daggers, but she had not escaped unscathed. A shallow cut bled from her cheek.
The others were following Russell. Dozens of soldiers and mercenaries sat on the ground, forming an ever-widening triangle with Russell at the peak.
Russell turned his head away from those who stared at him in stunned silence and looked directly ahead. The shockwave had kicked up a dust cloud, which the wind was pushing away. Drakan stood in the center of it.
A large, hemispherical crater had formed. Drakan was hovering in the air above where the ground should have been. “This is surprising,” Karugon said.
“So many of you survived. I was expecting to kill all of you with that attack. . .?”
Karugon’s voice trailed off. The drakan was staring at Russell. Specifically, he was watching Russell, who had taken out a cigarette case from his breast pocket and was tapping one out. He lit it without a care in the world.
Russell took a long drag of the cigarette and exhaled, smoke curling out of his nose and mouth. He took a few more drags and exhaled again, his expression twisting into a slight frown.
Karugon blinked at the nonchalance. His large eyelids, both the top and bottom ones, opened and closed, revealing his glowing yellow eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Damn, I bought the wrong pack. These things taste like sh*t. I wonder if I can get a refund.”
“Are you ignoring me?”
“You must have an easy life if you don’t even have to consider the fact that you just caused all of this.” Don’t you have any friends?”
Drakan’s jaw dropped. He had never heard a human speak to him like this before.
“What, what did you say?”
“Are you deaf now, too? I’m asking if you’re a friendless loser.”
“. . .”
Crack, crackle, crackle.
Pitter, patter, patter. . .
The patter of heavy raindrops broke the monotonous silence amidst the desolate plains. As if making up for the long drought, the downpour intensified in its fury.
Russell spat out the cigarette he had been holding. It served him right, he thought wryly, to smoke in a downpour.
“So, drawled Karugon, the wretched little mind has finally caught up, has it? It seems only fitting that I should be the one to deliver the punishment you so richly deserve. The heavens themselves seem to agree with me.”
Karugon shrugged off his sodden robe, revealing the drakan’s imposing form. His iridescent blue scales covered his entire body, with the exception of his relatively smooth underbelly, shielded by a breastplate.
“My element is lightning.”
Karugon raised his massive staff. Russell has a good look at it now. Its shaft was thick enough that a human would need both hands to get a proper grip, tapering to a sharp point reminiscent of a spear or lightning rod.
At the very tip of this slender, needle-like staff, four curved horns spiraled around the central spike, like the stylized representation of a thunderbolt.
“Feel the wrath of the heavens, insect of a human.”
With that, Karugon thrust his staff towards the rain-laden clouds.
CRACK!
Russell looked up. At the same time, a bolt of golden lightning from the heavens struck him. It didn’t stop with one strike. It struck twice, three times, four times, and continued relentlessly until the terrified humans watching lost count of the deafening thunderclaps and blinding flashes.
“. . . Russell.”
Lexi’s voice faltered as she stood rooted to the spot.
She stared at the once shallow depression in the ground, now transformed into a deep crater by dozens of lightning strikes. White smoke billowed from it, and the earth around its rim glistened under the dim light, glazed to glass by the intense heat of the lightning.
“His name—I never got his name.”
Zeona collapsed to the ground, her eyes resting on the great sword lying abandoned nearby.
“. . .”
Evelyn looked at where Russell had been standing, her eyes empty, and then she looked at Karugon. Karugon let out a chuckle.
“Not even dust was left behind. A fitting end. Now, let us collect the rest of your lives.”
“You won’t, dragonkin.”
A clear, melodious voice rang out as dozens of beams of light shot down from the sky. These were spells launched by Albert, who had finally arrived on the battlefield. Karugon casually swung his staff and deflected the beams. He had condensed the raindrops into a large disk of water and refracted the beams, causing them to miss their mark.
“Elf wizard. How foolish of you to use light-based spells in these conditions. . .Huh?”
Unlike Karugon’s laughter, Albert’s spell was not over. The moment the refracted beams hit the ground, vines shot out from the spots where they had landed.
“Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t take that into consideration.”
At eight points, eight vines shot out of the ground, surrounding Karugon and binding him tightly. It was a binding spell that would prevent even a powerful drakan from moving.
“You little—!”
A transparent barrier shielded Albert, who stood a short distance away, hovering slightly above the ground. His barrier kept him dry from the rain. Albert muttered,
“Now, priestess.”
As if on cue, a blinding light appeared beneath the rain clouds. It was a blonde woman, clad in armor and wings of light. Everyone on the ground looked up at her in awe, her form glowing in the dark sky and pouring rain.
“May the light granted by the Lord In Heaven shine upon you. . .”
Elenora raised the mace in her right hand, and a holy aura began to gather around it. Elenora swung the mace, now much larger than its original size, down at Karugon.
“Only evil shall be unable to stand!”
“You insolent servant of a false god!”
The vines bound the drakan, and he barely managed to raise his staff. A crackling ball of lightning formed at the tip of his lightning rod staff, and just before the mace could strike, it exploded, sending out bolts of lightning.
The flash and shockwave were like nothing that had come before. However, this time, there were no fatalities or injuries. Albert had thrust his staff forward, redirecting the attack’s full force upward.
A giant pillar of light rose into the sky. The falling raindrops evaporated, and even the rain clouds parted.
A brief moment revealed a patch of clear, blue sky. The rain clouds quickly covered the blue sky, as if to reveal the earth beneath. The sky rumbled, as if in anger.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
The thunder and dust settled. Elenora, still clad in her light and armor wings, landed on the ground. Albert looked at her with new eyes.
“So you’re a candidate for sainthood? I see that you are not merely toying with the power of light.”
“It is only by the grace of the Lord. And it’s not over yet. That dragonkin is stronger than I had anticipated.”
She was right. The cleared dust revealed a pit even larger than before. And from within, the drakan rose to his feet, surrounded by a yellow lightning barrier. Interestingly, his injuries did not seem severe.
“A simple human city has an elf wizard and an avatar of a god. Then I shall create reinforcements of my own.”
Karugon reached into his robes and pulled out a handful of something. He scattered it on the ground. They were teeth. They were not human teeth, but rather sharp, pointed teeth, similar to those of a crocodile or a lizard.
“Rise, my thralls of the dragons!”
At Karugon’s cry, the teeth burrowed themselves into the ground. Soon, the ground around them turned black and viscous, like blood. And then, gauntleted hands burst out of the ground.
The things that pulled themselves out of the ground were corpses clad in full armor. They were armed with a variety of weapons—swords, shields, maces, and spears—and their bodies moved with a sickening grace as they stepped out of the ground, their eyes glowing blue from beneath their helmets. Among them were a few who wore wizard’s robes and carried staffs.
The rain quickly washed away the clumps of dirt that had covered the corpses as they emerged from the ground. There were nearly fifty of them. Albert let out a curse.
“Draugr. Monsters created by binding the souls and bodies of those who dared to attack dragons and dragonkin to the earth, never to be forgiven. We rarely use that spell, as it runs the risk of corrupting the soul, but he uses it without a care.”
“He must be corrupted already, then. That army would be more than enough to trample the city. We have to stop them here.”
“Of course. I promised the city lord that I would take that bastard’s head.”
Elenora nodded and raised her mace again. At once, a golden light surged out of her and enveloped those who were lying or sitting on the ground, scattered around the plain. The wounds of the soldiers and mercenaries, as well as the fear in their hearts, quickly faded away. In their place, courage and the will to fight filled their hearts.
Albert ascended into the sky, and Elenora took a stance with her mace. Behind them, the soldiers, mercenaries, wizards, and knights gathered together.
Lexi picked up the two swords that lay abandoned on the ground. Evelyn loosened her fists. Zeona stood at the forefront of the knights, holding a sword and shield. They numbered less than a hundred, but they all stood their ground, facing the city, ready to die.
Fifty draugr stood opposite them. Those with spears formed the vanguard, those with swords and shields formed the center, and four or five wizards stood at the back. Behind them all, the drakan, Karugon stood like a giant.
Pitter, patter, patter.
The rain continued to fall without an end. Albert, shielded by his barrier, and Elenora, who had spread her wings of light, were the only ones who remained soaked to the bone.
But none of them felt the cold. As their hearts pounded and blood rushed through their bodies, those with hearts forgot the cold, and the soulless draugr did not feel the cold in the first place.
The atmosphere was tense, as if a clash would erupt at any moment.
Then, out of nowhere,
CRACK!
A bolt of lightning shot up into the sky from one side of the battlefield. Everyone looked up in surprise at the unnatural phenomenon—a bolt of lightning ascending into the sky like a dragon.
A figure jumped out of the pit in which the lightning had erupted. He landed squarely between the two groups. He was tall, standing at around two meters, with broad shoulders and black leather armor. His hair was black and hung down in a loose ponytail. His face was pale, and his purple eyes burned with intensity.
“I was wondering if I would ever get a chance to thank you.”
Crackle. Blue electricity danced around Russell’s hand.
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