The titan was smart enough to cut off Kallen's water source. It was also smart enough to know that Kallen considered the castle important. It did however, needed conserve its scales and thus it couldn't use them to bomb the city anymore. Neither could it rear its breath attack, because then that left Kallen free to hurl something at its eyes and blind it. Thus it needed to expend its own armor to keep Kallen busy, while also keeping the archers below busy.
The reality was, it couldn't do all three. But getting Kallen out of the picture was far and away the most beneficial thing it could do and it understood that. So it adapted.
The Titan shifted into a steady climb, tail curled beneath its bulk for balance, wings drawing deep, thundering beats through the sky. It didn't move quickly, but ascended all the same, forcing Kallen and his echo to match it. Higher. Thinner air. Less support.
It aimed to starve him of oxygen.
Desperate tremors ran through Kallen's Gargoyle. The higher they went, the more the Terror fought to keep them aloft. Kai rose just beside them, breathing with effort.
The dragon before them opened its mouth wide, but this time, it roared. A deep resonant sound shook the clouds. A challenge. A taunt.
Neither of the two Sleepers answered.
Instead, Kallen reached for what little moisture he could gather. It wasn't much, but he didn't need volume. He needed speed and precision.
Tiny needles of vapor formed around his open hand, a lattice of crystal clear darts. His soul groaned.
"I can't get much closer than this," Kai said. "The heat…"
"I know."
The archer raised his bow. "Can you see well enough to aim those things?"
"No." Kallen said, shaking his head. "But that thing is more afraid of me than you. You blind it, and I'll ground it once its lost some altitude."
The former idol looked at Kallen. He didn't say anything, instead sighing to steady his nerves.
Alright. Last round… hopefully.
Up in the clouds, visibility was at a premium. He could barely see the silhouette of a Nightmare Creature that could dwarf full sized buildings. Neither him nor Kai would be able to see if it was laying a trap for them.
But it didn't matter. As soon as Kallen saw an orange glow of flame building from behind the haze, he burst into action.
One more time and then you can rest, he told his echo, knowing full well that it couldn't think, or feel emotion. That saddened him a bit, but he couldn't think about it.
He and Kai dodged the torrent of fire spilling from the dragon's mouth, and outpaced it as it continued to follow them through the sky.
Kallen felt unbearable heat creep through the cracks in the Gilded Warden, searing jagged lines down his skin. He did his best to ignore them as he worked to create an opening for Kai.
But strangely, the dragon didn't pursue him. It hovered, wings beating with slow and deliberate motion as molten blood dripped down from its open wounds.
It didn't fire off another blast of fire. Almost as if it didn't want—as if Kallen and the Gargoyle were right where it wanted them to be…
A scale he hadn't seen detonated ten feet below them.
The Gargoyle turned sharp left, directly into a plume of smoke beside them. It beat its wings to clear the haze, but what they found were three floating objects, dormant and glinting, floating in a triangle around their position.
Proximity mines.
The Gargoyle banked hard, but too late.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Concussive force ripped through the echo's right wing. Kallen's armor shuddered as flame tore into his side. Pain erupted. He tightened his midsection. Shattered pieces of gold exploded from him.
They fell.
The dragon followed, matching their descent like a vulture diving for prey.
Kai's arrows streaked upward, but they bit into uncaring skin as the Titan dove. A spear thrown from down below pierced through the air, digging just into the dragon's jaw, but even that didn't phase it.
Something hard slammed into Kallen from behind. The force stole the breath from his lungs. He didn't have time to thank Kai for catching him. He didn't have time to breathe. He was already twisting, realigning.
Kai dropped him when the Elder Gargoyle neared.
Kallen landed on it, finding his Terror battered to hell. There wasn't time to think before another series of scales exploded.
With the dragon cutting off its attempts at bombing the city, the full force of its colossal power was focused on the three of them in the sky.
They wouldn't hold out for long…
~~~
Kai
An orange glow gathered in the sky, the Titan's gaze molten and monstrous, locked onto Kai.
Fresh blood spilled from his abdomen and right side, the wounds slick and warm beneath his torn armor. He didn't know how deep they were, he couldn't even feel them properly anymore. Just numbness and fog and short, hot breaths, each one sharper than the last.
He was out of luck. He was out of options.
The Titan's throat swelled, fire building behind its jagged teeth. Kai knew that sound. That heat and the way the smoke tasted on the wind. He could've cut his Aspect, let himself fall into the open air, but the dragon would just track him, follow him down and burn him mid-plummet.
He could try darting out of the way, but he could hardly tell up from down. He was already dead, the reaper just hadn't collected him yet.
But then… then Kallen did something crazy. He and his Gargoyle flew straight into the Titan. A distraction. A suicide run maybe.
And then something hit Kai. a wall of pressure, almost like a hand from the gods—wind, raw with its intent, it flung him sideways.
He tumbled through the air, spinning and stumbling in the sky, alive and out of the path of the flame. The dragon didn't follow. Kallen had taken priority; stolen its attention.
Kai didn't try to comprehend what had happened. Instead, he summoned a Memory from his soul arsenal. The Blood Arrow
It materialized in his hand, longer than a normal shaft.
It would kill him if he missed.
Kai hadn't used it before, not in this fight. He'd been too scared to. Too many risks. Too many unknowns. The dragon's armor was far beyond that which he could pierce. The air was a mess of heat distortion and pressure bursts from constant detonations, and even if he did land a hit on exposed flesh, the intensity of its internal heat would probably weld the wound shut, or melt the Memory entirely.
There was only one viable target… the eye.
That was it.
Kai steadied his breathing like he'd done thousands of times before. He pushed past the pain as well and the creeping numbness. Past the fear. Fear had kept humanity alive for centuries, but here and now, it would only get him killed.
The dragon reeled from Kallen's assault, head twisting, jaws snapping around his echo as it disintegrated into a rain of sparks. From its neck a fresh wound gushed molten ichor. Kallen's final mark before being flung backward by an exploding scale to the chest.
He collapsed and fell, half of his golden armor gone, flesh torn and exposed. But in that chaos, for one breathless moment, the Titan's eye turned toward Kai.
Just long enough.
He notched the arrow, letting it drink from him.
Kallen spun end over end through the air.
Kai's vision tunneled on his target and the world blurred.
Everything else faded. There was only the eye.
He pulled.
And released.
Only then did he allow the darkness to take him.
~~~
Seren
The sky burned.
The ground burned.
A thousand tongues of flame licked the streets, the rooftops, houses, stone, wood, it didn't matter. The walls of the city melted under the heat, and the roar of the Titan's mighty wings echoed through alleys.
Sleepers screamed, some froze in place, others sprung into action. Smoke choked thick in the air, clinging to Seren's skin. Her eyelids were impossibly heavy.
But she didn't run. Couldn't no matter how she wished she could, because Kallen was still there in the sky, fighting. Her connection to him burned bright in her mind.
She couldn't see him up there, but she could feel him. He was losing altitude now, but that was normal. The fight had taken them all sorts of places.
What she needed now, was to support the exhausted Nephis.
But then a flash of light caught her attention. The sky flared red for a moment. She looked up, shielding her eyes, coughing. Through the haze, she could barely make Kallen and Kai out—two tiny figures dancing around a lone colossus.
But… neither of them were dancing anymore.
Kallen?
Kai?
Her heart seized. They were falling. Tumbling. Fast. Shapes growing larger against the backdrop of inferno sky. The dragon hovered, unmoving, its hateful blood falling to the ground in long incandescent ribbons.
It wasn't attacking, but she didn't care why.
Her breath caught in her throat.
There was a flicker of gold. She could just barely make out Kallen's form, cracked golden armor spilling off of him.
Was he conscious? Why wasn't he summoning the Gargoyle? Why wasn't Kai catching him?
No… No—
They were falling fast, but just before disaster, she saw Kallen twist in the air, spine arched, arms thrown wide as a golden trident glowed in his hands. He and Kai couldn't have been more than a hundred feet off the ground when the air above howled. Controlled wind lurched beneath Kallen as a breaking tide, catching his descent and slowing it somehow.
How had he…
Kai's limp form tumbled just past him, too far for him to…
The wind sharpened. A current curved like a talon around Kai and swept him toward Kallen's outstretched arm. He caught him by the collar, jerking him in like a puppet yanked by its string.
Both of them stabilized, just barely riding on the winds.
Seren's knees nearly gave. She laughed, a broken sound of disbelief and relief and a thousand other things. But she didn't look away.
Something strange was happening.
Up there in the smoke, she saw Kallen's golden armor—the transcendent echo, a glorious boon of power and control begin to melt in a show of white resplendence. He was dismissing it. Why was he dismissing it?
It disappeared, but only a few minutes later, a matte chitinous metal wrapped around him, glinting with strange joints and angles.
The armor from the Iron Spiders nest?
Why would he…
It wouldn't protect him from the heat. It would cook him alive. Even Gunlaug's armor, as battered and broken as it had been, would have been a better choice.
Wouldn't it?
Kallen dropped Kai from where they floated, and Effie leapt from the smoke, catching the archer before he could fall more than half the height between him and the ground.
Why wasn't the dragon doing anything?
Why did Kallen dismiss the golden echo?
What the hell was that Trident?
Seren shuddered. The earth rumbled again beneath her. Another tower crumbled in the distance, but her focus was fixed above.
What are you doing, Kallen?
The wind around him ceased all movement, dropping him for a brief second. Then, as if there was an invisible platform under him, he jumped, his armor's lunge enchantment pushing him impossibly high.
A few more times, he launched like gravity had loosened its grip on him. Each bound pushed him higher and higher still, until the burning skyline of the city was beneath him, until he was almost level with the Titan again.
Alone.
But the dragon still didn't attack. It just hovered there with wings that beat like thunder, slowly descending. Seren tried to strain her eyes to see what… why, but she couldn't tell.
What was Kallen planning?
His trident hadn't vanished like the armor had. It remained in his hand, glowing through the haze of smoke.
No one else was watching. They were too busy fleeing from flame or pulling survivors from rubble. Nephis was too busy healing someone, bleeding from her own temple.
But Seren couldn't tear her eyes away.
Kallen shifted again in the air, carving the sky into steps beneath him to jump from. A platform formed beneath his feet, distortion more than substance. He kicked off it with a burst of momentum, trident tucked close, black armor flexing to absorb the stress of the lunge.
Then another twist. Another platform. Another launch.
Seren felt her lungs rebel against their natural compulsion. It was intense enough to elicit a fit of coughing. But she wasn't scared of that. She was scared of how close Kallen had to get.
Scared of what he was doing, because it reminded her of who he'd been when they'd found him in that spider nest. He'd been a monster, his mind torn apart and stitched back together by the venom.
He'd set up defensive webs around the place, and had used them to exploit his arachnid armor's lunge enchantment to its maximum capacity.
He was doing that now. Which meant that he had to get in close. Every time he launched, every time he got within striking range, Seren could tell the heat was consuming him. That TItan was a god sized crucible of fire and Kallen was streaking through that furnace, just close enough to strike and then vanish like a ghost.
He slammed his trident into its flank once, carving a glancing wound that sprayed ichor.
He launched again, this time angling toward the wing joint. The dragon seemed impotent to stop him, thrashing in seemingly random patterns, but never letting itself lose balance.
Almost as if it couldn't see.
Kallen spun in midair, planted a new platform beneath him and shot. His body moved too fast, Seren almost hadn't caught it as his weapon slammed into wing membrane. It rippled, but didn't break.
Kallen went flying past it, catching himself and launching between a few platforms before going back in.
But how long could he keep this up? He'd waited to use that trident's enchantments until the very last moment… it must have been a last resort.
If he didn't bring it down soon—
Seren felt… she felt a raindrop of all things. It hit her nose, then evaporated after a moment.
She opened her mouth, tilting her head as fire raged around her.
The sky, despite the dread of night, was darkening somehow.
~~~
Kallen
Kallen had done more than had been asked of him. He was probably an idiot for waiting so long to ground the Titan, but he needed the damn thing to be lower to the ground before he did it. It's immense weight slamming into the earth could cause catastrophe. He couldn't risk Seren. He couldn't risk his friends.
And he needed to wait for the rain.
He'd pulled on the [Stormbringer] ever since he'd brought the trident out. So imperceptibly that the drain on his energy was almost negligible. And now, the fruits of his labor would finally pay off.
A switch flipped in his mind, and he became more aggressive.
Another lunge. Another twist. His heart rate was probably too high, but he didn't care. He lurched, zigzagging past plumes trailing the Titan's wings. Rain came in faster, not enough to smother fires—it never would—but enough to cool him, if only a little.
He shouted as he shot forward, batting at the Titan's wings as he flew by.
The opposing force sent him spirling, but he righted himself and leaped between platforms to keep himself up. Thankfully, the dragon was slowly descending, meaning its crash into the ground would be more manageable for the sleepers down below.
There was some merit in sending it crashing down from higher—to deal it more damage—but he wasn't willing to take the risk.
His time, however, was quickly running out.
Every wind platform, every fly by, every pass through that dreadful field of heat was killing him. He couldn't go much longer.
He needed to end Phase two now.
Kallen let out a shuddering breath, his lungs shouting at him.
A platform beneath his feet.
A quick flare of his lunge enchantment.
Kallen screamed as he tore through the sky, pulling one last burst of wind beneath his heels.
And he landed. Right on the damn things' back.
The heat was unbearable, his armor hissed, venting from the gaps, and his skin prickled, urging him to leave as soon as possible. He could hardly tell which direction was right or left through the heat exhaustion.
There were mere seconds before he'd overheat and pass out.
The dragon twisted, sending Kallen stumbling to his knees. He was on its exposed, molten flesh. No scales to worry about.
He crawled toward its wing, battered at the joint where he'd focused the brunt of his attacks so far.
At what might have been some of his last seconds of life, he drove the trident into the joint. Flesh resisted. The trident pushed back. Kallen poured every ounce of strength he had left, and with a sickening noise, carved through tendon and membrane alike.
Then he ripped outward.
A sound like leather tearing thundered through the air.
The titan roared.
It began a barrel roll, but Kallen held on, impossibly, heat searing through his fingers. Then came the collapse.
The Titan's wing folded in on itself; a total failure of structure, rather than a controlled break. The sinew he'd severed gave way, and the entire limb buckled, sending the king of the skies into a death spiral.
And that was the end of phase two.
The asymmetry of the wings sent the dragon into an uncontrolled descent through the smoke and ash and rain.
Kallen didn't even try to hold on. He called for the wind to push him away from the unbearable heat, but it wouldn't listen to him. The trident faded from his grasp.
Fear consumed him, and at some point, one small gap in consciousness grew into several.
He fell.
He tumbled.
Sky. Fire. Dragon.
The world spun too fast to track.
He was falling, but he'd done his job. Heavens help him that Sunny could do his part.
A/n: 2 chapters in 2 weeks, we're so back