Now, the Belt’s surface rolled outward in gentle circles from where Behenien had appeared, and even the wyrmlings flinched away from their matriarch’s shadow, knowing she would not care to stop even if it meant their death.
Ships drifted aimlessly as men froze mid-swing on the grappling planks. On the walls, crimson-coated soldiers lowered crossbows that had been aimed at others in the same livery. For a fleeting moment, the coup and the siege both seemed secondary, like petty arguments echoing in the far end of a hall, while the real action finally began.
Only the truly powerful dared do more than freeze or flee.
“Up,” Pauline barked, eyes darting around as she tried to determine if their path was clear or if she needed to kill.
Orion didn’t argue, pulling on the broom’s magic as hard as he could and rising with the rearguard, higher and higher, until Stillport shrank into a smudge beneath a dome of strained wards and smoke. Around them, the flights reflexively widened their spacing, giving each other room, because if something went wrong down there, no formation would save them. Only distance might, and even that was not guaranteed.
Behenien gently bobbed on the river, unconcerned with catching anyone off guard. That alone demonstrated she was operating on a completely different level.
The more of her that became visible, the heavier the air seemed, even at such a height, which told Orion that those few unlucky ones too close to escape were probably suffocating on their own breath.
Water cascaded from her scales, dislodging some of the wyrmlings that clung to her wake, too afraid to go forth, but too young to flee.
For a long moment, her control of the battlefield seemed so absolute that she could determine the life or death of everyone, from the chanting witches who had come to hunt her to the citizens hiding in their homes within the city.
And then, from the sky, two lights fell.
Asteria descended first, a white and silver flame against the pewter clouds, her hair streaming back as if she were underwater from the sheer force of her power. Elder Candra followed, smaller and compact, but no less dangerous.
Just her specialty alone, Jewelcraft, should have been enough to know she could be terrifying when she wanted to, and the stillness around her told him she was just waiting for the right moment to demonstrate that.
They paused at the Belt’s midpoint, hanging just above the she-dragon. Behenien lifted her head to look at them, and for the first time since she’d appeared, she stilled.
It was a strange gesture, almost respectful.
Then his mother spoke, and somehow her voice carried over the winds and through the rain, as crisp as if she stood right beside him.
“Behenien,” Asteria said. “Have you gone feral? Attacking two major factions at once will only end in your death, and that of your spawn. There is no other possibility.”
The dragon’s laugh rolled across the Belt and up the walls of Stillport, causing barges to rock and wards to flicker.
“Feral?” Behenien rumbled, amused. “Is that what you call those who refuse to stay in their cage?”
Asteria didn’t back down. “You crossed borders you knew were off-limits. You attacked the Floating Bridge, burned entire towns to the ground, and now you seem fully determined to unleash your spawn on another city.”
Behenien’s slitted eyes narrowed with delighted malice. “And you believe I did it because I lost my mind?” Her head tilted, and a cascade of rain slid off her horns. “No, little priestess. You should know better than that.”
Asteria’s expression hardened. “Then you truly believe you can escape the consequences if you win today.”
Behenien’s grin, because it was a grin, sharp and terrible it might have been, widened. “Would anyone strike two major factions without reason to believe they could come out on top?”
Behind them, a ship’s bell rang out in distress as strong currents pulled it away, but no one responded.
Asteria didn’t let herself be intimidated by the implications. “By tomorrow morning, the Crimson Wheel will hang bounties for your head big enough to make men richer than the kings of old. They will not forgive this, and many, many powerhouses who avoid the political scene wouldn’t hesitate to add a dragon’s skull to their trophies. And the Sanctum—”
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
“The Sanctum will do nothing,” Behenien echoed, savoring the words like meat. “I can see it now that they sent a newly empowered child and an elder who is about to die. And even if you spoke the truth, it would still be worth it.”
She spread her wings a little, not fully, but enough to create a gust that pushed away the creeping mist, revealing her full size to everyone. “For too long my flock has been chained to the freezing seas of the north, fighting leviathans for scraps, bleeding ourselves against Deep Ones that do not even fear death just because of an ancient pact you don’t even remember, much less honor.”
Her tone turned mocking, and her gaze shifted to one of the ships, where the terrified men looked at her in silent shock. “We are tired of fighting for our right to live. You have so much here, surely you can spare some of the local delicacies.”
A massive paw reached over, covering a good part of the ship’s bow, tapping against it as if she were thinking about what to do with it.
“And when a door opens,” Behenien purred, “when an opportunity presents itself to change that… what mother wouldn’t take it? What mother wouldn’t fight for the wellbeing of their progeny?”
Asteria’s eyes narrowed as she clearly saw the parallels she was drawing and didn’t like them one bit. “A door of that size doesn’t open without someone unlatching it.”
Behenien’s laugh was quieter this time, crueler. “Now you’re thinking. Your little Magocracy isn’t as unified as you’d like to believe, nor is it as isolated. ”
Orion’s stomach constricted. Not because the idea was shocking, considering it had been a topic of much discussion during his time in Valderun, but because if Behenien was being so open about it, it meant things were moving quickly beyond his sight.
Candra spat to the side, clearly done with talking. “Enough of this,” she said, her voice carrying without effort, raspy and contemptuous. “Asteria. Purge the draconic filth and be done.”
Behenien’s amusement disappeared, and her maw opened as the inside of her throat glowed with a wet, amethyst light, signaling how little she appreciated the interruption.
“Elder!” Orion heard Pauline inhale beside him, but he didn’t share the apprehension.
The dragon exhaled, releasing a torrent of toxic flames, purple in the center and green at the edges, across the distance in an instant, so fast that Orion’s mind could barely process it. The intense heat caused the rain to hiss into steam before it even made contact.
Elder Candra raised one hand, and a ring on her finger shone with gold, bending the world to her will. The gout created an invisible arc and snapped downward like a whip, slamming into the Belt’s surface and boiling the water into a large plume of caustic vapor.
The backlash killed a cluster of wyrmlings that had been circling beneath their mother, vaporizing them.
Behenien didn’t even glance at them, instead surging forward with deadly intent, clearly aiming to punish the mouthy Elder for her contempt.
“Move!” Pauline snapped, pulling on his arm.
Around him, the various flights were climbing higher, and Orion followed them once his fascination gave way to his survival instincts. The rearguard ascended even further, until the low clouds were coming up above them, and only then did they stop, knowing that being unable to see was just as risky as being too close to the fight.
Seeing what was happening was harder now, but Orion assembled a light-focusing lens with little effort and was able to follow the battle much more clearly.
Silver runes hung in the rain like halos and blades all around Asteria, layered so densely that Orion’s eyes blurred, while Candra was invisible, yet signs of her presence could be seen, as the air rippled at times, only to explode into all kinds of esoteric effects, causing roars of pain from the draconic matriarch whenever they hit.
Behenien unleashed her flames in all directions, altering the winds and summoning powerful geysers of compressed water that forced the two witches to abandon their attack whenever they got too close to pressing her.
Orion watched, horrified, as a spell that could have turned a drake into ash glanced off the dragon’s scales and smashed into the river instead, where the shockwave spread outward and capsized three barges, spilling men into the boiling water.
The wards over Stillport flexed from the intense side effects, suffering more damage than during the sustained attack from the flock before.
Asteria and Candra didn’t slow, and Behenien didn’t care.
Ships burned. Bridges shattered. Barges split. The soldiers on the walls, who had been stabbing each other a moment ago, dropped flat behind crenellations, praying that the gods fighting above their heads wouldn’t drag them into it.
Orion’s hands clenched around the broom. He’d once witnessed an even greater battle between his father and Archmage Ulysses, but that had been contained, clean, and so impossibly grand it felt like watching a show.
This was different. It felt real, as death and screaming people were everywhere he looked. He could see the spells forming, follow their patterns with [Hypotheticism], sense how they were built, identify their purpose, and realize, with sickening clarity, just how little he could do to stop them if they turned against him.
Not for a while, maybe not for years.
Behenien suddenly lunged, abandoning her magical attack, and Asteria disappeared for a moment, making him fear she might have been caught.
But she reappeared a hundred feet away, moving with a displacement spell so fast it looked like she had simply vanished.
Candra struck simultaneously, releasing an arc of pale light that cut across Behenien’s shoulder and sent scales flying down the river.
The dragon roared, cracking whatever windows still remained in Stillport as the vibrations moved through the ground, ignoring the wards. A wave swept across the Belt and crashed into the outer docks, flooding them.
Yet Asteria reemerged above the wound and drove silver runes into it with a shout.
Behenien’s tail whipped in agony, and the river rose at her command.
Asteria’s defenses flared in protection, allowing her to escape. Simultaneously, Candra’s ring blazed again, and the tail’s kinetic force folded, redirected, and was thrown back into the water, killing more wymrs.
For many long minutes, those scenes kept repeating, and gradually Behenien began to lose ground.
Not because she was weaker or because her magic ran out. But because she faced two opponents who worked perfectly together, with a style centered on collaborative casting. Their spells overlapped in too many ways, creating chances and openings that they could never have achieved otherwise.
Behenien’s eyes narrowed, and her mass shifted as if she was planning her escape.
“She’s going to run,” Pauline whispered, almost reverently.
Orion’s heart pounded. He wanted her to run away. He wanted the death to stop. Yet he also wanted her to face the consequences for her actions.
Candra moved first.
She cut a gash along Behenien’s forelimb, deep enough to draw a cascade of green-black blood that sizzled where it met the rain, making it clear she would not get to run this time.
Behenien snarled, promising great pain, but Asteria was already on her other side, mirroring the movement and drawing her own line through the air, creating the same kind of wound as if marking a beast for slaughter.
Water erupted from the dragon in all directions, forming a tsunami powerful enough to crush any tide wall, yet it was too slow to catch the witches.
Orion felt the air shift as they began to chant together, clearly done with the back-and-forth. Their voices harmonized in a way that made his skin prickle, and [Hypotheticism] caught sight of silver threads of mana he couldn’t begin to understand.
The clouds overhead brightened, and a moment later, the sky split open.
A column of moon-white light descended in judgment and struck Behenien with a deafening roar.
The dragon disappeared, and the Belt exploded into steam.
I would really appreciate any support, from simply upvoting the Reddit posts to saving the book in your Kindle Unlimited library and leaving a review!
Aethon and narrated by Neil Thorne on Audible.
-
Amazon:
-
Audible:
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1rdgz50/low_fantasy_occultist_is_now_live_on_amazonku/
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/comments/1rdgzbo/low_fantasy_occultist_is_now_live_on_amazonku/