Epilogue

Just as Arielle had told us when we found out about the gold delivery, the distribution of enemy power among the ships had ended up drawing all of the event's magical potential into two very large auras at the helm of either galley that remained almost exactly twenty yards ahead and behind a large, shallow submersible made up of light, overlapping copper plates. Looking down through the eyes of my independant aura on the ships that were still an island and some change away from the checkpoint we had set up by blocking off neighboring channels surrounding the gold mine with trees and boulders, i could see all but the signatures of life within the submarine to see that there were no Scalesh among the crews, but it did not seem like any of the mages on the galleys took notice of the massive amber and amethyst dragon warrior flying just within the clouds at the bottom of the planet's troposphere several hundred feet over the islands. Everybody go through your final preps, we have maybe twenty minutes before Operation Welcome Wagon is a go and there are no Scalesh bystanders. I repeat, no Scalesh bystanders, i inform the others through Issa's psychic connection to all of our shamans and their connections to my companions as my gold-hearted aura maintined its position overhead in the vague mist of condensing cloud cover.

Over the last two sessions of intense training that we had put ourself through, i had learned how to control Duality to some extent by making my aura more agreeable with my gold source even though using my black core increased all of its substantiated physical qualities like strength and speed, but the loss of those stats was a bvalanced trade for being able to give my aura actual commands and guidance rather than just standing aside and watching as the team did their best to take my dragon self down. At first i would have to come to my aura's rescue with only half of my own magic, but it was not long after becoming the group's target for all of their offensive magical skills that i began to learn how to recognize the different energies and flow patterns of their spells and even start synchronizing with incoming attacks to absorb their energy and throw it back. Almost as soon as i had learned how to welcome enemy magic with Open Arms, my aura began consuming magic greedily during its bouts with the others, forcing them into eventually focusing on defensive tactics until my aura and i had worn them all down to bruises and magical critical mass, but our sparring fights now lasted as long as two hours before my aura's source could no longer sustain independance.

Now i was no longer the only person in the group with an actual EMF body, no longer the only person with wings and flight or even anti-gravity buffs, and some of the others had even taken on so many shamans that their magical capacity had been rivaling my own, but even in our mock flight battles my experience and independant aura helped me to rule the skies. Even though nobody had actually let their avatars change from all of their training, everybody was far stronger than they had been before coming to the gold mine island with weapons that struck twice as hard as ever before and even Billy had the stamina to outlast most professional athletes. I had little fear that we would lose, but both auras on the galleys came with EMF bodies at their hearts that looked like armored knights and i could only imagine that the actual boss mage who resided in the sub would have an EMF body that could possibly rival ours and that was sure to fluctuate the tide of war for a little while after they made their appearance.

Our ambush point was an intersection of canals between three islands just a few miles from our new fort with all but one waterway dammed off to herd the enemy into our trap, each beach facing the island was covered in carefully concealed foxholes containing Scalesh warriors, archers, and even some mobile scorpios that would help to clear away the galleys we did not need once i initiated the assault and signaled for everybody to come out of hiding. Without any Scalesh on the galleys to worry about, i had no reserves against using granite dust from the crater in front of the gold mine to thin the enemy numbers while presenting a smokescreen through which our forces could launch their attacks. No sign of the third mage? Harold asks suspiciously from the back of my mind.

None, no aura escaping the sub and no way to probe it without being discovered, i reply in almost casual tones before briefly detailing my plan to unleash all of my collective rock dusts on the enemy before our combined forces converge. After that initial volley, they're sure to make an appearance, so I'll use Dracomancer to draw them away and keep them occupied before joining my aura to finish that part of the fight. Once the dust clears, if any ships are still afloat, board them and use their weapons on the sub- we don't need it since we made our own.

Time seemed to drag its ass as we waited for the ships to reach the intersection, crawling by second after second until the bow of the lead galley finally came into view down the canal from my position just within the curve into the intersection, but then time seemed to resume its normal pace as the caravan of ships started rounding my bend with the shiny metals of the sub gleaming just a few feet beneath the surface of the water. Once all three vessels were within the intersection, i solidify from my particulated form within the beach and find myself rocketing up into the air from mass displacement until i was half as high as my aura with several crocodile lungs and lather sacks in my hands that i simply drop with thin packets of stored energy within. The spillage from my containers streamed up behind the falling backs of dust, scattering and filling the air under me with a smokescreen until the bags were only a few dozen yards above the ships and i could trigger the energy into a thermal expansion with a snap of my fingers that bursts the backs outwards in all directions with massive clouds of multi-colored rock dusts.

The response from my comrades surrounding the intersection was immediate, dozens of shamans and bonded guards rising up from their foxholes to unleash heavy barrages of magical crossbow fire into the settling dust storm while scorpios rose up from the sand to launch explosive Plasma spears at the galleys. I simply partculated my body as i fell down into the dust clouds, blending in with the particle screen shroudning the waterway as magical explosions of all kinds began redistributing the dust clouds in all directions while the fading wails of choked, dying screams rose up from the mundanes on board the ships whose lungs were being eviscerated by crystalline rock dusts. The lead galley was already crumbling away as i settled like dust near its helm, the thick cloud of refracted light within the clouds hiding the colors of my aura with a myriad of rainbow hues as the lead mage fought to preserve the lives of himself and almost a dozen men near the prow of the ship that was falling apart into the water.

Harold was already crashing through the side of the ship by the time i materialized my body and belongings, drawin the remaining crew's attention far away from me as i leveled Hanran in the mage's direction and lunge forward to plunge the blade downward between the backs of their shoulders to come out of their stomach. I was already particles floating in the air by the time the first mundane reacted to the loss of the mage's dwindling, protective aura, but they were all bleeding from their eyes and noses and mouths by the time Harold arrived to put them out of their misery as they clawed helplessly at their throats. Then, much as i had expected, a new aura appeared as the dust was finally settling on the water to reveal that both galleys were little more than pices of driftwood surrounded in thick clouds of crimson water, but the sudden sight of this new opponent brought a chill running down even my spine.

The aura was huge, several feet taller and broader than my own Dracomancer without any of its humanoid features, this entity was all beastial claws and fangs and scales with massive skeletal wings and a crown of twisting horns about its head. The colors of its body were amethyst and amber, within its chest beat a solid heart of black magical source, and there was no magi within the aura to fight. Only their own Duality that was diving down on the nearest beach with an explosion of energy that mirrored our Falling Star attacks.

Dracomancer was already performing a Falling Star of their own before i even reached out to my independant aura, but their target was the submersible to take out the first enemy magi we had ever come across which left me with the responsibility of fighting the Duality. Hitome, Eric, and Julia were stationed on the attacked beach that had now become a giant cloud of sand, but i could tell from their auras that they were on the defensive protecting their Scalesh reinforcements while their shamans rallied against the aura. At first their myriad of sound and energy and fire attacks were clearing away the sand as i started my own Falling Star down on the beach, but the enemy auric entity soon proved even better than i was at recognizing, syncing, and then consuming magical attacks by breathing their energies like a dragon's breath out over the simmering beach of exposed foxholes and mobile bodies.

Clear the LZ, i broadcast to the entire beach as the present honor guards were taking up positions among the trees to deplete their auras through their crossbows at the demonic aura for a distraction, drawing its attention and attacks of powerful winds of glassy grains of sand that stripped layers from the coconut palms growing along the edge of the thin cane forest beyond the beach. The beta members were already displacing themselves and the Scalesh from the beach as i landed through the auric entity on the beach with both wakizashi, Demon and Divine, releasing charged kinetic, thermal, Potential Plasma, and even soundwaves from the passing of wind across the twin sets of grooves running down either sides of my waki spines. The affect was an almost immediate dispersal of not only the auric entity's substantiated body from the soundand vibration infused energies but also most of the beach bordering the waterway intersection so that thousands of gallons of oceanic river flooded outward from the waterway and exposed the submaring to Dracomancer's multiple concentrations of gathered energies positioned after the serpentine constellation namesake for my aura's signature move, Draco Shower.

Even as the demonic aura materialized all over again despite the sudden cratering in the waterway from my aura's attack exploding the submersible against the seabed, i was suddenly very happy that i had come up with an entire spell class with which to fight my own Duality should it ever assume control. Dracomancer was dispersed by their own attack as i displaced myself forward toward the enemy twenty yards away, but my auric body quicky regenerated outward from my own to grapple with the enemy Duality that tried to grab at my body even as i passed through theirs with a sudden explosion of Mach Two kinetic energy that particulated both auras. Sound and Plasma were the best offensive ways to defend against enemy magic, the compounding pulses of disharged energy in Plasma helping to diffuse an enemy attack or the vibrations of magically amplified sounds particulating mediums and bodies of energy, but against a substantiated aura who could eat magic the use of sound through the medium of magic was the only choice i was left with.

The others were all communicating and coordinating with one another in the back of my head trying to figure out if the Duality had gone rogue or if the magi was still alive hiding in the churned murk of the newly rennovated intersection of waterways that had now become a magic-made lake thanks to Draco Shower. Rogue or not, the entity would only be gone once its source had been run dry or it was returned to the magi and it was packing a single battery with as much juice as i had in both of my sources with Dracomancer back in place. Issa helped with positioning the others because i was too busy wrestling and throwing the enemy aura out into the middle of the lake while getting mercilessly pummeled and ethereally stabbed through my body within Dracomancer, but after several grueling minutes of relatively unarmed combat that i now realized i needed much more work in it all proved to be for naught as everybody surrounding the shores of the lake unleashed volleys of magic and magical weapons only for the aura to disperse itself.

I hand just enough time to broadcast that the enemy magi was still alive somewhere underwater before not only everybody else's attacks converged on me but also a massive eruption of amethyst and amber energy from below geysered up from the water beneath me. Despite all of the light and explosions surrounding me, everything had gone deaf and dark and cold and even as i thought to curl up in a ball to condense my magic there was no physical response to my commands or even the presence of my aura. Then it hit me in a bitterly infuriating realization. Not only did the enemy magi use my self-sacrifice against the possibly rogue aura to bait their greatest competition into a trap using our own trap for the aura, but they had killed me instantly.

When i was finally aware of being an actual existence instead of just a trapped consciousness, i opened my eyes to find myself standing on the frozen surface of the lake our fight had made wearing leather cargos that were now charred and tattered with weapons all about my body threatening to fall out of their torn sheaths. The magi must have surfaced in the wake of their own attack and frozen the lake as a show of power because they and their Duality were currently engaged against the rest of my beta friends while all of the Scalesh were retreating on the barges, but it was obvious that the others were struggling just to repell the magi's incredibly waves of raw amethyst and amber energy that had sundered me by surprise as well as fend off the blind speed of their demonic Duality. Even though most of my gear had been ruined with my death, i was physically and magically restored to full health and the enemy had no choice but to believe i was dead.

I was there in an instant, stripping my physical body of all of its magic to fuel Dracomancer who dove down from overhead on the enemy Duality while i rendered myself magically invisible while landing soundlessly behind the magi who never knew to evade or defend as i drove either wakizashi up under the backs of their ribs. Displacing myself ahead of them as they stumbled forward from the purely physical attack with a massive wretch of bloody fluids from their ruptured lungs, i leap up into a rising sun knee that connects with their chin perfectly with enough force to lift them up off of their feet. Another almost miniscule displacement brought me under their body as Dracomancer wrestled on the ice with the enemy aura under a constant maelstrom of magical attacks from my comrades, wielding Hanran as i solidified to displace myself up into them and through the sword up through their robed lower back and shove them even higher in the air as i dropped back to the ice.

Spiraling up into their air past their body as it reached its pique at thirty feet above the ice to reach my own at a hundred, i lean back into a dive toward the backward falling magi with Shitome held out and at the ready to pass easily through their hooded face while they were still seven feet above the ice that i crashed through carelessly to pave the way to their watery grave. Displacing myself up from the lake floor as their body sinks slowly through the upper layers of salt and pressure and my aura begins growing out from my body, i use the newly returned Dracomancer to rip through the magi's corpse and collect my weapons before breaking the surface to find the others all making their way to the pond in the middle of the frozen lake. "In case nobody noticed... i got caught with my pants down in that one move," I inform the group as i knelt on the ice and hacked up water from my travels. "I told you this morning to let me nuke the ships, but nooo, Zai had to get ashed for the first time in his life. Thanks."