Reckless Dakka (2/3)
Haalfrin is already using a flight spell to launch himself down towards the Threshold, where he sees Dakka engulfing the entire fortress in fire. "Kaalhyme!" he orders sternly into his Far Speak Medallion, "The Queen is busy right now! Mount another assault on the tunnels! I'll go help Dakka."
"Haalfrin!" Kaalhyme calls back, "It's probably better to keep the Ants alive – trap them somehow; the Queen can't revive them near her if they're still alive."
Haalfrin just retorts, "What about the time when she had her army kill itself just so she could summon them again in a better spot? There's no point in trapping them."
"Right. I'm on my way then."
And so begins another round of intense war… just as the fighting had seemed to slow down. After all, the Queen had recently learned to maximize her efficiency of rapid travel throughout her territory, which made it easy for her to get places. Because of this, it became too hard to engage her forces while she was gone, so the Arkin made less frequent attacks on her ants.
Now that Dakka is holding the Queen down in a fight… this is the perfect chance to get some free Death Aura!
The Arkin are always battle-ready – even sleeping with their weapons and armor – only taking them off to bathe themselves. And so, as one, all the Arkin immediately unsheath their weapons, merge with their weapons for more convenient flight, then charge down in their designated squadrons.
As Haalfrin briefly looks behind himself and sees the Arkin flying off to war, he only shakes his head and thinks, "This may be an opportunity, but it all would've turned out better if Dakka hadn't run off on his own. Otherwise, we would've been able to at least plan more!"
For the first time in a long time, Haalfrin wants to curse Dakka out. Alas, Dakka is more powerful than him now, so the only thing he can do is go along with the dragon's antics.
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The Queen down below sees through her soldier's eyes as the tunnels are flooded with those pointy eared devils. She grits her teeth and nearly cries over the tunnels she'd spent so long making – all come to ruin now.
Then, she feels the Master Key at her hip hum. Then, using the surveillance functions on the thing, she sees Haalfrin flying towards her off in the distance.
Well, she has less time than she thought. She may be able to barely handle the dragon now, but things will get more unpredictable with the human here too.
And so, the Queen runs to the edge of the Threshold and attempts to run away.
Unfortunately for the Queen, dragons are at their best when hunting from the air. As is the case of all animals who hunt from high in the sky, his eyesight is unrivaled. He spots the lone Ant attempting to flee. It's also rather easy for him to tell which Ant this is, due to the clothes she's wearing.
After all, none of the common Ants have any clothes available, so they either have to wear their chitin armor in their human form, be naked, or just stay in their Ant forms. The Queen, however, has always been insistent on wearing clothes.
"GET BACK HERE!" Dakka roars as he reaches out with one hand. Of course, Dakka's hand passes through the atmosphere with so much speed and force that there's a sonic boom in his hand's wake, and many other Ants are thrown into the air or crushed by the shock wave. Also, because Dakka can reach across most of the Threshold's surface just by moving his hand, the Queen really has no way of dodging.
The Queen knew this much too, so she already has a mana shield prepared. Sure, her massive mana pool is enough to protect her, but she still wants to vomit when she hears her pendent shove another set of numbers in her mind.
"31,210,332,997,002,593"
"31,001,001,933,439,293"
"Oh goodness," the Queen thinks in dread, "my mana numbers were only around 1 trillion when I got this pendent. That one slap from the 5 horned dragon cost me more than 200 trillion mana numbers."
Needless to say, if it were the Queen from before, she'd have been instantly killed.
Of course, the Queen realizes by now that she's far too slow to run away from Dakka; she had only run away before in a fit of panic.
…But before the Queen can even gather the resolve to stand and fight, she barely has time to register the sight of the dragon's maw surging towards her, with mouth open and an empty, black throat.
Just before Dakka's jaws close over her, the Queen notices a faint light coming from inside his throat, as if there were a furnace inside the dragon's belly.
This observation does her no good, though.
In one quick movement, Dakka's mouth snaps shut over the Queen and she disappears from view.
Indeed, the Queen may have had more mana in her mana pool than Dakka, but Dakka has something the Queen will never have – an innately strong body and speed she could never match.
The Ants, who are watching from below, scream in horror and grief when they see their mother disappear into the dragon's mouth.
Dakka, of course, notices the children's horrified looks, but his spirit is so full of vengeance that seeing their agonized clicks and squeals just makes him satisfied.
The tyrannical dragon is about to start popping the bugs beneath his feet when he sees some of the Ants shapeshifting into their humanoid forms.
Some of the Ants appear to be young women, while most of the newly made ones are little children with big, googly eyes.
The great dragon pauses with his claws outstretched before a clump of them, and he looks into the little children's eyes, which are teary eyed and glaring up at him with unwilling hatred.
Seeing this… Dakka's heart softens, and he retracts his claws.
Just as Dakka is about to walk away, he hears a voice in his head coming from Haalfrin. "Hey, why'd you spare the Ants?"
"They're just kids," Dakka grumbles.
Dakka looks up with nostalgia at the grey sky, and he thinks serenely, "Ah… We've been fighting for so long, and it's finally over…"
"Wait, Dakka…," Haalfrin pauses in shock right after he lands on Dakka's head. "Why isn't the grey sky going away?"
There is silence.
"DAKKA!" Haalfrin shouts urgently, "The Death Aura barrier is still up! The Queen's still alive!"
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The inside of a dragon's mouth is nothing like the stories say. The old tales of heroes slaying dragons always depict their breath to be smelling of rotting flesh, and their saliva being burning and poisonous.
First off… YES, a dragons' saliva is extremely acidic, and it can burn through just about anything, including enchanted metal. However, their saliva and hot breath are so potent that no stench can linger in their mouth – only the ashy smell of things long burned away.
The Queen knows this about a dragon's mouth very well by now, seeing as how she's clinging onto one of the dragon's fangs – desperately trying to NOT be carried away the river of saliva flowing down his throat.
The few times the Queen's feet accidentally dipped into the acidic saliva, her mana shield protected her, though she saw that her mana numbers had dropped by about 10,000 in a single second.
With this in mind, the Queen guesses that she'd probably be able to survive in the dragon's stomach for a while, but his strong stomach acids would constantly eat away at her mana shield.
You'd think the Queen would be able to just blast her way out of the dragon's vulnerable stomach, but there's a glaring problem with that plan; in order to use an attack spell, she'd have to drop her mana barrier, and the moment she did that, she'd be instantly burned to ash.
So, the Queen knows that if she's going to make a move, she'll have to do it while inside the mouth, not the stomach.
This is precisely why the Queen has been meticulously inching further and further up the tooth and trying to find the best spot to hold onto. When she drops her shield to attack the dragon, she'd rather her skin NOT be touching any of his saliva.
This is taking several minutes when suddenly, she feels the dragon's head start to shake, as the simple act of him turning his head is enough to throw the Queen off the tooth she'd been climbing up.
"RAAAA!" she screams in frustration as she lands in a pool of acid. Then, without hesitation, she swims to the side and starts climbing up another tooth.
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"What do you mean she's still alive?" Dakka asks Haalfrin. "I just ate her."
"You remember her mana barrier!?" Haalfrin nearly screams at Dakka. He can't believe how clueless this dragon can be!
"Oh… OH!" Dakka roars as realization dawns on him. "Ah! What am I supposed to do about it!? Should I vomit her out!?
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"Grr…," the Queen growls as she sees the dragon's jaws moving up and down as he's talking. It's way too hard to climb up when he's doing this.
Then, the Queen notices that the teeth on the top of his mouth aren't moving when he talks. However, she has no idea how to get up there…
Whatever. She can only keep trying to climb up a tooth, no matter how many times she's knocked back into the acid below. It's either keep trying or die… just as it's always been.
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"Dakka!" Haalfrin yells, "Open your mouth! I need to look for the Queen."
"Ew! Don't come in my mouth!" Dakka growls defensively.
"I'm just looking! Just do it already!"
"Fine…" Reluctantly, Dakka opens his mouth wide and displays his long rows of teeth.
Once Dakka does this, Haalfrin looks inside and almost immediately sees the figure of a mature woman clinging to one of his fangs and desperately trying to inch up.
"Dakka! Slap your tongue on the left side of your mouth! Knock the Queen off your teeth and swallow her already!"
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As soon as the dragon opened his mouth, the Queen sees the cursed Haalfrin making eye contact with her, and her heart drops.
A few seconds after that, the dragon starts swishing his tongue around and shaking his head, and then she is sent flying in every which direction.
Seeing that she's about to be swallowed whole, the Queen realizes that she can't wait any longer.
So, the Queen tries pushing out all her fearful thoughts as she quickly releases her mana barrier and spends about a 10th of her mana on a single mana blast.