The Elder Dragon Awakens (2/4)
"I didn't know she could fly," Dakka thinks as he sticks the tip of his head out of the water and looks up at her retreating form.
Truthfully, the Queen may think that Dakka was trying to eat her, but the man himself had merely poked his head up in order to get a clearer look at her. He had his mouth wide open because he was taking a deep breath – not trying to eat her.
"Aw… she seems to have misunderstood," Dakka chuckles to himself.
Then, he looks up and thinks, "Huh… Do I need to beat her up BEFORE I ask her to marry me? That's probably a good idea."
In the dragon's mind, it makes perfect sense to teach his partner who's the boss before he proposes a relationship. Hierarchies are such a big part of dragon society that they think a clear chain of command is always necessary.
When Dakka starts to feel bad about beating up the Ant Queen, he remembers something his grandfather had once told him.
"Now, Dakka," Fheldin had said once, "Back when there were male AND female dragons, they'd always have a duel before they got mated for life. The winner will lead the relationship, and the loser will support."
To a dragon, it's not strictly important whether it's a man or a woman in charge; what's important is that someone's in charge. And OBVIOUSLY, the best way to determine the leader is to fight, right!?
For obvious reasons, this dueling tradition was discontinued once the female dragons disappeared, since none of the other races could handle fighting a dragon in single combat.
Realizing that the mate in his mind is powerful enough to duel him one on one, Dakka feels elated.
Doesn't it feel good to be able to hit and bite your partner, all while trusting that they'll survive?
No human or Ant can possibly understand how infuriating it feels to constantly have to control your strength around others – especially his frail sisters.
The second he makes one small mistake – twitch one muscle just a little too hard – and someone gets hurt. The second he even acts a little rough, everyone freaks out and calls him a monster, yet others act more intimidating than him, and everything thinks it's funny.
But the Queen… she's different. It feels good to trust in her strength – trust that he can fight her without killing her.
Dakka is thinking about all of this as he stares up at the fleeing Queen.
"All right," he rumbles as he slowly rises from the blood lake. "I'll fight her seriously from now on. I want her to understand that she'll be safe with me."
'Safe' – he says as he whips his tail out of the blood lake and swipes the air with it – knocking the Queen out of the sky.
Immediately after that, he looks around at the blood lake and dives beneath the surface…
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After the Queen crashes into the blood lake once again, something unimaginable starts to happen.
She looks around her, and she sees that the lake's surface is sinking; it's as if there's a drain at the bottom of the lake.
What the Queen doesn't see beneath the surface is that Dakka is using his immense control over magic to condense the blood – squishing it all so tightly that all of the blood is crushed into a sort of solid ice that isn't cold to the touch.
As Dakka continues to crush the blood crystals, all of the excess, impure blood is squeeze out, leaving only the condensed mana behind.
Whenever a portion of blood is squeezed dry of mana, its red glow goes dark, and it gets unsummoned back into the Queen's soul.
What's left behind are many bright red crystals that sparkle more brilliantly than the most magical rubies.
As the blood is consumed to make these red crystals, the blood lake lowers and lowers as it slowly loses its contents.
The Queen herself isn't sure what's going on, but she can at least sense that her power isn't diminishing – just getting denser.
She has no idea why Dakka is doing this, but she feels that whatever it is, it's beneficial to her.
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After several minutes, the blood lake has come low enough that the Queen can see little tips of pointy red ice poking out of the blood lake's surface, like little islands in an unfriendly sea.
As the blood lake lowers further, the little islands seemingly grow into huge, towering pillars of red ice that dwarf even the Threshold's tallest ramparts.
Once the blood lake has finally been drained, the Queen sees Dakka standing in his dragon form amidst the forest of red crystal pillars, and his eyes are glued to the red glow.
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In all honesty, when the Queen sees the dragon's eyes transfixed on the red crystals, her first instinct is to find some place to hide.
"You know what?" she thinks, "I'll do just that." She dives into the ground and uses her ample magic to burrow as deep as she can into the earth.
However, a few seconds after she disappears underground, she feels the entire ground shake and groan painfully around her.
Then, the Queen feels an unstoppable force pluck her out of the ground and pull her into the air, along with every last bit of earth in this confined battlefield.
The Queen watches weightlessly in horror as she sees trillions of tons of rock plucked up and floating in the air around her; it's as if gravity suddenly lost its power.
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With one simple motion, Dakka had completely ripped out a layer of earth across the entire battlefield, which is tens of thousands of square miles large. He did this because he knew the Queen had dug underground, but he wasn't quite sure where.
In order to make his search even more efficient, Dakka makes a biting motion with his jaws, and all the floating rock shatters into a great cloud of dust. With a beat from his wings, the dust is sent careening away, which leaves only the Queen, who only survived his bite because she has a mana shield up right now
Dakka knows very well that the Queen can't use more than one spell at a time, so in order to make sure that she has to keep her mana shield up, he releases a burning aura so strong that the entire atmosphere ignites on fire, and the earth below starts melting into a thick sea of magma.
The temperature around Dakka's feet is the hottest, so the rock there melts the fastest. In fact, the ground beneath his feet is melting so fast that he's visibly sinking into the earth; he has to beat his wings every now and then just to keep himself from falling into the earth and disappearing.
Normally, the Queen would've just dropped her shield and sent off an attack before reviving somewhere else… but there's a big problem with that.
In order to revive, the Queen needs to have an Ant body to revive into. However, all of the Ants she's kept hidden in the ground were ripped out of the earth earlier and crushed to dust by Dakka's spell.
The only Ants left are hidden in the Threshold and Valor Hall – safely behind Time locked doors. However, the Queen is reluctant to go there right now, since she knows she'd be trapped with no way of escaping.
And so, feeling shaken and terrified, she doesn't even have time to think as the dragon swipes her with his tail, sending her flying off into the distance before crashing into the lava.
At least Fina doesn't sink into the lava, since magma is denser than a living body, making the Ant quite buoyant.
As soon as Fina floats to the top of the magma, a giant clawed hand reaches down and carefully pinches the back of her shirt – picking her up and hoisting her up in the sky.
"COME NOW, LITTLE QUEEN! I EXPECTED YOU TO PUT UP MORE OF A FIGHT! DON'T DISAPPOINT ME!"
Huffing with apparent anger at how easy this battle is, Dakka throws her towards the Threshold.
She flies into the main city and crashes into one of the houses.
Groaning, the Queen gets up – unharmed, yet disoriented.
Grunting with frustration, the Queen realizes that she can't fly or attack at all, since the second she drops her mana shield, she'll explode in a puff of fiery ash.
Left with no other choice, the Queen runs on her own two feet up to one of the walls.
Once she gets up there, she sees a bright ball of red and orange light off in the distance; it appears as if a great sun had appeared where Dakka's open mouth should be.
The next second, a torrent of white fire explodes out of Dakka's mouth.
The Queen has very little experience using her advanced Fel Name, but she still opens her mouth out of instinct.
To her delight, her Name works just as she thought it would.
The moment Dakka's arcane flame reaches the Queen, all of the abundant energy is sucked into her mouth, and she feels her mana pool explode with delicious power.
Dakka stops his attack to just stare for a moment at her. To the Queen, he looks like he's shocked or even afraid that she can counter is abilities so easily.
It's quite the opposite actually. Instead of feeling frightened, Dakka is feeling ecstatic. He'd be truly disappointed in her if she hadn't grown more powerful since they last met.