The Elder Dragon Awakens (3/4)

Since Dakka is being so kind as to stop and give the Queen time to think, she finally has the idea to use her Fel Name on the fiery Aura burning the air.

And so, she opens her mouth, and another torrent of energy starts funneling towards her from every place Dakka's Aura had touched.

Within a matter of moments, the burning fire in the air is gone, and the Queen is finally free to drop her mana shield.

Sensing that the fight has finally begun for the two of them, Dakka roars with delight and charges at her with his head bent own and his sharp horns pointed forward.

Fina reaches a hand out, and a brilliant white shield appears in the sky right in front of Dakka.

Dakka runs straight into the barrier, and though his body is halted, his sharp horns have pierced through.

The Queen sees that her shield didn't completely work, and she starts sweating in fear again. That was the strongest shield technique she knows, yet even with all that power, it couldn't completely stop the dragon.

In other words, if Dakka ever ends up stabbing her with his horns, she WILL die.

"Well," the Queen thinks as she wipes the sweat from her brow, "at least my shield was able to stops his charge. I have time to-"

Before she can finish her thought, the 6-horned dragon digs his claws into the ground to anchor himself, and he shoves his head forward with one last push – this time shattering her white barrier.

Before Dakka can snap his long neck forward and crash his horns into the Queen, she sends a mana bolt so powerful that it burns the air just like Dakka's Aura.

Dakka stops to take the hit, and he looks down at the place that the Queen attack just hit. A small patch of his scales have been warped and burnt black.

"DID YOU THINK YOU COULD PLAY IT SAFE WITH ME, MY QUEEN!? GO ALL OUT WITH ME ALREADY!"

As if taunting her, Dakka leans back on his hand legs and stretches his neck high into the sky. Already, his head is looming taller than the Threshold's mountain was, before he destroyed it millennia ago.

In Dakka's mind, he thinks that he's just giving her a sporting chance to display her skills. To the Queen, she thinks…, "IS HE MOCKING ME!?"

Screaming in fury, the Queen spends several seconds to charge up a spell she'd come up with herself long ago. Even though it's her most powerful strike, she's never used it before, since it takes a bit of time to cast.

Within seconds, Dakka feels the incredible heat rise from the Queen's spell circle, which is slowly drawing itself in the air.

Baring his teeth in anticipation, Dakka braces himself just before the impact.

The entire sky lights up with a blinding white light, and the lava ocean around Dakka is knocked into the air so far that a great red wave splashes against the battlefield's outer boundary.

Dakka himself grunts in pain, "HURUUUM! I FELT THAT ONE! Good… GOOD!"

Despite his scales all over the front side of his body being broken, and the skin beneath being burnt, the dragon in question doesn't seem to mind.

"IT'S MY TURN NOW!" Dakka roars as he swings his head forward again. The Queen jumps away from the wall just in time to avoid being crushed flat.

And so, the battle between Dakka and Queen Fina commences in full.

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Dakka knows very well that he can't release his burning Aura, since the Queen can just devour it using her Fel Name; he KNOWS she's using a Name to do this, since Name powers aren't spells, and he sees her frequently using it while having another spell up.

Dakka also knows that he can't breathe fire at her, since he'd just be delivering mana to her. Even he knows that if he were stupid enough to do this, he'd be voluntarily surrendering the fight to her.

Despite having feelings for her, Dakka is under no illusion that she'd spare his life should she win here.

So, Dakka takes to using more abstract spells, like telekinesis and barrier spells to knock her around and keep her running, while he uses his immense body to swing at her.

Sure, the Queen can devour mana directly now, but that won't save her from a tail to the face.

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While Dakka is having the time of his life, the Queen feels her heart bleeding, realizing that she's using up so much mana during this one fight. She'd gone through ALL that pain and patience to gather it up, and now she's using it all!? How can she accept that!?

Sure, the Queen is getting faster and more fierce with her attacks. Sure, every solid hit from her causes his body immense damage. Yet at the same time, she has to use a large percentage of her mana (about 5%) every time she makes one of those absurd attacks.

What if she misses an attack? What if the dragon is able to interrupt her in the middle of casting her spell? If any of these things happen, then she'll have wasted one of the few attacks she's capable of making against him.

And so, the Queen has to spend most of her time flying out of the way of his attacks or putting up a mana shield to directly take the damage. Only occasionally is she able to find a chance to send off a quick attack.

In order to minimize the amount of mana she has to use for her attacks, she's always sure to send the strike to one of the areas on his exposed skin, where the scales had been knocked off from earlier.

This is pretty hard though, since Dakka is moving so fast, and she's trying to hit a small, exposed target.

The fight gets even more insanely difficult when Dakka starts to rapidly shift between his humanoid and dragon form.

Whenever he turns to his smaller size, he seems to disappear from her view. Then, he'll appear in his dragon form in an unexpected place and make a swipe with his horns that nearly slices her in half each time.

Then, whenever she's about to land a critical strike on his exposed skin, he'll shrink small and disappear again.

Even more frustrating is that Dakka is starting to use the huge difference in size between his two forms to his advantage.

Since his humanoid form is infinitely smaller and lighter than his dragon form, he's able to drastically change his speed whenever he shapeshifts.

After all, Force = Speed (Velocity) x Mass. When he hurls through the air or moves in any way, he generates a net Force on his body. With the force already set in a certain direction, he can instantly gain a huge amount of speed by reducing his Mass.

Because of how heavy a 6-horned dragon is, all he really has to do is twitch in a certain direction and instantly shift into his humanoid form. This instantly sends him flying through the air faster than a comet.

Unfortunately, attacking like this is very hard to aim, though he nearly gives the Queen a heart attack every time he does it.

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As the fight goes on, the Queen starts to feel her connection with her remaining children start to disappear – even the ones who are safe behind the Time locked walls from the Threshold AND the sky fortress.

What's going on?

The Queen briefly looks through her children's eyes, and she sees countless Ants curled on the floor and gasping for breath before suffocating to death.

The Queen may not have thought about it, since she has several enchantments to protect herself, but with Dakka's Fiery Aura from earlier, he'd burnt all the oxygen out of the air. With the Ants having nothing else to breathe, they're all being unintentionally killed by Dakka.

This, understandably, freaks the Queen out, since she realizes that if she dies, then she'll probably have no more bodies to revive into.

Realizing this sudden handicap, the Queen starts to constantly produce microscopic eggs, and she drops them as she flies around. This leaves a sparkling trail behind her, which softly rains onto the ground.

Most of these eggs are destroyed in the commotion between herself and Dakka, but she's hoping that at least one survives in case she's accidentally killed.

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Their fight goes on like this for about 10 minutes before Dakka starts to grow impatient. He honestly expected to have won already.

Feeling like it's finally time to end this, Dakka knocks the Queen off the Threshold wall again, and he smacks her into the ground.

Before she can get up, the dragon is already on top of her, and he's pummeling her deeper into the ground with his fists.

With each swipe of his claws, the ground is upheaved, and the queen is shoved deeper into the hole.

As the Queen is pushed further down, Dakka sinks down with her.

Helpless, the Queen can only keep her shield up and forget about trying to fly away. The only thing she can hope for is for the dragon to run out of energy before she runs out of mana for her shield.

At least Dakka isn't trying to swipe at her with his horns right now; otherwise, there'd really be nothing she could do to keep her own life.

When the Queen sees black smoke billow out of Dakka's mouth, she starts to think that the beast had lost his mind and that he's going to stupidly waste all of his energy on her.

However, her thoughts change when she starts to sense a powerful heat coming directly from beneath her.

What the Queen never knew is that if you go deep enough into the earth, the ground will be under so much pressure from the rocks above that it turns into a giant ocean of magma thousands of miles deep, on which the tectonic plates are like boats floating along the planet's surface.

Dakka, having a stellar education where his grandfather had paid for the best tutors, knows many odd things about how the world is constructed. Plus, given a dragon's natural connection with physical reality and the Elementals, it makes sense for him to be in touch with how this physical reality works.

And so, the Queen is pushed further and further into the planet. Now, she starts to feel alarmed when she feels the heat on her back.

She really thinks that the magma below her is a result of Dakka's magic, so she tries using her Fel Name on it to absorb the power.

However, due to this magma being a natural phenomenon, she's completely powerless against it.

Now, once she realizes the truth, she starts to feel real fear.

With Dakka constantly pitting his physical strength against hers, it won't matter how much more mana she has than him; she'll never be able to get out. Then, Dakka can just hold her under the magma and wait for her to run out of mana.

Within a few more moments, Queen Fina is pushed all the way into the earth's Mantle, and she's completely submerged in molten lava.

Dakka isn't satisfied with this, and he pushes her so far into the magma that she actually hits the spatial barrier that keeps this whole war confined to a small (small-ish) space.

The Queen grunts in pain and fear as her face is pressed hard against the barrier, and she flails her limbs about in helpless despair.

Suddenly, she hears a dragon's voice that is deeper than the earth speak in her mind, "YIELD! IF YOU YIELD AND AGREE TO BECOME MINE, THEN I'LL SPARE YOUR LIFE!"

What, be like his slave? Doesn't that sound terrible?

In the Queen's mind, belonging to someone else would mean that she's treated as badly as she treats her own children. Obviously, she'd never want that fate for herself.

So, feeling belittled and infuriated, the Queen thrashes about some more and screams, "I'll die first!"

She doesn't realize that when considering Dakka's sick personality, her stubborn refusal only made her more attractive in her eyes.

(A/N: You need help, Dakka?)

Out of desperation, the Queen tries feeling for any eggs that may have survived. She has to get out of this situation, or she'll die!

To the Queen's relief, she feels several spirit threads extending out to the Ant eggs which had survived Dakka's onslaught.

Seeing a way out, the Queen immediately drops her shield and lets the magma completely incinerate her current body.