Despair and Hope (9/10)
Smiling in childish glee, Freyya spends a moment experimenting with these borrowed powers by wiggling all her new "body parts" - the solar system around her.
A world shudders here, as if her finger is twitching.
The sun flares slightly brighter there, as if Freyya is taking a deep breath.
Concentrating even further, Freyya feels her skin start to prickle all over, as if the magical activity in the entire solar system was part of her skin.
By far, the biggest itch in her body is on her left shoulder. When she reaches her hand up and touches there, she senses Haalfrin's homeworld. 'Oops. Better not touch that spot.'
She carefully feels other parts of her body, and as she does so, she feels countless traces of mana and energy flow through her mind.
Finally, she stops when her finger reaches a small spot on the right side of her hip. That spot is occasionally prickling.
When she touches her hip, her mind fills with brief images of Haalfrin working alongside thousands of Arkin.
'What are they doing?' Freyya thinks with curiosity. 'I can sense them all using Body Reinforcement spells… stone carving spells… Time Locks… telekinesis… and several other spells I'm not too familiar with. Aw. They're trying to set traps for me! That's kind of cute!'
Feeling a bit of malicious glee, Freyya gives a toothy grin and whispers, "I wonder what'll happen if a scratch this spot here?"
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"Come on! Come on! We don't have all day!" Captain Fisco shouts to the soldiers around him. "You see this! My section of the wall is already done! Pick it up, you slackers!"
Without waiting to hear any complaints or excuses, Fisco sighs in frustration and hops off his wall. He runs over to the nearest soldier, who is currently struggling to lift up a large carven block off the ground with his magic. "Here, let me help you with that…"
Just as Fisco and helps the other man set the stone in its proper place, they're interrupted by a violent earthquake and the sound of stone grating painfully against itself.
Suddenly, a titanic force descends from the sky, and huge gash is scraped across the ground – cutting a ravine 1 mile deep and completely destroying the fortress that the Arkin had labored so intensely on for the past hour and a half.
Most of the Arkin are caught in the attack, and their bodies are destroyed beyond hope of immediate recovery.
Fisco himself is lucky enough to have been a few feet away from the sword slash that descended from the heavens.
"GENERAL!" Fisco calls over to Haalfrin through their Far-Speak medallion, "I thought you said that Freyya was another half an hour out? How'd she get here so fast!?"
'I don't know!' Haalfrin answers back, 'Our scouts say that she's still out there. I don't know how she could fling a spell at us so accurately from so far away…!'
…But… Freyya didn't cast a spell at them. She just scratched her skin a little, and the Arkin down below mistook it for an attack.
(A/N: Yes, it's canon that every time Drakavar scratches an itch, a natural disaster is spontaneously created somewhere else in the universe, on some random planet.)
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-The Far future-
After the gods' forces surround Drakavar again and engage her, it doesn't take the Archdemon long to collect disgustingly high mountains of corpses around her.
Among the dead and defeated are countless Elementals, many giants, and the comparatively bug-like humanoids of various races – all littering the ground after vainly throwing their bodies at her.
Since Drakavar had mostly regained her wits now, she knows it would be better to fight in her humanoid form, in order to conserve what little energy she had left.
Constantly, the Black dragon beats her ebony wings – dispersing the projectile attacks and spells the army is hurling at her. With long range attacks being next to useless, the only people who have a hope of harming her are the ones who come close for melee combat.
Every beat of her tail crushes brushes the bones of an enemy to dust. Every swipe of her claws cleaves a foe in many pieces. Every exhale of her breath burns the marrow from someone's bones. Every step she takes crushes the skull of one of the fallen.
After being told by Felkawyn that everyone can be resurrected if they defeat Drakavar, the soldiers, gods, and beasts of all creation recklessly throw themselves at Drakavar with courage many of them never knew they had.
And so, the battle – no, the massacre drags on and on, yet the Demon of Destruction never seems to be growing tired from the slaughter.
Days… weeks… months… years… There are so many foes to kill that the slaughter never seems to end.
…And the entire time, the near-infinitely tall World Tree is still falling to the ground.
It's only after 300 years pass that the World Tree finally smacks hard into the ground, and when this happens, the entire plains of Everywhere are engulfed in a cloud of dust.
…Yet the slaughter continues…
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-The Present-
While Haalfrin and his soldiers are wondering where this last attack came from, Freyya is merely reveling in the simplistic beauty of these Names.
Drakavar's Names can literally mean whatever she wants them to mean! In fact, those Names are so simple that she's coming up with more uses for them, just by thinking about it!
'Since "Dra" is both a word for "physical", as well as "power", then her Name "Drakavar" can also mean "All bodies"?' Freyya ponders seriously.
'Since every bit of energy is a part of Drakavar's body, doesn't that mean that she's technically everywhere at once?'
'If that's the case, then I don't have to waste any more time flying over to Haalfrin. The man has a body, and he's wearing enchanted armor; that means I'm technically already at there, since I'm everywhere.'
Feeling a little giddy, Freyya closes her eyes and… well… Saying that she "teleports over to him" isn't exactly correct. It's more like she transfers her body over to him, like destroying a house and rebuilding it somewhere else (transferring), instead of just moving the house (teleporting).
When Freyya appears right behind Haalfrin, the man is so on guard that he's already swinging his black sword at her the moment she becomes aware of herself again…
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-The Far Future-
For most of the long battle with Drakavar, Haalfrin spent most of his time directing the Death Aura around the battlefield and strengthening the soldiers who needed it most, then reviving the soldiers that Drakavar doesn't manage to eat in time.
He had effectively joined the host of support crew gods who were all busy casting mass healing spells and buffing the soldier's morale with Spirit Magic.
However, there comes a point when Drakavar strays a little too close to Haalfrin and the others.
Wanting to buy time for the other healing and support gods to get away, General Haalfrin summons a black necrocrystal blade, and he charges in close to her.
The dragon senses the General attempting to ambush her from the back, so she swipes her tail to the side so quickly that he's unable to dodge.
However, the Death god transforms his torso into a mass of Death Aura at the last second – turning his body ethereal.
The tip of the Dragoness's bladelike tail cuts straight through his mistlike body, and she scatters much of his Death Aura in the process.
Sure, Haalfrin lost a lot of his power right there, but it still gives him the chance to get in close and give a good swing at an open wound on the side of her neck.
The split second before Haalfrin's blade connects, the Black Dragoness swings her head around and catches his sword in her clenched teeth.
Not even giving the man time to change his sword's shape, Drakavar bites down on his sword and shatters it into a million pieces.
With her mouth and fangs occupied, and with him being too close for a tail swipe to be effective, she takes one step back, pivots on her heel, and swipes a clawed palm at him – slapping him in the chest and sending him flying into the distance.
Drakavar had grown so weak during this battle that Haalfrin's armor is actually enough to save him from the crushing force of her palm, though the blunt force trauma still crushes his ribs and sends him flying off into the distance.
The Death god of Fallen Warriors is flying and tumbling so violently through the air that he can't even tell which way is up.
Suddenly, everything comes to an abrupt halt. By the time Haalfrin's dizziness wears off, he goes silent and looks down in confusion.
'Why… is there a branch sticking out of my chest?' Haalfrin thinks numbly.
'Ah… It seems that I've… been impaled through the heart by one of the World Tree's… fallen branches.'
With blood trickling out of the General's mouth, the old soldier spits out a laugh, "Haha! After being too lucky to die for so long – even… being lucky enough… to survive an attack from Drakavar… I have to get killed… by accident… Ha… ha…"
'The Gods of Fate have a sense of humor after all.'