Chp.31: Buying time

"Shit, he noticed!" Maleficent exclaimed, who was using her human avatar and was standing atop the back of a royal basilisk within the enormous dragon illusion.

That staging had been a further genius prepared by Haku for the occasion. The goal, in simple terms, was to buy as much time as possible by exploiting the fear that everyone had towards dragons. To accomplish that trick, Haku simply had to find a royal basilisk; they were the final stage of the female basilisk, and unlike the males they were larger, more robust and provided with wings (they literally resembled large chickens with many legs and serpentine characteristics). Naturally, the royal basilisk didn't need to be alive: it would have been enough to possess it and turn it into an avatar, consequently Haku just had to look in the guilds of adventurers for someone who had been lucky enough to find one and kill it. Finding it hadn't been too complicated: even if the war had been over for more than a year, many of the beasts killed on the border of the Baudonia City Alliance hadn't yet been completely slaughtered, since some of them decomposed creating new very rare materials. Sisna using her crime network had managed to find one of these corpses still in perfect condition, had bought it and then had sent it to Haku. Once the royal basilisk was received, Haku's sisters had drawn lots on who would have the honor of possessing it, and in the end the choice had fallen on Kialandì, who had spent two months training to use that body to perfection and simultaneously create an extremely realistic illusion of an adult dragon. That illusion was obviously very fallacious, given that an adult dragon was much bigger than a royal basilisk, and therefore it would have been enough to touch it to realize that it was fake, but this wasn't a problem since the plan was more to scare the opponent, not to face him. Indeed, it was perhaps more of an advantage: given that the illusion was so great, if the enemy had tried to hit it most likely the blow, even if aimed at the heart or the head, would have completely missed Kialandì's avatar.

And so they had staged that sham. As soon as Kialandì had seen the jet of boiling water, she had taken off and created her illusion, and then she moved placidly in the sky, pretending to want to get closer. On her back there was her sister Maleficent, who would have thought of keeping an eye on the surroundings and warning her when there was a risk of someone hitting her, to create the right illusions if a spell or an arrow was directed towards them, and finally to fight back in case more than simple intimidation is needed. After Maldor, Maleficent was the one of the family who knew best how to use magic, and therefore she had prepared some fire spells to cast in case of danger. She knew they were ridiculous compared to the power of a real dragon, but she didn't have better options. She had hoped that their opponent wouldn't notice that detail, too frightened by the fact that he was facing a dragon, and just thank the sort of having managed to dodge the attack. And indeed when the battle with the spirit began that method seemed to have worked... but unfortunately Akheilos had noticed the deception anyway.

"Yes, I realized it!" Kialandì answered her sister's affirmation. She was quite annoyed: she had literally done everything to make the disguise impossible to detect, and Maleficent had created very realistic illusions of Akheilos' blows crashing into the dragon's body, yet they had been detected anyway. Kialandì knew that probably, just like the legendary levels, spirits could also perceive illusions, and for this reason she in turn tried to keep a constant distance of three hundred meters from Akheilos (since that distance seemed sufficient for him not to notice the deception), shifting when he tried to get close pretending to be bored by his behavior, and thanks to this, at least for a while, the spirit hadn't noticed anything. But apparently the illusion had now been discovered. "It doesn't matter. It's already been ten minutes. We just need to keep him busy a little longer!"

The intent of the two dragons was certainly not to fight against a spirit. They knew very well that they had no hope. The goal was to keep him busy long enough for the time to run out for Akheilos to remain in the mortal world. Normally a spirit could stay for just twenty minutes, half an hour at most. But Carrion had already been infected with the hydra's venom when he summoned Akheilos, and even though it hadn't had time to fully take effect before the summoning, it still debilitated him greatly. It was probable that Akheilos wouldn't be able to stay in the mortal world for more than fifteen minutes or something like that. If they had therefore managed to keep him busy all that time, they would have won. That's why Kialandì had wasted so much time talking instead of reacting immediately: the aim was to buy time, not start a real fight. Thanks to that expedient they had already gained ten minutes; if they could hold out a little longer, then Akheilos would return from wherever he came from, and Carrion couldn't summon him again as he had already wasted half of his divine power and the other half was now terribly debilitated by the nullification rune and the poison of the hydra.

Akheilos lashed out at them, furious at being deceived, but Kialandì hadn't trained for two months for anything; with graceful moves she easily dodged the trident that the spirit was waving in anger, and moved away several meters. She moved across the sky more graceful than any bird. Akheilos growled and tried to strike at her with new spears of water, but none of them hit.

Kialandì obviously didn't just stop to fly and perform maneuvers in the sky; during those two months of training she had made modifications upon modifications to the body of the royal basilisk. She had removed most of the internal organs to make the body lighter and on the contrary had filled all the space with bags full of gas in order to lighten herself. The idea had come to her while she was eating a bird and she had noticed (actually she already knew it, but only then she realized that it could be useful to him) that it had several sacs adjacent to the lungs which probably filled up with air when it breathed making the easier flight. Using the same principle, Kialandì had created sorts of balloons using the sturdy tissue of the intestines of her prey and had inflated them and then she stuffed them inside the body of the royal basilisk. As a result, the royal basilisk was now light as a feather, so much so that when she wasn't using it she had to put it back in her dimensional bag or it risk blowing away if there was a gust of wind too strong. An extremely light body ensured extreme aerodynamics, allowing Kialandì to fly better than any bird.

And that wasn't the only change she'd made. She had added membranes to the wings to increase the surface area of ​​air they could hit and thus give each other more thrust. She had added many muscles to make the existing ones much stronger. And she had added numerous fortification runes that allowed her to speed up even more. Thanks to all this, she had literally become a bolt of lightning in the sky.

Akheilos grit his teeth when he saw that he couldn't hit the illusion of the dragon, but then he hurled himself against it again and transformed himself into a jet of water, traveling at extreme speed. Kialandì knew she couldn't dodge him this time, but Maleficent already knew what to do. As her sister flew she cast several fire spells; behind them exploded numerous fireballs, each of them just a meter wide and extremely bright. They clearly couldn't hurt Akheilos too much, but they were enough to slow down his flight: even if the heat hadn't bothered him, in fact, the heated air around the fireballs generated shock waves that hit him, pushing him continuously off course, and the intense light blinded him periodically.

"How much time has passed?" Maleficent asked her sister.

"Thirteen minutes!" was Kialandì's curt reply.

Akheilos was literally exploding with rage. As a spirit he didn't usually get carried away by emotions, but the two dragons seemed to have really done everything to infuriate him. First they had ignored him, then they had underestimated him, then they had deceived him, and finally they were constantly escaping him. It was enough to snap even someone whose emotions were muffled. "I like simple things" he whispered to himself as he raised his trident, which shone with an extremely bright blue light.

A jet of water emerged from the tip of the trident, but this time it didn't travel against the dragon's illusion, but rather expanded and enveloped it completely before Kialandì could escape. Maleficent tried to use magic to free her and her sister, but her spells had no effect on the wall of water. For a few moments nothing happened. Then, suddenly, the wall of water rippled and formed hundreds of sharp points pointing at the illusion of the dragon. An instant later, these spikes were all thrown against it, traveling at incredible speed.

The avatars of Kialandì and Maleficent were completely pierced by the points of water, so much so that they seemed to turn into pincushions. Once penetrated into their bodies then the spikes generated further smaller spikes that hit even deeper. If there had been a living body in their place, he would surely have died; they had no such problem, but if their brains got too damaged they would lose contact with their avatars. Luckily, the water spikes vanished after a few moments, allowing their skulls to regenerate in time (the hydra's venom kept the body still active for a minute or two even after the head was destroyed, allowing it to regenerate if hadn't been too badly damaged). However, Kialandì had been so taken aback by this attack that the illusion of the dragon was canceled, revealing to Akheilos the true appearance of their avatars.

"So that's what you are? A royal basilisk and a human?" Akheilos exclaimed seeing them, and then almost choked on his own saliva. "What the... you're not even alive!"

Obviously the spirit had noticed the decaying state of the two avatars. And maybe even the extra body parts that had literally been sewn onto them. "What is it? Is that a problem?" Kialandì asked contemptuously.

"I didn't expect to have to deal with necromancers" Akheilos murmured, realizing that these bodies were piloted remotely. "Don't delude yourself, I'll find you even if... oh, no!"

Akheilos's body was growing thinner, more transparent. A few drops of water began to detach from his body and fly towards each other reflecting the sunlight. Maleficent smiled triumphantly: "Ah ah! Sister, how much time has passed exactly?"

"I'd say... sixteen minutes" Kialandì replied with a grin (as much as a royal basilisk's face allowed her to grin). "I'm sorry to tell you, but I'm afraid your time is up!"

Akheilos' body rapidly began to disintegrate and the drops of water escaping from his body again formed a circle in the sky, into which the spirit was literally being dragged. Akheilos was furious: not only had he failed in his duty to protect the chosen one of the goddess Heloisa, since he had allowed himself to be deceived and cheated, but he hadn't even managed to defeat a single enemy. He was tempted to use his last bit of strength to punch the two people in front of him, but he knew it would be useless since those weren't their real bodies. He could do nothing but growl in fury. Within seconds, his body completely disintegrated and disappeared through the divine circle, which then dissolved into thin air.

Maleficent and Kialandì watched the spirit vanish, then the former asked: "So... we won?"

"Yes. I say we won" Kialandì answered. "Let's go back to Haku, and hope he won too"

As soon as he finished saying those words he felt an explosion coming from the gorge. Kialandì and Maleficent looked down and saw that one side of the wall was collapsing. "Well, at least it looks like his plan is continuing to go as planned" Kialandì murmured.