Yldra's entry

[Ilnori]

Running through the forest a minute later, Jennia followed closely behind Darganth with her two-headed body. Her four other bodies were meanwhile racing after them a few hundred meters further behind, having stayed back to finish dealing with the mages.

Though this meant that she could no longer use darkness magic to hide her main body, neither she nor Darganth's massive form soaring above the treetops seemed to draw any attention. Only passing by scorch marks and other signs of battles, they were thus already close to the destination Darganth had in mind when a sudden streak of light flashed above them.

Briefly shining through the dense trees above her, Jennia noticed it only for the briefest of moments before a deafening impact rang out from a few hundred meters ahead. Shortly afterward, a Shockwave swept over them, carrying debris their way and temporarily halting Jennia's movement as she closed her eyes to shield them from the dust.

When she reopened them, her eyes immediately widened in surprised when she saw the clearing that now opened up no hundred meters before her.

Glancing through the gaps between the trees still standing before her, she saw the cause of the explosion.

Standing at the center of a small crater, an easily thirty-meter-tall aura avatar towered amid the clearing. Its massive form radiated with energy, with the water-attuned mana it consisted of pulsated inside the construct as it rapidly repaired the damage done by the landing.

Around this crater, the once imposing forest was meanwhile in total disarray. Broken trees littered the ground, multiple streams of water spilled from the crater and flooded parts of the surroundings, and wounded soldiers were scattered all throughout this. Of those, most were either lying amid their broken surroundings or standing with light wounds, with only a group of five humans remaining unharmed after the sudden impact that had torn up the battlefield.

Focusing her mana sense on these five and confirming that they were mythic ranks, Jennia was about to reveal her presence when she suddenly felt another presence appear next to the crater.

Quickly turning one of her heads toward it, she was surprised to see Yldra step out of a rectangular window of silvery spatial energy that hung in the air.

Leaving the gateway to snap shut behind her, the dragoness disregarded the five other mythic ranks who flared their mana in response to her appearance and turned toward the aura user in the crater.

Studying his enraged expression, Yldra then spoke with a provocative grin.

"Enjoyed your flight?" She asked.

"You!" Roaring in anger, the man brought his sword crashing down onto Yldra with a swift swing.

Unfazed as the blade descended onto her position, Yldra revealed her wings with a backward shrug of her shoulders. Not moving out of the path of the attack and only turning her torso slightly, Yldra calmly moved her wings in a single, weak beat.

Though unimpressive, this motion instantly shifted her position by half a dozen meters as her wings carried her through space, effectively teleporting her.

Arriving just far enough away to not be affected by the impact that struck a moment later, Yldra stood unbothered as the shock wave of the attack's impact rustled her clothes.

"That's all?" She taunted mockingly.

The aura user's face twisted in fury at her words. Heaving his weapon out of the hole it had cleaved into the earth, he twisted it to the side and struck at Yldra with a horizontal slice. Along with it, he made the water rise out of the ground, forming a quickly growing wave that accompanied his slash.

Glancing toward the attack with a sigh, Yldra lightly pushed off the ground. Immediately, she disappeared from where she stood as she stepped through space, partially moving into a deeper layer of space and applying its distance to her movement in the real world. Through this, this light jump was enough to catapult her easily ten meters upward, leaving both the swing and the wave that accompanied it to harmlessly pass by below her.

Unfurling her wings to keep herself in the air, she didn't leave him a chance to recover this time. Stretching out one arm toward her opponent, made a pulling motion that caused his aura avatar to stumble toward her.

Shooting forward at the same time, Yldra gracefully landed on the construct's head. Standing stably

even as the aura user was still in the midst of catching himself after the stumble, she gathered her mana for a moment before sending it through one of her legs.

Jumping off again simultaneously, she sent a pulse of spatial magic into the aura avatar. Ripping through it with ease, the surge of energy punched deep into it before exploding into a cloud of spatial tears that burst apart the construct's head.

With the aura user's vision forced back into the perspective of his physical body for the moment, Yldra easily dodged the imprecise swing of his arms that followed. Gracefully weaving around it, she ascended even higher than her jump had carried her and transformed one of her arms back into a draconic claw.

Reeling this arm back, she let a red hue form around it as she let her own aura flow through it before slashing downward. With her motion, four crescent slashes shot out from her hand and toward the human aura user.

When they tore into the aura avatar, steam started to rise from where the two energies clashed. Within seconds this caused a light mist to spill out of the crater as Yldra's attack showed no signs of weakening, leading to the fire energy infused mana it was made of to influence the energy forming the aura avatar all the way until it landed in the puddle of water at the bottom of the crater.

Sizzling as it sunk one or two meters into the deep pond, the impact was followed by a short moment of silence before the two elements mixed and erupted in a steam explosion.

Ripped out of her thoughts as the ground suddenly shook below her due to this, Jennia pulled her attention away from Yldra's fight and toward the five other human mythic ranks before her. And while she would be hopelessly outclassed against the man the Locis dragoness was fighting, the others were all close to herself in power.

Seeing them already moving to again attack the group of non-mythic rank elven soldiers on the other side of the clearing, Jennia responded in kind and came charging out from the treeline. Crushing toppled trees beneath her legs as she moved, she rushed to the closest among them.

Blinking forward once the man noticed her, she crossed the remaining distance just as he spun around to face her.

Swiping one of her claws horizontally, Jennia's attack collided with an earth pillar that the mage made rise from the ground. Following this with one of her maws snapping forward, she nonetheless forced the man to propel himself away by having the earth beneath him rise rapidly and catapult him away.

While in the air, her opponent reached forward with his arms. Conjuring up two boulders to form in the air beside her, he then motioned for them to slam together right where she stood.

To his misfortune, Jennia had by then started to arrive with her other bodies. Moving to reinforce her main body with the one that was formed around her earth affinity head, she used it to reach out with its elemental control.

Immediately, her mana started meeting resistance as she tried to affect an area still under the control of a conflicting spell. Initially only slowing the boulders through this, she kept increasing her mana output until they slowed down once she was using about one and a half times as much power as the mage.

Sensing him respond by doing the same and not willing to engage in a tug of war from the disadvantageous position of the second caster, she instead changed tactics. Using the advantages in the precision with which it can be wielded that elemental control offers over magic, she changed the effect she was imposing on the stone to be angled ever so slightly away from its center, slowly scraping away at its surface through it.

And though this meant that the boulders were again starting to close in on her, her main body hadn't been idle in that time.

Charging forward, she gained some distance from the attacks as she closed back in on her opponent.

Weaving around the forward-angled stone spike that shot out of the ground directly in her path, she quickly made it into striking range. Opening with a swipe of her claw, she shattered the hastily conjured stone wall but missed the mage himself just barely.

Continuing by lashing out with her heads, she snapped forward repeatedly. Shattering shields and barriers each time, she kept her opponent on the back foot and forced him to focus fully on defending.

A few moments into this, right as she was about to snap forward with her time head, Jennia suddenly felt an overwhelming agony jolt through her entire being. Immediately, this was followed by the familiar splitting headache that accompanied the demise of one of her split bodies.

Not having been prepared for this, she unconsciously recoiled in pain as she felt the entire pain of dying that her darkness body experienced in the brief moment before the part of her consciousness inhabiting it returned to her main body.

With it, a new darkness head rapidly formed next to Jennia's time and space heads, returning the part of her mind that she was using for this head back to its usual perspective.

The instant this happened the pain also abruptly stopped, allowing Jennia to regain the initiative before she lost her advantageous position. Perfectly switching from fully utilizing two heads to doing the same with three, she shot forward with two of her heads just as the mage prepared to retaliate.

Tearing through the mage's barrier with the first head, she then managed to catch his personal shield in the maw of her second head. Quickly biting down a second time and digging her teeth further into the shield, she got a tight hold on it. Utilizing this, she flung her head to the side while also turning her body, catapulting the mage into the direction of his spell.

Stopping the spell with which she was slowing down the boulders and instead also accelerating them, she simultaneously curved the space before them. As such, though the direction of the boulder's momentum didn't change at all, they curved inward and slammed into the mage from both sides.

Unsure whether this was enough, Jennia didn't hesitate to charge up another attack. Gathering mana in the throat of her space head, she unleashed a beam of energy from her maw. Shredding through the stone that now encased the mage, it erupted in an explosion of spatial tears that was impossible for the man to survive.

Not relaxing after this success, Jennia's continued attentiveness allowed her to barely brace herself in time before the aura user Yldra had been fighting cleaved through yet another body of hers. Having expected it this time, she fought through the pain of the aura sword cutting through her torso right between her front and hind legs.

Furthermore, her being prepared for this also allowed her to change her approach even smoother than before. Sprinting forward before her air body even fully succumbed to its wounds, she held back on attacking just long enough for the head to reform and return some of the mana her air body still had remaining to her.

The moment this happened, she unleashed the full might of all four heads her main body had at that point onto one of the remaining human soldiers. With two more also already dead after their fight with Darganth, one still busy fighting him near the elven soldiers, and attacking the aura user whose defenses had managed to hold out against Yldra until then being pointless, the only target that still presented itself to her was the woman that was still fighting her fire body.

Uncaring for the mana inefficiency of this, Jennia let her power collapse onto her target without any finesse. Instead simply conjuring up one of the four elements currently accessible to her main body in each direction around her, she pushed them toward her without any form.

As such, her attack was pure chaos, with space and time twisting, turning, and breaking randomly, darkness shifting as if it were alive, and the air rushing around unpredictably, with hurricanes forming only for them to then be snuffed out once the currents changed a few moments later.

All of this came crashing into the female aura user within seconds, forcing her to choose quickly and leading to her throwing herself into the section where the air element was running amok.

Immediately, she was catapulted upward by an updraft of wind, throwing her into a hurricane that had formed far above the ground. Caught inside it for but a moment, the woman got a brief respite when the hurricane dissolved with no new dangers in sight.

Quickly stabilizing her fall and positioning herself feet down, she was already feeling some hope when the first blade of sharp air cut into her back. Shredding through her clothes, it brought a sudden stinging pain as it cut through her aura-enhanced skin and dug a centimeter into her flesh.

Reacting only to her hopes being crushed and completely ignoring the pain, the woman already had a resigned expression on her face when Jennia's fire body appeared amid the storm. Pushing through the slashes of wind that cut through her scales and into her skin, she charged at the woman with it while still gathering mana into the spell she had prepared.

But instead of defending herself as she had expected, her opponent only leaned back her head and stared into the sky. There, she briefly saw hundreds of green glowing vines easily hundreds of meters long stretch past below the starry sky before the explosion Jennia had been preparing ripped both her fire body and her apart.

At the same time, Jennia was witnessing the same phenomenon with her main body. Staring into the sky completely distracted even as her fire element head reformed, she watched in confusion as over twenty of the vines abruptly curved downward above the clearing.

Before would've even had the chance to take cover, they already slammed into the last two humans they were still fighting. And to her surprise, the fifteen or so that struck the aura user Yldra had been fighting crushed the defenses even the latter had problems with, with them piercing through his chest and impaling him faster than Jennia could even blink.

Darganth's remaining opponent fared similarly, with the first vine already pulverizing his head before eight more struck him in rapid succession and turned his body into an unrecognizable mess.

Staring in shock at this development, it took Jennia until she heard Yldra mutter something about Venrie while staring at the vines for the realization that the battle was over set in. Once it did, she felt the exhaustion of the last hour or so of fighting set in, prompting her to lie down with an exhausted sigh as she transformed back into her humanoid form.