Aegis of the Dragon Lord

[North of the human empire]

Watching as the dragon quickly gained the upper hand after the mage's death and the resulting disappearance of his enhancement spells, Darganth chose not to intervene in either this or Serania's fight. Instead, he turned his attention toward where the rest of the enemy unit was still fighting.

Trapped in place by the numerical superiority of the troops that had accompanied Serania and forced to abandon the attempt to reinforce their leader, they desperately fought back against the onslaught of attacks raining down on them.

Spotting the aura user that had been his first target after his arrival amid the resulting chaos, Darganth raised an arm and prepared a spell. Aiming through the inferno of flames still splitting the region of the battlefield in two, he followed the man's movements before interfering with his time at the most opportune moment.

Faced with a spell coalescing a hundred meters or so above him, the man had already bent his knees and was about to dash as far away as he could when his time was slowed down. Affected far more severely than their unit's commander who was still putting up a good fight against the fire dragon under the effect of the same spell, the man only saw the world around him accelerate by at least half before a massive iceberg already came crashing down on him.

The moment it struck, Darganth's attention shifted in search of the next target. Forgoing the two mages due to their higher resistance to formless magic, he soon decided on targeting a slightly more powerful aura user, who was in the midst of a duel against an elf wielding two shortswords.

Not waiting this time, he immediately cast the same spell again. With it, his speed slowed by at least a tenth, turning the slightly advantageous fight for him into one massively favorable for the elf.

Watching the results for a few seconds until he was reassured that this was enough, Darganth soon turned his attention to the next enemy. By then, Serania had also joined him by his side, her own formless magic already cast upon the enemy fighting the vampire on their side.

As Darganth was busy deciding on his next target amid this, he suddenly sensed danger in his immediate future. Quickly ruling the enemies before him out as they were still encircled by his allies, he did a quick sweep of his surroundings before acting on instinct and covering himself and Serania with a spatial shield.

Mere fractions of a second after his spell finished forming, an explosion tore into it from the side. Barely escaping a direct impact due to its distortion effect, the shield nonetheless shattered under the force of the blast, sending him and Serania flying as the shockwave washed over them.

Quickly halting their momentum again by letting his wings appear and unfurling them while holding onto Serania's arm, Darganth preemptively dashed to the side. To his surprise, no spell came flying past them even nor did one impact the barrier he simultaneously erected in front of them, making him cautiously shift the spell to get a look past it.

As he did, he saw a flaming streak descend upon the fire dragon just as the latter was about to finish off the aura user he had been fighting. Exploding into a cone-shaped burst mere meters before reaching him, the attack washed over him and pushed him back dozens of meters while doing little damage.

Though the fact that fire magic managed to hurt him at all was already worried Darganth quite a bit.

This thought was only reaffirmed when the mage that had launched the previous spell appeared a few moments later. Unleashing another fire magic spell at the dragon, he tore through the barrier that sprung up between them in one strike, allowing the fireball that came flying out of his palm to land a direct impact on its target.

Roaring as the spell's explosion tore away his scales and burned his skin and flesh, the dragon pushed through the pain and unleashed a fire breath in retaliation. Before everyone's eyes, the attack engulfed the mage's position a moment later, giving them only a brief moment to see the mage's personal shield flicker to life in response.

Watching without much hope as the torrent of flames subsided after a few seconds of continuous inferno, Darganth frowned as his thoughts were proven correct by the unharmed form of the mage emerging from the flames. Seemingly not even having to focus fully on supplying his shield with mana, he immediately returned fire with half a dozen spells that formed around him and launched toward the dragon.

Recognizing the chasm in power between the mage and the dragon, not to mention himself or Serania, Darganth abandoned any idea of intervening directly. Simultaneously he wasn't willing to let a dragon die before his eyes without at least putting up a fight, making him hesitate as he weighed his options.

During this, his gaze kept following the dragon to wherever the battle between him and the human mage shifted. Watching as spell after spell struck the former, throwing his massive body around while tearing open massive gashes in his flesh, Darganth became increasingly enraged with every second that passed.

Helped by this growing fury of his, it took him only a few seconds to come to a decision. Once he did, he turned to Serania and spoke with determination, "I have an idea but I need you to gather Jennia and Allaire for it. Optimally also Yldra, but I'm not sure if she can help me with it so tell her to only come if her presence won't be missed too much. Can you do that?"

"Of course. But are you sure that you want to potentially miss out on Yldra's help?" Serania asked worriedly.

"It will be fine. I might not know how the spell will react as my physical body was never the limiting factor but I've seen hundreds of people try the same with different spells and the worst that happened was a few weeks of incredible pain." Darganth said confidently.

Reassured by his words, Serania rose into the air a moment later before surging upward and a gust of wind in her wake. Watching as she shot off into the distance, Darganth turned his attention back toward the nearby fight a few seconds later.

Slowly stepping toward the fight, he didn't try to hide his approach and fully unleashed his presence as he gathered mana in preparation for his spell. With it, the mana in his surroundings started to quake in agitation while time stretched and space seemed to become centered around him.

Though physically nothing changed, every mana user across the multiple kilometers over which the battle was scattered felt the shift around them. Unconsciously, their attention was drawn toward Darganth, with the speed of everything that happened around him seemingly slowing to a crawl as he stepped onto the first step of an ethereal stairway that shimmered into existence before him.

"Aegis of the Dragon Lord." Speaking the spell's name as cast it, Darganth placed his foot on the lowest step of the stairway before him.

As soon as he did, the place of power spell he had just cast started activating. Immediately, the mana that Darganth had gathered, which by then equaled about a third of the full capacity of his mana pool, started being drained into the spell. And with each step he took up the stairway another surge of mana flowed into, causing more of the structure that was created by the spell to appear ahead of him.

For what felt and looked like an eternity for those watching but was in truth barely even a full second, Darganth climbed the at first seemingly endlessly extending stairway. As he slowly made his way up along it meter by meter, the silver mountain whose slope it led up along grew taller at the same rate.

Simultaneously, hundreds of azure green rivers of energy started flowing down from far above him. Merging one by one as if forming a tree starting from the individual leaves and branches, they coalesced roughly toward where the sides of the mountain would form its tip based on the angle of its sides.

For minutes the fighters across the battlefield could only watch as he slowly approached this peak, their bodies and minds frozen in the regular flow of time while only their perception of Darganth's ascend was sped up. Even when he finally reached the peak sometime later the twisted flow of time didn't immediately return to normal, with it instead slowly equalizing as Darganth approached the throne that was formed where the two energies from above and below met and melded.

Turning around to sit down on this throne, Darganth finished casting the spell with a final surge of mana as he lowered himself down onto it. With it, the burden he felt shifted away from the drain on his mana pool and started to physically take a toll as the spell's energy rushed through his body, draining his stamina as his regeneration worked to offset the damage it did to him.

Simultaneously this shift also marked the unleashing of the spell's effect. And where typical spells that are categorized as a place of power spells serve to enhance certain spells of the caster and his allies, whether that be those belonging to a specific element or that are unified by some other common attribute, Darganth's spell spread out across the battlefield and channeled its energy into every dragon present.

Furthermore, instead of using the caster's mana and elemental affinity to achieve its effect like the vast majority of spells did, Aegis of the Dragon Lord channels Darganth's status as god and creator of dragons through the existential weight and influence this legend gains from the collective knowledge of his titles among the inhabitants of Vunreon.

Due to this, the power this spell can display is less dependent on Darganth's own power. Instead, it grows through every dragon that recognizes his sovereignty over them, every time someone utters his titles with even a shred of conviction in his words, and each time a story of his deeds is told. The combined power this gives his legend is then only limited by how much of it he can physically bear to channel before the damage to his body becomes too great to keep control of the spell.

As such, when its power was unleashed even the many dragons whose might was well above his current power felt their power rise. And despite the spell's output being limited to what Darganth could theoretically channel for perpetuity even in his current state, this already resulted in a significant shift in the battlefield.

Dragons who had previously been kept at bay by their opponents suddenly became just that bit faster for their strikes to still catch their dodging opponents while spells gained enough extra power to punch through barriers and shields that blocked them before. Through this, groups that previously managed to match a dragon through their coordination lost one or two vital members, while powerful solo fighters suffered their first serious wounds since the battle began.

Soon, the first solar dragon managed to break through the groups of enemies keeping her trapped in the skies and came barreling down onto the on average weaker enemies that were fighting on the ground. Not holding back, she let her flaming body crash down amid one of their formations, with her weight punching a crater into the ground and the fire burning along her claws subsequently melting the earth and stone beneath her.

Emerging from the hole she created, her claws dug into the ground as she pulled her massive form partially over the crater's edge. Keeping her torso suspended halfway over it by digging the claws of her hind legs into the sides of the crater, she flared her wings and lowered her head and neck to unleash a thundering roar directly in the face of her enemies.

Behind her flames continued to flicker in the crater, illuminating her form from below and behind as the figure towered before the terrified group of humans before her.

Then suddenly she burst forward, her wings still spread and the flames flickering around her form surging even higher as Darganth increased the power of his spell. Swiping her paw through the formation before her, she incinerated a mage who stood too close purely through the heat she emanated as her claws tore through an aura user in their group.

With the beat of her wings that followed another wave of heat washed over the group, setting the grass around them ablaze while the dragoness already flew rose to intercept a mage that had started to fly toward Darganth.

Taking note of not just this scene but multiple dozen similar ones as the almost a thousand dragons he was leading fought with a surge of new ferocity, Darganth nonetheless still saw too many of them in disadvantageous situations. While the two enemy emperors and Ikrus were still kept busy by Neandra, Venrie, Torrak, and Odylia, their inner circles and other mythic ranks still outmatched most of those among his kind that haven't accompanied Irsyr.

Prompted by the increased number of wounded dragons he saw from his vantage point, Darganth thus further increased the power he put into his spell. With it, an illusion manifestation of his true form appeared behind him. Climbing to the side as he shifted the direction his throne faced, it opened its maw in the same direction when he pointed his arm toward the dragon that had prompted his actions to begin with.

Channeling the spell's power toward him, he intoned, "My power, my will."

With his words, the manifestation of his true form above him unleashed what looked like his dragon's breath at the fire dragon. But as the beam of silver and emerald green struck its target, it melded around the dragon's body.

Suddenly unleashing a roar, the dragon swung its wings downward and burst forth from amid the mage's raging flames. Emerging with his claw reeled back, he teleported into the striking range of the mage who was already assured of victory, taking him by surprise and landing the first successful attack by slashing through at least one of the shield spells the man surrounded himself with.

Not letting up, the dragon let his instinct and Darganth's voice that whispered to him guide his actions. Gathering flames in his maw, he unleashed a breath attack not on the mage, but on the female aura user recovering behind him.

Engulfing her position almost immediately, his attack left the mage no chance to intervene on her behalf. Only able to watch as the flames consumed her, he instead took aim at the fire dragon's neck with fury in his eyes.

But before he could fire his spell, the latter finished his spell. Amid the characteristic green glow of time magic, his head split in two as he forced two branching futures to happen simultaneously, allowing one of the heads to turn its breath attack onto the mage while the other kept his aimed at the aura user.

A moment later the two attacks met and clashed briefly before erupting into an explosion that ripped through the surroundings. Dashing forward without hesitation as he felt the resulting rebound cancel his breath attack, the fire dragon didn't hesitate and leaped through it at his opponent.

Surprising the mage, his strike managed to find its target with the full weight of his momentum behind it. Tearing through the man's personal shields, the dragon's claw even ripped a gash into his robes and was only diverted when it struck the thin barrier above the man's skin.

Activating the spell connected to it, the contact caused a blast of flames that threw back the dragon's leg, leaving an opening for the mage to unleash a barrage of spells into his chest. Surprisingly, the attacks tore through scales and flesh, leaving the mage momentarily stunned as the dragon's corpse fell from the sky.

But this didn't last long, with the falling corpse scattering into motes of green energy merely a second later. The moment he saw this, the mage's expression twisted into terror, though the realization didn't come fast enough for him to restore his shields and other defenses before the fire dragon's other possible future, and with the destruction of the alternative the real him, came flying upward and devoured him with a single bite.

Finally lowering his arm at that point, Darganth's gaze briefly lingered on the wound his left arm had sustained in these brief moments of channeling the spell's power. Dead skin flaked off of his arm and deep cuts of silver and azure light stretched from his chest to his fingers in a lightning pattern, all the while his hand felt as if it was constantly being bathed in acid.

Taking a second to steady his breath, he was just about to ignore the pain again and choose the next dragon to empower when he felt the strain on himself drop sharply. Immediately after, he heard a sharp breath to his right, shortly followed by the sight of Yldra stumbling from the sudden piercing pain.

"So it's not unique to Irsyr and Azeal but rather the Locis and Tempust clans in general." Darganth muttered, briefly lost in thought from the implications before he rattled himself.

"Can you endure it?" He quickly added once he did, looking toward Yldra with concern.

"Of course, but next time I want a throne of my own." She managed to joke, relieving Darganth.

"Though finishing this fast would be appreciated." She added.

Nodding in agreement, Darganth again increased the power of the spell. In response, nine draconic figures emerged from caves that opened up at various points across the mountain of spatial energy. Among them, the two that emerged near the peak closely resembled Darganth's true form, with both being differentiated by the presence of only spatial or temporal energy respectively as well as some slight differences in their form.

Together with these manifestations of Irsyr and Azeal, conjured copies of the seven other dragon gods also emerged on the mountainside. Flaring their wings as they towered on its slope, they one by one lit up with mana as they unleashed their respective dragon breaths across the battlefield.

Similar to the manifestation of Darganth's true form, the energy they unleashed struck one of the surrounding dragons. Through it, the target was empowered with a fraction of the dragon's might, gaining their unique characteristics as well as an even further increase in their power compared to what the Aegis of the Dragon Lord provided to every dragon within range.

As the first wave of counterattacks began under the support of these enhancements, Darganth's attention was again drawn to his side when Serania, Allaire, and Jennia appeared there around that time. Almost immediately, the former two almost sank to their knees as the spell recognized the small signature of Darganth's draconic mana all three radiated and started using them as conduits to channel its power.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Allaire said as she caught herself at the last moment.

"Alright. But leave before it becomes too much." Darganth said.

"After seeing your arm I'd sooner force you to cancel the spell than to leave." Allaire answered him.

"I guessed so, I just wanted to have said it."

With these words, Darganth again increased the output of the spell, raising it all the way to the new limit of what was possible without his body receiving a backlash.