Boarding battle

[Astral realm]

Having turned toward the ship's deck at the same time as he shouted the warning, Darganth was already focusing in the direction when the unknown man landed on the teleportation platform. Delaying for a brief moment to gauge his intent, Darganth only acted after the invader did.

The moment he felt mana surge within the man, he raised an arm in response and aimed with lightning speed. A fraction of a second later, his magic lashes out in the form of five crimson red beams that erupt from his fingers.

Streaking through the air, they struck Darganth's opponent in rapid succession, with two blasting the man's sword across the deck while the other three struck his lower torso, chest, and neck respectively. Tearing into their target's magical defenses, the first shredded the shield the man's armor was projecting around him, allowing the next beam to strike his chest-plate and burst open the metal armor just before the last one still graced his neck despite the best efforts to dodge.

Though this meant that he escaped the killing blow by a hair's breadth, some of the others had already started aiming at him before Darganth's spell even finished. As such, the man didn't get a single moment of respite before already being forced to dodge again as one of the stationary cannons shot a compressed sphere of fire attuned mana his way.

Passing over his shoulder as he bent out of the way, the projectile erupted behind him just a moment later as it squarely struck one of his comrades who had just teleported in. Completely consuming both him and a woman who had teleported a mere meter next to him, the explosion reaped the first two victims among the attacking force as it took two mages by surprise.

Shocked by the weapon's power, the first attacker quickly reevaluated the danger they posed. Memorizing their position with a quick glance around the deck, he made them the first target in his mission to weaken the Starweaver's defenses.

Feigning a dash toward the closest, he drew two of the transformed dragons away from their positions before hastily pivoting and aiming for another stationary weapon a little bit further away from him. Rushing toward it, he substituted his still missing sword with an aura weapon, which he drew back as he leaped toward his target.

But, unluckily for him, this had brought Averyla's attention onto him. Watching his movements through her with illusion magic hidden dragon eyes, she waited patiently and without as much of a flicker in her presence that could give away her intent, all the way until his second foot left the ground.

Bursting into action the moment he no longer had any leverage to push against, her magic shot forth and coalesced into a flaming sphere before her mouth.

"Flame burst." She called out as the fiery bomb shot forward, warning her fellow solar dragon, who had started to rush after the attacker in the hopes of fixing his earlier mistake.

Though this also drew her target's attention, as he was already sailing through the air, his options were limited. Twisting his torso and covering himself with a fire aura, he slashed out with the aura sword he held by his hips in a desperate attempt to block the spell. But as the weapon cleaved through the attack, the fist-sized flaming sphere erupted not into a burning inferno but a blinding light, followed by a sizzling arc of electricity that latched onto the broken remains of his chestplate and catapulted him backward with a thundering shockwave.

Already rushing in by the time this happened, Averyla's claws glinted in the soft ambient light as she reeled her hand back. Arriving where her opponent was flung to in a blur of speed, she thrust her hand forward and raked the sharp talons that tipped her fingers across the man's back. Searing through his armor and digging into his flesh, her claws ignited with flames as she cut across the man's back. Under her control, the flames mixed with the electricity still coursing through his body, leaving their fused form to flicker around her hand as her swing ended.

Pushing another surge of mana into the pale remains of her two spells, she reignited its power and shaped it into a solid construct of fire that coiled around a central, equally solid bolt of lightning. Grabbing hold of the resulting two-meter-long staff, she quickly pivoted and plunged its sharp tip into her opponent's back.

Finding the hole her claws had cut into his armor, her strike sank deeper than the last attack until it burst forth from the man's chest on the other side. Skewering his heart in the process, she briefly let her weapon linger in that position until she sensed the man's presence vanish. With this proof that his soul had been separated from his body and thus the confirmation of his death, she ripped her weapon free and spun around, not even reacting when his gathered mana burst forth from his damaged heart in a shockwave that washed over Averyla.

Instead, she let her gaze sweep across the battlefield, taking in every last little detail as she decided on her next course of action. At the center of the deck, a mix of her fellow solar dragons and the three fire dragons that were also part of their companions on this journey, brawling it out with the vanguard of whatever group it was that was attacking them.

Covered in aura and with their claws, tails, and sometimes even wings on full display, they scraped against shields and metal armors or battered into them with blunt force. The counterattacks were meanwhile caught on the scales that covered their bodies to varying degrees, with only the occasional thrust piercing through their defense, while a few others among her fellow dragons were sent stumbling back by especially heavy blows from warhammers or similar weapons.

From the sidelines, there came a storm of arrows and spells that tore into this melee. Chief among them were the Starweaver's stationary weapons. Though three were already threatened by an invader that had managed to close in on it and was trapping the draconian controlling it in close quarters, the remaining six manned weapons were still more than enough to exploit every opening that presented itself.

With each of their shots, explosions, or massive balista bolts struck the invading group. While none managed to achieve the same success the first volley had, each hit rattled even the most prepared of the defenders when it struck the first shield or barrier that sprang up in its trajectory.

Amid this, Allaire's voice suddenly echoed across the deck, "Scattershot."

Simultaneously, she unleashed the mana imbued arrow that she had drawn back. Thanks to her warning and the fact that their mana sense allowed them to estimate its trajectory even with their back turned, the projectile passed by two of the transformed dragons without any friendly fire, with its target area being similarly free of allies due to the same reasons.

There, just meters before reaching the closest of her enemies, Allaire's arrow exploded into hundreds of pieces that mixed with thousands of tiny needles of manifested aura and shot out like a shotgun blast.

With an eruption that sent the frontmost invader flying when it struck the tower shield he cowered behind, this blast washed over the center of the enemy formation. Spreading in a cone shape, the dense cloud of minuscule projectiles completely swallowed up almost a dozen fighters as it exploded across the area in but a moment.

Still, that brief instant was enough to catapult multiple invaders backward. Furthermore, though it couldn't break through the enchanted armor they all wore, even if those that were merely made from leather, the blast tore skin and flesh from bones in every gap between armor plates that had been left exposed to its onslaught.

And while this was already devastating and completely broke their formation, Serania still had her own addition to make. Raising an open palm toward the same group, her fingers briefly crackled with electricity before it shot out toward their enemies. Erupting as dozens of individual strands of lightning, her spell arced wildly through the invader's now scattered formation, latching onto the ship, scattered metal fragments from the tip of Allaire's arrow, and enemies alike.

The opening this created wasn't left unexploited by the nearby dragons. Charging forward ahead of the others, Vagha was the first of them to reach the enemy. Quickly blasting back an aura user that had recovered quickly and tried to intercept him with an explosion that erupted from his palm, he then opened his mouth and unleashed a torrent of flames at three mages that stood near each other.

Washing over them, his attack left the closest of the three no chance to defend himself before the flames already consumed his body. The other two meanwhile barely managed to pool their power into a water barrier that mostly stopped the attack, with only the hot steam of evaporating water sizzling against their personal shields but failing to penetrate them.

Before he could even close in further to follow up on this attack, a fellow solar dragon had already burst through the water barrier. Clad in a storm of wind that clung to his skin, he smashed his fist into one of the mage's shields.

Cracking under the impact, hair-thin lines burst open on the white light element barrier around the spot where the fist struck. At the sight, the mage's eyes widened in fear, and his hand shot up to release a panicked blast of light magic.

Stepping to the side after his second strike, the dragon easily dodged the spell and was just about to resume his offensive when his other opponent unleashed a surprise spell from under his feet. With only the brief moment in between the spell circle flaring to life and watery tentacles grabbing at his limbs as a warning, the dragon barely had time to dash two meters to the side before half a dozen water constructs wound around his left leg.

Coming to an abrupt stop as they tugged on his body, he quickly pivoted to face the spell before bringing down his still in wind clad fist. Tearing through the tentacle that was trying to grab one of his arms, he brought down his foot in a stamp just as he sensed another buildup of mana from the same mage.

Pushing his palm to the side, he sent a wall of raging wind in both mages' general direction. Sending his first target flying back a meter as a nice bonus, its main purpose was revealed when the water mage unleashed a barrage of small blue projectiles that curved outward before aiming at him.

Though when they passed through the wind barrier, powerful gales scrambled their trajectory, leading to most of them missing him. And those that did hit meanwhile all missed his head, leaving the spheres of water that erupted around their impact area to encase that spot, and doing nothing but increasing the weight he had to move by a minuscule amount.

Before the mage could then follow up on this, his mana sense caught a glimpse of movement to his right, prompting him to instinctively thrust out a hand in that direction and intone, "reflective sea."

With his words, a vertical water surface barely a few centimeters thick shimmered into existence before his palm as the man's upgraded water mirror spell took form. This came not a moment too soon as a bolt of fire struck it in practically the same instant. But instead of exploding or otherwise reacting, the flaming projectiles vanished into the wall of water before it with but a small ripple in the otherwise tranquil surface, only for it to come shooting back out in the exactly opposite direction a moment later.

Faced with his own spell flying back at him, Vagha barely got a moment to duck mid-sprint before the flaming attack burst into half a dozen chains of fire that wound themselves around the position where he had been just moments prior.

A moment later, Vagha closed the remaining distance to the mage and burst through the wall of water that had calmed by then. Though feeling a momentary resistance as he smashed his fist into it, he soon pushed past the limit of what the spell could reflect, causing it to fall apart into a splash of water.

With his thus entering close combat with the water mage and preventing further interference from him, the other dragon only had to contend with his opponent when he finished destroying the water constructs that wound around his legs.

Though surprised that he hadn't been attacked by the closer mage during this, the dragon wasted no time lunging at his opponent. Reeling back his fist, he only noticed too late that the shield that surrounded the latter wasn't the same as it had been before.

Appearing in a flash of crimson red around the impact area, this new shield met his strike with a wall of elementally attuned mana. Shaking from the impact, it held firm under the strain, before then erupting with spikes formed from the same war element constructs a moment later.

At this, the dragon's eyes widened in shock. With no time to react before spikes erupted from the surface of his opponent's shield spell, they managed to land a clean hit on him.

Though such quick spells from a mage of his opponent's caliber shouldn't be able to pierce his air armor, together with the space and time elements, the war element was the exception to this.

Whereas the former two were so powerful due to their nature and resulting status as the sole superior element, the war elements' status as the element embodying the concept of power gave it the strength to match these two in raw power. But in exchange for this unique position, its form was less stable, making it overall equal to the other standard elements.

What exactly this meant varied depending on what the element had been shaped into. For constructs like the spikes for example, it often meant that they delivered the same impact as an equal space or time attuned construct. In exchange, the construct itself would start to break down after far fewer strikes.

In the dragon's case, this took the form of the spikes easily breaking through his defenses, causing the wind armor to burst apart with a gale that erupted in all directions. Though in doing so, these sharp currents tore into the spikes, their forms bursting open under the strain.

Lifting an arm to shield his eyes, the dragon then let the resulting wave of energy harmlessly roll off his scales. And with him now aware of his opponent's proficiency in the war element, it took him only a moment before he again seized the initiative and attacked with a new tactic to minimize its advantages.

Raising his palm, he was just about to launch a small spell to trigger the shield spell when a beam of intertwined azure and silver tore through the air above.

This was immediately followed by a beast's pained howl, though its sound died down just as abruptly as it had appeared a mere moment later. Only catching the unknown beast's sudden emergence and death with his mana sense, the dragon didn't get a chance to dwell on it before his brief pause was interrupted by a formless light magic spell that weakened him.

Shifting his attention back to the matter at hand, he thus left the greater battle in the hands of his friends and colleagues.