Saphielle Mythralis, the Celestial Shapeshifter
The battle didn't slow. If anything, it escalated with every breath.
Kai lunged forward again, his blade carving through the air in a downward arc, only to meet empty space as Saphielle sidestepped with ease, her wings adjusting mid-step for flawless balance. Her movements were elegant and economical, an unspoken ballet of war that danced just outside his reach.
Kai spun, low, aiming a wide sweep with his dagger to force her to leap. She did, but not in the way he anticipated. Her wings flared, catching the wind with a gust that lifted her effortlessly skyward. A single beat, and she was already behind him. Before Kai could turn fully, her boot slammed into his back, sending him skidding face-first across the grass with a grunt. Dirt and tufts of green tore up in his wake.
He hit the ground hard, rolled twice, and shoved himself up, spitting out grass and mud as he panted heavily. His left arm ached. His ribs were a storm of fire. I cant....no, I won't stop now. She's not.
Another flurry of bolts came, quick and precise. Kai ducked under the first, jumped the second, then willed his dagger to shift into a shield to catch the third. The impact rang through his bones like a bell. He countered, dashing forward with raw determination, willing the shield to turn back into a dagger. Both blades ignited with azure light. He slashed upward in a crossing arc, she leaned back so smoothly it looked like time slowed for her alone, the strike missing her by inches.
Saphielle landed light-footed as a feather, spun on her heel, and drove her elbow into his gut. Kai wheezed as air fled his lungs. Before he could recover, her wings swept in, feathers like white blades, and with one powerful flap, she launched herself into a graceful arc, landing effortlessly twenty feet away.
The wind carried dust and crushed grass between them again. The sky above remained bright, the sun glaring as if it, too, bore witness.
Kai coughed, staggered to his feet again. He was bruised, blood smeared along the edge of his lip, and his breath came ragged, uneven. Yet his eyes hadn't dulled. They were sharp, burning now with unyielding grit. He charged again.
He tried weaving his movements, zigzagging, dipping low, even baiting her into attacking first so he could counter. But Saphielle remained one step ahead, always a fraction of a second faster, always in control. She parried, dodged, and when needed, struck with swift, punishing precision. At one point, she spun with the grace of a dancer and delivered a sweeping kick that sent Kai hurtling into a stone column. It cracked behind him with the impact. He hit the ground, coughing violently, his vision swimming.
Three minutes passed, three whole relentless minutes of pain, speed, and sheer defiance. Kai's arms trembled as he stood once more, boots unsteady beneath him. The glow from his HEX had dimmed slightly. His Temporal Aura, though still solid, was flickering, as if warning him that it couldn't take much more. He planted one foot forward, teeth clenched, blood staining his temple.
Saphielle landed lightly ahead, watching him with an unreadable expression. Her bow still shimmered with energy, faintly crackling in her grip. Then, for the first time since the fight began, she spoke. "You're doing well." Kai blinked, his chest rising and falling with shallow gasps. "Well?" he rasped, voice dry, strained. "You've tossed me across half this field like I'm a training dummy." Her eyes softened...just faintly. "Yet you keep standing."
Before he could reply, she raised her hand. The bow shimmered again. "But now," she said, her tone sharpening like drawn steel, "we turn things up a notch."
Kai's heart dropped. His eyes widened with disbelief. "Turn things up?" he coughed. "How...?How do you expect me to continue when I can barely keep up now?" Saphielle didn't answer. Instead, she lifted her bow high....and released it.
The sapphire blue weapon crackled, flaring with energy, and then scattered into streaks of light. It unraveled in the air, dissipating into radiant threads before the last fragment touched the grass with a whisper and vanished completely. The silence that followed was unnerving. The light wind stilled.
Even the sun seemed to pause behind a passing cloud again, shrouding the battlefield in an eerie silver dusk.
Kai's breath caught in his throat. "Wa-wait... what are you..?"
The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
A brilliant flare of sapphire-blue light erupted around Saphielle, swallowing her in a sudden blaze that surged skyward like a living flame. The ground beneath her feet cracked in a perfect circle, grass and earth shivering from the force of the eruption. Kai instinctively raised his left arm to shield his face, the glow searing his vision even behind closed lids.
The temperature shifted.
A roaring hush, like wind inside a canyon, surged through the field. As the light twisted and spiraled upward, it formed the outline of something massive. The radiant blaze swirled faster, tighter, energy dancing like serpents around a growing figure. Kai's eyes widened as Saphielle's silhouette stretched, expanded, changed. Her limbs disappeared into the blaze as new ones unfurled: longer, broader, scaled and ripped with muscles. Feathers faded into smoke. Her elegant frame gave way to something far more ancient.... and terrifying.
The last remnants of the radiant storm dissipated with a flicker, vanishing in motes that scattered like fireflies into the air. And then silence. Kai stared. Where Saphielle once stood, there now loomed a colossus.
A dragon...no, not just any dragon, but something majestic and primeval. Fifty feet tall, standing with terrifying grace, the scales along it's upper side shimmered in hues of sapphire so rich they looked like liquid crystal. Light glinted off each individual scale, flawless in shape, sharp at the edges. A line of sharp, triangular spinal spikes ran down the length of its powerful neck and back, catching the sun like a serrated crown. Its underbelly and the vast expanse of its wings gleamed an iridescent white, stark and bright against the sky.
Two pairs of antler-like horns curled backward from its head, branching out elegantly like carved branches of silvered bone. And its eyes, those sapphire eyes, now slitted and reptilian, locked onto Kai with unblinking intensity. They were still Saphielle's. Unmistakably her gaze. Calm. Unyielding. Cold with purpose.
A small puff of air escaped the dragon's nostrils, along with a few wisps of white-hot embers that floated lazily through the air, hissing as they drifted to the scorched grass. Kai couldn't breathe.
His body refused to move. His legs were ice, trembling under the weight of the moment. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but he couldn't. He was frozen, paralyzed, a man turned to stone by the gaze of a living myth.
The dragon, Saphielle, lowered her head slightly, her voice emerging like a resonance in the air, deeper now, rippling through the space between them. It wasn't a roar, nor a growl. It was perfectly spoken... and final. "Let the final two minutes commence."
Kai's heart thundered in his chest, sweat beading down his temple as the sun slipped free of the clouds again, casting its full light across the field. He was no longer just fighting a Time-Keeper. He felt like he was staring down a god.
The dragon's wings shifted, massive, cathedral-like things of sinewed membrane and luminous white scale. With a single thunderous motion, she unfurled them, casting an enormous shadow that swept across the battlefield like a falling curtain. The wind from the motion slammed into Kai's body with a concussive force, rippling the grass flat around him and tossing loose debris into the air. The sky seemed to bend under her rising form.
Then, with a powerful beat that cracked like thunder, she launched herself upward.
Saphielle ascended in a graceful but overwhelming arc, her form cutting across the sky like a sapphire comet. The sun caught her wings as she rose, framing her in a corona of searing white light. Each beat of her wings stirred the air in great tidal waves, kicking dust into cyclones below. From high above, she circled once, her enormous form blotting out the sun for a heartbeat.
Kai could barely keep his footing. The shockwaves from her ascent trembled beneath his boots. He lifted his gaze slowly, neck craned, heart hammering, watching her hover like an ancient sentinel in the sky. Then her voice came again, deep and layered, shaking the very air. "Brace yourself." It wasn't a warning. It was a decree.
The dragon's head tilted downward. Her jaws opened wide, wider than any living thing had a right to, revealing perfect rows of gleaming, curved teeth, each one the size of a sword. From deep within that abyss, a pulse of radiant heat shimmered like the surface of a sun. Kai's eyes widened. His mouth opened, but no sound came.
There, in the back of her maw, light began to swirl: first faint, then blinding. It gathered fast. A sphere of white-hot energy, the very color of a dying star, formed between her jaws, roaring louder with every breath. The temperature on the field spiked. Grass shriveled and blackened around Kai's feet. The very air crackled, trembling beneath the weight of what was coming. He could feel his skin begin to sting.
His Temporal Aura surged to life instinctively, wrapping around his frame in thin, flickering waves of royal azure. His HEX pulsed weakly at first, then roared to life, its glow intensifying with a desperate, reactive fury. Kai threw both arms forward, willing a barrier into place with every ounce of focus he had left.
The dragon exhaled. What came next wasn't just fire. It was annihilation. A beam of pure white flame erupted from Saphielle's mouth, a searing beam of molten destruction that split the sky and hurtled toward the earth.