The attack was pulled back, not that any who had actually entered combat could return. More dragons, giants, and drac arrived, filling the disintegrating swamp around the ruined plaza with massive angry bodies eager to exact vengeance.

Which was totally alright. The rubble made any kind of a bombardment attack impossible, and the Autobows were more than happy to snipe back with a banefire’d punch behind them, making it an unpopular choice of passing the time. The rock-tossing, I mean. Seeing if you could shoot a drake in the eye at two hundred meters was perfectly permissible, if the drakes dared to get that close.

The magic bombardment was also an interesting tactic. After all, spells had range. The dragons and Hags moved in close to the edge of the Stillflight, high enough to ignore most of the rubble, and of course from every side, so they could attain full coverage of the area the company covered.

So, the attack spells commenced from all sides, dragons and Hags unleashing an arsenal of AoE magic to demonstrate their ire. Surely multiple rounds of direct damage would have the desired effect.

Mmmm. And if the Ironblood and Briggs hadn’t been there it might have succeeded, too.

Fire, lightning, acid, poison, death magic, heart-stopping cold, cutting rains, pounding hail, shredding blades... dozens of attack spells went down, filling the area inside the rubble with dust and energy, tossing rubble into the air, and making the place totally occluded by the debris.

The assault lasted a full minute, which meant ten spells from a limited number were now gone. Always nice to deplete the enemy of their ammunition...

Of course, it was completely futile.

Those were Ten Forsaken Nulls, with Nulls of 40+. The only Caster who had any chance of getting through those was Tusk Annie, with her full Exemplar bonus.

Even she wasn’t going to get through Briggs’ Sun with that, especially since she was targeting him and Elder Arg.

It was merely a matter of making sure everyone was standing close to an Ironblood. Elder Arg dropped down to the size of a chimp with Mark-shifting, hooting in disdain, and as the magic tore up the area around them, the blasts did absolutely nothing within the silent field of the Nulls.

Then it all went to shit for them.

------

Our dragons had been getting a lot of Breath Weapon practice in recently, and Captains Fido and Shirley were more than happy to pass on all the interesting things you could do if you were skilled in use of Breath Weapons, which were basically quasi-magical energy sources that could be wielded in much the same way magic could.

While normal Breath Weapons didn’t have much of a range, that’s because they were AoE’s whose effects start at the mouth of the exhalation. Once they were turned into Rays, for example, well, their range extended... significantly.

And if they linked up and built up power together, well...

A bolt of fire lashed up, scored a searing hit across the hide of an older dragon. Before it could react, another line of cold slashed across the same line, and superheated scales blew apart even as they froze solid, driving jagged shards of the dragon’s skin into its own insides.

Two more lines of cold punched up, along with a streak of lightning. The wounded Mire screamed as the blast tore through it, while two other dragons felt their insides chilling miserably-

Two stronger lines of lightning reached up into the super-cooled skin, and went dancing about the insides of the frozen and rather overly conductive dragons.

Three adult Mires went spiraling down from the sky, bellowing in pain and disbelief as they died. Their riders naturally jumped away, floating and flying in the air, only able to watch as their mighty mounts fell helplessly to the shattered and clear ex-swamp waters below.

The other dragons realized they might just be a tad too close, and that they hadn’t killed those within...

Then the haror broke formation, and hit them from all sides at once.

------

Approaching was actually pretty easy. Each group of haror flew in formation, covered by the illusion of an incoming drake or dragon, as they preferred. They’d be seen coming from a long way off, but neither Hags nor Dragons have natural True Seeing, and couldn’t immediately tell it was an illusion.

Trying to see through an illusion Cast by a haror with a Charisma of 40 at a distance wasn’t going to happen, either.

They came flapping in leisurely, assessed their targets, picked them out, coordinated spells, and Blinked apart.

Energy Grasp is a basic Valence I spell. Does a d8 of energy damage per Caster Level, capped at 5d8. Energy type is variable, usually set to lightning, and is favored by Mageblades who love conducting it through their weapons for a surprise punch. It only requires a touch to activate, so very useful against big creatures that can’t avoid it.

Cast it out of a Valence II, the damage cap rises to 10d8. If you get a free Raise out of it, the cap is 15d8, plus attach a free +I Meta if you are a Twelve Caster. Spend two points out of a huge Pool of excess Slots from having such a monstrous Charisma to Top it out, and that’s 120 points of gently Laying-Your-Hand-on damage.

Then spend your 1/day free Fastcast to do it with the other hand, too.

One haror to the rider, one to the dragon, two hands to the neck.

No boom, but a lot of firecracker popping of extreme voltage going off. Twenty-five Mire Dragons and their riders convulsed as their brains cooked.

They were staggered between dragons. The pairs Blinked again, thoughtfully pre-Cast, and were suddenly in position next to new targets.

Slender long fingers grasped clawed hands raised instinctively to defend, or touched the body to either sides of the dragon’s spinal crest.

Residual Metamagic Feat: If you use the same spell on a succeeding round, you may apply one of the Metamagicks from the previous spell for free. Like a free Fastcast.

Also, one got Topped for free. So, why not Energize it for +50% damage, especially if your second targets are senior to your first ones?

The sky lit up again, while the dragons were writhing, trying to reach and intercept these targets... and only putting themselves right in the way of the attacks coming in.

The sky was full of falling dragons and cooked Hags.

---------------

Hagmom was still far enough back, and the silver-winged angelic haror had wisely not attacked the area right next to her. Watching her aerial encirclement fall apart just like that was a massive shock, leaving her momentarily frozen as to what to do.

Then the Wyrm jerked underneath her, let out a roar of alarm, and began to fall from the sky.

She instantly tried to Teleport away, but that was Interdicted, too.

She did throw herself off the big dragon, not wanting to be buried under its crushing weight, and was more than willing to take the impact on her massive pool of Health Qi.

I looked up and met her eyes as she came down. Oh, and the dragons that had been hovering to the right and left of her. Them close encirclements have some problems, I tell ya.

There was a double, quadruple scream of dying Hags and dragons as Wayfair unleashed a firebolt, Topped, Energized, with a Sheath of silver fire about her to add a nice little +1 per die of damage. And then Fastcast its twin right next to it.

Yeah 45d6+45 of maxed-out AoE damage with a save of about 40 wasn’t something dragons or hags were going to walk away from.

More dragons and hags coming down from the sky.

Hey, did everyone forget about Briggs?

The whole Company came out of the plaza grounds as if they had steel springs for legs, with a lot of the Ironblood simply hanging onto charging chakon raging for the very distracted forces of encircling drak. A whole lot of head-sized Runeballs headed out by way of introduction.

Briggs blew past the encircling forces with two leaps and two swats, sending scaled bodies flying out of his way. Elder Arg, towing the whole arc of the Rockborn on their Disks, formed a flying wedge of leveled Spears that nothing wanted to get in front of. Alas, they didn’t have much time, as the chakon hit the monstrous line, the Ironblood were launched past them, and the great apes latched on, rolled over, and presented broad enemy backsides for perfect targets. Burning Spears drove in deep, and drac bellowed as Shock Gauntleted hands grasped and wrenched.

The surviving Princess Hags naturally were torn between fleeing and racing down to aid their mother. The choice was taken from them as the Stillflight field of Briggs’ Interdiction swept over them, and down they came. Gotta be decisive there, mein sisters...

Blurs of Helices arriving at speed from the distance began to break apart as Briggs executed a hard turn over the water, kicking up a thick spray as he bent his path towards the other dragons still in the air who hadn’t had the wits to run away while they could.

The big Wyrm took the crashing impact heavily, but the explosion of red meant he’d been allowed to build up Health Qi, and he took no real physical damage, although he did roll over once before heaving himself back to his feet.

His head was just rising off the ground when the Elephant arrived.

The Exemplars had listened to Elder Arg, who had chided them for not picking a name for themselves. They were the Kings of Beasts, and they should acknowledge themselves as such.

King Ivory came out of invisibility, the girls on his back. At the moment he was twenty feet tall, massing close to a hundred tons. Verd was also almost twelve feet tall via Growth Potion, riding behind his head, her Spear Hedge twenty feet long and held as immobile as a steel lance, just above the tusks that suddenly were borrowing a Spirited Charge and One Strike from her as Mount and Rider.

All that mass, moving at sixty mph over the surface of the swampland, slammed into the head of the Wyrm. Steel-hard scales shattered and flew away, the head of the Wyrm was smashed away like a ball on a string, scarlet Health Qi erupting from it.

An unending stream of Brilliant bolts ignored those self-same scales, punching into them and building on the holes there, drawing spurting gouts of blood... but not from the head. Nope, they were centered around the base of the wings, chopping into them, making it impossible for the Wyrm to raise his wings and sweep them out as the tendons and muscles jerked under the impact and vented Health Qi like a sieve.

King Ivory slid over the surface of the water, lightfoot barely online with Monk/1, but enough to let him turn around with impossible speed. Amber and Veis spun counter with smooth balance, even exchanging positions to keep Veis in front as a constant 1/second stream of Autobolts drove into the Wyrm.

The Wyrm was actually just as massive as King Ivory, but the Elephant’s mass was concentrated, not spread over hundreds of feet of serpentine body. There was definitely an old grudge between the two of them, and today King Ivory was going to settle some scores!