A GOD AGAINST A DRAGON

Lightning flickered around Parsia’s battered body as his breathing grew ragged. His missing arm and leg still bled profusely, his golden hair dyed crimson with blood. He clenched the fist of his remaining hand and grit his teeth as he poured out Mana from his Soul, coating every inch of his body in thick, lightning bolts.

He broke forward, causing sounds of thunder to echo through the sky, as he dove toward the beastly Sorth who was still trying to regain his footing in the sky. Parsia caught up quickly and swung with his fist, squarely hitting Sorth onto his chest. Bounced back like a ragdoll, Sorth spat out a mouthful of blood as he roared, his body growing once more as he landed in the distance, causing a massive explosion on the ground.

Parsia dove right after him, releasing sounds of thunder with each of his movements. Array of bolts flickered off his shoulders, arrow-shaped, as they pulsed forward. Crashing into the beastly body, they caused a ring of explosions, further blowing the hill-filled landscape apart.

As a reply, Sorth’s eyes turned crimson as his body bulged, pushing forward into the sky seemingly faster than the light itself. His arm extended into a fist and, seeing this, Parsia echoed his movement as the two clashed. Explosion of pure lightning ensued, blowing both backward and onto the ground as they tracked forth for miles, leaving human-sized imprint throughout. Parsia flipped backward, forcibly steadying his body as he once again railed lightning to surround him, his eyes vacant of reason and thought.

From his back, two wings of bolts erupted as he pushed forward once more. Sorth rolled directly through the heart of a mountain, creating a gigantic hole throughout, as he regained his footing on the other side. Bellowing form the depths of his soul once more, veins popped open on his calves due to pressure, crimson blood escaping down. Once again, he dove toward approaching Parsia with his fist extended as hairs on it stood upright.

A pair of sonic booms followed before the two clashed yet again; Parsia suddenly felt bones in his fingers crack as his eyes widened in surprise. Before he had a chance to process it properly, his remaining arm was blown right off into smithereens as his entire body skyrocketed backward in an arc as he crashed heavily onto the ground, coughing out a small pond of blood.

Lifting his head up slightly, he saw limping Sorth approach; the arm that he just use to clash with Parsia was hanging by a tinge of flesh off his shoulder, nearly falling off. One of his eyes was pierced right through with a lightning bolt, remnants of electricity still dancing about. Just as he surrendered to death, he felt gentle stream of water envelop him as his body began emitting faint glimmer of golden light. Glancing sideways, he saw Thalia land softly next to him as she crouched down, her brows kitted in worry.

“… wow, you got beat.” she mumbled, looking sideways toward Sorth who suddenly paused when he noticed her. “It’ll take a goddamn year to heal completely…”

“…” even if Parsia wanted to talk, he was unable; every muscle in his body ached, even with Thalia’s help.

“… I don’t have much Mana left myself, but it should be enough to handle the big guy.” she said, getting up; a human-sized bubble of golden water wrapped itself around Parsia, suspending him midair and guiding him back to safety. All around them was only a landscape of destruction, bits and pieces of green hanging above the rubble and decay.

Meanwhile, at the heights of the sky, lightning and flames entwined for a moment before relapsing back. Atop the Dragon now stood a crimson giant, blood dripping off it like rain. Seeing this, the short, old man frowned, his eyes scouting left and right for a boy.

“… he ran away?” the old man mumbled.

“He’s a coward like that, after all.” the giant replied in an amused tone.

“… aren’t you ashamed?” the old man asked the giant. “Serving a pathetic human?”

“… what do I have to be ashamed of?” the Sanguine God scoffed. “The boy’s been a Magus for a little over five years, yet he can take a blow or two from a God without dying. Is that something I should be ashamed of?”

“You’re a God, in servitude of a human.” the old man said, his face distorted. “You should be ashamed of your very existence.”

“A God, a human… what’s the difference? In the end, you can beat that boy, but I can probably find a good hundred humans that can beat you back all the same. It’s the Gods like you that are the reason we were so vehemently hunted in the first place by the ‘pathetic humans’.”

“… ha ha,” the old man laughed madly as lightning as thick as a tree’s stump landed atop his head, his body slowly bulging into spheres as though ready to explode. “You’re the first one so adamant about defending the humans. Others either fear them, hate them, despise them or want to eradicate them down to the last one. Tell me, when did you abandon your kin for our natural enemy?!” the old man’s body exploded as bolts of lightning erupted fiercely from within.

Bit by bit, they formed a shape of a gigantic creature, nearly the size of the Dragon; it appeared winged, sharp-jawed and eyeless. Its body was filled with thick, azure scales constantly spewing out tiny bolts outwardly, while its back was a home to a row of backward-facing fins. At the bottom, bolts coiled around twelve limbs, six on each side, as they hanged down like listless tentacles.

“… you’re pretty old, huh?” the Sanguine God chuckled lowly.

“Much older than you, at least.” a voice coming form nowhere while at the same time everywhere replied. “Very well. If you wish to stand at the side of our enemy, then fall with them into the depths of abyss.”

“…”

Bolt crashed into the giant’s body before the latter even had a moment to react, blowing a through hole at its abdomen. However, blood merely wrapped and coiled around itself in a vortex-like fashion as it slowly filled the hole back up. There was a momentary silence, akin to a prelude to a storm, filling the sky. Even endless spewing bolts hummed no sound, and as though world came to complete stillness, three creatures which defied all common sense danced frozen in the sky.

However, after that momentary silence, all hell broke loose as the sky itself was wrapped into a catastrophe beyond measure. On one side stood lightning, wrapping itself for dozens of miles, while on the other stood flames, burning away fabric of existence itself to ash. Within the flames stood a still-beating heart of a God as it poured its blood energy directly into a Dragon.

Two forces pushed toward one another in a clash that can only ever be dreamt, but never witnessed. Lightning and flames wrapped and burned one another as two gigantic bodies scaled down and up, moving left and right; although they appeared to be moving slowly, they would cross dozens of miles with a single push of their wings.

The crimson-scaled Dragon opened its gigantic maws fully as fire wrapped itself into a gigantic spheroid. With a singular breath, it spewed it out linearly, breaking apart bolts that came crashing into it. Opposite of it, the God finally moved its listless limbs; they extended into bolts thicker than pillars withstanding the sky. Carrying the same destructive momentum of lightning, but with the ability to move at will, they wrapped around the massive spheroid of fire and pushed its momentum to a halt, digging straight through its core.

The spheroid collapsed and exploded, its fragments flying outward as though it was a volcano. Seeing this, the Dragon’s body shuddered for a moment as its entire body gushed out with fire into the sky. All of the world beneath suddenly lit up in color as the darkness was blown away, and even Ryuuk had to use defensive measures to protect against it.

The usually blue sky turned fiery crimson, and the somewhat chill temperature of the day skyrocketed, drying up land at speeds visible to the naked eye. Fire encircled the God like a rounded wall, as millions of blazing whips suddenly enriched the sky.

As a countermeasure, the lightning bolts thickened even further, multiplying in number. The listless limbs moved once again, coiling themselves around the gigantic, azure-scaled body of the God. Each began spitting out bolts as though they were ordinary pebbles, crashing against whips while causing explosion after explosion to erupt, dismembering the fabric of space surrounding them. For hundreds of miles and on in the sky, fire and lightning bladed against each other. Flashes of light continuously blinded the world below, causing Mages to break out in cold fear and Mortals to believe that the Judgment Day had arrived.

As one of the fiery whips broke through, it slashed against one of the God’s wings, cutting dozens of meters through before burning out. The creature bellowed in pain as the frequency of bolts increased, more and more, until there was no free space in the sky; it was either dominated by fire or by lighting bolts. Strays quickly began escaping them as they crashed toward the ground. Cities trembled as people began running in panic, while the battlefield directly beneath the clash of giants erupted in outright chaos.

It turned into every man for himself as people began running away. While sky and earth tore under the magnifying pressure, Lynne casually glanced back, smirking while also sighing. Under the weight of the sky, he felt his own Mana and Soul were being threatened, but he had no time to run. Opposite of him, space was being directly devoured as the very dimension was seemingly being warped.

Scythe above him hummed a melody of death as Skyfire and Hellfire flames wreathed against it. In contrast to the crimson flames in the sky, his seemed almost insignificant; yet, many eyes, even those currently engaged in a battle that could bring this realm to a ruin, glanced toward him. Two types of flames screeched as they finally wrapped themselves around scythe’s blade.

“… those guys really don’t care for this world,” Lynne sighed, extending his arm out. “Geez, don’t make me clean up after you. Equilibrium, ascend.”

At his command, instead of going after the distant Grath, scythe suddenly turned upward and pushed as it began spinning. Flames encroached upon the sky further and further away, black and white soon reaching the width of the crimson flames in the sky. Whether stray bolts or flames from above, whatever touched the scythe’s reach was burned completely into nothingness. While the Skyfire and Hellfire Flames slowly extended, normalizing the world beneath, Lynne cracked his neck gently as his focus shifted back onto Grath.

“Sorry for the wait,” he said, smiling as he confidently stepped forward. “Your turn now.”