Chromatic dragons are larger and more physically powerful when compared to their Metallic equivalents but with their larger size they often fail to gain sentience. They come in a variety of sizes and colors from smallest to largest being: white, green, yellow, grey, orange, brown, black, blue, purple and red. Some of them carry the same elemental affinities though they do so with different mixes and instinctual magic.

Adrian

The flurry of lightning ends and the Althaen have no choice but to acknowledge me. They do not say it but that they move on to their next charge.

“You are in possession of Kythia Bloodclaw bought by House Faer as well as Thalia and Lysan Alanthíer, likewise purchased by House Faer. Will you return them to their rightful owners?”

“No, and they are not slaves.”

“Then you are guilty of theft and will be . . .”

“The point make by Lord Ravnos is valid. If you all would turn to page fifty-five of the packet I gave you, you will see that all three of their names have been redeemed on the Dwarven List of Approved Peoples. The next three pages are receipts from House Faer marking a refund of the purchases made of those three. This claim should also be dismissed as there is no validity behind it.”

I cannot help but laugh as nigh half of the judges begin to argue with each other. I don’t know how Thrane knew to do this or how he got it done overnight but I do not care, I am really enjoying this and I am going to call on him to do this law stuff again next time. After a few minutes, the man who started this trial become quiet as he begins to speak once more.

“Don’t think that any of this has changed the outcome, or that the next three pages tying them to you will save them from returning to their rightful place. You see some of us did read what your dwarf friend prepared. You used necromancy to animate the corpse of a noble, which is punishable by both death and destruction of your house. You are of course declared to be guilty of this and all your possessions and family forfeit to whoever found your deviance into the dark arts.”

Wait what? I thought Thrane was playing them. I look at him, he expected it right?

“The given target for a legally sanctioned use of necromancy was selected by you. He should not be held as it was under duress and it was directed by another.”

“It is not my fault he did not ask for different supplies or provide his own and I call for a trial by combat for your slander of insinuating that I approved of the raising of a dead noble, and as we are already in a trial I motion all charges be tried by combat.

Any objections from the judging council? No, then in essence of time I call for the trials of combat to take place simultaneously.

All in favor?”

Each and every one of the Althaen judges make either a gesture or call out verbally their agreement. I did expect things to end up this way but I did not think that I would end up having to fight multiple opponents at once.

“Each house that is part of the council will field a Magister, House Faer as the lead and beneficiary will field the extra two for the total of six. The Magisters are waiting outside and if you do not immediately go to the field of battle we will take that as an act of surrender. The fight is to the death baring enslavement of the accused.”

I turn around and take the phone back from Lysan, storing it in void cache. As much as I feel like recording the fight it would be a bad idea to end up showing how I fight to everyone. I probably should not have recorded the ‘spells’ earlier either.

I begin to twist reality to create effects with durations longer than concentration as I walk to where the trial by combat will be. Specifically, I accelerate both time and my natural healing rate as much as I can.

Once I exit the courthouse I see that in the half hour I was in there the street had been cleared cleaned and readied for this battle. Thrane is not as good as it seemed, he played the Althaen but at least one of them used that to get exactly what he wanted. There are six men standing separated by only a few dozen feet, no line passing through more than two of them.

Great, they are in a formation meant to mitigate the dangers of area effects, not that that will be too much trouble for me to deal with. As soon as I am in the open the six of them release darts of light that swerve as I attempt to dodge, a sneak attack but I never expected them to play fair to begin with.

Many small black marks with bruises form across my body and my clothing is now little better than cleanish rags. For some reason I smile, I've grown to like fighting and I want to make these six suffer.

The first thing I do is call upon what is left of the lightning in the clouds above us to crash down on top of them but it seems they all cast protective spells as the lightning is stopped by a shell. The blinding flashes at least do give me the time I needed to get to one of them, not the closest one though. They expected that and I ran around the grease fire combination they unleashed in what would have been my path.

Unfortunately, not all of them were set on that trap, one instead sent a bolt of fire at me while another threw a ball that exploded into a mass of spider webs.

I manage to get through the webs and dodge the firebolt but the melee attack of a spear drawn from Void Cache merely cracks a thin layer of something and the force behind my strike negated. Stoneskin, but why didn’t it distort their color? Illusions to cover it up?

A rod of green energy taken physical form manifests in the hands of the mage I failed to harm. The following strike stings more than the kinetic force should have but I take the hit and grab several stones from the nearby gravel with Translocation Grasp.

The Stoneskin he has is layered protection so it should block a specific number of hits, how hard the hits are don’t matter though. I stagger throwing stones until his image stops suffering cracks when hit. I dodge a spear of ice and the rest of our battlefield is covered with either webs or grease, both of which are subject to the spreading fire, when his last layer of Stoneskin is broken.

Neither the flames, grease or webs seem to be affecting the mages. Are they doing exclusions or have protective spells up? I really need to figure out a way to at least check for mana based effects.

I jump into the air to dodge a fireball, which dissipates when it slams into the mage behind me. I see their grins as three of them throw lightning bolts at me. I was hoping to hide this longer but I manifest the wings of my dragon form to allow me to twist in the air as I use Translocation Grasp in inverse to throw a knife into the mage whose Stoneskin is down.

My hair stands on end from the charges leaking out of the lightning bolts but I don’t take the hits. The thrown knife deviates from my intended path but it does hit the mage, with the hilt breaking his nose.

I land and feel top heavy, causing me to stumble a bit. I need a counter weight. This error causing me to be hit by someone's Fan of Flames. Before I am burned too much I create frost fire around me to negate it while I add my tail to this hybrid form.

I need to kill one of these guys quickly, but it is so much fun to keep this up. I smile and destroy any control they had over the fire as I push them to burn hotter and wilder, their color shifting from red-orange to a blue.

I laugh as I hear the mages scream for a moment before some sort of contingency was triggered and bursts of cold air spread out from all six of the mages. The fires are put out but their terrain hazards are also now gone. The mage whose still had not managed to put up another protection spell finds himself in melee once more.

His decastave blocks my hands turned claws but a tail sweep lands him on his back. In the tumble, I get past his block and rip his throat before stopping my roll with a flap of my wings. The abrupt change of direction dodging an earthen spike.

The other five must have recovered from the surprise burns. The unnatural chill of negative energy warns me of the next attack coming my way, a blast of red-black energy. I only manage to dodge it due the difference in the rate of time.

Two creatures made of pure fire appear between me and a group of three mages. Summoning something to tie me down? Decent idea but those are fire elementals. I point to the two and force their flames to extinguish themselves.

I see the green bolt of Disintegrate flying from the third of those three mages and dodge it, at least if my wings were not out I would have. Pain and comfort explode from the nerves within the membranes of my left wing and I feel some of it transform to dust but don’t feel danger from the spreading hole.

The disintegration stops after a head sized hole is in my wing, my accelerated natural healing slowly fills the hole as the comfortable feeling that accompanied the Disintegrate fades. What just happened? A slash from a blade on my back brings me back to the more immediate worries.

I see no sword but the one in the hand of a mage over a dozen feet away. A ranged attack? I throw a stone at that mage but it is blocked by the appearance of glowing motes of light.

Protection from Normal Missiles, aright I’ll just use melee then. I rush that mage and just before reaching him I unleash a breath weapon, Gravity Breath.

I can handle the increased weight but this man can’t and he falls to the ground and I turn to the other on this side of the field. He teleports, dimension door?

A glance shows me he is now crouched over the mage I already killed. With a touch and a flash of dark red light the corpse rises. So they can use the corpse of a noble but I can’t?

I twist the forming negative energy matrix in the rising corpse, and it exploded in a wave of negative energy. The pained expression of the mage in black and red tells me all I need to know, he is not warded from negative energy attacks.

If he isn’t then the others probably are not either. Returning to the prone mage with a sword I wrap my right clawed hand in the dark purple and black energy of death before striking him with it. A layer of Stoneskin breaks, the physical damage of my claws negated but his rapid withering and ceasing to draw breath lets me know just how few years he had before dying of old age. Two down, four to go.

The stationary position I held as the sword wielding mage died cost me taking a small swarm of acid blobs. My rush at the nearest mage only gives them the time they need to cast what I assume is a protective spell. Not wanting to waste time on an energy that won’t hurt them anymore I release a blast of frost fire at point plank range.

The frostbite resulting from my attack is not immediately lethal but it did cause him to botch whatever spell he was casting and I push him into an icy spear sent at me by his compatriots. I can only assume the ice covering a third of his torso after that is lethal as he struggles to breathe and collapses.

An earth elemental rises from the ground between the last three and me. Protective runes are swarming around the lot of them. I can’t manipulate the raw material of this kind of elemental so I dodge its swing as I run past it. If I kill its summoner it will dissipate and one of the mages is wearing brown.

I see runes for every type of energy I can manipulate by altering reality revolve around him so I spit a glob of the void at him. I can only frown as he manages to get a silver rod between us that sucks my attack into it before the cracks along it spread a bit further.

I steal the rod with Translocation Grasp before striking him with it. As the rod immediately broke I can only assume that is was not meant to be used as a weapon. I do however like to result of its explosive discharge.

A silver blue flash eruptd and all of the spell the three mages had active vanished. Even the earth elemental collapsed and sunk into the ground. An antimagic burst? As the light passed through me I felt the energy I use to access Void Cache be reduced significantly but I still have some. I want another of those rods.

My claws make short work of the now defenseless mages. They were screaming and crying in despair at their own lack of mana, a problem that does not cripple me.

Once the last of the mages is dead I shake the blood from my hands as I revert all the way back to human form. I turn to the Althaen council.

“Apparently, I’m innocent of all charges.” I say with a smirk before dropping each of the corpses into Void Cache to search later, I'm not getting screwed out of my loot like last time.