“Take only what one’s needs called for, and never a touch more. Leave the roots and never pick too much, lest there be no more. Care for the nature that provides, live by the bounties it supplied. By the rules of mother nature one shall abide, lest the guardians come forth to chide.” - Old words of wisdom, passed on by word of mouth for generations amongst the elven tribes of Greenmeadow Isle.

While Cal hung onto the serpent as it tried to shake her off by gyrating wildly in its flight, Willa thought to give a try to what she did as well, and had Ognar and Giselle launch her up the same way. This time they failed to get her close enough to the cavorting serpent, however, and while she tried to reach it with her claw-gauntlets, it only resulted in several bloody lines on the serpent’s torso.

Instead she took a smack from the serpent’s tail as it whipped her hard against a tree, hard enough that the impact broke the tree in half, as its upper half fell to the ground in a crash. Willa herself only shook her head and dusted herself off the wood shards though. Even Giselle and Ognar wouldn’t be harmed from that level of impact, much less her.

That said, the serpent’s wild gyrations made it hard for Cal to climb further, as she had to hang on instead, digging her blades deep into the serpent’s tough flesh for hold. Even so, she was nearly thrown off at times, the serpent’s blood making it slippery and hard for her to hold on.

Eventually, Cal dug her blades in deeper, and even shoved half of her arm into the wound she made, her blades lodged sideways in the wound for a better hold. She managed to stabilize her position on the serpent’s back that way, despite its increasingly wild gyrations as it felt the pain from her actions.

From below, magical and mundane projectiles kept coming. For the most part they missed the fast-moving wildly gyrating flying serpent, though Sidonie landed a few lightning bolts - having given up trying to hit the beast with a javelin - which did little to it. Leila’s magma projectiles were also far too slow and easily avoided, while the lances of fire Krystal conjured just burst harmlessly against its tough scales.

The serpent apparently got an idea and crashed its back - where Cal was - hard against a massive sequoia that was several times larger than itself, intent on crushing her between its bulk and the ancient tree. Unfortunately for it, percussive impacts like that was the least effective way to fight a skilled blood mage, whose body was heavily reinforced with magic and could simply tough it out.

All the maneuver did was to shred the back of Cal’s vest as it dragged her against the rough bark of the tree and left a groove behind. Her back was practically uninjured, however, as the force of the impact failed to do little more than inconvenience her a little bit.

In turn, she pulled one of her hands out from the wound the moment her back left the tree and struck with her halberd once more. Even an awkwardly positioned one-handed blow from her packed quite the force, and the beaked hammerhead on the back of her halberd crushed through the serpent’s scales and dug deep into its flesh once more.

That caused the serpent to pause for a moment from the sudden pain, and at the same time, Elaina and Sidonie had pooled their mana and worked together to hurl a larger, far more powerful bolt of lightning that struck the beast. The beast stilled for a moment as its muscles cramped under the sudden shock. On its back, Cal also felt a bit of the electric shock assail her, but ignored it.

Both the attacks combined their damage and caused the serpent to fall for a bit, and just as it regained control over itself and tried to pull back up, Kino struck as a blade of void mana swiped through the serpent’s lower half. The beast screeched, and gyrated far harder than before, as the rear quarter of its length was sliced off cleanly by the void blade.

The wild gyrations actually threw Cal off the beast, one of her knives left stuck in the serpent’s body still, and she crashed to the ground after breaking many branches on the way down. Her cloths were in tatters, but she herself was mostly unharmed, other than a hit to her dignity as she spat out some leaves that accidentally got into her mouth during the fall.

Further away, the serpent fled as fast as it could, bleeding profusely from its severed rear end, so fast that none of them would have been able to catch up on foot. Lumi looked eager to chase after the beast, but Leila reined her in, since just the two of them would not have been the serpent’s match at all, and made her stay.

They had thought that the beast would have gotten away, when they heard a loud honking noise from far away, not unlike what a duck or goose would make, but far louder, and infinitely more feral. Just moments after the noise sounded, something large and white swooped in from above and seemed to have just snatched the serpent right out of the air as it landed in a dust cloud not too far away.

While the dust covered their sight, the party could hear the desperate, pained screeches of the serpent, along with the occasional angry honks and the ruckus of what sounded like two giants in a fight. It was only a while later, when the dust settled and the cries died down, that the party got a good look at what exactly happened.

What they saw was an even larger beast in the midst of dismembering and devouring the large flying serpent. The beast looked avian in shape, with two strong legs sporting wicked talons, oddly with webs between its talons, wings that were several times wider than its body, and oddly long scales that gave the impression of a feathered beast from afar.

At the ends of its three long necks rested heads that resembled that of a duck or a goose somewhat, if a duck had lines of dagger-like sharp teeth in its beak and three small horns - two pointed backwards over its eyes and one pointed forward in the middle of its brows - on its head. The beast all too casually tore the massive serpent in thirds as its three heads ripped it apart, and the rightmost head tossed the chunk it had up to catch and swallow it as it fell.