“It’s coming for you!” Choshi shouted.
I hauled myself up just in time as the drake opened its wings. Its spines shot toward me, igniting midway through the air, but I threw up a Plank Pillar. The flaming projectiles pounded into my wooden wall and set it aflame.
The drake circled around the burning pillar, but I was ready. As it dove toward me, I thrust my trident into its scaled abdomen. The prongs only penetrated half an inch, but it was all I would need. I channeled through the trident and produced a Smothering Mist. The technique poured out from my weapon and filled the drake’s insides with magical liquid. The spinedrake screeched as its body bloated like a water balloon and dropped to the ground. I used Compress Ash to create a dagger, black as obsidian, and stabbed it through the monster’s skull.
“One down,” I said as I scanned the plateau.
The first spinedrake ripped itself free from the golem and scrambled toward me. Its maw snapped at my face, and I rammed the Depthless Dream into its mouth. The drake’s teeth closed around the trident’s handle, and the monster tried to rip the weapon from my hands with a flick of its neck, but I maintained my grip and used the momentum to pull me away from the edge of the plateau.
I stomped the ground with my right foot and activated a Ground Strike attack. The spinedrake’s teeth released my trident, but the monster had no time to escape my technique. A crashing tide of splintering stone impacted the drake and reeled it back toward Mahrai’s golem. It spread its wings and took to the air but remained only ten feet from the ground.
I caught my balance before I joined the earth and water pathways within me. Twin Mud Geysers erupted from the ground beneath the drake, and viscous muck splattered over the spinedrake’s scales. The mud weighed the creature down and made flying impossible. It dropped to the ground, trapped in the mire I had encased it in.
The magma channels within me flared to life, and a mass of molten rock exploded from beneath the monster. A Magma Burst crashed into the spinedrake’s left wing, burned through the fleshy membrane, and cut through the spinedrake’s tail with an insidious crackle of heat.
The spinedrake hissed so fiercely that every hair on my body stood up.
“So, you’re not invulnerable to heat,” I said, drawing the Demure Rebirth and advancing on the creature. “Just fire. Good to know.”
It lashed out at me with its undamaged wing, but I ducked under the swipe and struck out with the Demure Rebirth. My warhammer crushed the drake’s injured wing with a crack. I maintained the momentum of the strike and sprayed the side of the creature with another Magma Burst. Lava splattered across the spinedrake’s flank and filled the air with the smell of cooking flesh.
I ducked beneath a swipe from its other wing and jabbed my trident forward. A Smothering Mist expanded around the melting scales, hardened the lava, and a wave of steam punched out in every direction as I melded my techniques together.
The spinedrake sagged, twisted its neck to face me, and opened its maw. A flare of intense flame jetted out of the spinedrake’s nostrils, but it jerked back as Mahrai’s golem wrapped an arm around its neck, caught hold of its upper lip with its other hand, and wrenched violently in opposite directions. Scales, flesh, and bone came apart under the golem’s hands, and what remained of the spinedrake went limp, a heap of superheated scales and dead weight.
“That’s one for each of us,” Mahrai said as she leaped onto her golem’s shoulder.
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said with a smile. “I earned at least half a kill.”
“Should we help the others, or let them achieve their own victory?”
I turned to see the final spinedrake grounded, bathed in water by Kumi’s Song of the Sea. Flowing aquatic tendrils wrapped around the monster and drenched it in extinguishing liquid. Faryn whipped leaves around the struggling drake, cutting its armored scales with her razor-sharp technique.
Fighting off Kumi’s water technique, the drake opened its maw and belched a torrent of fire, but Vesma caught it on a Flame Shield. Sweat streamed over her face as she held off the blistering jet of fire. I was about to help them when Kegohr bounded toward the drake, leaped into the air, and slammed his mace onto the monster’s head. A deafening crack sounded as the stone weapon split the drake’s skull asunder, spraying my friends in bone and brain matter.
“Gross,” Vesma said as she wiped gore from her robes.
Kegohr slapped her on the back and grinned triumphantly. “We did it!”
“Sure did,” I said as I approached them.
“Now, it’s time to get even dirtier.” Vesma wiped her hair out of her eyes and grimaced as she drew the knife that she used to remove monster cores.
The core, as it turned out, was situated at the back of a spindedrake’s throat. It didn’t take long before we pried them free of their skeletal corrals. Fist-sized stones shone a bright red light from within the black protective membranes.
Kegohr whistled appreciatively as he weighed one of them in his huge paw. “These things are huge! Vesma, do you know what technique they give?”
Vesma shook her head. “No. I don’t know whether we even have enough for one of us to learn a single technique, let alone all three of us.”
“We should get into to the monastery before we absorb them,” I said. “That might not be the last of them, and I can’t have you guys falling over from Augmenter’s Sickness.” While I had
