It was the Opal Dragon’s tail.
I tasted hot blood in my mouth. The world lurched, and only my quick instincts allowed me to keep hold of Noctis. My hand shot out as I began to slide from my perch on my dragon’s back. I found purchase on one of the Onyx Dragon’s wings. With a snarl of frustration, Noctis was pulled into an involuntary spin. Somewhere above us—or was it below?—there was a rush of heat and a flash of flame.
The spin was righted in a few seconds, and Noctis pulled up sharply, flapping hard to gain altitude. With effort, I managed to get myself settled once again.
“Where—” I began to say, casting about for Elenari.
“There!” Noctis said, mentally drawing my attention to a sight below us that made my blood turn to liquid nitrogen.
While Noctis and I had been somewhat distracted by the business of making sure that we did not fall out of the sky, the cunning Opal Dragon had made its move. Clearly, the hulking beast’s apparent sluggishness in the air had been a ruse, for it had somehow managed to inflict an injury on Gharmon.
The Emerald Dragon’s flank was blackened, and one of her wings was injured. Elenari appeared unscathed, but she was staring behind her with the resigned, calm eyes of one that sees death looming.
The huge Opal Dragon was slightly below and behind the stricken Emerald Dragon, within a few short seconds of killing both her and my wife. It could have done so already, if it had wanted to kill them with its fire, but I figured that the beast wanted to make a meal of this kill, in every sense of the word.
Saya, Renji, Tamsin, and Penelope were too far away to help in time.
I looked down, judged the distance, and jumped from Noctis’ back.
There was no thinking on my part, really. It was the only course of action that I could see, so I took it.
I splayed my arms and legs like a skydiver, gaining a little more control over my freefall, and pointed myself at the huge head of the Opal Dragon.
Time slowed.
I saw the black dragon’s eyes twitch across, as it noticed me hurtling down to meet it. The vertical cat-like pupil contracted. I read glee in that cold reptilian stare, but also confusion. Prey did not act like this, did it? Its attention had very much turned from the injured Gharmon and Elenari to me.
The dragon opened a mouth the size of a three-ton moving truck. Rows of teeth as long as my arm and as sharp as Satan’s cock glittered up at me. A cloud of breath that was so foul it would have made a maggot retch reached out to envelope me.
I had a plan.
I just hoped it wasn’t one of those plans that came up short.
I fell into the dragon’s open mouth, and the world became a dark, hot hellhole.
It was about time that the dragon’s massive jaws snapped shut that I thought I might have made the biggest, and last, mistake of my life.
Still, there was always a little more time.
Working at the speed of thought, I assigned Garth’s power into my Right Arm slot. I prepared to let loose with the biggest Forcewave that I could. My rationale, when I had leapt from Noctis’s back, had been that even if the Opal Dragon could not be harmed by magic from the outside, it might be able to be hurt by magic from the inside.
But the thing was just so huge and so powerful…
I considered using a Shadow Sphere but didn’t want to end up erasing anything else along with the Opal Dragon. I didn’t care about myself, but if the Shadow Sphere were to somehow ricochet and hit one of my fellow dragonmancers, I’d never forgive myself. I could sacrifice myself but not someone else.
For now, Garth’s Forcewave would have to suffice. And if that didn’t work…
I shook my head, not wanting to think about whether this plan would fail.
As I gathered the Forcewave mana together, I became aware of the other three dragons that shared my brain—Noctis, Pan, and Wayne—linking their mana reserves to that of mine and Garth’s.
Holy hell, I realized, they can lend their power to the dragon that I am actually making use of at a particular time. They can boost Garth’s power by lending him some of theirs! Together, we are one larger reservoir of mana!
There’s a time for flabbergasted amazement at a revelation, but when you’re about to be ground to hamburger meat between the molars of a mythical creature is not that time.
With the massive bolster of mana that my three other dragons provided me in this life-or-death situation, the Opal Dragon’s head ruptured like a melon into which a pipe bomb had been inserted.
The spell expanded the air around me with such force and violence that the giant black dragon’s head was completely annihilated. One moment, I was seconds from death, trapped in a stinking oubliette filled with teeth. The next second, I was free falling, covered in dragon blood, while the enormous carcass of the Opal Dragon dropped away from me to the ground below.
The fact that I was alive blanketed my senses, overwhelming every other immediate consideration, even the excellent truth that the fucking wild dragon was dead.
In hindsight, I came to understand that the boosted Forcewave worked because it was an actual physical changing of the atmosphere inside the dragon, rather than a direct attack on the dragon as a regular spell would have been, but I
