The damp stone beneath Thranduil's boots felt like the underbelly of some slumbering, primordial beast.
He moved down a subterranean thoroughfare of staggering proportions, a highway carved through the deep crust of the Dragon Realm where the architecture was meant for titans, not elven mages. It was a suffocating, absolute dark—a pitch so pure it felt tactile, like heavy velvet pressing against his skin. Orbiting his head was a solitary, fist-sized sphere of brilliant blue mage-light. It bobbed rhythmically, casting long, frantic shadows that danced along the jagged wet walls, fighting a desperate, losing skirmish against the hungry blackness that threatened to swallow it whole.
Drip.
Drop.
The occasional condensation falling from the unseen vaulted ceiling miles above sounded like a hammer striking an anvil in the oppressive quiet. His stomach was tied in a sickening knot, twisting tighter with every agonizing step. He tried to tread lightly, to feather his footsteps against the cold stone, but the cavernous expanse betrayed him. Every stride resonated in a haunting, echoing ripple that ran down the endless hall and vanished into the dark ahead.
He was being watched. He could feel it in the prickling of the hairs on his arms, the invisible weight of a dozen predatory gazes anchoring themselves to his spine. But he was powerless against the unseen. All he could do was force one foot in front of the other.
He was terrified. Who wouldn't be? He was a lone mage walking through the literal belly of a dragon's nest, surrounded by an ancient, hunger-driven darkness that felt alive, waiting for his light to finally sputter out.
Thranduil steered his path closer to the left wall, hoping a physical boundary would anchor his failing senses, but the corridor was a geometric nightmare. The further he walked, the more endless the labyrinth became. The silence began to warp, replaced by the thrumming engine of his own pulse hammering against his eardrums. The only variation in the gloom was the occasional, erratic flicker of his mana-sphere, its light stuttering as if the very air was toxic to magic.
He abruptly ground to a halt. His instincts—honed by decades of survival—screamed at him to turn and bolt, to flee back toward the sunlight. But the rational core of his mind held him anchored. Running blindly through a subterranean infinity would yield nothing. You cannot outrun a dragon, especially not on its own hunting grounds.
His heartbeat was a deafening, rhythmic roar now. His hand drifted down to his waist, his fingers brushing against the rough texture of the wooden stick Bora had given him. He considered snapping it—breaking the wood to trigger whatever emergency ward or anchor lay within—but he forced his hand away. Not yet. It was too soon to throw away his final lifeline.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, Thranduil channeled a fresh surge of raw mana. Crack-crack-crack. Five more fireballs materialized in a halo around him, each considerably larger and more intense than the first, glowing with a fierce, sapphire heat. The expanded illumination widened his defensive zone, carving out a forty-foot perimeter of visibility. Though he still couldn't pierce the long, abyssal stretch of the corridor ahead, the radius was wide enough to give him a fighting chance to react if anything lunged from the shadows.
Time had lost all meaning. Thranduil unclipped the silver hourglass from his belt, staring down at it with a flash of bitter frustration. The artifact had been useless since the moment he crossed the threshold into the Dragon Realm. For some inexplicable reason, the laws of the realm held the sands frozen; the grains refused to fall, trapped in a perpetual, agonizing stasis. He shoved the useless trinket back into his sash, his boots thundering louder against the stone as his pace quickened. His breath was growing ragged, turning to white mist in the sudden, dropping temperature.
Don't stop, he repeated to himself like a mantra, his teeth chattering. Don't stop for anything.
Suddenly, a foul, overpowering stench hit him like a physical blow. It was the scent of ancient rot, sulfur, and copper—the unmistakable aroma of a carnivore's den.
Thranduil spun around frantically. With a desperate wave of his hands, he sent his array of sapphire fireballs rocketing toward the cavern ceiling, trying to illuminate the upper ledges. It was futile. The darkness seemed to actively consume the light, an unnatural, magical gloom that refused to be dispelled.
Skrrritch.
A sound scraped from the dark directly behind him. It was a horrific, spine-chilling noise—like thick, overgrown fingernails dragging slowly across a dry chalkboard.
In that terrifying microsecond, the elven mage felt a profound wave of vulnerability. He found himself wishing for things he usually disdained. He wished for Areia's flawless, predator-like night vision; he wished for Cyra's hypersensitive, beastkin senses that could map a room through scent alone; he wished for Dan's reckless, unyielding guts. But he had none of those. He only had his wits and his flame.
"Show yourself!" Thranduil commanded. He threw every ounce of his elven nobility and manufactured calm into his voice, letting it ring out like a silver bell across the ruins. "Don't hide in the darkness like a coward!"
He stood perfectly still, his knees locked, his sapphire eyes burning as he stared into the black void where the scraping had originated. He braced his mind for what was to come. He expected to see the glint of massive, armored scales; the serrated, yellowed teeth of a fire-breather; or a colossal claw capable of flattening a fortress.
The wet, heavy object rolled out of the abyssal dark, leaving a thick, glistening trail of crimson on the ancient stone before bumping softly against the toe of Thranduil's boot. It was damp, oozing, and warm.
In a spasm of sheer, unadulterated fright, the elven mage recoiled, kicking the object away. It spun into the center of his sapphire light, settling face-up. Strands of stark white hair stuck to a brutally severed neck; the skin was a hollow, draining pale. It was a head. And it belonged to someone he knew intimately.
Areia.
"You know, she was quite tasty," a cold, crackling voice echoed from the shadows, accompanied by the nauseating, wet crunch of bones being snapped and flesh being systematically torn apart. "Never in my thousands of years of living have I had the blood of a half-elf who tasted so exceptionally good."
Thranduil's sapphire eyes were locked, paralyzed by the gruesome sight before him. Areia's severed head lay in the dirt, her features locked in what looked like a peaceful sleep, entirely at odds with the violence of her end. Her pale face and freshly cut white hair were still slick with warm blood.
Mechanically, his legs moving without his permission, Thranduil took a slow, trembling step forward. He crouched, his elegant hand shaking violently as his fingers brushed her cold cheek. He flinched back instantly, his heart shattering. For a split second, the sapphire fireballs orbiting him flickered wildly, threatening to plunge him into total darkness.
"It's an illusion. It has to be a trick, his mind screamed, desperately searching for a fray in the magical weave. But his sensors met a terrifying void: he couldn't detect even a micro-trace of active magic in the air. Everything before him—the copper smell, the thermal heat of the blood, the texture of the flesh—was completely organic.
Clang.
A heavy piece of metal shifted just beyond the head. There lay the distinctive, double-handed greatsword Areia had carried across continents, still tightly strapped to a severed arm. The unmistakable black tattoo marking her skin was clearly visible on the pale flesh.
"I caught her barging in here, blowing up walls and destroying the caves as she went," the voice rasped again, closer now. "She was really pretty, I must say. Too bad she had to waste that face. She could have done well seducing a noble or two."
Thranduil couldn't look away from the remains, his face turning an exceedingly ghostly pale under the blue glow of his magic. Running was an illusion; he knew he'd be hunted down and torn apart before his boots could clear two paces. His fingers subconsciously tightened around the wooden stick Bora had given him, his knuckles turning white. To make matters worse, the creature remained entirely formless, a phantom in the dark; he had no idea what it looked like or where it would strike from.
The wet tearing noises stopped. The heavy, sharp skrrritch of fingers scraping the stone floor resumed, followed by deep, seismic thuds that vibrated through the soles of Thranduil's boots. The rotten smell of sulfur and decayed meat grew so sharp it stung his eyes. The predator was directly in front of him now, staring, perched just an inch outside the boundary of the sapphire flames.
"You know, I'm a coward," the dragon said, its voice circling him now, a shifting vortex of sound just beyond the light's edge. "Out of all the guardians of Guava, I am by far the weakest in a fight. Though... I suppose I could still level a kingdom or two. I might be weak compared to other dragons, but I am a dragon nonetheless."
The cave fell into a suffocating, dead silence. Thranduil swallowed the lump of ice in his throat, his jaw setting as he forced himself to stand.
"What were her last words?" Thranduil asked slowly, his voice dropping into a cold, dangerous register.
The scraping stopped. The dragon seemed to ponder the question, its hot, sulfuric breath rolling over the boundaries of the blue light.
"I don't really know," the dragon rumbled smoothly, a sickening note of amusement in its tone. "But she said something right at the end... something about someone coming to save her. Was it Dan? I guess we wouldn't really know now, would we? Because I ripped her throat out shortly after."
"I see," Thranduil muttered, his silver tongue turning to lead. "Now I just have to fight for my life."
The dragon had no concept of how the elf could pin its coordinates in the absolute, lightless void, but the answer manifested in a heartbeat. Deep in the pitch-black space above the beast's skull, a jagged, luminous red gravity arrow materialized. The magic wasn't supposed to glow, but in this oppressive ink, its crimson aura burned with terrifying clarity.
The air rippled. A massive, sapphire-blue fireball shot through the darkness at hypersonic speed, detonating flush against the dragon's snout. The concussive blast blew the localized darkness to ribbons, momentarily exposing the jagged contours of the cavern. Thranduil's eyes flicked to the stone floor—Areia's scattered remains were still there, wet and stark under the fading embers. It unsettled him, a cold knot tightening in his chest.
"Honestly," the dragon's voice crackled, low and amused as it dragged its bulk out of the rising smoke and the avalanche of debris raining from the ceiling. "Usually, mortals give up and offer themselves to the slaughter when their strongest link is severed. But you choose to thrash like a cornered animal."
With a sickening crunch, the gravity arrow above its head shattered into red dust. The beast stepped fully into the light of Thranduil's remaining mana-spheres. It was a repulsive, sickly creature—just over 8 meters of dirty, decayed green scales. Its leathery wings showed patches of black rot, weeping foul fluids, and its demonic green eyes locked onto the elf with absolute malice.
Seeing the horror in flesh and bone rather than hidden in the dark caused Thranduil's panic to recede, replaced by a cold, clinical focus. Thin blue sparks began to hiss and dance across his fair skin, grounding his tremors.
"If you're going to kill me anyway," Thranduil said, his voice dropping into a severe, melodic cadence, "I might as well fight."
The blue sparks erupted. Within seconds, they converged into a roaring, violent tornado of pure electrical energy, enveloping his entire frame.
"Interesting," the dragon hissed, its voice crawling with ancient malice. "Even though you know it is entirely futile, you still intend to play the hero. It will not end well for you."
The beast launched itself forward, a green streak that sprayed shattered stone and pulverized bone in its wake. It was impossibly fast. Thranduil didn't even have time to chant; acting on pure, unadulterated survival instinct, he drove a lightning-infused fist straight into the dragon's snout.
The impact thundered through the vault. The raw kinetic pressure cratered the ground beneath them, knocking the massive beast flat into the stone. Thranduil leaped backward, his boots skidding across the grit as the dragon wriggled and thrashed in the dirt, trying to clear its head. The punch had been far more effective than the elf had anticipated, but the victory was short-lived.
His knees suddenly buckled. Thranduil collapsed onto one knee, a ragged gasp tearing from his throat as he clutched his midsection. A severe, agonizing pain flared through his gut—the dragon's tail had caught him during the exchange. He looked down to see a deep, jagged puncture wound oozing a mixture of crimson blood and a thick, glowing green venom.
Across the clearing, the dragon pulled its head out of the shattered floor, its ugly, spiked tail waving lazily in the air, its tip glistening with the elf's blood. It didn't seem keen on finishing him off immediately, content to watch him suffer.
Thranduil didn't waste a second. Drawing a silver ritual knife from his sash, he made a quick, agonizing incision around the punctured flesh, purging the blackened, poisoned tissue. Green bile poured onto the sand. He slammed his palm over the open wound, channeling a desperate thread of restoration magic; the flesh twitched, muscle fibers knitting back together with an unnatural, sickening speed. He forced himself back to his feet, breathing heavily, his eyes locked on the circling beast.
"For an elf, you possess a decent spine," the dragon rumbled, dropping to its hind legs and pacing around him like a wolf. "But compared to real powerhouses, you are nothing more than a civilian. Your magic is mediocre. The fact that you cannot regenerate automatically without manual incantations is already a testament to your weakness. Then again, weakness does not always mean an unentertaining death."
The dragon blurred into a jagged, zigzagging sprint. Thranduil's eyes could barely track the green distortion. Instantly, he conjured a translucent mana shield around himself, but the dragon's talons and whip-like tail struck in perfect unison.
CRACK.
The barrier shattered like cheap glass. The blunt force of the tail sent Thranduil flying across the cavern, blood gushing from his mouth. Yet, through sheer elven stubbornness, he managed to twist his body mid-air, landing heavily on his feet and skidding to a halt. The soles of his leather shoes smoked against the stone, smelling of burnt hide. He knelt, his fingers tracing a complex rune onto the ground. The temperature in the cavern plummeted instantly. Dozens of massive, jagged shards of ice materialized in the air around him, their edges sharp as razor blades.
"Now that is mildly interesting," the dragon muttered lazily.
It bent low and darted forward again. Thranduil panicked but kept his cool, slamming his palm down. "Freeze!" The moisture in the air solidified instantly, trapping the dragon's claws in a thick block of glacial ice. In the same motion, Thranduil hurled his ritual knife. The massive clumps of hovering ice slammed into the beast, pinning its decaying flesh to the floor.
But the dragon merely flexed. The ice prison shattered into harmless powder. The thrown knife struck its armored skull and snapped cleanly in two. Before Thranduil could teleport, the beast's jaws clamped shut around his retreating leg, teeth tearing through cloth and meat.
Thranduil didn't scream. He slammed his palm directly between the dragon's eyes. "EXPLODE!"
The localized detonation was deafening. The concussive blast threw both combatants far apart. The dragon's teeth ripped entirely through Thranduil's calf muscle as they separated. The moment he hit the ground, the elf mended the shredded limb, scrambling backward just in time to dodge a sweeping blow from the beast's bony tail. With a desperate flicker of mana, he teleported a safe distance away.
The dragon walked out of the smoke, its gait slow and deliberate. Had Thranduil met the beast just now, he would have assumed this was its natural state—half of the dragon's face had been vaporized by the explosion, exposing the white, soot-stained bone beneath a layer of twitching, charred flesh.
"That was one mighty attack," it murmured, its voice bubbling through blood. "Keep fighting like that. Make it fun for me. I do love breaking the weaker ones."
With a disgusting, squelching sound, the meat on its skull began to twitch and reform, wrapping back over the bone until its face was whole once more.
Before the beast could finish its sentence, Thranduil vanished.
He materialized directly in front of the dragon, his hand slapping against its wet snout. Teleport. In a dizzying sequence of high-speed spatial distortions, Thranduil flickered across the highest reaches of the cavern ceiling, dragging the beast with him. At the apex of the vault, he released his grip, letting the dragon fall.
Thranduil pulled his arm back, his fingers mimicking the draw of an invisible longbow. He unleashed everything he had left. A cataclysmic torrent of pure electrical energy erupted from his palm, striking the falling dragon squarely in the skull.
The air turned to pure ozone, the scent of charred meat filling the cavern as a blinding hot zone illuminated the entire realm. Thranduil's boots touched down softly just outside the smoking crater. He panted, his chest heaving, hoping against hope. Cyra had survived lightning like this before—he knew dragons were built differently.
A deep, sinister laughter echoed from the depths of the burning pit, booming off the stone walls.
"I can see why some of my kind take on human form when fighting," the voice yelled madly. "It is surprisingly easier and more efficient to move in!"
Thranduil backed away as a figure emerged from the smoke. First came a pair of tattered, dirty-black bat wings, followed by a muscular, sour-looking man with long green hair the exact shade of the dragon's scales. His eyes remained a demonic, glowing green. He smiled wickedly, cracking his knuckles. "Let us keep going, shall we?"
Before Thranduil's brain could process the change, a fist collided with his jaw.
A sharp, blinding pain exploded in his skull.
The force rocked him backward, his body plowing deep furrows through the earth and stone. But he refused to go down alone. With a desperate surge of his remaining mana, he slammed both hands into the dirt.
The ground around the dragon exploded; two colossal stone golems, each three times larger than the beast's original dragon form, sprouted from the earth and attacked without mercy.
The cavern became a vortex of dust, flying debris, and shattered rock as the golems swung their massive fists. Seizing the distraction, Thranduil teleported directly into the fray, landing two wicked, concentrated explosions right onto the dragon-man's head and chest. The golems caught the elf before the backdraft could incinerate him, but the dragon was sent hurtling miles away, crashing through a distant support pillar.
"You can summon familiars?" the dragon's voice boomed through the structural walls of the cave, laced with genuine surprise. "Interesting!"
"Just go down already!" Thranduil yelled angrily, blood dripping into his eyes. "I don't have time for this!"
He snapped both hands together. A wall of flame erupted around him, shaping itself into two towering, human-shaped fire spirits. "Let's get this over with."
In a split second, the golem Thranduil was standing on was blown to absolute dust. The green-haired man flew through it at subsonic speed. Thranduil floated momentarily before crashing to the earth. One of the fire spirits intercepted the dragon as it lunged for the elf, but the dragon-man merely smiled weakly, driving a fist through its core. The final stone golem stepped in, throwing its massive body over Thranduil as a shield.
The air was instantly superheated, turning the cavern into a literal microwave. The dragon was blasted point-blank by a massive, concentrated output of fire magic from the dual spirits. The resulting explosion tore apart massive sections of the cave ceiling. Smoke filled the area, and Thranduil had to use a localized burst of wind magic just to clear a path so he could breathe.
"I take back what I said about you being weak," a voice echoed through the haze.
The dragon-man walked forward, each thud of his bare feet growing heavier. His wings were completely gone, burnt to cinders, and a large chunk of his torso was still actively on fire. Yet, he kept coming. The two fire spirits and the remaining golem shifted defensively in front of the elf.
"But you are going to need more than toys to defeat me."
The beast lunged with a velocity Thranduil couldn't even perceive. The fire spirits reacted instantly, attacking in perfect synchronization. The cave erupted into a blinding inferno, the heat rising to such an extreme intensity that the stone floor beneath them began to liquefy into bubbling, red-hot lava. Even with a layer of defensive ice wrapped around himself and the golem shielding him, Thranduil could feel his skin beginning to blister and peel.
When the light finally died, Thranduil opened his eyes to a nightmare. The cavern had been converted into a mini-volcano. The fire spirits were gone; only a half-melted stone golem remained. He stared at the sizzling sea of lava, silently praying the beast had been reduced to ash.
A figure broke the surface of the magma. The dragon-man walked across the liquefied stone, a wicked, distorted smile playing across his ruined face.
"You're running out of mana, aren't you?"
Suddenly, the dragon-man was face-to-face with Thranduil. A large chunk of his facial flesh was entirely gone, exposing the jawbone and skull, smelling strongly of charred meat. The tissue was twitching weirdly, trying to repair itself, but his wings remained mere stubs.
The melting golem made one final, desperate swipe, separating the two. Thranduil used the fraction of a second to teleport away, but as his boots hit the ground, he realized the terrifying truth—the spatial density of the cave had locked down; he could no longer teleport outside the cavern.
The green-haired man walked out of the dust cloud left by the golem's destruction. The final familiar was gone. He was smiling.
"No more tricks," he said slowly.
He closed the distance before Thranduil could even twitch a finger, his hand clamping around the elf's neck and tossing him effortlessly into the bubbling lava. Thranduil instinctively flash-froze the magma beneath him; the ice melted in a fraction of a second, but it gave him enough leverage to leap back onto the solid shore. Before he could recover, a heavy boot struck him square in the gut, burying him feet-deep into the stone floor.
"Come on. Is this the best you can do?" the dragon asked, standing over the crater.
Thranduil crawled out slowly, his limbs trembling. The dragon's foot came down in a brutal arc, colliding directly with his nose.
CRACK.
A sickening crunch echoed through the vault. Thranduil gritted his teeth, refusing to give the beast the satisfaction of a scream. The dragon lifted him roughly by his blue hair, staring into his bloody face. "Pathetic. All mages are."
He delivered a devastating backhand that sent Thranduil flying like a wooden plank shot from a cannon. The elf shattered a distant cave wall, collapsing into the rubble, motionless. His vision was blurring, fading in and out as his elven physiology desperately tried to repair his punctured eyes and broken nose.
But amidst the blood and dirt, Thranduil began to laugh.
The dragon stopped pacing, its green eyes narrowing in confusion. "What is so funny, mage?"
Through his one recovering eye, Thranduil looked down at his trembling hand. Something glinted in his grip.
"What's that?" the dragon asked, a cruel smile returning to his face. "Still cooking up something, are we?"
Thranduil lifted his hand. Resting in his palm was the severed, blood-soaked head of Areia. He stared at it, a look of pure, manic glee breaking through his battered face.
"Have you gone completely mad?" the dragon asked slowly, stepping back a pace.
"Originally," Thranduil muttered, his voice raspy as he licked a streak of blood from his lips, "I had planned on getting the real deal from the original herself. But I can't just go around cutting Areia's hair... she would literally kill me. But even though this head is an illusion... you said it yourself: it is made of perfect, organic material. It can serve as a substitute... so long as I get the imagination exactly right."
The dragon's eyes widened slightly before a dark smile split his face. "I see what you are getting at. You are planning on creating a familiar of your dead friend. Go ahead. I will wait. But if it is not worth the effort, I will tear your throat out myself."
"You might as well be digging your own grave," Thranduil whispered.
With a brutal yank, he plucked a handful of white strands from the severed head and tossed the rest aside. He rubbed the silver hair between his bloody palms, pressing them hard against the stone floor. Channeling the very absolute dregs of his mana, he traced a ragged, erratic summoning circle with localized lightning strikes.
He sat back, his body twitching violently as beads of sweat poured down his face.
The white hair began to hover, spinning slowly in the center of the crimson circle. It grew exponentially, weaving into thick, silken locks before expanding into a skeletal frame. Bones snapped into place; phantom muscle and pale skin rapidly covered the structure. Within three agonizing minutes, the transformation was complete.
Sitting in the center of the smoking circle was a physically perfect, naked facsimile of Areia.
Thranduil, maintaining his elven modesty even on the brink of death, unclipped his green cloak and threw it over her shoulders. The doll sat there, entirely still. She didn't accept the cloak, nor did she reject it. Her deep purple eyes opened, staring blankly at the ruined cavern, then at the dragon, before finally locking onto Thranduil.
A profound, unnatural chill ran down the mage's spine. Even though he had forged this familiar with his own magic, he felt a terrifying realization wash over him—she was not under his control. Not even a little bit.
"You summoned a girl? Without any weapons or means to fight as your trump card?" The dragon erupted into mocking laughter. "You have truly gone senile, elf."
Thranduil stared at her, completely uncertain. Areia had always looked harmless on the surface—right up until she started breaking bones. The doll opened her mouth, her throat straining, but no sound came out. She touched her neck, a look of brief confusion crossing her face as she realized she couldn't speak. Another red flag. Thranduil instinctively took a step back.
The duplicate stood up slowly. She glanced down at her bare legs, and as if the realization of her nudity had just dawned on her, she wrapped Thranduil's green cloak around her frame with quick, decisive, military movements. She locked her purple eyes onto Thranduil again, stepping toward him.
Thranduil took another involuntary step back. She was on him in an instant—a burst of speed so absolute he didn't even see her limbs move. She leaned in, sniffing his neck, staring deep into his pupils, examining his pointed ears and his blue hair. Satisfied, she turned her gaze toward the approaching dragon.
"It would seem this little joke has run its course," the dragon said, yawning widely as he closed the distance. "I almost pity the girl, dying before she even understands what she is. But it is inevitable."
Thranduil doubled over, coughing up thick clots of blood as his mana completely hit zero. He looked up. The familiar wasn't moving. A normal summon would have lunged based on his thoughts, but this doll was completely independent. Had he accidentally anchored a piece of the real Areia's stray consciousness through the organic material of the head?
The dragon towered over the silent girl, placing a massive, heavy hand on her cloaked shoulder. "Sorry about this, doll."
"Areia!" Thranduil screamed, a desperate, wild thought striking his mind. "Don't let him kill you! If you die here, how are you going to get Dan back?!"
The name acted like a chemical trigger.
The dragon vanished.
BOOM.*
A cataclysmic shockwave tore through the cavern, the sound so immense it rattled the deep foundations of the realm. The sea of lava parted violently, blown aside by raw kinetic force. The ceiling gave way completely, exposing the cold, dark void of the Demon Realm above them. Areia's extended right arm was steaming, the air around her fist vibrating with a terrifying hum.
Thranduil's bloody lips stretched into a wide, breathless smile. She's weaker than the original, clearly... but one thing I know for certain: Areia is still miles above this dragon.
A mile away, the dragon crashed into the stone, blood gushing from every orifice of his body. His entire midsection had been completely hollowed out by the single blow, his exposed spinal cord visible through the shredded meat. His original punch hadn't even connected; the doll had caught his fist mid-air, twisted her hip with flawless martial geometry, and redirected the entire momentum of his own strength back into his gut.
The dragon-man scrambled up, coughing violently, but Areia was already gone.
Her cold gaze flicked to Thranduil one last time before she vanished into a vacuum of pure speed.
The dragon's vision flickered in and out of darkness. Such force... from a girl that small? Who is she?! He looked up just in time to see her descending from the dark void above, the green cloak billowing around her like a shroud of death.
He threw up his arms to block. Their fists collided. The dragon's skeletal structure shattered, his arms twisting at horrific, unnatural angles. Before he could scream, Areia's boot connected with the side of his skull, driving him face-first into another stone wall. She was on him before he could hit the dirt. Reaching down, she cleanly ripped his broken arm from its socket and used it as a blunt hammer to beat him deeper into the earth.
Had I known she was this strong... I would have never used her likeness to break that mage! the dragon thought frantically, his mind racing through the agony. Alicia said she was a knight... she never specified she was a monster!
"Damn bitch!" he roared, channeling the absolute maximum of his dark green energy.
As he rocketed backward under her momentum, he unleashed a massive torrent of highly concentrated, corrosive poison. Had the real Areia been in the path of this strike, it would have been instantly fatal—the genuine Knight of Dan Shula possessed almost zero resistance to toxins. But Thranduil hadn't known that flaw when he visualized the summon. The doll was a copy, but it wasn't a perfect one; it lacked her mortal weaknesses.
The acidic blast struck the ground, melting the stone into a smoking puddle of green sludge. But Areia was no longer there.
She materialized directly behind the dragon. Her hands clamped onto the tattered stubs where his wings had once been. Planting her boot squarely in the center of his back, she flexed her muscles and pulled.
The dragon pelted toward the cavern floor like a dying asteroid.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
A series of thunderous concussions echoed through the labyrinth as Thranduil dragged his broken body closer to the impact zone. The walls were groaning, threatening a total structural collapse. He peered over the lip of an extraordinarily massive crater.
At the bottom, the doll was methodically, brutally disassembling the dragon. The beast's legendary regeneration was trying to trigger, but the sheer frequency of her punches was keeping it locked down, turning its flesh to paste before the cells could knit. The shockwaves were so violent they literally bounced Thranduil off his feet from meters away.
The dragon's screams turned from curses to frantic pleadings, then to wet, gurgling whimpers, until finally—silence. No twitching. No regeneration. Just a motionless, broken heap of green meat.
Thranduil let out a ragged breath, a smile forming on his lips. But the smile froze into a mask of pure terror.
Areia's deep purple eyes were suddenly an inch away from his nose.
He stood paralyzed, unable to twitch a single muscle as she gazed directly into his soul. Her pale face was completely covered in a horrific mask of green dragon blood and viscera. She didn't strike him. Instead, she knelt down, picked up a sharp fragment of stone, and began to violently scratch a message into the floorboards of the cave.
Done, she tossed the stone aside, gave a curt, indifferent wave of her hand, and walked off into the darkness, her form slowly dissolving into white mist as the summon expired. The green cloak fluttered through the air, dropping softly onto the dirt.
Thranduil stood in the quiet of the crater, his chest heaving as he stared down at the jagged lettering carved into the stone:
TRY THIS AGAIN WITHOUT MY PERMISSION AND I'LL BEAT YOU TO A BLOODY PULP. JUST ENOUGH SO YOU CAN BE PIECED BACK TOGETHER BY ANTREA.
He walked over to the cloak, his hands shaking as he picked it up and slung it carefully across his shoulder, not daring to actually wear it. He drew his spellbook from his belt, the pages glowing with a faint, comforting light as he began the long, slow process of healing his broken bones, his eyes tracking the dark tunnels ahead as he ventured deeper into the dragon's nest.