Runeblade-Chapter 235B2 : Drake, pt. 2
The night was almost pitch black, the thin waning moon providing only the barest slivers of light.
Thankfully, Kaius had his Truesight, and the pervasive gloom of the forest was lit up in grey toned hues that hid nothing from his eyes.
Their rush through the trees had been as fast as they could make it—there was only a few hours between when the drake retired and when it would begin its nightly patrol of its territory. A tight timeline for them to get set up and prepared.
He took a final look at their preparations.
A sharp rocky crevasse cut through the earth to his left like the clawmark of some titanic beast, the final remnants of some long extinguished stream. It was just barely wide enough for the drake to pass through—enough space for it to manoeuvre a little, but not enough for it to turn around.
They’d stacked logs on each side of the crevasse, dozens of them. Hardwoods one and all—monstrous oaks and ashes that they had felled nearby. With their strength, they’d been easy to cut down, and only moderately difficult to haul into place with Porkchop’s help—even despite the fact that each one had been almost as thick as his chest.
That hadn’t been the difficulty. The only window of relative safety where they could risk the noise of felling the trees was when the drake was far away on patrol—a bare handful of hours per day. Still, they’d managed, and now they had a precarious pile that was ready to fall as soon as he heaved on the lever that would send them all crashing down below.
If anything, the levers had been the hardest things to organise. Considering the size and weight of the stacked logs, they’d spent hours finding branches that were long and stout enough to work.
Porkchop was on the other side of the rent in the forest floor behind his own pile, the white ruff around his neck standing out starkly as he peered through the darkness—meeting Kaius’s eyes.
Kaius gave his brother a hungry look, his anticipation of the coming conflict mirrored in the emotions that flooded from Porkchop across their bond. His heart thumped, blood ablaze with the promise of future glory.
Heavy cracking thumps echoed through the darkness, night birds taking flight as they were shaken from their roosts.
It was growing close.
Moving away from the logs, he moved towards the sheltered treeline and gave Ianmus a nod as he entered the range of his darkvision amulet. No words were shared—it felt almost sacrilegious to break the silence, even if there was still little risk of their prey overhearing a few quiet whispers.
Ianmus reached into his belt, drawing out their flasks of quickfire, ready to light an alchemically supercharged pyre atop the drake’s hide.
Returning to the logs, Kaius kept watch of the drake’s trail path—it would have been easy to think of them as fully fledged roads, if they weren’t strewn with the shattered remnants of broken branches and pulped undergrowth.
Eventually, he saw it, and time seemed to slow.
A monster of myth, a horror conjured from a child's nightmare.
It was his first time seeing it so close, and the only thing he could feel was awe. It was a living weapon, honed in the brutal warfields of the wilds—a conqueror who had known no defeat.
The confidence—the unflappable security in its own strength—exuded from its very pores. Whatever hellhole it had crawled out from, it was certain that it sat at the very pinnacle of this little slice of the plains.
Unfortunate, since tonight was the night it would learn how mistaken it truly was.
Lumbering stomps carried it forwards, the full length of the creature emerging from the trees. Its grasping claws were held close to its chest, while backward-kneed legs flexed to propel its bulk forwards.
Kaius analyzed it.
Lesser Stone Drake - Level 107
Beast, Pseudo-Dragon, Magical, Brawler
It was one thing to know that it was nearly as tall as the siege ogre that they had slain in the depths, and another entirely to feel the full weight of its presence brought to bear. A titanic physicality that he would never be able to match, with instinctive affinity abilities as well? There was no wonder that most people left pseudo-draconids well enough alone. Even for a normal team of equal level, it would be a pyrrhic victory at best.
They weren’t a normal team.
There was no fear within him. No trepidation at the hungering death that watched on from the hells. Only liquid fire, his body rousing as he understood the enormity of their task. Pupils dilated, senses honing as he drank in every facet—processed in full by his Glass Mind as he turned the total weight of his attention to the approaching monster.
Flexing the fingers of his sword hand, Kaius grasped the long lever they had readied on their trap as the drake continued on, making its way slowly into the crevasse below.
Loose gravel crunched under its feet as soft soil gave way to stone—stray chips pulverised to dust under its weight.
Every stride it moved felt like it took an eternity. A relentless procession of agonising impatience and anticipation.
Until, finally, it was in position.
“NOW!” Kaius screamed through his bond, pulling down on his lever with all of his system-backed strength.
At first it felt like the logs wouldn’t move—too stable under the pressure and weight of the stack. It set Kaius’s teeth on edge, their window would only be a handful of seconds.
His heart nearly fell out his chest in relief as a terrible groan echoed through the trees a moment later, roughly hewn logs scraping against each other as their precarious stability was shattered.
Porkchop’s stack joined his own a bare moment later.
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They fell, hitting the rocky wall of the cut in the earth, bouncing back out to rain down carefully prepared fury on the drake below.
Beady eyes looked up, trying and failing to pierce the gloom as a soul-rattling roar tore its way free of its throat—a challenge noticed a moment too late.
The first of the logs smacked the drake in the jaw, point first. Bone shuddered with a creek that left Kaius’s skin crawling. It fell prone, dazed by the sudden ferocity of their assault.
The deadly rain kept falling—tonnes of wood burying the drake. Enough weight that even a draconid would struggle to free themselves. Only its long neck and head was free—everything else entombed under what would hopefully become the drake’s grave.
It wasn’t dead, Kaius could see the shuddering of its neck as it breathed, the way its jaw shifted under its scales, slowly realigning its jaw.
He cast Slip Step, kicking off the ground as the world lost its hold on him.
**Ding! Latent Glyph of Aelina has reached level 68!**
Reality shifted around him, each step sending him long-strides further than it should have.
Ripping his blade from its sheath, Kaius leaned on his quick senses and deft body, leaping from jutting rock to jutting rock as he flew down the side of the crevasse.
Halfway down, he kicked off, soaring towards the drake’s limp head. Drawing A Father’s Gift up, he readied to plunge his sword into its eye.
The strength of his soul flooded his blade, enchantments empowered beyond reasonable belief as he used Initiate’s Bladerite.
**Ding! Initiate’s Glyphic Bladerite has reached level 47!**
It almost proved to be his undoing.
Light flashed within the smokey crystal of his fuller, sigils burning with empowered vigour. The glimmer cut through the drake’s haze, Kaius watching its eyes widen. There was nothing he could do—no force he could enact to change his terminal flight to its rousing maw.
Right as he blade was about to punch through the beast’s fist sized black orb, the drake lurched, yanking its head to the side.
The tip of Kaius’s blade punched through a gap in the toughened scales on the top of its head, but skittered off its reinforced skull and glanced to the side.
A booming hiss rattled out from the beast’s cracked chest. Lurching up, the drake’s mouth snapped open—as quick as a bullwhip as it tried to snatch him from the air.
Kaius reacted.
He kicked off the bony ridge of its upper lip—legs burning as he forced as much strength through them as possible. Shooting back, he just barely managed to avoid the follow up clack of its teeth as the drake tried to punish his retreat, Slip Step carrying him further than the beast anticipated.
**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 59!**
**Ding! Latent Glyph of Aelina has reached level 69!**
**Ding! Tempered by Dissonance has reached level 57!**
Bright white banished the night, a writhing snake of stunning pain and screaming energy summoned into Kaius’s hand. He smote the beast, a wrist thick streamer of lightning wrapping itself around the drake’s neck. Storm mana and the vibrational force of Resonance Amplification pumped into its system, circumventing the might of its armoured scales.
**Ding! Latent Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 79!**
The drake snapped its head up, its neck tensing uncontrollably.
Kaius’s feet touched the stone of the crevasse floor, and he rushed back—retreating from the range at which the beast could threaten him with its arm length fangs.
Porkchop arrived a moment later—forced to circle round to the end of the short gully in a mad sprint thanks to his inability to descend its steep edge.
He was garbed in his armour—resplendent and mighty under the weight of dozens of crystal slabs. The changes to his summoned equipment had forged him into an unshakeable fortress. Where before it had only just covered his chest, upper back, and head, now everything except his back legs were wrapped in seamless overlapping heavy-plate.
It was an intimidating sight, especially as his new helm covered his eyes and ears completely—his senses untouched by dint of system backed magic. Only his jaw remained free to bite and tear, and even then, a triangular plate was affixed to the bottom of it. ƒrēenovelkiss.com
“Fire coming!” Ianmus’s warning call sounded from above, two glass bottles careening through the air shortly after.
They hit the pile of wood directly above where the drake was buried, shattering on impact. Oily liquid splashed, spreading far further than was possible without alchemical miracles. Everywhere it touched, an inferno was ignited. Even fresh and damp, the logs went up in seconds—the night beaten back into the flickering shadows thrown off by the hungering flames.
The drake roared, heaving in a mindless panic against the crushing weight, trying to escape the scorching flames that kissed its flesh.
Kaius saw the tell tale glow of solar mana coalescing up above, Ianmus beginning to channel.
They only had to hold it for a few minutes.
Kaius saw his brother plunge his claws into the earth—a Prismatic Shardwall erupted from the stone. Hurled forwards through tortured earth, it crashed into the drake’s snout, shattering scales and spraying blood from its injured nose.
Kaius dashed to the side, the world sliding around him as Porkchop followed up his assault with a roar, Bulwark’s Challenge forcing the drake's attention on him.
He doubted the compulsion would last long, not against a drake, but it was enough. The beast was left open.
Only then did he see the building mana emanating from the beast—sufusing the stone beneath the piled logs. Kaius’s eyes widened—he had to interrupt the spell before it could free itself.
Landing by the crevasse wall, he tapped into his stormlash.
Their whole battleplan relied on crippling—if not killing—the beast before it could recover from their initial assault. The longer it took to free itself from the pyre they had built, the worse its wounds would be.
A prime example of an apex predator it may have been, but its Health was still limited—especially at a level of one-oh-seven. When its healing was shot, it would die just as easily as anything else.
He’d come into this battle with twenty-nine casts of Stormlash, and ten of Yellia’s Slip Step.
Kaius burned every lash he has, one after the other. Thundercracks blurred together as lash after lash fell upon the descendant of fables, the gully cast in a white glow as he burned the drake out from within.
Smoke rose, and blood poured—interior organs and vessels rupturing from the continuing reverberations of his assault.
His ears rang, and his mind ached, as Kaius emptied nearly his entire pool in seconds. Even with most of the tension being managed by his glyph, it was a strenuous thing. The channels in his hand and wrist aching under the tension of over two dozen spells cast back to back with only moments to aim between.
He leaned on his will and intent, head throbbing as he directed the crackling arcs to bind the creature's throat—doing his best to concentrate the damage on as small an area as possible.
The drake slumped into a smoking heap, the bonefire it was buried under growing larger by the second.
**Ding! Latent Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 80!**
…
**Ding! Latent Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 86!**
**Ding! Resonance Amplification has reached level 64!**
…
**Ding! Resonance Amplification has reached level 65!**
