Covering Fire [Nathalia POV]

First, there was fire. Enveloping her, embracing her, spreading from her as she dove down as a pyroclastic projectile upon the tendrils for water.

Second, there was steam. Heat boiled liquid in a flash. A cover of white spread around them. The creature, Kanaloa as a typed-out warning in the Harem Comms revealed, sent more water her way.

Third, there was the vortex. Not the impact of the water, just the swirling of the point at which they dropped through. On the other side of the portal, they had a brief moment of respite.

Nathalia turned to Layla. The annoyingly endearing crazy woman was immediately slinking towards Veridion again, despite her injuries. “Step back,” the dragoness commanded, just as a flick of her wrist summoned a wall of molten stone. A renewed attack from the ocean boiled away upon contact. Kanaloa was following her.

“He isn’t-“ Layla began to hiss, stopping when she heard the orange haired woman’s growl.

“Know your value, little Layla. Taking his life is not worth forfeiting a single one of your nails.” Nathalia rolled her eyes when Veridion suddenly launched a primitive attack at her. Even with a god’s expansive mana behind it, a basic Mana Power Attack was just pathetic. “You think you can stand against me, irksome mouse?”

“A mouse…?” Veridion spat out and rose to his feet. Layla muttered something hateful. Whatever method she had used to tap into his oath powers was evidently fading. “You… dare… call me… a mouse…?!”

The god of oaths was a miserable picture. His chest had more stab wounds than flesh. Red had totally soaked his shirt and tie, turning both crimson. The black suit was similarly slick with blood, sticking to him. He made a vain attempt at righting the way his jacket sat, to pull it tight, and to pull his hair back into an orderly display. All he managed to do with his trembling hands was to smear red all over his forehead.

“I… am Veridion… I am… the god of oaths!” The strength slowly returned to him. Tall as he stood, the damage Layla had done to him was self-evident. His nature kept him alive, but the wounds neither closed nor clogged. He swayed on his feet, a delirious cadence to his sneering words. “I am Veridion!” he repeated. “And you… are a WHORE!”

Nathalia’s fist crashed into the haughty mongrel’s face. Before he could fly away, she caught his tie. The divine grade garb held as she ripped him back and right into the obsidian spike of her flying knee. Adding another hole to his chest hardly made a difference, but it was satisfying all the same.

Another wave was launched from the sea, stronger this time. Nathalia reinforced her lava wall with another casual gesture. ‘This Kanaloa entity will arrive here in full **** in due time,’ Nathalia thought and put her foot back down.

Veridion stumbled back, then threw himself at her. A Mana Power Attack broke against the backswing of her hand. Reversing the momentum of the motion, Nathalia slapped her enemy god’s face the second he was in range. The clap echoed in the night, underlined by the sadistic laughter of the weak human woman with them.

Nathalia did not mind an audience, not when she got to demonstrate why she was feared among the gods and especially not one that she would likely count among her sisters in lifestyle soon enough.

Since her awakening in this era about three years ago, Nathalia had suffered three notable defeats. She had her jaw ripped off by the goddess of genocide, had been defeated in the Divided Gates tournament by Orkos, and had required notable aid to fight against Tiamat in the Lorylim War. The last was not technically a loss, but Nathalia knew what her chances on her own would have been.

It was an annoyingly high number of losses for her. A goddess of destruction, that was her classification within the boxes the divines put themselves in. A title to that end had been given to her and she had readily adopted it. Nathalia, black dragon, goddess of volcanoes, a walking cataclysm of a woman that took what she wanted because she could.

Though she had adjusted her nature, one fact remained.

Nathalia was strong.

In blind rage, Veridion threw himself at her again. There was little form to his motions. Flailing his fists would have been a more threatening series of attacks. Left, right, left, right, left, right, the utterly predictable strikes came in at an unbroken rhythm. Nathalia deflected them all with just one hand, continuing to reinforce the molten rock wall behind her. Kanaloa was hurling the might of a tsunami at it, while Veridion was like a child playing pretend at martial artistry.

For one that was used to sparring with the foremost combat savants of this generation and of generations prior, it was so dull that she languidly closed her eyes and yawned.

Veridion pushed himself further, adding impotent arcane strikes to the flailing strikes. Nathalia didn’t even bother blocking them. The tiny pangs of pain were nothing. Scales splintered then regrew within moments.

Turning sideways, Nathalia effortlessly dodged a lunge, then grabbed Veridion by the throat. She lifted him up. His hands tried to reach her in turn. Even his outstretched fingers stopped short of her upturned nose. “Pathetic,” she stated. “That you thought you would be a worthy obstacle to my marriage…” the dragoness rolled her eyes, “…what a waste of everyone’s time.”

Claws pierced skin. The heat of her palm seared flesh. Veridion squirmed. Mana concentrated under her grasp and blocked the snapping of his neck. Every passing second taxed the already fluttering flow of mana further.

Veridion’s gaze snapped to Layla. Mana gathered under his hand.

Whirling around, the dragoness immediately launched the cowardly godling at the lava wall. The half-molten rock splattered and broke under the impact. Veridion barely slowed, skipping once on his way to the shoreline. A multitude of tendrils gently embraced him, Kanaloa bringing him to a halt.

Nathalia had met many entities in her life. Something akin to Kanaloa, an elemental uniquely detached from its plane of origin, was nothing surprising. That wasn’t to say she recalled meeting something just like this before, but that had more to do with her lack of interest than anything else.

This locally bound water elemental took the shape of a mound of ocean water. The more of its presence consolidated in this Illusion Barrier, the more the water changed to resemble a beast of the deep seas. Bioluminescent patterns glowed in the dark of the night. The gentle blue pulses competed with the light of the three-quarter moon. Beyond them, there was little of definitive shape to the entity. Rounded tendrils waved with the gentleness of a friendly lover, while the sharpened teeth of anglerfish formed ridges of black water.

Veridion was placed in the wet sand where the ocean had lay before coming alive. “Now you are doomed!” he declared. “You cannot stand up against me and Kanaloa!”

Under a raised brow, Nathalia’s incandescent gaze drifted from one opponent to the other. She opened the Harem Comms again, reminding herself of what had been typed about the elemental’s level. 1021, putting it 100 levels above her 921. Numbers on a sheet of paper, reflective only of raw power and even there it was unreliable. Kanaloa had the sheet of a Monster, hiding where it fell on scaling spread.

Nathalia, with her own power amplified by the Wild mark proudly displayed at the bottom of her plunging neckline, was confident in her victory. “Veridion, what do they call you again?” the dragoness asked.

“I am the Oathkeeper! The Enforcer of the Word!”

“All of your titles, all of your treaties, you think they will remain when the Flame of Destruction comes for you?”

“…Let’s test that theory,” Veridion growled.

The human forms of both gods began to break. Skin dissolved into silver threads and magma. Watery tendrils arched towards Nathalia. They were as much projectiles as outstretched limbs. In the dragoness’ vicinity, the clear water boiled, salty steam rising upwards in a steady draft. The ground beneath the goddess of volcanoes glowed, melting sediment rising to join into the criss-cross streams that filled out her body made of volcanic rock and black glass.

“Can you keep yourself safe?” Nathalia asked, her voice flowing unchanged from the jagged rock teeth.

“I’ll be fine!” Layla promised. “Punish them!”

That was exactly Nathalia’s intention.

She set her sights on Veridion. The brown-haired shell was no more. In his place hovered an entity of silver and blue light, made up of unmoving threads. The stab wounds covered the vaguely humanoid front, light seeping out of him in place of red blood. “Show me your broken words!” His voice boomed with an undeserved authority.

Nathalia knew what would come next. Threads leapt from Veridion’s outstretched hand to Nathalia. They were thin, silver things, barely enough to move a handpuppet. Though he tried, Veridion could not move her an inch. “What-…? I know you, you are the scum of the Earth! Where are your broken oaths?!”

“I was the scum of the Earth.” The ground rumbled as the goddess of volcanoes took a proud step forward. “I was a slut and a hedonist and a bad friend to those who were close to me.” Water continued to evaporate around her, failing to penetrate the shield of heat around her. “Even at my worst, Veridion, I only made promises I intended to keep.”

Molten wings spread. Roaring, Nathalia blasted liquid heat outwards. Water tendrils scattered as she took to the air. Orange and black energies consolidated in her claws. Volcanic bombs rained down on Veridion and Kanaloa by proxy. The living ocean created a dome above Veridion, shielding him from the impacts.

The water elemental shuddered, directly struck for the first time. The previously blue markings upon its shifting surface flared an angry red. Eyes opened up all over the creature, resembling a multitude of sea creatures. For her part, Nathalia was reminded of Undine.

Saltwater rivers rose from the enormous entity. Had she still possessed her mountainous dragon form, this would have been one of the rare opportunities to let loose in her weight class.

She did not miss that form, not its size nor its brutality.

Pulling her wings in, the dragoness dove through a gap in the rivers coming for her. The maw of a gargantuan eel greeted her on the side. She dove into it, moving too fast for the secondary jaws within the creature to catch her. The water before her bent unnaturally, the magically reinforced membrane stretching like rubber. Orange, fiery light enveloped her, then burst as she broke through.

Veridion was there, wielding a crude construct of magic and threads. “I vow to destroy you!”

‘How convenient,’ Nathalia thought, a second before sustaining a painful blow to the head. Dazed, she fell. She shook off the confusion in due time, her wings spreading again. An ocean of anglerfish below snapped at her burning shadow as she sailed by above them.

Thundering beats carried her up, further and further, until she hovered above. Veridion launched his pitiful attacks on her, chipping her surface scales. Kanaloa writhed, a gargantuan mass of water and glowing patterns.

If it hadn’t been for Layla, the goddess of volcanoes would have turned this entire Illusion Barrier into a molten landscape already. Friendly fire protection only went so far, however. Indirect consequences could have fried the brunette… so a more direct attack would do.

Eight saltwater rivers rose into air, joining into four, joining into two, before all becoming one. Veridion raised his hand, weaving his mana together into a charged attack that crudely reminded Nathalia of an Arc Lance.

Nathalia’s chest expanded. Air entered her, mixing with the mana inside her into a rapidly changing mixture of materials. **** was bottled up, constrained, rumbling against the constraints of her body. It taxed her, the energy needed to contain the **** growing as the **** itself did, until the equilibrium could no longer be contained. Thrusting her head forwards, she gave the power an outlet.

A volcanic eruption bellowed from the goddess’ maw. A cataclysm spread out in a cone. The burst of power overcame the steady stream, breaking through Kanaloa’s water. Fire was lost in the process until only flying rocks remained. Crude as an Arc Lance it was, it was still fired with the might of a god behind it, shattering the projectiles heading Veridion’s way.

Revealing the diving goddess behind them.

Two claws grasped Veridion’s arms. Nathalia slammed the Oathkeeper into the ground, turning the beach shore into a desert of sand and glass. Kanaloa scattered around them, turning into a million bioluminescent droplets. They quickly began to coalesce again, but not quickly enough. Nathalia would take care of the weakest link, then deal with this halfway threatening elemental.

Veridion tossed and turned beneath her. Threads melted into clumps beneath her. His head fell to one side. Something like a smile born of shifting light appeared on his otherwise featureless face. Another Mana Power Attack launched from his hand.

Confusion lasted only for a split second. The bolt of barely shaped mana was cutting across the landscape, heading towards Layla. Whatever shelter she had found, the shockwave of the impact had torn down. Exposed and too slow to dodge, she was about to be struck down.

Nathalia moved at a rapid pace. A leap, a beat, a dive, then her body formed a wall in front of Layla. The projectile struck her, chipping away more at her surface.

“The great and terrible Flame of Destruction, protecting a mortal with no concept of the sanctity of oaths!” Veridion mocked. “You chose the worst kind of repentance!”

Nathalia just growled as bolt after bolt of mana slammed into her. Individually, they meant nothing, but as a mass they were hurting. They came rapidly. Veridion laughed manically, the delirium of his fading vitality reaching a peak. The oath he had sworn to destroy her was all that fuelled him at this point. Was he going to destroy himself to take her down with him?

Kanaloa hovered behind Veridion. The angry red of the bioluminescent lines gradually cooled to a simple blue. It was impossible to know what the entity thought. Sitting there, the living ocean simply observed.

Nathalia was tense, waiting for her opportunity to strike back. Layla tried to move, but the silver strings that connected all living beings to Veridion informed him of this immediately. Weaving her magic to erupt the floor beneath him into geysers of molten rock distracted, but it did not stop him. The arcane projectiles just kept flying. All scales had been stripped off her surface now. Her molten core bubbled and splattered.

Kanaloa raised a tendril.

And smacked Veridion with enough **** to flatten him.

Words reverberated from the surface of the Hawaiian elemental. “You pass the trial of Kaho’olaw, Tūtū Pele.” Relaxing water washed Veridion ashore, as the living ocean returned to its natural state of calm.

Nathalia reverted to her human form. Her left side was covered in bruises and cracks. It would take a few days to heal unassisted, but was nothing to worry about. “Thank you…” Layla muttered, sheepishly approaching.

“You learn well, to thank me before approaching the perpetrator,” Nathalia groaned, then took a testing step. One of her legs did not quite carry her weight anymore. Layla noticed immediately and helped to prop her up, in spite of her own injuries.

Together, they limped towards Veridion.