Chapter 179 - Tyranny of Rank

There he was. I clenched my hands into fists at the sight of him, fury roaring through me. I wanted to unleash hell on the man, wanted to drop the heavens on him and destroy him for what he'd done. He'd shattered our budding alliance, killed one of the leaders, destroyed the home my friends and I had spent a lot of time putting together. It was too much. He had to go down, and I wanted to be the one delivering the blow.

At the same time, I knew I needed to handle this with caution. It didn't appear he could see us. His dragon continued on a straight path toward the castle, not veering off or flying higher. He had to be able to see the damage; parts of the castle still burned from my attack runs. Either he thought the attackers were still there, or he figured we'd hit and run already. That meant we had one shot at hitting him when he'd still be fully taken by surprise.

We'll need to be very careful, though. That dragon is too high a tier for me to tell what tier it is, Tenebris said.

"Agreed. I figure she's at least tier fifteen, based on the damage she can take and dish out, but she might be even higher," I said.

Delightful. Well, we have surprise on our side. Let's use it, shall we?

"Yes," I replied. "Let's."

Tenebris drew in his wings and stooped into a sharp dive. We fell soundlessly, wind whistling past us as we dropped like a meteor toward our unsuspecting prey. We had one free shot. That meant we had to make it count as much as possible.

I gathered power to me, driving mana into the Lightning Bolt spell. When we were still a hundred meters or so away, I cast the spell. A forked bolt of blazing electricity streaked from a nearby cloud, zinging through the air and smashing full-force into the red dragon. It struck on her hindquarters, a bit behind her right wing.

The reaction was instant. The red dragon screamed with pain, echoes of her agony reaching my ears even over the noise of the growing storm above. Peter had dodged most of the blast, although he shook his head like he was disoriented. Tenebris and I kept dropping, and seconds later we were in range for his breath weapon. He opened his mouth and fired a blast of fire that washed over the red dragon's back, engulfing both her and Peter alike.

This time, Peter's screams joined his dragon's.

That made my heart feel good. I wanted that man to scream some more, too. One wasn't even close to enough to pay for all the harm he'd done.

We shot past them, still moving too fast to slow down easily, but Tenebris opened his wings, braking us rapidly. Peter's dragon had forward velocity on her side, so by the time we'd slowed our descent enough, she'd gained a little lead. That was fine, though. We shot forward in hot pursuit.

I landed a Drain Life on Peter, wounding him more. I saw the spell impact, watched him jolt as it sucked away at his life force. He looked back over his shoulder as we gained on them, and I saw something new in his eyes, something that hadn't been there before.

Peter was afraid.

About damned time.

Then the red dragon turned herself sideways, popping up onto her left wing and pivoting almost in place. Those were some real aerial gymnastics we were seeing out there. I'd have been incredibly impressed if I wasn't more interested in seeing Peter dead than giving him applause.

Both dragons were on a collision course.

Will he break? Tenebris asked me.

"Dunno." I had a limited feel for Peter's reactions. His dragon was bigger and higher tier than mine, though, and unlike him, my best attacks were all ranged spells. If we collided and the dragons ended up grappling, we'd be at a disadvantage.

"Break right," I ordered. We couldn't risk a collision.

Tenebris shifted off to the right just enough that the dragons shot past each other rather than colliding. The red dragon twisted again, reaching out with her claws, trying to grab hold of Tenebris. She missed his wings and legs, but almost snagged his tail in her claws before we sped past.

That was good information to have, as scary as it was to almost be caught like that. If the enemy dragon was trying to grapple, that meant I'd guessed right, and we'd be at a disadvantage if it was able to close with us. We needed to keep our distance, not let the dragon near.

I concur. The problem we're going to have is she's faster than I am.

"Shit, really?"

Look behind us.

I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, the red dragon had already come about again, and was gaining on us. She was bigger and faster? Somehow, that didn't come across as being very fair to me, but what about any of this was? If there was one thing I'd learned since the Event, it was that the tyranny of rank dominated everything else. The higher your rank, the stronger you were. A lower rank could struggle and strive against a higher tier foe, but the odds were stunningly in the favor of the strong.

"Dive. She's faster than you, but hopefully if we can get low enough, we can tire her out flying in circles around the towers. If there's one thing she can't do better than you, it's going to be endurance," I said.

True, Tenebris replied. I don't tire. Ever. She certainly has a great deal of Stamina at her tier, but she won't be able to keep flying forever.

We turned into a steep dive again, this time with my undead dragon beating his wings to speed our way. We weren't trying to stay out of view anymore, we just needed to remain out of reach.

"They just raced all the way here, too," I added. "She's got to have burned some of her Stamina on that flight. Let's see how much she's got left!"

She was still right on our tail as we came up on the castle. We dove between two of the towers, Big Red still tight behind us. I didn't have a name for the red dragon, but that seemed to fit, so I was going with it for the time being.

Tenebris snapped left and curled in close to the tower as we sped by. I tossed out a Dark Pulse in the tower's direction that shattered the stone directly above where we passed, sending chunks of rock plummeting toward the ground. Peter flew directly into their path, forcing his dragon to slow down as she dodged the falling debris.

That won us a little more distance, and I planned to use it well. Tenebris shot out from between the towers, flying into open air again. Big Red followed, just as I'd hoped. As soon as we were out into open air again, I slammed home another Lightning Bolt, striking her in the head this time.

Big Red glowed for a brief second before her wing beats faltered and she began to drop. She pulled herself out of the fall before she dropped too far, but she was clearly injured. I felt better about this fight already. Back during the battle for the Farm, Peter had the orc army with him. He used them to attack the Farm.

If he'd attacked with just the dragon, would I have been able to beat him? I had to wonder, because those Lightning Bolts were putting some serious hurt on his dragon, just like they had during the battle for the Farm. Every time he'd come at me, I'd just blasted him with more lightning. Without the orcs, he'd never have been a threat.

It was his multi-layered defenses and attacks that made him a serious threat. I needed to keep him cut off from other resources.

Even as I had the thought, he seemed to come to a similar conclusion, because he broke off his attack! Instead of continuing the chase as we soared skyward away from the castle, Peter turned back toward the castle and landed on the top of one of the towers. Shit, what was he doing now?

I couldn't just let him do whatever it was he was up to down there without taking action. "We need to turn around."

What do you have in mind?

I thought for a moment as Tenebris came about and flew back toward the castle. Peter wouldn't have landed there unless he had a plan to seize the advantage from me. That meant I needed to stop whatever it was he was doing.

"Do a fly-by. I want to see what he's up to, over there," I said.

Tenebris made a bee-line for the tower in question, flying just a dozen or so meters above it and turning sideways so I could get a good look as we sped past. Peter had gotten down from Big Red. He was poking around at the shattered remains of the ballista that had been mounted there, but we'd already done a good job destroying all four of them. He wasn't going to be able to turn those weapons against us, not easily anyway.

He waved as we flew past. That was weird.

"Selena!" Peter's shout barely carried on the wind. What could he possibly want?

He's gesturing like he wants you to land. I think he wants to talk. Maybe he'd like to surrender?

I laughed. "I doubt we're that lucky. I just had a conversation with this asshole back at the Farm, before I made you. It wasn't very helpful."

Maybe not, but it buys time. Isn't that the point right now? We need to buy your friends time to break into his lair and find whatever he's using to control the dragon. Once they have that, he loses control of the dragon, and it's all over but the crying. His crying.

Tenebris had a point. Stalling served us well. It also bought him time for his dragon to recover, and that's probably what he had in mind, but I doubted I could reliably hit her when she was perched on the tower, anyway. I might nail her with a Lightning Bolt, or it might go astray and hit the tower instead. I considered doing just that; I could slam Lightning into the tower every time the spell came back up until it shattered and they had to take off or be buried. But part of me was curious what the hell Peter wanted to talk about this time.

I figured odds were he wanted to give his proposal another shot, which was both weird and creepy. But if it bought Clay, Kara, and Patches more time, all the better.

"Okay, why don't we set down on that tower there," I said, pointing at the one next to where Peter stood. "I don't want to be close enough that they can sink their claws into us, but we should be able to shout from one tower to the next."

Let's do that. Tenebris banked, slowed, and then came in for a gently landing on the tower I'd indicated.

It was time to see just what the hell Peter wanted to chat about this time.