All The Skills

"Why fly out that way?" Brixaby asked. He pointed his muzzle downward, toward the still spiraling, bleeding green dragon—the one who had been holding the portal open. It was nearly at the ground now. "When all we need to transport everybody over there is right in front of us."

He sounded eager to steal a brand-new spell. A portal type, at that.

Only the lessons on dignity he had been forced to take at Wolf Moon Hive kept Arthur from slapping his forehead. "No need. I already have a couple of spells." And, thanks to the mana silver, he was topped up on power.

Just in case, he placed his hand on Brixaby's neck and let the mana flow into him as well. This was an incredibly useful spell.

Brixaby and Joy loved to talk about getting others into their retinue, but Arthur wanted that silver into his... whoever he was.

That was a problem for later.

Meanwhile, Laird was bellowing orders, pulling everybody's attention towards the dragons out to the Salt Sea. Unfortunately, they were miles away—a ten-minute flying sprint at best.

Arthur had the spell to get them there in a blink.

"Brixaby, fly me up high. We want to portal down over them--Ooph."

Brixaby did what he asked almost before Arthur had finished talking, coming to a stop so fast that Arthur was thrown forward, catching himself right before he hit one of those backward-facing spines. Then Brixaby spun around, and Arthur got a view of the battlefield below.

There were fewer of the Mind Singers' dragons than he'd thought there had been before. Many had fallen, though most of those had been injured, instead of died, and managed to land in a controlled fall. Several ground-based skirmishes were occurring right now.

Others lay broken on the ground. Including tiny broken bodies of humans, looking like dolls scattered in the dust. Arthur could not tell at a glance who were the attackers or the defenders.

They all went up on my orders, he thought, then shook himself. Now was not the time for self-recrimination. Now was the time for action.

As if reading his mind, Brixaby bellowed, putting a hint of his Stunning Shout into it. That had the effect of mentally slapping people and dragons alike. The few skirmishes left stopped. And the moment the defenders were distracted, the Mind Singers' dragons tore off straight to the lake to help the rest.

Arthur gestured to the lake which had waves now cresting over twenty feet high. Some of them crashed against the peninsula, flooding it over. And still, the waves built higher and higher.

The lake was shallow but vast, and Arthur did not doubt that if they got those waves up high enough, they could get it to swamp over the Mesa. Not only would that be a danger to the people hiding inside, but the toxic saltwater would destroy all their crops and almost ensure nothing could be grown afterward without the aid of some serious magic.

"Earth Dragons—anybody with rock, soil, or powers—head down to the mesa and seal it up. The rest of you, follow me through the portal."

Turning, Arthur activated one of the portal spells in his mind. Then he scraped his fingers down into the fabric that was the sky.

It wasn't easy. He wasn't working with a full-blown spell card—just a copied spell. He didn't have the details of it like he would with a normal spell card. He was forced to go by instinct and feel.

And this spell practically gushed mana.

He felt mana flow out of his fingertips even before there was a visible sign of a rip in the sky. His fingers caught something, and he clamped on and dragged his hand down. A dark line appeared, but the space beyond it was so cold that it felt almost hot.

Arthur grimaced but kept on, knowing that his healing card could handle a little bit of frostbite.

He tried not to think that it usually took two greens to hold open a portal during a scourge eruption. Arthur was going to have to do this all by himself.

As Arthur worked, Brixaby sank, allowing Arthur to lengthen the rip. But there was only that freezing blackness beyond. What was he doing wrong? What—

Oh. The destination.

He held an image of the lake in his mind. Instantly, the darkness snapped into blue sky again. Blue sky that was almost indistinguishable from his own because it was only a couple of miles away.

The mana still flooded out of him, but at a slightly more reasonable pace now that the portal had a connection.

"Brixaby, have you gotten a copy of the spell, too?" Arthur asked, his voice strained.

"No. I can't copy your copy," Brixaby replied, annoyed.

Arthur sighed, but he had suspected as much.

"Okay, let's rip this open."

Brixaby knew what he meant immediately, and flew diagonal and straight up, allowing Arthur to peel back the sky as if it were a curtain.

His mana dropped like a stone, and Arthur yelled out, "Stop."

This was his limit. The portal was perhaps fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. If he made it any larger, he knew he would lose his hold. His arms trembled with the weight of holding the fabric of reality open.

"Through the portal," Brixaby yelled at the awaiting dragons. And one by one, they darted in.

At least, the smaller and medium-sized ones did, who were able to fold their wings and dive through. The humans on their backs pressed low to keep from being scraped off.

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Laird bellowed again. He was too large for the portal, but within moments, he had a contingent of other larger dragons heading out the long way. They would be there in a few minutes, and hopefully, act as support for the battle to come.

Meanwhile, Arthur's mana was already two-thirds gone and was dropping fast.contemporary romance

He tried to activate the mana re-fill spell. But that split his mind in too many directions. His hold on the portal grew slippery, and he started to feel the fabric of space slip through his fingers.

"Hurry them up. I can't last too much longer."

He focused solely on the portal, allowing Brixaby to yell and hurry the rest along. Finally, when he was only a few percentages from empty, the second to the last of the dragons—a yellow—dived in. The very last was a cheerful pink dragon.

It was Joy, with Cressida on her back.

Joy's claws were stained red, but her expression was triumphant. "Hi, Arthur! Any way we could help?"

"Get through the portal!" he yelled, sweating.

"Sure thing," Joy said.

Cressida added something as well, but her voice was lost to the wind.

The moment Joy’s tail disappeared through the portal, Arthur gasped out, "Brixaby, now!"

Brixaby completed a turn so sharp that he practically spun in the air. Then, as he dived through the portal, Arthur let go of the edge.

The sky folded back into place within a few seconds, just like a piece of cloth. That gave Brixaby just enough time to dart through and out the other side.

They made it... straight into the chaos of battle.

Arthur glanced back and saw that Laird and his larger dragon contingent were still a few minutes out, at the very least.

The water had congealed into one large wave which rolled ominously back and forth, with blue dragons shaping other, smaller waves to add to it. Each one increased its mass and overall energy. Meanwhile, the rest of the Mind Singers' dragons acted as vanguard, protecting those blues and throwing themselves in front of anybody who tried to stop them.

Judging by the dragons who floated down below, they had paid ruinously for it, but with each moment, the giant wave was building.

Arthur immediately activated the mana spell to refill his supply. “Brixaby, target the blues.”

Brixaby obediently opened his mouth, inhaled so deeply that his sides stretched out, and dove.

Arthur's mana had only recovered a few percent, but it was enough to start peppering enemy dragons on the way down with more rivets.

The second Brixaby was in range, he targeted a blue with his stunning shout who was shepherding along a smaller wave.

The blue staggered in the air, shaking its head and looking confused. The small wave collapsed without joining the larger one.

Arthur caught a flash of orange out of the corner of his eye. A large dragon was headed right for them, his claws physically lengthening.

Oranges were materials experts, and this one seemed to have some kind of body modification. His frame had lengthened like a knife darting through the air, claws extended out too straight, just like swords.

But he wasn't the only one with claw-based power.

Joy, who had taken her position as a guard and had been flying behind and just to the side of Brixaby, peeled off and hit the orange first. Her claws were much smaller but loaded with deadly poison.

Meanwhile, Cressida yelled something, and Arthur was suddenly surrounded by a flock of water cranes that dive-bombed past him into the dragons below. One even landed in a building wave, breaking the spell and dispersing it.

Most importantly, however, Arthur and Brixaby's charge had punched a hole through the Mind Singers' dragons' defensive line. Others followed, and many of them targeted the dragons shepherding the massive great wave.

The one in charge of the largest wave was a blue shimmer dragon—so high quality that his scales caught the light and flickered with the sun.

"Attack the shimmer blue!” Brixaby yelled both out loud and in several minds.

Not that he needed to. Its shimmery quality made it naturally eye-catching.

The blue was instantly targeted by a whole host of spells. Most were Common spells. Nothing extraordinary. But the sheer volume all targeted at one dragon was more effective than Brixaby diving in and doing the work himself.

This is what it means to be a leader, Arthur thought to himself. There was a time and a place to make the final blow, but sometimes it was equally if not more important to direct others to do the same thing.

The shimmer blue fell, stunned. And the great building wave collapsed on itself in a huge ploosh that sent water up over the banks of the shallow sea and rolling far out into the desert. The mesa was several miles off, and Arthur suspected it would be hit by only gentle waves.

The salt that the water left behind would be a problem if anyone ever wanted to plant outside, but it was better than flooding the entire Mesa complex.

Speaking of…

He glanced at the Mesa, then frowned. Dust rolled up off the top of it, and he saw a vee of dragons flying rapidly away.

Were those more crafters who didn't want to fight? He didn't know for sure, and he didn't have the luxury of finding out because, despite the waves collapsing, there was still a battle to win.

He and Brixaby directed the defenders to attack the remaining enemy dragons.

“Brixaby, order everybody to stun if at all possible. And only kill if they have to.”

Brixaby grumbled, but with bellowing shouts, he passed the word along. Unfortunately, too many broken dragons and people landed in the toxic salt water and drowned.

Arthur tried not to look. But now they had momentum on their side, and they were reinforced when Laird's dragons finally reached the battle.

Soon, it was all but over. They’d won.

Arthur was readying himself to tell Brixaby to land among the stunned Mind Singer dragons. If he could break her hold on them one by one, he might be able to gather some information. But first, he had to find some healers to tend to the injured. Arthur was looking around for a courier purple when he spotted one... conveniently heading right toward him.

It was a young purple, only a little smaller than Brixaby. She must have had a speed enhancement card because even though she beat her wings at a normal speed, she seemed to effortlessly fly faster than Brixaby.

Brixaby didn't like this and flew around the purple which also twirled around to face him. The result was that the two dragons instantly whirled in the air.

Arthur was in danger of being sick. “Brixaby, stop that.”

“Oh! Oh! You're Brixaby! I wasn't sure. They said to find the black dragon, but you are purple too,” the young dragon said, in a high, childish voice.

“Why do you want to see me?” Brixaby demanded.

“I have a message for your rider. Oh! There you are!” The purple turned wide eyes on Arthur as if she hadn’t spotted him before now. “Chablis says the eggs have been stolen, and you're to come back to the mesa right now. You're in big, big trouble, I think. Sorry,” she added.

“Eggs?” Brixaby demanded. “What eggs?”

It wasn't very often that a purple looked at somebody else like they were an idiot, but that's exactly what this one did.

“The dragon eggs. Our dragon eggs. Well, not mine,” she added, "but all the rest. Stolen to the last shell. Everybody's really angry. Come on,” she said, flipped her tail, and immediately flew back to the mesa.

Arthur and Brixaby glanced at each other.

“Wait,” Arthur said, “They have a hatching ground here?”

“I'm glad you said it,” Brixaby muttered. “And not me. Also, I do not like being summoned by somebody who owes us a debt for just saving them.”

Arthur hesitated, knowing the eggs were important, but then nodded.

“Land,” he told Brixaby. “Let's see what we can do to break the Mind Singer's spell over those dragons.”

The missing eggs would have to wait.

done.co