Chapter 146: Time to go all out
Ren looked at William as all the bolts of lightning grew larger around him. William raised his hand into the air, and all that lightning condensed over his palm. His hands trembled from the force of his own spell. He looked at Ren and hurled the attack.
Ren took a deep breath and shot out a heavy stream of flame. It slammed into the attack, but the lightning kept pushing through. Ren pushed out more flames, his crimson flames wrapping around the lightning that fought back heavily against his flames. The lightning could no longer push past, and the collision ended in a massive explosion that ripped through the air.
Ren looked down, only to see that William was no longer there. He sensed William behind him and quickly turned around, seeing William using a wind spell to fly and attacking with more than fifty ice lances.
He hurled them all at Ren at the same time. Ren flapped his wings and immediately shot up, evading the ice as they came. More came in. One grazed his shoulder, but he managed to evade every single one while keeping the girl safe.
’Fang, Ezra, head here now,’ Ren gave an instruction telepathically to the both of them. He needed to hand this girl over, or it would be too difficult for him to take William down.
"You cannot run forever, Ren!" William yelled and raised both hands. Multiple magical circles formed in the air and spread forward, each one pointed at Ren. They began firing large chunks of rock that moved extremely fast. Ren reacted by creating energy spheres. They blasted out, each one slamming into the rocks, and explosions followed, coloring the sky in flames and smoke.
William attacked through the smoke with a heavy bolt of lightning. Ren saw the attack coming and responded by lifting one hand and using iron scales to cover it. He tanked the lightning as it slammed into his arm. The bolts rushed through him, but he resisted it all until the attack finally stopped.
William did not give him a moment.
Another barrage of lightning came down immediately, thick bolts firing in rapid succession, each one aimed to keep Ren moving rather than settling into anything deliberate. Ren raised one hand and blocked them, iron scales flaring across his forearms as the bolts hit, the energy dispersing across the surface in crackling threads.
He looked down at the girl in his arms.
’I cannot go all out like this.’
The thought had been sitting at the back of his mind since the fight moved outside, and he was still holding her. He considered transforming, going to his full dragon form, having her sit in his palm or on his back where she would at least be stable.
But the moment that thought formed, he dismissed it.
William was a forest lord. Whatever ease the fight had looked like from the outside, putting real effort into this was going to require real effort, and in his full dragon form, the scale of his attacks was not something he could fine-tune in a close engagement without risking the girl in the process.
He stayed as he was.
William kept firing.
The bolts came in waves, each one heavier than the last, and Ren blocked them with iron scales, his forearms absorbing the impacts one after another, the pain building underneath each block in the particular accumulating way that said the defense was holding but was not going to hold indefinitely. He gritted his teeth and kept his arms up.
The iron scales began to show the strain.
Then something cut through the air from the side.
The spear hit William in the flank before he saw it coming, driving into his side and tearing through, and the scream that came out of him broke the rhythm of the barrage completely. He spun toward the source.
Ezra came in right behind her throw.
She hit him at full speed, driving him into the ground hard, her spear already pulled back and ready as they landed. She looked up at Ren from the ground, reading the situation in one pass.
Silas hit from the other direction simultaneously, wind attacks battering William from the side before he could fully process the first impact, pushing him further back across the compound.
Ren dropped down fast.
"Take her," he said, handing the girl to Ezra. He looked at both of them. "Get out of here now. Both of you. Before he gets back up."
Ezra read his face and understood immediately. She took the girl, nodded once, and launched into the air. Silas broke toward the town at full speed.
Ren turned back.
William was already standing.
The wound in his side was closing, the healing working fast, and the moment he looked up and registered that the girl was gone, his expression changed. The calculation behind his eyes shifted, the restraint that had been there while Ren was holding her falling away entirely.
He raised both hands.
The lightning that formed around him was not the directed bolts from before. It came from everywhere at once, pulling in from the air around him in a massive rotating vortex that built and built, the sound of it filling the compound and then going beyond it, the light of it painting everything white.
It curved upward.
Then it came down.
Ren smiled.
He leaned back, drew a breath, and unleashed the Primordial Roar.
The sonic boom hit the vortex head-on and stopped it, the two forces grinding against each other in the space between them until the lightning dispersed and the sound rolled out in every direction across the town.
Ren was already moving.
He flapped his wings and blasted forward, closing the distance faster than William could build the next attack, and drove his fist straight into him.
William threw up earth walls, multiple of them rising fast in sequence, and Ren broke through every single one without slowing, the stone meaning nothing at the speed he was carrying, until his fist found William and drove him into the ground and kept driving, the trench forming beneath them as Ren dragged him across the compound.
He released, and William went up.
Ren followed him into the air.
Ice lances formed around William mid-flight, dozens of them, and he sent them all down at once. Ren moved between them, side to side, reading each one, not a single one connecting, and when the last lance passed him, he opened his jaws and fired.
The flame breath hit William square in the chest and drove him deeper into the sky, the force of it carrying him backward and upward until he was a shape against the clouds.