[Mana spring]
Rolling his shoulder as he hovered in place, Darganth took a moment to shake off the impact that had just struck him. Though most of the force had been dispersed by his overlapping scales, the strike from his opponent's hooves had been surprisingly strong. When he had then failed to reinforce the ground as he was sent sliding backward, the momentum the strike had transferred into his body had carried him across part of the clearing. Propelling himself into the air once he had slowed down enough to do so, he now hovered there, studying their opponent as he adapted their plan to this newest one in a series of nasty surprises that showed why a feral beast of all creatures controlled the mana spring even though 'standard' beasts were typically seen as more dangerous.
Though typically feral beasts also relied more on physical strength than magic, the individual before Darganth already broke the mold. Despite this, they hadn't discounted its physical capabilities as it was still a feral beast, no matter how comparatively weak for that. But considering that a single kick still caused such damage despite the enhancement spells Darganth had imbued his body with, he was hesitant to launch yet another overly hasty attack.
Especially considering what he had seen from its exchange with Venrie. To call upon magical attacks with a similar power efficiency to the innate abilities of some legendary species was rare, especially if it could be done in near an instant, as the beast had. With precious few exceptions, powers that had the potential to utterly overwhelm an equal foe required time to conjure and often exposed the caster by emitting a noticeable mana signature during the casting, so to see one be used without any warning had taken him by surprise and slightly delayed his entry into the fight.
But Yldra's success also showed that, despite all of these worries Darganth had, the beast's surprises had a limit. Not only had her actions helped Venrie conserve a noticeable portion of her mana pool, but when she had latched onto the beast's antlers, it had also caused the dome covering the clearing to drop.
Immediately suspecting a connection, Darganth felt confirmed in his thoughts when he watched Venrie aim at the beast's left antler. Unleashing her spell mid-flight, hundreds of tiny seeds emerged from Venrie's open palm as she flew past the beast. Erupting with a sonic boom as they shot toward their target, they each caused an audible crack as the cloud of projectiles struck bone. Though this mostly came from small pieces being chipped off by glancing hits, a few perfectly placed projectiles buried themselves deep into the antlers.
Roaring in anger at the damage to its antlers, the beast blindly lashed out with its hind legs. Like a flailing child, it kicked with wild abandon in an attempt to strike Venrie as she flew past. However, such predictable strikes weren't enough to catch her and only gave Yldra a chance to drag the beast low while its stance was disrupted.
Swinging her head to the side, the dragoness dragged the beast forward and forced it to scramble its feet back into a stable footing. Just as it did so and halted its momentum, Yldra shifted backwards and ripped the antlers around, throwing the beast to the side and sending it tumbling onto its side.
Seeing this as the opportunity it was, both Darganth and Jennia joined the fray. Bursting out from the forest while still in the middle of transforming back into her true form, the latter charged over the clearing. Meanwhile, Darganth leaned forward in mid-air, arching his back so that the next beat of his wings pushed backwards, catapulting his body forward as a result.
Accelerating to impressive speeds, he crossed the just over a hundred meters separating him from the beast in a little over a second. At the same time, an invisible magic circle of numerous layers spread out beneath his flying form. Lingering there only for a moment before vanishing in a brief flash of power visible only through mana senses, the accumulated energy inside the spell circle then rushed into Darganth's body.
In an instant, he feels the cumulative effects of almost half his mana pool in enhancement spells surging through his body. Spitting this magical energy between multiple elements so that he didn't charge one spell past the point of inefficiency, multiple versions of each basic enhancement, namely strength, speed, and endurance, started pulsing through his body.
With this newfound strength, his strike then smashed into the side of the beast's head just as Yldra let go of the right antler. As such, the impact caused its head to snap to the side with such force that it briefly looked as if it broke the beast's neck. Such notions, however, didn't last long as Darganth tore his claws across the beast's flank immediately after, causing a pained howl and a frantic strike from its hooves in his rough direction.
Stepping past this strike, Darganth followed this up by bringing his open maw down on the beast's back. With a vicious snap, his teeth dug through its hide and pierced into its flesh. Though as his teeth struck the beast's spine, he felt a surge of mana gather there in response.
Barely a moment later, he felt something metallic pierce into the flesh. Recoiling with a furious roar, he was forced to let go of the beast as metallic spikes erupted in a row across its back. Not willing to risk it, he even went a step further and retreated out of the beast's vicinity with a beat of his wings.
This left an opening for Venrie that she didn't miss. With a wave of her staff, wooden stakes erupted out of the ground around where the beast was lying. Angled inward, they struck its body from all directions, shattering against its body where they met its hooves or the metal spikes now emerging from its spine, while piercing deep into its flesh wherever they struck softer targets.
At the same moment as they immobilized the beast, Jennia arrived. Having seen Darganth's attack and relying heavily on biting herself, she kept her two central heads back when she attacked. Using her remaining four heads, she lunged toward the beast's legs, biting into them in an attempt to tear through the thin muscle coverage there and crack the bones beneath.
Initially finding little success in this endeavor, Jennia was soon helped in her attempts when Venrie pointed an open palm toward her. Feeling no difference at first, even after she sensed a surge of mana from the elven woman's body, she was then surprised when the next snap of her maws didn't meet living flesh but dug into dry skin. So even though the spell didn't manage to fully decay the affected areas, it weakened them enough for Jennia's teeth to finally pierce past the skin, causing the flesh beneath to be shredded as she pulled back her head.
However, in response, the beast started thrashing against the stakes of Venrie's spell that impaled it. Though largely achieving nothing but increase the pain it was experiencing, it's blind rage soon turned out to be at least not be an entire waste of energy. Because, by chance, one of its legs was only struck by a single spike that didn't even penetrate that deep, causing the narrow tip to break off as the limb pushed against it and allowing it to slip free.
Not noticing this in the fury of attacks she unleashed on the beast's front legs, Jennia was taken by complete surprise when a sudden kick struck one of her heads from the side. Impacting it right at the connection to the neck, she barely even registered as the force of the beast's kick tore through her bones and splattered that head of hers across the rest of her body.
Lashing out in an instinctive reaction as the pain shot through her system, she didn't even consider the futility of her actions and spun three of her other heads around. Dodging the second strike due to the lucky timing of this response, she let these three heads fan out before lunging forward with them once the third strike came.
Managing to avoid the beast's attack, her three heads then fell upon the outstretched limb. However, without Venrie's spell weakening the flesh in that area, her teeth stuck the skin with a low thump and failed to penetrate. But what this did was hold onto the beast's leg with all of her bite force, something that became a problem when the beast's leg was pulled back a moment later.
Even with her reacting the instant she noticed her trouble, Jennia was still pulled forward half a dozen meters. Quickly noticing the unfortunate position this led her into, she tried to redirect this momentum to the side and maybe dodge the kick she was sure would follow. For this, she dug her feet into the ground and pushed off, not caring whether she landed on her legs or had to roll to finish escaping the danger. Despite this, another flash of pain surged through her nervous system as the beast's leg shot out at a speed she could barely perceive and struck another one of her heads.
But in the same instance, Jennia also felt a surge of power wash across her body. With it, her body accelerated mid-jump, catapulting her further through the air with electricity crackling in her wake. Successfully overcoming the disorientation this sudden shift in speed caused, she then managed to exploit this additional speed to still bring her legs back beneath her body before landing a moment later and coming to a sliding stop a safe distance outside of the beast's striking range.
At the same time, she heard the beast cry out in pain. Raising her four remaining heads into its direction, she watched as the already half-freed creature recoiled from seemingly invisible attacks. Each time, a soft whistling would announce their arrival, shortly followed by the beast flinching and throwing an agitated glare into the part of the forest it assumed the attack to be coming from. But with each attack, this location seemed to change, making the beast helpless as over a dozen attacks struck it within the span of only a few seconds.
And with its attention thus otherwise occupied, Venrie had free rein to prepare her next spell. Floating before the mana spring to hide the surge of power as she gathered her mana, she unleashed her magic onto the beast from below.
Cracking open the ground itself, the spell burrowed up as massive limbs of wood and other plant matter. Taking various forms ranging from humanoid arms to tentacles, they lashed out over the edges of the chasms that were opening up all across the clearing like a starving beast trying to drag prey into the pit it was trapped in.
Doing so randomly at first, when the first of these limbs struck the beast and tore a bloody gash across its side, every construct shifted target as if it was smelling the blood. Shooting toward their shared target, they dug in with fingers, thorny hooks, or small extensions that tangled in the fur so that the beast couldn't escape easily.
Securing their hold one by one, the first few limbs soon started shifting as a pulse traveled down their length. Starting from where they made contact with the beast, a green light traveled down the center of the limb, with a bulge in the outer layer accompanying it perfectly.
Feeling its life-force being drained this way, the beast reacted with a mix of rage and fear. With a roar, mana surged through its antlers once more, causing them to glow in bright silver as it prepared a devastating attack.
Before it could release it, however, Darganth unleashed one of his secret weapons. Drawing on temporal energy to reach into the future, he locked onto him from two years into the future and pulled. Not to bring that potential future version of himself into the present, but to channel its power into his current body.
For a brief moment, this caused his body to undergo every uncomfortable sensation at once as it experienced the result of two years of training and draconic growth in practically an instant. In that fraction of a second, his form grew to just shy of three hundred meters long, his mana reserves grew by considerably more than the energy he had expended, the enhancement spells layered onto his body were strengthened by the increase in mana quality, and the world itself seemed to slow down as the speed at which he could think and act increased.
But even though this brought him closer to matching the beast in physical power, maybe even allowing him to catch up completely thanks to the increased power of his spells, he nonetheless didn't charge forward to test this theory. Instead, he directly went to his most potent option of attack by opening his maw and charging a dragon's breath.
Not caring about the drain on his reserves, he pushed as much mana into the beam as he could before unleashing it just ahead of the beast's own innate ability activating. When he then fired it, the twin colored beam of spatial and temporal magic barely blinked into existence and started registering on the senses of everybody present before striking the beast's already damaged left antler.
The moment it did, the entire clearing was swallowed in a burst of two shades of silver, one similar to a metallic reflection, while the other was more akin to a brightly glowing cloud with specs of other colors inside, and a gem-like emerald green.
The deafening silence that accompanied this burst of light was then soon followed by a devastating shockwave. Sweeping across the clearing, it tore through the air with a boom, sending every loose piece of debris flying and throwing even Venrie back a few dozen meters into one of the waterfalls behind her.
And though Darganth shielded himself with one of his wings, he, just like Jennia, didn't fare any better. Both slid back dozens of meters, with Darganth slowly lowering his wing to see the damage his attack had caused to their opponent when he came to a stop at the edge of the forest.