Despite the holes in the ship, rather than sinking, I could feel it starting to lift upward as a giant void broke the sky. I looked over to Hara for a glimmer of hope, but she was unconscious, though still somehow holding a barrier around herself and Rune, no doubt being the only reason they weren't dead.
The force of the magic was too strong for me to counter and too complex for me to even understand, but with what I did know, I at least stalled it, considering its attention was finally split between the two flagships. 'So is this it then? No, Rafi, you are coming, right?' With my dark magic unresponsive, I couldn't sense her, and instead, the more unwilling my soul became to move, the more it melded perfectly with my dragon's blood, which, in essence, was the perfect example of an unflinching soul.
My body grew to its larger size, partially tearing my clothes and denting my armor outward. Scales covered my left arm and down the outsides of my legs as my feet tore out of my boots. 'I just need to stand…'
Fire began leaking from my every short breath as my eyes turned from white to orange, to bright red, the currents of magic around me becoming perfectly visible. At first, I was overwhelmed, but soon, I somehow began to understand the flow and change it. Altering its course, I was able to stand, and with no better Idea, I breathed fire as hot as I could until the water under us boiled, despite not even being near the demon.
After just a few seconds of the intense heat, the magic vanished, and the boat once again dropped, hitting the sea like a brick and again leveling me. 'I just need to stand… Just get up…'
I pulled myself to my knees when suddenly I froze, feeling my leg bending from somewhere that… Well, somewhere that wasn't my knee… My right leg had been spared because it had transformed more, but that wasn't the case for my left. 'So what now… I can't stand…'
I looked up at the demon with tears in my eyes, breathing fire again so that the moment it tried to attack, it would get burned, with every breath I sent waves of flame, absorbing air through my skin so that I could maintain a continuous stream of fire until my whole body was numb. 'That's all the time we have for today, kids…' I coughed out a cloud of smoke before falling to the side, my entire body feeling dry and hot like withered asparagus.
"Siya… Siya, you have to get up!"
I coughed again, opening my weary eyes. "I don't have to do anything… Dying isn't so bad, you know. I mean, I've done it before…" I grumbled with a voice that was barely understandable as a gleam came from the distance. 'A moon so bright… You can see it even during the day…' A greatsword of pure moonlight skewered it from one end to the other, slicing it in half with its tremendous width. 'It's about time…'
A sudden wave of pressure threw her into the distance so hard that a large cliff face fell into the sea far away. 'Fair dust…'
The more I tried to use dark magic, the more my soul became still, and again, the more I transformed until scaled wings shot out of my back and a tail from the end of my spine. I could hardly move any other part of my body… But since those parts were brand new, they were not damaged… Ironically, it meant I could fly, although I had my doubts till my instincts led me into the air. It was as if I was in control, and yet, not in control, the dragon taking over my motor functions. Sense my left arm had transformed that's what I used to wield my blade, and without dark magic I relied solely on the tremendous mana of a dragon to fuel my strength, cleaving a massive chunk of it's flesh and skewering my blade straight through it's secondary heart, which was shallow enough to be reached with a thrust.
It screamed and threw me off, but I made sure to let go just at the right time so that it sent me near a loaded ballista that I then carefully aimed. 'Rafi, if you can hear this, I need you to go to the abyss and fight it there. It will be invisible, but if you swing enough with that sword's size, I'm sure you'll hit it!'
'You better know what you're doing!'
I felt myself grin through the half of my face that wasn't broken as a rush of wind from her movement flooded past me like a hurricane just before she traveled between realms. Just as my blade dropped from its body, several chunks of flesh started flying off and vanishing into the air like a ghost turning to mist. It phased back in, and I fired the ballista, piercing straight through the primary heart. 'That's two…' I coughed again, no longer able to speak out loud, holding up my broken hand and pointing my outside fingers into the air. 'Take that, you overgrown trashcan…'
It phased back out, but as soon as it did, it started losing even more chunks of flesh, this time unable to regenerate them nearly as fast without properly functioning hearts. 'She's still swinging…' I wheezed with every breath as I reloaded the ballista, barely managing on my own as my brother's last arrow took its place for a turn while I struggled. "The secondary heart again; it must have regenerated by now…" The arrow flew and chopped it up like a blender before it instantly phased out and rapidly moved to the other side of the ship. 'Rafi might not have noticed it moved…' "LU!" I shouted. "Airsidh, shoot it. We need to stop it from attacking." Lu ran over to me, trembling and unable to speak. I slowly rested my clawed hand on her shoulder. "I need you… To tell Rafi… To switch realms."
After shaking for a few seconds, she nodded and closed her eyes, folding her hands.
The monster phazed back in, and Airdish aimed and fired the balista for me, piercing through it before Rafi's blade once again slashed it in half. Only this time, it wasn't able to instantly piece itself back together. It instantly switched planes and moved, now continuously moving in a random pattern while it slowly regenerated. 'Not good.'
"Siya, what now?" Vive asked, still having a bit of vomit on the corner of her mouth.
"Load the ballista."
"We're out of arrows." My brother said,
"It's fine, just trust me."
Without another word, he began tightening the strings. "Vive, the moment I get launched from the ballista, I want you to teleport me as close to the monster as you can."
I heard the crank on the ballista stop for a second before my brother let out a small laugh, and it continued to tighten again. Without needing an order, Rafi went back to the abyss, fading in and out to track its movements and continuously weakening it to stop it from fully recovering. "Lu, communicate the demon's position to Rafi as best you can." 'That should help…'
With a flap of my wings, I landed atop the ballista, curling them up and making myself look like an arrow as much as I could. I supported my weight with only my good leg on the bowstring. "Airsidh, yell at Hara to place a barrier around the demon…"
He did just that, and thankfully, she was awake enough to do so, though having to borrow some manna from the still-unconscious Rune. It was weak and broken nearly right away, but it was just enough for Rafi to land a nearly fatal blow, scaring it to phaze back in. I used my tail to fire the ballista myself, and right away, Vive teleported me, carrying my momentum threw the portal. Turning my body mid-air, I slipped myself right between its two haves and breathed fire as hot as I could, roasting it as I shredded it with my claws to grab and crush the crystal. In its pain, it tried to tear me apart with magic, but. I continued to run wild until I literally couldn't move, as if a starving animal had taken control of my body until even the demon was unrecognizable, and I became too exhausted to even breathe with my lungs, instead relying on my skin as though breathing fire. At some point, it must have become too injured to phase out, and so it met its end even with most of its brain still intact. When I got a hold of myself again, the events that followed felt more like a dream than a memory. Vive brought me back to the ship, where they gave me first aid and brought me to a cabin to rest.
'So Rafi… Am I really strong enough to fight by your side now…'
'Pfft, maybe in another thousand years.'
'Oh really? Because you know, I took out both hearts and the crystal… What did you do besides flail around randomly?'
'That's! THAT'S… Ok, so that's like kind of true…'
'I'm just joking. You said this was personal, right? How does it feel?'
'Sad… But… In a good way I guess…'