Chapter 718: Armies Collide Part III
Chapter 718: Armies Collide Part III
The first dragon’s wing caught on a primary strand. The silk didn’t break from the weight of the dragons.
The creature’s momentum carried it forward, but its wing couldn’t follow. The limb was wrenched backward at an angle that no joint was designed to accommodate.
Bone splintered and cartilage tore. The supporting muscles that allowed flight were completely severed.
The dragon’s scream erupted across the formation as it realized it was trapped. The creature’s consciousness registered the inescapable reality.
It had been ensnared, and movement in any direction would only serve to entangle it further.
The second dragon attempted to veer away.
It banked hard, its wings spreading to maximum extension, its musculature contracting to create the force necessary to change trajectory mid-dive.
But the web was everywhere. The strands crisscrossed in patterns that occupied every possible escape vector.
The dragon’s tail caught on a loop of silk. It pulled hard, using its massive musculature to attempt escape. The silk held. Instead of breaking, it wound tighter, constricting around the creature’s spine.
The dragon’s body convulsed.
Pain erupted through its consciousness as the silk compressed its vertebrae, as it began to restrict blood flow to the creature’s lower extremities.
The dragon pulled harder, desperate now, understanding that every moment it spent struggling was causing additional damage to its physical form.
The third and fourth dragons managed to break through the outer edges of the web before becoming completely enmeshed.
But they emerged wounded. The passage through the silk lacerated their scales.
Their confidence was shattered by the sudden realization that they had been successfully ensnared by something they hadn’t even known existed.
Their wings bore slashing wounds from the silk strands, wounds that began bleeding immediately and would compromise their ability to maintain flight for extended periods.
The fifth dragon didn’t even manage to break through.
It was caught in the inner structure of the web, surrounded by strands on all sides.
It thrashed, its massive musculature straining against the silk with increasing desperation.
Its wings flapped in movements that only entangled them further. The creature’s panic broadcast across the telepathic network. A raw, unfiltered scream of an animal that understood it was trapped and couldn’t escape.
The remaining two dragons in the web continued to struggle.
They thrashed against the silk with increasing desperation, their wings flapping in movements that only served to entangle them further.
One dragon managed to tear through a section of webbing with its claws, raking downward with all of its strength. But in doing so, it became even more thoroughly trapped.
The severed strands unraveled, creating additional loops and tangles that wound around the creature’s limbs.
The Voidweaver, patient and methodical, began to spin additional sections of web.
The spider’s consciousness was calm. The creature understood that the prey had been captured.
The creature understood that time was now an ally. It began weaving additional strands around the struggling dragons with the precision of an artist constructing a masterpiece.
Each new strand was positioned to maximum effect. Some to restrict movement, some to apply pressure to critical joints, some to add weight and complexity to the entanglement.
The dragons’ struggles became progressively more frantic.
One creature succeeded in tearing free its head, but only by leaving an entire section of its body still bound in silk. Another dragon managed to damage one wing but became hopelessly trapped in the process.
The web continued to grow, expand, and ensnare. As dragons tried to help and use dragon breath, Voidweaver continued to spin a web, leaving the dragons less and less space to operate.
A hundred dragons were now caught within Voidweaver’s creation.
The dragons were experiencing significant distress, manifesting as widespread panic and broadcasting their terror across the telepathic network, which caused involuntary reactions even in distant formations.
The web had been successful beyond even Voidweaver’s calculations.
It had not just captured the five diving dragons; it had captured nearly a hundred creatures positioned near them, creatures trying to provide support, creatures that had found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Saphira’s entire frame went rigid.
Her shoulders tensed. Her claws dug deeper into the stone of the command platform.
Her golden eyes tracked the expanding web with the intensity of a creature watching her force structure being systematically dismantled.
She had lost control of the lower engagement. She had lost the ability to coordinate anything beyond desperate, reactive orders.
The web had been successful. Her dragons were trapped.
And that’s when the portals erupted around the upper formations.
Not small apertures. Not micro-portals designed for infiltration. Massive, massive tears in reality that stretched dozens of feet across, their edges crackling with dark lightning.
Portals that led to somewhere beyond this battlefield, somewhere beyond this moment, somewhere that existed in defiance of whatever Jack had planned next.
A figure began to emerge from the largest portal.
Mira stepped into the open air.
Her feet left the portal’s edge, her shoulders rolling backward as she transitioned from one dimension to another.
The motion was economical, the kind of movement that a combatant would execute after having trained for exactly this scenario a thousand times.
Her body was already positioned for her descent, torso angled forward, arms positioned at optimal angles, her entire posture calibrated for maximum destructive impact.
She began to fall past the dragons.
The white fire that surrounded her body wasn’t random. It was focused, directed, compressed into a vortex of superheated energy that intensified with every meter of descent.
Her breathing remained controlled even as flames consumed the space immediately around her, even as the heat she was channeling reached temperatures that would have incinerated conventional matter.
Having Fire Magic as a human was considered rare, but it also meant nothing if you didn’t have a huge talent for it. The Fireheart clan was one that bred fire users with high Magic Talent.
They had a set of specialized skills that set them apart from other fire users. The ability to deprive cells of water and cause them to die. This was their most well-known trait, but they also possessed something far more devastating.
Her descent accelerated.
The air around her began to shimmer. Reality itself seemed to bend away from the intensity of the heat she was channeling. The dragons below her began to register her presence.
A falling figure wreathed in white fire, descending toward them at a velocity that made evasion impossible.
The Voidweaver’s massive, intricate construction, strong enough to restrain dragons, disintegrated.
The intensity of the heat was extreme. The destructive force was overwhelming. The web did not burn; rather, it evaporated, transitioning from a solid state to smoke and memory within a single moment.
The dragons that had been caught within the silk suddenly found themselves falling.
But they fell directly into the path of Mira’s descent.
She passed through them like a meteor through a cloud. Her flames seared flesh from bone. Her heat melted scales into liquid that dripped downward like tears.
Wings didn’t just burn; they transformed into ash that scattered on the wind, no longer capable of supporting flight.
The creatures’ bodies blackened, desiccated, transformed into husks that could no longer support consciousness.
The dragons’ screams erupted across the telepathic network.
Twenty-three more dragons fell from the sky.
Some were already dead before they hit the ground, their consciousness having ceased to exist the moment Mira’s heat reached their vital organs.
Others were still clinging to consciousness, their bodies charred and broken, their forms wreathed in smoke and the lingering heat of Mira’s unique fire magic.
They cratered into the earth, creating shockwaves, splintering bedrock, and leaving massive gouges in the landscape.
But the most unsettling thing about her magic was not the white fire; it was the fact that her magic turned black.