Voice: What took you so long!?
Azhure: Other stuff to do. Also generally mind blank when writing.
Owen entered the Kirash capital for the first time following the rebel forces and spirits’ invasion of the place. He could tell it was once a bustling city with life and he had a feeling its decline didn’t start with his father’s siege from a gradual descent beginning decades ago. The streets were empty with all the buildings shutting their doors and windows as the occupants did not want to get raided. Lines of empty stalls stretched to infinity with most of them looking as if they had been abandoned the entire time.
“Leave the guards alone!” Joshua commanded, having himself leading the charge. “We go straight to the palace!”
“””Uuoohhh!”””
As Owen’s father said, the capital defenders have all lost their will to fight. Seeing their greatest asset defeated in mere moments by a single spirit art from Alicia and seeing all of the greater spirits against them would do that to them. Owen even spied a few of them huddled together in a corner, tucked in like ostriches in the sand hoping this would blow over.
GRROOAAHH GRRAAHHH
“Cursed spirits! Up ahead!”
Standing in their way, with more coming out of the alleyway, were cursed spirits that must have lagged behind the initial wave from the gate. Seeing the marching army, they howled in ferocity and lunged at them. The rebels also seeing the attacking cursed spirits stopped in their tracks and assumed defensive positions.
“Oh, water spirit, lend me your aid!”
Just as quickly, Alicia channeled another spirit art, and the spirits following the humans obliged. Charging their power, Aqua and the water spirits performed the same move they did earlier.
SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH
GRRAAOHH-UH?
SHIING SHIING SHIING SHIING SHIING SHIING SHIING SHIING
Just like before, the purified spirits were left confused as the purple haze of corruption evaporated from them. They became even more confused seeing an army of humans and almost every water spirit on top of all of the greater spirits with them. Then they looked at the Court Wizards with the large group and got startled.
“All of you!” Aqua called. “Follow us!”
Hearing their greater spirit’s call, the purified spirits broke out of their stupor and went over to the rebel ranks. While they still looked unsure of what was happening, given that Aqua and literally all of the greater spirits were here, they went over without hesitation.
“Forward!” Joshua then commanded, willing the soldiers to continue.
CLING CLANG CLING CLANG
To the marching sounds of metal, the army pressed onward to the palace. Like a ghost town, Owen still saw no people on the streets or any open buildings. Glancing up, he spied an open window from a house’s second story with a woman taking a peek. Suffice it to say, as soon as she realized Owen saw her she quickly shut the window.
Forward and forward, the rebels marched unimpeded with literally no one in sight. While Owen figured a good chunk of the residents had moved out over the years due to the social impact of Aqua’s great sea, it was still too quiet. Even during the month-long siege, the inhabitants still had to come outside every now and then.
It could be the cursed spirits, Owen figured. There was no doubt the kind of effect the first time the cursed spirits were revealed had on the capital folk. Realizing their king had dabbled into forbidden arts would have made them terrified and just shut their doors from then on. It’s best not to think about it further.
Coming to the center of the capital, Owen could see the public gathering of the place having seen better days. The fountain dried up and the bulletin board in front of it was barely standing with nothing but scratches and nail holes on it. Even the greeneries decorating the public place were left unkempt and dried. It really accentuated the state of decline the Kirash capital was in as the army marched around the fountain.
ROOAAAAAARRRRR
“W-What was that!?”
“It’s coming from the palace!”
“What manner of beast makes that sound!?”
To the humans and spirits who lived in Spiri Raia, it was the most foreign noise they had heard. Even so, they could still feel the malice coming from that cry to their very core, shaking them with unease. While the Court Wizards had a good idea what it was, greater spirits very much knew that kind of roar. The roar of a dragon.
RUMBLE RUMBLE KABOOM
Bricks and stones flew as though a volcanic eruption happened caused by a growing figure bursting out of the castle over the distance. It kept growing and growing, eventually growing half the size of the palace it utterly ruined by enlargening itself inside of the place. And the creature itself was nothing short of an eldritch horror.
BRAK BRAK BRAM BRAK CRASH
As all of the debris came falling down to the ground, everyone saw the most terrifying monster they had ever seen. It was serpentine as a whole while still having arms and legs, but it was the least accurate description. He had scaly, sickly purple skin like the cursed spirits and wings stretching many times his size. What made him horrifying, however, was the snakes-like hair on his snake-like head like he was a medusa, they were that big.
“W-What kind of monster is that!?”
“It’s the dragon!”
“Truly an abomination!”
ROOAAAAAARRRRR
Seeing the army of humans and spirits, he gave another roar with the snake hairs hissing at them as well. Such a display unnerved the party greatly. After all, the Spiri Raians of today were now witnessing a cursed dragon of a bygone age, something they’d never expected to see in their whole life.
So that’s Typhon, Owen thought, looking and the monstrosity. But he wasn’t supposed to be this big…
Owen, he wasn’t supposed to be this big in the otome game. (William)
I can see that, Owen replied back.
He distinctly remembered the CG depicting Typhon to only be as big as the throne room where the party fought him. He didn’t even look as fearsome as the Typhon he was seeing now. His transforming into his draconic form was a last desperate attempt and it showed with the weakened state he could only morph into which was why he resorted to cursing spirits. Here, it appeared Typhon was back in his full glory.
He… is in his original form as a thousand years ago! (Aqua)
Uhn…! What’s happening!? (Rin)
Clearly, he was not weakened as we thought. Could it be a butterfly effect of our actions? (Ronald)
I had a feeling it might be the case, as far back as when we helped Allister. (Joshua)
Usually, when protagonists get transported to the world of a novel they read about, they would use the knowledge of the story to their advantage. However, the more changes they made to the world, the more unreliable the source material became. That was always a constant, even the protagonists’ mere presence would be enough to change the script no matter how uninvolved they tried to be. This was something the Court Wizards knew very well when relying on information from the Storykeeper, but they didn’t expect the changes they were seeing to be this drastic.
“Damnable spirits!” Typhon’s voice bellowed throughout everything that could be seen. “For a thousand years you have fancied yourselves as rulers of this world but now your arrogance comes to an end for I, Typhon, shall put you back to your place!”
Just from those words alone, Owen could see where this was going. One would figure villain monologues to be a fictional thing, but many a fiction came from the Storykeeper who got it from watching worlds. And much like that chubby noble from Kaomagi, Owen could tell the dragon was about to make a narcissistic rant trying so hard to justify himself as being in the right while sounding insane to everyone else like so many others who will come out of nowhere on the internet for the next few years. Ronald was doing his best to make sure that didn’t happen at the turn of the next decade.
“And we will stop you!” Aqua shouted with a booming voice. “We have defeated you once and we can defeat you again! Your curses have failed!”
“Hahahaha! As if I would use my might for mere useless fodders!” the dragon boasted, whether or not it was to hide his own weakness. “You may have beaten me into a shadow of my former self, but while you were fighting amongst yourselves, I grew stronger than I have ever before!”
“Oh yeah!? Like what!?” Ignis snarked, spewing out flames from his body. “You did some push-ups or something!?”
“Hah! I need not of your peasantry for I have a more refined method!” Typhon declared with a grin on his snake face. “For I merely need to ‘curse’ myself stronger!”
It was another sentence that hammered home how absurd the cursed dragon’s powers were. The ability to warp reality around them even to a limited degree made them the most dangerous beings to encounter if Typhon could just tell himself to be stronger. But that made it more impressive and horrifying how Aqua and the greater spirits managed to beat them.
“If cursed dragons have all of that power, how did you defeat them?” Alicia wondered.
“Well, that is why we needed to have everyone together for the attack. While not numerous, the cursed dragon’s power truly stumped any sophisticated tactics.” Aqua explained. “So, we concluded the only way to defeat them was through brute force, to say the least.”
“So you just charged at them!?” Alicia gasped in disbelief, having an idea what that implied.
“We picked them off one by one, using our sheer numbers to overwhelm them faster than they can curse us all,” Aqua continued. “Many died, but all of us were under the dragons’ tyranny for so long that we kept pushing until all of them were dead.”
He didn’t do that in the otome game. Why here? (William)
…I think it might have something to do with the great sea I erected. (Aqua)
Yes… After seeing your true power, it would be natural for him to realize he needed to work much harder to take you all down. (Ronald)
True, part of how we defeated the dragons was how they kept underestimating us, so they did not fight fully with their curses until it was too late. (Aqua)
This was bad. The otome game depicted the fight against Typhon to be a hard-fought battle as he kept cursing the party and otome Maria had to constantly undo those curses. Even so, it was still a fight where the dragon was backed into a corner, a desperate last stand after his plan to flood the world with cursed spirits failed. But here, it appeared Typhon realized he couldn’t underestimate his opponent again after seeing just how powerful Aqua was compared to when she was a fae. While still carrying out his cursed spirits plan, he also didn’t put all of his eggs in one basket and made himself stronger too.
“Now, allow me to show you my power!” Typhon bellowed with the biggest grin imaginable. “I, Typhon, curse you madness spirits!”
WHOOOOOM
A wretched, purple aura emanated from the serpentine dragon. It pulsated and expanded like a dome, looking absolutely unavoidable. In fact, it happened so fast that it created a minor shockwave that blew away leaves, parchment, and anything small not pinned to the ground. It happened so fast that the rebel army had no time to react as the curse came crashing like a wave.
URK-GRRAAAHHH
NGU-GRROOOAAAHHH
AHH-GRAAAAHHHH
The effects were immediate as the younger spirits around them began convulsing and screaming incoherently. Like blinking lightbulbs holding on to the last of their lives, the water spirits flashed blue and purple struggling in futility against the dragon’s curse. The humans and the rest of the more powerful spirits had a front-row seat just how Typhon was able to curse spirits to do his bidding as the newly minted cursed spirits howled in pain.
“A-Aaaaaah!”
“Spirits save us!”
The ranks fell into disarray as soldiers and spirits panicked as the cursed spirits started tearing into their ranks in a berserker fury. In pandemonium, Owen could see his father trying to calm his men down to no avail as they scattered about, flailing their weapons to swat off cursed spirits coming for them. The greater spirits were in a similar situation as the higher ranking spirits unaffected by Typhon’s curse were also panicking, casting spirit arts left and right.
“Ggh!” Owen grunted as he tried not to get squished by the rebel soldiers running amok. Slipping through the crowd, there was one person he needed to find in his mind more than anything.
Pushing himself forward, Owen slipped through the crack to find Alicia pacing her head left and right looking at all of the cursed spirits, preparing to purify them. “Alicia!” Owen called for her, reaching out his hand to her instinctively…
FWOOOOOM
PIERCE
…just as a purple beam plunged through her chest.
Voice: …Wha-
Azhure: She’ll live alright, Voice?
Azhure: So, what do you all think of this part? Is it good? Are there any problems with it? Any reviews or feedback is appreciated as long as they’re not plain insults meant to blow off your stress.
Voice: Don’t do that to people! Not even on the internet!
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