[Ouroboros' End]
Soaring across the green field while staying in the shadows of the forest that towered to his left, Darganth, in a shrunk-down version of his true form, cut through the air with Alicia and Yldra behind him. Flying in a V-Formation, the three of them kept their gaze locked forward as the rest of their group held lookout from where they sat on the three's backs.
In their wake, a torrent of wind gushed out to the sides as their three massive forms cut across the plains, causing the trees to their right to ruffle slightly and the occasional animal below to be pushed around by the current. Naturally, this meant that their movements were easily spotted from everywhere except inside the forest, with fleeing animals and some weaker beasts and monsters alerting the creatures living there further.
But the group didn't care for that. They had a rough picture of where their targets were, so they disregarded everything else as long as it didn't attack or otherwise bother them. Instead, they were moving through the lush surroundings, flying steadily and at a fast pace.
And so far, the trip had been largely uneventful. With Alicia, and to a lesser extent Darganth, slowing Yldra down, they still hadn't made it to the spot Neandra had marked, even after a full day of flying. Though they were slowly getting close, as while Neandra was faster than they were, the gap in speed was only a fraction of the gap in power, something that wasn't just the case for them but among mana users in general.
For one, inside the atmosphere of planets, a beast's larger body was hampered by air resistance. Especially at higher speeds, this drag almost completely negated the size advantage that larger forms had for distance travel. Furthermore, while mana allowed a person to interact and influence reality without the laws of physics as an intermediary, it didn't allow one to fully ignore all of them. As such, accelerating further still became more difficult at higher speeds, creating an effective limit to the speed any non-ascendant mana user can reach. And while she was suppressing her ascendant nature to hide it from the three rulers of Ouroboros' End, Neandra was affected by this limit too.
Still, due to the distance that remained to their targets, they weren't on full alert yet. In the area they were in, anything else simply wasn't warranted, with none of the creatures they could expect to encounter being in the mythic rank. Those who rose to that status meanwhile always migrated into or beyond the forest to their right after some time.
This was also part of the reason why they were currently taking a slightly longer path. Not only would the trees slow down their flight or force them to stay higher up, but they also couldn't just ignore every creature in the forest.
Contrary to that, on their current path, they had no reason to even slow down for anything, with any foolish attackers being quickly dealt with by but a single spell from any one of them.
Even when coming across a small village, this approach did not change. Consisting of primitive huts with no sign of fields or agriculture in general in sight, the settlement that came into view only warranted a brief glance from Darganth. Only slightly raising the altitude as they soared over the crest of one of the surrounding hills, he was already pushing the knowledge of its existence to the back of his mind when he was suddenly met with a burst of fire that shot from the hill he had just flown over.
Not bothering to dodge and instead summoning a magic shield that sent the flames into the spatial realm, Darganth was already rolling his eyes and summoning a fraction of his mana to deal with the interruption when his instincts flared mere moments before his shield shattered. Before he even knew what was happening, he felt an impact against the side of his neck as whatever projectile had been shot at him scraped against his scales before ricocheting off to the side.
While it hadn't done any damage, Darganth's eyes widened in shock. It might not have been the most powerful he could conjure, but the shield hadn't been one that any common weapon could've easily destroyed. Not to mention one that didn't even register to his mana sense before the impact.
"Are you alright?" Hearing Allaire's concerned voice from his back, Darganth briefly nodded in response before turning his full attention to the settlement down below.
Quickly spotting the primitive balista that had shot the bolt at him, he dove toward the town. Catching his descent mere meters above the ground and leveling his flight, he let Jennia, Allaire, and Serania jump off from his back while he himself turned his path toward the open area at the center of the settlement.
Turning toward the center of the village a moment later, his massive frame then came smashing down onto the largest of the huts. Immediately, panicked screams erupted around him as the goblins that inhabited the place backed away in fear. Those unlucky enough to have been inside the building meanwhile didn't dare to move and were forced to stare up at his towering form through the hole in the ceiling where his food had sunk through.
Though none of that truly registered in Darganth's mind as his attention honed in on the three goblins still standing next to the improvised construct that consisted of a tree trunk, a flexible wooden board, and a thick rope. Next to it, over a dozen more examples of the bolt that had shattered his shield were piled up without care, while one of the goblins stood frozen with another one in his arms.
Briefly studying the sight, Darganth then stepped forward a few seconds later. With it, the fear that had rooted the three goblins in place began to run wild, causing the one who was carrying the bolt to throw his arms up and run screaming.
Naturally, this caused the projectile to drop to the ground. Catching the slight cracking of the wood that followed the impact, Darganth's eyes widened. Summoning his mana in anticipation of a violent discharge of the enchantment's stored mana, he braced himself for an explosion, only for it to never happen. Instead, the dropped projectile briefly surged with energy before simply vanishing as if it had never been there.
Looking on in confusion for a moment before cautiously approaching the remaining munitions. His sharp claws might not be optimal for picking up such small objects, at least as long as he didn't shrink himself down far enough to not have to rely on the tips of the fingers on his front legs to grab them, but with enough experience, this problem could be minimized.
And while even the little bit he could retract his claws only helped to keep them from digging into the ground when walking, by carefully controlling his strength and using the reverse aura technique utilized in strength training to blunt his claws, he could at least pick one of the bolts up without breaking it.
But despite these precautions and him not using any spatial aura, the moment he touched the projectile, it too vanished. Only after he then lightly touched yet another one of them with no mana flowing through that finger did Darganth recognize how reactive to the space element these munitions truly were.
This then presented a new problem to him. If his natural connection to the space element was already enough to trigger their enchantments, it seemed likely that Jennia, Alicia, and Yldra also couldn't carry them. And with spatial storage obviously also not being an option, he was more or less out of good options if he wanted to study them later.
As such, after only briefly entertaining the idea of asking Allaire to carry them, Darganth decisively balled his claw into a fist and smashed it down onto the stack of remaining bolts. Feeling the tingling of spatial energy against his scales, he already knew that the projectiles were destroyed before he even lifted his leg and confirmed their absence.
With these munitions taken care of, even if not fully to his satisfaction, Darganth looked up to see whether his wives had finished disarming the rest of the village.
The first thing he spotted were the smoldering craters that were all that remained of the two fortified positions at opposite edges of the village. Not that they had been particularly good ones, even before considering that the outward-angled half-circle of wooden spikes that had formed them wouldn't even have helped against a first rank. Despite that, they held a symbolic value for the goblins of the village by representing their struggle for survival and being a reminder of what they had already endured.
But this symbolism ended with two almost lazy shots from Allaire's bow. Not even moving from where she had landed after dismounting from Darganth's back, she had aimed into the skies and quickly unleashed two arrows, with each of them finding its mark in one of the two primitive fortifications. Charged with aura, they punched multiple meters into the ground before erupting into an explosion that tore up dirt and rock alike, sending both spraying into the surroundings and causing a crater to replace the fortifications in their entirety.
Meanwhile, Serania was floating a few dozen meters above the ground with a small storm crackling around her. Beneath her feet, dark clouds stretched for a few meters, their edges occasionally glowing from the flashes of lightning that erupted out of them. Landing on or near any goblin that still tried to run toward the center of the settlement, Serania's lightning bolts made the goblins understand that Darganth wasn't to be bothered.
Lastly, Jennia was simply sitting on the roof of one of the huts. From her position, she watched as Darganth briefly experimented with the balista bolts before crushing them. Consequently, she was the first to move once he had done so, teleporting onto his shoulder before he even started to unfurl his wings. Moments later, Serania gently hovered down to land by her side, followed by Allaire appearing next to them by dashing toward them in a blur of motion.
With all four of them thus ready to depart again, Darganth then rose back into the skies. Just as quickly as he had arrived, he thus disappeared again, leaving a damaged, but not irreparably so, village in his wake. Its population was meanwhile in a similar state, with goblins not posing enough of a threat for Darganth to care now that he had destroyed the bolts.
"What was it?" Serania asked as Darganth rose back into the air.
"Enchanted munition. Sadly, it reacted with spatial magic, so I couldn't take it with me, but it's taken care of." Darganth said.
"We're not going to find out who they got them from?" Jennia asked.
"I doubt they could tell us. You know how short-lived goblins are, and these bolts looked to be at least a couple years old. Besides, if just this tribe has them, then it would be a waste of time, and if they're more widespread, we'll have a better chance of getting answers from longer-lived species.
And I strongly suspect it to be the second possibility. If so, we likely also just learned what kept their spatial mage away from here, so maybe our targets know something." Darganth said.
Despite saying this, he also agreed with Jennia's curiosity. But while that was the case, catching up to the escaped attackers took priority. That was why he had only spent a minimal time dealing with the goblin tribe, as he didn't want to leave his enemies even more time to escape.
Thus, Darganth rose back into formation with Yldra and Alicia. Sharing what he had just told his wives with them too, their group continued as if nothing had happened, something that they were accustomed to by then due to the multiple times their journey had been interrupted by attacks before.
Though this didn't last long, as only a few minutes later, Darganth's expression suddenly stiffened as his senses picked something up. Slowly, his lips curled up into a smile while the picture he could make of that area became clearer. Before long, his first thoughts were confirmed, prompting him to turn sharply to the right.
Behind him, Alicia and Yldra recognized what this meant. Turning after him with only a moment of delay, they too partially closed their wings before following him into the forest. On their path, every tree that couldn't be avoided by the wildly swerving maneuvers the three flew was burst into splinters as the full mass of a draconic body crashed into it.
Soon, Yldra also found the trail Darganth had spotted moments earlier. Narrowing her eyes and letting out a low roar of excitement, she briefly turned her head to lock eyes with Venrie. Having already risen from where she had sat on the former's back, the elven woman was already readying herself for the coming fight as the two locked eyes and nodded in unison.
"Get ready everyone." Darganth said at the same time, prompting all of them to hide their mana signatures as much as possible. Not even five seconds later, glimpses of a clearing appeared between the trees, with campfires visible in it despite the light of universes illuminating the forest from above.
With that, Darganth shot upward and past the treetops. Briefly lingering at that height to allow his wives to jump off, he then dove at the smugglers that had escaped him only a day earlier while roaring a battle-cry in draconic.