Jadis fought to take back control of the battlefield. It was crazy how much the situation had shifted from the appearance of just one spell caster. The damned possessed wind mage was making a bigger impact than she’d expected, even accounting for the demon empowering him via possession. Jadis hadn’t made the stupid assumption that just because the caster’s magic was wind based that meant that he would be weak. There was no way a wizard got to level eighty-five by being weak. Besides, Jadis could think of a lot of examples of just how destructive wind could be. She just hadn’t expected to have a literal fucking tornado following her around the battlefield.

Every time Dys rolled or sprinted out of the twister’s grasp, it moved to wrap her back up in its blinding winds. Dys was alone, separated from her other selves. She couldn’t rely on other eyes to see and the mage’s spell was making it near impossible to tell what was going on around her. The snow and dust obscured all vision and bit at her watering eyes while the howling winds made it so she couldn’t hear anything but the loudest booms of Aila and Nora’s spells.

There was one small boon to the cyclone, however. The wizard’s magics were indiscriminate in who they struck. As Dys darted around the battlefield, dragging the tornado along with her, the winds tore at the demons with far more devastating effect than they did against Dys. Determined to do what she could to thin the horde, Dys purposefully crashed through anywhere and everywhere she could figure the biggest clumps of demons were. She’d have to rely on Aila and the others to take out the wind mage, though.

The battle by the hill wasn’t Jadis’ only concern at the moment.

“Fuck my fucking fuck!” Syd screamed as she was whipped around through the air while riding on the face of supremely pissed off ice dragon. “I’m going to fucking throw up!”

The dragon roared in response. Jadis wasn’t sure if the roar was in protest at the idea of her puking all over its face or just her existence in general, but either way it didn’t sound happy.

“Noll!” Jay shouted from the ground below the dragon. “Noll! Is it dead yet!?”

“You’ll know when it’s dead!” the old wolf shouted back, barely audible over the sound of the dragon’s roar and crashing limbs. “Focus on the fight!”

Jay dodged, flying yards to the right as one of dragon’s massive paws swiped at her. Noll was right, she really didn’t have the time to be asking stupid questions. She needed to focus on just staying alive.

The dragon was truly monstrous in power. Despite being big enough to swallow all three of her bodies whole with room spare, the beast moved with incredible speed. There was nothing slow or ponderous about this kaiju. Worse, the ice part of the ice dragon wasn’t just for show. Like its much smaller draconic kin, the ice dragon was exuding a constant aura of extreme cold. The freezing temperature sapped away at her strength while also frosting over her armor, making it more difficult to move the longer she remained in close proximity.

Thanks to her tenuous position, she was really wishing Syd had worn some fuzzy underwear.

Glancing inward to check her status sheet, Jadis saw that her health had dropped by a little more than two hundred points. She’d taken enough damage to kill Eir nearly twice over just by being near the damned dragon. She hadn’t even been hit by the beast yet. Jadis had to remember to thank Jack once the fight was over for warning them about the power of the dragon’s frozen aura. If any of her less-beefy companions had come close to the dragon to fight, they would have been killed before Jadis had time to do anything about it.

Speaking of her companions, Jadis figured the time had come to get at least one more involved.

Rapidly dashing backwards and away from the dragon, Jay rushed towards the tree line with every ounce of speed she had in her. In heartbeats she was back to the point where one of the massive trees had been cut down to trap the dragon. Glancing westward, she could see the fight where her other self was bogged down with the demons and the swirling winds of the possessed mage. For a moment she was tempted to run over there and quickly deal with the wizard and some of the demons, but she resisted the urge. Her Jay and Syd selves needed to get rid of the demon trying to possess the dragon first or everything they were doing would be for nothing.

“We need your extra damage,” Jay said as she slid to a stop next to Bridget. “You ready?”

Blue arcane flames burst to life in Bridget’s lantern as she clutched the weapon in both hands.

“Let’s do it,” she nodded once.

Without another word Jay swept the orc warrior up in one arm and sped back towards the dragon. She could see that it was already starting to shake off the trees pinning it, their bark and wood frosting over and breaking apart into brittle pieces. Jadis hadn’t wanted to risk Bridget’s life in the initial assault since she hadn’t been sure how well it would go or if she would have even been needed, but now she wished she’d carried the woman on her back. They clearly didn’t have long before the dragon would be free, less than a minute by her best guess.

“Noll!” Jay yelled as she neared the side of the dragon. “Catch!”

With a grunt of exertion, Jay leapt twenty feet into the air and hurled Bridget up towards the dragon’s neck.

Bridget streaked through the winter sky like a comet, her blue flame blazing. The dragon, distracted by the Nephilim latched onto its face, failed to notice the burning orcish projectile. Jay watched just long enough to see Noll catch the brave warrior before she turned and sprinted to the right, hammer swinging.

Steel met scales as Jay’s weapon impacted the clawed paw of the frenzied dragon. She heard a crack like a boulder being split and saw that her attack had broken at least one bone in the dragon’s hand, maybe more.

With a screech the dragon’s head snapped down towards its injured paw, jaws filled with spear-long teeth glinting in the dying light. Jay barely managed to dodge out of the way before that colossal maw snapped shut where her upper body had been half a second before.

“Shut up you stupid lizard!” Syd shouted as she punched the side of the dragon’s snout. “We’re trying to help you, D damn it!”

Jay followed up the punch with an upward swing of her war hammer that connected with the dragon’s lower jaw. The beast’s head snapped back, reeling from the blow like a punch-drunk boxer.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Jay noticed a bright flash of blazing light. Taking her eyes off of the dragon’s head for a moment, she saw that Bridget had struck the demon’s shield with her flail, its arcane light causing the demon’s shield to glow. Next to her, Noll began slashing at the shield again, his sword cutting through the magic protection now that the damage had been enhanced by Bridget’s bespelled blow.

A quavering shriek roiled up out of the dragon’s throat as the black blood of the demon began to flow, pouring out from the wounds that Noll was inflicting.

In the same moment, an arcing arrow sped through the air and struck the exposed demon. Kerr’s powerful shot buried the arrow deep into the dark flesh of the demon, so deep that even the fletching disappeared.

“Nice!” Jay shouted in triumph. “It can’t take much—”

Her exhalations were cut short by a bellowing wail that erupted from the dragon. Like a bucking horse, it lifted itself high, tossing the huge trees from its back as it reared up on its hind legs. Its long, sinewy tail whipped out behind it, cracking like a whip as it tore trees to shreds. Its wings spread wide, knocking against the trees hemming it in as it stretched its neck to the skies. All Syd could do was hold on for dear life as the dragon roared in agonizing pain.

Head ringing, she searched for Noll and Bridget. She spotted them hanging off of the dragon’s shoulder, Bridget clutching onto Noll’s leg as he hung with his claws dug into icy scales.

Quickly checking her most recent status sheet notifications, Jadis saw nothing to tell her that the demon trying to possess the dragon was dead. Looking at the still wriggling tentacles confirmed it. Whatever the damage they’d done, it hadn’t been enough. Now it seemed the demon was trying to incite the dragon to some greater action. Or it was trying to take the beast with it.

Icy breath spewed forth from the dragon’s mouth, a torrent of freezing wind and snow that easily overshadowed what the heavens were producing in the moment. The cold rained down around them, the temperature noticeably dropping even though the dragon’s head was pointing away from Jay. Even Dys, a couple of hundred yards away could feel the change.

Then, the dragon fell forward, landing on its front legs. It continued to exhale its deadly ice breath, freezing trees before it as its head lowered.

Jadis couldn’t let that ice breath turn towards the battle to the west. The dragon would freeze everyone and everything, demon and man alike. Her friends were over there. Her lovers. Her loves.

“God fucking damn it!” Syd cried out as Jay did the same, both parts of Jadis acting in tandem.

Rushing forward, Jay slammed her war hammer down on the dragon’s clawed paw, crushing a finger. However, that was only the triggering attack. In the next instant, Syd reared back and slammed her lance down into the top of the dragon’s long muzzle. Her lance pierced the stony scales and crunched through the bone, penetrating all the way through the dragon’s flesh to come out of the top of the beast’s mouth. The raging cold of the dragon’s icy breath flowed back up the lance in an instant, turning it so cold Syd lost all feeling in her hands.

The torrent of dragon breath ceased as the dragon’s head recoiled in pain. In that same moment, two things happened. First, Syd’s lance, frozen to a supernatural degree, shattered like glass. Her numb hands flailing at the sudden and unexpected loss of stability, Syd lost her balance on the dragon’s head. It whipped its neck to the side and she went flying, tumbling through the air with no sense of where she was even going.

The second thing was the dragon’s injured paw lashed out, backhanding Jay before she could dodge out of the way. With a force Jadis had no experience to compare to, Jay hurtled backwards across the clearing. She ricocheted off of several trees, bark and wood flying as her armored body tore through the forest before slamming into a boulder sticking up out of the ground. The boulder was crushed by the impact, stone splinters flying everywhere, but it did stop her momentum.

Jadis barely even had the time to contemplate what had happened to her Jay self before her Syd self crashed into several large tree branches. She was still alive, at least, so Syd clutched at those branches in an effort to stop her fall. One branch was thick and strong enough to support her weight and she found herself dangling upside-down with her legs wrapped around a bough seventy or so feet in the air. Still reeling, Syd twisted around, trying to catch sight of where she had ended up.

As Syd half turned around, her vision was filled with the sight of an immense, scaly head only twenty or so feet away from her. Blood poured out from its open jaws as it focused on her, pure malice filling its red eyes as it regarded the creature that had inflicted so much pain upon it.

“You’re not going to accept that I did that for your own good, are you?” Syd called out weakly.

A hiss like a thousand angry snakes had fused into one filled the air.

“Didn’t think so.”

As the dragon’s head reared back in preparation to strike her, a small flash of movement flitted out of the trees to the left of the colossal beast. As the world seemed to slow down, Syd saw that the small, almost insignificant thing was an arrow. An arrow exactly like the kind that Kerr used. Her eyes tracked the projectile in its flight, following it as is streaked through the open air towards the base of the dragon’s long neck.

There was a brief moment where Syd lost all sight of the arrow, her vision blocked by the dragon’s gaping maw as it closed towards her.

Syd flinched as the dragon’s eyes went blank, nictitating eyelids covering the red orbs. The dragon faltered, its huge toothy snout brushing past her, knocking against the tree she was precariously dangling in. The dragon collapsed, falling to the ground in a rumbling heap that shook the clearing.

The thick branch that Syd had wrapped her legs around bobbed, creaked, then cracked.

“Oh shi—”

Syd’s exclamation was cut off as the bough snapped and she plummeted through the air once more.