All The Skills

In the moment of clarity between when Arthur left Laird's back and right before he landed on the enemy orange, he experienced a moment of harsh clarity: Am I insane?

Then in the next moment, he struck with a force that knocked his air from his lungs. He didn't have time to recover from that before he started to slide down the chainmail armor. It was well made, buttery soft, and without any easy seams or gaps for him to grip onto.

Arthur focused on his Nice Shot card.

With a will of mana, he made the chain rivets stick to the arms of his outer jacket, his sleeves, and the fabric covering his knees.

His slide off the side of the dragon halted, and he was able to take a proper breath to refill his lungs. But he was still in trouble. The wind whipped around him like a hurricane -- a combination of their forward movement and the turbulence from many frantically beating dragon wings.

Most importantly, the orange hadn't failed to notice him.

He whipped his head around, his eyes the exact color of his scales – wide and staring... and yet oddly blank. There was no light inside. Nobody home.

When he opened his mouth, he screamed a sound that was half a melody. He was within the Mind Singer's clutches. He might even be alerting the Mind Singer to Arthur's presence right now for all he knew.

Meanwhile, Laird hadn't simply flown away. He continued to harass the orange by beating at his head with his overly large wings. It was an attempt to take the orange's attention off of Arthur. It wasn't entirely working, but the orange hadn't tried to shake him off yet.

Concentrating, Arthur ran a finger down the length of the chainmail rivets, concentrating all his mana on the effort of fine control. The rivets unlinked from one another in a line. Then he repeated the process a foot to the right, capping it off with a line on the top and bottom to complete the strip.

He pulled off the armor in a swath, wrapping it awkwardly around himself. But as the rivets were only a couple inches from his body he was able to make them relink in a thick sash.

Or, what he preferred to think of as: Ammunition.

It only took a few moments, and in that time the orange managed to duck Laird's beating wings and twist around to see what Arthur was up to again. This time something like recognition flashed in his eyes.

And Arthur felt something brush up against his mental skills in a way they hadn't during the fight with the Singer's dragons last night.

It felt like something was probing and being nudged away by his mental blocking skills. It was curious, not angry. Not yet.

Probably because it didn’t know if it was Arthur or not.

Arthur's eyes flicked upward to the portal that was still spitting out dragons fresh to the fight.

But it was more than that, wasn't it? It was also a direct link to the Mind Singer.

Arthur focused on his area of effect mental shield skill.

He wished he was strong enough to bathe the entire sky with it, but his mana vault had taken a hit thanks to grabbing the chainmail. The best he could do was to focus the mental shield around himself, Laird to keep him safe just in case, and extend it over the orange’s head, past his nose.

The effect was immediate. The orange stopped in place so abruptly that Laird overshot the other dragon and had to quickly flap to circle back around.

But the orange wasn't fighting him. He looked around, confused.

"What?" he asked in a surprisingly high voice that was devoid of all melody. "What happened? Where am I? Is there an eruption?" He looked around and down, politely puzzled to see no scourgelings in the sky.

"Mind magic," Arthur gasped, taking the opportunity to rip a second swath of chainmail away. He wrapped this around his waist like a thick belt. "You were under a spell."

The orange's head twisted around to Arthur. He looked aghast at the patchwork his fine chainmail had become.

"Hey, I hope you intend to pay for that..."

"I just snapped you out of having your mind taken over." With a heave, Arthur pulled himself directly up on the dragon's back and stood. Then he pointed downward. "Go take shelter in that hive. You'll be safe there. Don't come back up until the battle's over. She might ensnare you again."

"She?" the orange asked, still seeming bemused. Then he visibly focused. "And who do you think you are to give me orders?"

Above, Laird chuckled darkly. "The Legendary rider of the Mesa Free Hive. Reach out and feel his power for yourself."

Dragons were much better at instantly determining internal card rank than humans.

The orange froze, his eyes going even wider. "Yes, sir," he said and very helpfully stayed still while Arthur jumped back onto Laird.

As soon as Arthur was safely aboard, the orange dragon folded his wings and dived.

Arthur watched carefully, but there was no indication that the Mind Singer had re-ensnared the orange again once he left Arthur's skill zone. It made sense, or else their own dragons would be actively being ensnared. He guessed that she had to be close to initially take over a mind.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

All in all, getting himself his chainmail armor/ammunition had only taken a few spare minutes. That delay had allowed the Free Hive dragons with their new combat cards time to catch up to Laird. Half of them had peeled off to help with the general battle. The other half circled close by, waiting for direction. Most of those had human partners on them -- not linked, but friends or people who were willing to fight and defend the dragon they rode on.

"Follow me!" Laird roared. "To the portal!"

The dragons roared alongside him. Together, they rose in a ragged formation, spells, and elemental long-range attacks firing ahead. Arthur even caught glimpses of conjured arrows.

The enemy dragons clustered closest to where they emerged from the portal. They fell upon the rising defenders eagerly, as if they were hungry.

Gripping Laird's neck with just his legs, Arthur grabbed a swath of chainmail, raised both hands, and started peppering the dragons in front of him with unlinked rivets.

He'd learned from the battles last night and aimed for the dragon's sensitive spots: Their faces, eyes, nostrils, throat, and stomach.

None of it was deadly to them, but it did provide a stinging distraction.

Laird opened his mouth and his deadly candle-top flames spewed forward. These were different from the ones Arthur had seen before -- they cycled from purple to a blazing toxic yellow and back again at random.

The candle-top flames danced merrily ahead and where they brushed other dragons, the flames clung on and didn't seem to want to extinguish. Even when one dragon covered himself with a bubble of water.

The aftermath was... gruesome.

"Hold back if you can, Laird," Arthur said, "These are victims, too. They're under the Mind Singer's spell."

"They're also enemies!" Laird roared, unsympathetic. Then to the other dragons, "Punch through!"

Arthur didn’t have time--and he knew he didn't have the place--to complain. There were more attackers than defenders. After all, dragons fell from the sky on their side just as often as the Singer’s. It took time to become truly proficient with a new card and tease out all the helpful nuances. Even combat cards.

But they were getting close to the portal.

Either the Mind Singer hadn't figured out what their goal was yet, or was distracted by managing so many minds.

Arthur tried to break her hold over enemy dragons as they flew upward past them, but his skill needed at least a few seconds to take effect. Touching them with the area of effect wasn't enough, and it was too much of a mana drain to keep it up. Reluctantly, he focused more on fighting rather than saving.

So, Arthur focused the bulk of his attention in front of them, peppering a path of stinging rivets in front of Laird.

Twice, Arthur caught sight of Ghost -- just a flickering outline out of the corner of his eye that he could never fully focus on.

The other dragon worked as a silent assassin, sneaking up and then physically attacking dragons who were in the middle of setting up complex spells. One time, he interrupted a dragon to great effect. Whatever spell it was weaving with bright strings of mana collapsed and then blew up in its face.

Laird bolted past a yellow dragon who was reflecting pure flashes of pure sunlight into the eyes of the hive's attackers.

Then, briefly, there was a straight shot to the portal.

Two dark green dragons were on either side of the rip in the sky, holding the edges open as if reality itself were heavy fabric. A silver visibly fed mana into it to help them keep up their strength.

"Get me close!" Arthur yelled, but Laird was already powering ahead.

He sent a burst of flames-- a gout of traditional red and orange fire -- straight to the mana-wielding silver.

The silver's rider reacted immediately by casting a semi-translucent shield over himself and his dragon. Laird's flames splashed over the top and the sides. It didn't blast through, but that interruption gave Laird the second he needed to close in.

And once they were within the spell's aura, Arthur was able to copy it.

New Counterfeit Skill Obtained: Mana Springwell (Spell)

Time remaining: 11 hours, 59 Minutes, 59 seconds...

Arthur immediately activated Mana Springwell and slapped Laird on the neck, pumping him with fresh mana. His own Mana Vault benefited as well, steadily climbing upward from a quarter full.

Laird shuttered in relief.

Arthur caught a flicker of movement he couldn't focus on. Ghost was with them.

"Ghost, take out one of the greens--"

The flicker moved and one of the greens screamed as a gash appeared on her side.

Immediately, her rider moved to heal her, but the cut provided a distraction. Something in the depth of the unnerving rip in the sky flickered.

Arthur reached for the two spells he felt from the greens.

Portalus Creatus: 59 minutes, 58 seconds remaining…

Temporal Tatter: 59 minutes, 58 seconds remaining…

He could only temporarily copy the spells, and they wouldn’t be as powerful as if he had the whole cards. But destruction was always easier than creation.

And the dragons were physically holding the rip open.

"Laird! Attack the other green!"

He waited a beat until Laird closed in and jumped off the dragon's back, concentrating all his might and mana on the two portal spells. As he fell, he reached to grab the rip in the sky.

Up close, his eyes didn't want to concentrate on it. He felt himself being pulled in -- in danger of being spit out on the Mind Singer's side.

When using the spell, however, the rip became less of a hole in the sky and more like a very, very dense fabric.

His hand closed around the sky that was like heavy cloth, and the weight of his falling body ripped it out of the surprised green's claws a moment before Laird struck it.

Arthur concentrated on tearing down the spell as he fell, and the rip closed along with him.

The other green shrieked and tried to reach out to regain control, but the construction of a portal was a delicate thing and Arthur had just upset the balance.

He felt with a sense he didn't have a few moments before that emerging dragons were being tossed back out the other side as this end closed off.

As he glanced through the closing portal... he swore he saw a bat-shaped scourgeling glaring through the other side.

Arthur’s head exploded with pain. He wasn't sure if it was rapidly dwindling mana, a mental attack battering his skills.. or both.

As he fell, the rip closed, and the fabric of reality slipped from his fingers.

Arthur kept falling.

But only for a few seconds.

Something slammed into his back as sharp claws gripped his arms. His chainmail tore under the strain, then recombined a few seconds later.

"Laird!" came a familiar boom in Arthur's ear, "Why aren't you taking better care of my rider?"

Arthur jerked to a painful stop. He was... hovering in place.

Brixaby had caught him.

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