The Gamer Chapter 1532 – Cities once Burned [Nathalia POV] (Patreon)

“Orkos of the Azure Tribe,” Romulus announced, then after a short delay, “Nathalia of Fusion!”

It remained strange, to the Fire of Destruction, to be named belonging to an organization. The strangeness swiftly faded, however, when she stepped forwards from the abundant food and crossed eyes with John. Her mate had a twinkle of worry in his eyes. “Be careful. There’s something off about this one.”

Nathalia blew air out of her nose. “I am a high dragon, I will not be stopped by someone that is ‘off’,” she declared.

Eager to prove as much, the dragoness manifested her wings. A splinter of her true form, as ready to break out of this vessel she poured herself into as any part of her might. A black skeleton of volcanic glass drew supernaturally viscous and firm magma between them. The glowing, molten rock stretched into a thin membrane, catching the air. It mixed with the innate magic of her existence to give her the might to resist the uncanny yoke of gravity.

In one boosted leap, she crossed the entire distance to the heart of the arena. Where she landed, her presence melted the sand. A spiderweb pattern of blackened glass and a circle of ash spread around her. Signs of wherever she went – diminished into humanoid form or not.

“Your fight will transpire in a metal cave,” Romulus announced.

“When will Luna succeed in getting these absurd tournament habits out of you?” Nathalia received no answer at first, but her opponent approached only with a lumbering gait. The entity, Orkos, moved every bit as slowly as the geriatric appearance would imply. Rust scattered like age spots, his black-and-white mana beard was unkempt and shifting like a lion’s mane soaked in sugar water exposed to strong wings. Even his eyes were unspeaking.

In the prolonged wait, Romulus responded, “You should start to realize that there are habits you allow your beloved to keep.”

“Hm,” Nathalia only hummed in a neutral tone. “I hope you do not mind cleaning up metal slag.”

“I do not. Keep in mind, however, that your true form cannot be contained by our barriers. You should take appropriate measures.”

“Do I ever.” Nathalia rolled her eyes. “Ever so cumbersome that you humans cannot erect proper places for me to stretch my limbs.”

Romulus shook his head and let out a rumbling sigh. “Still incapable of adapting?”

“I am perfectly capable of adapting, there simply is no reason to bend to comfort of mor-“

“Nnnnathaaaaliaaaaaaaa.”

The dragoness swiped instinctively at the geriatric man suddenly right beside her. As quickly as he had appeared there, Orkos disappeared again. The magus step brought him back several metres. For one moment he stood tall, proud, and dominant, his eyes crackling with multi-coloured fury with such intensity, Nathalia felt something she hated.

A shudder down her spine.

Orkos blinked and he was gone again. Gone, not in the sense that he teleported, but in that the crackling eyes were replaced with dim confusion. “W-where…?” he stammered and looked around. He got stuck on Nathalia for a second, then looked to Romulus for guidance. “Where am I…?”

“The Great Coliseum of the Eternal City,” Romulus responded patiently. The tone was patience, unsurprised. He must have been clued into whatever the difficulty with Orkos was. “You are here to fight.”

“Why… why, yes… of course…” the geriatric arcane elemental mumbled and stumbled towards the teleporter.

‘Perhaps my mate was right,’ Nathalia thought, as she followed him up to the teleporter. ‘Perhaps this will require… adaptation…’ She shuddered again, this time out of disgust for the idea in her head. ‘This is unworthy of a dragon.’

The teleporter took her to the cave. It was, as described, made largely from metals. Raw and refined, the various metals extended from the walls as nodes, veins, and chunks. For the most part, what was layered between the veins of metal were different metals, but here and there stone still stuck out of it all.

Nathalia’s connection to the guts of the Earth was as innate as her Faith would imply. With every step she took towards the designated spot, she could feel the caverns sing. They extended far above and far below, winding and twisting, their shape as natural as conscious design allowed.

Not even Romulus had enough wealth to cover a biome of this size in metals worthy of the combatants within it. Iron and copper dominated, rarer and magical earths interspersed irregularly. Creating this cavern must have been an incredible effort. Nathalia found herself humming with mild delight. At least someone had created a space worthy of the occasion of her getting her claws dirty – even if she and Orkos would pull this place apart like it was made from sandpaper.

Nathalia stood on the designated spot, a pronounced circle of Elementium, and waited. She would have stared at her dementia-ridden enemy, had he been in sight. It appeared, this time, that her enemy had been teleported to elsewhere in the cavern. It was of no consequence. ‘Matter of fact, it is to my advantage.’ The dragoness grinned.

A loud gong rang throughout the cave and Nathalia began a leisurely stroll. She could just tap her heel and begin the swift and inevitable process of melting this entire place into an incandescent ocean. Oh, how wonderful and homey that would be.

However, it would also rob her of the element of surprise. There was no need to be swift about this. She could melt it all at her leisure.

Nathalia strutted confidently down the winding paths of the cavern system. Her steps did not echo, because she willed the metal not to vibrate. The fruits of the earth were within her domain, less so while solid, but still.

In this expansive cave system, she could walk with her eyes closed and still be more perceptive than practically all of humanity. Extending a hand, she let her claws scratch over the nearby walls. Iron, copper, and the variety of other, magical metals, all gave way without a notable resistance. There was one, no doubt about it, but the scales that clad Nathalia’s alluring form outdid them all in hardness and this was doubly true for the specialized obsidian of her claws.

Quiet in her approach, she heard Orkos long before he did her.

“W-where… a fight… was that it?” the creature mumbled. He would have been ancient to many, but even by the most gracious of estimates, he was only about half of Nathalia’s age. Not a youngling by any capacity. They both were in the realm where the number of years hardly had any meaning. All that mattered was what was done with those years.

‘I don’t think he has gathered much worthwhile experience over the years, stuck as sand,’ Nathalia told herself with a grin, that turned sour when an intrusive thought occurred. ‘Have I?’

The annoying doubt was pushed away with all the force she could muster. Not a lot, it turned out. It remained tingling around the edge of her consciousness. It would go away soon enough, once she filled her consciousness with the pleasure of combat and would remain gone when she used even greater delights to fill the space it occupied after her victory.

Nathalia stopped, hidden behind a wall of metal-made dripstones. Between the gaps, she could see Orkos quite well. The man had half unmade his robe, revealing a thin, rusty body, surrounded by the occasional spark. Hunched forwards, he held onto a staff forged from various colours made crystal, and looked around. His gaze wandered right past Nathalia’s hiding place.

“Mhm… maybe…?” Orkos pointed a decrepit finger at a nearby wall.

A blast ray blew a metre-deep crater into the wall, turning the chunks that had occupied the space into shrapnel. A piece struck Orkos himself in the shoulder, turning his back to Nathalia.

There hardly was a better time to strike.

Nathalia rushed out, claws extending just a little bit more, reaching a length of half the fingers they were attached to. The five blades slammed into Orkos and came to a sudden, sparking halt. Her hand was blown back; the geriatric man was left entirely unfazed.

‘Particle skin,’ Nathalia identified immediately. Not the mana barriers shaped into scales that Liakan had used – the genuine deal.

Orkos turned to Nathalia, hatred burning in his wide-awake eyes. “YOU!” he thundered, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Do you remember Atlatan, Fire of Destruction?!”

“I do not,” Nathalia growled. She had meant to make it sound mocking, but it just came out neutral, aggressive due to circumstances. Her confusion was her own tone, which she shoved right over to her doubts.

“Of course, you wouldn’t, creature,” Orkos mumbled, his tone once again causing an unpleasant, cold sensation to run down the dragoness’ spine.

Silver mana gathered in a swift swirl in Orkos’ hand, growing into a sphere of half-pointed, crystal energy. Nathalia had seen arc lances many times, from John and many casters before him, but never one that charged this fast. A sudden burst of speed allowed the disorderly old man to point the charging attack right at her face.

It changed colour to red.

Nathalia’s wings and tail burst out of her back in a hurried manifestation of spattering magma. Red, hot and angry, the molten rock hissed as it scattered through the air. The many-ridged tail attempted to swat the aiming hand away before the man of metal and sand could complete his attack. The particle skin flared, making her attack bounce off without a single sign of progress made. Nathalia raised her hands in a cross guard. Scales thickened.

Then cracked.

The red arc lance slammed into Nathalia’s arms with enough force to pulverize the outer layers of scales and break even the bones in her forearms. If black arcane was the most refined way to deal damage using arcane spells, then red was the most brutish variant. Raw kinetic force, absent of all the typical secondary effects of arcane impacts, such as arcane fire and lightning, thrust Nathalia back.

The bones melted back together. Fresh scales emerged from the layer of lava that covered her epidermis. The true might under this vessel’s skin broke out a little more, causing her teeth to sharpen and her eyes to glow incandescently.

Nathalia sunk her hand into a nearby wall. Solid in one moment, liquid in the next, the metal reshaped according to her will, turning into a tide of superheated slag. Orkos circled his wrist, drawing a circle of silver that rapidly turned white. A wall of arcane energy manifested, swiping aside the metal soup before Nathalia could use it all to cover her attack.

Pointing his staff at her, Orkos’ wrinkled lips twisted into a satisfied smile. A mana chain of the traditional make shot out, striking Nathalia’s wing.

The speed of the projectile surprised the dragoness; her power in turn surprised Orkos. With a beat of her wings, Nathalia leapt, maintaining her speed while shattering the links of the attack. She landed on Orkos, claws clenching around his thin arms. Arcane energies crackled, protesting against her presence. With all her might, Nathalia held on and bellowed proper fire all over her enemy.

Hotter than the hottest dwarven forges, drawing its might from the molten heart of the earth, her destructive flame engulfed Orkos. The cave, first underneath him, then all around, rapidly absorbed part of the heat. The ground turned incandescent and began to depress, while the walls and ceiling turned liquid like melting wax.

Though the particle skin held, the floor did not. They dropped through the bottom of the chamber like two iron balls through a wet paper towel. Halfway submerged, Orkos brought up a red sphere between them.

‘Unstable Arcana,’ Nathalia realized, pushing herself off the mage. The sphere was crushed a moment later. A dozen bursts of arcane energy were unleashed all at once and likely would have cracked much more than her surface, had she not retreated at the final moment. Still, the kinetic energy blew her back.

Twisting mid-flight, she grabbed a waterfall of liquid metals and twisted them around her like an incandescent cocoon. The calming red glow enveloped her, but nothing ever came that she needed shielding from. Nathalia kept up the defences for a little while, then peered out carefully.

Orkos had stopped moving. “Hm? Singed? Singed, where are you, my boy?” The old man’s body language was completely different now. From the confident wielder of previously unseen arcane colour-changes to a cowering, afraid man that carefully tapped forwards on his staff. His voice slipped further and further up in pitch, until he used that particular, creepy tone of the truly demented – ragged from age and naïve from the removed life experience. “Mom… mom, where are you? Everything… everything is… burning… I’m… I’m…”

‘Atlatan…’ Nathalia tried to remember, the sorry sight of the powerful man before her spurring on a spark of something she was not at all used to. A pit in her stomach opened up and she did not know why.

What she did know was that she had to win. Everything else was secondary. A dragon would not be the first to lose on her side, nor would she ever lose!

The element of surprise was long gone and with it her patience to keep this place standing. Nathalia turned her magic outwards. Metal that had just begun to cool began to heat up again, then melted quicker than ever before. Orkos let out one more miserable whimper, before collapsing to his knees.

Air was slowly pushed out of the collapsing cave, venting through what gaps to the surface either existed or were made by the rapid shift in internal pressure. The cave system sank in on itself, thousands of tonnes of metal slouching down like any other viscous fluid.

Before long, Nathalia swam in an ocean of her liking. Her senses could pierce the all-encompassing radiance of heat and light, spying Orkos’ form. A shape of white, the particle skin taxed on all sides, the old man was an arcane sun in this sea of slag. Eventually, his mana would have to expire. If the heat did not make sure of it, then the pressure with which the volcano goddess held him in her supernatural grasp would.

Then, suddenly, change.

The white mana burst outwards in a perfect sphere, blasting back and lifting all that surrounded Orkos. Even through the vacuum that the displacing magical energy created, words echoed clearly, “Let them witness one more time, the fruits of my labour, this arcane dreadnought!”

For a flash, the bubble of arcane expanded into a pillar. It blew a corridor straight to the surface, through which Orkos suddenly escaped. Growling within her pocket of molten metal, Nathalia gave chase. She swam. She flew. She grew. She became obsidian and magma, where she had simulated bones and blood, and cast off the pleasures of the flesh. Now was the time to wield only destruction.

Even scaled down, she emerged a hundred times the size of the man that now hovered above the landscape. They were at the centre of the barrier. All this had been extensive metal caves and caverns to begin with, hundreds of entrances spread around like the holes of a sponge in a setting as wavy as the edges of the Eurasian steppes.

All of that was gradually melting, collapsing towards the molten lake at the centre of it all, spreading its influence fuelled by the dragoness that rose from it all, staring at Orkos.

All that was left of the previously geriatric creature was the rough shape of his build. His decrepit limbs were covered in muscles of glowing sands, their surfaces often glistening in azure on a silvery white. The age spots on his face had disappeared, giving way to a wrinkled but solemn elder, one of the kind mortals tended to venerate. His beard, still of black and white, was of mana so solid it flickered in the heated gusts rising from Nathalia’s form. Still, it would have reached all the way to his navel. The red robe now only sat around his waist

His eyes were prismatic, swimming in a sea of purple. “Atlatan,” he declared, his voice now firm and wide awake. “A village of a hundred souls, happy and content for many years, until you burned it to the ground. To this day, I wonder why, Fire of Destruction? WHY?!”

Nathalia dragged the last of her molten body out of the ocean and then growled the answer she had come to. An answer that she would not have minded giving not too long ago, but now… now she delivered it in a tone of voice she thought herself above. “I… do not remember,” she said in remorse.

Orkos grimly raised his hand.