His tension reached its peak when two streaks of golden light loomed closer, moving through the jungle. Bushes rustled, as though something large were pushing its way through the leaves, and then trees began to crack.
Two trunks split in either direction as huge, bestial red dragons shoved their way through. Sparks flew from their nostrils, smoke from their crimson scales, and burning ember eyes flared as they twisted serpentine necks from side to side. They scanned the jungle, their perceptions passing over him...without reacting.
Lindon let go of some tension. Shadow madra and pure madra were difficult to detect when veiled, but that only accounted for four members of the group. Yerin and Naru Saeya would have a harder time veiling themselves, but obviously it had worked.
He could almost see the fire aura around the red dragons even without opening his Copper sight, and just their presence ignited some of the sticks and dry leaves beneath their feet. Flames licked their claws, smoke drifting up into the sky.
The others followed next.
The green dragon was a young man who appeared mostly human. His human skin was a brown almost as dark as the pair from Dreadnought City, and green scales ran down his ears and the sides of his neck.
A pair of wooden horns twisted up from his forehead. He wore emerald robes and carried a twisted driftwood staff that matched his horns. His hair flowed like moss down his back.
Two gold dragons came next, and like him, they looked more human than dragon. From their heads hung strings of scales that imitated hair, and the scales that ran down their throats only accented their pale skin. One was a man, the other a woman, but not Sophara.
They carried themselves with no weapons and visible arrogance, thin tails whipping at the underbrush as they walked. They were dressed in rich robes and jewelry, as though to cover themselves in gold to compensate for the scales they'd lost.
The columns of light from their two crowns hung back.
There were five people here. Eithan had said seven. Sophara and her black dragon must’ve hung back, holding on to their two crowns, sending the rest of the team forward to pick up the third.
Lindon tensed. He had no way to signal the others. The first person to move would commit them all to an attack. Should he wait? He was almost as afraid of the black dragon as he was of Sophara—he would be able to withstand Blackflame far more easily than Lindon could, which meant that Lindon had virtually no way to hurt him.
He hadn’t been able to do much research into the black dragon team; there were too many contestants remaining, and some of them were less well-known than others. One of their contestants was listed as ‘Black Dragon Prisoner,’ so he wondered if the black dragons might be forced to fight by the gold dragons. That might be a weakness they could exploit…but it might not. He would still prefer not to fight a black dragon.
Attacking now meant they could weaken the enemy party while the two most frightening members were gone, but Sophara would only have to flee for an hour. Then she could have her revenge on anyone left.
While Lindon debated, the gold dragons passed him, and the choice was taken out of his hands.
A green blast of wind madra caught one of the reds in the body at the same time as a wave of silver sword-madra. Pride was there so quickly it looked like Yerin's Striker technique had carried him, and he slammed a foot down onto the other red's skull.
Neither dragon died. They roared, sending fire madra flooding around them, but a wave of pure madra almost instantly wiped it away.
The attack had taken only an instant, but the other dragons weren’t waiting around. Golden streams of Flowing Flame madra spewed into the woods, washing over the human attackers, just as the green dragon released a pulse of life madra. It felt more like a perception technique than an attack; he was looking to pinpoint them amidst the jungle.
So he was the one who shouted and turned when he felt Lindon behind them.
With the speed and grace of the Soul Cloak, Lindon had dashed behind the two gold dragons. Focused on their Striker techniques, neither reacted quickly enough to stop him.
He used an Empty Palm in each hand. Just for good measure, he added a wisp of soulfire to both techniques.
His hands struck them both in the lower back, and huge blue-white handprints flared at the hit. Pure madra flooded them, disrupting their madra channels, and they staggered forward. The woman whipped her tail at him, but without madra Enforcing it, it didn't have enough force behind it.
She was still an Underlady and a dragon, so she hit like a kicking horse. But Lindon had the Soul Cloak moving through him, and he snatched the tail from the air with his right hand. He hauled on it, pulling her off her feet.
In the meantime, both red dragons flowed away in pulses of white light.
For a few seconds, Lindon was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with both gold dragons. Without his training at the Akura family, he would have had to disengage and run. This time, he held his own, matching their blows without giving ground.
Even without Enforcer techniques, they were almost as strong and fast as he was. But the Soul Cloak made the difference, so he was able to move around them, keeping them in each other's way, preventing them from using their number to their advantage.
Lindon had been most concerned about the green dragon interfering, but he was filled with black arrows. His scales glowed emerald as he focused his life madra on himself, trying to purge himself of Mercy's shadow-venom.
It did no good when Naru Saeya's rainbow sword slashed through his neck.
Eithan strolled up to Lindon's fight, casually slapping the Underlady in the face as he tripped the Underlord. They rolled to the ground, and Mercy had them bound in Strings of Shadow before they could react.
Even so, they began to tear through the madra. Their spirits were coming back under their control...slowly but surely, they would regain their powers from the effect of the Empty Palm.
But Lindon was no longer concerned about them. He stared through the trees at the two retreating pillars of golden light. Sophara was running.
And something else was barreling through the trees at them.
The black dragon obliterated the two trees that the reds had knocked over. Lindon couldn't tell if it was a male or a female; it had a long, snake-like black body, with two huge wings and a pair of massive claws in front. Its eyes were like Orthos'—solid darkness with two fiery rings where its irises should be.
It blew dragon's breath down the forest.
Rather than black-and-red, like Lindon's, this was a solid bar of darkness with a few red sparks here and there. It radiated the power of destruction so strongly that the smaller pieces of debris nearby crumbled to dust and burned away in its passing.
Eithan, of course, reacted first. He held both hands out, and pure madra spun around him, catching the Striker technique as though in a whirlpool. It twisted, spinning back at the dragon.
But the black serpent took his own attack on his scales, ignoring it, and swept its breath from side to side.
This time, it was Lindon's turn.
He dropped his pure core and drew on Blackflame, his eyes heating up as they matched the black dragon's own. The Burning Cloak ignited around him and he leaped forward, driving his white fingertips into dark scales.
His hunger arm began to feed.
Before reinforcing his arm with the Archstone, it had been difficult to draw madra into his cores. The Ancestor's Spear had used scripts to guide madra in that way, and though the binding was capable of the same thing, it had to be carefully controlled.
Since then, Lindon had grown much more familiar with the technique, and it had grown stronger. But he rarely encountered madra that he wanted in his core.
This time, he feasted.
The dragon's madra flowed through his arm and into his channels, surging into his Blackflame core. The energy was wilder than his Path of Black Flame, more primitive and savage, with a heavier emphasis on destruction. It was as though his human madra had diluted it, and this was the primal source. But it was compatible, so he drew as much as he could.