Marcus…
He circled around the mountain until he landed directly in front of Malthael, falling to the ground with a crash, the lightning trailing after him causing thunder to crackle in his wake to draw the Archdragon's attention.
It worked as Malthael's head slowly moved towards him and his eyes bored down on him.
Marcus looked up at him and his heart weighed down in his chest in fear. He imagined that when he would be fighting him it would feel like fighting Godzilla which would have been bad enough.
This was way worse.
If he remembered right, Godzilla was over one hundred meters tall but looking at Malthael as he towered over Mt. Lunaris, he was arguably over nine thousand meters tall. Far taller than even Mt. Everest on Terra.
He was even more terrified when he heard the Archdragon's voice speak to him, "Child of Hestia...You have come to challenge me and die?"
Marcus steeled himself as he said, "I've come here to kill you, nothing more, nothing less."
Malthael started making a sound that was awfully similar to laughter before he turned his entire body towards him. He then pulled back his neck and head, arched his back and opened his mouth. He began to breath in so much air that he could feel it being sucked from the entire area.
Marcus knew what was about to happen as he coated his entire body in highly compressed Dragon Glass armor, used his lightning to strengthen his muscles, and increased the gravity around his body significantly to weigh him down as much as possible without crushing him.
The next thing to come out of that Dragon's mouth would be absolutely devastating.
Malthael's massive head lunged towards him as he roared. The sound escaping from his mouth was more earsplitting than thunder and sounded more like a continuous detonation of nuclear warheads. It was so powerful that the entire face of the mountain that Marcus stood on shook and the thick layers of snow packed on its surface was blown away causing an avalanche falling down towards Lunaas.
Although he could not see or even tell it was happening, the effects of Malthael's roar did not end with only the mountain being devastated. Every window in Lunaas shattered and the all the buildings closest to the mountain crumbled from the earthquakes before being buried in the snow that fell towards them. All the dirt within the town's streets were lifted from the ground and blanketed it in a dusty haze.
All of Eleum would hear the terrible sound of Malthael, the Archdragon of the Abyss awakening from his slumber.
In the face of his horrifying roar, Marcus refused to be blown away.
I won't fall! he thought to himself in defiance as the gravity increased around his body to resist the force of the powerful roar.
When Malthael was finished, he looked down at Marcus as if waiting for him to display his strength. Something that could celebrate his status as a genuine threat to his life.
Unfortunately, Marcus was not confident in his lungs to be able to shake the mountain he stood upon like Malthael had done. However, he did remember that when Artemis saw Light Taker in his hands he had seen horror and fear in her eyes. His sword meant something truly important to instill terror into such a powerful goddess.
He simply reached behind him and grabbed hold of the hilt of his sword as he pulled it out of its sheath.
Light Taker's black blade glimmered in the moonlight as he held it in front of him, displaying it to the Archdragon and Malthael's eyes narrowed to look at it before widening slightly in surprise.
He then let loose a hearty laugh as he said, "For any man to wield such a blade, they must be of incredible strength boy. Be sure not to disappoint me."
Without saying another word, Malthael pulled back his arm, raised high above the clouds, to strike him down.
Alta, moments ago...
As the massive dragon towering over the mountain turned to face against whoever was foolish enough to challenge him, Alta stared at Gaiyen, now a Draugr, and the Dragon Wraith that he had to put to rest alone.
He gritted his teeth in anguish as he looked at his friend before he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Lich King, full release!"
His magic works by absorbing heat into his body to decrease the temperature of things around him, he can then also release that thermal energy from his body. He has a water talisman so that he can form ice and a flame talisman to produce fire so he can absorb the heat and then re-release it. He learned early on that by rapidly transferring extreme heat into ice can make steam and make explosions.
Upon hearing him, the dragon wraith lunged forward, extending the blade in its right arm to run him through but Alta formed a sword of ice in his right hand and deflected the strike away before reaching out his left hand towards Gaiyen and focused his magic to the center of his palm. He lowered the temperature of the air so quickly that the drop in air pressure caused a vacuum to form.
Alta himself didn't understand why his magic allowed him to do some of these things but he managed to find out with trial and error over the years. Maybe he could ask Marcus how it works since he said that where he is from things are based more off of science and engineering and a bunch of other complicated bullshit that he didn't understand.
Regardless of his lack of understanding the fundamentals of how his magic operates, he knew enough about how it worked to tear this Dragon Wraith apart.
Gaiyen came flying towards him as he was pulled in by the sudden vacuum and knocked the Dragon Wraith aside and caused it to tumble away. Alta didn't have time to think about how he felt seeing his only friend turned into a Draugr as he stabbed him in the chest with his sword. Before Gaiyen's corpse could react in time he snapped the hilt of his ice sword while he slammed the palm of his left hand and coated the entire front of Gaiyen's body in ice and frost.
He then did something that he learned only recently, to create explosions through the rapid transfer of heat into a cold object. He used the flame talisman to absorb heat into his body while also absorbing all of the surrounding heat that was still in the area, including any heat in Gaiyen's body. As he focused on accumulating all the thermal energy around him into his body, he focused it into his right hand before he struck Gaiyen's frozen corpse.
His body was completely incinerated as the ice rapidly turned from a solid to a gas and the expansion of heat caused it to explode from the inside out.
"I'm sorry Gaiyen, but I refuse to die here," Alta said as he put his friend to rest.
The force from the explosion was so great that it even knocked the Dragon Wraith off its feet as it was priming itself to charge straight at him.
"Now to take care of you," Alta said as he focused his attention back on the Dragon Wraith.
Before he could decide how to kill it he noticed that it was looking up towards the sky.
At Malthael.
Alta dared to turn his head to look as well just as the massive Archdragon pulled back its head before releasing a thunderous roar. The force from it reverberated through the mountain and Alta's ears folded down in fear as he watched the snow fall towards him.
"Nope! Not this time!" he said to himself as he absorbed the heat from the flame talisman and transferred it to the bottom of his feat onto the snow beneath him and used the explosive force to jump high into the air and descend down the mountain.
The moment he landed on the ground, the Dragon Wraith crashed right next to him with both of the blades in its arms extended outwards.
"You're not going to let me get away are you? Fine, bring it on!" Alta shouted defiantly as he brandished two swords of ice. The Dragon Wraith answered the challenge as it charged at him before thrusting its right arm forward.
Alta had noticed that when it had struck him once before when he was surrounded by the Draugr, and once again when it stabbed Gaiyen, both instances were with its right arm.
Did that mean it was right handed or something...?
Deciding to test his theory, Alta dropped the sword in his right hand used it to instead create a vacuum and deflected the incoming strike with the sword in his left towards his right side. It caused it to lose its balance and gave him a clear opening as Alta raised his ice sword above his head and focused the thermal energy in his body. As he brough his sword down on the Dragon Wraith's arm he transferred the heat into the edge so it released the force focused along its blade as he was swinging.
He had never tried releasing heat and cold at the same time in this manner because he was worried it would blow up in his hands and possibly kill him but he was able to control it just fine as it slammed into the Dragon Wraith and buried it into the snow making a small crater around them.
Damn! These bones are hard to cut through! he thought to himself as he failed to cut off its arm. He only managed to leave a small nick in its humerus bone.
The force from his strike managed to cause the blade in its right arm to retract but with the blade in its left arm still extended it slashed at him wildly which he parried away as he released another explosion from the blade's edge.
Alta spun his body around as he gripped his sword with both hands and swung his sword upwards at its chest with another explosive slash. It managed to blow it back only a few feet as it struggled to maintain its footing.
Alta stared at it as it stood firmly in place, unmoving.
It then retracted the blade in its left arm as well before also retracting its claws in both hands and crossed its arms in front of its chest. It clenched its bony fingers into fists and gritted its teeth as if focusing and preparing to launch an attack.
"Oh no...," Alta muttered as he took a step back.
The Dragon Wraith let out a horrifying roar of its own and black blood began seeping from its chest and drenching its ribs and spreading to the rest of its scorched and blackened bones. The blood began to solidify and clot as it started to form into what looked like flower stems with thorns protruding from them.
It then swung both of its arms outwards and extended the claws and blades in both of its arms before its entire body set itself ablaze with black flames. The energy coming off of it was ten times stronger than it was before and he could tell that it was going to be much much harder to kill now than it was before.
"You're starting to become a major pain in my ass," Alta said in annoyance.