Chapter 353: The Inescapable Calamity

"You seem to be well prepared for a second clash against them, Caesar."

Streams of silver light converged upon Aurelian, a raw torrent of magic that coalesced into radiant blades fanning out behind her argent wings. They rose and fell with her breath, like ribbons of brilliance trailing across the dark.

Caesar grunted in assent. "I did not linger here merely to hide or to recover. The fire-veins below are a comfort to me, yes, but also my weapon."

He sank both talons into the obsidian floor. His blood surged, molten with ancient fury. Power gathered in his core as a blazing corona unfurled behind him.

The fire dragon's essence reached deep into the earth, wrenching forth the last searing dregs of the dying fire-veins and drawing them to the surface.

"I've missed such rapture."

A roar thick with cinders rose from his throat. Flames crackled in the seams of his scales, sparks hissing into the air. The cavern swelled with heat as the torrent of fire mana surged upward, rushing into his body like a long-lost tide.

Beyond the volcano, stormclouds churned. Lightning carved the sky as a vast vortex opened. A host of cultists astride winged drakes poured forth, their cries mingling with the thunder.

The ground itself quaked as a monstrosity descended out of the storm: a titanic drake. Though it bore echoes of a dragon, its swollen bulk made it resemble a gargantuan lizard, its flesh bloated with grotesque strength, muscle and fat knotted together in abundance.

Its colossal limbs crashed down like hammers upon the land. The impacts split stone, sent shockwaves through the depths, and rained down rock into the cavern where the two dragons waited. The walls groaned as if they were about to collapse.

"This is where the dragon Caesar hides," a voice intoned above the storm. "The power the Archbishop sealed within him has awakened. This is proof that another dragon has joined him! Only then would this portal from Heaven activate. Let us take this opportunity to acquire a blessing for ourselves!"

The words came from a black-robed commander astride a greater drake, its body closer to dragonkind than its lesser kin. By his side hovered a half-draconian warrior, his leathery wings beating to keep him aloft, slit-pupiled eyes burning with zeal.

"Indeed," the half-draconian replied, his gaze locked on the ground. "I am here to claim my ascension by striking down Caesar himself. If you aid me, when I ascend, you shall not go unrewarded."

A nimbus of strange power flickered around him—the unmistakable touch of Its hand. Though they had been told that this power came from Heaven, none truly knew just what "Heaven" meant.

"Caesar is strength incarnate," the black-robed leader said coolly. "Only Heaven's power can end him. If we falter, we will all perish here. I will commit all my power to bind him. You must deliver Heaven's judgment."

Given that their target was the redoubtable Caesar and that an unknown dragon was present, they couldn't afford to take things lightly.

Even as he spoke, his comrade stiffened. The half-draconian's eyes contracted sharply. "He's here! Prepare yourself!"

A thunderclap split the mountain. From beneath the hulking drake pounding on the ground erupted a streak of crimson fire. Caesar burst forth, wreathed in incandescent flame. His charge drove the drake skyward, his horns and shoulders slamming into its swollen belly with irresistible force.

The creature shrieked with a hideous keen. Yellow ichor cascaded from its pores, thick as tar. The fluid was highly flame-resistant, with chunks of anti-magic obsidian fragments lodged within it.

The drake had been specifically engineered to counter magical dragons. Like a torrential waterfall, its ichor poured down upon Caesar.

Unfortunately for the cultists, their opponent wasn't any ordinary dragon.

There was no light, no flames—only sound, shock, and the shimmering heat of a fearsome explosion all around Caesar. The air itself had detonated around him. The falling ichor was vaporized into a haze of ash before it could touch his scales, sublimated in the invisible furnace cloaking him.

The force of the explosion ripped through the drake. Its bloated hide split, its organs shredded and its bones turned to powder. The abomination had been annihilated in an instant via a single strike.

It vomited out a gout of blood and torn flesh, then collapsed lifelessly onto the ground. Yet even in death, its purpose endured.

Above, the cultists raised their hands. From their palms flared sickly violet light that struck the drake's carcass.

Like maggots in carrion, the energy burrowed into its ruined flesh, devouring what power remained and transforming into chains of purple-gray light that attempted to snare Caesar.

But Caesar had been prepared. Fire flared skyward, a sunstorm igniting the carcass before the chains could fully form. The drake's body was reduced to ash.

Caesar's senses stirred. His fire was his flesh, his sight. Through it he perceived a core of condensed power, concealed within the drake's shell.

It was a trap built for this express purpose. When he immolated this drake, it would unleash a hidden doom.

He recoiled at once, wings heaving with torrents of flame. His body tore through the air in a streak of scarlet, the fire bending space itself in his wake.

Behind him, a singularity bloomed in the drake carcass. A colossal phantom hand descended, wrought of a combination of void, magic, and Its power. The hand lunged toward the retreating dragon, fingers outstretched, aiming to shackle and bind Caesar before he could escape.

Caesar's jaws clashed in a spray of scattered sparks. His throat ignited. Fire surged, turning from red to blue, then blue to colorless—into a breath of pure annihilation.

He exhaled continuously around him, devastating the land and turning it into a field of ruin. The unseen blaze engulfed the phantasmal hand, slowing its pursuit as it burned.

Then came the swarm. Winged drakes dove from the heavens. Their cultist riders' eyes were crimson with frenzy. They hurled themselves to their doom, their black robes flaring with violet wards.

The wards weren't for protection. Rather, they were to ensure that, as the cultists fell to their deaths in a kamikaze attack, they would erupt in the "sin" they had generated in life and in death.

Caesar cleaved through them in an instant, his vast body smashing rider and drake alike into charred fragments. Yet each death birthed writhing motes of malignant energy, gathering around him like leaves caught in a gale.

These motes of energy seemed to possess a will of their own. In moments they had coiled about the red dragon's vast frame—not striking directly, but clinging onto him like maggots on bone. Neither searing heat nor blistering speed could shake them off.

The cultists hurled themselves to their deaths without hesitation, a tide of bodies feeding the curse. Each sacrifice thickened the shroud of energy binding Caesar until it reached a critical threshold just as his searing breath reduced the pursuing phantasmal arm to cinders—the threshold required for Heaven's Judgment to descend.

"Upon the dragon wreathed in sins innumerable, by Heaven's decree, let divine wrath fall to cleanse the world!"

The half-draconian, standing at the side of the leading cultist lifted his arms high. Prayers in the draconic tongue spilled from his lips, while Its power roared through his body. From the vortex above, a colossal spear of light wrought from Its essence descended inexorably. Heaven's will gathered, its immeasurable force locked squarely upon Caesar.

Thunder roared. Caesar spread his wings wide, hurling a constellation of fireballs toward the half-draconian, intent on breaking the invocation before Heaven's might could fully be unleashed.

But the cultists continued to pour endlessly forth from the vortex, feeding themselves to the flames. Each was incinerated by the explosions; yet with every death, the "sin" upon Caesar's body multiplied, hastening the descent of the divine spear.

"Caesar's weakening far more quickly than I expected," the cult leader sneered, watching the helpless dragon below. "I thought we'd need to sacrifice a full 70% of our thralls before Judgment could descend—but look at him now. He can't resist. Die, king of flames. Be fodder for our ascension."

From the sky, more and more cultists spilled forth, riding beasts of every kind—drakes, wyverns, even enslaved true dragons. These last did not yet strike, but rather arrayed themselves as a living shield before the half-draconian.

The Caesar of the past might have already released his full power in an incandescent wave of fury, sweeping the swarm of cultists from existence.

But what remained of his strength was a mere echo. The last Heavenly Judgment he had suffered had broken him. Perhaps only one part in a hundred of his original strength remained.

𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Spear of Judgment, descend—"

A single note of steel cut the air. The world seemed to halt. The prayer froze on the half-draconian's lips; the colossal spear stopped in place.

Silver hair billowed in the storm. Aurelian appeared behind the two leaders without the faintest warning. With one flawless sweep of her silver blade, both were erased from existence itself, leaving not a single trace of their presence behind.

Her draconic form unfurled in all her argent majesty. Lances of light burst outward, reducing all foes struck to ash.

"As expected of the chosen of the dragons..."

Caesar's one good eye glimmered as he beheld the silver dragon who had annihilated their foes as if it were nothing.

Then, at long last, he loosed all that he had held back. The earth convulsed. Lava burst skyward, tearing open the mountain's heart. After decades of dormancy, the Dying Crag roared to life once more. Caesar dragged the buried fire-veins into the open, wrenching torrents of molten fury into the sky.

Above his outstretched arms, the lava gathered, fused, and swelled into a sphere so vast it blotted out the sun. And with titanic strength, he hurled it upward at the vortex where the divine spear yet hung stationary, from which endless cultists and their drakes still poured.

The molten lava seethed as if alive, consuming every foe in its reach. And when it reached the vortex above, it detonated—

Flames scoured the heavens.

On that day, the peoples who dwelled near the Dying Crag bore witness to its dread eruption. And as rain of molten fire fell from the heavens, they knew that cataclysm had come...