Inexorable Chaos - Chapter 274: 146 Gaw: Fire, Ice, and Earth.

Calidi growls as she weaves through the onslaught of highly pressurized water while doing her best to keep herself between Oceanus and the lake. Were the Titan to get its tentacles into the water, then all the damage she’s done so far would be moot.

With a spin of her blazing spear, the air temperature spikes, and a tentacle of water boils instantly into steam. Grinning maniacally, she rushes at the elemental’s core. “[Flame Cyclone].”

The air around her body superheats, then ignites into a fiery yellow-green maelstrom and the acrid, sickly sweet smell of burning air fills her nostrils. With a thought, her domain increases the heat around her even more and the flaming aura is shot through with pale blue as the water itself is ripped apart and recombines. The air sizzles, the earth burns, and water tears apart as her body moves towards the titan.

The titan reprises with another onslaught of high pressure water followed by numerous slower tentacles. She tilts right and dodges the jet, then ducks down and around as the pressurized water follows her.

She sees the tentacles closing in, aiming to strike or immobilize her so that the water jet can hit, but as they near, the tentacles boil into a mist.

Taking the opportunity, Calidi holds her spear in both hands and sprouts her wings of flame. She jumps and flaps, flying low to the ground as she expertly weaves around the stream of pressurized water trying to slice her in half.

When she reaches the elemental’s main reservoir, the elemental has positioned its core at the opposite end of its liquid mass. Without slowing down, she couches her glowing spear and aims.

“[Cavaliers Lunge]!”

Her domain flairs with the intensity of a star. With a final flap, she dives into the elemental’s liquid body, steam explodes around her as she cleaves a path. Eventually, the Titan runs out of water between its core and her, and her spear finally finds its mark. The titan attempts to dodge. With its will, it forces the core to swerve out of the way. The core twirls and moves left as Calidi’s spear makes impact, cleaving off one side and sending the rest spinning away.

Grinning at the damage, Calidi spreads her wings and glides up. She stops midair, hovers, and then looks down. Oceanus still lives, but a mortal wound has been dealt. The core leaks mana, and with that mana, pieces of the core flake away. Few elementals can recover when a quarter of its core is removed.

Then, her grin fades as Oceanus glows brighter and more powerful even though the core continues leaking. Then she feels it- a Pulse.

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Siberia twirls her arm and strengthens her domain. The air cools further and wraps her in mist, her hair glistens with hoar. At her behest, mist freezes around her into hundreds of icy spears. She hurls the fusillade of ice at the Titan of Flame.

Hyperion shrewdly does not try to take the spears directly with its body, instead, it casts explosive flame magic to divert her attacks. Though powerful, even Hyperion’s flame is not hot enough to instantly melt her domain-enhanced ice.

Regardless, her onslaught was fruitless. All she’s done is force a stalemate, which, while it has protected the city, is ultimately not decisive. Elementals draw their mana from another plane to fuel their activity. Normally, prolonged magic combat will exhaust them, but it seems a Titan’s regeneration is at another level.

“Sustained combat is ineffective.” she whispers with a cold breath.

She changes her plan and decides to tap the full force of her class. The [Cryoform Sovereign] spreads her arms and stretches her domain as far as she can. All around her, the air turns violent as hot and cold mix in tumult. A storm of ice and thunder rages in the sky above Coeus and threatens to disrupt the weather.

“[Ice-form Creation: Elder Cryo Dragon]”

Her mana spikes further as she activates her signature spell- the one she gained when she hit her third tier class.

From the blizzard around her, a long serpentine form, huge as Hyperion, crystalizes out of the ice. The head forms first, an elegant, reptilian snout with jagged horns as intricate as snowflakes. Then coalesces a long, slender body held aloft by six mighty wings. More ice condenses into four clawed hands and an armor of glacier-blue scales..

Syberia lands on her creation’s head- right between the horns. With a thought, the Elder Cryo Dragon roars, flaps its wings, and rushes towards Hyperion.

The titan, sensing the mass of ice, begins a counterattack. Its mana flares violently, creating a mass of heat in-between itself and the incoming threat. The heat condenses into a molten red orb. The Titan continues funneling mana into it, turning the orb yellow, then white, until it finally gains a bluish hue and a Luminosity brighter than the titan itself. With a pulse of its core, an inferno fires from the orb- a beam of potent heat that sets the sky aflame.

The Elder Cryo Dragon rears back and spreads its wings. The dragon glows blue as it pulls mana from Siberia. It opens its mouth and unleashes a torrent of blue-white light and mana.

“[Absolute-Zero]”

The ray fired from the Dragon meets the stream of plasma. The antitheses battle, consuming and countering one-another as the dragon closes with the titan. At first, the heated plasma ignores the incoming ray, but as it gets closer, Siberia’s domain takes hold. The plasma slows, then stops, its progress checked by the dragon’s ray. The stream’s front disperses harmlessly as cool wisps of air.

With the attacks now equal, the two beams of energy cancel each other out. In what looks like panic, the Titan’s mana flares. The orb of potent flame presses toward the dragon while continuing its stream of energy.

Fire meets ice. A fiery explosion shakes the firmament. The battlefield falls silent as friend and foe wait for the steam shrouded sky to clear.

From out the fog flies a dragon rampant. The winged monster is damaged. Half its scales are melted, a foot is lost, and two of its wings were severed from the impact, but on it soars, undaunted, piloted by the [Mage] ensconced in the center of its body.

Hyperion tries to deflect and dodge by firing a stream of flame near its core, but it is already too late. With Siberia close by, her domain smothers the Titan, weakening the flame enough that the dragon’s claw catches at the core and gouges a chunk out of it.

Hyperion’s core, essence leaking, falls from the sky.

Siberia hovers her dragon and funnels her dwindling mana into it, healing wounds that would have been fatal to a living being. As she prepares to finish the job, she feels a Pulse from the falling core.

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“The Bulwark is annoyed,” Darius pouts as he once again pummels Lapetus’ body into dirt, only for the elemental to once again reform.

“The Bulwark requests the location of your core.” he asks, but, as expected, gets no answer.

The elemental reforms and strikes at him, but the Bulwark blocks it easily by weakening the elemental with its domain. Truly, out of everyone in the battlefield, Darius is the perfect counter to the titan. With his domain, he can easily reduce Lapetus attacks to loose dirt and dust, while making his own body immune to anything the titan can dish out.

The Elementals arm crashes against Darius, breaking easily on impact against his [Elder Elemental]’s body reinforced by his domain to be as sturdy as steel.

Just as he pummels the titans body again, a beam of violet energy streaks by his head and strikes the ground underneath the elemental which creates an explosion that does nothing to assist him.

Even as the elemental reforms, another beam flashes past him, striking right under the elemental again.

He takes a moment to turn and glare at Gunwidow on the wall.

“Lady Widow, though the Bulwark thanks you for attempted assistance, it would be far more helpful if you’d fix your aim.” he says respectfully.

The barrel of the gun moves and re-aims. The barrel charges and releases a stream of violet energy that perfectly bores through Darius’s elemental chest, passes his own head by a centimeter, and then travels the rest of the way through the Titan of Earth.

Darius gulps at the smell of molten rock near his head. With a spark of mana, the small hole closes.

The barrel moves again, blasting directly underneath the Titan.

He stares again at the sizzling earth and then realizes…

“The Bulwark is an Idiot.”

Spreading his domain further below ground, his senses quickly locate Lapetus’ Core ten meters below.

Dodging the re-reformed elemental, Darius quickly destroys it again with an onslaught of punches. As the titans body crumbles, he releases his domain and strengthens the earth under, above, and around the core in a ten meter radius. Wth the earth hardened, he kneels down, grabs the hardened earth, and then lifts a four thousand (one hundred and eighty-seven) cubic meters of rubble out of the ground. Not to be outdone, Lapetus enforces its will on the mound of earth and form it into an elemental body twice the height of Camelot’s walls.

With such size and mass, Darius is forced to dodge the incoming fist that is directly strengthened by the titan’s core. With its core in its body, the titan also moves faster and more fluidly than before.

“The Bulwark does not find this fair.” he glowers at the towering monstrosity. No longer does he believe he will be able to destroy the elemental, not when it is so large. He needs a better plan.

Thankfully, a plan presents itself when a constant stream of violet energy burrows into Lapetus’ chest. The beam zig-zags across the torso in seemingly random directions, but considering Widow’s exceptional aim, the Bulwark would bet they’re not random.

Grinning wildly, Darius releases a storm of his mana under his feet.

“[Accelerate Casting], [Earth Spire]”

A pillar of earth erupts from under The Bulwark’s feet and sends him flying at the titan.

As he flies through the air, his eyes follow the beam of energy. The titan, seeing Darius rushing at it, swings a fist to swat him out of the sky, but Darius only grins. With an effort of will, he breaks off a chunk of his golem’s body and kicks it away to dodge the fist. He sacrifices several more chunks to erratic maneuvers and finally makes impact at the exact spot Gunwidow is targeting.

Just before he hits, The Bulwark focuses all of his mana and domain directly in front of himself. His golem slams into Lapetus and sticks, Darius is plunged into just transmuted mud right on top of the titan’s core. Darius punches the core with a hardened fist. A third of it shatters and the rest is knocked out the back of the Titan of Earth’s body.

The damaged, leaking core traces a graceful, gravity mandated parabola over the Aesir army. Darius watches it go with satisfaction till he feels its mana Pulse.