((Continued from The Search))

It had been so perfect!

She had felt the power in her grasp, felt it fly straight and true.

At the last moment, she had felt another elemental force altered, manipulated. Twice.

Time.

As the assailant - Sha'uri, the one that Cadence had mentioned, she assumes - had ripped time to get out of the way of her own power thrown back at her, and a second time.

Too close. Terrifyingly close.

And then, wrapped in - arms? tentacles?

And now being hauled through time by something.

There was no time to react, no time to think. The trip to wherever it is she is being taken is too fast.

As she feels the trip beginning to end, she blinks, tapping into the power she had felt back at Cadence's little pocket dimension, remembering the vision she had seen as they had been there in the mud bath.

All around her small form, scintillating emerald light begins to suffuse her flesh, consuming her. The stretching, reforming of flesh, growing larger, stronger, more fierce.

As the pair emerge from the time curtain, the woman holding her finds she is not holding a small, young girl, but a fully grown, brilliant emerald green dragon, turning to fight. Its only adornment is a thick silver collar, from which dangles an amulet of stone, jet black gleaming in its center with the same brilliant green light.

((Note from Shauri: Considering the previously agreed upon conditions of this string and its delicate outcome and unknown Location and all ... perhaps this should be a closed string. Anyone wanting to do something with this string needs to clear it with Val first.))

It was her first time being in this form, and even though it was hardly the most ideal of circumstances to try it out in, the feeling was absolutely fantastic.

The sheer power, the sinuous grace, the beauty of it all as not only her body changes but her sight, her hearing, all of her senses are enhanced to nearly orgasmic acuity would be, if not for the circumstances under which it came, completely mind-consuming.

A small part of her mind reflects that if she should survive this, she will definitely have to explore this in much further detail.

If.

That word takes her mind as she sees the one she presumes is Sha'uri change her own shape into something far more glorious by comparison than herself. Even though she is supposed to be fighting the other, even if Sha'uri is supposed to be evil and dangerous, one small part of her can't help but admire the sheer beauty in that form as she takes to the air.

The rest of her, though, rears up and leaps into the air after her with a roar that shakes the very air. This may be her first time as a dragon, true, but it's not her first time being in flight - she'd had her wings longer than she'd had this body, and had been taking lessons in aerial combat from the only other member of the Guardians that had them - Lupinius.

Lagging behind a bit, perhaps, but watching her opponent as she takes a swift turn, she levels out to soar underneath Sha'uri before turning and pounding fiercely with her own wings, arrowing straight up at the other dragon's underside.

((Inspirational Music: 'Burly Brawl' by Juno Reactor and Don Davis))

Inexperience leading to the first blood drawn, and the blow is not hers.

Sha'uri's maneuver works most effectively, flinging the younger dragon up and away, thoughts shoot through her head, faster near than she can follow. The draconic mind seems capable of processing more, faster, than her human mind had been capable of.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to experience this in more...detail, later. If I survive this.

No more thoughts in that direction.

For a moment she feel disoriented, pain dull along her jaws where those steely claws had dug in to get a grip, scalding blood flowing freely. A shake of her head to clear her mind, her vision, and she realizes she's flying backwards and up, sheer momentum defying gravity's effects. Her eyes focus in on a form speeding away her.

Sha'uri...

She can feel the rage and power still in the draconic body, instinct and anger screaming at her to follow, to catch her challenger. Already her wings are snapping outward, catching the air, ready to pump in a powerful thrust of her own, ready to angle her into a dive after her.

"All right, first rule in aerial combat...or in any fight, for that matter. If you ever get into a fight like this and you can tell your opponent has more experience than you, don't play their game. Play yours."

Lupinius' voice, the first thing he had ever taught her.

So fast does the draconic mind move that this processes in a space of time faster than it takes to blink, cooling her rage. Not abating it, oh now - rather turning it to a different purpose, colder, deadlier.

Sharper.

Honed.

Able to see clearly now, her thoughts perfectly in line with what is going to be done, she watches Sha'uri dive away. That draconic rage focuses, sharpens, only this time it won't be any physical action that emotion is turned towards.

The power is there, as strong as before. Stronger, for all the rage, all the magical power in this form.

Reaching out to it, she seizes on the first element that is most prevalent in their surroundings: the air itself.

The rumbling voice that escapes from her, shouted at the other draconic form, is a roar, but understandable as words. "Here's a lesson for you as well!"

The result is nearly catastrophic in proportion.

As Sha'uri is diving away, immediately following her comes a blast of air, as powerful, as huge, as turbulent and almost seeming solid as a wall of winds, as if the gods of the sky had turned a pummeling fist upon the diving dragon, seeking to drive her into the ground.

She watches with no small satisfaction as the winds hammered Sha'uri into a near collision with the ground, her only small twinge of regret coming from the fact that she hadn't actually impacted into the trees. Good to not for next time.

As the other dragon teleports, she feels the alteration in the elements, a subtle thing - the shift of air as it collapses in the place she had been, the expanding of the air not far away revealing where she appears again, just above...

For a moment she is expecting another physical attack, and she flips over in midair, rotating her body so that she is on her back, finding Sha'uri just in time to see the flames roaring in her direction.

She almost laughs at the attempt.

Oh, yes, that's it...play my game with me. Give me more weapons to use against you.

As the flames close in around her, she touches the fire, the elemental force not only gathered but amplified. In moments the molten fire is encasing her in its grip, blazing hotter, becoming more defined as she gathers the energy inherent in the blaze around her.

A final touch, that vital spark of life breathed into the flames...

She tucks her wings and lets herself drop free of the flames, which suddenly coalesce into the form of an angel near as big as a dragon itself, wielding a sword of pure fire. The angel opens its eyes, glaring up at the dragon, with a snarl of pure, holy rage.

The fire elemental wastes no time in surging upwards at its new enemy, the colossal sword in its hands swinging a blow for Sha'uri's midsection.

As the elemental meets its end, Val feels a twinge of regret. Elementals are intelligent beings, doing her bidding gladly. To her, they are a life she has created, and at their death she feels a small part of what she imagines a mother might feel at the passing of a child.

One part grief. Another part anger at the destroyer.

The elements are still at her beck and call, though, and all the more potent for that. As she falls away from the explosion, she can feel the icy blast of arctic cold, the steam that might have cooked her had she not already been moving down with gravity's pull, the shards of ice in the air.

Heat, cold, water. As she sees Sha'uri plunging downwards in a spin, she decides.

Rolling over in mid-air, she snaps her wings open and arches her body into a sharp turn, turning back towards the falling form of the other dragon and flinging herself back towards her. The vaporized water, lingering residual cold and heat mixed in a tumultuous cloud above them is touched at the same moment.

First, the heat, a flaring flash of invisible radiation to melt what ice remains to vapor. And then the water and cold, gathered together, compressed, intensified to form slender, sharp spears of ice as solid as steel.

And, as gravity reclaims them in its inexorable grasp, a final touch. the air itself, once again called on, a wave of it to push the sharpened daggers of icy death in a shotgun blast of glistening arctic shrapnel.

An attack on two fronts - from the front Valeria herself, enraged dragon, from the rear an assault of cryogenic skewers.

She had never thought of pain as something that could galvanize her, could act upon her with anything but panic.

She's discovering new things about this new form every passing moment, it seems. As claws sink into her body, as pain lances through her with it's white-hot flame, she realizes that the sensation doesn't really cause the effect of fear that it might have had she been human in form.

In this draconic body she feels the pain, feels it stab into her mind like needles, but instead of fear and panic, she feels a new, burning sort of rage, fuel added to the already volatile fire.

She can feel that she's lost the fight, lost the advantage. The two-pronged attack she had so hoped would give her the upper hand had, somehow, failed. Somehow, some way, this Sha'uri is behaving as if she already knows what to expect, almost as if she knows Valeria, has come up against her several times before...

She doesn't understand how that can be, but nevertheless she knows it to be true. Somehow, she knows that this woman has gotten to know her very intimately, has planned this all out very carefully.

But there is one thing she might not expect.

Val can feel the grip that the other dragon has on her, can feel the spinning of the out of control flight. Try as she might with tooth and claw, nothing seems to have an effect - she can't push Sha'uri away. Her attacks are ineffectual.

She can feel gravity's inexorable pull once more, reaching up to grasp them with its crushing grip.

Gravity...

Sadness and fear finally make their claim on her. She may yet survive this, she may not, and the only question that remains is how far she is willing to go...how much she will sacrifice.

She sees in her mind keenly all of their faces - Lupinius, Wraith, McCarty, Kaleb. Such good men, such honorable warriors.

Guardians.

And finally Cadence, a kindred spirit of sorts, young and childlike and with a certain sort of innocence. A friend, someone she had grown very attached to in so short a time.

She pushes them all from her mind, a growl rumbling deep in her throat as she gives up her attack and instead gets her own grip, no longer pushing Sha'uri away but instead digging in with long, sharp claws and pulling her in close.

You may be taking me down, you bitch, but I'm bringing you with me.

She reaches out to the crushing grip of gravity, in her mind visualizing a great, terrible, invisible hand reaching up to grab the pair of them in a death grip and pulling down.

And suddenly it feels to her - and would feel to Sha'uri as well - that their combined weight suddenly triples, then quadruples.

Pulling the pair down towards the cleared-out space of broken, spearlike tree stumps and other wreckage where Val's earlier aerial assault on Sha'uri had finally impacted.

Pain.

Her whole world had become pain, so terrible, so brilliant, so all-consuming.

The earlier pain had served to galvanize, to drive her further into action, to enrage the mind embraced by the draconic body.

But as the acid begins to eat into her, it becomes something worse. Burning, dissolving, she can feel her body being consumed by the thick, corrosive liquid.

And yet there is still hope, as gravity pulls, as she feels them accelerate towards a final ending.

The amulet, fastened to her neck by a thick collar of silver, will keep her alive, and the brief touch she had felt from Lupinius earlier let her know that she would be able to - somehow - tell them where she is, to bring them to her.

It's the last though she has before impact - so terrified by the pain is she that she doesn't even feel the roll of their bodies as Sha'uri flips them.

If the burning of the acidic expulsion by the other dragon had been terrible, it was nothing compared to the piercing of her draconic body by the spears of the trunks below. A great, terrible roar of pain and fear erupts from her, a scream of deafening magnitude as she is pinned like a butterfly to a board.

Such is the pain that she cannot even move, only fall limp, skewered in almost a dozen places by the stumps of the trees, her eyes scanning the area around them.

Distantly, as if seen through a long tunnel, she sees the other dragon some distance away, getting to her feet, turning, stalking towards her.

No...no...it's not possible...

Feebly, she tries to move, only to find that she can't. Some vital connection has been severed, and such is the pain she is wracked with that it seems, despite her power, even the elements are beyond her reach.

I'm sorry...Lupinius...Cadence...I have failed...

More pain as the other dragon lands on her, spraying her with more of the viscous acidic liquid is spread over her, and yet somehow she seems more detached. Sha'uri's words are heard but not comprehended as, at last, she surrenders her life.

Part of her wonders if she ever had a chance of keeping it.

As if in response to her question, she feels one final, fleeting touch of the elements - time. Too weak to actually manipulate it, she can nonetheless feel it, can see, at last, what has happened that led to this moment within her mind.

She sees Sha'uri defeated, time and time again, her attacks rebuffed over and over again by a young girl. And with each rebuff the others move in to the attack, overwhelming her with sheer numbers and strength, their combined power too much for the enemy to handle.

That final, fateful time when Sha'uri realized why, realized that the least threatening in appearance was in fact the reason she kept being brought to a standstill, then being pushed back.

And then another vision. This one of the great, dark dragon, rearing up to attack, or maybe to defend, only to see a blaze of brilliant light erupt from the base of her neck, severing through skin and scales as if they were no more than warm butter before a white-hot knife.

By the time the vision is finished, her head is being severed, but even as Sha'uri is delivering the final blow, she is smiling, the vision of brilliant light bright in her mind, a final peace in her eyes, and she manages to speak four final words in a weak, gargling voice even as the world fades to black.

"You...have changed...nothing."

For a long moment, all is still. silent, as if the world had come to a complete standstill and all the sound had been sucked away with it.

A second later, the jet black amulet, still attached to the collar around what remains of the dragon's neck, shows a pinpoint of brilliant, shimmering emerald light, which grows to completely suffuse the emerald dragon's body, until the light explodes completely out from the body and envelopes the entire area, engulfing even Sha'uri for a long moment in blinding, green-white light. A shaft of the light punches up into the sky, seeming to go on forever...

...and a moment later it is gone. All that is left of the Guardian known at Valeria is the shell of her now-human body, minus the head, the amulet at her neck once again the thick, rope-like necklace from which dangles a jet-black stone encased in silver.

No harm brought to Sha'uri, either, save perhaps the dazzling of her eyes.

Three weeks later....


Small feet scurried along the ground, scampering over the rocks. The small furry creature climbed up the pile and stopped at the top to look around. It's brownish red bushy tail twitched as it lifted itself and sniffed the air. Chittering noises escaped it almost inquiringly.

"I got nothing. What you find, Neeko?" The old shaman called to his familiar companion. The two of them always came up after the spring thaw and the water run off had returned to normal. It always flushed new things from old places and this had always been a good area to find the precious rocks. Although they looked like nothing special on the outside, the two of them knew the quirks to look for, tall tell signs of something much more within.

The squirrel twitched its brilliant tail and squeaked some negative reply. Neeko hadn't found anything yet.

"Look sharp, my friend." the old mans voice betrayed his age. This one had seen much in his more then generous human life.

The squirrel chirped and darted down the pile, scampering on to the next one. He seemed to dig gently for a moment before he pulled on one of the geodes, picking it up in his front paws. The squirrel chirped to the old man and then waited for his elder companion to get there. The old man simply put the geode into a pouch and the two continued over the piles of rocks.

It was one such pile, a pile unlike all the rest, that the squirrel had some problems getting to the top. In fact, it was a rather large pile, noticeably more so then the rest. This intrigued him. He darted swiftly up ahead of the old man, leaving him several yards behind.

As he started up the pile, the rounded rocks below his feet shifted easily and rolled almost precariously. He paused to steady himself and the pile. That's when he caught the scent.. a rather tantalizing scent of his favorite nuts. Although he wasn't hungry before, the scent woke up a hunger he'd never felt before. Chirping excitedly, he began digging which swiftly turned rather incessant.

The more he dug, the more he smelled the scent. The more he smelled the scent the deeper his compulsion to dig faster, fully consumed by something within... something that was Sha'uri's little illusion which he'd fallen victim to.

The faster he dug, the faster the geodes rolled down from the top. All too soon, the little one wasn't digging anymore he was trying to stay on top of them, darting along the tops as they began to fall faster and faster from beneath his feet. Soon he was virtually running in place.

His squeak held a note of alarm. It soon barked a cry, no longer able to keep up with the rolling geodes and he went down, feet caught within the rolling geodes and rocks as he fell down the pile going along for a ride.

The old man looked up from his pile, bushy brow raised to an arc framed by the deep crows feet lined round his aged green eyes. The squirrel wasn't acting like his normal self and the old man sensed the compulsion taking over his companion. He dropped the geode in his hand and let it fall into the pouch by his side. Then he moved to his companion to see if he was alive. He, being familiar with it, already knew that it was.

"Hmmm." came the short grunt from the old man as he stopped next to the squirrel and peered down at it. His hands were resting on both his hips.

The squirrel was laying on its back staring up at the sky .... blinkblink... when the old mans shadow fell cool over his face. High slid to low pitch as Neeko squeaked, flailed wildly and scampered to his feet. The rocks began to roll again but this time the little one had the right momentum to jump to the old mans foot and wait for the rocks to settle again.

That's when the squirrel spotted the odd sparkle inside the geode with the broken end. It was peeking out from beneath a few others.

The old shaman lifted that brow again causing the hairs in the corner of that arc to stick up, enhancing that pointed look. He caught sight of that strange glimmer within. "Hmm? What's this?"

He went to reach for it, but Neeko realized what the man was doing and appeared to be angry. Shaking his head, Neeko literally made a nose dive for the geode, dislodging a huge section of rocks this time as he reached in, wiggled wildly and sent the whole side moving.

This time the old man seemed to tread rocks beneath his feet, running in place like the squirrel had done moments before. The old man was not as adept as the squirrel and soon went down, flailing as he fell down the pile.

The squirrel finally got what he was after. He latched on to that geode, gripping it close to him with those little paws. There was no way he was letting go. Unfortunately for the squirrel, without his front paws he found it difficult to move himself, especially on a pile of rocks in motion beneath him.

Neeko went down for the ride again....

The squirrel bounced and tumbled down the side, never letting go of that geode. He finally bounced into the old man, flew up in the air and landed on the shaman's chest. The two just looked at each other, Neeko still holding the geode close. Finally they came to a stop at the bottom of the pile some ten feet or so below the top.

Neeko looked at the shaman with wide innocent eyes. The old man furrowed his brows and stared at the squirrel. And for a moment they both didn't move.

Then Neeko was reminded of the scent and began to sniff the air, shifting his nose to the geode. The old man raised the other brow just waiting to see what the squirrel would do. Something strange was compelling that little one and he was trying to figure it out.

The squirrel began to breathe in the scent deeply. Then he did the unexpected. Neeko bit the goede. Hard.

Crunch!

Except, it wasn't the rock that crunched. It was Neeko's tooth.

"Ahhhh!" Neeko's squeal sounded with pain as it shot through his tooth.

"Neeko! What are you doing?! Don't eat the rock!" the old man felt that pain in his companion.

He tried to pull the goede away but the squirrel attempted to bite him, barking all protective of the rock. That's when the old man knew something was wrong.

Using one hand to distract the squirrel, the old man snatched the geode away with the other. The squirrel turned almost feral until the old man swatted the squirrel off his chest and stood up. "Something wrong with this rock! Calm down Neeko. It might be a trap!"

The squirrel?s anger lasted until his bum end hit the rock pile and the voice of his master seemed to catch hold of his attention. He still pouted but he seemed to calm and just wait for the old shaman to do what he was going to do.

And do he did.

The old shaman took a good look at the geode and then began to chant, guttural sounds in his aged voice while he waved a stick with feathers in circles over the top of it. Slowly the magics began to reveal themselves.

"An illusion, Neeko. See it for what it is."

Neeko almost looked like he was going to cry as he realized that it wasn't really hiding the best nut he'd ever know.

The old man shifted the tonality of the chant, digging further into the magics around it. The stone inside was not normal. That much was certain. However, he didn't understand what it was. He did begin to feel something about it as he cancelled the illusion. He began to sense the evil that had once held the geode.

His eyes widened abruptly, mouth dropped open in terror as he threw the geode to the side. Neeko began to run after it but the Shaman stopped him.

"No Neeko!!! It's trapped! Something evil about it. Something is trapped. Better to send it away."

It was about all the old man could decipher about it. The feel of the Abyss was still present from Sha'uri's touch... and the presence of a soul was trapped within. It was all he needed to know to make up his mind about it. The evil was terrible enough for him to reach into his most primordial line of powers, chanting forcefully and arms moving in strange but graceful forms as he began to dance a wide birth around the geode.

Neeko scampered up onto the old mans furs, hiding in one of his hidden pockets. It was the safest place to be that he knew of.

"Aye ja yahad, ehya ja yahad.." the man chanted.

As the old man reached into the primordial magics, the geode rose in the air turning slowly round and round as the magics increased and the vortex slowly built around it, opening up the nexial flux in the center. All the while the man continued to chant, increasing the speed of his words and the flow of his arms. The vortex also moved faster and faster.

When the spinning began to obscure the focus on the geode, the old man snapped his arms towards the center, shouting one last command as the nexial flux opened with a flash and the geode was hurled inside.

Light exploded along the mountainside. In the next instant it was as if the light was sucked into the vortex and became lost within.

The vortex closed and sent a shockwave over the land for miles, not damaging anything but knocking out all living things for a short period of time.

When Neeko and the shaman opened their eyes, it was as if nothing had ever happened. The sun was shining, the air warm with spring... The geode was gone, sucked into the nexus although there was no sign left of any of this. Life here resumed its normal routine. Neeko and the shaman continued their yearly search once again.....