The eleven-year-old boy finally started to calm down. After crying out his regret, Pedro looked at Lucy and said, "I'm fine now."
"Take a deep breath and tell Shadow the rest of the story."
Pedro did what Lucy suggested and took a deep breath. Still feeling upset, Pedro took a few more quick breaths and caused himself to cough. Seeing the boy do this made Lucy and Shadow smirk.
"So, After El Diablo left. El Grande took control of our god Xototl somehow. He would unjustly kill many people and then bring their dead bodies to the temple and drain their blood. He would make me help with it." Thinking back on all the people that were killed. Pedro started to tear up.
"Take your time, Pedro," Lucy said in a soothing voice.
Pedro wiped his face with his sleeve and cleared his throat. "The dragon men attacked us again, and Xolotl let them enter the city. Xolotl wiped them all out and gathered their bodies too. After the last attack, Xolotl killed anyone it found."
Pedro looked down. He then looked up at the two ladies and said, "El Grande even tried to kill me in the temple when he couldn't find anyone. I think he uses the blood to control Xolotl."
Shadow was digesting everything the boy said. She was starting to think of what they should do next when she smelled the strong whiff of blood again.
"Hide now!"
Shadow executed Shadow Walk to grab the kid and hide under the wall again quickly. Lucy also hid in her last spot.
"Pedro! Pedro! I heard you crying. Come out, Pedro!"
The skeleton was floating in the air and yelling. "Fine have it your way." Xolotl started to unleash lightning attacks on each of the building destroying them.
Shadow sent a mana message to Lucy. "Take the boy and leave in the hovercraft. I'm going to distract the creature." Before Lucy could refute her, Shadow dashed off.
Shadow ran into the middle of the street to get the puppet's attention.
"A beastman! Perfect timing. I needed a new source of blood." Xolotl started firing lightning attacks one after the other.
Shadow just kept running. She used the buildings to take the brunt of the attacks, and she would dash to a new location. She had to pull him away so Lucy and Pedro could get away.
Shadow was running as fast as possible to the east part of the city. The lightning attacks were not letting up. Shadow got hit twice by residual electricity, but she kept running.
Thinking on what to do, she figured if she could get to the temple, she could kill the man controlling this creature.
Using the same tactic as before, Shadow kept dodging the attacks until Xolotl attack the building in front of her. She stopped in her tracks when the lightning landed in front of her.
"You have nowhere to run."
"I could say the same to you."
A new voice entered the battlefield. Xolotl looked up to see a black scaled draconian staring at him. Small flames started to dance around the draconian.
Shadow looked up surprised she was saved. She looked up to see the black-scaled man and a giant airship in the distance. It looked like he was here for revenge.
Beodror probed the puppet and sensed the draconian blood on it. Some of it seemed fresh too. Beodror summoned his bastard sword from the airship. A four-meter long sword landed into his grasp.
"I'm going to kill you." Purple flames ignited on the bastard sword. Beodror leaped forward and slashed at Xolotl. The skeleton caught the blade between its two hands.
In the temple, El Grande was swearing at his crappy luck. The pressure he was feeling from this draconian told him he was in trouble. He used up a lot of his strength firing lightning at the beastman. The only way to gain more power was to use himself. El Grande ran his forearm across a blade and started to bleed. Commanding Xolotl, he made it execute a powerful lightning attack.
Electricity ran down the bastard sword and zapped the draconian. Beodror flew back and stared at the skeleton. "This damn thing is as strong as a Construct warrior."
Beodror didn't back down. He stepped forward and released a ranged flame attack from his sword. A wave of purple flames was flung at Xolotl. The purples flames were met with Xolotl lightning. An explosion erupted and blew the two figures backward.
The draconian created massive flames on the sword. Those flames started to turn a darker-purple color. Beodror slashed out three times sending what looked like three giant dragon heads.
Xolotl fired off as many lightning bolts as he could but only seemed to destroy one of the attacks. The other two flaming dragon heads slammed into Xolotl crashing him into the ground.
El Grande was started to lose consciousness from blood loss. He had Xolotl stand, but looking through the puppet's eyes, he realized both arms were missing, and chunks of his body shattered. "Nooo...My godly body." The two of them yelled in unison.
Lightning and death aura encircled the skeleton. Xolotl jumped off the ground and flew directly at Beodror. The creature was about to commit a suicide attack.
Suddenly, El Grande felt something happen to his real body. Now he spat out blood. He looked down to see a beastman claw poking out through the front of his chest.
Shadow ripped it back out, and El Grande fell to the floor. Laying on the floor of dried blood and several bodies, EL Grande struggled to cling to life. Shadow looked at the man and sent him a message.
"You are scum that needs to be cleaned from this earth." She wouldn't let a man like this live after sacrificing all his people.
The man tried to respond, but blood filled his throat as he gasped for air. Eventually, he took his last breath and died before her. Knowing that the draconians were nearby Shadow left the temple to head back west.
The puppet, Xolotl, was mere meters away before it stopped moving and the mana it was operating with vanished. After a few seconds, it started to fall to the ground.
Beodror grabbed the thing and realized that he was fighting an ancient artifact. If he could repair it, the draconians will have gained a powerful weapon.
Since Beodror attention was scanning the artifact, he didn't notice the warrior escaping to the west.
Shadow ran to where the hovercraft was and saw Lucy and Pedro waiting on her. "Lucy! I told you to leave. What would you have done if it wasn't me who had returned?"
Lucy gave her a big smile, "I don't have to worry about that. Do I?"
Even though these women started on the wrong foot, they grew closer in their short time together. They also trusted and respected each other considerably too.
Shadow shook her head and said, "Let us go find Leo." The three of them got into the hovercraft and headed southward. They didn't know where he was, but they knew they'd find him.