The two exchanged a glance.
Bast and Kire knew that obviously this mysterious dragon had a lot of power.
But they also knew it was a hatchling, and while it had great potential, it only had access to part of that right now.
So with the both of them able to exhibit just as much power from this place as it, wouldn't this be unfair at the moment?
It hadn't grown and evolved into a fearsome predator yet.
It wasn't even big enough to eat a human without having to take them apart piece by piece.
But on the other hand...
Kire could remember how he got his butt kicked last time after all!
This dragon had knowledge and creativity they had somewhat inherited, but they both knew it was incomplete because they had actually filled in some gaps in knowledge for each other!
Thanks to Bast's inheritance, Kire now knew about how lightning was conductive through the salts not the water, not just aware that some difference existed.
And thanks to Kire, Bast had learned that light could be refracted, spread out or tightened through a medium like water.
After all, Kire had used water to take her light spears and refract them away from him so he wouldn't get hit!
Honestly if normal mages saw how these two creatively used magic to somehow block solid light attacks with a thin veil of water that shouldn't do anything, as well as other creative ideas, they might beg the two to take them in as students!
But the dragon... who knew what he could do or how much he was capable of thinking of!
To be honest there were limits to what a single person can do. Two heads are better than one and all that.
Kire and Bast's innovation was actually serving to teach the spying dragon and inspire it quite a bit, unknown to them.
But that inspiration was the point here.
As an outsider, he could learn all they did, but also innovate off it for new ideas they wouldn't think of.
And so a strange mixture of "is it unfair to team up?" And "even teamed we'd probably die" came about within their minds.
Silence was held.
Finally...
~ ~ ~
[By the way, only afterwards will I answer your questions. But I WILL answer them.] I casually mentioned.
And with that single mild moment of when that statement was said, the battle began.
Kire immediately created a sphere of water around himself, as being able to freeze and unfreeze it at will as a shield, and extending tendrils of water as whips and tentacles to fight was becoming a good opening move for him.
Meanwhile Bast surrounded herself with fire, like a living sun, and used the light emitted by the flame to create light spears which she fired!
Since Bast's attack was coming at me a lot faster and was more offensive in nature while Kire's current set up was meant for control and draining the stamina of the enemy in a drawn out endeavor, I focused on countering that first!
A thin veil of water appeared, and Bast smirked.
She sent a single spear ahead of the others by a bit to see how it refracted upon the veil, and as it shot off at an angle she actually adjusted her other spears to take advantage of that refraction!
So if I let it happen, I'd be hit. If I dropped the veil of water, she could just adjust again.
Fuck why is the reaction speed of these two improving so fast? Used to be I could do 2 things when they did one!
[Hehehe... so you think you can fight?]
Bast's eyes narrowed briefly in doubt, before going wide in shock.
"What the-?!"
Every spear refracted in different directions.
Not a single one went anywhere close to the right way!
'That's impossible, it was a thin veil without movement! There was no change in its motion so why was it all different?'
Kire meanwhile has his eyes widened as he could feel what I'd done with the water element, and his eyes sparkled at the concept of what I'd done!
But before he could try that out himself, he had a fight to win!
His water tendrils struck at me, fierce and fast!
And then his entire expression froze in disbelief as every last bit of water he'd summoned froze.
Now freezing water isn't hard. You just concentrate water into a solid, or drop it's temperature by shifting the energy to the water elemental particles.
But that water was already being directly controlled by his will!
To freeze it with water magic would mean breaking and taking over his control over that bit of water, but he didn't feel that at all!
In fact even now he could feel the water under his control, yet somehow it was now ice!
And he was blind because the ice was a full globe around him!
This time Bast's eyes glimmered with an impressed and revelatory light.
[Alright, my turn.]
Kire shattered the ice around himself and tried to force it back into water, and it worked, except it seemed RIDICULOUSLY difficult to do!
Bast waved a hand as a wave of heat went to the water as it suddenly became easy to unfreeze and hold as a liquid again.
Kire's expression shifted. Did they use fire magic to affect his ability to use water magic? But water should weaken fire, not the other way around!?
They looked up to see shards of white light flying at them, but Kire could feel a small presence of water in them.
As Kire tried to make his own refracting water barrier, suddenly the light shards changed completely!
They both stared in shock as, seemingly from nowhere, every white spear separated into 7 spears of every color of the rainbow!
As they all hit Kire's barrier, each one bent differently due to the different wavelengths and frequencies each held, making it turn from a concentrated hail of spears into a scattershot in every direction!
Countless spears filled the space, and Kire infused his will with the elements to make his will-self faster and more flexible, essentially fusion magic in this space but without an actual body.
He used the speed and flexibility to dodge some spears while trying to use concentrated blasts of air and wind to push others away.
Bast meanwhile simply accumulated a great amount of fire magic within herself, and let loose!
"HAH!"
"BOHOOOOOOM!" A massive explosion of flame blew away the spears headed her way!
Both of them narrowed their eyes a bit.
When the spears had split into colors, both could clearly feel the strength of the mana within them was split as well.
The colored spears had a lot of possibility for low quality but high quantity, but why would I use an attack I knew wouldn't succeed? Just to show I could?
I've no doubt that's what they thought, but the look on their face when they looked towards where I'd been in confusion only to see empty space... ah that was great.
[An extremely colorful and plentiful attack that takes up a lot of space makes a good smokescreen.]
Bast flinched forward as she turned to face the sudden sense of danger from behind as she felt an aggressive will lock into her with killing intent-!
And then I came from below and froze before her, jaws an inch from her neck.
[Dead.]
Silence reigned.
And then I drew away and looked at Kire. [Look out by the way.]
"Huh?"
And then a massive meteorite slammed into his back knocking him flying.
Not my fault he didn't notice that all the dodging I made him do led him right to the edge of the earth magic...