Xenon knew that Ido was always a bit harsh, so he didn't give much thought to Ido's disdain for the gem keepers' childishness, but the more he watched the group, the more he began to understand what Ido meant. Xenon let out a long sigh as dust rose into the air, mixing with the fog and making the already horrid visibility even worse.
In front of Xenon were two winged, cat-sized six-legged fuzzballs locked in a wrestling match, tumbling through the sand in ways that appeared to defy the laws of physics, but was really the result of flailing wings and stubby legs kicking off violently at strange angles. In the middle of the cacophony was Riselus, standing stock-still, looking for all he was worth like a burnt-out father who just got back from work to see his house an absolute mess.
Xenon suddenly stiffened and snapped around to look in the direction Ido and Qassot left in. He quietly extended his magic, probing for the brief flash of movement he felt.
Xenon cursed under his breath and turned back to the gem keepers. He stretched his hand out, training his focus on Cyil and Aavern. The sand suddenly solidified, forming into a rocky bowl in an instant, rolling the two fighting fuzzballs to a stop almost immediately. The two glanced up from their tussle and looked around at the rock formation in confusion.
"Hey!" Aavern said. "Why'd you stop us, Riselus?"
"Wasn't me," Riselus grunted. He lurched into movement to stand at Xenon's side, looking at him expectantly.
Xenon silently wished that the other elders of the High Council of Magic had a personality as stable as Riselus.
"What is it?" Cyil asked, noticing the intense look on Xenon's face.
"Prepare for battle," Xenon said, flexing his hands and clenching them into a fist.
"Why?"
Aavern slapped Cyil in the face with his wing and gave him a stern look.
"Listen to the wizard."
Ido suddenly emerged from the fog, striding at a rapid pace, followed closely by Qassot, who had her katana drawn and was nervously looking over her shoulder.
"What's the situation?" Xenon asked.
"Kluxon is awake," Ido said, his face hardened.
Xenon gritted his teeth.
"Why did it have to be Kluxon?" Xenon muttered under his breath.
"He's already aware of us," Ido said, his voice a low growl. "You and the gem keepers stall him while I open up a portal to the Beyond."
"But Kyle's not back with Dracoa yet!" Cyil protested, but his voice trailed off when he saw the grimace on Qassot's face.
"What's wrong?" Cyil asked.
Qassot shook her head. "We can't win against that thing."
"What? Why? I know we don't have Dracoa, but is this Kluxon really that strong?" Aavern asked.
"Just shut up," Qassot grumbled under her breath. She took a deep breath and swung her katana around in front of her face, rotating it around until its tip pointed to the sky. Like a blooming flower, her katana duplicated into a storm of swords and fanned out behind her like a second set of wings. The sight briefly stunned Xenon, a shimmering peacock tail of beautiful silver swords, flowing through each other in a smooth cycle, shimmering with what little light shone through the rapidly darkening fog. He hadn't seen such a masterpiece of smithery and magic since Draiken.
Aavern glanced at Cyil nervously.
"Group up. Now," Xenon ordered. As he looked at Qassot's ever-growing flock of swords, he started to get an idea.
Qassot suddenly flinched and grimaced.
"He's coming," she muttered.
Xenon clicked his tongue in frustration. Kluxon was the worst possible matchup for his abilities. He was accustomed to fighting at close range, and Kluxon's magic aura was dense and corrosive enough to vaporize anything that approached him without the proper magic defenses. He was the one Elder Dragon who Xenon couldn't fight at full power.
"Which of you is the fastest?" he snapped.
"Me," Cyil said at the same time Aavern pointed at him.
"You distract Kluxon. Stay out of his aura," Xenon said.
"What?"
"Do as he says," Qassot hissed.
"Can't we just fight him?" Cyil muttered under his breath, but nodded his acknowledgement.
"Everyone else stay out of the fight or attack from a distance," Xenon said. "Just try to buy time for Ido to open the portal. Don't get close to him."
"Why?" Cyil asked.
The steady thud of footsteps suddenly broke through the fog. Heavy footfalls that shook the ground and sent small gusts of air blowing like wind, scattering the mist. Qassot nervously crouched and gathered all her swords behind her, pointing forwards into the darkness of the night.
No, it wasn't the night. It was a dark patch that was vaguely shaped like a dragon, surrounded by a dense aura of pure blackness that seemed to suck light out of the air, shrouding the setting sun perfectly. He was far away, having only just arrived on shore and taking his first heavy steps through the desert.
Xenon crouched into a ready stance and clenched his teeth.
"Kian would be a better matchup against this monstrosity. Why'd he have to leave first?" he muttered. He glanced around at the gem keepers. Cyil and Aavern were staring nervously forwards, eyes widened in shock. Riselus was pulling matter out of the nearby ground, condensing and compressing it into a stone spear. Far behind them, in the background, was Ido, steady gathering his black fluid magic into a tiny point to create a portal into the Beyond. Xenon clicked his tongue in annoyance. Despite his exceptional ability, Ido was rather inexperienced at breaching the barrier between dimensions. It would take him a while to make any proper headway.
"Get ready," Aavern said to Cyil, gathering magic around him to form a bright white aura.
Cyil nodded nervously, setting himself on fire and putting several tongues of flame into his fur.
Inside the dark patch of night, a pair of eyes stared at the nervous group. The dragon stepped forwards, shaking the ground with every slam of its massive claws on the ground. Its dense, dark aura enveloped it, clearing the fog around it as it moved forwards. As the dragon approached, Xenon began to see a myriad of glowing purple lines, like cracks, riddling the dragon's scales. One piercing purple eye and one dead black eye tinged with purple swirls locked eyes with him, sending a chill down his spine. The density of magic the dragon possessed made Xenon grimace, even from this massive distance.
The dragon suddenly stood tall, rearing up on its hind legs to a height that seemed to challenge the mountains. Xenon suddenly jolted into action.
"QASSOT!" he shouted. "SHIELD! NOW!"
Qassot quickly gathered her swords around herself, layering them closely together and forming a wall of metal blades layered over each other. Xenon quickly crouched behind the wall, followed quickly by Riselus, Cyil, and Aavern, who had surrendered the role of strategist to Xenon.
A deep, resounding roar that shook the world to its core caused Cyil and Aavern to shiver and huddle behind Riselus as Qassot struggled to build the wall even higher and wider, in hopes of shielding Ido behind them as well.
Suddenly, all light vanished. The fog disappeared. The sands around them, not shielded by Qassot, seemed to cease existing. The sky above them, ever-shrouded by fog and clouds, was now pitch black. The wall of swords shuddered under some invisible force, but held strong as Qassot layered ever more swords onto it, in hopes of fending off the strange force that scorned all of reality and tore it to shreds.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the darkness vanished.
"Cyil! Go now!" Xenon ordered as Qassot nervously looked at Xenon for orders. Cyil flew out from behind the sword wall at a fast pace, but faltered in the air and gasped aloud at the sight.
"Don't stop!" Xenon yelled, gritting his teeth. He knew what sight Cyil saw out there. As Qassot unfolded the swords and rearranged them behind her to point at Kluxon once again, Xenon heard Aavern and Qassot gasp. Behind him, Riseslus cursed under his breath.
Xenon narrowed his eyes.
"He's gotten stronger," he muttered.
Before them, in a massive cone between Kluxon, who fell onto all fours with a resounding thud and a shockwave that blew Xenon's hair back, and the gem keepers, and spread across the distance which Cyil was now rapidly covering to reach Kluxon and distract him, was simply nothing.
It was gone.
The ground, the rocks, the sand, and even the fog. Everything in that stretch of land had simply been deleted. The untouched sands of the desert gradually trickled down to try and fill the nothingness, only to fall far short and dwindle to a few grains that fell, fruitlessly, into the void. The destruction spread out behind where Qassot lay down her wall of swords, reaching outwards and finally dwindling as it approached Ido, who was still gathering magic into a portal in the back.
Above this blank void, below which not even bedrock could be seen, Cyil flew onwards, casting a nervous glance at the dragon's dense, black aura as he went, watching as the rock spires which happened to pass through the aura as the dragon steadily approached vanished and disintegrated, as if the world itself deemed their existence unnecessary.
The dragon let out another earth-shaking roar.
"Send your swords," Xenon said, and immediately every katana swarming in the air around Qassot rushed forwards towards the dragon.
"Do you think our attacks will even go through that aura?" Aavern asked. It seemed like he had finally understood why Xenon and Ido had been so nervous.
"Only the strongest ones," Xenon muttered. "Save your energy."
Far in the distance, the dragon took another step forwards, stepping into the nothingness that came from its first attack. Xenon faintly saw a dark circle appear under the dragon's feet as it walked over the void.
To Xenon's right, Qassot cursed under her breath. Xenon guessed that she had been hoping that Kluxon would simply fall to the bottom of the void his magic created.
Xenon gritted his teeth and muttered under his breath.
"Can't let the kids do all the work," he said, crouching and placing his hands on the ground as the remaining sand around him began to swirl and gather around him.
With a bright flash of light, glinting in the setting sun obscured by the dragon's massive black aura, Qassot's swords arrived. Piercing through the dark cloud surrounding the dragon, the swords defied the aura's destruction of matter and struck at its scales, drawing blood easily.
With a roar of frustration, pitch black blades grew out of the dragon's massive claws. The dragon took one massive step forwards with one of its legs, and then swept its other claw in a wide-ranging arc, cleaving cleanly through the mountains to the right and sending whatever rock and stone lucky enough to be left alive in the desert into the void.
The black wave that shunned reality swept over the storm of swords accosting the dragon, but they only shuddered and were knocked away. The swords simply refused to be affected by the magic. With a sound like a blowing wind, every sword pointed itself back at the dragon and rushed back towards it while the dragon thrashed around with its claws, cleaving more and more matter out of the earth, unable to stop the assault.
Xenon watched the bombardment quietly with a stern look on his face, concentrating quietly as the sand continued gathering around him.
"He hasn't used it yet," he muttered under his breath.
"Used what yet?" Cyil asked from besides him.
"Aren't you supposed to be distracting him?" Aavern asked from within a pure aura of light, looking up from gathering power to notice that Cyil had returned.
Cyil rolled over lazily. "Qassot seems to have him distracted pretty well."
Xenon gritted his teeth. His voice came out in a low snarl. "You ignorant little-"
"OUT OF THE WAY!" Aavern shouted, interrupting Xenon. He glanced over to see Aavern completely enveloped in a pure white glow. Cyil quickly darted to the side, and Xenon quickly followed suit.
With a sudden roar like the cries of a thousand angry creatures, a beam of light bright enough to swallow the horizon and illuminate the deepest depths of nothingness in front of them burst forwards, crossing the massive distance instantly. The dragon, slowly suffering a death of a thousand tiny cuts, looked up to see a bright white light fill its vision and consume it.