Rose looked to the side as her blue eyes seemed to glow in the darkness of the stormy night, the lightning that bathed the sea made her feel nothing but very noisy. Apart from that, she was really enjoying riding a dragon in such a violent storm, it was like being on a rollercoaster, only much more dangerous and exciting.
"If I were a portal in the sea, where would I be?" Rose muttered to herself as she looked around with a thoughtful expression.
*Sound of Thunder. *
With the deafening sound making her whole body shake, Rose felt her vision blurred by the intense glare as she smelled ozone in the air along with a ferrous taste in her mouth. A bolt of lightning had passed dangerously close to her. If she had been five meters to the left, the lightning would have struck her full on without any mercy.
She would have been fine, Limitless would have protected her automatically, but Oberon would have been in serious trouble, dragons were not lightning-proof, which easily had millions of volts, a voltage capable of killing anything in the flesh.
"Put aside the search for the portal and focus on finding an island, then find Asterion and Luna." Rose muttered to herself again as she brushed away the hair stuck to her face, obstructing her vision which was already badly affected by the storm and the darkness of the night.
Although she said it, Rose discovered that it was easier said than done, how in Merlin's name could she find an island in the middle of a storm at night and risk her dragon being killed at any moment by a bolt of lightning.
In short, she was fucked, and she didn't mean it in a good way, at least that's how Daphne put it.
Suddenly, Rose's eyes caught the red lightning tearing through the dark night, which contrasted sharply against the dark surroundings. From the red beam, she noticed the magical aura that belonged to Asterion, her fiancé.
"A very visible sign, fortunately it's only us in the second part of the race." Rose commented as she controlled Oberon, heading towards Asterion's magical aura. She could imagine the skies full of dragons, all fighting among themselves as they tried to kill each other while in the middle of a storm. It would be real pandemonium, they needed to find the second portal quickly and get to the third and final part of the race before chaos broke out in the sea below them.
After a short trip on the dragon, Rose spotted two figures flying low, dangerously close to the huge waves, which would easily sink a medium-sized boat without too much difficulty.
She quickly identified Ancalagon and Luna's dragon, the former flying ahead while the smaller dragon followed behind taking advantage of the vacuum provided by the larger dragon. It was a good strategy to conserve the dragon's energy.
Rose commanded Oberon to descend and stood next to Ancalagon, essentially creating a formation that resembled a triangle.
Asterion wasn't surprised by Rose's arrival; when she entered his detection field, he had already sensed the girl before.
He quickly made a few signals to Rose, who responded just as quickly with her hands.
"No island nearby." Asterion muttered Rose's reply. This gave him a headache, it was as if the second part of the race had no safe harbor, just like the desert Oases, which increased the difficulty a lot, especially with Luna's dragon getting more and more tired with the continuous flight without breaks.
Rose had also deciphered Asterion's hand signals and was equally helpless, because of him, she already knew the situation Luna was in. Potions don't work on dragons, even if she gave some to Luna's dragon it would at most be like drinking water for the dragon. The rate of blood pumping and the colossal amount of blood in dragons was simply too different from humans.
While humans only needed one vial of potion to have an effect, to have a similar effect on a dragon it would have to be a vial the size of five meters high! Such a quantity of potions could easily provide stamina potions for a month or two in any store in Diagon Alley.
Asterion and Rose looked at each other and saw the helplessness in each other's eyes, then a thought crossed their minds at the same time.
If there is no safe haven, what's stopping them from making one?
Asterion quickly did what he needed to do, summoned Sadalmelik-Albus again and made her control the seawater, creating a huge platform a hundred meters long. In the next second, a blue beam emerged from the tip of Rose's wand and the entire water platform was frozen in an instant.
All the ice seemed especially resistant, something Rose did on purpose, she also began to Transfigure the entire platform, making it even stronger and more resistant, as well as malleable. Under Sadalmelik's control, she lowered the Ice Platform into the stormy sea, splashing water everywhere.
Luna, knowing what this was all about, quickly made her dragon land on the Ice Platform while she used what little magic remained inside her to create walls on all four sides of the platform, playing her part in saving Asterion and Rose's magical energy.
The poor dragon fell heavily onto the ice platform and didn't move, completely exhausted from all the flying so far. No one could blame him, he had already done something that many dragons couldn't, stand in front of a water spout and remain firm.
Luna, despite the weakness in her limbs from magical exhaustion, leaned on her own dragon and breathed heavily as Rose poured a whole bottle of a stamina potion and a magical energy recovery potion.
Luna's face contorted at the extremely bitter taste of both potions, she looked at Rose with a childish expression and asked hopefully, "Do you have any strawberry flavored ones?"
Rose smiled and replied with an evil expression. "They all taste worse than you can imagine."
Luna's face turned grim at such bad news. Suddenly, the pale blonde-haired girl found herself sliding down another edge of the ice shelf, including her dragon.
Just as she thought she would hit the ice walls she had conjured up, the platform suddenly tilted the other way, causing Luna and the Dragon to slide to the other side of the ice platform.
Luna's face turned pale and her stomach churned with a strong feeling of nausea. She put her hand to her mouth and swallowed the stomach fluid that threatened to come out of her mouth.
After the sensation passed, Luna lay down on the ice platform without bothering to slide from side to side.
"I hate Dumbledore." Luna commented aloud without hiding her resentment towards the Hogwarts principal. If there was a favorable rating above her head, Dumbledore would have -100 with Luna.
Finally, Luna's dragon regained some strength and dug its Claws into the platform, holding itself in place, something Luna thanked Merlin for and leaned on the Dragon.
Ancalagon and Oberon were fixed in place with the same method used while Asterion and Rose got back on their respective dragons as the whole ice platform swayed from side to side.
"What are we going to do? Luna is recovering while it will take a while for her dragon to fly again." Rose spoke, her voice tinged with subtle concern. The longer they lingered in this place, the more the other participants might arrive for the second part of the race and when that happened, it would be a dragon war in the middle of a storm. Something she wanted to avoid if possible.
Asterion knew this, but there was nothing he could do until Luna and her dragon had fully recovered; until that happened, they couldn't go to the second portal.
"We'll wait a while, but our priority is to find the second portal." Asterion put aside these worries and focused on finding the portal, something they had to find as soon as possible.
Rose frowned and replied in a confused voice: "I tried to locate the portal, but there was nothing, not even a piece of rock in the sea. We don't have a clue as obvious as the oases in the desert."
Obvious?
Asterion muttered that word, thinking it was the key to finding the second portal. As Rose had said, the direction of the first portal was obvious, just head north with the help of the Ursa Minor Constellation.
In theory, the second part of the race should be similar, but there were no stars above them because of the storm and no islands apparently created as well as the artificial oases.
"Obvious... obvious... obvious..." Asterion muttered as he looked at the storm clouds above him and the Water Spout receding into the horizon.
Wait a minute!
"The Water Spout!" Asterion exclaimed as he looked towards the giant tube of water connecting sky and sea with the primordial fury of nature.
Hearing Asterion's shout, Rose wasn't slow to understand her future husband's thoughts, yet she couldn't help cursing loudly. "Fuck, Dumbledore wouldn't be crazy to put the second portal in the Water Spout!"
The more she thought about it, the more she was sure that the second portal was inside the Water Spout!
Luna's face was even more bitter, the second portal was more like a sorting line to separate the strong from the weak for the finish line. Unfortunately, she was on the side of the weak!
-------------
Author's thoughts: Writing at four o'clock in the morning, eating cookies and listening to rap. I have to say that my routine is complete garbage.
Support me to write more and read chapters ahead of all regular readers!
Membership is only $5 all chapter, so if have some spare cash and wanna support this work that'd be appreciated
P-atreon.com/HPSCB
(Just remove the hyphen to access Patreon normally.)
Next Chapter Second Volume: Chapter 210 - On the Night of the Storm (3), Chapter 211 - On the Night of the Storm (4), Chapter 212 - On the Night of the Storm (5), Chapter 213 -At the Highest Point of Heaven (END Dragon Race), Chapter 214 - The Spark of Chaos (1), Chapter 215 - The Spark of Chaos (2), Chapter 216 - The Spark of Chaos (3), Chapter 217 - The Spark of Chaos (4), Chapter 218 - Ancient Artifact (1), Chapter 219 - Ancient Artifact (2), Chapter 220 - The Last Moment Before Chaos (1), Chapter 221 - The Last Moment Before Chaos (2, Chapter 222 - The Labyrinth of Cnossos (1), Chapter 223 - The Labyrinth of Cnossos (2), Chapter 224 - The Labyrinth of Cnossos (3).
Next Chapter of the Third Volume: Chapter 225 - A Dark Day (1), Chapter 226 - A Dark Day (2).