Grapple

"Order?" "The new order will be dictated by me!" Cassius roared into the sky. Veins bulged across his hide, muscles jutting out like blocks of iron. With a thunderous sweep of his wings, his immense frame shot toward the clouds like an arrow loosed from a bow. BOOM! Where the red dragon had stood, the ground shattered instantly, spiderwebbing with dense fissures around a crater dozens of meters wide. An invisible shockwave blasted outward from the pit, sweeping across the entire waste. A gale choked with gravel and earth tore through the air, forcing mortals hundreds of meters away to shield their eyes against the blinding wind. The red dragon pinned his wings tight against his flanks, streamlining his body to cut through the air. He climbed at blistering speed. Sparks showered from the friction against his scales; flame vented from the spiracles along his neck and tail; and a brilliant tail of fire trailed behind him. Like a meteor falling in reverse, he vaulted hundreds of meters into the sky in less than a breath. Flames, lightning, and ash swirled around Cassius. As his acceleration mounted, a turbulent tide of magical energy surged about his body. The colossal draconic form tore through the atmosphere, detonating sonic boom after sonic boom as he hurtled straight toward the wyrm silver dragon aloft. Oszedro’s expression turned grim to the extreme. He, too, recognized the terrifying might behind this overwhelming charge. The wyrm silver dragon raised the Astral Scepter in his foreclaw and chanted ancient Draconic syllables imbued with boundless magical power. Countless silver stars materialized around him, linking together and whirling rapidly into a dense, radiant spherical grid a hundred meters across. Yet that was not the end. The outer layer of the grid became encased in smooth, transparent facets of permafrost crystal. The sleek planes radiated biting cold and reflected dazzling auras of magical light, culminating in an immaculate, orderly polyhedron. BOOM! Cassius crashed headlong into it, yet failed to break through. A searing torrent of flame blasted against the smooth surfaces, only to be deflected right back out, carving another molten crater of swirling magma into the unfortunate ground below. This indestructible abjuration absorbed and reflected all surrounding energy, keeping the wyrm silver dragon safely protected within. Watching Cassius thwarted again and again, Oszedro wore a look of smug satisfaction. "Red dragon! Your assault is feeble and powerless!" Yet Oszedro had forgotten one thing: he had not yet locked down the surrounding space. According to the silver dragon's thousand-year-old habits of thought, sorcerers typically leaned toward the raw energy output of Evocation spells; those who understood the mysteries of space were exceedingly rare. Furthermore, sorcerers could not choose their own spell lists, which was why they were contemptuously dubbed the "barbarians of spellcasters." But he did not know that Cassius was no ordinary sorcerer. Whoosh— Cassius merely flashed a feral grin, thrust out a claw, and tore straight through space, opening a flaming portal that led directly into the heart of the defensive ward. "Not good!" Oszedro’s face fell. He scrambled to weave a counterspell, but the red dragon was far too swift. Space convulsed violently, followed by the blur of an afterimage so fast that even eyes augmented by True Seeing could barely register it. The red dragon fell upon his back, powerful foreclaws locking tight around his wings. "Got you, you bothersome old fossil!" Cassius snarled, pouring all his strength into pinning the silver dragon down as his gaping maw, wreathed in blistering flame, clamped down savagely on Oszedro's neck. Yet Oszedro was, after all, a spellhoarding dragon. In this moment of mortal peril, his innate Chain Contingency activated immediately, conjuring layer upon layer of luminescent film over his body to halt the red dragon's piercing fangs. Yet how could ordinary spells withstand the red dragon's brute might? The barriers held for barely a few seconds before the razor-sharp teeth punched through them like thin parchment, sinking brutally into scales. Shattered silver scales fluttered through the air, sparkling in the sunlight. Crimson dragon blood spurted forth. "ROAAAR—!" The silver dragon's shrill, agonizing bellow drew the eyes of every living creature on the battlefield. Humans, tieflings, and dragons alike stared in disbelief at the sky, watching the two behemoths grapple and tear at each other. With hearts in their throats, they gazed up at this clash that seemed straight out of an ancient age—and right now, the red dragon was clearly holding the upper hand. Yet the strength of a wyrm silver dragon was not to be underestimated, and Oszedro's combat experience far outstripped Cassius's. Oszedro thrashed violently in midair, rolling and pitching as several Transmutation and Abjuration spells washed over his massive silver form. A barrage of bizarre counterattacks—ice shards, force pulses, howling gales—erupted from him in rapid succession, miraculously shaking Cassius off his back and slipping the grip of those powerful forelimbs. Yet the silver dragon gained no respite. No sooner had he broken free, before he could even begin casting, than the red dragon fell upon him with unfathomable speed. The two colossal dragons tangled together and plummeted from the sky, crashing through glacial ridges on the ground with an ear-splitting roar. As they grappled at close quarters, Oszedro sensed something amiss. A scent. The red dragon bore the scent of rain. He knew it all too well—the distinct fragrance of the silver dragon race, as fresh as clean air after a rainfall. And before he had brought his clan here, there had been only one silver dragon in the Great Anzetta Waste: his dearly pampered granddaughter, Olivia, "Silver Stars." Oszedro’s countenance warped. Casting aside all the dignified poise of a wizard, he threw himself recklessly at the red dragon and roared: "Red dragon! You reek of a silver dragon!" "Where is Olivia?!" "What have you done to her?!" Fuelled by boundless fury, the wyrm silver dragon's aura spiked savagely. Veins bulged across his flesh, and even his physical strength swelled beyond its usual limits, faintly overpowering the red dragon. Having lived for over a millennium and entered the stage of a wyrm, Oszedro's emotions had cooled into indifference. He no longer roamed the world upholding justice as he had in his youth, and had grown largely detached even from the lives and deaths of mortals. Yet family remained his sacred sanctuary, the solemn responsibility he bore as a clan elder. "Hahahaha!" "You old fool, didn't you know? Your precious granddaughter is already a proud citizen of my kingdom!" Cassius laughed brazenly. Summoning titanic strength, he delivered a ruthless blow that knocked the silver dragon’s rage-twisted face aside, then slashed his claws across Oszedro’s hide, opening deep, bleeding furrows. Paying no heed to the wounds on his face, Oszedro flared his broad, mirror-bright silver wings and charged the red dragon in a blind fury. "Liar!" "I taught Olivia myself! She is virtuous and righteous by nature—how could she ever bow to a blood-soaked beast like you?!" Cassius met the charge head-on, forcefully bracing against the silver dragon's immense bulk as claws and fangs ripped into silver scales once more. "Old fossil, that only proves your little system is obsolete! It defies all logic!" "When even your own granddaughter has no faith in your so-called 'order,' how can you expect to balance the world with it?" "What a pathetic joke!"