Without the support of her divine body, Gorazdla's form of thunder began to crumble and collapse. Torrential lightning spread outward like a surging tide, churning across the sky and expanding relentlessly outward.
And as the thunder receded, her wretched true form was laid bare. A grotesque, horrific wound was blasted clean through her chest, pale white bones exposed, her scorched flesh mangled and charred, resembling a skeletal dragon slain in fire.
She flapped her wings with all her might, her body swaying and listing crookedly as if on the verge of plummeting to the ground, kept aloft high in the air only by sheer electromagnetic force.
Gorazdla stared fixedly at the severed horn clutched in Cassius's claw. Her face twisted into a snarl, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, arcs of electricity crackling within her narrow vertical pupils to betray a desperate, ravenous longing.
"That's mine! Dragon variant, give it back to me! Give it back to me!!"
At this moment, the great wyrm blue dragon was like a traveler parched in the desert, craving the fountainhead of her power—the Horn of Tiamat—to the point of madness.
With this horn in her grasp, she had been like a deity commanding thunder, freely manipulating lightning to unleash all-destroying divine thunder.
Yet having lost this divine body, she felt only immense weakness and decline, even trembling in fear before the Red Dragon Emperor.
"Give it back to me—"
Finally, unable to bear such a devastating disparity, Gorazdla lost all reason. Shrieking, she lunged at the Red Dragon Emperor, spewing another blast of Lightning Breath from her maw, though it was nowhere near as potent as before.
"Interesting..."
The corners of Cassius's mouth curled up, baring bloodstained fangs in a savage yet mocking smirk.
"Looking like that—you dare face me head-on? Have you lost your mind?"
The Red Dragon Emperor reached out with a massive, razor-sharp claw, seizing the great wyrm blue dragon directly by the neck and lifting her bodily into the air.
Before his dragon form of coalesced flame, hundreds of meters long, the great wyrm blue dragon was practically like a grievously wounded hatchling, utterly powerless to resist as Cassius hurled her through the sky.
"Boom!"
Gorazdla slammed heavily into the earth, causing mountains to crumble and the ground to split, the earth groaning as shattered rock flew everywhere. Her already battered body was left even more battered, bones shattered and flesh pulped.
Struggling with everything she had, she was just trying to haul herself up from the ground when that colossal crimson silhouette crashed down upon her, pinning Gorazdla beneath him and rendering her immobile.
Cassius pressed down on the great wyrm blue dragon's neck, sneering, "I told you long ago, you're nothing more than a loyal dog of Tiamat. You were never worthy of standing on equal footing with me!"
Gorazdla strained to open her jaws, wheezing out broken words: "Dragon variant... you will regret this... Her Majesty the Dragon Queen will banish you to a lightless cage... to suffer eternal torment..."
Cassius said coldly, "Are those your last words? From what I see, your Dragon Queen abandoned you long ago!"
"Boom!"
His forelimbs surged with sudden force, muscles and veins bulging as he crushed down on the great wyrm blue dragon's throat. Under the immense pressure, the earth abruptly caved in, driving Gorazdla deep into the ground.
She spewed a massive mouthful of blood, an agonized wail tearing from the depths of her throat as dazzling thunder burst from within her body.
The sheer agony stripped away Gorazdla's sanity, leaving her mind clouded and reducing her to mere base instinct. Howling toward the sky, she prayed with fanatical desperation:
"Your Majesty Tiamat, please save me! You promised me—you promised I would become a new deity!"
"Rumble!"
Lightning tore through the firmament, and a blurry five-headed phantom materialized at the edge of the sky. Its eyes were cold and grim as it spat a furious, exasperated curse:
"Useless trash—"
Before the voice even faded, a five-colored pillar of light erupted, plunging down through the torn firmament and hurtling with terrifying momentum toward the Red Dragon Emperor's mountain-like form.
Flame, lightning, frost, poison, and acid—each colored beam within the breath weapon radiated profoundly evil divine power, brimming with might capable of obliterating all things and roiling the Material Plane itself.
This was the divine punishment Tiamat had unleashed, piercing planar barriers at the cost of vast divine power!
"Boom!"
In an instant, scalding dragon blood showered the sky. Cassius's flaming body was brutally split open by the five-colored pillar of light. His back was nearly torn in two, revealing stark white bones and pulsing internal organs, his torso practically impaled through by the beam.
"Tiamat! You truly know no shame!"
Through agonizing pain, Cassius threw back his head and unleashed an earth-shattering roar, confronting the five-headed dragon phantom across the heavens as surging waves of dragon flame poured from his body.
Taking advantage of the opening, Gorazdla slipped out from beneath the Red Dragon Emperor. Dragging her broken body into midair, she let out a hoarse, raspy laugh. "Dragon variant, your retribution has arrived! I told you, Her Majesty Tiamat would never abandon me!"
Cassius's body regenerated at a pace visible to the naked eye. Tightening his grip on the severed horn in his claw, he raised his head, opened his bloody maw, and spewed a brilliant pillar of fire from deep within his throat, colliding midair with Tiamat's divine punishment in mutual annihilation.
"Who would have thought, Your Majesty Tiamat? A lofty deity resorting to such underhanded methods to ambush a mortal."
Tiamat's gaze was exceptionally dark, steeped in murderous intent as it crossed boundless time and space from Her divine realm far away in Avernus to bear down on the Red Dragon Emperor with suffocating oppression.
For a deity, piercing planar barriers to deliver divine punishment was a perilous undertaking.
This was the Third Age; the barrier separating the Material Plane from the Outer Planes was nearly impregnable. Breaching it required an enormous expenditure of divine power, leaving one vulnerable to rival deities seizing the opportunity to attack one's divine realm.
Yet now, Tiamat could no longer afford to care. Of the three anchors for Her descent onto the Material Plane—the three fragments of Her immortal divine body—Cassius had already seized two.
If this continued, Her millennium-long plan of descent would fall apart at the final hurdle.
Back then, the Chromatic Dragon Queen could never have imagined that this dragon variant, hatched less than a century ago, would not become Her aid. Instead, he had become the greatest obstacle to Her breaking Her bonds and descending into the mortal world, becoming the mightiest and most obstinate foe of chromatic dragonkind.
"Cassius, you have become the greatest impediment to the revival of the chromatic dragons! In the name of the Mother of Evil Dragons—I shall grind you to dust with divine punishment!!"
"Boom!"
The five-colored beam representing Tiamat's divine power once again tore through the firmament and plunged from the heavens with staggering fury. The world trembled and shuddered beneath it, erupting into piercing shrieks and groans.
"Divine punishment...? Then bring it on!"
Without a shred of hesitation, Cassius marshaled every ounce of energy within his several-hundred-meter flaming dragon body, concentrating it deep in his throat into a dragon flame breath weapon that soared straight toward the heavens.
He knew Tiamat had made countless enemies. Before long, hostile deities would seize this golden opportunity to assault Her divine realm, indirectly coming to his aid.
He only needed to hold out through this moment, and victory would be his!
"Boom!"
The two forces clashed, unleashing an explosion several thousand meters across. At the very instant of impact, Cassius's breath weapon was utterly overwhelmed by the divine punishment, and the five-colored pillar of light hurtled toward his head at terrifying speed.
"Give it back to me!" Gorazdla, hovering midair, also spat a streak of linear lightning, lunging frantically at the Red Dragon Emperor—or more accurately, at the severed horn clutched in his claw.
Cassius had no desire to tangle with the crazed great wyrm blue dragon. His thick tail whipped violently, smashing into Gorazdla like a siege hammer and sending her hurtling hundreds of meters away.
"Quick, stop that blue dragon!" roared the ancient gold dragon Dionysius.
A dozen gold, silver, and brass dragons took to the sky, cutting off the great wyrm blue dragon's path. Yet even heavily wounded and stripped of her divine body, Gorazdla was a quasi-deity—far beyond what these metallic dragons could handle.
"Mongrels—die, all of you!"
With a roar of absolute fury, thunder and lightning erupted across the heavens. Dragging her ruined body, the great wyrm blue dragon unleashed a deluge of lightning. One after another, metallic dragons plummeted from the sky, bodies scorched black and billowing wisps of acrid smoke.
"Quick, aid Lady Gorazdla! Assist Her Majesty the Dragon Queen!" the evil dragon priests shouted in turn. Countless dragonspawn and cultists threw themselves forward in relentless waves, clashing in fierce battle.
The battlefield descended into utter chaos as the coalition soldiers once again tangled in bloody melee with the followers of the Cult of the Dragon. And at the very epicenter, Cassius fought desperately against Tiamat's divine punishment.
The five-colored beam ravenously devoured the dragon fire, closing in on Cassius's body. The torrent of divine power bored through the world, reducing every physical object in its path to dust and carving thousands of minute spatial fissures across midair.
Under this horrifying divine punishment, even the Material Plane itself trembled and fractured—how could the living beings within it hope to endure?
A brass dragon that inadvertently wandered within a hundred meters of the five-colored pillar of light was swept up in the tempest generated by the divine power. Its body annihilated and dissolved in the torrent of energy, reduced to microscopic particles without leaving so much as a scrap of bone or flesh behind.
"Tiamat—!"
Faced with such divine punishment, the Heart of Garyx within Cassius beat frantically. The dragon crystal blazed with solar brilliance, and superheated clouds of steam vented even from between his scales.
From his gaping maw poured dragon flames so brilliant they made the soul shudder, the extreme heat incinerating everything in the vicinity to ash.
In the sky, a blinding, magnificent brilliance blossomed in an instant like a supernova explosion. Across the battlefield spanning a hundred li, over a hundred dragons and millions of soldiers had this spectacle seared into their minds.
"Gods above..."
This power was simply too vast, too monumental, delivering a shock that shook them to their very souls.
Tiamat's divine punishment ultimately held the upper hand. The five-colored pillar engulfed the flames, bearing down on Cassius amidst the collapse of space, his body beginning to disintegrate beneath the enveloping radiance of divine power.
Yet right at that moment, crossing boundless time and space, a roar brimming with fury echoed from afar:
"Bahamut—!!"
Tiamat's five-colored divine light abruptly halted. A cyan divine glow manifested in the heavens, accompanied by the piercing, bone-chilling howl of a freezing northern gale.
A blurry phantom of a platinum dragon appeared high in the sky, wings gleaming with metallic luster blotting out the heavens, its voice resonant and clear:
"Tiamat, it is time to end this farce. You know full well—deities must not interfere in the affairs of the Material Plane! To think you would sacrifice divine rank just to slay this red dragon—how truly pathetic!"
Tiamat roared back, "Bahamut, it is because of stagnant relics like you that draconic rule fell into ruin!"
"Be that as it may, descending upon the mortal realm in such a manner is forbidden!"
"Then let our claws decide, you cursed worm!"
"Boom—!"
Two peerless divine powers clashed in the sky, throwing the Material Plane into turmoil, until at last the divine radiance was fully dispelled by the rejection of planar laws.
Were it not for the hideous spatial fissures scarring the horizon and the utter devastation across the ground, it would almost seem as though the divine punishment had never happened.
"The divine punishment is over!"
"That was His Majesty Bahamut, the Lord of the North Wind! He stopped the Chromatic Dragon Queen!"
"Praise the gods! By divine grace, this war can finally end!"
For a moment, as people looked up, only the majestic, towering silhouette of the Red Dragon Emperor remained in the sky. As for Gorazdla?
Taking advantage of everyone's distraction moments before, trailing lightning and snarling low, the great wyrm blue dragon had fled frantically toward the southwest of the battlefield.
High above, the Red Dragon Emperor was battered and bloodied, wounds gushing across his body and bones plainly visible. Baring his bloodstained teeth, he grinned with terrifying savagery. "Daring to run... Who was it that once took me for prey?"
In the next breath, ignoring his grievous injuries, Cassius snapped his wings forward. A blazing gale whipped up as he trailed streaks of fire, blurring into a crimson afterimage barely visible to the naked eye.
"Gorazdla—!"
Far off amidst the endless yellow sands, the frantically fleeing great wyrm blue dragon could not resist glancing back. Instantly, her scalp went numb, scales bristling in panic.
"Curse that dragon variant—how does he heal so fast?!" Gorazdla's voice trembled, drenched in terror.
A sharp sonic boom rang through the heavens as the Red Dragon Emperor pierced the sky like a falling star, brutally ripping through the gloomy firmament to leave a long trail of smoke and cloud in his wake.
The crimson silhouette grew ever larger and clearer in her eyes, swooping down toward the great wyrm blue dragon at horrifying speed.
"Boom!"
Yellow sand erupted skyward. The tremendous impact sent dust and smoke billowing across the earth, blasting a colossal crater into the desert.
Plummeting at terrifying speed, the Red Dragon Emperor slammed into the sands with cataclysmic force, pinning the wounded great wyrm blue dragon to the ground.
Killing intent flared within Cassius's narrow golden vertical pupils. Snapping his blood-drenched maw wide, flames churned once more from the depths of his throat. "Gorazdla, it is time to pay for your arrogance!"
"No, stop! I am a future god—"
Flapping her ruined wings, the great wyrm blue dragon shrieked in terror.
Yet almost instantly, with a thunderous roar, blinding fire filled her vision. Surging torrents of dragon flame incinerated her flesh and bone, reducing her completely to ash.
Cassius did not notice, however, that a tiny streak of lightning slipped free from the great wyrm blue dragon's body, crackling through the air as it streaked into the distance...
Chapter 821