"STOP HIDING YOU COWARD! COME OUT AND FACE ME IF YOU DARE!" Mei shouted.
For the last couple of hours, the earth immortal Yin Mei has been relentlessly chasing after a skull-masked dragonnewt Nox through this foggy terrain without much luck. So far, any time Mei has managed to locate her target, Nox would predict her first move in advance and respond accordingly to fend it off, before pulling some trick or item out of her sleeve to make Mei back off just long enough for her to slip away.
When this chase began, Mei's intent was to capture Nox in the hopes of obtaining clues to the location of the real Yang dragon ring. However, over the course of this chase…
"I WILL MAKE YOU BEG FOR DEATH!!!"
Her priorities seemed to have changed.
"Enough of this! If you will not come out of hiding, then you can die where you are!" Mei said as her body began to grow in size, entering her dragon form.
The black dragon hovered over the already devastated misty woods below and took a deep breath, preparing to unleash an attack that would annihilate the entire area. However, just as she was about to gather her qi, she froze at the sight of a silhouette resembling a dragon moving around in the fog.
"Ah, right? That boy was there…! What in the world-!"
The fog enveloping the silhouette began to thin, the figure hidden behind it became clearer, and what she saw gave her pause.
She had seen the same figure earlier when she arrived here and had assumed it to be Xing in his dragon form moving about in the fog, but the dragon in that fog was not Xing, nor was it Ming. Dragon transformation is a rare ability only a handful of dragonewts can manage, so it's not too surprising that Mei assumed it had to be one of the two, but as they say about assuming, it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "Ming", because this was Nox's dragon form. However, what was giving her pause was not that her guess was wrong, nor the fact that counting Nox, the Yang bloodline has now managed to produce three consecutive generations of draconic polymorphs. Nox's dragon form, if summed up in one word, perhaps "grotesque" would be the best descriptor.
She was in the shape of a dragon, yes, but there was something very wrong with it. Looking just purely by the shape and structure, she was something of a mix between an eastern- and a western-style dragon, with an elongated body and tail, large leathery wings folded on its back, sharp claws and muscular limbs, sharp white antlers on its head and a jagged underjaw. However, most apparent of all regarding this form, well, the easiest way to put it would be to say she looked like a dragon who had been wrung inside out.
Covering the surface of her body, there was not a single scale to be found, only an exposed skeleton wrapped around densely packed discoloured muscle fibres. On her back, stretching from its spine to its tail, you could see her exposed backbone. You could see her ribs wrapped around the mass of muscles in her torso holding in her organs. Her head was a white dragon's skull, with eyes so sunken in you wouldn't even know they were there if not for the blue glow of her iris, and stretching out from the top of her skull, there was a tiny glowing puddle of blood from which a tiny river of red flowed, lining the rest of her bone structure.
"I think I am going to be sick-! *Gag*"
The sight of this would be terrifying to a regular person, but to Yin Mei, a dragonnewt hailing from a culture which worships dragons as revered ancestors, this sight was completely and utterly revolting, like seeing a man walking down the street without his skin.
*Exhale*
Opening her skeletal mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, Nox breathed out a puff of white smoke as she looked up at Mei in silence, her eyes suddenly lighting up in a blue blaze.
"You disgusting thing! Let me put you out of your misery! *Roar*" Mei said before unleashing her dragon's breath, sending a massive stream of darkness energy towards Nox.
Responding in kind, Nox opened her maw and unleashed a breath attack of her own using her flames of control.
*BOOM**BOOM**Rumble*
When the river darkness collided with the blue flame, it split in two as Nox's aura redirected the energy off to the side as it slowly pushed its way up towards the immortal dragon in the sky.
*Swoosh*
Seeing her dragon's breath was losing out against the blue flame, Mei stopped her attack as she dodged out of the way from the incoming aura fire, however, …
"Hm? Just when I thought you had found some backbone, you return to hiding like a coward?" Mei uttered aloud.
When the aura-based breath-attack passed her by, Mei had looked away from her opponent for an instant, only to find the inverted dragon who unleashed it to have vanished.
Believing Nox to be hiding in the fog, she was about to unleash another breath attack, one with a much greater area of affect to force her out of hiding, however.
*Swoosh**BANG*
*boom**Puff**Cough**Cough*
Just as she was about to unleash her attack, jumping out from the cloud above her, a skeletal dragon glowing in enchantments came crashing down on her, grabbing on to the top of Mei's snout with one of it's talons as it tackled the immortal black dragon to the ground at lightning speeds, forcefully shutting her mouth as her jaw slammed against the earth, causing the energy in her mouth to go haywire inside her body.
Managing to time her actions perfectly with Mei's, the moment the black dragon ended her attack in favour of dodging, Nox had halted her attack and activated the body enchantments carved directly on to her muscle fibres to bolt into the sky above her opponent in the split second her attention was elsewhere. Meanwhile, the aura flame still burning inside her body conveniently caused her body to leak out a white aura-based smokescreen for her to hide in. Then she simply waited for the right moment to strike.
*Chomp*
"Ugh! GET OFF OF ME YOU DISGUSTING-!"
The moment they hit the ground, taking advantage of her enemy being stunned from the recoil of her own attack, Nox immediately and swiftly coiled her body around Mei's before sinking her teeth into her jugular.
Though, she is in dragon form, Mei's physical form was still an earth immortal spirit body, meaning her insides mostly consist of the very corrosive darkness element, which means, the moment Nox's fangs, claws and whatever else dug past the surface, they immediately began to disintegrate. Seeing as Mei is an energy lifeform without organs or blood to lose, it wouldn't be wrong to say Nox was actually harming herself more than her opponent by biting her neck, however, it was not a problem to Nox, for her intentions were not to harm, but restrain.
"You wouldn't dare!" Mei uttered as she glimpsed the literal fire in Nox's eyes.
Nox was planning to unleash a point-blank aura breath attack while having Mei pinned to the ground, however, enchanted dragon form or not, she was up against an earth immortal.
*Squelch*
*Shatter*
The moment Nox was about to unleash her attack directly on to Mei's neck, Mei in her frantic panic to get free, tore Nox's body apart with brute force and in a very lucky swing of her neck, managed to fling the upper section of Nox's body clamped down on her jugular into the air, with a chunk of her throat crumbling into particles between rows of almost completely eroded teeth, right in the nick of time.
The very moment she lost her grip on Mei, Nox breathed out an immense amount of aura fire, which ended up going all over the place as the section of her body spinning uncontrollably in the air had been ripped off from just above the wings on her back.
*Splat*
After drawing circular lines of blue flames all over the area, Nox's upper body, with barely functional teeth and stubs of what used to be claws, hit the ground with a wet thud, unmoving, and blacked out eye sockets.
"*Huff**Puff* Ugh! Damn wretch!" Mei grunted out in exhausted grunts while carefully rubbing the wound on her neck.
*Drip*
She is physically incapable of sweating, but if she could, in this moment, she would have been drenched in cold sweat. The threat of death, just before she got loose, she had felt it down to her very bones. Had she not managed to get free when she did, or had she not whipped her neck around so fast the inertia ended up ripping off the chunk of her neck Nox was biting on to, there is a very real chance she would have perished.
*Huff**Puff*
*Drip*
With her foe in literal pieces, she took a minute to catch her breath before turning around to leave, after all, with her mission incomplete and the very real threat of her allies pocketing the object she was here to retrieve, she couldn't afford to dawdle, however, then she heard it…
*Splash*
Hearing a wet sound behind her, she quickly turned around to look at where Nox's head had been laying unmoving just a moment ago.
"What even are you?" Mei muttered as she felt a chill run down her spine at what she saw.
The blood leaking from Nox's body, it was like it had a mind of its own as it latched on to the various chunks of meat and bone in the surroundings, physically pulling the horrific dragon back together.
"A magician!" Nox replied, letting out a puff of smoke from her mouth as her eyes caught ablaze.