Coruscating beams of coherent light converged on her scaled skin, instantly burning holes deep into her tissues. She roared her anger before flapping mighty wings and swooping back toward the ground below.
Dropping down, she passed the little dragon on its way up, the beast immediately spitting an abortive burst of flame at her, but she zipped right through it, pulling up almost immediately and flapping to regain altitude. Now she was in an aerial dogfight with the weapons of the machine and the dragon that was bound to the witch, but she had reduced her overall enemies by over three quarters, leaving them on the ground. And it wasn’t a fight she needed to win; she just needed to buy herself time to open up her escape route.
Her powerful flight and skillful evasive maneuvers immediately cut down on the amount of firepower that hit her wings and body, the small, powerful beams of energy burning tiny, painful, but ultimately unimportant wounds through her limbs, torso, and wings when they could catch her twisting, diving form. She shot upward then suddenly spun in place, pulling her wings in tight around her body, thus increasing the force and speed of her spin like an Olympic figure skater floating in midair. Suddenly she spread her wingtips, the single-point talons at the end of each finger-like pinion slashing through the air in an eighteen-foot arc around her. Two of the diamond-hard claws ripped into a pair of the computer’s advanced drone orbs, shredding the tough outer skin and knocking them out of the air.
The remaining drones opened fire, but the witch’s mini dragon, which swooped, dove, and flapped around her, actually impeded the energy blasts of the micro machines while at the same time ineffectively blasting flumes of fire across the sky.
She moved the fight sideways through the air until she was over the adjacent property’s rooftop. Her research into the supernatural school property had included detailed information about the surrounding real estate. So she knew that the building below her had once housed a small manufacturing company but had since been repurposed into an artist’s cooperative studio and retail space. The roof was a flat rectangle over a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. A perfect space for her getaway exit. Flapping in place, she extended her right thumb and index finger talon and without hesitation drove them deep into the center of her torso, in the spot where a human’s solar plexus would reside. Ignoring the sharp bite of self-inflicted pain, she rooted around until her claws felt a hard, round object the size of one of those white dimpled balls that humans struck with clubs and then chased over many acres of heavily groomed grassland.
Three of the mini machines dove at her and she was forced to dive and swoop, all while pulling and digging at the spherical object within her, engaging in her own self-mutilation. Her greasy black blood made the orb slippery, but her diamond-hard claws dug into the shell of the object, allowing her to get a solid grasp on it.
A flare of scalding heat brushed her back, the flames licking though laser-burned holes in her wings, shifting her pain level up several notches to excruciating in a split second. She tucked one wing in tight to her body, pulling a multi-g turn that would have crushed a human pilot. Her big left foot shot out and slammed into the dragon, knocking it backward, its wings collapsing inward.
It should have fallen, as any aerial flyer with wings would have, but it didn’t. Instead it hovered in place without flapping, easily finding the time to bring its wings back out to full extension.
An Air Elemental… this little beast was actually an elemental, somehow shaped into the ultimate avatar of flight.
In the time it took the fire breather to recover, Lilith had been successful in plucking the bloody orb from within her own body. With no hesitation, she threw the ball straight down, as hard as her supernaturally powerful arm could hurl it.
She took a split second to watch for its impact on the art co-op roof and thus caught sight of the projectile that came hurling up at her from the ground below. Malahidael had launched himself at her, jumping fifty feet into the air from the same rooftop to intercept her current dive. He was fast, so fast that she upgraded her assessment of his abilities. His vampire-like skills were very much like an old, old vampire, harnessing whatever arcane energies the bloodsuckers tapped into to push his already superhuman jump into something closer to being shot from a cannon than a leap. But his vector was straight up and she simply backwinged, stopping her forward flight, letting him shoot up past her, his lethal sword unable to reach her position several yards away.
She leaned forward, flapped forward, and jabbed her spear at an upward angle, looking to stick the evil black blade deep into his exposed groin as his jump reached its apex.
He inverted. Somehow just flipped himself over, knocking her attack away with that hateful sword.
It didn’t matter, as his attack was spent, gravity starting him on his way back to the ground, albeit slower than a natural object that couldn’t subvert the laws of physics with vampire mumbo jumbo.
She flew around his descending body, putting it between her and the annoyingly dangerous remaining four drone balls, taking the opportunity to jab and slash at him with the lethal point and edges of her SHUKUR. He fended off every attack, but his lack of maneuverability hindered him, frustrating him.
She flapped upward, letting him get below her, taking the opportunity to glance down at the impact results of the ball she had thrown. What she saw was a spreading black circle on the roof of the building below. It was like a pool of oil, except for the tiny sparks of light spread throughout the blackness. It looked more like an upside down nighttime sky than a portal between worlds, but the Summer Queen had presented it to her as the highest level of portal technology, the pinnacle of the magic arts that created holes in the fabric of reality.
Unfortunately it needed more time to fully drill through space and time, so she was left with evading her enemies as she waited to beat a shameful retreat.
Motion on the ground below caught her eye. Two wolves, a bipedal werewolf, the two bears, one slightly wounded, and a female figure that had to be a vampire were racing across the parking lot. Behind them, moving at much, much slower human speeds were two figures, one short and compact, the other tall and lanky.
Another glance at the fetal trans dimensional portal showed she was maybe ten or fifteen seconds from her exit being ready and open. For the first time since getting that obnoxiously powerful blast from that child witch’s wristband, she smiled. Maybe she could salvage this whole mess in one fell swoop. And swoop she did.