NOVEL NEXT Book 4, Chapter 15
Battle magic between near-peers was, ultimately, pretty straightforward. A competent battlemage has a shield for pretty much every different kind of attack someone could use against them. If you had an attack that your opponent didn't have a shield for, then you won quickly and cheaply; if you didn't, it became an attritional slugging match where both parties tried to figure out which attacks of theirs would most efficiently deplete their enemy's ability to block attacks, to reach the ideal endpoint where your opponent hit vital burnout or ran out of magicka and you could finally kill them.
I say this because, as a Dragonblood Sorcerer, fire breath was my cheapest magical attack, and it was also one of the cheapest things for me to defend against, thanks to the Dragon's Skin spell.
As Silas' fire breath wound down, he saw me standing in the same place, untouched by flame, and then recoiled backward as he caught another spray of lead shot to the face. It wasn't harming him, not really, but it ate some of his magicka, and it made him flinch, and that was perfect as far as I was concerned.
"A fellow Dragonblood," Silas murmured, eyeing the scales peeking up above the collar of my shirt, and the tinge of imperious fire that burned through my aura. "Well. Perhaps we can come to an accord."
"Just how stupid do you think I am?" I asked, before shooting him one more time, buying me the opportunity to switch to my rapier, charging in to engage him up close and keep him from ducking and weaving behind enough cover to get a spell together. As useful as magic was, the wise battlemage knows how to do damage without magic, so that they've got more juice to spend on shields. "You've made yourself known to me, Silas. You want me dead, and you're gonna try your damnedest to make it my problem. You think I'm gonna buy that you suddenly wanna cooperate with me just because I'm a Dragonblood too?"
"Not just because you carry the blood of dragons," Silas said, parrying my rapier with his claws, and riposting with a swipe I ducked under, and rewarded him with an iron knuckle to the gut that barely drew an 'oof' from him. "No, because you're a woman who carries the blood of dragons. Think, Catherine, what we could do together! If we could only concentrate the dragon's blood within our veins far enough, the two of us could birth a new generation of dragons!"
"I'm a Mage-Knight, and also homosexual," I said, before grazing his cheek with the tip of my rapier.
"Hrgh! Those are... Petty issues... In the face of destiny," Silas said, before catching me full in the face with a wild haymaker. "You will look back on this moment and despair at your youthful naivete, and you will thank me for my forgi-"
I slammed an iron fist into his mouth, spraying blood and a few long teeth through the air and across the deck. "I will thank you to shut the fuck up, in fact!"
Already, I could feel Occult-like magic swirling around him; Sorcery was not a pure tradition, after all, and it laid between the Arcane and the Occult. He might not fully realize it was what he was doing, but I certainly recognized a fellow Occultist's attempt to control the narrative.
Silas spun with the punch, but before I could capitalize on his back facing towards me, he managed to knock me off my feet with his tail, and then kicked me in the face as I fell, throwing me back across the deck with my head ringing like a bell.
"You will be made to understand," Silas growled, his voice barely muddied by the blood in his mouth at all as his spell, despite my best efforts to disrupt it, took hold of me.
---
Your name is Mario Bowser Junior. You are a half-elf, the son of a powerful and successful orcish man and a mysterious elven woman. You are too much like your mother, your father tells you; you aren't brash and loud like a proper orc should be. The fact that you're not an orc, that you're a half-elf, is just an excuse, he tells you. He keeps telling you, don't be like your mother, be like your father.
Your name is Silas Ironheart. You are a half-orc, the son of Rebecca Ironheart, daughter of Artorias Wind-Caller and Terpsichore Ironheart. Your mother loves you dearly, and does her best to raise you like a proper High Elf, kind and gentle and quick with a joke; she raises you to be passive and soft, rather than hard and assertive like your father.
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Your name is ever-changing. Whatever love may have existed between your parents, it cannot overcome the simple fact that they want conflicting futures for their child- for you.
Neither seems to concern themselves with what you think, with the future you want. This is what would bring you to hate your parents, as you grew older.
Your name is Silas Ironheart. You are a half-dragon. Your mother, Rebecca Ironheart, is a Black Dragon- a dragon who hides the fact that she is a dragon, spending all of her time shapeshifted into an elven woman. When she was young, she had been a mere dragonblooded half-elf, but years upon decades upon centuries of refining her dragon's blood had seen her metamorphose into a full dragon, at which point, taking a fully elven form was easy.
Your mother tells you why she lives as a Black Dragon. She tells you of Hano, the paladin who slew the Dark Lord in the final Dark Crusade, and how, soon after, he set his sights on another target. They called him The Dragonslayer in those days, as he slew the kingly Gold Dragons of the world, one by one, and any Steel Dragons who had the misfortune to stand in his way. The common people cheered him on, for they had come to hate the Gold Dragons, in the same way they would come to hate elves; and when Hano had slain every dragon living openly among people, the sheer weight of his legend had fueled his apotheosis, forging him into the Living God of Paladins, who soon went on to wage the War of the Roses, which killed Mother's entire family- even brave Napoleon and clever Frederick, snuffed out before they could save everyone.
Your name is Silas Ironheart. You are no mere coward of a Black Dragon, content to hide in the shadows until the end of days. You will build an army of loyal followers. You will rebuild your people from the ashes. You will father a legion of dragons, you will march on the gates of the Imperium, you will break down the doors of the Paladins' last redoubt, you will tear Hano down from his throne, and assume your rightful place as the master of all things.
Nobody can stand in your way. Nothing can ever be more than a momentary obstacle. Your destiny is clear- you will conquer the world, uniting the teeming masses of the lesser races under the banner of your immortal resplendence. You will restore the Gold Dragons and elves to their rightful place as the unchallenged kings of this world, and you will put a firm, guiding hand upon the reins of the lesser races, to ensure that this upheaval, this overturning of the natural order, can never happen again.
Soon, you will be the first true Gold Dragon to grace this fallen world in a long, long time. Soon, you will be recognized as the Emperor you truly are. Soon, you will have the Empress you deserve. Soon, you will rule the world, for it is fit only to be ruled by you.
Your name is Silas Ironheart, and with your hands, you will build an empire.
---
"Thus always to tyrants," I intoned, breaking the spell at its climax, causing Silas to reel backwards as I picked myself up, my sword lost, now being replaced with the other iron knuckle.
"Cousin, it's not-" Silas began, before I caught him in the face with an iron-studded fist.
"May them who live by the sword die by the sword," I said.
Silas coughed up blood as I slammed another fist into his solar plexus. His magicka was fully depleted, after that; he was out of options, and now he was going to die, as his draconic features faded away, leaving only a tall, slender man with broad shoulders, dirty blonde hair, and a curious mix of elven and orcish features.
"May justice be done, even if the heavens fall," I continued, grabbing him by the throat and shoving him down to the deck, coming to kneel on top of him, pinning him down.
"Cousin..." he rasped out, as I took on the Dragon's Maw.
"Thus, always, to TYRANTS!"
I bit down on his throat, my brand new fangs tearing through his flesh with such wonderful ease. His blood, hot and sticky and oh so delicious, coated my mouth, inside and out, as I finished ripping out the better half of his trachea. He'd die very quickly, but he wasn't dead yet, and without thinking about it, guided by instincts I hadn't known I'd had, I kept tearing into him, lapping up more and more of his rich, potent blood, until the flow finally stopped, as his heart ceased to beat.
Silas was dead. And now, all that was left was to mop up.