Chapter 452: Tiamat vs Ouroboros
In the silent fold of the isolated dimension, where light didn't enter and sound seemed to be swallowed up by space itself, two colossal figures clashed like forces of pure will.
There were no words. There were no screams.
Just the raw sounds of battle: flesh against scales, claws against fangs, wings tearing at thin air.
Ouroboros' endless body spun in vast spirals, like a snake trying to coil the world. Its black scales, with violet-blue reflections, seemed to suck in the surrounding light. Her movement was hypnotic - as if she were dancing while trying to crush everything in her reach.
Tiamat responded with brutality and precision. Her five heads fought not in synchrony, but in coordinated chaos - each one representing an instinct, an emotion, a fury.
The fire head opened its jaw in short, devastating bursts that not only burned, but exploded on impact like magma bombs.
The ice head spat out crystalline mist, which hardened the air around it, freezing sections of Ouroboros' body for seconds - long enough for the acid head to dive in and corrode the vulnerable area.
The thunderhead vibrated like a war drum, its discharges sparking in the eyes, whipping the air and creating cracks that broke the dimensional structure - as if the plane itself was cracking with tension.
The head of darkness was silent, but lethal. It didn't spit anything out - it touched, and where it touched, matter crumbled, as if denying the existence of that point.
Tiamat spun violently in the air, flapping her wings in acrobatic maneuvers that seemed impossible for something so large. When she dived with all heads forward, the impact with Ouroboros exploded in a shockwave that folded the surrounding space like a wet sheet in the wind.
Ouroboros counterattacked with thunderous force. His body contracted like a spring, and in a single impulse, he wrapped himself around Tiamat, crushing her with tectonic force. The dragon bones bent, snapped - but Tiamat spread her wings like blades and broke free with a muted roar, slicing through serpentine flesh and spurting blood as thick and dark as hot oil.
But Ouroboros didn't back down. Its body spun in a violent spiral, the scales creating enough friction to generate sparks against the magical air of the dimension. It launched part of its length like a whip, hitting Tiamat's back with a crack so loud that it split the surrounding floating mountains.
Tiamat staggered in the air, but then struck back - two of her heads stuck out of Ouroboros, while the other three exploded in a bombardment of elemental magic at zero point, at the exact spot of the bite.
A flash. A muffled scream.
Space shook.
Dragon's blood fell in slow drops, floating like cursed pearls between them. Some drops hit the floating ground below, and where they touched, the ground cracked and burned or froze, depending on who was bleeding.
They separated briefly, both panting.
Ouroboros, though silent, seemed to be pulsing with an ancient rage. Her wounds were regenerating - slowly, but with an aura of insistence. She arched her body and prepared for another dive.
Tiamat, with broken scales and scorched heads, growled low. A vapor of all elements came out of his nostrils. Her wings were cut, torn in parts, but she still floated, defiant.
And then they collided again.
Claws tore flesh. Teeth tore through scales. Magic exploded in pure, brutal bursts, hurling the two against the edges of the very space they had created. They passed through floating structures like living projectiles, then returned to the center in a vortex of draconic rage and pride.
They weren't fighting to kill.
They were fighting to dominate.
To assert their presence.
To decide, perhaps, who was the most worthy to stand beside Strax - not for possession, but for honor.
And outside, on the material plane, the others felt the echoes of the clash. As if the air were heavy. As if the ground vibrated with an invisible heart.
A duel between two queens, fought not with words, but with fangs, fire and silence.
Tiamat glided backwards, her five heads raised in unison - eyes glowing different colors, each boiling with a different elemental power. Their necks arched like serpents about to strike. Their jaws slowly opened, and the air around them became electric, freezing, toxic, flaming and dark, all at the same time.
At the same time, Ouroboros raised his body in a vertical spiral. His long torso rippled like a ribbon of ancient power. The scales shone with an abyssal glow, and its jaw opened at an almost impossible angle, exposing a throat that seemed to contain dead stars. Black smoke began to leak slowly from its lips, as if the void was manifesting itself in gaseous form.
They didn't hesitate.
Tiamat was the first to attack. Five beams of pure destruction came out of the open mouths:
A column of white fire, hotter than the sun itself,
A beam of absolute ice, which froze even sound,
A beam of emerald acid, which distorted the air as it passed,
A thunderbolt of blue plasma, cutting through with a howl,
And a beam of liquid darkness, sucking in color, light and form.
They all converged on a single point, like a prismatic beam of pure elemental chaos.
Ouroboros responded with a single breath.
But it was so dense, so absolute, that it seemed to pull the whole dimension to itself.
His breath was silent. It didn't roar, it didn't crackle.
It was a stream of dense black energy, mixed with dots of purple and red light, like a gravitational flux compressed into reptilian fury.
And then the two collided.
The impact made no sound.
But the world bent.
The fabric of dimension tore like a thin veil struck by titanium spears. Space didn't just shudder - it imploded.
The shockwave from the collision didn't expand - it collapsed inwards, like a black hole of compressed force, sucking in everything around it for a fraction of a second.
And then...
It exploded outwards.
Light.
Darkness.
Sound.
Silence.
The dimension fell apart in an explosion of primal energy. Cracks opened up in the air, and reality gave way. The laws of physics wavered, broke... and reformed unsteadily.
In the real world, the dragons and Strax saw a tear in the sky open up violently. It was as if the sky had been torn apart by invisible claws, and a shower of ethereal energy fell from it, accompanied by thunder that seemed to come from all directions at once.
And then they appeared.
Tiamat and Ouroboros were ejected from the collapsed dimension like living comets, falling in flames, spinning in the air, until they hit the sacred ground of the mountainside where the other dragons were gathered.
The earth shook. Rocks rose up. Pieces of tree exploded into splinters.
The silence that followed was profound.
Slowly, from the center of the craters where they had fallen, the two bodies moved.
Tiamat rose with difficulty, their heads gasping. Scales were burnt. One of the horns slightly chipped. But alive.
Ouroboros slid away from its point of impact with slow, heavy movements. Parts of its body were still spewing ethereal smoke. But its eyes were open. Alive. Fixed.
Both were wounded, but smiling with their eyes.
There was pride there. Mutual recognition. Neither had won. But neither had surrendered.
Strax stepped forward, his eyes still shining with the Draconic Gaze. "...Welcome back."
Scarlet snorted, shaking her wings. "You managed to tear reality apart just to prove a point?!"
"These silly disputes," Cassandra sighed.
"You're quite the hypocrite, sister." Daniela just crossed her arms, shaking her head.
Beatrice giggled, ears twitching. "If the world ends because of an ego argument... at least it'll be between real dragons."