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Temple of the Spirit Dragon ch 11
"Watch your ass!" shouted Lan.
He pushed Jaune downwards as shadowy meteorite barreled through the area where he had been floating earlier.
"Sorry!" said Jaune, who blocked a swarm of bee-like apparitions with his Veritas shield.
"Be more careful Jaune!" said Ruby, who soared above them and fired several shots at the dream eater, who blocked the shots by materializing a giant slab of stone.
The three of them had been engaging the giant creature for a few minutes now. In response to the two new combatants, the dream eater had altered the surroundings by creating many pieces of floating debris that it controlled to prevent them from getting closer and created more nightmare simulacrums to attack and distract them. Jaune and Ruby had focused their efforts on defending them from these creatures while attempting to strike at the Dream Eater when the opportunity arose, but not only were most of their attacks blocked in route, even the attacks that landed didn't seem to bother it that much, simply phasing through its incorporeal form before coming out the other end. Lan was still attempting to get used to the new abilities he had just acquired, quickly discovering that he was now able to freely fly in 3-D space. He was currently flying around the area providing support for Jaune and Ruby, whom had superior offensive power due to their larger number of fused souls, while trying to find anything he could take advantage of.
"I know that essence blow can affect it" thought Lan, as he avoided a torrent of warping fire "But it doesn't have anything that looks like a weak spot."
He had been scrutinizing the Dream Eater ever since his first contact with it, even expanded his spiritual senses to try and probe it. But he kept finding it to be an even amalgamation of whatever energy or substance it was formed out of, there were no physical vulnerabilities he could take advantage of and he understood nothing about the qualities of its energy that he could possibly take advantage of.
"Guess I gotta try to use this somehow" thought Lan, as he looked down at his palm.
He'd noticed that whenever he focused his attention on one of the many dust crystals around him that slowly came in and out of existence, the crystal would stabilize then begin to gain mass. He had several theories about what the end result would be, but since the affect would likely be elemental dust based, he had very little confidence that whatever came of it would do any good against a creature that existed beyond the established laws of the world he knew.
"But not like I got any better ideas" he muttered as he focused on a spec the appeared in his palm. The crystal quickly grew to the size of a jackhammer, and after dodging a piece of a debris that came his way, he channeled his aura into it and fired the volatile green spike at the Dream Eater. Noticing it, the Dream Eater seized a giant piece of stone debris, and threw it to intercept the attack. However, the dust spike had already gotten extremely close due to the air currents it released pushing it forwards. As a result, a massive green twister erupted from the impact site, engulfing half the Dream Eater's body.
"Yeah! You did it!" shouted Jaune, who raised his sword in victory.
"…Nope, not at all" said Lan, who was sensing no change in the Dream Eater's energy.
"I wish I knew how to merge essence striking techniques with weapons and dust" thought Lan "But I never made it far enough into training to even begin to understand the fundamentals of those abilities."
He thought about applying his current knowledge of the arcane and eldritch towards discovering those methods himself, but the sheer mental concentration required to manifest dust and weaponry here in the dreamscape made it almost impossible to apply something he wasn't accustomed too at the same time. Shaking his head with regret, Lan tensed himself to charge towards the Dream Eater as soon as the twister died down.
"YAAAAAHHHHH!", a sharp battle cry tore through the nightmare sphere as Ruby charged forwards. The twister had destroyed all the apparitions that had been floating near the dream eater, so Ruby had decided to take the opportunity to attack the Dream Eater itself. Noticing this, the dream eater lifted its hand, telekinetically gathering the many pieces of debris from the rock that block Lan's attack, and flung them at her, just in time to block her strike. The moment the blow struck, however, something unexpected happened.
With a flash of green light, Ruby's scythe was covered in a greenish whirlwind. It tore through the stone and proceeded to cut through the Dream Eater's form. Expecting the attack to merely pass through harmlessly again, Lan was amazed to see the Dream Eater recoil slightly from the attack, a quickly fading green glowing gash evident on its chest.
"The heck?!" thought Lan as Ruby, emboldened by the effectiveness of her attack, began to charge forwards again. "How did—was that-, that was like when Uncle Meng showed me how to manipulate the energy you merge with Dust, but there's no way I was able to fuse in essence striking energy into that!"
"T-that's because we did."
Lan twitched as this phrase echoed as if from a hundred different mouths inside his own mind.
For the first time, Lan looked within himself and began conversing with the hundreds of souls that had merged with him. To his surprise, he discovered that a majority of them were the youngest disciples of the temple.
"You really should have talked to us earlier." Said the collective of souls.
"Sorry, got caught up in the battle" thought Lan apologetically, "But man, I never thought all of you would be here."
"We got pulled in because we weren't strong enough to fight back yet" they said. "It knew it wouldn't be able to handle any of the senior disciples or masters. In fact, we think it was trying to avoid people with powerful souls in general, that way it could regain it's strength with minimal risk."
"I guess I was lucky that I was nearby when it created its dimension then" said Lan "That's probably how I was able to slip through."
"Well, for now we'll do our best to support you, we'll focus on fusing essence striking energy into any attack you make." Said the young disciples. "Show that specter what happens when you make an enemy of the temple of the spirit dragon!"
"Got it!" acknowledged Lan who looked up as Ruby was knocked away, the previous boost to Crescent Rose having completed dissipated. .
"Uh Lan, do you think I can get another boost?" she said as she stopped right beside him.
"You got it!" said Lan who began to manifest more spiritual Dust. "Just stick by me till its ready, like normal dust it doesn't seem to exhibit its full effect unless triggered by direct contact with aura, or in this case spiritual energy."
"Uh sure," said Ruby, who didn't understand the finer details "Awaiting the power-up!"
"Some for me too if you could" said Jaune who popped up and blocked a blast of dark energy with Veritas.
With this, the three of them finally began making some headway. Ruby and Jaune would protect Lan from the Dream Eater's attacks and summoned nightmare creatures while Lan created essence blow infused Sprit Dust, and after he applied it to their weaponry, they would fly at the Dream Eater and burn away the dark miasma that it was formed out of. Lan attempted to apply this dust to his own weaponry to and strike at the creature's blind spots. However, he soon reaffirmed that the damage he inflicted was far inferior to Jaune and Ruby's again due to the fact the two of them were synchronized with far more souls than he was.
"Should we transfer some of them over to you?" said Ruby, after he informed them during a lull in the enemy's offensive.
"No, we don't want to undo any positive synchronization that's already occurred." Said Lan, besides, he already had an idea why the two of them were able to merge with so many more souls than he was.
"I'm too different from normal kids" said Lan as he dove out of the way of a nightmare and used a piece of spirit dust to blast it with an energy beam. "I've only been able to merge with the more abnormal children here since they're more similar to me."
These were children who had gained great mental fortitude beyond what children their age would normally have, yet hadn't developed enough such that the Dream Eater would consider them a threat.
"Only in my case I really am a threat" thought Lan as he landed on the tip of Jaune's sword, slid down to the hilt, and enhanced it with hard-light dust.
Jaune's sword expanded to form a glowing sword 5 times bigger than his own body. As Jaune slowly swung his enormous sword at the Dream Eater, it prepared to move out of the way of the attack, but it was stopped in its tracks as Ruby shot up from below, her speed boosted with lightning dust, and slashed it from foot to head. Jaune's sword then came crashing down on top of it, sending it flying back to the edge of the dimensional space that it was in.
"It's gradual by I can sense that its energy is being reduced." Said Lan as he spun some crystals together and began firing off energy blasts like a machine gun at the remaining nightmares floating around. "Let's keep this up."
"Uh Lan" said Jaune.
"What?" said Lan as he vaporized the last of the nightmares.
"We think it's doing something different." Said Ruby.
Lan refocused his attention back on the Dream Eater, and was momentarily confused.
It appeared to be shrinking, but at the same time he felt the energy that it was comprised of was growing denser and denser. Lan prepared to stop whatever it was doing, but sensed something approaching from behind, and struck it was a reverse hammer fist. He discovered it to be a nightmare, which along with the countless others flying around the dimensional space, were being sucked into the dream eater as it continued to refine its new form.
"Uh oh" said Lan "I knew that wasn't its final form. Okay, attack before it finishes!"
The three of them begin to charge towards it, but stopped as they suddenly felt the space around them begin to shake. They look around and saw that the boundaries of the space they were in begin to pull towards the dream eater as well, beginning at a single point falling from above. In a split second, Lan weighed attacking the Dream Eater before it finished its transformation against getting everyone out of the collapsing space safely.
"Everyone out!" shouted Lan, who dove towards the nearest boundary, and rammed this tips of his fingers into one of the points in the space in an attempt to rip a hole in it with his energy. To his chagrin, the boundary held even as he forced all of the energy he could muster to tear through it, likely due to it having been designed to hold people in rather than keep others out.
"You guys may want to help with this" communicated Lan to the souls of the disciples within him. They complied and assisted in better controlling the applied energy to tear at the seams of the boundary, causing cracks to form on it. "Not sure we're going to make it!" screamed Lan as the shrinking space began pulling them closer to the dream eater.
""Yes, we are!"" shouted Ruby and Jaune, who charged forwards and swung their scythe and sword at the impact site. With a burst of light, the three of them tore through the space and emerged in the skies above the nightmare castle, the battle between the dreams and nightmares visible far in the distance at one of the edges of the forest. They whipped around to face their foe and saw an enormous orb that was the space that they were recently fighting in.
It glowed with thousands of different colors, many of them not of this world, and was gradually shrinking in size. Bit by bit, the lights blinked out as it began to form into a humanoid shape. It appeared to be a humanoid void leaking a kind of shadowy mist, wearing body armor that had the appearance of being made from blackened human bones. Behind it was a pair of ebon wings, seemingly made from darkness itself, which held the creature's legless form in the air.
A shadowy face formed above the armor, a twisted shadowy version of the gentlemanly face that it had showed to Lan earlier.
"Uhhh, it's a lot smaller than before." Said Jaune.
"Yeah, we're winning!" said Ruby, who hefted her scythe.
"No" said Lan who could sense the energy emanating from it "Our earlier attacks depleted some of its energy, so it's decided to make its energy more condensed to be better able to trade blows. I'm not sure that I have enough spiritual energy output to damage it significantly anymore. On the flip side, you two have the energy output from the millions of souls that merged with you, and now that it's taken on a more solid form you should be able to damage it even without my assistance."
"Cool." Said Ruby, whose grey eyes were gleaming "So we can still hit it!"
"Uh are you sure do you want some of our souls?" asked Jaune, who readied his sword and shield.
"No," said Lan who took a stance to ready himself. "As I've already told Ruby the souls have already bound themselves to hosts who have a more synergistic effect with them. It's simply that most children are more like you two than they are like me."
"Uh is that a good thing or bad thing?" asked Jaune.
"Good for the world, difficult for our current situation." Said Lan, who placed his wrists together in a meditative pose and began working with the other temple disciples within him to try and build and refine his energy into something that could pierce the Dream Eater's new defenses. "Can you guys handle it for a bit while I prepare myself?"
"We'll take it down before you're done!" shouted Ruby, who charged forwards leaving a trail of rose petals in her wake. With her astonishing speed, she was upon it in an instant while swinging her scythe down.
'Swish'
"Huh?" her scythe hit the empty air where the Dream Eater had been just a moment before.
"Look out!" shouted Jaune, who dove in front of Lan just in time to block the Dream Eater's claws. It scraped against Veritas, but luckily Jaune was able to hold his ground.
"It's way faster now!" said Ruby, who darted back towards them.
"Urgh, stronger as well." Said Veritas, as its claws scraped against him.
Ruby swung her scythe at it again, but the Dream Eater effortlessly floated out of the way, its visage seeming to sneer at her. Screaming in frustration, Ruby chased after it, and though her speed was tremendous, it effortlessly moved out of the way of every one of her attacks, even the quick shots from her sniper configuration. Jaune attempted to help as well, but found himself unable to keep up, only able to barely defend Lan against its sudden assaults.
"Alright, that's enough!" said Lan who clenched his fists, causing his arms to glow with an azure light. He'd thought about creating more spirit Dust to enhance Jaune and Ruby's attacks again, but seeing as how they were no longer able to hit it, he decided to use all the energy he readied to boost his own attributes to fight it head on "Hopefully this will be enough" he thought.
Lan darted out from behind Jaune and collided with the Dream Eater who was floating just outside of Ruby's reach. With the disciples within Lan focusing on producing the energy, Lan could focus on combining it with the energy produced by the spiritual resonance he had with the souls within him and direct it into his strikes to increase their effectiveness.
Lan and the Dream Eater darted through the sky like two shooting stars, trading blow after blow as Ruby and Jaune watched from below.
"Uh, can you follow them?" asked Jaune as he whipped his head back and forth.
"…just…barely" said Ruby who was focusing with all her might.
"That's great, cause all I'm seeing are blurs." Said Jaune.
Lan and the Dream Eater were evenly matched for a while, although the Dream eater had superior strength and durability, Lan's superior combat skills allowed him to hold his own for a while. But the strikes he landed hardly seemed to affect the creature at all and as the fight continued, Lan felt the situation beginning to worsen. "I-It's Learning" he thought as he redirected a vicious swipe of its claws with a sideways palm strike. He had no idea how, maybe due to it having already picked up the skills earlier or simply that it was a fast learner, but the Dream Eater's technique and movements were growing more and refined the longer they fought, not to mention the fact that it showed no sign of tiring even though Lan's energy was quickly draining.
"Not good!" thought Lan, as he barely avoided a blow aimed at his eyes. "Need…to…find…a…game changer!"
Lan focused his senses to the limit trying to find some weakness, some disturbance in the Dream Eater's energy to finally end this long and tedious conflict.
'Wham'
The Dream Eater finally landed a clean blow on his cheek that sent him flying to the edge of the surrounding forest, serendipitously however, that's when he finally noticed something.
"The souls it ate…I can sense them."
Like small stars that dotted a night sky, Lan could faintly sense pinpricks of consciousness flickering in the depths of the Dream Eater's form.
"Yeah, that might work." Thought Lan, as he stopped himself in midair and recovered his stability. "If I can harmonize our energy with them, we may be able to attack it from the inside and outside simultaneously…But first I need to create an opening."
With renewed vigor, Lan flew back at the Dream Eater, pouring all of his instantaneous energy into a flurry of vicious blows that took the creature by surprise, forcing it to guard. With a roar, Lan delivered two simultaneous hammer fists to the sides of the Dream Eater's wrists, blowing them to the sides. He then opened his hands and slammed both of his palms into its chest, focusing his semblance to harmonize with the spirits within and firing every last iota of energy he could muster into a piercing energy wave aimed at them. He felt it tear into the Dream Eater's otherworldly energy, and pierce deeper and deeper until…'Crack."
Lan stared down in alarm, the Dream Eater's armored hands were firmly around his wrists, which were now bent at excruciating angles. The energy Lan had forced inside hadn't even made it halfway to the souls within, and was quickly dissipated by the Dream Eater's own energies. Lan tried to pull away, but having mustered all his strength into that previous blow, he could only watch while his energy recovered as the shadowy wings behind the Dream Eater unfurled, crackling with unearthly energy.
""Lan!"" cried Ruby, Jaune, and Veritas as they flew towards him. But, too late. The wings tore through Lan's form, smashing through all his weakened arcane defenses, and ripping through his very being. Cracks of wispy dark energy spread out from the two wounds, and spread all over his body.
The two ebon wings, pulled themselves from Lan's body along with a couple of souls which the Dream Eater greedily devoured. Then, with what appeared to a sadistic grin, it tore Lan's hands off his wrists and let the boy fall.
The attack damaged Lan so badly that he was barely able to feel anything. As he fell he was desperately forcing into trying to keep his thoughts clear with all the will he had left. This of course left him completely helpless.
The Dream Eater tossed Lan's severed hands aside, both of which disintegrated into a mass of shining azure particles before winking out of existence. It then raised its hand, gathering energy into a kind of dark sphere, and aimed it down at Lan's descending form.
"No!" shouted Ruby who began firing desperately with her sniper configuration. But each shot was effortlessly blocked by the Dream Eater's other hand. "AGGGHHHH! YOU BIG STUPID MONSTER!...ugh…! Jaune!"
She yelled at Jaune who was futilely flying towards Lan in an effort to catch him before the shot fired.
"Throw your shield!" she cried.
Understanding what she meant, Jaune gripped his shield tightly, and hurled it towards Lan the moment the Dream Eater fired its sphere. The two projectiles collided in midair right above Lan. The resulting explosion sent the shield crashing down onto Lan's broken body and both down to the ground far below.
"I'm coming buddy!" said Jaune, who attempted to charge forwards again.
"Wait!" shouted Ruby, who grabbed Jaune and pulled him away just in time to avoid a blast of dark energy.
The two of them turned, and looked up at the Dream Eater who was staring at them from on high.
"We need to beat that thing before we go after Lan." Said Ruby, her voice was shaking slightly, but her eyes were still filled with innocent determination.
"Bring it on!" Shouted Jaune, who had trails of glowing liquid streaming from his eye holes as he held his sword in a two-handed grip "I'll make you pay for hurting my friend!"
The fight recommenced up above, with the Dream Eater seemingly playing with the two young titans. But down below, protected by his oldest friend, Lan was fighting a battle of his own. The blow from the Dream Eater had completely destabilized his dream form, and little by little, his consciousness was flowing back towards reality. But knowing that they wouldn't be able to win without him, he desperately fought to stay asleep.
"Keep it together boy!" shouted Veritas who was shifting the position of his face so he could look down at Lan face to face "Keep it—Oh my."
The boy's body had essentially been torn in half at the stomach, with only a few strands of wispy glowing energy attaching the two halves of his body together. Had Lan's body been made of flesh and blood, his insides would have been spilling all over the ground. The spirits within him were desperately trying to help him maintain his form, but most of them had also been greatly destabilized by the dream eater's attack, and were gradually leaking out from Lan's body.
"T-tried everything I…could. " Gurgled Lan. "S-semblance t-too dangerous t-to use, s-so mainly using training. 'inhale' but not enough…m-my training not enough either."
The residual energy from the dream eater's attack, was coursing through the boy's body, attempting to eject him from this dreamscape. Lan was imposing all his will to try and resist it, but quickly found it to be a futile struggle, only delaying the inevitable. He had to keep trying though, he knew Ruby and Jaune wouldn't be able to win on their own so he kept attempting to realign his own energy and pull his body back together despite knowing that his connection to this realm was fading faster than he was making any progress. Thoughts of regret over not pushing himself harder in the temple's training kept rising up in his mind, if he had learned just a few more of Uncle Meng's skills, he might have been able to turn this around.
"Dammit, all those hours slacking off when I could have gotten better!" he thought, tears pouring down his face. He remembered all the times he had been self-satisfied after finishing his training for the day and wanted to punch past self in the face, and scream at him that he should have gone the extra mile.
Seeing the boy's face contorted with anger and despair as more and more spirits floated up to the top of shield, Veritas let out a sigh.
"Do not feel so much despair boy." Said Veritas "Perhaps the best course of action truly is to bring your Uncle here as soon as you can."
Lan looked up at Veritas with alarm.
"You have already gone above and beyond what was expected of you, even forcing an entity that threatened a civilization that had spread among the stars to fight you seriously…I will not stop you from trying to remain here and fight with us, but we both know how the flow of your energy is progressing…But fear not boy, while you are gone, I shall devote all of my being to keeping those children safe…even should it mean that my soul is at last cleaved from this plane of existence." He looked at Lan with the closest thing he could make to a smile. "But for now, I will protect you from that thing for as long as you remain in this realm."
Lan no longer had the mental clarity to even speak back, and could only manage a strained gurgle, and before long, as if falling asleep, he felt his consciousness slipping little by little.
Words rung out in his subconscious "How many times do I have to fail? This is why I should have taken training more seriously" These and other desperate thoughts filled him until—
'BLAM!'
Lan's consciousness was jolted back to focus by a large impact that shook the shield. From the corner of his vision he could see objects digging under the edges of the shield, attempting to lift it up.
"Do not worry boy, I will see to this!" said Veritas, whose face disappeared, likely moving to the outside of the shield "What the-? You!? What are—…I understand."
With a metallic clang, the shield was wrenched off. Initially Lan was alarmed, his first thoughts were that the Dream Eater had come for him, but as his eyes adjusted to the light he saw that standing above him was:
"Meep"
This conflict will probably wrap up in another chapter or 2. After that you'll start to learn a bit more about Byakko and his comrades' place in the world. Hope and motivation are really dying down for me though. After all, I know I suck. Even if on the off chance that this story was even marginally good enough to be accepted by RWBY staff, they wouldn't read it to avoid any possible copyright issues. Even though I'd gladly sign away my rights to this story, as long as they would use it and I could keep working on it. But I'll keep writing till I finally accept my own worthlessness, for those who stay with me to the end of my death throes, I thank you.
