Dazed, confused and momentarily crippled, Earth lifted her spinning head up as far as it would go... not very far as it turned out. Coughing violently, mainly due to the dust she'd swallowed, she tried to stand up from beneath the debris that pinned her into position. Nothing moved, not even a jot. Summoning her magic, she let rip with a kinetic burst that should have, in theory, thrown all the rubble off her. Nothing happened. Remaining motionless and paralysed, inside a tiny seed of fear started to spread its shoots throughout her, weaving this way and that, vying for control.
Licking one of the warm offshoots of blood that tricked across her lips, desperately she tried to calm herself. Losing her temper here and now would not benefit her in the slightest, she knew. Sifting past her thumping head, she attempted to call on just the slightest spark of magic, but her focus was totally shot. Here and now, it just wasn't going to happen. She was totally and utterly trapped.
Suddenly, from above and behind, a minute scraping noise caught her attention. This was it she thought... the end of the road. One of her enemies no doubt, looking to capitalise on her precarious predicament. Anxiously trying to turn her head this way and that, frantically attempting to catch a glimpse of whoever it was, a wave of relief washed through her when a thick, toothy jaw slithered into sight, followed instantly by its double. Her familiar!
"Good girl, good girl!" she exclaimed. "Come to help your mistress have you? Your timing couldn't be better. See if you can move some of the bigger chunks of rubble will you, and I'll try and work myself free from this end."
Slithering across her chest in an 'S' shaped motion, the familiar chose the biggest piece of marble it could find, and widening both its jaws as far as they would go, grasped hold of it, pulling it off to one side. This it started to repeat, over and over again.
Under siege, raging mad and constantly on the move, Manson was a mass of conflicting emotions. This should have been over by now. Not only should the coronation have already taken place, with him crowned king, and Earth, his new wife, queen, but all of their enemies should have been vanquished forever, except that blessed dragon imposter George, remaining alive for him to torture for as long as it amused him. Instead though, here he was bounding, leaping and somersaulting out of the way of this blasted silver dragon that had sprung up out of nowhere, from the human shaped body that bloody naga king had been tending to. It just wasn't fair, or right.
Pinned down momentarily by a wayward piece of rocky debris, he fought back against his fear as a huge, raging fireball, spat at him from said dragon, headed his way at speed. Falling back on his experience and knowing that there was no time to avoid the very obvious attack, with closed eyes he opened his mind, found the guttural words of the unfamiliar language, and put all his willpower behind the effort. Through the sheer force of his psyche, he compelled his eyes back open, determined to face the consequences head on. Within only a few metres now, the heat scorched his face, that's how close it was. And then, suddenly, the roaring comet of superheated magic skipped in an instant, off to one side, missing him by the width of a fly's tongue. Forcing himself to swallow and shaking his foot free of the rubble he'd got caught up in, a short-lived flashback rendered a bright green Astroturf pitch right before his very eyes. Of course, he thought, harking back to the day when he'd taken Bentwhistle down a peg or two in the hockey match they'd played against each other, when both Salisbridge teams had met during a supposed friendly. Despite having already used his magic during the course of the game, his team were on the verge of losing as he approached the goal. Wanting to make sure of securing at least a draw, he could remember in stunning detail casting the spell that he'd just used as he wound up to hit the hockey ball. Following its trajectory all the way, pure delight and ecstasy had rocked him back and forth at the ear splitting sound of the ball hitting the backboard of the goal. Not only that, but the confusion Bentwhistle had suffered as a result of not being able to stop his magically driven shot, was by far the icing on the cake. Right there and then, he'd lost his temper and given the hopelessly naive dragon a hint of what was to come, something by all rights he really shouldn't have. It hadn't, however, affected what happened next, only the freak weather had done that.
Surviving once again by the skin of his teeth, the heat from the attack searing his chin smarting like hell, his temper, with yet more cause to erupt, threatened to spill out. Unfortunately there wasn't time for that, because that damned naga king was working in conjunction with the dragon, and both of them together had him almost pinned down. Thoughts of the past fortunately presented him with another option. Grunting out parts of the nagas' decidedly basic language, in conjunction with intricate finger movements, his mind harked back to his time in charge at Cropptech, the company he hated so much. It had amused him no end to observe the lengths the suspicious Bentwhistle had gone to in an effort to figure out just how he'd been avoiding the security cameras in and around the huge corporate facility. In a million years, he'd have never worked it out. Unlike the almost backward dragons living beneath the surface in their precious dragon domain, the nagas had harnessed their God-given abilities in much more advanced ways, one of which included an incredible piece of supernatural wizardry. On finding out what they were going to teach him all that time ago, at first he'd thought it a joke, a prank, something he had little time for. But no, it was real, and had been demonstrated to him there and then. You see, this one spell, the one he'd used to avoid Peter and all the cameras at Cropptech, was a teleportation spell. Limited to a range of about seventy metres or so, it could easily bypass physical objects and transport its user that sort of distance in any direction, up, down, left right, pretty much anywhere. All the caster had to do was imagine exactly where it was he or she intended to end up and then BOOM, it would happen in an instant, the only drawback being that it was hugely magically intensive, consuming more for every metre it moved the user. Magic that allowed him to move about covertly then, is exactly what he used now to avoid the imminent attack, transporting himself only a short distance this time, looking on as half a dozen icy missiles zinged past his left shoulder, slamming into the ground, forming their own slippery little lake in the middle of all the action.
Cursing himself for coming over to investigate the peculiar turn of events, he wished to hell that he'd stayed surrounded by the subordinates in his army. Briefly going on the offensive, bright blue and purple arcs of electricity rocketed from his fingertips in the direction of the naga king, forcing the serpent-like beast to use all the coils in its body to roll unnaturally out of the way. Tumbling head over heels to avoid more magical attacks from the well armed and informed silver dragon, reluctantly he brushed away his pride and telepathically sent out a call for help to all and sundry. Knowing that he only needed to last a matter of seconds before dozens of reinforcements arrived, spurred him on to go on the attack once again. So blasting the winter lake that had formed on the ground from the ice bolts with a huge fireball of his own, he somersaulted up and over the huge plume of steam that erupted from it, and hiding behind it, readied ever more offensive magic, determined to bring these insolent whelps to bear when his backup arrived.
Nagas and dark dragons of every shape and size flooded out of the council building and onto the courtyard adjacent to it, the serpent-like creatures queuing up to cross the bridge and join the action, while the dragons waited patiently for enough air space to take flight, that's how crowded it was. Manson's magical call to arms had ignited the supernatural power within all these beings, forcing them to do their master's bidding, whether they liked it or not. Very few, if any, of Manson's attacking force remained in the council building, which would have been unwise on a tactical level, especially given the current infestation of magical and mythical creatures slowly scouring what was left of it, attracted to the scent of magic, following it wherever it would lead them, keen to sate their hunger, and all now working together as one. Somebody, at some point, was in for a big surprise.