It was not any surprise to sage Enduring Blossoms that the dragon was the first or only one to notice her intrusion. As she watched the beast roar a challenge at her, she also noticed something else that made her lip curve upward in a smile. In the time the beast had roared, the Gabriel’s replica grew, nothing more than a toe nails worth but in the presence of her soul sense, it could not escape her notice even if it tried. A plan or more of a sequence of actions she had decided to take, it was not significant enough to make her actually plan against it. Her sequence of actions were simple, she was going to beat up the dragon until it shrank some more then she was going to seal it until a more experienced Gabriel was ready to mediate the two. As fate had ordained, if he must cross into sage hood, the dragon and the man must merge into one. One overtaking the other will seal his fate in the scholar’s tier, unable to advance. The task would be a very difficult one as the dragon would be as arrogant, overbearing and uncooperative as a dragon ought to be and negotiating would be almost impossible except in the most special of circumstances. At least there is a precedent in the ‘last king’. Well, she had been distracted enough, the replica had lost the nails worth again. She willed it and her aether began to encroach on Gabriel, in the physical world, green life returned to the forest ground ravaged by Gabriel’s ghostly green flames. In Gabriel’s soul space, green grasses around the edge of cracked barren lands, it grew to cover a fifth of the way around the replica and the dragon before the dragon could react.
The dragon reacted soon enough, sending put an aether filled roar, the aether of the roar moved like a wave in three-sixty direction, where it passed ghostly green flames escaped the cracks and burned the land. As soon as the wave reached the patch of green, the receded to half its length. the dragon moved to relax having straightened from his resting posture when a branch struck his side. The blow rocked its body in place and it twisted to roar green dragon fire at the offending branch and the tree in which it originated. Immediately after, another struck it from its other side. The dragon turned to retaliate and two more struck it before it could do so. It roared in anger while twisting around trying to dodge the attacks buy they struck true like rain on it scales.
Sage Enduring Blossoms ignored the single drop of sweat that had gathered on her brow, it was not necessarily because of the difficulty of the task but more for the need to focus on holding back as much as possible least she cause Gabriel irreversible damage. There was a reason why she deemed it fit to only occupy half of a fifth of the boy’s soil space, why she only allowed thin, poor excuses for trees to grow upon that space and why she only attacked with the tiniest of branches, just sturdy enough to be noticed but too weak to cause any damage. It was a delicate work, if she lost focus for even a moment, over extended her aether even a little and she could snuff out the boy’s aether body cripple the boy in an instant and that would be one of the least damning of consequences. There is a reason the August Accord exists, worse things existed than the end of this world.
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The dragon had shrunk enough that sage Enduring Blossoms was satisfied, there was still a difference in height between the two forms but no longer was it, a dragon compared to a candlestick, it was now more of an old tree compared to a grown man and that was better. It would make actual growth easier to incorporate into himself, whether it would shorten or extend his journey to sage hood only time will tell. She still needed to seal it, to give Gabriel the time he needed to grow.
The dragon coiled around itself cautious, a while ago all the attacks had suddenly seized, even the trees had been sucked back into the green circle of land. It was not just his instinct that warned him, his senses told of terrible power building up in that green plot, so he too prepared sucking up all the flames that had since been gushing out of the cracks in his land to little effect, he prepared his final move. It happened suddenly, four roots each as thick as its own body sprouted from the green patch of land and raced for him but he was prepared and he roared his counter in futility. The roots passed through his fires unharmed and unhindered, he twisted trying to get them all in range and they twisted with him, twisting and twisting until they had buried all of him, from head to tail, in wood. Then they squeezed and tightened around him until his senses were dulled and his connection to himself was veiled.
It was done!
The boy jerked once, hard, underneath her fingers and fell to the ground. The sealing process was a very painful process, a hot, sharp pain at the moment of the sealing. It was fortunate that the boy was unconscious, she had heard from her peers that the pain traumatized the victim just as much as reality of the situation did.
