When Violet collapsed to the ground she struggled to remain conscious, it felt like her very soul had been peirced through. With the toxic Icor of the monster now burning her up from the inside out.

The pain was almost unbearable, yet she stubbornly fought off the pain, refusing to allow her consciousness to slip into the embrace of sleep. Its siren call sending a shiver down the young dragons spine.

Yet she was not given a chance to do more than fight back against the burning pain of having her soul wounded, or to contemplate how exactly the splinter had managed to wound her so.

For she instead was forced to only watch as Luna appeared besides the monster. Violet wanted to shout out to her, telling her to stay away from the abomination. Yet she was instead forced to watch as the world around Luna froze.

From the falling water to the flailing limbs of the monster, everything simply froze.

Whilst Violet was unable to move even a claw, she could still see. To be fair Violet was unsure if she was unable to move because of the frozen time or simply because of how much damage had been done to her. But that was besides the point.

Whilst everything else was frozen, or simple slowed down to near inaction as she noted that the monsters limbs were moving, only at a fraction of the speed as they did before. Luna herself seemed to be entirely unaffected.

Violet watched in amazement as her companion split in two, each version mirroring the other. Spears of ice acting as the damaging force for the illusion.

In mere moments, or could it have been minutes? Hours? Violet could not tell. But whatever it was, in this place of frozen time Luna cut apart the monster with a deadly grace.

However, when Violet heard the sound of shattering ice she felt the raging emotions of her companion suddenly still. Then when time resumed its normal flow, Violet watched in frantic concern as Luna collapsed to the ground alongside the chunks of frozen monster parts, that being all that was left of the monster after Luna had dealt with it.

Violet tried to crawl forward towards her companion, her friend, the one that she loved. Yet her body betrayed her, she was unable to move, her claws flexed minutely, yet she held no strength in her limbs. Ever her neck was unable to support her heads weight and it collapsed to the ground. Violet then tried to blink towards her, yet her skill failed to respond. All that happened was another spike of pain shooting through her very being for the attempt.

Thankfully she was not alone. Susan swiftly appeared besides Violet, soothing water rippling along her scales. The burning icor being washed away, and the flesh underneath knitting itself back together under the careful ministrations of the dogkin.

Yet whilst the physical injuries were being mended with comenserate speed, the wounds on her very soul were only being slightly soothed. Still though as the relief of the healing, Violet was able to think clearly, or at least mostly clear. And seeing Rhyana approach Luna filled Violet with relief.

So she instead thought about what happened to her, and how she can go about recovering from this wound.

So Violet thought back on how she had been injured in the first place. She had been in the strange place she went to when using blink, Violet had thought that she was both invisible and intangible whilst in that space. She had used it to avoid attacks before now, so why was she able to be attacked this time?

Well the monster seemed to have some kind of ability to weaken her, Susan and Rhyanas magics. Why was this? What was the reason for this phenomena.

Looking back on the short fight Violet noted how all of their attacks had ever so slightly shrunk at the moment of impact. Yet strangely Luna's attacks did not seem to suffer from this same phenomena. She also thought about how when she tried to block the splinters with her shield they simply ate a hole right through the shield.

An idea slowly formulated in her mind, one that once she considered seemed to fit quite well. It would explain how she was able go be hit in the odd liminal space of blink, why magical attacks had diminished results and how her shield was useless against it. And it all resolved around the icor of the monster.

Violet thought that the icor had a mana consuming effect. Or at least some effect of a similar nature, it was able to, for lack of a better word consume a portion of the mana that came into contact with it. This would explain how it reduced the impact of magical attacks. She also presumed that this effect work kind of similar to her void magics and would not just consume the magic, but erase it. This would make than when the splinter passed through her location when she was blinked, it managed to pierce through the liminal space that she was still occupying.

This pulled her on another tangent of thought, if that's the case then where exactly did she go when in that space during blink. Did it perhaps move her physical body into some kind of spiritual plane? And then somehow leave behind a portion of her soul as an anchor of sorts? Then the splinter erased a small part of that soul imprint?

Violet was a touch unsure but it seemed to fit from what she knew.

But then the oddity of Luna's ice being able to damage the monster with no detriment. Well at first she thought that maybe Luna just attacked a spot with no icor, but rejected that idea quite quickly. Whilst maybe true on the first attack, Violet saw Luna tear through the creature and saw plenty of icor splatter along the ice blades.

No Violet had a different idea, she assumed that whilst magical attacks did limited damage, more physical attacks had no such restriction. And whilst Luna's ice was magical in nature, it still summoned a physical object to do that actual damage. Or at least that was Violet's best guess after considering the matter for a solid 27 seconds. She truly thought long and hard about that.

However, her thoughts were soon interrupted when a noise came from the side, by this point she was able to minutely move her head and did so to see what caused the noise. To her surprise it was the mole beast, it still looked to be in quite the sorry state, but not in a life threatening manner.

Yet the beast looked quite agitated, continually looking around, as if searching for something. Or, the thought struck Violet, as if afraid that something might be looking for them. It was then that she felt a mental bridge tentatively form with her, and noting the surprise of both Rhyana and Susan, it appeared to have connected with them too.

The voice that came through was low and slow, the communication was not exactly made up of fully formed words, but more like a amalgamation of scents, sights and emotions with some semblance of words thrown in. Yet the meaning was quite clear all the same. "We are in danger, monsters gather when one of their kin die. We must flee."

'Well… that's not ideal' was Violet's thoughts, right before a cacophony of otherworldly screeches and wails resounded from all around them in the forest.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.