First Demonic Dragon

Mira was unflappable in terms of composure.

Just because her enemy didn't seem to want to share his identity with her, that didn't mean that she let herself be overly preoccupied with discovering his identity.

All she cared about was the fact that she could make him bleed. Whoever he was.

Still, she found it rude not to ask at least once.

She smiled casually. "No plans to announce yourself?"

The hooded man was unphased. "I've no intention of giving my name to one of Abaddon's disdainful children."

"What about surrendering to one then?" Mira smiled innocently.

"I believe not. I look forward to seeing your father weep when he comes to find you and your head rests on a spear."

If the hooded man was expecting his words to rattle Mira, he was sorely mistaken.

She had heard more violent threats and taunts from individuals far more malevolent than him.

And after all of this time and all of her experience, she was no longer capable of feeling anything for these barbarians but pity.

"Emboldened by your anonymity are we? You'll have to remind me how well that serves you beneath a grave."

The ground between Mira and her enemy ruptured. Their opposing, but similar levels of strength caused a chain reaction in the grounnd; forcing it to split apart. Enjoy new stories from empire

The two kept pushing against each other in their mammoth contest of strength until staying upright was no longer feasible for them.

Mira watched her enemy vanish into darkness as if he were some kind of rouge.

Reaching behind her back, she removed the pair of daggers from their sheaths.

Bright, blue blades with a sharp, dangerous edge made from ridges of ice. It's leather and gold pommel was terrifically balanced despite it's apparent heaviness- making them ideal for throwing.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

The weapons twirled easily in her hands as if they were mere extensions of her very own body.

Using the flat sides of her blades, she knocked aside a series of sharp projectiles aimed at her head and neck.

The landscape around her continued to crumble as the ground underneath her feet shifted.

The ice and bedrock exploded with no warning.

Mira was hurled upward along with mounds of debris bigger than most modern cars.

She righted herself in the air and stood upside down on the rock closest to her.

Mira looked for the initial cause of the explosion underground, but found nothing.

Her enemy was still fluttering about quietly while making sure he kept himself out of sight.

Mira wondered if it was time for her to be more offensive, or if she could continue to play a longer waiting game.

The decision was ultimately made for her when a portal suddenly emerged from behind, and a large scaly fist was launched out of it.

Mira lashed out with her daggers and cut the fingers off the creature with sinister ease.

The beast shook with anger and roared before retracing his hand from the opening.

'You think I'll let you go?'

A mirage of scaly blue arms appeared above Mira's head- each of them twice the size of the limb that had just tried to attack her.

With one phantom limb, she grabbed hold of the creature's wrist pulled it back out before it could run away.

As she continued to pull, more and more of the creature's body was exposed until she could finally see it's head.

It looked like a monster with the face of a lion and the body of a black tatsu. And of course, there was a fresh cut across its face that helped to confirm it's identity.

With it's head exposed, the creature was in a more dire position than it had ever wanted.

It opened it's maw to unleash a great beam of anger from it's very soul.

Mira used her free hand and clamped the beast's mouth closed before the blast went off.

The resulting explosion damaged her spiritual hand little, but caused a dreadful amount of damage to her energy.

It's face became a mangled thing; like a bowl of mashed beef and peas.

For any other enemy this would have surely spelled a defeat, but somehow the creature began to regenerate and put it's face back together.

…Mira sighed in relief.

'Thank god he could do that. If he had've kicked the bucket then the mission would have been a failure.' She thought.

This was just another reminder that she had to be careful here. Killing him on accident would be a really bad look on her record.

"No more hiding!"

Mira yanked her enemy free and his full body came flying out of his hovel.

She sheathed her weapons and drew another one from her own dimensional storage.

Rather than being a pair, there was now just one.

A seven foot long naginata, designed with a jagged icey blue blade and the inscription of a roaring dragon.

Clutching her weapon, Mira bounced off the debris in the air to reach her opponent.

Starting at the base of his tail, she drug her weapon through his scales until she reached the bone underneath.

A roar of agony shook the entire land of snow as the creature roared, and Mira continued to drag her weapon all the way from the tip of his tail towards the crown of his head.

As Mira flayed her 200-meter enemy alive, he felt his magical power waning with every cut.

A chill was also beginning to wrack his body that made this bit of Jotunheim weather feel like a simple refrigerator by comparison.

Those two things would have been upsetting enough on their own, but together they were like a gasoline fed fire.

Too much more of this and he knew that his body would start shutting down.

"Get off of me, insolent woman!" He roared.

The creature cracked his serpent-like body like a whip and sent Mira shooting off of him.

He turned around in the air and opened several more portals.

Some released eldritch blasts, others fired literal stars and asteroids big enough to capsize mountains and overflow oceans.

Mira was surrounded from most every direction. And the amount of time she had to make a decision was already dwindling.

But the princess didn't like being rushed. Never had in all of her various years of life.

She would rather just… give herself more time.

Her eyes glowed their distinctive twin colors as an unprompted gust of wind whistled through her hair.

She parted her soft, full lips and spoke in a voice so quiet it was almost like a whisper against the roar of the ensuing battle.

"The order of the world is mine to overturn… Such is my divine right."

The change wasn't slow, or gradual in any way.

It was instant.

Everything big or small, living or non living within Jotunheim came to a dead stop.

Time was as frozen as a block of ice.

Mira stashed away her weapon for something else of equal importance.

A mirror.

She took her time to fix her hair and make sure her clothes were still decently presentable.

Mira's ear twitched.

"Hm..? Oh yeah, I'm going. I just felt like I had something stuck in my hair or something."

She seemed to be talking to herself, but oddly enough she was still in full possession of her sanity.

Time is an unruly thing. Like a great cosmic ocean.

It longs to be free and unrestrained, and when it isn't, it has a bit of a tendency to become slightly fussy.

Like a child unused to not getting it's way.

Controlling time isn't necessarily difficult for the esteemed race of Nevi'im, but it isn't something that they do lightly either.

The longer one keeps time frozen, the greater the eventual backlash one will eventually suffer.

But Mira didn't plan on keeping time frozen here for years, so there was no jeopardy of temporal displacement.

However, she could still hear time groaning within her ears- like a dam struggling against a raging waterfall.

It wasn't happy about this. It never was.

Which was why Mira developed a habit of talking directly to it. Coaxing it into being patient if you will.

It worked pretty well for the most part. But she still wanted to get a move on so as not to seem rude.

Mira hopped, skipped, and jumped over every projectile that was sent her way.

She went towards her enemy and found him frozen just like everything else in the giantlands.

Summoning another giant ethereal arm, she drug him through the space by his bottom lip- as if he were just one big disobedient child.

Mira drug her enemy back to the position in space that she had formerly occupied.

She tied his massive body up in knots like a pretzel and left him there; returning to his prior position a safe distance away.

Floating on her back, she reached inside of her dimensional storage again and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.

She smiled wickedly as she lifted a hand to snap her fingers.

"Ka-boom-boom."

Ka-boom-boom indeed, Mira. Ka-boom-boom indeed…