By the time Irwyn awoke, the dragon was dead. Elizabeth had dragged both the corpse and his limp body over to one of the larger islands of half molten metal at some point. It gave him a brief scare to see the maw as soon as he had glanced around, though lifelessness became quickly apparent given the sheer damage that had been inflicted upon the monster.Irwyn was rather sure it had not been his spell that sawed off the monster’s head, then seemingly extracted its spine with an arduous number of rough hacks. Not content with just three pieces, Elizabeth had then proceeded to carve her way into its torso in a much more surgical way, creating holes that she had then resealed with her magic for whatever reason.“So, it fell unconscious?” Irwyn called out his guess.“Comatose, but yes,” she shouted back from the other side of the carcass. “A moment.”So Irwyn used that time to evaluate the state of his body. Which was rather rough. He was successfully ignoring the headache for the most part, but there were many physical signs of wear. Like the thin trails of blood that had surged out of his nose and eyes. He was briefly confused why they didn’t seem to stretch all the way down his face, before he realized Elizabeth must have wiped some of the crimson away before he had awoken.More concerning was the within. Irwyn had, seemingly, finally found the limit of his mana when letting several sparks of a Domain freely tap into his magic, far exceeding any draw he could cause himself. Not because he had actually run out - his Reservoir felt as full as ever - but rather because his Vessel had buckled under the strain. Practically every fiber of his physical being was strained or bruised. And abused in different ways. Almost every spell except Constellation of Will had lost form, unable to hold onto the body anchoring it - and even that one was barely functional at the lowest sustainable level.Experimentally channelling (...)