"Ha!" The dragon bared her fangs, her forked tongue taunting him through their deadly points. "The mightiest of the ants, challenging the heavens themselves! And he thinks himself [i]eternal![/i]" A fresh bout of laughter shivered through her, and she had to raise one set of claws to hide her vicious grin. "Oh dear, little one. I haven't heard such comedy in centuries..." Her biting words slithered through a storm of oncoming blows, pricking at the griffin's fluffy ears. Archontikos had taken no significant damage from her claws, and other than a faint tingling sensation in his arm, there was little to stop him from launching his brutal retaliation. Those wings of his were veritable siege weapons, and their barrage would have pulverized even the thickest of castle walls—but Tiamat was a leaf on the wind, and against such a simple assault she was all but untouchable. Strike after strike ripped through the empty air beneath her, and her stinging claws snipped and sliced at the lashing wings, punishing every attempt to bring her down. Once again, positioning was key. She'd launched her previous attack from above, and the impact had cost Archontikos just a few feet of altitude. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but here was the thing: every action produced an equal and opposite reaction, and the same impact that knocked the griffin down had pushed Tiamat [i]upward[/i], the recoil of her own blow giving her a burst of extra lift to gain distance. Her opponent had begun his counterattack without bothering to close the distance first, and though his sizeable wingspan gave him sizeable reach, Tiamat had only been gliding up to this point. As the beast unleashed his first mighty strike, her own wings beat down, and she darted up still higher, so that her body passed beyond the maximum range of his blow. It was the flying equivalent of footwork, the kickboxer's agile backstep adapted for use in aerial combat. Any oversized bird could use its wings as weapons, but Tiamat had honed them into the primary tools of a full-blown airborne [i]martial art[/i], one that many a former foe had learned to fear and respect. More quick wingbeats kept her clear of the initial follow-up strikes, but the dragon knew better than to wait for her enemy to change targets. The griffin's remaining four wings might have sufficed to keep him aloft, but in this moment his lift was nonetheless reduced, and it couldn't be easy to stay balanced in the air while constantly throwing out one's wings like that. Tiamat had used her wings as bludgeons many times in the past, and it only took her a couple of seconds to figure out the timing, and spot her opportunity. An upward strike, a missed blow... And before the next could arrive, her own wings snapped closed. Without any remaining lift, the dragon dropped like a stone. And this, too, was a part of her art. In the air, gravity became yet another weapon, another tool to use in outmaneuvering one's enemy. Archontikos had just thrown up a wing to try and strike at her, and that wing had yet to fully draw itself back into position after the blow. Before it could, Tiamat came down on it like a fucking guillotine, leading with a brutal axe kick powered by the full gravity-assisted weight of her falling body. The raw force of it absolutely dwarfed her skimming slash from before, and no amount of toughened hide was going to keep that from leaving a bruise. ...But that wasn't the point, or not entirely. The fact was, in using two of his wings to attack, Archontikos had sacrificed a degree of balance and stability. And while his physical toughness could reduce [i]damage[/i], it didn't prevent transfer of velocity, meaning it wouldn't keep him from being knocked out of the sky and sent hurtling towards the ground in an uncontrolled spin. [@Griffintaur]