These flames are far from ordinary, and much stickier than the earth elementals.

She doesn't get burned, but they foul up her flying a bit. Still, her wind's picking up, the small objects in it flying at high enough speeds Ellisaria might want to close her eyes soon.

She raises walls of earth as windbreaks.

Some of the fire elementals leap into the earth elementals, and they merge into a form that combines the fire's ability to stick to Brisingr with the more powerful physical blows of the earth.

She weathers a few blows, tries a few clever tricks - 

And then zooms straight for Ellisaria, closing rapidly.

She rears up, intent on using her superior size and mass effectively.

Brisingr seems to be planning on being fast, slippery, and sharp - all of which she's quite good at.

But she's also fairly young, and rather unlikely to win.

There are very few dragonish tricks Ellisaria has not seen in her thousands of years. Such is the price of living in the Black Dragonflight.

She will make a threat of the perceived ventral vulnerability, if the opportunity presents itself.

Brisingr goes still when her belly's threatened by more than a glancing blow.

"I give," she says, a bit cheerfully.

She backs down.

"Well fought."

Hee.

"You're very good!"

"I have had millennia of practice. My dragonflight is not a peaceful one."

She curls her tail around her feet. "I don't know many dragons that old. Smaug's probably close to my age, and our oldest story teller is from the very late Second Age, and he never fights and he's so small no one thinks he's threatening."

"How sad."

"It's how things are, now. But we can change it."

"Yes, we shall."

"Is the vulnerability of your underside common?"

"Yeah. Usually the scales there are a lot thinner. I've heard of dragons with big hoards melting things into their scales, too, though. It's just hard to do with rocks."

"That is useful to know."

"Yeah - Smaug should have the same weakness."

"Precisely."

She bounces. "That'll be a good fight."

"A short fight is better than a good fight."

She laughs. "And a victorious fight is best."

Heh. "Yes. You mentioned lesser enemies?"

"Hm. There's other dragons, but they're probably not worth fighting much before any actual unification attempts... There's the orcs and all, some of them mind their own business but a lot of them work for the cockroach so I don't like them. I mostly know which groups pledge allegiance where - cockroach's orcs are way more annoying. They do recruitment attempts."

"We may as well thin the swarm."