A place disturbed. A still scene through which a calm wind carried the last glowing cinders, still hot against the skin. It was a grisly sight, the little town, steeped in a heavy cloud of smoke and soot, though strangely serene the way time seemed to hang there. The dying flame crackled and crawled along what little was left unclaimed, slow but sure in its efforts to erase all that once stood where I did now. It didn’t have much time left. The way things were going, the city would be leveled by nightfall, and there’d be no trace left come morning.
In those final hours, none bore witness but one hopeless rodent, a stinking rat half-buried as it dug through the filth. It wasn’t much use. I sifted through it piece by piece, but there was nothing to find. Every stone turned awarded the same awful sight, every alley decorated with the same ash and gore that stained my eyes this deep red hue.
What am I missing? I asked myself—both this time and the last—knowing that somewhere beneath the pile of rot and ruin was the answer that alluded me. This village and two more before it gone in a puff, and here I had nothing to show for it but a rank pair of boots and scars that I knew wouldn’t stop aching.
Amidst my digging, I stopped and withdrew my dingy paws, nails caked in black smut. In my solitude, it was hard to miss the sound—the flurry of feet and the flash as it sprung before me. It was too slow. Metal split the wind, a mourning melody it sang as it cleaved in two the little imp and left behind it a crimson streak. A second later, the mutilated carcass struck the ground with a dead thump, and the blood rained down behind it. Another second, and the bloodied brand clicked back into the scabbard on my waist. I was safe, but no closer to a conclusion.
I knelt to examine my prey, pitiless to the vermin fool enough to desecrate these grounds and think it could escape reprisal. Damn ugly thing. Coarse hairs sprouted in tufts all along its body, and its twisted face was full of splintered teeth. And now it lay, a lump of yellow flesh in a pool of red. Just a trow, nothing more.
A tense sigh fled my lungs, and my teeth pressed sharply into my lower lip. This place was utterly broken—torched and charred to a point beyond recognition but with nowhere to cast the blame but one measly goblin. There may have been more of them, as there often were when dealing with the tribal troglodytes, but this far surpassed their means. A specimen as lowly as their sort had neither the brain nor the brawn to set a blaze of this magnitude; it was more likely they were here for the spoils, ripe for thieving little scoundrels.
Not content to give up, I returned to my scouring, a meticulous piecing through the wreckage in the narrow hope of finding what I continued to miss. Not that I enjoyed it, but I had no choice. This wouldn't mark the first, but the third of our allied villages to go up in flame without an official explanation, and with each repeat incident I fell further out of favor with the powers that be. Cornika, Thorwell, and now Crodmill had all been razed to the ground save a bloody smear left in their place, and who was I but the poor sap they looked to for answers? Two times that sap had tested their collective patience; it was unwise for him to try it again. And so, I cupped my hand to my nose as I continued to trudge the ruins left from whatever hell consumed it. I started from what used to be the plaza, its scorched stones providing a perch from which to survey the rest of the city. It didn’t provide me with a high ground, but I could see the extent of it, and my second wind didn’t carry me much further.
I doubled over. It took all of my willpower to avoid retching, not just from the sight of it all, but from the abhorrent stench of singed flesh and bone that wafted through the air. Having experienced it twice before, one might expect the sensation to numb—for their lifeless faces to stop registering—but one detail always made my blood curdle just as it did the first time: the still of it all. Charred remains of countless men, women, and children alike littered the streets in swaths, but not a soul’s cry rang out from the rubble, not one life left intact after some greater power tore them to shreds. It wasn’t an attack that these poor souls faced, but extinction.
You’d think with an event like this that it wouldn’t be hard to deduce the cause, but the scale of the catastrophe didn’t make it any easier. There were complications. First was the timing: Cornika’s downfall occurred a year before today’s events, and less than a month passed before Thorwell followed. Now Crodmill joined them, but so long after that one might have assumed they were unrelated. It didn’t help that I arrived this long after the fact. In every case, it was only passersby that alerted us to the villages’ burning, and that made my job all the harder. I was at least a day late every time, not enough time for the fire to die, but long enough for it to claim its victims. Long enough that they started to smell.
An instant, painless death to all of them. That’s what I wished for, and what I said to console myself, but I wasn’t that foolish. Though none of them escaped, they all ran from something. Something that was still out there, and while it wasn’t clear what, a little clearer was the path of destruction. With each repeat incident, the threat loomed ever closer to our Abdera, and though the scale of our cities was incomparable, anything capable of this slaughter still posed a significant threat. I couldn't leave without a verdict this time. Not lest the same flames brush my homeland.
Sometime during my wandering, I heard it again: a scrape, a scurry in the heap of scrap, and no later was I surrounded by them. Nearly a dozen crawled from the debris with the soot on their faces to show for it. Trow were a species of goblin that frequented the native territories, a common pleasure saved for those such as myself. They were nothing but dirty scavengers even less intelligent than others of their kind. Like wild dogs, their mangled molars gnashed and dripped saliva. There was no emotion in those warted, flaxen faces. They may seem intimidating, but given that their crooked bodies lifted a mere two feet from the ground, one of the varmints amounted to fodder for my steel. This many, however, could quickly overwhelm me.
I back-stepped and drew my sword, still slick with the fluids of the last wretch fool enough to cross it. They seemed to take notice, trading squeals and grunts in place of words. For now, they were apprehensive, crouching as they circled. It couldn’t have been them. Even now, I was certain they couldn't have managed a feat as this. There weren't weapons between their gnarled fingers, nor were there torches, only small scraps of wood and cloth bound to their skin as primitive armor. They brandished nothing but their own overgrown nails, ready to rip and tear at whomever was unfortunate enough to cross them. From what I understood though, it wasn't just us that despised them. Trow were infamous for their hostility towards other packs, and I had never known them to travel in larger groups than these, so this was likely their extent.
That was all I needed to see. With a firm but delicate grasp, I flourished the blade in an arc. At my provoking, the ugly creatures exchanged looks until the closest and bravest leaped towards me and, for his courage, received a taste of my steel. The metal bit in deep, shearing the skin with little resistance and causing it to shrink back with an ear-splitting shriek that rallied its cowardly comrades. They cackled and hollered, bouncing on their haunches as the ring closed around me. Before they could retaliate, I stepped into the hoard with a rising slash—two more trow thrown into the heap. Evidently, that was just what they needed to quell their fear because they wouldn’t give me another opening.
I was lucky to have hurt a few of them before the rest would have a go at me. One by one, each member of the troupe introduced themselves, wildly swinging their odd-numbered digits at my shins. Backing away, I outpaced them for a little while, but then I felt the low-burning rubble hot against my heels: I was out of space. Another wide sweep pushed them back, but it was temporary. Now that they knew the advantage they held, they were foolhardy. Relentless. I had to change my strategy or there was no chance of getting away from the little cretins. There were too many of them, and my weapon would sooner break than find its way through each of them. Short of options, I had one left to turn to. To escape with my life, I'd have to tap into its source—I'd have to use magic.
The name carried illusions of grandeur, but it was a commonality of all things living; through the veins of all man and beast flowed the energy we called ether. More of a spectacle was when it was given form—bent to one's will and used to perform tasks otherwise unimaginable. Commonly, it was a tool for our convenience, but in the hands of the adept, it could prove a formidable weapon. This weapon, however, was double-edged. That which brought us strength also gave us life, and, whilst powerful, spelled the death of any practitioner careless enough to fully expend it. Unchecked, holding the elements in one's fingertips meant watching your lifeblood spill from them, thus, warriors such as myself chose to wield this power with delicacy.
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In the space I had left, I turned my blade and held it level with the ground, sweeping my open palm from tip to forte as I channeled the latent power. Upon my touch, the cool metal grew colder still until it stung my fingertips. Slowly, a sheet of frost formed from the surrounding the air, and layer by layer the rime built upon itself until the full length of the blade had been encased and extended with solid ice. This was a catalyst: a way to draw the burden from our bodies and reclaim the ether lost. Metals made the best of them, but all materials had a capacity for it.
With a larger swing, the tide of battle fell to my command. They sprung in twos and threes, but my blade covered ground faster than their little legs would allow, severing them from afar. The swarm howled as more of its ranks dropped like flies into the muck. Our skirmish wouldn’t have lasted much longer thereon. I was having no trouble fending them off, and I was prepared to see every last one of them through, but ultimately, our soiree ended too soon. Our feet fell out from beneath us when suddenly the ground quaked, shaking free all that remained standing and showering us with rock and cinder. Old embers roared to life as a fierce gale bellowed from somewhere nearby.
They’d had enough. Like the stacks of dust and smoke they crawled from, the hellions scattered, seeking new shelter from whatever greater threat had risen in my place. I was left then, to fend for myself against the harbinger of calamity. Whatever it was, it was airborne, bearing wings powerful enough to domineer the wind and the ash it carried. It was a long backlog of monsters that had met their end at my sword’s, and among that list, there was only one beast capable. With the air turned to poison, I breathed instead through the neck of my tunic. The bluster blurred my vision, so I found nothing when I first scanned the skies. I didn’t know if it had seen us or merely responded to the commotion, but I crouched in either case.
Griffins were not a friendly foe. The only way to pin one down was to clip its wings, and without the right tool, that was no easy task. My sword sheathed and my bow drawn, I took aim. This thing had to be enormous, not just to scare away a lurk of trow but to force the earth into a tremor. It wasn’t a foreign situation I found myself in, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. My heart started beating in the back of my ears, and the bow wavered gently against the breeze. Whether these villages got retribution—whether it continued on to take more lives in Abdera—all hinged on my first shot. My fingers still rested on the string when I first spotted the winged silhouette against the cerulean.
“That’s not—” I whispered at the form. Something was off about it. It moved swiftly, too gracefully compared to a griffin’s lumbering flight, and its sharp profile didn’t match that of a feathered beast. I looked again down the shaft of my arrow, my eyes growing with its outline.
The deafening roar that ensued was enough to make me drop my flimsy weapon and clasp my ears in agony. It tore through my whole body, weakening me at the foundation and causing me to drop to my knees. Then, I saw the rapture. My whole peripheral was filled with a cleansing white fire, and my nose likewise filled with an acrid and sulfurous miasma. From a nearby cluster of buildings wailed the group of fleeing goblins, but not for long. The garbled sound drowned in the roar of fresh flames; meanwhile, I still knelt in reverence of its great power. When my eyes fell upon what caused the chaos, my heart sank, and despite the intensity of the heat that surrounded me, I was frozen where I stood—locked in place by fear's deathly cold grasp.
The next instant, I was an insect in a giant's shadow. It descended in a black cloud, bringing with it new dusk beneath the risen ash. Only through a narrow break in the cinders could I catch another glimpse of the culpable monster, and when I did, I was forced to shield my face from the light dancing off of its countless scales.
I waited until its reptilian form was obscured by plumes of smoke before adding my own, a wake of loose dirt and debris as I broke into a sprint. I needed to alert my partner, otherwise, both of our bodies would join the tally. It was that pressure combined with my wide strides that sent me tumbling. My forefingers were raised to my lips when my legs caught on the crag, and with only my flailing arms to cushion the impact, the hard earthen floor was unkind in my fall; a jolt of hot pain coursed through my splayed limbs, and the whistle was trapped when I struck my chin. The taste of blood coated my tongue. I struggled to regather my bearings, but it was impossible to focus with thoughts racing at a pace I could only wish was matched by my legs.
When again I had my feet under me, I was relieved to find myself concealed from its view—sequestered by the thickly suspended soot. From nearby, I could hear my horse's loud and anxious whinnying, followed by a distressed call of shared origin. "Kaiser! What in the hell is happening? Where are you?"
"Here! I'm here."
Soon after, three figures stepped out from beyond the wall of black and gray. It was the guard whom I had instructed to keep watch of the perimeter along with our two steeds. “Thank Christ. I saw the smoke and thought you had crawled where you didn’t belong. You found them then? The guilty party?” He asked, pointing back into the murk.
“Not before it found me. Untie the leads—we leave now," I demanded firmly, but with a lingering shakiness. I knew he still awaited an answer, but I had not the time nor desire to give him one. Without delay, I vaulted on top of my horse and pulled sharply on the reigns.
He was close behind. "What do you mean, leave? Shouldn't be apprehending the bastards?"
"You're welcome to try, but unless you like the look of your viscera, I wouldn't recommend it."
"Oh, spare me your lunacy, just tell me what—" he was swiftly silenced by the squall, a torrential wind that nearly threw us from our mounts. When he spoke again, it was with dread. "God's blood...what? What is that monstrosity?!" The ash had cleared to reveal the full breadth of the blood-red nightmare that laid claim to Crodmill.
While not unheard of, draconic beasts were a rarity in our region's flat terrain and cool climate, so I had ruled them out during my reconnaissance. More importantly, I was aware of only a few species, none of which compared to what flew overhead. It was tenfold the size of the largest beast I had encountered, stretching the length of four abodes head-to-tail with a wingspan roughly double that. And yet, despite its mass, it swam the clouds like a swift breeze, its shadow stretching half of Crodmill.
Size was one matter, but its breath was another. In its throat, it carried a pale blue plasma enough to instantly smother the town. This was unprecedented. I was certain the lizard's features matched no other. Whereas the wyvern moniker was given to any flying reptile, and drake for any that crawled the ground, 'dragon' was reserved for myth—for legends and wives' tales passed through millennia. Even so, it was the only word that came to mind as the ruby giant graced us once more, demanding our undivided attention as it basked in the holy light. Then, with a single wingbeat, it soared past us.
"Where in the hell did that monster arise?"
"From the depths," I surmised, my eyes still glued to the winged demon. Despite my concern, it appeared unaware of our presence, circling back to roost as it had been prior to our arrival. It glided by, and I could just make out its finer features: the dragging, spiked tail, to the four talons tucked tightly to its scaleless underbelly.
Though I was curious, my gaze didn't linger; we had miraculously slipped beneath its notice, and I wasn't to push our luck further. We shook our heads of wonder and awe and rode back at a pace faster than that which we had arrived. All the while, I struggled to cope with the rawest and most primal fear I had yet experienced, along with another feeling that I couldn't so easily place. It was a nagging sense of déjà vu, as if somewhere in the deepest reaches of my mind I'd triggered a dormant memory. For the time being, I concluded it was best to forget about it. There were more pressing matters at hand.