Harlan gladly listened to every order he received.

Go here, send this person here, bring this squad back, send supplies here.

“Changeling, gate 200 north, 300 east, they need your help.”

He went through the gate and came out in the sky.

The wyvern hunting squads didn’t just hunt single targets, mostly because there was no such thing as a single target during a wyvern swarm.

They were a rare event, and nobody knew exactly why they would seemingly throw themselves at civilization without regard for their lives.

Even when mages of the past managed to bribe a conversation out of a survivor, the wyvern’s themselves didn’t understand it, they simply felt compelled to rush south.

The most common reason given was that they felt fear, but sometimes they would say that they suddenly felt ravenous hunger or an uncontainable aggression.

Harlan landed on the back of one of the smaller wyverns and clawed off one of the wings, tendrils came from his back and stole them, sending the beast to the ground.

As the wyvern’s arms were also their wings, the creature was barely able to stand anymore, its body wasn’t meant to stand without its wings acting as balancers.

It tried to support itself on a tree, but it only made it easier for Harlan to dive down and cut its neck nearly in two, his blade unfortunately not having the length for a full decapitation.

He left it to bleed out, even if he was powerful, there was no sense in getting near the flailing beast that weighed over a ton and had scales like steel.

After adjusting the size of the wings, Harlan moved quickly through the sky, to the leader of the archmagi.

“What do I need to do?”

“Leave the greater wyverns to us, we need you to take out the small fry who keep interrupting our spells.”

Harlan left with a great flap of his wings.

When he encountered the nearest wyvern it was a basic unaligned one, but blue veins on its scales showed it was starting to become water alignment, meaning it wasn’t more than five years of age, but not less than four.

He spun around and used earth imbibing to harden his entire body, including his new wings, piercing the chest of the beast like a bullet.

Unfortunately while he broke in, he lacked the speed to get all the way through.

He became stuck, funnily enough, in the rib cage, and the beast whose heart was destroyed plummeted to the ground below.

One of the other archmagi wanted to help him, but the leader told him to ignore it.

Harlan emerged not 15 seconds after it hit the ground, and a few minutes after that, the wyvern got back up as well.

Having died so recently, the mana in its body had yet to fully dissipate, so his gem quickly filled the void where the soul was and took hold of it.

It took to the sky alongside him despite the gaping hole in its chest.

When Harlan repeated his trick, he added wind imbibing.

Fire makes one stronger, but Harlan was using his weight and speed to break through, being able to throw a stronger punch would mean little in this case.

The wyvern grabbed the dead body and glided while Harlan waited for the gem to activate.

Harlan’s plan was not to keep adding more wyverns to his group, instead he wanted to fuse them together.

He was certain that what he was doing was alright as he added proper arms to the wyvern along with increasing its size.

It wasn’t alright to make a dragon, but it was alright to make a flesh golem that resembled a dragon.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, as he was supposed to keep the lesser wyverns away from the archmagi who were charging much larger spells to take out the greater wyverns, the appearance of a dragon, even a false one, sent them into a frenzy.

The Dragonoids held traits which were draconic, and for wyverns it was envy and rage.

The poor traits of their opposites, the drakes, was their slothful and stubborn inclination.

Harlan’s false dragon let out fire from its two heads and four lungs as well as throwing out punches and kicks, but two dozen wyverns had descended on it and there was only so much that could be done.

Still, it wasn’t a loss.

It was for the false dragon, it had been torn apart, but it had killed a dozen of them and gave Harlan the time to prepare something big.

The spiralized void warspell broke through the mass of wyverns with ease, killing another five, then as they rushed forward, a gate opened to redirect the spell back to the group and took out another four.

With three wyverns which were young but elementally aligned on his tail, Harlan tried to get some distance.

They snapped their jaws and let out their flames, or ice and lightning in these cases, but wyverns did not work together, they just happened to be near one another fighting the same target.

One of them grazed another and started fighting, this small distraction let Harlan slip right between those two and the third, who let out a black bile, an Acid Wyvern.

When it struck their scales they let out a literally deafening roar that popped Harlan’s ears and broke his equilibrium, sending him to the ground as he couldn’t control the direction of his flight.

Had they any sense, they would’ve let out their elemental breaths and Harlan would’ve died or at least been seriously injured, instead, they shot their breath at the Acid Wyvern who harmed them.

As they dove down to devour its flesh they argued in their clicking tongue, how a wyvern would speak before it was evolved enough to use language, and went back to fighting one another.

By the time Harlan recovered the Ice Wyvern had won out over the Lightning but was mortally wounded.

He couldn’t help but scoff.

When The North was reclaimed by humanity, led by Sepul, the wyverns had tried to work together sometimes, but it always just made things easier.

Even a greater wyvern, with intellect on par or above humans, was a petty creature, and betrayal was just what they did.

The trait which all dragonoids had to some extent, which could on occasion overcome the others, was greed.

He opened a gate and moved the wyverns to the body of the false dragon.

It would take time for it to be pieced back together and for the other parts to be added onto it.

The other archmagi touched down, having killed their targets.

“Good work. Now, could I barter for some of those scales? Surely you don’t need them all.”

“For now, I’d like to send this thing against the other wyverns. But when this is over, I can part it back out, though the flesh would all be mixed together.”

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“How long until it is done?”

“Considering the heavy modification, even by using up all of the gems I have on myself, half an hour at least.”

“An eternity in a fight like this.”

“I need to get back to Wyrmhold, take this.”

Harlan handed the leader of the group a communicator, its shell made from wyvern bone and its string made of tendons.

“And this is?”

“It will listen to your commands if you talk into that, but try to keep it simple, this thing isn’t going to be very smart and at its size moving isn’t what I made it for.”

“What did you make it for.”

“Spewing elemental breath. Keep it in a straight line and it should cut through just about everything.

Keep in mind what heads it has.”

“Why don’t you just use it?”

“Because I need to gate others around, keeping this with a strike team will be more useful.”

Harlan waited a moment.

“And if you use it, I want half of anything it kills.”

The man hesitated, but shook Harlan’s hand anyway.

Back in Wyrmhold Harlan went to receive more orders, but was told that there was a disagreement between the Archmage and the Commander from Ragne regarding where to send their forces.

Divinationists cooperatively cast massive spells that covered hundreds of miles, their goal was to find the unmarked villages, no map in The Frontier could really be called finished, they came and went by the month.

When he entered the tent things were tense.

“I SAID SEND THEM HERE.”

“LEAVE THEM.”

“THEY ARE STILL PEOPLE.”

“Hello.”

“SHUT UP.”

When the two men recognized Harlan, they apologized.

“Is there something I can do, considering my ties to both sides here.”

“No, not you.”

“Yes, this man intends to leave every Fomorian village to their fate.”

“We’ve already lost enough human villages, I’m not letting you send my men to be killed by those monsters when they can be helping to move people instead. No offense, Sir Fomoria.”

“Some taken, but I agree. Archmage, whoever you are, Fomorians should be considered a threat until proven otherwise, it would be a waste to send soldiers or mages there instead of sending them to evacuate the other villages first. They’ve been locked into these lands for centuries, during which other wyvern swarms have happened, if they lived before, they can do it again.”

Harlan tapped on the map table.

“You are sure there are villages in these locations?”

“These other locations are ones that are shielded from divinations, which means someone who doesn’t want to be found. This could mean old sites from the ancient Renioan Empire, but it is much more likely that they are Fomorian villages since we know there is human-like beings there.”

“If they are shielded, how did you find them?”

“When a dozen archmagi and another two dozen mages cast a spell like that, nothing is really shielded.”

“Commander, are any of these sites owned by Ragne.”

“I cannot comment, considering our company. And you, you are not allowed to ever say anything about these findings.”

“Archmage, ignore them, focus on finding evacuating villages that we know about.”

“You can’t order me to do anything, we are here to reach an agreement on how to deploy the next wave of forces.”

“I am not ordering you as an archmage, I am ordering you as The Queen’s Blade. This is a joint operation, archmagi come here to get paid in coin and material, Ragne lets you take whatever you kill so long as you follow orders. Commander, where do I need to send people?”

“We’ll write out the rest soon, but for now, I need gates here, here and here, then one here in the south to pick up more supplies.”

The archmage wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t going to argue the point.

They considered archmagi to be above soldiers, to be above militaries, to be nations unto themselves.

He considered Harlan coming in there as a military dog and swinging around his title to be beneath him.

But, Harlan was right, it was a joint operation, the archmagi were there for selfish reasons generally speaking, and even this man wasn’t doing this because he cared about Fomorians, he just hoped he could convince them to go with him so he could study them.

As Harlan was waiting for the men who were unloading supplies from a warehouse for the citizens who were injured or hungry, who had lost their homes, he decided to call Adina.

Only there was an issue, she wasn’t answering.

Not a problem, he just needed to contact the others.

Yet nobody answered, moreover, they didn’t just not answer, the call never went through.

Harlan spoke to the other mages and asked them to try contacting anyone they knew who was still at the academy, but nobody could get through.

Suddenly terrifying thoughts ran through their minds.

From Harlan’s report when Charlotte was nearly assassinated, the only thing they knew that would do that over an area was Fae magic.

The important question was if it was a Fae directly, or if someone had bartered with one of the fair folk for a magical item.

Harlan rushed back to the tent.

“Do we have anyone who can confirm the state of the academy?”

“What?”

“Nobody can contact anyone in the academy. Can you send any message that can confirm what is happening there?”

The archmage and the commander both started making calls, but Hirum only had a few moments of peace before he needed to rush back into the fight, and all he could say was that the building was standing.

How he knew this wasn’t important, so Harlan left it unasked.

“We can’t spare many forces, Harlan, check on the academy and report back if you need reinforcements.

Worse case we leave The Frontier to its fate for however long it takes us to reclaim the academy.

I pray that this isn’t what it seems, the archmagi are already tired, and we can’t have them leave active fights, so any help will be delayed.”

Harlan found that he couldn’t gate anywhere near the academy.

So he went to Borden and started flying as fast he could with the wyvern wings boosting his speed.

A dozen miles out from the academy when he encountered an ambush, a quickly constructed fortress across the road had been cloaked from sight, and which attacked outside of his mental senses range.

A hail of spells fired on him, and he couldn’t gate away, it could form now that he was in this space, but it was distorted and he couldn’t tell where in the area it would even send him.

It was however better than being hit by the attacks headed his way.

The assassins were unsure if their attacks had connected, but when the smoke cleared they saw no body.

They kept an open eye, but he was gone.

Harlan didn’t want to leave it there, but he also didn’t want to spend the time it would take to kill them.

Harlan flew up and away from the academy until he could connect to Rosewell first, as many of the students were the heirs of nobles, and then he contacted the archmage who was coordinating the other archmagi handling the wyvern swarm to warn them about an unknown enemy force that had clearly prepared a large attack if the fortress was anything to go by.

When he reached the front of the building he absorbed the wyvern wings to recharge his mana, they wouldn’t be of much use inside.

As he walked inside he noticed the array and tried to determine its use.

Judging by the bodies, it electrocuted people.

Harlan didn’t have time to figure out the best way through, so he backed up and jumped through it.

He expected to get a shock but roll through to the otherside, instead, he felt the array check him for something and then ignore him.

He didn’t have time to contemplate this, he just kept running towards the infirmary.

He encountered a tall man with blue skin and horns that was cutting down students and soldiers alike.

Misunderstanding the situation, he jumped in to fight the man and save the students.

The man however was fast, and the gauntlets he wore could block the black blade.

“I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY.”

“YOU ARE BUTCHERING THESE PEOPLE.”

“DON’T CLAIM YOU HAVEN’T DONE SO BEFORE.”

Both sides tried to use skip to get around the other, and from the outside it just looked like the two men were rapidly teleporting around the hall, each clash of their weapons let out a dull sound of bone on bone.

By the 20th skip, the tall man decided to just take the blade head on, quite literally.

As the blade was deflected by the black horns of the blue man he spun his body while holding Harlan’s arm and tore it from the socket.

“LET ME EXPLAIN.”

The shock of losing a limb forced Harlan to stop, and the man tossed it back to him.

Once it was back on his body Harlan just shook away the odd feeling.

“Those with yellow bands are enemies, they are Reinoans and traitors from Ragne, if this is led by Reino or if it is a coup against them I don’t know.”

With Harlan’s mind clearing up again he noticed that the man felt wrong, his mind was like his own, a black hole that demanded one to acknowledge it but to also turn away once they had.

“Who sent you?”

“Who do you think? Now, come, there is much to be done still, your wife is here, is she not?”

The two made their way towards the infirmary, both had sensed Hellon and figured she would know where to find Adina.

Provided of course they reached her before the numerous people they could sense around her killed her.