Eryn

Arch Priest Erlaut paced frantically as he muttered just beneath his breath. His mania had grown worse in the past few days. Rest came sparsely, if at all. He’d done the best he could to prepare. All that he could.

That fool Morwen, always so rebellious, had taken the Theferis and run off on one of her fool’s errands. Always the dutiful soldier, but always so insistent that she was the correct one. But she didn’t know like he knew. He saw it every night when he closed his eyes. The dragon’s final siege of Eryn.

Every night he was forced to walk the ashes of his world as the dragons brought ruin to it. Every night he was forced to stand witness to true evil as Sauridius reawakened. Every night he was forced to watch as they robbed the golden well of its vitality. Every night he was forced to weep as his world burned and the sector fell to darkness.

He’d taken every precaution he had within his ability. The Grand Fleet had been mobilized and stationed above the planet and placed on alert. He’d evacuated the populace to shelters designed to withstand sieges after Ominek’s attack. He’d even erected a powerful shield over the city, the complexity of its wards among the strongest he’d ever woven.

Something shifted, almost imperceptibly. It rippled over him softly, like a gentle summer breeze. He wouldn’t have noticed it had it not been for the augmentation spell he’d cast on his divination senses to warn him of potential shifts in the divine web. Since he couldn’t see the future, he’d rigged up a sort of trip wire to warn him of something dangerous.

That trip wire spell had just pinged him at the same time as the shift. He froze. Something powerful and evil was approaching. He bolted for the window and leaned out to look above. In orbit, a massive void portal opened. Even from the surface, Erlaut could see a massive fleet roll forward from the aperture.

He wove a quick teleport spell and crossed the vast expanse between himself and the capital ship Aeryn’s Grace, in orbit. He appeared on the deck of the Erynian flagship, already in motion, striding for the bridge. The frost clinging to his clothing from the long distance umbral jump steamed softly as it melted.

He and the crew watched with dread as a score of dragons spilled out of the void like a bag of snakes being dumped out. And at the rear of the massed force? Leviathos himself. The father of all Sauridian dragons. Dread seized Erlaut locking him in place. His nightmare manifest crippled him.

A panicked crew member crashed into him, drawing his attention from the chaos above him. He blinked, trying his best to regain his composure and control. Like a pestilent cloud, the dragons descended upon the gathered fleet above Eryn. Teeth, talons and tails gnashed as spells flickered back and forth inside the cloud.

Above it all towered Leviathos, the demigod guardian of Sauridius. Architect of the elder gods return. Somehow Erlaut knew these two facts deep within his soul, as though a hot brand had stamped them there. The massive dreadlord coiled around the small planet covetously. Erlaut risked a glance back at the surface, sighed in relief at the raised shield. It would hold for now, but for how long?

Long enough for a miracle, he hoped. They lacked the legendary spell ship and Morwen and now more than ever he realized what a mistake it had been to spurn Morwen. He should have put Rayshe in his place sooner, but that damage had been done under her father’s watch, not his own. Now all he could do was make up for previous mistakes.

Erlaut reached out to the web of fate hesitantly. He was curious if the block was still up on divination magic. No doubt a powerful hex cast by Leviathos to prevent possible counter planning. To his surprise, he could sense the web and all the possibilities it yielded.

“You’ve made a grave miscalculation, wyrm.” Erlaut said.

Releasing his stranglehold on the web meant Leviathos was confident enough in his preparations that nothing that happened here would stop him from succeeding in his goal. But winning the battle and winning the war were different matters. Erlaut just needed to find something that would ensure his people lived on. However, instead of hope, he only found despair.

“ArchPriest!” the captain shouted, desperately trying to get his attention.

Erlaut blinked away the web and his focus returned. “Yes, captain?”

“We need you now.”

And there it was. The thing he needed most. It didn’t live on the web. It lived in the here and now. Time. It had such a strange way of affected judgement and priorities.

He gave the Captain a reassuring pat on the shoulder and flashing his most confident smile as he nodded. It was a confidence he didn’t feel whatsoever, but his forces needed it more than he did . The Emerald Guard needed it. The people of Eryn needed it.

Leviathos’ talon pointed to the shield. An unspoken command issued, and all the dragons poured down, crashing into it. Spells and breath attacks slammed into the shield, and it held.

Erlaut directed his fleet to focus on the smaller and weaker wyrms first. They would work their way up and thin out the numbers as best they could. It wasn’t the greatest approach as strategies went, but he wasn’t on Morwen’s scale with applied tactics. He was a mage, not a warrior. Unfortunately, right now, his people needed him to be both. So he would do his best to protect his people, and more importantly, the wellspring.

A wyrm crashed onto the deck clumsily, and Erlaut immediately dispatched it with a disintegration spell that blasted away its head. He noticed it was missing large chunks of its body. As though they’d been blasted away already. Had the dragon already been dead when it attacked? He didn’t get time to verify the theory before the ship fell under attack by a trio of dragons.

“Roll 20, Pitch minus 10, all mages to the port side. Fire!”

Several things happened at once. The ship banked, so the port side had a clean shot at the offending dragons. As this happened, it tipped into a soft dive. Two squads of mages lined the port side gunnery positions and hurled powerful light magic blasts. The blasts shredded through the trio of smaller dragons.

A massive acid blast slammed into the exposed side of the ship, but the Erynian Redwood planks that made the ship’s hull were sturdier than steel. Recognizing the threat, Erlaut barked a follow up set of commands.

“Roll 35, pitch 25, proceed for 200 meters, then adjust heading to 275 degrees. Mages, split deck, select targets of opportunity, and fire at will!”

The ship rolled in the other direction and climbed slightly. The mages split their squads up to one each side and readied another salvo of spells as dozens of others filled the airspace. A large white dragon with milky white eyes and a hole bored into the center of its head and several other spaces on its body hurled a lightning bolt at them.

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Erlaut counter spelled, sending a streak of red magic out that nullified the spell. Erlaut needed to take control of the fight, and quickly. He felt a pulse from his spell staff. Acknowledgement.

“I’m sorry, old friend. I never dreamed this day would come.”

He felt it respond to him with sadness and acceptance. As if it said back to him wordlessly, “ It’s ok. This is the purpose for which I was created .”

Erlaut released the staff as it hovered next to him. Now free, his hands wove signs the opening signs. Slowly at first and speeding up in speed. Magic began to glow and resonate around him as he continued to channel and weave. When it became almost too much to bear he gripped the spell stave and a blast of pure, raw, aether explode from the top focused through the floating ruby at the top, creating several kilometers long spell blade from the staff like a god sized weapon.

Then, Erlaut swung his weapon and wiped away a vast swathe of dragons, boiling them away with undistilled power as though they were never there. Where the blade passed, it simply evaporated their foes. High above the battle, Leviathos watched with delight. It was only a matter of time before the guardian of this pathetic little world would begin spending large portions of magic.

He casually blocked the spell saber with a flick of his talon, oblivious of the fact that the attack was removing large quantities of his horde. Most of them had been dead, and brought here for this attack. This was it. His final gambit before he brought his dark father back. Erlaut staggered on the deck of his flagship as he continued to sweep his weapon across the battlefield.

Eventually, the horde of dragons got wise to the weapon and began dodging its attacks. It still claimed victims, but far fewer than the initial surprise caught. The spell lasted a few moments longer until the ruby began cracking under the strain before shattering and exploding into fractured pieces. The haft itself turned to ash, leaving nothing behind of the spell staff he had carried for years.

Leviathos gave the command, and the dragons regrouped and fell upon the shield once again. Even with fewer numbers, they struck with twice as much ferocity. The shield discolored under the assault and cracked in several places. Erlaut brought his flagship above the fray and sprayed luminous fire on the dragons, physically attacking the shield.

Golden fire scorched the undead dragons who kept up their attacks, ignorant of the damage done to them. Scattered among them was the occasional living dragon that flailed in the fire. But it was too little too late. The remaining ships in the fleet were overwhelmed fighting their own battles. Erlaut watched Leviathos rear back a massive talon and bring it down, crashing into the shield.

The wards discolored, cracked and shattered like glass. Chaos ensued below as the massive talon of Leviathos slammed into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust in all directions. And then he was gone. Erlaut tensed as a powerful elder wyrm like that disappearing meant bad things.

The Cadaver Crasher blazed through the skies above Eryn. Captain Fennex barked orders as the gunners operated the spell and mac cannons. Magnetized ferrous slugs and bolts of elemental aether slammed into thick draconic scales with little effect. It was like Tohruun, Kofex, and Hidros all over again.

“Where is Morwen?” He growled, not for the last time since the battle began.

The ship bucked as mages on loan from the surface poured magic into the main gun and fired at their target. He watched as a massive firebolt slammed into a draconic zombie’s body like a flaming spear lancing it clean through. Secondary fire from Brotherhood mounted tech munitions poured on afterwards, bathing the corpse in explosions and tearing gaping holes into its body.

The corpse dropped the ship it had been tearing apart and pounced on the Crasher. The weapons began firing with frantic zeal, trying desperately to dislodge the great undead beast to no effect. Its ivory talons and teeth tore at the metal flesh of the ship violently. The undead dragon savaged the Crasher’s hull. Systems blew out across several decks, and the ship started losing altitude.

Fennex cursed as he did what he could to seal the small hull fractures in the bridge. “Get everyone out. Now! We’re going down.”

Crew members frantically evacuated stations and rushed to the hangar of the ship. Most knew it was their only way out. Fennex struggled and fought with the aged battleship as she began to tumble end over end in an uncontrolled fall. He emptied every weapon at his command into the undead dragon until it eventually released the ship and flew off to attack another target.

“Come on you blasted ship! Fly!”

The spell drive whined as Fennex ran the throttle forward and did his best to stabilize the descent. The best he could manage was stopping it’s spin, but it was still going to crash. He eyed the corridor off the bridge. If left now, it was a sure bet half or more of the crew would die. He sighed, leaning back in his harness.

“Well hell. Always knew I’d bite it fighting these scaley bastards. Never figured it’d be on the pointy’s own blasted planet.”

He reached down and fished out a beer. When the plea for help came in over the long range comms he knew it was against his better judgement to come back to Eryn, but some golden lady had made him an offer he couldn’t say no to. Come to the planets defense and she would bestow some of her power to him. So now he could use light magic to fly. Of course it was a suicide run, no different than his trip to New Xinjia, but at least on Eryn, he could fight instead of acting like a glorified armed taxi.

He blew at the can, coating it in a thin sheen of frost. A flick of his wrist popped the tab up top with a hiss of compressed gas. He saluted to the lush green forest of Eryn as it grew in shape and proximity to the wounded battleship. This would be her last flight. He knew that. An ignoble end for the old girl that’d saved his and the lives of many of his friends many times over. He wouldn’t abandon her in her last moments.

Fennex patted the console. “You did right by me and mine. I won’t leave ya now.” He saluted the ship, the Brotherhood, and Akamori as the Cadaver Crasher slammed into the surface, plowing a trench into the soil and landscape several hundred meters long. And thus ended the last flight of the Crasher.

“The wellspring…” Erlaut said, realizing the gambit too late. “Protect the skies. No one else reaches the surface!” Erlaut barked and strode into a teleport spell. He shrugged off the magical nausea and the frost from his robes.

Dragons rained down in the skies above Eryn when the defense shield fell. Anti-air cannon fire filled the sky from batteries along the ground. Even mages and beast tribes alike contributed fire. The entire world rallied for its defense. Rounds from spell rifles shot into the air like embers of magic floating in the air from a fire. Mages contributed their spells as well. The beast tribes in the countryside also lent their power while praying to thier new god for support.

The combined arms worked to overwhelm the remaining dragons, taking them down one at a time. Chaos reigned even still as the wyrms descended upon the city and lay waste to it, forcing the defenders to focus on them instead of Leviathos. In the great temple just ahead of the passageway that fed down to the golden well, Erlaut stood with his spell staff.

Before him stood Leviathos in his human shifted form. His wings folded elegantly behind him. Jet black hair that fell down past his shoulder blades was swept back out of his face. His eyes glowed with sickly green soul magic. His attire was elegant and regal. That of a draconic noble from an age forgotten by most.

Meanwhile, across the sector, the pleas of many desperate tribes cross the expanse of space to reach their patron, Akamori.

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