Where Dragons rule

The sun sat smoldering half hidden on the horizon, immovable, impaled there to bleed its liquid fading light across the sky, staining it a burning, bloodied orange. Its amber light smeared on the jagged knife blade mountains, glared off the river and shaking marsh water, glowed in the sails of the riverboats and behind the thousand banners. It was a twilight just dark enough for deep shadows to rule in the shade.

And where the light failed, fire avenged it. Dragonfire burned in white hot streaks and siegefire rumbled in rolling stoic waves. Everywhere armor and blades flashed the color of flame, and the smoke formed a dense plain in the sky, sister to the scorched silt below, but twisted and chaotic, a nightmare realm unrestrained by gravity, where dragons clashed and flying magi and mounted air Paladins wove lines of smoke and steam that traced their violent deeds, and which at times dropped corpses and bombs on the land below.

Those who flew up there saw, when unassailed, the battleground laid out in gentle order. A plaything.

The massive plain was bordered by the hills to the west, dense lake forest to the northeast, the great river to the east, and lesser river to the southwest.

The Forces of the Cloth, those who would see the Empire reformed, had come from the northwest, where twinkling fires whispered of their hateful march through the lands of the hillfolk, and were now arranged west to east, south facing, on that massive plain, their left flank now pressed between their enemies and a dense pocket of marsh.

The forces of Wovenleaf, those who would see neither the empire return nor suffer the dull taxes and projections of soft power and proxy wars of the myriad of anti-imperial republics, had come down from the nearby city of Angleis, visible from the battlefield as a mounded mas of darkness whispering with sparse torchlight, where the twin great rivers met. The leafen army was arranged like a slackened sail, and its rear was a curved line pressed against banks and sand bars.

The battle was fierce, and the dying day, though having shed most of its hours over the struggle, did not diminish the violence by falling into night.

Wovenleaf marines stormed the beaches of the downstream flanks of the great river while aided by Angleisie siege machines throwing all manner of burning, crushing, smoking, and exploding ordinance at the Cloth’s beach defenders. On the plain, cloth Paladins led crashing charges against the Leaf Lord’s infantry, and Cloth archers and balistamen rained hell from the safety of their northern marsh-ringed hills. The arrows and bolts fell in a myriad of colors tones and sounds.

Leafen Pikemen turned maneuvers against Flayed Zealots of the Barbed band, And the main masses of infantry bled themselves into the soil at the center, where siege carts and trenches and fallen shardtowers were the only scraps of protection against the death that fell in all kinds and from all places.

None of which was more feared than dragonfire. Though magi of either side repelled it in brief boiling translucent domes that smeared it into molten puddles, and the Dragons threw it sparingly, being too locked in combat with each other to let their eight eyes linger on the insectoids on the plain, all feared the time when their enemy’s dragons were left unopposed, free to throw flame in equal to their wrath.

Though the dragonfire may have been the most observed spectacle, it was not the most brilliant. That honor fell, as always, to the heroics of the fighters.

In a brief gap in the clamor, where a low grass had miraculously survived untrampled, and a single purple Lealilac nodded in the wind, Myrlias dismounted Sarnec with his great hammer, and raised it overhead with a wavering howl mastered by his people. But Eustus, hidden in the surrounding cloud of melee, stretched out a ringed hand and froze the weapon before it could deliver that fatal blow, so that the great Draugh-forged hammer head shattered against Sarnec’s rune-blue plate like glass. Another wavering howl beat back the ring of soldiers, and Myrlias gave battle with his shattered weapon like a spear, killing both of Sarnec and Eustus in rage at the destruction of that weapon.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Stormlord Hedwin was cut down by Sylverai Blackblade, dark assassin of the Foghold streets, and the summoned storm of Donnersturm, thus left unopposed, poured helmet sized hail and biting corrosive rain upon the forces of the Cloth.

Dryadame managed, while riding that moss covered purple eyed mount of hers sidesaddle, to charm the enemy dragon for a moment, causing it to torch a legion of its own calvary.

And others too put their names in the log for good though glorious deeds.

But another more subtle struggle was unfolding to the north forest, where forces greatly needed by the Cloth to ford the mile wide river were about to encounter an unspeakable obstacle.

The great trees of the Xenshua forest have been untouched by blade for all of history. The edges of that dense region are marked by rolled boulders taller than the towers of Pleidon, placed by the ancients to declare the edges of agriculture. Past them, no forestry was permitted by law, and no foraging beyond the annual holy walks by the chosen priest, which lasted only from sunrise to sunrise. It was an untamed and impenetrable forest. Which is why the sappers of the Cloth chose it as their passage, thinking its strength would bow to theirs, and become their shield.

The sun had not fallen, but was barely a glow through the smoke darkned skies, as they marched, led by nine magi of the Bestuod Sect, who sung a low chant that turned everything above the soil to brittle stone. Great beasts of Donra walked in the front, trampling the fossilized trunks and growth to dust, and three cohorts of sappers marched behind, armored Shodai-Sen shieldmen at the outside, then crossbowmen and grenadiers behind them, and at the heart of the column, their priceless cargo, nine Silthian powder carts, dark wood and iron liters carried by shelled lizards and defended by the Paladins of Scarlet, wielding crystalline maces and halberds.

In their haste, they had taken no forward scouts besides a low level Hawkhand, whose bird circled high in the air, only descending below the canopy to investigate a suspect clearing or rogue hill. They had calculated that any force not committed to the battle on the plain or the clash at the lake would not be worth worrying about anyway, given their own strength.

This assumption would be their undoing.

They lay in wait still as stone, but not uncomfortable. They knew how to sit still in the forest for hours and even days. Each one had about them a tented cloak reinforced with foliage from the immediate area, a defense not only against the dumb eyes of humans, but also against the keener infrared eyes of Quanli, and the thermal sight of dragons.

If they could have been seen, their formation in waiting would have resembled a V shaped jaw of teeth, with their enemy walking towards the throat. At the tip of one of the formations incisors, halfway down the jaw, she waited.

Double obscured, not only by her fabric tent of foraged foliage (in which now nested a silver lark and a weaving moonspider, not unaware of but completely unconcerned with her presence), but also by her silken cloak of twilight, one of only three in the entire battle of ten thousand souls, and by far the fairest of the three. It drew colors from around, threw her body heat off at diffused shapes, and buffeted itself against arrows.

At the tip of her bow, hard drawn, was an arrow of special cunning. Itself camouflaged, tipped with ultradiamond forged by the beaded sweat of a volcano dragon. Hard against armor, shattering like glass under flesh, mixing with blood and dissolving into a potent poison that took effect quicker than a heartbeat. It was aimed, expertly, at the visor of Khianron, head guard of the marching sappers.

She had watched him for weeks. Stalked him as he rode out from the distant fortress of Lanyor Draugh, seen him dispatch a rebel raiding team with ease, studied how his armor was put on and removed morn and night by his squire, and been lucky enough to witness his fight with Molt-Molt, head guard of Kaldren bridge, just days before High command had sent Khianron on some unmentionable mission. She could have taken him as he marched through the Doldric caverns and took the backpaths to the battlefield, but she knew it was better to take down an enemy’s oak when he sits among the branches, than when it stands alone.

So here he was, with armor like polished amethyst, atop a reptilian mount with forge glow eyes. His spear blade was long and shined like sleeping metal. Silverfish he called it. Its segmented blade would break apart into twelve razor lashes that moved through the air as if suspended in their own invisible water as he fought. Impossible to predict or parry for all but the most trained fighters. She had seen the silver fingers catch a magi’s fire ball and throw it back at him.

But, she had also see him do something else. Every time he sensed a threat, he twitched his spear and squared up in exactly the same way. So when Knucklebuster coughed in the tree line, and the Sappers halted in their march, as the bowmen and sheildmen readied arms and the singing magi shifted to verses of anti-personnel destruction, Khianron shifted his shoulders, bared his chest, lowered his silver blade down and to the right, with the shaft along his back behind him, and Lindsey let the arrow fly.