“Mommy, mommy, there are snakes in the sky!” Shouted Sheng, bursting into the tent. His long golden locks crazed by the strong winds outside. The valley was nothing but powerful gusts this time of year. His eyes were wide and arms outstretched. Amadeus watched the child grab hold of his mother who shared the same fair hair and dragged her outside. ‘Snakes in the sky’ It sounded like gibberish but he was curious and followed the two of them.
The old man stepped into a cacophony of noises as he pushed aside the flap and squinted his eyes to ward off the golden sunlight. The winds played with his white beard and carried it this way and that. Amadeus nearly fainted. The village center, almost at capacity, buzzed with excitement. People danced, women in traditional gowns and men in robes. Some kneeled while others bowed and the rest simply stared, gazes upturned and glazed over. Their mouths hung open and chins nearly touched the ground.
Amadeus made a visor with his hand, shielding his eyes as he stared into the cloudless sky. Any trace of blue had vanished, painted over with a heavenly golden hue. “It can’t be,” He muttered to himself. “I had given up hope, yet, here I am.” A tug came at his robe and he suddenly found himself staring into the wonder struck eyes of his youthful grandson.
“Do you see them gramps, do you?” He pointed into the sky excitedly, still tugging at the sleeve. “The snakes, can you see them?” Amadeus gaped, paying little heed to the boy on his arm. Sure enough, there, slithering in the sky as if it were water, floated hundreds of serpents. Only, they weren’t snakes, they were dragons.
Amadeus held the esteemed position of village elder and so he knew their history well. Legends, passed down by the first saint, told of this day. A day of awe and wonder. One where the time to rejoice would finally be upon humanity. The celestial bodies would descend from a golden sky and take with them those that were worthy. That day, a sunny afternoon deep into the warm months of summer, they had come. A comfortable breeze ruffled his grandsons long hair and suddenly, all went quiet. He looked from Sheng’s fluttering hair to the sky again where the dragons were no longer dancing where the clouds should be but instead, plummeted toward the earth. People stretched their arms upwarp. “Pick me,” screamed some of the villagers while others held gifts to the descending horde of dragons in hopes of being picked. Sheep squirmed in their owners arms while other villagers held up priceless family heirlooms.
His stomach lurked, not with fear, but with awe. “Magnificent.”
The dragons got closer and People began to sing, there were songs specially practiced among the priests for the coming of the celestials, the first saint told of a merry meeting between heaven and earth. The village square was nothing short of chaos, robed priest sang songs of joy while women danced with their husbands and children.
“Come on mommy.” Shouted Sheng as he dragged his mother into the group of people dancing in the square. Amadeus could only watch. He didn’t believe this day would come in his time, and a long time it had been indeed. A practitioner of his skill didn’t know the bounds of age as a normal person might. His eyes lit up with joy as his beautiful daughter lifted his grandson into the air and they spun together, their long locks dancing in the wind, blonde hair turned golden by the sky.
Then, everything changed. The dragons were upon them and gone a moment later in a spray of crimson mist. Dread filled his stomach as screams filled his ears. He looked to the sky again, the dragons were like rays of light, emitting the very luminescence of heaven. They left a trail of red and gold. The former being a lot more gruesome. The beasts struck again a moment later, barreling through the crowd and very precisely clutching people in their massive jaws, devouring them. They would pass through and feed on only certain people, leaving the rest unscathed. When villagers hid in their tents the dragons simply destroyed them. Sometimes, the entire thing, while other times, only half, leaving crying villagers wondering why it couldn’t have been them instead of their sons, their daughters, wives or husbands.
The gentle summer day turned into a massacre. After a pass that was a bit too close to his daughter and grandson, Amadeus suddenly sprang into action. In the blink of an eye the old man snatched his daughter and her son from the crowd and left them in the relative safety of the village barracks, stone walls were better than cloth and sticks. He left them and went to rally troops, and possibly mount a counterattack against the beasts. He couldn’t imagine it being successful but not trying would be disastrous. Amadeus soon found that few remained of the warriors and with each pass that small number dwindled even further. They were taking the warriors, killing them, eating them. The weakest of the warriors were weeded out, leaving only the strongest alive.
A fire awakened in his stomach. One that had been extinguished long ago. So long in fact, that he had forgotten the sensation. A mixture of pleasure and fury. A trance like state that was born from raw emotion and nothing more. A practitioner found power in the the ways of meditation, patience, knowledge and above all, qi. Right then, in the midst of a massacre, none of that mattered. Suddenly he was at war again, visions of his closest friend and leader, the twin saint, Abraxas, flashed before his eyes.
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With the few warriors the village had left, Amadeus went to battle. His body glowed, his eyes turned white. The men around him were gone, while some were scooped up and eaten in the most recent waves of the dragons, others took to the sky’s. All the blood, the screams, they left him. A horn sounded. A loud, deep sound bellowed into the sky. This was war.
Amadeus was no normal practitioner. Some might even say a genius. During the war of the twin saints, He served as a general to Abraxas, and although his side lost, there were none that survived without fearing his name. Since then, he had gone by many titles and bore even more children. He was searching for something and recently, he had found it. When… if, he fell to the armies of heaven, all would not be lost.
A dragon swooped down, it came from directly above. It’s massive jaws poised to strike. The air crackled with the familiar yuan that he wielded and refined over his long lifetime. It belonged to him and only him. The sky turned dark, rays of shimmering gold still broke through in some places. Grey Storm clouds blanketed the sky. They were dark and brooding, alight with blue energy contrasted by darkness. The storm roared, thunder shook the ground. The dragon's jaws surrounded Amadeus, it’s warm breath making his skin moist as it covered him. He reached inwardly, to his middle Dantian were he could summon the most power. The storm inside him raged even more than the one in the sky, begging to be let out. The qi practically seeped through his pores, yearning for the world energy gathering above. The two wanted each other, needed each other desperately. Amadeus made it so. The crackling energy came fourth in the very form of the foe that meant to consume him. At the same time his own qi formed into a lightning rod, directing the untamed world energy into himself. The lighting dragon shot fourth from the storm, smothering it’s golden counterpart in a shroud of blue. The bolt dispersed in a matter of seconds and left in its place a pile of ashes that still had yet to disperse, remaining in the shape of the beast for a moment longer before trickling to the earth.
The clouds disappeared, the golden glow returned and with it, a truly terrifying sight. Hundreds, maybe thousands of dragons poured from a scar in the sky. Each and every one of them heading in the same direction. Towards Amadeus.
***
Young sheng huddled in a corner with his mother’s arms draped around him. Her fear radiated through him in the form of violent shaking and sobs that caused her tears to wet his own hair and face. He clutched a small knife in his hand so tightly that his knuckles paled. The handle felt slick from his sweaty palms and for some reason he couldn’t stop grinding his teeth.
He glanced over and saw another women crying uncontrollably. She held a piece of cloth in her hand, presumably belonging to her husband. He recognized her as one of the scribes and remembered her husband training alongside the other soldiers.
Sheng’s stomach lurked and he wondered where his grandfather had gone. It didn’t make any sense. Somehow the man he knew as a gentle storyteller and wise village elder had picked him and his mother up with one hand each and moved them across the village in the blink of an eye and now he was just gone. The knife in his hand he had received when he turned six as a gift from his grandfather. The blade relieved some of the stress that made his stomach turn.
Different colored specks floated all around him and although it was weird he had gotten used to it. Others couldn’t see them including his own mother who’d cried when she first learned of his ability. His grandfather on the other hand had seemed excited.
When he was outside, most of the dragons were surrounded by golden specks. Now, inside the barracks with the absence of the sky was an abundance of brown ones floating just above the ground and some red and white ones hovering throughout the room. Sheng used them as a distraction and tried to count the specks and block out the screams. It wasn’t perfect but it helped. He just finished counting the white ones and began counting the red when an ear splitting boom shook the ground. His mother clutched him tighter, making it hard to breathe. The lady with the piece of cloth cried more violently and others shouted in surprise. The room suddenly became bathed in dark blue specks, far too many to count and appearing out of nowhere was his grandfather. The moment he appeared the blue specks gathered around him. The old man scooped sheng and his mother up in a tight hug and only released them after another scream from outside. Amadeus stared at sheng, sheng back at him. The boy hadn’t seen the man reach into any pockets or move at all, but in his hand was a pendant that seemed to be even more ancient than the man holding it. Sheng looked at the pendent then at his grandfather who had a look in his eyes that he couldn’t place. It seemed a mixture of sadness and something else he couldn’t interpret. Amadeus held it out to him and he accepted it, depositing the pendant into his robes. The three of them hugged once more with his mother crying even harder. Where there was a bundle of hard muscle sheng hadn’t known his grandfather to have one moment, the next there was only air. The old man had disappeared again.
***
Amadeus reappeared in the sky alongside warriors who weaved between enormous jaws, some hurled fire while others tossed giant spears of ice. Only the elite would be left now. A ring glowed on his finger and a familiar weight appeared in his hand.
“It’s been a long time.” He said, seemingly to himself. His spear, it’s length triple his own, was ready to kill. Storm clouds gathered once again as Amadeus readied himself for battle. A procession of powerful cultivators in his wake.
A deep voice reverberated in his head. “It has indeed.”
His dantians surged with power, sensing the world energy around them, he reached for it. The energy yielded to his powerful yuan and the sky turned black. Entombed by another storm.
Amadeus vanished, blue bolts began to flash throughout the vast darkness and where each one appeared a slow trickle of ash fell...the war had begun.