Valerius stood at the head of his troops, worried in the final moment before the battle. Joakim had proclaimed that he would be happy to join the ranks of the regulars and had done just that. Valerius didn't even know where the man was at this point. Kasper too had gone off to find himself a place among the thousands of peasants, militia, and soldiers that were under Valerius command.

  Some of these men he had helped to train himself. His personal men-at-arms that he was leading, mounted on horse, were good soldiers that he had known since he was young. However, most faces on the field were strangers. All we're angry and ready to have the fight be over with.

  He had considered what he had set out to do many times. Certainly, too many times to turn back now. It was too late for that. Still, there was some hesitation in his heart as he gave the order for the army to advance and execute their battle strategy. It was almost too simple of a strategy for his tastes, but this simplicity also brought comfort with it. The plan was too simple to mess up.

   His primary force of infantry would advance on the enemy outside of the city. Valerius' infantry from Souster vastly outnumbered his father's infantry. These would march through a solid area of ground between to fields that had become boggy sloughs from the heavy spring rain, and either bring the king's larger cavalry force towards them or engage the king's infantry. If the king's cavalry engaged them head-on, then the infantry under Valerius command would retract just a bit in their center before the charge struck, and the mob of infantry would engulf the cavalry if the center could hold. If the king engaged with his infantry, then the king's cavalry would only be able to strike the flanks by going through the boggy ground, which would hopefully impede horses and make the charge ineffective.  

  Then, of course, there was the force from Notting to the North. Gunvar had no cavalry, but he did have a couple of seige engines and a large force of infantry which were well-trained militia. These men were used to fighting the bandits and beasts of the northern wastes. The king's forces would have to engage them as well.

  The king's forces were few, and this did not make sense to Valerius. Even if the loyalist forces had the numbers which Valerius had expected they would have been outnumbered, but the numbers they actually had were small compared to Valerius' expectations. Where the rest of the king's force had gone, Valerius did not know.

  But that was the least of Valerius worries. The largest of his worries was what had happened to Azara, and the status of their dragon foe. If the dragon decided to descend from the mountains, where she had said it was, then it would not take the full length of the battle for the dragon to arrive. If it then decided to attack, then both armies would be slaughtered in the chaos. After clashing with the dragon in the north, Valerius had realized that only someone with Azara's prowess in magecraft could hope to face one and hurt it.

  And Azara is nowhere to be found. He thought. The moment he had seen the bright flash of light from the king's palace, Valerius had taken it as a signal to attack, and he knew that it meant Azara was in danger. Yet no ultimatum or news regarding her had come, and as both armies and lined up for battle the next day he had still received no information about her. Every messenger or emissary was rebuffed without a word.

  Part of him wondered if they would be greeted with her head being brought out on a pike at some point during the battle, or much worse. Still, he had to press on. He could not let the fate of the kingdom be about that one person. To a certain degree, just like Joakim and Kasper, Valerius was now just another man in a much larger fight.

  He sat with his cavalry, behind the line of infantry advancing between the boggy ground, and felt small. Then, he saw the enemy cavalry move and he felt even smaller when he saw the coat of arms of the rider leading them. The man carried a large lance and an enormous ax upon his back. His coat of arms was a picture of fire burning a dragon.

  Orvaar and the cavalry he led then charged Valerius' infantry line. A volley of arrows from the king's infantry forces, among whom had been sprinkled archers, loosed towards Valerius. It struck Valerius infantry, but despite casualties, they did not waver at all. Then another volley struck them, and Valerius' heart skipped a beat as his father's charge rammed into the infantry line immediately after. He watched as the king became a fear man of sheer violence, tearing through soldiers like they were stalks of wheat being reaped by a scythe.

  And then his blood started to boil in his veins. His heart beat faster, and he felt the same fierceness he had beck in Midton, and during any fight which he had suffered through in his life. He felt angry and eager. His infantry attempted to make their plan work, as the center buckled just a little to try. They tried to surround and overwhelm the cavalry that had charged them, but they buckled too much, and the cavalry broke through their line.

  So Valerius began his backup plan, and charged forward with his own cavalry to plug the line and keep his father's from flanking around the Souster infantry force. At the same time, he realized that the king's infantry were advancing. He was going to have to deal with his father quickly, or else his infantry would break.

  The charge was short but powerful, and when the two cavalry forces struck together, surrounded by infantry, there was an audible crash that sounded above all the other noises of battle.

  Men screamed and moaned pains of death above the clash of steel and the cries of horses.

  Valerius lance struck home on the first charge, skewering the man who was his target with deadly accuracy. It punched through the man's chest plate and threw the man from his horse. Valerius did not have time to view the grisly results of his victory though. His lance broke, and the man's body fell from the saddle - vanishing beneath the horses of his comrades.

  Valerius then drew his sword and knocked away a lance thrust at him from the left. After this, as the enemy rider moved past, Valerius cut the man on the arm. This elicited a cry from the horseman. Then Valerius defended an attack from his other side, and dispatched that man with a thrust of his sword to the man's neck. This time he briefly saw the work of his hands as blood spewed from the man's mouth, but Valerius was quickly distracted from it by the visage of his father just over the enemy soldier's shoulder.

  His father was in the midst of fighting several men, wielding the massive ax upon his back to incredible effect while mounted. He crushed one man's skull and took another's head. He broke another limbs and wounded another with a crushing blow to the shoulder. The king alone was causing Valerius cavalry to waver, and the king's infantry was just about to meet Valerius's own infantry. Valerius could feel his men becoming afraid, and realized that they were going to flee and route. A chill ran down his spine. He couldn't face his father, he realized. The emotional weight of the decision was heavy enough, but by watching the man in battle he realized that he would be no match for the king. 

  Then, there was a howl that reached across the battlefield, and quite a few men even stopped fighting to find its source. When Valerius looked around for it he saw a massive beast racing towards him. It was a monstrous, wolf-like creature. It had wings upon its back like a bird, but the body and head of a wolf. The enormous creature ran across the battlefield with wings outstretched, before leaping into the air and gliding over Valerius cavalry in a single leap. It landed on top of King Orvaar and tackled the man from his horse. It then attempted to bite at the man's head.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  However, despite its size, which was quite a bit bigger than a horse, the king resisted it. He swung his ax at the beast with one arm, and the wolflike creature bit at the arm instead of the king's head. The majestic monster tore off the king's limb with ease. Then it tried again to bite off the king's head, and Orvaar used his other good arm to grab a dagger from his belt and stabbed the wolf-like creature's mouth.

  The wolf recoiled in pain, and several of the king's men quickly grabbed the man and pulled him away. A volley of arrows followed, and though they landed more upon the king's own cavalry than Valerius men, several struck the wolf creature and caused it to further recoil away and wince in pain. When it finally got its bearings, the king was gone, vanished int the crowd of his cavalry.

  The winged wolf growled and roared, before tearing into the king's cavalry head first, intent on finding Orvaar.

   Valerius' men, initially stunned by the arrival of the strange beast, suddenly cheered, and with renewed vigor rushed the forces of the king. Valerius joined them, unsure of what had just happened, but grateful for it. The arrival of the creature, which now tore through their ranks, had the opposite effect on the king's men, and their morale broke.

  He wracked his mind to remember tales of such wolf creatures from legends, but he could think of none, and in the heat of battle his mind dismissed it as unimportant. Perhaps there were other forces on his side that he did not know of, and he took the appearance of the beast as a good omen.

  The retreat of the king turned the battle into a full route across the entire field. Soon Valerius and his men were pushing the king's men into the city. During this time, to his dismay, he saw several coats of arms which he recognized, and he saw them fall. Some were of his older brothers. Though he had never been on good terms with most of his half-siblings, it still did not make him feel any pleasure to see their colors disappear into a mob of infantry or cavalry chasing them down. He counted himself lucky that he did not have to confront any of them himself.

  When they reached the city and began fighting through the streets, it took every bit of effort for Valerius to keep his men from looting and ransacking the city, and instead focus upon defeating the pockets of resistance that formed within the city itself. Eventually, however, they became organized again, and Valerus took a large force of Calvary and infantry and marched for the palace.

  When they reached the palace, Valerius let one force contend with the guard, while he took another and broke into the palace from a route through the gardens. This was a way that he had learned as a very young child, before his mother had taken him away to live in Souster.

  As expected, the encountered no resistance, until the reached the throne room. There, at the entrance, Valerius and his men came face to face with the house guard of the king, or what was left of them after the battle. They were formed up in front of the entrance, and they menacingly glared towards him and his small force of men-at-arms.

  The doors they stood in front of were the same doors in front of which Valerius met Azara, and it struck him that that moment had been a turning point of his life. From then on, everything had been put into action which he had planned for some years, and at a breakneck pace. He had gone on a journey to hunt a dragon, and returned having faced undead monsters, met celestial descendants, become engaged to the woman who would be his queen - and also his childhood friend - and narrowly escaped death more times than he could count. 

  "Let him come." Valerius heard from within the throne room. It was his father's voice, ever menacing and powerful.

  The guards seemed unsure, but then quickly parted, opening a path for Valerius. The prince walked forward, and his men began to follow him. He held up a hand, signaling for them to wait, and then continued forward.

  He opened to the doors to the throne room, and the sight which greeted him was almost pitiful - almost. He still could not forgive his father for the evils he had seen for so long.

  "Shut the doors." the king said, and Valerius briefly hesitated, before he did so. After doing so, he turned looked at the king even closer, and sadness came to his heart whether he willed there or not.

  Blood ran from the king's mouth, and the stump that was left of his torn arm had been bandaged. The bandage on his stump oozed blood from its surface. The man's face was crushed and bruised, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. He had also broken a leg, and it rested at an odd angle. All of these injuries, presumably, had occurred when he had been attacked.

  "A dragon, as well as one of Rana's own? How much of the mystic world and the fae, of the stars and their blessed ones, have you brought with you? Is it the work of that childhood friend of yours, that Veyorn girl? Is she your lover now, the queen of this land to be?" the king gasped out, the hints of a smile appearing upon his ruined face.

  Valerius scowled. "I don't know what you mean. Rana's own? A Dragon? What does the moon have to do with any of this? What do you mean the friend of a dragon? I have befriended no such beasts. My betrothed name is Irinia, and you shall refer to her by it. She is not just some Veyorn girl for you to mock."

  "Yes, I remember now, she told me that you did not know." the king said, and took a deep, rattling breath. "What am I, but a man, amidst forces more powerful which are guiding the world. You as well, son."

  Valerius shook his head. "If you intend to justify your wrongs by claiming that this was all the will of some-"

  "I was wrong, son, and I asked you to close those doors, so that in these last moments, I could speak to you as a father, not as a king." 

  Valerius wanted to respond, but the words caught in his throat and he remained silent, realizing that his father was indeed dying, and that he should at least honor the man's wish to have dying words.

  "I should have visited you more often, and I should have let my personal feelings be more involved with the ruling of this country. Your mother called me a coward for not doing the latter, and I should have known she was right. I also should have known she was wrong when she asked me not to visit her in Souster, and I should have been near you regardless of her wishes while you were growing. I should not have just paid heed to your brothers." he said. "And that is my admission, my apology. However, that is not what needs to be said now."

  Valerius glared. "And what does?"

  "You may not have been raised to be religious, as your mother was not one of the Veyorn Starlit. However, as I did not, you must heed the word of your queen to be. I know she is devoted, and I caution you that her counsel is not foolish, and that her religion is not empty. Great forces have begun to move in this place, and you must have them by your side if you intend to lead. I thought that I had done well in this regard as a king. I thought I had been clever, dealing with these forces, but I was mistaken." 

  Valerius shook his head.

  "I have seen many incredible things these past few months father, and I have met incredible people. I have spoken even with the Starchild of Aericia, and seen his power. However, I still do not understand your meaning. I do not understand many things, such as why a dragon has appeared now, or what that being was that attacked you. "

  The king sighed, his breath coming in rasping, rattling gasps. "Ah, so even they are at work here. What chance did we have? Yet more, I cannot be angry with you, when you are but another piece in such a large game. You and I, we are just men, aren't we? Men ignorantly dealing with gods."

  The talk of being a piece in a game angered Valerius. The rambling angered him. What was the point? So, magical things had been at work in the country, but what business was that of his? This whole fight had been about justice, that had been the point, and Valerius was going to have it. He raised his sword and began advancing towards his father.

  "Whether or not that is true, father, you must pay for your crimes. For what you did to my mother, to her people, to my people, and to this kingdom. For the deaths, the executions, the taxation and extortions. You will pay for all of it today."

  The building rumbled and shook, causing Valerius to paused and steady himself.

  "What was that?" he asked, and turned towards the source of the sound, from outside the palace.

  Another rumble followed, and the building shook again.

  "Yes, I shall pay." the king said, staring blankly off into the distance. "My son, I had my duties as a king, but I loved your mother, and I loved you as well."

  Then, the massive maw of a dragon, covered in gemlike scales of red, crashed through the roof of the throne room. It engulfed the king and his throne, then snapped shut.