The emperor had set up dozens of firing groups in the air high and surrounding the mountains. Their sole duty was to kill the dragons if they showed their faces.

But a large set of firing positions, all of which had agreed beforehand on which direction each one would try to miss in could fill the sky with enough stones that it would be unlikely for the dragons to escape unscathed.

If the dragons had fled towards the north, going further and further away from the hurled stones, the odds were decent that they could — at least most of them — escape without serious wounds.

But that was obviously impossible if they went straight at the emperor’s army.

Which they did now, flapping quickly to gain altitude, and then hurtling forward at a speed that even a celestial could not match.

The firing groups, all of whom had been on high alert, targeted the dragons, tracked the dragons, and they fired true. The stones hurtled at a terrible speed towards, leaving cracks in the air that would only be heard after they had hit.

And then… the rocks shattered and dissolved as the runework that had been incorporated into the scales activated.

Far down below Sesako could see the emperor in the midst of his army, surrounded by his greatest lords. His expression was more resigned than shocked. Almost instantly he stopped staring and turned to his men shouting orders.

The dragons swept forward through the firing area. In the time it took them to cross through the range of their enemies, they received five volleys, each one more accurate and focused than the last.

But the runework held.

The dragons were only drained slightly by the runework calling out floods of power that dissipated into the ether.

They flew so fast that the wind blew Sesako’s lips back to expose his teeth, and he had to grip tightly to the dragon’s hide to stay in place.

This was a familiar sensation.

In the years since he had constructed his purified core, and especially since he had advanced further to having a profound soul, he had often gone flying with the dragon, going for flights that hurtled faster than any cultivator could propel himself.

It was odd to see the landscape beneath them that they had fought over so thoroughly.

More stones were hurled at the group from small and large garrisons that the emperor had left behind to control his land. But most of them did not even come close to hitting the dragons.

The snow-covered peaks looked much as they ever had.

In the valleys the leaves had the dark heavy green of late summer, and many of the grasses had turned brown. The glacial rivers in each of the deep valleys were still thick with melt water, and as they had for two thousand years, the farmers attended their flocks and fields by day and night.

The only signs of war were the many ruined buildings, the occasional craters — miniscule against the vast size of the mountain range, and the tiny, tiny wooden towers that the emperor had built to control the space — each of them hundreds of feet tall.

That was all that told the terrible tale of torment.

And here and there, in spots sadly remembered by Sesako, the graves of the honored dead.

They burst out of the deep mountain range to the outer line of the island, beneath them the thick growing trees, olive orchards and vast vineyards. The summer sun hot on the mountain side. Below them suddenly the city of Kyit. The cultivators poured into the sky to defend it. It was controlled by a set of strong towers that had already been rebuilt by the emperor.

That beautiful city, half of it a blasted ruin.

And the house of the clans, its thousand columned portico stood resplendent. The banner of the empire flew high and large. And next to that the banner of the governor the emperor had installed to rule in his place. And then beneath that the coat of arms of each of the clans, though none had given their permission for their flag to fly beneath the banner of oppression and murder.

Sesako filled with rage.

Rage my soul! This is your time! Let your hatred drive your mighty hand.

We are coming for you, you bastards.

For a moment Sesako desperately wished that this raid could do the sure and certain thing, and attack without warning, and before the defenders had time to gather their positions.

Stolen story; please report.

The dragons slowed and came to a stop hovering directly over the volcanic cone of the island. Cultivators flew to meet them, organizing themselves into vast defensive lines, and flooding out of the barracks and fighting halls of the island.

Though he had taken the vast majority of his forces inland to this brutal war, the emperor had not been such a fool as to leave his great island unprotected.

At least a thousand purified cores and one profound soul defended it.

These damned invaders deserved to die without warning, for what they had done to them, again and again.

The sound of the dragon’s voice rang loud. “Hear all ye, hear all ye. I have determined that you shall not die without warning. This island is no longer to float, but I have determined to take it, and annex it to my own lands. And the mechanisms that keep it afloat shall be destroyed. To avoid their deaths, we give you twenty minutes to flee from the island. Flee now, I beg you. For you all are my children, especially those who have no ability to fly on their own, and I wish to protect you all.”

They waited for ten minutes.

After the dragon announced this, the commander of the island garrison stopped his clearly useless hurling, and instead he gathered up all of his cultivators in increasingly well-ordered formations around the cone, with a particular density protecting the throat of the volcano.

And clearly nobody was trying to get away.

Sesako leaned down to place his lips against the dragon’s scale, and he spoke softly, but empowered the words with a spell that sent them straight to the dragon’s ears. “See, they will not flee. It was not their order to flee, and they will do as the emperor has ordered them.”

But as soon as Sesako said that the fact proved his words to be false.

A huge number of men started flooding out of the buildings and tunnels structured on the island, running towards the edge that faced the city, and in many, many cases they were those without the power to fly being carried by others.

Sesako could feel the Great One’s satisfaction at seeing this.

They also took substantial amounts of equipment: Hurlers, crossbows, heavy suits of armor, giant sacks of food, boxes for potions.

But as they went to the edge of the island, the men either jumped onto waiting boats, or leapt out to swim the mile distance between the edge of the island and the piers around the city.

The numbers of people fleeing were vast, but at this moment they were too disorganized to be an army.

The army was made up of five thousand cultivators, those with a golden core or a purified core, who stayed arranged around the volcano prepared to defend themselves against attack.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

The group that had flown with him had prepared several hurlers that he could infuse one after another with crimson energy, to try overwhelming the defenses and their ability to deflect magic when the attack came.

The emperor was coming.

Every second the emperor was closer.

The twenty-minute limit passed, but Fitzuki apparently did not even try to give the command to attack, as he knew that the Great One would insist that they wait for the tens of thousands of people still on the island to get away, and to move to some slightly safer distance.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Another minute passed.

Another.

The emperor was closer.

Now Sesako began to understand and feel deep in his bones the complete conviction that Fitzuki had spoken with, that the plan was doomed.

At last, as the final groups leapt off the island into the ocean, at last the Great One roared.

The mighty echo of the roar vibrated through Sesako, shaking him deep inside. But the roar was in no way painful, for the dragon’s affection for those who she called her own was infused into it.

And the roar echoed off the tall mountains, like a clap, and small avalanches were started all along the nearby peaks of the range.

And at this signal, the great cultivators of Yatamo moved.

Thirty stones hurtled downwards, aimed directly down the throat of the volcano.

Twenty-eight shots were deflected. One of the stones struck a group of cultivators who hovered in the middle of the cauldron and refused to break their formation and dodge.

The three of them who were hit by the stone were instantly killed, but as their dying act they forced the stones against the lip of the cone, and stopped it from going deeper in.

And one stone plunged straight down to hell.

Seeing it fall through, Sesako tensed up, ready to feel, hear, and see the massive explosion that had been promised by the other.

Nothing but a faint sound of rock striking rock.

It had perhaps been not quite straight and hit the wall of the volcano on its way down. The stone needed to hit hard enough to blow through the cap.

The next round was shot off less than two minutes later.

This time all of the shots were deflected.

The emperor had built this island to be safe against such an attack.

Instead of launching another round immediately, Fitzuki signaled most of the cultivators to attack. Sesako led the charge. He descended with a group of hundreds of skilled warriors, followed by Dairuke, Akane, and Fitzuki. They struck hard, forcing the defensive formations to harden towards them, rather than focusing all of their attention on the stones that were being prepared around the dragons.

Sesako fought well, but he was aware the whole time of the judging eye of Her watching him from above. His instincts had become sharp over the past month, and he easily broke through the defenses of those cultivators that he faced.

But again, and again he could not bring himself to deliver the killing blow.

The strong fire from the crossbows of the golden cores drove them away after the initial strike, but it had been enough.

Out of the third, smaller salvo, three stones plunged deep into the throat of the volcano.

Sesako listened for the explosion.

Again nothing. Perhaps a metallic sound from a mile down. But over the next few minutes something changed. Almost no steam rose from the volcano.

They pulled back and reformed their offensive formations.

They would attack when the next salvo was ready.

Firing so many times in quick succession was likely to destroy at least a tenth of their hurlers.

More than half of those that remained would fail in the volley after that.

Hurlers were expensive devices, vital for the defense of the island. Now was the time to risk men and resources in the hope of snatching victory from defeat. To care in the slightest about waste at a moment like this would be the most wasteful possible decision.

When the fate of everything turned upon the question, asking what it cost was simply stupid.

Then Sesako saw him coming.

This was at least ten minutes before they had thought he could possibly arrive.

The first sign was that the air around the mountain they had come from began to redden. The speed of his passage leaked power in a great area trailing behind him.

The emperor was coming.