by Sain Artwell
Four tassels hung from the shoulder of the captain behind her. He was a youthful gold-horned man with a square lapis-blue face, four arms, and a long tail. In his hands the captain wielded four golden sabers of Sandblade elites.
No average wyrmkin could survive Alron’s earnest blows, let alone stare him in the eye with such bravery as these two.
Without a spark of doubt, these captains had forged their bodies with numerous vestiges, and spent years mastering them to forge their dragon-cores. That said, in Alron’s experience, a warrior’s prowess depended more on the make-up of their dragon-core and mastery over them. For instance, a dragon-core composed of two resonant heartstring vestiges would always prevail against a patchwork collection of ten vestiges. Thus, aside from the most privileged of oldbloods, Alron rarely met his equal, even before advancing beyond awakened masters.
His foes must’ve sensed the gap between their might. They hesitated, falling into defensive stances. Clanking boots of reinforcements echoed from the hallway behind them.
“Tell me. Do you know who I am?” Alron asked politely.
“We do,” said the woman, her voice as rigid as her poise.
Alron cracked his neck. “Would you tell me your names?”
She swallowed. “Vrekost.”
“Captain Yalm,” said the man, his slit eyes narrowing, his sabres rising.
Alron nodded. “Thank you. Before we battle, might I pose another question?”
“We know who you are, Alron the Mad Traitor. The corrupted bastard of Carrion Scour, the Shame of Myrwing. You are the reason we lost so much in the War!” The captain’s jaw tensed, his body tensing. “Spare us your lies.”
“So be it.” Alron frowned, and said, “Fei.”
Fei flooded the room with soulfire.
Two silhouettes rushed at Alron through the azure inferno. He guided the woman’s thin greatblade aside with his claw tips, and deflected the man’s sabres with a wing. They were decent warriors, especially the woman. She spun the blade above her head, guiding it in a controlled spin to build its momentum. In a contest of pure swordsmanship, with that particular blade, she might’ve bested Alron. Under different circumstances, he could’ve learned a thing or two by exchanging blows with her. Not today.
By feeding vis to his vestiges, Alron accelerated his movements. He stepped inside the range of the woman’s blade, and before she had time to gasp in surprise, crushed her neck in his grasp.
Screaming “Glory to the Ascendancy,” the captain attacked in an ungraceful whirlwind of sabers. Alron chopped his wrists clean off with rapid diagonal swipes of his wing. Stumped, the captain staggered backwards, his mouth agape. Alron stabbed the tapering point of his wing through it.
Soulfire dispersed. Alron collected Vrekost’s blade.
“‘The Shame of Myrwing’?” Fei kicked the captain’s corpse, snarling with disgust. “Owowow… Ow, my toes. H-how… How dare they? After everything we did.”
Alron couldn’t muster the effort to feel resentment over their ignorance, nor could his hatred towards Sorcerer King and his allies grow any deeper. “Does it matter whether they hate us now, or after we’ve destroyed the Ascendancy?”
“It does. Of course, it does! They should sing praises to you, name their sons Alron for what you did! They should beg for the right to lick your toes, and…” Fei pursed her mouth shut, drawing a deep, quivering breath. “I’m fine. Yes. Fine. Very fine. You’re right. Their death is all that matters. So long as they die, I’m happy.”
“The captain’s dead! Fire, fire, fire! Hold the line!” shouted a voice from the hallway.
Shoulder cannons boomed. Alron simply stepped to the side and out of sight. A hail of projectiles zinged through the open doorway. Their firing angle didn’t favor the cannoneers.
Alron dragonized Vrekost’s sword. A scarlet sheen ran up the blackmetal blade. Its straight arm guard curled around Alron’s grip, like a raptor’s talons. For his grip and strength, the five-foot blade served as a single-handed sword. He gave it an experimental flourish, and was satisfied. It would suffice, for now.
Cannonfire paused.
“Come. Coat my weapons, I’ll feed your vis,” Alron said to Fei, walking towards the enemy. Fei guided soulfire to his blade, claws, and wings.
On his ascent from the battleship’s bowels, the warriors offered roughly as much resistance to Alron as the sea does to a fish. His new blade whistled pleasantly, veins pulsing along its length, and a resonant tune growing within it as the metal warmed up to his dragonsoul. Bloody and smiling, Alron re-emerged on the deck to find the vessel surrounded.
The other three battleships circled them less than a mile away. It was simultaneously a daringly tight formation, as well as a smart gambit by Commodore Lenjora. Alron’s wings could reach each ship within a few moments. But, at the same time, all cannons were within optimal range for an accurate bombardment with their main artillery, and in range to erect a column of anti-air starsteel shells to prevent his escape.
In fact, the situation was now quite heavily in favor of the Commodore. Alron had wasted too much time underdeck and squandered his advantage.
Survivors of his battleship were still scrambling to flee, when the three ships opened fire.
Alron swept Fei from her feet and dashed under an open bunker, layering his wings behind them into a shield. Heavy impacts of shells bent metal on the spot he’d stood, kicking up hot blasts of air, smoke, and a sideways hail of shrapnel. It rapped against Alron’s back and wings, the fastest shards slicing through his scales, ripping painful holes into his flesh and dragonsoul. Screams of the remaining crew snuffed beneath the whistling of projectiles, booming explosions, and the deep dying groans of the ship’s hull.
Alron cursed. There was no way to outsmart a trap after walking into one. He had to leave before the bunker was torn to shreds. He had to find an opening…
The three battleships had eighteen heavy cannons between them. There had to be a gap between the re-loads. Closing his eyes, Alron tuned to the rhythm of the bombardment.
“Let’s dive below again. They won’t see us through the chaos,” Fei said, tugging on his shoulder as she began to transform into Living Flame.
Alron caught her wrist. “No, their oracles know to watch the sea now.”
“Then I’ll veil us and you fly through. At least they won’t target us directly.”
“No.”
“No. Hm? No? Aah, I think I see. We can always kiss, fuck, and die right here. Why not? I’ve always dreamt of dying in a metal cocoon! Is that your plan?!” Fei screamed over the noise.
The battleship began to tilt sideways. A shell dented the bunker’s roof, and another punched a round hole in it, flying out through the door, exploding close by. Its shards ricocheted around the bunker. Three heartbeats later, another shell impacted the ship, and the rhythm began to repeat.
Alron opened his eyes. Three heartbeats was the longest pause. He’d have to take the next one.
“Hide in my lungs, I’ll fly through the fragment curtain,” he said. “Unless you have a better idea.”
“I gave you two, three actually. All of them were better. At least in my plans to die, I included a little fun. Why don’t you give us a second idea if mine won’t do. Hm?”
“My lungs, or my ass. You have two options now. Choose wisely, but swiftly.”
“Stars take your ass…” Grumbling, Fei turned into Living Flame and slipped into Alron’s lungs.
Pressure and warmth swelled in his chest. Drawing breaths grew heavier, though not unbearable. There was friction between their dragonsouls, a fracture in their bond, but so long as it didn’t break, he should remain immune to her soulfire.
Alron focused on the rhythm and waited for his window of three heartbeats. It came.
Within half a beat, he’d dashed onto the destroyed deck. Claws burrowing into the battered metal deck for stable footing, Alron tensed the muscles of his legs, and stretched his wings high to grasp the smoky ai
r, feeding his heartstring vestiges as much vis as they could endure. When he launched, the deck dented into a crater. Accelerating for the Commodore’s flagship as fast as his wings would strike, Alron plunged into the shrapnel storm.
Sharp cuts and scrapes assailed his body all over. Some wounds were superficial, others chipped right into his dragonsoul, depleting his vis.
Oracles must’ve seen it work, because rather than hurling missiles at him, the cannons projecting the shrapnel-field adjusted their aim. The explosions moved to follow Alron, refusing to let him fly through.
Bleed me and call me a wyrmling… I should’ve seen this coming.
Now all he could do was fly. Fly and trust that he could make it through the metal blizzard. Fly and endure.
Alron grinned. Endurance was nothing new to him. Moments crawled into eternities of searing pain, hot streaks of blood, deafening claps, and a slow, creeping sensation of weakness. Shards lodged themselves in his flesh. Despite forcibly squeezing strength from his vestiges, Alron was slowing down. Riddled with holes, his wings caught less air with each strike. Unfortunately, no amount of grit could make a wingless man fly.
For a burning instant, Alron wondered if they had done it—killed him with nothing but modern weaponry. Then, the stabbing stopped. He emerged from the shrapnel field.
Alron was forty feet from a battleship. And ten feet from a flock of dragonfire projectiles racing at his face.
He blew Fei out, adding his own soulfire into hers. She took control of it, channeling his excess power, ballooning into a gigantic cloud of soulfire which engulfed half the battleship.
Alron landed on a bunker-roof, and readied his blade. “For them to prepare a welcome such as this… I must’ve flown slower than I thought.”
“Don’t feel too down about it, you did have holes in your wings,” Fei said.
Alron huffed in a muted snort.
Above the battleship hovered the three remaining Wing Captains. All wore the navy’s red-blue uniforms.
A thin woman with cold blue horns was covered in an armor of ice-white scales that seemed as sturdy as Alron’s. Another, an aging man with enormous black wings and a mask over his mouth, wore a bulky blackmetal suit covered in hissing pneumatics and machinery. Third, a mature woman with stubby wooden antlers and muscular build wore only the navy’s underclothes over leaf-green skin, which rippled like liquid. Behind the captains hovered a formation of winged warriors numbering between three to four hundred strong. Reinforcements from the other two battleships were no doubt on their way to boost that number close to one thousand.
On the other end of the deck, a grim-faced woman watched Alron from the command bridge. Lenjora of clan Mjensk had the appearance of an angry obsidian sculpture brought to life, except sharper and far less compassionate than stone could ever be.
The two of them had crossed paths during the Carrion War. He’d witnessed her brutal efficiency in clearing towns before the Scourge could infect them. If there was one warrior who’d sacrificed more than Alron, it would be her. Tassels of a commodore hung from her shoulder.
Their eyes met.
Alron inclined his head.
Lenjora returned the nod.
If Alron defeated her and the remaining Captains, the whole fleet would likely disband. Only the fools and fanatics would remain to throw their lives away for Ascendancy. Unless a century had changed the fundamental nature of wyrmkind, the rank-and-file would disperse once they witnessed overwhelming strength.
“We’ll kill her, the captains, and take this ship,” Alron whispered to Fei.
Fei engulfed Alron’s weapons.
Three squads of cannoneers shot their volleys. Spinning on his toes, Alron received the projectiles with his wings. Telltale pain of starsteel wounds lanced through his dragonsoul and flesh. His wings were already in tatters, but that was alright. They didn’t need to carry him through the sky anymore, but through the corpses of his enemies. Alron dashed for the closest squad, his blade raised high.
Winged warriors threw spears and dragonfire from above. Walls of multicolored dragonfire erupted to block his path, and behind it a wall of black ice. Dragonfire licked against Fei’s soulfire, the sheer volume of it too much for the soulfire to consume swiftly enough.
A shimmering mirage bent air around Alron, blurring reality from horizon to sky with muted colors and melting shapes. Alron felt a chorus of seductive voices compel him to sleep, to give up the fight and lie down, to let it all happen and take his well-earned rest. Realizing what was happening, Alron bit his tongue and shrugged off the sensory collapse. Those star damned oracles…
Alron had missed a step and stumbled. On gut instinct, he rolled off the bunker, narrowly avoiding a focused barrage of projectiles and dragonfire. He wasn’t given time to recover. Figures clad in heavy blackmetal armor fell from the sky like meteors of violence. The blades of their glaives slashed through his scales, and from their tips boomed hidden barrels of miniature cannons. Right behind the elite warriors, the captains of wings descended upon Alron, joining the melee, pushing him on the defensive, backing him against a corner.
His breath grew heavier. His wounds deepened. His mind foggier. Alron’s heart pumped with deep, laborious thumps. His muscles burned hot as he parried and blocked and parried and blocked. His dragonsoul grew agitated, pushing against its bonds as it attempted to wrestle control from him. Even his vestiges, despite his mastery over them, sensed a moment of weakness. Alron smiled.
Wounded. Unable to flee. Two against hundreds. Alron’s body was finally starting to remember war. And with war came a memory of that elusive feeling. That sensation of flow. That endless moment between moments. That place where the border between the body and the world dims, and where there are no attempts or tries or half-measures; only action and consequence.
Like an ethereal whisper of an old lover, it beckoned him, dimming the meaningless background droning of the world to silence until every fiber of Alron’s being was tuned into this battle.
Alron drew a deep breath, and plunged his mind into the peaceful flow found in the violence and ecstasy of pain.
He deflected blades and mini-cannon shots with his sword, then crouched close to the deck, pulling his wings tight against his body as he slid between the warriors, his sword laying bone-deep cuts through the gaps of their armor. One of the ten who’d surrounded him managed to deflect it into a non-lethal gash, and threw his glaive at Alron’s head. Alron grabbed its haft and dragonized it. Sharp spiky scales bloomed from the handle, impaling the warrior’s arms. Distracted, the man was easy to finish.
The large bulk of the masked Wing Captain blocked Alron’s progress. The captain engaged him with enormous claws, armored wings, and two bladed tails. Pneumatic machinery of his armor hissed, boosting the man’s strength so that his blows dented metal and rattled Alron’s bones. Centuries of experience guided the man’s movements, compensating for Alron’s advantage in speed, strength, and instinct.
No doubt about it, this ancient veteran was one of the living legends from the War on Wealdfront—a Doomguard who’d defended the Ascendancy against endless tides of beasts and beast-minded savages hiding in the untamed wilderness of Grovelands. This man and his companions had been Alron’s childhood inspiration.
Alron pushed his bleeding muscles, leaning deeper into the ecstatic serenity of flow, drawing strength deeper from his aching dragon-core.
For one decisive instant, he blinded the veteran with a puff of soulfire. Alron stepped up, grabbed a piece of the man’s mask, and poured draconic vis into the metal. Blackmetal dragonized. Tubes stretching into the man’s lungs sprouted sharp scales and the veteran fell, his eyes wide as he drowned in his own blood.
Others wearing similar dragonfire powered armor attacked fearlessly. Winged warriors descended from the sky to replace those who fell before Alron. The tide of warriors seemed endless.
Alron was swimming in a sea of metal and claw and fire, wading through halberdiers and blades. I
t was almost like running through metallic brambles. Ten wyrmkin opposed his every motion. For every beat of his heart, twenty weapons sought to pierce it. Now and then his mind registered a fresh stab of pain. His dragonized clothes tore off a scale at a time. A tang of iron coated his gums, and breath burned in his lungs.
Every swipe of his claws, blade, and wings ripped the flesh of his enemies. Yes, the colors of blood being spilled and weapons being swung changed. But, in Alron’s mind, the foes blended into a single entity.
It was as if he was facing Carrion Scourge again. A more varied, but less cohesive, less organized… simply a lesser version of Carrion Scourge.
Cannons and dragonfire tried to hit him, but he used bodies of the enemy to block what Fei could not. Two of the enemy’s strongest faced him, but so deep in the zone was Alron that he realized they had been the remaining captains of wing only after breaking them both. Only one coherent goal remained in his mind: Death of the target standing on the command bridge.
His wings unsuitable for flight, Alron instead climbed the cloud of winged enemies between him and his target. He jumped from body to body, diligently killing what he stepped on. They must’ve sensed his plans somehow, for the enemy began to disperse. Too late.
Crushing the helmet he stood on, Alron leapt the last sixty feet to the command bridge in a single bound. Bars of blackmetal as thick as his wrist barred his entry. Roaring, Alron pried them open with a single yank.
Foreign thoughts brushed the surface of his mind. Besides the target, the bridge was bustling with enemies. Enemies with extra eyes, unnaturally long pointed ears, and other dragonmarks common to those who dabbled with vestiges of dreams. These were oracles. Their glowing gazes distorted Alron’s senses. Fei’s shouts faded into the deafening silence.
He was plunged into a fall through utter blackness of sensory collapse. Gravity seemed to be doing backflips without his consent. Unspoken nightmares of Alron’s primal mind crawled forth from the dark, their hateful voices whispering accusations and insults, echoing his own secret doubts.