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The dragons wheeled above, their roars shaking the walls. The Gray Dwarves below screamed in rage, their voices echoing like steel on stone, but they did not break. They would die before fleeing. Their kingdom had stood for millennia in the depths of the Underdark, its walls forged in blood and rune, its pride as unyielding as the earth itself. Even as their giants crumbled, their eyes burned with hate and defiance.
Sarath, watching from the walls, clenched his axe with trembling hands. His voice cracked with disbelief.
"Why… why are there five? Five dragons, and not one kind… but metallic and chromatic… together?!"
No answer came. Only the roiling fog, the endless dead, and the dragons above—terrible, beautiful, unstoppable.
---
At this time, upon the obsidian cliffs of Shadow Island, Barbatos sat coiled in his draconic majesty, idly toying with the Black Dragon Ball in his talons. The smooth, dark orb pulsed faintly, as though a slumbering heart beat within, whispering with ancient hunger. Its surface reflected the battlefield far away in distorted fragments, like a mirror showing not what is, but what will be devoured.
Below the surface world, in the endless labyrinth of the Underdark, the war raged. The legions of the gray dwarves pressed forward with methodical precision. Their advantage was plain for all to see: weapons and equipment of brutal excellence. Towering siege crossbows groaned as they loosed bolts the size of tree trunks, each one tipped with forged steel that could pierce stone. Stone-hurlers thundered as boulders, carved with dwarven runes of weight, crashed upon their foes. Behind them, ranks of armored infantry advanced, their shields and axes glimmering with cold iron and blood.
Even among the endless wars of the Underdark, the gray dwarves' craftsmanship stood supreme. Their armor bore enchantments to resist corrosion and decay; their axes could cleave through steel like bone. Compared to them, the surface kingdoms seemed like crude children tinkering with bronze and wood.
Yet, for all their weapons, for all their mechanical brilliance, a fatal truth remained—there was no strong man among them. No guardian of legend. No figure who could tilt the scales of war with a single breath or spell, as the surface humans once boasted from their golden ages.
Their spellcasting was pitifully weak. The gray dwarves were creatures of flesh, blood, and forged steel. The few abilities they practiced were auxiliary at best—Invisibility, used for ambushes, or Enlargement, to swell their warriors to the size of giants. Useful in skirmish, yes, but nothing compared to the cataclysmic sorcery wielded by archmagi or the divine miracles channeled by holy champions.
No artifacts, no sacred relics, no divine blessings. Centuries of isolation in the dark had sharpened their steel but left their souls barren.
Barbatos, from the heights of Shadow Island, understood this truth as well as he understood the weight of the Dragon Ball in his claw. The dwarves believed they were slaughtering the undead tide upon the battlefield, but what they faced were but the weakest shells—fodder, husks meant to exhaust their stamina and morale.
The true dead, the powerful dead, were hidden within the dark fog that crawled like venom across the Underdark floor. Thick, murky tendrils of violet-black mist seeped into corpses, filling brittle bones with new marrow, soaking armor with unholy radiance, pulling shattered bodies back onto their feet. Their eyes burned with soulfire as they rose again, stronger, twisted, obedient to the will of the abyss.
From his vantage, Barbatos's lips curled into a jagged smile.
"In that case… let me hasten the process," he rumbled, his voice echoing across the cavern like a rolling earthquake.
He slipped the Black Dragon Ball into his storage space, the orb vanishing into a fold of reality. He did not devour it now—for such a feast required patience—but his hunger gnawed at him. To consume it would be to ignite power that could overturn even the heavens, yet for now, he restrained himself.
There would be time for that later. After all, the Feast was drawing near. The banquet of food, and flesh.
Stretching his vast wings, Barbatos's shadow engulfed the obsidian spires around him. His scales shimmered with abyssal light, his eight horns casting jagged silhouettes that seemed to claw at the sky. The air warped with the scent of sulfur and ozone, and the ground trembled beneath his talons.
"Elise," he spoke through the soul chain, his thoughts slithering into the soul of his servant, "are you prepared?"
Her reply was immediate, steady, tinged with devotion.
"Lord, I have been ready for a long time!"
Far away, in Phoenix City, Elise stood cloaked in a heavy gray robe, her figure hidden among the ragged horde of refugees. The once-proud city groaned beneath the weight of those who had fled the encroaching horrors. Merchants, beggars, farmers, nobles—all reduced to the same stench of fear. Elise had slipped seamlessly among them, her presence masked, her aura suppressed.
She did not know her master's full design. She did not need to. To follow his will was enough. Even now, her fingers tightened around the talisman concealed in her sleeve, the mark that was given to her by him in case emergency.
Back upon Shadow Island, Barbatos's wings unfurled to their fullest. The coordinates had been set. His consciousness stretched across the void, locking onto the resonance of Elise's soul amidst the sea of mortal despair.
The storm of energy thickened around him. The air quaked. Lightning forked across the cavern sky of Shadow Island, shattering stalactites into dust.
With a single beat of his colossal wings, reality itself screamed.
The great dragon's form dissolved into void.
And then Barbatos vanished.
The Underdark shuddered, as if the abyss itself had drawn breath.
---
Phoenix City—though that was the name carved into the stone of its gates and sung in the proclamations of its rulers—was known by another name in whispers throughout the Underdark: Slave City.
The epithet was not spoken with shame by its inhabitants but rather with pride, a testament to their dominion over weaker races. Here, in this fortress of obsidian and basalt, the gray dwarves had forged not merely a city, but a monument to survival, conquest, and breeding facilities, relentless pragmatism.
The city sprawled across a series of vast chambers, each lit by molten rivers that ran through cracks in the stone. The orange glow cast long shadows over squat towers, massive forges, and merchant halls lined with runes that pulsed faintly with psionic wards. Above, jagged stalactites hung like the fangs of some slumbering god, their tips carved into watchtowers and shrines to Laduguer, the patron of the Gray Dwarves.
The heart of Phoenix City was its Slave Market, a sprawling square of blackstone lined with tiers of cages, platforms, and auction blocks. The stench of sweat, fear, and blood clung to the air like a second skin. Gray dwarves moved among the throngs with the casual arrogance of those born to command. Their movements were brusque, economical, and precise—no wasted motion, no wasted words. They haggled fiercely, voices like gravel grinding against steel, their eyes cold as they assessed the "merchandise."
Eighty percent of the slave owners in the city were Gray Dwarves themselves, and they ruled the trade with ruthless efficiency. The rest—scattered residents, lesser merchants, and opportunists—were tolerated but never truly respected. For in Phoenix City, wealth was not merely a sign of power but of superiority, and those who did not own lives to sell were considered lesser.
The war with the undead had cast a shadow even here, but it was not fear that gripped the Gray Dwarves—it was calculation. The deathless legions could not be shackled or sold, but they brought with them opportunity. Refugees from fallen villages and shattered strongholds fled into the Underdark, desperate and destitute. To the gray dwarves, they were prey, to be bought, branded, and bound in chains. Every war was a crucible from which fortunes could be forged, and though the profit this time was thinner, still the Gray Dwarves thrived.
Phoenix City was a city of contrasts. In one square, the clangor of smithies echoed as master craftsmen forged blades, armor, and tools of surpassing quality—each stroke of the hammer reverberating with the Gray Dwarves innate focus. Their craft was their pride, an echo of the same grim determination that had carried their kingdom through millennia of strife. Intricate runes were etched into steel, binding it with subtle psionic wards that made weapons hum with menace and shields thrum with unyielding defiance.
In another quarter, the slave pens stretched like a labyrinth, filled with wretches of every race found in the dark—drow captured in internecine skirmishes, surface elves stolen in raids, humans lured underground by false promises, deep gnomes who had strayed too far from their burrows, and even beasts twisted by Underdark alchemy. Some sat hollow-eyed in silence, their spirits already broken. Others raged, snarled, or begged for mercy—only to be silenced with the crack of a whip or the brand of iron.
And yet, despite its cruelty, Phoenix City shone with a kind of terrible grandeur. Its avenues were lined with obsidian columns carved into the likenesses of ancient kings and queens. Murals of conquest adorned the walls—scenes of gray dwarves standing triumphant over mind suckers, beholders, and rival races. The Gray Dwarves never forgot, and never forgave; their history was carved into stone, and their legacy was guarded in blood.
To walk through Phoenix City was to see the embodiment of Gray Dwarves nature: disciplined, suspicious, prideful, and ever grasping for more. In taverns carved from hollowed stalagmites, slave wine and fungus spirits flowed freely, though drunkenness was rare; the Gray Dwarves prided themselves on control. Gambling dens thrived, but every wager was calculated, every move weighed with cold precision. Even their pleasures carried the sharp edge of discipline.
The power system of the Gray Dwarves was woven into their society like veins of ore in stone. Where surface dwarves relied on divine blessings or brute strength, the gray dwarves honed the mind into a weapon sharper than any blade. With but a thought, a Gray Dwarves could grow to giant size, looming like titans over their foes, or vanish into invisibility, stalking their prey unseen. Others delved deeper, cultivating their mental strength to shatter thoughts, bend wills, or crush bones with a gesture.
Centuries of toil in the Underdark had forged in them a culture of relentless labor, cunning invention, and brutal hierarchy. The greatest smiths were revered as much as generals; the richest slave lords held as much power as kings. Theirs was a meritocracy forged in fire and shadow, where weakness was ground to dust and only strength endured.
Even now, as war raged above and below, the Gray Dwarves of Phoenix City moved with confidence. Their kingdom had stood for a thousand years, battered but never unbroken. While others called their city "Slave City" as an insult, the gray dwarves wore the title as armor. It was proof of what they were: survivors, conquerors, masters of their fate.
And in the torchlit glow of the market square, as chains rattled and the cries of the enslaved mingled with the barked orders of the Gray Dwarves, Phoenix City lived up to its name—not as a symbol of rebirth, but as an eternal fire, burning in the darkness of the Underdark.
The slave lords of Phoenix City sat in their obsidian halls, counting their expected fortunes. The war had disrupted the balance of trade, but they still imagined coin flowing into their vaults, imagining lines of captives turned into chattel. Yet they cursed one bitter reality: this war was far less profitable than any before. Their enemies were not flesh-and-blood mortals who could be shackled and broken. No—this time the enemy was the undead. And no Gray Dwarf lord, no matter how shrewd, could simply bind the will of a corpse animated by necromancy. To dominate even lesser undead required mastery of grim soul-binding, a dangerous art that drained mind and spirit.
Still, the lords of Phoenix City schemed. They spoke of tribute, of metal veins that would soon fall into their control, of rival noble houses ruined by attrition. Their crimson eyes glimmered like coals in the dark as they drank from hammered cups of black steel, the taste of iron-laced wine sharp on their tongues. They were the Gray Dwarves. Proud inheritors of ancient chains, bred in tyranny and cruelty.
Phoenix City glittered with rivers of molten fire channeled through rune-forged canals. Their halls were lined with enchanted basalt, their forges thundered without end, and their protective wards were said to rival those of the infamous City of Sharp Blades. To the Gray Dwarves, Phoenix City was impregnable. No demon, no Undead, no dragon could breach it without shattering itself on its wards.
But just as the slave lords savored their imagined futures, the light above them dimmed.
A shadow, impossibly vast, swallowed the molten glow of their city. For a moment, the Gray Dwarves thought their protective wards had failed, that some abyssal eclipse had descended upon them. The cavern seemed drowned in blackness.
Then came the sound.
BOOM.
The ground itself convulsed as though struck by the hammer of a god. Stone cracked, magma surged, and towers shuddered. Entire central district of Moscowe collapsed as a figure materialized in the heart of Phoenix City, bypassing every protective rune, every ward, every fortress enchantment. It did not crawl through the gates. It did not burrow through the earth. It appeared—an act of impossible sorcery, a feat of space manipulation that no archmage had ever dreamed possible.
When the dust cleared, the truth of the shadow was revealed.
A dragon.
Not merely a dragon, but a mountain of one. Its body stretched over one hundred and sixty meters, larger than any fortress tower, larger than the cavern's tallest stalactites. Where it landed, buildings disintegrated, crushed beneath its sheer bulk. Gray Dwarf slave markets, treasure vaults, entire households were annihilated in an instant, their owners erased without even time to scream.
And then its eyes opened.
Twin orbs of molten scarlet, each the size of a villa, blazed through the haze. A slave lord standing on a high balcony made the fatal mistake of meeting that gaze. His lips parted, his pupils shrank to pinpricks—and in that moment his soul simply unraveled. He fell dead where he stood, mouth frozen in an endless scream.
Across Phoenix City, the silence of awe broke.
"What—what monster is this?!"
"No… no, it cannot be!"
"This… this is a Black Dragon!" one slave master shrieked, his voice cracking. His face, once iron-clad in arrogance, now twisted in sheer terror.
But denial surged just as quickly as fear.
"Impossible! The battle is outside the walls! The wards—our wards! No creature should be able to appear here! Not even the surface legends could bypass our barrier!"
"Look at its size!" another Gray Dwarf roared, shaking his head in disbelief. "No wyrm grows so vast! This—this cannot be real!"
The Gray Dwarves were a prideful race, cruel and disciplined. In their society, weakness was punished with chains, and hesitation was met with death. Yet now, even they faltered. Even their discipline shattered. Their crimson eyes, usually cold with calculating malice, burned wide with the panic of prey caught in a predator's shadow.
Some fell to their knees, overcome by the crushing aura the dragon exuded—a presence that pressed upon the soul, heavier than iron, sharper than flame. It was not merely physical weight.
The Gray Dwarf lords had scoffed at such tales. Now, staring up at the scarlet gaze of a godlike wyrm, they realized the truth.
Tens of kilometers away, from the outermost districts of Phoenix City, Gray Dwarf civilians—workers, smiths, and even chained slaves—saw the dragon's vast form blot out the light. To them, it was not a beast, but a second mountain, alive and watching. Its wings stretched wide enough to scrape the cavern's dome, the flicker of magma-light dancing across scales blacker than the void between stars.
The Black King did not give the Gray Dwarves even a heartbeat to grasp the weight of their doom. His shadow fell upon their city like the slow descent of a mountain, blotting out the glow of their magma forges. Before the first alarm bell could finish its toll, his talons crashed down, rending a gray dwarf champion into paste. The stone beneath them cracked like dry bone, a reminder that even their vaulted halls were no stronger than clay in the hands of a dragon.
The Dwarven soldiers shouted, axes and hammers raised, their eyes burning with the same cruel stubbornness that had built this kingdom. Pride was etched into their every scar; these were not surface folk, but Gray Dwarves — children of deep stone and black iron, slavers and smiths who mocked both gods and demons alike. Their walls were carved with runes of defiance, their plazas crowded with chained thralls from a dozen races. Pride had been their armor for centuries.
But pride cracked before truth.
Barbatos opened his maw.
A glare like the sun itself burst forth — not fire, not lightning, but a lance of condensed heat, a blue-white torrent that scalded the air and warped the stone before it even struck. The breath of a dragon made legend. The ray screamed as it tore across the plaza, slicing through temples, forges, towers of obsidian — all of it bursting apart like parchment in a furnace blast.