Chapter 73: Because It Is All Too Fragile (3)
In the Azerlisia Mountain Range, eight clans of Quagoa once dwelled.
The Purimid, Puralder, Pursliks, Poram, Poshunem, Poguzua, Zuaigen, and Zuryushk. These clans claimed descent from the names of their eight ancestral forebears: three clans bearing the lineage of the ancient hero Pu, and the others tracing their blood to Po and Zu, rivals who once contended with him.
Each clan numbered around ten thousand Quagoa, give or take. Together, nearly eighty thousand of them carved their homes into the vast caverns and tunnels beneath the mountains.
Such numbers were rare across the continent. Quagoa were not found only here, but nowhere else had they flourished with such strength. The endless caves and hollows beneath Azerlisia—shielded from sun and storm—allowed them to thrive.
Yet to call them strong would be misleading.
Though one clan might boast ten thousand, their civilization was primitive. Among the denizens of the mountains, they ranked low, more often prey than predator to stronger beasts.
Their greatest enemies were not monsters, but each other.
Often, rival clans fought. At times, even within a single clan, factions turned against one another. Monsters regarded Quagoa merely as prey, and though their fur, fangs, and claws lent them some defense, their small frames left them helpless against the truly powerful creatures of the mountains. Predators did not count as "enemies." But rival clans were another matter.
The cause lay in their very growth.
A Quagoa's abilities as an adult depended on the ores it consumed in childhood. To make their bloodlines stronger, clans competed fiercely for rare minerals. And it was the nearby rivals that proved the most troublesome.
The dwarves, too, were enemies, contending for ore. Yet armed with enchanted weapons, the dwarves often drove the Quagoa away.
But a generation ago, everything changed.
A Quagoa was born whose might eclipsed even the greatest heroes of their ancient legends. This was the Unified Clan-King, Periyuro. His strength outstripped all others, and with overwhelming power, he brought the scattered clans beneath his rule.
Periyuro's greatness was not brawn alone. Unlike the brutish intellect of common Quagoa, he possessed cunning knowledge and the wisdom to wield it. He discovered an abandoned dwarven city and claimed it, gathering his clans within and raising them to prosperity. He used dwarven captives to develop agriculture and animal husbandry.
From that foundation, his power grew. He stored all resources in a royal treasury, distributing them carefully to inspire loyalty. He avoided wasteful wars, preferring negotiation, compromise, or duels between chieftains—methods that shed the least Quagoa blood. In time, nearly every clan of Azerlisia bent to his rule.
By his command, the strongest of each clan were chosen. Two thousand warriors from every lineage, forming a host of sixteen thousand.
Never before had such an army of Quagoa existed. Yet even this force could not storm the dwarves' stone fortresses. Quagoa hands were ill-suited to tools, their claws and fur making weapons unwieldy. So they fought barehanded—and even then, they were often repelled by dwarves.
Thus Periyuro adopted a different strategy. With sheer numbers, he encircled the dwarves, cutting them off and starving them slowly. Six thousand Quagoa were sent forth as a vanguard under three clan chieftains to seal the front lines, while the rest closed the retreat. In this way, the dwarves were ground down, until at last, only a single fortress remained.
It would not be long now before the dwarves were utterly annihilated.
The Quagoa, nursing their ancient grudges, whispered among themselves, giddy with the thought of the sweet revenge soon to come.
But—
That grand design was shattered by only two humans.
....
"Ha! A hunt!"
"Stay sharp—Quagoa everywhere! One mistake and we're surrounded and dead!"
"Ha! As if this rabble could ever beat me, Colton! Just watch my back, Rohaim!"
"You idiot!"
....
The humans were strong.
Most Quagoa never once set foot outside the Azerlisia Mountains. Only a few chieftains or high officers had glimpsed humans before: the furtive wanderers at the mountain's edge, or the scouts daring to tread into their range. Encounters were rare, and when Quagoa captured them, humans were usually nothing more than food.
To Quagoa who knew them, humans were noisy, tender-fleshed, frail prey.
But these humans… they were something else entirely.
At first, a few Quagoa officers licked their lips at the thought of soft meat and rushed them. Those Quagoa died before they realized their folly. Likely, the two had come in answer to the dwarves' plea for aid—but their strength was so great, the word "human" barely applied.
One wielded a greatsword wreathed in lightning, swung so fast it was almost invisible. To Quagoa, lightning was death itself—natural predator.
The other unleashed waves of fire, mercilessly scouring the creatures whose bodies could not endure sudden heat.
Striking without warning, the pair cut into Quagoa ranks again and again, escaping before retaliation. In only a few months, the toll grew catastrophic.
At last, the enraged clan-king Periyuro himself took the field, vowing to crush them. Against a single warrior, he might have triumphed.
But together—lightning and flame united—their power overwhelmed even him. Periyuro, strongest of Quagoa, suffered grievous wounds and was driven into retreat with his retainers.
....
Now.
In what had once been the dwarves' capital the second-largest hall—the grand chamber that once housed their merchants' guild—had become the Quagoa royal palace.
In its deepest chamber, King Periyuro reclined against soft, oversized cushions. His body was swathed in torn cloth strips steeped in herbal poultices.
From time to time, to stave off boredom, he reached into a servant's basket, plucked out a squealing lizard, and crunched it between his jaws. The tang of blood, the smell of entrails, the tender flesh and crunch of bone—all brought a smile to the warlord's lips.
"Tasty."
"My thanks, sire," murmured the servant with a bow.
Ignoring him, Periyuro brushed a claw over his bandaged wounds. A week had passed since that battle. The injuries were nearly healed now, thanks to secret Quagoa medicines, crude bandages, a week's seclusion—and his own indomitable vitality, fitting for the pinnacle of his race.
Yet until they closed, he had been uneasy. If those two humans had continued their raids, he might have been forced to withdraw, or worse, seek aid from the monsters he despised.
But they had not appeared again. Perhaps their contract had ended, or they had quarreled with the dwarves and left. Perhaps they, too, had grown weary, and the trackers he sent after them had managed to wound them deeply, as he himself had been wounded.
So much the better. Next time, he would not lose.
Periyuro felt stronger now, hardened by battle. Lightning and flame—he felt he had grown more resistant to both. The next clash, he swore, he would crush them head-on.
But even he could do nothing about the cold.
"…Those damned dragons."
His gaze turned to the window. Beyond it loomed the dwarves' royal citadel, even greater than the palace he had seized.
Within it dwelled the beings he hated most: the dragons.
They regarded Quagoa as nothing more than slaves, tools to be spent and discarded. Yet there was no resisting them. Dragons were the supreme race of this world. Even in lands too harsh for any other life, creatures would adapt—but in the frozen extremes of the Azerlisia range, only dragons reigned unchallenged.
Here, too, they stood as absolute rulers. For lesser beings, the mountains teemed with merciless monsters. But for dragons, mightiest of all life, the land itself bent to their dominion.
The dragon that reigned above them was known as the Frost Dragon.
Born with shimmering blue scales, they grew paler with age—white as snow, or clear as glacial ice. As a race, they possessed absolute immunity to cold.
Their most terrifying weapon, the breath of dragons, carried with it a killing frost, and even the spells they wove were steeped in the blessing of eternal ice.
To the Quagoa, who feared cold more than anything, subjugation was inevitable. They borrowed the dragons' authority, basked in their shadow, and called it an honor. Yet resentment simmered.
The Frost Dragons ruled with crushing arrogance, demanding tribute so vast it beggared entire clans. Grateful servitude was impossible when every boon came at the cost of ruin.
Someday, Periyuro swore, someday even they will kneel.
If not in his own lifetime, then in that of his children, or their children's children. His eyes burned with ambition that spanned generations.
But already, far from his sight, that ambition was unraveling.
....
The Quagoa clans sensed nothing.
Their civilization was primitive. Only recently had they managed to gather into something resembling a nation. A king, vassals, subjects—all the trappings of rule were present, yet the veneer of savagery clung to them still.
They had seized the dwarves' capital, striving to absorb its technologies. But instead of advancement, the effort only proved how socially stunted their race remained.
They were monsters at heart: brutal, poor in intellect, incapable of creating true culture, and utterly barren of magic. Even united, they distrusted each other. Without the will of the great leader Periyuro, the eight clans would never have been anything more than scattered tribes.
Thus, their communications were crude—messages scratched onto hides, or shouted across caverns.
Which is why they were blind to the calamity descending upon them.
....
Flame fell without a sound.
No screams rose before life was snuffed out. Death spread silently through their warrens, unnoticed until too late.
"…What is this?"
A sudden wave of heat snapped Periyuro upright. He tore the bandages from his body, glared about the chamber, then rushed to the window.
There, splitting the skies, was a tide of crimson.
"A Red… Dragon?"
He recognized them at once. They resembled the Frost Dragons he was forced to serve, yet stockier, denser, radiating a power even more terrible than cold. His eyes bulged. From the heavens, white death rained down like judgment.
....
The Red Dragons, summoned by their master, had only a brief time in this world.
And so, they meant to carry out his command with flawless perfection.
They had already failed once, forcing their lord to retract his first order out of their ignorance. The shame of that failure burned them still. They would atone with slaughter.
One dragon struck first: crushing scores of Quagoa beneath its talons, flattening dozens more with a single sweep of its tail, then exhaling a flood of fire that engulfed the cavern.
Ten dragons repeated the act in unison. Thousands of Quagoa—erased in heartbeats. Some tried to flee, others cowered behind the corpses of their kin, but it was useless. Red Dragons sensed heat; to think one could vanish from their sight was pitiful.
Half the time their master had allotted was already gone, but it was not enough. The shame of their earlier failure demanded more.
Thus, gathering as one, the dragons turned not only on the Quagoa their lord had pointed to—but upon the very warrens themselves. This time, they would erase the pests at their root.
And if the first attack had been too noisy, the next would be silence itself.
The command from their master had been clear: Cull the Quagoa—quietly.
To have been scolded once already was humiliation enough. To carry out their duty noisily, drawing attention with chaos and thunder, would only dishonor them further. Thus this time, they resolved to strike swiftly, silently.
They emerged from the narrow caverns into a city sprawling beneath the mountain. For a moment they hovered above it, then the leader of the flight gave the order.
Within their throats, fire churned—compressed, refined, transmuted until the crimson blaze was distilled into white brilliance. It was not flame, but annihilation itself: heat rivaling the surface of a star, unleashed in a single breath.
The Breath Weapon, supreme armament of the dragon race.
The Red Dragons' variant was pure fire, condensed and fanned into a blinding spray. It fanned outward in a radiant ring, a white corona of obliteration.
Wherever it touched, Quagoa collapsed in silence, reduced in an instant to ash—flesh, bone, teeth, and claw alike.
All ten dragons exhaled together.
In one wave, tens of thousands of life-signs vanished. Half their number gone in an eyeblink. Another volley was readied, but a shrill voice rose from below.
"Great ones! Mighty race! Hear us—please!"
One dragon tilted its head. A Quagoa stood among the ruins, clad in crude finery, a crown perched atop its skull.
"We mean you no harm! We would not oppose such greatness!"
The chieftain, one dragon thought.
They felt no need to answer. They spread their wings, fire gathering again to consume him where he stood—then hesitated. To end the leader here and now would be efficient, but it was not what their lord had commanded. The order had been clear: Cull them. Do not annihilate. Final judgment lay with the master alone.
The crowned creature shrieked on, but the dragons ignored it. They turned their fury elsewhere, spreading fire across warrens and streets.
It was then they sensed something else. From the largest structure—a palace stolen from dwarves—came a trace of power.
Cold. Blue. Familiar, and yet unfamiliar. The aura of their own kind.
"…A Frost kin?"
"A hatchling, perhaps. Grown, but unrefined. Its presence is weak."
Contempt flickered in their golden eyes, but they returned swiftly to their task.
"Our orders are the Quagoa. Nothing more."
They resumed their work. The shrieking voices below soon dwindled into silence. The Quagoa population—once a tide of eighty thousand across clans—had in this city been halved, then halved again.
When at last the fire died down, only a third of their numbers remained—perhaps twenty thousand.
Enough to survive. Enough to avoid extinction.
Enough to satisfy their master's restraint.
"This will suffice."
"The time our lord allotted us is nearly gone."
"Good. Let us make our report."
With thirty heartbeats left, they shaped their message. Through the Sending, they delivered the tally: the Quagoa culled, the remnants left in check, and—most important—the trace of a Frost Dragon bloodline discovered within the dwarven halls.
Satisfied, the ten Red Dragons allowed themselves to fade. Their forms unraveled into motes of crimson light, retreating to the astral gate from whence they had come.
And the cavern was silent once more.
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