The War Dragon's fort was no longer a fortress. It was a carcass. What had once been an engine of slaughter with foundries roaring day and night, breeding pits churning, armories layered deep into the mountain's bones now lay ripped open and hollowed out. Entire sections of the walls had collapsed inward. The ramparts were stripped bare, barracks turned inside out, command rooms emptied. Siege equipments were hauled away, chain anchors that once held the floating islands in place dangled uselessly, snapped or cut, great lengths of them coiled like dead serpents across the battlefield.
The gate meanwhile had a strange feeling. The supports were torn free. Structural logic unraveled. The gate hadn't been destroyed so much as its purpose was redefined on purpose. Corpses were everywhere. War-bred dragons lay stacked in grim efficiency, armor removed, weapons harvested, usable components stripped down to bone and scale.
Those beyond recovery were heaped into slag pits or crushed beneath collapsed fortifications. Blood had soaked into the stone so deeply that it had permanently darkened the ground, forming blackened channels where it had once flowed freely under the Law of Bloodshed.
The place was looted clean and the corpse of the war dragon himself was gone, leaving the place hollow and empty. Here, at the heart of what had once been a fortress of industry and slaughter, hung a pressure like a held breath. The first to arrive was the Summer Dragoness.
She descended in a blaze of radiant heat, wings unfurling wide enough to blot out the ashen sky. Her scales gleamed gold and ember-red, each one etched with sigils of authority and cyclical dominance. Where she passed, the land remembered sunlight; stone warming, dead ground cracking as stubborn shoots of flame-touched flora tried to force themselves back into existence.
She landed atop a shattered bastion with imperial certainty, talons sinking into stone as if it were soft clay. Her gaze locked immediately onto the ruin. "…So it's true," she murmured. The War Dragon, Imperial dragon of Bloodshed, Attrition, and Endless Conflict had fallen. Not sealed. Not driven into dormancy. Defeated. And not by another Imperial.
The Summer Dragoness's jaw tightened. She turned as space rippled nearby, folding in on itself like silk being drawn through a ring. The Space Dragoness popped into existence midair, upside-down.
"Oh! There it is!" she chirped brightly, righting herself with a lazy spin before floating down. Her scales shimmered in impossible gradients, grey and silvers sliding across her body as if the night sky had been poured into living flesh. She peered down at the destroyed fort, tail swaying. "Wow. This place looks… flatter than I imagined."
The Summer Dragoness did not look amused. A third presence announced itself not with movement, but with absence. Dream bled into the edges of reality. Colors softened. Sounds dulled. The battlefield seemed to sink half a step out of phase as the Dream Dragoness emerged, coiling atop the broken remains of a siege tower that might never have existed in the first place. Her form was indistinct, pearlescent scales that never fully resolved, eyes like reflected moons behind veils of half-remembered futures. She said nothing.
The air curdled next. Not with heat or distortion, but with sickness. A wet, crawling malaise seeped outward as the Plague Dragoness descended, wings folded tight against her frame. Her scales were a dull, unhealthy green mottled with darker lesions that moved if one stared too long. Spores drifted lazily in her wake, dissolving before they could contaminate the battlefield only because she willed it so.
She landed at a careful distance from the others, eyes narrowed. "…He really did it," she said quietly.
Last came life. The Life Dragon did not arrive dramatically. There was no explosion of mana, no spatial tear. One moment the ground was dead and cracked and the next, grass pushed through fissures, veins of green crawling outward as a massive emerald-scaled form simply was there.
Flowers bloomed beneath his weight. Then withered again, unable to sustain themselves in the aftermath of War. Life looked down at the sight of the fall for a long time. "I never believed," he said slowly, "that I would see one of us laid low by a mortal claimant."
Silence followed. Five Imperial Dragons stood around the ruin of their fallen peer, each feeling the same thing in different ways. Fear, worry and apprehension. The Summer Dragoness broke it.
"This changes everything," she said sharply, wings flaring slightly. "Artorius Pendrath is no longer an emerging variable. He is a direct existential threat."
She turned, eyes blazing as she looked at the others. "Which is why I summoned you. Alone, we will be hunted down one by one. Together—"
"—you want to rule," the Plague Dragoness cut in flatly.
Heat spiked. The Summer Dragoness's gaze snapped to her. "Watch your tone."
"I am watching it," Plague replied coolly. "Along with your posture, your mana flow, and the way you positioned yourself now. You wish to take advantage of this crisis."
Space giggled. "Ooo, are we fighting already? I thought this was a meeting."
The Plague Dragoness's eyes slid toward her. "You don't get a vote."
Space blinked. "Huh?"
"You weren't here," Plague continued. "You didn't fight. You didn't lose forces. You didn't risk exposure. You vanished."
Space shrugged, completely unbothered. "I was busy."
"With what?" Plague pressed.
Space tilted her head, thinking. "Looking for the Void Dragon Artorius mentioned." That earned her several looks.
The Summer Dragoness scoffed. "Chasing rumors while one of us dies. Typical."
"Hey I thought you could take on one scaleless dragon on your own," the space dragoness said cheerfully. "Anyways no one has been following after the Void Dragon. So I have been looking into his whereabouts."
Life exhaled slowly, vines retracting along his neck. "Well you will have to set that aside for now. This is survival now. Whether you like it or not, he will come for us."
Dream finally spoke. "I do not think it is a good idea going after him as one."
Every head turned. Her voice was soft, distant. Dangerous in its calm serenity. "Action," Dream continued, "always carries consequences. Especially when taken in fear."
The Summer Dragoness bristled. "You undermine me at a critical moment."
Dream's gaze drifted toward her, unfocused. "You confuse leadership with urgency."
"Where were you?" Summer demanded. "Just like her." She gestured sharply at Space. "Absent while the War Dragon fell."
Dream's lips curved faintly. "Working."
Plague frowned. "On what?"
"Against him," Dream replied. "the Star Dragon."
Life stiffened. "You were countering the Star Dragon's movements?"
Dream nodded once. "He was very busy. Watching. Nudging. Aligning outcomes. I had to… blur certain paths."
Space clapped. "Oh! That explains the weird static."
Plague's eyes narrowed. "You said action has consequences. What consequences?"
Dream looked back at the ruin. "I cannot fully see," she admitted. "But if we move together… we will be noticed. Not just by Artorius."
Summer's voice sharpened. "By Zytherion?"
"Perhaps," Dream said. "Perhaps not. Dreams have a way of not getting right to the heart of the matter."
Life's wings twitched. "If the dead dragon emperor intervenes, this ends badly for him. Our parents will step in."
Then Summer straightened. "Nevertheless," she said, voice hardening, "we cannot allow a nobody who we have no idea where he came from cull us. We will unite. Temporarily."
Plague studied her, then inclined her head slightly. "I'll agree. Not for you but for the greater good."
Space grinned. "Sure! Sounds fun."
Dream said nothing but she did not leave.
Above them, unseen, the world shifted, subtly adjusting to the weight of a new alliance. And somewhere far away, Artorius Pendrath moved forward… unaware that his citation got worse.
-
The corpse of Zytherion did not rot like any regular dead body should have. By all natural laws, by entropy, by decay, by the slow mercy of time something that vast and ancient should have begun to fall apart the moment its animating will was gone. But Zytherion, once Emperor of Probability and Sovereign of Infinite Outcomes, lay as if merely sleeping.
A mountain of blackened bone and god-scaled sinew stretched out before him and the ragged army. The ribs of Zytherion rose like great arches, each one carved with scars from wars that predated the naming of continents. His skull, half-buried in stone and crystallized blood, stared eternally skyward, its crown of broken horns framing the heavens like pillars that held it up.
Their main base located on the skull of the dead dragon met them as they crusted a rise. Fortifications of layered stone and salvaged metal ringed the great citadel. Pylons hummed softly, drawing power from the dead corpse, siege weapons were at the ready. Great banners snapped in the wind, bearing his sigils.
Dragons moved everywhere. Soldiers. Engineers. Smiths. Healers. Beasts of burden and creatures that had once been enemies now yoked together under shared command. Fires burned in controlled lines, smoke rising in pillars that marked foundries, kitchens, and ritual sites.
This was not a camp. This was a capital in the making. The horns sounded shortly after dusk, deep, resonant blasts rolled across the basin, echoing off Zytherion's bones and vibrating through the stone underfoot. The sound carried purpose. Command. Announcement.
They're back. Artorius led the vanguard looking like a mess. His armor was repaired but not pristine, blackened steel etched with runes, plates bearing dents that had been earned. A long cloak hung from his shoulders, torn at the hem, its deep crimson stained darker in places where blood had soaked through and dried.
Behind him came his army, the survivors of the War Dragon's fortress. They did not march in perfect ranks. They didn't need to. They moved with the loose cohesion of veterans who had bled together and lived. Some leaned on spears. Others carried injured comrades on improvised litters. Several bore trophies; standards torn from enemy ramparts, shattered siege-core, severed war-beast heads scorched clean by flame and magic.
And at the rear, hauled by chained giant drakes and reinforced magical platforms that floated, came the thing that silenced the citadel. The War Dragon. Even dead, he radiated violence.
Crimson scales layered like overlapping shields, many stripped away to reveal muscle scored with scars and battle brands. His wings had been folded and bound with chains. His head hung low, jaws slightly parted as if caught mid-roar. Rows of serrated teeth glimmered in the torchlight, each one large enough to be forged into a blade.
A great noble dragon of slaughter, dragged home like a kill from the hunt. The citadel erupted. Cheers broke out first; raw, disbelieving shouts that cracked into laughter. Men pounded weapons against shields. Magic users let sparks of uncontrolled mana flare from their claws. Others roared, howled, or stamped, feeding off the energy.
Someone started chanting Artorius's name. Others joined in. Not a cheer. A rhythm. "Pen-drath. Pen-drath. Pen-drath." Artorius raised one hand.
The sound didn't die instantly but it bent, curved, folded inward. Discipline reasserted itself. The chant faded into murmurs, then silence broken only by the crackle of fires and the distant groan of settling stone.
He stopped at the edge of Zytherion's skull. For a moment, he simply stood there. Then he turned. Up close, the cost of the campaign was written across his face. A fresh scar ran from temple to jaw, still red. His eyes were sharp, alert but tired in a way that went deeper than sleep.
He looked at them, all of them. "I said we'd bring the war to them," Artorius began, voice carrying without effort. "And you followed me into hell to make good on it."
A ripple moved through the crowd; pride, memory, pain. "We broke a fortress that had never fallen. We killed a dragon bred for endless conflict. We came back."
He gestured behind him. "With proof." Laughter broke out; dark, savage, relieved. Artorius let it happen. Then he continued. "You bled for this. You died for this." His voice hardened. "And you earned more than cheers."
At his signal, banners were raised, new ones. Each bore names. Hundreds of them. The dead. Silence fell again, heavier this time. "They will be remembered," Artorius said. "Not as fuel. Not as losses. But as the reason this world is changing."
He drew a blade, not in threat, but in salute and drove it point-first into the stone. "To those who stood when they should have broken," he said. "To those who trusted when fear would have been easier."
He looked at the War Dragon's corpse. "And to those who proved that greats can die." A roar answered him, thunderous, unified. Looking at the corpse, he wasn't sure if he wanted to consume it. Blood was a useful power to have but he did not feel as if it fit him.
The celebration ignited fully after that. Fires multiplied. Kegs were rolled out from storage. Meat, some of it uncomfortably exotic, from very noble dragons were roasted over open flames. Music erupted from somewhere near the eastern ramparts, drums and horns setting a wild tempo that spread through the camp like wildfire.
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