Zhayla stretched out her hands, palms open, as if in some vague hope she could embrace the vast crowd gathered before her.
They filled the Grand Plaza of New Ghis, like a swarm of ants. Numerous yet worthless.
Colossal harpy statues loomed over the square, their wings spread in frozen dominance, gazes forever cast downward upon the masses beneath.
Once, it had been a place of ceremony. A place of triumph. Where slaves were paraded along in their thousands, where merchant princes announced new monopolies and victories over rival houses.
Now the plaza was choked with people.
Slaves pressed shoulder to shoulder with freedmen, dockhands with artisans, mothers clutching children with uneasy tension.
It had been days since Zhayla had been commanded to calm the city.
Days of standing beneath open skies, beneath the circling shadows of dragons, speaking until her voice grew hoarse. Each morning, she returned to this plaza.
Each evening, she left exhausted. She spoke to them. She listened. The Blue Graces tended wounds and sickness without asking for coin or status.
The Red Graces moved among the people, offering comfort where despair threatened to swallow whole families.
Alas, even with all their efforts, the city refused to be calmed.
How could it? The people could hear their fathers, mothers and even children hanging high from the city walls to die.
That did not even account for the pair of winged behemoths that flew overhead every day.
It was as though a sword hovered over every throat, its edge bright with a bloodthirsty glint, its fall delayed by nothing more than the whim of the hand that held it.
No one knew when the blade might finally descend. All they knew was that it would...eventually.
All Zhayla could be thankful for was the fact that no riots had occurred thanks to her efforts. Nevertheless, she had grown greedy.
Merely calming the people was not enough. She needed things to change drastically.
Thus, since receiving word of the Dragonlord's response, she no longer spoke merely to soothe. She spoke to incite. Rouse. Prepare, even.
To prepare the people for a new possibility. A new future.
Not one where they would be hurled into the flames to preserve the pride of merchants who would flee at the first sign of collapse.
Not one where the city would be sacked, its streets soaked in blood to satisfy conquest.
Another...more fanciful possibility.
Zhayla drew a breath and let her voice carry.
"People of New Ghis," she began. "For generations, we have been told that our suffering was necessary. That it was the price of prosperity. That chains, hunger, and fear were the foundations upon which this city must stand."
Murmurs rippled through the plaza.
"The Radiant Council and the great merchant houses have ruled us in the name of tradition," she continued. "They claimed wisdom. They claimed divine favour. And yet…what have they truly built?"
She swept her gaze across the crowd.
"They have built wealth for themselves. Power for themselves. Comfort for themselves." Zhayla said, unflinching. "They hoard grain. They strangle trade. They raise prices together until survival itself becomes a privilege reserved for the wealthy." Her hands curled slightly. "If you are not born rich, what choices are left to you?"
Silence answered her.
"The Iron Legion," she said. "Or slavery."
A bitter truth, spoken plainly at last.
"You are told this is the natural order. That this is the way of the world. But I ask you…whose world?" Zhayla leaned forward. "Yours? Or theirs?"
She straightened, voice rising once more.
"You stand now at the precipice of history. The old powers would rather see this city burn than relinquish their dominance. They would sacrifice you, your lives, your children, to preserve their pride."
Her hands opened again, imploring.
"But there is another path. One where you are not fodder for a doomed defiance. One where your lives are not bargaining chips." Her eyes burned with conviction. "I will not promise you paradise. I will not promise safety. But I swear this—you do not have to die for their greed any longer."
The plaza was utterly still.
Zhayla let the silence linger for a heartbeat, then lowered her hands slowly.
"The future of New Ghis will not be decided by harpies carved in stone," she said quietly. "It will be decided by the living."
A sudden, thunderous roar split the sky.
The plaza shuddered as two vast shapes swept overhead. One bronze, one silver, scales flashing like molten light beneath the sun.
They dove low, wings beating with a brutal grace, passing close enough that the wind of their descent tore cloaks from shoulders and sent dust spiralling skyward.
Men atop the walls froze.
Scorpions tracked the beasts but did not fire. Men paralysed by a most primal fear.
No horns sounded.
No orders were shouted.
No arrows flew.
The dragons climbed again, unchallenged, sovereign over sky and stone alike.
Zhayla watched the crowd waver.
They had just watched their own soldiers waver in fear at their foes. What hope did they even have of winning, should they listen to the Council? To those very people who had chained them for all their lives.
Then understanding dawned.
If they rose now…there was a chance. A slim one, perhaps, but real.
If they did not—
No wall. No legion. No council decree would ever protect them from creatures that flew like gods and burned cities to ash.
Zhayla lifted her voice for the final time as her gaze swept across them.
"If you wish to live then you must seize this city with your own hands. Tear it from those who would burn it for their pride. Take the gates. Take the streets. Take your future. Only then may the dragons offer us clemency."
A hush.
Then a shout.
And, then another.
Dozens. Hundreds. If not thousands of shouts filled the plaza, swelling into a roar. Not of fear, but of fury long denied voice.
Some cried. Some roared. Yet, they all shared the same goal.
Freedom.
Zhayla stepped back as the tide surged forward.
The people of New Ghis poured from the plaza, flooding the avenues, racing toward the great gates.
Not as cattle.
Not as slaves.
But as a people finally rising to claim a freedom they had once thought to have lost.
***
Rakh felt his heart thunder in his chest as the crowd carried him forward.
It was not a march so much as a tide of flesh. Bodies pressed tight on every side, their push and pull relentless.
At times, he was lifted clear off his feet, boots scraping uselessly against stone as the mass surged; at others, he was crushed so tightly he could scarcely draw breath.
Sweat, fear, and raw desperation clung to the air. Elbows dug into ribs. Calloused hands shoved at shoulders and backs, not out of malice, but cruel necessity. To stop moving was to be trampled.
Screams rang out, some in terror, some in fury, but all flowed toward the same end.
The gates.
"Move!" Someone shouted behind him.
"Forward!" Another cried ahead.
Control the city. Then surrender.
That was the plan, simple and impossibly fragile. If they could seize the gates, the city would fall without dragonfire. If they failed…
Rakh swallowed hard.
The merchants had stripped the city's heart bare, throwing most armed men to the walls in a futile show of defiance.
The inner streets belonged now to slaves, labourers, dockhands, and the starving poor, people who had been told their whole lives that obedience was their sole path to survival.
'Fools,' Rakh thought bitterly. 'Arrogant enough to think fear still owns us.'
Yet fear still gnawed at him.
In New Ghis, betrayal by the lowborn had only one ending, and it was exactly the same ending that the unfortunate souls hung on the wall shared.
To be flayed alive, skin peeled away inch by inch, screams echoing long after one's voice gave out.
Then they had hung what remained from the city walls, exposed to sun and wind and cold nights.
Rakh bit back a gag as those memories flashed through his mind.
If this failed, that would be him. That would be all of them.
No!
Even if they did not choose this fate, they might still share that fate if these perfumed bastards lording over them decided to remain defiant.
Worse still, another moon, perhaps less, and he would no longer be able to feed his family.
The war had stifled trade. Rather, it had strangled it.
The merchant lords above would bemoan their withering fortune; Rakh could only mourn his dying livelihood.
Fewer ships meant less livestock delivered. Fewer livestock arriving means less business for a butcher like him.
His family were already surviving on scraps and hope. Any longer and they would have to starve. He, his wife, his daughters…
Thus, a choice loomed over him every night like a blade: sell one of his daughters, or sell himself to the Iron Legion, forever. Only through this could his family hope to survive.
Either way, something precious would be lost.
Gods be damned. He would not choose that fate.
He tightened his grip around the knife pressed to his chest and forced himself forward.
The first guards appeared near the gatehouse, merchant men-at-arms, armour mismatched, confidence cracking as they realised how badly outnumbered they were.
Someone in the crowd hurled a stone. Another surged forward with a broken spear.
Then, before he knew it, the world erupted.
Rakh found himself screaming as he lunged, blade flashing. One down. Then another. Then another.
Rakh felt as if all he knew at that moment was to swing. Keep swinging until his arms fell dead; only then would his family be able to see if they could survive another day.
Another guard fell beneath the weight of bodies, his helm crushed by boots whilst his blood slicked the stones.
The air filled with the metallic tang of iron and the wet sound of steel biting flesh. The crowd pressed onward, trampling the fallen without pause.
Iron Legion soldiers soon descended from the walls and pushed back. They remained disciplined even now, shields locked as they tried to hold the narrow approach.
Rakh slammed into them shoulder-first, pain exploding through his arm. Someone beside him went down with an arrow in their throat.
Another leapt over the shield wall and vanished beneath flashing swords.
It was chaos. Completely and utterly, chaos.
Rakh ducked beneath a wild swing and drove his knife upward, feeling it bite into flesh. He didn't look to see where. There was no time.
Before he knew it, hands grabbed him, shoved him, tore him away and hurled him back into the press.
Then he saw the commander.
The man stood taller than the rest, armour marked with red enamel, barking orders even as the line faltered.
In the heat of the moment, Rakh didn't think. He couldn't.
He could only charge.
Pain blossomed as an arrow struck his chest. Then another to his shoulder. And, then what Rakh could only assume to be a blade, which sliced at his leg.
But momentum and determination carried him through as he slammed into the commander, both of them crashing to the ground.
Gritting his teeth, he understood he could not give the man any time to react.
The knife came down once, twice, again until the shouting stopped. The man had ceased to breathe; all that remained of him was a bloodied mess of a corpse.
Rakh rolled away, gasping.
Warmth spread through his body. Too much warmth. Before he knew it, he was sinking into a pile of blood. His blood.
He tried to stand up, but his legs failed him, and he collapsed against the stone, vision blurring.
Above him, the city gates groaned, chains rattling, iron screaming as hundreds of hands hauled them open inch by inch.
Through the ringing in his ears, he thought of home. His family.
Of his wife, whose hands were always rough from work yet remained soft when she caressed his face.
Of his daughters, one serious, one always laughing, both clinging to his legs when he returned at night.
If he had fallen like this yesterday, terror would have crushed him. Terror of what would become of them without him.
But now…
As sunlight spilt through the widening gates, as the roar of the crowd surged into triumph, that fear loosened its grip.
They would live. He would not. But, somehow, his family would live.
Rakh smiled faintly as darkness crept into his vision. The world fell into a sombre hush, despite the chaos that lingered around him moments prior.
For the first time in his life—
He was free.