The Dragon Queen of Thelvadore

Magic and magick froze in its tracks, held in my claws, as I forced my will upon the world. Daylight dimmed, until it turned into the eternal night that was the realm of shadows. Not even magical darkvision would help my adversaries now.

With barely a thought the gate to my armoury appeared behind me, a gate rising from the ground, tall enough to fit three adult serpents. My aura flared, and with it my will was imprinted on the world around me. A voice as ancient as I was, heavy with authority and wisdom came into being, shaped by nothing but my will alone.

People of Thelvadore! Barricade yourself in the palace. Lead young and old, weak and sick, for we leave nobody behind. Fate is upon us on this day, and it is our duty to persevere.

In the wake of my declaration silence reigned for a long moment. With my preparations complete I began enacting my plan.

In my long life here on Satien, the world I had found myself in after my first death, I had achieved many things. I had a slew of titles long enough to drown any human in intent without even being spoken aloud, and with those titles came powers and responsibilities.

Among those many titles were some that I rarely if ever made use of, much too dangerous to rely on unless absolutely necessary. And for the first time in millennia I made use of my most dangerous one.

It barely took a thought and the world shifted. The darkness surrounding me came to life, armies of shadows sprang forth, hideous things in my form, yet with no humanity left behind those empty eyes.

I was the Living Nightmare, a being so close to the primordial source of fear that I could manifest it at will.

An army of thousands descended upon the rows of adversaries outside our gates and within a moment their blood stained the ground. Corpses littered the landscape outside along the walls, staining the once beautiful grass red with the essence of life.

Each being consumed by my darkness rose anew, the essence of their fear made manifest to haunt their former allies until nothing remained, while their souls moved on to Altis to be judged and escorted into the afterlife.

As grand as the spectacle was, it was nothing more than clean up. The true threat to my people lay beyond the lines of infantry that had been conscripted to siege our walls and I had no illusions about being able to keep all the enemy forces out of the city.

With a thought I was outside of the city, emerging in the blood drenched fields I had just cleaned of vermins, clad in a uniform that I hadn’t worn in ages. From here I encompassed the capital of Thelvadore in a bubble of shadows. It would not be a permanent defence, but it would do for the moment. What I had to do next left me with little room to concentrate on protecting them otherwise.

I was no stranger to having enemies, in the three millennia I had spent on this world I had offended a number of people, some deserved, some not. Kingdoms had risen and fallen, sometimes squashed by my own hands, almost always leaving someone with a wish for vengeance behind. Most of my enemies were distant, political threats. Some, however, were the personal kind. Those were the truly powerful ones, beings that could stand up to me, despite me being a diamond ranker.

One such enemy was my former student Apocalyptica Impendium. Once upon a time I had taken him under my wing, a naive attempt to control his nature as an Apocalypse Dragon, one I had long since regretted.

Everyone was a result of their upbringing and their nature, and only few have the willpower required to control themselves from acting upon those urges. In that regard, I had been lucky. I was a true blooded Shadow Dragon, a being of pure evil; yet through my will alone I had learned to walk a different path. I was indomitable, more stubborn than even the chaos of the world, and through that I had been able to suppress what made me a danger to any living being.

Apocalyptica lacked that particular talent. He was headstrong yes, but that was not the same as strong willed. For a time I had thought I could teach him that, but I had failed and the result was a monster that could stand toe to toe with me but ravelled in the chaos of madness. He cared little for beings other than himself, and even his subservience to me had only lasted until he realised there was nothing else I could teach him.

And now he had come here, together with the humans and the slavers, to my doorstep, to bring my ruin.

With a deep sigh I shook my head when I felt him approaching; another figure that I knew oh too well right behind him.

Flame Dragon Chatan had been one of the earliest acquaintances amongst dragons that I made in the past. At the time I had barely come to grips with my own fate, weak as I had been, and he taught me what it was to be a dragon.

In time he became my lover, long before I had met Tizanta and my friends, and with him I had my first child.

It had lasted for a couple years, a blink in our lives, but our ways separated once I made it clear that I would not follow his doctrine to the letter.

Ever since then our relationship had soured tremendously, not helped by the fact that I soon surpassed him in nearly every aspect. Not only had I become an Emerald ranker before him, I had also amassed enough followers to earn myself a seat among the divine.

I had outclassed him in any metric he deemed important and I had done it all without him.

So I was not surprised when I heard that he had joined the slavers in their war against me, much less that he worked together with my lost apprentice to undo me. On their own I could beat them quite handily, I was powerful enough to manage that. But together?

I was a diamond ranker, sure, but so were they.

Even the eldest beings couldn’t remember a conflict such as ours, three diamond rankers set upon destroying each other. There had to have been some fights like this in the ancient past; the world was marred by those wounds for eternity. Yet there was nobody still around to remember them.

This conflict too could spell disaster, and it was my duty to prevent it.

The first volley was little more than a warning shot, at least to us. Shadows erupted from shortly in front of them, black spikes with the weight of my full power shooting up into the sky.

Neither Apocalyptica nor Chatan seemed impressed, not that I expected them to be. Magick of that scale would spell disaster for mortals, but every single one of us had long since left those constraints behind.

With a dismissive motion of his hand Chatan simply willed the world around him to burn and so it did. Flames burst into existence, warring with the ever dark of my realm, slowly but surely clawing their way through my magick.

I responded in kind, pulling upon my divine authority to cordon off a section of the world. This would be our battleground.

Even with all my might and power I had to pull hard on the strings of the world to achieve my goal, was I not trying to imprison the free souls of living beings. The soul was the one thing that was impossible to violate, even for the most powerful of gods. And while I was powerful myself, not even I could count myself amongst that particular elite.

The world shook as the two resisted, but soon they surrendered. I could not break them, nor could I vanquish their souls, but I could hurt it. Hurting souls was an ugly thing, a measure that should never be used by anyone for nigh any reason. But they knew I was capable of it, and they were not willing to test me. Not with something as precious as their soul on the line.

I was duty bound. They knew that with my people on the line, there was no taboo I would refrain from, no unimaginable horror I wouldn’t afflict on them. If I had to sell my soul to the devil to protect my people then so I would without even blinking.

Inside the realm of shadows, now fully removed from the world outside, I relaxed my hold on my human form. It was no longer required, nor was it useful for the fight to come. I was not the only one either, the forms of my adversaries burst into magick before coalescing into gigantic draconic forms, each easily bigger than even the biggest commercial airliners back on earth.

My own form was slightly smaller, yet despite that my presence was much more terrifying. My aura took hold of the world, clashing with theirs, before squashing them with barely a thought, and for once I didn’t suppress the evil roots of my being.

I was a true blooded Shadow Dragon, descendant of one of the most terrifying beings in the world. Despite all their power my adversaries couldn’t help but shake in fear at the profound wrongness of my being.

No words were spoken; no snippy pre-combat conversation, nor attempt to assuage things with democracy. I would have loved to go that route, would have loved to avoid the fight, but I knew that these two wouldn’t. They would simply use it to distract me, to find some way to get to my charges.

That I could not allow.

Apocalyptica was the first to move. I had expected it, overeager as he was to prove himself superior to me. Runes appeared all around us, a language unknown to anyone but himself. Even with my own studies, the knowledge of three millennia and the deepest secrets of magick, I had no hope to understand even a single word.

With a mental tug I shattered the runes before they could fully form, unwilling to let him have his way. Shadows broke down on us like a crushing ocean, smothering the three of us in black.

Sight was all but useless in any fight of this scale, it was a distraction at best. Hearing and smell did a bit more, but even they were useless. Touch was too easy to fool so I simply ignored any and all inputs from my mortal senses. No, this was a fight of magic and magick, there would be no way to perceive it properly other than my aura.

Flames incinerated me, bathing me in white, while I pulled upon my immense mana pool; measured only by that metric some would consider me even beyond diamond rank even if the rest of my powers weren’t there yet.

Magical torrents the size of countries started to bubble up as I dipped deep into my reserves. Any lesser being would find their movements restricted, but not my adversaries. They were simply too powerful for me to affect them this way.

Like rocks in the waves they stood their ground while the shadow realm around us broke apart, shattered by my will alone, Chatan’s storm of flames still trying to singe me.

In a way I had the advantage here, I needn’t kill them, only delay them. Once Tizanta could pull off the ritual they would be out of here, hopefully to a realm much calmer.

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