Chapter 167: Arc: The War of the Eastern Kingdoms - 167: The Legions of Ignivara
Dawn broke laboriously over the devastated plains of eastern Paris, staining the horizon with a blood-red that seemed to foretell the massacres to come. Where once stretched the fertile fields of Brie, now remained only scorched, sterile lands, marked by the gaping scars of previous dimensional incursions. The air itself still carried the acrid scent of sulfur and raw magic.
The portals opened one by one in a tearing of space-time, their edges crackling with violet energy. Each opening released a wave of suffocating heat, laden with the metallic smell of the draconic world a mixture of red-hot iron and scaled flesh that caught in the throat.
On this wounded earth now deployed the most formidable of armies: the legions of Ignivara.
The house standard snapped in the cold morning wind - a fabric black as obsidian, embroidered with a crimson dragon with outspread wings, its ruby eyes seeming to fix each soldier with millennial authority. Around this banner, thousands of draconic warriors aligned in perfect formations, their black armor reflecting the first light of day like so many deadly mirrors.
At the center of this military tide, on a platform of metal forged in the flames of their native world, stood Varnor Ignivara. The patriarch of the house embodied the raw power of his lineage. His massive silhouette, nearly three meters tall in his humanoid form, was girded with black armor engraved with incandescent runes that pulsed to the rhythm of his dragon heart. His obsidian eyes swept over his troops with the cold assurance of a born predator, gauging each unit, evaluating their combat readiness.
To his right stood Syléane Ignivara, his eldest daughter and presumptive heir. Unlike her father’s imposing stature, she had chosen deadly grace over brute force. Her slender silhouette was molded in scarlet armor that perfectly embraced her forms while maintaining formidable efficiency. Her flaming red hair cascaded over her shoulders like a fall of lava, framing a face with chiseled features where emerald-green eyes shone. But this beauty was deceptive: each of her gestures betrayed the deadly precision of a seasoned warrior, and her claws, delicately filed, remained no less capable of slicing through steel.
The silence reigning over the plain was almost religious. Ten thousand draconic soldiers waited, motionless, for their lord to speak. Dragons in humanoid form, domesticated wyverns, chimeras with reinforced metal wings, contingents of war griffons - all fixed their patriarch with devotion mixed with respectful fear.
Varnor finally raised his black metal-gauntleted hand. The silence, already profound, seemed to intensify further.
- "Warriors of House Ignivara!" His voice rolled across the plain like distant thunder, carried by authority forged in a thousand battles. "King Maelor has entrusted us with the honor of bringing iron and fire to the heart of the human Orient. Today begins our march toward a territory our ancestors have coveted for centuries: the Middle Empire."
An imperceptible shiver ran through the ranks. China - that distant land of which draconic legends had spoken for millennia, populated by humans with ancestral combat techniques and hunters reputed among the most formidable in the world.