Dawn broke across the mountain in, perhaps premonition-like, shades of gold and crimson. Barjuchne stood at the widened cave entrance in her massive wyvern form, her wings spread to catch the first light. The air carried the scent of cooking fires and steel. Below, spread across the valleys and forests and at the foot of the mountain, she could see them clearly now. Not just campfires in the distance, but armies.
Three distinct forces were converging on her home.
A system window materialised before her eyes.
[DUNGEON ALERT]Intruders Detected At: Multiple Breach Points
Adventurer Companies (East)
Holy Church Expedition (North)
Magical Academy Research Team (South)
Threat Level: CriticalBarjuchne dismissed the window with a thought. She had known they were coming. Had watched them march closer each night since the flight. But seeing them now so close to the mountain in daylight, seeing the sheer numbers arrayed against her, made her chest tighten with something akin to anxiety.
Behind her, footsteps approached. Veliah emerged from the dungeon depths, her violet eyes scanning the approaching forces from the mountain’s peak. Rou-ya followed, her golden gaze already calculating angles and chokepoints. Distant from the rest, F.P. hovered nearby on crystalline wings, her shackle's chain extending back into the cave.
“I’m also here!” said the slime princess giddily, despite no one having said anything to provoke it.
"Three fronts," Veliah said quietly. "If they all take a different path up the mountain, we can't defend them all simultaneously without splitting our forces dangerously thin."
"Then we don't defend them all," Rou-ya replied. "We funnel them into the dungeon. Make them come at us from directions we choose." The goblin princess crossed her arms, thinking.
“That’s dangerous,” replied Veliah. “At least outside of the dungeon, we have control of the situation to some extent. If we pull back and cede the entire territory to them, we’ll have to defend under extreme pressure. It’ll be all or nothing.”
"That thinking shows the weakness of your common blood,” interjected a sharp voice from the side toward Veliah. “The monsters can handle the mountain," said the small candour, carrying a casual sharpness to its tone. Several gazes shifted toward the fairy princess, hovering there with casual composure. “A lesson in governance. Leave the fieldwork to the lowborn. Royals defend their castles from the inside,” she said, nodding her head back to the dungeon gate. “Their lessers can have the honour of defending the territory outside of it and thinning out the invaders.”
Barjuchne glanced back through the side of her eye. “You will not speak to my Veliah that way, fairy,” warned the dragon. “She is a crown jewel amongst my many treasures.”
The elf Veliah smiled quietly at that, clasping her hands together as F.P. averted her gaze, crossing her arms.
Barjuchne’s gaze turned back toward the horizon as she studied the approaching armies. She pondered about her enemies.
People. They were just people, or, rather, they were three distinctly separate groups of rational actors rather than one, whole, conjoined force.
The adventurer companies to the east moved in loose formations, their campfires scattered and disorganised. They were likely to be treasure seekers and glory hunters. If she had to guess, they would be dangerous because of their numbers and unpredictability but ultimately be a minor threat because of their lack of coordinated strategy. Perhaps it would be worth the effort for her to strafe their camps with fire and chase as many off as she could.
They were a reasonable but not frightening danger.
What appeared to be large teams of mages to the south advanced with more careful motions through the region, their camps marked by strange lights that hovered in geometric patterns. As the last dragon, they were surely interested in her for this specific reason. Her guts told her that they would be researchers and specimen collectors primarily. They would try to capture and study rather than kill as an aim, which made them both less immediately dangerous and more insidious in the long term. A low-priority threat, for now. With a high density of broadly schooled magic users, they were a currently unprodded hive.
It would be best to let them do their thing from a safe distance. The last thing the dungeon needed was a swarm of angry mages and witches coming its way. She had barely managed to trick Lord Parsmuth's wizards.
But the northern force made her scales prickle with instinctive warning as she focused on them with intensive clarity. There was something in the air there, something she knew intimately.
Royal blood.
As for the rest of that group, she didn’t know what to make of them.
“Hood men,” said Rou-ya, following Barjuchne’s lingering gaze toward the final group.
“Hood men?” asked Barjuchne.
“The church,” replied Veliah in Rou-ya’s stead.
The Holy Church expedition marched in perfect formation, their white banners visible even from this distance. At their head, the dragon could make out two figures that stood apart from the armoured paladins surrounding them. Identical twins in ceremonial robes that gleamed with divine light. One carried a staff. The other held prayer beads. Even from here, Barjuchne could feel the power radiating from them. Their blood was royal; their magic was potent. Her dragon heart stirred with contradictory impulses at the sight of the two pinprick silhouettes on the horizon. Even in such low fidelity, however, they made her senses stir.
They were dangerous. The two of them alone made her more worried than any of the enemy hosts at her borders. But also, like a collector of dangerous things, she immediately wanted them for herself despite the fact that they might end up killing her.
Being a dragon was hard.
She shook her head, dispelling the thought. Now was not the time for her collecting instincts to distract her.
“I understand the greedy adventurers and the curious mages,” began the dragon. “But what does the church want from me?”
“Hard to say,” replied Veliah. “They’re hard to do business with because their internal politics are so tight-lipped and long-sighted that we could never predict what they would want or need next,” explained the merchant’s daughter. “But for now, it’s safe to assume they’re an enemy until proven otherwise.”
It was silent for a time as the dragon finalised her defensive strategy.
"The wild monsters will thin out the herd. Deploy the goblins to the tunnels for those who make it through," ordered Barjuchne, her voice rumbling with deep resonance down her long neck. "The adventurers will rush in first, foolhardy and with lust for gold. Let the traps thin their numbers, then hit them with coordinated ambushes, as with Parsmuth’s legion."
Rou-ya nodded, already gesturing to waiting goblin warriors.
"Veliah, take some of the dragon clan and set the bones of the undead dragons to the southern choke points before they get there," Barjuchne continued. "Set up a ‘graveyard’ there. The academy mages won’t be able to resist stopping by and they’ll be right in the middle of the trap.”
“Clever,” replied Veliah. “The undead rising at being poked around by some scholars at will make it feel like it was their own fault for being too nosy, rather than an act of aggression from our side."
Barjuchne nodded.
"And the church?" Veliah asked.
Barjuchne's eyes fixed on the northern force. On the twin figures of terrible beauty and power leading their paladins forward. The church paladins stopped there where they were, making camp on the edge of the mountain. But the two twins moved on alone toward the path without their escort.
"Don’t provoke them,” warned Barjuchne. “The last thing we need is to become the enemy of a global religion on top of what we already are,” said the dragon with caution. “If any straggler priests come up our way together with the adventurers, pull back and let me handle them."
The valley below the mountain sprawled with canvas and cookfires. Hundreds of adventurers had gathered, their camp spreading across the grassland in chaotic profusion. Tents stood in haphazard clusters. Supply waggons formed rough circles around communal areas. The scent of cooking meat and unwashed bodies mixed with weapon oil and leather. They weren’t an organised force; rather, they were all just people moving in the same direction at the same time.
Men and women sharpened blades on whetstones, the rhythmic scraping carrying across the morning air. A group of hedge mages practised spells in a clearing, their magical lights flashing in competitive displays. Warriors checked armour straps and tested shield grips. Healers sorted herbs and bandages whilst discussing injury protocols.
A man rolled his eyes and kicked down the weathered, primitive wooden sign by the start of the mountain path with his muddy boot, as if it were a joke.
Stay out! Only death inside!Confidence ran thick through the encampment. These were professionals. Glory seekers, yes, but experienced ones. They had fought monsters before. Cleared dungeons. Faced dangers and emerged victorious with treasure and tales. For many, a dragon was just another mark on the tally. Another legendary beast to overcome.
"Final preparations!" a grizzled company leader bellowed to his troop.
Movement rippled through nearby groups. Someone made a joke about what to do with any rescued princesses, assuming there were any. Someone else debated whether dragon scales made better armour or better coin.
A shadow passed overhead.
The conversations died.
Heads turned upward as one, eyes tracking the massive shape that blotted out the rising sun. The shadow grew larger. Darker. Moving with terrifying speed.
The black-scaled wyvern descended from the clouds with meteoric velocity.
For one frozen heartbeat, the camp stared up at death approaching. Then someone screamed. The beast opened its jaws and unleashed hell, starting at exactly where the old wooden sign had been trampled into the mud.
Dragon fire roared forth in a cone of destruction that washed across the unprepared camp. Tents ignited instantly, canvas bursting into flame. Alchemical supply waggons exploded as their contents caught fire, sending burning debris in all directions as the glass-bottled potions exploded. Men screamed and scattered, their organised formations dissolving into panicked individuals fleeing in every direction.
The gigantic monster strafed across the encampment, her wings beating with powerful strokes that fanned the flames higher. Her tail swept through a cluster of weapons racks, scattering steel across the grass. Her claws gouged furrows in the soil as she banked for another pass.
Arrows launched desperately upward bounced harmlessly off her obsidian scales, the shafts shattering on impact. A mage threw a lightning bolt that struck her shoulder and dispersed without effect, her natural magical resistance rendering it useless.
"RUN!" someone shouted. "GET OUT OF HERE!"
But there was nowhere to fall back to. The camp was an inferno. Adventurers ran in every direction, trampling their own supplies, abandoning their weapons, and thinking only of individual survival. The disciplined treasure hunters became a mob of terrified individuals fleeing for the forest or for one of the many other camps that remained, unburnt.
High-ranking adventurers or not, experienced monster hunters or not, at the end of the day fire could burn everyone just the same.
Far off, on the other side of the mountain, the forest thinned as the research team climbed higher, revealing a clearing that made them stop in collective wonder. Bones littered the ground in chaotic profusion. Obviously, dragon bones. Dozens of skeletons in various states of completeness, their massive forms scattered across the moss like monuments to ancient battles.
"By all the gods," one mage whispered. "Look at the size of that skull."
They rushed forward with academic enthusiasm overriding their caution. Measuring rods appeared from packs. Sketching charcoal and parchment emerged from leather cases. One researcher began cataloguing sizes whilst another prepared preservation spells for specimen collection.
"This femur alone is worth a semester's research funding," someone said excitedly. "The marrow cavity structure is fascinating."
A younger mage knelt beside a partially intact ribcage, her fingers tracing the grooves worn into ancient bone. "That’s odd, though. These dragons didn’t die fighting,” she muses. “There are no damage patterns on the bones," she said, moving from one piece of ivory to the next. “They’re spotless.”
"Take samples. Careful documentation. We'll need to -"
The air shifted.
It happened slowly at first. A subtle change in pressure that made their ears pop. Then the magical charge built, crackling across their skin, making hair stand on end. The bones began to glow with cold fire, phosphorescent light bleeding from empty eye sockets and cracked marrow.
The skull the lead researcher had been sketching suddenly moved, as if looking at him.
It lifted from the ground, vertebrae clicking together beneath it, ribs pulling themselves into formation. All around the clearing, scattered bones dragged across moss and stone, assembling themselves into skeletal forms that should not have been able to move.
Hundreds of undead rose simultaneously.
Dragon skeletons towered above the terrified mages, their empty eye sockets blazing with magical fire. Smaller bones formed lesser undead, skeletal warriors and beasts that surrounded the research team in a tightening circle.
"ESCAPE!"
The mages scattered, their careful documentation abandoned, their specimen containers dropped and forgotten. They fled down the mountainside in absolute terror, convinced they had disturbed ancient graves and triggered some terrible curse.
Behind them, the skeletal dragons gave, perhaps halfheartedly, chase with grinding bone and hollow roars that did seem convincingly real to those being hounded.
The undead pursued them relentlessly, driving them away from the mountain entirely.
Having taken a harder and less obvious route, a fourth force moved up the mountain.
Rather than coming over the distant, easy, but open plains, they had come through the long stretch of forest. It had given them cover from the sight of the enemy. Given the distraction the others were making, this was their opportunity to move.
They knew what they were doing, after all.
The forest smouldered around them, trees blackened by recent fires, the ground scorched and cracked. The vanguard forces of the neighbouring greater noble lord’s court pushed upward through the devastation with grim determination. These were professional soldiers, well-equipped and disciplined.
The burning landscape was terrible, yes, but they had faced worse in days of siege and war, and it did little to impress the hardened men.
Streams of lava flowed down carved channels on either side of the path, creating barriers of heat and flame. The knights marched in tight formation, shields raised, eyes scanning the scorched trees for threats.
The attack came from the smoke.
Black-scaled lizardmen dropped from burnt branches, their crude weapons swinging with surprising coordination. They struck and retreated, using the smoke for cover, forcing the knights to fight blind against enemies who knew the terrain.
"Shield wall!" the captain roared. "Hold formation!"
The well-trained soldiers responded in turn, shields locking together whilst spears thrust through the gaps. Lizardmen fell, pierced through scaled hide, their bodies tumbling down the mountainside. But more appeared, an endless stream of scaled warriors emerging from the smoke, as if they were simply manifesting behind it.
Or perhaps… from it? It was hard to say.
Pseudo-dragon whelps dove from above, their small wings beating frantically as they breathed gouts of fire before retreating. The knights raised shields overhead, protecting themselves from the aerial assault whilst maintaining their ground advance. Rear archers took out the aerial threat, while the footmen handled the wild ground combatants.
And they were winning, despite the enemy’s numbers.
The lizardmen fell back, their ambush broken by superior training and equipment. The whelps retreated higher. The assaulting forces pushed forward towards a narrow pass that led to the distant dungeon entrance.
Victory seemed within reach.
Then the lava beside them erupted.
The fire elemental rose from molten stone with terrible majesty. It towered above the largest knight, its form composed of living flame and liquid rock. Heat radiated from it in waves that made the air shimmer and twist. Where it touched the ground, stone melted into fresh lava.
It crashed into the knight formation with devastating force.
Shields melted on contact. Armour turned red-hot, cooking the men inside. Spears ignited before they could strike. Soldiers screamed and scattered as their disciplined formation shattered.
The creature moved through their ranks with unstoppable momentum, leaving burning corpses in its wake. Knights who tried to stand their ground died where they fought. Those who fled still burnt, fire clinging to their armour and flesh.
The elemental raised burning arms and prepared to annihilate the last survivors.
But then a brilliant white light flooded the mountainside.
A magical barrier materialised between the elemental and its soon-to-be final victims, a wall of pure holy power that halted the creature mid-strike. The burning arms crashed against divine light and recoiled, flames dimming fractionally.
Two figures stepped through the smoke and chaos with perfect synchronisation.
They were identical in every visible way. Pale skin that seemed to glow faintly with inner radiance, untouched by ash or soot despite the burning landscape around them. They wore white ceremonial robes that should have been filthy with dirt and smoke but remained pristine, as if reality itself refused to mar them. Golden hair fell in perfect waves past their shoulders, not a strand out of place. Eyes of brilliant blue stared forward with absolute focus but also a strange, vague emptiness of sorts. It was almost as if they weren’t exactly present there, where they were staring out from. Their movements matched exactly, their steps falling at precisely the same moments.
Even their breathing happened in coordination.
But in contrast to the radiance of their interrupting and world-contrasting presence, their expressions were completely blank. There was no fear. No anger. No excitement or concern. Just serene emptiness. They were faces that could have been carved from marble for all the emotion they displayed.
The twin priestesses stopped in perfect unison ten paces from the elemental.
The staff-wielder raised her weapon. Holy light intensified, growing brighter until it hurt to look at directly. Her lips moved, speaking words in a language that made the air vibrate with divine resonance.
The prayer bead holder began chanting. Her voice carried no emotion, no inflection.
They were empty people. But the magic that came from them was full. Their combined power struck the fire elemental like a hammer.
Holy power tore through the creature, disrupting the magical bonds that held its flame and stone together. The elemental thrashed and began to collapse. Flames guttered and died. Molten stone cooled to black rock. The towering figure of burning wrath diminished, shrinking down until nothing remained but cooling slag.
The identical priestesses stopped their chanting.
Silence fell across the mountainside, broken only by the crackle of dying fires and the moans of wounded knights.
The surviving soldiers stared at their saviours with awe and relief written across smoke-blackened faces as if staring at a pair of heaven-sent angels who had come with divine intervention on their behalf.
The twin saintesses turned as one, their void expressions never changing. They looked at the wounded knights with those empty blue eyes, assessing them with the same total lack of emotion that one might associate with having stemmed from insects. But, nonetheless, the priestesses stopped and knelt, moving from one injured man to the other as they wordlessly and effortlessly healed burns and deep gashes with the power of their holy magic. Quick, hot flashes of energy wove from one wound to the next.
And then, without a word or even a reply to the many thanks and blessings they received, the two of them began walking up the mountain towards the dungeon entrance. From their part, there was no acknowledgement of the lives they had just saved. Nor was there any expression of concern or satisfaction or anything at all.
One of the wounded knights tried to call out after them. But his voice died in his throat. The twins disappeared into the smoke, still walking in perfect lockstep.
Behind them, the knights exchanged troubled glances but said nothing.
One of them yelped. They all looked.
"...I think an ant just stung me," he muttered, looking at the red dot on his finger.