A Perverted Path to Victory

Tinvel

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Even as Tinvel flung himself free from the plane, Chona was beginning her work. This was the kind of fight she’d spent ten years training for. Her, alone, against a loosely-organized mob of violent spearmen and archers.

The ocean water felt shockingly chill on Tinvel’s half-healed skin as he splashed into the sea. As saltwater seeped into his wounds, it came with pain enough to make him hiss. He held the cryslock pistol above his head and well above the waves as he began to wade away from the plane.

“Back!” Chona’s voice, though hoarse, cracked like a whip through the air. “Back, or I’ll kill you all!”

There was a rush of air, then the roar of flames. Tinvel turned around in time to see a wall of fire rolling across the beach toward the Sporaton soldiers. Starting as a dense sphere the size of his chest, it caught the wind and flared out as it travelled, turning into a wall as tall as he was and ten feet wide. With the enemy still a few hundred meters away, it dissolved into nothingness well before doing any damage.

That hardly mattered. There was no creature alive without a fear of magefire. The block of Sporaton spearmen stopped well short of the scorched portion of sand, instead waving for the archers to come forward.

Chona, who’d been standing with one foot on the Sunrise’s pilot seat and the other braced against its wing, with her hands still wreathed in the lingering tatters of fire, leapt down from the plane and pressed her back to its fuselage. She looked left, then right, and seemed confused. Looking up, he could see the moment she spotted him still wading away from the plane, as evidenced by the way her eyes bulged furiously.

“Get the fuck back here!” She screamed. “What’s wrong with you? There’s no cover over there!”

As he saw the archers nocking their arrows, Tinvel realized how right she was. He was standing in waist-deep water next to a flat, unsettled stretch of sand. The only cover was the plane.

He heaved himself around, lifting his legs high to help him awkwardly sprint back toward the Sunrise. He was moving as fast as he could, throwing his all into every step, but he was tired. Injured. The healing potion had done what it could for him, but it hadn’t fixed everything. He still tasted blood in his mouth, and every breath hurt more than the last. Either his internal injuries were getting worse, or exhaustion meant his body could no longer hide the pain.

The arrows flew. After so long fighting in the sky, barely able to hear his own voice unless he shouted at the top of his lungs, fighting on the ground was a strange experience. He heard someone shout the order “loose!”, then heard the twang of bowstrings releasing, all while the lapping waves kept up their soft rustle as they calmly washed up on the shore. He looked up, saw the arrows sailing toward him in a tall arc, and threw himself into one final leap forward.

He hit the water belly-first. Chona grabbed the back of his jacket and, rather than drag him to the plane, shoved him down into the water, smashing his face against the sand.

Arrows splashed around him. Like hail striking a lake, they landed in a rapid patter, his water-logged ears registering their impacts as dull thuds. He felt one thump against his back, but it had lost too much speed. It didn’t even pierce his jacket.

Chona dragged him up a second later. He blinked saltwater out of his eyes as she shoved him up against the Sunrise’s fuselage, both their chests heaving.

“You alright?”

“Didn’t get hit,” he answered breathlessly. Then he looked at the dripping wet pistol in his hand and cursed.

“It was already loaded, right? It might still work.”

“Hope so.”

He grabbed the cockpit’s rim and lifted himself up, peering at the soldiers. More had arrived. About thirty of them were nervously milling around in a loose line, stopped about a hundred meters or so away. They were eyeing the charred sand with trepidation. The black line told them exactly how far they could approach without risking a grisly death, and it seemed like a great deal of arguing was going on over what to do. Tinvel ducked back down as the archers began nocking more arrows.

“Another volley incoming,” he breathlessly informed Chona. The arrows began to strike the plane and ocean around them as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Crouching, pressed as tightly to the Sunrise as he could get, he looked at Chona. “Can you keep them off us if they charge?”

“Don’t have a choice, do I?”

Her eyes glittered dangerously. Though the sun was high and bright, her dark pupils were blown out wide. Gray skin showed through the patches of burned fur on her forearms, and her hands trembled, fingers twitching convulsively. When she spoke, she only vaguely looked in his direction, eye contact a forgotten concern.

Combat shock or spellsickness? Professor Brown and the Governess had sent out a lot of information to the military about the effects combat had on the mind, mostly in the form of written pamphlets about the signs of combat shock. It was probably going to save lives when the war came to Tulian’s doorstep, but in this instance, all it achieved was muddying the water for Tinvel. Every mage had a different internal experience of spellsickness, but the symptoms had certain commonalities to an outside observer. Detachment from reality, a focus on things which weren’t there, eventually culminating into full delusion, shortly followed by prolonged unconsciousness. Combat shock was awful, but in the worst cases, a spell coma could last weeks.

Either way, it’s bad. We need to get the hell out of here.

Regrettably, there wasn’t a thing he could do to achieve that. The Sunrise’s spine was shattered, its propellers snapped, its wings held on more by the canvas skin than any of the supporting struts within. Even if they ran for it and managed to outpace the soldiers, they were on a flat, desolate island. They’d end up with their backs to the sea in short order.

“Have you heard anything from the fleet?” Peering over the top of the cockpit, Tinvel put his pistol to half-cock, watching the enemy. He ducked back down as the archers raised their bows for another volley.

“No, Tin,” Chona snapped. She was kneeling in the water, leaving it up to her neck. The burns she’d suffered left her fur looking like a dog with mange, but it seemed the cool water was helping with the pain. “I’ve been kinda focused on trying not to throw up or shit myself.”

“Sorry, stupid question.” He squinted out at the fleet. They’d gotten his message, clearly. Their sails were out once more, picking up the breeze. “Can you give me the crystal?”

She reached into her chest wrap and pulled it out without a word, tossing it his way. His blood-specked hands caught it awkwardly, smearing its clear facets with a pinkish red. He put it to his ear.

The network was predictably busy. The Central Nexus commander barked out command after command, constantly reminding every speaker to minimize their speaking time. The messages given were spoken so rapidly and with so many abbreviations that Tinvel, who hadn’t been trained in all the lingo the crystal jockeys used, could barely parse it.

As arrows rained down in the water around him, his fervent listening slowly revealed several things. Firstly, that neither of the twin brigs were in danger of sinking, but it was a narrow affair. Looking out at the distant fleet, which were little more than black blobs with white rectangles from this distance, he saw that the two brigs were now close enough for crew to jump from deck to deck. White foam sprayed between the two ships, both ships soaking the other with the lathery firefighting substance in the places their own pumps and hoses couldn’t reach. The other ships which had suffered magefire attacks were similarly clustered together, each helping the other fight flames that licked up the exterior walls of their hulls. One ship in particular, though Tinvel couldn’t tell which, was in the process of being abandoned. The fires had spread across its entire length, hungrily crawling up the mast and sails. Another ship had come up alongside, tossing ropes to the swimming survivors, but the rescuing captain was plainly reluctant to get too close. Unlike the Waverake and twin brigs, captured ships didn’t (and couldn’t) have a robustly fireproofed powder hold placed beneath the waterline. It was only a matter of time until the flames reached the multiple tons of blackpowder stored within.

Tinvel heard nothing about the rescue efforts for Chona and himself, however. The fleet only had a pair of communication crystals with them, so it made a degree of sense that they couldn’t coordinate everything over the crystal network, but he still wished they’d say something. Though the fleet’s sails were deploying once more, driving them into motion, it was a terribly slow affair for someone used to the speeds of aeroplanes. Signal flags constantly rose and fell from the ship’s masts in a colorful dance of vibrantly dyed cloth, but he couldn’t read their meaning.

All he could focus on was the shouts of the twenty or thirty Sporaton soldiers that he could just pick out. Like farmers planning to till a new field, they were arguing over the simplest and easiest way to kill him.

There was still nothing he could do. The arrows kept falling, piercing the plane’s canvas through. He and Chona kept themselves shoved up against the fuselage, arms over their head to protect against the possibility of a lucky arrow falling at just the right angle to strike them directly. The soldiers tried several times to advance on them, but each forward jaunt was met and repelled by a wall of crackling magefire. They tried several times to jog along the beach, finding a position where Tinvel and Chona weren’t protected by its fuselage, but it was easy enough to simply circle around the plane, keeping its crumpled corpse between them and the archers.

He didn’t know why they weren’t splitting up. As the minutes ticked by, more soldiers, some of them injured or sporting the signs of recent healing, joined the cluster of archers and spearmen. As their numbers grew to forty or so, Tinvel felt the obvious course forward for them was to encircle the plane with archers, leaving no angle for them to hide from all the arrows at once. That didn’t seem to occur to them, however. The archers remained stolidly attached to the wall of spearmen, refusing to break the formation, or even to put themselves before the protective wall. Whether that was because they feared Chona’s magefire that much or they simply lacked ingenuity, he didn’t know, but he was grateful for it all the same. It was probably the former. There were no knights or officers amongst them to provide motivation, and conscripted levees like them had very little interest in risking their lives without a blade prodding them forward.

The tense stalemate wasn’t going to last forever, however. Every time they crept forward, prompting another blast of spellfire from Chona, the wall of flames was noticeably smaller. Shivers began to wrack her body, and she went from crouching in the water to tiredly kneeling, breathing hard, one arm grabbing Tinvel’s belt for support. He kept a hand on her back in turn, offering reassurances as he risked the occasional glance toward the soldiers. They could tell that Chona was getting weaker. A few of them had been caught on the fringes of her spells, fire clinging to their limbs or clothes, but none of them had been killed outright. Their fellows had dragged them back and tossed them on the ground, slapping them with clothes and kicking sand at the fire until it was extinguished. Magefire shouldn’t be dealt with that easily. She was weakening terribly, and they were figuring that out. Even after more than a dozen had suffered injuries, there remained more than enough to mount an assault if they wanted to. With every testing probe, it was becoming more obvious that a charge would succeed.

“We should get ready to burn the plane,” Tinvel said. “I’m going to try and get your powder bag out of the cockpit.”

“No,” Chona rasped, tugging at his belt to keep him in place. “I can burn it without that. Don’t get shot.”

“You shouldn’t waste any energy on burning the plane if you don’t have to. You’re going to need it for us to make a break for it.”

“If we’re burning the plane,” she said between heavy breaths, “we’re getting killed anyway. I’ll take as many as I can with me.”

He wanted to argue with that, but there was no point. Chona was barely present. She was staring straight into the plane’s fuselage, eyes constantly darting from left to right as if she were reading text only she could see. Her shivers had turned into full-body tremors, and she flinched heavily every time a wave splashed against her, despite them arriving in predictable intervals. He lifted his pistol, pulling the hammer all the way back, and prayed to Talavan that no water had seeped around the bullet to foul the powder. From closer than he’d have liked, he heard a voice call out.

“Make ready!”

He didn’t bother to peek. He knew what was coming. Instead he lifted the communication crystal and, interrupting whoever had been speaking at that moment, sent off a final message.

“TCA to Naval Command. Enemy is preparing an assault we cannot repel. Will attempt to burn plane before death or capture, but, failing that, request that naval vessels bombard it heavily to ensure destruction. TCA message over.”

He shoved the crystal into his pocket. He supposed that was another thing he’d have to try and get rid of if they were about to be killed or captured. Probably best to chuck it as far into the sea as he could and hope that the Sporatons wouldn’t be able to find it.

The sound of feet stomping through sand alerted him to the enemy’s approach. Chona started to stand, but he barely had to touch her shoulder in order to shove her back down. She tried to curse at him, but it came out as nothing more than incoherent mumbling.

Tinvel raised himself up and over the cockpit, swinging his pistol around. The line of soldiers were approaching with their spears lowered, archers trailing behind, arrows resting against their bowstrings. One man saw him leap up and pointed, calling out.

“Gun! He has a gun!”

Tinvel pulled the trigger. To his immense relief, the pistol jumped in his hand, a puff of smoke and zip! of a bullet answering the man’s shout.

The soldiers’ reactions were entirely out of proportion to the single gunshot. The bullet whipped harmlessly past the man Tinvel had been aiming for, yet every last man and woman threw themselves onto their stomachs with a shrill cry of fear, dropping their weapons as they did their best to cover themselves. The reputation of gunfire’s lethality had, clearly, reached truly ridiculous scales.

Tinvel dropped back down and fumbled in his pocket for ammunition. He found a lead ball easily enough, but when his fingers grabbed a paper blackpowder packet, they squished into its utterly sodden form. There was no way the water-logged powder would burn.

He shoved his back against the fuselage once more, closing his eyes. Beside him, Chona began to stand. He heard fire beginning to pop, and felt the heat against his side. She was preparing another spell, consequences be damned. This time he didn’t stop her.

Whump.

Tinvel opened his eyes. The muted thump was very far away, but it sounded familiar. He looked out at the ocean, squinting, just as he heard a serpentine hiss.

…sssssSSSS-THOOM!

The air shook hard enough to rattle his bones. The explosion was ear-splitting, deafening, and he was briefly put into shadow as a great column of sand rose high enough to put itself between Tinvel and the sun. Off in the distance he saw the bow of the left brig, the Little Rake, wreathed in smoke.

Tinvel risked a glance over the fuselage. Black smoke was rising from a fresh crater in the beach, one about ten feet wide, three feet deep at its centerpoint. With its epicenter about halfway between the soldiers and the Sunrise, it wasn’t the best shot in the world, but he didn’t care. The soldiers had frozen in place.

Whump.

Tinvel turned.

Whump-whump.

Whump.

Whump-whump-whu-whu-whump.

The Tulian fleet, it seemed, had decided to risk firing at the upper limit of their range.

The black hulls of the ships were drowned in a thick mist. The dense smoke choked the air in great pillowy clouds, the long, freshly rifled 24-pounders mounted at the bow of every ship firing in sequence. With their emcotton-filled shells propelled by three pounds of blackpowder, he had no hope of catching sight of the lethal projectiles in flight. But he heard the split-second hiss that heralded their arrival.

THOOM!

Some of the Sporatons turned to run. Others dropped to the ground.

TH-THOOM!

THOOM!

TH-TH-TH-THOOM!

The second shell hit the dead center of the enemy formation. Men and women were scattered like dolls, blood and limbs thrown into the air in a grotesque display. Thankfully, the following shots quickly hid the carnage.

Shell after shell poured into the Sporatons. Having fired from just under half a mile away, on a rocking, rolling ship, their accuracy was awe-inspiring. The roar of each impact blended into the next, the distinct black puffs of emcotton explosion shielding the beach from sight, each brief flash of light all that clued him in to the fact that shells were still landing. He counted ten, eleven, then twelve thundering strikes, each digging a new crater in the sand.

The barrage ended without fanfare. The eerie silence that followed was, paradoxically, almost more disturbing than the bombardment itself.

The Sporatons were gone. What remained in the dented beach was hardly identifiable as having ever belonged to a human being. Pieces of a metal helmet there, tatters of cloth there, and the warped, spindly remains of things that had once been alive. Clothing and flesh alike had been ripped away, leaving nothing more than a scant few tendons and muscles connecting limestone-white bones.

Whump.

Tinvel closed his eyes.

Wh-wh-wh-wh-whump.

As the shells streaked inward with a deadly hiss, Tinvel lifted the crystal to his mouth.

“TCA to Naval Command-”

The explosions began. He winced, covering one ear and turning away as he waited for it to end. Once it had, he took a tired, shaky breath.

“TCA to Naval Command. Enemies dealt with. No further bombardment necessary. We are injured and unable to do much, however. Retrieval is requested.”

“Naval Command to TCA,” the flagship’s crystal jockey replied. “Message received. Boats have already been dispatched to retrieve you. Admiral B’Leary recommends destruction of aeroplane to avoid enemy capture.”

“TCA to Naval Command: Recommendation keenly agreed with, but retrieval of engine is paramount. If boat sent is incapable of carrying both us and engines, will need second boat dispatched.”

“Naval Command to TCA: message will be relayed to Admiral.”

A moment later, when it became clear that the conversation was over, the Central Nexus jockey spoke up in a sharp, acidic tone.

“This is Central Nexus: all operators are to recall proper procedure for further messages. Further infractions will result in removal from posting. Do not verbally acknowledge this message.”

Tinvel chuckled lightly, putting the crystal back into his shoulder pocket. Then, not even bothering to drag himself toward the shore, he put his back to the fuselage and slumped down. He came to a rest on the silty seabed with most of his neck submerged, his chin tickled by the passing waves.

Chona, beside him, fell against him. He wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulder and dragged her closer, guiding her head to come to rest on his side. Her face was twitching uncontrollably, lips making soundless, nonsensical shapes, but something in her eyes still seemed relieved.

In the distance, he heard the cannons fire again. This time the shells arced up and over them, sailing across the harbor. They began landing in the city, crashing into the distant castle walls. Less than an hour ago, it would have taken Tinvel little more than a minute to go inspect the damage being done to the Sporaton city. Now it would have taken hours of walking and swimming to get a good view.

A rowboat was coming their way. Sailors in light armor were pumping away at the oars, heading straight for their crash site. Behind them, their launch only a few minutes behind the first boat, nearly every other ship in the fleet began to deploy their boats. Tulian Marines were riding in these, and they were steering not for Tinvel and Chona, but for the Sporaton wharfs.

Seeing the approaching enemy, a few groups of Port Agrith militia gathered on the docks. They were too brave for their own good. The cannons that had been striking the castle adjusted their aim and, with a handful of volleys, scattered them to pieces.

The rowboat reached Tinvel and Chona a few minutes later. A healer began to work on them, glowing hands helping finish what their potions had started. While Chona was carefully helped into the boat by an exceptionally anxious sailor, Tinvel went back to the Sunrise and gave directions to the Tulian marines. They didn’t understand why it was so important that Tinvel retrieve the Sunrise’s engines instead of just burning the whole thing, but he didn’t bother explaining. He helped them use their bayonets as hatchets to hack apart the fuselage, retrieving the forward and rear engine in full chunks. He took personal care of the rear engine, using a bayonet as a saw to neatly trim it free. The marines, eager to join their comrades in the assault, barely hid their disgust at being forced to watch him carefully work out the best method to remove the engine without damaging it further.

Tinvel didn’t care what they thought. That engine had done something no other had. Like a living, loyal creature, it had failed at the last possible moment, each emerald fighting to keep operating until they had absolutely nothing left to give. The Sunrise’s body may have been broken, but its heart wasn’t. It had saved his life. He wasn’t going to leave it there to rot.

By the time he’d finished disassembling the Sunrise to his satisfaction, Tulian marines were marching back down from the city’s castle, their arms piled high with looted wealth and equipment. The flaming ship out at sea had gone up in a hideous fireball, the blast throwing smoke a kilometer or more into the sky, but no other ships were around to be struck by the debris. They were already tied up to the Sporaton pier, loading ramps deployed and ready to accept the plunder of enchanted armor, texts on spellcraft and artificery, chests of coin, elegant gemstone arrays, and broken samples of the castle’s artifice-enhanced walls. Having been warned of the consequences that would befall them should they loot anything other than the homes of nobility, not a single Tulian marine was carrying something that could have possibly belonged to common civilians.

As the rowboat finally pulled away from the beach, leaving a canvas bonfire behind, Tinvel could do nothing more than watch in silence.

It seemed like they’d won the battle. He’d thought he’d have felt better about that. But no. He just felt tired. Slumping forward, his head landed on the back of a rowing marine. He tried to lift it away, but his body was sluggish to respond.

It would be the late morning when he awoke in a ship’s hammock.

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Sirian “Seareye” Tailya

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“It was an ambush, my Lord. They set upon us as we began our attack.” He bowed low, only the barbarian King’s feet visible to him. “The fault is mine. In my arrogance, I failed to consider the possibility that the enemy’s flying machines were capable of traveling such distances. I should have ordered my Wing to prepare for opposition, instead of focusing all our efforts on the enemy’s ships.”

The King of Sporatos listened in magnanimous silence, his pale face a mask of imperious solemnity. He was not looking at Seareye. His gaze was high and away, peering at the shameful sight that topped a nearby hill.

Taotri lay curled atop the grassy knoll like the wyverns of old. She was wrapped about herself, chin laying on her tail, one wing pressed firmly over the wide hollow her curling posture created. Smoke rose in twin snakes from her nostrils, drifting high into the sky, occasionally bursting into wide clouds as she huffed out a disgruntled breath. Occasionally her tail would lash involuntarily, jerking itself out from under her chin to expose the people sheltered beneath her wing, and then she would have to bring it back around to pin it beneath her head again.

The hill, Seareye supposed, couldn’t rightly be called grassy anymore. It was a black mount of ash, great streaks of burnt land rolling down into the surrounding lands. In some places lay the smoldering corpses of the unfortunate few who had tried to approach Taotri on their own, shortly after she had landed.

“You could not have known the enemy craft would make an appearance,” the King eventually said. “I have spoken with my spymasters. Neither your people nor my agents had been made aware the unnatural creations were capable of traveling such vast distances.”

Seareye straightened from his bow, but made certain he kept his gaze low, not daring to look the King in the eye. Not after such a failure.

“The fault remains mine,” he insisted. “I am no amateur in the ways of the sky. That I failed to instruct my crew and those under our command to stay wary for our enemy was an inexcusable failure.” He looked at Taotri and grimaced. “One that has had… significant consequences.”

The King nodded slowly, still not looking at Seareye. His focus was on Taotri alone. The two of them stood alone, or as close to alone as the King ever truly was. His plethora of attendants, slaves, and servants had been ordered back a good ways to ensure they could not overhear a single word.

As was befitting a Warrior-King, the Lord of all Sporatos was resplendent in a truly magnificent set of armor. One unlike any other Seareye had ever seen. Its gilding was dense enough to be dizzying, endless swirls of golden trim weaving in artistic waves that disguised an uncountable array of enchanted glyphs. Even with the late afternoon sun at his back, the King was aglow with magical energies, rivers of light that ebbed and flowed across the steel like the steady pulse of a living creature. Seareye had less than no magical aptitude, yet even his untuned mind could feel radiant power wafting off of it. When he stood too close to the King, his mouth was filled with the taste of copper, while staring too long caused his eyes to water almost painfully, feeling dry and worn no matter how many times he blinked. At times it seemed the metal bent and twisted with impossible ease, as if it were merely a second layer of skin draped over the King’s body, and on other occasions it presented itself as so unyieldingly solid that it seemed the man was carrying an entire castle on his shoulders. It was newly forged, Seareye knew that much, but even the few friends he had made among the Sporatons did not know from where it had come or who had made it. All, however, were certain that there existed no equal in all the land.

“Yes, there was a failure.” The King finally turned to face Seareye. “But your people’s aid has been great. I am confident that you and noble Taotri, should you have been ready for the enemy, would have prevailed. Without your partner and the griffons that follow her, the city would have been helpless against the Mad Champion’s contraptions. You provided an opportunity for those of importance to evacuate, for the serfs to organize what little resistance they could muster, and personally brought my royal self new knowledge of our mutual enemy’s abilities. I could not in good conscience object to your continued presence in my lands.”

Seareye bowed again. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

“You are welcome.” The King lay his gaze back on Taotri. He shook his head. “Her… mourning. Noble though she certainly is, this is not what I expected of a wyvern.”

Seareye swallowed trepidatiously. The more he’d seen of the King, the more he dreaded conversations of importance with the man. He was a powerful individual. Likely the most powerful Warrior that Seareye had ever met, barring the Honored Elven. And the King, though polite, was deeply, intimately aware of what it meant to hold that power.

“Taotri is… Your Highness, may I be direct?” The King nodded him on. Seareye kept his arms firmly behind his back as he spoke, spine straight as an arrow, as if he were still a simple message runner giving a report to a superior. “She is ten years old, sir. She is intelligent, honorable, and has trained all her life for battles much like this, but that life has been so short. In many ways, she is still a child. And before that red-winged plane took to the skies against her, she had never once seen a member of her crew die.”

“Ten years old,” the King murmured. He rubbed his chin, which bristled with a short, graying beard. “And already so far beyond almost any lesser creature. It is difficult to imagine living such a life.”

Seareye nodded. “Wyverns… their reputation for arrogance did not spring from the ether. Her breeding is strong, her lineage great, and she was larger than the others of her year from the first day she sprung from her egg. And so she has never been wounded like this, never suffered true loss, and has never had to retreat. It is…”

He let himself fall silent. He had nearly begun to make excuses for Taotri. But that wasn’t his place. The nobility of the town that Taotri had landed nearby had clearly heard tales from the capital of the famous Imperial Wyvern. Seeing her wounds when she set down, they had gathered themselves and the local healers to deliver food and aid.

In her wounded panic, Taotri had seen only a threat. The corpses of those kind souls lay charred in the soil. How could Seareye say that her murder of innocent people was understandable? To ask the King to forgive her immaturity?

“I understand,” the King said, as if he heard all the words Seareye had left unspoken. He took a step forward and slipped his helmet onto his head. It made an odd noise as it settled into place. A hiss and a click. Despite the thick, elegant armor that now protected him, his voice was not the slightest bit muffled as he spoke. “I have raised a daughter of my own, you know. Were she to go into battle at the tender age of ten, only to witness one of her favored guards dying in the line of duty, I cannot fathom her reaction. Were she to possess the power of noble Taotri, I imagine her temper would flare much the same.”

Seareye inclined his head deeply. “I thank you for your understanding, Your Highness.”

“I am not in the habit of ruining profitable alliances, Captain Seareye. Only in nurturing them.” He shifted his weight and turned on a heel, putting his back to Taotri for the first time since he had arrived. Staring at the full radiance of the King’s armor, it took all Seareye’s efforts to not wilt under the sheer presence of the man as he spoke. “But now I must ask something of you.”

As the King began to outline his plan, Seareye tried to dissuade him. He dearly wanted the King to take any other path forward, to simply allow Taotri to calm down herself, but the King would hear none of it. This was the second crewmember that red-winged plane had taken from her, and she was in such agony over it that she was not allowing any of her crew to leave the shelter of her wings. Her neck wound was still dripping blood, though much of it had crusted over, and he suspected that the bones in the base of her wing had suffered fractures after colliding with those damnable pillars of ice. The King, he told Seareye, was not going to allow such a majestic creature to continue suffering.

With all his advisors and aids clamoring desperately for him to do quite literally anything else, the King began walking up the hill.

Sensing his approach, Taotri’s serpentine neck rose high. In these barbaric lands, they told antiquated, fanciful tales of wyverns. Of their hordes of gold, their penchant for virginal humans, and the death and destruction they would unleash if their desires were not met. Seareye had not understood how anyone could believe such drivel about so beautiful a species. All his life, wyverns had been the ideal of beauty and grace, the glittering jewel sitting atop the Pantheon of Nature.

Yet when he saw, from atop her burning and smoking hill, Taotri’s eyes narrow, her lips curling back to reveal dozens of long, spiked teeth, while her spines rose like the hackles of a mere beast? When he heard the growl that reverberated deep within his chest, her lashing tail throwing up clouds of ash and dust? He understood where the legends came from.

“Noble Taotri!” The King spread his arms wide as he walked steadily onward, his voice sonorous and loud. He circled around the hill, so that he no longer stood between Taotri and the crowd of onlookers. “I beg of you, allow me and my people to aid you!”

She did not answer. Not with words. Instead the air around her began to shimmer, her throat swelling, the pitch of her growl changing, turning hollow. Droplets of liquid fire began to drip from her jaws like the foaming slobber of a crazed, rabid dog.

The King kept walking aside, until he was alone in the empty field.

“You are injured. Your family has suffered. But I have with me aid, and food, and those willing to-”

Taotri lunged. The watching audience screamed.

Wyvernfire shot from her gaping maw like an upended waterfall, spilling down the hill with the speed of a flying arrow. Flames enough to drown a thousand men spread across the plains, a flood of guttural power rolling for hundreds of paces beyond where the King stood. Though he’d made sure that her flames would not be directed their way, many of the King’s attendants fled in terror, shoving and striking one another in their haste to escape. Seareye did not blame them. Truthfully, it was remarkable that so many did not flee.

Taotri’s fire spilled for ten long seconds before her jaws finally snapped shut. The smoke cleared slowly, carried away by the wind.

The King appeared, his armor glowing even more beautifully than before, and took another step forward.

“We seek only to aid you, Noble Taotri!” He raised his hands, putting his palms toward her in a gesture of peace, and slowly turned in a circle. “You can see that I carry no weapons, not even a dagger. I speak with nothing but the truth when I say that I-”

The instant his back was to her, Taotri lunged again. She struck like a snake, jaws wide as she blurred toward the King, seeking to swallow him whole.

To Seareye’s vision, it seemed as if the King’s image simply flickered. One moment he was standing with hands raised, and the next he was beside Taotri’s head as she slammed into the dirt, snapping down on empty air.

With a wrestler’s wide-legged stance, the King let out a mighty grunt as he wrapped his arms around Taotri’s upper jaw. She was large enough that he could barely get a grip of her. One hand latched itself onto one of her teeth, the other scrabbling at the smooth scales that ran across her snout.

Taotri roared furiously. She tried to wrench her head aside, jaws slamming shut over and over again, but it achieved nothing. The King grunted yet again as the ground beneath his feet was smashed to pieces, his armor directing her titanic force into the soil around him.

At first, it was simply a testament to the man’s astounding armor. That it could withstand and redirect the full force of a grown wyvern was beyond anything Seareye had ever heard of in the Empire, and it left him awestruck. He wondered if the King had somehow struck a bargain with a dwarven smith or uncovered one of their ancient artifacts. It seemed the only explanation for how such a thing would be possible.

Then the King grunted again, and Seareye was forced to acknowledge that he did not know what was or was not possible.

With one foot digging deeply into the soil, the King shoved Taotri’s head back.

It was not by much. A few feet, perhaps, or however long the King’s single stride was, but that was enough. Taotri was so aghast that she tried to recoil, to rip her head free from the King’s grip like a wolfdog caught by a housecat’s claws, but the King wouldn’t let her. He shifted his stance in an instant and dug his heels into the ground, keeping her head locked in place.

“This… does you… no good…!” The King panted out. “Allow… your family… to be healed…!”

Finally, her eyes wide with shock, Taotri leapt to her feet. Her great wings threw a cloud of dust as they slammed into the ground, her titanic legs digging deeply into the soil as she sought the leverage to properly rip her head free.

The King, wisely, released her.

Taotri’s head whipped up and back like a snapped bowstring, a hideous snarl rippling across the land. The onlookers, which now included peasants from the nearby town, screamed shrilly, many joining those that had already begun to flee.

“How dare you!” Taotri bellowed. They were the first words she had spoken since Soriya had died. “How dare you!”

“Taotri!” Seareye yelled sternly. “He is the King of this land! You will speak with respect, lest I-”

“No!” The King yelled, holding a hand up to silence Seareye. “No, I wish to hear her words!”

“My words?!” Taotri’s head snaked down low, fury glittering in the one eye she placed before the King’s face. “A machine of spells and children has taken from me two of my crew, and you wish to hear my words?” Fire rose in sputtering gouts from her nostrils and the sides of her mouth as she ranted. “Have you any idea what I have suffered? What they have taken from me?”

“I do not,” the King replied. He was still speaking with his full chest, the words spreading unnaturally across the many hundreds of paces that separated him from the village. For the benefit of Seareye and the advisors, no doubt. “I have lost those close to me in battle before, Noble Taotri, but never a ‘crew.’ I have seen the way you care for them, and know that it is a bond unlike any I’ve known.”

“Then speak not to me! Rid myself of your presence!”

“I cannot,” the King said. Genuine sorrow was in his words. “Would that I could, Noble Taotri, but I cannot. My honor aches at the sight of your wounds. At the wounds of your family!”

The King kept using that word, Seareye noted. Not crew. Family. Taotri noticed it too, no doubt, and even if she was too inconsolable to comment on it directly, Seareye could see the cleverness of the comparison. All knew that the King had lost his wife in the wars against his northern neighbors, so shortly after his daughter had been born. So great was his love for his wife that he had never remarried, much to the Kingdom’s consternation. If he had not lost a member of his crew, he could at least lay claim to having lost family.

“We have our healers,” Taotri snapped. There was a terrible pain in her voice. “We have our healers, our potions, and we have no need to allow you sallow-skinned northerners to lay hands on my crew.”

“That is true,” the King piously agreed, “and I am sorry to say that I do not have the greatest of my people’s healers with me, as you rightly deserve. Against these measly offerings, I am sure your crew’s talents would shine through in time. But they are tired, are they not?”

Taotri’s great eye rolled around, to the crew who had been left exposed when she leapt to her feet. They were huddled together in the same position they had been when she had been sheltering them. Seareye could see Sothea in the center, her healing magic still at work, but it was a paltry light compared to the blaze it should have been. A wyvern’s crew was supposed to have two healers, but it had been the other, Soriya, who had fallen into the sea. Sothea did not have the strength to heal them all on her own.

“She is a great and worthy healer,” Taotri snarled at the King. “I would sooner wait a week to be healed by her hands than to let some mongrel barbarian near my crew after battle.”

Taotri settled back down, returning to her curled position of rest, one wing draping over the rest of her crew. She did not, Seareye noted, so much as twitch her injured wing.

“I understand.” The King took a single cautious step forward. “And it is wise of you to protect them in their time of weakness. But they are not as mighty as you or I, Noble Taotri. They are mere humans, weak and fragile. And though I have no doubt that you could endure a day, week, or a month of your current pain without complaint, do you truly want that suffering for them?”

Taotri shifted. Her lips curled, nearly turning into a snarl, only to fall still once more.

“...it will not be a week,” she said, looking away. “Soriya will have them healthy and hale in a few short hours.”

“Were you to allow my healers to visit them, they could be healthy within minutes.”

“Your healers are pathetic!”

“They are,” the King quickly agreed. Seareye wondered what the collection of church priests and mages summoned from the capital thought of hearing their King say that. “But they are here, and they can help.”

“I will not risk my whole crew to such exposure! They must be protected!” Taotri said the word with petulant, dogmatic faith. She was not thinking clearly, allowing herself to be driven by deep, ancient instincts.

“Of course,” the King said soothingly. He took another slow step forward. “But they are here, and they can help now. That you do not wish to risk them all? You prove yourself wise yet again.”

“Of course!”

“I believe I have an offering you might accept, however.” Taotri only huffed at that, so the King continued. “You cannot risk them all. Rightly so. But will you allow me to bring them, one at a time, to the healers? And once I do, and your family has been healed to your satisfaction, will you allow yourself to be healed?”

Taotri gazed suspiciously down on the King. “You will bring them to the healers? You? Your royal self?”

The King nodded. “If that is what it takes.”

A ripple of gasps went through the crowd. It was so far beyond what was expected of a King as to be unthinkable.

Taotri stared at the armored King for a long while. A full minute, perhaps longer, passed. Eventually, with great reluctance, she pulled her head back and lifted her wing.

“...You may aid them.”

“Thank you, Noble Taotri.”

The King of Sporatos, Lord of all the Land, dressed in the finest armor that had ever graced the face of creation, moved quickly forward, crouched, and awkwardly side-shuffled beneath Taotri’s wing into the dark interior. A moment later, he returned to the light holding a woman in his arms. Soriya. Though she had not been the worst injured in the battle, the healing efforts she’d gone to during the flight back had left her face sunken and hollow.

With the foreign peasant woman in his arms, carried like some did their new brides, the King hurried quickly to the waiting healers. They began to rush up to greet him, but a booming roar of “Back!” from Taotri sent them scurrying away.

The King arrived in short order, placing Soriya on the ground. The healers immediately went to work by crowding around the woman, affording Seareye not the briefest second to speak to his crew’s only surviving healer.

The King stepped back. Peasants and advisors alike were whispering to one another, looking on in awe. In the Empire, those lucky few chosen to be placed among a Wyvern’s crew invariably served for life. They were outside the social order, beyond legal punishment by all but other wyverns or the Honored Elven themselves. The King, thanks to his long conversations with Taotri, knew this well. But to the commoners milling about, it seemed that he had just risked his life wrestling a wyvern on behalf of a mere peasant woman. It was as near to a children’s story of a wise, honorable King as any of them had ever believed could happen.

While the healers tended to Soriya, the King returned to Seareye. Reflexively, Seareye bowed to the man.

“You have handled yourself better than any save a wyvern-rider could have, Your Highness,” he said, and he meant it. “Even I could not convince her to allow a single soul out of her protection. You have my utmost gratitude.”

“I am glad for it, Captain Seareye, and thank you for the compliment. But you may rise.” When Seareye did so, he was greeted by the helmetless King once more, the older man sporting an uncommonly boyish grin. “You spoke of wyverns being arrogant, did you not?”

“I did, Your Highness,” he cautiously agreed, confused.

“And we compared her to my own daughter, yes?”

“I suppose we did, Your Highness.”

King Sporatos laughed. “I would like to say that I am a natural savant with wyverns, but I’m afraid that would be a lie. Your descriptions gave me all I needed to know.” He nodded to Taotri, who was watching the proceedings with a keen eye. “You think she is an arrogant creature? Bah! You have not met the lone princess of a Kingdom, raised on doting love and the finest of military training. At the age of ten? Ha! She would have made Noble Taotri look downright bashful!”

Seareye laughed in turn. It was a nerve-wracking thing to do, laughing at a joke given at expense of the King’s daughter, but the King clearly expected him to. By the time the King’s laughter abated, Soriya’s healing was done. Waiting for the woman to climb to her feet, King Sporatos graciously escorted her back to Taotri, receiving in her place another of Taotri’s wounded crew.

As he went, however, Taotri’s voice rose.

“Your Highness.” There was something very nearly approaching deference in her voice, as difficult to believe as that was. “I have a question to ask of you.”

The King turned around, still holding his charge. “Yes, Noble Taotri?”

“The red-winged plane. The pale pilot and dark mage that did this to my crew.” Her voice dropped low. “I want them dead.”

The King nodded slowly, cautiously, digesting her words. “I am sure you will have opportunity for that soon enough.”

“No,” Taotri growled. “I no longer care if it is by my claw or fire that they die. By Imperial writ, you command this Wing and its griffons. It is not mine nor my Rider’s place to order them to seek vengeance.”

“Ah. I understand.”

“I would like you to order their deaths,” Taotri elaborated. “To make it a priority.”

The King thought for a moment. He did not respond off-handedly. He considered it, a lifetime of courtly politics doubtlessly giving him the ability to weigh her request in ways Seareye couldn’t fathom. The red-winged plane was unique, that much was true. A skilled combatant, and the only one that had truly challenged them so far, save a brief clash with a similar one scribbled in foreign text. But the red-winged plane was only one enemy from a nation filled with vicious, strange foes. To send so many on a quest against a lone Warrior was a risky thing indeed.

To the King, however, it seemed that a wyvern’s gratitude was worth the risk. He nodded sharply.

“I will give the order.”

Taotri’s head lowered, chin resting against the ground as a satisfied growl disturbed clouds of ash around her.

“Good. I am in your debt.”

Seareye wished he could show what he felt. But the King was approaching once more, and he was surrounded by people of a foreign land. He was left stewing in blank-faced silence, his thoughts tumbling end over end.

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