Without hesitation, Baren folded his wings and dove, his massive form plummeting toward the earth like a meteor wrapped in orange flame.
At the last possible moment, he spread his wings wide, the sudden air resistance sending shockwaves through the ranks of undead as he landed with ground-shaking force directly between his friends and their attackers.
The impact sent cracks racing through the centuries-old stone beneath his claws, while the displaced air from his landing scattered lesser undead like leaves in a hurricane. Dust and debris exploded outward in a perfect circle around his massive form, temporarily clearing a space in the chaotic press of battle.
Rena stumbled backward, her eyes wide with shock as she took in the sight of the magnificent dragon that had materialized between her and certain death.
For a moment, fear warred with hope in her expression—dragons were creatures of legend, and not all such legends were pleasant ones.
"Rena! Taeryn!" The dragon's voice reverberated but with a warmth and familiar humor.
"Miss me?"
"Baren?" Taeryn's voice cracked with disbelief and overwhelming relief.
"By all the gods, is that really you?"
The dragon's head swung toward them, and despite his reptilian features, there was something unmistakably familiar in those golden-flecked eyes.
"Did you expect me to leave you two to have all the fun? Besides, I have a surprise for you—but first, we need to deal with this army."
-
High above the battlefield, from the Lich King's position, his hollow eye sockets scanned the chaos below with calculating intelligence.
The arrival of another dragon was concerning, certainly, but it was not this newcomer that had drawn his attention away from Morgana's aerial champion.
No, what had seized his focus was something far more significant—a presence that blazed across his supernatural senses like a beacon of power.
The energy signature was unlike anything he had encountered in his centuries of unlife: Origin power and aura flowing together in perfect harmony, wielded by a single individual with a strength that made even his ancient soul take notice.
The source was not here at the fortress but in the town beyond—the town where his orc allies had been carrying out their diversionary slaughter. But even at this distance, the Lich King could feel the magnitude of the power being unleashed and could sense the moment when that blazing presence.
"Interesting," he murmured, his voice carrying across the battlefield despite the ongoing chaos. The word seemed to freeze the very air around him, causing frost to form on the stone walls below.
"It seems this backwater region harbors more surprises than I anticipated."
With a gesture of one skeletal hand, the Lich King commanded his dragon mount to break off its engagement with Swefarna.
The bone-white dragon responded immediately, banking away from its opponent and beginning a swift descent toward the battlefield below.
Swefarna was confused and felt a warrior's frustration at having her opponent flee mid-combat.
But Morgana, her connection to the cosmic forces deeper than most mortals could comprehend, had felt the same disturbance that had drawn the Lich King's attention.
-
-
In the heart of the town's central market square, Jaenor alighted with ethereal grace, his six wings folding against his back like shadows made manifest. The destruction caused by his energy arrow had left a perfect circle of fused glass where the previous Orc had met his end, the sand and stone of the square transformed by the sheer intensity of the Origin power into a crystalline memorial to divine wrath.
But what truly commanded attention was Jaenor himself.
Standing in the center of that circle of destruction, he seemed less like a mortal warrior and more like some avatar of celestial vengeance given flesh. His long black hair flowed around his shoulders like liquid night, stirring in winds that seemed to exist only around his person. His skin held an otherworldly luminescence, as if lit from within by the very energies he commanded, while his piercing blue eyes blazed with the intensity of twin stars.
He was tall for his apparent age, with the kind of lean, athletic build that spoke of both elven grace and human strength flowing in his veins. But it was the power that radiated from his every movement that truly marked him as something beyond ordinary mortality.
With each step he took, the very air seemed to shimmer around him, Origin energy rotating around him.
Grashek's eyes, burning with primitive cunning and berserker fury, locked onto the ethereal figure descending from the smoke-filled sky.
"Ah," he rumbled in heavily accented Common, his voice like grinding millstones, "who in the fokka aarr you?"
He hefted his massive weapon, the war axe.
"I am Grashek the Bone-Breaker, slayer of heroes and crusher of armies. Come then, pretty bird. Let us see if you bleed."
Jaenor touched down in the center of the square with impossible grace, his six wings folding against his back like shadows given form.
"I am…just a human, pig," Jaenor replied, his expression rather playful.
"And you, fatty pig, are already dead—you simply haven't realized it yet."
The Orc Lord's response was a roar of pure hatred that shattered windows three streets away. He charged forward with deceptive speed for something so massive, his war-axe cutting through the air with enough force to cleave a building in half. The weapon sang with malevolent joy, its runic inscriptions flaring to life as they anticipated the taste of blood.
But Jaenor was no longer where the axe descended.
Moving with fluid grace that seemed to bend the laws of physics, he sidestepped the crushing blow by mere inches. The meteoric blade passed so close to his face that it should have taken his head clean off, yet somehow he remained untouched, as if reality itself conspired to keep him safe.
Grashek's momentum carried him past his target, and in that moment of overextension, Jaenor struck. His right fist, wreathed in energy that pulsed with the Origin energy, drove forward in what appeared to be a simple punch.