"Raguth, it all falls to you now!"
The Archmage in white robes roared, his hair whipping about his face in a wild frenzy. The death of his friend had ignited a fury in him, forging his grief into a terrible resolve.
"Let the Light purge the dark! Let all shadows be unmade!"
As the words left his lips, the clinging shroud of shadow that had clung to him was violently blasted away by an eruption of pure, internal luminescence. The Archmage was consumed by it, transformed into a figure of blinding radiance.
But this was no gentle, warming light; it was an oppressive, suffocating glare. A world with no shadow is a world of madness, a world of zealotry.
"By Light’s artifice, a phantasm born. By Light’s decree, a sanctum sworn. Whilst this flame burns, this cage shall hold."
Vwommm.
Orion heard a sound he shouldn’t have been able to hear. He heard the sound of the light itself.
A blinding flash incinerated the world. Orion squeezed his eyes shut against the searing wave, as did King Neptor of the Sea-Drakes(seadragon) and Saint Noel of the Order of Man beside him.
When Orion dared to open his eyes again, the world he knew was gone. Before him loomed monstrous, reptilian behemoths, their silhouettes like that of the god-lizards from forgotten myths.
He, the Sea-Drake King, and the human Saint were trapped, caught within a new reality forged from slaughter and overwhelming light.
Without a word of consultation, the three warriors converged, their backs meeting to form the defensive triangle, their weapons facing out at the legion of shimmering beasts.
Three breaths later, the battle began anew.
The Emerald Veil, within the Ashenfang Traverse.
The lines were drawn as if by ancient treaty. Orion and Leonidas stood on one side of the clearing. Facing them were Grand Sage Merrick and Grand General Dorian of the Silvermoon Empire.
These were the two Archlords whose arrival had heralded this new, bloody Chapter. Whether they were here in their true flesh or as avatars of their power, Orion could not discern, though he wagered on the latter.
"I must admit to some curiosity," Leonidas began, a wide, mocking grin spreading across his face. "What could possibly possess you to shatter the peace? Were you not enjoying the quiet twilight of your empire?"
"We do not wait for the wolves to heal their wounds and grow stronger, only to become their prey," retorted Grand General Dorian. His voice was like stones grinding together, worn smooth by a thousand battles.
These two Silver-Eyed lords did not even bother to ask their names. Before Orion and Leonidas, they stood as embodiments of pure, unadulterated hostility. This was not a contest for territory or a squabble between rivals, as his conflict with King Neptor had been—a conflict that could be tempered, even resolved.
No, this was a war for survival. In their eyes, Orion saw the chilling, final promise of a fight to the death.
"Wolves?" Leonidas chuckled, a rasping, wicked sound. "You flatter yourselves. You mistake me for some common predator, little elf. I am a Dragon. A true Dragon!"
His laughter echoed, carrying a dark swagger that painted them both as the grand villains of this epic.
"Enough talk, brother. One for each of us!"
"Agreed," Orion said, his voice flat.
He and Leonidas broke apart, each man choosing his opponent. Orion moved towards the General, Dorian, while Leonidas stalked toward the Sage, Merrick.
A familiar, dreadful sight unfolded. The third eye on Grand Sage Merrick’s forehead split open. From its depths, a silver chain of ethereal light unspooled. It was without substance, a thing of pure spirit, yet its power was absolute.
Leonidas threw up a series of shimmering defensive wards, but the silver chain permeated them as if they were mist. It plunged into Leonidas’s body, snagging onto something deep within his soul, and held fast.
"If you would be so kind, join me for a private audience in my domain of nothingness," the Sage’s voice echoed, devoid of inflection.
And then, both he and Leonidas vanished without a trace, their very presence scrubbed from the world.
Orion’s heart went cold. A severing strike. The oldest tactic in the book.
They were hell-bent on dividing them, on killing them one by one. He never thought he’d see the same strategy he, Alexander, and the Deputy Commander had so often employed used against him with such brutal efficiency.
"Your determination is... impressive," Orion said, his gaze locked on Grand General Dorian.
The General raised his trident, its three tines gleaming as he pointed them at Orion’s heart. A warrior who favored the trident. A curious coincidence.
"Thank you," Dorian said, accepting the statement as the compliment it was. "I will take that as praise. This realm was chaotic enough. Your arrival has bled it, scarred it, and brought it to its knees. Do you see it? The very earth weeps blood."
"Countless lives have been extinguished in this pointless war you have brought to our doorstep. I will kill you. I will kill all of you. And I will end this. I believe, with every fiber of my being, that we will be victorious."
Orion was almost moved. The speech nearly brought a tear to his eye. The only problem was, he knew he wasn’t the villain of this story. He was simply fighting for a space for his people to exist, to prosper.
"You talk too much," Orion finally said, the words sharp with contempt. "And it all boils down to the same selfish creed: what is best for the Silver-Eyed. I guarantee, if sacrificing your entire race would bring true peace to the Emerald Veil, you would not do it. You would ask yourselves, ’What good is a world without us in it?’ Am I wrong?"
He let out a short, harsh laugh.
Orion was no master of rhetoric. But sanctimonious posturing in the face of a naked struggle for power disgusted him.
And those who disgusted him, he had a simple policy for.
He would kill them.
Fwoosh!
He who strikes first, strikes best. Locking his entire being onto the General, Orion unleashed his explosive momentum, his body a blur as he shot forward.
Yet, in the face of this deadly charge, Grand General Dorian stood as immovable as a mountain.
The third eye on his forehead opened. It blazed with silver light, but no projectile, no beam of energy, erupted from it. Instead, the world itself changed.
Orion’s eyes widened, a flicker of true fear finally taking root.
Slow.
Everything had gone impossibly slow.
His trident, which had been a streak of deadly lightning an instant before, now crawled through the air, inch by agonizing inch. It was caught, suspended just three inches from Dorian’s chest in a localized field where time itself had been turned to sludge.
Because it was so slow, it was as if the world had been paused.
"I have never feared assassins," Dorian snarled, a cruel grin spreading across his face. He himself was unaffected by the temporal distortion he commanded. "And I have never shied from a direct confrontation. That is why I am the Grand General who guards the borders of the Silvermoon Empire."
While Orion was trapped in the time-mire, Dorian moved with fluid grace. He raised his own trident and thrust it viciously toward Orion’s heart.
It was a bizarre, horrifying tableau: Orion frozen in his attack, and Dorian’s counter-strike moving at normal speed within the same space. It was in that moment that Orion gained a new, profound respect for the power of the Archlords of the Silver-Eyed.
Screeeech!
The tines of Dorian’s trident shrieked as they punched through the spectral plates of Orion’s Ghostbone Armor. The points dug into his skin, but there, they stopped.
Beneath the surface, a layer of shimmering scales materialized, catching the tips of the trident and holding them fast.
It was the Dragonscale Leather Armor—a gift from the Commander himself, and it had just saved his life.