'This weather's perfect for sleeping…' Aufreyr thought to himself as he strolled through the grassy plain of Dragon Valley, the gazelles, zebras, wild goats and other food stock scrambling away from his presence at their fastest speed.
While he very much wanted to simply lay down and drop into a deep, enjoyable slumber, he took his role as the guardian of Dragon Valley seriously. He huffed—a burst of green mist escaping his snout—and shook his massive body, warding off the tempting lethargy.
His diligence proved the right course of action, when a completely unfamiliar scent suddenly broke through and stood out among the natural, consolidated one of the livestock, flora, and other dragons present in the valley.
It was a human, and a couple of more inquiring sniffs told him it was one he knew.
He pushed off the ground with his thick and powerful hind legs, sending himself into the air and keeping himself aloft with multiple, solid flaps of his wide wings, his substantial weight proving a slight challenge.
Due to their massive bodies, instant vertical takeoff didn't come easy to dragons. They had to struggle for a bit before they really got going. To counteract this, they usually chose or situated their dens in high locations.
A dragon at the top of a cliff, mountain, or even in a cave carved into its side, could remain hidden from most eyes, remain nearly unreachable, and respond to any hostiles by launching themselves from such heights and diving at them.
While he didn't jump off such a height, Aufreyr's current altitude allowed him to dive towards the intruder and engage when he set eyes on them. He flew for kilometers before putting a face to the scent.
It was a man, one whose size and build dwarfed most of his kind. Golden hair hung down his shoulders, its radiance barely matched by the circlet around his forehead, the armor over torso, and the bracers and boots and around his limbs.
The combined presence of these items on his body made it hard to even get a good look at his face. Though that could also be attributed to his impressive aura, its calm but deep might exceeding even that of the diving Aufreyr's.
When the giant man saw the green dragon's actions and heard the loud roar, he made no motion to reposition himself and rather hurried forward, opening his arms wide as though to receive the reptile in a hug.
A muffled boom erupted from their "collision," a large crater forming beneath Aufryer's massive form and the golden man not even moving an inch. Instead of a battle occurring though, the man wrapped his huge arms around the dragon's large head while it rubbed its nose against him.
"Willis, I thought you didn't have time to visit. Did the human king finally let you go?" The green dragon said, its attempt to speak in a low tone clearly failing as the very air around both of them trembled.
"It's a long story, Aufreyr. I'll tell you when we have time. I wish to see the clan leader. Please."
"Uh… " Aurfreyr hesitated, "The clan head is not happy. Ever since your people returned Rissana in that state, he's been fuming. The elders are trying their best to save her. I don't think this is a good time… "
"Aufreyr, I'm also a member of Dragon Valley. Don't tell me I can't enter it now? Or did the clan head forbid me from returning?" Willis asked, his voice going more than a tad louder, his aura rising to match.
Standing at ground zero of the simmering explosion, the expression on Aufreyr's dragon face grew somehow awkward as a tiny bit of Fourth Grade spiritual pressure settled and pressed upon him.
"He did not!" he hastily said, "I'll try, but as for whether he'll see you, that's something I cannot control."
Willis merely hummed and nodded in response.
Aufreyr took that as his cue and turned to face the largest and tallest cliff in the distance, Dragon Cliff, his maw opening wide and releasing a loud and drawn out dragon's roar with a specific cadence.
A few moments after he stopped, a roar louder and much more powerful than his own rang back from the cliff and told him and Willis all they needed to know.
"The clan head has agreed to see you. Come, let's go."
Aufreyr pushed against the ground and beat his wings once more, throwing itself into the air with as much difficulty as before. As his powerful movements generated equally powerful gusts, Willis, who remained an unmoving pillar despite the tree bending winds, beat his closed fist on his chest.
In a flurry of motions and shifts too fast for most to perceive, the golden armored knight's form rapidly folded in on itself and enlarged, transforming into a green dragon larger in size and more beautiful than Aufreyr.
He took to the skies and joined his brother up there, the both of them looking at each other before unleashing a roar in unison and continuing their flight towards the tall cliff in the far distance.
Its true appearance became more visible the closer they got to it. All along the wall of the cliff, a plethora of holes—in reality huge dark caves—could be found. Most of their inhabitants coiled their slender necks and peeked their draconic heads out when they sensed Willis' presence.
They unleashed greeting roars of their own, all of which Willis responded to in kind, the huge number of booming roars chasing away the quiet and tranquility of the valley and replacing it with liveliness.
After the loud and lengthy exchange of greetings, the duo finally made their way to the meeting hall. Its location was right in the middle of the cliff, the unnaturally carved space expansive enough to allow the conference of about thirty transformed dragons.
It was the most sacred place in Dragon Valley, after the Dragon Altar at the very peak of the cliff of course. Raistlin only convened here with other dragons when the clan was faced with difficult times and needed to make an equally difficult decision.
Willis, who had returned to godlike human form, felt a pang of worry when he marched into the hall.
In there, he found three dragons awaiting his presence; the Green Dragon clan leader Raistlin, and the elders Singe and Phantim. Every one of them was a Fourth Grade being.
"My child, welcome." Raistlin's voice thundered within the hall and sent tremors throughout its walls. "I hope you bring us good news this time."
"I wonder what kind of good news father wishes to hear?" Willis asked.
"We smelled the aura of the evil adepts on Rissana. I hope your visit has nothing to do with them."
Raistlin, still in dragon form, brought his massive head low and stopped it right in front of Willis' two meter tall form, his large amber eyes fixed on his son.
A sense of great struggle appeared on Willis' face. "Great father, I brought a message from the human king. He seeks the aid of Dragon Cliff to reinforce the frontlines, imploring us to remember the many offerings they have given us in the past. The battle with the adepts is going terribly. They hide in the Greenland Forest and kill the witcher knights in droves."
"I do not care about the king or the humans. What is your stance?" Raistlin said, his voice unerringly calm." Tell me. What do you want?"
"I…" Willis' internal struggle grew in intensity, his face betraying this all too well. "The flames of the war should not be allowed to spread here. I don't want my brothers and sisters to fall under the machinations of the adepts. But… they're already here. We should confront them and beat them back. Or should we just abandon the ranch we've been tending to for more than a thousand years?"
Raistlin took in his son's words and shared pointed looks with the elders, returning his gaze back to the hopeful and expectant visage of his progeny. "Son, you've never experienced the horror of a planar war nor the cruelty of adepts, else, you wouldn't be saying these words. As soon as the adepts set their eyes on this plane, all hope was lost."
Undeterred by these words despite the hope on his face no longer present, Willis tried to rebut the point his father made.
"But father. The invading adepts are weak. If we gather the entire might of the cliff, we can easily chase them out."
"My child, I didn't raise you to be this naive. The time you've spent on this material plane is too long. It has warped your thought process into that of the pathetic humans, making you think like them.
It doesn't matter if you chase off this wave of adepts, the clan they belong to can retry at any time after more preparation. And even if we hurt them enough to make a second try impossible, they'll just sell the plane coordinates to a more powerful party. I don't need to tell you what happens next, do I?"
This time, Willis remained silent, unable to muster up any proper rebuttal. Seeing that he'd gotten through to his son, Raistlin pressed on.
"We've encountered adepts before in countless other plane worlds. Their greed and cruelty is rarely seen even amongst the few powerful large planes. If we were more powerful and perhaps had the support of the Emerald Dragons of the Dragon plane, we could actually go forward with your plan and keep them outside of our territory once and for all.
But we don't. We the Green Dragons are an insignificant branch of the Emerald Dragons bloodline. They don't even acknowledge our existence and deny any connection to us. The moment the adepts obtained this world's coordinates, its fate was sealed."
As the child of the green dragon clan head and a native human girl, Willis was a unique existence in this knight's plane. His mixed bloodline meant he belonged to the human citizenship as well that of the dragonflight.
And while in Dragon Valley he was just the clan head's and had some modicum of authority as a result, in the human kingdom, he was the one with the highest authority, even above the king in some ways.
His order was law when it came to the witcher knights, and the king's trust in him was absolute. He'd come here with the intent to prove that that level of trustworthiness wasn't unfounded, yet it seems after years of not seeing his father, he'd forgotten about the old dragon's stubbornness.
"Father, I know you have no place in your heart for these humans. But I'm your son. I've travelled hundreds of kilometers just for this one request. Are you going to make me go back empty handed? Please, help me save this plane!"
While it was true his heart held no love for the "pathetic" humans, it held plenty for his half-human son. So much so that Raistlin was moved by the heartfelt plea and turned to the elders for their opinion, the discussion devolving into loud roars of an argument.
As the clan head though, his word was final. He turned to Willis and stared at him with his large amber eyes.
"I respect your decision. If you wish to fight for the humans, you may have some of your brothers and sisters follow you. I will not stop them. Dragon Valley will always be open to you if you return. You may leave."
A bright smile plastered on his features, Willis nodded and offered profuse thanks before rushing out of the meeting hall. A few moments later his roar of war declaration rang throughout the valley, a commotion ensuing as many of his brethren roared and heeded his call.
Now in human form after using Ultimate Transfiguration, Raistlin stood with his arms behind him at the entrance of the meeting hall and watched the silhouettes of his young and hotblooded clan members disappearing into the distance.
"Singe, did we make the right decision?"
The green dragon elder who remained untransformed, walked to his leader's side and joined him in watching the young ones in the distance, his massive amber eyes betraying the immense wisdom behind them.
"I've tried to divine a future where we win. The leader of the invading adepts is a Sixth Grade Great Adept. We cannot win against him whatsoever. Even if we joined the fight ourselves, we'd at most delay the fall of this plane by one, two hundred years.
"Unless you are able to obtain reinforcements from our seniors, the Emerald Dragons, we cannot do anything. We will only be defeated and enslaved along with the humans."
Raistlin processed the words of his trusted friend and advisor, his gaze glued to the direction Willis and the others left in as the despondence in his eyes deepened.
****
Author's note:
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