[POV Ryan Third-Person] [Tense: Past]
02:15 p.m. - At Pulmonary Clinic, Valley Medical Center, San Jose. (02 March 2021)
Paper on the exam bed wrinkled under Ryan's hands. The room hummed with the air vent. He sniffed out of habit. Nothing. No antiseptic. No coffee from the hallway. Just blank air.
"Ryan Mercer?"
He stood. The pulmonologist closed the door with a knee and set a folder on the counter.
"We ran the smell test and the chest imaging." The doctor held up a card with tiny pictures of fruit. "You missed almost all. That's hyposmia pushing into anosmia. It explains why you couldn't smell a gas leak or burning toast."
"So if the building burned," Ryan stared at the card, "I'd only learn from the heat."
"Exactly." The doctor slid a printed lung image forward. "Second part. Your CT shows a few small nodules. Most are benign. But given your age, we still watch. You're at some risk for lung cancer. Family history?"
"None that I know."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Secondhand exposure? Workplaces, home, childhood?"
Ryan rubbed his thumb along the paper's rough edge. "When I was 3, both my parents worked long hours. The babysitter… wasn't careful. A lot of smoke around then."
(A clean story. He kept the real cruelty sealed where no one could pry.)
The doctor watched his face for a beat, then nodded. "Okay. We track. Low-dose CT again in 6 months. I'll refer you to ENT for the smell loss. For safety, get smoke and gas detectors at home. Two, if you can."
"I will."
A cotton swab touched near his nose. "Smell this."
"Nothing."
"Alcohol pad. Strong. That confirms it."
Ryan looked at the lung scan again. White specks like dead stars. "What do I do now?"
"You already did the right thing by coming. Next, avoid smoke, dust, fumes. If you work in places with poor ventilation, fix that. Exercise. Report any cough with blood, chest pain, weight loss. Don't wait."
"Time matters."
"It does."
Ryan took the folder. It felt heavier than it looked. "Die when young? before die i want to make something a world can see."
"Maybe you should but you not die if. You check. You act early. You will save think positive."
He breathed in again, out of stubbornness. Still nothing. "I can't smell fire."
"You can install something that will. And you can tell a friend. Not to scare you. To make you safe."
He nodded. "I'll set detectors tonight."
"Good. Any questions?"
"Yeah." He looked at the floor, then up. "If this turns bad… do we still have options?"
"We do."
Ryan stepped into the hall, folder tight to his side. A vending machine buzzed. A nurse walked past with a cup that steamed. No scent reached him.
Time to give a fuck.
---
[POV Draemyr Third-Person Omniscient] [Tense: Past]
05:00 p.m. - At Throne Hall, Castle of Aurelthorn, Dawnspire.
(One month ago, before Ryan's arrival.)
The hall hummed like a wound. Stone drank torchlight and gave back long shadows that climbed banners and antlers carved into the beam-ends. The silver stag above the dais watched with cold patience. Draemyr felt the weight of all of it press between his shoulder blades and settle in the scars along his ribs.
Aldric stood over the war-map. Armor caught firelight, scratched and stubborn, the stag on his chestplate dulled by dust from a dozen councils. He did not lean. He did not sit. He let silence bite first, and the lords and barons around the long table shifted like men caught in sleet.
"Ten villages razed," Aldric let the words out, low and heavy. "The roads were quiet. Eryndral burned in every report."
Draemyr did not flinch. Eryndral was his land, his people, his streams and dark copses where he'd hidden from raiders as a boy and from grief as a man. He had no breath to waste on grief here.
He set a gauntleted finger on the map, on the little crosses etched in red at the edge of his demesne. "Their dragon knights pushed like floodwater. If they reached Eryndral in force, we'd lose the north. Not just ground. Two-fifths of our hold would slip from our hands."
A murmur slid round the table. Lord Harven of the Western Cliffs fumbled his ring, throat bobbing. "If we answered in force, we'd bleed out. Their numbers were larger. A direct fight was suicide."
Draemyr watched Aldric's jaw work. The king's eyes traced the routes from the western badlands where Drakensvale'siron roads bled into the border forts. The painted sea at the map's edge looked thin as hope.
"Eryndral was our heart," Aldric's voice stayed quiet, but the chamber took it and held it. "If it went, We would lose more than territory. We would lose our people's faith. We would lose what bound this realm."
Draemyr kept his hand where it was and drew a line from the southward spur road to the river bend that cut behind the old millstones. "Then we did the thing they would not expect. We would pull them deeper and strike from dark. They came proud. They counted on us breaking. We would show them a weak face. Smoke, emptiness, bait. When they overreached, we would cut."
Chairs scraped. Some faces hardened. Some closed down like shutters. One baron's mouth opened, then shut on whatever plea lived there.
Aldric raised a hand and the noise stilled. His gaze slid to the old tapestry of the First Staglord driving raiders into the river. His eyelids closed a moment, a breath caught in the space between duty and memory.
A child laughed nowhere near here, Draemyr thought, and let the thought die.
"Backstabbing the enemy," Aldric's mouth twisted around the word. "Dishonour. Mothers and children lived in Eryndral. Their suffering weighed upon Us."
Draemyr let the blade-edge into his tone. Not cruelty. Clean steel. "Their pride would be the trap. We would give them sweet bait to count, fires to chase. We would let their scouts find what We planted for them. When their center stretched, when their supplies lagged, we would cut the spine. Quick. Clean."
Let them taste their own pride. Let them learn Eryndral bit.
A veteran captain with a ragged scar ridge from brow to ear planted both palms on the table. His fingers flattened an old spill of wax. "Ambushes worked if men vanished well. Eryndral had folk in it. Did we risk them as bait? How many of ours did we send to dangle in front of dragon riders?"
Aldric looked to the mark for Eryndral like a man who wanted to press a thumb into a wound and stop the bleeding. Smoke at the horizon had been a line outside the western windows last night. Ash on the tongue, and the city had not burned.
"We would not throw lives away without cause," he answered, all iron again. "Nor would We watch the north burn while We did nothing."
He slid a red pin into the map at Eryndral's mark. The pin stood like a small bleeding tooth.
"We would use the land. We would pull them in. We would take what we must. We would try to save as many as we could before the crush."
Breath left the circle in a tired sigh. A parchment creaked. Someone coughed into a fist and swallowed the sound.
Draemyr took the hard comfort of choices that hurt now instead of later. He nodded to the shadows where Aemond lingered, robes swallowed by the torchlight, crystal atop his staff catching a cold spark.
"Aemond," Draemyr turned his shoulder to the mage. "Give us fog along the river bend. Wards against flame at the ford. Masks of camps in the hollow by Old Peller's stones. Could you shroud our movement and show them ghosts?"
Aemond's gaze flicked to the map and then to the king. "The elements would answer, Lord Draemyr." He lowered his staff until the wood met stone with a soft knock. "I could lay a shroud at the bend and strengthen old protections about the mill. The wards would not stop steel, but they could turn fire and slow their sorcery. Illusory camps we could set along the ridge if you planted braziers. Light and shadow would do the rest."
"Do it," Draemyr's voice went flat with purpose. "Begin the groundwork; we move in four weeks." Aemond inclined his head. "I will set the shroud and wards, then ride back to Frosthaven to maintain the weave. The lines will answer me from there."
Aldric's knuckles eased on the map's edge. "We would prepare five thousand men to stand along the Rhamnale road toward Eryndral Village; once Drakensvale enters Eryndral, we would surround them."
"We would hold Our second line at Frosthaven. Aemond would lay the preparatory wards in the coming days, then return to Frosthaven to anchor and govern them from there; on the appointed night, he would draw the full shroud. Command and reserves would stand under the stag at Frostlight Square."
"Antlersteed Riders would feint and vanish. Their legions fought like a wave; We would put our own villages to the torch, let Drakensvale take Eryndral, and when their banners crowd its streets, we would seal the exits and burn them out."
A pale scribe lifted a trembling hand. Ink stained his fingers. "If we baited them… when would we move to pull villagers out? What if they'd… gone?"
Aldric's eyes met the pale scribe. Sorrow moved there but did not soften the steel. "We could not save all. We would save whom We could and strike where their arrogance left them open. We would move with speed and craft."
Draemyr tapped the old road. "Rangers through the birchcut trail behind Eryndral. Two squads. They would pull families to the stone circle by Harrow Ford. No banners. No fires save those marked by our sappers and Aemond's braziers. If they were found, they would break into 3's and melt into hedges. I wanted 200 longbowmen hidden in the alder thickets by the ford. Oil casks sunk into the mud where the bank narrowed. Spiked boards under the shallows."
A grunt came from Baron Tull—broad belly under chain, rings fat on fingers. "Gods above, lad, that's a butcher's yard."
"It was a battlefield," Draemyr did not offer the man comfort. "Did you want to count coffins down the main road, my lord?"
Tull looked away, mouth a hard line.
The door by the dais banged. A courier stumbled through, hair wet with sweat, leather cloak streaked with mud. He went to one knee with a slap of skin on stone and thrust a letter up.
"From the northern watch at Stonebar," his breath came like a saw. "Raven at dusk. Drakensvale vanguard had reached Black Alder Cross. Two thousand. Orc pikes in front. Red knight in the rear with mages. Wyvern outriders were seen east of the stream. They bore the Crowned Dragon."
A hiss like steam escaped someone at the table. The black dragon round an iron crown had haunted the dreams of farmers' sons since the first raid two years ago.
Aldric took the message and unrolled it. "We heard," he answered, voice slow and formal now, the older cadence of the throne pulling up around him. "Rise."
Draemyr's mind mapped faster, cutting through the numbers. "Orc pikes didn't like mud. We would break their front on the shallows and drive them into the killing lanes. Dark mages stayed back; Aemond would keep their fire off the bank. Wyverns—nets strung between alder trunks, and archers with barbed shafts dipped in resin. We would anchor the nets with 4 rope lines. 8 men to a line."
Aemond inclined his head, that small grave motion that meant yes. "I would place anchors and set the wards to flare when sorcery touched them. Your nets would hold longer if I bound the knots with frost."
"Bind sigils into the ropes as well," Draemyr said. "Air‑snares. If a drake or wyvern stoops, trigger the runes and cinch the lines."
"It shall be done," Aemond answered. "I will lay wind‑runes and frost‑seals; no wing will pass our marks unscarred."
The captain with the scar snorted, a short hard sound. "We'd need sappers. Three units. Trenches cut across the southern approach. We'd draw them into the bottleneck."
"Take them," Aldric answered. "We would not be found wanting for earth and sweat."
Lord Harven rubbed at his brow again, eyes on the stag banner. "What of the Council of Twelve? The archmage? The guild levies? We were thin."
Aldric's mouth twitched like someone tasting bitter root. "The Council bickered while Our folk choked on smoke. We would move regardless. We would send word to the dwarves of the Frosthaven mines—their engineers were swift when purpose was clear. But We would not wait on twelve voices to give Us permission to save Our heart."
Draemyr grunted approval. "I wanted 50Antlersteeds to patrol the left flank. Their hooves would scatter the outriders if they tried a sweep."
"You would have them," Aldric nodded. "Sir Baelor commanded them. He knew the birchcut paths."
A baroness from the south vineyards—eyes sharp as pruning knives—leaned forward. "And the folk still in Eryndral? We needed names, not numbers. Mother Wesa kept the orphanage near the mill; she wouldn't abandon those children."
Draemyr felt the twist behind his ribs. He'd bought bread there once as a boy. "Ranger Ila knew her. She would bring them out or die on the way. But the order stood—no heroics that broke the line."
"Bloody gods," the baroness whispered into her sleeve, then wiped her eyes with the heel of a hand and straightened.
Aldric's gaze swept the table. "Hear Us. We would move before dawn on the appointed day. Lord Draemyr, you would command the strike that broke their middle when they overextended at Harrow Ford. Captain Veyr held the right with trenches and caltrops. Aemond shielded the ford and masked Our false camps. Barons Harven and Tull, your levies would carry oil casks and spiked boards; your men were not to light fires without order. The rest would carry word. No banners. No horns. We looked weak. We were not."
"Five thousand would stand under your hand for the ring, Lord Draemyr—no horns until the gates are shut."
"No cooking fires," Aldric added. "The only flames on the appointed night would be Ours—the marked decoys and the kill‑fires set by the sappers and by Aemond's braziers."
Draemyr rolled his shoulders, armor creaking, the sound like old oaks in wind. "I'd need 300 longbowmen, 60 sappers, 12 carts of oil, 8 coils of rope for nets, 4 smiths to barb shafts. And 1 prayer from every man who had a mouth."
"You would have them," Aldric's answer left no air for doubt. "And more besides. We would stand at FrosthavenOurselves. Need or no, Frosthaven will be Our seat of command when the hour comes—four weeks hence," Aldric said. "The second line forms there."
"Your Grace," Aemond's eyes held a plea without bending his spine. "Stand behind the second line. If Drakensvale aims for any heart on that night, it is yours."
Aldric's jaw worked once. "We would stand where We were most useful. Do not school Us in fear, old friend," he allowed the faintest curl near the words, not warmth, but a shared old fire that had not gone out.
"Fear kept you alive," Aemond murmured, staff crystal pulsing once, blue like winter sky.
A drumbeat of boots sounded outside, rhythm quickening. Orders spread like flame across dry grass, but this fire would be ours.
Draemyr bent over the map, palm hovering above the red pin. He tasted iron. He tasted cold. He counted the crossings, the hedges, the places where men would make last choices. He saw the faces of boys who had never seen a wyvern up close, and of women who would bar doors and hold knives behind their backs.
"We made them think we were broken," he lifted. "We broke them instead!"
Aldric's hand closed over Draemyr's forearm. Rough gauntlet on rough vambrace. A single hard nod. "For Aurelthorn."
"For Eryndral," Draemyr answered.
The hall moved. Scribes ran. Barons murmured to stewards. The captain barked names like blows. Aemond's staff sang in a low whisper as he began to shape the first threads of fog in the cold air by the door.
Draemyr turned from the table. The stag on his breast caught the light and threw it back sharp as a promise. He lifted his helm from the bench. Leather creaked. Metal rasped.
"Move," he growled to the men nearest. "No sleep. No fucking excuses."
Their spines straightened. Fear pulled tight into purpose.
Aldric stood a moment more under the staring stag of the tapestry. His hands opened, then closed. He did not pray aloud.
The torches hissed. Wax dropped. Outside, the city's lamps flared to life along the climb from the river. Hooves rang in the yard, heavy and sure, antlers scraped as handlers led the great beasts to the lines.
The map lay open behind them. The red pin at Eryndral waited.
---
[Tense: Present]
06:00 p.m. - At Deep Eryndral Forest (10 September 2025)
Beyond the village, the storm drowns the forest in shadows.
Wings thunder overhead as a Drakensvale dragon sweeps low, flames scorching treetops and painting the canopy in blazing gold.
Then—the air changes. The forest stills, as though every branch holds its breath.
The dragon roars, uneasy now, its flame spilling into the storm. The firelight flickers against something vast moving between the trees.
A shape uncoils from the shadows—massive, sinuous, wrong. Branches snap like twigs beneath its weight, yet its movement is fluid, almost reverent, as if the forest bends willingly aside.
The dragon shrieks and twists, fire lashing wildly. For a heartbeat, molten light reveals a maw filled with serrated teeth, eyes burning gold in the rain.
Then silence. The dragon vanishes between those jaws, its flame is snuffed in an instant.
A low growl ripples, vibrating through the trees, through the ground, through bone. Even the storm falters before it.
And then… nothing. The forest returns to stillness, but every shadow seems alive, waiting.