The Black Glass Wastes had once burned bright. In an age before the Frost War, before the White Lady's dominion spread her stillness across the biome, it had been a land of glass plains and obsidian ridges. Shards of glass had flowed like blood beneath an ever-churning sky, and from their heart had risen the strongholds of the Oblivion Dragon vast spires of volcanic stone veined with fire. But the ice came, and silence with it. The magma froze mid-flow, the air died, and the land that had once sung with thunder turned to a field of cracked, black mirrors.
For years, the waste had been in the White Lady grasp. Until the day the mountain awoke. At first it was only a tremor, a distant shiver in the crust. Then the world split with a scream. Great fissures tore open, spewing ash and molten stone into the gray air. Xytherion had returned.
Somehow he was able to cause mass devastation upon the biome as he seemed to have left something deep within the biome. Mountains cracked like hollow shells. The ground itself seemed to recoil from what rose beneath it. The world itself seemed to remember him—the skies darkened, the ash returned, and rivers of magma pulsed once more through their frozen veins.
Like a locutus swarm his army invaded, beasts of metal and smoke, dragons wrought from slag and sorrow, their bodies forged in the forges of ancient ruin. The ground itself split to birth them: drakes with veins of glowing iron, wyverns with wings of blade-glass, golems whose cores pulsed with imprisoned flame. Each bowed before their master, and as his fire washed over them, their dormant hearts reignited.
"Let us reclaim what is ours, my children," Xytherion intoned, his wings spreading until they blotted out what little light remained. "The Pale has stolen what is ours. The frost has claimed my bones, my dominion, my name. No longer."
They made short work of whatever force was stationed in the biome by the White lady as soon the air thickened with heat, the glass plains melting into rivers that flowed toward the heart of the Wastes. From within them rose black towers, his old citadels, reforged from memory and stone. The fortress of Varrak'Nol, his once-capital, clawed its way from beneath the ash, crowned in red flame. The age of frost was ending.
Far to the north, the White Lady's sentinels saw the horizon ignite. From their towers of ice they watched as the southern sky turned red, and the once-silent Wastes burned again.
Already long foreseeing his return but this was well beyond their expectations with her command, two of her Triune Lords descended to crush this force. Ravagan the Crimson Drakonar, Warlord of Frostbound Flame, and Vorthul the Shadow Hydra, Executioner of the White Lady. Together they led an army of pale drakes, frost wyverns, and spectral dragonkin born of winter's breath. Across leagues of frozen desert they marched, their arrival heralded by blizzards and aurorae that fought the new red light of the south.
They reached the edge of the Wastes soon, if such a thing could still be named. Before them stretched a nightmare reborn. The black plains boiled, rivers of molten glass cutting veins of red across the obsidian earth. Geysers erupted like the breath of titans. Above it all, the silhouette of Xytherion moved, vast and crowned in flame. Ravagan snarled. "He bleeds corruption into the land. Even the air recoils."
Vorthul's heads tilted, their eyes glowing faintly. "Well he is after all an evil bastard!"
"That is true. Let's crush him once and for all," Ravagan growled, flexing his claws. His tail lashed, molten frost dripping from its barbed end. "For our Lady."
He roared, and his host answered. The sky filled with the thunder of wings. From the blizzards above descended a storm of ice and death; white dragons, frost serpents, elemental shades of winter. They plunged into the inferno below, colliding with the armies of ash in a cataclysm of opposing elements. Ice met fire. The Wastes screamed.
The clash was apocalyptic.
The Frost Vanguard struck like a spear of light, freezing entire rivers of magma into brittle black glass. Frost-bolts the size of ballistae hammered into ranks of dark drakes, shattering them into slag and smoke. But for every one that fell, two more rose from the fissures below, re-forged in fire.
Xytherion watched from above, wings half-spread, the frost rain hissing against his scarred scales. His voice rolled across the battlefield. "She dares send only her lapdogs after me?!"
Then looking at the shadow hydra, wrath appeared within his eyes, "And you, you traitor," Xytherion hissed, his words like a whip.
For some reason the insult struck like a dagger to Vorthul's heart, his old master's scorn echoing in his mind. "Perhaps I am," he muttered to himself, his voices low and rasping, "But I am no longer yours to command."
Ravagan's voice cut through with a flame of his own, a torrent of blue-white fire that seared even through the haze. "You are weak, old dragon. By her command you were buried! By her will, you will put down once again!"
The Oblivion Dragon laughed, a sound like avalanches collapsing into volcanoes. "Your frost cannot chain me twice, little spark."
The fight was spectacular as each gave it their all, fire and frost tore through the air; the land itself trembled and plains collapsed into seas of broken shards. Even the shadows joined the fray, weaving chains of darkness that sought to bind the dark dragon but the breath of Xytherion was pure oblivion, and all that opposed him began to unravel.
At last, Ravagan made one final gambit, driving his power deep into the scar that marked Xytherion's ancient defeat. The strike drew blood from the unkillable, yet even that wound could not end him. With a roar that split the world, Xytherion cast his foe down and claimed the field in fire.
Vorthul surged forward to protect his fallen comrade, shadows wrapping around Ravagan's form. "Retreat!" one head commanded.
Xytherion raised his wings, the torn membranes glowing with dark light. "Run," he rumbled, every syllable heavy with scorn. "Tell your mistress her end is near. Tell her that I am coming for her." He unleashed a final blast, a storm of black flame that turned the central plain into a sea of nothingness.
The frost army shattered. Vorthul barely escaped, one head carrying Ravagan's limp body as they vanished into the veil of shadow. Behind them, the once-frozen Wastes glowed like a wound reopened, bleeding magma into the sky.
When silence finally fell, Xytherion stood amidst ruin and victory. His armies gathered around him, legions of ash and metal, their dark eyes turned upward in reverence.
He looked upon the Black Glass Wastes, his kingdom reborn, and felt the pulse of power returning to his veins. The pain of his old wounds faded beneath the heat. He could feel the land remembering him, its rivers flowing again, its mountains reshaping themselves under his will.
From the dark rivers rose vast citadels of black crystal, their towers coiling like the spines of slumbering beasts. Fire-forges roared back to life, their glow painting the horizon. At their heart, the great fortress of Varrak'Nol completed its resurrection, crowned with an infernal halo.
Xytherion climbed its summit, standing upon a spire that pierced the smoke. His wings stretched, filling the sky. "Let the frost watch and tremble," he declared, his voice carrying across continents. "The Lord of Oblivion has returned."
Below, his legions roared in answer, a cacophony of thunderous cries. In the distance, he could feel the frost's reach faltering, its grip loosening around the southern realms. The Pale Snowfields' borders had begun to crack. And beyond them, he sensed the stirrings of another force, one quite peculiar.
The Oblivion Dragon smiled, the expression cruel and slow. "My, my, what do we have here?"
And far away, upon her crystalline throne beneath the aurora sky, the White Lady of Frost and Bone felt the echo of that laughter reach her court. The ice cracked. The age of stillness was breaking.
-
The frost had never been colder than that night. The Pale Snowfields stretched beneath the aurora, silent but for the whisper of ice against ice. Crystalline towers glittered under the pale starlight, their spires sharp as knives, their walls etched with runes of dominion.
Normally, the White Lady's court thrummed with the quiet discipline of a winter-bound court, each frost drake, each snow wyvern, each spectral dragonkin aligned to her will. But tonight there was a hollow in the air, an absence she could feel with every scale of her being.
The victory she had expected, the swift subjugation of the Black Glass Wastes had not come. Reports had arrived, carried by frost winds on trembling drakes: Ravagan the Crimson Drakonar and Vorthul the Shadow Hydra, commanders of her finest frost armies, had been routed. The legions of her frostborne, once her pride, had been scattered and broken.
The White Lady did not flinch, but the silence of the message weighed on her as if the wind itself feared to speak. She sat upon her throne, a figure of immaculate ice, antlers curling like frozen lightning, her wings folded tightly against her back. Her gaze traced the falling snow, every flake a prism of memory. She inhaled, tasting the chill of the air, tasting the decay of her power.
The White Lady closed her eyes. Memory unfolded like frost across her mind, jagged and exquisite. She had faced Xytherion atop the Ruined Pyres, in a tempest of fire and ice that had scarred both dragons alike. In that battle, she had bent the coldest winds, frozen the molten rivers, crushed stone with breath alone but still, he had endured.
And in the end, the final strike had come too close; her own body had been wounded, her wings torn, her essence fraying at the edges. She had survived, barely, retreating into the Pale Snowfields to heal in secret.
But even now, though her injuries had knit themselves beneath layers of magic and will, the memory of weakness lingered. She could not lead her legions to battle. Not yet. Not against him. And so her army had been left in her stead, commanded by her Triune Lords, and they had failed.
The doors of the hall shuddered, thrown open by claws and wings heavy with exhaustion. Ravagan and Vorthul entered together, the weight of defeat dragging from every scarred scale.
Ravagan lowered his head, talons scraping the frost-crystal floor, breath ragged. Smoke rose from his nostrils in thin, trembling coils. "High Lady," he said, voice raw but measured, "we return… defeated. The Oblivion Dragon, he is beyond all reckoning. The Black Glass Wastes bends to him; our strategies, our strength… it was not enough."
She lifted a talon, tracing the air above the hall. Snowflakes formed and crystallized midair, glowing faintly with runes of command. "The Pale Snowfields endure," she said, voice low and sharp as an icicle, each syllable vibrating like ice cracking over a frozen lake. "Yet this… insult… cannot stand. The Oblivion Dragon's fire has scorched our borders, and my legions have been humiliated in my stead." Her gaze swept the hall, the aurora reflecting in her eyes like the pulse of the world itself. "I cannot lead them now. Not yet. My wounds would serve only his advantage."
A single feather drifted from her wing, suspended in the frozen air. "But there are others," she whispered, and the sound carried like wind through a canyon. "There is one who shares my blood, though not my name. One who holds the winter as I do, yet knows no allegiance but his own."
From the shadows of the hall, two of her frost-veil scribes moved, unrolling a scroll forged of ice and silver, the script shimmering with magic. The White Lady extended a wing, touching the scroll lightly. Frost spread along the runes, igniting them with a pale light. "Summon him," she said. "Bring Viserion from the Glacial Labyrinths. Bring him, that he may hold my army and turn the tide of ruin."
The scribes bowed, voices echoing like wind through hollowed ice. "At once, High Lady."
"Are you sure my lady?" Ravagan asked hesitantly.
The White Lady's wings shimmered as she folded them, the faintest chill emanating from her as the command settled upon the air. Her gaze never left the frost-dusted windows, where the aurora flickered like a dying star.
Her half-brother locked himself away in the Glacial Labyrinths he called home, he grew embittered with his lot in life and turned to darker ambitions. He was born from the Dragon lady of Frost and a lesser dragon that she had taken as a lover.
His heart was as frozen as her own, but his ambitions ran deeper, darker. He would not aid her for loyalty, but perhaps for power. But she had little choice.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/422071796348187919/
"Yes, I am sure," the white lady answered. "If he gets thoughts of usurpation I will deal with him. For now I will have him lead my forces to stem the tide of the Oblivion Dragon!"
-
Artorius stands at the entrance to the dungeon's final chamber, his forces arrayed behind him. The floor beneath them hums with power as the storm rages around them. In the center of the chamber, an enormous figure stands, wreathed in lightning: the Storm Guardian, a colossal being made of pure electricity, its body flickering and crackling like a storm come alive. The guardian's eyes burn like twin lightning bolts as it surveys the invaders.
[Storm Guardian — Level 17]
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/2744449767655719/
The air is thick with the scent of ozone. The ground shakes as the Guardian moves, a mass of crackling lightning, and thunder echoes throughout the chamber. It raises a hand, and bolts of energy shoot toward Artorius's forces, nearly vaporizing them. The battle is fierce, with the soldiers ducking behind cover, and the elite fighters rushing in.
As Artorius charges forward, his lance crackling with energy, he can feel the weight of his crystal harness absorb damage and the burning pressure of the storm. His dragons circle overhead, breathing fire and lightning, trying to keep the Guardian distracted. He leads his troops forward with precision and strategy, coordinating with his cavalry and archers.
But the Storm Guardian was relentless, its body shifting into a cloud of storm and wind, blinding his forces. Every time they think they have it, it reappears somewhere else, a blur of power and might. The battlefield shakes with each strike, forcing Artorius to call for an even more focused attack.
After a grueling battle, it's Artorius's final, well-timed strike that cracks the Warden's body, ending the battle. As it collapses into a heap of charred stone and smoke, the dungeon's oppressive atmosphere lifts. Artorius stands victorious, though exhausted, his forces cheering. They've claimed victory over another dungeon and best of all when he looked at his system messages he couldn't help but smile.
You have slain [Storm Guardian — Level 17]
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 9
Stat gains: +1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 Per, +1 CHA
-
Support me if you can & get advance chapters!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Abdirah
Discord: https://discord.gg/UmRZ5vFj