Ouroboros stared at him with an expression that hovered between disbelief and a desire to slap him across the face. "You insane, reckless little gremlin," the serpent hissed, coiling tightly. "You should not be alive. Why do you keep on doing stupid things?"
Artorius tried to laugh. It hurt so much he nearly blacked out. "Can you pack up the radiant dragon? Hopefully I can learn the Word of Power for Light."
Ouroboros bonked him lightly on the head with his tail. "You are becoming more and more like a dragon everyday, partaking in your foe's flesh. I would have been so proud if you weren't so foolhardy."
Ouroboros stopped mid-motion, tail frozen in the air. The air begin to tremble, subtle at first, then insistent, deliberate. It was the weight of a being that had not moved in centuries, pressing down on the world itself.
Artorius' grin faded. Pain throbbed in every cracked bone, every split tendon, but instinct pulled his gaze upward. He blinked against the cold wind, frost clinging to the edges of his lashes, and then he saw it.
The sky above the Nest was torn open. Clouds twisted like broken glass. Winds spiraled into impossibility. The world seemed to bend and stretch, as though the laws of matter and magic themselves recoiled from what had arrived.
A colossal figure coalesced in the upper atmosphere. Scales, brilliant and holy, shimmered in hues that no mortal or even dragon could name: light folded into light, a spectrum of divine radiance refracted through impossible geometry. Its wings stretched across the horizon like living constellations.
Its serpentine body coiled in majestic arcs, each movement slow and deliberate, bending clouds and light in its wake. Light shimmered across the Nest, caught in the edges of its scales, fractured into blinding beams that scattered across mountains, forests, oceans, and deserts. The world's surface quivered with its presence, a gravity of holiness pressing down on everything beneath it.
The creature's single, coiling gaze with its eye like a spiral of light, fractal and infinite fixed upon him. The effect was immediate. The air thickened, shimmering with holy light. Frost lifted off the snow in faint filaments, caught in a slow, deliberate drift. Light filled the world below, throwing rainbowed shadows across the shattered battlefield. Even distant storms stilled as if in reverence, their lightning held mid-flash, their thunder suspended in a beatless silence.
The System flared behind Artorius' eyelids, cold and precise:
[Holy Zilant Dragon King ??? has noticed your accomplishments]
[New Evolutionary Path Available: Holy Zilant Dragon King]
Artorius exhaled slowly, chest heaving. He had been broken, he had bled, he had danced on the edge of death countless times. Today alone, he slew not one, not two, but three different direct descendants of Dragon Lords. After all this he had been recognized for the great deeds he had accomplished.
Above, the Holy Zilant Dragon King coiled once more, silent, vast, incomprehensible. Its wings stretched from horizon to horizon. Its scales shimmered with the light of forgotten stars. Then it was gone.
The sky had calmed. The tremors from the Holy Zilant Dragon King's gaze had faded, leaving only a quiet, heavy reverence over the Nest. Below, the battlefield stretched in stark contrast: snow scorched into crystalline fractures, forests shattered into skeletal trunks, rivers frozen in mid-rippling waves from the sheer force of Dragon Lord energies that had collided here. Even the air smelled of ozone, smoke, and the metallic tang of blood long shed.
Artorius stumbled forward, the frost still burning along his veins, his arms trembling from injuries that would have felled an ordinary dragon or soldier. Ouroboros was the first to move, coiling protectively around him as he took stock of the field. "Report," the serpent hissed, voice rough from shouting commands over wind and chaos. "I want numbers, conditions, everything."
Artorius nodded, grimacing as he looked over the cracked frost-broken landscape. "We'll start with our own forces," he said, voice hoarse. His gaze swept across the scarred expanse, seeing familiar banners of crimson, gold, and frost-colored insignia flutter in the cold wind.
Thankfully his noble-blooded dragons had won and had come out alive, severely in some cases like Viserion but victorious! They stood like battered titans among the ruin. They stood triumphant over their defeated enemies who were mostly still alive. Unlike him who killed just about everyone he fought, they still had their enemies alive on a life line but alive.
Raijin, the thunder dragon was the one to give him the report as Artorius lowered himself onto a frost-crusted rock, wincing as his joints protested. The battlefield still thrummed with residual energy, a faint echo of what the White Lady's unleashed and his own unleashed fury. Around him, his generals and dragon-blooded nobles regrouped, their banners tattered but their eyes alight with the fire of victory.
"We have heavy losses concentrated at the frontlines where the White Lady deployed the item she held. Artillery and ranged units fared better. The scouts and cavalry suffered medium losses overall."
Ouroboros leaned close, tail brushing the fractured snow. "The cost," he said, voice low, "is still immense. 400 soldiers dead, 600 wounded. The entire biome is scarred and changed. The White Lady's and Fragrance queen combined army—700 killed, 900 wounded, 900 scattered. You can't ignore what has happened."
He hissed. "Their losses are worse… but that doesn't make ours acceptable." Artorius closed his eyes. He agreed. But war never asked for consent before taking what it wanted.
"Despite the losses, morale among the survivors is high. They witnessed your personal engagement with the radiant dragon and the white lady along with the oblivion dragon in the end. Plus who can forget what you did calling upon the long dead Dragon Snow Lord!" Zoklath, the black dread added.
"Dragons will follow legends to the grave and back," Raijin remarked.
Shiun, the golden imugi who had been overseeing Viserion intoned, "We are victorious for now!"
He let out a slow breath. "We won," he murmured, though the word felt small compared to the scale of what had occurred. "But nothing… nothing comes without sacrifice. Every victory carries its cost."
He looked out at his soldiers. Some were kneeling beside friends who would never rise again. Some were screaming as field medics cut away frost-burnt limbs. Some were standing silent and trembling, alive but hollow.
As if this day did not want to end, the ground trembled. Not the gentle crackle of settling frost. Not the distant shifting of ice forming new stress lines. This was a heavy, slow, deliberate tremor like a giant placing one enormous foot upon the earth. Artorius stiffened. All humor drained. His eyes flicked upward.
His vision sharpened beyond the haze of his injuries. He could see a distant shimmer along the horizon, the sky bending unnaturally. Even from the Pale Snowfields, the refraction of what was falling like sunlight through cracked crystal stretched the heavens with a nauseating clarity. The landscape itself seemed to tilt, the curvature of the world bending slightly as if the planet were straining under the weight of what was to come.
The corpse was here. It had been a distant light this whole time they were warring with each other now it was about to come crashing down.
It was too immense. Too grotesque. Its body, torn and fractured, tumbled through the stratosphere like a blackened comet. Shattered wings, vast enough to eclipse mountains, flapped in impossible arcs. Its head, jagged and partially missing, trailed a tail of cosmic fire, embers falling like stars snuffed out mid-flight. The sheer scale of it, the incomprehensible mass, made the Pale Snowfields look like a child's playground in comparison.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/172473860725590001/
The dragon corpse hit the lower atmosphere with a deafening crack. The sound alone rolled across the skies like thunder on a continental scale. From the Pale Snowfields to the distant mountains, deserts, and other biomes the tremor reached like ripples from a colossal stone thrown into a cosmic ocean. Even dragons in flight felt the pressure. Winds reversed, spiraling violently, tearing apart smaller creatures mid-air. The ice and snow beneath Artorius's feet cracked in jagged lines, fine frost shimmering and breaking as if in sympathy with the distant destruction.
Across the continents, the arrival of the corpse unfolded like the final act of a doomed planet. From the jungle biomes, to the oceanic biomes, to the desert biomes, mountain biomes and more each and every dragon watched. It was the kind of sight that became myth immediately upon its occurrence. It was something dragons here would be speaking of for countless years to come.
The corpse's descent became a spectacle of devastation even before impact. Its enormous body, tumbling end over end, shed fragments the size of hills and mountains. These fragments burned with internal energy, trailing glowing fractures of destruction. Each shard that struck the earth exploded upon impact, sending shockwaves and incandescent plumes skyward.
And still, the dragon corpse fell. He could only stare in awe. It was time like these that he came to realize how truly terrifying reality was. expand
When the corpse landed, it was as though the Nest itself had been struck by a celestial hammer. The impact was not localized, it reverberated across the whole Nest. Mountains buckled and crumbled, valleys inverted, forests and plains were flattened as the corpse fell down. The initial shockwave rolled across the land like a tsunami of sound and force, cracking tectonic plates, bending rivers, and flinging boulders miles into the air.
The explosion rose, a titanic mushroom cloud that glowed from the combination of fiery energy, crushing earth, and residual power emanating from the fallen dragon. Anything beneath the dragon corpse was obliterated. Rivers boiled, trees were reduced to skeletal husks, and the air itself crystallized momentarily from the sudden, catastrophic release of energy. Lightning struck endlessly from the mushroom cloud, dancing along the clouds of ash and vapor. Dragons and every form of life within dozens of miles of the epicenter were vaporized instantly, leaving only echoes in the air of their cries.
Yet even at this distance, the shockwave reached distant lands. Dragons in mid-flight were tossed like leaves caught in a storm. Magical wards flared in alarm, many cracking and failing under the overwhelming energy. The world collectively shuddered, as though acknowledging the arrival of a force beyond reckoning.
Even here in the Pale Snowfields, thousands upon thousands of miles away, Artorius and Ouroboros could feel the heat and the aftershock. Snow rippled unnaturally, frozen peaks bending under the tremor. The horizon shimmered with heat and light, despite the cold of their own biome. Air itself seemed to quiver and fracture, carrying with it the scent of ozone, ice, and scorched earth.
The impact reshaped the night sky. From every corner of the Nest, dragons could see the mushroom cloud rising impossibly high, trailing luminous fragments that reflected like shattered jewels. The light refracted across the clouds, across the mountains, across seas and deserts, showing them the unimaginable magnitude of what had just occurred.
Every distant observer, dragons who were not near enough to feel the tremor physically, could see the apocalyptic display. Its scale transcended geography. Its terror transcended life. The corpse of a single dragon, once noble, once feared had reshaped the world in a cataclysm akin to a planetary extinction.
Ouroboros finally hissed, low and trembling. "There will be bloodbaths for it!"
Artorius, trembling from the exertion as he stood up. He swayed on his feet as his body had reached the limit of what flesh could endure. He felt it, a change in the wind something else was coming. He could feel it pressing against the horizon like a blade pressed against a throat.
"My lord," Artorius turned as a scout dragged himself forward half-frozen, armor cracked, one horn snapped off entirely. Blood stained the snow behind him like dark ink. "Speak," Artorius rasped.
The scout collapsed to one knee, gasping hard enough that steam curled from his nostrils. "We… we sighted something…" His voice shook. Not from cold but from fear.
Ouroboros' coils tightened. "Something? Be specific before your heart gives out."
The scout swallowed. "A… army. On the horizon. Cutting through the snow storm. Moving in fast. It's… it's massive, sir. Bigger than the army we faced today."
Zoklath remarked, "That's not possible, no noble in the surrounding three biomes has that many soldiers. Not even combined."
"Unless…" Shiun whispered, everyone turned to face her. "Unless they are not from any of those biomes." A sudden gust blew across the frost plains; warm, sharp, carrying scents that did not belong here: iron, sand-baked glass, hot wind, and the metallic tang of sharpened mana.
Artorius' mouth went dry. This was great, this day was not ending at all. "How far?"
The scout shook his head. "Impossible to tell. The storm distorts visibility. But they move fast. They could be here within a day or two."
"A day?" Raijin snapped. "We're half dead, a third of our troops are crippled, and our commander's bones are cracked like old pottery!"
Artorius stood straight. Pain throbbed. Blood ran. Muscles cried. But he stood. "Options," he said.
Ouroboros tilted his head. "There is only one, we retreat."
Artorius closed his eyes. "I intend to survive." He took a slow breath, letting frost fill his lungs. "Send orders." The wind stilled. The nobles listened. Somehow though he felt as if things were about to turn much much worse!
-
Author Note: This ends Arc 2, the Warmonger!
-
Chapter 33 Recap!
Leveled up Race: True-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 21!
+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +1 PER, +1 CHA
Leveled up Archetype: Leader to Lvl. 21!
+1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 21!
+1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 CHA, +1 LUC!
Leveled up Race: True-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 22!
Leveled up Archetype: Leader to Lvl. 22!
+1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 22!
Leveled up Race: True-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 23!
+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +1 PER, +1 CHA
Leveled up Archetype: Leader to Lvl. 23!
+1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 23!
+1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 CHA, +1 LUC!
Leveled up Race: True-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 24!
Leveled up Archetype: Leader to Lvl. 24!
+1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA