Day 5 of the War. Twilight.
Location: The Western Border, The Allied Encampment.
Weather: Low cloud ceiling, turbulent winds.
The ground war had stalled.
The massive pile of Orc corpses in front of Rian's trench had become a grim wall, preventing further infantry charges. The Royal Center was licking its wounds, exhausted by the sheer weight of the previous day's assault.
The mud was quiet.
But Rian Thorne was not looking at the mud. He was looking at the clouds.
"The air is heavy," Baron Aris said, sitting on an ammo crate, whittling a piece of wood. "My grandmother used to say that when the birds stop singing, the sky is holding its breath."
Rian adjusted his binoculars. He scanned the gray underbelly of the cloud layer.
"Your grandmother was a wise woman, Baron," Rian murmured.
He turned to Livia, who was organizing the inventory of the powder wagons.
"Cover the wagons," Rian ordered sharply. "Not just with canvas. Pile sandbags on top of the crates. Now."
"Rian?" Livia paused. "Sandbags? The wagons will break under the weight."
"Better broken than burned," Rian said. "Gorr failed on the ground. He failed underground. There is only one direction left."
[Ding! System Alert]
[Atmospheric Disturbance Detected]
[Source: Biological Wing Beats]
[Altitude: 3,000 Feet (Descending)]
[Count: 40 Units]
[Identification: Black Wyverns (Fire-Bombers)]
Rian's eyes narrowed.
"Battle Stations!" Rian roared, his voice cutting through the twilight calm. "Sky Watch! Eyes up!"
The Descent of the Dragons
High above the clouds, Squadron Leader Krog of the Wyvern Riders adjusted his leather harness.
He rode a Black Wyvern, a beast smaller than a true dragon but faster, more vicious, and capable of spitting balls of corrosive acid.
Behind him flew thirty-nine others. Each Wyvern carried a net slung under its belly. Inside the nets were clay pots filled with Naptha (Orcish Greek Fire).
"The Gray Human hides behind his wire," Krog growled to his mount. "He hides in his holes. But he cannot hide his wagons."
"We burn the food. We burn the powder. We leave him naked."
Krog signaled the dive.
The Wyverns folded their leathery wings.
They dropped through the cloud layer like stones.
Perspective: The Golden Center
Cassius Thorne was eating dinner in his tent when the screams started.
He ran outside, sword in hand.
He looked up.
"Dragons!" a sentry screamed, pointing at the dark shapes plummeting from the sky.
"Wyverns!" Cassius corrected, his face pale. "Forty of them! Archers! Mages!"
But the Royal Army was unprepared. The archers were eating. The mages were meditating to restore their mana.
The Wyverns swooped low over the center camp, shrieking. They ignored the knights. They ignored the horses.
They banked hard to the left.
Toward the Swamp Sector.
"They are targeting Rian," King Aric realized, stepping out of his pavilion. "They are going for the cannons."
The Wall of Thunder
Location: The Swamp Sector.
Rian watched them come. They were fast—diving at 150 miles per hour.
"Hold," Rian commanded.
His gun crews were standing by the 12-Pounders. But the cannons weren't pointing at the Orc lines.
They were pointing up.
Rian had dug the trails of the carriages deep into the mud, elevating the barrels to a steep 45-degree angle.
"Fuse setting: 1.5 seconds!" Rian shouted.
The gunners twisted the dials on the wooden fuses inserted into the explosive shells.
This wasn't solid shot. This wasn't canister.
This was Shrapnel Shell.
A hollow iron sphere filled with gunpowder and musket balls, designed to explode in mid-air.
Flak.
The Wyverns entered the kill box. They were 1,000 feet up, lining up their bombing run on the wagons.
"FIRE!"
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Ten cannons roared.
The shells screamed upward.
One point five seconds later.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
The sky exploded.
Ten black clouds of smoke blossomed in the path of the diving Wyverns.
Shrapnel flew in every direction.
It wasn't a precision strike. It was a shotgun blast to the face of the sky.
Krog saw the flashes. Then he felt his Wyvern lurch.
The beast screamed. Its left wing was shredded by hot iron balls. Leather membrane turned into tatters.
"Pull up!" Krog roared.
But behind him, three Wyverns flew directly into the explosions.
They didn't just die. They disintegrated.
Iron balls punched through their chests, shattered their skulls, and tore their riders to pieces.
The Wyverns tumbled out of the sky, trailing black smoke, crashing into the swamp with wet thuds.
The Confusion of the Prey
The formation broke.
The Wyverns scattered. They had expected arrows. They had expected maybe a fireball.
They did not expect the air itself to explode in front of them.
"What magic is this?!" a rider screamed, swerving to avoid a second volley of flak. "The clouds are biting!"
"Drop the bombs!" Krog ordered. "Drop them now!"
The Wyverns released their nets prematurely.
The clay pots of Naptha fell.
But because of the scattering, they missed the wagons.
They smashed into the empty mud of no-man's-land, erupting in pools of green fire that burned harmlessly in the water.
"They missed," Baron Aris cheered from the trench, waving his helmet. "The Sky-Thunder scared them!"
"It's not over," Rian said grimly. "They are regrouping. They will dive again from different angles. The cannons can't traverse fast enough."
Rian grabbed a signal flare.
"Varg," he whispered. "Your turn."
He fired the flare. A Green Star rose into the twilight.
The Knights of the Clouds
High above, hiding in the dark clouds where the Wyverns had just come from.
Varg sat strapped into the saddle of his Titan-Hawk, Storm-Wing.
Behind him, thirty other Wolf Riders sat on their own hawks.
They weren't carrying lances. They weren't carrying swords.
They held their Compound Crossbows across their laps.
"The boss lit the lamp," Varg grinned, pulling his goggles down. "Time to feed the birds."
The Titan-Hawks folded their wings.
They didn't scream. They dove in silence.
Stealth Dive.
Below, the surviving Wyverns were circling, preparing for a second run at the cannons. Their riders were focused on the ground, watching for the muzzle flashes.
They didn't look up.
WHOOSH.
Varg hit them like a thunderbolt.
His Hawk slammed into a Wyvern from above. The impact was massive. The Hawk's talons—tipped with steel covers Rian had forged—tore into the Wyvern's back.
The Wyvern shrieked, its spine snapped by the kinetic force.
"Scatter and Kill!" Varg shouted.
The thirty Hawks broke formation. It became a swirling dogfight.
The Wyverns were bigger and could spit acid.
But the Hawks were agile. They could turn on a dime.
And they had Gunners.
Varg's second-in-command, riding behind him, raised his crossbow.
He was ten feet away from a Wyvern Rider.
THUM.
The steel bolt punched through the Orc's chest armor. The rider fell from his saddle, plunging 500 feet to his death.
The Dance of Feathers and Scales
It was chaos.
To the soldiers on the ground, it looked like a war of the gods.
Giant shapes grappling in the twilight. Feathers and scales raining down like snow.
Screams of beasts and men.
A Wyvern managed to latch onto a Hawk. It opened its jaws to spit acid.
But the Hawk Rider was faster. He jammed his crossbow directly into the Wyvern's mouth and pulled the trigger.
THUM.
The bolt exited the back of the Wyvern's skull. The beast went limp.
"They are panicked!" Rian observed through his binoculars. "The Orcs rely on fear. When something hunts them, they break."
Krog, the Orc Leader, saw his squadron being decimated.
Half his flight was gone. The "Flak" had broken their formation, and these "Giant Birds" were finishing them off.
"Retreat!" Krog screamed. "Back to the Warlord!"
The surviving Wyverns—maybe twelve of them—turned tail and fled toward the mountains, flying low and fast to escape the Hawks.
"Let them go!" Rian radioed (via signal flag). "Do not pursue over enemy lines!"
Varg pulled Storm-Wing up. The great bird screeched in victory, banking over the Allied Camp.
The King's Awe
Location: The Royal Center.
The entire Royal Army was looking up. Their mouths were open.
They had seen the explosions in the sky.
They had seen the giant birds dive from the clouds.
They had seen the Wyverns—the terror of the West—broken and chased away like pigeons.
King Aric lowered his spyglass.
"Hawks," the King whispered. "Titan-Hawks. I thought they were extinct."
"He tamed them," Duke Ironwood said, his voice trembling. "Viscount Thorne. He didn't just bring cannons. He brought an Air Force."
Cassius Thorne stared at the sky. He saw Varg's squadron circling in a victory formation above the swamp.
He felt a cold pit in his stomach.
Knights ruled the land.
But whoever ruled the sky... ruled the war.
"How?" Cassius muttered. "He has no Beast-Taming affinity. How did he bind thirty Alpha Predators?"
The Aftermath in the Swamp
Rian walked out to the crash site of the nearest Wyvern.
It was buried deep in the mud. The carcass was smoking from the flak damage.
His men were already salvaging the leather.
"Good material," Rian noted, touching the wing membrane. "Fire-resistant. We can make better aprons for the flamethrower crews."
Varg landed his Hawk in the clearing. The bird hopped over to the Wyvern corpse and began to tear at the meat.
Varg slid off, looking exhilarated.
"Did you see that, Boss? We swatted them! They didn't know which way was up!"
"You did well, Varg," Rian handed him a canteen of water. "But now the secret is out. The King saw the Hawks."
"Let him look," Varg shrugged. "He can't ride them. Only my boys know the whistle commands."
Rian nodded. That was true. The "Taming" wasn't magic; it was conditioning and biology. The King couldn't steal the Hawks because the Hawks would eat anyone else.
Location: The Orc Camp.
Warlord Gorr watched the remnants of his Air Wing return.
Twelve Wyverns. Out of forty.
He didn't scream. He didn't rage.
He sat down heavily on his throne of skulls.
"The Gray Human," Gorr whispered. "He owns the ground. He owns the dark. He owns the sky."
Grand Shaman Zog hobbled forward. "Warlord... the spirits are quiet. They fear the iron."
Gorr looked at his army. Fifty thousand strong. But they were muttering. They were scared.
They had seen their "Invincible" monsters die again and again.
"He is not a human," Gorr decided. "He is a Dwarf-Devil in a human skin."
"We cannot attack the Swamp again," Gorr announced. "It is a mouth that eats armies."
He pointed his axe at the Golden Center.
"We ignore the Gray Human. We focus everything on the King. If we kill the King, the Gray Human will have no one to protect."
"But Warlord," his lieutenant asked. "If we attack the Center, the Gray Human will shoot us from the side again."
"Then we build a wall," Gorr growled. "Tonight, we pile the bodies. We build a wall of corpses between us and the Swamp. A wall high enough to block his thunder."
The Midnight Visitor
Late that night, Rian was in his tent, drafting plans for a "Rolling Barrage".
The tent flap opened.
It wasn't a messenger this time.
It was Princess Isabella herself.
She wore dark riding leathers and a cloak of Shadow-Silk. She had snuck out of the Royal Camp.
Rian stood up. "Your Highness. This is dangerous."
Isabella pulled back her hood. Her eyes were bright with adrenaline and curiosity.
"Dangerous is standing next to you, Rian," she smiled.
"I saw the sky explode. I saw the birds."
She walked over to his desk. She looked at the blueprints.
"My father is terrified of you," she said softly. "He won't admit it. But he is."
"He thinks you are building a kingdom within a kingdom."
"I am building a survival strategy," Rian said, pouring her a cup of tea.
"Whatever it is," Isabella leaned in, her hand brushing his on the map. "It is changing the world. The Mages are arguing. Half want to burn you as a heretic. The other half want to study under you."
"And you?" Rian asked.
"I want to win," Isabella said fiercely. "Gorr is building a Corpse-Wall to block your guns. He plans to crush the center tomorrow with sheer mass."
"Can you stop him?"
Rian looked at the map.
"A wall of bodies blocks line-of-sight," Rian mused. "It stops direct fire."
"But it doesn't stop Indirect Fire."
He looked at Isabella.
"If Gorr builds a wall... I will simply rain on his parade."
"Go back to your father, Isabella. Tell him to hold the line one last time."
"Tomorrow, I introduce the Orcs to the concept of the Mortar."
End of Chapter 77