Chapter 3: Fox-Two!

A crimson sun hung low in the sky, and a gentle wind whistled through the grass. The monsoon season in Sylvara had ended, leaving the earth swollen with rain and the Great Forest teeming with life. Nimble footsteps, barely audible over the breeze, stalked their prey, and with a single loosed arrow, found their mark. Liora stood for a moment, a self-satisfied, almost smug smile spreading across her face as she admired her shot. Allowing herself only a moment to savor her kill, she murmured a quiet prayer, entrusting the soul of the creature to the spirit of the forest.

With expert hands, Liora quickly gutted, cleaned, and skinned the kill. Burning the meat and flesh felt wasteful, but only the pelts of viletusk boars could be safely used this time of the year. This was the final kill of her career as a hunter. Even though elves are remarkably long-lived, twenty years in one place, doing one job, is nothing to sneeze at. As she passed through the village gates, the still-warm pelt slung over her shoulder, a thousand thoughts raced through her mind. But they were quickly silenced by the scene before her.

Dropping her pelts and herbs, Liora pushed to the center of the throng. “Everyone, please, the situation is under control! Return to your homes and let the guard handle it!” a loud but frantic voice boomed.

As soon as Liora’s head breached the center of the crowd, a pair of wrinkled hands grabbed her shoulder. “Liora! Please talk some sense into your father! We must evacuate!”

Restless murmurs and rising panic stirred in the crowd behind her. Liora stopped for a moment and closed her eyes. The throng of voices and shouts rose around her as she drew in her breath and counted to five. One. The crowd churned around her. Two. The clank of swords and bows being passed out. Three. Children wailed, screaming for their parents who had fled into the forest. Four. Her father, captain of the village guard, desperately pleaded for calm. Five. She exhaled.

“Father,” she said, her voice steady but her crimson eyes swirling with fury, “what’s the situation?”

The old elf’s face was etched with unmistakable regret and shame, dripping into his words. “Liora… You were right…”

“So they’ve come?”

“A force twice as large as the one that razed Underne.”

Liora’s eye twitched, and the crowd instinctively stepped back. Among elves, who were, at the best of times, a proud and boisterous lot, Liora was renowned as the only one in the small elven village of Sylvara who truly had a temper. More than a few of the men, women, and children in the small village had found themselves on her bad side in the past, and to a man, none wanted to find themselves there again. The crowd hushed.

“Leaders and force?” she asked.

“Upwards of three thousand, mostly orcs. We believe led by the warboss who annihilated Underne.”

She asked the all-important question. “How long until they arrive?”

“No more than half an hour.”

* * *

At once, the village began preparations for the siege. Among the ranks of the villagers were perhaps forty able-bodied fighting men and another twenty mages capable of support. The attack was deliberate, timed precisely for when the best hunters and warriors of the village would be clearing out the monsters driven to the shores during the monsoons. The notion of orcs orchestrating such an attack struck Liora as suspicious, but she had neither the time nor the inclination to worry about such things now—evacuation was no longer an option.

The weaker mages, who would have fared poorly in combat, rapidly enchanted the stone walls of the main gate. It was a hasty job but would protect the defenders against lesser elemental attacks that were a staple of orc combat. Barrels and crates were pried apart, their timbers used to reinforce doors and barricade windows. Amid the chaos, Liora slipped quietly out of the village.

Orcs were a fierce, violent, and martial race. Above all else, they respected strength, and to orcs, strength looked like blood and severed heads. Among a thousand orcs, you would be hard-pressed to find even one with both the cunning and standing to command the horde. Massed attacks by orcs such as this were a rarity for that exact reason, yet clearly today, the horde had found its leader and its target, and Liora had found hers.

Just beyond the main gates of the village, she turned for half a breath and surveyed it. She knew full well the rumors about her. A rude, fiery, demon-spawned elf that would one day lead the village to ruin. Surely, some today had thought this invasion was her doing. Yet for all their prejudice and rumor, Liora had only one home, and the small village was her only kin. She was willing to die to protect them, and perhaps tonight, she would.

* * *

The battle had begun, and a few kilometers in the distance, the invading orc army crashed like waves against the village defenses. The ringing of mangled steel filled the night, and the endless line of torches snaking from the hills was a sight almost beautiful to behold. She muttered a lengthy incantation under her breath, and her blood-stained, white cloak shifted color to a drab olive. As expected, the commander’s guard at the rear was light. Orcs typically relied on their large, pig-like noses to allow them to smell trouble long before it approached, but the stench of mana hanging on the air after the monsoons masked her approach.

In a small clearing where the rear echelons of the army were stationed, a towering orc sat before a bonfire, barking orders. The commander stood a full meter taller than Liora and weighed as much as a fully grown bison. His dark flesh was a tapestry of scars, burns, and wounds, and the crude animal pelts that covered him were stained a deep, dried crimson from years of battle. All the same, Liora’s job was simple. Either kill the commander or make him incapable of commanding.

Drawing back the string of her short bow, she whispered a quiet incantation. The string hummed, and the arrowhead began to glow a dull blue. As her incantation grew longer, she felt the mana from the depths of her bones be pulled into the singing arrow. Her vision swam as the energy was sapped from her body, but she pressed on, the arrow now a dazzling blue. The commander had turned to the source of the glow, but a second too late, as the supersonic crack of the brilliant blue dart took off his head and felled the tree behind him.

Amidst the uproar in the orc camp, Liora melted back into the trees. Orcs were nothing if not predictable. With the death of their commander, every member of the horde would jockey for the position, a lengthy and chaotic process that could take weeks. In the meantime, of course, the attack would stall completely, and the village defenders would easily beat back the rabble. Sure enough, as she crested the ridgeline overlooking the village, the snake of torches scattered, the horde fleeing in disarray.

The damage to the village was significant, and a number of defenders were seriously wounded, but miraculously, none had died. That was an untold relief. There were so few elves living today that surnames were unnecessary—Liora, a once-common name, was more than likely the only “Liora” alive today. Waiting at the village gates, of course, was the only “Lioned”, her father.

“Liora!” he bellowed, pulling her into his arms. “Are you alright?! Are you hurt?” He inspected her carefully. She chopped him on the head.

“Father, I’m fine! There are people here who are actually wounded! Go tend to them.”

“R-right…” he drew himself up and regained his composure. “You’re right, I’m sorry… You were right about everything…”

“We can save that for later. For now, we must evacuate the village. The horde is choosing a new leader as we speak.”

“But where can we go? We can’t abandon Sylvern here, and there’s no other elven settlement on this continent.”

“Sylvern is the spirit of the wood and wind,” Liora said. “She can go anywhere we have those.” She paused. The second part was true. Who would shelter an entire village of elven refugees? The beastfolk had enough trouble feeding their own as is, and the humans on the coasts cared little for mouths who couldn’t pay for food. Even though they survived the crisis, something still felt off to her.

“Father, the attack on Underne was…?”

“Two weeks ago. Why?”

Liora gazed to the north and strained her eyes. In the far distance, a thick, swirling storm raged, stretching down from the ground and up to the heavens. A rancid wind had been blowing from the north for two weeks now. Little was known about the storm, but the elders among the village had called it “The Great Rift,” a storm that surged across the northern continent once every thousand years. It had first appeared… two weeks ago. Immediately, wires crossed in Liora’s mind, and her breath caught in her throat.

“Father, ready the guard and mages for a second defense. We have to defend the shrine at all costs!”

“But why? The horde won’t amass for another attack for at least a few days.”

“They weren’t the attack!” she shouted. “They were the decoy!”

Her mind raced as she sprinted to the heart of the village. Two weeks ago, a coastal village to the north, Underne, was razed by an army of orcs. There were no survivors, and the ancient spirit of the oceans and seas enshrined at the heart of the village had vanished. Two weeks ago, for the first time in a thousand years, the Great Rift opened on the demon continent—Tenebral. For over a century now, rumors had been spreading about an army amassing in the far north, beyond any ever seen by man. Not one soul knew the purpose. Liora had urged the elves to stand with humanity to fight in whatever war might come, but the elves, ever proud and ever selfish, had believed the day would never come. Her father had been chief among her opposition. A single thought raced through her mind. The war began two weeks ago, and we didn’t even catch the first shot.

* * *

She had scarcely reached the inner walls of the shrine when a deathly stillness had fallen over the village. It felt as if the air itself had grown thin, and the stench of mana grew thick. Darkness swallowed the village, and the last faint crimson light was fading from the clouds. Liora could feel it coming now. A monstrous presence loomed—beyond comprehension, beyond fear, beyond hope.

The stars above her winked out, and a thunderclap shook the valley. In a split second, a brilliant bolt of fire engulfed the village’s front gate. The enchanted barrier held for a fraction of a second before fizzling out and engulfing the defenders on the ramparts in a torrent of purple fire.

A second thunderclap, and the village chieftain’s house became a burning pyre, casting a sickly purple glow across the village. The defenders on the walls strained their eyes and ears, desperate to even spot the beast. At last, in a final low pass, Liora saw her foe, and her heart sank to the pit of her stomach.

Among all the races of the world, dragons are the most ancient. The first gods of existence, an essence born of the primordial currents that ebb between light and dark. A billion years before the God of Man or the Demon Lord had awoken from their slumber, dragons ruled the lands. The dragon race was few in number and fiercely proud, but clearly, at least one had been swayed to the side by the Demon Lord—this was a true prince of darkness. Pitch-black wings, thirty meters across, razor-sharp talons, a glowing purple pair of eyes, and scales as thick and tough as obsidian.

For the next fifteen minutes, the dragon toyed with the village. It had eliminated the defenders and laid an impenetrable wall of fire around the perimeter of the village. It now simply waited for those fires to close in. The defense was hopeless, the village lost. All that remained was for the last of the inhabitants to succumb to the cursed fire and for the beast to seize the spirit within the shrine Liora now guarded.

Trying as she might to stand, her legs failed her. Try as she might to scream, her voice was a breathless rasp. Try as she might to fight, the bow in her arms felt like stone. Villagers screamed around her as the beast circled and landed in the town square. But from the flaming wreckage of her house, a lone figure emerged. He planted himself with shaking legs between the dragon and Liora and, with trembling hands, raised a curved metallic bow she had never seen before. In a voice, too distant from the familiar booming tone she was used to, he spoke.

“Spirits of Erde…” he began, his bowstring singing in chorus. “Bestow upon me, your faithful servant, the powers of kings.” A familiar blue light glowed from the tip of his arrow. “Grant my strike the swiftness of the wind.” The once-still arrow began to spin restlessly against its nock. “Grant my strike the force of the flood.” The brilliant blue light from the tip intensified, and a swirling vortex of wind gathered around the man’s feet. “Make my blows of iron and steel.” A brilliant red heat emanated from the tip of the arrow as it twisted and writhed in place. “…and light in my heart a fire that burns brighter than all my foe’s. Amen.” At that, he loosed the arrow.

Liora knew the incantation well. A family art, passed from generation to generation. A person’s mana, their very life-energy, was poured into the shot. The longer the incantation, the more powerful a shot, in exchange for more of that energy. Her father had never taught her the final verse, and in an instant, she knew why. As the villagers watched the blue dart streak across the sky, Liora saw only her father’s lifeless face, flashing her one last smile as he crumpled.

The arrow struck true, and a bright flash blinded her, but when the smoke had cleared, the dragon stood unfazed, save for a single missing scale covering its chest. It snorted, half in admiration, half in amusement, but all the same continued on its path towards the shrine. Liora tried desperately to channel her own mana, but a playful snort of fire from the monster left her bow and the hand that held it in cinders. She whispered a quiet prayer, either for salvation or a swift death.

A blinding flash lit the horizon. The dragon had other prey, but Liora was transfixed on a new glowing star in the night sky. Slowly, the faint light grew larger and larger, until suddenly she could see it—a thin, shimmering dart, perched on a trail of brilliant fire. An explosion rocked the earth and staggered the dragon, kicking up dust around her feet. A second later, a shrill whine and a thunderclap louder than any she had ever heard shattered every window that remained. But the silver dart was already gone, climbing high into the sky once again, a trail of sound lazily following behind it.

Another dragon? It must be. But who had ever seen a dragon so small? Who had ever seen one so fast, for that matter? In not even a second from when it last passed, it was already on the horizon again, and the beast that had been at her throat a minute ago was hot in pursuit. As the two creatures flew higher and higher, the last of the crimson light from the setting sun caught them, and Liora could see clearly.

The silver dragon was no more than ten meters across and polished as bright as any mirror. Where the dragon her father had fought rode on silent, gargantuan wings, this tiny beast roared louder than any she had heard before and flew on wings that neither flapped nor beat—prancing on a tail of fire brighter than any she had ever seen. The two creatures were locked in a heated fight. The black dragon pursued, firing bolts of purple flame. The silver beast charged in headlong, dodging and weaving.

The demonic dragon seemed to realize something and came to a halt mid-air, forcing the smaller and faster beast to overshoot. Glowing bursts of green fire that shattered into brilliant explosions peppered the skin of the demon, but it was unmoved. A searing jet of purple fire engulfed the silver dart.

For a few seconds, there was only silence, as the black beast watched the small, silver dragon fall down to earth, trailing smoke. Suddenly, a jet of white-hot fire erupted from the dart’s tail, carrying it skyward. Impossibly thin wings somehow held the tiny beast aloft and pushed it faster and faster. In a split second, it was back in the fight, and Liora whispered a silent prayer of thanks to the gods. The battle shifted. Both fighters had seemingly learned the rules of an incredibly complicated game, and the thin dart rocketed straight up into the sky. Its brilliant trail of white flame was quickly enveloped by thick clouds that clung to its skin, but it climbed higher and higher. The demon made desperate pursuit but was losing steam, lagging behind. A desperate bolt of purple flame seared off the tail of the small dragon, and the column of white flames it rode suddenly stopped. Liora held her breath.

The two flew freely, straight up into the heavens for what felt like an eternity, and at the apex of their flight, the victor would be decided. A purple glow filled the belly of the demon, shining brightly through its scales.

At the apex, the silver dart flipped and shot a lone bolt of smoky white fire that streaked impossibly fast across the distance. Corkscrewing through the sky, it matched every twist and turn the demon made in the air before finding its mark in the one gap in the great dragon’s armor.

For a split second, a great purple flash lit up the night sky, and the dragon fell in two smoking halves. The silver dart, now trailing crimson flames, spun wildly into the forest below. Liora’s heart sank, but moments later, a lone orange flower bloomed in the sky. Beneath it descended a battered and bruised man, no dragon at all.

Stifling tears for her father, Liora left the village behind and ran into the woods after him.