Blaze of Glory (Archemi #7): Chapter One

Five thousand feet below my position, the city of Lovi burned.

Pillars of flame boiled unchecked into the sky from the once-white towers of the Revalan royal palace. Muzzle flash from artillery lit up the streets in waves of twinkling lights, the rolling boom of mortars reduced to pops and bangs by distance. The simmering carcass of Ilia's defeated flagship, the Sol Invictus, still smoldered where it had fallen. Its magitech engines belched clouds of toxic smoke into the haze that hung over the city like a mourner's veil. Ilian airships encircled the walls, raining death down on the rebels fighting house-to-house in the streets. We had arrived in the nick of time.

"Second Fleet is in position, all commanders reporting in." Suri's voice, as calm and disciplined as always, purred over the group audio link. "Wind holding steady, no signs of interception. Ilian airwave traffic is going crazy now the ground forces have rolled in.  Waiting for your signal, chief."

A mixture of ash and snow slithered over the smooth face of my helmet, my armor, and over the scales of my dragon as Karalti glided toward those burning city walls. Behind us, another two hundred dragons trailed us in the gloom. White, blue, green and silver, they glided behind us in disciplined, arrow-shaped formations.

"We’re closing on the city now. Get Rutha on the radio; tell Ilia their 'reinforcements' are arriving T-minus five minutes from the eastern front." I squeezed the grips of Karalti's saddle, venting the pre-combat tension through my hands.

"10-4. Stay on the line. All officers copy." Suri muted herself, no doubt to start the flooding of hijacked Ilian communications channels. Those channels were magical in nature, spell-based 'radios' pioneered by Rutha of Vasteau, the former Court Sorceress of Ilia. Rutha was now on our side, currently in the belly of the Second Fleet capital ship - where she was coordinating the hacking of those same channels.

A giddy feeling built inside me as I focused on our distant target: the three hundred or so warships encircling Lovi. As we came within spotting range, my dragon spat a small gout of white fire into the air, a signal to the flights behind us, then backwinged over like a hunting swallow with Split Turn. Supernaturally nimble, Karalti pulled above and slightly behind her brothers and sisters. The fire and our change of position was the cue for the officers leading each color-sorted wing. As one, they put dragon horn trumpets to their lips. An eerie, mournful chorus wailed across the battlefield - the sound played by the Knights of St. Grigori to announce incoming reinforcements.

"Look! Hector! They're rushing to the decks!" Karalti's entire back flexed as she strove up into the thin, frigid air. From underneath, she was invisible against the dark sky. Kneeling up, I grasped the saddle straps and bent over her shoulder to look, weaving my head like an eagle to zoom in on the distant Ilian ships. Sure enough, small knots of soldiers had formed - soldiers with telescopes, gesturing to their comrades. Some of the soldiers cheered, throwing their arms up in victory. Others rushed off to report the good news belowdecks. The dragon knights were here! Victory was certain!

I smiled thinly. It sure is. "Get into range. Suri, Gar, advise the captains to start moving.”

All four commanders of what had been Ilia's greatest weapon - the dragons of the Eyrie - flew towards their old banners like a flight of arrows, bugling war cries. Even knowing the dragons were now hive-bonded to their queen, MY queen, a lump of doubt rose in my throat. The Knights of St. Grigori had been ordered to betray their own nation, their own ruler, and there was still a tiny chance that all two hundred and four of them would somehow break that tentative instinctual loyalty to Karalti and side with their former masters. But as we watched, the formations took their planned routes, heading for the Ilian command vessels. My chest swelled as the Rose One and Silver Two wings – led by Skyra Tanghe on Kivrakh, and Skyr Delmonte on Ishilteth – closed in to either side of the Ilian capital ship.

“Rose One and Silver Two in position, Green and Blue following in.” I broadcast over the VC. “We’re lining up, and then it's hammer time.”

"Yeah! The payback is gonna be AWESOME!” Karalti, now nearly hundred feet of sleek muscle and aerodynamic black opal scales, tilted her wings and pulled herself into a parabolic dive: intentionally stalling, swinging her legs forward and arching her spine to plunge backwards, almost vertically, from the sky. “Hold onto your panties, Hector: We’re going down!"

I couldn’t even respond telepathically as the move drove all the breath from my lungs. Gravity crushed me down and smeared me back like the hand of God himself; the wind ripped at my body, every seam in my suit and every port in my helmet shrieking musically as the mingled smells of sulfur, slagged metal and ozone forced in. I clung to the saddle grips with hands and feet, laughing until my voice broke. The pre-combat high was so intense that my hands and feet felt hot.

“Ten seconds… five…” Karalti plummeted, wings tightly folded to her body. Faster and faster, until she suddenly twisted into a swift horizontal glide toward the Ilian fleet. The ships had taken their typical formations around the dragons, spacing out to give the nimbler fliers room to maneuver between aircraft. We had been counting on them doing that exact thing. Dividing the herd.

"GO GO GO!" I yelled over the VC, bracing myself in preparation to leap. “GET IN THERE AND START SLAMMING!”

Karalti banked and yawed, zooming over one of the confused rear-guard destroyers. Her jaws gaped, and wordless, rumbling roar boomed through the air as she engaged a special organ in her throat – a sound suddenly overlaid with a second brilliant, piercing note that burst through the airships like a lance of pure sound.

Queensong of Life and Death III

The Queensong is a special, magically-charged vocalization which allows your queen to communicate with fellow dragons—and other species—at vast distances. It is unique to each queen dragon, reflecting and magnifying the elemental Words of Power written into their genes.

Your dragon has the Queensong of Life and Death. Three times per day, she may emit a cry which—at her discretion—either restores 60% of her allies’ maximum stamina (to a maximum of 250 allies) or causes the Fear and Nausea debuffs to susceptible opponents (to a maximum of 250 enemies).

The Queensong is a magical ability, not a sonic attack, and is therefore not affected by the Mute status. However, powerful anti-magic fields (Level VI or above) will nullify the effects of the Queensong. The Queensong will in turn degrade the effectiveness of anti-magic fields, weakening them by one spell level.

Karalti’s Queensong rocked the aircraft in front of us and sent three scouters careening out of the air as the pilots were blinded with the sudden terror and nausea. But Karalti’s Queensong didn't have that effect on the dragons... not the ones that had come with us, and not the ones who had still been fighting alongside the Ilians. As the Queensong touched the hundred-or-so dragons still controlled by the enemy, they activated like Manchurian candidates. As one, dragons and riders broke free of the lingering threads of the Diamond Pact and turned on the Ilian forces without a second of hesitation.

Wingleader III

Your dragon telepathically calls to your allied dragons, uniting them into a fearsomely determined unit. Your queen dragon selects up to 100 allied dragons who will instinctively form a unit at her direction, gaining immunity to fear for 10 minutes, +15% speed and +15% damage against one individual target.

The closest dragons fell on the stunned airships like locusts. A squad of four went berserk, turning on the nearest Destroyer and blasted it with gouts of blue-white lightning. The Light element damage tore the airship’s magical shields apart like spider webs, leaving the metal-clad vessel completely open to the artillery that opened on it from above. Explosions rocketed through the ship, tearing through the upper hulls and engines and sending it lurching from the sky, belching smoke. And from above it… four hundred Vlachian ships, their hulls painted a dark blue-gray, descended from cloud cover. Sirens blared from every deck as they unloaded artillery on the stripped and confused Ilian Eastern flank.

Karalti frantically teleported a short distance away to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. She shrieked in alarm, broadcasting an imperative to every dragon within telepathy range. “Everyone! Burst Flight, now!”

The order scythed through the ranks of dragon knights – those we had brought with us, and those suddenly yielding to the will of their Queen. Confused riders who had been flying for Ilia yelled at their mounts, beating on their backs to no effect as the freed dragons twisted away from their targets and flashed away from the melee. Usta's brood had an innate ability, Burst Flight, that allowed them to briefly vanish and reappear at supernaturally-high speeds. The rolling rapport of their sonic booms tore over the deafening drumfire of the Vlachian assault - but half a dozen dragons, struggling with rebellious riders, didn't obey Karalti fast enough. Artillery fire tore through wings and limbs and sent them spiraling toward the earth like broken kites.

"No! Hector, please call off the assault! They're dying!" Karalti keened, abruptly cutting off her Queensong. Terror and grief both slashed through the Bond. “I can’t control tenough of them at once!”

"Hold it together, girl." I laid my will, my focus over hers. We weren't close enough to help them. Or at least, not all of them. "Teleport in and brace that blue's port flank, now! We both cast healing magic on him at the same time!"

Karalti’s focus intensified on her stricken brother, and there was a brief pause of darkness and cold before she materialized under him. The terrified blue let out a high, whistling screech as we practically collided with him in the air - and joined him in falling until Karalti braced his destroyed wing with her body and snapped her left wing out to straighten them out into a proper spiraling dive. The blue’s huge leathery wing nearly pinned me flat to my saddle, close enough for me to slap a hand against it.

"Ikizt y’lanihaat nefesuu, yildizla’man shihben chizierum!" We chanted together.

Pale green light pulsed from us and through the dragon's body - and he cried out again, this time in surprise, as his shattered bones liquified and flowed back together, plumes of glowing blue blood sucked back in and transmuted by magic into newly healed flesh. Even the most powerful herbal or alchemical healing potions couldn't have done this - or given the dragon the strength to push off Karalti and back out into the air. The blue head and the wild-eyed dragon knight on the blue's back twisted toward as Karalti, panting with effort, frantically beat her wings and veered to avoid crashing into the city walls.

"We did it!" She sounded exultant and exhausted both, climbing back into the air with determination. "But the others-"

"We can't save everyone. We have to focus on the battle." I hated every second of it, every scream of every fallen dragon, but there were no brakes on an assault. The overwhelming force of the Vlachian 2nd Fleet thundered toward Lovi like a fast-moving storm, wreaking havoc on the ambushed Ilian ships. Weakened by magically-charged blasts of lightning, the inferior Ilian craft stood little chance against Vlachian firepower. White-hot mortar fire pounded against shells of blue light until they shattered; engines whined and belched smoke as airships veered off course and sunk toward the earth. Ilia's fighter craft - small, truck-sized two-man skirmishers the size of fighter jets but much slower - were no match for the maneuverability of Vlachian Dragoons. Fighters disappeared under clouds of shrieking quazi, who tore their guns off the ships and flung them away. The mages on their backs disenchanted their defenses - and their engines. The great golden rings that powered them ceased floating, turning the skirmishers into bombs that struck other ships as they fell from the sky.

"Illuminata closing in within symphonic array range on the Illian command ship. How's it lookin' out there, Hector? Gar?" Suri's voice, breathy as if she'd been running, broke through the deafening roar.

"Still alive. Dragons are taking hits, but the ones still under Ilian control heard the call and they're out of harm's way." I had half an eye on my Kingdom Management System, watching as the mass troop counts - airships, dragons, dragoons - slowly ticked down as the Ilians inflicted sporadic casualties. I was about to order repositioning when a brilliant flash from the city caught my eye. My head swiveled in time to catch a second explosion, and a flotilla of smaller aircraft rising from the fortressed hill around Lovi palace... aircraft that made the armor-clad Vlachian warships look like medieval relics.

"We’re taking losses but holding steady, but- uhhh…" Gar grunted over the line. "What the hell is THAT?"

"What the hell is-" the question died on my lips as I turned on Karalti's back and looked up. The clouds were inverting over Lovi Palace, funneling upward and then spreading out in concentric rings. Monkey brain wanted to stare and gape at the unfolding spectacle. Soldier brain knew better.

"All units, IMMEDIATELY withdraw from the vicinity of the Palace Hill!" I slammed a system-wide alert through the Mass Combat System, targeting every allied unit: ships, heroes, dragons. "ABORT, ABORT, ABORT!"

The F.A.M ships and the dragons we had brought from Myszno were already steaming away from the city, hounding the Ilian ships as they tried to flee the slaughter. But most of the Second Fleet were engaged with Mercurions and Ilian holdouts just east of the palace. They were doing their best to obey orders, the battle formations pivoting as they were harried. To my surprise, several of the sleek, deadly Mercurion destroyers also formed up and began to gun it away from the combat, firing potshots behind them. The Dracul was the only ship that didn't move. The massive juggernaut of acontinued to blast waves of antimagic force ahead of itself, covering the smaller Second Fleet ships as they curved around and gunned it for the perimeter.

"Dracul, get out of there! Rose One and Two, Silver Three, form up! Eyes on me!" I watched in alarm as the concentric rings began to ripple and wobble. The snow was picking up in force, but getting wetter. Ice slapped against my armor as Karalti roared to her kin, winging around to face the oncoming... whatever was happening.

"The fuck is going on?" Suri's voice was tight over the voicechat. "Nethrys, Jamal... you see anything from the ground?"

"Negative. Weird sky," Nethrys grunted back.

My pulse pounded in my ears as Karalti caught a rising thermal and let it lift us higher. The wings I'd called slid into position behind us, leveraging their Burst Flight ability to catch up to us in pulses of super-sonic speed.

"Wait." Nethrys' voice broke through the chatter again. "I see something now. Looks like a drag-"

A high-pitched pulse of sound shattered the air, my eardrums, and caused Karalti and the other dragons to shriek with agony. A wave of white lightning rippled through the cloud rings in every direction, and my stomach lurched as Karalti's body sagged beneath mine.

"Hector, I can't..." her telepathic voice was small and frightened as she swooned from the air and began to fall.

"FUCK!" I managed to catch my saddle just in time, lifting up and slamming back into it. Karalti's wings flapped limply beside her body as she and every other dragon began tumbling bonelessly toward the shattered city below.

"Abort! Abort! Get the fuck out of there!" Suri screamed over the line. At me, at Nethrys. She never screamed.

I was too shocked to be scared as I clung to my dragon's back, fighting simply to hang on as we spun into a fatal dive. The sky was suddenly full of falling bodies - and falling ships, as a bloom of raw black energy pulsed down through the hole in the sky and turned the whole world blinding white.