Wild Wastes 6 -ch 13-

Legion of Yosemite forces were wandering around the fortress, though in a very systematic way.

Moving in squads they were checking every square inch of the place. Going over it with eye, hand, and magical senses.

They’d found a number of caches, hidden passage ways, storage rooms, and even a sex-room of sorts.

A great deal of wealth, trophies, useful objects, even.

But no Emperor.

There was an obvious chest missing from what was likely the Emperors personal room as there was a clear and unmistakable position where it would have been. A very heavy chest, given how deep the imprint was on the rug it’d rested upon.

Additionally, there was a general lack of clothes that the Emperor would be the owner of.

The realization that was becoming ever more crystal clear was that the Emperor had fled at some point.

Likely, a while ago.

Several Dragons, a Dragon-Newt, and some seventy servants were all on their knees in front of Vince as he sat upon the Emperor’s throne.

Next to him was a silver platter Ynes had wrangled from somewhere. Loaded on top of it was a heap of Dragon and Dragon-Newt hearts.

Anyone who had surrendered had been spared, anyone who hadn’t, was now being carried off to the Duke of Denver.

Courtesy of the nearest Dragon garrison.

Undead Dragons and Dragon-Newts would be very helpful to the Duke, so Vince had sped them off with haste.

Fresh corpses are always better aren’t they? He can likely have them healed up, then ressurect them, and maybe even get something special out of them.

Didn’t hurt that Safina practically froze them before lift-off.

Should arrive in as best a condition as I can manage.

“I’ll make this simple so my lord doesn’t have to bother,” Ynes declared, stalking away from Vince’s side. She held one mace loosely in a hand. The other was hanging from it’s hook at her waist. Both were liberally covered in blood. Ynes had single handedly killed at least two Dragons that Vince had seen. “I don’t care about morals. I don’t care about laws. I don’t… I don’t care. About any of that!

“I just don’t care. It’s that simple. I don’t care. Is that sinking in yet? I don’t care. I-don’t-care.

“You’re all guilty of taking up arms against Vince Campbell, lord of Yosemite, first to inherit the Imperial crown of Legion.

“So I don’t care. Now… with that said.”

Ynes walked up to the Dragon that Vince had quite literally, though accidentally, cut her tongue out. Her face was damaged badly, one of her eyes missing, and she was holding her jaw in place.

Every time she breathed, from the nose down, her face moved in different directions.

Lifting her mace up, Ynes tapped it against the Dragon’s temple.

She winced, peering up at Ynes with her one good eye.

“Your one saving grace, for all of you, is you might have information for me. Information for me, is information for my lord, that is,” Ynes continued. She stood there, staring at the wounded Dragon that would clearly be unable to talk. “For some of you, information might be given through writing it down. You may thank me later for being a generous Dryad to allow you the opportunity to save your life.”

Ynes emphasized her point by tapping the Dragon with her mace again. Then the Dryad slowly looked around the room to everyone gathered there.

No one responded or said anything at all.

Sighing, Ynes looked down to the Dragon.

The woman grunted, blinked her one good eye, then held up her empty hand toward Ynes and made a grabbing motion.

“Oh? Oh! Wonderful. I’m glad for your willingness to help. Let’s get you a place to write things out then. If it goes well, we’ll get you all healed up and go from there,” Ynes promised.

Then she lifted her gaze to the guards on the far wall.

Without saying anything, or even gesturing, several broke away from the formation and came over. They carefully scooped up the wounded Dragon and took her away. Leading her out of the auditorium.

“Alright, well, I guess that’s the extent of it,” Ynes said. “No one else wants to talk? Then… then I guess that’s it.

Then a beautiful smile crossed her face. One that could turn the head of any man or woman that saw it.

She cocked her mace back and brought it down atop the head of a pretty Red Dragon. It the metal end of it smashing into the woman’s skull.

The Dragon was propelled face first into the ground. Planting into the tiles and laying there.

Before anyone could react, Ynes brought her arm back and brought the mace down into the back of the Dragon’s head. Then she did so several more times.

The body of the Dragon twitched, flexed, and spasmed with each strike. Even though their head had long since been pulped to mush, the body quivered with every hit.

Ynes stopped and then stood there, panting over the body.

Blood had splattered across her face, which gave her glowing eyes, and radiant smile, an awful appearance. The beautiful Dryad was not in her right mind and never had been.

In these moments it became readily apparent that Ynes was for all intents and purposes, probably crazy. That most of it was bottled up and barely contained behind her smile at the best of times.

Grunting, Ynes pulled the dead Dragon over onto it’s back. She then pulled a knife out of her kit somewhere.

With a rough shove she thrust it down into the chest of the Dragon. Jerking at it one way, then the other, she made a gap between the ribs.

She put the knife down, then smacked her mace against the rib bones. There was a sharp crackling noise as they all broke at the strike.

Reaching in with her free hand she stuck her hand into the chest cavity of the Dragon. She looked up to the ceiling as she blindly felt around inside.

“Ah! Perfect,” murmured Ynes before jerking her arm out of the Dragon.

A heart with a long section of what looked like veins and arteries came out with it. She lifted the heart up to her mouth and neatly trimmed off the extra bits with her teeth till it was just a heart by itself.

Walking over to Vince she set it down on the platter.

“For you, my dearest,” purred the Dryad. “From your beloved Flower Pot with love.”

Ynes smiled at him, wrinkled her nose, then went over to the next Dragon in the line.

“I’ll tell you everything I know!” shrieked the man, holding his hands up. “The Emperor went south! To the Tri-Lliance lands!”

“Yes! Yes! He’s going to have a government in exile there!” added another Dragon.

“We’re all soldiers of the Tri-Lliance! We were sent here to help and defend the territory!” someone else pitched in.

“Feris save us!” squealed a Dragon-Newt.

There was an odd echo that Vince heard at the same time inside of his head, and then in his grove. A mindless, desperate, prayer for salvation.

From a young Dragon-Newt named Tennie that was here in front of him.

“I hear you, Tennie,” Vince said as he stood up out of the throne. He began walking straight toward the Dragon-Newt. “I hear you on behalf of Feris. I hear your prayer. I will give you your safety.

“For who am I if not your lord?”

“You… Feris… what?” whispered the Dragon-Newt.

Then the prayer she’d made earlier came back, though much louder this time.

He could hear it plainly as if she were speaking to him.

“Lord of Dragons? S-save me and let me live?” prayed the Dragon-Newt.

“Yes, Tennie. I’m the Lord of Dragons. I will sav eyou and let you live,” Vince confirmed and stood in front o fher. He reached down and put his hand on the top of her head. “Now… let’s start from the beginning again. I want all the details.

“Tell your lord… everything… about the Emperor and the Tri-Lliance. Tell me who would know more and give it all to me.”

“Yes, my lord. I’ll tell you everything,” whispered Tennie in a voice that was almost too hard to hear.

The echoing promise that came through her faith was as if she screamed it, even if it was the same words.

Vince grasped that, fed it back to Tennie through his hand on her head, and blessed her with his grace.

Her eyes shot wide, her pupils dilated, and he could practically hear her soul vibrating inside of her.

“My lord… the Emperor left this fortress as soon as you began to bring the lands to glory,” began Tennie in a strange tone.

***

Vince sighed, looked to Sam, and shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m not any good at summarizing this,” Vince confessed what was likely already known. “Think you can paraphrase it for the comms? I’d probably just sum it up as… Emperor bailed, Tri-Lliance responsible, planned as a puppet-war, Emperor is in the Tri-Lliance.

“That and I think this violates our treaty, if you ask me. But I’m not a politician or a legal expert.”

“I’ll handle it. Then you can handle me and show me what an expert you are at getting me to moan,” Sam stated, one hand coming up and running two fingers along Vince’s jaw to his chin. “If you don’t do your job as well as you can, you’ll have to keep trying till you meet my approval. I’m sure I can handle your attentions for a while.”

Sam flew off towards where the communications array was in the siege line.

The smaller communications with the Legionnaire’s were good for many things, but sending a message all the way back to Europe was beyond it’s ability.

Especially confident communications that would be going to Petra.

Vince nodded his head once, then lifted up the heart he’d been eating. Taking a bite of it he chewed quietly.

This was thankfully the last one.

Listening to Tennie as well as the others had taken more than a while. The sun was approaching the horizon.

“I feel better,” Ynes pronounced.

“What? Why?” asked Johanna, sounding confused.

Ynes didn’t answer, instead, she hit Johanna with her magnificent smile. She’d thankfully cleaned the blood off her face as well as her armor.

Johanna’s eyebrows rose up though she didn’t say anything else. Instead she held Ynes gaze for several seconds before turning to look at Vince.

He briefly wondered if Johanna had figured out that Ynes felt better for killing people. Perhaps even killing the unarmed Dragon that’d surrendered.

“Well, it’s a goal met, even if it wasn’t the way we wanted it. Or the goal exactly as we wanted it,” Johanna murmured. “It’ll still be a win one way or the other.

“Last I looked at a map, this and a few minor kingdoms north of here were the only holdouts.

“Now with this location put down, I imagine the forces here will move that way and put more pressure on it.”

“That’s probably true, yeah,” Vince agreed. “Pretty sure Yaris has made them offers to become Dukes rather than just being cut off at the knees.

“Given this development… I hope they’ll take it. They have to see that there’s no real ability for them to hang on any longer. That continued resistance is pointless and will just make it harder for us to accept any concessions in the future.

“But… we’ll see. We’ll see. I suppose that’s not really my problem since it’s all polite and civil so far. The Emperor just happened to be inside of our territory so we couldn’t leave him alone.”

“Do we need their territory?” Safina asked, tilting her head to one side and looking to Vince.

“Not really. If we’re being honest about it, we can just insure our border is clear, drop a bunch of magical walls, and call it a day,” admitted Vince. “It’s one of the reasons we’re pushing them, but not outright attacking them.”

Everyone nodded their heads.

“Now what do we do?” Renata asked and put her hands on her head before stretching her back one way than the other. “Are we done for the day? Should we take the portal back?”

“Aren’t they busy?” Canae asked. “When we came through the portal didn’t have much of a line but that was to get here.

“The line to go back looked pretty clogged up. We’re not really on a priority other than who we are. Given how much power it takes to keep them powered and running… well, it’s just harder to push to the front. Isn’t it?”

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Those portals eat up power and even with mages to power them, or to hook them to power sources, they still have costs.

With all the wars, Felix clearing out his original world, and everything else, the portals are taxed.

“We’ll check and see if there’s any groups heading to Yosemite that we can slip into and join,” Vince suggested. “If there isn’t… well… we do have two very fast and sleek Dragons. We can just fly there.”

Renata perked up at that and gave Vince a grand smile and clapped her hands together. Bouncing in place as she did so.

Her Legionnaire’s armor didn’t do much to prevent her from bouncing splendidly.

“Yay! That sounds exciting and wonderful! Ride me, Vince. Ride me,” purred Renata, moving toward him. “Then you can show me your home and everything there. Where you grew up.

“I’ve heard that your original home is still there. Isn’t it? I’d like to visit it!”

Vince found he couldn’t help but smile at the bubbly Orange Dragon.

“Yeah, it’s still there. Though we all moved out of it to that planar house on Legion World that Petra and Yaris set up. I don’t know what the old house is used for now.”

“It’s a museum,” Safina added helpfully. “I read about it in some down time when I was in the south of spain. It’d been included in the orientation packets that they were going to give to some of the nobility if the surrendered.”

“Wait, if it was going to the nobility, why’d you have it?” Dalia asked.

“Oh, I just borrowed it. I put it back before they even noticed it was gone,” Safina stated with a wide smile. “No one even noticed it’d happened.

“By the way, did you know that Vince has been shot at least seventy times? There’s even a handful of rounds that’d been dislodged from his body on display.

“Supposedly… there’s even a shrine somewhere in the city that his missing finger is at. They found it after the battle and immediately went to preserve it.

“That wasn’t in the packet though, that was just rumors I’d heard when working with the front line soldiers.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the rumors. Since we’ll have some time to talk as we fly, since I don’t think we’ll find a group with room, you can tell us what’s true and what isn’t, Vince.”

Let’s see if we can convince Renata to fly ahead. Really fast.

That’s not a conversation I’d really like to have.

***

Walking in through the front gates of Yosemite, Vince was excited.

Incredibly so.

Canae, Dalia, Safina, and Renata, had humored him and put an enchantment on him. For all intents and purposes, he looked like a Legionnaire soldier in Legion armor.

He wouldn’t stand out in any way.

Even those who were with him weren’t well known.

The only one who could give the game away was Red, who had also been given an enchantment. Right now she just looked a lot like Renata, though a Red Dragon.

The security which had once been paranoid and extreme, now felt rather lax in comparison.

Yosemite’s gate guards performed a perfectly cursory inspection of the group and what they had on them, but also had clearly been unconcerned with his party.

“Ah, it’s much tamer than I expected,” Safina said as they walked down the street.

The walls that’d once been filled with soldiers now only had sentries in a normal number. The siege machines were manned, but those on duty didn’t look concerned.

There were new towers interspersed along the walls and each one had a Dragon on it.

“Tamer?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know… I just… well… this is where it all started. This seems more like one giant neighborhood,” Safina explained. She gestured to a patio that had half of it’s tables filled with families eating a meal.

Almost every family had a child with them, though there were several that had more than three. Safina’s point of it feeling very neighborhood was looking to be quite true.

“It was like this in the start, too,” Red growled. “Red remembers. It was all… very friendly. United. Red has always felt good, here. This is Red’s hometown and Red would do whatever Red had to, to defend it.”

Walking along the road, the bells began to chime from a clock-tower that Vince didn’t recognize. It was perched near the dead center of the city and rose up at least twenty or so floors.

He didn’t miss the fact that there was a great deal of Legion tech at the top of it pointing into the sky, either.

Though now that he took a moment to really think about what he was looking at, most of Yosemite had been modernized.

Converted into a Legion city.

With electric lights in nearly every home and very obvious antennas pitched on top of pillars in the corners of the roofs. They were receiving broadcasts though Vince didn’t know of what type.

If he had to guess, it was likely both radio and television.

All the Ratkin living atop the houses also had electricity and small were wired into the satellites as well it seemed.

Won’t be long before they have internet.

Or the Legion equivalent.

“Ah, that’s Vince’s house. Let’s go, let’s go,” Renata cheered happily. “Vince is going to ride me for the first time tonight.

“In his old bed, in his old room, maybe? That’d be exciting!”

“No, we’re going to keep exploring for a bit,” Ynes countered. “Being here in Yosemite is exciting and we should go see what sights we can before they close up for the evening.

“Tomorrow we probably have new orders and will be going elsewhere. I don’t think we’ll get to explore much.”

All valid points though… riding Renata.

That sounds like a lot of fun, actually.