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– Chapter 25 of the Legends of the DragonRider

Directly south of the grand crater that is the site of the Utopian Citadel, there rises a great, jungle-choked plateau. It extends far to the east of it, bordered on the north and south by steep escarpments nearly half a mile tall, though it slopes more gently downwards at the ends. A road runs along it, thus – connecting the Kingdom of Arulco in the east with the Utopia while bypassing the highly irregular and rugged terrain that lay directly between the two. A short way west of the crater, this road then joins with another, leading north-to-south. The southern branch extends more south-easterly from there, towards Aldovia, while the northern branch crosses the river and joins with the main road connecting Ruritania in the west to the Utopia in the east – and, more importantly, its steadily-growing Caravansary, along with the rest of the enclaves clustered around the western side of the massive crater. As such, no roads or other navigable pathways attempt to actually pass the tall, imposing cliffs that border this southern plateau north and south.

Right now, however, as the Utopia lies besieged and attacked, there is a road under it – or, more precisely, a tunnel, dug out by a team of hardworking Brown Dragons, aiming to open up another front in the battle. Through it, a steady stream of troops are flooding the Utopia – Lizardmen and Kobolds, supported by a steadily-shrinking number of Brown Dragons. In support of this push, a massive war-camp has been established just south of the plateau, outside the reach of any of the Utopia’s defenses. Here, fresh troops are marshaled, organized and sent forwards through the tunnel to join in the attack, while wounded ones are carried back to receive treatment from Lizardfolk Shamans and Kobold Alchemists. A hastily-erected palisade wall partially encircles the encampment, jungle-trees have been swiftly cut down or simply torn up – roots and all – by the massive jaws of Brown Dragons, tents and lean-tos have been erected to provide shade, and the fertile black loam of the Utopia has been stomped into firm, flat ground by the passing of thousands of clawed feet.

In the midst of this large camp – which was still receiving new ‘residents’ as more lizardfolk warbands and kobold work-gangs arrived from the south to join them, their divisions having been spread out significantly over the course of the long march there – there sat a single Silver Dragon, surrounded by lizardfolk priests who hung on his every word. He was feeling very sorry for himself indeed. When Many-Mawed Takharsis had put out her call for all faithful dragons of the world to rally behind her, he had just recently fought an inheritance-duel with a conniving cousin – and though he’d undeniably won, the battle had left his wings shredded. By the time his Dragonhome departed to meet the call, those wings still hadn’t been fully healed – allowing him to fly, but only clumsily and with great effort, barely avoiding the dishonor of being left behind with the brooding females and hatchlings. He had not, however, been deemed fit enough to fight at the front lines of this crusade, earning glory and wealth as he struck down the heretical traitors – and thus had been left with this pathetic assignment… watching over the Lesser Races who had likewise rallied to the call of the Avaricious Goddess, and coordinating their pathetic efforts by way of various communication-spells.

Indeed, right now, some reports were streaming into his mind from the front. Apparently, while the northern arm of the ground-offensive remained stalled, the southern one – which he was part of – had penetrated the outer defenses of the heretical dragons’ castle, streaming into its lower levels. Still, so far they had seemingly failed to break through the defenders within the castle, or do any real damage – but there was a suggestion that, with a massive enough push, flooding the fortress with lizardmen and kobolds, that could swiftly be changed. It wasn’t an order, though, which left it somewhat at his discretion how many of the lizardfolk under his command he wanted to send surging through the tunnel, underneath the grand plateau that the camp was nestled against, and into the line of fire. Some were clearly needed to maintain the pressure, but if he sent all his reserves, and they all wound up dying… he’d have accomplished nothing at all, while wasting potentially valuable resources. What to do, what to do… well, for starters, he could start reciting the initial update on the southern front situation to the eager priests standing beside him, for dissemination to the various Warchiefs who were preparing to take their warbands through the tunnel, and thus put off the final decision for another minute or two…

He was still in the process of reciting this message and making up his mind – tending towards sending a massive surge of troops as suggested, in the hopes that they’d accomplish something that he could take credit for – when a disturbance at the camp’s eastern gate drew his attention. Central as his position was, he could see just about the entire encampment by just raising his head, atop his long, slender neck, and looking around – thus spotting a solitary lizardman, clearly badly injured and dragging himself along using a broken spear as a crutch, reaching the guards at that gate and exchanging some hurried words with them before limping inside. The guards looked rather disturbed at what they’d heard, and were readying their weapons, calling for more of their kind to join them.

As the silver dragon had halfway expected, the injured creature seemed to be making his way directly towards him to make a report, and his recounting of the front-situation soon drifted off as he stared down at the battered lizardman in curiosity. His scale-patterns were a bit different than most of his kind – instead of just being some mixture of brown, green, silvery and blue, with maybe a bit of yellow mixed in, he had a distinctive stripe of red scales running right from his nose, across his dorsal scales, and down his back to his tail-tip. At first, he’d taken it for blood, so vivid was the color. “Great, Silvery Lord…” the lizardman gasped, obviously exhausted, and as much knelt as collapsed before him. “I am Thraxl, of the Acako-Tribe. Our warband was heading here to join this righteous crusade, when we were ambushed in the jungle. I fear I am the only survivor – monsters came out of the green and tore through our ranks without pause or mercy!”

“An entire warband, wiped out?” The silver dragon asked, frustration seeping into his voice. Well, at least that explained why he hadn’t seen those scale-patterns before. This wasn’t just some scout, returning from a scuffle, but the leftovers of what would have been most welcome reinforcements, considering the massive push he was now contemplating. The wounded lizardman nodded jerkily, while a nearby shaman inched towards him, glancing up at the dragon for permission to begin healing his wounds. However, the silver had more important things in mind, especially when the battered warrior managed to gasp out a few more words. “Yes, Lord… I barely escaped… they were right behind me…”

And now, there were cries of alarm from the western gates. Cries that descended rapidly into gurgling. Lifting his head again, the dragon glanced over there, then blinked. There was… something at the gates, and it didn’t really resemble anything he’d seen before. ‘Monster’ did, indeed, seem to be the only word for it. Its head was equine, its torso would have been human-like was it not for the three rows of breasts that spilled down it in order of decreasing size… but its arms and legs were strangely skeletal and glittered like sweet gold, with the later being tipped by a nasty set of claws while the former terminated in dedicated weapons – a razor-sharp, single-edged knife on the right, and some kind of spear-like poniard on the left, which seemed capable of extending with significant force, based on the fact that it was currently poking out through the back of a lizardman’s skull. Several arrows were already sticking out of its fleshy bits, but they did not seem to deter it, and no wonder – to the silver dragon’s eyes, the dark, necromantic energies that wreathed this being were obvious. It was no living thing at all, but some form of undead horror! The lizardfolk could likely overwhelm it with sheer numbers, but they’d quite clearly lose a fair few of their numbers in the process, so perhaps it would be wiser if he dealt with this thing himself – one quick blast of his blue-fire breath would likely incinerate it thoroughly…

He had halfway spread his still-tattered wings to prepare for a quick jump to the western gate, when he heard the survivor cry out before him again – “Please, Lord, listen! That thing wasn’t alone – there was another, even fiercer beast, and it’s probably still lurking among the trees! It was…” the shout descended into uncontrollable hacking as the lizardman coughed up a not-insignificant amount of blood. Annoyed at this interruption, but worried about what this ‘fiercer beast’ might be, the silver lowered his head to glare at the wounded warrior. Around him, the whole encampment was coming alive, every head turning towards the western gate, with hundreds of warriors streaming there to firm up the defenses. It wasn’t as if they had proper gates, after all – it was just a palisade of heavy logs with roughly-sharpened points.

“Well, speak, then!” he demanded of the coughing, blood-spitting lizard. “What manner of beast did you see? Is it something of a magnitude to threaten a dragon?” The lizardman seemed to be trying to pull himself up straighter despite the loss of blood, but his voice was low and hoarse as he continued, forcing the silver to lower his head further in order to hear. “It may have been… a demon…” the warrior gasped out. “It was red as blood… bigger than a horse or a bull… moving through the jungle with impossible speed and agility… never seen anything like it…” then another bloody cough interrupted him again, and he drew in a shuddering breath. “Please, Lord… I need healing…”

Frustrated, the silver dragon lifted his gaze and opened his mouth to call on one of the lizardman shamans that always clustered around him to give this soldier some quick healing, just so that he could finish his report – but then froze. The nearest shaman – standing right next to the scribe who was taking down every word he said, checking the records for accuracy – looked frozen, wide-eyed and petrified. His mouth was open, but only a faint wheeze was coming from it and the scribe was the same way. There was some… nasty, bulbous, fist-sized, black thing perched on his scaly shoulder for just an instant before scurrying down his back and out of sight. The dragon’s sharp eyes darted around – whatever guards hadn’t already started moving towards the western gate, the other shamans, his personal attendants, all petrified, frozen in place, as if time itself had stopped.

His mouth was still hanging open when his gaze, zipping left and right in growing confusion, caught on something. Something big and blood-red, standing right in front of him, right where that wounded soldier had been just a moment ago. One of its forelegs looked strange, bent and twisted – but he had little time to process that sight, as the limb in question lashed out with the speed of a striking serpent, jabbing right into his half-open mouth. He couldn’t see that forelimb warp into a massive, jet-black spike in mid-movement, but he did get to hear the crunch as it jabbed through the soft tissue of his palate... and, with a bit more effort, the thin layer of bone that separated the back of his mouth from his brain stem. It was not a warrior’s blow, but an assassin’s – killing the huge and ancient beast before he even knew he was under attack, parting his brain from his spine with surgical precision. No amount of stamina, toughness or general constitution could allow a creature to survive that.

“I think it was a bicorn, ‘my lord’…” the red-coated stallion remarked tauntingly as he swiftly pulled his weaponized front leg back out of the dragon’s mouth, before the weight of its skull could snap its jaws shut, like a bear-trap, around the murder weapon. The limb slowly shifted back into a regular, albeit blood-red, horse-leg with a black hoof. Not that he looked entirely like a horse, color aside, of course – a pair of large, curled horns grew from his skull, jet-black yet speckled with tiny, diamond-like golden flecks. He was, after all, Keltinor – the bicorn leader of the Red Hand, the Utopia’s secret squad of wet-works monsters.

Keltinor quickly glanced around. The lizardfolk around him were starting to keel over – the paralytic toxin that had frozen them in place was starting to reach their heart and lungs. Here and there, he could see some of the bloated, tarantula-like spiderlings who’d carried out this mass assassination, lurking on awnings, the backs of armor-shirts, under robes, and anywhere else they could stay out of sight until it was time to strike – hiding behind the frozen corpses of their victims, but peering curiously out to see what was going out. He flashed them an appreciative smile, then turned his head east. With the distraction still drawing attention west, the eastern gate would be poorly-guarded, which he fully intended to make the most of – after all, it was likely only a matter of seconds before some sentinel managed to tear his eyes away from the distraction long enough to notice that everybody in the camp’s center was dead.

Sure enough, the alarm-cries started almost as soon as he began to move, but that was fine. He simply galloped through the camp, blasting anything and everyone that he saw on the way with bursts of destructive energy from his horns, aside from those that he could simply trample or run through without slowing. Now that he’d removed their leader and main communication-hub, his secondary objective was to spread as much chaos and fear among their ranks as possible, after all. The lizardmen were clearly unprepared for a beast such as him to charge through their encampment, starting from the center of it, and barely had time to even grasp what was happening, never mind raise their weapons, before he was gone again… tearing out through the eastern gate, dismembering the sentinels stationed there on the way. Once he was among the trees, dodging and jumping among trunks, curled roots and dangling vines with an ease that only a being that shared the blood of the Unicorns could hope to possess, any attempt to follow him was doomed from the start.

Then, it was just a matter of circling back south, then south-west, towards the prearranged rendezvous-point, where the rest of his abbreviated ‘team’ was waiting for him. He’d been away from the Utopia, on a mission to Commorragh, when word first got around about the impending invasion – and enemy action had delayed that word from reaching him, until it was almost too late. He’d set off immediately upon hearing about it, carrying his two comrades on his back, and only just managed to arrive back in the eleventh hour, with the invasion already underway… but, the journey – and the weight on his back that had slowed it somewhat – had been well worth it, he reflected as he stepped into a small clearing to find Penelope busily helping Heaina pull an arrow out of her back. After all, he’d departed alone, carrying only his devoted Equus servant with him, but returned with two able Red Hand members in tow, ready to jump directly into the action.

Yes… despite his initial misgivings, Heaina’s transformation had been both successful and spectacular. She’d retained her mind and soul, even after the agony of the process – and seemed entirely unconcerned about the fact that she’d effectively been reduced to a limbless torso in the bargain. Her new limbs – or, at least, the first set of new limbs she’d been provided with – had been crafted from the gold-plated bones of her original ones, and designed with her new role as a full-fledged Red Hand member in mind. The hooves could ‘open up’ into razor-sharp talons, useful for traction, climbing, or deadly kicks – while her hands could flip down to grasp her arm-bones, revealing in the process the lethal weapons usually nestled between them. More than enough to terrify a cadre of lizardfolk, especially when combined with the toughness of her undead flesh. Of course, as had been the whole idea of the process she underwent, she didn’t look like an undead – she had no deathly pallor, her heart still beat, her lungs still drew breath, her flesh remained soft, warm and subtle… with the nature of her limbs suitably disguised, she could easily pass for a living being.

The newest member of his team, Penelope, would be harder to disguise – but then, he didn’t intend for her to act as front-line personnel, as he’d also assured her when he originally recruited her. It was, indeed, quite hard to miss the fact that she was a Drider – well, sort of, anyway. Driders were generally identified as having the torso of a Drow – or, in more recent parlance, Drukhari – attached to the body of a spider in the fashion of a twisted sort of centaur. However, when the brilliant-yet-insane Haemonculus, Urien Rakarth, had finally created a true Drider race, capable of self-perpetuation, he’d gone through a large number of experiments on the way. Penelope, from what Keltinor had gleaned of her recollections, was one of them – her pale torso, along with her mind and memories, came from a young brunette halfling girl, born in the slave-pits of Commorragh. She’d received her name, along with tales of a sun-drenched world of green and gold, from her enslaved mother before they were separated – and when she managed to escape from Urien’s laboratory during the chaos of the Drow Civil War, she’d thus headed upwards with dogged determination.

It probably hadn’t been an easy journey, Keltinor reckoned – not that she seemed inclined to speak much of it. Unlike most of the creatures that people referred to as Driders, she hadn’t been designed to show off the fleshcrafting-abilities or general competence of her creator, but purely as an experiment, never meant to be seen by anyone else, or even function outside of the lab. Her spidery lower body, thus, was heavily bloated and barely able to carry its own weight, much less that of the much smaller, sturdy halfling torso sticking out of it – forcing her to support herself on her hands in order to move, and even then doing so only clumsily. Combined with the grossly bulging nature of her black arachnid abdomen, she cut a pitiful figure, reminiscent of a cripple dragging himself along the ground on a wheeled cart… but, this awkward shape belied her true power and deadliness, hence why he’d found her as a bullied minion of a trio of more traditional Driders, being used by them as a tool.

Quite clearly, the experiment she represented had been about procreation – and it had, in a sense, been highly successful. Penelope’s grotesquely swollen abdomen was capable of producing a steady stream of hand-sized ‘spiderlings’, misshapen tarantulas that bore a noticeable resemblance to her arachnid half, but lacked any of her humanoid features. They were, seemingly, mindless or nearly so… but they were also linked to their ‘mother’, and could act as her eyes and ears, as well as act like assassins thanks to their deadly, paralytic bites. It was, in all honesty, a frightening sort of power – even just the ability this granted her in terms of surveillance, communication and infiltration was fearsome – and only someone like Urien Rakarth could have created such a monster only to casually toss it aside as an experiment concluded.

However, this ‘monster’ was a friendly, and rather innocent, sort – who still retained the sunny disposition and carefree nature of the halfling she’d once briefly been. She looked up as he approached, quickly pulling out the arrow she’d been wiggling, and smiled hopefully. “Sir! Was that… okay? Did I time it right? I didn’t miss anybody in the area, did I?” Putting on as much of a reassuring expression as he could, considering his current, equine form, Keltinor nodded. “You did just fine, dear. For this being your first mission as a member of the Red Hand, you acquitted yourself very well indeed!” Sighing, he sent an additional helping of necromantic energy towards Heaina, helping the wounds she’d sustained while escaping from the lizardfolk at the gates close nigh-instantly, and eliciting a slight moan from her in the process. “On that note, I am rather sad that this is your first impression of the Utopia, Penelope. I assure you, it’s much nicer when it’s not under invasion…”

Penelope fiddled with the arrow in her hands, paying no attention to the blood still dripping from its barbed tip. “Oh, um, that’s nothing, Sir… I like it already! It’s… green, and sunny!” Well, that was the benefit of growing up in a Drow slave-pit, he supposed – it set your standards nice and low. “But… Sir… are you really sure they’ll actually let me live here? Even though I’m… like this?” Penelope continued, gesturing towards the whole back-end of her body. Keltinor smiled – without showing teeth, mind, since the row of fangs that adorned his otherwise-equine face tended not to register as ‘reassuring’ on people. “Of course I’m sure, Penny. They wouldn’t reject you on account of what you look like regardless, but now? You’re actually fighting in their defense, and straight outta the gate at that. You will be welcomed.”

Penelope’s smile was blinding – she had no issue showing her teeth, at least. She was also a very trusting person, even to a fault, Keltinor reflected. Not that he was lying, of course – based on the last communique that had gotten through to him before departing from Commorragh, the dragons were planning to offer permanent citizenship to anyone willing to stand in their defense at this crucial time. However, he was leaving out the rather large ‘if’ of the situation – namely, that the Utopia needed to still exist at the end of this battle, in order to provide the peaceful and unprejudiced home that Penelope so desired. And, late as he was to the party, there was a sharp limit to how much he could do to ensure that…

“What is our next move, Master?” Haeina queried just then, interrupting Penelope’s cheerful humming. She seemed… eager. More than ready to throw herself into the heat of battle again – no doubt trying to make up for all those missions where she’d been able to render only limited assistance, being very much a non-combatant. And, well, it was a good question, one that Keltinor carefully considered. Ideally, he’d be establishing contact with the Citadel, and whoever was in charge of strategy in there… but the Utopia’s magically-charged atmosphere had never played nicely with communication-spells, outside of the simple, line-of-sight based Sending. More complex message-carrying spells tended to just result in the recipient getting a brainful of mental static or, at best, a scratchy, partially-garbled message. And that was before a full-on goddess descended on the area, bringing her own aura of arcane power along. So, with no protocols established ahead of time… he was pretty much on his own.

Maybe they should go for the tunnel? Collapse it, on top of the lizardfolk? Wouldn’t be easy, and there were still enough Browns left to just dig it out again even if they managed it. His forces, ultimately, were limited. He needed to keep that in mind, and set a goal that they could realistically manage. Thus, taking a deep breath, Keltinor focused on the options he had, and made his choice – hoping, as he did, that it was the right one. Such was the curse of leadership. “Well, they’re going to be off-balance due to the loss of their leader for the moment…” he confidently declared. “So we’ll just work to keep them like that, hitting them every time they seem to be lowering their guard and making them nice and paranoid. As long as they’re on the defensive, they won’t be sending more troops to join the battle. And if we can keep ‘em locked down until the battle’s over, the Utopia’s forces will be easily able to encircle them and force a surrender.” Once again, there was an unspoken ‘if’ there… and, once again, it remained unspoken as his team, green recruits though they both essentially were, readily nodded and prepared to follow his orders.

“Hmm… lizardfolk reinforcements from the south seem to be drying up…” Lezard Valeth remarked casually as he sat on the empty air, carefully adjusting the farsight-spell that was allowing him to monitor the ongoing battle from his current position, several miles above the battlefield. “Some subtle strike on the southern encampment, I’d say. Whatever strategist they’ve put in charge knows his craft.” His dark-blue cloak rustled behind him as he thoughtfully ran his eyes over the expanding fronts – military strategy had never been a subject of particular interest to him, but he couldn’t deny a certain intellectual curiosity about the art. Perhaps, if he had not dedicated his life to studying the deep and forbidden secrets of magic, he could have been a strategist himself.

“Hrmph… what does it matter? The whole ground-war is little more than a distraction…” his companion remarked dourly. “A petty attempt by petty goddess to distract the defenders by throwing away thousands of lives that she considers beneath her notice. The battle will be determined in the air – that much should be clear.” Lezard shot the man an annoyed glance. There was plenty to be annoyed about there, honestly – starting with his hopelessly archaic dress-sense! A long, black, hooded robe… the default attire for a practitioner of magic who didn’t care too much about ethics or morality – at least, a hundred years ago or so! Lezard himself was, of course, dressed with a bit of class – purplish-blue vest and shirt, accented in bronze, with a white cravat and a high-collared cloak with a suitably decorative clasp. The clothes of a modestly wealthy nobleman or highly successful merchant, unlikely to raise too many eyebrows, yet embroidered with enough subtle runes and arcane symbols to make him recognizable as a wizard to those in the know.

Well, you had to make certain allowances when you worked with… veterans in your field, he reminded himself and put on a fake smile. “You are undoubtedly right about that, Raistlin…” he thus answered pleasantly. “But, we have little to do right now, other than await the conclusion of this battle, and hope that it ends in a way favorable to our plans. So why not pass the time with some mental stimulation? I hear it’s a good way to… ah, stay young, yes?” He’d almost said ‘ward off senility’ but, by now, he’d more or less concluded that the fearsome old Magus had little, if any, sense of humor.

It seemed like the black-robed mage had heard the unspoken words all the same, though, and he glanced over at Lezard with vague annoyance – a somewhat unnerving sight, in and of itself, what with the man’s strangely golden skin and hourglass-shaped pupils. Supposedly, those eyes saw the future of all things, in the worst possible way – the fall and decay of everything that today was young and vibrant. Perhaps, to them, Lezard himself looked like a withered old man too, or a rotting corpse… but then, that was just a rumor, one of the many that surrounded the legendary Black Mage. Based on their first encounter, Lezard could appreciate why so many rumors had sprung up around him – he’d been a truly terrifying opponent, and without the assistance of Aelia the Spear, the green-armored mercenary who’d dragged him into that battle in the first place, he likely could not have persevered against him.

With a dry sigh, Raistlin turned his eyes back down towards the ongoing battle, watching the bright sparks that represented blasts of dragonflame and deadly spells. “True, I suppose…” he remarked, somewhat grudgingly. “And I must confess to some curiosity about their strategy with regards to their civilians. They all marched into the castle before the attack, but now it’s a war-zone – fighting across the lower levels, certainly, and it’s only a matter of time before more of the attackers start breaking through that shield to hit the upper levels too. So where are they hiding all those people? I do not sense the kind of… flood of souls that such a massacre would entail.”

Lezard smiled. Raistlin, he’d learned by now, could be quite diplomatic, even charming, when he wanted to be – meaning, when he stood to gain by it. A valuable skill, and one he’d never quite managed to master himself – most people seemed to find him insufferably arrogant and overly sarcastic, for some reason, though they tended to put up with him anyway, for… well, much the same reason: Because they stood to gain by it. Because they wanted something from him. Just like dear old Raistlin did. “Ah, I had been wondering about that myself…” he said out loud, settling down into a more comfortable, mid-air recline. Regardless of what the conclusion of this battle might bring with it, he could think of worse ways to spend the time until then than talking shop with the ruthless, but undeniably knowledgeable, Magus of the Black Robes. “But, I do have a theory – have you noticed the vague, infernal emanations from the lowest reaches of that massive castle? It seems the benevolent dragons have been bartering with demons – and I know from experience that such bargains can sometimes pay unexpected dividends…”

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PREVIEW ENDS. Want to find out how the evacuees are getting on, how the battle is progressing, and how it will all end? Then go read the full story on my Discord, link is in my Profile! It's one of my longest stories to date, at just over 100 pages.