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A portal opened on a large, ornately-decorated wall in the main hall of Lord Kaiser's palace. Its inky, pitch-black surface rippled like water in a pond being showered with raindrops. A small, cloaked, shivering figure tumbled through it, quickly rising to his feet and breathing a sigh of relief as the portal closed and disappeared behind him.

Looking to his left and right, the figure scampered up the stairs towards the living quarters, lowering his hood and revealing the twitching ears of a disheveled and unkempt-looking fox. He dreaded the reaction he would get from his master upon hearing his report, and hoped that the stories he'd heard of previous messengers delivering bad news were only fabrications, or at the very least, exaggerations.

The door in front of him stretched high overhead, taller than many of the buildings in the world he had just returned from. It was made of solid gold and encrusted with countless jewels taken from each one of his Lord's realms. The fox saw that it had been left open a crack; Kaiser was expecting him, and he didn't like to be kept waiting. Slipping through the opening, the fox ran inside the darkened room.

"Well, what have we here?" The dry, deep voice echoed throughout the chamber, as imposing and fear-inducing as the massive dragon that it came from. At the center of the room, bathed in harsh lighting shining down on him from the ceiling, Kaiser sat on his throne, a huge, menacing thing carved out of black onyx. As with each of the previous times he had entered this room, the fox found it impossible to judge its scale, knowing only that the massive muscular deity towered over everything else in it, or in the rest of the realm of Ardallen, for that matter. His piercing amber eyes narrowed as a wry, knowing smile spread across his lips. "And just how did contact with the newly discovered world fair, my shivering little slave? Did they accept the offer to join my kingdom?"

"M-my Lord," the fox began, bowing his head and avoiding eye contact, both out of respect and of fright. "The n-negotiations were-- they were unsuccessful. T-the people of that world-- humans, they're called-- would not even hear what I-- I had to say."

He braced himself for the dragon's wrath, expecting to be suddenly lunged at, grabbed, and squeezed to death, or something much worse. But instead, he only heard a booming laugh, vibrating throughout the room and terrifying him. Looking up, he saw Kaiser rub his chin with two long red fingers, his thick arm muscles flexing as he did so. "I suppose that is to be-- expected. After all, from what I've observed, these measly little maggots -- humans, did you call them? -- they've always seemed rather full of themselves."

Within an instant, the dragon jumped up from his throne, stretching out his wings to their full impressive span. "Perhaps it's time I pay a little visit, and demonstrate the... consequences for refusing my proposal." He started walking towards the door, each step of his powerful feet shaking the ground, causing the fox to lose his balance and fall over. As Kaiser swung open the huge golden door with minimal effort, his tail flicked behind him, smacking into the fox and sending him flying across the bedroom, smashing into and then sliding down the wall.

---

The streets of Manhattan buzzed as the sun set behind the clouds, the humid heat of another summer day turning into a warm, muggy night. People filled the streets in and around Times Square as the lights flickered on, ready to start one of the most famous nightlifes of any city in the world. Busses, taxis, and tens of thousands of cars lined the streets, tunnels, and bridges leading out of the city, as people headed home to the other boroughs, New Jersey, or points beyond. In the subways, trains ran at full capacity, each one snaking underneath the city like a speedy metal earthworm.

Just off of 42nd Street and First Avenue, hundreds of diplomats and ambassadors started filing out of the United Nations Headquarters complex. An emergency session of the General Assembly had just let out, discussing the conflict that had been brewing in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past week. Virtually none of the representatives paid any thought to what had occurred the day before, when a mysterious cloaked figure had somehow snuck into the assembly chambers shouting a dire warning about joining forces with the "Realm of Ardallen", whatever that meant. Three security guards had quickly tackled and restrained this lunatic, dragging him out of the chamber, and most present would've found bringing up the idea again laughable. Perhaps, if they'd have known that the mysterious figure had somehow caused a small black hole to suddenly form in the ground outside the main building, eluding the guards' grip and vanishing through it, some might've reconsidered their amusement.

A similar black hole had now opened up in the ground just a few miles away, on the north meadow in Central Park, significantly larger than the one the cloaked fox had escaped through less than twenty-four hours before. The rippling portal covered nearly the entire meadow, some three hundred feet across, engulfing hundreds of park-goers as it formed. A few seconds after appearing, a massive red-fingered hand rose out of it, followed by a thick, brawny arm over two hundred feet long. Protruding into the sky for just a moment, the arm bent at the elbow and came rushing back down, shaking the entire park as the hand hit the ground. The claws dug into the meadow and pulled up huge chunks of grass and dirt. Another arm followed in suit out of the portal, and they each pushed against the ground and flexed, lifting the head and torso of the dragon they belonged to up through the portal.

Kaiser looked down at the tiny stunned people that were unfortunate enough to be on the wrong side of Central Park that evening, and the corners of his lips turned upwards in a smirk. "What's the matter, humans? Are you fearing for your lives?" Leering in closer towards a crowd of around fifty or so, he grinned even wider, bearing his sharp teeth. "Your species always did seem to be on the cowardly side of things. But then, I suppose that's appropriate when you're facing your certain doom."

Quickly reaching out his hand, the dragon grabbed a handful from the crowd, bringing them up to his open maw. He tilted the hand slightly, just enough to give those squirming in his palm a view of his thick, waiting tongue and the bloodstains of former victims still visible on his teeth. After a few terrifying seconds, he dumped them in, letting them fall towards his mouth. Some unlucky (or lucky, as the case may be) souls went straight into the throat and were swallowed whole. Others got caught between his tongue and his teeth, their screams echoing against those craggily white rocks and dissipating in the dragon's steaming breath. Gnashing his jaws, Kaiser felt their writhing bodies get torn apart by his incisors, the shrieking suddenly silenced as a liquid with a slight iron taste spread across his tongue.

The dragonlord smiled at the pleasure of devouring his first of many humans, pulling his body the rest of the way out of the portal, which quickly collapsed as he cleared it. Standing up to his full height of just over five hundred feet tall, Kaiser turned his head left and right, surveying the city that he was about to destroy. "I'll give you credit, humans," he said, his voice thundering throughout the center of the island, "you've built yourselves a rather impressive little city. It could have been one of the crown jewels of my realm. Pity that you didn't accepted my offer while you still could."

Seeing that the tallest buildings lay to his south, Kaiser started walking in that direction. He ignored, for the moment, the relatively scattered groups in the park, most of whom were able to dive out of the way of his footsteps. He knew that he could get much more death and destruction with much less effort towards the more densely populated parts of the city.

Cutting across the wooded areas, knocking down trees, lampposts, benches and fences with every thundering step, he finally reached the southeast corner of the park. In front of him, 59th Street was jam-packed with vehicles of every shape and size. Hundreds of pedestrians turned their heads upward at the approaching colossus, gazing at his muscled form in terror. Some were frozen in fear, a few fainted from the shock, while many others screamed and started running as fast as they could in the opposite direction. "Flee, my little minions, while you can do so," Kaiser said, his eyes narrowing at the retreating crowds. "But know that there's no place in this or any other universe that you'll be able to hide from me."

Stopping only for a moment in anticipation of the rush that causing wide-scale destruction always gave him, he took another step, slowly bringing his paw down in the middle of the street, easily covering all four lanes of traffic with room to spare. Dozens of vehicles were pinned underfoot, many of whom with terrified occupants still inside. The metal of the cars bended under the enormous pressure before giving a satisfying crunch, flattening against the asphalt. Those who had been stupid or unlucky enough not to have fled on first sight of the dragon only were able to look up and see the thick, muscled sole of the dragon's foot, its fleshy surface stretching out in seemingly every direction above their heads. Within seconds they were snuffed out of existence, their bodies becoming paste. Grinding his heel into the ground, forming an indentation over ten feet deep, Kaiser bared his teeth as a low, guttural growl escaped from his throat.

The dragon now stood in the middle of the street in front of a twenty-story apartment building that didn't even come up to his waist. He brought his hands together, flexing the thick muscles of his biceps and forearms. Lifting his leg up, he then placed his foot against the roof of the building, and with a grunt, he brought all his weight down on top of it. The walls creaked and groaned but couldn't withstand the forces they were being subjected to for more than a few seconds, and the building began to crumble to the ground. A cloud of dust and debris flew into the air as the dragon's foot pressed further down, his claws scraping against the stonework of the neighboring building, causing it to partially collapse as well. "Such pathetic construction," he sneered. "You should be glad that I've chosen to help improve your city; after all, under my rule, you'll be able to rebuild much stronger than before."

Moving on from the ruins of the building, Kaiser stomped down Fifth Avenue, flattening countless more cars and busses without even a second's thought. As he did so, his black-striped tail flicked back and forth with surprising force, smashing windows and sending chunks of concrete flying. Smaller buildings caved in on themselves due to the tremors emanating from his massive footsteps. Underground, many subway trains derailed from the shockwaves, colliding with the walls of the tunnels and stations they were passing through, while several water mains burst, causing geysers to shoot up through the streets into the air above.

After a few minutes, Kaiser had made it to what appeared to be one of the tallest structures in the city, a skyscraper that stood nearly three times his height. Looking up at the limestone-surfaced tower with its antenna spire on the roof, the dragonlord let out a low whistle. "Most impressive. Part of me thinks I should leave this one standing; I can even picture a statue of me at the top, lording over your entire city. But no, you shan't be so lucky." Climbing up and planting his feet against some of the ledges about twenty stories up, Kaiser wrapped his arms around the side of the building, resting each of his hands against a corner. Through the windows, he could make out the shadows of tiny figures with horrified faces, and he grinned mercilessly at them. Taking a deep breath, he started pushing against the stonework, his thick arms tautening up.

At first, the tower seemed to withstand the force he exerted upon it, looking like he might not be able to budge it. After a minute or so, though, the steel inside began to give way, stone breaking off the walls and falling to the ground below. A large crack formed along the sides about halfway up, and the spire at the top began to wobble back and forth. With one final, forceful push from the dragonlord, the top of the tower started to buckle. To the millions watching, both in the city and around the world on breaking news reports, the collapse seemed to happen in slow motion. The monolithic skyscraper slowly toppled over, it's huge exterior surface crashing down onto the neighboring structures and streets below, as the antenna spire snapped off of its base, flying through the air and landing in the East River, nearly a mile away. The force of the crashing tower caused dozens of smaller buildings around the city to also crumple, as gas lines erupted and burst into flames.

Satisfied, Kaiser jumped back down to street level, causing the rest of the destroyed building to fall in on itself. All around him, sirens blared, fires raged, and the sounds of uncountable voices weeping and screaming filled the air. Crossing his hands over his chest, he turned around, looking towards the south side of the island. "I hope, for your sake, humans, that my message has come through and that my intent is clear. I will send my representative again in forty-eight hours. I expect your unconditional surrender then, and will gladly add your world into the many under my control. If you choose to decline, however... well, next time, I won't be as gentle as I was today."

With a loud, booming laugh that echoed throughout the entire city, Kaiser reached out a single claw and sliced downward, causing a visible rip to appear out of the air in front of him. Stepping through it, the dragonlord vanished, and the tear closed up behind him, leaving the humans to contemplate the consequences of the decision they now faced.