Chapter 18: DD2 Chapter 012 – Capture

As the ground raced beneath Typhoeus’s admittedly useless feet, he was struck by how flying without wings was exhilarating in a wholly different way. In his larger draconic body—his mind rebelled at the thought of calling it his true body—wind was his greatest ally. In his previous flights, he would barely have to flap his magnificent wings as he navigated along updrafts and the unseen air currents to soar above the clouds towards his intended destination.

Flight, no matter how limited, was far superior to walking, regardless of how treacherous the turns may be, or how the relatively fragile fabric of his sundress really wasn’t suited to supporting his entire weight. A realisation that had unfortunately prompted him to be careful and slightly lower the speed at which he traveled for fear of damaging the precious garment.

Instead of wings extending from his back, Typhoeus was relying on the latest evolution of his skill [Artillerist’s Reservoir] to give the very clothes that he wore a velocity and a direction. Rather than being restrained by the practicalities of wing strength and span, his current speed was only limited by the amount of mana that he dared to pour into the metallic fabric. It was a poor imitation of true flight—his current method of travel being far closer to strapping himself to a rock which he then threw with the System aiding his arm—but it was still flying. His speed was even enhanced further by his own considerable intelligence score as he flung himself at extreme speeds above the surface of Creation, Typhoeus taking liberal advantage of a skill clearly designed to hurl rocks and other heavy missiles at his enemies rather than small mages in dresses.

He whooped with joy at the primal sensation of defying gravity. The vast expanse of nothing between him and the distant ground gave him a sense of power, that despite the frailty of his human form, he was still a dragon.

With the icy winds rushing past his face, Typhoeus could think clearly in a way that he simply couldn’t when he was crawling along the ground, distracted by the inane little details of land-bound life. Upon reflection, he felt more than a little stupid as it was all so very obvious with the benefit of hindsight. In his defence he had been unconscious when he had first entered Cawic and keeping all those villagers alive throughout the battle had simply required far too much of his attention. Too much at least, for him to put together the very obvious puzzle pieces that had so conveniently arranged themselves in front of him. 

The burning of the beast corpses, how the attacking creatures time and again went for the hurt and not the kill. The mere fact that Cawic couldn’t possibly have survived a series of assaults on such a scale every night for almost a month. And then almost as if to rub his face in it for being too slow to piece it together they had gone and reanimated every corpse for miles, a giant, blaring sign that practically screamed out ‘large necromantic ritual’ to anyone who was listening. The delightful taste of high-arcana on the wind was something that he had almost forgotten, having been surrounded by lesser species for so long. If he wasn’t so worried about the steel rank dragon hunters that such a large working would invariably attract—draconic arcana or not—then he might have taken a few moments to truly enjoy it, but instead he was going to have to deal with the implications and move on before the hammer inevitably dropped.

Soaring just below the cloud cover, it didn’t take Typhoeus long to see them. Their outpost was well warded, with a passable illusion to cover up the evidence of their bright bonfire located in the centre of the cleared ground between their tents. He pushed [Sovereign’s Perception] through the scrying effect of [Artillerist’s Guidance]. A conjured bolt of hardened mana appeared above his shoulder to facilitate the union of his two skills as his awareness of their camp bloomed in his mind's eye.

He watched them talk, listened in as they joked, laughed and ate as humans were so prone to doing after a hard day’s work. The ease at which they relaxed, confident in their safety after having just attacked Cawic disgusted him. There seemed to be little concern that they may be discovered and face some form of retaliation for the prolonged harm that they had caused. The humans, youthful mages for the most part, were almost all high-pewters and wearing a dark-blue uniform that looked distinctly un-militaristic with a black on white crest over the left breast that Typhoeus instantly recognised as much as he wished that he didn’t.

Erebus’s. 

There was a section of their camp, closer to a stables, really, where a score of creatures stood, vacant in their expressions as they stood perfectly still waiting for their next commands, likely to attack Cawic again the next night once the mages had caught more beasts to add to their ranks. Judging from how lived-in their camp seemed, they had clearly been there for a while. More than three dozen of them at first count, and as he watched he was able to refine his initial estimate to forty-two junior mages, two senior and a further ten non-combatants with a mixture of servant-tagged classes.

He wanted to drop down amidst their ranks, and start killing. To cleave his way through their camp, leaving just the highest levelled humans alive who he would then convince to talk, but if they were claimed by Erebus, then killing them was a sure fire way to ensure that he faced retaliation rather than a welcome in Traylra. It was still tempting, but Typhoeus knew that it wouldn’t be him paying the price, and Arilla had already suffered enough for his mistakes.

He would have to do this the hard way.

Typhoeus slowly fed mana into his manabolt and watched patiently while it grew in both size and destructive potential. When he was satisfied, he released it. The missile raced straight down where it hit the roaring bonfire and exploded loudly with an impressive bang that sent flaming logs and fragments of splintered burning wood throughout the outpost.

He twisted [Artillerist’s Reservoir] and caused his upwards velocity that had been successfully cancelling out the pull of Creation to invert, pushing him down to the ground with gravity pulling him even faster in his descent. Before he could splatter on the ground, Typhoeus arrested his fall, his dress straining and his body suffering from the abuse, but he was right where he wanted to be, floating above the smoking crater where the bonfire had so recently been.

Despite the suddenness of his entrance, volleys of coordinated spellfire were soon flung at him. Typhoeus knew that the camp’s occupants were almost all mages, even if more than a few were necromancer-tagged, but he was surprised by the practiced efficiency of their assault. While half a score of servants were cowering far away from him and the carnage that he had created, the remaining forty or so mages didn’t react as he had hoped. Instead of screams of panic adding to the chaos he was trying to cultivate, they didn’t hesitate to try and repulse him with bolts of hardened mana, incinerating beams of fire, shards of ice or any one of a number of different entry level spells, all relatively well-cast for humans.

Typhoeus’s mana reserves weren’t nearly full, not by a long shot, but he wasn’t the only one who was fatigued and he was in part relying upon the attacking mages’ exhaustion to bring things to a rapid close. So having grabbed everyone’s attention, and established his dominance in the pecking order, he turtled up. The dragon chose to layer thick arcane barriers around himself that turned their spells back on them, rather than respond with offensive attacks of his own. Hoping to keep things less-than-lethal with [Artillerist’s Abjurations] doing all of the heavy lifting.

Of course, he had seen the creatures standing docile to their side of their camp and knew that balls of fire and ice were the least of what they had to offer. He waited for it and when it hit him he was surprised to find himself momentarily staggered by the intensity of their attack. His mental stats were high, but due to the balanced nature of his dragon class, and the inadequacies of his human brain, he was embarrassed when their combined might got through—even if only a little bit.

Mind Mages.

Disgusting people who took away others' will and replaced it with their own. At least necromancers had the decency to wait until their puppets were dead first. Typhoeus felt their grasping little thoughts press against his mind, and he let them feel his revulsion and felt their collective amusement in response. To his dismay the Mind Mages’ insidious little needles continued to pierce through his defences, each time getting a little deeper as they lifted his surface thoughts and stole flashes of his memories in their attempts to gain access to his will.

Arilla’s smile, the sound of her laugh, how her red-hair caught the light when it was blowing in the breeze, the feel of her hips in his hands and the taste of her lips. Typhoeus wanted them out of his skull, but forcing the issue was beyond him, so he changed the scene. 

The feel of Medrauts arrows ripping through his breast and exiting his back, the feeling of burning alive beneath a carrion hound, of being pinned beneath his sister’s claws as they crushed him against the bare stone. He felt their hesitation, first from the shock of the vivid pain that he shared with them, and then their confusion at his memories of being pinned down by a dragon. 

The singular sensation of having his wings bitten off, of what it felt like to his scales methodically split open as claws parted his vulnerable flesh. The sense of shame as Sovereign Dragons laughed all around him and the force from their magic that slammed him into mountains when he tried to run. Typhoeus felt their fear and smiled, some of their minds tried to wriggle loose but he held them close to him and forced them to watch as he went in for the kill.

Erebus’s welcoming arms that offered him shelter and advice, the profound sense of wonder at seeing his human form, so perfect and appropriately sized. A human city ruled over by a dragon, his playground for a time while he nursed his wounds. Terror echoed back from every mind that had penetrated his, they knew what he was, who he was, and they knew that they had overstepped.

The thoughts pulled back as fast as they could, and Typhoeus didn’t stop them.

The spell-fire that had rained down on his shields uninterrupted throughout the entire assault stopped immediately and as Typhoeus looked out through his golden barrier, the collection of mages bearing Erebus’s colours one and all knelt face down in the snow.

The dragon smiled.

“Much better. Now, which one of you is in charge?”

An hour or so later, Typhoeus flexed his toes by the warmth of the crackling fire. The dragon was more than happy to take his time to enjoy the feeling of mobility in his freshly healed legs. He was pointedly ignoring the human before him who was trying their best to explain the sincerity of their misunderstanding while the dragon ate his cake and quietly lusted over the silver fork in his hands.

The tent in which he was convalescing in was the largest of those that remained unscathed from his brief attack. Meaning it was scarcely big enough for the two chairs that faced the ceramic wood burner that dominated the small canvas room. Typhoeus was delighted to find that they had cake of all things and had insisted on being served it on their finest kitchenware while healers came and went, fixing his legs in the process.

His hosts were polite and fearful, which was how Typhoeus liked it. The dragon was coming to appreciate as he matured that his instincts were there for a reason, and Sovereign Dragons had a tendency to only ever negotiate from positions of strength, something which he saw no reason to fight against. The human before him kept nattering on, taking the dragon’s silence and appreciative moans around mouthfuls of cake as permission to keep talking.

A notion Typhoeus was going to have to disabuse him of.

“...understand that had you just approached the camp and announced yourself, we could have avoided the entire confrontation,” the man explained placatingly.

“Are you trying to say that this is somehow my fault?” Typhoeus asked with a raised eyebrow, his cake-fork held almost threateningly.

“Of course not, Lord Sovereign. It’s just—”

“Just what? My fault?” Typhoeus reiterated, daring the human to try him.

“No, of course not. But had we known that it was you then we simply would not have attacked you like we had,” the bronze-rank mage explained, his arms held out to the side disarmingly as if that meant anything from a man who habitually invaded the minds of his foes.

Typhoeus narrowed his eyes at the human and wondered if his defences would have held up without the human’s contributions or if the Mind Mage was skilled enough to have left something behind in his head. There was a pressing temptation to kill him just to be sure, but that would almost certainly anger Erebus, or was that the worm of a spell causing him to stay his hand?

Typhoeus hated Mind Mages.

“What’s your name again?” he asked, trying to keep his disgust from his voice.

“Rinton,” the mage answered.

“Well Rintone,” Typhoeus said, making sure to mispronounce the human’s name. “If you hadn’t been attacking Cawic like common bandits then maybe I would have given you the benefit of the doubt. Next time you should raise a banner or something; if it wasn’t for the crest on your uniform I would have simply killed you all from afar,” he explained, pretending not to enjoy how the human's already pale face went several shades whiter.

“Well, I am very grateful that you saw fit to show restraint,” Rinton sighed, earning himself a look of quiet displeasure from Typhoeus.

“What were you even doing, attacking Cawic like that? If Erebus wanted the village destroyed surely you could have done it with half the effort?” Typhoeus inquired.

“Of course, but it was necessary to teach Cawic, specifically Kalle, a lesson for going back on her deal with Doomhold. That and it was a great opportunity for my students to grind some real combat experience against humans. The finesse that it takes to get a beast to pull its punches like that is far better for levelling control skills than going all out ever could be. And with the dungeons acting up, recruiting creatures to our stables and gaining class levels has never been easier, especially for a large group like ours,” Rinton began. “Honestly, until your arrival this has been the best end-of-year trip we’ve had in decades.”

“End of year trip?” Typhoeus asked, pinching the bridge of his nose with frustration. “Please, tell me I didn’t have my mental defences momentarily overwhelmed by schoolchildren.”

“Of course not,” Rinton quickly expressed, a look of panic appearing and disappearing on his face in a span of seconds. “The mages under my care are all over the age of sixteen, with the bulk around twenty or so.”

“And what would Erebus want with so many Mind Mages? I knew he had a mage school within his walls, but I was under the impression he kept the class sizes much smaller.”

“I... couldn’t... possibly say,” Rinton lied, the four words coming out haltingly as the man lacked both the confidence that the lie would be believed and his ability to hold up to Typhoeus’s scrutiny if the dragon pressed. Fortunately for Rinton, Typhoeus was not in the position to threaten his way through this. Now that he was ‘friendly’ with the mages, he had to tread carefully for fear of doing anything which could potentially upset Erebus now that the misunderstanding he had engineered had been cleared up. 

Still, Rinton and the other mages were terrified of Typhoeus, and so he could use that to extract more from them beyond a little healing and slices of delightfully baked cake.

“And this deal with Cawic? Kalle mentioned no such thing,” Typhoeus asked.

“Well, that’s unsurprising. Kalle is a thoroughly unpleasant old woman,” Rinton said spitefully, only continuing after Typhoeus loudly cleared his throat. “Doomhold, or Traylra as the humans beyond our walls like to call it, has a longstanding deal with Cawic. They discreetly facilitate trade for us with Rhelea in exchange for a fairly substantial levy on the goods that pass through their town. More than enough to keep that little village of hers afloat and all she has to do is send her people south with wagons ladened with our gold.”

“And I take it she reneged on this deal?”

“Yes. This past autumn she’s been taking our gold but never once delivered on her end,” Rinton said, nodding along emphatically. “Until she either returns her fee, or provides us with the goods she promised us, Cawic is fair game for my students to use as live target practice.”

“I see…” Typhoeus said, tenting his fingers together as he thought. “How much gold are we talking about?”

The flight back to Cawic was far less dramatic, even if his passenger wouldn’t stop squirming,nearly causing Typhoeus to lose his grip. Due to the lack of urgency and his unwieldy baggage the dragon stuck to air speeds that his clothing could comfortably handle; the deep pockets of his winter coat were bulging with elegantly crafted silverware and cake crumbs. 

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They landed atop Cawic’s gatehouse amidst a clinking of metal and a slight kicking up of the snow. Typhoeus closed his eyes and followed the tether connecting him to his Dragon Guard, while the human that he had brought with him was busy throwing up from either the turbulent flight or the somewhat bumpy landing. The presence of the stranger caused cries of alarm to ring out from the village’s guard atop the walls, but Typhoeus didn’t care, and swiftly dragged them along towards Arilla before anyone could gather to stop him.

He found her in the temple, his favoured warrior unable to stay away from organised religion it would seem even if she was confined to a sickbed. The temple, a grand building by Cawic’s standards, was still immaculately decorated on the inside despite the many decades since it would have seen regular use by wealthy travelers. The mystery behind how all that stained glass, enamelled mouldings, and ornate frescos had been maintained was now solved, even if the presence of over a score of seriously injured citizens took some of the grandeur off of the building's opulent interior.

“System help me…” the healer muttered. The woman that Typhoeus had borrowed from Rinton’s school-trip was seemingly taken aback by the scale of the injuries on display.    

“Dont,” Typhoeus warned, ignoring how the thick scent of blood in the air made his stomach rumble with anticipation.

“Don’t what?” the young woman asked. She couldn’t have been more than twenty Typhoeus thought, not that it mattered.

“Your friends caused this, you don’t get to be horrified like you didn’t know the consequences of your actions.”

“But, I didn’t think—”

“I don’t care. I brought you for your class, not your moral outrage or sudden hypocrisy,” he stated, looking at the short human with a mixture of scorn and disinterest.

The healer nodded once in response, seemingly finding her resolve as she stepped forwards towards the most seriously injured person in the temple, only to be jerked back by Typhoeus’s small hand on her shoulder.

“Not him, her,” Typhoeus ordered, gesturing away from a grievously wounded labourer with a grotesque looking gut-wound and towards Arilla, wrapped almost head to toe in bandages that were concerningly stained red in more places than they weren't.

“She’ll be fine, trust me. I have a skill that evaluates these things. She won't scar even if she’s left alone. He won’t live through the night without healing,” she insisted, pulling towards the labourer.

“Then you’d best do a good job fixing her and you can save him next,” Typhoeus stated, his grip tightening on the woman, who looked back at him with confusion. “What? You know what I am, I make no claims to be a saint or a hero. She is mine and you are going to fix her. If your conscience compels you to help the others in the room afterwards then that’s fine by me. But you’ll indulge in your guilt after you do what I brought you here for.”

The healer looked at him like she was only seeing him for the first time before she nodded again.

“Okay,” she uttered, as she moved forwards towards Arilla without any of the haste that had been first inspired upon entering the temple’s sickroom. 

The healer was being conservative with her mana, healing Arilla slowly over tens of minutes when she could have done the same in seconds if she was willing to be more wasteful. Considering the quantity of injured people in the room, Typhoeus was willing to wait and consulted his list of rank up options to see if there had been any change whilst he killed time.

Artillery Mage - You have caused great destruction with the simplest of magical spells. As a result, you are given the option of further strengthening your ability to commit wholesale carnage with your ranged spells.

+2 Vit, +4 Int, +1 Will, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Mage] tagged.

 

Will become...

Aero-Kinetic Magus - You have used your skills to launch yourself through the skies. As a result, you are given the option of further enhancing your ability to fly and fight from aloft. 

+1 Dex, +2 Vit, +4 Int, +2 Will, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Mage] tagged.

Grand Artillery Mage - You continue to cause great destruction with simple magical spells. As a result, you are given the option of further enhancing your ability to commit wholesale carnage with your ranged spells.

+2 Vit, +6 Int, +1 Will, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Mage] tagged.

Sovereign Magus - You are of a noble bloodline and have led an army into battle raining down spells on your enemies. As a result, you are given the option of further strengthening your ability to command and empower others with your spellcraft.

+2 Vit, +5 Int, +1 Will, +2 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Noble] tagged.

As much as he wished for it, there remained no change to the classes that had been offered to him by the System so many months ago. Although with his disguise as ‘Typh’ growing increasingly tattered by the day, he was rapidly losing his excuse to put off the decision. He knew what he should take, he was a Sovereign Dragon and he had a duty to every person on Creation regardless of their species, but he was afraid.

Typhoeus was a runt. Spending time amongst humans was good for his ego as they were all so piteously weak, but amongst dragons he was nothing; a fourth-tier nobody, just a deformed little deviant most dragons wouldn’t waste their time on. The mana in the air was so weak, compared to what it was at its peak before the Great Wards, the Monsters creeping through the cracks should be comparatively weaker as well. Yet Typhoeus knew that if he took Sovereign Magus as his class, he would be committing to fighting them tooth and claw, a fight he didn’t think that he could win.

His siblings probably could, but not him.

The army that he had forged over the autumn, while impressive by human standards, was nothing compared to what should be fielded by a member of a council race, and if he marched them against a Monster he knew that it would in all likelihood be a one-sided slaughter.

So why was the System urging him on, offering him a class to do just that when it knew he couldn’t win?

Typhoeus looked at Arilla, how the colour in her cheeks was slowly coming back while sweat dripped from the healer’s brow. He wished for nothing more than for her to wake up and to run away with him. He already knew more or less what Erebus would say; the entire trip to Traylra or Doomhold was a pointless farce, one last chance for him to escape his responsibilities. Sure, he couldn’t guess the why of it without going north, but the result was plain enough for him to see.

The Great Wards were failing and the Monsters were coming back.

It was his duty to fight them, but if Arilla so much as whispered the word run, he would take her and never look back.

Arilla’s eyes flickered open, and the first thing she did was look straight past the healer and smile at him.

“I’m done. she should be at full health,” the healer declared.

“Go away,” Typhoeus ordered, waving a hand dismissively as he quickly moved to sit by Arilla’s bedside, while his warrior sat up on her elbows and yawned.

“What did I miss?” Arilla asked groggily.

“Not much. Are you ready to end this?” he inquired.

“I think so.”

The doors to the temple burst open, with Kalle arriving at the head of a nervous looking group of villagers. Men and women who Typhoeus had saved along the walls, all armed and looking shiftily between him, Arilla, and the healer he had brought who was busy saving the life of the labourer with the severe gut wound.

“Arrest them!” Kalle ordered, smoke flowing around the old woman like a physical shroud. “They’ve betrayed us to the enemy!”

“Where’s my sword?” Arilla asked, looking around for her heavy weapon.

The villagers drew their weapons and the dragon stood up to face them.  His Dragon Guard following his example a mere second later, a bed hefted over her shoulder in lieu of her sword.

“I can’t believe you already lost my sword,” Typhoeus muttered under his breath.

“I lost a lot of blood, okay? I’m sure it will turn up,” Arilla said defensively.

“Kill them!” Kalle ordered, smoke rushing forwards, her agitated looking militia following a few steps behind.

Arilla swung her sick-bed.

Chaos ensued.

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