Chapter 73: DD3 Chapter 019 – Ashes

To say that the existence of the Old Roads had influenced human civilization was a profound understatement. They were the arteries in which lifeblood that sustained every nation on the continent flowed—it was not an exaggeration to say that without them, human society would devolve into isolated city-states surrounded by vast oceans of the unknown. Not only did the ancient structure’s intersections largely predict where the short-lived species decided to build—or rediscover lost—settlements, the roads themselves were the backbone of their two favourite pastimes, trade and war. 

They allowed humanity to harvest and transport the natural resources that they needed to thrive whilst making it easy to move armies across the continent to wage war on their neighbours. Human cities that were not built on the Old Roads tended to be directly adjacent to them. Those few enterprising settlements that bucked this trend consistently failed to flourish and were more often than not consigned to irrelevance.

Nonhumans didn’t use the Old Roads much, largely because they rarely found themselves in search of new homes. Periodically destroying everything you had ever built every few millennia and then needing a ruin to shelter in while you rediscovered fire remained a purely human phenomenon. Many species’ ancestral homes predated the Old Roads and still existed to this day, having resoundingly succeeded in standing the test of time. More recent settlements were intentionally built far away from the magical megastructure to avoid humanity’s limited exploration efforts. But the largest reason by far for the nonhumans’ collective hesitancy was that the classes and skills that allowed you to make the best use out of the Old Road’s ancient magic were restricted to the human species alone.

With the right combination of classes and skills, a human could cross the surface of Astresia in a fraction of the time that it would take a comparatively levelled elf, goblin, or kobold to do the same. The exact limits of this advantage were determined like everything else, through the classer’s individual skills, levels, and attributes. In ages past when nonhumans had once tentatively built homes alongside the Old Roads, the presence of these human classers—usually tagged as a ‘Guide’—had proven that this was a surefire way to ensure that a human army arrived outside your walls long before friendly reinforcements could even be alerted.

Variations of those same ‘Guide’ tagged classes were now being used to drown Helion beneath a weight of Padian refugees and to bring south the hostile armies of Terythia’s distant north. Fortunately, there were some restrictions to this otherwise insurmountable advantage. To gain the benefits of a Guide, you had to remain on the paved surface of the Old Roads at all times or immediately fall out of the skill’s Creation-warping effect. 

Typh had never experienced this for herself. Guides were rare and those sworn to the Traylan dynasty had all either died—or far more likely fled—with Rhelea’s fall. She did, however, have a collection of half-faded memories from when her ancestors had benefited from their briefly subservient humans. To their ancient eyes, the landscape surrounding them had remained blurry and indistinct while they crossed a far greater distance than could be accounted for with their limited number of steps.

Armies were at their most vulnerable when on the move. An army that was forced to arrange itself into a miles-long column that couldn’t see into the distance was even more vulnerable to an ambush. Typh knew that the humans marching against her would attempt to mitigate this weakness by having higher levelled scouts travel alongside the snaking mass of soldiers. With enough dexterity, even the Guide’s skill-enhanced movement could be surpassed, and with the added benefit of perception skills, it would only take a few dozen sufficiently levelled classers to spot any significant threats to the forces under their care.

Typh also knew that these scouts' training had been based on the military conventions that had arisen through thousands of years of humans fighting against humans. While there were likely measures taken to account for the rare ‘monstrous horde’ or lone beasts that might see fit to attack a force of thousands, they were thoroughly unprepared for her. To the best of her knowledge, they simply didn’t have the inclination let alone the ability to look up above the clouds for danger. 

It was a failing that she was planning to violently inform them of.

"I much preferred what we did the last time we left the estate together…" Arilla sighed.

"Why? Is an early morning flight atop my back not exciting enough for you?” Typh asked.

"It’s not that—you know how much I love flying—and what you have planned is hardly dull, but the company leaves something to be desired.”

"Oh really? I happen to think that kobolds are great. They’re lightweight, polite, and have scales, which while less fun, are far superior to skin. I’d much rather be loaded up with them than humans. Can you imagine the incessant complaining? It would be all ‘I don’t like heights!’ ‘Are you sure this rigging is secure?’ ‘I have rope burn!’ This is much better,” the dragon said.

“I don’t love it when you make sweeping generalisations about my species. I like it less when you mock my very legitimate concerns about the way you’ve decided to carry quite so many people with you,” the warrior complained. “But you misunderstand me. It’s the quantity that I’m having trouble with.”

“You think I should have brought fewer kobolds?”

“Yes.”

“Pfft. What’s the point in having such a high strength score if you don’t ever get to flex it once in a while?” 

Typh turned her head to stare at the warrior sitting atop her back. Arilla was dressed for war in yet another set of red enamelled runeplate which the dragon sincerely hoped would last longer than her previous one. With her oversized sword and imposing figure, she’d look like a hero right out of a bard’s tale if not for the awkwardly silent kobolds invading her space and occupying every available surface of Typh’s draconic body.

Tight rope rigging had been draped and securely tied to her. Then every kobold with a mage level they could muster had been tied to that. It was by no means comfortable—not for them and certainly not for Typh—but to capitalise on the information that Xan had provided the dragon needed to move fast.

Close to two hundred thousand soldiers were marching south down the Old Road from Eurionkon to the northwest, to siege Helion. There they would be joined by a further hundred and fifty thousand arriving from the northeast. Once the forces merged, conventional wisdom would dictate that they’d have to swiftly take the city before they ran out of food. 

Typh had a lot of faith in her forces, but as Arilla had proven, there were numerous species under her command who were ill-suited to both siege warfare and fighting from a defensive position. Outnumbered more than seven to one, Typh’s army of fifty thousand would be swiftly overwhelmed even if they didn’t have to deal with maintaining their own siege of the palace.

She did have significant advantages, namely the walls, cannons, and higher-level troops than the average levied farmhand, but in the face of those numbers it was unlikely to be enough. Their only saving grace was that the hostages secreted around Helion kept the southern cities from adding their military might to Terythia’s north. Although, if Xan was right then it was only a matter of time before they too marched on Helion.

Typh had to make sure that never happened.

Which was why this fine, breezy morning she intended to cripple the two-hundred thousand marching against her… with one human and scarcely more than three hundred kobolds clinging to the rigging wrapped around her back. 

“I’ll admit that I may have gone a little overboard, but I am the one who is carrying them all. I think you can put up with a little discomfort,” the dragon stated.

Arilla laughed at that, earning herself several furtive glances from the reptilian creatures lashed all around.

“You know Xan’s going to be pissed,” Arilla said.

“Yes. I assume she thought I’d take this information as an incentive to marry fast and marry well,” Typh replied, quietly delighting at how her warrior wrinkled her nose in disgust at the mere thought of a political marriage.

“I assume she thought you’d do something sane… Not this…”

“Insanity?”

“Your words, not mine.”

Typh shrugged her broad shoulders and felt several dozen clawed hands frantically scrabble against her scales as terrified kobolds clung to her. She did not envy them. Not just for hanging suspended miles above the ground by thin knots of hempen rope. She’d do what she could to protect them, using her own hardened aura to shield their bodies in addition to her own, but depending on the resistance they faced it was likely that they’d face very heavy casualties.

“I’ll admit this is a little eccentric, but insane? No. That would be marching on the ground against a dragon,” Typh scoffed. “I can’t believe they forgot I could fly.”

“I doubt they forgot…” Arilla said, looking down over the side of Typh’s thick neck. “But I’ll concede that it is a failure of imagination on their part.”

“Don’t make excuses for them. It’s stupid is what it is,” the dragon said, joining her lover and numerous other kobolds in peering down through the wisps of cloud cover to see the snaking chain of humanity many miles below. “Did they really expect me to just wait for them?”

“Maybe. Helion’s walls have only been taken once—by you. It’s not unrealistic to expect that you’d attempt to hold them. Regardless of what they expected, it won’t be this.”

“If they are and this is somehow a trap, this is unlikely to go well for us.”

“Xan would have to be in on it. I don’t like her, but if she was really our enemy there are less convoluted ways to go about killing us.” 

Her piece said the warrior drew her sword, while the kobolds lashed to Typh’s back adjusted their positions and readied their arcane foci.

No expense had been spared on this front and the greatest runestaffs, wands, tomes, arcane crystals and effigies had all been requisitioned for the diminutive creatures. Standing at a little over three feet tall, kobolds were hardly the most terrifying of foes. They’d been viewed by humanity’s adventurers for thousands of years as little more than starter monsters a half-step up from goblins. In addition to being delightfully light and scaly, the little creatures had a strong inherent aptitude for sorcery. Nothing compared to humanity’s or dragons’, but for a species effectively capped to a mere 49 levels in their species class, they were fortunate enough to have skills to choose from that complemented their spell use nicely.

A part of her was delighted by the prospect of giving kobolds a reputation for being more than just cunning trapsmiths. Who knew what they could have become if they had ever aspired beyond that well-trodden field? While she couldn’t—and had no desire—to change their culture on such a fundamental level, she also knew that after today they would at least be known for their magecraft as well. 

But in truth, Typh was excited that she was finally going to hammer home to the humans that she was not going to come to them on her knees and beg for permission to help.

She was a dragon—a primal force of magical and physical might. She may have been the least powerful sovereign dragon to have lived in a very long time, but that didn’t change what she was. Just because she came to the humans and offered impassioned warnings to go alongside her demands, it didn’t mean that they were anything less than demands.

Typh would rule Terythia as its Queen. 

And after today she imagined few would think that she needed a political marriage to ensure her legitimacy.

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“Are you sure about this?” Arilla asked. “There will be no taking it back.”

“I’m certain,” the dragon grumbled. “It’s time to remind them of who they’re going to war with.”

Ignoring her lover, she took a moment to glide forwards with just her thoughts for company—her draconic pride was morphing into something deeply unpleasant, yet she couldn’t afford to put those ideas of grandeur aside. Typh looked down at the long line of men she intended to kill and realised that there was no way she could go through with what she’d planned without those toxic thoughts. From up high the humans looked so utterly insignificant that it was hard for her to remember that each one of them had just as much potential as Arilla did. Most of them were new to their classes—too new to pose a threat to her—but enough of them had the levels and the motivation to destroy everything she was trying to build. 

This was not what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to be a leader, not a butcher, but if the humans wouldn’t bend then she’d have to make them break. Perhaps then she’d be able to reforge them into something useful to her. 

“Prepare yourselves,” Typh announced, knowing that the command was pointless, but saying it anyway. 

They were prepared, each and every one of them. With reptilian faces that more closely resembled a dog’s than a human’s, the kobold mages began their chant. The dragon tucked her wings close to her body, and with a solemn warrior on her back, Typh committed to the dive.

Even with her mana speeding her along, she had a very long way to fall. Which regrettably gave her far too much time to think and anticipate the coming violence. [Sovereign’s Perception] made her keenly aware of every twitch and tremble her passengers expressed. From the creaking hilt of Arilla’s leather-wrapped sword to a scrawny mage named Pun-Pun fumbling with a sarrukh bone idol too large for his small hands. Collectively the kobolds reeked of appetising fear, but as they all picked up speed and progressed further down their rhythmic chant, the crisp scent of determination rose above their terror.

Air currents buffeted her as Typh plummeted straight down. Mana from all those kobold mages working together built. The roar of whistling wind rushed past her ears, and the tiny dots of individual humans marching together in a miles-long column grew larger. 

A simple spell perfectly cast and maintained by three hundred reptilian voices blossomed around her and Creation suddenly became a lot quieter. 

From the way their scaled snouts moved and their forked tongues flapped in their mouths, she knew that words were being said. From how Arilla practically stood on her back, Typh knew that the warrior was about an inch away from yelling with unconstrained glee. But the dragon couldn’t hear any of it. Not the arcane words of power, not the wind fighting against her, not the creaking ropes tying her scaly passengers to her or her own challenging roar. 

In perfect, total silence, the dragon fell towards the ground.

The advancing column was long, dwarfing those she’d once sent into Rhelea by at least a factor of twenty. With baggage trains and pack animals interspersed amongst the flowing banners and rows of tightly packed soldiers, the army marching shoulder to shoulder extended for as far as she could see into the distance.

Thanks to the kobolds’ magic and her rapid descent, she arrived undetected at its rear some thirty feet or so above the paved surface of the Old Road. The sphere of silence’s outward edge fell on the back ranks of the army’s rearguard whose heads slowly turned about in mute confusion. 

Typh imagined that it would be deeply unsettling to have every conversation around you cut out mid-sentence. People would instinctively panic from suddenly not being able to hear the familiar rise and fall of a thousand boots, of not being able to hear their own heartbeat and having no idea why. 

She hesitated for all of an instant and in that time she saw countless soldiers tug on their neighbours' shoulders, shout questions that would never be answered as they looked around for the source of the silence. 

Some unlucky few saw her and screamed—she would remember their faces—but just like the absent sound, that panic never travelled.

Typh cycled her mana and exhaled. [Sovereign’s Breath] activated and she felt the powerful vibrations of skill-enhanced fire rumble through her chest. She saw the incandescent flames exit her mouth, tasted the heat passing over her tongue, and then she watched with her large draconic eyes as the soldiers on the ground disappeared beneath a wave of deadly gold. 

But she heard nothing.

She flew forwards, and the stream of fire that covered the Old Road travelled with her. The System told her that she had killed, but she was anticipating many, many more prompts before she was done and she had no desire to start reading them now. 

The dragon intermittently flapped her wings to stay aloft as she swept forwards above the Old Road. Typh had brought her momentum with her from her dive and so she was moving blindingly fast. She forced her mana through her skill and did it again, relying on the System’s power to let her forgo an inhalation as she instead spat out a continuous wave of dragonfire in advance of her flight. 

Gouts of trailing flame washed over the unaware army below. Her skill remained active for far longer than it was supposed to as it blanketed an increasingly large stretch of the Old Road in bright golden flames. There were screams, but they would remain unheard. Ahead of her, the column marched on oblivious to the fact that it was being attacked. The few shouts of alarm that emanated outside her sphere of silence failed to travel faster than she flew and any growing panic was swiftly swallowed up only to be drowned out by her all-consuming flames.

And so in total silence the literal rolling storm of fiery death that heralded her arrival swept along the Old Road unopposed. She felt Arilla’s enthusiasm wane as the fight she had been promised failed to materialise—noted the kobolds' growing confidence as the plan unfolded without a hitch and levels were had by all.

The tavern logic that humans were so fond of stated that what she was doing was impossible. A peak iron could be defeated by ten peak bronzes, or a hundred peak pewters, a thousand peak clays and so on… While those numbers needed adjusting to take into account Typh’s obvious draconic supremacy, there was still a number that she simply wasn’t supposed to be able to overcome. 

Had she been willing to fight them on the ground then she supposed that might remain true, but she wasn’t an idiot and had no intention of doing that.

Instead, Typh flew along the entire length of the column bathing the entire thing in dragonfire. The counterattack she’d been afraid of never came. Occasionally she’d see mage shields flicker up in advance of her attack, or witness classers dive to the side or take shelter behind a skill or a shield, but the army on the move proved to be completely unprepared for an aerial assault.  

The System kept trying to tell her how many men she’d killed. That she was a monster. That the greater good couldn’t possibly be worth so many lives swallowed without a fight. Then it gave her another level in both skill and class, and she consigned herself to continuing her exhalation. On and on it went, until her throat was dry and her lungs were sore and yet she couldn’t bring herself to stop when she knew that it was necessary.

Typh leant into the cold outlook of her draconic brain and relished those few inches of distance it gave her from her roiling emotions. She did not look at the ashen road behind her, but with [Sovereign’s Perception] it wasn’t like she didn’t see it. The massacre couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes, but when she was done and finally allowed herself to turn her head, there was little more than ash in her wake.

Sound suddenly snapped back into existence and the sound of crackling flesh and screams from the survivors suddenly accompanied the smell. She hadn’t got them all, but that was hardly a loss as she had never intended to get so many. Typh consoled her ailing conscience that the horror of what she’d just done would make Arilla’s part considerably easier.

“Good luck,” the dragon said.

“I won’t need it,” the warrior replied, her voice strained and stilted. Without looking back, Arilla jumped off the side of Typh’s neck and landed on the Old Road a few dozen feet below.

Steeling her resolve, Typh flapped her wings to gain some altitude and made a point of turning back towards the north in plain view of the carnage she had just wrought.

Her breath caught in her throat, but she didn’t stop. Onwards the dragon flew, not south to Helion, but towards Eurionkon and the north. 

Erebus had once murdered a city of a hundred thousand, and that act rightly made him a monster. In a matter of minutes, she’d killed an army twice as large. 

Did that make her twice as bad or did the fact that they were soldiers somehow make it better? The System made a point of quantifying violence, but just this once she wished that it did the same for morality.

She hoped that Arilla would forgive her for this. 

She hoped that she’d forgive herself.

But above all else, she hoped that the humans wouldn’t call Arilla’s bluff. Because even if the warrior forgave her for murdering this army, there were thirteen cities to the north of Eurionkon, and Typh knew that there would be no forgiveness if the humans made her visit this destruction on each one.

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