Chapter 79: DD3 Chapter 025 – Appearances

With a steady flow of mana running through [Conqueror’s Reservoir], Typh soared through the sky in an erratic, zigzagging pattern. A rapid series of staccato booms trailed in her wake where bolts of lightning arced up into the air with loud thunderclaps announcing their passage. On a rooftop down below, a warrior flung javelins of elemental force that curved to chase her through the skies. A mage stood beside him, both buffing his attacks with a halo of azure light, and erecting a powerful mageshield to protect them both whenever Typh fired a spell back.

She could tear through that magical barrier if she wanted to, but not without risking the crowd below. People had gathered in the streets to watch her fight, heedless of the obvious dangers. Soldiers in her colours fought against adventurers in the immediate area surrounding her destroyed carriage and the collateral damage from their ongoing battles only seemed to excite the braying crowd. Any semblance of order had completely devolved into a messy free-for-all with uncontrolled violence steadily spilling out onto neighbouring streets and rooftops.

Everywhere Typh looked there was a potential combatant, although clearly identifying them was a challenge. The teeming mass of noisy bystanders had mostly consigned themselves to simply cheering on one side or the other. Unfortunately, the majority of the people within those crowds had class tags, and more than a few of them were willing to toss a spell or skill-empowered rock into the melee. Whether their low-level efforts aided or hindered Typh’s forces, didn’t really matter. The issue was that they added to the confusion, and her enemies were keen to exploit it.

She watched an adventurer—one of the few that were hers—chase a fleeing rogue into the crowd where they immediately lost sight of them amidst the thronging masses of unhelpful humanity. When Typh’s adventurer gave up on their pursuit and returned to the main fight, they were ambushed from behind when their original foe emerged from the same crowd and unleashed a devastating sneak attack.

Her adventurer lay still on the flagstones in a pool of expanding blood, and while a high-powered manabolt caused the enemy rogue to swiftly join him, it wasn’t enough to turn Typh’s mood.

She pursed her lips as she rolled through the sky, dodging countless javelins as well as magical blasts and scything blades of force. Despite the obvious attempts on her life, she didn’t feel like she was in any real danger. The adventurers arrayed against her had numerous dragonslaying weapons, but they lacked enough dedicated archers to give her trouble, and they didn’t appear to have any particular plan to force her from the sky where their blades simply couldn’t reach her.

Typh’s problem was more political in nature. If she fled, she’d not only be leaving her entourage to her assassins’ tender mercies, she’d also be inviting more attempts on her life. Everything she had, she’d gained through strength. There was a power in that—a myth that was steadily unfolding—but it was young and fragile. If she lost once, then the humans would turn on her and everything would fall apart. She simply didn’t have the kind of legitimacy that would make men and women lay down their lives for her when there was any kind of alternative.

Typh was a tyrant who relied on fear to keep the peace. She needed to not only win but to win decisively.

Her would-be-assassins were all firmly iron-rank. There were exactly four teams composed of the classic five-man-adventuring-party fighting against her. The rogues made her enemies’ true numbers hard to count, but she was fairly certain the stealthy adventurers were there.

The more sensible humans in the crowd had already fled from the storm of spellfire and growing destruction. As the crowd gradually thinned, her adversaries were running out of places to hide and their limited numbers were starting to show. Her forces outnumbered them five to one, and while she lacked anywhere near as many iron-ranks, Typh’s presence was more than enough to tip the scales in her favour. 

But a slow, gradual win was not the decisive victory she wanted. She needed to do something dramatic.

Typh stretched her arms out to the side and for a moment, she revelled in the electric feel of energy passing between her fingers. She corkscrewed through the sky while brilliant lances of molten plasma whipped up from the ground. When they struck her, her golden shield shimmered and smaller arcs of brilliant energy would shoot down to strike at whoever had attempted to harm her. The effects were usually minimal, but the extra spellfire all added to what was fast becoming a breathtakingly beautiful scene. 

Multi-hued beams of light forked and curved around the dragon while she let out a cackling laugh that was lost amidst the cacophony of crashing thunder. Ionising whines and loud blasts echoed across the skyline while Typh danced on wings of mana. Over a dozen iron-ranks tried their hardest to kill her, but their best efforts couldn’t do more than bring a smile to her face. She’d grown immeasurably in the past year, and it was so refreshing to feel powerful for a change.

Although… it was possible she was enjoying herself a little bit too much. 

Deciding to wrap things up, she turned on a needle’s head and aimed herself down towards the javelin-throwing warrior atop the roof. His eyes widened with intoxicating fear as she forced herself into a dive. The mana in her skill caused her to plummet towards the ground far faster than she could reasonably be expected to travel. A javelin sheathed in lightning hit her square on. Her shield deflected the damage causing the missile to glance off, but the blinding light left after spots in her skill-enhanced vision.

Fortunately, she didn’t need her eyes to see.

She continued to charge straight down. Her momentum barely even faltered when she tore through the mage’s barrier and tackled the adventurer standing beside them at speed. The warrior’s strength score made it feel like she was crashing into a statue composed of solid steel, but Typh’s shield made from the hardened mana she kept in her aura wasn’t exactly fragile either. 

The two of them continued travelling straight down, disintegrating the roof of the building and collapsing an exterior wall as Typh’s flight path clipped the edge of the house. The mage was lost in the carnage as ceramic tiles and shattered bricks exploded outwards. The pair hit the ground and suddenly Typh was skidding along the flagstones doing the one thing a mage should never do with a warrior—get up close and personal.

Powerful strikes hammered against her aura, which she’d condensed into her preferred armour of golden scales. Each punch hit harder than she’d been struck in some time, and she estimated the warrior had an effective strength score in the low two hundreds. Their scuffle was frantic and desperate, with the nearby crowd rushing to get out of their way. Typh pushed mana into her muscles, giving her the temporary strength she needed to hold her own. She pressed the warrior down against the flagstones and weathered his assault against her scales while she built up mana in her chest. Once the crowd was far enough away, she opened her mouth and exhaled. 

A torrent of golden dragonfire poured past her painted lips. She bathed the warrior beneath her in intense, hammering flames. His struggles persisted for some time while Typh funnelled more and more mana through her skills. She drained two rings dry of their stored power, pushing half the extra energy towards the intensity of her spat flames and the rest into her defensive aura. 

A ranger had started shooting arrows at her, sending deep fault lines juddering through her scales. She ignored his efforts, patching the damage as necessary while she focused on the task at hand. The warrior’s blind blows stopped several seconds before she did. She only relented when his helmet’s runes gave out, and the thick metal finally melted around his face. Whether the warrior would survive that or not was up to the System and his vitality score, but she only cared that the chunk of solidifying steel covering his eyes would almost certainly keep him out of the fight.

Typh stood up and retrieved the fallen warrior's javelin from the floor while a barrage of arrows continued to rain down. She took a few quick steps forwards and threw it in time to catch the mage from the roof in the stomach. The missile transformed into a bolt of lightning a split second after it had left her hands and sent the mage tumbling back down to the ground, this time in a smoking heap.

To her disappointment, the javelin didn’t return to her hand, and so when the ranger sent a skill-empowered shot through both her arcane defences and the meat of her shoulder, she was temporarily without a means to respond.

Typh pushed through the pain, quickly draining another piece of jewellery dry to restore her shield and kick-start her natural health regeneration. With the excess mana threatening to evaporate, she channelled it into a spell, and let loose a wide beam of intense heat that clipped the ranger as she tried to escape.

Four rogues suddenly appeared around her. Their blades immediately set her nerves on edge as she detected the dragonslaying enchantment etched into each knife. Four separate killing strikes, along with another four to maim were headed her way and dodging them all was out of the question.

Typh stepped into the nearest rogue, using her mana to blast herself forwards. The killing blow turned into another maiming strike as she took two long knives to the chest before the other three could get within dagger range. Still racing forwards, she bared her teeth and bit into the rogue’s neck, tearing out a chunk of him which she promptly swallowed.

Her feet skidded along the surface of the road as she raced out of their encirclement. The man she’d injured disappeared, whilst the three she’d evaded all converged on the spot she’d abandoned just in time for the heavy flagstone to explode. She’d miss the mana she’d sunk into it—her toe rings were despairingly empty—but it was a worthwhile trade to earn herself some breathing room.

With blood dripping down her chin and two dagger handles protruding from her chest, Typh walked towards the centre of the melee. Her feet left the ground after a couple of steps as she floated above the ground and rained down a storm of curving manabolts on those adventurers still engaged with her soldiers. The individual spells weren’t that devastating to iron-ranks, but the sheer quantity sent them reeling. This then opened them up to opportunistic strikes from the troops loyal to her.

Several deaths quickly followed and the remaining hostile adventurers withdrew, melting away into the thinning crowd which stood by in subdued silence. Her soldiers looked up to her floating high above the ground and bathed in a warm golden glow. Their eyes were wide with awe while the gathered civilians looked up at her with fear instead.

She pulled the enchanted knives out of her chest one at a time before throwing them down to clatter on the floor. Typh turned her attention to the waiting crowd and spoke:

“It’s over. Go home.”

Collectively, they flinched, and Typh felt a knot of worry form in her stomach. It wasn’t supposed to be like this—they were supposed to love her—but she simply didn't know how to make it happen. When she turned her attention to her soldiers, she saw that they were still staring at her.

They were a mixture of different species, predominantly the dual-classed ratlings in the beginnings of their third-tier, but more than a few humans had joined their ranks—veterans from Rhelea who knew the threat they were up against. Those soldiers gave her hope that it wasn’t too late for humanity, but it didn’t really matter. She’d put too much effort into their species for her to give up on them now.

“You did well, thank you,” she announced to the hundred or so men and women staring up at her. They raised their weapons and cheered, while Typh slowly allowed herself to fall to the ground.

Officers bearing draconic ranks flocked to her, and she barked out a series of orders that got the column of soldiers arrayed into some semblance of order. The injured were ferried to healers, while the captive adventurers were put under guard. Typh sniffed out Halith relatively quickly. The ratling woman had been horrifically burned at some point in the attack, and Typh found her standing over an enemy healer with a jagged dagger in her one, good arm.

“I hope this isn’t what it looks like, Halith. You know how I feel about torture,” Typh commented as she approached.

“This? This is nothing,” the ratling said, gesturing to her bloody blade. “Although, I might have to introduce the human to some friends of mine if they don’t start talking.”

Typh looked at the healer on the ground and frowned. The human looked young in the way that most iron-rankers did. He was conventionally attractive enough that he must have a reasonable charisma score, and he was staring up at her with abject terror in his green-blue eyes.

“Well, healer? Are you going to tell me who sent you or are you going to force me to compromise on my morals?” Typh asked.

“Morals?!” the healer said with a laugh that verged on the hysterical. “You cremated two hundred-thousand people! You’re a monster! You don’t have morals!”

“You’re right. I did kill all of those people. I’m not going to try and justify it to you, because you’re beneath my notice. But I am going to ask you to talk. Please. Tell us who sent you, and I promise you’ll be ransomed back to your people.” 

The healer glanced to the side at the other captives who were being bound in runic chains and led away. He licked his lips while he thought, before whispering something that Typh actually misheard with all the activity around her. She leaned in closer and was genuinely surprised when the healer responded with a vicious headbutt and hawked globule of phlegm that hit her in the face.

“Get fucked, dragon!” the human yelled while she reeled back in disgust.

Halith brandished her knife and looked at her pleadingly. Typh wiped her face clean and shook her head. 

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“Chain him up with the others, and bring me someone who wants to cut a deal. Offer to beat whatever they’ve been paid,” the dragon said.

“Are you sure?” the ratling asked. “They don’t deserve your mercy.”

“I’m sure, Halith.”

“I’ll see it done, Lord Sovereign.”

***

It didn’t take Halith long to find an adventurer willing to talk. These weren’t knights sworn to a cause—just mercenaries following a promise of gold. The one who finally stepped forward was a warrior older than most. She had the soft features that marked her as a Tolisian, and a fresh wound leaving her blind in one eye. Still, she seemed in good spirits and was happy to answer Typh’s questions after being provided with numerous assurances of her safety, payment, and a frustratingly large keg of hard to find skill-brewed ale.

“This is good stuff,” the warrior said, taking a deep drink from her clay cup. “I think I can taste grapefruit.”

“That’s nice,” Typh said. “Now, can you tell me who sent you?”

“Sure, why not. You’re paying after all,” the adventurer agreed.

“She’s stalling,” Halith accused, and Typh hated that the ratling was right.

“Only a little bit,” the woman admitted with a confident smile. She then took another drink in lieu of an explanation and Typh just barely resisted the urge to scream.

“If you don’t give me something, I will let her torture you,” Typh threatened.

“No, you won’t. I’ll give you everything… I was sent by Lord Andreas of House Cytheme. He hired about ten or so of us, with the other great lords of the south all pitching in to buy our esteemed services,” the adventurer explained.

“The Southern Lords paid you to kill me?”

“Gods no! We weren’t paid nearly enough for that!”

“Then what do you call this?” Typh asked, gesturing to the ruined buildings that had been destroyed in their attack.

“This? I call this a very expensive distraction,” the adventurer replied, and then took another deep glug of her ale. Typh immediately felt a massive sense of dread as the woman continued to speak. “Besides, if you’re using that big ole lizard brain of yours, you’ll realise there are eight cities to Rhelea’s south—nine if you count Dolieis, but it’s so far east who does?—Lord Andreas paid for ten adventurers like myself, and the other noble lordlings weren’t the types to be outdone. I’d say twenty or so attacked you here so…”

Typh stopped listening and focused her attention on the horizon. If the warrior could be trusted—and she definitely couldn’t—there were upwards of seventy iron-ranks somewhere in her city causing trouble. She tried to think how long this had all taken. The ambush couldn’t have lasted for much more than ten minutes, but going through the captured adventurers to find one willing to talk, and then sending a runner to negotiate for a barrel of third-tier Padian ale… 

Far too much time had passed for Typh to be comfortable with what she was hearing.

Seventy iron-ranks could have done a lot of damage while Typh had been distracted, and just because she was aware of them now, it didn’t mean she had any idea how to find them, let alone stop them. Typh needed something to go on. She looked over her shoulder and caught a self-satisfied, yet oddly flirtatious wink from the captured adventurer. The dragon clenched her fists so hard that it hurt. She was thoroughly unsurprised when her temper leaked into her surroundings and the dried blood started to cook on the flagstones around her.

Arilla, King of the North.

Queen Constancia, trapped within her palace.

The firstborn hostages of the Southern Lords.

They had to be the priorities. Typh wasn’t sure if the exact order would be shared by those who’d sent adventurers into her city, but she had to act fast to stop them.

“Pay the woman and let her go. Send runners to mobilise everyone. Have them sweep the city to find the southern adventurers and notify the siege grounds and those guarding both Arilla and the hostages that they need to be prepared for an immediate assault,” Typh ordered.

“You know it's too late, right?” the warrior offered.

“Say another word, human, and I’ll not only renege on our deal, but I’ll let Halith’s people torture you for information before they throw your corpse to the goblins,” Typh threatened. 

The adventurer wisely shut up, but it didn’t stop the warrior from grinning as she enjoyed her relaxing drink.

The dragon closed her eyes and tried to think. She wanted to rush straight to Arilla’s side, but that was predictable and quite possibly unnecessary. She’d been played, and now she needed to be smarter than everyone who was arrayed against her. Typh went through the resources available to her and cursed her lack of high-ranking classers. If she got out of this with her city intact, she would strongly have to consider giving up her neutrality in the looming nonhuman civil war.

Typh opened her eyes and addressed the adventurer:

“I need to know exactly how morally flexible you are.”

“That depends… how much you payin’?” the woman simply answered.

Typh ground her teeth and let out a tired sigh. She unclenched her fists and ordered an attendant to pour her a large cup from the adventurer’s barrel.

“I think we both know I’m about to be paying far more than you’re worth,” the dragon said.

“That you are lass—that you are.”

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