Taren14

The sun seemed friendlier and warmer than it ever had before in the North as the assembled Warfang dragons stood outside of the walls of Bjornhold the next morning. The Guardians stood facing Bjorn, Blacktalon, the Elking, and the Ancient One, with Spyro, Cynder, and Ventus standing between both sides. Behind the Northern leaders stood honor guards of their tribes, banners of each waving in the breeze. The wind blew gently southwards, and Ventus looked up into the sky as he felt it pass, at the thin clouds that floated lazily along in the breeze. “We’ll have a favorable wind going back,” he observed. “All the better to return to Warfang as swiftly as possible!” Cyril said. “All is in readiness, Terrador, you need only give the word.” Terrador nodded, and turned to the Northern leaders. He inclined his head respectfully towards them. “You have our thanks for hosting us for this long, friends. I know that hundreds of dragons are not something easily dealt

It almost surprised Spyro how much livelier Bjornhold could be when its people had the chance. The city, formerly so drab and quiet each time he had visited, was now home to one of the largest parties he’d ever been a part of. The Jarl’s hall was packed to bursting with snow leopards, cheetahs, Sherpa, moles, gryphons, and dragons, and their combined noise of talking, laughing, and singing nearly drowned out the music that floated over the entire gathering. The noise rose to the rafters themselves, where even more gryphons sat, talking and singing and drinking and eating. The hall’s great doors were opened out onto the great stone landing outside, where yet more Northerners danced and whirled to even more music that was being played by even more musicians. The smell of roasting meat and vegetables wafted through the room, and Northerners of all stripes raised tankards of ale and cheered with stunning regularity while others tore into chunks of meat with their

Terrador looked off to the north for what might have been the hundredth time as he stood on the battlefield at Half-Axe Pass. All around him snow leopards, deer, moles, Sherpa, and gryphons worked to clear the field of the detritus of war. Weapons were picked up from the ground and piled into carts, Grublin weapons to be burned in some while Northern weapons were salvaged in others. More Northerners retrieved arrows from the field, ripping them from the earth and stacking them up in their arms to be reused if they were whole, while those that were broken were pulled up and thrown on a large pile. The work had taken them days, so far. The scale of the battle meant that there was a great deal to do at the end of it. And the most unfortunate duty was, even more unfortunately, taking the longest. Those Northerners not scavenging weapons instead walked the field, carefully examining each of the hundreds of bodies of Northern warriors that lay scattered across the pass to see

Another ball of purple and black fire bloomed over the lake, its shockwave making waves form on the water below and shattering the windows of the castle wall next to it. Spyro went spinning backwards from the force of the blast but quickly righted himself, his sightless white eyes staring at Erebus, who remained in place. Black shadow fire roiled around Erebus’s body as he hovered over the lake, watching him. As Spyro watched, Erebus reared his head back and breathed a searing torrent of black fire at him. Spyro opened his own mouth and exhaled too, meeting Erebus’s fire with his own as black and purple once again came together. Smoke and flame erupted from their meeting and Spyro cut his flame and winged through the smoke. Kill him, he thought. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. His mind was clouded by shadows and rage. That same chant filled his head, only interspersed with the occasional command as he dodged, climbed, dove, slashed, bit, and

Erebus gave his wings a mighty flap and took off into the air as Spyro let out a great roar. The sound shook the earth and the trees around them, and even Erebus felt the pressure and power behind it as Spyro spread his wings and took off after him. Erebus flew back out over the lake with Spyro in pursuit, and turned his head to spit a fireball back in his direction. Spyro dodged around the attack and it kept going, streaking through the ruined timber on the shore and exploding against the side of a mountain. Spyro replied with a ball of purple fire, which Erebus rolled to avoid. The fireball kept going and exploded part of the castle’s exterior wall, sending a shower of broken stone and dust back out of the hole that it left. Erebus dove down towards the lake surface and still Spyro came after him, more purple fireballs leaving his mouth as Erebus banked first to one side, then the other, dodging around the blasts as they hit the lake and sent up great plumes of water in

Thanatos smashed through the brick wall of a library and went sprawling onto the floor. His helmet, warped and distorted from the heat of the explosion, bounced off of his head with the impact and skittered across the stone before finally clanging against the wall, where it came to a stop. Hissing in pain, Thanatos looked back up as Ventus followed him through the hole. Unlike Thanatos, he pulled up short as he entered the library, hovering in the air above him and looking down. As he did, his paws went up and pulled his helmet off. Part of it had been blown off by the explosion, and Ventus tossed it aside. His chestplate, now even more warped than before, went next. Both clanged loudly on the floor as Thanatos got to his feet and snorted. “Getting rid of your armor now, are we? How considerate of you to make yourself easier for me to kill.” “Come and try it, then,” Ventus replied. “Gladly,” Thanatos snarled. He spread his wings and

Bjorn struggled to maintain his composure as the massive Grublin stormed towards the shield wall. Hours of battle had passed, and the ground was thick with the detritus of fallen Grublins, but still they came on, in ever-increasing numbers and ever-increasing size. While the archers had kept the numbers fairly manageable, the deer had run out of all but one volley of arrows hours ago. Bjorn didn’t begrudge them for keeping that last shot in reserve. If they only have one shot, they need to use it at the right moment. All the same, the archers no longer shooting had only emboldened the Grublins on the ground, and they had surged forward with renewed aggression. The shield wall was hard-pressed now, and the disciplined lines of the snow leopards and moles struggled to hold back the Grublins. A few had even managed to break through on occasion, slamming leopards aside and breaking into the open space behind them. Though they were swiftly cut down, it only made Bjorn even more

Bjorn had grown deaf to the sounds of war. For hours he and the other snow leopards had held the line against the Grublin horde, the enemy’s weapons slamming against their shields in between brief periods where the leopards lashed out with their own. To either side of him the rest of his warriors fought on. A Grublin that managed to leap over the shield wall was caught in mid air by a snow leopard’s spear. It thrashed and snarled, hissing and spitting before with a loud roar the snow leopard that it scrabbled and clawed at slammed it into the ground. Elsewhere, more spears thrust out from between the shield gaps and impaled more of the Grublins that charged heedlessly at the wall. Other snow leopards fought mechanically, blocking strikes on their shields even as they stabbed and slashed at the Grublins around them. The moles continued to fight on the flanks, and held strong as their spears extended and retracted, over and over again, each outward thrust felling

The group fought their way up. Floor by floor, they ran down hallways, through galleries, up stairs, and through door after door. Everywhere they went, Grublins surged to meet them, roaring in challenge as they charged at the three dragons. They tore through them easily, their elements working in concert as the Grublins were burned, frozen, smashed, zapped, melted, or blown away. At what seemed like the umpteenth floor, a pair of Grublins went flying down yet another hallway as Ventus blasted through a set of doors with his wind. They quickly righted themselves and charged, only for Cynder to surge past Ventus on a blast of her own wind, and fell both of them with a slash of her tail. As the two Grublins crumbled into dust, Cynder looked back at Ventus. “How far up are we?” she asked. “Pretty far,” Ventus replied as he looked around. “I think Erebus’s study is only a few more floors above us.” He pointed down the hallway they’d entered, towards a wooden door