Valkyrie's Shadow

Empire in Chains: Act 4, Chapter 18

Empire in Chains: Act 4, Chapter 18

Chapter 18

“Your Eminence.”

A low growl reverberated off of the stone around him. Xerix shifted back from the edge of the steaming lake.

Twin orbs of cyan radiance appeared in the darkness, regarding him with a baleful gaze. Xerix lowered his head, retracting the crest running atop his scaled neck.

“It is time, Your Eminence.”

The eyes narrowed. Had he said too much?

An oppressive atmosphere filled the cavern as the murky waters churned. Xerix turned and fled as a massive form rose from the waves. His razor-sharp claws sent flecks of stone into the air as he ran through a winding tunnel to dive into the waters on the other end with a shadow splash.

Warmth enveloped him. He swam another kilometre to emerge from the bottom of a large lake. His pace increased, legs and tail moving frantically as a wave of pressure rolled over him from behind. Just before the surface, he levelled out, cautiously poking the top of his head out of the water.

Nearby, two Goblins sitting in a dugout stared at him, a fishing net of woven vines held limply between them. He paid them little mind, making his way towards the distant shore. There, a row of Gnolls clad in hides decorated with bright plumage from various magical beasts lowered themselves to a knee.

“Lord Xerix,” the Alpha, Irweth said. “Whe–”

The waves erupted in the distance. Arcs of water flew through the air as the Viridian Dragon Lord, Rerix’ixthrious=Cyrililderex, launched herself from the lake. The tribes of Demihumans along the shore stared for all of three seconds before prudently melting away into the trees.

Once his mother’s gargantuan form disappeared beyond the trees, Xerix turned his gaze back to Irweth.

“Has everything been made ready?”

“Representatives from all of the tribes have been called together by the Matriarch. They were sent to receive the Humans’ tribute several days ago.”

“Is the gathering no less impressive than before?”

Irweth fell silent for a moment, her paws shifting over the damp soil.

“Our numbers are the same,” she said. “The passing of seasons brings change to the tribes, but I do not think the Matriarch would err in her selection.”

He hoped for his own sake that she hadn’t. If his mother decided that the tribes had fallen short in their presentation, she would take it as a slight and exact the requisite punishment against the offenders. As the one responsible for the preparations, Xerix would certainly be killed in some gruesome way.

The Gnolls hacked and coughed, falling away as he released a sigh. Their Druids started casting Cure Poison spells.

One might think that avoiding this fate was a matter of simply leaving the jungle, but simply leaving was not so simple. A crucible, his mother called their home. The perfect environment in which to cultivate her offspring. Wyrmlings who survived a jungle full of powerful predators would rise to rule the Demihuman tribes, learning the intricacies of intrigue and competing with their siblings.

Rerix’ixthrious did not prevent her children from leaving, but the Human Empire that surrounded the jungle and patrolled the skies did. And, so, Xerix and his brood mates acted according to their mother’s wishes, growing up to become good and proper Green Dragons. Those who didn’t were simply killed by the rest – one played the game, or they died.

As a final test, they were driven out before reaching Adulthood. Xerix wasn’t sure how many survived this ‘graduation’, as those who did would strike out into the world to establish their own proud domains, never to return.

Being the next in line to leave, Xerix was naturally the strongest and most cunning of the young Green Dragons in the jungle. This, unfortunately, meant that he was also in charge of receiving the Humans’ tribute. It was a stressful time when he could only wish that he could go back to more enjoyable activities such as plotting the downfall of his siblings and claiming their hoards as his own.

Xerix took wing, lazily circling over the lake until he crested the emergent layers of the jungle. Several kilometres away, at the base of an obsidian cliff, he found his mother feasting on a freshly-slain Gigant Basilisk. Alighting nearby, he eyed the Ancient Dragon warily. She was over four times his seven-metre length and dozens of times his mass. A single snap of her tail could probably end him in an instant.

“Your Eminence,” he said. “The Gnoll Matriarch has gathered the delegation.”

The sound of tearing flesh and snapping bones was the only reply. The odour of the Gigant Basilisk’s poisonous blood suffused the air as his mother continued to gorge herself on the Magical Beast.

With some annoyance, Xerix realised that it was one that he had planned on using against his siblings in the nearby territories. Had his mother killed this one on purpose to make things more ‘interesting’? A mature Gigant Basilisk was close to a match for a new Adult Dragon, so she may have decided that it was an inappropriate tool in the struggles between her children.

Time went on and carrion birds gathered overhead. A family of brightly-plumed Venomous Raptors poked their heads out from behind a fallen log, seemingly anticipating a free meal once the Ancient Green had sated her hunger. Wisps of poisonous, green gas rose in the air as Rerix’ixthrious belched in satisfaction. She finally turned her attention to him.

“Has the tribute increased?”

“I…”

How could he know the answer to that? It wasn’t as if the Humans came and delivered some sort of notice beforehand. His mother narrowed a critical eye at him. Her scales rippled in disappointed disgust and Xerix wracked his mind for an appropriate answer.

“The Humans grow more numerous every year,” he said. “That should mean that their tribute should proportionately increase, yes?”

That seemed a reasonable response. When his mother had first imposed her demands on the Humans, she had settled on a mere quarter per cent of their production, which was to be paid following their autumn harvest. While it felt a piteous amount, Humans were a race that seemed to expand without limit yet remained manageably weak. As they invariably grew, so did the tribute, which was small enough that the Humans simply agreed to hand it over without a second thought.

Xerix and the rest of his siblings considered it an inspired notion and sought to emulate their mother’s successful establishment of recurring revenue with the tribes under their rule. There were gems and precious metals aplenty in the ancient volcanic formation, so everyone built up very respectable hoards – for young Dragons, at any rate. They plotted raids and took great delight in waging proxy wars; plundering the wealth of the tribes and fellow Dragons alike.

“Is that all you can think of?”

Xerix blinked. His mother snorted in derision

“You are an idiot.”

A torrent of wind washed over him as Rerix’ixthrious took wing. Xerix followed after his mother in confusion. Was there something he had missed?

“If I may ask, Your Eminence, what do you mean by my being an idiot?”

“The domain of our neighbour to the west has vanished,” Rerix’ixthrious replied. “Have you not considered the implications of this?”

Though he couldn’t see past the mountains surrounding the jungle, Xerix still cast a disdainful look westward.

“Not really,” he said. “Whites are stupid and weak. They probably can’t even control their local population of Giants. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were hunted to extinction.”

His mother’s maw opened in a toothy smile at his roundabout attempt to assuage her ire. The tribes of Giants in their jungle and the mountains surrounding it had been removed a few decades before Xerix was born. It was Rerix’ixthrious who had personally seen to their extermination and she considered it one of her greatest achievements.

“You are right about some things and wrong about others. Perhaps you are yet too young to understand. The fall of a great power foments the rise of new powers. Who will fill the void left behind?”

As far as he was aware, the domain of the White Dragon Lord encompassed the Azerlisia Mountains and the forested foothills around them. There were a number of possibilities that might have caused his downfall.

The first was that one of his mates had defeated him and took his place. This was unlikely as they did not sense that the victor had established her domain in his place.

Most likely was as Xerix had mentioned: the Frost Giants that the Frost Dragons had long contended with for dominance of the range had finally overcome them. In that case, their young would be enslaved and everyone else would be slaughtered.

A distant third possibility was that the Platinum Dragon Lord who had established one of his domains over a peninsula further northwest was sticking his insufferably shiny snout into other people’s business. Again. As a metallic Dragon, he loved to influence the affairs of mortals in sickeningly selfless ways and Xerix could not fathom for what reason he would do such things.

Still, even metallics weren’t so rude as to significantly infringe upon another Dragon’s domain, never mind confront them, unless they felt that they had no other choice. He doubted that a Dragon Lord whose power eclipsed Rerix’ixthrious’ by several orders of magnitude would feel that he had no choice about anything.

If the Platinum Dragon Lord and his cadre of goons had a problem with something that the White Dragon Lord was doing, they would simply tell the White Dragon Lord to stop. The overwhelming difference in power between them meant that the White Dragon Lord would prudently back down, as any civilised being would. Then again, White Dragons were generally idiots so he might have been unceremoniously slapped down.

His thoughts turned back to his mother’s question, assuming the second case to be the most likely. With the White Dragon Lord’s power broken, the Frost Giants would not take over his entire domain. They would stay in the icy peaks and valleys of the Azerlisia Mountains, leaving everything at lower altitudes free for expansion by lesser powers. Did his mother mean to say that the Humans would move to exploit the opening?

“Do you believe that the growth of the Humans’ tribute will exceed expectations, Your Eminence?” He asked, “It’s barely been three seasons.”

“You underestimate these Humans,” Rerix’ixthrious told him. “They are as voracious ants, tearing down and reshaping the world according to their selfish desires. To their kind, resources are to be exploited and anything preventing them from exploiting those resources is an obstacle. Without obstacles, they consume everything in their path.”

Xerix wondered how many more wagons of treasure would appear. He couldn’t wait until he could establish his own domain and raise Humans of his own.

A weak race that offered treasure as tribute and worked on their own to grow and expand made for ideal minions. Humans were especially so since they were prone to politicking and scheming in a myriad of interesting ways, offering various delights for a Green Dragon’s sensibilities. Things would be far more entertaining than the tribal Demihumans that they had in the jungle.

Once he approached adulthood, he would fly south and find a nice, quiet jungle of his own. Then he would pick up some Humans and mould them to his liking. His thoughts drifted as he started to envision the vast, wealthy empire that would grow around him as the ages passed.

After two hours of leisurely flight, they approached what the Humans referred to as ‘The Spill’: an old lahar that flowed into a sizeable lake in the river valley to the east. Near the lip of the colossal caldera that contained the jungles of his home, a dark fortress loomed over the scarred scenery. From its towers fluttered the flags of the Human ‘Empire’ that paid tribute to Rerix’ixthrious.

Several kilometres away, near the edge of the jungle, a great gathering of Demihumans awaited them. Xerix chuckled to himself as the shadow of the Viridian Terror crossed over them. They scattered in all directions, helpless before her frightful presence. He had just come to harness this power, but, eventually, he would grow strong enough to inspire such overpowering dread as well.

He landed on a rocky outcropping and watched as the Viridian Dragon Lord awaited the return of her minions. Her eyes narrowed in pleasure as they came back with trembling steps, backs bent under the aura of her matchless might. Of the Demihumans chosen, there were dozens of strong Gnolls, Trolls, Ogres and hundreds of Goblins to help bring in the tribute. Several of the other races living in the jungle had been brought out in the past, but they proved themselves poorly suited to the dry, flat and open terrain or were too stupid, clumsy or a combination thereof.

Xerix yawned as Rerix’ixthrious continued lording over the ‘delegation’ of Demihumans, eyeing the entrance of the distant fortress down the slope. When the sun reached its zenith, the gate finally opened and a long procession of wagons trickled out.

By the Viridian Dragon Lord’s decree, the wagons were to arrive uncovered so that she could watch the delivery glitter in the sun. Xerix’s nostrils twitched as he watched the shimmering line of vehicles laden with gold coins, precious ores, gems and jewellery made their way towards them.

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty…hmm…

There didn’t seem to be that many more than the previous year. Had her mother overestimated the Humans? No, that couldn’t be. She was over four centuries old and she had settled amidst the Humans some time after reaching adulthood, so she was well aware of their capabilities. The Humans had either encountered opposition to their expansion…or they were trying to deceive her.

He glanced towards the Dragon Lord. She must have surely noted the same thing. Rerix’ixthrious’ tail twitched in displeasure as the procession reached them and a Human male in vibrant garb came forward to genuflect before her. The man was Count Enz – the third Count Enz in Xerix’s recollection – who was markedly shorter than those who came before.

“Your Eminence,” he intoned. “In accordance with the pact of old, we present to you our appreciation for your benevolence. Long may we prosper under the auspices of undeniable power and wisdom beyond our mortal comprehension.”

The wind swept over the landscape in the wake of Count Enz’s words. Beads of sweat formed over his brow as the Viridian Dragon Lord scrutinised the train of wagons behind him.

“Are you sure this is all?”

“Y-your Eminence?”

“Have the lands bordering your territories not changed? Surely your Empire has taken advantage of this.”

Even from where Xerix was perched, Count Enz’s swallow was audible.

“That’s…it is true that the situation in the west has changed, Your Eminence,” he said, “but our investments have not manifested any tangible benefits yet. It is our hope that gains may be realised soon.”

While he wasn’t very good at reading Humans, Count Enz did not appear to be lying. Rerix’ixthrious fixed the Human with a cold stare. A terrified wail drifted into the air as the Human Lord crumpled into a quivering ball on the ground. The dozens of Humans driving the wagons scattered and fled.

The Viridian Dragon Lord watched them for a time before releasing a snort.

“Bring this over to the main lair,” his mother told him. “I shall await its arrival there.”