The Throne of Conquest
The Palace of Burning Fangs rose like a cathedral of war at the heart of the Draconic Lands, its towers of black obsidian piercing the scarlet clouds of a perpetually blazing sky. Within its volcanic stone entrails, the air vibrated with electric tension, charged with raw magic and titanic ambitions. The echoes of footsteps on black marble resonated like death sentences, carrying with them the weight of a nascent empire.
The throne room, defying all human asure, stretched nearly a hundred ters, its vaults lost in mystical darkness. Twisted columns, carved from a single block of draconic basalt, supported a ceiling where ancestral conquest bas-reliefs intertwined with prophecies engraved in fire runes. Braziers suspended by runic levitation cast dancing shadows that seed to narrate the bloody history of the draconic race, their blue and gold flas creating an atmosphere both majestic and unsettling.
Upon the draconic iron throne, forged from the bones of the first Leviathan defeated by their ancestors, sat Maelor, barely twenty-three years old, but already bearing the burden of a multidinsional empire. His amaranth-black scales caught the light like cut gems, each telling the genetic story of a millennial royal lineage. His golden eyes, heritage of the Great Dragons of the Ice Age, burned with cold and calculating intelligence. In that gaze resided sothing more terrifying than rage: the thodical patience of a born predator.
To his right, like a pillar of protective shadow, stood Elystria. Her silent presence was not passive but strategic. Each blink of her eyelids analyzed, each tilt of her head calculated. Her silver-gray scales reflected light like war armor, and her violet eyes rarest genetic mutation of the royal lineage scrutinized the assembly with the acuity of a born spy. She was the blade in the shadow of the throne, the intelligence that completed her brother’s brute force.
Below, leaning against the black granite base that elevated the throne above common mortals, Eldorath embodied absolute authority even in abdication. The forr king had not renounced power; he had delegated it. His antique bronze-colored scales bore the scars of a thousand battles, and his eyes, deep red like liquid rubies, never left his son. Each gesture from Maelor was weighed, evaluated, approved or disapproved by that rciless paternal gaze. The ssage was clear: reign, but govern only if you are worthy.
The first counselor advanced, his midnight blue scales glittering under his runic war armor. General Vorthak, veteran of three dinsional invasions, bore on his elongated snout the ritual marks of World Killers. His voice, deep and tallic, filled the hall:
- "Majesty, our spy networks confirm the total collapse of French resistance. Paris fell in forty-eight hours. Lyon and Marseille capitulated without a fight. The last rebel pockets in the Alps and Brittany survive only thanks to pathetic camouflage spells. Our legions crush them thodically, village by village."
He unfurled a holographic map that materialized in the air, showing Europe in bloody hues. Red dots blinked: conquered territories. Orange dots: weak resistance. Only a few green dots remained, pathetically isolated.
- "But," continued Vorthak, his tone hardening, "the United States and China oppose us with unexpected coordinated resistance. Their S-Ranks fight with desperation bordering on madness. They have transford their galopolises into magical fortresses, using war techniques our scouts had never catalogued."
Maelor slowly crossed his claws on his throne’s armrest, the tal grinding against stone. This sound, sharp and unpleasant, froze the assembly.
- "Elaborate," he ordered, his voice carrying the authority of a thousand generations of conquerors.
- "New York has erected a mystical barrier powered by the suffering of its own inhabitants. They sacrifice their civilians to maintain their defenses. Beijing uses ancestral magic we thought extinct they awaken the dead dragons of their legends to turn them against us. Our losses..." Vorthak hesitated. "Our losses are acceptable, but heavier than expected."
A second counselor, Master Kyraleth, stepped forward, his erald green scales sparkling under his ceremonial robe embroidered with draconic gold threads. Chief strategist of interdinsional armies, he carried in his eyes the cold certainty of war mathematics.
- "Sire, our calculations are formal. If we concentrate seventy-five percent of our available forces on these two bastions, their fall is guaranteed within one hundred sixty-eight hours. Human resistance will collapse psychologically as soon as their last symbols of hope have been annihilated."
He made holographic projections appear showing battle simulations, loss curves, enemy morale analyses.
- "I recomnd leaving only peacekeeping forces in pacified territories and redeploying our elite legions. Humanity will fight with more ferocity as long as it believes it can win. Once their champions are slain, it will accept the inevitable."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was heavy with calculations, strategies forming and unraveling in the minds of draconic leaders. Maelor slowly turned his head toward his father, a gesture that seed trivial but which, in this hall, amounted to asking permission from one emperor to another.
Eldorath straightened slightly, and his voice, though barely louder than a whisper, filled the stone cathedral like an underground rumble:
- "France is not just a conquered territory. It is a symbol." His red eyes fixed on the holographic map. "Paris was their City of Light. Versailles, the symbol of their past grandeur. Every castle, every cathedral in this country tells a thousand years of human pride. By settling there, we don’t just take lands. We take their dreams."
He paused, letting his words resonate.
- "Moreover, the geography is ideal. Central position in Europe, temperate climate, developed infrastructure, docile population since their governnt’s collapse. Their wines and art will add a touch of refinent to our court. The humans who serve us will understand that obeying dragons can be... civilized."
An icy smile stretched Maelor’s lips, revealing ivory fangs that could have torn steel.
- "Perfect." He rose from his throne, his imposing stature nearly two and a half ters dominating the assembly. "Let the portals be prepared. The Draconic High Court, all Noble Houses, imperial archives, and the War Treasury will be transferred to France within seven days."
A tremor ran through the assembly. This was not just a move; it was the migration of an entire civilization, the establishnt of a new multidinsional power center.
General Vorthak bowed, his scales glittering:
- "Should I begin preparations imdiately, Majesty?"
- "No." Maelor’s voice cracked like a whip. He turned his gaze toward a figure lurking in the shadow of a column—Scribe Zephyros, a dragon with gray scales and atrophied wings, specialist in inter-dinsional communications.
- "You. Send a sealed ssage to all Noble Houses. Every family, every clan, every minor lineage. Tell them that the Grand Council of Invasion will be held here, in this hall, in exactly forty-eight hours." His golden eyes hardened. "Specify that any absence will be interpreted not as a refusal of obedience, but as a personal declaration of war against the Crown."
Zephyros bowed so deeply that his snout touched the black marble.
- "It shall be done according to your will, Supre Majesty."
As the counselors began to disperse, their steps echoing like war drums in the palace corridors, Elystria took an almost imperceptible step toward the throne. Her violet eyes t her brother’s. No words were exchanged, but in that gaze passed sothing complex: pride, concern, and perhaps a silent question about the price of their ambition.
When silence fell again on the throne room, Maelor murmured, his words carrying the weight of prophecy:
- "This world does not yet belong to us entirely. But in seven days, nothing will remain of their hope. And then..." He smiled, and in that smile resided all the patient cruelty of his race. "Then, we can truly begin to mold it in our image."
Thousands of kiloters away and in another dinsion of reality, Paris agonized under an ash and blood-colored sky. The air itself seed contaminated by the tallic sll of draconic magic, a sickening mixture of sulfur, burnt copper, and crystallized human fear. The suburbs of the French capital resembled gaping wounds in civilization’s fabric, their gutted buildings like carcasses after the passage of a hurricane of claws and flas.
The rare survivors wandered like ghosts between improvised barricades, their empty eyes reflecting broken humanity. So were protected by exhausted hunters, others abandoned to their fate by defenders who had fled or perished. In every gaze could be read the sa silent question: how much longer?
At the heart of this urban apocalypse, two silhouettes advanced with the deadly fluidity of born predators. Mordred led the way, his steps perfectly silent despite the rubble and debris littering what had once been the Rue de Rivoli. Every muscle in his body betrayed controlled tension, that of a killer evolving in his natural elent.
Behind him, Ygdrasyle moved like a living shadow, so discreet that a distracted observer might have believed Mordred was advancing alone. His silver eyes constantly swept the environnt, cataloguing potential threats, escape routes, strategic positions. It was survival instinct sharpened by decades of missions in war zones.
The silence between them was not that of discomfort, but that of two violence professionals who didn’t need words to communicate. Every vibration, every change in the air, every suspicious shadow was automatically analyzed and categorized by their overtrained senses.
Mordred suddenly froze before what had been a busy crossroads, now transford into a smoking crater bordered by gutted facades. At the center of this chaos, almost incongruous in its integrity, was a sewer manhole. The cast iron plate, matte black that seed to absorb light, bore marks that only a trained eye could notice: concealnt runes engraved with precision that betrayed non-human origin.
Ygdrasyle raised an eyebrow, his killer instinct imdiately alert:
- "You’re planning to go down into the sewers now?"
Mordred didn’t respond imdiately. He turned slowly, and in that movent, sothing changed in him. His features hardened, his shoulders straightened, and his eyes... his eyes blazed with intense orange light, like two star fragnts imprisoned in human flesh.
When he spoke, his voice had changed. Deeper, denser, charged with harmonics that didn’t entirely belong to the human auditory spectrum:
- "Below lies the secret of my existence." He paused, his flaming eyes fixed on the plate.
Ygdrasyle felt a shiver run down his spine, that primitive reaction predators feel when they encounter sothing more dangerous than themselves. His silver eyes lingered on the plate, and suddenly, it ceased being a simple urban maintenance access. It beca a door to sothing ancient, powerful, and deeply personal.
Mordred knelt and placed a hand on the cast iron plate. The instant his palm made contact with the cold tal, a discharge traversed his being—not physical, but spiritual, as if two long-separated magnets finally recognized each other.
His eyes closed, and in the darkness of his closed eyelids, a na resonated like a cosmic heartbeat:
Isaac.
This na didn’t cross his lips, but it resonated in his chest with the force of a dinsional call. The more he concentrated on this resonance, the more it took shape, transforming from a whisper into a contained cry, from a vibration into a silent supplication. It was as if a part of his soul, long amputated, was reaching out to him from a temporal abyss.
His fingers trembled slightly. This wasn’t fear Mordred had surpassed that stage long ago. It was sothing rarer and deeper: the physical sensation of two realities rubbing against each other, creating friction in the very fabric of existence. He was about to cross a threshold, once again, but this ti toward a truth he wasn’t certain he wanted to know.
Ygdrasyle knelt beside him, his fine fingers tracing the discrete symbols engraved around the plate. Anti-intrusion runes of stupefying complexity, deactivated but still visible to those who knew how to read them. The sophistication of these protections proved this wasn’t a simple municipal access, but the entrance to a place of power.
- "You knew there was sothing here," he observed, his voice tense with professional curiosity. "How?"
Mordred opened his eyes, and in his orange irises now danced real flas, tiny but hypnotic:
- "It attracts ." His voice had beco a hoarse whisper. "Like a magnet attracts iron. Like the tide attracts the moon. It still breathes, down there. In the darkness where they imprisoned it."
He paused, breathing deeply, and each inhalation seed to connect him further to this underground presence.
- "It calls to . It’s always been there, in a corner of my consciousness, like a lody you can’t forget. But now..." He straightened, his flaming eyes fixed on Ygdrasyle. "Now, I can hear it clearly."
Ygdrasyle narrowed his eyes, his analytical mind cataloguing this information with the precision of a biological computer. In his long career as assassin and spy, he had learned to recognize pivotal monts—those instants when destiny’s threads knot and unknot, where long-buried secrets surface like corpses in a swamp.
- "Who is ’it’?" he asked, though he already suspected the answer would change everything.
Mordred stepped back, as if an invisible gravitational force was drawing him toward the plate. His mind swayed slightly, caught between two overlapping realities. Silent migraines crackled at the back of his skull, harbingers of a truth too important to be contained in a single human brain.
- "You’ll discover it soon enough, my friend," he murmured.
He raised his eyes to Paris’s gray sky, where draconic silhouettes still patrolled among the clouds.
- "The dragons believe they’ve won. They think their invasion is a success." A terrible smile stretched his lips.
He turned toward the sewer plate, his orange eyes shining like beacons in the gloom.
- "Let’s go."
Reviews
All reviews (0)