Valkyrie's Shadow

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 2, Chapter 10

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 2, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

9th Day, Upper Wind Month, 1 CE, 0300 Hours

A gust of cool night wind lifted the torn silk curtains, carrying with it the stench of char and the sounds of a city forlorn.

The screams were the worst. No matter how hungry; no matter how weak; they somehow always found it in them to scream. Soft, yet piercing, their wordless cries of desperation, terror and anguish filtered through the broken balcony window, echoing throughout the throne room as if to cast their damnation upon its sole occupant.

Our Queen.

We trusted you.

We loved you.

Our blood is on your hands.

A whimper rose from a polished marble throne. Eyes raw from sleepless nights filled with bitter weeping, Draudillon Oriculus stared listlessly over the high hall of the Draconic Kingdom. Once filled with courtiers and servants, only dust and refuse remained. Magical torchlight glistened off of the dusty stone floors, broken window shards and empty bottles strewn about. But for the bottles, it was a scene unchanged over the past few weeks.

Despite their best efforts – or because of their best efforts – the Beastman nation making their slow advance across the Draconic Kingdom accelerated their cruel campaign of wanton slaughter. Her eyes fell over the bits of broken glass haphazardly swept away from the base of her throne. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

With their military forces hopelessly outmatched by the Beastmen, the Draconic Kingdom mostly relied on Adventurers and foreign aid to repel raids and invasions. Every time their neighbour’s aggression rose, the nation that the Draconic Kingdom sent ‘donations’ to – the Slane Theocracy – would send their forces to stem the ravenous tide and push it back.

The Draconic Kingdom made financial contributions on a regular schedule under the premise that their security was assured by their powerful neighbour to the west. Outsiders labelled the arrangement as imprudent and foolish – that they should instead allocate the not insubstantial portion of their national budget to their own military – but it was not so simple as that.

One could not simply enact a bill into law, throw money at the citizens and expect an army to spring forth. Raising an army took time. Raising an effective army took an even longer time. It required education, training, industry and infrastructure. Doing so was decidedly difficult when Beastmen raided them on a regular basis and the Draconic Kingdom’s soldiers were simply seen as slightly more interesting food.

They could throw money at the problem until they went bankrupt to no avail. And, so, they instead depended on the forces of a country that was stable and secure enough to actually resist the predation of their Demihuman neighbours.

The Slane Theocracy was the most powerful of humanity’s nations: one with six centuries of stability and the development that came with it. Their forces had few issues turning the Beastmen away. Except, this time, they didn’t come. Draudillon couldn’t understand why. Generally speaking, they were quite prompt when it came to heading off Demihuman incursions. Dealing with threats to humanity was an integral part of their mandate, after all.

Despite its name, the Draconic Kingdom was a Human nation and the Theocracy had donned the mantle of humanity’s defenders. But since the sovereign of the Draconic Kingdom was technically a Dragon Lord, the Theocracy aided them ‘unofficially’ to avoid internal unrest. How they went about helping mattered little to Draudillon and her people, however. What mattered was that they did and in doing so saved them time and time again.

Usually, they sent over an army group and a contingent of Paladins. She understood that the Theocracy was at war with the Elves, but, even if their regular forces were tied up, they could have teleported over one of their Scriptures: elite forces composed of some of the Theocracy’s most powerful individuals. Instead, when the tribes of the Beastman nation crossed the border once again, Draudillon’s call for aid was met with silence.

Her armies, which had been painstakingly trained to hold out until help came, sacrificed their lives in vain. At that point, all that was left for her subjects to do was hole up in their towns and cities while the Beastmen sated themselves by ravaging the countryside.

Additionally, a new problem had become apparent in the most recent conflict. Unlike their previous raids and invasions, the Beastmen now appeared intent on staying.

She wasn’t sure if it was because they became emboldened by the weak resistance that they had encountered or if the Beastman nation had changed its foreign policy, but more and more of its tribes invaded. The magnitude of their most recent invasion was far greater than ever before. They swept over the land, devouring villages and laying siege to the towns and cities in their path.

With no response from the Theocracy, Draudillon turned to Adventurers for help. But Adventurers, while effective against raids, could only do so much against a conquest. No matter how strong they were, they did not have the projection and coverage of an army. Where they fought, the Draconic Kingdom held. Everywhere else…well, needless to say, it was unpleasant choosing when and where her people would be abandoned to their fates.

Province by province, the Draconic Kingdom fell. As the situation became more and more untenable, they came up with a desperate ploy: a surgical strike that would eliminate the leadership of the Beastman forces. The idea was that, without the Lord that unified them, their war effort would fragment and dissipate.

She twisted her lip in disgust. It was a plan just as barbaric as its namesake: the ‘surgery’ proposed by the Boastful Sage of the Minotaur nation. Judging by their reaction, the Beastmen thought so as well.

The surgical strike was a success, killing the Beastman Lord directing the invasion as well as many of his followers. The Adventurers returned to great fanfare and a feast was prepared to celebrate their success. It was during that celebration that retaliation fell upon them.

Even as she was toasting the Crystal Tear and the Adventurers who had participated in their heroic raid, a group of powerful Beastmen who had infiltrated the capital broke in through the throne room’s balcony windows. The Adventurers and many of her courtiers were butchered before her eyes. Draudillon thought she would be next, but the Beastmen only sneered at her.

They had simply come to exact vengeance. It was achieved so easily that she had no doubt in her mind that they could have assassinated her at any point of their invasion. The Demihumans vanished into the night, leaving her with her dismembered hopes scattered around the throne room.

Assumptions that the invasion would lose cohesion and fall apart proved tragically correct. They were correct in the idea that their foes would lose cohesion and fall apart, but the pieces fell all over the Draconic Kingdom. The Beastman army fragmented into hundreds of tribes and went wherever they pleased. Their orderly advance turned into a chaotic deluge that devoured everything in its path.

As the Beastmen slaughtered their way across her country, all hope was lost. Before they could lay siege to the capital and occupy the coast, Draudillon sent her people away. She ordered what was left of her court to leave and implored her people to do the same.

But they wouldn’t. The more she pleaded with them to flee and save their families, the more they clung to her and dug in their heels. She was their beloved Queen – how could they possibly abandon her?

And so the Beastmen came. And so her people died. And so Draudillon Oriculus could only weep as she waited for the end.

It felt that waiting was half of her life. She waited for help whenever the Beastmen attacked. She waited for others to achieve results. Perhaps that was unfair as all leaders, no matter their talent or resources, had to wait for development, growth and revenues. She had one resource that most others did not, however.

Many often wondered why a Human country was called the Draconic Kingdom and why Draudillon Oriculus held the title of Black Scale Dragon Lord. The answer to the first question was probably a bit fanciful. Draudillon’s grandfather was an actual Dragon: the Brightness Dragon Lord.

Founded in the aftermath of the Demon Gods’ rampage, the Draconic Kingdom was a nation centred around the fact that its royalty was of Draconic lineage. Although Draudillon was pretty much Human, there were a few things about her that were decidedly not. One of those things was that she could wield exotic magic, which qualified her as a Dragon Lord in Draconic culture.

She never really took pride in the title, but her subjects seemed to. This felt like it caused more problems than it solved. On a personal level, it put her on a strange sort of pedestal. Nobility was already seen as attractive and royalty even more so. She was a Queen with an exotic bloodline and this drew all manner of interested parties, who were for the most part annoying.

It was loosely something that any eligible ruler or aristocrat had to deal with, so it couldn’t be helped. The big problem was how it affected their diplomatic efforts.

The Draconic Kingdom’s most attractive prospective ally – the Slane Theocracy – followed a faith that advocated Human-centric policies and culture. Though the Draconic Kingdom was a nation populated by Humans, their head of state was technically a Dragon Lord.

As such, the people of the Slane Theocracy treated the Draconic Kingdom as a non-Human state and nothing official could happen between them. There was no trade from their Merchants; no exchange of culture, magic, technology or knowledge. The military support that the Draconic Kingdom received was not recognized by the Theocracy’s general population.

She wasn’t sure how the soldiers and agents who came back from the fighting reported it. Perhaps they just treated it as a deployment against Demihumans and it just so happened to be in the Draconic Kingdom.

Therefore, the Draconic Kingdom was in a difficult position. They had powerful Beastman neighbours to the east, the Katze Plains to the north and the inland sea to the west and south. Being founded on a fertile coastal plain with riverlands ideal for Human habitation in their situation only meant that the Draconic Kingdom was a prime location for Beastmen to hunt Human populations like wild game.

There was one thing that they had – no, she had – that could have stopped the Beastmen. This was the primal sorcery that made her a Dragon Lord: Wild Magic. It was stupid, in hindsight. The lineage that prevented the Draconic Kingdom from officially joining hands with the Slane Theocracy world offered the power by which the Draconic Kingdom could be free from that very same dependency, yet she refused to employ it.

Her grandfather taught her that Dragons had a special place in the world. It had little to do with mortal concepts of good and evil. They were keepers: those who were entrusted with power by the World to maintain its natural order and defend it from existential threats. It was something like a sacred purpose; one instilled into every Dragon Lord from before the time of the Eight Greed Kings.

To mortals, the Dragon Lords of old might have seemed aloof, capricious, tyrannical or outright evil, but the truth was that everything they did was in service to a greater cause: maintaining the sanctity of the World itself. They were the last and often sole line of defence against threats that only a select few were aware of, maintaining a thankless vigil that spanned aeons.

And then, someone fucked up. Well, her grandfather didn’t quite put it in those exact terms, but that’s what basically happened.

The Dragons of present-day carried a vestige of this legacy in the form of their instincts. They were still physically strong enough to manage their domains, but they had lost the ability to wield Wild Magic. Her grandfather greatly lamented this fact, exploring the possibility of introducing new Wild Magic users by fathering children with the different races of the world.

Draudillon was a ‘success’ in that sense, but she lacked the power of a Dragon despite being descended from one of the mightiest Dragon Lords. Despite this, her grandfather took the time to make sure that she understood the basics of wielding Wild Magic before leaving her to fend for herself as Dragons often did with their offspring. He was a grandfather that cared too much, by draconic standards. Dragons were akin to Sorcerers…or rather, Sorcerers were akin to Dragons – they would eventually figure out their sorcery on their own.

Still, while Draudillon was thankful for her grandfather’s care, she had foolishly disregarded one of his most important lessons.

Though she was only part Dragon, the Draconic Kingdom was still her draconic domain. It was her responsibility to take care of it – to make sure her little part of the World was managed properly. No matter the cost.

It was this cost that made her hesitate; kept her from doing what needed to be done. The Brightness Dragon Lord had even warned her that her Human nature would get in the way.

With the power of Wild Magic, she could destroy any invasion. The cost, however, was the sacrifice of many of her people. Unlike Tier Magic, which used mana, Wild Magic was fuelled by the primal power of the soul. She could turn armies of millions into ash, but her people would perish in return. As such, she considered its use a last resort.

And so, she waited. Waited for the Beastmen to grow disinterested in their offensive; waited for the Adventurers to produce strategically significant results; waited for help to arrive from the Theocracy. As she waited, the Beastmen continued their advance.

The last resort became a last-last resort. Then a last-last-last resort. Villages, towns and cities fell. The subjects that she was loath to sacrifice to destroy the Beastman invaders were instead consumed by them.

Her grandfather was right. Her domain was her responsibility. She should have defended it, even if the cost was the death of her people and her own damnation. By displaying the undeniable power of Wild Magic, the tragedy that had unfolded could have been prevented. A threat was only effective if one demonstrated the will to carry it out, after all.

Draudillon reached for a bottle at the foot of her throne. Finding it empty, she reached out for the next. She sent the fourth empty bottle hurtling through the air to smash into a nearby column. Regret truly was all that she had left.

Bestial roars sounded through the throne room door. Cold dread trickled through her. They were here.

Something thudded against the door, followed by a scraping noise: the sound of claws being drawn over sturdy, enchanted oak. A tear trickled down her cheek as she bit her trembling lip.

Someone help. Please!

Even after everything; the indecision that had cost her nation and its people everything, she didn’t want to die. She deserved to, but she didn’t want to.

The snarls of Beastmen and the pounding of their attacks against the door continued. A crack appeared, growing more pronounced with every thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

She couldn’t die like this. At the least, she would die with what little dignity she had left. She was around one-eighth Dragon, so it probably amounted to one-eighth of a Dragon’s pride.

Draudillon closed her eyes, preparing the first and final spell that she would ever unleash against the Beastmen. A spell she should have used the moment they stepped foot across the Draconic Kingdom’s border. Her self reached out; beyond the royal palace and over her capital. She swept up the souls of her people as they were butchered in the streets and gathered them to her.

She considered adding her healthy subjects, but decided against it. Even if one became livestock, there was still the possibility of them or their descendants regaining their freedom. Sacrificing their souls would no longer purchase the continued existence of others.

With the souls that she drew to herself, she could at least vaporise the entire palace quarter. Hopefully, she would get someone important.

She arranged her hair and fixed her diaphanous dress, straightening on her throne. Her hands turned white as she clenched its armrests and fought to steady her ragged breaths. She mustered what little defiance she could.

Bring it on, you damn furries. I’ll blast your souls straight back to the World.

After a minute or so, she realised that the pounding had stopped. No sound at all issued from the other side of the door.

Won’t the World even let me blow myself up properly?

As her tension turned into annoyance, three taps sounded on the door. After several moments, they sounded again.

Draudillon frowned, glancing to either side of the entrance, where members of the palace guard usually stood. It was a stupid thought to have, but she had never answered a door before. The knocking came again. Her fingers drummed against the armrests of her marble throne.

Why would they knock? Was it some sort of trick? Or were they mocking her with some pretence of Human custom?

Three more knocks. It was becoming annoying in a different way.

Draudillon rose from her throne with a sigh. Her toes curled over the cold floor as she padded around the bottles and the general mess that had accumulated with the sending-away of her palace staff. She made her way to the huge double doors of the throne room, trying to figure out what was waiting on the other side. The knocks sounded again. Draudillon swallowed.

“Wh-who is it?”

From the other side of the door came a Human voice. It was rich and masculine, with a timbre reminiscent of tempered steel.

“Ah, excellent, someone is in. I beg your pardon for our intrusion, Madam, but we couldn’t help but notice your predicament. Might you be interested in hiring security forces from the Sorcerous Kingdom?”

8th Day, Upper Wind Month, 1 CE, 0900 Hours

A cold blast of air scattered the Katze mists, rolling over the cracked clay of the wasteland to tease the pleats of Ludmila’s skirt.

“Sending others to war. Difficult.”

An amused smile played over her lips. It was a line that one might expect of a grizzled old General watching young soldiers march off to an uncertain fate. She didn’t think that sentiment applied here, however.

First of all, Lord Cocytus was not a grizzled old General. He in fact insisted that he was a young man who was perfectly fit to do battle. Why he made that distinction when he was a Heteromorphic being that did not age past maturation was beyond her.

The difficulty lay in the fact that he wanted to go with them, but, as the Grand Marshal of the Sorcerous Kingdom, he couldn’t. As such, he went all the way to the veeeeery edge of the Katze Plains to look out over the windswept wilderness of the Draconic Kingdom’s northern frontier. The Hanzos with him didn’t detect anything within ten kilometres, so Ludmila supposed that he could at least have his moment.

“According to Countess Corelyn’s plan, my lord,” Ludmila said, “it’s less of a war and more of a ‘product demonstration’. If you participate, it wouldn’t be much of one.”

Lord Cocytus’ shoulders slumped. A grumbly sound rolled out from between his mandibles.

Obscured by the mists roughly half a kilometre deeper in the wasteland, the gathered Undead forces awaited the call to advance. Their part wouldn’t come for a while yet, as they first needed to secure permission to enter the Draconic Kingdom. A spotless performance to present the Sorcerous Kingdom as a respectable member of the diplomatic community was the order of the day.

One of Lord Cocytus’ clawed hands went up to the side of his head. After several moments passed in silence, he nodded to himself.

“The Prime Minister,” he informed her. “Permission to begin…has been granted.”

“Saiko,” Ludmila said.

“We are ready to depart, my lady.”

Her adjutant came forward with seven other Elder Liches. Each was the ‘sergeant’ of one of the Death-series squads waiting at the border, but they would accompany her to the Draconic Kingdom’s capital. She turned to Lord Cocytus.

“Did you have any parting words for us, Grand Marshal?”

“Hmm…” He scratched his head, “Considering. The mission. Too much, perhaps, but…show them the power of the Sorcerous Kingdom.”

He was probably right about that. Impressing the might of the Sorcerous Kingdom on the Draconic Kingdom would probably lead to lasting mental trauma amongst its citizens. Still, she had some security forces to showcase.

“I’ll try not to scare them too much,” she smirked. “If anyone in the general staff notices something about the strategic situation, please have them let me know.”

Ludmila activated her hairpin and rose from the ground. After offering a parting salute to the Grand Marshal, she rose into the sky with Saiko beside her. The Elder Lich sergeants formed a wing to either side of them. From the gloom, the half-dozen Shadow Demons she would use for reconnaissance followed in a formation of their own. Once they ascended to roughly three thousand metres, they started their journey south.

Her time with Ilyshn’ish had taught her many principles when it came to flight that she would have never imagined as a terrestrial denizen. The first was that it was remarkably easy to get around undetected in the sky. Distance was a component of concealment and detection, so one could simply fly to a certain height and never be noticed by the vast majority of observers on the ground.

This was baked into the local commonsense: the further one was away, the harder they were to spot. Several tests with Ilyshn’ish, however, proved that the truth was far more arbitrary. The Frost Dragon could comfortably read a book from ten kilometres away, but concealment skills made it so that her ability to detect those targets was reduced drastically. Even without her equipment, Ludmila could get within about five hundred metres from her companion in the open before she was detected. With her equipment, she could close to within fifty.

Employing all of these factors made a high-altitude approach effectively undetectable from the ground. To be extra sure, their flight path first brought them over the inland sea before following the coastline from several kilometres away. They levelled out at around five thousand metres and Ludmila started to compare the view of the Draconic Kingdom to the map provided by Chief Venomscale, which she had committed to memory.

A vast wilderness made up the northern edge of the country, stretching all along the northeastern border. The area bordering the Katze Plains was known to Merchants as the Deadmarch. Instead of developing their northwestern frontier, the Draconic Kingdom opted to use it as a buffer zone where threats were identified, intercepted and destroyed.

To the east of the Deadmarch was a vast stretch of mountainous terrain. To the north of it was Wyvern Rider territory. At a certain point in the southeast was the beginning of the Beastman Kingdom. Unlike the area two hundred kilometres to the north where the Sixth Legion had conducted their late winter campaign, the mountains here were covered in thick vegetation. Rivers flowed out from the region’s deep, long valleys on their way to the coastal plain before reaching the sea.

It took roughly two hours for their flight to cross over into the actively-managed lands of the Draconic Kingdom. From high above, she wouldn’t have been able to tell that the nation was at war. There were no signs of devastation across the low-lying coastal plain and the fields had even been sown.

The first major settlement they passed by was a small harbour city that went by the name of Blighthold on the trade maps. It was there that she saw the first signs of the ongoing struggle.

?Dropping to two thousand metres.?

“Is something the matter, my lady?” Saiko asked.

“The city below is under siege,” Ludmila replied. “At least I think it’s under siege.”

Sets of huts were raised in a ring about a kilometre distant from the Blighthold’s walls, mostly centred around the copses near the city. The view below had all the makings of the siege, except that there were no visible attempts at taking the fortifications. Packs of Beastmen moved below, patrolling their side of the perimeter.

One group of Beastmen drifted closer to the walls. A volley of arrows landed a dozen metres short of them. Laughter rolled out from the Beastman group.

“What do you see?” Saiko asked.

“How much did you notice down there?” Ludmila asked back.

“Little,” the Elder Lich replied. “We are too high to make out what’s going on.”

The conditions were clear and the sun was almost directly overhead, so it appeared that even the strongest Elder Liches in the Royal Army had vision comparable to a regular Human. Barring their Darkvision, of course. The Death-series servitors were the same, so it served as another compelling reason to get her Rangers trained and working with the Royal Army as soon as possible.

“The city is being contained,” Ludmila said. “It might explain why we’re not getting any Merchant traffic. All the ships in the harbour are sunk at their moorings and it looks like Beastman patrols are moving along the roads. I wouldn’t be surprised if the frontier is littered with pickets to prevent anyone from leaving.”

“How many Beastmen are present?”

“Going by what I’ve seen so far, this ‘siege’ has dwellings for perhaps a thousand Beastmen.”

It was less a siege camp and more a set of small villages encircling the city. By what little she had seen and heard so far, Ludmila already had a fair idea of what was going on.

A Human army was normally accompanied by a supply train that was often dozens of kilometres long. The army could also procure supplies from local sources by foraging, hunting, purchasing them from Merchants or pillaging them from their enemies. Acting poorly against the local population was usually a bad idea – especially if the army planned on annexing and occupying that territory after the war.

Beastmen, however, had no need to make any such considerations. They could forgo supply trains and simply eat as they went along. Judging by how they had made themselves comfortable around the town and the rural regions around it, the Beastman army had broken up into tribal groups and had dispersed across the Draconic Kingdom. If what she saw was representative of their numbers across the country, there were upwards of a quarter million occupying the land.

There was no pressing need for a decisive victory. They were too powerful and numerous for the Draconic Kingdom to dislodge and there was plenty of food – millions of Humans – around to sustain them. The ‘free’ territories of the Draconic Kingdom were slowly being eaten into submission.

This meant that, while tens of thousands of citizens were being consumed every day, the country itself was in no immediate danger of vanishing in its entirety.

“Report our findings to Lord Cocytus and his general staff,” Ludmila said. “It looks like we’ll be going with Plan B for the Katze force. Hopefully, these Beastmen react as expected.”

Ludmila and her entourage ascended and continued their southeastern flight. While she already had some notion of what the Beastmen were trying to do before entering the Draconic Kingdom, seeing it in person was surreal.

Unlike what one might imagine of a Demihuman invasion, the Beastmen were fairly methodical. The Human settlements were depopulated to a point, after which they were mostly left alone. Occasionally, they would fly over a village being attacked by a pack of Beastmen, who would drag one or two people off to wherever the nearby tribe was.

Of course, Beastmen did not simply eat once and never eat again. Depending on the race, carnivorous Demihumans might feed anywhere from every day to once every few weeks. A quick calculation using the numbers she saw below had her estimate that it was somewhere under two weeks for the ones occupying the land.

This made the scenery below seem surprisingly normal. At least if one was on the ground. From above, she could see where the Beastman tribes had situated themselves and how many Human settlements were in their ‘hunting range’.

As for the Draconic Kingdom’s citizens, most people wanted to live even if life was terrible. To live, one needed to eat and so they continued their seasonal activities. Work continued in the fields and the occasional wagon could be seen delivering goods to the towns and the cities.

In all, it was a different sort of order – one presided over by Beastmen.

“There is one thing I do not understand, my lady,” Saiko said. “While the Human citizens here are physically interdicted, that does not stop them from using magic. Message is a Second-tier spell and casters of that calibre are not phenomenally rare. We have not been challenged in the air, so Fly also appears to be an option where available. If this conflict has been ongoing for over a year, there has been ample time to call for and receive assistance from their allies.”

“That is the question that everyone would like to know the answer to,” Ludmila replied. “There is a certain taboo about using Message spells for important and sensitive communications, but I think that anyone would resort to it in this situation. It could be that the same taboo is causing the recipients to disregard the unsolicited Message spell. Alternatively, it could mean that the invading army has developed a way to stop Message spells.”

“Our spell research department would be very interested in the latter if it is the case.”

“I think we all would,” Ludmila snorted. “Instantaneous communication at any distance is a pesky problem to deal with on many levels.”

It was close to three hours past midnight by the time they covered the four hundred kilometre distance between the Katze Plains and the capital of the Draconic Kingdom. The fortified city was roughly the size of Arwintar, situated on a large river some thirty kilometres from the coast. A thick curtain wall roughly ten metres high encircled the city while a second wall ringed a large palace set on a stony hill overlooking the river.

A chorus of cries from the streets below sent a wave of alarm through her.

“The city’s defences have been breached,” Ludmila said. “Let Lord Cocytus know that we’re about to arrive.”

She went into a free fall, descending to two kilometres before reactivating her hairpin and guiding herself towards one of the palace towers. On the way down, she noted dozens of Beastmen streaming in from outside.

?Shadow Demons: two of you remain with me. The rest of you, locate Queen Oriculus.?

Ludmila called her glaive to hand as her boots hit the stone of the parapet. She stood still upon landing, alert for any indication that she had been detected. After several moments, she went over and peeked down the stairwell.

Bestial roars and the cries of Human defenders punctuated the sounds of battle drifting up the tower. Whoever was guarding the post had probably left to join the fight. She listened for a few more moments before heading back up.

“Should we contact Lord Cocytus?” Saiko asked as he floated down in front of her.

“This spot is too open,” Ludmila replied. “We’ll do it inside. Summon Wraiths and use them to help figure out where the Queen is. She should be in some sort of fortified section or maybe she’s barricaded herself in the throne room.”

That was assuming she was in the city at all. She knew very little of Queen Oriculus. Captain Cavallaro spoke well of her, but Ludmila felt that he was speaking of her as a prospective romantic interest rather than making a judgement of her character. It could be that the Black Scale Dragon Lord had fled the city and they would have to go to another castle.

Ludmila descended to the floor below and nodded at Saiko. Several moments later, the portal of a Gate opened before them. Through it came one whose appearance gave her pause.

Is this why Ilyshn’ish decided to continue attending that dojo?

Before her stood a man in a black suit. He was a few centimetres taller than Ludmila, with broad shoulders and a powerful physique. In combination with his sharp eyes and meticulously groomed beard, she suspected many women of all ages would find him attractive. With his pure white hair and venerable features, Ludmila would call him aged but for the second visage that she understood to be his true appearance.

Like many of the Sorcerer King’s servants, the man was not a Human. Along with his Human guise, Ludmila’s gaze traced over a head that could only be described as ‘draconic’. Steel-grey scales glistened in the torchlight over a head that swept back into a pair of ridged frills. Stubby horns protruded from behind his dim silver eyes and out from the hinges of his jaw.

She couldn’t tell what the rest of him looked like, as he was covered in his suit and wore pristine white gloves. Overall, it gave the strange appearance of a man in a finely-tailored suit with a Dragon-like head sticking out of the collar.

He was the Sorcerer King’s Butler: Sebas Tian.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Lord Tian,” Ludmila lowered her head into a curtsey. “I am Baroness Ludmila Zahradnik, currently serving as the military commander of the relief effort dispatched to the Draconic Kingdom.”

“Likewise, finally getting to meet you is a pleasure, Baroness Zahradnik,” Lord Tian returned her greeting with a bow. “I’ve heard much about you from my colleagues and a few of our mutual acquaintances. I look forward to working with you.”