Sorry for the delay, I have stitches in my forearm that makes typing hard. Please leave a review on my work so I know how I am doing so far. Thank you so much everyone
As Rex and Lacey watched Markus start to ascend the stairs, both seemed to hesitate for a minute. Rex looked at Lacey, and Lacey looked at Rex, both seemed to be waiting for the other to make the first move to start heading up, almost like they both had the same idea, suspicious stairs, suspicious old man. “Ladies first” Rex said, bringing his arm upright to point up through the staircase, attempting to usher Lacey through. “I am no lady, get up there wimp” Lacey sneered holding her ground, seeing right through Rex’s attempt to get her to go first. “If both of you don’t get your asses up here, you’ll miss out on the surprise I planned” Markus called out through the clouds. Both Rex and Lacey jolted from surprise at Markus’s booming voice, looking up the staircase, it looked to be at least 500 metres of stairs to the clouds, but only a few seconds has passed since Markus had left, this is odd, he was able to climb that many stairs in the space of a few seconds, something was fishy.
“How is this possible?” Rex said, not showing any signs of hiding his excitement at seeing Fafnir for the first time in almost a week. “Your father is a smart man, he informed this man to provide some assistance, he cannot speak with me, but he can facilitate this meeting for us though, in turn bypassing that spell on your chest to subdue me” Fafnir replied. “So can this spell be removed?” Rex asked, he was eager to be rid of this restriction. “It can be removed, with little effort to someone trained in weave magic, the spell was designed to allow a user to cast many spells, sharing the load between ones mana pool and physical strength, in essence drawing fuel from your mana pool and your own energy reserves at the same time. It was ingenious for battle mages, if you trained strength and extended your own mana pool, you would be a force to be reckoned with, it has been modified in a way that the spell draws strength from you to continue feeding it, in essence, if you lived for 100 y
“You hit me in the back by surprise!” Rex yelled, jumping to his feet to face his attacker. “In a fight, you never want to be surprised, pay attention, typical male response!” yelled the woman that faced him. Her name was Marcia, she was another of the great generals under the emperor’s command, she was head of the Azure army, this army consisted of all females that rode on the backs of great birds called Skylarks that each woman had to tame herself, with Marcia as their leader, no man had ever been accepted by a Skylark as its master in over 500 years, so no males ever tried to tame one anymore. “First lesson, always expect a fight” Markus called out. Looking towards where his voice came from, Lacey and Rex were astounded, he was not able to be seen! “What magic is this!?” Lacey called out, for Rex he felt this was the same magic Duncan had done to them at the staircase to his house earlier that morning. In the next second, Rex felt a sudden need to duck forward, feeling an odd i
“What did you want to speak about?” Lacey asked, turning towards Markus as they walked towards the horses that were tied up on the edge of the training grounds. “It is about something a wise man told me not long ago, about your future” Markus replied with a huff, Lacey could see what he was about to pass on weighed on him heavily, “Let me start at the start.” Their conversation lasted right up to them reaching the castle walls, the guards bowing and saluting moments before Markus passed them, bowing his head back, Markus followed by Lacey continued riding their horses right up to the palace, Markus noticing Marcia’s skylark perched up high on the roof. ‘Lucky man’ Markus smirked to himself, still looking at the magnificent bird, knowing that no male has ever ridden on a skylark in over 500 years, especially on Marcia’s skylark of all birds, also feeling a little jealous wishing it could have been him. “What’s on your mind father?” Lacey asked, seeing the look on Markus’s face. “Oh
“You might be a prince, but no one respects people who are late, let me put it in perspective for you, it is your coronation day, you are late, the whole of Dracoterrum notices and thinks you cannot even handle turning up at the right time for that day, how are you going to handle a kingdom, it is your wedding day, everyone is waiting for you to arrive, you’re late, your new wife will think she was not worth enough to you that you could make it on time” said a loud booming voice from across the room. Looking over the room, Rex saw a short old man in robes, grey hair and long grey beard wearing square glasses standing in front of two desks and long corridors filled with books branched out from behind him, stretching on for what seemed like forever. “I will certainly remember your lesson from today onwards” Rex said back, trying his best to hide his smile. “It would be wise for you to remember those words young prince. Lacey, you should know better by now, why you would not inform him
Following Lacey closely, Rex was able to see how the city was structured, close to the palace, the buildings were quite elaborate and the further away they got, the simpler they seemed, Lacey seemed to notice Rex looking at these new buildings differently and was like she read his mind. “These houses belong to the people who do not work at the palace or families who are not merchants or officials, these are everyday folks, like farmers or miners” Lacey said, while they walked down the road leading away from the palace, not a few days ago, Markus brought them up this very road, but Rex had failed to notice the change in living conditions. They had made it a few blocks away from the main south gate when Lacey said, “The shortcut is through here, it will save us an easy 30 minutes of walking” and shot off to Rex’s left through an alleyway. “How will cutting through here save us 30 minutes of walking? How far away is this bloody market?” Rex questioned, to him 30 minutes of walking mean
Turning to face the person the hand that was touching him belonged to, Rex was slightly surprised, Lacey was now standing next to him, with her hand on his shoulder, looking straight into his eyes with a soft gaze he had never seen before from her. “But look at what he did, we both knew what he was going to do as well, he deserves worse!” Rex yelled, turning back to face Frog, who was now moments from death, dangling limp from Rex’s grasp. “He will get what he deserves” Lacey said, forcing Rex’s head around to face her, “Please Rex, put him down.” “But..he was going to…” Rex replied fiercely. “I know, I am ok and I have you to thank for that” Lacey said, “Now let’s bring him to the castle so he can be punished for that.” “Fine!” Rex growled, dropping Frog into a heap on the ground in front of them. “Thank you Rex” Lacey said softly, in fact she was partly a little terrified Rex had snapped like this, she had never seen even the smallest hint of anger from him, no matter what situ
Rex woke suddenly to a voice that sounded very familiar to him, ‘Fafnir!’, he said excitedly, then realized this was not possible, that curse blocked him out, so he was curious as to what was happening, he had the same sensation of being in the magical space when he and Fafnir used to train and speak, so to ensure he was not dreaming, he performed the age-old trick, he pinched himself, ‘Ow, yep I must not be dreaming, so how am I here?’ he questioned, looking around. He noticed he was not in the same place they came to before, that time he was in a black marbled walled circular space, with sand at his feet, this time he was inside of what looked like a room in a palace of some kind. As he was studying the stone walls, he heard the deep voice again coming from the next room, walking over he leaned around the corner and took a peek in, he was not sure if he was able to be seen or not while here, seeing the coast was clear, he surveyed his surroundings, there was a large golden bench, al
As the enemy soldiers charged, they quickly spread out evenly across each squad commanded by Rector’s defence, ‘They are testing our weak spots” Rex heard Rector say to Markus, who nodded in agreement as the small number of soldiers were killed quickly by Rex’s and Ley’s squads, Markus’s and Gwayne’s a few moments later, the barrage of fireballs from the walls reached the enemies’ position almost simultaneously, hitting the barrier created by their warlocks, most being stopped, the more powerful fireballs made it through and scorched the soldiers they hit, dying a few seconds after impact. “Are you going to try a counterattack?” Markus asked quietly, leaning over to Rector. “Not directly, no” he replied, stroking his beard, the enemy had not made a move since their test of his defensive line and it worried him, “Something is going to happen, I can feel it.” “What are you thinking?” Markus said, “I think they are scheming since their test proved our defences are solid.” “No defence
Everyone got dressed in silence, they were all thinking about what was coming their way with the battle. After a half-hour, everyone was suited up and ready to go, they all headed out of the room, down the stairs and out through the gate, stopping outside. Saying their goodbyes to Marcia, she hugged everyone before calling out and departing on Ulna. “Time to go and see your troops I guess” Lacey shrugged with a sigh, the closer it got to the battle, the more she started to worry. “That would be wise, seeing as they are formed up and waiting for you by the gate,” Ley said with a smile. As they all made their way to the southern gate, the entire group was silent, they were all apprehensive about how close to battle they all were, Ley seemed to notice this, “I think if anyone will survive this, it will be you all, I sense something different, something strong has formed between you, use that and you will be a force to be reckoned with, that rumoured scorpion pet of yours would be of
The sun was an hour from even touching the horizon, Rex was laying in the middle of Minet, Marcia and Lacey, all sleeping soundly, Rex snoring quietly, “Rex, wake up please, but do not wake the others, I must show you something.’ Even while inside of his dream, he knew the voice belonged to Rector, his father, it was loud enough to wake him, but not too loud to startle him, as his eyes blinked and focused, he saw Rector sitting in a chair watching and smiling, looking at the women, they were all dressed, which he did not remember them doing. ‘I would not intrude on a view that is not for me, I made sure clothes found them before I came in’ Rector said with a wink. Carefully moving Marcia’s hand off his chest, he slowly sat up, standing at the same speed, stepping over the women carefully, not wanting to wake them, ‘Is everything ok?’ Rex asked. ‘Let us go, then we can speak more freely’ Rector said, holding his hand out to Rex, who took it. Once his vision cleared Rex was in a dar
“Did you end up killing it? Surely not even you could kill something THAT big” Lacey added in. “Hang on…so you like for real saw and fought a tentaculum? A fabled flesh-eating tentacled monster from the books of legend?” Marcia asked, still visibly skeptical. “No word of a lie,” Minet said, “Rex and Raz stayed behind to let us escape, next we saw them, Rex was covered in shit and Raz’s head was split open.” “Well yes, I didn’t end up killing it, but we injured it enough it must have thought us too painful to continue fighting, it ended up losing 3 tentacles and 1 eye, Raz was hurt after it ejected some black shit that shot us into the trees, Raz hit some rocks, I patched him up best I could and carried him to the shack,” Rex said, recounting the events, leaving out some in-depth gruesome parts he wished he could forget, “So why was that muscle-bound axe man chasing you into the shack?” “Wow this is so much drama in a short time, how you even got anything done, I’ll never know,” Mar
“Well, my place is the closest to everywhere we need to be tomorrow and is away from prying eyes, and I have half a bottle of yarak spirits, we can share that, you can tell me all about your trip in a shortened version and we can have some fun, get a little sleep and then head out to our posts in the morning,” Marcia said with a smile. “I’m sold,” Marcia said, clapping her hands together. “I just had a thought” Lacey started to say. “Yes or no?” Minet interjected. “Yes, sounds good” Lacey nodded, walking with the women, “We weren’t told who we are serving with tomorrow.” “I don’t know about you, but I’m sticking with Rex” Minet shrugged. “That was what I was hoping to do, what do you think? Where is Rex?” Lacey asked, looking around for him. “Odd he would sneak out on us, this was supposed to be our night together” Minet scowled, putting her hands on her hips. “Sorry, I’m here, was just trying out a bit of magic I was shown earlier, good to know it still works, it gave me an id
Rex, Minet, and Lacey followed Rector into the palace, turning away from the throne room and traveling down a hallway Rex had never been before, “I don’t remember seeing this here” he stated, looking back, then back toward a large wooden door at the end. “That is because I do not allow this area to be accessed unless necessary, the war room has not been used since the Blood War, it saddens me to even have to use it again,” Rector sighed, walking toward the door, it opening as he approached. As they all entered the room, there was already a handful of older men present in the room who were pointing to places on a table that was in the center of the room, it showed the walls of the city and the fields beyond, many black figures stood in the southern fields showing the invading troops and their positioning, the old men were all yelling at each other for what plan they thought would be best, Marcia, Ley, and Markus were all at one end, Marcia was scowling at the men yelling, Ley was smil
“So whoever has brought this army has one hell of a grudge against Dracones, or father” Rex guessed, seeing how much dust over such a large area was being kicked up, “What was the scout's estimate?” “In excess of 30 thousand strong” Marcia replied, “That’s three times as many as Ean’s last army.” “Holy shit, how many defend Hale?” Rex asked. “About 10 thousand,” Marcia said, doing some quick math in her head, “Would be 18 thousand if we could rely on general Chris’s forces, but word is, he is currently under assault as well, it is almost like this attack has been co-ordinated from both sides of the realm at the same time.” “Three to one odds, battles have been won with a lot worse before” Rex replied. “Yes, but human battles did not have magic and monsters in their ranks either,” Raz said with a grin. “Holy shit!” Looking over to Lizz, who had cursed, which was rare for her, she was now pointing out toward the field outside of Dracone’s southern gate, to where a massive force, a
“So, you’re saying we can be released from the deal to suicide, to serve under you instead?” one of the soldiers asked. “Correct” Rex replied, “Instead of your life being a waste, why not use it for something better?” “We cannot accept that” the soldier replied, saddened, “When we swore our oath to serve, we were branded, if we break our deal, the brand kills us, so either way, we are doomed.” “Who would make you do such a thing?” Lacey asked, she was not the only one who was shocked, the entire group was as well. “Our new leader ensured our allegiance with spells” the soldier replied, lining up his sword, ready to pierce the heart, the rest of the group following suit, “We thank you for the offer, you are not like they say you are,” he took one last deep breath to ready himself, closed his eyes and slid the sword into his chest with a groan, after a few gasps he fell lifeless to the ground, followed shortly after by the remainder of the soldiers. “I did not think they would have
The sound of screams and metal hitting metal echoed out soon after the soldiers reached Rex and his companion’s position as they cut through their first wave. Lacey and Minet had teamed up on Rex’s right side and were diving, dashing, stabbing and blocking each other’s weak spots, many dead and dying fae laying around them. Raz and Lizz were on the left front, Lizz was throwing fireballs at their enemies furiously, scorching two, sometimes three at a time, Raz was standing fast between her and the front line, cutting down any that made it through to ensure Lizz could focus on what she was doing. “Looks like we underestimated a group of children,” Douve said with a sigh and smile, “Looks like it is up to us to settle this.” “Seems like it” Rex replied with a shrug, he was a little curious, everyone knew the royal family had power stemming from dragons, yet Douve did not seem phased. Bowing to Rex, Douve took a ready stance, so out of courtesy, Rex nodded his head, not a second afte