"At the roof of the cosmos rise the Dragon Peaks, titanic mountainous ranges that pierce the firmament of creation. This realm, the Dragon Eyrie, is the cradle and crucible, the sanctum and battlefield of all dragonkind. This is where broods of every hue claw their way from shell to slaughter, their first breath a defiance to immortals and kings alike.
Dragons are no mere beasts. They are dominions clothed in scale, empires made flesh, heirs of fire whose wings carve the skies and whose claws have raked upon the bones of worlds. Their might has toppled kingdoms, silenced vast armies, and humbled civilizations; their fury is written in the ruin of continents. They are sovereign predators, apex creatures who stand at the top of the food chain in the multiverse.
Through ages uncounted, when empires withered into dust and gods fell silent in their heavens, the dragons endured. They are a people of flame and fang, of majesty and hunger, bound to no throne but their own dominion. Their peaks cast shadows over stars as mountains over anthills, their roars still shake the pillars of creation, and their wrath is a terror that echoes to every known corner of the cosmos."
The cave stank of brass blood and smoke. Artorius leaned against the wall, ribs screaming with every breath, his vision clouded at the edges. The Dragonne's corpse lay cooling behind him, its eyes dimmed to stone, its ruined body a monument to how close he had come to death. He could not linger. The Nest would not allow it. Already the shadows shifted beyond, he felt the weight of unseen gazes pressing in.
He needed more power. He needed more than the feeble strength and stubborn will he had. His thoughts turned back to the Hatchery Fields.
The memory of the place still haunted him, the nightmare that crawled and broke free, the eggs splitting open, yolk steaming in sulfurous air, newborn drakes shrieking and tearing into one another. But he remembered, too, the yolk's shimmer, the heat of it on his skin when it splashed across him. He remembered how even his rawest wounds had felt steadier afterward.
The dragons were born of fire and hunger. Their blood was poison, but their yolk was life. So he had to go back and he did just that.
The Fields stretched before him like a battlefield of broken shells and boiling pools. In the distance, he saw them — the newly born, already locked in duels of dominance. Scaled titans of varying sizes crashed into each other with enough force to split stone. Others, much more grotesquely and larger, towered like siege beasts, wings half-formed, jaws crackling with varying colored flames. Sparks and smoke marked their battles, their roars shaking the air.
Closer, on the ground he found what we were looking for as it was littered with failure. The broken and defeated crawled away into corners and shades licking their wounds. The malformed hatchlings cried out weakly, their wings and limbs crumpled, their jaws broken, their eyes weeping molten tears. Others limped, their scales thin as parchment, already bleeding out into the floor.
Artorius crouched low, skirting the edge where the shadows lay thickest. Every step was a gamble. One stray gaze from a healthy, powerful hatchling, and he'd be torn apart. But desperation had sunk its teeth into him sharper than fear. He moved like a scavenger among giants.
The first malformed wyrmling hissed at him, dragging itself forward on twisted claws. He drove his jagged spear through its throat, the motion clumsy but final. A chime whispered across his vision: [You have slain a Iron Drakeling — Lv. 1]
Another limped toward him, one wing dragging behind like rotten cloth. Its bite scraped his arm, drawing fresh blood, before he crushed its skull beneath a stone he had found. [You have slain a Sulfur Wurmling — Lv. 1]
The Nest seemed to watch him feed on weakness. He did not care. He was too broken for pride. At last he reached what he sought, the remains of a shattered egg, yolk still steaming within its shell. He dipped trembling fingers into the golden ichor and brought it to his lips. It burned.
Fire slid down his throat, seared his stomach, licked across his wounds like a cruel caress. He fell to his knees, clutching his ribs, his body convulsing as if the yolk sought to remake him from within.
The pain ebbed into a strange heat. The bleeding slowed. His muscles felt tighter, as though threads of fire were stitching them together. The agony remained, but now it sharpened him instead of drowning him.
When he rose, his legs no longer trembled as before. His vision steadied. The pain at long last faded. The Nest still threatened to devour him whole, but for the first time since entering, he felt he could stand without immediately falling apart.
In the distance, two colossal hatchlings collided: one a black-scaled brute, the other a scaly one whose roar split the air like thunder. Their duel cracked stone and shattered eggs around them, the ground trembling beneath his feet. He knew he could not face such things. Not yet.
But he could take from the broken. He could build, piece by bloody piece.And so, moving like a carrion bird at the edge of a battlefield, Artorius hunted.
-
The Fields seethed with life and death, yolk boiling in sulfur, hatchlings shrieking as they tore each other apart. Artorius crouched near the fringe, blood still fresh on his hands, breath raw from the drakelings he had culled. He thought himself unseen.
Then he felt it. A stillness. Not silence, the Nest never slept but a pocket of quiet amid the storm. His eyes caught movement: a figure emerging from broken shells. Not a beast, not a malformed creature, but upright, balanced, refined, and watching him closely.
The hatchling was like him, humanoid in shape but much more draconic in nature and bug-like. Scales gleamed faintly along its jaw, shoulders, and arms, white bronze that shimmered faintly in the red mist. A helm of scale and bone crowned its head. Its eyes glowed low, like embers at the bottom of a dying fire. In its hand was a jagged shard of obsidian, threaded with veins of molten gold, glowing faintly in the dusk.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/32510428556217895/
It did not speak. It tilted its head. Once. As if curious. Then it moved, all he got was a system prompt before it was upon him. [Dragon Lancer — Level 5]
Before it even reached him, its lance seemed to flex with a serpent's whisper, elongating until it hissed through the mist. The first thrust came from twenty paces away. He barely got his make-shift spear up in time as the lance snapped outward like a striking spine, the tip piercing through the stone wall where his head had been.
The weapon retracted with a clang that echoed like laughter and he stared at the weapon in shock. "What on earth is that?" he asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one as the creature lunched at him again.
The Dragon Lancer moved with a rhythm unlike beasts. Its strikes were not wild, but measured and to make matters worse its weapon came from an impossible direction — from behind a shell, from above, from the side. The weapon's shaft warped and curved mid-flight, extending and coiling like a living serpent.
Artorius did his best to defend as sweeps of the lance came his way, each one forcing him back inch by inch. Sparks screamed when his spear met the strange creature's lance.
They moved together like dancers in a death-song. Step, strike, counter. His spear darted like lightning, frantically protecting him. The lance fell like thunder, sparks lit their faces, ash swirled around them. Every impact cracked the stone underneath. Every miss carved scars into the Hatchery floor.
The ground cracked beneath each impact of the creature he dodged, it was as though the weight of the weapon was more than metal. Artorius bled freely whenever the lance grazed him. His crude weapon splintered under the onslaught. Every strike from the lancer creature left his arms shaking, his ribs screaming, his vision narrowing.
This was no scavenger like him or a simple beast. It was a hunter, a great predator, a rival. He didn't know why, but deep down inside he believed it was created by the nest to counter him and defeat him.
The creature finally got the opening it was looking for as his crude spear could not hold on any longer and shattered in half. He could only look at his broken weapon as the Lancer's next attack struck true. The lance extended and curved midflight, hooking behind Artorius's arm and pinning him to the wall. Pain flared white-hot as the weapon twisted, spearing through muscle.
The Dragon Lancer advanced slow, regal, inevitable and with each step the lance shortened back into its grip. He screamed, half in rage, half in fear. And then with no choice he let a Command rise to his throat. His voice burned raw as he spat the word, hoarse and bloody: "Kneel."
The strange creature shuddered and froze mid-step, knees buckling as if unseen chains had bound it and its ember-eyes dimming for a heartbeat. For one terrible moment, even the hatchlings in the distance ceased their fighting. But the cost was agony — he felt his throat tearing as blood flooded his mouth. Still, he rose, grabbing hold of the spear in his trembling hands and dragged it out.
Ignoring the gaping wound in his shoulder, light surged along the jagged edge of his makeshift spear. Not fire, not mana but something else that was greater. Heroic Blow. The strike came down like judgment.
However the strange being did the unthinkable, getting out from under his command it struck out against his blow which he thought was foolish until it activated its own skill.
Its eyes flared, molten veins racing across its body. The lance came up not to block, but to invite. His own attack came back rebounding with the same vicious energy he unleashed upon it.
The spear split in his hands. His arms screamed with shattering pain. He was flung across the cavern like a rag doll, his back cracking against stone. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His own ability had been twisted, returned to him as punishment.
The lancer advanced, lance humming with stolen light. For the first time since he had arrived in this Nest, Artorius felt the bone-deep certainty that this was not a trial. It was an execution.
He lay gasping, chest torn open, weapon ruined. The humanoid dragon creature loomed, ember-eyes blazing, lance raised for the killing thrust.
Desperation birthed cunning and a willingness to sacrifice. Artorius did not rise. He rolled. Not away, but into the strike. The lance tore through his side, ripping flesh, spilling blood — but his hands closed around the shaft. He locked it against his ribs, screamed through the pain, and dragged the lancer down with him.
They crashed into a shattered egg. Yolk and blood hissed together, burning, volatile. The lancer twisted, trying to wrench the lance free. Artorius didn't give it the chance as he bit down on his own scream, seized the jagged end of his broken spear, and rammed it over and over again into the creature.
It weakly tried to resist, but he was ruthless, already used to pulling out weapons from his body he tore the knight's lance out of his shoulder with bloodied hands, and forced it upward beneath its helm driving it with every shred of pain and fury left in him.
The sound was not of triumph, but of collapse. The creature convulsed once, ember-eyes blazing, then dimmed into ashen dark. The body slumped, pinning him beneath it. Heavy. Final. The System whispered in the silence: [You have slain Dragon Lancer — Lv. 5]
Artorius collapsed beside the corpse, blood soaking yolk and stone, gasping through torn lungs. His hand still gripped the lance that had nearly killed him. His body screamed, every nerve alight. It had not been victory. It had been survival bought with blood. But he still breathed and the Nest had lost one of its champions.
Also to add to this silver lining he finally got a message saying: Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Class: [Storybook Squire] has reached level 1 – Stat points allocated, +1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Dex, +1 Char, +1 Luc!
But the messages did not end there. The air itself stirred. A pressure built overhead. The air, once sulfur and ash, now carried ozone. Heat bled into the wind, dry and sharp, as clouds gathered where there had been none. The volcanic plain hissed as sudden rain struck molten veins, raising steam in choking bursts.
And then he felt it. A gaze. Not hungry, not mocking, not cruel but vast. Judgmental. Like the weight of the sky itself had leaned down to peer at him. From the far reaches of the Dragon Peaks, across storms that had raged for millennia, a great serpent uncoiled. Its scales shimmered with lightning, its body crowned in thunderclouds.
It had seen him.
The storm deepened, rolling thunder splitting the heavens. A single bolt of lightning struck the Hatchery Fields, searing a scar into the volcanic glass only a few paces from where Artorius knelt. Steam hissed upward, wreathing him in smoke and stormlight.
And the System whispered again, uncaring and forthright: [Your valiant duel with the Dragon Lancer has been recognized by the Weather Ryu ???]
Artorius sat frozen, lungs heaving, his heart hammering as if it wanted to claw its way from his chest. He felt small, less than small — a flicker of light at the edge of a sky too wide to comprehend.
And yet… something inside him answered. Not pride. Not arrogance. A fire. The fire of his blood that refused to bow, even to storms. He clenched his trembling fists. If the heavens themselves had marked him, then he would not shame the recognition.
Though this was not the first time he got noticed by something… much greater. He recalled that Void Worm, which had been happy he slew the luck dragon now this Weather Ryu. He wondered what it all meant. There were so many questions left unanswered, but his main priority really was to survive in this hellhole.
After defeating his foe, Artorius pocketed its strange needle-like lance, its weight alien in his hand. This thing had been a very troublesome tool. He used inspect skill on it, reading the prompt; Extendable Lance(Uncommon) - A magical lance that can stretch and bend, able to pierce someone at unexpected angles.
And he took the helm it wore, the metal smelled of ash and old fire and it seemed to suit him. He also noticed one more thing shining amongst the ruined corpse of the creature, pushing his hand into the cavity of its body he drew out a very familiar token.
Lancer Class Token(Tier 0) - A wielder of the spear. It's the path of precision, discipline, and defiance. Theirs is a dance of reach and recoil, each thrust a vow.
Artorius was sure what to do with since he already selected his own path, but he still stored it away. Nonetheless he was left with lots of questions, was the reason this creature was powerful because it had a class like him?
The other draconic creatures he saw so far were all purely beastial. Most likely they only had their race to back them up.
Healing up on the dragon egg yolks, he tried to get a lay of the land.
Spotting one tall rock outcropping which was almost as tall as a skyscraper, he guessed it would make do for a good vantage point so he climbed. He had to be careful as there were some draconic creatures there. His body screamed with every motion, torn muscle dragging bone up the jagged pillar. The Nest spread beneath him in waves of fire and shadow. When he reached the summit, the breath left his lungs.
It went on forever. The Hatchery Fields stretched beyond sight, endless plains of broken shells gleamed like cracked moons across the volcanic place, steaming rivers of yolk winding between them. Hatchlings clashed in endless swarms like rivers of scaled bodies tearing, shrieking, and devouring. Some were wolf-sized, fast and furious. Others rose already titanic, their duels splitting boulders, boiling over streams, and shaking the air with their roars.
There had to be millions. For one fragile moment, the weight of it nearly crushed him. He was a speck in an ocean of claws and teeth flung into this land of apocalypse. A trespasser in the graveyard of gods.
With little to no options, he descended back down and started heading in a random direction hoping it could lead somewhere.
At first, the Hatchery Fields changed little. More shells. More yolk. More shrieking wars of hatchlings that never ceased. He kept to the edges, scavenging the malformed and the dying, stripping what scraps of strength and nourishment he could from them. Days bled into nights, though here no sun or moon marked their passage, only the ceaseless crimson haze of the Nest's false sky. His body grew numb. His wounds scabbed, split, and scabbed again, until even the ache became part of him.
But the farther he walked, the stranger the world became. The seas of eggshells gave way to forests of bone. Petrified ribs as tall as towers stretched overhead, looming like the ribs of dead titans, their surfaces pitted with claw marks from battles long ended. The marrow within them had hardened into veins of glittering crystal, sharp and cold as glass.
The ground grew brittle, black glass cracking beneath his feet. Nests lay like grave mounds, piled high with broken corpses—half-formed wings, cracked jaws, hollow eyes staring forever skyward. Bone dust drifted on the wind, fine as snow, catching in his lungs until every breath rasped.
Rivers of molten lava and glass ran side by side, glowing with sickly light, their fumes searing his lungs raw as they blistered the air with poisonous shimmer. He crossed on bridges of calcified scale, careful not to slip.
Ash storms rose without warning, stripping skin raw. He wrapped himself in scraps of cloth and scale, crawling into husks of dead hatchlings to wait them out. At night, roars filled the air, the cries of young dragons fighting relentlessly.
One night, as he rested inside a ribcage, he saw an enormous silhouette pass above the canopy. It was no hatchling. No wyrm. Not even a dragon. Something older, half-fossilized, its spine broken and re-fused with stone, its wings rotted into pillars of petrified membrane. And yet it walked across the forest like a mountain given legs.
He dared not move, breathe, or even look its way as it passed directly above him its footfall crushed whole groves of ribs flat, bone exploding in clouds of dust. He only came out of his hiding place until it was gone, looking at the destruction that it left in its aftermath.
Sometimes he caught sight of something moving beneath the marrow. Long serpents burrowed through crystal veins, scales scraping, bodies groaning against stone. When they emerged it was sudden, a skull splitting open, marrow spilling as the system told him what they were [Bone-Wurm] burst free. They were pale and half-formed, their bones visible beneath translucent flesh, their jaws filled with too many teeth. They hunted like ambushers, striking and vanishing back into the ribs.
Another time, he walked into something horrifying. Stepping on a pale carpet of bony grass that muffled every step. At first he thought it was another grave-mound, until the earth itself began to gnash. The ground split, and pale enamel rose like flowers, long molars and jagged fangs sprouting from the soil in clusters. They clicked and chattered, grinding softly against one another in a rhythm of hunger.
Whole fields of them spread before him, white blossoms swaying without wind, their roots sunk deep in marrow-rich earth. Some were small, like infant incisors. Others were massive, as tall as his chest, serrated like butcher's knives. All gnashing, faintly, as if dreaming of flesh.
He realized then that the gardens were not plants. They were the mouths of something beneath, something sleeping, waiting for the careless to stumble into its maw. He circled wide, each step deliberate, praying that whatever lay beneath did not notice him.
At night, skulls rose from the dust, floating lanterns with different colored flames in their sockets. The system read: [Skull Lantern] They whispered as they drifted between ribs, their murmurs forming hymns too soft to understand, but he did notice the lament in their tone. When they drifted together, they formed glowing processions, weaving between the ribs like funeral marches. They went deeper, always deeper, until he realized they were not lights but lures, drawing prey into traps.
He had been walking for what seemed like days through the hushed silence of the Bone Forests, every sound echoing wrongly, some too sharp or too long. The ribcages arched above him like cathedrals, marrow crystal catching the dim crimson haze in eerie glimmers. He stopped when the bone-dust began to shift.
Then the silence changed. The air grew colder. From beneath a grave of fused vertebrae, something stirred. A crack split the fossil mound and a shape unfurled, impossibly long, impossibly thin.
It rose like a nightmare, a serpent of fossil and sinew, its hide a patchwork of calcified plates and raw bone. Its forelimbs were wrong, not claws, but elongated scythe-blades of sharpened femur, curved and ridged with teeth. Each swing shrieked like steel across stone. Its skull was faceless, its sockets hollow, glowing faintly with ghost-light.
The System burned a single line across his sight: [Reaper Bone Wurm — Level 7]
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1266706140357980/
He tried to suck underneath a ribcage, but it was too late as it had noticed him. The beast moved in silence until the last instant. Then it struck. One blade carved through the trees, shearing a rib-column clean in two. The shockwave threw him back, bone-dust exploding like ash.
Artorius rolled, barely avoiding the second strike. The scythe tore a furrow where his chest had been, slicing deep into the glassy ground. He staggered up, spear at the ready in his hands.
The wurm coiled, circling him, scythes scraping the ground. Sparks screamed from the bones. Its body was too long, too fast. Each swing forced him back. His arms went numb from the shock of parries, the weapon splintering under the weight.
Then came the tail, barbed and ridged like a saw. It swept low. He leapt but too slow. The barbs raked his thigh, ripping flesh to the bone. He crashed hard, choking on blood and dust. It lunged, jaws gaping wide enough to swallow him whole. In desperation, he shoved his Command through his throat, voice raw, bloody: "STOP!"
For a heartbeat, the wurm froze. The forest itself seemed to hold its breath. Its hollow sockets slowly inch by inch turned toward him, and with a terrible shudder, it broke free. His order broke leaving him coughing red into the dust.
The wurm surged. He scrambled backward, mind racing. He could not match it blow for blow. Not strength. Not speed. Not even command it. But the forest itself… The Bone Garden.
He ran, every step agony, blood painting his trail. The wurm followed, carving through pillars of bone, its blades cleaving entire ribs in a single sweep. Shards rained like hail. When he reached the Gardens it stirred as if sensing a great predator trespassing on its territory. Teeth began to rise from the soil, gnashing hungrily. Artorius sprinted straight into them. The wurm lunged after him, blind to the trap. At the last instant, he dove aside, throwing himself behind a rib-spire.
The wurm plowed headfirst into the garden. The ground erupted. Hundreds of teeth snapped shut in unison. The wurm shrieked not with its vocal cord, but in bone, a grinding scream as its body was caught and shredded. Its scythe-limbs slashed, tearing dozens free, but every movement drove it deeper into the maw.
Then the situation changed on its head as the bone wurm's hollow sockets flared bright with ghost-light. The air thickened, trembling. Artorius felt it before he saw it—an awful pressure, a storm gathering around death itself.
The wyrm reared back, its scythes outstretched. The glow in its sockets pulsed faster, brighter, until every bone in the Garden hummed with resonance. Then it unleashed hell.
The air exploded in shrieking arcs. Blades of bone, dozens upon dozens, spun from its limbs in a storm of cutting wind and motion. Each swing threw fragments like shrapnel. The Garden convulsed under the assault. Ribs shattered. Pillars cracked. The gnashing mouths wailed as their teeth were torn from their sockets and hurled skyward.
A storm of sharpened femur and shattered jawbones scoured the clearing, ripping flesh and stone alike. Artorius ducked behind his spire, arms over his head, feeling the storm flay the stone from the pillar. His cover held—but barely. The Garden was dying, carved apart by the wyrm's frenzy.
Then the ground shook. A sound like a bell tolling in the deep long, hollow, and furious. From beneath the earth, something moved. The teeth stopped. Then it opened.
A great draconic monster rose from below, tearing through the corpse-field like an avalanche of rot. Artorius system flashed with a single line across his sight: [Underground Rot Wurm — Level 9]
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/74239093853418932/
The rotting wurm was older and massive, its flesh sagging like mud, its ribs exposed and dripping pitch-black ichor that steamed on contact with air. Worms and larvae squirmed through its hollow sockets. What passed for its jaw was a mass of gnashing, half-formed skulls that chattered as one.
Artorius stumbled backward into the shadows, barely breathing. Two ancient terrors faced one another now, the bone predator and the carrion ambusher that had waited here for who knew how long to feed.
The Reaper Bone Wurm struck first. Its scythes lashed in a blur, carving into the Underground Rot Wurm's chest. Each blow shattered bone and sent showers of decay spraying outward. The rotting wurm responded by slamming its bulk down, its massive body crushing entire rib-spires to dust. Its jaws clamped around the Reaper's tail and ripped.
Bone shards and rotten sinew filled the air. The Reaper screeched and retaliated, its scythes igniting again, hurling arcs of bone-blades that tore chunks of rotting flesh from its foe. The rotting wurm reared back and vomited a flood of corpse-bile, sizzling acid that melted through the Garden floor.
They collided again and again, two horrors locked in death, tearing each other apart. Scythe met claw. Bone met rot. Each strike sent shockwaves through the Garden. The Reaper's blades carved trenches through decayed flesh; the rotting wurm's jaws crushed plates of fossil armor and its acidic spit corrading bone. The ground quaked under their struggle.
Artorius could only crawl away, shielding his face from flying shards of bone and acid rain. The air reeked of sulfur and death. Still though he had a plan in mind as he made it to a pillar overlooking the fighting and climbed the column, the fight shaking his perch. The air below was a storm of dust and blood, flashes of marrow-light bursting in the dark. He waited, silent, heart hammering, watching two giants of death tear each other apart.
At last, the storm began to fade. The Reaper's movements slowed, its left scythe shattered, its tail half-gone and its skull half-caved in. The rotting wurm sagged, its flesh totally rendered in parts and gone, but it had come out on top.
The rotting wurm reared, victory in its bellow, preparing to drive its mass down for the killing blow. That was when Artorius moved. He climbed, breathless and shaking, higher up the pillar until he was at the summit where the wind thinned. Then he leapt.
He fell through dust and ruin, spear gripped in both hands, Heroic Blow blazing like a falling star. The rotting wurm never saw him coming as he shot towards it like a falling star.
The spear struck behind its head, where the rotted flash thinned. The impact tore through its spine in a burst of golden light. The creature convulsed once then collapsed onto the ground, dead.
Its vast carcass crashed into the Garden, shaking the world. Splintered ribs rained down. The shockwave threw dust high into the gloom. Artorius landed hard beside the ruin, half-buried under falling shards. He dragged himself upright, trembling, vision swimming. Before him lay the Reaper Bone Wurm, the monster that had hunted him, that had carved through the forest like a god of death.
Now it was broken before him, the situation reversed as he had become the hunter and it the prey. One scythe was gone, its long body half-severed and it coiled in around itself in protection and what he knew was fear.
Artorius limped closer, spear dragging in the ash. The ghost-light still burned faintly in the wyrm's hollow eyes, flickering like dying embers. He raised his weapon. His voice cracked but carried, raw and commanding. "Surrender."
For a heartbeat, the light inside the Reaper's skull pulsed once then dimmed, almost as if obeying. Artorius thrust the spear forward, Heroic Blow igniting once more. The tip punched through bone, through the dying flame, pinning it to the ground.
The Reaper shuddered once, then went still. Silence fell over the Bone Gardens. The System whispered: [You have slain: Underground Rot Wurm — Level 9]
[You have slain: Reaper Bone Wurm — Level 7]
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] has reached level 2!
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Archetype: [Leader] has reached level 2 – Stat points allocated, +1 Int, +1 Will, +1 Char!
Looking at the messages, he was glad to see double levels which really had to show how tough these two foes were. Picking over the corpse of the two great slain enemies, Artorius found there really wasn't anything to take except some bone and rotting flesh.
Pressing forwards, Artorius knew he couldn't stop here even if he had a great victory as there were even greater dangers here and might come looking into what all this ruckus was.
Traveling through the strange and alien landscape, at long last, the forest broke. He then came upon a canyon yawning wide, its walls jagged, its floor buried beneath the skeletons of uncountable hatchlings, drakes, wurms. Bones piled upon bones in grotesque heaps, a sea of white and rusted ash, their shapes twisted in death. The wind blew through the place ringing against the ancient bones causing strange, eerie noises like a cathedral of despair.
He walked among them, every step echoing, every sound answered by the wind's mockery. More than once he thought he heard words in the moaning chorus, half-formed syllables in a dead tongue. At the canyon's heart lay something stranger still.
The bones curved inward, not at random but as though dragged into a single shape: a throne, vast and broken, carved from the remains of countless dead. And behind it, carved into the mountain itself, a doorway opened — scales fused into its stone, faint runes glowing with ember-light.
The air grew heavy, pressing against his lungs. His pulse slowed, each beat louder than the wind. This was no accident or battlefield. This was a tomb. He hesitated then he stepped inside, hoping to find something to give him answers.
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A/N: The Dragon Lancer is inspired by Hollow Knight. I have been playing too much silksong recently.
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Chapter 5 Recap!
Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 1!
+1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Will, +1 Char, +1 Luc!
Leveled up Race: Royal-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 2!
Leveled up Leader Archetype to Lvl. 2!
+1 Int, +1 Will, +1 Char!
Found Lancer (Tier 0) Class Token!
Found Extendable Lance Uncommon Magical Item!