Artorius Pendrath stood at the center of the war chamber carved into the inner curvature of the Dragon Emperor's skull.
The chamber had once been hollow marrow and neural channels. Now it was reinforced with layered bone plating, steel braces, and crystalline growths harvested from nearby biomes. Maps were etched directly into the floor living projections formed from light, psychic resonance, and star-signal interference patterns.
Around the circular table stood dragons of rank and consequence. Royal dragons and Noble that made up of his inner circle. The air was tense, thick with restrained aggression and anticipation. They all knew why they were here.
Artorius didn't waste time. "Close the chamber," he said. The Twilight dragon at the far end extended a claw. Shadows folded inward, sealing the chamber entrances. The Psychic dragon made mental dampeners activated moments later, cutting external surveillance.
Only then did Artorius continue. "We've confirmed the target," he said. "The War Imperial Dragon has committed the bulk of his forces to the eastern conflict zone. He believes we're still in a defensive posture."
A low rumble of approval moved through the room. "He's wrong," Artorius added. The projection shifted. A massive draconic silhouette appeared above the table; thick-bodied, heavily armored, covered in overlapping plates scored by years of combat. Scars were visible even in the projection. The War Dragon.
"He's not subtle," said an Raijin, their thunder drake.. "He never has been."
"No," Viserion the frost noble dragon agreed. "He doesn't need to be."
Artorius gestured, and the projection zoomed out, showing territory lines. The War Dragon's forces were sprawled across several former royal biomes, all stripped bare and converted into weapon foundries, breeding pits, and forward mustering grounds.
"He's built his entire existence around attrition," Shiun the golden imugi commented. "He doesn't care how many die as long as he wins. That includes his own forces."
"That's why no one's taken him down," said the Dawn dragon. "Even other imperials avoid direct engagement."
Artorius's eyes narrowed slightly. "That has made him complacent and predictable." The projection shifted again, highlighting troop movements. Supply lines. Rotation schedules. Weak points where logistics were stretched thin.
Murmurs spread through the chamber. "You've been studying him a while," the Ocean Dragon noted.
"Months," Artorius replied. "Every clash. Every engagement pattern. Every response time."
He turned toward a figure standing slightly apart from the others. The Star Dragon. Unlike the rest, its scales didn't reflect light, they bent it. Star-patterns pulsed faintly across its body, constellations shifting with slow, deliberate motion.
"You're certain?" Artorius asked.
The Star Dragon inclined its head. "His forces are overextended. He believes numerical superiority guarantees victory. He will not expect a decisive strike."
"Good," Artorius said.
A Psychic dragon frowned. "Will you abandon our posts? If we do, we will get overrun."
"Yes," Artorius said calmly. "We will leave dummies and decoys behind and we will leave only a shadow force. The War dragon has the vast majority of soldiers on his side so we need to go all in."
He brought up the final projection. A three-phase operation plan. Silence fell. "We isolate him," Artorius said. "We strike fast. And we kill him before the other armies realize he's dead."
Some dragons shifted uneasily. "Killing an imperial dragon isn't—" one began. "—impossible," Artorius finished. "Just very difficult."
"And there will be hell to pay," Ouroboros remarked.
His gaze swept the room. "We've been bleeding slowly for months. Defensive engagements. Attrition skirmishes. That's their game. I'm done playing it."
The Star Dragon stepped forward slightly. "My forces will assist with spatial denial and star-lock fields. He will not escape." That got attention. A War Imperial Dragon without retreat options was something few had ever seen.
Artorius nodded once. "That's all I need." He straightened. "This isn't a raid. This isn't harassment. This is decapitation." The room went still. "We take the War Dragon," Artorius continued. "And when the others realize an imperials can fall, the balance shifts. Permanently."
A slow, dangerous grin crossed his face. "Prepare your forces. We move in forty-eight hours." No cheers followed. Only resolve. Because everyone in that room understood exactly what this meant. They were about to kill a dragon of war.
-
The mobilization was in silence. Twenty thousand dragons did not gather by accident. Even a fraction of that number normally caused great bloodshed, tremors all over, and shifts in power that could be felt across biomes.
Artorius understood better than most that armies did not move quietly in the Dragon Nest. Even without scouts or scrying, a force of that size disturbed too many at once. Artorius could not afford that. If the War Imperial Dragon realized what was happening too early, the entire operation would collapse before it began.
Instead, small groups departed over the course of hours. Tens here. Hundreds there. Patrol-sized movements that matched established traffic patterns. Sky dragons rose first, blending seamlessly into what looked like routine air dominance operations. Ocean dragons followed via submerged routes and mist corridors, surfacing only at predesignated points far from prying senses.
On land, Dawn and Psychic units advanced through dead zones, areas stripped so thoroughly by prior wars that even imperial senses tended to slide past them. These dragons moved slowly, deliberately, erasing their own tracks as they went.
The eastern front lay beyond the shattered left wing of the Probability Dragon Emperor into the lands of the Sky royal dragon. Once, it had been an uninterrupted aerial empire, ruled by currents, storms, and absolute vertical control. Now it was broken space: fractured sky layers, dead cloud seas, unstable pressure zones, and floating debris-fields left behind by the dragonfall.
To most, it was dangerous territory. To Artorius, it was a cover. The attack began in pieces. Artorius remained at the center of it all, traveling with the honor guard, his presence carefully masked. The operation was a go.
"Spacing is holding," reported a Twilight commander through the shared channel. "No convergence signatures detected."
"Maintain it," Artorius replied. "No acceleration without authorization." He watched the live tactical overlay projected by the Psychic cadre. Thousands of moving markers, each one a dragon or a unit, drifting eastward in what looked like chaos. In reality, it was a spiral. Every route curved toward a single point, but none pointed directly at it.
The War Dragon's territory lay ahead: a brutal stretch of land converted entirely for warfare. Foundries burned day and night. Breeding pits churned out expendable war-beasts. Entire mountains had been dug in with forges alight.
And the War Imperial Dragon sat at its heart, convinced that nothing short of another imperial could threaten him directly. Artorius intended to prove him wrong. The first contact did not look like an invasion.
Sky dragons slipped into the outer airspace and struck only what they had to. Anti-air pylons vanished in controlled implosions. Detection arrays were crushed before they could finish their alerts. Storm dragons redirected wind corridors, scrambling long-range signaling patterns and delaying response times.
Below, Dawn and Twilight units eliminated command posts with surgical efficiency. No prolonged fighting. No dramatic engagements. War-bred dragons died without ever understanding what had happened.
Still, no full mobilization as they were not completely noticed. "Enemy response remains fragmented," the Psychic liaison reported. "No centralized command activation."
"Good," Artorius said. "Advance Phase Two." That was when the army stopped pretending.
The sky over the eastern territory darkened as thousands of dragons emerged from concealment at once. Waves of them rippled outward, cracking through cloud layers and collapsing unstable air pockets. Fire, lightning, force, and kinetic strikes hit multiple foundries simultaneously, overwhelming local defenses before they could adapt.
Their goal was simple to draw out the enemy and their foes proved to be too easy to rattle awake. War Dragon legions poured out to meet them. They were massive, brutal creatures bred for frontline combat, their scales thick with layered plating, their movements aggressive and direct.
Under normal circumstances, they would have rolled over lesser forces through sheer momentum. Instead, they ran headlong into a well-structured and organized army.
Champion-led squads punched holes through enemy formations, retreating just far enough to draw pursuit before Elder-led units collapsed in from the flanks. Psychic dragons disrupted coordination, flooding enemy ranks with false threat indicators and delayed reaction signals. Ocean units surged inland through mist corridors, slamming into rear positions that were never meant to face attack.
Artorius entered the battlefield at the head of his honor guard. The pressure was immediate. Enemy champions and elder blooded dragons converged on him instinctively, drawn by command authority and the weight of his presence. He met them without hesitation. His blade that he got from the Sword dragon moved with practiced economy, every strike meant to kill or cripple. Blood sprayed across broken stone. Bone cracked under impact. He did not slow.
Orders left his mouth between kills. "Left flank, rotate!"
"Honor Guard, tighten formation!"
"Dawn units, push through the breach!"
The battle sprawled before his vision thanks to his trait of Strategic. Controlled zones of violence expanded and contracted according to plan, denying the War Dragon's forces the mass they relied on.
They were drawing in more and more war dragon soldiers each minute as they attacked their different defensive positions. Just as they planned. "Star Dragon," Artorius said. Space answered and the dragon appeared.
"I have located him, he is in his primary fortress!"
"Good," Artorius nodded his head. "Then phase three is a go," he said. Their goal now was to cut off the head of the snake. All this, drawing out the enemy soldiers was a distraction. They wanted the main huncho, the War Dragon and now they knew where he was.
"Hold your position here," Artorius commanded. "Keep an eye on the other imperial dragons and make sure they do not find out what we are doing."
The star dragon nodded his eyes as his eyes had that far away look, stargazing far off like he always did to keep watch on their other enemies that could interfere. Artorius turned to his honor guards, "We move out!" He ordered.
They were going into the thick of it and they all answered with chest slams and spear buts onto the ground.
-
Artorius force cut though like butter anything that stood in their way.
The War Dragon's outer territories had been designed to grind enemies down over weeks. Layered kill zones. Overlapping artillery arcs. Endless reinforcements. What they were not designed for was a concentrated strike by a disciplined army that ignored territory and went straight for the spine.
The honor guard advanced in a tight spear formation, moving faster than the War Dragon soldiers could keep up.
Artorius saw it the moment they broke through the outer storm belts. The structure sprawled across a mountain range that had been hollowed out a long time ago. Layered ramparts of fused stone and metal climbed the slopes like overlapping shields. Artillery nests were carved directly into the rock, each one large enough to house dragons meant to fight entire squads alone. Chains thicker than ships anchored floating bastions overhead, each bristling with siege weapons and kill arrays.
At the center rose the keep itself; a large iron-bone spire driven straight into the mountain's heart. Heat shimmered around it. Mana pressure rolled outward in waves. The air smelled of oil, ash, and blood that had soaked into the stone so deeply it would never leave.
They struck like a blade. Artorius knew they were on the clock and had to besiege this place as soon as possible. Looking at the massive gates that stood before them, Artorius did not have the time to wear it down so they brought out their superweapon.
"Bring the weapon forward." From behind their columns something massive was dragged into position. The superweapon emerged fully into view.
It was built around a segment of the Probability Dragon Emperor's spinal core. The bone was pale and veined with faintly glowing lines that pulsed irregularly. Zytherion had even helped create it.
At its front sat the firing aperture, a circular maw lined with crystalline probability lenses harvested from the Emperor's eyes. The weapon was called the Outcome Engine.
"Charge," Artorius ordered. The Engine hummed. Reality bent around it. Not violently. Subtly. Like the world was being convinced to accept a conclusion it didn't want. Artorius raised his fist. "Fire."
The Outcome Engine discharged. There was no explosion. The fort's main gate simply… stopped being defensible. The overlapping ramparts didn't shatter. They failed. Structural supports lost relevance. Reinforcement calculations unraveled. Entire sections slumped inward as if they had always been unstable and were just now admitting it.
The central spire cracked. A vertical fracture split it from base to midsection, glowing faintly where probability had been rewritten. Silence followed. Then screaming alarms. "Advance," Artorius said. They surged forward.
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Sky and Storm units punched a hole through the outer defenses, sacrificing stealth for speed. Anti-air emplacements fired immediately, turning the sky into a killing field. Dragons died ripped apart by converging fire, slammed out of the air by ballista but the formation did not break. Ocean dragons surged forth on waves that had been seeded earlier, crashing into the lower artillery decks and flooding them with crushing pressure.
Artorius led the ground insertion.
The honor guard hit the slope hard, talons digging into stone as explosions tore the terrain apart around them. War-bred defenders charged immediately, massive dragons clad in overlapping armor plates, wielding axes, chains, and embedded siege weapons. There was no hesitation. Artorius went straight through them.
His blade flashed, severing limbs, splitting armor seams, punching through skulls. Every movement was efficient. Brutal. He was not here to duel, he was here to eliminate. His honor guard moved with him as a single unit, shields interlocking, spears and blades striking in precise rhythms.
War dragons tried to swarm them. They failed. "Advance," Artorius ordered. "No delays. Ignore the fortifications."
Orders screamed across the battlefield as enemy commanders tried to regain control. It didn't matter. The assault had already reached critical mass. Elder-led units slammed into secondary gates, tearing them open from the inside. Kinetic dragons collapsed entire wall sections, burying defenders under their own fortifications.
Artorius felt it. The air changed. A pressure rolled down from the keep, heavy and violent, like the world itself leaning forward to crush intruders. The ground shook. Lava veins ignited beneath the mountain. A roar erupted that drowned out every other sound on the battlefield.
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[Imperial War Croc-Draco — Level 47]
The War Imperial Dragon had emerged. He was enormous, larger than any dragon Artorius had faced directly, his body stretched low and brutal, a living siege engine pressed close to the ground. His hide was a tank of overlapping crocodilian scutes, each plate thick as a dinner plates, scarred, cracked, and reforged with iron bands and rune-welds. Old wounds crossed newer ones in jagged layers, proof that nothing had ever truly put him down.
His head was a nightmare of predation: a massive, wedge-shaped skull, jaws elongated and heavy, packed with uneven rows of conical teeth the size of daggers. When he breathed, steam hissed through gaps in his armor-plated snout. His eyes sat low and forward, glowing embers beneath heavy ridges; cold, calculating, and utterly relentless.
Weapons were built into him. Cannons were mounted along the ridgeline of his shoulders and spine. Chains were coiled and bolted around his forelimbs, clanking as he moved. Blades were fused into spined flanges along his forearms and tail, turning every sweep into a guillotine.
What wings he had were reduced and reinforced thick, armored fins more suited for balance and sudden lunges than flight. This was not a creature meant to soar. Looking at it, War was not what he did. It was what he was. "So," the croc dragon thundered, voice shaking the battlefield, "another weak prey has comes to die."
Artorius stepped forward, blood dripping from his blade. "Are you sure you are not the prey?"
The War Dragon laughed and charged. The impact was catastrophic. They collided halfway down the slope, shockwaves tearing the battlefield apart. Artorius was driven back, boots carving trenches through stone as he barely kept his footing. The War Dragon followed relentlessly, slamming him with claws, tail, shoulder, each hit strong enough to shatter lesser dragons into pulp.
Artorius blocked, redirected, rolled. Pain flared across his body as armor buckled and cracked. He felt ribs strain. Felt blood fill his mouth. He smiled. This was what he had prepared for.
"Honor Guard," he snapped. "Formation Sigma. Do not engage unless I fall."
The War Dragon noticed the withdrawal and snarled. "Running already?"
"No just making sure this fight is between you and me only," Artorius lunged. His blade struck the War Dragon's chest, scraping sparks as it cut into a seam between armor plates. Not deep but enough. The War Dragon roared and swung, catching Artorius midair and hurling him through a bastion wall. Stone exploded around him.
Artorius hit the ground hard, bounced, rolled, and came up on one knee. Health dropping. Stamina draining fast. That was when he activated his first ability. Underdog. His stats started flickered up at the edge of his vision
The War Dragon charged again. Artorius stepped into the attack. At the last moment, Chance twisted. The War Dragon's claw missed by inches. Artorius drove his blade upward into the joint beneath the arm, severing tendons and armor supports.
The War Dragon looked at his injured arm, brought it up to his and licked it. "Wonderful. You have the spark of violence in you!" Artorius did not know what to say and got distracted by that display; he noticed too late the tail that slammed into him.
Artorius flew, crashed into the slope, and forced himself back up through sheer will. Blood soaked his armor now. His vision blurred. "If we are using Laws, get a taste of mine!" The War dragon bellowed.
The world lurched like something hungrying was unleashed. Something primal flooded outward from the War Dragon, rolling down the slopes, seeping into nearly every dragon in the fort. The air thickened with the metallic scent of blood already spilled, and that scent pulled. It tugged at instinct, at the part of every creature that remembered killing as survival.
Artorius felt it claw at him as if he wanted to let loose and rip and tear. He only kept his sanity due to his Stoic trait which shielded him of these mental attacks. Artorius knew what the War dragon had done, it unleashed its Law… Bloodshed.
Nearby, dragons faltered. A champion turned too sharply, eyes unfocused, and tore into an enemy already dying. A unit abandoned formation, piling onto a knot of War Dragon soldiers with reckless fury. Screams rose, not of fear, but of hunger and wrath.
The War Dragon laughed, deep and thunderous. "This is war," he said. "This is truth." The battlefield began to unravel. Artorius planted his feet and forced himself to breathe. His heart pounded, each beat trying to drag him forward into the slaughter. His hands shook not from fear, but from restraint.
He raised his voice, amplified by his Command trait. "Hold your lines! Disengage! Reform now!"
Some obeyed. Most didn't. The Law of Bloodshed overrode discipline for those too deep in the fighting. Dragons tore at one another in brutal, spiraling melees. Allies and enemies blurred together as rage took precedence over orders.
Artorius clenched his jaw. 'So this is why no one faces this mad man head-on.'
The War Dragon inhaled. "How beautiful!" All this bloodshed seemed to be not only intoxicating to him but also he activated an ability which he saw with his Dragon eye was empowering him. Already he could see it with his own regular eyes as the War dragon grew, his muscles became more bulging, his energy spiked.
He turned sharply and slammed his blade into the ground. "Honor Guard!" he roared. "Focus on me!" There was a reason why he had these dragons follow him, not only to keep the best nearest to him but also for this very reason.
They heard him. Even through the madness, even through the Law, his command cut through. His elite units disengaged, forming a tight ring around him, shields up, wills focused. Artorius closed his eyes. "Draconic Empowerment," he said to them and used the ability the way it was supposed to be instead of letting old dead dragons in.
This time, he did not draw alone. Belief surged filled with trust. Hundreds of dragons fighting under his banner felt it and responded. Power flowed through the bonds he had forged; discipline, loyalty, shared purpose. Mana, stamina, health and strength all of it surged into him, pushing him beyond his limits.
His wounds dulled. His stance steadied.
The War Dragon snarled with a grin, "Good give me everything you have." He unleashed everything as did the war dragon. Cannons roared. Chains snapped outward. Fire and force tore the battlefield apart. They were evenly matched.
So Artorius decided to end this in one spectacular fashion. He called upon his words of power; Flame. Light. Crystal. They did not clash. They aligned perfectly. "NOVA." The world detonated.
A sphere of compressed power erupted outward from Artorius, consuming the space between them. The blast tore into the War Dragon's chest, shearing away entire armor plates and blasting a crater straight through his torso. His roar cut off as he was driven back, smashing into the keep's outer wall hard enough to buckle it inward.
Silence followed. Smoke rolled. Artorius stood, breathing hard, barely upright.Surely it could not be alive after that but he did not get the kill message.
The blood on the ground made from thousands of small cuts, severed limbs, ruptured bodies lifted. It poured into the large crater where the War Dragon's ruined form laid, flooding the cavity, knitting flesh together with horrifying speed. He rose from the wreckage, body steaming, wounds sealing.
The War Dragon laughed- raw, exhilarated. "Yes," he said. "Yes! This is war!"
Artorius felt it settle in his gut. This creature was just impossible to kill. From the info they gathered this was its word of power of word; Blood!
-
Author Note: The war dragon is a manic.