The US government didn't really know what to make of the spontaneously generated dragonleaf city. They didn't have much intelligence on it, other than its name. According to a few spies doing recon, people had been peacefully processed and sorted into free housing, no questions asked.

It seemed completely too good to be true.

Many people in command were starting to wonder if COTD was a legitimate new religion. Originally, they thought it a terrorist group with unheard-of resources. But seriously, what made giant green cities? And randomly tapped into the minds of thousands, millions, worldwide? They couldn't name any organization with those kinds of capabilities.

With these thoughts in mind, the generals of the US military were trying to come up with a valid plan. The green city had clearly sprung up and essentially seized a circle of a 3-mile radius in Virginia; clearly the US government couldn't let that go unchecked. How could the US pride itself as Earth's leading nation when it couldn't even defend itself from insurgents making a new city-state within its borders?

'We're absolutely fucked,' Captain Edgewood thought to himself when he woke up to new commands from above. Why did anyone think that attacking that huge green city was a good idea?

He shook his head in disbelief.

He rolled out of bed, then turned away, grumbling, in search of the bathroom. It wasn't far away, thankfully; he was always groggy early in the morning and needed time to ease into the day. A shower was key to that process.

As he stepped out of his personal quarters, he felt the ground shake, once, like someone had set off some kind of land mine or artillery far away. He snapped up, his body poised to react to an incoming attack.

About a minute later, Edgewood was actually prepared for when the hallway in front of him was crushed and warped by a giant white wolf. More to say, he was prepared to fall backward on his ass as he quickly dodged the oncoming destruction.

The wolf stood up in a flash, its face seemingly alight with joy, as though it was about to fetch a toy or something. Did wolves even fetch?

Edgewood thought about his own dog, a little Jack Russell Terrier named Sparky.

He sighed to himself. He knew this line of thought was a subconscious coping mechanism; he'd been nearly crushed to death in the collateral of a giant, heaven-defying wolf smashing into the building.

But Edgewood needed to get his ass into gear and try to figure out what was going on, not reminisce. He got up, then ran over to the hallway and carefully navigated the torn-up ground. What he saw when he reached the gaping hole in the wall was enough to leave him speechless, jaw clenched.

The damned wolf actually was playing fetch. What the actual...?

He cursed and reached his back pocket for his phone. He wasn't in fatigues and didn't have his radio on hand; after all, it was the crack of dawn. He'd just been waking up.

He started to call his CO, only to hear the man's voicemail recording.

Snorting in frustration, Edgewood walked outside, realizing that pajamas or fatigues weren't going to make a difference against a giant wolf: he'd be crushed or ripped to pieces all the same.

After all, he could see now that this wasn't just an oversized genetic mutant wolf. That he could feasibly believe. No: this was a motherfucking monster wolf. It was quite possibly the fastest thing he'd ever seen; it took a few loping strides, seemingly casual and relaxed, only to cross hundreds of feet and leave his field of vision. This put a new meaning to the phrase, 'making something difficult look easy.' It was making something fucking impossible look easy.

Edgewood gingerly stepped outside, running along the building's largely undamaged exterior wall as he searched for the current location of the hostile wolf. He didn't see anybody else as he ran; likely, anybody off patrol was still inside, unaware of the danger without. If the damned wolf hadn't ripped through the hallway in front of him, he'd probably be in the shower.

That meant that everyone who was on patrol was likely trying to galvanize others to action and relay to their superiors what in the actual fuck was going on. It was now just over a minute since the ground initially shook, and Edgewood expected that armed forces would start pooling out of the building any minute.

Edgewood continued onward, rounding the corner of the building. That was when he saw a tank spin through the air, having been hoisted up by two human figures. He once again saw the wolf, gleefully bounding after it, and catching it by snagging the vehicle's side, its teeth piercing the wheel links.

Edgewood didn't even want to think about how hard the tank hit the ground. He grimaced as he realized just how much money was draining out of the army's coffers; these tanks had been preemptively driven in over the past day for the planned siege assault on Basalith. Now, they were being systematically smashed.

"I knew we were absolutely fucked," he murmured sadly. The two figures continued to hoist the Virgina base's recently augmented stock of tanks into the air. This continued for about a full minute before countermeasures were deployed.

"We're still fucked," Edgewood noted, feeling fairly sage-like with his predictions. A few smoke bombs from the tanks began to go off, apparently with the objective to confuse the hostiles. Then, trying to take advantage of the momentary "distraction," a group of people in full tactical dress ran out of the building off to Edgewood's right and fired their assault rifles at the human figures and the wolf.

Edgewood looked on, completely unimpressed, as what was clear to be a feminine figure from afar held up her arm and watched as bullets bombarded her skin and then fell away, practically bouncing off. Actually, as Edgewood crept closer, he saw that wasn't quite what was happening. They actually did enter her skin...only to be expelled out half a second later, as though some kind of internal elastic force was at work.

The female figure then laughed, a full, booming, raucous laugh, as she lowered her raised arm. The figure next to her motioned for her to help him lift another tank, to which she obliged, and unsurprisingly another tank went flying.

That was when the RPGs arrived.

...And that was also when the wolf decided large projectiles were more fun to chase after than flying tanks. Before Edgewood could so much as blink, the wolf had run over to and, apparently, swallowed the RPGs before they could ignite into their second phase and really pick up speed.

How fast did that make the wolf? Over 100 meters per second, for sure. Faster than that, though by how much, Edgewood wasn't sure. He figured that the wolf couldn't sustain such a speed for long, but could easily sprint that fast over a short distance.

At the same time the wolf closed its mouth, an audible, though heavily muffled, explosive sound rang out from its throat. The wolf just coughed in response.

Before Edgewood even realized what was happening, he was only a few hundred feet away from the hostiles, his feet moving along without his conscious input. He was approaching from a different direction from the rest of the forces, and so was completely alone (as well as conspicuous in his pajamas).

Lisa sensed that there was a person slowly approaching who only felt curiosity and awe towards them rather than the all-present anger felt by the now-firing soldiers. Lisa didn't blame the soldiers; after all, it was really early in the morning, sometime around 4 am. She'd be pissed as hell if someone stormed into her house and started flinging around her family's cars, if that was any kind of equivalent for what she was doing now.

Of course, they weren't just flinging around the tanks. The RPGs actually came at the perfect time, just as the 20th tank fell to the ground. Lisa had created the plan with a good deal intelligence at hand, having received it from a servant that Lepochim sent out. Lisa couldn't believe that the army had thought that 25 tanks would be enough to attack Basalith. She knew that each tank was supposed to be worth over 4,000 soldiers, and that 25 tanks therefore summed to more than 100,000 soldiers...

But Basalith was fortified. Assuming that they all discounted the possibility that the Dragon was real and standing guard over the city, they had to assume that they had some kind of plan to keep it safe. Otherwise, why would they have built the city?

Lisa was wondering when the aircraft were going to arrive when the oddly peaceful, slowly approaching soldier spoke.

"Are you the heads of the Church of the Dragon?" the soldier asked.

Lisa smiled. "I'm the Church."

Dean gave her an awkward glance. "I'm the Knight. And the wolf is just Wolf."

The soldier's expression didn't change at all as he slowly nodded. "Okay. And what are you all doing with the tanks?"

"Leaving a statement," Lisa replied, still smiling serenely despite the fact that RPGs were exploding not too far off all over the playful wolf, turning its fur gray. She thought it a wonder that she and the soldier could even hear each other over the noise; thankfully, the soldiers with the machine guns had stopped firing, else the sound might have been too much to speak over.

"I see a jet, incoming," the Knight remarked with a touch of nervousness.

Dean wouldn't have believed any of this was possible a few days ago. Lifting up a tank? Hell no. Throwing a tank a hundred feet into the air, even if assisted?

There were different levels of impossible, and this was at its limits. Therefore, when he saw a fighter jet approaching, he couldn't get over a natural sense of fear. Only a few days ago, a jet would have spelled his certain doom.

Now?

"Wolf," Lisa's voice called out. The wolf immediately turned around and sprinted back to Lisa and Dean, then bared its back, as discussed in the plan. Lisa and Dean quickly hopped on, then held onto the wolf's makeshift leather harness while Nimesh leapt to the top of the army base.

Then, Nimesh leapt up onto the roof of the base. Dean quickly dismounted, then lifted the wolf into the air, spun in a circle to gain speed, and then threw the hulking sapient in direction of the plane. Lisa had touched the shells of the pilot as soon as he fell within her range, influencing him to fly lower. Dean launched them as soon as she gave the signal with her hand...

The end result was that Nimesh smashed into the low-flying plane's underside. Lisa quickly dismounted and stood on top of the plane as it began to careen downwards, moving her hands almost as though she were a surfer on a surfboard. As her hands moved, so too did the plane, thanks to her mind manipulation. It was far easier to manipulate someone into doing something that they wouldn't naturally oppose; the pilot didn't oppose moving a bit to the left, then making a sharp right, since he was going to crash regardless. Before they hit the ground, Lisa let the pilot eject.

The plane smashed into the ground in a giant blaze of flames that quickly conflagrated into a tower of fire.

Edgewood didn't understand how the plane alone could...He shook his head in realization. The self-proclaimed Church ran the plane into one of the crashed tanks.

Edgewood couldn't see exactly what was happening, and with a grunt of frustration retreated back into the building, gunning for the roof for a better vantage point.

It didn't take Edgewood more than thirty seconds to get to the roof, his adrenaline pumping in response to the dangerous environment around him. He reached the roof just in time to see the Church walking calmly, majestically, through the inferno, her crystalline shoulderpads and gorget scintillating orange and red.

Edgewood noted that the flame was a perfect accompaniment to the sunset-colored accents on the Church's flowing gown. Edgewood took this time to marvel at the Church's ability to ride a wolf and leap aboard--and ride--a plane in a dress. He couldn't see her features clearly from so far away, but had a feeling that the woman was drop-dead gorgeous. He didn't know why, but...even from afar, he felt attracted to her, as though he couldn't fathom lifting even a finger against her.

The Wolf walked over from somewhere down below and stopped once it reached where the Church was standing. Then, from somewhere else on the roof, the Knight jumped and fell downward like a fiery comet, landing with his fist on the ground at the feet of the Church. He then arose, standing at her side. She held up a finger, pointing everywhere and nowhere, her index finger parallel with her piercing gaze.

Edgewood was effectively snapped out of his stupor by the ensuing silence. For the past few minutes, he'd heard nonstop weapon fire. Now, all was still, excepting the crackling flame below.

Once again in control of his faculties after breaking free of what he could only call the Church's charisma, Edgewood recognized that the tanks had all been arrayed in a circle. One, separately placed at the center of the arrangement, now lay entangled with the ruins of the aircraft. It appeared to be...some kind of formation?

His eyes snapped to attention on the Church as she raised both of her hands high. As she did so, the Wolf howled and the Knight walked around to the Church's back, a gesture of symbolism more than anything else

As the Church raised her arms to the sky, her form resplendently wrapped in the light of the rising sun and blistering flame, dragonleaf began to sprout up, rapidly filling the area within the tank-circle. Contrary to what Edgewood first thought, the dragonleaf growth wasn't random, but almost surgical, as though the plant were tracing over an already-present pattern. Forced to describe it, Edgewood would say that it reminded him of a Celtic knot pattern, though more sharp and geometric. Perhaps it was a fractal?

Then, the Church shouted out, her voice carrying out preternaturally far, as though she had the projection powers of two opera singers. "The Church of the Dragon presents to all here this gift." Now the Wolf and Knight both moved to either side of the Church, flanking her.

"We title this artwork, 'Preemptive Peace.'"

Edgewood understood the title immediately. Only someone who had complete confidence in their ability to storm this base would even consider this kind of crazy plan: making art out of destroyed tanks and a crashed fighter jet.

"We were always absolutely fucked," Edgewood sighed appreciatively to himself. He knew that he'd be able to tell his eventual kids about this some day.

Then, suddenly, the Church's eyes snapped up to meet his own. Edgewood nearly stumbled back, surprised by the suddenness and intensity of the gaze.

"We'll be taking this man with us," she said, pointing one of her fingers out. Without any warning, the Wolf bounded to the roof and grabbed Edgewood in its jaws. Edgewood tried his best to stay limp and avoid damage, though this was utterly impossible. By the time the Wolf landed back on the ground next to the Church, the Knight shook his head and gave the Wolf a rather stern look.

"Sorry," the Knight said softly, so only Edgewood and the other two could hear. Edgewood's right side was covered in bruising bite marks from where the pressure of the Wolf's jaws had held him. Edgewood knew he had several cracked ribs from the difficulty he now had breathing.

Edgewood didn't know what to think. He'd literally been given a split second to process the words of the Church and the resulting actions of the Wolf. He understood he was in a state of shock, but didn't know how to snap himself out of it.

"Can't you fix him, or something?" the Knight said, nervousness creeping into his voice.

The Church frowned and gave him a look. "That's why I fetched him; he's resistant, somehow. Come on, its time we go back."

With that, the Church called the Wolf over. All was silent for a moment, the Knight visibly confused by the Church's hesitation to mount the Wolf. Then the Church raised her voice, saying, "Nimesh: I swear, if the RPG soot doesn't wash out of this dress with some water, Bath's going to be pissed." Then, she hopped on. The Knight grabbed Edgewood and carefully followed, aware of the tenderness of the man's injuries.

And so Edgewood went, carried princess-like atop the back of a giant monster wolf to what was likely a large, green, brand-new city. Definitely not the early morning he'd been expecting.