“We have to flee now.”

Jack looked up from his breakfast as Elwin swept into the room with a haste that was totally at odds with her normally breezy demeanor. Which raised a number of alarm bells in his head. Elwin was many things, but a woman prone to exaggeration she was not.

“Why?” he asked, keeping his voice prompt and level – even as he had to speak over the other women present.

Elwin ignored Ren and Lin though, her focus was entirely on him, her pale features reduced to a paper white color. “The Red Death is coming. I can feel his ill will on the wind. And if I can sense him, it means he will be upon us at any minute.”

That was an ominous name, though before Jack could even stand or say another word, a… wave seemed to wash across the room.

“Die.”

Everyone flinched as the unexpected word reverberated through the room – and perhaps the entire city.

Christ that’s a lot of bass, Jack thought. Like a foghorn trying to use words.

More than that though, it seemed there was some… magical component to the noise beyond its audibility, given the way all three women in the room visibly flinched.

“He’s here,” Elwin whispered, eyes wide with very real terror as she stared off into the distance, clearly looking beyond the concrete walls of the command room. “The Doom is here.”

Before Jack could tell her – tell all of them to snap out of it – a long drawn-out explosion echoed across the walls of the compound.

Distant, but powerful enough that we could sense it from here, Jack thought. And it came from the direction of the wall.

Cursing, the miner dashed over to the monitors. He ignored the plates that fell and shattered as he knocked over chairs and tables in his haste to reach the nearest monitor. In a crisis, every millisecond mattered.

Not that his alacrity seemed to help at all. As he reached the monitors, he saw that a number of the screens were now black, the cameras destroyed or otherwise rendered non-functional. Though as discomforting as that was to see, what was displayed on those screens that still functioned was worse.

It was a scene from hell itself.

The crawlers were in ruins, all-but welded to the flagstones, looking for all the world like half melted wax figures as flames lapped around them. Rows of barricades and razor wire were now little more than sagging bits of warped metal.

As for the men and women guarding them? The only evidence that they’d ever existed was the ash pouring from empty blackened suits. One hundred members of his militia, gone in an instant.

…Though perhaps some might have survived? Those stationed on the wall?

Still, Jack struggled to process it.

Nearly three quarters of his personal guard force. Gone.

Gao. Gone.

The defenses he’d spent nearly a day erecting. Gone.

His eyes panned over to where Gao’s command crawler sat. It was in the center of the formation, naturally, warped barrel pointed toward the skies as if in some vain attempt to ward off the coming blow. The only reason it hadn’t exploded was because the flamethrower’s fuel mix wasn’t a napalm equivalent, but rather two separate chemicals that only ignited when mixed together and exposed to air. Apparently it was used for shuttle fuel back on Earth. Though that variant likely didn’t have polystyrene added to the mix.

Jack had thought himself rather clever when he’d thought of that work around.

Didn’t do those poor bastards much good, he thought numbly. And the batteries are likely to cook off any minute now anyway.

The batteries for most of the equipment he used had some pretty incredible tolerances, but he doubted any of them were rated for being submerged in dragon fire.

And that was what had done it he realized as he turned his attention to another screen.

A motherfucking dragon.

It hovered over the wall like some kind of demon from the depths of hell, the enormity of it casting nearly the entirety of the breach into shadow. Each beat of its massive batlike wings was like the summoning of a hurricane, and as he watched men were flung from the wall by the gale force winds to be dashed across the streets below.

Some of those men had been clad in the blue and silver of his militia.

“Christ, it’s as big as a small cruise ship…” Jack hissed.

It was like he was looking at Smaug from the sixth Hobbit remake.

Only bigger. And spikier.

“Pathetic. This motley collection of metal was what stymied you so daughter? I am disappointed.”

The beast’s draconic snout moved not a bit, yet Jack felt its words ripple through him, shaking his very bones.

His focus wasn’t on the words of the overgrown reptile though, before it, he could already see movement from the trenches and the camps. The troops in the trenches weren’t able to move with the dragon hovering over them, but those in the camps had no such problem. More to the point, the Instinctive troops in the trenches would definitely charge the minute the beast moved.

Towards an opening in the wall that was now almost entirely unguarded.

…They’d known this was coming.

“What the hell is that thing Elwin?” Jack’s surprise, quickly morphing into fury as he whirled to face the elf.

“The Red Death. The Scourge of the Southern Continent.” The elf said solemnly, hands clasped in front of her. “We… we thought he was dead.” Her eyes flitted towards the screens, real fear dancing in them as she regarded the red-skinned dragon. “It seems he merely changed location.”

And sided with the Instinctives to help them overcome their own ancient foe.

Christ, it was like every ‘white savior’ story ever put to paper but with a giant dragon instead of a generic white guy.

Jack was well aware of the hypocrisy in him saying that given his own role in local politics, but in his defense, he wasn’t saving anyone. He was out to save himself. And a lot of the time, the people he needed to be saved from were the locals.

“Well, at least now we know where the dragon bit of the Herald came from.” Jack turned towards Ren. “There wasn’t some missing Imperial Scion after all. No, they’d had a full-blown European dragon on their side.”

“Europe?” Elwin mouthed as Ren just stared at him.

A sort of morbid sense of humor boiled up in him as he continued. “I mean, we really should have seen something like this coming when the Herald started throwing around mana in that ritual of hers.”

Elwin almost visibly flinched, taking her eyes off the dragon for the first time since he’d shown up on screen.

“Yes, I suppose we should,” she finally muttered.

Before Jack could say another word, another voice rippled through the room – and much like with the dragon, he assumed the entire city.

“Monster!” The Magistrate roared as she tore through the skies towards the monster, golden lightning crackling beneath her feet as she flew through the air.

“Ah, it seems the child of the upjumped fish dares to challenge me.” The Red-Death just laughed, deep and throaty as he flapped his powerful wings and, almost casually, flew up towards the clouds. “Let us see if the child of the carp has more mettle than my own lackluster spawn.”

Thunder lit up the night skies as Huang sped up, ascending after the monster. Behind her, other cultivators flew with her. Unlike with the massive dragon, it was a little harder to make out individual faces from this distance even with the resolution on his cameras, but Jack had little doubt that most of the flyers were sect leaders.

Though if he’d thought Huang’s means of transportation peculiar, those of her colleagues looked downright bizarre. Some looked to be jumping on air, while others were quite literally surfing on their swords.

The sight would be almost comical in any other situation. As it was, Jack could only wish them luck. Then he turned away from the screen.

“I need to get to my workshop,” he said as he made for the stairs. “Get on the radio and tell our gonnes to start firing on that big bastard the moment they have a clear shot. Use the flak shells, not the new ones.”

He doubted his latest warcrime would do much to a beast of that size. He’d designed the new shells as a means of hopefully clearing out the trenches, not fight giant dragons.

“It will be done,” Ren said, finally snapping out of her reverie now that she had a clear path before her.

Jack grinned fiercely at her, before pausing just before he passed through the doorway. “And Lin?”

“Y-yes,” the young woman said, clearly surprised at being addressed.

“It looks like you're finally getting your wish. Get the Scotsman up in the air and headed our way. I’ll give you more instructions once I’m suited up.” Jack didn’t wait to see her response before running off and down the hall.

He heard it though.

“What!?”

-----------------------

Deng Ru watched from below as in the skies above, a legendary battle occurred. Normally Deng Ru had little enough patience for cultivators beyond the Hidden Master, but here and now he prayed for their success as the magistrate and sect leaders continued their aerial duel against the monster that had killed some many of his friends.

Some amongst the artillery crews claimed the monster was a dragon. Deng called them fools. He had seen an artist’s rendition of the Empress before her ascension to human form, and this beast looked nothing like her.

Certainly, it flew and had scales, but its body more akin to that of a bat than a snake. More to the point, it was forced to crudely rely on its wings to fly through the air, rather than simply floating through its mastery of ki like a true dragon would.

Hell, it even spat fire rather than lightning.

No. This was no dragon. Simply another monstrous beast of the Instinctive. Stronger and more dangerous than most, but a monstrosity all the same.

Still, fake or not, it battled with a fury that shook him to his core. The city’s defenders easily dodged around its clumsy oversized claws and tail, but as they had discovered, the massive creature’s physical body was not the true threat.

Deng winced as a cultivator was swatted from the sky by a coruscating beam of blackness that seemed to appear from thin air. The older woman was thrown from her sword like a ragdoll and her smoking form plummeted back down toward the Earth. It didn’t take long for another of her compatriots to follow after her, the third since the fight had begun.

Yet not a single strike or technique used by the city’s esteemed master’s had yet managed to wound the monster. It’s scales seemed proof against anything they could muster.

The same could not be said of the reverse however, as another master plunged into a cloud of unnatural green gas. When they emerged from the other side, it was as a lifeless ragdoll that fell from the sky.

A fourth master down, with nothing to show for it. At this rate, the Magistrate would be alone before long.

“Should we fire now?” One of his subordinates – and wasn’t that a terrifying prospect now that Gao was seemingly… dead – asked worriedly.

All of the big gonnes were aimed toward the melee, the newly installed range finding targeting notches prepped for what Deng sincerely hoped was the correct distance. “Not while the cultivators are so close. We’d be as much at risk of hitting them as the beast.”

For while the destructive spirits of the flak shells knew when a cultivator was close, their suicidal bloodlust was such that they cared not whether said cultivator was a friend or foe.

He was about to say something else when a cultivator – from one of the sects – rode up to the perimeter. After a few seconds of disgruntled communication with the guards there, the rabbit-kin was allowed through, at which point she rode straight up to him.

“You, mortal, Lady Shui commands that your master’s catapults be directed towards the breach.”

Perhaps if Denya had been born in Ten Huo, he might have hastened to obey that order. City-folk could be a little… odd where cultivators were concerned in his eyes. Too subservient, too quick to forget the chain of command because the prior link in it was another mortal and not a cultivator.

“I’m sorry great one, but this lowly one has received different orders from his own chain of command,” he kept his tone dutiful, but stern. Just like Gao had taught him for those occasions where he would have to deal with cultivators.

Just the thinking of the man sent a small pang of sorrow through the rabbit-kin’s heart, but he steeled himself. He could mourn and panic later. For now he had a job to do.

“Good, you can-” It actually took the woman a second to process that he hadn’t immediately leapt to obey. “What did you just say?”

Sighing, he dropped the ‘formal’ tone he’d been instructed to use. As much as Gao had apparently been a rebel within the context of his fellow former guards, he had still been a Ten Huo man with all the foibles that entailed.

Denya wasn’t. He was a Jiangshi native, with his own foibles, and one of them was a disinclination to use for the ridiculously flowery speech these city slickers used.

“I informed you that unless you give me good reason to reconsider my own orders, I cannot obey your mistress’s request.”

“You uppity-” The woman’s hand had barely touched the handle of the sword at her waist before the sound of a half dozen rounds being chambered echoed through the clearing.

Just as Denya had expected.

The Jiangshi militia had lost a lot of people in the last few minutes and were naturally on edge.

“I’d take your hand away from that blade, miss” He spoke as calmly as he could. “Nice and slow. I’d hate for a lot of people to die over a small misunderstanding.”

Say what you would about the woman’s sense of self importance, she apparently knew enough about the weapons held in the hands of the militia around her to recognize that a fight would go poorly for her.

…Or she considered her own orders more important than her wounded pride.

Denya would have bet on the former, as the woman’s hand slowly moved away from her sword. Which was good, he had bigger problems to deal with without having to engage in a firefight with some cultivator’s upjumped cultivator messenger.

Like the scaled bat overhead that had just murdered over a hundred of his friends and colleagues and was now slowly wiping out the city’s collective leadership.

Taking a breath, the woman across from him very deliberately reigned in her temper. “Very well, can I ask what task could possibly be more important that plugging the breach?”

“That.” He pointed up. “My orders are to wait until my people have a clear shot before unleashing hell on that monster.”

The woman’s eyes goggled, likely at the idea that a bunch of weapons crewed by mortals could do anything against a monster capable of fighting the entire city council.

Never mind the fact that said weapons had become the cornerstone of the city’s defensive strategy over the last two months or so, because prior to this they’d mostly been used against other mortals. And the fact that smaller variants of said weapon had cowed her into backing down just second prior.

Cultivators, Denya thought.

“Besides, an Imperial army cohort was being kept on standby for… an eventuality like this.”

Said eventuality being all of his friends dying.

The female rabbit-kin shook her head. “They are in disarray. While they didn’t catch the brunt of the beast’s attack, they caught some of it. Lady Shui is already redirecting sect forces to plug that gap, but it will take time until the mortal component of that response force arrives. My fellow cultivators may not hold until then if they have to combat both Instinctive champions as well as who knows how many tribesmen. If those sect cultivators fall before aid arrives, the breach will be left wide open and the enemy may manage to form a beachhead within the walls.”

Denya tried to ignore the hint of genuine pleading that seemed to enter the woman’s tone. What she’d said was… catastrophic yes, but so was a giant bat creature attacking the city from above unopposed.

As he glanced up he saw that the Magistrate was now alone in her fight with the beast.

He frantically wracked his mind for a solution.

Finally, his gaze settled on the new shells that had been delivered just last night. They were kept in tightly sealed containers and were only to be removed for firing. Lady Ren had explained their purpose to the watch officers on duty and how dangerous a malfunction would be.

His instructions had said they would be useless against the beast. It was too big and the sky too open.

Within the close confines of the breach though?

“What if there were no mortals for your cultivators to contend with? Could they hold then?” Denya asked.

“Of course. Assuming the foe has no more surprises up their sleeve.”

He sighed internally.

“Load up a quarter of the gonnes with the new shells,” he spoke through a dry mouth.

“That won’t be nearly enough,” the woman pleaded, following after him as he turned away. “The enemy will just ignore your attack if only a few catapults are used.”

“I doubt it,” Denya grunted as a flurry of activity broke out around them.

No, his primary concern was that five guns would be too many. He didn’t want to imagine the carnage he was about to release spilling back into the city.

He could only hope and pray that the winds were kind.

-----------------------

The floor was still hot to the touch where the god-dragon had struck down the Domestic’s defenses, but that was easily ignored as Bujir charged through the breach. Ahead of him he could see champions battling the newly arrived cultivators and watched as some of his fellow tribesmen peeled off to help them.

Not him though.

All that mattered was getting out and onto the streets. More were following behind him from the camps and the trenches. They would overwhelm the scant few Domestic cultivators here. The first wave was better served by piercing as far into the city as possible. The further they got, the more thinly stretched the defenders would be.

Some had scoffed – quietly - at the Herald's words on the subject, as evidenced by their actions now. Bujir still believed though. Yes, the horde had been stymied for a time, but that was over now. With the arrival of the god-beast, he and the other faithful would be rewarded for their loyalty.

While those who had doubted would be purged.

In time.

For now, there were far more meaningful targets for his axe.

He grinned widely as he jogged past the deceased body of one of the flame-crabs, ignoring the smoke billowing from it. The hateful beasts had denied the call of the wild and been cooked in their shells for their betrayal. For just a moment, the rat-kin found himself wondering what the flesh of such a beast would taste like, before he shook his head and continued on.

His goal was-

“Incoming!”

Bujir hissed as the hateful whistling of the shells grew closer. Of course, even with their city breached, the Domestics still refused to come out and fight honestly.

The rat-kin watched and waited for the telltale clang of the shell’s impacts.

There!

He darted away as the metal object impacted the floor, driving deeply into the concrete. Yet, as he ducked and cowered away, expecting the inevitable secondary explosion… there was none.

He watched and waited, prepared for some manner of trick. Yet there was none. He strained his senses, but could pick up nothing beyond the hissing of the cooking flame-crab meat and the acrid smell of ash.

“Even the Domestic’s tools f-fail them!” He coughed finally, the smoke making the words catch in his throat as he said the final words.

A ragged cheer rang out from those around him, broken only by coughing no doubt brought on by lingering overlong in amongst the ash.

He moved to charge again, only to find his vision blurring, the air sticking in his throat. The smoke really was bad. It was like he couldn’t breathe. Indeed, he watched as some of the blurred forms of his compatriots fell to their knees, clutching at their throats.

He couldn’t stay here. It was too hard to breathe. It was…

---------------

As the thunder and lightning faded away, the Magistrate was dismayed to see that her last and greatest attack had done no more than carve away a few scales from the false-dragon.

“You dare! A mere whelp dares to wound me!?” The malformed monster roared.

Huang ignored him, focusing instead on her internal ki reserves. Which were all-but empty. She had truly placed everything she had into that final attack.

She was done. Her allies were dead. She had exhausted herself.

And her foe remained almost untouched.

“Die!”

Not that one would know it as yet another of his strange techniques crashed into her, this one a screaming skull that flew on green fire. It exploded on impact and she finally felt her control over her flight give way as she started to plummet.

The monster passed overhead, smug contentment on his draconic face as he watched her fall to her death.

Was this how she died? Perhaps. For all that she held contempt for the monster circling above her, he had been truly powerful. Perhaps only slightly weaker than her mother. She had never stood a chance really. There was no shame in being defeated by such a foe.

And perhaps, if she were just another warrior, she would have been content with that. She wanted to rest. To release her earthly burdens. To forget the pain in her leg. The stinging in her meridians. Her pounding headache. It would be so easy to just close her eyes and allow oblivion to take her tired weary form.

She couldn’t though.

She was not just a warrior. She was an Imperial Scion. A Magistrate, responsible for a city of the Heavenly Empire. She had a responsibility to every citizen below her.

So she fought.

Her very insides burned as she tried released the vaporlike dregs of what little of her internal energy she’d managed to purify since being wounded. Instead, she dipped deeply into the black tar-like corrupted ki that her wound had created. She drew strength from it, letting the blackened mess fill her meridians.

Destroying them.

No not before she could coax just a little more power from them.

“For the Empire!” she roared, blasting up towards the skies with the last of her power.

Her foe had thought her defeated, and was taken totally off-guard as her last attack pierced his defenses, charring the flesh of his chest and blackening the red scales surrounding the now exposed flesh of his abdomen.

She smiled as he howled in rage and agony.

That was it. Now she was prepared to die.

Contented, she closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of wind flowing through her fingers as she rushed toward the ground. It reminded her of some of her fondest memories. Of being thrown high into the air by her father. Of flying lessons with her mother. Of races with her many siblings.

“I’m sorry mother, I failed you. I hope you can forgive this Huang,” she whispered.

Then something slammed into her back as two powerful arms wrapped around her.

“Woah!” A familiar baritone voice called as her savior slowly began to arrest their descent, flames flaring from the back of his strange metal armor.

“Johansen?” she asked breathlessly.

“That’s me,” the man said matter of factly, as if rescuing an imperial princess was something he did every day.

The beast overhead roared, diving toward them, only to yowl as explosions rippled around it. Truthfully, Huang knew most were achieving nothing, the beast’s scales were tougher than that, but the wound on his chest… that was vulnerable.

Which was why she grinned as another explosion went off near it, and belching furious flame the beast broke off his descendent ascending once more up toward the safety of the sky.

Johansen’s descent slowed as they approached a rooftop and she finally took her eyes off the monster to look at her savior. Not even a few hours previously she would have sneered at a suit of armor like this. Considered it to be the tool of a coward unwilling to spend the effort to better hone his or her martial arts.

The thing wasn’t even complete. She could see holes in it where pieces had been removed. Hell, one of the arms was just Johansen’s bare flesh.

Yet, despite all that, with the glint of the afternoon sun glinting off it, it looked rather… dashing.

Oh goddess, was she blushing!?

She all but leapt from his arms as they touched down on the roof, though she nearly collapsed as the unexpected weight of everything made her stumble.

Oh yes, she’d destroyed her meridians.

She was basically a mortal now. That… she didn’t know what to think about that. So she didn’t. Instead she focused on her savior, who had not noticed her stumble. His gaze was entirely on the beast flying overhead, a beast that seemed… wary of coming down further after being lashed by both her and the big gonnes.

“You can’t beat him,” she said. “He’s too strong.”

His gaze turned towards her. “And what would you have me do.”

“Flee,” she said. “Take those closest to you and run as far and as fast as you can.”

She meant it. It was the only real choice left. She would not begrudge a man – even less a foreigner – for fleeing the fall of a city he owned no real loyalty to. He had already done more in its defense than anyone could ever ask.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

Then he shot off, the flames on his back flaring brightly as he soared up towards the dragon.

And what was likely his death.

And for the first time in her life Huang was powerless to do anything more than watch.