A lethal silence fell over the place at once, broken only by the clatter of weapons slipping from the hands of stunned men.
Then, without warning, a voice rose through the entire hall — a voice like a great wave breaking across that suffocating stillness:
"You dishonorable wretch!!!"
Valerius's fist closed on Scythe's face with a speed no one caught, and stopped only a hair's breadth from severing his head.
Scythe had already crumpled to the ground. Everyone traded glances,
thick with dread and terror; no one dared speak, for no one knew what such a word might cost.
Valerius looked down at him, his fist still trembling in the air:
"You killed him, you vile coward. You murder an unarmed old man simply because he defied you??"
His eyes narrowed further, and his voice dropped to something closer to a hiss:
"You are casting your soul into perdition without mercy..."
Scythe's terrified expression twisted into fury, and he rose slowly, leaning on his spear, bellowing through the hall:
"He was a senile old fool. He wanted to ruin our reputation, and the reputation of all Crag."
He lowered his head for a moment, his lips trembling, before pressing on louder:
"I endured him, I heeded his words for far too long — he was no longer the legend I once knew. So the least I could do was spare myself the sight of him crumbling any further.
It is a wretched thing, to watch the man you once revered as a legend collapse like vermin..."
He shifted his stance, leveling the point of his spear at Valerius with one slow, deliberate step, and said in a grave voice:
"And you, you contemptible thing... nothing more than a man who fancies himself powerful, or of some standing, simply because he felled one feeble dragon."
He turned his face away for a moment, as though Valerius weren't even worth looking at:
"I would not be surprised if the whole tale were pure fabrication, purchased at the expense of the dead. Did you threaten the living into echoing your lie??"
He turned back, meeting his eyes directly now, without a flicker of hesitation:
"I never have, and never will, allow you — or anyone — to take Crag from me. I alone am worthy of her..."
Silence reigned for a few moments more, the two most dangerous men in the land standing eye to eye, poised to strike at any breath, their bodies drawn as taut as a bowstring. But that tension was severed by a laugh rising from behind them — Agnyr's, his head tilting to one side in open contempt:
"Heh. Humans... so hopelessly foolish. What a disgrace it is to call you enemies."
Those words were the final spark to Scythe's hatred, and in a lapse of judgment he leapt high for a killing blow — but Valerius was faster still,
and with a single strike drove him to the ground, leaving a savage wound in his left arm. Valerius looked down at him,
his gaze brimming with contempt and scorn, the corner of his mouth curling into a cruel smile, and said, his voice thick with grim satisfaction:
"You are nothing but a nobody, moved only by the words of those around you..."
He leaned toward him slightly, his voice sinking to a cold near-whisper:
"Let Crag sink to the depths of hell along with you. Since you already know the truth and are content to live inside it, let the people say whatever they please..."
Scythe rose in terror, swaying a moment before catching his balance, and fled, ordering every soldier to follow. He paused at the gate, turning only his head, not his whole body, to face him, and looked back with contempt:
"You arrogant swine. Believe me — the price for this will be nothing less than your life."
He stormed off, dragging the tatters of his defeat behind him.
Valerius exhaled a long breath, letting his tensed shoulders drop,
then began inspecting his wounded body, nearly every inch of it battered, before collapsing from sheer exhaustion.
Yet just before his eyes fell shut, he remembered — behind him lay a full-blooded dragon. He let out another sigh, rubbing his eyes with a trembling hand.
"Haaah... what am I supposed to do with you now? I can't bring you back with me, and you're not dangerous enough that I should kill you..."
Agnyr flared with fury and tried to roar, but he was too weak to manage it, and so resigned himself to the situation for the moment, folding his good wing tight against his body in visible sulk. Valerius began to laugh at him — until he suddenly recalled the matter concerning that terrifying creature, and the smile fell from his face. He started advancing slowly toward Agnyr,
entirely at ease, palms open before him like a gesture of peace.
Agnyr drew back a step, unsettled, and snapped:
"Human — do you not know your place??"
Valerius smiled and ignored him completely, dropping to one knee to bring himself level with the dragon's gaze, and said in a firm, serious tone:
"Hey, you. Tell me exactly what happened — and why you and your companion attacked. Who is he, even??"
This time Agnyr held Valerius's eyes for a long moment, searching them for the truth. He sighed, realizing he would find no peace until this man's curiosity was sated, and agreed to tell him — on condition that his wing be treated in his old cave. The moment they set foot there, Agnyr glanced around, his eyes carrying a grief he kept locked away, their usual brightness dimming for an instant, while Valerius felt every bit the unwelcome guest, keeping his arms pinned to his sides and touching nothing...
A few hours passed.
"Haah, I think this is how it's done," Valerius muttered, tending Agnyr's wing with slow, careful movements...
Agnyr hissed, his whole body going rigid: "You fool, that hurts!!!"
"Quiet, you sensitive thing," he replied, not lifting his eyes from the bandage. "This is roughly how it works... I think."
Soon Agnyr was flexing the wing with ease, lifting his head with visible pride, and before Valerius could speak, he cut in quickly:
"Yes, yes, marvelous, I know — dragons heal fast, it's not a matter worth remarking on."
Valerius bristled at the arrogance, crossing his arms over his chest, but let it pass, and said:
"Now. The truth."
Agnyr turned to him, lifting his head high, and cried out with imperious pride:
"Heh — and why exactly do you think I'll tell you anything? I could kill you where you stand, right now."
But Valerius met his eyes without blinking, without retreating a single step, and said with dry mockery, "Oh, of course. Go on, then — tell me."
Agnyr let out a sharp exhale through his nose, showing his irritation, but in the end bowed his head and gave in:
"Very well, then. You know little of us, so I'll be brief."
He paused, his eyes clouding with a distant memory:
"Long ago, my companions and I discovered that Daim had grown unnervingly close to the Dragon Lord. But that wretch had once been intimate with Orghion — the first Beastlord of Dragons — before his fall.
Their bond had been formidable, and he held great standing at his side."
His voice dropped further, as though he were recounting it to himself first:
"But once Orghion fell, Daim descended into ruin, and would often be heard muttering to himself. By chance, I discovered he was speaking to Orghion still,
even though he had been banished to another realm entirely, and urging him to betray the current Dragon Lord.
The instant that wretch learned we knew,
he didn't so much as trouble himself to kill us — he simply fabricated a charge against us and had the Dragon Lord banish us to your world instead."
He bared his teeth for a moment, the old insult still raw:
"But he knew that alone would not be enough, and he is not the sort to bother himself with a fight of that kind — he prefers to have everything handed to him with ease. And he found his way..."
Valerius froze where he stood.
He looked at his arm. He looked around him. Everything had gone pitch black before his eyes.
His breath came in ragged gasps, his fingers closing over his chest, as though he were slipping from himself entirely — until Agnyr's shout dragged him back to his senses:
"You fool! What's wrong with you?!"
Valerius came to, shooting to his feet, swaying a moment before steadying himself, and said, his voice unsteady:
"I... I don't know what to say. You didn't deserve any of what happened to you. I have to return to Crag — I have to tell them everything..."
But his wounds would not permit him to remain conscious a moment longer, and with one last staggering step he collapsed into darkness.
Elsewhere, hours later, an immense crowd had gathered in Crag. Scythe stood before them all, spine straight, arms spread wide at his sides with a false confidence.
"People of great Crag! Our proud city very nearly vanished in a single night."
The crowd exchanged uneasy glances and murmured questions, but Scythe pressed on, taking one step forward as though closing the distance to each of them personally:
"And this was the work of one man alone — a man who chose his own life over all of ours. That lying wretch, Valerius. He conspired with the dragons to preserve his own skin, and when our great lord Griem stood in his way..."
He bowed his head, his shoulders trembling as though holding back sobs, his eyes brimming with tears, and went on, voice breaking:
"He struck him down!!!"
Shock swept every face in the crowd. Scythe hid a flicker of a smile before turning to a single man standing beside him, and with one dark glance, the man stepped forward, his voice shaking:
"Yes — it happened before my very eyes! He and the dragons attacked all of us, and only Scythe and I survived, alone."
The man remembered, with a shudder that made him avoid Scythe's gaze, what had happened only hours earlier — Scythe had struck down every man before him and pressed his spear to within a breath of the man's own throat, saying with terrible calm:
"You need only play along... or else..."
Scythe's eyes narrowed as he turned back to the crowd, spreading his arms as if to embrace the whole city:
"But do not fear, people of Crag. I am not a man of his ilk. I have decided not to kill him."
He lowered his voice, tilting his head with feigned mercy:
"I will only strip him of his ability to fight, for he was once one of us, and I do not forget a debt owed..."
But voices clashed at the back of the crowd, the whole mass rippling like a disturbed wave. "Wait — what do you mean? He killed Griem!" Others countered, quieter but more insistent: "But he saved us from the dragons — twice. Could all of this truly be a lie??"
One woman's voice cut through the crowd and rose above them all, and she pushed forward until she'd broken past the front rows:
"Enough!!! Val is not a bad man!!! This isn't true — I have known him since we were children!"
Scythe smiled to himself, a smile only he could see, then said to her with false gentleness:
"Ah — you must be dear Raya, is that right? That vile man has been deceiving you."
Before he could finish, she struck him across the face in full view of the crowd, his head snapping to the side. He barely managed to catch her wrist, gripping it harder than he meant to show, and said, his voice low enough for only her to hear:
"It's alright — I won't kill him. He toyed with your mind, but I won't forget that he was once one of my beloved city's own. So I will return him to you, forever. All I ask of you in return is one thing..."
Valerius's eyes snapped open. He glanced around in a panic to find himself lying near Agnyr. He tried to make sense of it, pushing himself up in one sudden motion, and blurted:
"What happened??"
Agnyr answered, calm and not without mockery: "Three days."
Valerius's face went pale. He struggled to breathe, gasping as though gone mad. "Three days?? I was out for three days?? I have to get back — she'll be out of her mind with worry!"
He lunged toward the mouth of the cave on unsteady legs, Agnyr shouting after him:
"You cursed human — you haven't eaten, you haven't had a drop of water, there's no strength left in you!"
And indeed Valerius began to stagger, his knees threatening to give way, and just as he was on the verge of collapse, he found himself leaning against someone. His vision would not clear — Agnyr had drawn back cautiously behind him, his eyes widening with a concern he wasn't used to showing. Valerius's eyes opened slowly, struggling to focus on the face above him, and tears fell onto him.
"You reckless fool... you made me sick with worry."
Valerius smiled tenderly despite his exhaustion. "Heheh — my apologies, troublesome one. I was only doing my duty."
Once he found his footing and steadied himself, he began laughing and recounting everything to her with mounting excitement, his hands moving through the air as he acted out the scene. But her eyes never once lifted from the ground the entire time, and the tears never left her cheeks — and something in that stopped him cold. He fell silent, reached out slowly, and laid his hand against her cheek to wipe them away, looking at her with tender confusion —
only to be met with a blade plunging into his chest.
He doubled over slightly. Valerius spat blood, his eyes going wide with shock and pain, and choked out, "Why... why?"
Raya wept violently, her face flushed red, and collapsed into his arms, sobbing like a child, her fingers still locked around the hilt of the blade:
"I'm sorry — I'm so sorry, what a fool I've been. He told me you were hurt, that they'd made you pay the price of betrayal — that if I lived with you forever, they wouldn't kill you. I believed his every word..."
Valerius's arms clenched around her until they bled, his breath shaking, his body seeming to burn with rage, and he rose to his feet, his whole frame alight with fury, and roared, a sound that shook the walls around them:
"Scythe, you wretch — your end comes today, by my hand."
He struck a light blow that gently knocked her unconscious, gathered her into his arms, and set off toward Crag with steady steps despite his bleeding, Agnyr trailing behind him, his voice carrying real worry this time:
"Hey, Valerius — you're not seriously going through with this, are you? This will be the end of you, you fool. Look at the state you're in."
But Valerius paid him no mind and kept moving forward without so much as a glance back, Agnyr struggling to keep pace behind him...
BOOM.
An explosion tore through Crag, shattering the main gate into fragments. As men rushed forward to investigate, they were hurled backward one after another. One of them screamed, stumbling back in terror: "Dragon!!!"
Hundreds of men gathered before the gate, weapons drawn but hands trembling, watching in fear and dread as Valerius, with Agnyr beside him, carried Raya in his arms. The crowd parted for Scythe, who stepped forward with contempt in his eyes, his stride slow and swaggering, while Valerius's own gaze burned with nothing but the will to kill. He said in a voice hard as stone:
"You contemptible wretch. You were, and remain, without honor."
He set Raya's body down gently on the ground, then seemed to vanish, reappearing before Scythe in an instant, crossing hundreds of armed men as though they were nothing at all. Before they could descend on him, Agnyr let out a piercing roar that shook the very ground beneath them, and the men turned on one another in confused fury and panic until the courtyard cleared for the two of them alone, the air thick with tension.
All around them men clashed amid the towering dragon, and Raya began to stir on the ground where she'd been left, her eyes opening slowly, her fingers scratching weakly at the dirt, her voice barely a whisper:
"Please... Val isn't a bad man."
The struggle between Scythe and Valerius was evenly matched, but Valerius's bleeding was beginning to tell against him, the other man's smile widening with every blow:
"Heh — look at you, all bark and no bite. You'll die in the place you were born."
He was gaining ground — until Agnyr roared from behind, his voice slicing through the chaos: "Valerius, watch her!" — and lunged at Scythe with a glancing strike of his claw. The warning was enough for both men to dodge it, and Valerius's eyes lit with sudden opportunity:
"Heh — my chance."
With a fist ablaze, he struck Scythe down for the second time, felled by the same man's hand once more. Valerius advanced on him slowly, both hands wreathed in flame, his shadow stretching across the ground like a beast of its own. Scythe crawled along the ground, but rose swiftly, a confident smile spreading across his face — and then Valerius cried out: "You vile creature!!!"
Scythe held Raya as a hostage, the point of his spear pressed to her throat, already drawing a thin line of blood. His eyes brimmed with reckless confidence, one eyebrow arching in mockery as he said:
"Heh — I've turned this around on you."
Raya looked at him with sorrow, then turned her eyes slowly toward Valerius, a sad smile rising on her trembling lips, and said:
"Val... I'm sorry..."
Before anyone could move, she pulled his spear toward her with both hands, driving it clean through her own throat, and collapsed, blood pooling around her like a crimson lake.
In that instant, the very air changed. Everyone fell silent, bracing for the storm to come, some retreating a step without meaning to, and others had already begun to flee at the mere thought of what would follow. A crushing, overwhelming pressure descended upon the entire place, flattening dozens of men until their insides were torn from them — though Scythe himself resisted, however faintly, his knees buckling under the weight.
Valerius advanced one step, his features gone entirely — a blank space where a human face should have been — and as he drew near her, a voice rasped from Raya's body:
"Vv... Val."
He stopped short, as though the ground itself had pulled him back, and ran to her, forgetting everything else, dropping to his knees beside her, gathering her body into his arms, tears flooding through him:
"Raya — please. I will never forgive whoever broke your heart."
He pressed her hand to his face, closing his eyes for a moment, just before she fell still one final time.
Before he could grasp what was happening, Scythe screamed from behind him, his voice carrying a vicious triumph: "NOW!"
Dozens of men in strange garb closed in around him in synchronized steps, chanting eerie incantations in a flat, collective drone, and Valerius found himself unable to move a single inch, as though bound in unseen chains. Agnyr, stunned, his eyes going wide with alarm, surged toward him, shouting:
"It's too late!!!"
The ground shook violently beneath them, and something like an ancient statue rose and encased Valerius's body entirely. He fought against it with all he had, the veins in his neck straining with effort, for anything at all — in vain. Scythe watched him with utter hatred, his arms folded in quiet triumph. And the instant Valerius understood there was no escape, he stopped fighting all at once, turned to look directly at Agnyr, and cried out, his voice cutting through the chanting:
"Agnyr — please — don't hurt anyone!!!"
The statue sealed shut around him completely, swallowing his face from the world. Agnyr stood frozen for a few moments, his wings sagging at his sides, while all around, the crowd watched Scythe with astonishment and a mounting loathing, backing away from him step by step.
"Did this really happen?? He killed an innocent girl. And that Valerius — didn't he beg the dragon not to harm us??"
Agnyr turned to them, slow and deliberate, his massive head swinging like a mountain shifting, and spoke in a calm voice that concealed something far darker beneath it:
"I will honor his request... this once."
Then his jaws parted, baring sharp teeth, as he finally let out a breath:
"You wretched vermin of men — leave this place, forever. And know this: a day will come when every one of you shall perish!!!"