The Sky burned with magic.
Vast currents of colour tore across the heavens, unleashing magical hellfire on those below. The battlefield had long stopped resembling land. The once lush forest was now a charcoal plain, littered with corpses of the unworthy and the defilers.
Above it all, I. Kalore. Sat astride on my sentinel steed Lor, the last of the great fire dragons, the last of the Sentinel knights and the last of the weavers. Lor was not a creature of flesh alone; he was the greatest accomplishment of the Valator empire. A marvel and fusion of magic, magitech and biology. No race had dared to create anything like our Sentinel seeds, and that's why they had come.
Lor touched my mind with its telepathy.
"Kal, hostile formations spotted."
Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Beastkin, Giants and even the snivelling gnome marched against us. The united forces of the so-called free people. Above them floated their terrible constructs from their false gods and their evil rituals.
They had been deceived, every last one of them. The Valator empire had ruled the free people with generosity for thousands of years. We lifted them from darkness, from ignorance. And how had they repaid our kindness?
With spite and betrayal. They dared to break the weave. And now they dared to keep us from our greatest treasure.
They had encircled the vault and encapsulated it in their dark wards. Each magical barrier was woven with magic from each race. They all shared the same trait: they were powered by the life force of their own fallen soldiers. The more we killed, the stronger it became.
"Today we end this," I said aloud, as much for myself as for Lor. Today we recover what is ours and let the gods weep at the cost."
"Let them burn," Lor replied with hatred born from seeing our allies killed.
"Dive," I commanded.
Lor obeyed instantly. I positioned the Weave rifle, the last of the great works of Master Ploa, onto its mounting cradle built into Lor's back. At nearly two meters, its polished barrel etched in sigils from the engineering corps reflected the magic in the sky.
I reached out with my will and weaved the threads of Fleg into the charging gemstone and loaded the last of the explosive rounds. Picking my targets, I had to maximise damage and minimise resources. I squeeze the trigger. The recoil halted Lor's forward momentum for a second, and we started to fall.
The shell hit the back line; from the impact rose a column of fire and lightning, which erased a company of dwarves and their siege engine. The area within a hundred meters was nothing but wasteland. But it was not enough. The smoke cleared, and behind them came more armies, more bodies to be sacrificed.
Their strategy was simple and brutal: use an endless tide to protect the vault. To protect the stolen seed.
We dived again and again, each fire breath, each shot, each grenade killing more of their numbers. I had grown numb to their death. But the defensive magic grew stronger with every death. There was only one way to end this.
"Together," I said.
"Together," Lor replied.
We flew higher than we had ever gone before, higher than the capital. Below everyone looked like ants. Even the vault was but a speck.
Then we dove, wings ducked, head tucked in. Gravity was absolute. The vault was protected by defensive wards powered by the dead. Yet we would not stop. We hit the dome at full velocity.
Our own defensive wards shattered like glass upon contact. The Dark wards held at first, bending before finally cracking open. We slipped through the crack, but it wasn't enough. The fourth ward set us alight with pure magical fire. I watched as my skin melted, and as Lor's scales burnt to ash. Pain was an illusion.
We refused to stop. We must not stop. The seed was the future of the Valator Empire.
We crashed through the opening of the vault. The impact was violent, and the vault shook under our weight.
I rolled over and saw that my arm and legs were broken and charred. The fire continued burning up my arm. I pulled out my weavers' knife. A weaver's knife couldn't be destroyed; they were woven from the Fleg. With the last of my strength sliced away the parts of myself that no longer worked. One clean cut, muscle, tendon and bone alike, it didn't matter to the knife. The first slice was hardest. I baulked at first, before gathering the nerve to slice my legs off in one clean motion, followed by my arm. Pain was irrelevant; only the mission to secure the seed mattered.
I mentally reached out to Lor.
Silence.
"No, no, no, no. We go together, "I called out,
"Kel. Go, burn, protect. I cannot move"
"I know, old friend," I whispered. "But you've gotten me here. That's all that matters."
In the centre of the vault, on a pedestal, sat the Seed.
It was smaller than I had imagined. Smaller than the seed used to create Lor. This was the greatest sentinel ever created a masterwork of the old Valator designed to wait, to endure, to preserve itself for the next generation of weavers.
I wanted to reach for it, but with no legs and only one arm. I knew I was not the one to activate this seed.
The ceiling collapsed while I was admiring the seed.
Above me, tons of stone and metal groaned and fell. They were destroying the vault. There was no escape. There had never been an escape.
But I could protect the Seed.
I turned to Lors' sentinel unit.
"Sentinel," I said aloud, my voice barely a whisper. "Initiate Purification Protocol. Authorization: Kalore, Three, Alpha, Omega, Four."
From the body of my fallen companion, I felt the build-up of energy. Lor's form began to glow with an ethereal light. It was the last failsafe of the Valator weavers, the final defence against the end of all things.
"Purification sequence initiated," said a voice that wasn't Lor's. The Sentinel protocols had taken over, overriding everything else. "Biological contaminants will be neutralised. The Seed will be preserved. Future weavers will be found."
The light grew brighter.
I turned back to the sealed case one final time. "Find someone worthy," I said to the Seed. "Find someone with the heart to use you. Find someone—"
The light consumed everything.