One night, as he rested inside a ribcage, he saw an enormous silhouette pass above the canopy. It was no hatchling. No wyrm. He wasn't even sure it was a dragon. Something older, half-fossilized, its spine broken and re-fused with stone, its wings rotted into pillars of petrified membrane. And yet it walked across the forest like a mountain given legs.
He dared not move, breathe, or even look its way as it passed directly above him its footfall crushed whole groves of ribs flat, bone exploding in clouds of dust. He only came out of his hiding place until it was gone, looking at the destruction that it left in its aftermath.
Sometimes he caught sight of something moving beneath the marrow. Long serpents burrowed through crystal veins, scales scraping, bodies groaning against stone. When they emerged it was sudden, a skull splitting open, marrow spilling as the system told him what they were [Bone-Wurm] burst free. They were pale and half-formed, their bones visible beneath translucent flesh, their jaws filled with too many teeth. They hunted like ambushers, striking and vanishing back into the ribs.
Another time, he walked into something horrifying. Stepping on a pale carpet of bony grass that muffled every step. At first he thought it was another grave-mound, until the earth itself began to gnash. The ground split, and pale enamel rose like flowers, long molars and jagged fangs sprouting from the soil in clusters. They clicked and chattered, grinding softly against one another in a rhythm of hunger.
Whole fields of them spread before him, white blossoms swaying without wind, their roots sunk deep in marrow-rich earth. Some were small, like infant incisors. Others were massive, as tall as his chest, serrated like butcher's knives. All gnashing, faintly, as if dreaming of flesh.
He realized then that the gardens were not plants. They were the mouths of something beneath, something sleeping, waiting for the careless to stumble into its maw. He circled wide, each step deliberate, praying that whatever lay beneath did not notice him.
At night, skulls rose from the dust, floating lanterns with different colored flames in their sockets. The system read: [Skull Lantern] They whispered as they drifted between ribs, their murmurs forming hymns too soft to understand, but he did notice the lament in their tone. When they drifted together, they formed glowing processions, weaving between the ribs like funeral marches. They went deeper, always deeper, until he realized they were not lights but lures, drawing prey into traps.
There were plenty of runs he had with vicious little creatures who wanted to make him their snake. Some he fought others he ran away from but still he got his experiences in. Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 4
He had been walking for what seemed like days through the hushed silence of the Bone Forests, every sound echoing wrongly, some too sharp or too long. The ribcages arched above him like cathedrals, marrow crystal catching the dim crimson haze in eerie glimmers. He stopped when the bone-dust began to shift.
Then the silence changed. The air grew colder. From beneath a grave of fused vertebrae, something stirred. A crack split the fossil mound and a shape unfurled, impossibly long, impossibly thin.
It rose like a nightmare, a serpent of fossil and sinew, its hide a patchwork of calcified plates and raw bone. Its forelimbs were wrong, not claws, but elongated scythe-blades of sharpened femur, curved and ridged with teeth. Each swing shrieked like steel across stone. Its skull was faceless, its sockets hollow, glowing faintly with ghost-light.
The System burned a single line across his sight: [Reaper Bone Wurm — Level 8]
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1266706140357980/
He tried to suck underneath a ribcage, but it was too late as it had noticed him. The beast moved in silence until the last instant. Then it struck. One blade carved through the trees, shearing a rib-column clean in two. The shockwave threw him back, bone-dust exploding like ash.
Artorius rolled, barely avoiding the second strike. The scythe tore a furrow where his chest had been, slicing deep into the glassy ground. He staggered up, spear at the ready in his hands.
The wurm coiled, circling him, scythes scraping the ground. Sparks screamed from the bones. Its body was too long, too fast. Each swing forced him back. His arms went numb from the shock of parries, the weapon splintering under the weight.
Then came the tail, barbed and ridged like a saw. It swept low. He leapt but too slow. The barbs raked his thigh, ripping flesh to the bone. He crashed hard, choking on blood and dust. It lunged, jaws gaping wide enough to swallow him whole. In desperation, he shoved his Command through his throat, voice raw, bloody: "STOP!"
For a heartbeat, the wurm froze. The forest itself seemed to hold its breath. Its hollow sockets slowly inch by inch turned toward him, and with a terrible shudder, it broke free. His order broke leaving him coughing red into the dust.
The wurm surged. He scrambled backward, mind racing. He could not match it blow for blow. Not strength. Not speed. Not even command it. But the forest itself… The Bone Garden.
He ran, every step agony, blood painting his trail. The wurm followed, carving through pillars of bone, its blades cleaving entire ribs in a single sweep. Shards rained like hail. When he reached the Gardens it stirred as if sensing a great predator trespassing on its territory. Teeth began to rise from the soil, gnashing hungrily. Artorius sprinted straight into them. The wurm lunged after him, blind to the trap. At the last instant, he dove aside, throwing himself behind a rib-spire.
The wurm plowed headfirst into the garden. The ground erupted. Hundreds of teeth snapped shut in unison. The wurm shrieked not with its vocal cord, but in bone, a grinding scream as its body was caught and shredded. Its scythe-limbs slashed, tearing dozens free, but every movement drove it deeper into the maw.
Then the situation changed on its head as the bone wurm's hollow sockets flared bright with ghost-light. The air thickened, trembling. Artorius felt it before he saw it, an awful pressure, a storm gathering around death itself.
The wyrm reared back, its scythes outstretched. The glow in its sockets pulsed faster, brighter, until every bone in the Garden hummed with resonance. Then it unleashed hell.
The air exploded in shrieking arcs. Blades of bone, dozens upon dozens, spun from its limbs in a storm of cutting wind and motion. Each swing threw fragments like shrapnel. The Garden convulsed under the assault. Ribs shattered. Pillars cracked. The gnashing mouths wailed as their teeth were torn from their sockets and hurled skyward.
A storm of sharpened femur and shattered jawbones scoured the clearing, ripping flesh and stone alike. Artorius ducked behind his spire, arms over his head, feeling the storm flay the stone from the pillar. His cover held but barely. The Garden was dying, carved apart by the wyrm's frenzy.
Then the ground shook. A sound like a bell tolling in the deep long, hollow, and furious. From beneath the earth, something moved. The teeth stopped. Then it opened.
A great draconic monster rose from below, tearing through the corpse-field like an avalanche of rot. Artorius system flashed with a single line across his sight: [Underground Rot Wurm — Level 9]
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/74239093853418932/
The rotting wurm was older and massive, its flesh sagging like mud, its ribs exposed and dripping pitch-black ichor that steamed on contact with air. Worms and larvae squirmed through its hollow sockets. What passed for its jaw was a mass of gnashing, half-formed skulls that chattered as one.
Artorius stumbled backward into the shadows, barely breathing. Two ancient terrors faced one another now, the bone predator and the carrion ambusher that had waited here for who knew how long to feed.
The Reaper Bone Wurm struck first. Its scythes lashed in a blur, carving into the Underground Rot Wurm's chest. Each blow shattered bone and sent showers of decay spraying outward. The rotting wurm responded by slamming its bulk down, its massive body crushing entire rib-spires to dust. Its jaws clamped around the Reaper's tail and ripped.
Bone shards and rotten sinew filled the air. The Reaper screeched and retaliated, its scythes igniting again, hurling arcs of bone-blades that tore chunks of rotting flesh from its foe. The rotting wurm reared back and vomited a flood of corpse-bile, sizzling acid that melted through the Garden floor.
They collided again and again, two horrors locked in death, tearing each other apart. Scythe met claw. Bone met rot. Each strike sent shockwaves through the Garden. The Reaper's blades carved trenches through decayed flesh; the rotting wurm's jaws crushed plates of fossil armor and its acidic spit corroded bone. The ground quaked under their struggle.
Artorius could only crawl away, shielding his face from flying shards of bone and acid rain. The air reeked of sulfur and death. Still though he had a plan in mind as he made it to a pillar overlooking the fighting and climbed the column, the fight shaking his perch. The air below was a storm of dust and blood, flashes of marrow-light bursting in the dark. He waited, silent, heart hammering, watching two giants of death tear each other apart.
At last, the storm began to fade. The Reaper's movements slowed, its left scythe shattered, its tail half-gone and its skull half-caved in. The rotting wurm sagged, its flesh totally rendered in parts and gone, but it had come out on top.
The rotting wurm reared, victory in its bellow, preparing to drive its mass down for the killing blow. That was when Artorius moved. He climbed, breathless and shaking, higher up the pillar until he was at the summit where the wind thinned. Then he leapt.
He fell through dust and ruin, spear gripped in both hands, Heroic Blow blazing like a falling star. The rotting wurm never saw him coming as he shot towards it like a falling star.
The spear struck behind its head, where the rotted flash thinned. The impact tore through its spine in a burst of golden light. The creature convulsed once then collapsed onto the ground, dead.
Its vast carcass crashed into the Garden, shaking the world. Splintered ribs rained down. The shockwave threw dust high into the gloom. Artorius landed hard beside the ruin, half-buried under falling shards. He dragged himself upright, trembling, vision swimming. Before him lay the Reaper Bone Wurm, the monster that had hunted him, that had carved through the forest like a god of death.
Now it was broken before him, the situation reversed as he had become the hunter and it the prey. One scythe was gone, its long body half-severed and it coiled in around itself in protection and what he knew was fear.
Artorius limped closer, spear dragging in the ash. The ghost-light still burned faintly in the wyrm's hollow eyes, flickering like dying embers. He raised his weapon. His voice cracked but carried, raw and commanding. "Surrender."
For a heartbeat, the light inside the Reaper's skull pulsed once then dimmed, almost as if obeying. Artorius thrust the spear forward, Heroic Blow igniting once more. The tip punched through bone, through the dying flame, pinning it to the ground.
The Reaper shuddered once, then went still. Silence fell over the Bone Gardens. The System whispered: You have slain: [Underground Rot Wurm — Level 9]
You have slain: [Reaper Bone Wurm — Level 8]
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 4
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Class: [Storybook Squire] → Lv. 4
Looking at the messages, he was glad to see double levels which really had to show how tough these two foes were. Picking over the corpse of the two great slain enemies, Artorius found there really wasn't anything to take except some bone and rotting flesh.
Pressing forwards, Artorius knew he couldn't stop here even if he had a great victory as there were even greater dangers here and might come looking into what all this ruckus was.
Traveling through the strange and alien landscape, at long last, the forest broke. He then came upon a canyon yawning wide, its walls jagged, its floor buried beneath the skeletons of uncountable hatchlings, drakes, wurms. Bones piled upon bones in grotesque heaps, a sea of white and rusted ash, their shapes twisted in death. The wind blew through the place ringing against the ancient bones causing strange, eerie noises like a cathedral of despair.
He walked among them, every step echoing, every sound answered by the wind's mockery. More than once he thought he heard words in the moaning chorus, half-formed syllables in a dead tongue. At the canyon's heart lay something stranger still.
The bones curved inward, not at random but as though dragged into a single shape: a throne, vast and broken, carved from the remains of countless dead. And behind it, carved into the mountain itself, a doorway opened scales fused into its stone, faint runes glowing with ember-light.
The air grew heavy, pressing against his lungs. His pulse slowed, each beat louder than the wind. This was no accident or battlefield. This was a tomb. He hesitated then he stepped inside, hoping to find something to give him answers.
-
The ruin swallowed him whole. Inside, the place was not carved stone but a cavern grown from fossil and scale. Ribs coiled upward to form archways. Vertebrae stacked into pillars. The walls themselves shimmered faintly, as though scales had been melted into rock long ago, their edges catching what little light bled through the runes.
The deeper Artorius pressed, the more the air changed. Dust gave way to smoke. Smoke to whispers. He could not place them at first, faint hisses at the edge of thought, the flutter of half-heard words. Then came the shapes. Shadows stretched too long across the wall. Outlines of dragons clawed and coiled, though no carving lay where the light touched. He tried to ignore it, tried not to listen. But the ruin wasn't having it.
The first trap came as he stepped across a shallow dais, the stone patterned with spirals of scales. A single touch sent the spirals grinding inward. The floor shifted. Dozens of stone fangs erupted upward, snapping like a jaw. He hurled himself forward, the fangs missing his leg by inches, but the tip of one sliced his thigh as it closed.
Further in, a mural caught his eye, a dragon carved with wings spread, though its head had been gouged out. For a moment it seemed no more than ruin, until the hollowed eyes flared with ember light. He blinked and the whole mural shifted. Its claws reached from the wall, stone scraping against stone, grasping for him. He tore free from whatever that was. His breath came ragged. The murals sank back into silence, but the whispers continued.
Then the chamber opened. It was vast, ceilings lost in shadow, walls ribbed with fossilized scales and great pillars that held it all. In the center lay the guardian. It looked half dead, a large meaty creature who was sickly pale with countless scars running across its body, and wings ragged and rotting like banners long forgotten.
[Cavern Drake — Level 12]
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/212443307416862048/
It was the most powerful creature that Artorius had run into so far, and it looked the part when he stepped forward and its eyes lit. Twin furnaces of molten gold that were milky white and filled with cataracts stirred awake. It moved. Dust shaking, stones rumbling. The whole hall trembled as the creature lurched to life, its maw splitting wide, grinding rows of teeth whirring into motion. Sparks cascaded as the bone-blades roared to speed.
The dragon creature came on like a storm. Artorius dove aside as the beast charged, the floor erupting behind him in a spray of stone dust. The razor sharp claws carved a trench where he had stood, sparks spraying like meteors.
He staggered up, clutching the needle-lance not noticing the follow up that came. The dragon spun, tail sweeping wide. The serrated edge caught him across the back, tearing cloth and skin alike. He went down hard, teeth cracking against the stone. His vision burst white.
The beast was already upon him. It didn't hesitate. Didn't pause. Artorius rolled but too late. The claws clipped his thigh. Flesh shredded. Blood poured down his leg, hot and blinding. He screamed, but the cry betrayed him further.
The guardian heard. It roared back, an ear splitting shriek that shook the chamber, then lunged again, jaws opening wide. Bone-teeth spun like a grinder. He thrust the lance upward, catching the maw before it closed upon him.
Thankfully the attack made the creature recoil back as it suffered a gash upon its mouth which had to be annoying due to how it roared in pain. However he did end up being left weaponless when it pulled away taking his weapon as it now was stuck in its mouth leaving him in a very precarious situation.
He staggered backward, weaponless, body screaming. The dragon tilted its head honing in on him as its maw opened wide ready to devour him whole. And then Artorius saw it. The pillars. The chamber was lined with them, vast columns holding the ceiling aloft. Already cracked, already leaning.
He bellowed, a hoarse cry that ripped his throat raw. The sound echoed, bouncing from wall to wall. The dragon snapped its head, locking onto him, and charged. At the last instant, he dove aside. The beast slammed into a pillar. The stone cracked and the column shuddered.
Again he screamed, taunting, drawing it forward. Again it lunged. Another pillar shattered. Dust rained from above. The ceiling groaned. The guardian reared, blind eyes burning, and screamed back. Then it charged one final time.
Artorius hurled himself flat as the dragon plowed into the largest pillar at the chamber's heart. The column snapped. The ceiling roared. Stone cascaded in an avalanche. Pillars toppled one after another, falling like giant slain. The dragon shrieked as the tomb came down, its shrieks drowned beneath the thunder of collapsing stone. Its body thrashed and its claws scrabbled before it vanished beneath the ruin.
Artorius crawled to his knees, lungs heaving, dust choking his throat. His hands trembled. His body was carved with wounds, each breath a knife. The ruin was quiet now, save for the settling groans of broken stone. Where the guardian had stood, only rubble remained, chains jutting from the debris like severed veins.
He waited for the words: the pale blue flare that always came when the System marked a kill. But none came and he knew the fight was not over. Steeling himself, he went over to the ruble and peaked at the drake underneath.
It looked helpless as it was weakly breathing, close to death as its skull caved in on one side, jaw hanging broken and limbs twisted into grotesque shape. "Well hello there," he purred. Mercy has long been purged from him, after having spent days here he was more akin to these creatures that made their home here.
Pulling his lance free, he got to the grisly work of finishing it off for good. He only stopped hacking it to death when he got a message from the system. You have slain [Cavern Drake — Lv. 12]
Also his good work seemed to be rewarded as he finally crossed the edge; Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 5
Stat gains: +1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +1 PER, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 5
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Artorius slid from the carcass, his body trembling. For a long time, he just lay there on the broken stone, chest heaving. But the need always returned. Hunger gnawed at him. His wounds burned. His hands shook as he gathered splinters of broken pillar.
A fire bloomed in the ruin. He carved strips of steaming flesh from the drake's corpse. The meat was stringy, bitter, stinking of iron and ash. He had grown used to it in these endless days, his body which had at first grew sick and rejected it now had no problem. He figured it was most likely his trait that let him endure the taste and the toxins. Still, he gagged on every bite, chewing, swallowing, forcing it down until the nausea dulled into grim endurance.
The flames hissed in the dark. The carcass steamed. His reflection swam in the drake's cooling blood. He felt neither triumph nor shame, only survival.
When at last he could stand, he followed the chamber inward. Past broken pillars, past rivers of rubble, until the hall widened. The dust cleared, revealing a dais of obsidian scales fused into the ground. Upon it lay a monstrous shape — colossal, still, eternal. The remains of a great Dragon.
It was no living beast, no corpse in truth, but something caught between fossilized and eternal. Wings folded around it like a shroud, their membranes petrified into sheets of stone, their bones gleaming with veins of faint light. Its skull was crowned in a crest of jagged spines, jaw locked forever in a silent roar. Runes spiraled along its body in coils, flickering faintly as though memory itself had been etched into bone.
Artorius approached, breath shallow, the weight of the air pressing down on him as if the tomb itself judged his every step. He raised a hand, trembling, and laid it against the cold fossil. The runes blazed.
The tomb came alive with whispers. They surged into his skull not words, but the echo of war. He saw visions: skies torn by dragonfire, the thunder of wings, other beings burned to ash, dragonkins devoured by it. And through it all, the Champion soared, wings wide, a great warrior of the Eyrie.
Coming back to the here and now. He shook his head to shake off the visions and then he watched as from the Champion's chest, the fossil cracked. Shards flaked away, revealing stones that pulsed with inner fire and glowed different colors. They fell into his hands, hot as brands, thrumming with ancient power.
Using inspect he saw that they read: Willpower attribute stone, Intellect attribute stone, Perception attribute stone!
His body trembled as he clutched them, each one a condensed legacy of the dead. If these were what he thought they were then they would be a great boon. Looking them over he tired to figure out how to get at it when giving up after several attempts popped it into his mouth.
It tasted like candy, the intellect one like blueberry, the perception like carrots, and the willpower like pomegranates. It seems like the additive if all else fails, just put it into your mouth was true as he got prompts;
+1 Willpower, +1 Intellect, +1 Perception!
And then the wings stirred. Dust fell in sheets. The petrified bones groaned, veins of light blazing bright that ran across the corpse. The dragon's wings unfolded in death, towering, shadowing the tomb as they floated silently in the air.
He used inspect once more and saw that the system called it: [Tattered Dragon Wings]
[Old wings of a great Dragon Champion. Its might is faded, its glory frayed, yet still it remembers how to take to the sky.]
-
Artorius stood at the canyon's edge, the tomb at his back. Below yawned an endless chasm with black stone and rivers of molten yolk winding like veins through the Nest, the air thick with heat and shrieks. The sky above was a bruised red haze. The horizon burned.
In his hands lay the Tattered Dragonoid Wings. It didn't feel like an object so much as a living echo with frayed pinions of bone and shadow, its edges shedding slow curls of ash. When he drew it close, his back prickled as if something old in his blood recognized it.
He fastened the bone harness across his shoulders. The flesh parts bit into his old wounds. The wings whispered against his spine, sinking into his skin until the weight became his own. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a phantom pressure stretched behind him like holding open doors to the sky. He looked down into the abyss.
He was really about to do this. If this failed, there would be no second chance. The Nest below was a labyrinth of ruin, molten rivers and shifting gravity, hatchlings battling like armies. Even if the fall didn't kill him, the things waiting below would.
He swallowed hard. The air smelled of ash and blood. He spread his wings. They unfolded with a groan, membranes glimmering faintly, frayed edges dripping light like molten wax. He could feel them trembling or maybe that was his own hands.
"Its now or never," he muttered to himself. And he jumped.
The world dropped out from under him. Wind howled past his ears. His stomach lurched into his throat. The wings dragged at his back, heavy and unresponsive, and for a heartbeat he thought he had doomed himself that it was only broken relics, a cruel trick. The chasm rushed up, stone spires spinning by, rivers of lava and yolk glowing like veins of fire.
He clawed at the harness, shouting in panic. "Come on—!"
Something in the wings snapped awake. They flared wide, tearing the air with a noise like thunder. The fall slowed jerking and stopped. Pain shot through his spine, white-hot, but his body hung suspended, trembling. Then the wings beat once, twice, each strike a hammer of wind.
He rose. The canyon spread out beneath him, endless and alien. Forests of petrified bone stretched like claws. Ash storms coiled over molten rivers. Dragon silhouettes wrestled and tore in the distance, their cries echoing across the void.
Artorius soared between stone pillars, banking hard. The wings dragged sparks from the air, leaving streaks of gold behind. The pain in his spine dulled beneath a rising exhilaration. For the first time since entering the Nest, he wasn't running, climbing, or crawling. He was free.
He whooped, a ragged, disbelieving sound and tilted higher, catching a current of heat that lifted him above the canyon lip. From up here, the Nest went on forever: endless plains of shattered shells, rivers of molten glass, distant spires like teeth. It was apocalyptic, terrible and breathtaking.
The wings burned his back, drawing from his blood and stamina, but he didn't care as it carried him higher, into a rising current that lifted him toward the horizon's bloody light. His heart thundered, his veins sang. For one fragile moment, he felt what the dragons must feel… a sovereign of the sky.
Artorius banked, wings trailing sparks, and let the horizon unfold before him. But the Nest did not forgive joy. A shadow darted across the red haze. Then another. Then dozens.
From the cliffs erupted a swarm the system named them: [Dragonets]. They were no larger than hounds but armed with claws like scythes and needle fangs dripping poison. Their wings were sleek membranes, sharp-edged like broken glass, their eyes molten coin-bright. Hatchling predators, bred to gang up on others.
They shrieked as one, a piercing chorus that rattled his teeth. The first dragonet skimmed past his face, close enough that he felt its sulfurous breath. Artorius jerked the wings, heart pounding, barely dodging another that streaked up from below. Their cries bled together into a hunting cry, vibrating the air around him.
The swarm moved like a single living thing. Every time he climbed, they climbed. Every time he dove, they dove. They were small, faster, hungrier and made for this sky. Panic clawed at his throat. The wings drank his stamina greedily, his arms and back already shaking with the strain. His lungs burned in the heavy air, sulfur stinging his tongue. If they dragged him into their midst that was a swarm, he was finished.
He twisted into a narrow canyon, stone spires knifing past on either side. The dragonets followed, shrieking, but the tighter space broke their formation. He banked hard, scraping sparks against the rock, then folded the wings close and dropped into a plunge. The rush tore his breath away but it shook half the swarm.
Still, there were too many on his trail. Taking a risk he continued diving down like a stone as his chest heaved, pushing onward. The wings strained, barely catching him before he slammed into a boiling river of lava. Heat washed his face, blistering hot. He veered low, skimming the current, letting the thermal lift drag him higher again. Dragonets fell behind him, seared by the heat or outright fell into the lava.
A few caught a hold of themselves in time or quickly wheeled back above. Now there was a manageable bunch left and he need some training in aerial combat. Artorius ripped the Extendable Lance from the holster strapped along his back. "Come on," he hissed through his teeth.
A dragonet dove toward his back, Artorius slammed the lance behind him. SCHNK. It pierced the creature clean through the skull. Another came from the left, jaws wide, the lance extended out to meet it right in the mouth.
Three more closed in, wings beating hard. Artorius twisted, letting his wings flare sparks. He snapped the lance short, then extended it again in a whip-fast thrust that skewered two in a single line of motion.
Their bodies tumbled behind him and he got a message. Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Class: [Storybook Squire] → Lv. 5
Stat gains: +1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 CHA, +1 LUC!
One last dragonet clung to his wing membrane, chewing through it like fabric. Artorius rolled violently, and the lance shot out like a grappling spike, curving backward to stab the creature straight off his wing. It fell shrieking into the molten river below.
Clenching his fist as he flew over the landscape, he was glad to be alive but it was a close call. The Nest never let him rest. It would keep testing him. Keep sending its foes until he proved himself or broke.
Keeping low to the ground and being on the look out for danger, Artorius used this chance thanks to his newly acquired wings to get a better look at his surroundings. The wind whipped against his face as the wings carried him higher, every beat burned his spine, but Artorius didn't care. The Nest unfurled below him like a map carved by gods.
From the air, the Dragon Nest stretched into infinity. Seas of broken shells gleamed crimson under the haze, rivers of yolk flowing molten-gold through the bones of mountains. Vast spires of black stone stabbed into the sky like the teeth of titans. And between them, dragon hatchlings clashed in numbers beyond counting, untold millions, tearing and devouring, a war eternal beneath the sunless sky.
He noticed the fields where he'd hatched from now nothing more than a fading scar on the horizon and the bone forest he came from stretching beyond like a maze of ivory knives. And then, far across that wasteland of ruin, he saw it. A citadel.
It rose from the horizon like a shard of divinity half-buried in blackened glass. The tower was carved entirely from dragon bone ribs arcing upward to form a crown of pale thorns. Veins of silver fire flickered faintly between its joints, casting long ghostly shadows. No banners flew. No smoke rose. The fortress stood silent, patient, watching.
Something was there, something important, he knew it deep within his bones. Artorius hovered in the ashen air, wings trembling, the heat burning at his throat. There was no path left, no guidance, only instinct.
And his instincts pointed there. Toward the citadel of bone and silence. Whatever awaited inside death, trial, or revelation it called to him like a voice half-remembered in a dream. With no direction to go into, this looked to be his next target. He adjusted his wings, turned toward the lightless spire, and dove.
-
Chapter 6 Recap!
Leveled up Race: True-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 4!
Leveled up Leader: Archetype to Lvl. 4!
+1 Int, +1 Will, +1 Char!
Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 4!
Leveled up Race: True-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 5!
+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +1 PER, +1 CHA
Leveled up Leader: Archetype to Lvl. 5!
+1 Int, +1 Will, +1 Char!
Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 5!
+1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Will, +1 Char, +1 Luc!
Treasures found: Tattered Dragon Wings
+1 Willpower, +1 Intellect, +1 Perception!