The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]
Chapter 374 – Five Hours In Fazba

Siostr and Fazba worked in unison in order to discover a remedy to whatever illness befell the dragons. The Siostr experiments revealed that dragons could be temporarily re-awakened in certain situations. Each individual scenario was analysed through thousands of different factors. These proved to be extremely specific and yet extremely varied. The presence of a solar eclipse, heatwaves up above and the position of the moon all affected it, but so did extremely heavy fog and certain weather patterns.

The Siostr Papers were tested in other dragonholds and their theories were proved correct. The phenomena, although studied in Siostr, was present elsewhere. Dragons would temporarily open their eyes and awaken when certain conditions were met. Even to today, the Siostr papers are the strongest argument against the World-Core Sealing somehow causing Dragonfall.

And whereas Siostr studied the material, Fazba studied the soul. Every necromancer knows how to split the soul from the body, what is more challenging is the maintaining of sanity and willingness to stay on Arda once the soul is dislocated. For this reason, Fazba first probed as to whether there was any way to manipulate the soul without detachment.

There was not.

Even though the risks were known, Fazba went ahead with the splitting.

- Excerpt from the incredibly rare text: “Chronicling Dragonfall”, written by a team of Dwarven Scholars and Intellectuals.

Iniri raised her hands, took a deep breath, and her plants started to move immediately. She let go of all the trivialities, her feet touched the ground as living wood shot off and away from her green dress and onto the stonework. The fortress of wood started to move. Branch burrowed into branch, tree wrapped around tree, leaf dried out and fluttered into the overwhelming darkness below as the forest that encased the bridge and the army became one single organism. Iniri heard her own heartbeat, felt it pulse with Kavaa’s overwhelming energy of life flowing into it, and heard the tree around creak and cracked as the sheer energy forced its bark to thicken and its fibrous strands to grow longer.

Iniri locked eyes with that ghostly dragon. Those monsters had been feared long before the Great War, and with them lead by Kassandora and adopting her tactics, they had managed to carve out an infamous spot in the book of history for themselves, written in blood instead of ink. The monster’s body was clad entirely in shimmering scales, each one as large as Iniri’s head. Four limbs and two enormous wings, its head had a series of horns that spread out like a crown, and each of its claws were easily the size of a full grown man’s leg.

Like all ghosts, it was opaque, yet here, in this dwarven hold so far underground that it had forgotten what light was? The dragon looked like a grey-green drawing brought to life, only its edges outlined. The ethereal monstrosity simply looked as if it should not be able to touch anything in this world, Iniri knew that as a ghost it couldn’t affect the material. Some things were simply impossible.

And yet it did.

It obviously held on to the ceiling, its claws dug into the stone. When its giant wings beat, the entire world shook. When it barrelled through the air at Iniri, the Goddess reflexively closed the gap in the wood between herself and the monster as if it was a real thing.

When it slammed into the tree, the wood creaked and groaned and snapped. Iniri poured more of Kavaa’s raw life into the bark. Branches started to regrow and intertwine. Snapped wooden fibres began to rearrange themselves. Cracks were filled in by sap which set to be as strong as steel, and then the sap was overgrown once again by more pieces of tree. Iniri heard the dragon roar from outside as Kassandora gently put Kavaa back down on the ground. The Goddess of Health had her eyes closed and smiled gently, her face framed by dark-grey hair. Kassandora asked the only question that needed to be asked. “Can you hold?”

“I can.” Iniri replied. With the rate at which her trees regrew, Divine magic would be needed to incinerate her wood in order to get through. The question wasn’t whether Iniri could hold, the question was whether Kavaa could last.

Neneria picked up the pace on Pegaz as the ghost of the winged horse started to pick up speed. Those great wings, opaque and grey green spread out marvellously and then beat. Hooves left the cold stone of the tunnel underneath as Neneria followed the light emanating from her tiny ethereal fairies. After Olin told her what exactly lay in Fazba, there was no time to waste whatsoever.

Iniri grit her teeth as she felt that ghost dragon claw at her barrier. Its wings beat furiously against the bark, its tail slammed down back and forth like a giant club, its jaw split wide as it tried to find a way to bite down upon the bark. The moment that monster would manage to close its jaws around the bark was the moment the defences would go. Even with Kavaa’s endless well of life flooding into Iniri, the dragon would rip and tear and destroy such swathes of forest at a time that there were simply no way possible for Iniri to hold back against such a monster.

The battle between the immortal Legionnaires and the dwarven ghosts died down as Iniri’s tree started to grow. She did not even mean to lock them in, but the wood around her became one whole rather than a series of barriers as it spiralled into an uncontrolled tree. “You’ve blocked us in!” Kassandora shouted.

“I’ll open a hole!” Iniri shouted back as she turned to look at Kassandora, in her black armour and with that marvellous red hair hold up the Goddess of Health with one arm. Kavaa was half-leaning on, half-held up by Kassandora. Her eyes were closed but her mouth still worked.

“Two hours girls.” She half murmured. “I’m pushing it.”

“I’ll open a hole and then we run out!” Iniri shouted and saw Kassandora shake her head. “What?!”

“It will follow us out.” Kassandora said and Iniri blinked. Would it? No… It couldn’t. No way. That retreat was their way out. The dragon wouldn’t follow them out. That’d be… That was unfair.

“How can you be sure!?” Iniri cried out. It had spent a full millennia in here, how could it simply leave? That was impossible. Kassandora was wrong.

“Are you sure it won’t?” Kassandora’s question crushed Iniri. No. She wasn’t. How could she be? There was no reason for the dragon not to follow them out of Fazba. Maybe something did bind it here and it couldn’t reach the surface, but did that really mean it wouldn’t be able rush out the gate?

“What do we do then?” Iniri asked.

Kassandora said something that would have made Iniri laugh if anyone else said it. But Kassandora said it, so it made Iniri want to cry. “We kill it!”

“It’s a fucking dragon!” Iniri shouted. “I can’t kill a dragon!” She saw Kassandora sigh as the Goddess of War looked at the Goddess of Health. And then War’s crimson eyes locked back on Iniri once again. Those were the eyes Kassandora was famed for; that cold glare overflowing with freezing fury that demanded an answer.

“Since when?!” Kassandora’s battled between being controlled and snapping.

“Since forever Kass!” Iniri shouted. “I’m not who I was. You know that. I know that. We all know that!”

For a moment, Kassandora looked at Iniri as if she was stupid. And then that questioning gaze turned to pity. The Goddess of War took a deep sigh and pointed one finger at the Goddess of Nature. Iniri heard War’s Orchestra magnificent tune invite her in.

“Listen to my song Iniri, If you’ve forgotten what you’re capable of, then I will remind you.”

Pegaz galloped through the air as Neneria bent down to catch the reins of her horse. Its wings beat with a thunderous and rolling slow power and spit poured from the animal’s mouth. Yet it was all in silence, Neneria raced forwards towards Fazba as she tried her hardest to clear as much of the distance as possible. Kassandora’s pace had to have been slow, there was no way that the scraps of her legion could cover ground quickly.

Iniri heard the tune play. War’s Orchestra stormed through Iniri’s mind as the Goddess of Nature let Kassandora in. She saw through the eyes of the men. A violin sounded in the distance, it was barely audible, but it was there. Once noticed, it was impossible not to hear it. It was Kavaa redirecting energy from the men and into Iniri.

Iniri did not bother looking through the eyes of the men, she did not want their ears or their eyes. She did not want to feel their pain or share their senses, there was no need for that. Instead, she let go of herself and let Kassandora take control. The Goddess of War did not hesitate for even a moment, the instant she sensed Iniri’s willingness was the instant that War’s Orchestra sprung into life.

A set of organs blew their notes and a set of oaks burst out of Iniri’s barrier. The organs changed the pitch from high to low, the oaks turned as they rapidly grew. A clarinet came in and spikes exploded out of Iniri’s barrier and into the dragon. Whilst wood could not pierce dragonscale directly, branches lodged themselves under scale as they pressed with all the power Kavaa could give and all the will Kassandora could manage. A set of drums quickly slammed down a series of beats and the oaks spun and whipped themselves at the monster like the drumsticks singing the tune right now.

Iniri watched the dragon roar, yet Kassandora was not done.

The beast swung a claw once again at the hardened wood. It got through, Iniri saw the monster’s grey-green opaque eyes as bark quickly covered up the hole left by the monster’s slash. A set of trumpets played a heroic set of notes as a piano struck several chords; Iniri’s bark released sticky sap to try and slow the dragon the whipping oaks struck the dragon. Once and twice, the trees slammed and thrashed as the dragon roared and raised its arms to grab and tear as the oak with its massive claws. A saxophone joined the orchestra, vines rapped around the dragon’s legs and tail, the beast realised that the plants it was fight were trying to capture it.

The dragon roared. Those huge wings beat and it retreated before diving down again. The War Orchestra composed by Kassandora still played, but now that she had seen how, Iniri did not think she needed anymore.

Neneria kicked Pegaz in the sides and whipped his reins to speed the animal up more and more. The horse roared, drops of grey-green opaque spit fell from its mouth and disappeared as soon as they left the creature. The horse charged forwards, thunderous hooves beating silently against the empty air, crazed neighing overflowing with spit that made no sound and the delicate black dress that Neneria wore whipping about madly in the wind.

Iniri raised her hand as she took over from Kassandora. She hated that she needed to be shown what she was capable of. But she had watched Kassandora use Iniri’s own power to force the beast away. And Iniri knew that there was none who knew how to use her magic than she did. It was shameful that the Goddess of War needed to step in. Iniri promised to herself that would the final time Kassandora would ever need to steer her power.

Bark became ironwood. Branches tips themselves off with spines of steel. Leaves became armour piercing discs. It all launched at the dragon, at the monster’s eyes and towards his underbelly and into his mouth. The monster recoiled as Iniri drew upon more power from Kavaa. She raised her hands, more oaks burst forwards like massive pikes towards the dragon. The ghostly grey-green beast saw them, it swerved to its side, then fell downwards under and around collapsing bridge that Iniri held up with her oak trees as another set chased the flying monster.

How long that went on for, Iniri did not know. The monster dived down, it would swipe and tear, Iniri would smash it with the strongest brute force she was capable of unleashing. She regrew the damage in her defences. She pushed onwards as the flora spiralled outwards. The dragon roared. It smashed into Iniri’s walls again. It tore and ripped and thrashed about. Iniri mounted a counter-attack. Oaks prepared themselves. Wood became as hard as iron. Sap began to leak. Leaves became sharp. Huge oaks bent backwards, ready to smash down like hammers.

And Kavaa’s endless well of life ran dry. The Goddess of Health collapsed.

Neneria bent down as her fairies began to shimmer away. Pegaz did not slow down, but the Goddess of Death needed a few moments for her eyes to realise that they weren’t trying to see in a complete flood of darkness. There was light ahead. Two shades, one ghastly and grey-green, the same colour as the animal underneath her, the other a horrendously and artificially white. Torchbearer light. Now… Did she make it in time?

Iniri raised her hands as she felt all the energy leave her. The dragon broke through bark and branch. It tear through tree and in one mighty blow, it tore a massive gash in Iniri’s defences as the Goddess fell to her knees. She heard the soldier behind her start to faint as she battled to keep herself awake. A tree slowly spiralled and tried to smash into the dragon, it exploded against the monster’s thick grey-green scales.

Iniri tried to move but her muscles refused to obey her mind. She tried to step back. She could not. The dragon advanced on her. It opened its jaws. It closed the distance. She saw those huge fangs, each one as large as her. And then she saw the dragon’s eyes leave her. The beast blinked.

The dragon took a step back. 

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