The Dragon Savior of Tone: World of Tone: Book 2 (31 page)

“Thank you. One final request. I will lead the humans. Can you send a single lightning bolt to me when I raise my hand?”

“Aaas yuooo wiiish.”

Terra returned with Fienna to their sleeping area. She asked why he wanted lightning sent to him. He told her he would use it as a weapon. She did not understand how he would use a single bolt as much of a weapon, but she always believed he knew what he was doing.

Chapter 56 - Death of a Village

(Fight, live, die.)

- The Time of the Draman -

Terra was very quite the sunset before the fight. As the darkness passed, word came from the fairies that the humans were in place in the gorge, the land nymphs and elves were in position below the trees. The bulk of the human fighters were waiting behind the mountain as shown in his plans. The dragons were ready and Terra's heart sank at the thought of all the death to come.

As the sun rose, Terra and Fienna changed into their dragon forms. Fienna flew off to join the dive dragons and Terra with his escort landed on a peak overlooking the village. He had thought of asking for the dwarfs’ surrender, but he knew they feared the dark one more than death itself. This was the only way.

Terra took off and dove toward the front of the village. He felt the power building within his breast and as his speed increased, he released the first powerful sound blast from his throat. The center of the wall with the opening dissolved into a ball of dust. Terra banked up and swung around. His second blast turned a third of the sidewall to a brown dust filled plume. He then swung up and around and sent his third blast at the large cave in the center of the village. Dust rose above the village as Fienna led the dive dragons into place. Terra glided up and over the mountain peaks.

Fienna saw Terra complete his dive. She dove first and her fire hit just in front of one of the domes. It flowed like a wave and boiled up under the structure. Screams rose through the air from under the dome, as it collapsed, cracking into three pieces. Then a thousand dragons began their dives. They had learned well from their last fight. Twenty dragons at a time dove on the domes. The ground shook as the flames burst against the ground and the domes. What was left of the village walls began to crack and fall. Soon the nymphs and elves could feel the heat.

The dive dragons finally finished their dives and the Flights began. The first three Flights started by hitting the three trenches. The fire was directed to the base of the trenches and soon flowed through the trenches like water in a stream. Although dwarfs were resistant to fire, they could not withstand a river of flame so intense that the ground itself melted.

Finally, the remaining Flights hit the village. The dwarfs were more protected in the village. They had built their caves of thick layers of rock and mud. The Flights filled the city with fire like water in a bowl. Even though the dwarfs built their caves well, thousands collapsed under the barrage of the dragons' fire. Unfortunately, thousands more survived.

As the dragons fired the village, Terra flew to join the humans. He glided down. As his feet touched the ground, he started to change. He stepped forward and with each step, his change brought him closer to human form. Upon the fifth step, Terra was fully human. He stood before the fighters naked, with no weapons. Naron stepped toward Terra offering him clothes, armor, and weapons. Terra thanked him, but still turned it all down.

Suti had trotted out from the center of the humans and stood by Terra's side. Terra waved the humans to follow him. As he walked, Terra reached within himself and drew upon the magic that allowed him to breathe underwater. The human fighters watched as Terra's body began to glow orange. The humans had never seen him glow in this way. They knew his hands glowed when he healed, but this was different. His entire body glowed and he grew brighter as he moved forward. Twenty heavily armed humans followed Terra closely as his guards.

The humans formed into three lines of twenty fighting squares as they left the protection of the mountain. They followed Terra to stand five to six hundred dragon lengths from the first trench. They watched as the dragons fired the village before them. The final dragons flamed the dwarfs and the world became quiet.

They all waited to see if the trees would help. Slowly, all could hear an unusual crackling noise rise from the trees. The sound grew in intensity as green sparks began to form throughout the protector trees' leaves. Suddenly, a single green bolt of lightning coursed across the sky, striking one of the five or six domes still intact. The dome shattered as the bolts sparkled across its' remains, and the screams of the dying dwarfs echoed through the trees.

A second, then a third bolt split the air as they struck two more domes. Then from a hundred different trees, lightning extended across the sky like a crazed web. The network of green lightning spread over the village and began striking down at the dwarfs' caves. Whole structures exploded into sharp fragments, killing and wounding the cave dwellers.

The thunder came with the force of a physical blow. It was so powerful the fighters had to cover their ears to stop the painful sound. The world seemed to glow green from the tree lightning. The only thing that stood out from the lightning was the large human, glowing orange, standing before his fighters. Thousands of lightning strikes raked across the trenches and village. Finally, the lightning slowed and then stopped. The trees dropped thousands of leaves indicating they had finished their attack.

Terra began to move toward the trenches. He looked down at Suti and smiled. “Go,” he told her. She ran into the nearest trench and soon screams of terror and pain were coming from the dwarfs. The human fighters followed Terra into a whirlwind of death. The nymphs and elves were given the order to move by several hundred fairies. They all advanced and climbed up and over the first trench's brim. Thousands of dead dwarfs and a few stunned and burned individuals who were killed quickly met them.

Terra advanced through the first two trenches finding only a thousand or so living dwarfs, who were quickly killed. The stench was overwhelming, so much so that a few of the humans were sickened by it. Terra stood at the edge of the final trench looking into the village through the great hole he had created. There he saw thirty to forty thousand dwarfs trying to form themselves into fighting groups. He moved forward to allow the first line of human squares to stand just behind him.

Terra lifted his right hand into the air. The largest of the protector trees sent a bolt of lightning to him. He reached up and caught the lightning with his hand. In the instant, that he touched the bolt it froze in place with all its glittering branches. He twisted his wrist and snapped off the end of the bolt, creating a long jagged, sparkling, glowing green blade. The rest of the bolt unfroze and continued on, striking the ground just inside the village. Both the humans and the dwarfs stopped in utter amazement at the sight before them.

Terra moved forward and saw that the dwarfs had formed into groups, each of which had one large dwarf in command. The leader of the nearest group ran toward Terra with its weapon in hand, followed by two smaller dwarfs. Terra met the large one with a downward sweep of his blade. Bone, sinew, and armor were sliced through as if they were no more than air. The dwarf fell in two as dark blue blood fountained from the body. The upswing of the blade killed one of the small dwarfs. The final dwarf managed to strike Terra's arm with his long metal blade. The blade and the dwarf's arm shattered like weakened ice. The dwarf fell to the ground, screaming in pain before one of Terra's human guards took his life.

As the humans looked on, Terra began to move so fast that he turned into nothing more than an orange blur. They all had heard he could move fast, but no one had even dreamed of such swiftness. They watched as the large leader dwarfs began to fall. Terra saw everyone moving so slowly it was as if they were frozen. He moved through the groups of dwarfs, killing the large ones along with any of the smaller dwarfs that were in his path. He knew that killing the leaders would destroy their ability to fight. For without their leaders the dwarfs would be unable to organize into effective fighting groups.

Terra moved faster and faster until all of those fighting could only see an orange ghost and a path of death. He stopped only one time at the top of a pile of rubble. There he saw the nymphs and elves were not moving forward due to an incredibly large dwarf, who was conducting the fighting against them. Terra moved straight toward this large dwarf, killing everything in his path. He saw the dwarf turn toward him, but by the time he began to raise his weapon, Terra had driven his blade through the center of the dwarf’s body from left to right. The top of the great body slid off the lower portion as the dark blue fountains erupted from the lower part of the body.

Terra continued on, killing the leaders one by one. As the dwarfs fell into disarray, Terra's fighters moved forward, killing every dwarf in their path. They finally broke and spread back into the twisted paths that led through the village caves. The elves swarmed into the paths after them, while the nymphs stayed in their small well-trained groups. The humans broke into groups of fifty. Each group was composed of those who used long metal blades, sticks and shaft throwers. The nymphs and humans methodically searched each path and cave, killing as they went.

Slowly, they worked their way through the entire village until they came to the back wall. Terra, with several thousand fighters, came to the opening in the wall. There they found ten to twelve thousand dead dwarfs. Many had wooden shafts protruding from their bodies, while others were burnt or simply torn apart. A few were half eaten by the dragons that apparently disliked the taste of dwarf.

This fight was finally over. Terra stood upon a small mound of rubble. He touched the tip of his blade to the ground and released it. It immediately returned to its previous state and exploded into the soil, where it left a small molten puddle. Terra's orange glow faded and once again, a naked human stood before the fighters. He was pristine, not a drop of blood or a smudge appeared upon his body.

The sadness held in Terra's face and his stance was so profound that none of the fighters could imagine celebrating their great victory.

“Please, find the wounded and I will heal them. Take our fallen to the field before this village of death. We must bury our fighters with the love and honor they deserve,” Terra said in a low voice that carried throughout the village and beyond.

Terra then walked to the first wounded fighter and started his healing.

Chapter 57 - The Aftermath

(Recover and move on.)

- The Time of the Draman -

Terra healed nearly three thousand fighters. Eight hundred and fifty-two humans had been killed, as well as four hundred and twenty-three nymphs. Five hundred and eighty-seven elves had fallen. Terra thought the elves’ losses were due to their singular fighting style. Finally, sixty-two faeries were also killed. Only three dragons fell, they were hit by shafts of wood thrown by large dwarfs standing atop of caves. The young dragons had dove too low and came much too close to the village.

As the first light filtered across the field before the now dead dwarf village, the burial mounds came into view. They were laid out in rows and sections. The fighters were laid to their last sleep with their friends and companions. It was decided by Terra and the dragon leaders to lay the dragons with all the others who had been killed. All the fighters had gathered. The dragons were perched upon the mountains. Terra stood before them with Fienna in her dragon form behind him. All awaited his words.

“These humans, nymphs, elves, fairies, and dragons are here because of their love of our world. They wished themselves and their families to live in a world free of the darkness. They paid the ultimate price for us all and nothing we can do will ever repay them for their courage and friendship.

“Their loss will be burned upon my spirit for all time. We can never forget the gift of their lives. They gave us all they possessed to save Tone and all we hold precious. I wish to thank you all for the sacrifices you have made and the pain that you have suffered. This world needs you all and so do I, for without you, I would be as a feather in the wind,” Terra said to all. Tears flowed down his cheeks, sparkling like crystals as they fell to the ground. Small hair roots absorbed them, and within moments, a small root ball formed beneath the soil Terra stood upon.

Terra returned to his dragon form and took off, followed by Fienna. He and Fienna flew up and passed over the graves flaming into the air to honor the fallen. The dragon Flights then gathered and flew across the field of the honored, while Terra and Fienna looked on from a mountain peak.

The ground fighters walked slowly in front of the dead as they moved back to the sleeping areas. When all were at a safe distance Terra and all the dragons flamed the mounds, melting the surfaces into a hard volcanic like rock. That sun-rising all rested and reflected on the fight.

The leaders gathered before they were to meet with Terra to discuss the next steps they would take to end this fight. Only the dragons were missing, for they were led by Terra and no one else.

“What do you all think?” Naron asked the group.