Bolzan leapt off the wall and into battle, a Valkyrian Spear in his hand. Landing with barely any sound, he faced down his enemies as they came surging towards the city.

Although he was slightly regretful that he scared Neve with his words, it wasn't a lie.

After he became a dragon, Malefor almost immediately threw him into a bloody ring and told him to fight for his life. Confused and in pain from the transformation, the first fight was a failure and Bolzan was almost killed until, at the last moment, the inner killer emerged and he mercilessly destroyed his opponent.

For 4 years after that, he was forced into the ring as "training" and it turned into the only thing he had to look forward to every week. On the day he escaped, he channeled all of his experience to eradicating all of his torturers. Anything that fell into his hands became a lethal weapon from quills to cards and even paper. All these were in addition to his natural weapons made his escape a gory and simple affair.

Until he was 9, being a wanderer meant that he had to kill to live. In addition to his usual dragon training, he trained with multiple weapons from daggers to scythes to axes to crossbows, all with his muzzle since he was unable to grasp anything with his paws.

However, one day, after he killed a hunter trying to catch him, a young child no older than 5 came out and began crying over the corpse. Putting the scene before him together, Bolzan realized that he had just killed this kid's Dad. This happened shortly before he entered Lazarus, swearing himself off killing.

"I guess I'll be breaking that vow today…" Bolzan chuckled as the Shadows came closer. With a sweep of his free hand, an entire armory of weapons materialized around him, hovering in midair and slowly circled his body. From the armory, he drew a sword to go with his spear before willing the weapons away.

"Bolzan…Can…Hear…?" Hunter's voice was tinny and faint as the trinkets established their connection.

"Yeah, I can hear you great, Hunter." Bolzan replied sarcastically as he examined his sword, Dragonfang. Most, if not all, of his weapons were crafted by the Moles and this was one of his more favored ones. The sword boasted a fairly thick and long blade with a hilt designed to be like a dragon coiling itself around the blade, wings outstretched. Its face was solemn and its eyes carried killer intent. It was amazingly light for its size, as was his Valkyrian Spear.

The spearhead was intricately carved out of titanium and weaved into a beautiful sharp pointed end. Feathery wings were folded up where the shaft and the blade connected with thin chains draped carelessly over each wing. The shaft itself was a masterpiece, sporting beautiful carvings depicting light and life. Although it was a little feminine, this was also one of his favourite weapons because of its deceptive strength.

"Aren't you a sarcastic fellow? Anyway, we'll give you a warning whenever we're about to fire off another volley so you can get out of the way. I'll also be supporting with some arrows so, stay sharp down there. Good luck!" Hunter's voice, now clear with the established connections, rang cut through the silence.

"Thanks, Hunter!" Bolzan replied before turning towards the oncoming army. "Well, well, well… I think it's time we had a little fun together…"

"What?" Hunter called through the trinket.

"Sorry, forgot to turn it off." Bolzan cut the connection and turned towards the Shadows', now closer than ever. He looked up and saw them fly off into the horizon and smiled.

"Good luck, guys." With that, he looked up to the heavens and roared loudly as a prayer to whatever unknown gods were watching them.

With that, he threw himself into battle.

In a graceful dance of death, he swirled and cut down the enemy numbers by the dozen. The spear cut through them like butter and the sword sliced those that survived to pieces. This trance-like state was interrupted by Hunter's warning. With a massive wing beat, Bolzan sent himself flying into the air. As soon as he leapt, multiple meteors flew from Warfang towards his position, blowing the Shadows' into smithereens. As he waited for the meteors to stop coming, he breathed light into his spear's tip and, as the glow built up, he kept his sword, dematerializing it into the armory.

As soon as the meteors stopped, he spun and flung the spear downwards where it streaked like a beam of light, causing massive magic circles to explode periodically. When it struck the ground, massive glaciers of Bifrost erupted from the ground before shattering, raining lethally sharp shards onto their ranks, impaling many of them to the ground. Their inhuman screams of pain merely added to Bolzan's bloodlust and he called a pair of scythes, one was made of pure obsidian and the other resembled an angel's wing.

He flew back down and began slicing his prey with wide circular sweeps. As he built up momentum, the scythes' blades separated from the shafts, connected with flaming chains. The Savior and Abaddon were twin scythes that specialized in decimation of large numbers. Enhanced with Hellfire, they were much more lethal, slicing through enemies like a hot knife through butter.

Several minutes in, however, pain began radiating from his chest towards his extremities. This wasn't from fatigue; rather, when Bolzan swore off mass murdering years ago, he asked Lazarus to place some kind of seal on him. Breaking the vow meant breaking the seal and it would begin, literally, tearing him to shreds from the inside out.

In spite of the pain, Bolzan still forced himself to continue fighting; until the pain overwhelmed him or they came back, whichever came first, he would fight.

And so he did, steeling himself against the mounting agony. In his armor, he had begun to cough up blood and it flowed down his chin, staining his fangs red. Now equipped with a pair of eight-barreled crossbows, he was firing volleys of ethereal bolts into his opponents with frightening accuracy. Every time he pulled the trigger, at least 7 bolts found their way into a head of an adversary, causing dark essence to pour out from the holes and flood the ground nearby.

Every time one of the Shadows was felled, they didn't bleed. In place of blood was a dark shadowy essence that hovered in the air, swirling with every light breeze of a blade's lethal descent.

Although he was still destroying them with lethal speed, the pain and exhaustion began to set in and Bolzan was faltering slightly. Several enemies managed to use their weapons to pierce through his armor, even though they usually died a few seconds later. Also, Bolzan realized that the Shadows were still advancing and it seemed that for every one he felled, 10 took up the place of their fallen comrade.

Critically injured and barely able to stand, Bolzan sank to his knees at the gates, panting badly and coughing up copious amounts of blood. Suddenly, the ground began to shake.

Earthquake? No, its too repetitive…He looked towards the horizon.

Crap.

Several giants were cresting the horizon. Even at this distance, they looked massive. Considering their sizes, the cannons wouldn't even be able to damage them.

"Bolzan! We've got giants in the fray!" Hunter's voice, both exhilarated and fearful at the same time, rang over the trinket's communication system.

"Hunter, get the troops to fight off the small fry. I'll handle those giants…" Bolzan ordered as he forced himself to stand up.

"What? There's no way…"

"Just do it! I'll be fine. Also, could you prepare a bag or something?"

"Uh, sure. Why?"

"I'm going to need you to catch something. Something small."

Without giving Hunter time to ask, Bolzan removed the trinket and threw it deep into the enemy's lines. They'd be too mindless to bother picking it up.

With that, Bolzan called his entire armory and plunged all of the swords into the ground blade-first, forming an intricate sequence of patterns radiating outwards from himself.

Clearing his mouth of blood one last time, Bolzan closed his eyes and began reciting a spell he had created while training. It started out slow and simple before rapidly increasing in speed and tempo until it was an unintelligible string of words. The words themselves were actually an ancient dragon language lost over the millenniums. The spell spoke of balance, of light, of shadow, of destruction, of creation.

As Bolzan recited the spell, lines of light and shadow criss-crossed from sword to sword, tracing an intricate runic circle.

From Hunter's elevated view, he saw that in the middle of the circle, the lines formed a dragon roaring in rage, its eyes a pair of burning embers. It was absolutely stunning.

Back at the gates, Bolzan stopped his chant abruptly as white-hot pain ripped through his body. He roared as the dark essence that had been hovering across the floor drew itself into the circle at his outstretched left hand. At the same time, the dimming sunlight seemed to be sucked from the air as a massive blade of light formed in the palm of his right hand. The roar escalated as the shadow and light coursed through his body, manifesting itself as a coat encompassing his entire body. In the short moment the Lazarite armor vanished, lacerations marred his body, his white scales red with his own blood.

A massive swirling column of Hellfire erupted from the circle before freezing in a frozen storm taller then the walls of Warfang before multiple slashes appeared on its surface and it broke apart revealing a beast of pure shadow and light hovering in midair, borne by a pair of wings that were tinged with black and white auras. A multitude of swords floated around its body, slowly orbiting the beast as it fixed its eyes at the oncoming giants. It took a while for Hunter to realize that that was Bolzan but when it turned and nodded in Hunter's direction, he immediately knew and gave the command to attack, donning his Lazarite bow as well.

With eyes of burning opal and onyx, Bolzan turned regally towards the giants, the blades gently rotating. As powerful as this was, he could only hold it for 5 minutes. 5 minutes was all he needed.

He lowered his head and slowly stretched his wings backwards. As if following an unheard command, the blades maneuvered themselves next to him, lethal edges pointed backwards as they formed into an extension of his wings.

Bolzan slowly closed his eyes and muttered the ancient word for "Smite" and flapped his bladed wings.

A massive runic circle formed behind his wings and propelled him forwards. As soon as he was moving, two waves of Hellfire and Bifrost burst outwards as he shot towards his targets. The two streams of death slowly fanned outwards; the one on his left incinerating the Shadows and the one on the right froze them so rapidly that they turned to dust.

As he neared his targets, Bolzan made a quick gesture and the blades shot to his lowered head, rotating at high speeds and sending streaks of shadow and light backwards, resembling a drill. He burst through the black carapace of the giant and out its back. Before it could even react, the entire monster froze and burst in a blaze of Hellfire, leaving no trace. Bolzan barely batted an eyelid as he moved on to his next target.

1 down, 4 to go.

This time he slowed himself and raised his arms into a cross in front of his face. The blades froze behind him in a pair of concentric rings. With a quick swing of his arms, the blades flew outwards and impaled the doomed monster over and over again. Roaring in agony, the giant tried to repel the swords as if they were flies. Unfortunately, flies didn't have razor-sharp edges that lacerated the giant's arms. After toying with the giant for a while, Bolzan got bored and clenched his hand. The blades drew from nearby energies to lengthen into lethal spears that pierced the giant's chest. With a final groan, it collapsed and crushed its own comrades under its massive bulk.

2 down, 3 to go.

The third one was more wary and tried to attack Bolzan first with a flaming boulder. Dodging at the last second, Bolzan rematerialized in front of its massive eye and wagged a finger in disappointment before a blade rammed itself into the giant's eye. Staggering and roaring in pain, it tried to strike Bolzan with a mountain-sized fist and felt something make contact. Bolzan had rammed several blades into its hand and sent the rest downwards, forming yet another runic circle beneath the giant. With a smirk, Bolzan snapped his fingers and an orb of shadow descended from the heavens through a dark portal. As it passed through the giant, it tried to claw the shadow off and tried to escape the orb. However, the runes held it in place as it was torn to shreds by the countless blades within the orb. The orb seemed to be devouring the giant and Bolzan left for the next one while his previous foe was still being "eaten alive".

3 down, 2 to go.

The next one seemed positively afraid of him, Bolzan inferred from the way it tried to run, crushing countless lesser monsters in the process. Not that he would show any mercy. This time, Bolzan recited another spell in the same ancient language and, as words for "Light" and "Impale" rolled off his tongue, pools of light formed above and below the giant, now realizing it was futile to flee and trying to hit Bolzan, who warped away every time the hand made contact, still chanting rapidly. Suddenly, beams of light erupted from each pool, forming a lethal lattice around the giant that began to slowly contract inwards, severely burning the giant and slicing it to ribbons simultaneously. Bolzan stopped chanting and made a little gesture with his fingers, causing the beams to rotate rapidly as it closed in, now twice as fast. The beast didn't stand a chance as the beams vaporized the dark mass that Bolzan presumed to be flesh.

4 down, 1 to go.

The last giant seemed to be the boldest of the lot and made a decent effort to attack Bolzan, even if it was all useless. Admiring this monster's tenacity, Bolzan resolved to let it die a quick death. All Bolzan had to do was utter the words for "Angel of Death" and the giant was instantly killed, its body vanishing into a burst of black feathers that slowly floated to the ground.

With the main threat gone, Bolzan suddenly felt the pain he had been resisting throughout the battle. His wings failed and the blades vanished as he fell to the ground. As he fell, the coat vanished in a burst of darkness and light, a small hatchling in its place; entire body covered in blood and gore.

Hunter was right beneath him and gently caught him in a blanket before wrapping up the shivering infant tightly in soft velvet. The blanket was almost immediately stained red with blood as Bolzan opened his eyes weakly and was about to speak before vomiting a massive amount of blood for his small size, covering Hunter's fur in the gore.

"Sorry…" Bolzan apologised weakly, reaching out a trembling paw to wipe the blood off. Hunter merely shushed him and cradled him close as he fired another arrow into a enemy.

The Shadows were at the gate and all seemed lost when, abruptly, all the Shadows collapsed and vanished in a puff of darkness.

A familiar voice came from the horizon and Hunter turned to see all of them returning from their mission, triumphant looks on all but Spyro and Cynder's faces, who were avoiding each other's sight. Cynder looked positively furious while Spyro hung his head low in shame while their kids looked fairly concerned. All of them looked completely exhausted.

Back in the Guardians' Wing, Hunter placed Bolzan in the hands of a capable healer and then went to sleep, still wondering about what had happened between Spyro and Cynder as he drifted off to sleep.