Interlude: The Fume Knight
He heard tales in his youth. Tales of madmen and cultists that gave themselves to worshiping dragons in the hope of becoming one. Some succeed, some grew the stone scales, breathed fire.
Fools.
Such feeble, worthless dregs they were. Adhering to fantasy for strength, worshiping some beast that weighed half as much as a castle like it was worthy of godhood.
They are ferocious monsters, the fiercest of challenges for any man who was brave enough to stand before tooth, claw, and flame.
But worthy of worship?
Pathetic.
Feeble and worthless dregs the lot of them. They fantasized about claiming the dragons strength for their own.
This fool seems to have been more successful than most.
And that only makes him the weakest of his fellows.
A fool is still a fool. One who dares to stand and face someone who's already slain a real dragon. Not some preening peacock that needed to slowly gain the barest shadow of the legendary beast's true might.
Like all men who aspired to Knighthood he'd faced a true Dragon. Not the feeble wyrms the size of a horse that scullery maids rushed to the nearest fortress to beg for aid against. Or even the Drakes that fancied themselves the apex predator of the Aerie Mountains and were just as easily saddled and reigned by those lesser servants that arrogantly, or perhaps moronically titled themselves 'Dragon Riders' but a true fire blooded Dragon.
It had been to the frozen lands of the north, the realms of scattered tribes that called themselves Forsans. During the times when they were only just looking to assemble into more than a hodgepodge of near nomadic brutes taking after the teachings and skills of Drangleic.
They'd come like bleating sheep, begging the court for help.
Before the King could ask for anyone to volunteer, he'd stepped forward. It took a sword to slay a dragon. Not a shield.
In those frozen wastes he'd found a trial worthy of a true knight and returned with his trophies.
The Forsan barbarians had cheered his title into their songs.
Knight. Knight. Knight. They would sing as he left that frozen world and returned to his home in Drangleic.
Strange that he should have to travel to yet another world to find a Dragon, even a faux one, to slay again. And one as queer as this one even.
The sorceries, the craft, the people did not make any semblance of sense here.
The buildings were strewn together in utter chaos. It was as if the Lord of this land had called in all the artisans from all the realms and told them to build what they wished wherever they wished it. Nothing had a place here. The homes of peasants hewn with mud that passed for wood or stone were mixed in with the homes of greater castes that were formed of bricks of red rock. And those were beside others that were crafted in glass, towering into the sky, as tall as the spires of Drangleic Castle, and those rested beside buildings crafted in steel, like those of the Kingdom of Iron with its maddened despot.
Some had doors that opened themselves. With lights that came from no torch, water that was not drawn from a well. Heat and cold summoned through the air at will. Webs of interconnected passages that made a man wonder where the support columns could hide.
He would not be surprised to learn if it was all done by magic. For the magics here were stranger still than the city itself.
Men that could fly unaided or move at great speeds, others that did not die when they had been run through with a blade, or others that could turn a blow aside entirely. Sorceries that crafted weapons that could forge themselves and then reforge themselves again into something entirely different, a death like touch that could still a man at will.
And here is this one with aspirations of becoming a dragon. A jester who pretended to stand in the court of might.
Foolish… worthless.
His King did not ask him to venture to the frozen wastes. But his queen had beckoned him forward as her champion this day and he would not fail her. Never.
Raime was one with not only the Dark, but also of the Fire. His Queen had granted him these great feats of power, and he was not one to let them go to waste.
The beast known as Lung lunged forward, and Raime was ready, bringing his massive greatsword down hard in an overhand swing, crushing the beast's shoulder, cleaving it open with a shower of gore that sent its body crashing into the ground.
The wound was grievous, enough to have crippled any beast of this size, but still the dragon cultist moved on his own power, the claw of his left hand striking him in the leg. He responded with a swing from the ground to the sky, carving into the monster's face and chest, powerful enough to knock the cultist up and back to the other side of the road they stood on.
The wound was sealing, the blood that had been gushing from torn flesh now reduced to a mere trickle. The metal scales growing over it. The cultist mimicked a true beast, on all fours now, before he breathes and released a white-hot stream of fire.
He answers with a roar of his own. Perhaps, years ago, it would have worked. But now? With the strength and favor of his queen?
He charged straight through the flames.
With his left hand he grabbed at the beast's face, slamming it into the black road beneath them with a harsh shove and doing it again as the cultist clawed and flailed against his arm.
He pulled away.
Knighthood demanded that he allow his adversary to stand but this was more beast than man, and a man that had forsook his humanity to pursue the worship of a false idol. It was unworthy of courtsey.
He raised his blade and brought it down with a ring of steel against steel and the wet crack of bone and cut flesh.
Lung roared, snarling and clawing at him as he pulled the blade free and brought it down, again, and again.
Then the two of them fell through the road into the underworld. A labyrinth beneath the streets? The catacombs?
They tumble down below, ten, twenty feet, slamming into steel grates that buckled beneath their weight.
The cultist moves with a speed that belies his size, standing over him before his claws come down like hammer blows.
He releases his sword and with both hands grasps at one tree-trunk sized fist, twists and pulls, harshly snapping the limb with a series of cracks and throws the cultist off of him, slamming him face first into a wall before he rolls to the other side, grabbing his sword and picking himself up in a single fluid motion.
The dreg roared, the fire in his eyes blazing hot. He charged and with a swing of his massive blade cleaved open the tunnel around him as it sent a wave of dark red flame that washed over his foe.
Lung roared in agony, as Raime heard the cracks and snaps of the structure around him. He stepped back, towards the hole they'd already made just as the whole thing collapsed, the street above falling like a house of cards over the jester.
With a roar Lung's torso emerged from the debris and Raime charged forward and with his massive blade gored the beast. Lung's claws rose to slice at his helmet and locked him in a vice.
Raime called on the flame burning within him, and to his call, the blade burst into red hot flames, burning inside the impaled Lung.
The dreg roared in agony and with another movement he pulled himself free, using the new leverage to lift and throw Raime like a child's doll, sending the knight crashing through the upper edge of their created sinkhole, tossing him back up to the street.
He lands on his feet in time to see Lung pulling himself up, out of the edge.
With a wet burst of visceral blood, wings now adorn his back.
There is a sound above him, a high pitched shriek that draws his eyes up.
And above, winding through the towering buildings he sees another beast. A dragon of metal. He's seen its like before. But the creature he'd battled had been a small thing. More lizard than anything else, barely a century since its hatching given its size. If it was even born at all. Only sorcery could explain cutting a thing open and finding only sparking lights and burning cables.
…
How he hated this place.
The metal creature released… something from above, some kind of projectile. He leaps out of the way, watching as they explode, collapsing yet another chunk of the unstable street, dropping the ground right out from under him to enter once more into the sinkhole of the city's underworld labyrinth.
The ground shakes beneath his feet, he turns and finds Lung leaping down from above, bull rushing with a roar, mouth alight with flame.
He sets his weight low to the ground, blade at the ready. A jester the size of a drake is still nothing more than a jester.
He ducks under the blow with ease, feeling the wind of the beast's swing over his head. He leans away to avoid the uppercut Lung tried to surprise him with.
Then he swings.
The blade carves open his throat, a literal fountain of red gushing from the new wound onto Raime's chest. The beast tries to breathe and does nothing but cough, gagging and choking on arterial blood before Raime's hand grabs him by the open mouth, fingers crushing the underbite and pulling it to smash his face against the stone and then yanking him down onto his knees.
His blade rises and cuts down, half of one of Lung's newly grown wings is suddenly shorn open, tatters of thin membrane hanging in strips from the bony length of cartilage.
And so here is the court jester as he should be. Rolling on the ground, prostrated and broken crying to the world, swearing that he is worthy. As strong as the lords and knights of the realm whilst begging for borrowed, unearned strength.
He hears a growl and is surprised as Lung moves again after the surely fatal blow. He rises, unimpeded, and punches him dead on, straight into the air. He hits what little remains of a roof above them before he slams back down into the wet muck.
The knight picks himself up, a renewed anger burning in his eyes as he lifts his head and sees the dreg's wounds sealing themselves shut.
He knows of magics that can heal like that… He'd killed their wielders before.
He stands. Greatsword in hand. The worthless dog has yet to learn its place it seems.
If the jester wishes for his body to be reduced to little more than pieces he will oblige him.
Suddenly an attack rains down from above. Projectiles exploding over the two, ice bursting from the impact points. He pulls away, unfamiliar with such magic. Sorcery? Pyromancy? It would have to be the later. A perversion that controls the heat level itself rather than mere flame.
He looks above where he sees the metal beast hovering, its wings utterly still.
Could this strange kingdom not even make the barest effort to make sense?
Lung blasts out a fireball from his mouth, searing hot and moving straight towards it. It explodes feet from its target, coiling harmlessly around some magical barrier.
The metal beast fires white lather from two shoulder cannons down at Lung and Lung flees, ducking out of the way. Faintly, he recognizes the attack. Some liquid that can solidify to be harder than stone. He'd needed to call on the blessings of his queen to see it destroyed.
The jester is apparently not fool enough to overestimate his strength against that particular magic.
Overhead, the metal beast circles like a wolf that stalks a lion. Or a hornet looking to sting a hawk. Staying well out of reach. It is a sound plan. Already he feels an infinitesimal degree of greater respect for the mindless metal animal above than the dreg that aspires to be little more than a leech.
Still, this enemy is interfering, and the honorless upstart is his to kill. The metal creature has no right to interfere.
He ducks low and with a single shove of his powerful legs he rises up towards it, as if he himself could fly, blade at the ready.
It turns in mid air, its head swiveling around to fire a beam of frost magic straight towards him.
He places the blade between himself and it, the magical attack slams into him, pushing him back, straight down. His back hitting some brick building. He plows straight through its surface, the concentrated energy frosting the ash that formed his sword and his arms.
The flames burst from his blade, angry and red, melting the frost.
He sees a flash of blue, another diverted attack from Lung and the metal beast rises once more into the sky, seeking escape. It will return soon, he knows.
He pulls himself from the debris of the building, looking down as Lung lunges from where he stands on the road
Like a battering ram the beast slams into him, he is shoved up, the both of them slamming onto the ceiling of these rooms and tearing it apart. Faux stone rains down, Lung roars and slams him against the walls, his hands big enough to now grasp him by the shoulders as though the ancient Knight is little more than a boy that is not yet a man.
Their sheer weight brings the floor down beneath them, and with the sudden fall Raime frees himself with a burst of pure strength, bringing his weapon to bear mid fall and striking downward. It carves into Lung's bicep, punching straight through him to the pure stone of the bottom floor.
In his remaining hand ash gathers, and he conjures his longsword, thin and slender, the weapon of a different time that serves just as well now.
He plunges it straight down through Lung's remaining hand, pinning it to his other side.
Straddling the leech now, he punches down, over and over again his fists crack against the metal face of the monster. Lung roars and breathes flame, white hot fire washing over the Knight like a geyser. He does not care, he keeps striking, his fists raining down again and again and again, feeling the metal buckle beneath his fist, the bones snap and crunch as they regenerate and try to heal beneath the relentless assault.
Then Lung's arm is free, the claw smacking the knight with a force he could only compare to a Giant Champion, eons ago.
He stands, the ash gathering to form both blades in his hands, as Lung stumbles to his feet. He doubts the lizard can even see clearly anymore, his face a disfigured mulch of metal, bone and blood.
Then more projectiles rain down to smash into both himself and the still healing Lung.
The metal nuisance.
He hears the snaps of stone and whatever other materials were used in the construction and only just manages to lunge out of the building through a wall at his side before the three stories come straight down over where they'd been standing.
He needs to bring it to ground. Make it commit to a place where it cannot fly away.
Its nest, where it lays its eggs, the aerie of its kin. This place would make it come to ground, make it fight. Allow him to destroy it.
And then… its a tickle at the back of his mind, an answer pulled free of its place in the mind of the little mortal. Of his vessel as she slept in Mother's embrace.
The enemy fortress.
He hears a rumbling sound, turning back and seeing Lung bursting free of the debris, his arm and face back to normal, his neck longer, more dragon-esque.
He hears a rumbling sound and it takes the knight a moment to recognize it.
Lung was laughing.
Fool.
Then, with a turn, Raime jumped into the air like a bullet.
He heard Lung roar. Raime pays it no mind. The leech will follow, all too predictable.
He hits the upper rise of a glass tower, gripping the edge and pulling himself over with the sound of crumbling stone and shattering glass, the massive windows shattering with his impact as his eyes pan over the length and breadth of this city, searching.
There… by the ocean shore as she remembers. He can see their soldiers, their warriors gathered on its pitiful battlements.
He hears the beating of wings behind him and doesn't bother to turn before he runs and leaps from the building, spying the circling metal creature coming back around as his feet crash into the roof of another building with the crack of stone. Lung diving straight after him.
If the lower reaches of the city are strange, the rises are even more absurd. Strings and cables, boxes, rotating fans, metal vents that spew out heat. None of it makes much sense to him. No rhyme or reason for any of it that he can see. It is as baffling as it is dismaying.
Regardless he keeps moving, one leap after another allowing him to swallow the distance with absurd speed, the building becoming ever larger in his eyes.
The metal creature screeches above as it passes and he hears it speak for the first time in the voice of a woman.
"Taylor stop!"
Strange. Does this breed have enough intelligence to speak? He did not think it possible.
It turns and with a ray of frost and a slew of projectiles Raime's momentum is brought to a halt as he's hit mid leap.
The frost ray, exploding projectiles and white lather slams into him. He's thrown off course, his body shoved to the side to scrape off a stone building before he hits the ground hard, frost and rapidly hardening foam covering his left arm.
It seems the thing has deduced his intent. It does not want him reaching the fortress.
He turns and continues his sprint, long strides and powerful steps making small craters in the ground as he slips through the winding alleys that could barely fit a horse through them.
The metal one flies above, taking shots where she could, trying to slow him down though only succeeding marginally.
Its when he reaches the sea that he realizes where he is and he turns, finding it there in the distance. The fortress has lights streaming into the sky, a blockade of metal carriages and soldiers with queer weapons that he knows will fire like a crossbow.
This is what the metal one would commit itself to protect.
He charges and can hear a human speaking, shouting with some sorcery or some machine to carry his voice further, a warning of some kind.
Then something hits the ground with a blinding speed, the black rock of the road bursts in snaps and cracks that pelt his body before something hits him hard! It felt like being struck by a Giant lord! He's thrown back, all sixteen feet of momentum brought to a dead halt. He hits the ground with his legs under him, feet digging into the stone road to bring himself to a stop.
He stands, a growl in his chest as the dust clears.
Its a woman.
Dressed in black and silver with flecks of gold at the lining of her cape, and some tower on her midsection. He does not recognize this one. Has never seen her before. He has heard of magics that can strengthen the body, though never to such a degree. A lost art rediscovered perhaps? Intriguing.
There is something above, it draws his eyes and he sees someone else, a sage in green robes flying above, past him, towards the city. Towards Lung.
He growls, low and angry. The dreg was his to defeat. First they send their metal pet to interfere, now they wish to steal a victory from him?
"That's far enough."
The voice brings his eyes up, towards the sky.
Its a man. A man in blue and white, his face only having an eye-mask. He recognized this one. The one that filled his vessel with such fear, such awe.
A… Triumvirate…
The word brings him the images. The names pulled from memory.
Alexandria. Eidolon. Legend…
These are the heroes of this world.
He came to slay a Dragon and instead will bear arms against Lords...
Raime's shoulders shuddered as a rumbling, gravel like sound emerged from his helmet. A chuckle. Before it morphed into deep, rumbling laughter.
He hefted his greatsword onto his shoulder with his left hand, and looked onto the champion this world named 'Alexandria.'
Lords and Dragons. Heroes and Monsters. All will feed the flames in time.