I smelled five trolls atop the tower that made up the intersection in the walls. From what I could tell a smattering of others manned the walls to the sides.
None of them reacted to me slowly making my way upward, the urge to watch the battle too strong for them to really watch for anyone climbing the walls.
I stopped just before I reached the top of the battlements, my claws just lower than the parapet. I drew myself back, tensing the powerful but malnourished muscles of my body.
I pulled myself over in an instant, one of my claws grasping around the head of a troll, ripping it off before he could react. By the time the others turned around I had killed my second victim, tearing his throat out with my teeth as I passed him by.
I killed a third by grasping his tunic, and biting his head off as I tossed him off the wall behind me. My claws closed around the throats of the last two before either of them could let out a scream.
I looked at the two poor guards, a grin coming across my scarred reptillian face. They looked surprised to see me. I crushed both their throats, before I descended into the tower.
I killed a few more trolls inside, making certain to handle them as quickly and as quitely as I could. It was gloriously bloody.
When the tower was clear, and I had closed and barred all the doors, I looked out the window, catching the smell of my slaves in the distance.
I'd be able to see them too if they werent hiding behind the treeline. This form had a number of physical advantages I could not stress enough.
Even with the weakness that comes from malnutrition I was a dangerous predator, and with the inscriptions even now burning into my skin and my bones ,I was beyond strong in magic.
An average green drake me be faster or stronger than I am now, but while the amount of magic it could draw on was considerable, it was nothing compared to what I could do.
It would take an adult dragon to surpass what I was currently magically capable of, as far as I could tell. I could only imagine how well the runes and inscriptions improve as I age.
This trip was a test in more ways than it was a manner in which to solve the slow destruction of this body. I extended a single claw into the ground, carving out a trench in the stone.
I carved in the relative calm of the tower, inscribing a series of symbols into the floor as the battle began to lull and the army I had brought along lost its unwinnable battle.
When I drew back the circle I was constructing took up nearly half the room I easily fit inside. A small incantation saw the blood pooling around my victims pull itself along the floor, filling the lines of my ritual circle perfectly.
When all had been gathered within a pushed my mana inside it, watching as the room was bathed in a muted green glow, before it immediately darkened into a crimson as the blood took affect.
It was a magical signal, calling out to the spirits of the land, and the spirits of the dead. A combination of Voodoo and Druidic magic.
I felt the already decaying and corrupted spirits of the land scream out as I drew upon them, followed by the souls of those who had died here.
Those Witch-doctors within the city would quickly notice how the land around them was suddenly void of the spirits they relied so much upon for their magics.
I was using every last one to power my spell.
It was a mass summoning. A play on the spell matrix that had brought me this far. I slammed a scaled arm on the center of the circle, and I felt the forest around me truly die, the land itself suddenly drying into a husk.
The inscriptions on my arm glowed, and I felt the flesh on my arm burn as I finished my work.
A tide of darkness surrounded the city, and screams erupted all around me as the blackened mist that now invaded the whole of this settlement did its gruesome task.
Hundreds of trolls yelled out in pain, dying as thousands of spectral claws descended upon them, hundreds more found themselves corralled back into their homes, forcibly pushed to where they couldn't get in my way.
Only the witch doctors and the greatest of the warriors would be able to intervene now.
I stood up, taking a moment to recover and take account for the damage I just did to myself, before I briefly flashed a simple light spell.
I listened as my servants made their way across the field, drawing on the remains of the blood around me to force vines to grow along the wall as they approached.
As they came to me I readied myself for the battles to come. This place was my playground now, but the foes I was now seeking out were dangerous.
The Loa of the Amani were bound here, and I was taking everything they had to give.
The wild gods had control over the nature of the people that worshiped them. The trolls, legendary for their regenerative powers, could have them taken away by their gods.
Or they could have them enhanced a thousand fold. Their power would be mine.
I had personally inscribed the ritual runes on my form for that very purpose.
Within the shadowed mists that now covered the whole of Zul'Aman, a dragon hunted gods.
