The Legend of Spyro

Warriors of the Fallen

Chapter 09 Battle of the Village Hidden in the Roots

With a crying exhale of air, Spyro brought his sword down, cutting throw another dreadwing that had tried to swipe at him. His most recent enemy dealt with, the purple dragon looked around. It was chaos.

In Spyro's experience, battles went one of two ways: Mass Army formation pushing into each other or Individual combat. This fight, at the edge of the foxmen's cultivation fields, at the base of the overhang cave, was both yet neither of those types of combat.

There were awakened, beating down any dark creature who so much as looked at them all around him. But at the same time, there were groups of dragons who were moving in a formation, and on top of that were the foxmen who were joining in the fight in teams of two and three. Spyro wanted to say what the tribe members were doing was more akin to tap-in-tap-out than formation fighting.

An eruption of elemental energy buffed the young man bringing his attention back to those closest to him. He could see Harlid using a war hammer to throw enemies in any direction that was not toward an ally on his left. Fighting with him utilizing attacking the thrown enemies were Horhe and Stecra. Flashes of bright red Fire contrasted by blasts of just-this-side-of-blue Sound from their respective sources were a sight, and did terrible, terrible things to anything they hit.

On the right were Kean and Carmeta, they were doing something similar to the foxmen, but instead of taping out with each other, they were disabling an enemy and then moving on, leaving the twitching enemies to be dispatched later by anyone who noticed.

Another elemental explosion signaled the most likely location of Georgia. The shadow user seemed to prefer to throw magic around instead of getting physical. The shadowy tentacle blob currently reaching out to swat at dreadwings trying to fly being both creepy and a great example of her fighting style.

Where Luanda or Walf was, Spyro had no clue. From what little he knew, the both of them were very much CQB fighters. From when he saw them spar, the Ice user liked to use here Ice Armor as both defense and offense, while Walf just kind of appeared in his opponent's blind spot and took them out.

As it stood, even while Spyro threw his sword up to block an overzealous ape's dagger thrust, the purple dragon still thought this battle was going well. Repulsing the ape and firing off an ice spear from his off-hand to finish the creature off, Spyro was able to get barring of the battlefield again. This time, instead of getting a bearing of his allies, he sought to see why they were doing as well as they were.

The reason became clear exceptionally quickly when he looked at the location the enemies were coming from. The hole in the wall, it was a lot smaller than he thought it was. The hole was just big enough for a single dreadwing and two small apes to come through simultaneously. While they were pouring through, the choke point was doing an outstanding job at not allowing them to be overwhelmed.

But that was only a piece of the dark army's problem. Spyro had thought it strange no grublins were coming through the wall or the ground. He knew the village wards were probably making that difficult, but they should still be getting through at least partially. And they were certainly trying, but the black blur of Cynder was on top of them faster than they could spawn.

Spyro was about to move to help his partner when he saw one other thing. Marshal, standing in the open, eyes closed, arms outstretched, and streams of wind flowing from/past him and into the choke point. Whatever the wind user was doing must have been having an effect because many of the hostiles looked to be more and more wounded just trying to get through the breach.

While this did bring a smile to Spyro's face, anything that hurt the dark forces was a good thing. The smile had to quickly leave as he noticed that what Marshal was doing was taking all of the wind dragon's attention. This left him wide open for the dreadwing moving to attack him. Having none of that, Spyro rushed in to defend.

Scholars and historians have long debated how and why the Battle of the Village Hidden in the Roots went as well for the defenders as it did. Some say the ancient and powerful wards of the village itself did most of the work. Others say it was the magically rich land resisting the actions of the Dark Forces to expand their breakthrough. And those who study war say it was because of the thousand-plus awakened doing what dragons do best, using copious amounts of magic to solve problems.

As someone who fought in that battle, and for those who know war is complicated, the answer is all of that and more.

The Wards and the magic of land did indeed make it harder for the Dark Army to both breach and expand their breach. And then what forces did get through had to face battle-hardened magic users. It was a situation that had never happened before. In every sense of the word, a fortress manned by an army filled with many would consider elite fighters who could and did regularly beat overwhelming odds. On paper, the village probably could have held out for several days, if not possibly repulse the Dark Army entirely. At least according to many Scholars and Historians.

Sadly, while all of that was in our favor, there were still things that scholars failed to realize.

One of the biggest, was the dangerously low supply of food. We had, at best, enough food to keep everyone at full strength for a few days. We had been husbanding the supply for days already by supplementing it with alternatives like herbs and reusing things that could not be eaten directly but could be boiled to add nutrition like bones or even some roots, which were usually poisonous when eaten. If we fought continuously, we would have quickly found eating a primarily liquid diet like that would see us rapidly weakening.

On top of that were numbers. The Dark Army outnumbered us, plain and simple. Some have long said, "So what? They've always outnumbered us. Hasn't stopped us before." And they'd be correct. It was a rare battle in which those who fought the Dark Forces were able to claim they had superiority in numbers. But even still, numbers matter. Every force in history needs at least two things to fight, Something to fight with and something to keep them fighting. The "with" was easy; we were dragons, we had both magic and the never-ending weapons we could pick up from our slain foes. But the "keep" was the problem.

We were so outnumbered that despite our best efforts and the relatively small breach, our enemy was still fast enough to get through with their shock troops that two more were able to take their place for every foe we killed. And because of that, it was impossible for us to pull back to rest for longer than a few moments. The injuries hardly had enough time to be treated before they had to get back into the fight.

At the start of the fight, Motivation was surprisingly high, and everyone's magic and energy reserves were as full as it was going to be. Not max, though; the lack of a proper diet and existing injuries prevented everyone from being at Max, except for a small few. The amount of time we could fight was limited, even if no one wanted to admit it or even showed it. Everyone had their limits, even the Lost Generation, who liked to act as they could for longer because of the many years of conditioning they suffered through. Especially at that early stage.

While I knew about most of the above in general, I did not honestly know how this would work for my relatively new allies at the time. It would take several follow-on battles for me to realize the berserk state, and even then, only because it had to be explained to me why the calls to retreat kept coming when they did. The Core, Harlid especially, and Marshal had, through hard-gained experience, learned to spot when their friends and allies were reaching their limit.

But in this first battle, at seeing us seemingly pushing back the enemy, I foolishly thought we had a chance. Part of this was also down to the simple fact that I could only see a small portion of the battlefield, the part within the Half-cave. I could not see the thousands upon thousands of dark creatures trying to come through, nor feel fierce magic being wielded to try and expand the breath. Magic I would only find out about when Marshal called for help.

-Not So Simple Really, A Perspective From the Front Line By Spyro "The Purple Dragon" Resoren and Co-written by Cynder "Terror" Qintro; The War Under the Trees Chapters, Part 1

With a sharp thrust of one sword followed by a shadow-infused downward slash of the secondary sword she had picked up, Cynder destroyed the ape trying to stop her from keeping the Grublin population down. The wave of Shadow Fire that came forth from her downward slash took care of both the corpse but also several grublins who had popped their heads into the cave.

The sound of fluttering wings signaled another grublin coming up behind her, so with a double horizontal slash of wind-infused swords this time. She launched Wind blades at her next enemy while also hopefully taking out what was probably the rest of the pod that had arrived. Cynder was rewarded a good handful of dead grublins, so she was happy about that.

But the female half of the Legendary Couple did not have time to take pride in her actions. She could already see another group coming in. It was never-ending. At first, she was able to keep the numbers down very well. But it was getting harder and harder. They were coming in more and more, and not only that, but she was having to repulse more and more apes and dreadwings, compounding the issue of keeping the grublin numbers down.

While it was a problem, Cynder was confident she could keep the numbers manageable for a long time. She hoped it was long enough. The fact that she had time to think, even as she moved up and down the combat zone throwing magic, said a lot about how taxed she was, i.e., not crazily.

Cynder had been able to keep at least a peripheral view of the rest of the battlefield. She knew that the others awakened were still doing good. But it also looked like their initial fighting steam was starting to taper out. Not in a bad way, more in a way that meant they could not keep fighting by themselves. Slowly, every time she looked, the others were fighting less and less as individuals and were more and more teaming up. She saw the most common one defending another attacking, with a possible third either jumping to assist or being covered for a few seconds to catch their breath.

There were a few formations that looked to have become battle lines. A team of awakened holding/pushing back those coming at them in front, keeping while a few who looked to be less physically able but more magically charged lobbing attacks at the apes from behind the suto-shield walls.

In a few areas, it looked like the Foxmen Warriors were either providing range support with their boomerangs or, like Claw was doing every time Cynder saw him, being a Hybrid force: tossing their boomerangs at any clumps that were forming, carving a bloody bath through said clumps. And then, once those boomerangs were moving through the air, using one of the strangest swords Cynder had even heard of, let alone seen, to cut down any enemy in reach.

The majority of the foxmen's swords were wood. From what she had been told, the wood was from the fallen branches of the enormous trees of the Giant's Forest, making the wood rich in magic and far more robust than it had any right to be. The only part of the sword that was not wood was a thin coating of steel on the side of the blade. The metal's sharpness was unquestionable, though. She had seen it cut clean through anything in front of it. And with the sturdiness of the wooden back, the weapon was even surprisingly good at blocking any enemy weapons.

In this fight alone, Cynder could tell the experienced Foxmen Warriors from the newer ones, for the elites wielded their swords in one hand and their boomerang in the other. The new ones looked to need a few seconds to switch weapons. She also noticed that the only Foxmen she saw fighting were these Elite force, those who had been trained as dedicated Warriors and wielded Boomeranges as big as they were. These forces were the only ones who were always at the ready. The rest of the Foxmen's fighting forces looked to be still either grabbing their gear or trying to form up with the units they had been training with. They did not usually fight in battles. Most of their training was as a just in case. The Foxmen could be an army, but it was not their preferred state.

A sudden call from a source she had not been expecting caught her attention and redirected her thoughts.

"Cynder! Need your help!"

She turned to the source to see a rapidly approaching Spyro. He was ducking and weaving around any creature in his way, carving a bloody path as he did so.

"We need to close the hole!"

Cynder looked from her partner to the breach in the wall. It had not expanded. She turned back to Spyro, "Any reason why? The numbers haven't gotten that bad."

Spyro, now closer, lopped a fireball behind her taking care of some grublins who had poked their heads out of the ground before responding. "Marshal's doing something at the other end; it's slowing them down. But he said something's fighting him, multiple somethings. The way he snarled that out gave me a good idea of who might be the main one. We need to close the breach now! If we don't, and Marshal starts to lose his little magical duel, they'll be able to expand it. And by then, we won't be able to retreat; we'll be overrun."

Cynder swore in her head. She had not even thought of any of that. While tactics had been taught to her, it was only in the loosest of sense. She was not used to thinking outside of small units, and it was showing. Something she internally decided she needed to work on. Outwardly though, she nodded and started moving. "Right, You do your earth thing, and I'll see if I learned anything about the whole Vibration side of my power."

Thankfully, her partner did not comment on the accidental, sort of, Pun she had just said. They had a job to do now.

But first, they had to get through the wave of bodies before them. It was something they were well practiced with.

Where Cynder went left, Spyro went right. Where Cynder Slashed out, Spyro threw magic, and where Spyro thrust, Cynder cast. It was a dance the two knew well, and the trail of destruction behind them proved their expertise.

When they reached the wall, they did not question the other. They only had moments to act; if their timings were off, the chances of them being able to do it again were slim.

Thankfully, they trusted each other and did not hesitate.

Spyro went first; with a cry and rounded kick, he slammed his foot into the wall forcing his will and Magic into the ground, ordering it to crumble and to lose with Earth Magic. And on a sort of time delay, also giving it orders first to heat up so that it could melt, even a little, with Fire Magic and then after a time to cool down and reform into more solid pieces with Ice Magic.

His work done, Spyro pushed away. And not a moment too soon, for Cynder had jumped to the wall. Unlike her male counterpart thought, she did not strike the wall. Instead, she placed her hands on it and, with a will of steel, forced every ounce of Magic she could with a straightforward order: Shake.

The effects took only seconds to reveal themselves. And it quickly was both seen and heard by all. The wall shook. And the ground quaked. And with the sounds of a deafening roar, Cynder knew the mountain had fallen.

By the time Cynder was back on the ground, and had killed a few hostiles, which had ended up to close. The dust had started to settle, and she could see her handy work.

The breach had collapsed in on itself. The boulders were of more sizes than she could conceive. She could also see Spyro's work thanks to the Sand particles and the half-melted state of the rocks. It was not something that could not be redug or reopened with time. And that was fine. The Legendary Couple had done their job. They had bought that time.

And with time bought, the two turned and moved to help end the battle behind them. The first battle of the War Under The Trees was coming to a close, and the Dark Army had suffered their first defeat.

AN: So, I decided to figure out how this battle would go, based on dice rolls. Ten d20s and a percentile roll: two 17s, three 16s, one 15, one 14, two 9s, one 2 (decided to 2 would be Walf getting bodied by a dreadwing early on and spending a good part of the battle underneath a corpse as a result). And then I rolled 20%, like three times (the additional after the first was curiosity and then see how long it took to get something else). The Dark Army was not having a good day…at all. Eventually rolled a 50%, but that was the highest I got, so in the end, and with the number of high rolls on the protag side…the Dark Army just got outclassed in this fight. I think I'll keep using this format or at least similar for future battles, making them a bit more dynamic.

As for story notes, This one gave me more issues than I would like to admit. But once I started going, it just sort of flowed. About giving Spyro and Cynder Last Names (Family Names, really), given that this story is more in line with Human characteristics, I figured it would make sense. Now granted, are those their actual last names in this Cannon? No, they are not. They are the last names given to them by those that "raised" them (Dragonflies and Apes are not going to give what we would consider a regular last name). Don't like it? I'm sorry, it's a little late now.

Moving on, I do hope you enjoyed the fight. It will not be the last. Unlike TDJD, WoF's Arcs are a bit more based on what's going on. In other words, we are done with Arc 1 (Explore, Meet, Regroup) and are not on Arc 2 (War Under The Trees). This is very likely going to go drastically differently (in terms of timeline for sure) than TDJD for one simple fact: The good guys are ground locked, while the enemy isn't! Also, there are a lot more fighters on the good guy's side.

Like a whole hell of a lot more. TDJD had, at the start, 1.3K fighters, with less than one-fourth sticking around for most of the fights afterwards (not even considering that the majority of them had limited experience fighting). Now granted, part of it was story purposes, but the fact that they last three straight days of fighting (technically three and a half) like they did is a big thing for an average fighting number of only 300 against a force of more than 30 times their size (my notes have more like 33 times and ok, at the start for the main ambush it was 13 times, but even with the most generous numbers I could imagine at the end it was still like 16-26 times depending on if I'm being extraordinarily generous or only mildly).

But for this story, I have 1000+ battle-hardened "dragons" (not even considering that these guys do not need to worry about equipment to fight because of how well they know their magic. That's not to say they can't be made better with proper equipment, as we'll see later in the story, but for right now, it's very much better that they don't have it) ready to fight. And more importantly, Keep fighting. They may be uncoordinated in terms of formation fighting right now, but they make up for it by being deadly in general.

And then there's the Foxmen, I'm still not sure of their combat numbers, But I'm leaning on A few hundred Archers (these guys are usually hunters but not right now), maybe like 300 (possibly add on another two to three hundred if they include the hunters in training and not quite adults who can at least use bows) then their more common (City militia if you will) have at most 700 (maybe another one or two hundred if all they do is basic pike/spear training and call up the able-bodied males. Not the females. They're the last line of defense for their young, elderly and infirm, so by tradition don't fight with their male counterparts. At least for these Foxmen). And then their elite forces (those boomerang wielding forces) I would stretch to that number being 150 (200 if they skip the last couple steps of those in training) at the best of times. If I add that up, that makes ~2,150 warriors (fox and awakened) ready to kick, but (with about 550 that can act as a sort of reserve or reinforcement force with only a bit of training). It's still not a great match-up numbers-wise, but I think it will be fun to see how this goes. (Also, those numbers are rounded for simplicity's sake so the exact numbers might be a bit higher)

This will be a War Campain, for a definition of the terms anyways. One, I hope I do credit.

Anyways, that's all I've got for now. So until we meet again, Happy Reading.