The morning had come, the sun was up, and the army of apes and their mounts were flying through the air again. Khan had to fight not to growl as he looked out over his forces. The harassment the day before had poked massive holes in his formations, and the less said about the damages to their supplies, the better. They were not in danger of being wiped out or running out of the necessities, but he was worried that they would have to start rationing if they could not finish their mission with all haste.

As it was, they had taken flight at first light to try and keep ahead of the dragons. From what he had seen of the dragons the day before, they were young and quite possibly just this side of looking unhealthy. So there was an excellent chance the action yesterday was the last bit of fight they had in them. This assessment was reinforced by what he had seen from the aftermath of the battle at the village. These dragons kept pulling out last-resort options, and even the mighty dragon could only do so many of those so close together.

Khan let out a quiet snort as he realized that the dragon(s) which had stemmed the swarm from entering the cave with that horrific explosion was probably still feeling it and not likely leading these dragons. He sure as heck had not seen any fire dragon who looked strong enough to do it. Not even the strongest fire dragon he had received a report on was strong enough to incinerate a commander wholesale. That the commanders usually did not survive the follow-up was more an indication of the persistence than that dragon's power.

In the ape general's opinion, the biggest threat was firmly the purple menace and the escaped slave who traveled with him. Those two had more than proven that not even his best commanders were enough to stop them once they got going. But that made sense even to him. They had faced the King himself and even went on to face the Dark Master. Of course, his partly commanders would not be enough. He knew this; that was why the standing orders were not to try and kill them but to drain them enough so that they could be overwhelmed.

Most of the rank and file of the fools standing against him would be killed; that was always going to happen. However, the strongest among them, those who were leading them, those creatures would be taken alive. Beaten, bruised and defeated, but alive. He would force them to watch as he executed all those they tried to protect, and then he would drag them back to his master and watch as the dark wolf played with them all.

Khan's smile was feral as he thought of the glorious sight of watching the dark wolf enslave those who stood against him. The happy thought of what he could do with the newly enslaved dragons prompted him to motivate his forces forward; he ordered his scouts ahead. It was more than time to cast the net.

They had some defeated dragons to hunt!

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As Spyro banked around another tree, he looked at the dragons he was flying with. He had to admit, he was impressed. Each and every one of them had to be tired down to the bone, and yet here they were, flying in (very loosely) a formation. Most of the dragons which had flown with them yesterday were still there. A few had swapped out for one reason or another, but they were still going. The Foxes were indifferent, more used to the physical labor than their larger counterparts; to a tee, the warriors were the strong silent type.

The purple dragon could not discredit those that had decided not to fight this morning. They had all been woken up way too early and made to set out before the sun was up. The more distance the slowest of them could make, the better they would have it. And it was even knowing that Spyro himself almost did not want to get up. While definitely much more used to fighting and flying than all those around him, even he was unused to these back-to-back days of fighting and flying.

Sure, the gap between days flying and days fighting was small for his first two "solo" adventures. More so for the week leading up to the Eternal Night than the overarching combined month-long slog of looking for the guardians and then getting crash-course trained by them. Trying to compare those adventures or the two, more three, days of the leadup to facing Malefor to what they were doing now was like comparing fruit to meat; you just can not. That did not mean he was any less sore, but it was currently a tossup of at which of three points he was sorer. Said three points being after freeing Cynder, after defeating Malefor, and now.

Overall, Spyro was just glad none of them was one big bruise. Well, maybe those two drakes who got a war hammer straight on might feel that way. But that was why the recommendation for all was to do everything possible not to fight the Ape General. The damage anyone would take trying to take him out was not worth it, especially since he would likely have the support of the rest of the army.

Spyro was confident Cynder or himself, or heck the both of them combined, could take the general out in a straight fight. Spyro also felt that Marshal might be able to if the conditions were right. That dragon was wasting so much magic that each of his attacks made Spyro want to cringe. From his talks with Cynder, they both felt that as the older dragon got more experienced, he would likely be quite the powerhouse.

But they had to deal with what the ancestors had provided them right now. And that included a horde of dragons with very little, if any, training in magic and claws. All being led by a wind dragon who was making things up as he went along. How they were getting away with it was something Spyro wanted to ask the ancestors directly.

(To be noted, many of the ancestors watching were just as confused as Spyro, so the answer the purple dragon would have gotten would have been gibberish. The cause of that confusion was for reasons far beyond all but the oldest among them's current understanding. That did not mean those that could were not trying to help with their normal nudges, just that they were very uncertain about what was about to happen. And since there was at least one Listener amongst those below, the ancestors had to be extra careful with their nudges lest they disrupt a balance or displace something important.)

Spyro looked again at the group. At the current point, they were moving around where they figured the Ape Army was. The plan for the second day was much the same as the first day, except this time, they had a better idea of what they were doing. On top of that, the plan was slightly more coordinated.

Spyro and Cynder were sticking with Marshal; they provided a bit more strength to Marshal's group. They had learned yesterday that of the four hunter-killers, Marshal's was indeed the weakest in terms of physical and magical power.

Horhe and Harlid's had affirmed their physical strength with gusto. Sadly outside of Horhe, Harlid, and one or two others, their magical force was by far subpar. Given how macho this group had been acting, not many were all that worried about them, they liked to be close and personable, and it seemed to be working.

Carmeta and Walf's group was the weakest in terms of physical strength, but their magic more than made up for it. Spyro did not entirely know what a Sniper was, but he understood that those in that group were happy to call themselves such a thing and prove that their long strikes were nasty given the opening.

Luanda and Carmeta's group had turned out to be the strongest overall, though. Cynder almost went with their group for the day but had decided against it for a simple reason; they did not need the second half of a one-two punch. The two dragoness had created and organized their group to conduct a hit-disorient-second strike-eliminate strategy and executed it to near perfection. The most they had to worry about was being caught unaware when they were setting up the next ambush. And even then, they would probably have the easiest time breaking out because they had the physical and magical strength to do terrible, terrible things to their enemies.

But Marshal's group, they were all flyers. They were, on average, more fragile physically and could only burst so much magic out at a time before the distraction caused their flying ability to degrade in a wrong way. With Spyro and Cynder there, they could at least provide rear-guard support or even make doubly sure anything that was the target was destroyed. Marshal had told the two of them that he was playing a delicate dance between disaster and success with every strike his group did. So every little bit that the legendary couple could provide was something that helped to lean the scales a little more to the not dying side.

Spyro did not tell the drake, but he felt Marshal could probably do more on his own than he could with the entire group combined. The purple dragon was unsure if this was more an indication of how strong Marshal was or just how weak everyone else was. He leaned more towards the latter.

A shift in the formation caught Spyro's eye; Marshal was redirecting slightly to the side and upwards. Looking around, the younger male could see why: the ape army had finally sent out their chaser patrols. They were way off of the formation's flight, but the wind dragon was extra careful. If they wanted to strike the army's rear, the formation had to take sweeping paths around—no use diverting attention needlessly.

The formation flew silently for a little bit longer. Spyro had to admit that it was impressive from his position on the edge, but he also hated the silence. The day before, there had been some banter, but as the day went on, it had gotten quiet. The purple dragon had to remember repeatedly; no matter how sore he must feel, the others were probably worse.

When one had something to do, they felt it less. When they had time to themselves like this, it was a slightly different story. Whenever Spyro looked to the other side of the formation to Cynder, he would see her looking over the rest, just as worried as him. They were doing what they could, yet it would still likely not be enough.

Another shift from Marshal caught his attention. The wind dragon was craning his head, looking in the same direction Spyro saw their target. The Ape Army was in range.

The wind dragon shifted the flight again as he shout-whispered to the formation, "Here we go, just like yesterday. Fly fast, and don't stop. If you collide, disengage quickly and get back to the group. We're aiming specifically for the dreadwings which are the most weighed down."

Spyro noticed the many nods; they were ready to go again.

The formation arched upwards and started to spread out a little more. And then, not quite over the army or directly from behind, but, above and from the side, Marshal rolled into a bank and dove towards the Ape Army.

The Young Dragon Army (as their fox companions had started to call them) were on the attack again.

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Khan was getting sick of these dragons! He was even more furious at the fact that he was wrong yet again!

He had seen the formation of dragons and their fox companions diving on his army too late to give warning. By the time he was ordering a shift in the army, the dragons were already diving past and swiping at his Supplies. And when the army finally got over their own shock and executed his orders, the dragons were already breaking off and leaving his forces behind. For their work, a handful of dead dreadwings and apes but three times that number were injured and lost even more precious supplies.

Khan almost ordered a chase when he realized something. This was one group. There had been four main groups of fighters the day before, with the occasional random traps for his scouts.

There was a possibility they were down to just this one group, but the ape general had not survived this long by hoping for the best. If it was one group, he could probably ignore them for the most part. But if not, he would have to change something. The problem was what could he change and how.

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Marshal held back a groan as he landed amongst the convoy. It was around mid-day, and his group needed to eat something before they went back out. They had made several more passes that morning, and while there were no injuries, the constant flying was starting to get to them all.

The wind dragon looked around the convoy. Even as he landed, he had to start walking immediately not to get run over. The convoy never stopped; they could not. Every trap, every distraction they were throwing at the apes was only slowing them down so much. From the last time his group had struck at the army, said army was not quite gaining, but they were also not losing ground yet either.

Thinking of the army as he moved over to where Kean was rationing out their supplies, Marshal was both concerned and happy. Their attacks seemed to be doing something, but something felt off now. The day before, from everything he had heard, they had almost free reign with their attacks. Now though, now it felt...different. The wind dragon could not quite put his paw on it.

As he walked up to the poison dragon, his face must have portrayed something. As Kean was handing the younger dragon something to eat, he asked, "Penny for your thoughts?"

Marshal sighed lightly; he chewed lightly on the food he was given before responding, "I'm not sure. It feels like...everything is going to plan more or less, but…."

Kean's head leaned to the side slightly, "But you're waiting for the other shoe to drop?"

Marshal nodded, "In a manner of speaking, yes. Yesterday was great; we caught them unprepared so many times."

"But not today?"

Marshal shook his head, "No, they weren't ready for us today. Have you heard from the others?"

"A few, Harild sent a few of his group back, one of them had a broken bone, and the rest were pretty banged up. Carmeta's come a few times. Both groups said more or less the same as they did yesterday."

Marshal growled out a hm before responding properly, "Ok, I'll have to accept that for now."

Kean chuckled at the younger dragon, "You don't have to, Marshal. I'm of a similar opinion to yourself. But I can't think of a similar situation in history, so I'm leaning more towards us being lucky and that neither has our enemy."

Marshal hmed again, "Maybe, except for two things. One, we can't take the history we know; it's different here. How the Dark Army will respond to anything is unknown to us. Also, I don't know about you, but I'm rarely all that lucky."

Kean laughed, "Come on, Marshal, we've all had some pretty bad luck. I'd Say we're due for a turnaround by now. Besides, I'm sure that with the number of us here, we can outweigh your lousy luck by sheer mass alone!"

Marshal cracked a light smile as he chuckled, "I guess you're right. I'll have to remember that."

Kean tapped the wind dragon's shoulder with his wing, "That's the spirit. Who knows, if you all can keep this up, maybe you can take out the army wholesale! Wouldn't that be something to brag about!"

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The sun was going down, and Khan had ordered an early camp again. All throughout the day, more and more reports of his patrols and hunter-killers being ambushed. And that did not even cover the ever-present presence of those long-range attacks on his main force and the fly-by attacks on his supplies from that one annoyingly fast group.

This army was starting to bleed. Each attack on its own was not enough to break his army, but as the damage was adding up, it was becoming more and more difficult. If he could not figure out something, some way to respond and stem the flow of losses, he would have to start splitting his army.

Only day two, and he had lost easily a fourth of his creatures and about a third of his supplies. Of his remaining forces, easily a third was injured. It was getting to the point where Khan would have to order his commanders to break the injured off into a new force to stop slowing down the main army. But the Ape General was uneasy about doing that. Even an injured creature could pose a threat to his targets, and he was loth to give up even more of his numbers advantage.

So with his limitations in mind, Khan had to come up with something. He refused to return to the Dark Wolf with his army torn to shreds without something to show for it.

Throughout the day, the Ape General noticed that the pattern was almost an exact copy from the day before. When he realized this, Khan had been hesitant to order a change in how his army was operating. He needed to know for sure what was happening. So instead of changing, he gave orders similar to the day before and but also had some of his reserve scouts to shadow everything that was sent out.

Of course, some of those scouts never reported back, but that was the gamble he was taking. Khan needed any information on his counterpart's movements and tactics he could get. Only then did the ape general have a chance of responding.

He had one final piece to his puzzle that he needed to figure out. Khan needed to know if his enemy would repeat everything from the day before.

When he had ordered camp, Khan had also ordered lookouts. He was still not sure if the dragons would be so bold as to attack his camp again. But if they did, he at least wanted to make sure they could respond, even just a little bit faster.

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The sun was giving its last bit of light up. And a large flight of young dragons, with warrior foxes upon their back, were flying as high as they could. They could see the glowing fires of the ape army below them, and they were anxious to do some terrible things to those creatures.

Cynder had to resist sighing as the dragons around her started to sike themselves up for the dive to come. Unlike the night before, they had grabbed every combat-capable dragon for this attack. This included some of their less injured and those that had been acting as scouts. Basically, it was a massive attempt to repeat their initial ambush the morning before, just while the apes were camping.

The female half of the Legendary Couple had tried to advise not making this attack. It would have been better to have a little more time to recover for everyone else. Sadly, she had been the only one. Despite the near-constant fighting and lack of downtime, everyone felt the fight was going their way. So why not do as much damage now as they could.

So here they were, attack once more.

At least they had accepted the idea of attacking from a different angle than they had last night. Last night they had struck out from the edge of the camp. This time, they flew above in the darkness of the forest to attack from above. That was about as far as their plan went.

Cynder became doubly sure that the plan had not evolved in anyone's mind when groups of dragons started to bank and dive on the army with zero coordination.

She had to resist growling as she noticed the first ones to dive were those that had been fighting with Harlid and Horhe. Muscle heads, the lot of them. Seeing that someone was attacking first, the rest of the dragons, of course, had to follow suit. Soon everyone was diving, Cynder right along with them.

Cynder almost missed it, but just before the forward most dragons started to breathe their element down upon the army below them; she noticed what she would swear was a pawful of apes looking directly at them and seemed to be giving out calls of warning. Even if they did what she thought they were doing, the call came too late. The dragons were in the midst of the army.

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Khan was getting tired of reigning in roars of rage. He figured the dragons would be coming, but he was not ready for them to dive from above into the midst of it!

The transition from the dark night to bright pillars of death had come with only the barest of warning from his lookouts. But given the majority had been at the edge, he was willing to give the watches a pass this one time. For now, he had to force back the incursion of scales from his army.

Gripping his war hammer, Khan began to leap and bound through his force. He was on the closest cluster before any dragon could respond.

The ape general swung his war hammer in an upward slash with a roaring warcry, catching an unaware lightning dragon in the belly. While the dragon was thrown up and back, it was further into the dragon cluster. So instead of giving chase, he swung around and grabbed at another dragon, poison this time. He got a hold of the dragon's wing spine.

With a firm hold, and the dragon roaring in pain, Khan used his immense strength to swing the dragon by the wing joint into another dragon. He almost kept a hold of the dragon he had by the wing spine. He could easily use the dragon's mass like a club. But he had decided that throwing it would do more damage, so that's what he did.

All the while, he had started to smile. This is what he liked; this is what he craved, to be able to destroy the accursed dragon menace with his own hands.

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Marshal restrained from swearing as he heard the uptick in pained-filled roars. Someone was facing something they really should not be fighting. So with a turn, he swung his tail around, bisecting an ape and releasing an Air Slash to either force back or kill any hostile near him. Now clear, the wind dragon pushed himself into the air to try and see what the heck was going on.

Not in the air for even a second, and he could already see the problem. At the edge of the dragon horde, dragons were tossed around as if they weighed next to nothing. They needed help, and Marshal figured he might as well if that was where the fighting was.

The closer he got, the more he could see what the problem was. The same giant war hammer-wielding ape caused him to call the retreat for the morning and night ambushes yesterday. And considering the damage the ape was doing, he had been right to call the retreat back them.

The wind dragon could already see five dragons that had been tossed around like rag dolls and looked like they were unable to get up. Three others had been battered back but were at least trying to get up. One of the warrior foxes was also there, but it looked like it was all he could do to use his boomerang to shield himself from the blows.

Before Marshal could get close enough, Horhe found out where the fight was. The fire dragon entered the contest with what Marshal was figuring had to be the general with a roaring flame breath as he jumped at the ape. Marshal could not see exactly what was happening, but he could see the ape's response, or more accurately, the lack thereof.

The Ape took the breath head-on and was covered in flames. The flames billowed in the same area, and Marshal was able to tell that instead of being incarcerated by the fire like most of the other apes who Horhe breathed on, the inferno was having problems hurting the ape. This became even more obvious as a substantial meaty ape paw reached through the flames and grabbed onto Horhe's snout, forcing the dragon's mouth to close.

Horhe gave out a yip of surprise, and if Marshal saw things correctly, the fire dragon was starting to tremble in fear. The tremble became plain to see when despite the ordinarily strong and tough fire dragon's attempts to break loose, the ape was not letting his prey go.

The ape general brought his war hammer up, clearly intending to smash Horhe's skull in.

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He had one; more importantly, it was one of the dragons which his scouts had said had been leading the more brawl oriented of the groups attacking his forces. Khan did not care who the dragon caught in his grip was. All he cared about was that this dragon would be dead soon.

The dragon was strong, to a point. Its flames manage to singe his air a bit, but the enchantments on his armor protected him with ease. And not only that, the dragon had tried to challenge him with a contest of strength! The foolishness of this dragon was great. He would eventually capture some of these dragons; the Dark Wolf would have uses for them. But that would be for later, once he had broken the army's spirit properly and was able to have more leeway.

For now, however, this one had to die.

AN: Yes, I'm ending it there.

I had a few minor issues with this one. A couple of times, I could not figure out how I wanted some parts portrayed or who's perspective to use. Overall though, I think this worked out. As it was, I was a bit unsure if this chapter would only have the second day or have parts of the third. But as the chapter got longer, I decided just the one day (mostly) would do.

Fun fact, most of this was writing while I was bouncing down a highway. It's a lot of fun having to rely on a phone's hotspot to be able to work on your typing, but hey, needs must and all that. The fact that I completely forgot to post this back then is another matter...oops.

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