Marshal smothered a groan as he leaned against a tree trunk. He could do that now, the day before they had started to get to the edge of the Giant's Forest. The trees were still significant, but Marshal would compare them more to the Redwoods than the monstrosities they had traveled through. So instead of miles high with giant root complexes, these new trees had started at one mile high, and small bumps in the ground indicating the root structures. They were getting smaller the further they went, but the change was gradual.
While being able to lean against a tree was nice, that did not stop Marshal from being sore. All the fighting and flying was catching up to him, say nothing on having to wake up early every morning so that they could get moving. And that did not even cover that the others were still looking up to him. He was still doing his best not to show how much all of this was getting to him, but it was becoming harder and harder. Yet here was, at the edge of the slowly waking convoy, ready to start all over again.
The night before had been a wake-up call for many. Despite the dangers, many a dragon had still thought this was going to be easy. They had refused to acknowledge the possibility that they could get seriously injured, let alone die. The near-critical condition of those that faced the Ape General, to say nothing of the confession that Horhe made, had revealed just how dangerous what they were doing was.
Marshal had tried to warn them; he had even spoken on length. But it did not matter if he had lost his voice in trying to warn everyone; they probably would have not fully believed him until it had smacked them square in the face. And it had, with all the force of a literal war hammer and the groans and cracks of broken bones.
Claw had told him they were probably still two days away from their destination. He had also warned them all that the last day would be the most dangerous. It was nothing but plains. That meant no cover and no hiding. Their pursuers would know precisely where they were. No amount of traps, false trails, and distractions would protect them—only speed.
This, in Marshal's mind, gave them one more day. One more day to create as large of a gap as possible between them and the Apes. They needed as much as they could reasonably get. The more time they could create now, the more grace period they would have for their run. The best scenario Marshal could dream of; they would be close enough to safety by the time the apes caught up to them that their enemy would have to break off for fear of counter-attack. The other side of the coin was that they would be jumped almost as soon as they started running.
Marshal was sure everyone knew the stakes. Even the youngest, barely out of toddler children, seemed to know something was off.
A voice broke Marshal's musing, "Still going out?"
Marshal turned to look at the voice, of all the creatures he had not expected it to be Horhe. The fire dragon had walked up next to him and was staring into the darkness of the predawn forest.
Marshal released a light sigh before he responded, "Yes. Even if I have to do this alone, I swore I was going to do everything possible."
Horhe was quiet for a bit before spoke up, "I hate you." Marshal raised an eyeridge, even as the fire dragon kept talking. "I hate you. You're a nerd. You're supposed to be weak and cowardly. Easy to boss around, do what I couldn't be bothered."
Marshal smirked as the fire dragon tapered off, "And yet?"
Horhe growled out, "And yet you're not. You're strong; the idiots back there listen to you. You're not scared, and trying to boss you around when you know better is the definition of stupid. I hate you."
Marshal chuckled lightly before sighing, "You'd be surprised, Horhe. Physically, I'm much weaker than you. How I'm stronger than you magically, I don't know. And as for being 'not scared.' Honestly, I'm terrified. I've wanted to curl up and pretend the world doesn't exist for a good bit now. But I can't, my fight or flight won't let me anymore. It's either respond or...or be weak." He shook his head, "And I can't be weak right now. So I respond, I fight. I fight for the chance that others don't."
Horhe snorted, "I don't care how you put it. It doesn't make me hate you less." A smirk started to form on his face, "In fact, it might make me hate you even more. But that's fine, give me more reason to make sure you don't die. You have to be alive for me to hate you."
Marshal started to turn and look at the fire dragon with a growing expression that showed he thought the older creature was crazy. But was interrupted by a new voice.
"I've heard worse reasons. But I guess it will work."
The two males turned to see the dark visage of Georgia moving to join them.
The shadow dragoness was smothering a smirk as she drew up next to them. "Me personally, I'm just want to kill something. Better it be something wanting to kill me than something someone actually cares about."
Marshal had a raised eyeridge, but before he could say something, someone else came up to them, speaking, "I don't know how she says that with a straight face."
The three of them looked to see the smiling visage of Kean joining them.
Before Georgia could glare the poison dragon down, he continued speaking. "While I do love the convoluted reasons for fighting. I think you'll find that most fight for a straightforward reason. They want to protect their family and friends or get revenge for them in some cases. After all, most of us actually like people."
Marshal sighed, "Point to Kean." The light groan of agreement he got from the other two was more than enough for the wind dragon. They were all quiet for a little before Marshal sighed again, "Either way, after what happened last night, I don't know how many we'll get who want to go out again."
A light cough from behind the four of them caught their attention. As they turned around, they quickly found the source to be a smirking Carmeta. Their attention went from the electric dragon to the growing group of other dragons gathering behind her.
Carmeta realized where their attention was, so she spoke up, "So, about that not getting people to volunteer." Her smirk was even in her usually bubbly voice.
Marshal, meanwhile, was slowly gaining a surprised expression as he observed the growing numbers. He could only wonder what in the name of all that was holy was motivating these creatures. Yet here they were, ready to bring the hurt to the apes chasing them.
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Khan had to resist smirking as his army flew through the early morning air. He had plans; he had plans on top of plans. All geared towards countering the fool dragons. If the dragons thought they could go another day of chipping at his army like they were, they were going to be in for an awakening.
He had already ordered his forward scouts and combat patrols out. It had been explained to them, in great detail, on what they were to do. They were also informed what would happen if they ruined his plan; they would meet his war hammer up close and personal.
The most significant change Khan had done was a complete shift in how his army fley. Instead of one giant blob. They now flew in what the ape general was calling a Guard Formation. The majority of his flyers flew in a tight flat formation. Meanwhile, the rest were scattered in small group formations around the primary formation in a randomized pattern, each group flying differently.
Khan's aim was not to protect; he knew trying to do that would be next to worthless against the dragons he was facing. No, the ape general's plan was response. His plans were perfect.
The sudden roar of an elemental explosion was the first signal he had. It was also the signal for his Quick Reaction Force (QRF), hovering away from the leading group into action.
Before Khan was fully able to swing around to see the attackers, they had already flown past the formation; their attack run done. Instead of ordering chase like the day before, he instead watched as a group of dreadwings dived from the direction the dragons were retreating towards to attack themselves.
Their cries of pain were music to his ears.
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"Keep pressure on there and make sure it clots up good! We're almost out of bandages, so use some of that moss the foxes have to keep it stable!"
Kean had to resist swearing. He had thought the days before were terrible enough. But this, this was something else. Almost as soon as a hunting party would go out, another was coming back caring injuries of all forms. A few had almost lost limbs!
And it was not just the dragons, but several of the foxes were also taking some nasty hits. Heck, one had taken an ape explosive directly to the chest. Marshal had flown that one back ahead of the rest of the group himself. It was probably the only reason the fox was still alive, even if said fox was unconscious from the third-degree burns covering most of the front of his body. It had been all they could do to cover him with all of the Aloe/alginic acid they could find/create.
How the convoy had not been slowed down because of all this, Kean would probably never be able to figure out. The most he could say was that the constant movement was perhaps making things more complicated than it needed to be. As it was, they had kept several carts for the most serious of injuries instead of getting rid of them to lighten loads as the plan had called for.
He just hoped the stream of injuries would stop soon.
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Marshal pulled sharply left to avoid the dreadwing aiming for his wing. His follow-on Wind Cannon managed to disorient and toss the offending attacker into a tree, and two follow-on Explosive Cannons managed to finish it off. The wind dragon was breathing heavily as he swung around to see if anyone needed help and was thankful to see the few remaining apes were being taken care of by contracted bursts from Luanda and Georgia's group.
The counter ambushes and QRF actions being done by the apes had caught them all off guard, and by the time they needed something for lunch, every leader had come to an agreement that they needed to change their actions. Unconsciously they had all delayed their afternoon actions so that they could meet up and come up with a response. They came up with two.
The first to be floated was to stop attacking and concentrate on just getting out of the area. The rear scouts reporting increased harassment had shot that idea down.
The second idea was to instead team-up. There were four attackers, so they would do something similar to what the apes were doing: have a QRF/counter-ambush force. They would have a group hit/attack as they usually would, and when the apes responded, another group would bounce on the apes to either relieve or even the odds more. A quick agreement had been arranged that all four would rotate between each other for who was attacking and which group was supporting to try and provide as few predictable actions as possible.
It seemed to work at first. But by now, it was getting later, and the sun was getting closer and closer to being evening, and the apes general had shown he had a response at the ready. Just as they were grouping up, so were the enemy.
This last fight had started with Wolf and Carmeta striking at long range at a lagging supply group like normal, only for a wing of apes to bounce them. As the "Snipers" Worked to pull out, Harlid and Horhe bomb rushed in to relieve them. Only have the apes which had been escorting the Supplies to jump on them. Thankfully, Marshal's "Strikers" had been nearby and heard the fight and adjusted to help out occupy the offending fast fliers and let Herlid and Horhe get their "Brawlers" out. And then an ape combat patrol which had been on the other side of the supply convoy from where they had initially been struck from had joined in on the fight. Thankfully Luanda and Georgia's "Ambushers" had already been shadowing the Strikers, so they were able to counter.
Marshal's head was already on a swivel, wondering if they were about to do a round-robin of this all over again. He hoped not; He was unsure if his Strikers, let alone the Ambushers, had the stamina to go another round so quickly. This was proven doubly so as he witnessed two foxes working together get one of the Brawlers, who had been unable to get away, back up. The male, even from as far as Marshal was, looked covered in bruises, had a few scales which looked like they were ready to fall off and reveal open wounds underneath with all the blood coming out and breathing in what he could only describe as wheezing without the injury to go with it.
That male was by far the worse off, but he also was not the only Brawler still there. Marshal could also see two snipers slowly extracting themselves from a cluster of trees they had been using as a fort for most of the fight. This fight had been bad enough that even in his mind, he could not call it a skirmish; it had turned into a straight-up engagement.
The wind dragon took another look at the sun. They still had hours of light left. The last two days, they had fought almost all the way to dusk.
"Marshal, It looks like we're clear."
Marshal swung his head over to look at the purple dragon floating up to him. The male member of the legendary couple looked worse off than his partner, who the older male could see flying off in the distance doing what looked like one last perimeter sweep of the battlefield. As the day had gone on, the two had deviated more and more in their tactics, and it showed in their conditions.
Spyro had been slowly transitioning towards a more brawler-heavy fighting style. His ability to use both his Earth and Ice Magic to create solid shields and control battle space with any element had saved more than a few from serious injuries. But It also meant he had to use more magic to keep those shields up as well as take and give out more physical impacts alongside it. Marshal had started to notice several bruises scattered across the younger male's body, as well as the inflammation slowly building around the claws. Spyro was in every fight, and it showed.
Cynder, on the other paw, fits in very well with the Ambushers or Strikers. Her preferred method of fighting was to make full use of her agility and mobility, and it showed. Her ability to take out troublesome enemies had proved invaluable multiple times. Whenever someone was getting overwhelmed, she was there to give them a way to escape, and then she was gone again. She technically used less magic because of this, but only because the majority of her spells were quick and did not take much magic to get the intended effects. But it also meant what hits she did take, were much harsher. The female's bruises were much more pronounced than her male partner's but in much fewer numbers.
When the two fought together, Marshal would equate them to Spyro being a sword and shield warrior while Cynder was the quick action rogue. That was not to say that, at times, the two of them would resort to taking over for the other, but the formation of Spyro tanks while Cynder deals had become their fallback and very subconscious pattern of action.
Marshal's evaluation of the couple must have shown on the face because Spyro seemed to get confused and looked at his red tented claws. "Ah, yea." He looked back at Marshal. "Don't worry about us, Marshal. We're tuff. We can keep going if we need to."
Marshal half glared at the young dragon, not sure if he should believe him. But eventually, he sighed and shook his head, "It doesn't matter. We need to regroup. This…" He motioned to a group of dragons below them who were slowly coming to terms they no longer had adrenaline fueling them, "...cluster fuck needs to be addressed, and everyone is going to need time to recover. We're going to regroup with the convoy. Hopefully, the others who went before us will as well. We need to stop early today. I have NO idea how to deal with this right now and need time to think."
Marshal was worried Spyro would put up a tough front, but thankfully the sigh of relief from him informed the wind dragon otherwise. "Thank goodness. I could use the bit of extra time to recover."
Marshal nodded, "You probably aren't the only one. No, let's get everyone moving." He took a breath before calling out, "If you can't fly, sound off! We need to get moving, everyone back to the convoy!"
The groans of pain were the primary response, but the orders were headed and started moving again. Those with the worst injuries were called out and carried while the rest made the slow process to the sky and away. The most non-disabled among them, Marshal leading, flew rearguard to ensure they were not being followed.
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Claw had to give it to these kids; they fought hard. Despite over half of them taking some form of minor injury, they kept fighting. Despite losing almost a tenth of their fighting numbers to significant injuries, They kept going.
Granted, his warriors were not faring much better. But they were trained for this their whole lives. These young dragons had not.
And despite how bad this day had gone, despite the morale being a bit questionable amongst several of them after the drastic turn the day had gone, they were still planning their next step.
It was the end of the day; they had made it to the edge of the forest. They had capped right at the border, just inside the tree line. Before them was a vast plain, tomorrow they would have to blitz across it or die. He could see the sun just starting to touch the horizon.
The fact that the kids were planning was not a problem. What Claw was more impressed with was that several of them were planning not for tomorrow but for one last strike that night!
"I know we can't just sit here, but trying more of the same is going to get us all killed." Luanda was the most fierce in not doing one last night's attack. The last one had gone poorly, and with the casualties they had taken throughout the day, they did not have the strength.
"And I'm not saying that's what we do. Just that we try SOMETHING. They gained on us today, and we need to put them on as much of a back foot as we can for tomorrow." Horhe, knowing the dangers, was still willing to risk it one last time for just one more chance. And Harlid, silent though he was, seemed to agree.
A harsh sigh from Marshal silenced the two of them, "I get it! We all get it." He signed again.
Claw could understand where the wind dragon was coming from. He had proven more than once he was trying his best to get them all out alive. He had even been the one to hard stop the attacks for the day after the last extensive engagement, even going so far as to order Kean to knock out anyone who tried. All in the name of making sure they did not start dropping because of over-exhaustion.
"Look, We all need rest. Tomorrow is going to be hell. They'll be on us almost as soon as they spot us. We're not faster than them, most of us anyways. My best hope is that the slowest among us will be only just slower than their average paise." Luanda was starting to look like a smug bug Marshal cut her off, "However! Horhe is correct; as it stands now, the Apes will be fully rested and more than able to jump us on their timeline. So! We will be attacking them tonight." He glared at Horhe before the fire dragon got his own smug look, "But we're doing it in a cautious manner, and we will not be doing it full force. And this time," he looked to Cynder. "This time, we will listen to everyone for this plan.
"Now, right now, I have the beginning of a couple of ideas…."
From there, they planned. And this time, out of respect and obligation, Claw decided to throw in a couple of ideas himself.
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Khan had to fight to keep his smirk off his face. His plans had worked. They had countered the dragon's annoying tactics. In contrast, he had not received a report on a positive kill on a dragon.
The information on the injuries his forces had handed out more than made up for that. From that alone, he knew more than a fair few of the limited number of enemies had been injured significantly enough that they would be unable to fight. They would be killed eventually anyway; why fret over them right now.
The ape general would admit, even if just to himself, that he was impressed with the response time of his enemy, though. They had figured out what was going on in under half a day and tried to counter it by mimicking his own tactics. It had undoubtedly caught him back-footed for a little bit, but he had already planned for such a thing. Granted, it had not been expected to be implemented so soon, but it still worked. A few hours before sundown, the last fight had undoubtedly been a surprising report to receive, but it was also a welcomed one. Such a fight would tire the dragons out long before they tired his forces out. He still vastly outnumbered them, after all.
Even with the known numbers advantage and the damage they had done throughout the day, Khan was still cautious. He had ordered camp a little over an hour after the last fight; he had received no report of the dragons and was worried they might be setting up another massive ambush.
As the main body of the army had been setting up camp, the scouts had gone out. While they had run into a couple of small traps, it looked like outside of a small rearguard patrol, they had called it quits for the day.
To Khan, this meant they had quite the field, tired and beaten for the day. He almost ordered his army forward again, but the camp was too set up by the time word came. He knew he would not be able to get near enough to threaten them in any significant manner.
So instead, the ape general had issued his orders for camp. His enemy had quite the field for the day; he could let his apes recover a little bit. That was not to say he was not worried they would try another night attack, but he had ordered sentries just in case.
Given the much smaller trees, he was less and more worried about fliers. Less concerned that they would have flown over the trees to reach them. More than that would give them higher hiding space. But this worked both ways, hence why the sentries were in the trees.
This was why when the first shouts of warning came, he was ready to respond—just not prepared for entire trees where those sentries were to go up in flames!
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Marshal flew high, watching a ring of fire grow as ape sentries called out. They were giving away their positions and allowing for someone to smite them. It had not taken long, and it had come from above the army instead of inside the forest to make it even better.
They had known flying in the sky would probably give a few of them away, but that worked both ways. A small group of Snipers with the best aim had flown as far away as they could and struck as soon as they saw an ape jump out of a tree to give warning. From there, it had been a matter of expanding the strike area as apes jumped out of the trees in shock, alarm, and for cover.
The next attack came as what looked to have been alert apes were getting ready to mount their dreadwings in response. This time the attack came from the forest. The remaining of their least magically exhausted Snipers reached out and struck at any apes looking to hit those flying.
At the same time, Concentrated masses of arrows and rocks flew from the Fox Hunters clearing those who looked to be the most armed at the edge of the camp.
Their salvo down a wave of dragons, Brawlers with a pawful of fox warriors, rushed forward. They aimed to strike hard physically at those the Snipers could not, then unleashed death via magic so that some of them could pull back.
Then just as some of the apes started to move to respond, the Snipers, which had stopped firing when the Brawlers went in, fired from a different portion of the camp's perimeter—this time was covering for Ambushes and the remaining fox warriors to strike. Meanwhile, the Brawlers finished pulling out of their first strike.
Just as the general looked to be ordering another reposition, the snipers and brawlers struck again.
This was their primary plan. The Sniper cover while those who could fight went in and caught attention, then as the response happened, started conducting a covered and organized fallback. At the same time as one group was falling back, the other group should have been repositioned and started attacking again to redirect attention. All the while, from various parts of the forest, the fox hunters would let loose a salvo of their long-range weapons before repositioning and doing it again.
This, of course, left one group out, the Strikers. Their job was twofold, and Marshal had split up his group accordingly. No group had any one job, but they could act between the jobs as they saw they could. One job was a mix of quickly providing cover/extraction if someone was having trouble getting out. The other was attacks of opportunity; if any one group of apes looked partially disorganized or looked like the supplies were open to a quick attack, then do, by all means, go for it.
Marshal had opted not to have any of the Strikers directly follow him. He, along with Spyro and Cynder, had been relegated to "oh shit." situations. In most minds, that meant distracting the General or large groups of the commanders when they decided to do something particularly aggressive. But it also went for instances when someone would choose to over-extend or when a Striker got clipped by a free-agent dreadwing deciding it wanted nothing to do with the ground and instead took its chance going after one of those dragons buzzing around.
Marshal was the first one to see such a thing, and so he dived in. And, like a wrecking ball, it brought death to the offending dreadwing. The dreadwing did not take long, and with a yell, for the Striker to "Get out." Marshal proceeded to take a page of Cynder's spellbook and launch himself into a raging tornado to cause damage while giving him wind to get back into the air. The spin made him a bit dizzy, of course, but it worked well enough that he was still up and away from the apes who were rapidly becoming aware of the dragon in their midst.
As he went up, he caught a bolt of lightning striking the ground as Spyro went in to help someone, and the rotation between the three of them began. It had not been planned or intended, but the three quickly fell into a pattern: one went in, one came out, one kept watch/recovered.
Later, much later, several dragons and foxes would credit their, not just survival, but sheer ability to get with only light injuries at worst, to those three. Cynder's disorienting rapid strikes from nowhere caused several ape commanders to hesitate, giving just a bit more time for some to get out. Spyro cacophony of elements created zones of death and cleared the way. All the while, Marshal's whumps and blasts of wind tossed around entire squads and some unfortunate battalions. Say nothing of the additional Tornado Breaths, Wind Cannons, Explosive Shots, Wind Slashes, and almost anything he could think of to get the job done.
However, as the battle went on, the three of them noticed they were going in more and more. Not just for the Strikers, but also the Ambushes and Brawlers. They knew they would not cause a knock-out blow when the plan was made, and the entire fight would be on a time limit. One hour was the max; if they made it to one hour, they would pull back no matter what. However long they got with that, was however long they got with it. It was up to each dragon/fox and their fellows fighting with them before that time limit to decide if they were too tired to continue.
The numbers started to drop noticeably after ten minutes. It was a trickle, but it was noticeable.
After almost forty minutes, Marshal had started to notice it to such a degree he was contemplating calling the retreat. The space between locations of the attacks was becoming less and less, allowing for the apes to move quickly to force them back. And not only that, but they had figured out there were only two groups, so the army had split into two major groups with others working as QRFs to disway the Strikers from doing any more damage. The dreadwings had been steadily taking to the sky to harass the strikers as well as the Spyro, Cynder, and Marshal. They had yet to reach a large enough number to be truly threatening, but the Strikers were being forced back and making helping difficult.
As Marshal swooped down to strike at a partially large group of dreadwings looking to rise to the sky, he began to affirm with himself to order the retreat. Just after dispersing the group and before he could start rising to gain altitude and give the order, motion caught his eye.
It was a good thing he looked because with a surprised call of "SHIT!" He tried to respond to the mass of a "flying" ape general.
The wind dragon barely had enough time to turn to face the war hammer-wielding ape, raised his forelegs into an X, and called his magic up to try and wrap around and defend himself. It was a good thing he did, for the general brought the hammer down with all the weight of the mightiest of sledgehammers.
Marshal's first coherent thought after the pain of being, effectively, "bitch slapped" back down to earth was closer to "Huh, I think I felt that magically." than it was to "oh fuck that hurt." That's not to say he did not feel the pain; he did take a war hammer hit and crashed into the ground at a reasonable speed.
But the pain was light enough; he was able to bring bearings, notice the giant shadow getting more prominent, and quickly conduct a yelped leading lunging-sideways roll out of the shallow crater he had created. He might have crashed into a nearby ape, but the sound and reverberating THUD of the general striking where he just was, caught more of Marshal's attention than anything else.
Back on his feet, Marshal had cried in surprise and ducked down as the general proved a lot quicker than he had any right to be and tried to conduct a horizontal slash at Marshal's head. Now down, near prone, on the ground, Marshal had the thought of "Distance!" crash through his brain.
A quick decision, and a bit of reckless abandonment for anything around him, Marshal roared out an Explosive Wind Connon directly in front of his face while pushing back with all four legs and a rapid beat of his wings.
He landed on his feet a few feet away, far enough away that when the general tried to conduct an upward strike, all he caught was air through the dust, wind, and tiny bit of fire. Marshal partially felt the backblast, but he more saw it as the visual obscurant was thrown out of the way.
Marshal was breathing heavily, trying to figure a way out of these, especially as he noticed a few apes moving to gather around him, but a shout from the general stopped him.
The general had pointed his war hammer at the wind dragon as he called out, "You have been both a worthy opponent and dagger in my side. The Dark Wolf will Feast on your flesh!"
Marshal had a raised eyeridge, confused at the proclamation of the ape general. This was the first he heard about any "Dark Wolf." He did not have long to think as the general drew his weapon back over his shoulder, grasped it with both hands, and gave a roaring war cry as he launched towards the wind dragon.
Though slightly disoriented, Marshal was somewhat more ready for the unnatural speed of the frankly way too giant ape before him, so with a cry of his own, he repositioned and intercepted the strike the flat of the tail end. The resound Clang echoed throughout the fight, but it also shook the bones of them both. Not that they noticed.
From there, the fight went into a rapid series of swings from the general, each one looking to get a good hit on Marshal. But Marshal was more and more ready for the ape's speed, and where he could with little effort, he dodged, and where he could not, he intercepted with his tail. Granted, he was doing so with yelps and cries of "oy," "hey," and "woy." And yet dodge them, he did.
With luck, Marshal would get enough room to launch a Wind Blast to try and disorient the ape, but the creature was challenging enough that such a low strengthened attack (even one as overpowered as Marshal's) was unable to do more than make him grunt in annoyance.
Eventually, Marshal decided to try something new. With a pivot on one foot, he swung around, calling his magic into his tail to try and add more power to his strike. A strike in which Marshal was fast enough to whip his tail around and slam it into the chest of the general. A resounding crack heralded the surprised ape as he was thrown a few feet back, grunting in pain.
Marshal had a few seconds to catch his breath, just a few. He realized he had room and went to try and get out. He was also a bit worried why neither Spyro nor Cynder had come to help.
Before Marshal could try and take off, the cry of multiple smaller apes cried out, and suddenly he was being swarmed from various directions by many, many apes. They came so quick and fast that he was resorting to claw, horn, tail, magic, and even his sheer body mass to keep them from dog-piling him. Try as he might, though, more than a few got through.
One of the larger commanders managed to grab his tail and weighted it down, and even as Marshal worked to snap it, and the new load on it, around like a blunging tool.
Several of the medium ones worked to grab his torso and stop him. Marshal tried to roll and slam this way and that to get them off him.
The smaller ones crapped his wings and finally started pinning him. A group jumped onto his back to add more weight. And then a few more grabbed his heck and worked to bring his head down so that they could finally pin his head to the ground.
Marshal groaned and heaved to stop them. But the weight of so many bodies was making it complicated. His body was groaning and creaking under the weight. And so he resorted to one last trick, his magic.
He had been using his magic to try and keep them off him, but now he could not use his head to direct it. So, he gave up on finesse and went full brute force. Still groaning, Marshal started to call on his magic, called on it to gather around him and within him. He was almost entirely pinned to the ground when the build of magic started to hurt. And so, with one last great push, Marshal let it loose with a mighty roar of sound and magic.
The volume of roar disoriented the grappling apes just a bit, but it was more the cacophony of a tornado that blasted out of and around Marshal, which removed them. Now standing proud with a snap-formed tornado around him, Marshal switched from a roar to gasping for breath. The tornado cut off almost instantly, no longer fueled. The wind dragon had no idea how he had done what he just did, and more it burned. Not just magically, but physically too. His whole body felt it, wielding that much magic so quickly hurt, it hurt a lot.
Distracted, as he was, even for the short amount of time it took to process this, let him open again. This time, instead of a swarm of apes, most of which were not in any condition to try and pin the disoriented dragon down, the next attacker was the general again. Recovered from his knockback and was pissed.
Marshal noted him too late. He was unable to call on his magic to defend himself, nor was he in a position to dodge entirely or even counter with his tail. No, the only action Marshal was able to come up with was block.
So, raising his left forearm, curling it back to provide as much coverage as possible, and protecting his head, Marshal took the full strike from the war hammer-wielding general.
All thought left the dragon's mind as the strike hit, for all he knew was PAIN!
00000000000000000000
Spyro grunted as he swung back into the sky, the last few of the Brawlers finally breaking free of the melee that had been stuck in for the last several minutes. He looked around as he did, trying to see if anyone else was having issues immediately around him. Or if he could see if Cynder had managed to finish helping the Ambushes, who had gotten stuck in a similar situation as the Brawlers at almost the same time.
The purple dragon was relieved to see his partner rising up as he was. But then he was worried; he did not see Marshal. Spyro had lost track of the wind dragon just before he had to dive to help the Brawlers. And more than that, he could not feel the dragon's magic signaling he was in a fight himself.
The purple dragon was about to signal his partner, hoping to coordinate and figure out where the wind dragon was. Before he could, an enormous tornado snapped formed somewhere near the center of the army, and along with it came the recognizable fury-laden roar of Marshal. When the tornado cut out just as quickly as it formed, that was when Spyro got concerned.
With a burst of magic to get him going, Spyro worked to rocket forwards to try and help Marshal before something happened. But he was too late. This was more than evident when the next thing he heard was not a roar of fury, or a roar of triumph, of a roar of pain.
And what a roar it was, so loud was the Roar that Spyro swore the very air vibrated. He had barely a second to contemplate on this as just as harsh was the roar, so too was the eruption of what Spyro would only describe as a mega-tornado. Unprepared as he was, there was little the purple dragon could but be captured and tossed around by winds stronger than any storm the young dragon had ever experienced in his life.
So destructive were the winds that even as he bounced, not crashed, bounced, off of apes and dreadwings alike, it was all he could do to make sure he was not knocked unconscious.
Just as he was starting to get his bearings finally and started to correct himself, so he was flying again, the tornado began to quiet down and soon vanish altogether.
Spyro worked to get his breathing under control as he started to glide and look around. All around him, apes and dreadwings and a myriad of their stuff were beginning to fall back towards the earth. Below them was a wrecked camp; the harsh winds have done much to destroy what repeated "controlled" attacks could not.
As he took it all in, Spyro almost missed Cynder coming up next to him. She looked a bit ruffed up thanks to the rudeness of what had just happened. But she also looked like she had been able to adapt to the sudden change in weather patterns much better than he had.
"What happened?"
Spyro started to shrug as he responded, "I probably know about as much as you do. Best I figure, Marshal."
Cynder looked around, then down at the ground, trying to find the wind dragon as she responded, "Think it had something to do with whatever caused him to cry out in pain?"
Spyro, now looking too, did his best not to sound worried, "Probably. Hopefully not as badly as I'm imagin….Wait, there!" He had spotted the wind dragon, standing of a sort right at the center of wind scarred lands.
The couple started to fly down to check on him. As they did, he must have noticed the sound of their wings because he looked up at him.
The couple almost stopped in shock. The older male had an almost blank expression on his face as the rest of him looked bone-tired, beaten, soar, probably heavily bruised, but his proto-armor made that hard to judge; he was even breathing far more heavily than they had ever seen him.
But most concerning of all was his left foreleg. The armor on that part of the leg was bloodied and torn, to say nothing of what they could see of the leg itself. The older, normally infallible-looking dragon, at least to them and many others, was also holding the leg close to his body and almost shaking, shaking as he had just come inside from nearly freezing to death.
He looked at them for a bit, no one speaking, the battlefield oddly silent as everyone and everything registered what apocalyptic force had just been unleashed and then suddenly vanished.
It was the cries of rage from apes that finally promoted the couple to act. Spyro dived down to get on the ground with Marshal before he spoke.
"Marshal! Can you move, We need to go!?"
The older looked at the purple dragon with cloudy eyes for a second before nodding slowly. And then, just as slowly started to work his wings.
Cynder kept hovering above them, watching as more and more apes started to recover from their shock, the army still very much an army. She could see no other dragons; the three of them looked to be alone. "The rest had probably retreated during and after the mega-tornado. We need to go now before those apes fully recover! Come on, Marshal, we need to go back, Now!"
His wings slowly moving, the wind dragon started to breathe in more uneven breaths. The eyes were rapidly blinking and quickly losing the cloudy look to them. As the eyes began to clear up completely, he was starting to huff and grunt, mostly from pain from the looks of things, as he started to become more and more coordinated in his rising flight. All the while, his left foreleg moving as little as possible and was held close to his chest.
With a cry of some emotion the couple could not place, the wind dragon burst forward into the proper flight, still breathing heavily and rapidly as he worked to get out of there as quickly as possible. The two of them quickly followed.
All three of them fled after those who had already retreated ahead of them into the darkness of the night. An army of apes and dreadwings raging in pain, horror, anger, and confusion behind them.
AN: Parts of this had to be rewritten several times. I could not figure out how I wanted this to go or how much I wanted to show or leave unknown.
Fun Fact for the day Alginic Acid is "A natural carbohydrate that comes from algae in seaweed. Used in medications to create a foam barrier that coats and protects the stomach." And is listed as something to use to help with Burns and other injuries to try and prevent infection. But should not be used for hydration and should be replaced on the regular. (Please do not take anything I say as medical advice) I did some random bits of research for realism, and the one I came across for burns mentioned this acid. And people wonder why I consider Cynder's powers as "not dark."
Also, a second fun fact, one I'm not sure if I mentioned before or not, but Spyro is learning how to use all eight of these elements from everything going on. We'll generally see him use the main four from the games. Mainly because it's what he is most potent with. And as a suto spoiler, even as he learns the other four, his ability to use those magics is severely degraded. This is because of what he's done to save Cynder, both in freeing her from Malefor and because of the Time Crystal. He's basically transferred/diluted his power, unknowingly, to counterbalance the darkness (1st game) and then to protect (second game). His connection to Shadow, Poison, Audio/Fear, and Wind got "transferred" because they were more in line with what Cynder would have normally/naturally wielded. They also have more in common "metaphysically" with Dark Magic that they could do more to deal with the concept of helping Cynder than the rest. Look, I'm sorry if this isn't making sense; magic is weird, and the purple dragons are even more so, what with their connection to Aether/Convexity! The long and short of it, we'll see Spyro use every type of Magic every now and then (Maybe not Dark Magic outside of the heaviest of controlled conditions WAY later down the road), but his bread and butter will always be Fire, Earth, Electricity, and Ice.
In other news...I decided to buy more RAM for my computer. 24 GBs is not enough for chrome when I'm typing as much/quickly as I am or something! So out goes 2 of my old 8 GBs and in goes 2 32 GBs. That should be WAY MORE than enough….hopefully. And for anyone wondering why I'm not taking out the last 8 or adding a fourth stick, it's because I don't want to fight with my CPU's heatsink again. I might have put the frankly huge thing in such a way as having a part of it directly over the slot closest to the CPU and partially over the next one. Which makes getting a stick a bit tricky. Go me!
For more story-related things, I have actually been looking forward to this chapter for a good bit. This last ambush has been an idea for some time now, and I think It came out much better than I had initially planned. Say nothing of the back and forth between the armies I created. There were so many points where I could have and almost wanted to leave this on a cliffhanger. But just this once, I decided not to. I wanted to fricken finish this thing! And I could not be happier with how it all turned out!
I do hope you enjoyed how each side responded to each other. And even more so, quite frankly, the most harrowing fight to date for some of these guys. I hope I got across the feelings and conditions the guys are facing correctly. Please let me know.
While this probably won't be my absolute favorite chapter to date, it will probably be right up there for some time. Either way, that's it for now, so until we meet again, I wish you all Happy Reading!