Dragon Gods Reign

[City of Sarcena]

Soon, the opening ceremony of the emperor meeting was in full swing. Taking its course without further troubles even as three of the other emperors arrived one after another, it seemed to calm down until hours into it a shadow fell over the city.

At the sight of this, the entire event slowly ground to a halt as notice of it spread through murmurs.

Soon its participants started gathering around the open side of the room, chaotically talking among each other as they gathered before the windows there and streamed onto the balcony. Down below in the city the people mirrored this confusion, coming to a halt as they looked to the skies.

But while practically the entire city looked to the skies in confusion, the emperors remained unfazed. Sitting in the seats they had either created or been brought, they calmly looked at the entrance instead of turning to the windows to their right.

The rest of the city was meanwhile met with the confusing sight of dark clouds blocking the previously clear sky. Continuously forming in the clear sky, they slowly thickened the cloud cover until an entirely black blanket hung above the city.

Nervously watching it, the attendees were too occupied to notice when three streaks of darkness descended on the city. Silently landing directly in front of the open entrance of the castle, a wave of darkness came rushing toward the throne room and with it the gathering.

Finally noticing that something was happening, the crowd turned toward the entrance in a chaotic scramble. And upon seeing the mass of darkness approaching, chaos erupted.

As some rushed forward to meet the unknown darkness with active aura and spells at the ready, others started fleeing from it or turned to the emperors with expecting eyes. Due to this uncoordinated mess of a response, none of the different groups had much success with their idea, running into and standing in the way of each other.

Luckily for them, the creeping darkness came to a stop a few meters into the hall. Dramatically towering in place with dark smoke rising from the dense mass of darkness, it only started dissolving once the smoke it had left on its path had fully dispersed.

At first only the central mass of darkness vanished, revealing three pairs of glowing red eyes that shone through the smoke that remained. But just a short moment later the people these belonged to stepped forward.

Passing through the smoke, Caedmon, Crelvic, and Thorim appeared in the crowd's view.

Immediately a wave of relief washed over the crowd. All three vampires were well known, with the latter two already having been their representative in multiple emperor meetings, so they knew that at least in the current situation, they had nothing to fear from them.

Though they no longer felt endangered, the crowd neither dispersed nor reacted in any other way, leading to Arkuns being the first to act.

“I don’t like that cloud darkening my city, disperse it.” He ordered, his tone leaving no room for discussion.

“We never wanted to be a bother, so of course. It’s just, well, your majesty should be familiar with how badly I and my kind get along with sunshine.” Crelvic said as a polite apology.

Waiting for a moment for Arkuns’s reaction, Crelvic was somewhat disappointed when he just nodded disinterested before turning his head to focus somewhere else. Sighing slightly frustrated at the disregard he was shown, he did as he was instructed and controlled the clouds to disperse with a wave of his hand.

Doing so absentmindedly while already focusing on the people already in attendance, Crelvic was already in the midst of taking the first step into the direction of the crowd when he noticed the clouds no longer reacting to his control.

Stopping in place much to the confusion of the two other vampire lords, he raised his head to the ceiling and tried a second time. Though just like before, the dark sky above remained entirely unresponsive to his motion.

Nervously glancing toward Arkuns to make sure he hadn’t yet noticed, Crelvic focused on the tether connecting the darkness he had created to himself. Finding the ethereal connection still fully intact, he kept his eyes on it and tried a third time.

Immediately his mana rushed skyward. Moving through the mana layer covering all of reality along the path that the connection with the spell was creating, it nearly instantly reached the dark clouds.

There, the mana tried to undo the shift in the elemental energies that the spell had originally created.

Keeping a close eye on the process, Crelvic immediately noticed when his mana came into contact with another force that tried to keep the elemental energies as they were having invaded his spell.

To his shock, as soon as the two energies clashed, this unknown energy annihilated the entirety of his mana that he had sent out. And not only did it do so without any noticeable decrease in its own quantity, but it did so almost instantly, making him unable to even estimate how large the gap between himself and whatever being was causing this truly was.

Stumbling backward with a shocked gasp, Crelvic immediately cut his connection to the cloud of darkness.

At his actions, the rest of the room looked on in confusion. Even the emperors couldn’t feel his mana traveling along this tether and only the surge as it left his mana pool and as such, they too only saw him manipulate his spell thrice before suddenly panicking.

“What now?” Arkuns asked annoyed.

“Someone took over my spell.” Crelvic said, too shocked to think it through before he was already answering.

Narrowing his eyes in suspicion, Arkuns’s expression turned slightly more serious when he noticed that Crelvic wasn’t acting.

“I’ll take care of this. But we will talk later.” He said.

Channeling mana into his throne as he finished speaking, Arkuns let the palace's defenses flare to life. In an instant, hundreds of formations became visible all around it, with some forming shields or barriers while others started to glow as whatever attack they could launch became fully charged.

Powered by the immense mana reserves of an emperor, the entire castle became fully powered within a few seconds. Once everything was ready, Arkuns didn’t waste time and discharged one of the formations toward the sky.

Taking the form of a bright ball of blue energy, the resulting attack reached the dark clouds in a fraction of a second. Vanishing inside the darkness, its energy discharged a moment later and turned into a wave of blue light that swept through the dark cloud.

Wherever it passed, the spell keeping the darkness together gave in after only a short clash between the two energies. As such, the clouds rapidly faded in its wake.

Though even with their disappearance, the shadow covering the city nonetheless didn’t vanish. Instead, its form shifted as the clouds retreated beyond the outline of the new source of the shadows, revealing the same form the people on the ground and even the emperors were staring at.

Most did so with surprise or terror, with only Venrie having a smile on her lips as Neandra descended from the skies.

Gliding toward the castle in her true form, she approached without care for the still active defenses or the reactions of the people below.

Soon reaching the first shield, her momentum bent the part of the spherical projection of energy inward without slowing down. Rapidly stretching it to its limit, it took not even a full second before the shield gave way to her might and burst open under the strain.

Continuing on as this first shield’s broken edges started regenerating and closing the gaping hole she had left, Neandra quickly broke through two more shields and a barrier. Behind her two more beasts followed through the opening she had left, their transformed forms being obscured from the meeting’s attendees by Neandra’s massive frame.

Only by the second barrier did her easy advance stop. Ramming into it as before, Neandra felt an impact on the front of her head as she collided with its energy, though she still broke through.

Stopping with a rumbling growl, she hovered in place and looked forward as the barrier fell apart around her instead of regenerating like those before. Finding a mix of both types in both the shields and barriers ahead, as well as sensing their increasing strengths, she changed her approach so that she wouldn’t have to feel the annoying pricks of such collisions again.

Instead of simply flying through them, she struck out with her tail-spike. Moving faster than many of the meeting’s attendees could follow, it tore through over a dozen shields and barriers, only coming to a halt when Neandra’s tail couldn’t reach any further.

Still, with this one attack, she destroyed every shield and barrier in the first third of the distance between her and the castle. At the sight even Arkuns trembled slightly, unable to believe what he just witnessed.

Coming out of his stupor as Neandra came to a stop directly before the next shield that was still standing, he hastily deactivated the remaining shields. This one attack had already pushed the rebound buffer that prevented the shock of a shield’s collapse from affecting him to over eighty percent of its capacity.

Without it, any mana that was still traveling into the formation or hadn’t yet been used by it would come rushing back to him, wreaking chaos in his body as it overloaded his mana channels and came into conflict with any mana he was currently channeling.

As such, he remained tense all the way until he felt the last shield fully fade. Not caring about keeping up appearances once it did, he leaned back with a stressed sigh.

Though only a few short seconds later Neandra’s now vastly shrunk down form shot into the throne room, prompting him to sit back upright with furious eyes.

Watching as she transformed into her humanoid form and landed flanked by her two guards, his hand twitched in the desire to attack her right then and there. Grabbing the armrest of his throne tightly to keep himself from impulsively reaching for his weapon, he forced himself to smile as he greeted her.

“You’re early, there is still half an hour of the opening ceremony left.” He said.

“I know. And I would also love nothing more than to wait these last thirty minutes somewhere else, but we don’t always get what we want.” Neandra said.

As she spoke, she noticed how Arkuns was holding onto the armrest. Seeing through the reason, she smiled amused.

“Try it, I’ll gladly give you a second scar. This time maybe even with some venom, it’s not like you have much longer left anyways.” Neandra said.

As she spoke, Neandra watched Arkuns’s expression twist at her provocations with great joy. Especially the frustrated look on his face as the whispers of the crowd reached his ears and he realized that the well-kept secret of his fading life force was now public knowledge was extremely satisfying for her.

“I would tell you to remember this lesson for the next time you let your subordinate make such a provocative speech but I doubt you’ll live till then. So let it instead be a warning for everybody to not conspire against me. None of you have found spies from me and it isn’t because there aren’t none, so always assume that I know.” Neandra said, causing many of those present to nervously glance around.

“You’re here because of Leukos’s speech? Then you must be even closer to the end of the rope than me or why did it take you over three hours?” Arkuns said, trying to get back at her.

“Don’t start dreaming. I was simply busy and you just aren’t anywhere near my top priority so this could wait.” Neandra said.

“On that matter, a little advice. Don’t reactivate the shields, the next group to arrive won’t be as nice as I was in dealing with them.” Neandra added as she turned to walk to a free spot where she could create a throne for herself.

Confused by her statement, not just Arkuns but also the other emperors and attendees turned to the sky again. Even Venrie did so, though only to keep their alliance a surprise for later.

At first, finding nothing amiss, they were surprised when a few seconds later a scream echoed out from someone in the crowd.

Abruptly turning toward its source, everybody present froze up when they saw Batoim step into the room out of thin air.

As he did, his draconic form disappeared in a flash of flames, revealing his humanoid form and seven more beings following after him.

“So the welcome didn't improve from the last time I attended.” He said into the silence that followed his arrival.