Morgan Rice - The Weight of Honor

Theos dove ever faster, opened his jaws wide, roared in rage, a roar that shook the very trees, and breathed a stream of flame so hot that even he recoiled from it. It was a massive stream, powerful enough to wipe out an entire city, and it rained down on his haphazard target: a small country village unlucky enough to lie in his path. Down below, several hundred humans, spread across farms and vineyards, had no idea of the death about to greet them.

They looked up, faces frozen in horror as the flames descended – but it was too late. They shrieked and ran for their lives, but the cloud of flame caught them. The flames spared no one – men, women, children, farmers, warriors, all those who ran, and all those who stood frozen. Theos flapped his great wings and set them all aflame, set their houses aflame, their weapons, their livestock, their possessions. They would all, every single last one of them, pay.

When Theos finally swooped back up, nothing remained. Where the village once stood was now a great conflagration, fires which would soon reduce it to ash. Fitting, Theos thought: from ashes humans came, and to ashes they would return.

Theos did not slow. He continued to fly, staying low to the ground, roaring as he hacked away at trees, clawed off branches in a single swipe, tore leaves to shreds. He flew along the treetops, carving out a path, still breathing flame. He left a great trail of flame as he went, a scar upon the land, a roadway of fire for Escalon to always remember him. He set aflame great swaths of the Wood of Thorns, knowing it wouldn’t grow back for thousands of years, knowing he would leave this scab upon the land and gaining some satisfaction at the thought. He realized, even as he breathed, that his flames might find and burn his own egg. Yet, overwhelmed with rage and frustration, he could not stop himself.

As he flew, gradually, the landscape changed beneath him. Woods and fields were replaced by stone buildings, and Theos peered down and saw he flew over a sprawling garrison, packed with thousands of soldiers in blue and yellow armor. Pandesians. The soldiers scanned the skies in panic and wonder, armor glistening. Some, the smart ones, fled; the brave ones stood their ground and as he neared, they threw spears and javelins his way.

Theos breathed and burned all the weapons in midair, sending them raining back to the earth as piles of ash. His flames continued down until they reached the now-fleeing soldiers, burning them alive, trapped in their shiny suits of metal. Soon, Theos knew, all those suits of metal would be rusting husks on the ground, a memento of his visit here. He did not stop until he burned every last soldier, leaving the garrison one giant cauldron of flame.

Theos flew on, flying north, unable to stop himself. The landscape changed, and changed again, and he did not slow even when he spotted a curious sight: there, far below, appeared a massive creature, a giant, emerging from a tunnel in the ground. It was a creature unlike any Theos had ever seen, a powerful creature. Yet Theos felt no fear; on the contrary, he felt anger. Anger for its being in his path.

The beast looked up and its grotesque face collapsed in fear as Theos dove down low. It, too, turned and fled, back for its hole – but Theos would not let it go so easily. If he could not find his child, then he would destroy them all, man and beast alike. And he would not stop until everyone and everything in Escalon was no more.

Vesuvius stood in the tunnel and looked up at the shafts of sunlight pouring down on him, sunlight from Escalon, and he basked in the sweetest feeling of his life. That hole high above, those rays shining down upon him, represented a victory greater than any he could dream, the completion of the tunnel that he had imagined his entire life. Others had said it could not be built, and Vesuvius knew he had achieved what his father and his father before him could not, had created a pathway for the entire nation of Marda to invade Escalon.

Dust still swirled in the light, debris still filling the air from where the giant had punched a hole through the ceiling, and as Vesuvius stared through it, he knew that hole high above represented his destiny. His entire nation would follow on his heels; soon all of Escalon would be his. He grinned wide, already imagining the rape and torture and destruction awaiting him. It would be a blood fest. He would create a nation of slaves, and the nation of Marta would double in size – and territory.

“NATION OF MARDA, ADVANCE!” he shouted.

There arose a great shout behind him as the hundreds of trolls crammed in the tunnel raised their halberds and charged with him. He led the way, charging up the tunnel, slipping and sliding on the dirt and rock, as he made his way toward the opening, toward conquest. With Escalon in sight, he trembled with excitement as the ground shook beneath him, tremors from the giant’s screeching up above, the beast, too, clearly thrilled to be free. Vesuvius imagined the damage the giant would do up there, let loose on a rampage, terrorizing the countryside – and he smiled wider. It would have its fun, and when Vesuvius tired of it, he would kill it. In the meantime, it was a valuable asset in his rampage of terror.

Vesuvius looked up and blinked in confusion as he saw the sky suddenly darken up above, and he felt a great wave of heat come his way. He was baffled to see a wall of flame descending, suddenly covering the countryside. He could not understand what was happening as a horrific wave of heat came at him, scalding his face, followed by the roar of the giant – and then, a tremendous shriek of agony. The giant stomped, clearly hurt by something, and Vesuvius looked up in terror as it inexplicably turned back around. Its face half-burned, it charged back into the tunnel, underground – and right for him.

Vesuvius stared, but could not comprehend the nightmare unfolding before him. Why would the giant turn back around? What was the source of heat? What had burned his face?

Vesuvius then heard a flapping of wings, a shriek even more horrific than that of the giant – and he knew. He felt a shudder as he realized that up there, flying by, was something even more terrifying than a giant. It was something Vesuvius had never thought he’d encounter in his lifetime: a dragon.

Vesuvius stood there, frozen in fear for the first time in his life, his entire army of trolls frozen behind him – all of them trapped. The unthinkable had happened: the giant was running scared from something even greater than itself. Burned, in agony, panicked, the giant swung its huge fists as it descended, swiped with its vicious claws, and Vesuvius watched in terror as all around him his trolls were swatted. Whatever lay in its wrathful path was crushed by its feet, cut in half by its claws, smashed by its fists.

And then, before he could get out of its way, Vesuvius felt his own ribs cracking as the giant scooped him up and threw him in the air.

He felt himself airborne, tumbling end over end, the world spinning – and the next thing he knew his head was smashing into rock, the awful pain ripping through his body, as he impacted a stone wall. As he began to plummet to the ground, to lose consciousness, the final thing he saw was the giant, destroying everything, undoing all his plans, all he had worked for, and he realized he would die here, far beneath the earth, but feet away from the dream he almost had.

Duncan felt the air rush past him as he slid down the rope at sunset, scaling down the majestic peaks of Kos, holding on for dear life as he slid faster than he’d imagined possible. All around him the men slid, too – Anvin and Arthfael, Seavig, Kavos, Bramthos, and thousands of others, Duncan’s, Seavig’s, and Kavos’s men joining together as one army, all sliding down the ice in rows, a well-disciplined army leapfrogging over each other, all of them desperate to reach the bottom before they were detected. As Duncan’s feet touched the ice, he immediately pushed off again, repelling downward, his hands spared from being torn to shreds only by the thick gloves Kavos had given him.