Now that the deadline is over, I am pronouncing Kareeh Indaga the winner, Myth the second winner and Winterfate as the third winner.
Sorry for not replying earlier, but I was without connection for days.
About the contest, I advice to wait for some time before posting a new one.
Until then, you can post stories in Myths tread or in my M&M Fiction tread.
Contest voting: Rememberment of Heroes
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Kareeah Indaga
- Archlich
- Posts: 1137
- Joined: 06 Jan 2006
-
Kareeah Indaga
- Archlich
- Posts: 1137
- Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Author’s Note: The italicized section at the end is from Heroes Chronicles: Clash of Dragons. I do not claim credit for it.
Sworn Justice
The combatants were faced off on opposite ends of a wide, grassy field on the edge of AvLeen territory. Mutare lounged calmly halfway between the two, blithely ignoring the four manacled, rag-dressed slaves who were polishing her scales. The campaign had been going well so far; the toll of elven lives grew daily, one of King Parson’s spies had been captured by her forces, and her own spies told her the foolish elves had only just begun to start mounting a serious defensive. To celebrate, and maintain the morale of her armies, the Dragon Queen decided that a bit of entertainment was in order.
To her left was a massive female gold, scales shining brightly in the early morning sun, dulled only by the scars of centuries of life and battle. To her right was a smaller dragon, flexing anxious claws that dug furrows in the soft AvLeen soil; his scales were no less bright than his opponent’s, but colored a deep emerald green. Even to the untrained eye, it was obvious the young male had only a fraction of the strength and experience of the much larger gold. Between the two and squarely in front of the Dragon Queen rested a man-sized oblong shield, polished so that the glazed, mad eyes of both will-torn dragons were reflected in it. This was for the observers’ benefit: the shield was for scrying, as Queen Mutare was familiar with aerial combat and wished to observe the match regardless of distance.
No fewer than three dozen red and black dragons had come to watch the spectacle, their huge scaled forms ringing fully half of the makeshift arena. Perched in the trees among them, squabbling and placing bets in irritable, squawking voices, a flock of harpies bickered, seeming to pay no attention to the much larger dragons. Across the field a pair of minotaurs had claimed a horse-sized boulder for their own; the larger of the two sharpened his axe as they waited, remaining silent as his companion chatted idly. And less than a stone’s throw away, a trio of crafty-looking beholders floated in the shadows of a particularly large pine, their single eyes swiveling in all directions to take in both the combatants and their fellow spectators. The Dragon Queen of Nighon took it all in; every internal alliance among those present, every possible traitor—even the most inconsequential nattering was laid out before her as clearly as pages in some great tome thanks to her sharp draconic senses. Content with what she saw, she motioned for the fight to begin.
Both combatants leapt from the ground with a flurry of wing beats, sending dust and dead grass flying. But the pair of them had barely cleared the treetops before the more experienced gold launched herself at the smaller green, biting and clawing furiously at her foe before he could properly gain his bearings.
Too startled to plan a more devious counterattack, the green exhaled the breath he had been preparing in a quick, mushroom-shaped burst. It was just enough to free him from her rending claws, and no more; the bright peridot flames washed over her head and hastily-lidded eyes, scorching her scales black but doing no serious damage. Once freed, he shot skyward, beating his wings furiously to gain height on the larger gold.
Her enraged roar started a minor rockslide in the nearby volcanic peaks as she charged after him, her larger wingspan making up the distance with little effort. Then she breathed her own flames in a thick, controlled stream, scorching a thick path of blacked scales up his spine and over the shoulder of his left wing. She had more power behind her breath weapon—and his scales were not quite so thick, especially on the thin membranes of his wings. He cried out at the sudden pain; a deep, bone-shaking yelp, and in a fit of pained inspiration rolled over to rake her belly as she flew over him.
An almost indignant snarl issued from her sleek gold form as she turned effortlessly in midair and pounced on him. For a few, desperate seconds, they were little more than a tangle of claws, wings, and madness, free-falling without regard to the ground or their hooting ground-bound audience.
Talons slashed wildly; the gold female managed a powerful backwards kick with one of her hind legs that tore through the emerald scales at the base of her opponent’s tail and sent a spray of dragon blood raining down on the onlookers. Several of the harpies let out delighted squawks as a few strips of hide and green scales fell, fluttering wetly, to the ground below. The bird-women squabbled raucously among themselves as the two AvLeen dragons finally broke apart.
By now the pair had climbed quite some distance into the sky; the smaller Minotaur complained loudly of being unable to see, and the beholder trio were doing their best to float unobtrusively over to the Dragon Queen’s polished shield. But to the Nighonian dragons, the results of the brief claw-to-claw struggle were quite visible, even without Mutare’s shield: The gold had a deep bite mark on the back of her jaw, just above her throat, and her wingsail had been torn near the edge by her opponent’s flailing claws. The green had faired somewhat worse; aside from the deep claw marks on his tail, he had a multitude of scratches across his ribs and keel bone, some going as deep as the bones themselves, and nearly all of them bleeding badly. The pair’s wing beats were just beginning to show labor from combined exertion and injury, but it seemed there was yet some time left before one or both combatants gave out and fell from the sky.
Once their flights had stabilized, the two combating dragons circled each other warily, gaining height with each spiral. (On the ground, the smaller Minotaur stomped over to the shield and seated himself, huffing irritably. When it was clear that he would not be slain for his impudence, his companion strolled over to join him, bemused.) Then the gold charged her smaller foe, jaws wide to breathe flame. The green back-winged in a hurry, hovering briefly to avoid the sweeping flames—
But her charge was a feint, and her snapping jaws bit down—hard—on the spot on his tail she’d maimed earlier. There was a loud snap almost audible on the ground below; the vertebrae in his tail parted company, as did several of her teeth when the appendage was torn hastily from her jaws.
Nudged slightly by Mutare’s control, the pain quickly drove all thought of tactics and restraint from the young green’s mind. He soared upward with pounding wings, the pain in his scorched wing joint drowned by the spell-born hate that was quickly consuming all rational thought. Then, just as the gold began to follow, he plummeted down again, trying to use his weight as a weapon since his strength had proven insufficient.
But he had severely underestimated the distance required to do real damage to his foe. She ducked her head just in time to keep him from latching onto her horns and snapping her neck, and slid just under the trajectory of his enraged plummet. Quick thinking on his part kept the ploy from being a total loss; his claws raked her back all the way from her neck to the base of her tail, leaving deep scores that bled freely and rained dragon blood on the ground below.
She issued another stone-splitting roar in challenge and dove after him. The two began a frantic, deadly game of midair tag, each scoring on the other some half-a-dozen times. Most of those watching had gathered around the scrying shield now, and there was an appreciative ooo-ing from below when the green male scored a solid hit on the gold’s nose that drenched her face and muzzle with gore and sent her reeling back to cough the blood out of her air passages. Soon after she struck back, hissing, and slashed out one of her rival’s eyes with a well-aimed foreclaw, eliciting a lewd hooting noise from one of the older reds as another rain of blood splattered onto his darkening scales.
The ‘tag’ ended abruptly and quite violently after a well-placed gout of flames charred the gold’s foot thoroughly enough to cook it into uselessness; enraged, she clubbed her opponent in the throat with a lash of her tail and turned on him, grappling him in midair and furiously trying to tear him to pieces. A few more desperate seconds of free-falling followed, and just as he was once again breaking free of her grasp, another well-placed kick from her remaining functional hind leg sliced through his belly scales, just below the ribs. The sound that split the air this time was not a roar, but a draconic scream.
He tried to flee; the pain had finally overridden Mutare’s control enough to allow him to disengage and fly for his life. The gold was not so released, however. The overwhelming madness in her eyes demanded that he not escape; her claws dug into the flesh of his lower tail and she pulled, trying to drag back her foe—
But the abused limb, which had been held on by nothing but tendons and battered muscle since she’d broke through the bones earlier, gave out horribly at this final abuse.
What muscle and skin remained came apart with a wet ripping noise, and most of his tail was left in her claws. Her indignant shriek at being sent tumbling backwards with what was suddenly two clawfuls of dead weight was drowned out by the terrible, nerve-bleeding keen of agony from her maimed and tortured antagonist. It echoed down through the foothills of the AvLee-Eeofol border and into the Nighonian encampment, a cry of desperation and despair that was met only with dark chuckling, savage grins and Mutare’s satisfied gaze. Down below, long draconic necks craned over the shoulders of the shorter audience members, and one harpy had unwisely perched on the brow of one of the smaller reds, the better to see.
The green’s blood flowed more thickly now, hindered only by draconic constitution. He tried again to flee, wings beating laboriously as he tried to escape over the mountains into nearby Eeofol. He was starting to slow, gradually—finally—too exhausted and wounded to go much further, too worn out for adrenaline to help him any longer. All told, his form was held up more by the updrafts from the live volcanic mountain range than his own, agonized wing beats.
But his opponent, sensing victory was near and still compelled by the Dragon Queen, chased after him, gaining height on him for superior position. And then she struck, plunging out of the sky like a golden meteor, smashing into his shoulder blades with such force that his wings snapped under the whiplash. They plunged to earth together, falling at tremendous speeds.
A shriek tore from his throat only to be swallowed up by the ashy wastes below. The ground rushed towards him, each obsidian ridge and scorched tree gaining ever more detail as it drew nearer, but this time he hadn’t the strength to break free and stop the fall.
Then it was too late.
He landed with a sickening crash, ribs shattering and ash flying up into the air in a thick cloud from the impact. The gold had launched herself from his helpless form mere seconds before the crash; now she circled warily several hundred meters above him, watching. He didn’t move. There was only the unsteady, pained rising and falling of his chest, made unbearable by newly-broken ribs, and the slow, agonized movements of his single remaining eye. He couldn’t rise to his feet; he didn’t even have the strength to try. Draconic durability would see to it that he live, perhaps for several days, but his wounds were too deep, too severe, and simply too numerous for him to survive. Now certain of his defeat, the gold roared her victory and winged her way back to camp, heedless of her own wounds and the broken green form on the obsidian ground below.
One of the minotaurs gazing into the mirror gave an appreciative whistle at the finale. Even the harpies had ceased squabbling over the fallen scraps, and watched the end of the fight from their new perches, awed into silence.
Mutare smiled at the result of her spectacle. Then she rose, stretching and fanning her wings, and gave the order to break camp while her slaves scrambled to put away her scrying shield. It had been a worthwhile entertainment, but there was a continent to be won.
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"Dragon!" someone shouts.
At first, you scan the sky but find nothing. Then you spot a massive green mound on the charred soil ahead. It's a Green Dragon, but it's not moving. You approach slowly, quietly, and as you near the creature you can see its wounds.
Both wings are broken and most of its tail is missing. The blood pooling on the ground is evidence of a much deeper injury concealed beneath its body. You rush forward, screaming for a healer even though you sense it is too late for this once-beautiful creature.
Soon, the Green Dragon notices you and opens its only remaining eye.
"What did this to you?" you ask.
"A Gold," the Dragon says. It takes one of its last breaths in order to continue speaking.
"Mutare made us fight each other, for her amusement."
"I'm sorry. She'll pay for this," you say.
"It's a dark power she holds over us. I fear her, Tarnum Dragonfriend. For the first time, we Dragons know fear in Mutare's presence," says the Green Dragon. "Thank you, Tarnum. It was good...to die with a friend...at my side."
Your tears fall on the Dragon's blank, dead eye.
End
Sworn Justice
The combatants were faced off on opposite ends of a wide, grassy field on the edge of AvLeen territory. Mutare lounged calmly halfway between the two, blithely ignoring the four manacled, rag-dressed slaves who were polishing her scales. The campaign had been going well so far; the toll of elven lives grew daily, one of King Parson’s spies had been captured by her forces, and her own spies told her the foolish elves had only just begun to start mounting a serious defensive. To celebrate, and maintain the morale of her armies, the Dragon Queen decided that a bit of entertainment was in order.
To her left was a massive female gold, scales shining brightly in the early morning sun, dulled only by the scars of centuries of life and battle. To her right was a smaller dragon, flexing anxious claws that dug furrows in the soft AvLeen soil; his scales were no less bright than his opponent’s, but colored a deep emerald green. Even to the untrained eye, it was obvious the young male had only a fraction of the strength and experience of the much larger gold. Between the two and squarely in front of the Dragon Queen rested a man-sized oblong shield, polished so that the glazed, mad eyes of both will-torn dragons were reflected in it. This was for the observers’ benefit: the shield was for scrying, as Queen Mutare was familiar with aerial combat and wished to observe the match regardless of distance.
No fewer than three dozen red and black dragons had come to watch the spectacle, their huge scaled forms ringing fully half of the makeshift arena. Perched in the trees among them, squabbling and placing bets in irritable, squawking voices, a flock of harpies bickered, seeming to pay no attention to the much larger dragons. Across the field a pair of minotaurs had claimed a horse-sized boulder for their own; the larger of the two sharpened his axe as they waited, remaining silent as his companion chatted idly. And less than a stone’s throw away, a trio of crafty-looking beholders floated in the shadows of a particularly large pine, their single eyes swiveling in all directions to take in both the combatants and their fellow spectators. The Dragon Queen of Nighon took it all in; every internal alliance among those present, every possible traitor—even the most inconsequential nattering was laid out before her as clearly as pages in some great tome thanks to her sharp draconic senses. Content with what she saw, she motioned for the fight to begin.
Both combatants leapt from the ground with a flurry of wing beats, sending dust and dead grass flying. But the pair of them had barely cleared the treetops before the more experienced gold launched herself at the smaller green, biting and clawing furiously at her foe before he could properly gain his bearings.
Too startled to plan a more devious counterattack, the green exhaled the breath he had been preparing in a quick, mushroom-shaped burst. It was just enough to free him from her rending claws, and no more; the bright peridot flames washed over her head and hastily-lidded eyes, scorching her scales black but doing no serious damage. Once freed, he shot skyward, beating his wings furiously to gain height on the larger gold.
Her enraged roar started a minor rockslide in the nearby volcanic peaks as she charged after him, her larger wingspan making up the distance with little effort. Then she breathed her own flames in a thick, controlled stream, scorching a thick path of blacked scales up his spine and over the shoulder of his left wing. She had more power behind her breath weapon—and his scales were not quite so thick, especially on the thin membranes of his wings. He cried out at the sudden pain; a deep, bone-shaking yelp, and in a fit of pained inspiration rolled over to rake her belly as she flew over him.
An almost indignant snarl issued from her sleek gold form as she turned effortlessly in midair and pounced on him. For a few, desperate seconds, they were little more than a tangle of claws, wings, and madness, free-falling without regard to the ground or their hooting ground-bound audience.
Talons slashed wildly; the gold female managed a powerful backwards kick with one of her hind legs that tore through the emerald scales at the base of her opponent’s tail and sent a spray of dragon blood raining down on the onlookers. Several of the harpies let out delighted squawks as a few strips of hide and green scales fell, fluttering wetly, to the ground below. The bird-women squabbled raucously among themselves as the two AvLeen dragons finally broke apart.
By now the pair had climbed quite some distance into the sky; the smaller Minotaur complained loudly of being unable to see, and the beholder trio were doing their best to float unobtrusively over to the Dragon Queen’s polished shield. But to the Nighonian dragons, the results of the brief claw-to-claw struggle were quite visible, even without Mutare’s shield: The gold had a deep bite mark on the back of her jaw, just above her throat, and her wingsail had been torn near the edge by her opponent’s flailing claws. The green had faired somewhat worse; aside from the deep claw marks on his tail, he had a multitude of scratches across his ribs and keel bone, some going as deep as the bones themselves, and nearly all of them bleeding badly. The pair’s wing beats were just beginning to show labor from combined exertion and injury, but it seemed there was yet some time left before one or both combatants gave out and fell from the sky.
Once their flights had stabilized, the two combating dragons circled each other warily, gaining height with each spiral. (On the ground, the smaller Minotaur stomped over to the shield and seated himself, huffing irritably. When it was clear that he would not be slain for his impudence, his companion strolled over to join him, bemused.) Then the gold charged her smaller foe, jaws wide to breathe flame. The green back-winged in a hurry, hovering briefly to avoid the sweeping flames—
But her charge was a feint, and her snapping jaws bit down—hard—on the spot on his tail she’d maimed earlier. There was a loud snap almost audible on the ground below; the vertebrae in his tail parted company, as did several of her teeth when the appendage was torn hastily from her jaws.
Nudged slightly by Mutare’s control, the pain quickly drove all thought of tactics and restraint from the young green’s mind. He soared upward with pounding wings, the pain in his scorched wing joint drowned by the spell-born hate that was quickly consuming all rational thought. Then, just as the gold began to follow, he plummeted down again, trying to use his weight as a weapon since his strength had proven insufficient.
But he had severely underestimated the distance required to do real damage to his foe. She ducked her head just in time to keep him from latching onto her horns and snapping her neck, and slid just under the trajectory of his enraged plummet. Quick thinking on his part kept the ploy from being a total loss; his claws raked her back all the way from her neck to the base of her tail, leaving deep scores that bled freely and rained dragon blood on the ground below.
She issued another stone-splitting roar in challenge and dove after him. The two began a frantic, deadly game of midair tag, each scoring on the other some half-a-dozen times. Most of those watching had gathered around the scrying shield now, and there was an appreciative ooo-ing from below when the green male scored a solid hit on the gold’s nose that drenched her face and muzzle with gore and sent her reeling back to cough the blood out of her air passages. Soon after she struck back, hissing, and slashed out one of her rival’s eyes with a well-aimed foreclaw, eliciting a lewd hooting noise from one of the older reds as another rain of blood splattered onto his darkening scales.
The ‘tag’ ended abruptly and quite violently after a well-placed gout of flames charred the gold’s foot thoroughly enough to cook it into uselessness; enraged, she clubbed her opponent in the throat with a lash of her tail and turned on him, grappling him in midair and furiously trying to tear him to pieces. A few more desperate seconds of free-falling followed, and just as he was once again breaking free of her grasp, another well-placed kick from her remaining functional hind leg sliced through his belly scales, just below the ribs. The sound that split the air this time was not a roar, but a draconic scream.
He tried to flee; the pain had finally overridden Mutare’s control enough to allow him to disengage and fly for his life. The gold was not so released, however. The overwhelming madness in her eyes demanded that he not escape; her claws dug into the flesh of his lower tail and she pulled, trying to drag back her foe—
But the abused limb, which had been held on by nothing but tendons and battered muscle since she’d broke through the bones earlier, gave out horribly at this final abuse.
What muscle and skin remained came apart with a wet ripping noise, and most of his tail was left in her claws. Her indignant shriek at being sent tumbling backwards with what was suddenly two clawfuls of dead weight was drowned out by the terrible, nerve-bleeding keen of agony from her maimed and tortured antagonist. It echoed down through the foothills of the AvLee-Eeofol border and into the Nighonian encampment, a cry of desperation and despair that was met only with dark chuckling, savage grins and Mutare’s satisfied gaze. Down below, long draconic necks craned over the shoulders of the shorter audience members, and one harpy had unwisely perched on the brow of one of the smaller reds, the better to see.
The green’s blood flowed more thickly now, hindered only by draconic constitution. He tried again to flee, wings beating laboriously as he tried to escape over the mountains into nearby Eeofol. He was starting to slow, gradually—finally—too exhausted and wounded to go much further, too worn out for adrenaline to help him any longer. All told, his form was held up more by the updrafts from the live volcanic mountain range than his own, agonized wing beats.
But his opponent, sensing victory was near and still compelled by the Dragon Queen, chased after him, gaining height on him for superior position. And then she struck, plunging out of the sky like a golden meteor, smashing into his shoulder blades with such force that his wings snapped under the whiplash. They plunged to earth together, falling at tremendous speeds.
A shriek tore from his throat only to be swallowed up by the ashy wastes below. The ground rushed towards him, each obsidian ridge and scorched tree gaining ever more detail as it drew nearer, but this time he hadn’t the strength to break free and stop the fall.
Then it was too late.
He landed with a sickening crash, ribs shattering and ash flying up into the air in a thick cloud from the impact. The gold had launched herself from his helpless form mere seconds before the crash; now she circled warily several hundred meters above him, watching. He didn’t move. There was only the unsteady, pained rising and falling of his chest, made unbearable by newly-broken ribs, and the slow, agonized movements of his single remaining eye. He couldn’t rise to his feet; he didn’t even have the strength to try. Draconic durability would see to it that he live, perhaps for several days, but his wounds were too deep, too severe, and simply too numerous for him to survive. Now certain of his defeat, the gold roared her victory and winged her way back to camp, heedless of her own wounds and the broken green form on the obsidian ground below.
One of the minotaurs gazing into the mirror gave an appreciative whistle at the finale. Even the harpies had ceased squabbling over the fallen scraps, and watched the end of the fight from their new perches, awed into silence.
Mutare smiled at the result of her spectacle. Then she rose, stretching and fanning her wings, and gave the order to break camp while her slaves scrambled to put away her scrying shield. It had been a worthwhile entertainment, but there was a continent to be won.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Dragon!" someone shouts.
At first, you scan the sky but find nothing. Then you spot a massive green mound on the charred soil ahead. It's a Green Dragon, but it's not moving. You approach slowly, quietly, and as you near the creature you can see its wounds.
Both wings are broken and most of its tail is missing. The blood pooling on the ground is evidence of a much deeper injury concealed beneath its body. You rush forward, screaming for a healer even though you sense it is too late for this once-beautiful creature.
Soon, the Green Dragon notices you and opens its only remaining eye.
"What did this to you?" you ask.
"A Gold," the Dragon says. It takes one of its last breaths in order to continue speaking.
"Mutare made us fight each other, for her amusement."
"I'm sorry. She'll pay for this," you say.
"It's a dark power she holds over us. I fear her, Tarnum Dragonfriend. For the first time, we Dragons know fear in Mutare's presence," says the Green Dragon. "Thank you, Tarnum. It was good...to die with a friend...at my side."
Your tears fall on the Dragon's blank, dead eye.
End
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winterfate
- Round Table Hero
- Posts: 6191
- Joined: 26 Nov 2006
- Location: Puerto Rico
@Kareeah: Stupendous work!
The Round Table's birthday list!
Proud creator of Caladont 2.0!
You need to take the pain, learn from it and get back on that bike... - stefan
Sometimes the hearts most troubled make the sweetest melodies... - winterfate
Proud creator of Caladont 2.0!
You need to take the pain, learn from it and get back on that bike... - stefan
Sometimes the hearts most troubled make the sweetest melodies... - winterfate
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theLuckyDragon
- Round Table Knight
- Posts: 4883
- Joined: 06 Jan 2006
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