A Journey That Changed The World

Archer got excited as the violet fire didn’t crawl this time; it roared. It poured out of him in a column that lit the jungle, turning night into noon, turning every drop of swamp water on the snake’s hide into screaming steam. The air ignited. Trees flash-burned to glass. He rose inside the inferno, shirt incinerating, skin glowing.

His eyes were twin dying stars. He spoke one word. It wasn’t a spell. It was a name the universe had tried very hard to forget. The snake heard it and tried to flee. But it was too late. The fire folded in on itself, condensed into a single violet spear the width of a man’s arm, and punched straight through the serpent’s skull.

Bone, scale, and memory vaporized in a perfect circle. For one heartbeat, the titan hung there, impaled on nothing, eye wide in something beyond pain. Then it fell. The impact cratered the earth for a mile in every direction. When the dust settled, all that remained was a lake of molten glass and one severed fang, still twitching.

Archer dropped out of the sky like a spent match. He hit the glass hard enough to spiderweb it, lay there on his back, chest heaving, violet embers still leaking from the corners of his eyes. The seal on his heart was now cracked, allowing him to use some spines. A thin, bright line ran through it like a crack in marble.

He stared up at the sky, tasting blood and victory, and started laughing all over again. ”Put that,” he rasped to the empty night. ”On my fucking tab.”

Following that, the surrounding monsters stayed away thanks to the chaotic magic that destroyed the landscape. This allowed Archer to cast a shield around himself, along with a comfortable mattress. He slumped onto and let out a relieved sigh as other Titans roared across this new world.

***

Lioran was standing on the deck of the 1st Fleet that was sailing toward Pluoria, where a rebellion had broken out since Archer vanished. This caused him to let out a growl. ”What did they do to you, brother? It’s been a month already.”

Just then, Nala and Teuila, two of his best friends’ wives and his sister, appeared. The lioness sighed as she revealed. ”Grandmother, Embera, and Colestah slaughtered the rebels to the last man. I can’t believe they attacked an isolated fort, luckily Kass was there and went berserk.”

”I bet she painted the landscape red?” he asked.

”That she did,” Teuila was the one to answer. ”Kass sent a message minutes ago saying she’s scouting ahead to destroy the rebels.”

Lioran and Nala agreed with excited nods, but the blue-haired beauty continued. ”But Aisha sent information that the ex-Duke Leonard Ashguard is leading the rebellion against our forces since the ‘Tyrant’ has vanished.”

”What about Avidia and Orientia?” he questioned, looking concerned.

”They’re calm according to the others,” the Aquarian responded. ”None of the populations are even interested in fighting against us when Arch has brought them nothing but health and happiness.”

”Plus the never-ending shipments of food we send every city,” Nala added, giggling. ”Lucky Hemi, Lyn, and Leira can still enter the Domain to tend to their ever-growing farms that churn out food.”

Lioran looked curious. ”How is that place so big? Aren’t the Swarm Queens living inside there?”

”Yes, and more monsters than Thrylos has ever had,” Teuila revealed, smirk growing wide. ”I’ve seen some of the creatures in there, they could only come from someone’s nightmares, I don’t dare to think where he gets them from.”

”Wow,” he muttered.

Nala giggled as she spoke. ”Remember those dinosaur beasts he kidnapped from that continent? He was so excited that he gave them their own continent in the Domain, and now they exploded in numbers.”

”He loves collecting stuff? Including women,” Lioran chuckled.

The two women laughed along, but Nala punched him; he was sent skidding across the deck, leaving him reeling in shock. Lioran looked at his sister, who was grinning as she warned. ”Don’t tease brother or you’ll get another one.”

”I won’t,” he said, holding his hands up as the trio laughed. ”Thanks for asking me to come, I was getting bored on Draconia, needed some action to get the blood going.”

”Archer is going to go mad when he learns of the rebellions,” Teuila muttered as she gazed out at the black smoke.

”He will kill them all brutally,” Nala said, a proud glint in her blue eyes. ”When the world learns of their punishment, it will scare them.”

Everyone nodded in agreement as they pressed on toward the storm-lashed shores of Pluoria, where the Homeguard, Legionnaires, and their allied armies clashed in furious combat, joined by six empresses who had already slipped onto the continent and were wreaking havoc deep behind enemy lines.

Far across the wind-bitten plains, one last fort still stood, its banners ragged, its walls scarred and bleeding dust. Atop the broken parapet stood the Draconian Commander, cloak snapping like a war-banner, his voice raw from smoke and grief as he called to the exhausted men clinging to the stones below.

”Our Emperor will return!” he roared, pounding his chest with a fist that still carried the old scar from the day the Emperor pulled him from the mud of the empire’s first battle. ”He will come, and every traitor who spat on us will choke on their own blood! We hold, for him!”

The soldiers looked up, faces blackened with soot, eyes hollow but burning. He met every gaze, voice cracking now. ”I’ve stood at his side since he was only a king with nothing but a broken crown and a heart too stubborn to die. I watched him take this world piece by piece, not for gold, not for glory, but for us. For you. For your wives waiting and little ones waiting in villages he swore would never burn. He gave us a future when no one else would.

If these walls fall tonight, if we fall, let it be with his name on our lips and our shields unbroken. I would die a thousand times before I let them drag his honor through the dirt. It has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve him, to call him my emperor, to know that even now he fights for every soul we left behind.”

He drew his sword, the blade catching the dying light, and pressed the hilt to his heart. ”So we do not fall as forgotten men. We fall, if we must, as proud Draconians. And that is worth more than any victory.”

A hush settled, broken only by the creak of bowstrings and the distant thunder of the enemy. Then, quietly at first, a single voice rose, then ten, then a hundred. until the whole fort shook with it. ”For the Emperor!”

And the Draconian Commanders smiled through the tears he would never let them see, lifted his sword high, and answered with everything left in his soul. ”For the Emperor!”

Following that, the rebels came like a black tide, ladders slamming against stone, hooks biting into the battlements. The fort’s defenders met them with a fury that made the walls themselves seem alive. Legionnaires locked shields and drove spears through gaps, screaming the Emperor’s name with every thrust.

Drakeguards leapt from the parapets onto the ladders, hacking men down as they climbed, falling with them into the press below rather than yield an inch. Homeguards fought with anything that could bite. They fought as though every heartbeat borrowed from their children had to be paid back in rebel blood.

For one impossible hour, the tide hesitated. Bodies piled so high that the next wave had to climb over their own dead. Half the rebel host lay broken at the foot of the walls or draped across the stones like hideous garlands. The air stank of iron and burned pitch and the raw, wild smell of men who had decided to die before they bent.

Then the gates splintered. The last ram, wrapped in wet hides, thundered through. The courtyard became a slaughter pen. One by one, the banners fell. One by one, the voices stilled. When the smoke cleared, only a single figure still stood in the center of the carnage, sword buried to the hilt in a rebel captain’s chest.

Blood sheeted down his armor; one arm hung useless, the other still gripped his blade as if it had grown there. They dragged him forward on his knees through the ashes of his soldiers and threw him at the feet of Duke Leonard Ashguard. The duke sat his warhorse in gleaming plate, the silver stag of his house shining clean while all around him was ruin.

He looked down with the cold pity of a man who believed history had already chosen him the victor. ”Draconian Commander,” he said. ”Yield. Even your Emperor abandoned you, he has rushed off after another whore, or so I’ve been told.”