Inside the majestic palace of the Chromatic Dragon Queen, the dragons were seized with terror. Dread of the Mother of Evil Dragons' wrath drove them down from the sky one after another.
They folded their wings, lowered their heads, and bent their knees, kneeling respectfully upon the ground—resembling nothing so much as a flock of meek sheep rather than vicious chromatic dragons.
Below the throne, Kaleymas, the most venerated of the great wyrm red dragons and one deeply favored by the Dragon Queen, stepped forward. He asked with utmost caution, "My revered Sovereign, what on earth has happened to stoke Your fury to such a degree?"
Not to be outdone, the great wyrm green dragon Samuel edged up beside Kaleymas and pledged with equal conviction, "Rest assured, Dragon Queen! We green dragons stand ready to ease Your burdens and eliminate whatever reckless fool has incurred Your wrath."
Upon the throne, Tiamat's eyelids lifted slightly. Her gaze swept over the great wyrm red and green dragons kneeling before Her. Reminded of Her defeat in the Material Plane, a blaze of fury surged from the depths of Her heart, Her irritation and anger flaring even hotter.
"Begone!"
With an infuriated roar, a blast of overwhelming power blew away everything before Tiamat. The great wyrm red and green dragons were both sent flying backward, slamming heavily into the palace walls. They crashed down battered and bloody, mangled from head to toe.
These two great wyrms, capable of reigning supreme and terrorizing entire nations in the Material Plane, were reduced in this moment to mere punching bags for the Chromatic Dragon Queen's venting fury, blasted half to death by a casual draconic roar.
Seeing the wretched state of the two great wyrms, the other dragons in the grand hall nervously bowed their heads. Not a sound was made; cold sweat poured down their scales as they dreaded doing anything that might provoke the raging Dragon Queen.
Staring into the distance with eyes brimming with venom and rage, as if beholding the four-horned red dragon in Her mind's eye, Tiamat gnashed Her teeth and uttered, "Erebus is dead."
The great wyrm green dragon who had just been battered half to death scrambled to his feet instantly. Ignoring the blood covering his face, he cried out in abject horror, "Erebus was slain? Your Majesty, h-how could this be?"
"He was a demigod! Could Bahamut Himself have intervened?"
"Impossible! If Bahamut had acted in person, the operatives we stationed on Mount Celestia would have noticed... Wait, could the Sun God have awakened?"
"T-That was the Lord of the Rotting Bog, the mightiest demigod of our green dragon brood! How could he be slain so easily?!"
Shock and dread washed over the numerous green dragons throughout the hall. Whispers and murmurs erupted in disbelief, soon escalating into heated arguments with dragons of other colors.
Without question, Erebus was the pride of the green dragons and their greatest pillar in their struggle for power and favor within the Dragon Queen's court. Losing him would deal a devastating blow to the standing of the green dragons inside the divine realm.
"No. The one who slew Erebus was that insolent traitor."
Tiamat shook Her heads, Her voice low and rasping, thick with rancor as She slowly enunciated the name She longed to flay and devour alive: "Cassius Claubau Nolexius..."
"How can that be!"
"He dared to slaughter kin! That is an unforgivable crime!"
"Damn it, that red dragon has grown this powerful?! Just how did he pull it off?"
A massive uproar erupted across the hall once more. In just a few short years, this red dragon of the Material Plane had sent shockwaves through the dragons of the divine realm multiple times.
And slaying Erebus was undeniably the most impactful, shocking, and downright terrifying feat of them all.
The great wyrm green dragon narrowed his eyes in contemplation, his mind racing. He muttered in a voice only he could hear, "T-This is simply impossible... That Cinder Emperor isn't even a demigod. How could he completely obliterate a true demigod?"
Suddenly, he looked up, gazing at the impossibly colossal five-headed dragon upon the throne, and a chilling thought surfaced in his mind.
Perhaps... no, Erebus definitely was not killed by Cassius.
To the Chromatic Dragon Queen, Erebus—whose physical form was shattered and could not recover anytime soon—had lost all usefulness. His only remaining value was that sliver of divinity he possessed as a demigod.
After Cassius defeated Erebus, Tiamat ruthlessly devoured the discarded pawn—this was by far the more reasonable, far more accurate answer.
Samuel stared at the Chromatic Dragon Queen, a cold dread creeping into his marrow. But the moment Tiamat swept Her gaze over him, he lowered his head in flustered terror, not daring even to draw a breath, let alone speak this so-called "truth."
He knew that the Dragon Queen's hall was not populated solely by muscle-brained brutes like the red dragons. There were surely plenty of other dragons who had deduced what had actually transpired, but they kept it to themselves, never daring to bring it into the light.
Naturally, the great wyrm green dragon did the same, burying the suspicion deep within his heart without breathing a single word of it, terrified of becoming the next Erebus.
Tiamat cast Her cold, piercing gaze around the hall before continuing, "Indeed, it was Cassius—that traitor who consorts with lowly humans. He shamelessly ambushed and slew Erebus, and even stole My divine body!"
"How dare he!"
"That traitor must face the harshest punishment! Snap his wings, flay his hide, and sever his head to display as an ornament!"
"Yes! Make that wretch pay for betraying the chromatic dragons! To think he dared blaspheme Your Majesty!"
The dragons in the hall erupted in righteous fury, competing to denounce and revile that "ungrateful red dragon," putting on the fiercest display of indignation even if it was mere pretense.
"Very well."
Tiamat surveyed the chamber once more, Her sharp gaze sweeping across the congregation of dragons as She asked in a deep rumble, "Then... who among you will slay this traitor for Me?
Kill him, and I shall bestow upon you demigod power, the bloodline of a progenitor dragon, and mountains of gold!"
Tiamat's voice rang out with resounding force, echoing through the great hall. Yet the dragons who had just been blustering with righteous fervor fell dead silent, as if struck by a Silence spell, universally lapsing into stillness.
Power, bloodline, wealth—the terms were undeniably generous, extraordinarily alluring. At any other time, countless chromatic dragons would have scrambled over one another to volunteer.
Yet no matter how wonderful the rewards or how vast the fortune, one needed to be alive to enjoy them. One's own life was the most precious thing of all—a truth every chromatic dragon understood intimately.
Send them to assassinate Cassius?
What kind of joke was that? He was one of the most powerful dragons in the Material Plane today—a being capable of brawling with Archdevils, standing toe-to-toe with avatars of deities, and even slaying a demigod dragon!
What was more, he commanded a mighty, rapidly expanding empire with formidable military prowess. Sending them to assassinate Cassius was no different from sending them to their deaths!
These greedy, selfish chromatic dragons would never do something so foolish. They vastly preferred posturing beside the Dragon Queen, plundering riches and bullying the weak without breaking a sweat.
Flustered with rage, Tiamat snarled at the gathered dragons, "Cowards, every last one of you! Is this how you demonstrate your loyalty to Me?"
"Your Majesty, no, we only..."
"I sustain you with My divine power—only for you to indulge in empty bluster here?! Get down to the Material Plane! Go destroy the armies of the Cinder Empire! Fail to carry out My command, and you shall never set foot in the divine realm again!"
In Her wild fury, Tiamat violently beat Her dragon wings. An overwhelmingly fierce tempest swept through the hall in an instant, striking down dozens of chromatic dragons residing in the divine realm and causing their forms to turn translucent.
"Your Majesty, please wait!"
"I don't want to go back to the Material Plane!"
"I beg of You, Dragon Queen! Let me stay in the divine realm! There's a lunatic paladin hunting me on the Material Plane!"
The chromatic dragons struggled frantically, wailing and begging for mercy, but to no avail.
In Her towering rage, Tiamat banished all several dozen chromatic dragons from the divine realm, casting them down into the Material Plane.
Watching the dragons cast into the Material Plane, Tiamat said coldly, "They ought to realize... since they enjoy the immense power bestowed by their birthright, they must willingly dedicate themselves to the chromatic brood."
The great wyrm red dragon Kaleymas immediately sidled closer and chimed in, "Your Majesty is truly wise and discerning. If we continued to let these whelps run wild, it would only breed more ungrateful curs like Cassius.
"Were that to happen, when would our chromatic race ever reign over the mortal lands again?"
Kaleymas spoke first to flatter Tiamat, and second to make his stance abundantly clear by drawing a line between himself and the Cinder Emperor. After all, being a red dragon himself, he could hardly escape the suspicion and paranoia of the Mother of Evil Dragons.
To his surprise, Tiamat fixed Her gaze intently upon him. Beyond the lingering heat of Her fury, an inexplicable arousal gleamed in Her eyes, and Her jaws split into a sinister grin.
"Kaleymas, it will be your turn to attend Me today as well. Remember to shape four horns upon your head. Tonight... you are going to suffer a little."
"Y-Yes, Your Majesty. It is my honor to serve You."
His tail tucked between his legs, his hindquarters quivering and cold sweat beading on his brow, the great wyrm red dragon—whose reproductive faculties had long withered away only to be forcibly restored through divine magic—wore an expression that begged to cry without tears.
...
The Taliro Desert.
A scorching sun beat down, the blistering heat shimmering through the distorted air. Amid the boundless yellow sands, what appeared to be a lush oasis shimmered in the distance.
Yet if a parched traveler were to draw near that oasis, they would discover in despair that it was nothing more than a mirage. Hidden beneath the illusion stood a sprawling ancient ruin, the skies around it teeming with blue dragons, manticores, and desert dragonbeasts.
These were the palace ruins of the ancient Rann Empire, now serving as the stronghold of the Blue Dragon Sect of the Cult of the Dragon, the palace of the "Thunder Tyrant" Golazdla.
Deep within these ruined halls, inside a vast interior chamber, the floor was covered in soft sand strewn everywhere with glassy fulgurites forged by lightning breath, gleaming with faint blue glimmers in the gloom.
The air froze in dead silence. Nothing remained in the hall save for a spine-chilling hum of static electricity, faint yet piercing straight to the bone.
Then, electrical arcs leapt, their crisp snaps echoing through the palace as the pungent stench of ozone filled the air.
The dunes trembled violently. The fine sand hummed as if shivering with terror, cascading down the slopes in shifting torrents, while a muffled tolling like a colossal bronze bell resonated from beneath the earth.
Suddenly, yellow sand burst outward. The entire dune collapsed abruptly, and a colossal, ferocious figure stirred from the earth's veins, rising slowly from the sands to reveal its terrifying form.
It was a fearsome blue dragon, chiselled with sharp, angular contours like stone hewn by blade and axe. Her heavy armored scales were no longer the cobalt or azure of youth, but had matured into a metallic hue nearing deep indigo, the worn edges of Her scales weathered pale.
They were etched with ancient patterns and fine crystalline nodules, scored with countless massive, deep scars crisscrossing Her craggy armor in a startling display.
The blue dragon's pupils radiated a glaring, pale-blue light, like rifts opening into a lightning-forged inferno.
As She rose fully from the ruins of the dune, the sight was enough to shatter the courage of the bravest warrior.
Along Her powerful spine, a row of serrated, deep-blue dorsal plates rose like jagged peaks, extending majestically from the nape of Her neck to the tip of Her tail, the crest of each plate crackling with restless lightning.
Attached to this dreadful body were two pairs of colossal wings that blotted out the sky, displaying a strange translucence as though rivers of liquid blue lightning surged ceaselessly within them.
Most terrifying of all was the energy saturating Her surroundings. Visible, writhing arcs of blue electricity danced and coursed between the crevices of Her heavy scales, converging at the tips of Her bone spines and massive horn with terrifying sizzles and crackles.
This great wyrm blue dragon seemed the very incarnation of thunder, the embodiment of a desert storm.
Every inch of Her body, every movement, even every breath quietly proclaimed Her terrifying might—a primal power drawn from the origin of the world, capable of rending the heavens and crushing the earth.
In the Taliro Desert, a long-circulating poem described the blue dragon's advent:
"The legend awakens, the yellow sands Her bed,
Thunder Her heartbeat, fierce and loud.
And the cities of mortals—
Mere dust swept away by the flick of Her tail."
This was the Thunder Tyrant, the Mother of Storms and Dunes, the uncrowned queen of the Great Taliro Desert—the great wyrm blue dragon Golazdla Faria.
Only this time, Golazdla's awakening was not meant to bring calamity to mortals, but to receive the divine decree of the Chromatic Dragon Queen.
The great wyrm blue dragon raised Her head slightly, gazing respectfully at the phantom of the five-headed dragon hanging in midair, and intoned in a low rumble:
"I understand, Your Majesty. As You command, I shall use thunder and lightning to annihilate his army, destroy his flesh, and show that arrogant wretch—and every mortal creature in this world—the price of betraying You."
Even before Her words finished, small bolts of lightning struck down from the massive horn atop the great wyrm's snout. Flashes of electricity flared around Her, scorching the sands beneath into pure glass.
She threw Her head back and roared, causing the heavens and earth to change hue. Cloudbanks of thunder blotted out the sun above the ruins, and amidst the muffled booms like war drums, blue dragons, desert wyverns, and lightning elemental drakes circled in midair, darting through crisscrossing bolts of lightning, roaring and bellowing endlessly.
Across a hundred li in every direction, humans and dragons alike trembled in sheer panic.
For they knew that the Thunder Tyrant slumbering deep within the yellow sands—had awakened!
Chapter 805