• The platoon of soldiers rode through the heavily-wooded forest in the evewning Autumn light. With the orange sun on their right, the mens' silver and white armor glistened with a gold sheen, and their royal-blue capes appeared black.

    "Sir! We're losing them, they're going too fast!" One of the men pointed ahead to the shrinking figures on the horizon, barely visible through the trunks of the old Wood. The Lieutenant scowled, then spurred his horse faster.

    "For the lives of your families, men, ride faster! If they escape us, countless die!!" He hollared back, and their pace quickened as the horses labored at the urge of their riders. The path of laid stone and washed gravel sounded off against the flurry of hooves as the soldiers crested the shallow hill and emerged from the forest.

    "No...!" The Lieutenant beheld his home, the grand city of Trakevv, being laid siege by the dragons his men had been chasing. At least six, no, seven of the beasts circled, swooped, bit and blew fire above the city walls. Clouds of arrows ascended from the castle walls' archers and found no marks upon the thick-scaled dragons.

    "Lieutenant Morvick!" A younger soldier cried out in astonishment. "By the gods, how can we stop them?!" His horse padding and whinneying uneasily at the sounds and smells of death, the Lieutenant reigned in and set his gaze. A long pause...

    "If we can't, I'll never be accused of not trying. Charge!" He spurred his horse into the valley towards the burning fields that surrounded the Castle Trakevv and the inner city.

    His horse's hooves pounding deafly upon his unhearing ears, the Lieutenant focusses all his attention upon the nearest Dragon. The beast was over sixty feet from tail to snout, and its transliescent wings caught the air and shoved it downward, skyrocketting the bronze-colored lizard high above the soldiers.

    Farmers, wives, children and animals lay dead, burned or bleeding in the burnt fields. The few that lived were running to whatever cover they could find, which was none, for too many of them.

    Hissing audably, the lofting Dragon, bronze scales glowing with the fires from below and the sun above, dove at the new appearance of staunch soldiers. Gouting flames burst from the maw of the serpent, and the soldiers raised their shields in defense.

    With the horrid screams of their dying horses filling their ears, half of the men succumbed to the heat and crumpled to the ground in their melting, burning armor. As the dragon pulled up from its dive and barrel-rolled over its left shoulder, readying another dive, the Lieutenant staggered away from his charred and burnt steed, and pulled a weapon from the sheathe on the animal's side: a collapsable, light-weight lance.

    Pressing the catch on the long spear, its spring-loaded haft extended the weapon to nearly three-times the original length, to a full twenty feet. Holding the massive javelin in his hands, the Lieutenant marched to the center of his mens' formation-- what few of them remained-- and holalred at the unlistening dragon in rage and adrenaline.

    "Come on you b*****d Devil! Kill me! Go ahead, slay me too!" He shook with rage and anticipation, and his men took to the rally. Holalring, war-crying and shouting the names of various gods, they too readied their lances.

    The Bronze Dragon dove again, mouth wide open and barbed-tail clenched tight. It released the tail under itself forcibly, and flung it's long rigid hairs into the numbers of men, like a porcupine firing it's quills. Some of the men fell as those quills found weak points in their armor, but the majority found sanctuary behind their metal suits.

    Continuing its reckless dive, the dragon roared as castle-based archers pepepred it with arrows too light to break it's scales. The Lieutenant, the one called Morvick, steeled himself as the beast descended upon them, its wings spilling their air to quicken the descent. The beast neared 100 feet from the men, and reached to them with fangs and claws.

    At the last moment, the Lieutenant shifted his grip from a javelin, to an over-under grip, and planted one end of his lance into the ground just in front of his rear foor, and raised the point to aim at the falling dragon. His disciplined men obeyed their training thoughtlessly, and mimicked the defensive attack.

    The astonished dragon's momentum carried it onto the spears, and it impaled itself upon the soldiers' clever weapons. Crying in pain, it leaked its precious lifeblood onto the men beneath it, then fell over sideways as the soldiers cast their spears aside.

    Panting and mopist from sweat and dragon-blood, the soldiers beheld a sight that sunk their hearts: another dragon, a mighty White Dragon, soared over to aide its fallen bloodkin. The beast, likely measuring over eighty or ninety feet, wore scars and wounds of past battles won upon its hide.

    "Sire, the other dragons! They're coming after us!" The men pointed at the remaining five dragons as they pulled away from their victims and followed the White Bull Dragon to kill those that would kill their nest-mates.

    "To the woods, men!" The Lieutenant drew his longsword. "We can draw them away from the city!" At a breakneck speed-- none too fast in full armor-- the men scrambled back up the valley hill, to the forest from whence they came. The furious dragons closed on them at an immeasurably faster pace, however, and were soon grabbing soldiers by the waist and lifting them into the air, only to drop them to their deaths.

    Finally, upon reaching the grace of the thick wood, the Lieutenant conducted a head-count. Eight. Only eight ******** ment survived?! Well, he thought, then this is where we gloriously die.

    "To arms, men!" With sword drawn, he ran back to the edge of the woods. The fallen leaves and aged wood caught like kindling when the first dragon spit his fire, and soon nothing was behind the nine soldiers but a ragin blaze of blood-red flames. Nowhere to run, no place to hide.
    ....