A Quiet Life Denied

The war horns blew, a single, deafening note that was the sound of the world's end. As the tidal wave of silver and gold crashed across the blood-darkened plains, the Bastard of Maxmore remained the calm eye of the storm. Astride his monstrous white warhorse, he was a beacon of impossible light.

He did not draw an arrow. He created one.

With two fingers, he drew back the ethereal string of his sun-bow. The air around his gauntlet shimmered with heat as his fingers ignited, burning with an orange light of purest form. Between them, an arrow of solidified flame materialized, its tip a searing white that warped the very air around it. He chanted, his voice a low, resonant hum of pure power that vibrated in the chests of his men, a song of sun and fire. As his two fingers pulled the string to its absolute limit, he spoke the final word, a command to the heavens.

"Heliostrike."

He released. The arrow did not fly; it erupted. It crossed the battlefield in less than a heartbeat, a silent, searing spear of light. It did not strike a single man. It struck the earth in the dead center of the Silver Dragon's vanguard.

The world vanished in a silent, white explosion. The ground flash-melted into glass. A wave of incinerating heat rolled outwards, turning men and horses to black, brittle statues of ash that crumbled in the wind. When the light faded, a massive, weeping crater scarred the plains, its edges glowing like the maw of a volcano. Hundreds of soldiers were simply gone, erased from existence. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and cooked meat. It was not a weapon of war; it was an act of godlike extermination.

The two armies clashed. The horrific beauty of the Heliostrike was forgotten, replaced by the grim, intimate butchery of close combat. A silver knight's sword bit deep into the neck of a golden soldier, the spray of blood hot against his visor. A horse, its eyes wide with terror, screamed as its legs were sheared out from under it by a low-swinging axe. A shield wall splintered under a cavalry charge, the sound of cracking bone and tearing flesh lost in the deafening symphony of battle.

The Silver Dragon army, reeling from the initial devastating blow, began to lose its nerve. Their morale was breaking under the golden sun and the divine might of their foe. The Bastard, serene amidst the carnage, raised his bow again, his fingers beginning to glow.

Suddenly, a shadow passed over them.

It was vast, swift, and absolute, a sudden eclipse that stole the golden light and plunged the battlefield into a cold, terrifying twilight. The soldiers on both sides faltered, their heads turning skyward. A collective gasp, a sound of ten thousand men losing their breath at once, swept across the plains.

A titanic shape descended from the bruised clouds. Its scales were a deep, ancient bronze, each one the size of a shield and scarred from a hundred forgotten battles. Its wingspan was so vast it could have blotted out the sun, dwarfing even the most ambitious siege towers. It was the dragon from Whistle Peak, and it looked like a living mountain of rage and power. Perched not on its back, but seated in a serene lotus position upon its massive, horned head, was the blindfolded, silver-haired lord. He was a statue of impossible calm in the heart of a hurricane.

The dragon let out a roar, a sound that was not of this world, a sound of tearing earth and shattering mountains that shook the very souls of the men below. Then, it opened its maw.

It was not fire that emerged, but a torrent of shimmering, ethereal blue energy. It was a river of absolute cold. Where it touched the ground, the brown soil instantly flash-froze, turning to a brittle, black glass. It washed over a line of golden soldiers. Their screams were cut short as the fire leached the warmth from the world, their armor frosting over in an instant, their flesh blackening with a frostbite so severe it shattered bone. Their shields, held aloft to defend them; they cracked and fell apart like porcelain.

The Golden Knight acted instantly. He raised his sun-bow above his head, and a dome of translucent, orange energy erupted around him, a protective barrier that shimmered like a heat haze. The dragon's cold fire washed over it, hissing and steaming, but the barrier held, protecting him and a small circle of his closest guards. The rest were not so lucky.

The battle had changed. It was no longer a war of men. It was a duel of gods.

The monstrous white horse let out a challenging shriek and charged, its hooves striking the ground with the force of cannonballs. Its speed was unnatural, a blur of white that somehow kept pace with the colossal dragon flying low overhead. The Golden Knight, riding with effortless grace, began to chant again, pulling back his two fingers.

"Ignis Hailstorm!"

An undefined number of flaming projectiles, each one a miniature sun, launched from his bow in a devastating barrage. The dragon twisted in the air, a display of impossible agility for a creature its size, weaving and dodging through the storm of fire. It answered with another blast of its cold, blue flames. Death and destruction rained down on the battlefield below. Soldiers were trampled into paste under the thundering hooves of the white horse. Others were frozen into brittle statues by the dragon's breath.

The Golden Knight did not relent. He drew his bow again, a single, brighter arrow of pure solar energy forming at his fingertips.

"Solaris Bolt!"

The arrow screamed through the air, too fast for even the dragon to fully evade. It tore through the leathery membrane of the beast's left wing. The dragon let out a shriek of pure, unadulterated agony as its flight faltered. It spiraled downwards, crashing into the earth with a ground-shaking impact that sent bodies and debris flying for hundreds of feet.

The silver-haired lord moved for the first time. He was already on his feet, standing beside his injured, writhing dragon, his hand resting gently on its snout. The Golden Knight saw his opportunity. He aimed another arrow, this one a simple sliver of light, directly at the defenseless lord.

He fired.

The arrow flew true. But it never found its mark. The silver-haired lord's hand shot out, catching the arrow of pure light in his bare palm. His skin sizzled and burned, the smell of seared flesh rising in the air, but he did not cry out. With a flick of his wrist, he threw the still-burning arrow back into the golden army, where it exploded, killing dozens of warriors.

"Child," the lord's cold, clear voice came, the first words he had spoken. "I seem to have underestimated you." He looked down at his burned hand. It wasn't healing. Under normal circumstances, the wound would have vanished in an instant.

He lifted his uninjured hand into the air. The wind, which had been still, began to circulate around him, picking up speed, whipping into a miniature cyclone. Lightning, thin and violet, crackled between his fingers. A divine spear, forged from pure wind and storm, began to take shape in his grasp, its tip a needle of blinding lightning. His eyes were still covered, but his head was aimed directly at his foe.

"Tempest Fury," he said, and a storm of lances made of shrieking wind and lightning shot across the battlefield. They didn't fly in a straight line; they weaved and dodged, seeking their target like vengeful spirits. The white horse tried to evade, but it couldn't escape them all. One of the lances tore through its leg, and the magnificent beast collapsed with a scream.

The Golden Knight dismounted, landing gracefully on his feet. He used his sun-bow to deflect the remaining lances, each impact a deafening crack of thunder and a flash of blinding light.

"It seems I have underestimated you, too, Uncle," he said, his voice calm, respectful, yet utterly defiant.

The white-haired lord spat on the ground. "Don't call me that. No one fighting on that monster Maxmore's side is related to me."

"I will not tolerate disrespect towards my father," the golden-haired knight replied, his voice losing its warmth for the first time. He pulled his two fingers back, fire beginning to coalesce around them once more.

The silver lord raised his own hand. The sky above him, which had been clear, was now a roiling mass of black storm clouds. Thunder and strong wind descended, a vortex of pure rage. The sky was now divided, one half a brilliant, burning sunlight, the other a dark, violent tempest.

Both were about to unleash an attacks that would annihilate the entire battlefield.

Then, in a single, impossible moment, everything froze.

The charging soldiers, the whipping banners, the swirling clouds, the crackling lightning, the coalescing fire—all of it stopped, a frozen tableau of imminent destruction.

A single, soundless step was taken on the battlefield, and a piercing voice full of an ancient and absolute authority.

"Stop this madness. Now."

A/N

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