Armageddon

Chapter 18: The Castle by the Sea

Joining Noctis' side in the thick of the evening, Selena knelt before the feral leader and stroked his neck, his ebony hide as smooth and slippery as fish scales. "Please tell me what happened to Blackheart. What became of the villagers?"

Noctis snaked his head around and sniffed her face before letting out a low grumble. "Gone...."

"What do you mean gone? Were they...?" A tear drifted down her moon-kissed cheek, but her grief was soon replaced by the blazing fire burning within her; her wrath was about to erupt like a violent volcano. "If Blackheart is nothing more than those zealots, I will burn it to the ground." Noctis snorted and flickered his tail across the dirt before wrapping it around his body, creating puffs of dust from each sweep.

Growing weary of waiting, Selena decided to take matters into her own hands. Noctis stayed ensconced within his coils, but she had already assumed her dragon form, heaved herself upward one full-body leap, and sailed through heaven's sea of stars. She was the light chasing away the darkness that consumed Armageddon, and time eluded her as she made her way towards the shadow over Blackheart.

As the village drew close, the mountains could hear Selena's roar. The guards who gave her group the rude greeting now donned the Order attire. As she closed the distance between her and the settlement, Selena snarled when she saw Blackheart crawling with the Lich's atrocious worshipers—their dark blue bone masks made her almost retch.

Upon spotting the Divine blue dragon, the zealots rushed about in pell-mell fashion, taking up arms in retaliation, firing a combination of magic and bullets as Selena flew close. Yet, she danced around their attacks as she swooped downward, her fury knowing no bounds. She breathed a line of blue Aether fire into a row of cultists, and she paused mid-strafe to watch the men from the Order burst into flames.

Pleased with her work, she circled and wafted more flames across the wall, destroying what remained of the wooden structure, her wings fanning the fires as her blazes burned. Steering herself along the perimeter, Selena spewed another torrent that ravaged both infrastructure and Order alike, with buildings and supplies exploding into pieces; barrels and body parts flew through the air.

Soon, the Order stopped attacking the rampaging dragon and began fleeing for their lives; Selena dove through and burned them down with a single breath, finishing her onslaught with one final strafe of the burning village and unleashing her deadly azure inferno. The Divine Aether Dragon reduced all her enemies to piles of ash. Satisfied, she flew away, not taking note of some talon prints left in the ground at Blackheart's center that belonged to Thor.

It didn't take her long to return to the ensconced Noctis. The lazy Nidhoggr leader looked up as she landed before him; black smoke plumed from his nostrils in greeting. To Selena's dismay, her friends still had not arrived. She was about to look for Silver and Rahim herself, but she was hesitant to abandon Noctis again after forming a new acquaintance. Noctis snaked his head across the ground to face her as if he read her thoughts. "Wait... for... them. T-they... will come."

Trusting in his words, she wrapped herself up within her coils and draped her wings over her head, only accompanied by the sound of Noctis' breathing as steady as the ocean waves. Grieving over the fallen villagers, with the lack of graves or, as much as it pained her to consider, a pile of bodies, Selena could only surmise that the Dreygur Rahim pointed out were the risen residents from Blackheart.

However, she heard a whistle, like a drawn sword. Her head shot up, pupils turning to slits as she prepared herself for a possible surprise attack; a bright flutter of sword-sharp wings caught a glimmer in Selena's sparkling emeralds, Noctis' rapidly descending dragonkin with their spoils from the Order's ambush. Their snouts and claws were dyed crimson as they gorged themselves immediately upon landing.