A Dragon's Bond

Retributions Upgrade

It took most of the rest of the day for Eulay's men to make their way into Retribution. The lazy river of bodies surging through our gates as our forces scrambled to offer food and drink to the newcomers. I felt a sense of pride in my people for getting out there and welcoming our new brothers and sisters in arms without needing to be told. These were good people one and all. As I stood there the pride overflowed into a smile caught by Eulay.

"What is it Adam?"

I turned and gazed upon her grace, as it was my new favorite thing to do. Taking in her beauty for a moment like I needed it to survive.

"I am just starting to get the crazy idea that we are going to seriously give Vadoris a run for her money."

She smiled and nodded as a look of determination cast across her face. I could feel the silent commitment to our cause from her. We watched them pass from the balcony for a while in silence until we decided it was time to gather our key people to plan.

I called together the meeting of leaders. We needed to get a formal plan together on how we will begin expanding the base. After a small deliberation, we all agreed that going underground was the safest and smartest way to go. This would allow us to keep our true numbers secret in addition to having a place to keep people who were wounded or didn't want to fight. We now had a decent portion of our population that wanted to support the effort without carrying a sword. These people were just as critical as the soldiers and dragons. One man may swing the sword but I promise you a hundred other people were necessary to build it. From blacksmiths, to cooks, to the person that keeps the spaces clean. All of these pieces need to work together and be protected and valued equally to be successful.

As we poured over plans and possibilities for Retribution, we also decided to address the formal structure of our military. We were becoming so large that we needed to standardize the units. We couldn't simply have all the sword dudes meet with John and the bows all follow Lisa.

There would be a number of guilds within our Army branching down from the Council we put into place at the top. The council was a collection of leaders from each discipline. It was decided that everything from Dragons, to bowmen, to craftsman and cooks would all be grouped by their main profession into a guild. From that pool they would elect their chosen representative for the council. For example the leader of the Blacksmiths could inform the council on arms inventory or required supplies. He would become the voice for their guild for all things. The council also voted on decisions about how we would run Retribution as it inevitably became a larger and larger city. With the final plans for the council completed we moved to the daunting task of actually planning the new additions to the base. Some of the less interested leaders left to begin passing out the new information.

We decided the underground portion of the base would start at the tip of the mountain and travel through to the base, connecting to the Armory below the old Blacksmiths hut by a secret passage. We would borrow a trick from the Nadar and their forest Kingdom. The opening in the mountain down would be ringed with defensive structures and a handful of less critical shops that had begun to setup in Retribution. Instead or ringing the outside of trees with homes, we would ring the inside of the mountain. All of our current buildings too include the castle would be built higher, and we will interconnect the buildings and towers with walkways, creating a stone forest. Our hopes are that the network of stone paths and towers would make it difficult for unfamiliar dragons to navigate anything quickly. We would build our stone forest high into the Sky. Let it stand in bleak defiance, we were done hiding.

One of the elder dragons present immediately turned and began creating flight training plans with his human counterparts. We would know this new forest well enough to navigate it blind folded through a blizzard if need be. It would become one of our greatest weapons.

After descending into the mountain and getting beneath it's base we would begin a complex and very large collection of halls mixed with rooms and dead ends. The dead ends would confuse attackers if they ever got down here, and left room to expand again if needed. We needed to stand ready to house much more than ourselves safely at any moment.

After a few hours the plans were complete and we ran them by the builders. They made a few corrections here and there since apparently some of the requests were downright impossible. We also learned from the Earth Dragons that we needed to change the elevation of our tunnels and holes at random just in case a tunnel was compromised. After we got their seal of approval we began building.

The forces were so large, and there were so many tasks, that I had to delegate most of the work to different leaders, I would never be able to keep up on my own. I began to trust my new army, every time plans changed they would easily adapt and overcome these new challenges. The guild leaders all naturally falling into place almost immediately and the system seemed to be working beautifully. The building of the base expansion began moving along just as quickly. We started by creating a huge cavern to hide the forces, trying to keep our new numbers hidden from the Queen. We relied heavily on the troops that controlled the Earth element in the beginning, they were worked around the clock tirelessly. After the bulk of the forces were hidden we were able to slow down and work at a reasonable speed. As we dug we shifted the leftover dirt and rock topside to be used for building the buildings taller and thicker our stone forest taking shape.

As the days passed The Queens forces started to probe and attack from different points around the base, constantly looking for any weakness in our defense, attacking at all times of the day and night. They would attack in small groups, breaking a few things and then disappear, never creating any large amounts of damage, constantly searching for weaknesses. It was as if they were just trying to slow progress and gather information on what we were doing. It only motivated us to prepare further for the inevitable large scale attack. She was planning something and I was onto it.