Adarin assessed the situation: the oh-so-slow landing operation at the beach, the wyverns terrorizing the scattered militia in the town. One rose up in a lazy circle, a struggling body in its hindclaws. It lowered its head and tore the poor militiaman apart, dropping the legs while devouring the chest. Anger boiled in Adarin's chest and he made a decision. He extended his diamonoid blade from his manipulator. The light sparkled ominously on the translucently black adamant.

  Time to see if I can take the budget dragons in melee.

  He sprinted toward the city, the dirt-pelted ground slick under his pounding manipulators. He felt the heat of the burning ruins of the wooden gatehouse, but like the wyverns, he didn’t hesitate. He sealed two-thirds of his sensors in wood and leapt into the flames.

  Choking heat robbed all oxygen. His sensors wilted and died, the world blurring into a hellscape of burning logs, glowing coal, and orange fire. Then he was through. Cold, clean air welcomed him—and he stumbled straight into the back of a grounded wyvern. He tumbled head over heels over the scaled body.

  Half-blind, half mad with agony, Adarin set his speakers to maximum volume and screamed a battle cry. The three wyverns squeaked and scattered like chickens after someone had thrown a rock at them. Without missing a beat, Adarin plunged the diamonoid dagger straight into the closest one’s chest. With a feral leap, the blade ripped through skin and meat.

  But this time he was losing the gambit of mass and momentum. The creature was nearly three times his weight. They crashed. Adarin fell but kept the dagger in place, carving open the chest cavity and was rewarded with a shower of blood and guts. Warm, slick, and metallic. He roared in satisfaction.

  The wyvern squealed, clawing, scratching, biting, gouging deep grooves into Adarin’s wooden body. The other two circled, hesitant to join the melee. With Adarin’s back so close to the fire it smoked, the wyvern raised its head for another bite. Got you!

  Adarin struck like a scorpion. His manipulator shot up, throwing a brutal uppercut into the creature’s jaw. Bone cracked and a satisfying shockwave went through Adarin's body. The wyvern paused, dazed. It moved its jaw as if to see if it still could and spit bloody saliva onto him. Adarin ripped the diamonoid blade upward, cutting the beast’s throat lengthwise. Arterial blood gushed forward, and with a gurgling screech, the wyvern collapsed.

  Adarin felt artificial adrenaline surge. A feral grin split his face, and he roared on the general channel. ‘One down!’

  The rational fraction of his mind still noted that one of the grounded wyverns had scattered and the aerial ones were hunting fleeing militia, picking men off one by one.

  Circling the other injured wyvern, he took slow, calming breaths, running through combat meditations.

  That was too fun. But I’m the commander, not the champion. End it quickly. He took a split second to appreciate his body's new flexibility. Without the blessing of the willows I couldn't be fighting this way.

  He pulled back the manipulator holding the diamonoid dagger, holding it like a scorpion stinger. He screeched again at full volume, this time noticing the jarring impact it had on his own body, how his world shuddered.

  To his surprise, the wyvern squawked and jumped back, flapping damaged wings—enough to land on a rooftop, not fly.

  Adarin froze. Well, shit. The fucker is more mobile than I am. No matter, this works in my favor. I have a battle to command.

  He reached out to Commodore Ashfield.

  ‘Estimated time of arrival?’

  ‘Five minutes. We’ve packed up the cannons.’

  Adarin nearly slapped his forehead. Of course. The impossible spatial storage. The artillery is mobile.

  He looked around, noticing another problem. The town's palisade reached up five meters and the gatehouse was a bonfire.

  ‘Fuck. Ashfield, the walls. How are you going to—’

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  ‘We are bringing ropes and explosives.’

  Adarin could have kissed the competent commodore right then and there. He took a slow breath and considered all the variables.

  He looked around: chaos, screams, blood. Wyverns hunted fleeing men. He reached out to the mage-captain he had left in charge of the town militia detachment.

  ‘Jacobson, report.’

  ‘Sir… I’m trying to rally troops. Three mages. Forty undead. Ten musketeers. We were at the edge of the lightning blast. My abjuration barely held—’

  Adarin ignored the rambling. He ran down the main road towards the market square to triangulate the position of his troops. It took him only three seconds to locate them and turn down into a side alley. Closed shops and two burning houses lined the street.

  Seventy meters. A squawk. Through the smoke of a burning house behind him—the one sheltering civilians—a wyvern descended. A plan crystallized in Adarin’s mind.

  In a split second, he judged the porcupine wall of skeleton pikes, the weary musketeers, the three mages controlling fifty skeletons. He dove into his protocol database, running probability estimates and distances.

  Yes. This will work.

  He deliberately slowed, letting the swooping wyvern catch up. The leafy-green predator descended with a lethal claw extended, polished talons glinting in the firelight.

  Thirty meters.

  Adarin reached out. ‘Captain Jacobson. Keep the pikes at low ready. The wyverns are smart. They’ll stop short. Keep musketeers ready. Fire only on my command. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Orders were barked.

  Adarin charged the formation. He judged which skeletons were in position and switched to speaking aloud. The wyvern closed—twenty meters, claws ready, coming in low. It wants to grab and drop me.

  Ten meters.

  “Buckle up now!” Adarin barked.

  Like the spikes of an offended porcupine, the pikes rose from low to high, the stance used to repel aerial cavalry charges. Gusts from the wyvern’s wings buffeted the formation, toppling the wounded captain.

  The smell of musk and keratinous hide engulfed Adarin. The wyvern screeched with earsplitting ferocity, hovering just out of reach, the pikes two meters from its body.

  So you think you’re safe, buddy?

  Adarin grinned in his private combat mindspace. He extended four of his eight manipulators, grabbed pikes by the shaft, and ripped them from skeletal hands.

  He curled like a spring, drove his legs into the ground, and leapt like a booby trap. His reach extended by five meters.

  The four pikes slammed into the wyvern. Two shafts splintered on scales, showering the small unit with sharp wooden fragments. One drove in half a meter before breaking, probably striking bone. It stuck out like a bloody thorn from the creature’s body. The last went clean through. Adarin felt resistance give way as it pierced the beast.

  The wyvern screeched, more in surprise than in pain.

  “Raise the pikes!” Adarin roared.

  He lifted his legs and hung all his weight on the embedded pike. It slid, but the friction gods favored him today. The wyvern dropped, dragged into the pike wall.

  It panicked, which was what killed it. Instead of beating wings, it slashed with claws, giving up lift. The three-ton predator was impaled by dozens of pikes, wings enfolding the formation like a grotesque tent. Many shattered and one mage lost an eye to an unlucky fragment. He went down with a scream. But Newton has proclaimed a death sentence and his word was absolute.

  Jubilation erupted. Musketeers fired a volley on Adarin’s order. Skeletons seized the crippled beast. The mage-captain curled on the ground, clutching a gut wound, and gave Adarin a weary smile.

  “Commander… brilliant. Fuck those lizards.”

  Adarin grinned, nodding his wooden core. “Fuck those lizards.”

  The soldiers took up the cry. “Fuck those lizards!”

  Adarin switched his volume to maximum. “We kill the second one! Only four left! Rally on my position! Rally on my position! Militia of Oakridge—save your town, defend your loved ones!”

  While he waited alongside the lizard blood showered and jubilant troops, the locals rallied, or decided that there was safety in numbers. One by one, soldiers appeared—militiamen with pikes, axes, blades, cleavers—bolstering the ranks.

  But Adarin swallowed hard. Naively, the situation looked good. In truth, killing the wyvern had come at a high cost. Two-thirds of their pikes had splintered or were too deeply embedded to recover.

  We can’t do this again.

  Smoke choked the sky. A dozen houses burned. Fires spread. A shadow swooped. The air whooshed.

  The big wyvern cooed in anticipation, promising bloody vengeance for its slaughtered kin. Cries of fear erupted all around him, revealing the fragility of their morale. The sounds of dying men and rampaging beasts rang out across the town.

  Adarin swallowed hard. This is far from over.