Chapter 504: A Grey Nightmare
"So do you know where babies truly come from now?!" Sapphire asked smug. His voice was triumphant, as if he had just won an argument that no one else had been having.
"What are you talking about? He must know they get brought to the parents by a bird if they love each other!" Sophia explained to her brother. Her voice was earnest, certain of the truth of her statement.
"Age is just a number, sister. But I understand if revealing the millions of years will make you seem too unreachable." Maria smiled at Benjamin, as he wondered why he was being addressed as a sister.
"Awwwn. So unfair, Benjamin," Heka pouted, as Benjamin glared at her, her lower lip jutting out in an exaggerated display of disappointment. Her brown eyes sparkled with mischief, and there was a playful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I revealed my true age as well! Tell us how many millions of years you’ve walked Elyndor!"
[You vixen! You’re making it difficult for me over here!] Benjamin sent Heka an angry telepathic message.
His mental voice was sharp and frustrated, but there was no real anger behind it. He was annoyed, but he also understood that she was just playing, just trying to get a reaction out of him.
[If you feel offended, please come and hit me. I won’t stop you, I swear.] [Heka] Her mental voice was warm, inviting, and pretty much eager.
Thus, the group walked down the slope and towards the city of Thaad with different harbored thoughts of Benjamin being at least about 1000 years.
The adventurers still exchanged glances, their minds racing with possibilities and speculations.
The slope was gentle, the grass soft beneath their feet, and the sun was beginning its slow descent toward the horizon.
The city of Thaad loomed in the distance. It was beautiful and serene.
They could see the details of the architecture now, the towers and spires that rose above the walls, the flags that fluttered in the breeze, the tiny people moving about their daily lives.
It was a peaceful scene, the kind of image that belonged on a painting or a tapestry.
***
The walled city of Thaad was well within eye-reach, but the group were still a few miles away.
However, they were close enough to see it—
BOOMMM!!
In the blink of an eye, the peaceful and seemingly serene city turned into a hellscape infested by—
"Wyvern!!" Eric yelled, alarmed at the beasts that literally suddenly started running inside and outside the city. His voice was strained, desperate, and his hand flew to the hilt of his blade. "Quick, let us go and join them before they will be casualties!"
The ground shook, the walls trembled, and a chorus of screams rose from the streets afar. The sound was horrifying, a cacophony of terror and chaos that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Eric’s words snapped the group into action.
They had just finished one battle, had just healed from their wounds, and now they were being thrust into another. It was exhausting, but there was no time to complain.
"Again...?’ Maria sighed as everyone started running towards the city. Her voice was tired, resigned, as if she had been expecting this.
"Again? What do you mean?" Benjamin asked her, also wondering what could just drop a swarm of dragons at a go.
His feet pounded against the grass as he ran, keeping pace with the adventurers, his eyes fixed on the chaos unfolding before them.
Before we move on, wyverns in this world are a type of dragon that has no hind limbs, and has a serpentine body which it also moves with its two fore limbs.
They are dragons, though not the type that flies or walk on four legs, so they can have elemental breath as well.
The stages and evolution of dragons apply to them too, which means there can be a "mature dragon" wyvern. It was a distinction that mattered, a classification that helped the adventurers understand what they were facing and how to fight it.
However, the ones chasing people around in the city were a little bigger than humans, mere Lesser Dragons, and can be killed by five men with weapons that aren’t rusty.
They were very dangerous, but completely manageable. A well-coordinated group could take them down without too much difficulty.
The real threat, the thing that made Eric’s blood run cold, was the fact that they were here at all.
And to Maria’s explanation: she said "again" because they have been receiving problems like this for the past few months. Monsters showing up under radar, or abnormal monsters appearing in locations and situations that would leave an expert confused.
It was as if someone was orchestrating it.
The pattern was too consistent and seemingly deliberate to be coincidental. Someone was pulling strings, manipulating events from the shadows.
Even the matter with the mature dragon they just killed was one of them. That dragon had been in the wrong habitat, had been too powerful for its size, had been altered in ways that defied explanation.
And here they are, met with another anomaly: a swarm of wyverns appearing out of nowhere, attacking a city that had been peaceful moments before.
The realization settled over the group like a heavy blanket, weighing them down with the knowledge that they were caught in something far larger than themselves.
They were pawns in a game they didn’t understand, pieces being moved by an unseen hand.
But they didn’t even have time to sigh properly before Benjamin pointed something horrifying out.
"I see... there’s an even bigger wyvern fighting some skilled Adventurers over there," he pointed towards the far distance, where a wyvern, unlike what is normally seen outside, was engaged in combat, a distance from where the City was.
Benjamin’s voice was far too calm and clinical for someone pointing out a creature of pure destruction.
The group turned to look, and what they saw made their blood run cold. This grey wyvern was clearly many times more powerful than the blue mature dragon Eric’s group just slain.
Its leathery but armored skin were dark and almost black, and its body was massive, coiled like a snake ready to strike.
With its flock littering the area, it behaved like a Common Dragon, directing the lesser wyverns with a intelligence that was human.
No, it wasn’t supposed to be there at all. It would be the most troublesome case they’ve ever received in Thaad.
Eric’s face went pale, and his hand tightened on his sword. He had seen many things in his long life, had fought many battles, but this was something else entirely.
The beast was about 60 feet long and 100 feet from the ground up, slightly shorter than the largest creature on Earth, and towered over all the trees at that area that it could be seen from miles away.
Its shadow fell across the landscape like a dark cloud, blocking out the sun and casting everything beneath it into gloom. It was a monster out of legend, a creature that should not exist, and it was standing adjacent to the city they were trying to protect.