Kaiaan Raich watched the devastation with cold fury.

  The grassy coastline of Guhran was alive with fires at the pitch black of midnight. Farmsteads and fields, coastal towns and villages, all burning. All his.

  Pillaged.

  And out to sea, the lights of yet more fires.

  The ghostly glows of hooded lanterns swung in the endless rain, the darkness shattered by the occasional thundering flash of a cannon blast.

  The Dying Sea pirates had come once again to Arcturas.

  And this time they had come in force.

  Everywhere hordes of pirates swarmed over the land robbing and killing from every home or vessel passing within leagues of the southern coast.

  Fast sloops full of plunder and slaves fled out to deeper waters, running to strongholds built or sequestered in the Spine Islands to the south where they made their home now.

  Everywhere Kaiaan looked the twisted horns and cruel tusks of Yscaa the Dread’s banner swayed in the breeze. Her standard planted on every ruined hilltop.

  Kaaian did not understand, and that ignorance filled him with fury.

  The pirates did not take land.

  They did not build fortresses.

  They ravaged the lands like locusts.

  Always plundering, raiding, but never had Yscaa and her filth ever set their sights on conquest.

  Something had changed.

  Kaaian’s ruminations were interrupted as a distant cannon blast erupted in the sky a mere 15 feet away in a corona of smoke and sparking red fire.

  “They’re getting very close your majesty!”

  A young lancer squire shouted over the shrieking wind and the pounding of the dragon's wings. A pair of them clung to Baksurra’s back with climbing hooks, attached to the saddle by metal cables.

  Kaiaan snorted to himself but nodded to the young man.

  He retrieved a red flag pinned to Baksurra's saddle, and held it aloft waving it before swinging it and the reins of his dragon left.

  In tandem the wing of five dragons swung to the left, repositioning to force the cannoneers below to readjust their aim all over again.

  They couldn’t hit them as long as they moved every few minutes or so, their cannon too imprecise.

  And with every missed shot, the Flight drew closer.

  The dragons were growing restless, bucking in their saddles, releasing thin jets of fire from between snapping angry jaws.

  All raged but Baksurra, the midnight titan merely purred, deep and low.

  Powerful as an earthquake, steady as an ocean wave.

  He knew his master would not make him wait long.

  Soon, this quiet moment would end, and the time of screams and slaughter would begin again. To the Emperor’s Flame, and his Shadow, this was their life, their destiny.

  Silence.

  Then screams.

  Silence.

  Then screams.

  Kaiaan held a raised fist above his head, and the dragon’s blood grew hot.

  It would begin again.

  “Kill them all!” Kaiaan roared over the cannon fire, opening his fist and waving it high in the air.

  His squires threw forth his sword, which he caught in the air as the dragons dove in tandem, beginning their dance of death anew.

  Baksurra let out a jet of flame that bathed the night in light.

  All eyes for miles turned and went wide with horror at the glowing pillar of white brilliance.

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  Flying higher than any palace tower, the dragon’s incinerating breath scorched across the land below like the gaze of an angry god, destroying everything beneath.

  Whole swathes of countryside; pirates, farmers, huts, and fields alike all went up like dry twigs thrown into the bonfire.

  The many wings in the flight spread about the skies, split off with military precision.

  Lancers fought the reins to get their mounts in position as the dragons roared with glee.

  One wing group swept out wide across the bay, flying high to avoid cannon fire, and sending gouts of killing flame bathing the decks of the Dying Sea fleet.

  Onboard, the pirates responded in kind, filling the night sky with the sounds of cannonfire and the telltale twang of bowstrings.

  The other wing group came low across the shore, Baksurra at their head.

  Diving, they struck directly at the fleeing pirates, killing men and smashing wagons of stolen loot.

  Men and women were ripped screaming into the sky, impaled on lances or plucked up by the teeth of hungry dragons to be torn apart.

  The coast was a killing field, flat save for low bounding hills that offered no protection from above.

  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  The open sky itself trying to kill you.

  Kaiaan slaughtered.

  Unsaddled, he and his squires fought on the beachfront, keeping swarms of pirates from approaching Baksurra, landed and vulnerable.

  Just beyond where the king and his men stood their ground, the pirates' only hope of escape waited.

  Lifeboats, small stolen fishing vessels, anything large enough to carry a few men and a couple chestfuls waited. Their only hope.

  The red sands of Guhran drank greedily as their khanda swords danced through flesh.

  They would let no one pass.

  The dragon’s pearl was glowing through its shaggy black hide, brighter and brighter.

  The dragon reared on its hind legs, wings spread wide, the titan roared and wreathed the sands in white hot flame.

  The small ships exploded, men aboard either eviscerated by the explosions or evaporated by the sheer heat of Baksurra’s fire.

  No survivors.

  “Up!” He roared, retreating and killing as he retreated, back to Baksurra.

  He and his squires mounted, leaping off into the skies as the stranded pirates raged and spat.

  The King-Regent found despite this strong initial gambit he could not enjoy himself.

  Something itched at the back of his mind. A feeling honed from a lifetime of war.

  An enemy never changed tactics for no reason.

  The pirates were dying en masse. The Dying Sea pirates never mobilized in force for precisely this reason.

  Always Ysca’s crews had operated independently, such was their ruthless disloyal nature. The price perhaps of filling your crews exclusively with desperate slaves, and inhuman slavers.

  Working together only for self-preservation.

  What had changed.

  A lancer and his mount dipped low, sending a jet of fire coating a covered wagon fleeing.

  The wagon exploded in a shower of yellow sparks. The sound like thunder.

  Shards of wood and metal were sent out in a wide blanket. Killing many pirates on the ground.

  The lancer and his dragon, as well as two other pairs coasting in the skies nearby were torn to pieces by fire and shrapnel.

  “Deception!” Kaiaan cried.

  “A trap! Off the shore!” He screamed, the dragon’s celestial winds carrying his voice across the beachhead.

  Everywhere lancers struggled to react, confusion obvious in their scattered formations.

  The ships along the coastline all began firing. Unloading far more cannon ordinance than had been observed before.

  They had been holding back.

  Luring them in.

  Getting them close.

  The ships weren’t aligned in a line for a quick departure for the looting crews spread across the coast, as Kaiaan had suspected.

  They were a firing line.

  The cannons struck, aiming not for the dragons, but for the wagons.

  They were spread out across the coastline in an almost even pattern, clearly deliberate now Kaiaan bothered to look.

  Lanterns hung from their fronts, a strange choice in a surprise raid. Unless they were meant to be seen.

  Kaiaan pulled hard on Baksurra’s reins, his organs jumping into his throat as they rose suddenly.

  The wagons exploded one by one, and Kaiaan could hear the sounds of his men and dragons screaming, and dying, behind him.

  A hot pain split his back.

  Kaiaan gingerly fingered at the spot and he hissed, his fingers coming back bloody.

  A metal shard as long as his foot and thin as hammered tin had buried itself halfway through his plate and into the muscle beneath.

  He didn’t think it was lethal, and made to ignore it for the time being.

  Turning to call for his squires Kaiaan found only empty air, their cables hanging taught over the side of the dragon's back.

  Glancing down he saw Anish and Yura’s torn bodies dangling like broken puppets.

  They looked like pincushions, so many bits of wood and metal stuck from their ruined flesh.

  Cursing, he cut their harnesses, letting them fall.

  He scanned for his remaining Flight in the skies about him. Fury rising.

  Three wings had fallen, riders and mounts left burning and blasted across the coast.

  They would need to be replaced, and soon.

  Pirates scrambled even now through the flaming ruined beachhead to carve his dragons apart and secure their priceless pearls.

  It was more than he had lost in nearly a decade of war.

  A disgrace.

  He raised the blue banner, scorched and pocketed in holes as it was, and led the Dragon Flight away from the coast inland.

  A retreat.

  His first in a very long time.

  How had he been taken by such a simple trick? By Ysca and her simple band of inbreds?

  He, the Emperor's Shadow.

  The King-Regent.

  Sword of Guhran.

  What had changed.

  He had changed, he mused sadly.

  His attention remained forever divided.

  Always his eyes were set on Aold Eiren, and the secret treasure it held. He needed it.

  Needed it with a desperation he could not, would not, put to words.

  Not yet.

  It distracted him.

  It’s queen resisted him.

  And now, the Dying Sea pirates seemed content to do the same.

  Kaiaan’s gauntleted fists tightened around the reins.

  Squeezing as if they were the throats of all his enemies.

  Queen Rhianorrix.

  Ysca the Dread.

  The Emperor…

  All his life, Kaiaan had been beset by impossible odds, obstacles and challenges that would break lesser men.

  All his life he had faced one powerful enemy after another, surviving war after pointless war.

  This was just another war.

  And like all those before, he would win it.

  With cunning, with ruthlessness, and yes, with dragon fire.

  He would win it all.

  Screams and silence, silence then screams. Again and again.

  It was his life.

  It was his destiny.

  It was his only way forward, as it had always been.