The Kingdoms of Man

Silence. The accursed dragon rubbed its snout. The defiant act had not gone unnoticed.

"Human swine," angrily growled the dragon. "You had naught but hide and hope I don't find you." Ferroth rose up to his full height, towering over many and all that stood in the capital city of Mankind. He roared a deep bellow that caused all living souls to look on. The dragon roared again, and the dragons who had been gorging themselves on human blood all rallied to their leader. Ferroth then dove down on Celestia and Fatum. The bulk of the dragon crushed marble smashed masonry and flattened the work fo men.

Celestia, having cleared the place, turned to Fatum, who himself was picking himself up after the attack. She asked him, "Do we have a plan, Fatum?" Grinning, he took a scuffed horn out from his belongings. "Yes," he said. "This was part of the plan, you see. Heroes, all. The women and children are a distraction. They volunteered to be bait. Their names will be remembered for eternity. They have baited the dragons in. Come and see."

As Celestia looked up, she could see that all of the dragons had taken to ground in favor of chasing individual humans or groups of humans around the streets. There was a terror in the eyes of the humans being chased, but there, too, was a purpose. "Now," said Fatum. "The trap has been sprung." Fatum then blew the horn.

At his signal, thunder sounded throughout the city. Cannons, hidden in the walls and the buildings, sounded off in a retort of great noise and fire. Their vengeance sank deep into the scaly hides of the attackers. Red dragons, blue dragons, or green dragons. They all bled the same red as the cannonballs struck true. And as they stumbled, tumbled, even screamed and roared from their injuries, a second horn was sounded.

Men, women, and children, from all walks of life, and from all of the militaries and the civil classes, rushed to the struck dragons. Theirs was a mad dash, all painted in the new black and white heraldry of the Kingdom of Man. They wore their maltese cross on their armor, and on their clothing, and on their faces.

They did not relent, and they did not stop. Legionnaires charged with their rectangular shields and heavy javelins. Hoplites rushed to bash the dragons and pry off their scales with their shields and their swords. Knights rushed forward with their poleaxes, intent on smashing and breaking the dragon's tough hide. The armored figures were no longer divided amongst three martial orders, but as part of a single effort, a single conflict. They have their all; to not do so, they knew, would mean the end of their nation, their peoples, their history, and their lineage. They screamed their outrage amongst the populace armed with knives, clubs, bricks, and discarded weapons and shields. Behind them, more Ligia Guard fired their rifles into the faces of the beasts.

A chant was soon taken up by the fighting humans. "Nex! Nex! Nex! Nex!" Their shouts challenged the volume of the dragons, even as they flailed and burned with reckless, dying abandon. "Nex, Nex, Nex, Nex!" they shouted. As their weapons sunk, crushed, and bit into the dragons, their shouts increased in volume. As they physically overpowered the dragons, they also shouted louder than the dragons with whom their rage was directed at.

The dragons twitched, the dragons wailed, and the dragons shrank from the stinging bite of the human weapons. They backed away from the clubs and swords to the face, only to find themselves impaled on the pikes and lances of those behind them. They even fought half-blind, even if all they did was close their eyes to the incessant strikes of the ant-like swarm overtaking them. Scales were peeled off. Eyes were poked, even pierced. Wing membrane was stretched, and torn, and cut. A few dragons tried to flee, their wounds gushing hot red blood as their wings failed to carry the weight of the dragons.

And Ferroth had borne witness to all of it. He roared in great anger and refocused his sight on the human sovereign and the pony monarch. "Worms! All of them!" he roared. His bloodshot eyes twitched and glared. He reared up again and looked around as Dragons now attempted to flee. Theirs was not the action of the predator no more, but their actions were that of prey. "Cowards!" he screamed. "Useless, idiotic worms! They are only insects! Fight!"

His words, however, had no visible impact. No dragon rallied to his call, and no help arrived from any of his thralls. Only the anguished, angry, and defiant cries of the men and women answered him. And they were approaching. Even now, humans with fury writ on their faces approached Ferroth. Their hearts pounded in their ears, and their weapons, military or improvised, were drawn. Even now, crossbows fired, Longbows loosed their arrows, javelins were thrown, rifles aimed and cannons were fired. The withering fire sunk into the scales of the great dragon, and he answered their missiles with a fire of his own. Scorching heat passed over entire crowds of soldiers, militia, and angry mobs of people, producing... screams of a different variety.

Fatum withdrew his pistol and started firing, as well. His voice added to a chorus of chaos that filled the air. All the while, Celestia stood in silence. Her mouth agape, her eyes searching the faces of those poor charging souls as Ferroth retaliated in lethal fashion. Parting crowds of people with his tail, smashing shield walls with his claws and loosing fire from his maw to any sort of direction. She hung her head to stop looking at it all. It was as if the end of Man was still at hand.

She felt a hand on her back. Looking up, she saw someone and gasped. Someone who should have been dead. Regnator Ligia. Fatum likewise noticed, and he swayed as he rubbed at his eyes. "H-How?" asked Celestia. "How are you here?" Chuckling, Regnator, the former sovereign of man, asked, "It is not easy to simply stop being immortal. Time has lost its effect on me long ago." Celestia looked to Ferroth, and squeaked, "What can we do against such hate?" The aged man smiled, and asked, "Do you think this more difficult than before? Remember."

As Celestia looked beyond this time, she took deeper breaths. Twitching eyes stilled with purpose. As she breathed heavily, she slowly started to grit her teeth, fresh tears streaming from her eyes. Her gaze hardened, lips peeled back in a sneer. Finally, she looked up to Ferroth, and light engulfed her eyes. Finally, she screamed. For a moment, she stopped being Princess Celestia. She stopped being even a pony. She was just another voice in the crowd. The spirit of defiance had fully taken her, and she was as human as the woman who stabbed Ferroth's heel, or an aged veteran consumed by fire.

Her anger reached the boiling point. Flying up, she superimposed herself before her sun and raised her hooves. Her cry reached a feverish pitch as the sun burned more brightly than it had for a long time. The fighting stopped as everyone moved to shield their eyes from the sun. Even Ferroth, Claimant of the Sun, could not stare directly at Celestia. Soon, it became unbearingly hot for most individuals there, and everyone but Ferroth immediately took cover in the shade as the sun bored own on them. Finally, a beam of pure solar matter struck Ferroth. The only thing to be heard was Celestia's scream and the fiery intensity of the sun.

After a seeming eternity of this, the attack finally abated. The Solar Princess, steaming from the energy she just used, could not find the strength to keep herself up. As she finally collapsed, Ferroth rose again. He lifted his blacked wings, only to find that they were damaged beyond use. The membrane of his wings had all burned away, and everything else not protected by scale was disintegrated. Even his eyes, protected as they were behind reptilian eyelids, steamed from the vaporized moisture, and Ferroth struggled to move. He moaned pitifully. He lifted his right foreleg and subsequently collapsed. He tried to get up again, but Fatum had other plans.

"Attack!" shouted Fatum and Regnator Ligia.

And the charge began anew. Ferroth offered little resistance to the humans stabbing, prying, and bashing at his scales. They grasped the edges of his scales, only for them to recoil away because of the intense heat. They settled for bashing debris against the dragon with hurting hands. Ferroth kept trying to move forward, unheeding of the human efforts to destroy him. Finally, some scales were pried out, and pikes were roughly shoved into the gaps. As they poked, more people roughly grabbed the pikes and contributed to the shoving and stabbing.

Fatum called, "Bring up the cannons! It is time to put an end to this war!" Ferroth seemingly did not hear Fatum and proceeded to crawl on his belly. HIs motions were slow, and the rage in his dragon eyes were absent. No longer was this biggest of dragons a force to be reckoned with. Now, even he is being whittled away. More screaming humans joined the execution. Some pushed cannonry into place, having to push past and over bodies and debris, and fired into the dragon point-blank. Torrents of crimson poured from the close impact points, but still, the dragon persisted.

Regnator grimaced. "This isn't good," he said. "Soon, Ferroth will remember his magic, and the battle will go ill." He looked, and saw a fresh cannon being rolled up for the combined assault. From his white funeral coat, Regnator withdrew a vial of blue liquid. Fatum saw this, and gasped. "Is this..."

Regnator nodded, and flicked out the vial's cork with his gloved thumb. "It will be necessary to finally end this." However, he handed off the vial, letting it and its priceless contents fall into the hands of Fatum. Before Fatum could voice his concern, Regnator had moved to the cannon. The black-coated cannoneers stepped back, and withdrew a cloth cylinder from his coat. he took a discarded knife and cut a hole in the bag. Inside, black powder sat. Lifting the muzzle of the cannon with his other hand, Regnator dumped the contents of the bag into the cannon. First, gunpowder, then grape-sized cannon ammunition. A cannoneer offered a ramrod. One-handing the ramrod, Regnator plunged the ammunition down the smooth bore of the cannon. While he was doing this, another cannoneer was preparing a fuse and a wick, just n case.

After Regnator was satisfied, he let the cannon back down into its carriage. he rounded the long side of the cannon until he met the cannoneer with the wick. Wide-eyed, the dirtied boy wordlessly handed Regnator the wick. "Thank you, my lad," said Regnator. Then, he grasped the cannon and took the whole weapon under his arm, and handled it all the way over to Ferroth. Everyone had stopped attacking Ferroth at that point, and now all eyes were on Regnator.

"Friends!" he shouted. "Humans! Free peoples!"

A few Ligia guard, having retrieved Celestia, took her weary form into sight. She raised her head, and upon seeing Regnator, cracked a tired smile. She said, "Reg... you came back..." her voice cracked, and her voice barely left her.

"The age of conflict is about to be over! No longer will individuals be swayed by the lies of this lizard, and no longer will the fear of man enter into the hearts of those who would be our enemies! The age of conflict is over!"

Regnator shot a smug smile towards Celestia and shouted, "This is for you, love!"

He lit the cannon, held onto the breech end of the cannon, and pressed it into Ferroth's eye. The dragon, having been still until now, stirred with alarm and prepared a spell. However, the cannon fired. The recoil nearly forced out of Regnator's hand, but he merely lowered it. The grapeshot had done bloody work on the dragon. A splash of blood now covered Regnator, the cannon, and anyone standing close by. a similar splash covered the ruins opposite of Ferroth's head. The sound of the shot echoed, and all was silent. Then, someone said, "Victory." The word sat on the tongues of everyone there. Soon, more people shouted it.

"Victory! Victory! Victory! Victory!"