12 The challenge of Fire and Blood

Less then 20 people were gathered as sheep for slaughter . All commoners , all despised by fate and nobility that were supposed to guard and protect them was silent and cruel.When Ivar was younger he didnt notice extent of those " small" things .He did not know the repression , the suffering of the common folk. But when he was tortured by Maria for the first time he noticed that people around him were just like slaves.They did not even have basic human rights and were beaten up by the guards for any minor mistakes .Thats why there were so many rebellions trough the empire .The people tried with all their force to break the chains but with limited access to mystical arts and profound techniques any royal noble could quell 50 k men uprising.So the uprisings were bloody as hell and common people lost their life by hundreds even thousands by every strike of experts .Still knowing this the common folk aspired for freedom and often sacrificed their lives in other to feel it , even for short amount of time !

So for them to die was not to strange , they saw many of their loved ones in chains so when dragon pointed the way they quickly accepted .One thing was to kill some local nobles , other thing is to die by the hands of mighty dragons so they did not resist. They came to terms with it when they were forsaken by the princess and left to be beacons.

Since he was leavening the cage he decided let go of his backpack.If he had chance he would come for it but as the things grew darker for him he wanted at least to leave his scrolls to be lucky encounter for someone ages from now !

Dragons were in two separate rows.They seemed to be like guardsmen in front of some dignitary holding their watch as cattle ( humans) went pass them.There were different types of dragons of course . The first one Ivar noticed was clearly a flood dragon , but it was not a one with pure bloodline .It was supposed to have blue scales with an extra protection of its reverse scale near mouth but clearly this was not the case . Next to it there were some red drakes and fire dragons but all of the did not have the bloodlines right or to be precise all their bloodlines were not awaken and possibly will never be. Ivar clearly saw it that way as information was presented to him in long histories of every and all of the dragons .

On the first dragon it clearly said :"Red flood dragon , mix-breed between red drakes and flood dragon with diluted blood over 1000 years old chance of bloodline awakening 0."

As he went further down the path he started noticing bones of humans and a slight increase in in percentage ( for the blood awakening ). But it never passed 30 percent until he finally noticed the big red dragon in front of the guards .

Queen of the red dragons ancient bloodlines awakened , Dragon of ancient red dragons bloodline .Last of its kind in the Northern wolf empire. then the unbelievable happened giant dragon transformed into pretty girl.That was probably one of the powers of her awakening!

"Last of its kind? What ? Was there a red dragon saint beast in the Northern empire capital? Should he be counted as dragon of ancient bloodline ? "Ivar wondered but no words left his mouth .

Every one heard the story of The first emperor Ragnar and his red dragon . They were enemies like every sentry and dragon in the north and fought many ,many battles. On one of the occasions dragon fell to his sword and was in his mercy , but young sentry spared his life and dragon vowed to fallow him and his family for the great gift of mercy. Maybe dragons were scourge for the common folk but even the people that were burned by the fire knew that dragon s oath was a sacred one and dragon s word was worth as gold. So the small sentry first became the yarl than united several yarldomes under his banner and created Northern empire.Ragnar also took wolf as his house sigil and the final name was Great Northern wolf empire . Empire soon expanded and started to raid nearby elvish kingdoms of Anglia , they even took some cities and posed some threat to high king of the elves in Lydin but than he was betrayed by one of his commanders and died horrible death by 1000 snakes bites .Those conspirators even tried to take the throne of the empire but than dragon saved the royal bloodline and with little bit of karma and help by Odin the rightful heir was put on the throne.

From that day on imperial clan had its red dragon as final trump card and he stood on the guard for 1000 generations !

But now the information he got clearly stated that large red dragon that turned into the beauty was the last one , and for now all the information he got was 100 % truth. Did something happen to the old dragon?Well it did not matter to much to Ivar and he did not like the royal family.

While he was thinking about his strange power and remembering the old legend they arrived to beautiful girl. Near them were another group of people but brought here by blue dragon. The black dragon that was leading Ivar and commoners bowed and in dragon tongue proclaimed :" My royal highness we brought some humans to you as a gift to your beauty and to your grace . "

Red beauty just lift her cute mouth and responded : " This can be considered a gift? They are just commoners and those brought by Blue dragon have same or better worth, so how can you deem these humans as a gift for me? Are you starting to show disrespect Chernoly ? Queen said as she was clearly mad because these humans were lowest of the low .

"They are better than Galubnoly brought ! Chernoly replied a bit discouragingly .

Hahah are you sure about this . ? "Red dragon queen a asked as she looked to black dragon.

Chernoly said :"yes "

What about you Galubnoly ? Queen raised her mighty red wings and flew above all of them .

"I think my patch is better" blue dragon proudly responded , " especially i have those 5 soldiers that we cought they should be pretty strong "

* The names Chernoly and Galubnoly come from the dragons respective colors .Chernoly is black and Galubnoly is blue *

Than let them fight :" The winner will get my favor and will be set free and those that die , well for them , mh mhm , they dont care if they become supper when they die do they?"

"Great" bought dragons responded and bowed to mighty queen " WE LIVE TO SERVE ROYAL QUEEN "

"Cut the act , its stupid and let them fight . Fo the fight to last longer lets give them some of those armor and swords that are laying near the bone pits .What else what else ,you can also use your magic but just once in whole battle . Battle stops when one side has no more members -that should be fair .Lets go like this . Also since you two are also joining the fight i will give you one of the apples BUT JUST ONE to the winner "

When they heard that they might get some apples they wigged their massive tails in great happiness .Of course the apples were special .They would extend the life of the dragons by 500 years and each year the apple tree would produce just 2 of them per ciycle of life .So no one but queen was allowed to have them and it was strange for queen to be this generous .

But she was not generous .She was just bored with her daily life in the middle of nowhere.When she was young ages ago dragons used to roam countryside and were feared all over the empire .But now it was no longer so .They were feared of course but many castles had scorpios on the walls , had magical rune works all over the buildings so the magic was useless and that is without mentioning the mage towers .With mage towers dragons could no longer escape because those crafty towers had binding spells and artifacts just for the dragons .So once mighty race was now only free in the sea region and that was because sea region just has to many islands. So she was bored , she could actually assault those mighty castles but rest of her kin could not so she decided to watch over them in the middle of nowhere .But over the years she grew bored with her daily life and displeased with younger generations of dragons that were more snakes with wings than mighty overlords off the sky.

The two dragons started talking on human language ; " Our queen wants you to fight, the winners will be rewarded with life the losers will be her supper for the night .You can choose weapons from the pile near the bones , choose well because your life depend on it " and with wing showed the piles .

They purposely left the part about heir attack so the common folk would be more free to fight and fight with full hearth . The other group gathered and started to whisper .It seemed that they elected those four in armor to be captains of the 4 five- man squads and gathered some armor some long bows,swords ,axes and some spears .The armor that they took was circular in shape with large ornaments , wood core and iron on the edges .It was armor suited for shield wall but this was still more buckler than shield and was perfect for bought attacking and retreating ( it was not as heavy as regular Shield and it allowed infantry to carry bought short swords,axes and spears.This was standard for north-men they had some assurance with bucklers in the middle but all the damage was done by spears , swords and battle axes .

"We are fucked , they have experienced commanders "Ivar thought but something had to be done .

Than he turned around and faced the looks of his fellow men "not a thing was present . They were so discouraged with current situation that did not want to even lift an eye .They were just staring into the earth as they thought nothing would keep them from death .

"Fuck , what to do , How can i turn this around ? fuck fuck fuck !" then he gathered remaining courage and said "Well if you want to die go just die ! I will not be the one that i will die here

.My dead family demands retribution !!!

The looks changed . My family and retribution echoed trough their broken bodies .. This boy has

strength of the vengeance behind him, we were so wronged many times but we never dreamed of getting vengeance !!

Ivar knew something strange happened ,and ass fast as lightning followed with ;" If you want to take vengeance against the world follow me here ! If we survive you will be my brothers and i will be yours .That means whatever vengeance my brother has it will also be my vengeance !"

They saw the light , it was red light, light of slaughter but somehow they were sure that boy will be able to deliver on those words so one by one they proclaimed ;

"Your wish is our command young master ,we will follow you to ice and fire " !!!

"GOOD we have a job to do "and lifted up a sword from pile and pointed to their opponents !