Dragon Wars Book 1 Pt. 02

The Gold Dragon King sighed, "Chromatics lay eggs normally, as do all dragons and the youngest first meal is normally the shells of those eggs. Metallic and neutral Half-Dragons have a respect for life the Chromatic Dragons do not share.

Our Half-Dragons can have complicated births as you know, trying to deal with broken wings when they are born and having them healed properly. Chromatics do tend to do that if the mother cannot push the ready child or children out fast enough. Many die. Also, their siblings being born as well. Many lose fertility.

When Half-Dragons, chromatics breed with each other, they do the same thing but the mothers' muscles are stronger and they have a sixth sense it is coming and work to push or cut the child out to save their own lives and separate the young, provided none are weak.

The ones who are weak are fed to their siblings alive or by the mothers directly unless she is hungry. They subjugate a population, like humans and they will have half the population breeding normally. The other half breeding Half-Dragons. Then they will start consuming the males and having the survivors breed with multiple females to keep up.

Those who become infertile, become food for them. We don't eat intelligent creatures. They will and do. Humans, Elves, Half-Dragons, makes no difference to Chromatic Dragons. They are all food to them, cattle if you will. Even other Dragons or Dragon young."

Queen Goldeagle sighed, "Tallion's concerns and approaches in regards to Valinta make sense to me now. He knows if we lose that human stronghold, what they will face. What it will generate for forces against us.

I wanted you all to hear this. The Metallic Dragons with riders are working on a massive Armada, the Elves have pulled all of the reserves we have for Valinta, The Valinta army needs to join them, or fall victim to this. All of your wives and mothers need to be prepared to be evacuated."

King Valinta contacted his Field Marshal and ordered the full deployment of the Army to the breach site. He ordered his Dragonborn held in reserve as he did not want them to be known about just yet.

Queen Goldeagle stared across the room. "Any of you who have been holding back assets or troops need to consider if you want this for your people. Send what forces you can to support this effort, and for Gods' sake King Valinta, get your navy moving to where they need to be and stop fighting what Tallion is telling us all. This is not elven lives or dragon lives, it is every life on this continent."

King Valinta sighed and contacted the Admiral. The ships had been manned now and he sent orders to get them moving. Others started ordering more troops to that front. The King of the Gold Dragons looked over, "I need to leave now as do the other Dragon Kings and Queens. We have a front line to face."

They all left Queen Goldeagle and returned home. She went to her room and summoned Par to the room with her other wives. She briefed them all and then broke down crying at the very thought of those poor mothers. She had to be steel and ruthless at times while on the throne, but in her quarters she needed their loving reassurance and they gave it to her.

---

Out of 800 ships, only 114 managed to make landfall. They fled into the mountains closer to the Chromatic Dragons. Those that tried to push on Valinta were slaughtered quickly and without Mercy. Many of them were Dragonborn that were unaware their lives had already been sacrificed.

3 days later they retreated from the breach site. King Valinta worked on building fortifications near that part of his border to deal with a potential horde coming from out of those mountains. They were a good 150 miles out and they kept human lookouts in place to watch for any movement.

---

Tallion wanted to go on the offensive. He had the Dragon Royalty in the War Room for a change. A new Gold King was in place, his father dying in the attack. The Bronze King led now.

As Tallion looked at them, "I know you lost a great King in this last battle. I know everyone in this room will likely be dead before this war is over. I want to cut down on the breeding stock the Chromatic Dragons have to work with for Half-Dragons.

I want to have Dragon Riders destroy every major port along the southern continent. It will take them years to rebuild. All 27 of them. We do this every 8-10 years and we cut down the breeding stock we are giving the Chromatic Dragons for Half-Dragons."

The Bronze King sighed, "I know why you say this, but how do we separate good people from bad people."

Tallion looked at him, "How did we with the Armada? The only way of doing that is to get troops on the ground to organize a legitimate withdrawal of humans and Dragonborn from that continent from the existing Kingdoms.

Knowing those populations would be moving into one of our 3 existing human allied Kingdoms and they would lose titles most likely. We left no room for more human Kingdoms to come from the south.

That would require Dragon Ambassadors, Eleven ambassadors, and Human ambassadors to travel there. Meet with the Kingdoms, and work out which ones will send us only those who pledge an oath of allegiance to our Alliance while being monitored with truth detection.

That also means putting our diplomats into the danger of a Chromatic Dragon overlord, who might already be breeding armies from those cities. That is a diplomatic effort and not my role in this war.

We know 6 ports are Orc, Ogre, and Giant controlled ports. Not all giants are evil but Storm Giants have flying Mountains and Cloud Giants have sort of flying fortresses from what I understand that travel higher. How do you wish to address it? They have 1 port that is giant controlled and used, Your Majesty."

The Bronze King nodded, "We attack the 5 ports, get with the others to take diplomats to the other ports. Those that do not return, we know to destroy the ports."

Tallion bowed to the Bronze King. He knew this King was distantly related to him, "Thank you. I will leave those actions to your Field Marshal to conduct while I continue to observe everything going on and in the northern continent.

I leave the diplomatic efforts to the Ambassadors and yourselves. Queen Goldeagle was aware of this meeting, but the others have not been talked with as of yet. I leave the diplomacy efforts to all of you to work.

Better your Field Marshal gets those directions from you this time than me in this matter. As it is going on the offensive and not a counterstrike I have authority over, Your Majesty."

The room emptied of Dragons except for the Bronze King he sighed, "You are of my blood. You bring good points forward. We had no idea how many of them would have attacked, we just knew the enemy we sought was intermixed with them. Some causalities cannot be prevented.

I don't want you second-guessing your actions from that night. You made the right call. The previous Gold King would still have been alive if not for the Giants landing massive spears into him. We did recover his body. He crashed on that ship to send it into the ocean and killed hundreds of giants in the process.

His death was imminent and he felt better going out in combat against a worthy opponent and against extreme odds of survival. It was better than dying in his layer, most ancients feel that way, including myself.

You washed your hands of this part to the diplomats and the Kings and Queens to authorize the offensive planning. We will bring you in on that when the decisions to go offensive are being made as well to direct those forces.

As it deals with force availability and when to withdraw. Like what we will do with these 5 ports using Dragon riders. We will need you in the War Room for that. You have done well. Continue to do so and continue to ask the hard questions, Tallion."

Tallion bowed to the Bronze King as he left the room. Field Marshal Golden Sword was in shock, "A great, great...something to you?"

Tallion nodded, "Yes 10 or 20 generations removed from what was hinted to me by my mother. My mother is in a bonded relationship with another Bronze Dragon for the last 175 years. I've met her out on the field once.

Dry spell and we were wrapping up a battlefield. She wanted to survey the damage for use by the Dragon Intelligence Service. Shortly after I became a General and before the Alliance formed.

She sent me a note after being named Champion, telling me she was proud of her choice to be a part of the Half-Dragon efforts. She had taken many elven lovers while here, my father was the last.

She was also proud of me for what I had accomplished thus far and to continue. I had not expected him to discuss our family connection, and not with elven witnesses if you will."

Field Marshal Golden Sword and their staff all laughed at that comment.

---

The Dragon riders hit the 5 ports and ships leaving those ports the next day. They ensured there was nothing left of them. The orcs and Ogres would have to move on to other ports to leave or rebuild them.

The other 22 were mixed, 7 under Chromatic Dragon control with the diplomats getting killed or escaping. All had open communication stones so they would know what transpired.

Those 7 ports were hit next with additional dragons to deal with the overlords and Half-Dragons who tried in vain to enter the fray. Most died in the air against the older dragons that fought them. The remaining 15 were still 70 years out and not interested in saving their people without saving their kingdoms.

The Council destroyed every other port along that section of the border. The diplomats reported what happened to those Kings who still had ports. They escaped when attacked, except for 2 who agreed to be the ports to move humans off of the continent.

They balked when the Dragons and Elves chose to enforce younger, fertile, and capable. Over older and wealthy who would not live to see the continent fall. They could send wealth with their young heirs instead.

They would likely die before the cataclysmic Comet Dragon's Heart would arrive. They would work to expand the population in the meantime. Then the remaining ports were hit a week later.

---

Tiamat, Null, and Task had gathered. Task spoke, "Our enemy is cutting off our breeding stock. We will send over mages. For those who will serve under us, we use teleportation circles to get them through instead.

Those with wealth first so we can add it to our hordes. Then as much breeding population as we can. We can agree to this, three circles, one to each of the cities and we let the cattle choose which slaughterhouse they will be joining?"

Null laughed, "Agreed, as long as we all get an equal share of the cattle for our followers."

Tiamat looked over, "Shares based upon the number of followers. Most of yours are older and beyond breeding age."

Null hissed out, "Then we will seek out the giants and the Dragonborn alone. You cannot breed with Dragon Born and giants will be harder to subjugate for breeding. They are fodder and food in that case. The Dragonborn will be fodder and food for dragons and giants on the front lines in Valinta when we finally form an alliance to deal with this threat.

They have not come after our human cities, like us, they want to breed more before committing more troops. They have hit soft targets. Word has it the King of Valinta hired 50,000 Dragonborn to help protect his city.

Sending Dragonborn against Dragonborn will make it easy to keep them both fed. He fears even the Metallic Dragons who share a border with him. They will be closer to the front lines that way.

We will need them to feed them both and you have no plans for feeding giants or giant Half-Dragons we manage to breed. Valinta is closer when we start running low on food. This does not count new lands rising."

Task glared, "You take them both and we divide the others to our 2 cites only. We have Dragonborn already. They are better than humans for shock troops, but not Orcs, Ogres, and Giants."

Tiamat glared, "I will agree with Task on this matter unless they seek out our circles instead. Breeding stock is our goal and giants are still a goal, food is a problem we will all have and that is what battle will produce as they feed on the dead. Some of our followers will move toward you Null when they get older and feel death knocking. If this war has not already killed them."

Null's eyes narrowed. "For the ogres yes. We will still take a small percentage of orcs for the front, based on followers. They breed faster and are more numerous. We will only take females though we give the exception to get the older dragons to breed Half-Dragons, as you know."

The 3 Dragon Gods had reached an accord.

---

AO was not happy about the port attacks and met with Bahamut and Corellon. AO looked across at them, "You cut off their exits and provided them no lands!"

Corellon looked at him, "We negotiated additional lands for expansion into the agreements with the 3 Kingdoms. They will likely double in size in the next 70 years. Those other ports will be hit again in years unless those rulers have changed their minds.

They are old, they have the power you allow and refuse to listen to reason for the good of your population. Some are still open and we will work to bring them to the 3 human Kingdoms to help in this war. The Chromatics will likely do the same and work to bring followers to them.

All to die being raped or eaten by dragons. We all know this. You could double your fertility rates on humans in the Northern continent and make all of those south who stay infertile. To thin out the numbers and speed this along.

We are not denying you anything, except more and numerous Kingdoms in exiting Elven lands. New lands that arise will be addressed then as we signed away all claims to those along the existing coasts for human expansion away from us.

Provided they remain with the Alliance. They will belong to the humans closest to them unless they block existing ports as agreed to. We have no idea how this will play out. Neither do you and the Elves did not request this change.

We sent diplomats and your people are shortsighted and rebuilding those ports. Influence their minds or their fertility to accept what is offered. The choice is yours. The Chromatics are making the same offers now.

You have delayed getting Champions on the field for a reason. While you have higher numbers, that is the time to make that decision for each of your gods alone. Only you know how many you can put forth."

AO sighed, "15, and we will not share their names when the time comes. 7 to good, 7 to evil, and one who is chaotic neutral and will work to keep these wars going and switching sides often. Just to be human about it. Also because IO asked for this to happen to this world, none will be my champion.

All to lesser deities to keep both sides guessing and they are 50 years out. Half of that if I cut off the southern continent now. I tried to speak to the Chromatic Dragon Gods and they refused my audience. We are only food and breeding stock to them that are likely to die in childbirth.

Your neutral dragons aligned with you. Their numbers are small for now anyway. I watched the battle that took place and I understand your positions. I will work to send those fertile and good-hearted toward your shores through the ports left. Then in a decade, a few more ports will open and be aligned to meet with you.

The same will occur with Chromatic Dragons as humans play both sides as the dragons do. Provided you do not attack the ports again. You did send in diplomats to warn them first. More than the chromatics did in subjugating them in place. Self-absorbed Kings and Queens are always a problem."

Bahamut looked over, "We will attack those of the Orcs, Ogres, and Giants as we send in assets to destroy the giant's port as we speak. We expect some losses. Those ports we will freely strike, just human-controlled ports are cleared.

You have some Dragonborn followers, they have the same rules for coming to us. We could use them for our armies. Dragonborn cannot be bred with for Half-Dragons. That makes them food in Chromatic Dragon lands and foot soldiers only.

Dragonborn at least know Metallic and Neutral Dragons will not treat them like cattle. Storm and Cloud Giants were contacted and do not use the Giant's port and we confirmed that they have a Storm Giant champion. They will be moving those cities over the ocean and then over new unclaimed land that rises in which to grow their people.

They may join us then in different battles, but not yet. Those ports are fair game for destruction. Ships going to the chromatics are fair game, but the ports we will not strike again. We just got their attention, and it focused on all of the docks and ships in dock."

AO nodded, "I will inform my other Gods who will inform the Kings, Queens, and Clergy on that continent. Your attacks were preventive strikes, to slow migration and get them to think about their grandchildren's lives, instead of their own.

Those who wish to stay and perish will be told to move inland. As they will become infertile. You made a fair point, but it will be used for both those going to you and the chromatics."

---

Horgax 10th, 30,951 44th Age of Dragons

Tallion did add 3 more Elven wives, all Moon Elves a year after Crisna died. Babella Silver Bowl A battlemage, Ingris Silver Bowl a cleric to Corellon and distant cousin to Babella, and Cussia Moon, a disowned member of House Moon Bow.

Because of her Mothers heritage, and an Arcane Archer. Each of whom only went through 5 pregnancies before going infertile, they were all war widows in need of a husband. Except for Cussia who was still a virgin on the wedding night and thus his youngest wife.

That was quickly lost as he ensured she went first knowing Flora was in heat again and in a bubble to suppress the effects. He had 33 children between those 3, only 7 sons from them. They joined him in the field as Mala and Flora continued to raise all of the children.

Those 2 were all still fertile and putting out 4 children on average every 18 months each, with 3 out 4 of them being females. With delivery dates aiding things, they eventually started going into heat on the same night, and for one night only. The other wifes stood back and just let the 3 of them go at it when that occurred unless a helping hand, toy, or mouth was needed.

Over the next 50 years, border skirmishes rose and fell but it kept them all in the Alliance as forces were brought in from all partners. The naval forces increased in size by 50% for all of the Alliance efforts as the populations grew in the human kingdoms.

The humans and Dragonborn had largely vacated the southern continent except for the elderly who wished to die in their homeland and some who sought refuge in the tall mountains. Nothing above 15,000 feet as they could not breathe going any higher. Several had the tops removed by Storm Giants for more Fortresses

The Chromatics had the ports rebuilt that they used as well as the circles. Dragon riders did not attack the ports but did do raids on ships at sea, as the Chromatics did the same in a piecemeal fashion.

Losing young dragons foolish enough to try as Tallion now had 3 dragons on each ship as he wanted in the beginning, each Kingdom had 18 naval forces and ruled over that border.

---

Tallion got a message from one of his spies, one he cared for very much. She was badly hurt and dying. Janna sighed, "Brendarathan. They have a large building. Giants stepping out with gear every minute or so. Likely a teleportation circle. I was too Ficka close.

To close when they blasted a ravine into the mountains. The giants have a home. Right on the border of Valinta. We know where they will be striking from. They are working on tracking me. I got one scroll left.