Chapter 103: Splashing the Wyverns

Panic swept through the Third Aerial Squadron like wildfire.

The formation was completely broken. Wyverns were shrieking in wild, uncontrollable terror, banking in random directions as their animal instincts completely overrode their military training. Two knights were already dead, their riderless mounts diving frantically toward the sea to escape the invisible monster in the clouds.

"Reform the line! Reform the line!" Ragnald screamed into his communication collar, his hands raw from pulling on Ignis’s reins. "Raise your magical shields! Ready your bows! Do not break formation!"

"Captain, what was that thing?!" a young knight wept over the comms, his voice cracking with hysteria. "It had no life force! It had no wings! It flew straight into the sun!"

"Quiet!" Ragnald barked, his eyes darting wildly across the gray cloud ceiling. "It is some kind of artificial golem! A high-tier flying artifact of the western barbarians! Draw your fire arrows! If it comes close again, burn it out of the sky!"

High above them, cruising peacefully at twenty-five thousand feet inside the overcast cloud layer, an F-35C Lightning II carrier strike fighter circled like a silver hawk.

Inside the pressurized cockpit, the pilot sat back in his seat, his hands resting lightly on the flight stick and throttle. His helmet-mounted display projected glowing green tactical symbology directly across his visor. Below him, thirty miles away, twenty-eight heat signatures were clustered together like slow-moving red flies on his multi-function screen.

"Ghost One-One to Strike Control," the pilot spoke calmly into his oxygen mask. "Intercept confirmed on thirty hostile airborne targets. Profiles match native wyverns and mounted riders. They are scattered and disorganized at Angels four."

"Strike Control copies, Ghost One-One," a cool voice replied over the secure digital radio link. "You are weapons free. Clear the imperial reconnaissance package. Splash them all."

"Ghost One-One copies. Weapons free. Starting the harvest."

The pilot banked the stealth fighter into a smooth, effortless descent. He didn’t even need to drop below the cloud deck. He flipped open the master arm switch on his console.

On his digital visor, green target acquisition boxes snapped over the leading wyverns.

"Fox Three," the pilot whispered.

Beneath the belly of the F-35C, the internal weapons bay doors snapped open with hydraulic precision. An AIM-120D AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missile detached from its rack, dropped two feet into the slipstream, and ignited its solid-fuel rocket motor with a bright white flash.

The missile surged forward, leaving a thin white streak as it sliced down through the clouds at Mach 4.

Four thousand feet below, Lieutenant Vane was desperately trying to calm his green wyvern when his enchanted warning pendant suddenly began to burn red-hot against his chest.

"Captain! Incoming magical mana—"

Vane never finished his sentence.

The AMRAAM missile struck his wyvern square in the chest.

BOOM!

The forty-pound high-explosive blast-fragmentation warhead detonated on impact. The green wyvern and its armored rider were vaporized instantly in a blinding orange fireball. A rain of burning scales, shattered mithril plate, and charred bone sprayed across the adjacent riders, knocking two more knights off balance.

"Vane!" Ragnald screamed, horror twisting his face.

There had been no casting circle. No incantation. Just a flying spear of white smoke that fell from the sky and erased an elite knight in a microsecond.

"Scatter! Scatter!" Ragnald yelled frantically. "Dive for the water! Disperse across the—"

BOOM! BOOM!

Two more missiles plunged through the overcast layer, striking two wyverns on the left wing of the formation.

The double detonation ripped the beasts to pieces, sending a shockwave that blew the surrounding knights into tumbling spirals. One knight’s mount caught fire, shrieking in agony as it spun uncontrollably down toward the ocean, trailing black smoke like a falling torch.

"Where is it?!" a knight shrieked, firing enchanted arrows blindly into the clouds above. "Show yourself, demon! Show yourself!"

The arrows flew three hundred feet, lost their momentum, and fell uselessly back into the sea.

Then, the F-35C dropped through the clouds.

It did not stay at a distance anymore. The pilot was moving in for the close pass, using the jet’s overwhelming speed to completely shatter the enemy’s sanity.

The gray stealth jet roared past the right side of the formation at six hundred miles per hour. The sheer noise of the Pratt & Whitney turbofan engine was deafening, a roaring mechanical scream that shook the air like an earthquake.

A wyvern directly in its path tried to snap its jaws at the passing machine.

The jet’s titanium wingtip clipped the beast’s leathery wing with surgical precision. The immense kinetic force tore the wyvern’s wing clean off its body at the joint. The beast shrieked in mortal pain, rolling over and over as it plunged into the dark water below.

"Shoot it! Shoot it!" Ragnald roared, swinging Ignis around.

The red wyvern opened its maw, gathering a massive ball of boiling crimson fire in its gullet. With a furious roar, Ignis unleashed a roaring torrent of dragon breath directly at the receding gray shape.

The stream of magical fire surged across the sky, bright and terrifying.

It completely missed.

The F-35C had already climbed two thousand feet in three seconds, easily outrunning the magical flames. The jet pulled into a tight high-G loop, carving an arc through the sky that no living creature could ever match, and rolled back down directly behind the surviving imperial knights.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot selected his secondary weapon system: the GAU-22/A 25mm rotary cannon mounted in an external centerline pod.

"Guns, guns, guns," the pilot said flatly.

He squeezed the trigger on the flight stick.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

A sound like tearing metal echoed across the ocean as the four-barrel Gatling gun spun up, firing high-explosive incendiary rounds at a rate of three thousand shots per minute.

A stream of bright red tracer rounds cut through the air like a laser.

The twenty-five-millimeter explosive shells hit three clustered wyverns squarely in their backs. The heavy tungsten rounds tore through the beasts’ tough dragon scales like wet parchment, exploding inside their flesh. Wings shattered, heads were severed, and the armored knights riding them were shredded instantly by the high-velocity shrapnel.

The three dead beasts fell out of the sky in mangled pieces, splashing into the churned sea below.

"Retreat!" Ragnald wept, tears of pure terror and helplessness streaming down his face beneath his goggles. "All units, retreat to the Aegis! Fly back to the holy barrier!"

There was barely an army left to retreat.

Of the thirty proud knights who had launched from Port Solis an hour ago, only six remained in the air. Their mounts were completely exhausted, their wings trembling, bleeding from shrapnel wounds, fleeing eastward toward the distant cliffs of the imperial fortress.

Behind them, the gray iron bird pursued them effortlessly, gliding behind their tails like a phantom.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

Another short burst from the rotary cannon chewed through two more fleeing wyverns, sending their burning remains plunging into the whitecaps.

Ragnald did not look back. He leaned completely flat against Ignis’s neck, digging his spurs into the beast’s bleeding sides, begging the red dragon to fly faster.

Up ahead, only five miles away, the golden light of the Aegis shimmered against the dark cliffs of Port Solis. The gate in the barrier was opening, mages frantically waving green warning lanterns from the watchtowers.

"Almost there... just hold on, Ignis!" Ragnald cried out, his voice hoarse and broken.

Whoosh!

A single heat-seeking AIM-9X Sidewinder missile passed barely ten feet over Ragnald’s shoulder. It tracked onto the wyvern flying directly to his left, slamming into the beast’s underbelly and detonating with a blinding flash. The shockwave threw Ragnald and Ignis sideways, scorching the captain’s armor and tearing his goggles from his face.

Ragnald gritted his teeth, pulling hard on the reins, righting the battered red dragon.

With a final, desperate burst of speed, Ignis plunged through the open gate of the golden dome.

The moment they crossed the boundary line, the temple mages slammed the ward shut. The golden runes flared brilliantly, sealing the barrier into a solid wall of holy light once more.

Ignis collapsed onto the stone terrace of the harbor fortress, skidding across the flags on its belly, panting heavily as dark blood dripped from its mouth.

Ragnald tumbled out of the saddle, crashing onto the cold stone.

Lord Justin rushed down the stone stairs, followed by a dozen royal guards and priests.

Justin grabbed Ragnald by his soot-blackened collar, hauling the captain to his knees. "Ragnald! What happened out there?! Where is the rest of your squadron?!"

Ragnald looked up with hollow, bloodshot eyes. His face was covered in dark soot and tears, his body trembling so violently his armor rattled against the stones.

He pointed a shaking, bloody finger toward the sky outside the golden dome.

High above the ocean, circling just outside the magical barrier, the single gray jet banked smoothly against the clouds. It made no sound from this distance, its sharp, mechanical wings gleaming faintly in the gray daylight. It dipped its wings once in a mocking salute, then turned gracefully toward the west, accelerating into the clouds and disappearing beyond the horizon.

"They are not men..." Ragnald whispered, his voice cracking into a broken sob. "They are not monsters... They are gods of the sky. Twenty-nine knights... gone in minutes. We couldn’t even touch it."

Lord Justin let go of the captain’s collar, stepping back in absolute horror.

Around them, the garrison soldiers stared up at the empty gray clouds outside the barrier, their hands trembling on their spears.

The empire had sent their finest aerial predators to hunt the enemy.

And only one broken man had returned to tell the tale.