Through The Storm

-1-

Hustle and bustle passed through the ranks of the Griffin Order, the finest fighting body in the orange’s army, but today was a different kind of hustle and bustle.

Four months since Zarzura fell have passed, and over this period, the oranges and the purples each had to fight on separate fronts to protect their sovereignty over their lands. Today, this changed.

It was the first trial to amalgamate purple wizards among the orange’s soldiers, and in the order of the Phoenix, of the scouts, the same was happening. Even in the order of Pixie, the one responsible for espionage, and spy warfare, purples were getting the run of the operation and learning how to use their unique abilities to infiltrate and sabotage the enemy forces.

Oranges were always the best spies, as they could communicate with plants and animals. Some people even theorized the oranges must have learned the secrets of life and why we existed.

Purples, on the other hand, were able to control the elements. They performed miracles through that. Hence, everybody in Agartha knew them as magicians, wizards, witches, and sorcerers.

Pitting the two together could produce a new fighting way, purples backing orange soldiers in man to man fights, and orange soldiers protecting the purples as they managed the otherwise unbeatable magical creatures.

Peytr was one of the squad leaders tasked with molding the purples to the life of an orange soldier. He was a career soldier, ten years now on the job. When he graduated Nafoura, he didn’t have plans as what was to be of his life, so, when he arrived at the city of the orange Aura nation, Meg Mell, he was open for anything on offer.

As all oranges, he had to attend the six months course on nature and her ways, then he was sent out for his year of communing with nature with three others. During that year, he discovered that he had an affinity to lead, as well as a keen skill with the sword and a fearless attitude towards death and death leading events. So, when he came back to the city, he was decided, he applied immediately to the army ranks. For the next ten years, he was a protector of the city, rising slowly through the ranks, until he became a squadron leader, then the war came crashing on their heads.

During the last four months, he lost almost half of his squad to the magical beasts led by the Order of Purification, and this made him more than malleable to the idea of including mages to his ranks. His second in command, Philip, known through the squad as Phil, was not happy by the inclusion of the three purples who arrived this morning at the barracks, as he said, “Those haughty, snobbish purples would treat us as their nursemaids and would manage to kill more of us than the reds.”

Even though they were now fighting reds, yellows, and blues, Phil insisted on calling all, “The reds,” something to do with the brutality of the reds since the start of the war. This might have to do with the time Phil was captured with another woman soldier, and how he barely managed to tell Peytr about the atrocities they did to her, which finally ended by decapitating her and dancing around with her entrails.

To this day, Phil always reminded Peytr he owed him his life. Peytr took a party of three in search of Phil and the other soldier, Myrtle, as both were acting as messengers from the main camp to their squad and they didn’t return within the allotted time.

Peytr didn’t need to see how they tortured the poor woman. His company barged on the dancing reds, her body lay scattered on the four corners of the camp, and her entrails drew a map around the camps fire of their earlier activities.

He didn’t even remember how the battle went, he was in a killing frenzy, something rare, but around one-tenth of the oranges experienced it when something heinous happened to them or to nature.

Peytr woke up from his reverie to inspect his new purple addition.

The three purples were young, yet they seemed to at least have some army training, as immediately, they fell in rank and formally talked to Peytr in a manner befitting a squad leader.

They were two women, Janna, and Roberta, and a man, Morris, and Peytr smiled as he saw the eagerness in their eyes, and he leaned to Phil. “They will do well, Phil, just watch over them till they get good at it.”

-2-

“Janna is down,” Phil screamed over the screeching roar of the wyvern. “We have to fill the ranks, now.”

Two months had passed since Peytr took the purples in his squad, they were no longer the purple addition, they were just soldiers Janna, Roberta, and Morris, they were part of his squad, and today, he lost one of his squad members, he added this day to his memory along all the days which he vowed to remember past the war.

Peytr gnashed his teeth, nodded to Phil, and pulled his long red-tipped sword, a gift from the purples, and rushed at the wyvern as he shouted, “Orange and purple, to me.”

The wyvern alternated attacking the squad with its maw, then with its tail, and if somebody was unlucky enough, it gutted them with its sharp claws, as was Janna’s fate, moments ago.

Peytr had been fighting the beasts for the last six months, and he developed certain techniques he passed onto his squad to devise a prearranged strategy to take the beasts down.

This strategy was reinvented once the purples joined his ranks, and it went as follows, the purples would bring the front line with air cushions to protect the oranges as they made the first lunge at the beast’s eyes, then they would hurl earth projectiles to block the eye sockets, preventing them from healing, as the main advantage of the wyvern was its immediate healing capability. Then the oranges would hack at the beast’s tail, rendering it useless as well as making it imbalanced.

Again, the purples would block the wound with earth to prevent healing, then came the last charge, the most dangerous of them. Both oranges and purples have to keep the beast’s maw open to shoot it full of arrows, thus nudging its brain jewel out of place and killing it.

The only weapons able to penetrate the skin of magical creatures were those that had the magical red tint applied by senior purple magicians, and the supply was always less than the demand. But Janna went too close as she tried to seal the beast’s eyes with earth, and it pulled her under its claws.

Now, Peytr had to do it the old way, he loaded his specially designed dagger with earth, as the others kept the beast busy, then he jumped on its back shoving the dagger in its left eye, which was about to heal, then by pressing a mechanism on the handle of the dagger, the earth would be released into the now punctured eye.

He did that and was thrown in the air twenty feet, and if it was not for Morris, who fashioned a fast cushion to aid him, he would have fallen inside the maw of the wyvern, lost in seconds.

Peytr still fell hard about ten feet off the fray. He shook his head to clear the buzzing then rushed back at the beast while screaming something primitive and guttural.

-3-

Phil jumped the ditch, then continued running, he had to reach the front line as fast as he could.

He got injured in the last battle, but today he heard the news, he left his sickbed and started to run from the camp, he had to return to his squad to warn them.

This part of the woods was almost dead, the Order of Purification passed this way a week ago, and the signs of their army’s passage were clear. The soil looked a sickly gray, not the usual rich red and brown of Agartha, the trees exploded on both sides of the trail, and there were even tufts of the fur of a dozen species of animals mixed with the wood shards and the soil. They might not have the full power of the dragons on their side, but two wyverns decimated more than ten mixed squadrons that day, it took more than forty purples to finally kill the beasts.

All the while, the humans were fighting around the battle between the mages and the beasts, a lot of good men and women lost their lives that day. But Philip couldn’t stop to give respect to the fallen, he had to reach the front line or another massacre would be repeated before the end of the day. He didn’t even have the time to stop for a minute to ease the pains in his legs or the burning in his lungs.

He had to tell Peytr that the reds are coming and that they are coming with a king wyvern, it might take all the powers of the remaining mages within the ranks of the remaining squads to take the majestic creature down. He trusted Peytr would know what to do with this imminent conflict, he always did.

He ran as fast as he could, and he remembered the first time of many, Peytr saved his life. He had pulled him out of the way of a burning unicorn’s horn, and as he stumbled to his feet with the aid of Peytr, he told him, “Live today to save me the next, Phil.”

Today has to be that day, he would run three more hours added to the ones he already did, even if it killed him, for he had a brother at arms to save.

And maybe Peytr will then manage to save them all.

-4-

Emir stood on top of a rocky outcropping, facing the village he was supposed to conquer. It was an insignificant place, but it was the midpoint between Thule, the city of the blues, his nation, and El Dorado, the city of the purples, it also happened to be the only passage between the two cities, as south of it laid the desert of Royogju, where the rumored dragon temple was supposed to be.

The desert was vast, dry, and he had no guides in his command to traverse it. So, this small village of the oranges had to be conquered by the end of the day, to pave the road to El Dorado.

His bonded companion, a dryad spirit, hovered restlessly around him. She was not happy by the coming slaughter, and neither was he, but it had to be done. Emir hated the war, and he hated being part of it, but his loyalty was to his nation, and his nation demanded he applied his services of leading a fighting company in this war, so he did.

Emir looked back at the expectant men and women he led, this was the first mixed company of blues, yellows, and reds, in an attempt to match the success of the mixed units of the purples and the oranges.

He sighed and shook his head, not a single one of his entire company was past the age of twenty years, and before the war ended, as he hoped it soon would, most of them would be dead. Never to experience love or prosperity in their nations, never to be crowned heroes of war as most of them hoped, and never even welcomed with the shallow embrace of a defeated soldier, a brother or sister at arms.

He descended from the rock and headed to his lieutenants, and started to formulate the plan to take the village.