[center][h1][color=c4df9b]Uwné[/color][/h1][/center]
His name was Qurkantha and he ruled this ashen paradise. Some would’ve called him a beast only because he looked like it. Because he walked on four legs. True, he did not wield weapons like others. He did not walk upright to spot dangers from a distance. He didn’t need to. His scales protected him. His slit eyes looked further than any of the bald monkeys ever could. Just like them, he could mold the air he exhaled. They called it ‘talking’. Just like them, he could question his own state. He made decisions not out of instinct. Now, laying on the hot black rock overlooking his land he had made the decision to rest. Whatever happened, his less aged companions would be able to handle it. These days nothing came at them that didn’t die within a few minutes.

That changed when he woke up to a rumble. In the distance, he saw it coming. A billowing wave of ash raced over the ground in the distance. It confused him. There hadn’t been storms for a long time. A creature that looked like him but smaller came howling at him. Qurkantha understood the howls very well. Something was coming. With a bark, a snarl, and a howl – things the bald monkeys would see as only that – he dismissed the packmate and ordered him to gather the others. A force was approaching. Perhaps something that had come through the rifts somewhere else. Like Qurkantha had. Such was the nature of all living things. To claim and hold and live off. But the red-scaled creature would not give up his prized possession so easily.

Sometime later another dust storm was raging towards the first one. Led by a growling and snarling Qurkuntha. Once again he would prove his ferociousness! His eyes tried to look into the roiling wave of dust ahead of him. Trying to discern what was coming. He could see now, but only barely. He saw shades and shadows. Small ones. Too small to have caused the roiling wave to trail them.

He relayed the information to everyone around him. Whatever attacked would die easily though. The two roiling ashen waves clashed with each other creating pure chaos. Qurkantha couldn’t see what he was attacking. He just saw the dark shapes and swiped with his arm. Catching one. Then he swiped with his tail, catching another one. Both were send flying. Something hit him. it didn’t bounce like it used to. He slammed away the attacker, though missed, and then grabbed whatever managed to slip between his scales. It was a tool, a spear. But not made of bone or blackened wood like usually. It was made of some dull grey metal. Then he felt himself get pierced again. More came. Shade became clearer to see. They looked like they wore the same dull grey metal on their bodies. Qurkantha roared his battle cry. It was answered by his pack.

He swiped and slashed and smashed. One shade broke underneath his arm and he lifted it up. It just looked like crumbled grey metal. Still, they kept coming. Swiping didn’t kill them instantly, though it should. In the chaos of the dust not much was seen. Qurkantha let out another bellowing cry. Fewer answered. The fighting continued. His claw rent through the grey-skins. Red liquid sprayed over his paw. They were the bald monkeys! Wearing a second, metal skin. Qurkantha laughed in his own way. He kept fighting. Then bellowed again. Even fewer of his pack answered. Things were turning sour. The monkeys didn’t stop coming.

The red-scaled, black-furred beast that was Qurkantha has let out a cry of retreat before he swiped one last time with his tail and turn back around to run out of the dust storm they were fighting in.

Once outside the thick ashen cloud that whirled on the ground, he looked back to wait for his pack. For a second none came. Then one ran out. Then another. And then one more came out limping and whining. Qurkantha took a step towards him but the first two stood in his way. Their growls were clear. They had to run. Things were bad. Qurkantha didn’t want to. He didn’t want to leave behind a packmate. The limper whined again. Then, from the dust and ash, he could hear it. Whistling. Three thin rods came flying through. Two of them drilled into the limper. He collapsed with one last whine.

Qurkantha was mad, but also realized he should fight here. He should be back at the nest. Gather the females and the cubs and find a new home. But as he looked back, something was wrong. Ash billowed up in the distance at the nest and thin flames erupted.

“Monster!” Qurkantha heard from the dust. One of the grey-skinned monkeys came marching out. Holding a long stick with a sharp blade at the end. “Your kin and kind are dead.” His words dripped with venom. Venom Qurkantha could understand even if he couldn’t understand the words. That didn’t mean he would die easy. He bore his sharp fangs. If in his heart he was making peace with it. He would die here and now. But he would take as many of the slayers with him. “Let’s finish this!” The monkey said, raising the spear at him.

Qurkantha instead opened his jaw. A torrent of fire exploded from his mouth. Engulfing the human who started screaming as the flames consumed him. More humans came rushing from the dust. As did more of the arrows that had killed the limper. Most bounced off of his old and hardened scales while he bit down upon another monkey. Severing her legs from her body. Another swipe and another crush. But more humans came. The mighty ruler of the Black Mountains was being cut a hundred times. His thin, violet blood came pouring out of his wounds.

Eventually, he collapsed. Exhausted by the blood loss and the fighting. His vision blurred. Alas, death was just another path. His kind held nothing against. They weren’t afraid of it. The only he regretted was that he couldn’t take more of the cruel, tiny things with him. One of the monkeys came closer. Qurkantha tried to open his jaw and breathe one last burst of flame. He couldn’t. All strength vanished. The monkey, the human, he spared no time. He raised his spear and plunged it down. Forcing Qurkantha’s soul into the vast dark sea.
[center]~[/center]
Caine removed his helmet. His spear was still stuck in the giant lizard’s head. The right side of his face was bleeding a lot. The flesh around his eye was thick and swollen. But he had finished it. He had killed the Tyrant. His people were safe. No, safer. “How many dead, Kiera?” he asked the person stepping next to him. 

Her armor was near identical to that of Caine, though it was perfect in size. Just like Cain’s armor perfectly fitted him. “All together?” She said, her voice betraying her far too young age. “Seventeen. Twenty-one wounded.” She looked down at the monster they had slain as a group while still holding her own spear. Its sides were filled with arrows, spears, and even the gaping wounds made by axes. The elder drake named Tyrant hadn’t fallen easy but he had fallen. Later on, they would feast.

As if the gods, all of them, blessed their fight something rose up through the sky. The people looked. Its light shone like the ancient tales about the sun. Even Uwné, as he stepped through the duststorm he had conjured, looked up at the golden disc and smiled. Others were truly restoring the world as well. He couldn’t wish for more. Behind him, blue lights appeared through the ash and dust wave. Golems moved slow and cumbersome. 

The automatons gathered around the Tyrant and his kin. [color=c4df9b]“Carry them back to the Anvil.”[/color] Uwné ordered. And almost all the Golems obeyed. Almost all, save one. That one followed Uwné while seemingly walking with a stick. Both of them headed for the mountain range. Where the other group of the warriors had killed the last of the drakes.

Though on his way Uwné realized he shouldn’t call them warriors. They weren’t. They were fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters that had picked up the weapons he offered. Dreadfully few of them could actually fight. The armor and weapons helped and it won them this battle, but many still died. They would need to train, but there was no time to train. They needed to get better but the monsters wouldn’t sit idly by to let that happen. It was a brain-wracking problem. One that consumed Uwné as he approached the nest.

It most than just a place where the drakes – now dead and strewn around – stayed and mated. In the center of the large cave, surrounded by human fighters it pulsed. A rift. A relatively small one. But still big enough to let monsters through. The Tyrant had been the first, but if the matter wasn’t handled he also wouldn’t be the last.

Uwné walked closer to the tear in reality. Beyond it, he could see fire and rivers of molten rock. It was a hellish plane. One worse than the Continent was right now. It was also the home of these monsters. Still, the god of crafting was curious. What materials could be found beyond this threshold? He extended his hand and carefully pushed it into the rift.

Suddenly his fingers felt empty. Drained of something vital. He felt weak. The heat was burning his hands. Afraid he pulled back his hand. The second it was back on the main plane of existence his hand looked as if nothing had happened to it. The rifts were dangerous. Perhaps more so than he first thought. With his other hand, he made a fist and the rift was closed instantly.

[hider=Summary]Enter Qurkantha, an elder drake. He sees a wave of dust coming and decides to answer it in kind. With his pack, he charges to protect his land. In the dust, they fight. He crushes grey-metal shade after shade. Soon he realizes they are in fact bald monkeys (humans). He keeps fighting, though they start hurting him so he pulls back out of the chaos of the dust. Dreadfully few of his kin escape as well. Behind him then, he realizes the monkeys had played him when he noticed the nests themselves were being attacked as well.

With his nest destroyed, his kin dead, and no way to pull back he decides to fight the last desperate fight. In which he vows to kill as many of the monkeys as he can. Though eventually, he falls.

The humans, supported by Uwné, declare their freedom from the Tyrant of the Black Mountains. Though the price was steep. Especially in times like these. Uwné’s golems, raised from what Exo left behind but moving through magic, start gathering the bodies of the fallen drakes. Meanwhile, Uwné checks out the rift the drakes guarded and came through. As he puts his hand through he realizes something’s wrong when it enters the other layer and pulls it back quickly and then closes the rift.[/hider]