Year 378 of the Second Era


You start a light jog to the wyvern infested ramparts, but you stop before you get there and string your bow. What is the point in throwing yourself into the middle of danger for nothing? Chances are that you would die a gruesome death for no reason other than your eagerness for battle. An inexperienced fool's death. 


With your bow stringed and the wyverns attention away from you, you start taking shots at the beasts. You aim your first few shots at the wyverns themselves, but when they bounce harmlessly off of their scaly hides, you shift your focus. There are two kobold atop each of the five wyverns present, and while they are certainly dwarfed by the sheer size of the wyverns they are riding, you don't let that distract you. Each of the kobold atop the wyvern has a critical purpose. The one in the front is to steer and control the mount while the one in the back holds a bow in its hands. It's job is to fire at anyone attempting to kill the former type of kobold. Such as you. 


The wyvern you'd been concentrating on turns its attention toward you, as does the kobold archer atop it, but it never gets a chance to loose its arrow at you. Instead your own arrow pierces its chest sending it tumbling from its mount and into the open air. Unfortunately, the other kobold still sits atop the wyvern, and after your display of accuracy, you've become a prime target. That wyvern and its rider come flying toward you, which is bad, but away from the battle, which is good. You take the last opportunity you'll get and loose one more arrow at the other kobold. Your aim is off on this, so your arrow only ends up bouncing off of the wyvern's body. You start to draw another arrow, but as you do, the wyvern takes on a burst of speed and is on you before you know it. Your life flashes before your eyes, and an image of Liliana's beautiful face plants itself at the forefront of your mind. You simply don't have enough time to react to the wyvern's speed, and you just close your eyes in acceptance. 


Then you feel a large claw grab your waist. Its touch is surprising gentle. Nothing of what you would expect of a wyvern, and you keep waiting for it to hurl you from its grip, but that doesn't happen. Hesitantly, you open your eyes to find yourself suspended in the air, and not in the grasp of a wyvern. Rather, you find yourself in the grip of a griffin. The relief you feel is instantaneous, but that is quickly replaced by terror. You quickly reach your hands and grip onto the cold claws of the griffin. 


You take stock of the situation. Including the griffin carrying you, there are at least seven Griffin Knights combating the wyverns in the air. It's  an amazing scene, and your breath catches. Griffins are much smaller than the wyverns, but this makes them significantly faster, so the wyverns seeme clumsy by comparison. The griffin knights themselves wear gleaming silver armor and cast a perfect picture of the word 'knight.' On the ground, the fight continues. The kobold outnumber division one, by nearly two to one, and that is discounting the giant lizards they brought with them to the battle. You start wondering why so many kobold came to mount an attack on the wall, but are soon distracted from that with what happens next.


You feel a sudden change in direction as the griffin carrying you heads back to the walls. You realize that it, and the rider, must want to drop you back off at the wall before returning to the melee. You are quite okay with this, but then a scene just below you unfolds in the span of a moment. 


A wyvern, with just the rider left to guide it, chases a griffin just below you. For that moment it seems the entire world slows down in order for you to see and understand what's happening. The wyvern is gaining, and it opens its mouth in anticipation for the coming chomp on the griffin's lower half. It isn't some beast's wild hope that it'll manage to bite the griffin either. No, you can very clearly see that this wyvern will be able to catch the griffin. Thus leading to both the griffin's and its rider's death. 


In this same moment, an utterly absurd idea crosses your mind. The griffin holding you wasn't trying to keep you prisoner. It was merely keeping you from falling, and you think you could pry yourself open from its grip if you really tried. If you did, then you should land just as the wyvern's saddle passes beneath you. Your weight might even be enough to cause the wyvern to lose the edge its gained on the griffin. You left your bow back on the ramparts when the griffin saved you from the wyvern, but you do still have your standard short sword strapped to your waist. If you did go through with such a ridiculous plan, you could maybe even take out the rider and wyvern. 


Maybe.

You let yourself be brought back to the ramparts

Year 378 of the Second Era


Sure you've done crazy things in the past, but this is no time to try and accomplish the utterly insane. Especially when the chances of success are so very low. Better to live and keep your chance of saving Liliana alive rather than to throw it away on the unlikely chance that you'll be able to save some random nobody.


Despite this fact, you still wince when you see the wyvern's mouth snap down on the griffins hindquarters. The scene turns into a bloody mess, and you can't help but look away as the griffin (or at least what's left of it) and its rider plummet down to the battle below. 


You feel a pang of guilt, but you push it away by telling yourself you couldn't have done anything anyway. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you don't believe this. 


Not too long after that you are dropped off on the ramparts you were originally guarding. Much is different. Several chunks of the wall are missing, and many soldiers lie dead on the ramparts. The wall you once guarded no longer carries that symbol of boredom and ease in your mind. It is readily replaced with the memory of blood spilt, and comrades dying. 


Over half of division two is either dead or incapacitated. Division on was doing better, but the griffin that was killed only moments before plummeted right into their line. That turned out to be the turning point in the kobold's favor, and now division one is slowly being pushed back against the wall. The griffins are locked in a very deadly battle with the rest of the wyverns, and don't seem at all in a position to help the human forces on the ground. 


You aren't sure what you could do to help in this situation, for it looks like your defeat is inevitable. The griffins won't be able to kill the wyverns fast enough to help division one avoid getting slaughtered, which division one is mere minutes away from. This leaves you with a few honorable choices and one dishonorable choice.

You join division one on the ground

Year 378 of the Second Era


You're no griffin knight. You can't contend with wyverns on an equal level, and firing a few arrows won't make any difference in the fight on the ground. No, if you're going to win this fight, then you need to go right into the thick of it. If you can manage to help division stay alive for even five minutes longer, then the chances of the griffin knights helping out are significantly higher. 


You still have your sword strapped to your waist, and you don't usually carry a shield on you for guard duty, so you pick one up from the dead and strap it to your back. Following this you jog to the closest tower and go down the stairwell. Inside the tower it is eerily quiet compared to the roars and clangs of battle outside, and the sound of your steel boots hitting the stone stairs reverberates throughout. Moments later, you come to the bottom of the stairs. A large iron gate-like door greets you. It is quite the durable piece, and nothing less than a battering ram would be able to break through it. Or perhaps a wyvern flying at breakneck speed... You push that foreboding thought from your head and walk through the iron doors. 


What greets you outside is a scene of bloodshed and death. Division one has been pushed back nearly all the way to the walls, but their line still holds. Currently the division is organized in a semi-circle formation with the flat of the circle pressed against the wall. Everywhere else is a place for fighting, and nearly every soldier fights for their lives. There is one soldier, however, that does not fight, You see him sitting against the wall with the shaft of a crude arrow of kobold make protruding from his stomach. It's Byron, and it looks like he's lost a lot of blood. 


Almost instinctively, you approach him. As you near, a spurt of blood comes out of his mouth and splatter against your chest-piece. "Lieutenant Byron?" You ask this fairly loudly, but he doesn't respond, so you repeat it. "Lieutenant Byron?"


This time he turns his pain and regret filled eyes toward you. He focuses on you and reaches his arm up and grips your forearm in his. A sign of comradery and trust. "I know not who you are, nor from where you came, but I need you now soldier. We are losing. My men die at every turn, and the kobold do not let up. Even still, there is hope. If we can keep the line, then they," he looks up to the sky, "will save us."


He coughs up some more blood, but his grip on your arm stays strong. "Your name escapes me soldier, and I feel bad for laying this burden upon you, but someone must keep these soldier together. Will you do this for me brother? See to it that some of these men survive this battle." 


With this last request his grip loosens and falls limp at his side. His breaths cease, and you're left in the presence of a dead man. Numbly, you stand back up and gaze at the fight. You knew you needed to help in this battle in the first place, but speaking with Byron has strengthened your resolve. The only thing left to decide is where you will help.

You help the left flank

Year 378 of the Second Era


You aren't Byron. You won't be able to lead these men better than him, or lead them at all. You're just another soldier, so what does it matter where you go? So you head to the flank closest to you. The left one. 


The fighting over here doesn't seem nearly as intense as the fighting near the middle. You pull out your sword and shield, and immediately get to work. Most of the people fighting are beginning to get tired, so the addition of a fresh, well equipped soldier vastly improves the line. So much, in fact, that it seems that the entirety of the left flank almost molds around your fighting. Which strikes you as odd, because of the way you're fighting. You don't rush in and throw yourself at the enemy in a fit of battlefield rage, or anything of that sort. No, you're calm in the heat of battle. You have a focused determination, and because of this you don't make any brash moves. Your goal is to stay alive while keeping everyone else alive as well. Defense is the best offense, and it happens to make the fight last a hell of a lot longer. Maybe this will buy enough time for the griffin knights to take care of the wyverns.


With this thought in mind, you fight. Not for glory, nor for yourself. You fight for Liliana, and the chance to see her alive and well again. 


"Retreat!" The sound of a despairing voice breaks you out of your focus, and a kobold nearly guts you because of it, but you quickly block the flimsy attack and return it with one of your own. It dies before you, and you have a sacred moment of rest before another kobold comes to fill its spot in the line. It gives you time to think about what the guy meant by retreating. Your line was doing so well, and retreating now would be suicide. The kobold would have a field day with chasing down and killing everyone on the ground. It was a cowardly, foolish mistake. Hopefully no one would listen to the fool's order, but, to your chagrin, they do. Soldiers from your left and right start disappearing, and, soon enough,  there is no longer even the semblance of a line. You're quickly surrounded by kobold, and while you make a valiant effort to stay alive, it isn't enough.