The Mighty Ride of the Firelord

***The Mighty Ride of the Firelord*** is the tenth track on Rhapsody of Fire's Dawn of Victory album.

## Lyrics

Cruel Akron bloody bastard I now spit on you

You can turn my bones to black ash but I'll move the moon

I will light your evil kingdom

and your heart will burn in flames

Mutilated or dismembered

we'll soon rise to eat your brain

You will pay for your victims and for Airin's bloody rape

For Arwald my dear friend and all my crying wasted land

I call the rage of my dead

I call the angels' tears

Also Dargor can't endure all... goes out from the cave

while the demons take the hero for their tragic game

Gods of earth save me from madness

from these rites of total shame

while descending in the red flame

Arwald dies but not in vain

They will pay for this nightmare, for the symphony of pain

For Airin, my dead friend and all my crying wasted land

I call the Tharos' fire

I call the thunder roar

Raise your voice and ride all

ride all brave, raise your sword to the sky

and sing the epic symphony

for the mighty and proud firelord

Arwald's acid broke the silver chains

before his very last breath

Akron laughing really doesn't know what now waits for him...

Gods are raging leading my red steel

heads and limbs are falling down

It's in me the mystic messenger bringer of revenge

"Black angel, I call you! King Chaos is raging

in the torment of my heart...

I call the holy earthquake to end this bloody Hell!"

Gods are raging leading my red steel

heads and limbs are falling down

It's in me the mystic messenger bringer of revenge

while she comes, beloved sunlight

On the river known as Aigor

our hero found his way

All the demons desperately

search for him now but in vain

They will pay for this nightmare, for the symphony of pain

For Airin, my dead friend and all my crying wasted land

I call the Tharos' fire

I call the thunder roar

Raise your voice and ride all

ride all brave, raise your sword to the sky

and sing the epic symphony

for the mighty and proud firelord

## Lore

Yes, dear friends, this is exactly what really happened, although your friend Aresius would never have liked to have told you...

When our two heroes finally arrived in Hargor, they immediately understood that it would have been impossible to go back! The vision was tragic... of the knights imprisoned during the siege of Ancelot nothing was left except their heads and limbs impaled in awful hellish geometry...

The message was clear and my two friends could do nothing other than attack as furies about to die in the proudest way. But no... what the Black King had planned for them was even more terrible... and I can assure you, I felt that something was not going right, being in mental contact with them most of the time! Captured and imprisoned, after many days of torture the two warriors awakened in a dark cavern lit by seven torches. Heavy steel chains were limiting their movement. Airin, oh my god, yes, right, poor Airin, was in front of them, covered only by a black veil, on an unholy stone altar. Akron, his dream of handling the mighty Emerald Sword satisfied at last, was laughing before the altar together with all his demonknights shadowing the cavern and no sane mind would like to imagine what could have happened in the next moments...

No, I don’t want to tell you... but I have to... because you all, my friends, have to understand how cruel and blasphemous the acts of a man can be, although it’s difficult for me even to consider him as a man, being possessed by the evil forces of cosmic oblivion!

So... Airin, Arwald’s beloved princess, was brutally raped by all the evil creatures of that hellish place in front of our two heroes and by Akron himself, still laughing and building his dark energy by the pain of suffering innocence.

Even the valorous Dargor, already trying to convince his king about the insanity of the trap and all this unfettered violence, felt himself constrained to condemn this horrible ritual of bloody depravation. Even if he swore his loyalty to the cult of Evil, the prince of the Darklands, being educated by one of my biggest enemies, the wizard known as Vankar of Helm, had always tried to conciliate his acts with some ideals that often contrasted with Akron’s philosophy... and now once again!

Returning to our tale... the ritual finished even more tragically... Airin was forced, with her last breath of life and looking for the last time at her beloved Arwald, to sink in the Sgral, a magic substance able to corrode the strongest steel.

And, after a while, her death was a reality...

Excuse me, my friends, if in this moment a tear is filling my old eye, but the tragedy is too big for an elderly, tormented heart like mine...

Arwald prayed to all the gods of the cosmos to be free of that unholy vision and, being unable to endure the pain of it, he soon lost his senses...

Akron had prepared something special for everybody, so the hero of the northern lands was also tortured in every way possible and in the end he was also forced to become a victim of the terrible corrosive substance...

But in that moment the gods of the cosmos heard his call. Even with his legs burning in the acid, using his last divine inner energy, Arwald used his arms, already showing the white of the bones, to throw some of the green acid towards the Warrior of Ice. Destiny would have it that part of it splashed on the chains imprisoning the chosen one... The steel corroded and our hero was able to free himself... Arwald, with his death, had thus saved the life of our mutual friend. Armed only with stones from the cave, his mighty rage led him against the horde of Evil and he was only able to avoid the deadly fury of Akron by throwing himself into the subterranean river known as Aigor, which flowed through the cave and carried him to the open air outside Hargor. After many moons, escaping through dark marshes and then over rocky mountains, he was finally able to reach his beloved valleys and then the Forest of Unicorns, only there could he feel himself finally safe. Sad, tired, hungry, enraged and furious, but at least safe. The Emerald Sword was now gleaming in the hands of Akron and something had to be done before it was too late for our beloved Enchanted Lands!

Alright, my dear friends, my old body endured too much stress this time telling you this tragic tale, and so it is better if I rest for a time between the magic trees of this green valley, which have offered me hospitality for some moons. I will be back to you soon for the last chapter of these chronicles, I think the most intense, dramatic, and epic that I will ever tell you! So prepare yourself and in the meantime try to live your life with the same ideals of honesty and justice which fill the hearts of my valorous friends, ready to use the rage of the thunder to fight unfettered violence, so that another old wizard will be proud to tell the chronicles of your existence with the same epic enthusiasm...!

Forever yours,

Aresius