Short Fiction: War of the Dynasties

Written for a prompt that said to base the story off of a song. This was the song I chose:

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He screamed in agony with his hands gripping the sides of his head, but the earth shaking bellow of the Great Soul-Ripper burst out as if the mountains themselves roared in pain, deafening his cry to a whisper. Its form reeled up from beneath the rotting battlefield below, eyes burning like the fire of a dozen white suns come to scorch the very spirit of life in its void glare. Innumerable black spines rattled and cracked the air along its back while a leathery hood of skin flared to encompass its terrible face lined in fangs the size of towers.

Finally the quaking echos faded, and Gareth, trembling and grasping for the air he couldn’t seem to take in, clawed along the stone walls of his post until he regained his feet beneath him. His eyes landed on the abomination just as it snapped its jaws around a gnat-swarm of fleeing gryphons and their riders, hissing in what could be described as nothing less than a gleeful laugh.

Gareth stumbled back from the sight and placed his back to the wall. Sweat and tears streaked across his old gashes and mixed with the bloody grime that coated his face like the warpaint of an endless fight.

“What have you lead us to?!” His broken, anguishing call spoke to the coldness of the stone around him, only barely loud enough to be heard over the howls of his comrades now at the gate bellow begging to be granted sanctuary from the nightmares engulfing the valley; but to no avail.

He grasped the ivory pendant around his neck and yanked it free from the clasps of his armor. The blue gem of the little dragon’s head stared back at him as he held it, and its gaze lit a fire in his chest as he threw it from the loft of his station, watching as it vanished into the sea of roiling blades.

“Coward! You toyed with our allegiance for sport, leaving us as prey like dogs in the pit! Curse you, snake!” His holler raked against his raw throat as he fought a hopeless sob of terror while dark clouds spilled from the clifftops nearby.

Dragons with scales of Dwemer gold swarmed in the distance, soaking the Soul-Ripper’s skin in lightning, and its angered growl rocked the foundations of the fortress. A white halo of power materialized before the wyrm’s open maw, and utter silence overtook the world. The bronze specks in the distance vaporized as a glaring shockwave rode through the air towards the city walls. Cliffsides splintered like brittle wood, walls rose and fell as if made of straw, and buildings all tumbled in a current of power that washed towards the capital.

Blackness; then vague shapes of grays morphing and traveling through blurred sight. His mind spun in circles – were wisps of warm light seeping from his split chest? The world rolled, and he was looking upwards at the sky from beneath a pile of granite. A piercing teal light was shining through the acid of the mist just over the peak of the distant mountains, and brillance in the form of ivory wings fell like a royal cape around a mighty drake as it plummeted from the heavens and landed on the throat of the wyrm with bared teeth.

“Forgive me.”