The sea stood calm amid the sounds of bellowing beasts.

Flags and banners adorned with a crimson dragon waved in the wind.

Five massive ships stood in the port, each one a true machine of war.

Below the decks stood four hundred wingless land walking dragons, The Bronze Class Behemoths.

Above those same decks were two hundred Silver Class winged Wyverns.

The men in charge of both were also on the move.

The skies blackened, a quartet of titanic serpents emerged from the seas before every ship, chains adorned their bodies, binding them to the vessels, they were the twenty Gold Class Leviathans.

This was the Nidhogg Empire’s Invasion Fleet, tens of thousands of men and thousands of dragons dwelling in only these five titanic Skithblathnir.

Five ships might not sound like much, and it’s true it was not, but when one considered their immense scale it no longer seemed to matter.

Their size wasn’t just for show either, for only such juggernauts could penetrate the raging storms that littered the South-Eastern Sea.

__________________________________________________

The Matriarch of the Tiamat House, one of the two Generals of the Nidhogg Empire, Rosa, looked upon this fleet from the port city's walls on high.

Her dragon companion, the very Tiamat for whom her house was named, opened wide its maw and loosed a very heavy yawn. 

“It’s finally happening then,” She said as she took in the calm orange sky, “War...my first real war.”

The word sounded heavy as it escaped from her lips.

She had not been a strong player in any conflicts until now, this would truly be her first true invasion of another land.

Footsteps echoed in her ears, heavy boots, a man clad in armour.

She turned to face him, the other general, Ahzi of Dahaka, an albino man clad in azure blue armour.

“What do you want?” She asked, her voice like ice.

The man responded with silence as he walked over to her side.

He turned to face the five vessels of war with a distant gaze.

They looked so mighty, yet these five ships were only half of the original number.

They belonged to the surviving Five Great Noble Houses, but there were originally ten such houses.

The rest of these ships had long since sunk into the sea during the previous wars, and these events were not loosely tied to their overall downfalls.

Ahzi pondered this as he turned to face the young girl who stood at his side.

He wondered if she knew how weak and fragile even these mightiest of things could truly be.

He worried in fact that she may really not even care.

“This was your hometown, was it not?” The man asked her.

Rosa frowned in turn, but she did not deny it.

This place was far from the Tiamat House’s lands, but indeed it was where her story began.

Rosa, born as the bastard daughter to a lowly slave, the girl who had risen to become the Lord of House Tiamat.

She could not keep herself from looking back on it and realise that had the Crimson Dragon not chosen her as its master that day, the House would never have known nor cared that she existed at all.

Certainly, if not for Tiamat's boon she would not be the leader of such a powerhouse today, she would barely even be better than a slave.

The reason she was so fond of the Red Dragon then was solely because of this; it was the first being in this world to show her any kindness whatsoever.

“That’s all in the past,” She said, sneering at the salty sea air.

She hated the stench of this town, she wanted to burn it and tear it all down.

Her gaze beset a random brothel that the soldiers were frequenting below.

Even though it wasn’t the same one that she grew up in, since that one had long gone out of business, it was regardless an infinitely unpleasant reminder.

“The strong do as they will with the weak,” She said, closing her eyes, “And it’s the fault of the weak for not learning to protect themselves better when that happens, that’s just a fact of life.”

Her words were half forced, but every one of them was true to the Empire’s creed.

Indeed their very God himself was known for eliminating the weakest members of their population in periodic purges, for his faith prided strength above morality since the latter did not matter without the backing of the former.

Grimnir’s Priesthood told the tale of a man who had been murdered without being able to protect anything he cared about.

Because he was weak he never had control of his life back then, because he was weak his life was trampled by the strong and then eventually everything he loved was snuffed out.

Rosa was both a product and proponent of the philosophy that was born from this because, like Grimnir, she’d had lived the life of the downtrodden until granted the boon of another.

She understood the importance of might above all else.

Perhaps then that was why, high above in the clouds hovering over the port city, he stood there.

An Einherjar, in service to the Crimson Vanir, Grimnir, who bore a cane and mask to match his regal robes, stared down upon the General of Tiamat, Rosa, with a most prodigious stare.

Perhaps it was because of her story being so similar to their God that she had fallen into this being's eyes?

Who's to say? Perhaps even the entity itself did not understand the reason he measured his ambitions and weighed her value to his cause.

Who can say? No one, not a one, could say.

All that one might know, as the historian looking back, was that it had simply turned out this way.

_______________________________________

The crowd began to stir as the city gates pried open.

People kneeled and bowed, parents snatched up their children to clear the path as a procession of carriages were pulled by draconic beasts into the waiting city streets.

Powerful auras that would deter any bandit shrouded the robust forms of the procession's many guards.

Rosa sensed them, then turned to see them.

Such a force could be for none other than their lord and liege, only the Emperor and his family could command those knights clad in red cloth and silver armour.

She heard Ahzi's voice again, and his words but affirmed what she of course already knew.

“Seems his Imperial Majesty has arrived."

The Azure General stood up, a deed which filled the silent air with a groan of exertion as his weary muscles stretched themselves in the act.

The two dragons, the Azure Dahaka and the Crimson Tiamat, then raised their heads to bellow from atop the city wall.

The carriage doors opened then amid two towering pillars of flame to welcome them like fireworks lighting the heavens on high.

The emperor departed first, his pitch black armour shone bright under the dim red light of the sun.

Behind him then followed his Empress Brynhilda, whose stiletto heels clapped down onto the carriage step.

She was then aided by her husband’s hand to tread the stone pavement further below.

The act was nothing but a show of proper manners, it was always the role of the gentleman to extend his hand and for the lady to expect and enjoy the courtesy.

She sighed, burying her accusations deep and as she closed her eyes and waited until he released her hand.

Times gone past, she would’ve felt gratified by this gesture, but not now.

The face of her husband’s Mistress, Gudrun, could not but come to her mind.

That woman had the old Imperial Family’s bloodline, however diluted, and this was why he married her.

For Sigurd, it was just politics, and Brynhilda did understand that, however she also knew the dangers involved in keeping such a woman around.

She looked back at the carriage as her young daughter skipped down the carriage steps gleefully and without a care for any form of etiquette.

The empress balled up her fingers as emotions roiled within her chest.

That child was so innocent, ignorant to the twisted games that adults play, she was yet to realise there was no greater danger to her than her much loved newly born half sister.

Brynhilda turned to face her husband, but he stood with his back to her and went about his business greeting the local lords.

She let her hand fall gently, she expected nothing from him.

Indeed the man had more than likely brought her along for but two reasons; the first was to see him off while the second was to prevent her from fighting with Gudrun while he was gone.

She sneered, no matter what he does he could not prevent that smaller war from erupting in their household, for while men had their battlefields women had them too.

Sigurd glimpsed her sneering glare through the corner of his eye and could not but feel uneasy leaving her unsupervised.

Indeed he mused about it a good long while, and then decided to leave someone who might stop her behind.

Yet who should he pick? Who was worthy of the task?

He could not fight this war without Ahzi’s experience, and the representatives of Seraphim and Qliphoth were acting on behalf of their family’s shared lord.

They couldn’t be trusted because that man could also not be trusted.

He was born to the Immortal Tribes in the North originally but when the city of his birth fell to Cain’s machinations he moved to their kingdom and devoured the then lords of both families.

Their dragons bowed their heads to him and that alone proved that he could adapt the bloodline of any being he consumed, such a monster could not be left to move about unchecked.

Sigurd looked towards his wife; he remembered her form on that day, when she showed off the power of her bloodline and frightened that monstrous man into submission.

That was the day everyone realised that the Valkyrie House was descended from The Immortal Clan of old, indeed they were heir to the most feared and reviled of all the Fourteen Branches, that of The Reaper.

Garner himself described them as the bane of the other Thirteen, the judicators who could kill even that which was immortal, it was no wonder then that they had been driven off and exterminated so long ago.

This then was why Sigurd could not afford to take his bride with him to the war, for he could not leave that man unchecked.

The otherwise mighty Emperor’s hands were truly tied, and he had but one option remaining; he had to leave Rosa behind, for only she was left among those who could be even remotely trusted to carry out the task of keeping that woman under her eye.