The heavens burned with smoke which parted slowly to reveal the blue flames of Fafnir’s breath.

The beast came forth as if from hell’s open maw to deafen them with its roar.

Gudrun held her baby tight as Rosa conjured Ash into a crimson coloured mist.

Faint flowery images could be discerned within the glow, her Ash gave off the illusion of a beautiful rose.

That image took form and became her weapon of choice; a glaive adorned with vines, thorns and flowers.

Fafnir charged but she was ready to face it, she was ready for both the beast and its master; except, she did not see its master.

“Where’d he go?” She whispered, then she looked for him with a frantic gaze only to see a blue lustre burning bright on the ground far below her.

There he stood, holding another fireball in his hand, this one was no larger than the first but, unfortunately for Rosa, it moved much faster.

When the Black Dragon opened its maw once again she knew what was coming then.

The Red Dragon swayed, it tried to escape but it was too late by then.

The explosion happened, it blinded Rosa, Tiamat and even Gudrun.

They couldn’t react to the impact which then sent them falling to the ground and scattered them in the landing.

With a crash then Rosa hit the dirt.

With a thud the red dragon followed.

She struggled to rise, her blinded eyes could barely see as Tiamat was pinned beneath Fafnir’s body.

She raised her head just in time to watch as her companion was slammed into the soil with her foe’s fangs upon her throat.

She could do nothing but watch then as her only friend in the world struggled fruitlessly against its stronger opposition.

Then, finally, a titanic crunch filled the world, and all Tia’s struggles turned to silence.

Rosa’s heart sank, her vision returned with a snap.

She couldn’t believe what she had just heard, wouldn’t dare to believe it either.

The shrieks of an infant resounded anew, she turned to face the source.

There stood Avance, his body clad in sable scales, with the baby Alyssa weeping loudly in his right arm and the unconscious Gudrun held over the shoulder of his left.

He turned to face her with a look of pity which rocked her to her very core.

The man lamented the sight of her, this girl, who should not be much older than either of his sons, yet she had been made to fight and suffer.

“So young,” He said, as he turned away from her.

He did not notice it as he walked towards the Black Dragon, the fact that Rosa’s wide open eyes were fixed upon his back.

“I’m sorry,” Said the man, “I need to take this mother and child, but worry not, no harm shall come to them...I’m not one to condone unnecessary cruelty.”

“Un...necessary...cruelty?” Rosa muttered, her eyes turned red as their blood vessels burst.

Her pupils began to drift as dizziness washed over her being.

When she glanced then towards Tiamat’s still and unmoving body it felt as if someone had punched open her rib cage and torn the still beating heart from her breast, it was unbearable.

“Unnecessary...you say?” Avance frowned, he endured a sudden ill premonition and then he turned to take in the sight of her.

What he saw near broke his heart and so he turned away in sorrow.

The Black Dragon cared not, for all of their kind, of course including himself and Tia, were human in the past.

He thought it a mercy to kill his kin, he would not lament his own demise either, it was true, and so he spread his mighty wings, he took flight without a care for Rosa’s broken heart.

“Unnecessary cruelty...you said?” Rosa continued to mutter as her wounds sealed themselves shut.

The blood was swept away as her gashes and burns closed up, but her pain didn’t lessen none.

“Unnecessary? Unnecessary!? Unnecessary cruelty!?” She roared, but it was all for naught.

Her foe was airborne and distant too, she had no means to pursue.

“Come back!” She cried as she raised her weak head to behold the blackened sky, “Come back! Murderer...come back! Coma back!”

The Black Dragon vanished over the distant horizon, it was gone.

"Come back!"

She dropped to her knees after one final howl, and then she wept beside the body of her fallen companion, the Crimson Dragon.

She hugged its nose and laid her head upon it, all the while begging the beast to defy death and awaken...no matter how impossible that might be.

"Come back," She muttered, "Come back...and kill me too."

The Dragon she called a friend, the valley she called a home, all of these things were consumed by that man, that monster.

The masked figure, the Einherjar who had watched it all from start to finish then appeared within the valley.

His robed body took shape from the mist, the cane he carried clapped hard against the stone.

He looked upon the unconscious girl, her energy spent as the wolves were gathering.

The crimson fog banished them, not from this place but the face of this very Planet Ymir.

His crimson fog then lifted her body like a bed of clouds off the ground.

He turned to leave, to take her with him, he needed to be swift.

Yet it was then that from behind him he sensed an eerie change upon the wind.

He grumbled, he was too late.

Another crimson mist spread across the land like an ocean to his tiny lake.

Upon the cliffs and crags did form many dozens of shadowed figures.

The fog cleared to reveal them, yet it still barred his path in every direction.

The youngest was eleven, the oldest but nineteen, and they were all clad in robes like budhist priests and monks.

The oldest ones wore three layers, yellow, orange and red, the youngest wore only the yellow one.

The oldest ones wielded naginata, the youngest held large sticks.

They gathered around him as a giant clawed hand, the throne which sat the king they served.

That young king appeared sixteen, like the other middling youths his robes were yellow and orange and there was a bladed tip at the end of the staff that he carried on his back that made it into a spear.

Nothing really differed him from the others save the crown upon his brow.

“How did you find me...your Majesty?” Said the Masked Einherjar.

The boy, the King of Grimlunde, said nothing, he merely smiled towards the unconscious Rosa and that alone told the masked man all he needed to know.

“You warned her about that man in Silicia,” Said the young King to the masked man, who nodded in return.

Yes, the ominous feeling that made Rosa act in such haste was his doing, he had warned her that Avance was in the capital, not that it mattered for all the good it did.

“Had you not, she’d have been better situated, well rested too,” Said the King with a scornful grin, “And we would not have found you, “Royal Teacher, Sigmund of Nidhogg”.”

The Masked man ignored his former liege’s goading.

Instead he started counting them, the young men all around him.

Their forms were not the same as in life, for they were born as Einherjar but recently and thus resembled human youths.

He judged they must have died all within a century or two.

“1...2...3...97...98...only 98, that’s good, there’s still two,” Said the former Royal Teacher turned First Nidhogg Emperor.

“Yes, the last two pairs of Sons and Daughters are still alive,” Said the King of Grimlunde, “The last of those you betrayed, so to say.”

The Royal Teacher ignored his goading, he did not care one bit.

The king begrudged it, but he understood the man’s nature.

He was naive back then, he had trusted him; he should not have done.

“You cannot attack me until those last two pass away...and Lord Grimnir’s pact expires,” Said the masked man as he turned to face the south.

His tone was ice cold and dismissive, as if The King’s existence didn’t bother him at all.

The King chuckled aloud and then the Royal Teacher paused his steps.

The men barred his path, they wouldn’t let him leave just like that.

Just because they were all Grimnir’s Einherjar that didn’t mean they got along, in fact it was rather the norm for factions to take form.

The situation was as the Teacher implied, until the pact expired these men could not attack him, but that did not mean they didn’t hate him.

“Those two are already at their limits,” Said the King, and so the Royal Teacher turned back to face his pupil of time gone by.

“Scoundrel,” Said the King with a glare, “Not long now, twelve years, less maybe, and you will pay for deceiving me.”

“I did not lie,” Said The Teacher in a tone that didn’t care, “One hundred sacrifices to make a pact with the strongest god, a thousand years of prosperity, we received all these things.”

“Yes,” Said the King of Grimlunde, “And YOU became Emperor while we were made to suffer!”

The Royal Teacher, the Founding Emperor, whatever he might call himself he did not respond, not even with a dismissive shrug.

“You cannot stop me from leaving,” he said as he held Rosa’s body in his arms and then turned to depart.

The King of Grimlunde shot the unconscious girl a glance then, and his next words did, finally, shake the Emperor's stoic demeanour for the first time on this day.

“You seek to renew the pact using her as a sacrifice?” The Emperor stopped his boots in place for a moment.

He glared back at his former pupil and then his body started vanishing, dissolving, into the crimson fog.

“I see...you’ll never change,” Said the King as he watched his teacher fade away.

He sighed then in lament for Rosa’s sake, the scene about her was herald to a cruel and tragic fate.

Indeed the air soon whispered with the king’s final and most melancholy whisper, “that poor, unfortunate child.”

Then, there was nothing, no fog, no men, nothing lay within the valley.

There was only a corpse, that of the Crimson Dragon...that of Rosa’s only friend.