The morning mist clung to the valley like a second skin. Emberhelm’s courtyard steamed with breath and sweat, the scent of stone, ash, and boiled roots heavy in the air. Around the inner circle, newly chosen warriors waited nervous, eager, some barely out of boyhood. Others bore scars older than Taranis himself.
At the centre stood the High Warlord of Caernath. His cloak cast aside, sleeves rolled, storm-grey eyes fixed on the line before him.
“No blades today,” he said. “Not until your hands know what weight feels like.”
He tossed a staff to the first in line. Then another. And another. Each warrior caught their weapon or fumbled it those who dropped theirs were told, simply, “Again.” And made to run.
On the other side of the training ground, beneath the shadow of the stone wolf banner, Boldolph paced in silence.
His pack half-men, half-beasts, with eyes like old moons watched him without blinking. He spoke low, but his voice carried like thunder over ice.
“You are not pets. Not soldiers. You are guardians.” A pause. “You see a child in harm’s way, you do not wait for orders. You act. That is the law of the wolf.”
One of the younger wolves whimpered. Boldolph turned sharply. “Fear is not failure. Freezing is. Move even if it hurts.”
Across the field, Taranis raised his voice again.
“This is Ignis. This is fire. You’re not here to impress me. You’re here to withstand the storm, and stand through it.”
He glanced at Boldolph.
“Or do you want to spar with his lot instead?”
A low growl rippled from the wolf-warriors.
The chosen laughed nervously until Boldolph nodded. One of his warriors, a massive figure with a half-healed burn across his chest. stepped ahead, gripping a staff as thick as a child’s leg.
Taranis smiled. “Right then. Let’s see who learned to dance.”
The wolf-warrior advanced, silent but for the low crunch of earth beneath padded feet. His height matched any war-chief. His eyes amber, slit like a blade of dusk fixed on the line of young recruits now stepping back.
Taranis caught Boldolph’s eye.
The old wolf-man crossed his arms, his growl half amusement, half challenge.
“Too much for them?” Taranis asked.
“They need to know pain has teeth. And that not all enemies snarl first.”
The recruits shifted nervously. One tried to step ahead, but Taranis raised a hand.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
Then, slowly, he removed the silver cuff from his wrist. The one shaped like twisted flame and dropped it into the dust.
The courtyard hushed.
Boldolph straightened, his expression unreadable.
“You mean to fight me?” he said, stepping ahead, voice low.
Taranis rolled his shoulder and took a training staff from the rack. “Not to wound,” he replied. “To remind.”
Boldolph took his own heavier, gnarled like a branch torn from an ancient tree.
They circled.
The recruits, wolf-men, and even dragons above watched in stillness.
Then Boldolph struck fast, low, aiming to knock out Taranis’s legs. But the warlord leapt, twisting mid-air, landing in a crouch with a grin. He swept his staff up, tapping Boldolph’s ribs before stepping back.
“Sloppy,” he said. “You’re slower in your old age.”
Boldolph snarled, but it wasn’t anger. It was the old dance. The rhythm of claw and command.
He lunged again this time a full force blow. Their staffs cracked like thunder as they met. Sparks flew from the impact. Recruits flinched. One dragon above rumbled softly, folding its wings to watch closer.
They moved like storm and shadow:
Taranis fluid, forged in battlefields and flame.
Boldolph grounded, brutal, unshakable like the old hills.
Neither aimed to kill. But neither held back.
A final clash and both stopped, locked staff to staff, breathing heavy, eyes locked.
“You’ve grown,” Boldolph said, finally. “Not just in size.”
“And you’ve not changed,” Taranis replied, sweat on his brow. “Still the rock I lean on.”
He broke the hold, stepped back, and offered a hand.
Boldolph took it without hesitation. The courtyard erupted in cheers both from humans and wolves alike.
Taranis turned to the watching recruits. “This,” he said, gesturing between them, “is how you lead. Not with fear. But with fire, with honour, and with those who would bite your enemies long before they betray your trust.”
Boldolph gave a rare smile.
“And don’t forget,” he growled to the recruits, “the wolves are watching.”
The sky over Rykar’s Ridge cracked with a sound like splitting stone.
Pendragon rose first wings stretched wide. Vast as storm sails, his bronze and emerald scales catching the last light of day. He circled high above the valley, a gleaming sovereign watching the armies assemble below.
To the west, the last kin of Stormborne gathered. Taranis stood at the forefront, grey-eyed and grave, flanked by Lore and Drax. The ground at their backs was scorched from the fire of prophecy.
To the east, under curling black clouds, came the dragon of thunder Tairneanach, black as midnight and crowned with sparks. Lightning licked his flanks. His eyes were coals, ancient and furious.
He was the dragon of reckoning, storm-forged and prophecy-bound, the one who watched from the shadows of time.
But this was no duel between beasts alone.
It was the end of an age. And dragons, it was said, chose sides not by blood — but by truth.
Taranis looked to the sky. “They’ve returned,” he said softly.
Drax scoffed. “Or come to see who burns first.”
“Dragons don’t come for sport,” Lore murmured, hand resting on the carved staff of flamewood. “They come when destiny wavers.”
The wind shifted.
Down came Pendragon, his great claws curling into the soil beside Taranis. His gaze fell on the young warlord no longer the exiled child of the woods. But a leader draped in fire-scars and ash-braided hair. Pendragon gave a low, resonant growl. Not a threat. A vow.
And across the field, Tairneanach descended like a storm himself, cracking trees and stone beneath his wingspan. His breath steamed in the air heavy with ozone. Thunder rolled in his chest.
They faced each other now: two titans born before men stood upright. Two dragons of the Stormborne prophecy.
The wind stilled.
And in that silence, Morrigan lifted her howl to the sky a signal from the ridge behind. Boldolph stood beside her in wolfman form, snarling low.
The Clawclan were moving.
“DRAX!” Taranis barked. “Hold the eastern rise!”
Drax nodded, slamming his axe against his shield. “With pleasure.”
“LORE!” he turned, voice like thunder. “Prepare the flame line. If the dragons fall—”
“They won’t,” Lore cut in, eyes glowing faintly. “But I’ll be ready.”
The Clawclan came screaming from the ridge like hornets. Painted in black and red, bone charms rattling, fire arrows loosed high. The first line met Drax’s warriors in a clash of metal, blood, and grit.
Behind them, the Stormborne shield-wall held fast. But the pressure built like a coming flood.
Pendragon roared, rearing high. With one beat of his wings, he swept fire over the Clawclan’s flank .flames so hot they melted shields anoʻd seared the earth itself. Men screamed, scattered, and fell.
But then, a second roar answered.
Tairneanach unleashed his storm.
Lightning struck the centre of the field, ripping through both earth and sky. The power coursed through bones, hearts, even memory. Clawclan warriors staggered but so did some of Stormborne’s own.
The dragons circled each other, neither striking first.
Not yet.
Amid the chaos, a boy barely of age charged toward Taranis blade too large for his arms. Face painted in fear and madness.
Taranis met him not with fury, but with mercy.
He turned the blade aside, struck the hilt, and knocked the boy unconscious.
“There’s no glory in slaying the broken,” he muttered.
A moment later, Boldolph leapt past him slamming into a Clawclan berserker with enough force to crack ribs. Morrigan followed, her white fur streaked with blood and soot, her teeth finding the throat of another.
Still the dragons circled.
Still the battle burned.
And then..
Pendragon dipped low. Not toward Tairneanach, but toward the battlefield.
A new force had emerged from the mists a second wave of Clawclan. armed with net-traps and dragon-piercing spears forged from meteoric ore.
“Cowards,” Lore hissed. “They seek to slay the sacred.”
Tairneanach landed with a thunderous quake.
He did not aid the Clawclan.
He turned against them.
His tail swept wide, sending a dozen spearmen flying. His mouth opened — but instead of lightning, he loosed a scream of pure rage.
Pendragon landed beside him, and for a moment. the two dragons stood back to back defending not sides, but something older.
Stormborne. Balance. Prophecy.
The brothers saw it too.
Taranis, Lore, Drax covered in blood and smoke turned toward the dragons now defending their people.
And Taranis whispered, “It was never a battle between them.”
“No,” said Lore. “It’s a battle for us.”
“For Stormborne,” Drax added, gripping his weapon.
Tairneanach raised his head, and with a final, sky-splitting roar, flew straight into the blackened clouds above. Pendragon followed, spiralling upward.
Together, they vanished into the storm.
And on the ridge below, the Stormborne warriors stood not victorious, but awakened.
The sky split again.
This time, it was not Tairneanach who screamed across the clouds, but Pendragon, rising high and circling above the valley. Beneath him, the Black Clawclan surged ahead like a tide of locusts. War cries rang out. Spears glinted. Shields slammed together in rhythm.
But at the front of the Stormborne line stood Taranis unmoved, massive, his blade held sideways like it weighed nothing.
Beside him, Boldolph roared half-man, half-wolf, his red eyes glowing. He slammed the butt of his axe into the ground and bared his teeth.
Behind them, Lore raised his staff. “Now!” he cried.
The runes carved into the ancient stones shimmered. The hill beneath the enemy’s feet cracked as though the land itself rejected their presence.
Drax, bloodied from an earlier clash, stood on a higher ridge, calling the warriors into formation. “Spears up! Hold the line! If we fall today, the fire dies with us!”
The dragons descended.
Pendragon spiralled downward, a comet of colour and fury. He opened his mouth and from it came not just fire, but a heat so intense it twisted the air. The Clawclan’s front ranks scattered as tents and timber exploded into flame.
From the west, Tairneanach swooped low and screamed. a bolt of lightning leapt from his jaws and struck the enemy catapult, reducing it to smouldering splinters.
“DRAGONS!” a terrified voice cried. “The legends were true!”
The battlefield was chaos.
Taranis leapt into the fray, his sword catching fire as Pendragon soared above. With every swing, a foe fell not just cut down, but shattered. It was as if the storm had learned to walk.
Boldolph tore through the lines like a shadow of vengeance. He moved low and fast, clawing one man across the chest. Slamming another with his shoulder so hard the man flew ten feet.
The brothers fought in unison, their bond forged through exile and pain.
Lore, standing at the sacred cairn, whispered ancient words. Roots erupted from the ground, tangling the Clawclan’s feet. A tree burst through the soil like a spear, skewering a line of advancing warriors.
Still they came.
From the far end of the field rode their leader a brute named Gaedrix. cloaked in bone armour and wielding twin axes carved from dragon tooth.
He bellowed a challenge.
Taranis turned. His sword burned brighter. “This ends now.”
They met in the centre of the field the High Warlord and the Bone King.
Steel clashed. Sparks flew. The ground cracked beneath their boots. Gaedrix struck wild, savage, unrelenting. But Taranis moved like wind and thunder blocking, dodging, answering with devastating power.
One swing he broke Gaedrix’s left axe.
Another he knocked the warlord to one knee.
The Bone King snarled, blood spraying from his lips. “You should’ve stayed dead, Stormborne.”
Taranis drove his blade into the ground beside him, stepped forward, and cracked Gaedrix across the jaw with his gauntlet.
“I don’t die,” he said.
Then, as the dragons roared overhead and the warriors of Stormborne shouted in unison. Taranis lifted Gaedrix above his head and hurled him toward the burning ridge.
He never rose again.
Silence swept the field.
The remaining Black Claw warriors, seeing their leader defeated, dropped their weapons. Some fled. Others dropped to their knees.
The sky cleared.
Pendragon circled once before landing beside Taranis. The great beast bowed his head, his flank marked by a shallow gash but his eyes burning bright.
Tairneanach landed beside Boldolph, nudging the wolf-man with a low, throaty growl.
Drax limped forward, laughing through the pain. “You’ve always been dramatic.”
Taranis sheathed his sword and looked around at the wreckage, the blood, the fire.
“We were born of storm,” he said. “But we survive through each other.”
Lore joined them, hand resting on the cairn stone. “The old ways live.”
From the cliffs above, children and elders peeked out watching, hoping.
Taranis turned and called, “We are Stormborne! This is your land. Your fire. Your home!”
Cheers broke like thunder across the valley.
Boldolph threw his head back and howled. Morrigan’s answering cry echoed from the woods. The wolves had returned.
Above them, the two dragons fire and storm crossed paths in the sky.
A new age had begun. The prophesy come true. Tairneanach landed near Taranis allowing Taranis to climb his back.
“I’m not the ball I’m the dragon rider ” Taranis smirked chuckling as he swooped up into the sky.
StormborneLore 