Roots in shadow, deep they wind,
Binding earth to blood and time.
Branches blaze where sun and moon
Kiss the sky in red and rune.
Leaves of gold and leaves of flame,
Each one whispers Stormborne’s name.
Wolves lie sleeping at its base,
Dragons coil through time and space.
Circle silver, circle stone,
Mark the heart the gods have sown.
Life unbroken, death denied,
Storm’s own oath, the tree provides.
By Elhewitt
Further Reading
The wind rolled down from the mountain like a warning.
Three days had passed since the Trial by Fire. Taranis had been seen walking beside Grael’s warhorse, the shattered collar left behind, and the obsidian pendant still warm against his chest. But not everyone had accepted his transformation.
Some called him storm-marked. Others, cursed.
In a low tent near the edge of camp, whispers brewed.
“He defied the gods,” one said.
“Walked through flame and came out smiling,” said another.
“Flame tricks the weak. It blinds.”
The men gathered around the edge of the fire, cloaks pulled close against the creeping mist. They weren’t Grael’s most loyal, nor Solaris’s brothers. They were wolves without a pack mercenaries who had once served the Clawclan, now waiting for coin and chaos.
They didn’t wear Stormborne colours. Not yet.
“Tonight,” muttered Kareth, his eyes gleaming with spite. “We do what fire could not.”
A few nodded.
“He should’ve died in chains. He’s no warrior. He’s a beast.”
“And beasts don’t get reborn.”
They struck after moonrise.
Taranis had gone to the stream to refill his waterskin, alone as he often did, choosing solitude over celebration. The camp had begun to sleep. The guards were half-drunk from fermented berry wine.
They came from the trees six of them. Faces covered, blades drawn.
The first blow caught him across the shoulder, sending him to the ground.
“Traitor,” one hissed. “Freak.”
Taranis fought back with bare fists, striking like the wolf they feared but it was too many. A second dagger found his ribs. A club broke across his spine.
He fell to one knee.
They kicked him until he stopped moving.
Until his breathing went quiet.
Until he bled into the moss and stones.
They dragged the body to the far side of camp, past the standing stones, into a hollow in the woods where no firelight reached.
They left no markers. No words. Just dirt over his body and a curse on their breath.
“He walks no more,” Kareth said. “The storm dies in silence.”
And they returned to camp, blades clean, alibis ready.
No one would find him.
No one would weep.
They believed the gods had finally corrected their mistake.
But Taranis was not dead.
He dreamed of fire.
He dreamed of wolves.
He dreamed of the black dragon watching from above not with pity, but with fury.
And beneath the soil, his fingers twitched.
The early morning sin rose and grael could be heard hollering
“STORMBORNE WHERE ARE YOU?” grael shouted looking around for taranis
“He fled, he’s a coward” one of kareths men said smirking Wolves circled where his body lay leading them to discover taranis body still and cold.
Two days passed “we will find him tether him again no escape this time.” A warrior said as the wolves circled a piece of land
“Hes dead grael” a Saris said
“He deserves a real burying ” another said
The earth did not keep him.
Not on the first day, when silence reigned.
Not on the second, when the wolves came.
But on the third the wind changed.
At first, just a shift. A stillness. Then, a scent.
Morrigan arrived first. White fur gleaming against the ash-darkened trees. She paced in a wide circle around the hollow. Then came Boldolph, the black wolf, teeth bared, hackles raised.
They howled.
A low, haunting sound not grief. Warning.
Grael rode at once, followed by Solaris and half the guard. When they reached the hollow, they found the wolves digging. Claws tearing through dirt, paws flinging soil like rain.
Grael dismounted. Something in his chest cracked.
“Taranis…”
Solaris dropped to his knees beside the wolves, hands trembling.
“Help me dig!”
No one moved until the first scrap of cloth was exposed. A torn edge of tunic, blood-black, crusted to the earth.
Then the digging began in earnest.
It took three men and two wolves to drag the body out.
He was pale. Lips cracked. Blood dried to his skin. The obsidian pendant still hung around his neck, dirt pressed into the ridges.
One eye was swollen shut. Bruises ran like vines across his chest and arms.
But he was breathing.
Shallow. Ragged. But alive.
Solaris shouted for the healer. Grael stared at the boy like he was seeing a ghost.
“No burial mound,” he said softly. “No cairn. Just a shallow grave… and a storm too stubborn to die.”
The healer worked in silence, hands quick and firm. Crushed pine and fireweed were pressed into the wounds, stitched with thread made from gut and hope. Taranis didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Each time the wind shifted, the wolves growled low in their throats, sensing the old power flicker just beneath his skin.
By nightfall, they had moved him to a guarded hut near the heart of camp. Four warriors stood watch. Grael gave orders that anyone who tried to enter unbidden would be struck down no questions asked.
Solaris sat beside the boy, wiping dried blood from his temple.
“You stubborn bastard,” he whispered. “Even the grave gave up on you.”
Taranis didn’t reply. But his eyes opened barely and fixed on the obsidian pendant now laid upon his chest.
Grael returned before moonrise.
“Speak if you can,” he said.
Taranis’s voice was a thread. “They buried me.”
“I know.”
“They didn’t even check.”
“I know that too.”
“Will you punish them?”
Grael paused. “I already have.”
He tossed something at Solaris’s feet a piece of fur, torn and bloodied.
“Kareth?”
“Gone,” Grael said. “Dragged into the trees by Boldolph. I don’t expect him back.”
Silence settled between them again.
“I should be dead,” Taranis murmured.
Grael nodded slowly. “You were.”
That night, as the wind moaned through the valley, a scout returned from the northern ridge.
“There’s smoke again,” she said. “Not ours. Not Clawclan. Something… older.”
She hesitated before finishing.
“There’s no fire. But trees are blackened. Stones cracked. Something passed through.”
“What kind of something?” Grael asked.
The scout swallowed.
“The kind that flies without wings.”
By dawn, word had spread. Taranis had survived. Taranis had risen.
They called it impossible. Witchcraft. Proof of corruption.
But some whispered another name.
Stormborne.
He stood the next morning.
Not for long, and not without pain, but he stood.
Morrigan watched from the doorway. She did not enter only nodded once, her red eyes gleaming.
“Even the wolves thought you were lost,” Solaris said.
“I was,” Taranis replied, voice raw. “But I heard them. In the soil. Calling.”
He stepped out into the morning light slow, stiff, but upright. The warriors turned to look. One dropped to a knee. Another stepped back in fear.
Grael met him near the edge of the camp.
“We’re riding soon. There are still wars to fight.”
Taranis nodded. “Then I’ll ride.”
“No packs,” Grael said. “No chains.”
Solaris handed him his cloak. “And no grave can hold you.”
Taranis turned to the standing stones, where birds now circled. Thunder echoed in the far hills.
He placed his palm against the earth the earth that had tried to hold him.
“Not today,” he whispered. “I am not done.”
In Emberhelm, the elders would speak of that day for generations.
The day the Stormborne rose from the grave.
The day the wolves howled not for mourning but for warning.
And from that moment on, no one dared bury him again.
Because legends, once born, do not stay buried.
© 2025 StormborneLore by EL Hewitt. All rights reserved.
The trial fire still burned in the hearts of the warriors long after the flames had faded.
They left the stone circle at sunrise, the air thick with silence. Taranis walked unbound now, but still marked the collar firm around his neck, his wrists bruised, the pendant of obsidian pressing warm against his chest beneath the tunic Solaris had given him.
No one spoke of the dragon.
They didn’t need to. Its shadow had burned itself into every man’s memory.
By midday, they reached the edge of a sprawling war camp carved between high ridges and pine forest. Smoke rose from scattered fires. Grael dismounted first and gave the order for rest and supplies. Taranis stood nearby, posture straight, though his limbs ached from the days of trials and visions.
A hush followed him wherever he moved. Some men nodded. Others turned away.
One older warrior spat at his feet and muttered, “Dragon-kissed freak.”
Taranis didn’t respond. But Grael saw and said nothing.
Inside the central tent, the tension grew.
“You should exile him,” said Kareth, a clan captain with blood on his hands and ambition in his eyes. “Or bind him again. The men are talking.”
“They always talk,” Grael replied coolly. “Let them.”
“This boy walks free after breaking formation, defying orders, and drawing the attention of beasts older than the gods?”
Grael looked up from the war map.
“Exactly. He walked through fire and survived. He fought off Clawclan while half my guard bled out in the dirt. He was named by a Seer. You want to leash him again? You do it.”
Kareth hesitated. “If he leads a rebellion, it’ll be your head.”
“No,” Grael said. “It’ll be his. If he earns death, he’ll find it. But if he earns something more, I won’t stand in the way.”
That night, Taranis sat near the outer fire, the pendant warm against his chest again. Solaris approached with a fresh poultice and a torn piece of roasted meat.
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I haven’t,” Taranis murmured. “Something’s changing.”
Solaris frowned. “You mean in you?”
“No. In the world.”
A growl echoed in the hills not wolf, not wind. Something deeper. Some warriors looked up. A few rose to check their weapons.
A young scout came running from the ridge.
“Smoke! North side. Something’s burning!”
They scrambled toward the hill’s edge and saw it.
A rival clan’s border camp was ash and ruin. No screams, no survivors. Only smoldering black earth and claw marks in the rock.
“Raiders?” Solaris asked.
“No,” Taranis said quietly. “It’s a warning.”
Grael joined them, silent, jaw tight.
Kareth was already shouting. “This is what he brings! The dragon follows him. Death follows him!”
“No,” Taranis said. “The dragon doesn’t follow me. It watches.”
“Same thing.”
Grael raised a hand. “Enough. We return to Emberhelm. There, the chieftains will decide what happens next.”
When they entered, the whispers turned to stares.
Children peeked from behind barrels. Elders crossed their arms. A group of shieldmaidens flanking the gate parted only after Grael rode forward and gave the sign.
Taranis dismounted, cloak billowing slightly behind him. No chains. No mask. Only the obsidian pendant.
In the Great Hall, the Five Voices of the War Council sat in a semi-circle.
Old warriors. Mothers of fallen sons. Leaders of lesser clans.
One stood Sern, a matriarch with fire in her eyes and silver in her braid.
“We saw the storm,” she said. “We saw the dragon’s wings. We heard the Seer’s cry.”
Another voice cut in a young man named Fenric, blood cousin to the boy Taranis had crippled.
“He’s cursed. He bled our kin, broke our laws, walked with beasts. Now you bring him here unbound?”
Grael stepped forward. “I bring you a warrior.”
“Not yet,” Sern said. “Not until the rite is finished.”
“What rite?” Taranis asked.
She pointed to the firepit at the centre of the chamber.
“You were bound by man. Now let the flame judge if you are bound by fate.”
They handed him a staff and stripped him to the waist. The collar remained. So did the pendant.
The fire was lit with dried hawthorn, wolf hair, and elder root.
He stepped into the circle.
“Do you claim name or no name?” Lady Sern asked.
Taranis raised his head. “I claim the storm.”
A gust of wind blew through the open doors behind him.
“Then speak your vow.”
Taranis closed his eyes.
“I was chained as beast. I was broken by man. But I rise not to rule only to walk free. I serve the flame, the wolves, the storm. If I break my word, may the dragon turn from me.”
He thrust the staff into the fire.
It did not burn.
Instead, the flame spiraled into the air and far above, the sky answered with a distant roar.
The hall went silent.
Lady Sern bowed her head.
“Then you are no longer beast. Nor slave. Nor tool.”
She placed her hand on his collar.
“From this day, you are Stormborne.”
She broke the collar with a hammer of bronze.
The pieces fell to the stone floor like the last chains of a life left behind.
Does that mean he’s free?” Solaris asked.
Taranis placed a hand to his neck, fingers brushing the worn ridge where the collar had once pressed deep.
“Or am I to be exiled?”
A hush fell again, broken only by the wind rustling through the pine above.
“Exile him,” came a voice from the gathered crowd, “and I will hunt him myself.”
All heads turned.
It was not Grael who spoke, nor one of the regular warband. It was a man cloaked in dark fur, standing apart from the others near the treeline scarred face, sun-dark skin, hair braided with bone. A chieftain from another clan.
“He bears the storm’s mark. He’s no beast. No slave. And not mine to cast out.” His voice was low, graveled with age and fire. “But if you send him away, don’t expect him to come back.”
Taranis didn’t flinch. His eyes locked on the stranger’s. He neither bowed nor raised his head. Just… endured.
Grael stepped forward.
“He’s not exiled,” the general said. “Nor is he yet free. The trial burned away the mask, but chains leave scars longer than flame.”
“And what is he now?” Solaris asked.
Grael looked to the warriors, the gathered villagers, the scouts and wounded men who had seen the dragon descend.
“He is Stormborne,” he said. “Named not by man, but by thunder. And while I draw breath, that name will be honoured.”
There was a ripple in the crowd not agreement, not rejection. Just change. Unease becoming belief.
Taranis turned to Solaris. “Then I stay?”
Solaris nodded. “If you want to.”
“I don’t know what I want,” the boy admitted. “I only know I’m still breathing.”
Beside him, the black scale the one left by the dragon was now strung on a simple leather thong, hanging from his belt like a forgotten relic. He touched it once, gently.
A woman stepped forward from the watching crowd. She carried no weapons only a clay bowl filled with ash and herbs.
“I came from the ridge when I heard the trial fire was lit,” she said. “If the dragon marked him, then his wounds must be sealed properly. Not with chains. With earth.”
She knelt before Taranis and dipped two fingers into the bowl. Ash and sage stained her fingertips. She reached up and slowly touched each side of his jaw where the mask had pressed hardest.
“You have walked through smoke,” she whispered. “Now rise through flame.”
Taranis stood, a little taller than before.
Grael gave a curt nod. “We break camp tomorrow. Clawclan still stirs in the lowlands. But the boy rides his own horse now. No packs. No tether.”
“And the collar?” Solaris asked.
Grael glanced at it now lying in the dirt.
“Leave it where it fell.”
As the crowd began to scatter, a new chant rose quietly from the younger warriors near the fire.
Stormborne.
Not shouted.
Not demanded.
Spoken like a secret remembered.
Like a name the wind had always known.
© 2025 E.L. Hewitt. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the StormborneLore series.
Do not copy, reproduce, or distribute without permission.
Further Reading
The campfire had burned low, all golden coals and wind-tossed ash, when Solaris approached the general.
Taranis knelt nearby, shoulders hunched. His wrists were bound, but not tight just enough to remind. The black collar still pressed against his neck like a verdict carved in bone. His mask, polished smooth and pitiless, lay beside him like a shadow waiting to return.
“Sir?” Solaris spoke softly. “Are we binding him again tonight?”
Grael didn’t respond at once. He studied the boy or whatever he was becoming with a gaze that weighed survival against prophecy.
“He walks beside the horse now,” Grael said. “Not behind it. That’s earned.”
“But still tethered?”
“Until trust is more than fire and fury.”
Solaris hesitated, then asked more plainly, “And the food? He eats with us now?”
“He eats what he earns,” Grael said. “He trains. He serves. He carries burdens. So we feed him as one of the line half rations until proven otherwise. If he bleeds for us again, the portions grow. But he’s no beggar. He earns it.”
Taranis stirred. His voice cracked when he spoke.
“Now I’ve got one foot in both worlds… the world of a chosen, and one of an outcast. One step wrong, and I’m whipped or worse. One step right, and they carve my name into stone.”
Solaris frowned. “But the mask…”
Grael stepped closer. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand.
“We remove it when he fights. When he trains. When he speaks with command. But in towns and camps?” He pressed it gently to the boy’s face. “It reminds him and us of what he was forged from.”
“Forged?” Solaris echoed. “Or broken?”
Grael didn’t blink. “Both.”
“And can he see through it?”
“Barely. But that’s the point. To teach him to listen more. Feel more. Trust the wind and the wolves.”
The fire cracked.
Solaris stepped back, watching as the leather straps were tightened once more.
“And when does it come off for good?”
“When the storm calls him by name,” Grael said.
“And if it never does?”
Grael didn’t answer.
The wind howled across the ridge sharp and ancient.
And far above, in the swirling clouds, something winged and watching passed through the sky without sound.
By E.L. Hewitt StormborneLore
Thank you for reading.© 2025 Emma Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this content is prohibited.
If you enjoyed this story, like, share, or leave a comment. Your support keeps the storm alive and the chronicles continuing.
To read more taranis stories please see The Prophecies and Tales of Taranis Unfolded
The courtyard had long emptied. The ash of the fire pits still glowed faintly, casting soft light on stone walls and weary limbs.
Taranis sat alone, legs stretched, a jug of broth in one hand,. the other flexing and sore from the clash with Boldolph.
The crack of staffs still echoed in his bones.
Footsteps approached not boots, but clawed paws. Heavy, padded, unmistakable.
Boldolph.
Without a word, the old wolf-man knelt beside him, a strip of clean linen in hand. He took Taranis’s wrist and began to bind the bruises, slow and methodical, like a ritual done a hundred times.
“You didn’t hold back,” Taranis said after a moment.
“You didn’t ask me to.”
The silence between them was old, familiar. Like the stillness before a storm. Or the hush before a boy became a warlord.
“I needed them to see I bleed too,” Taranis muttered, wincing as the linen tightened. “That I fall. That I get back up.”
Boldolph grunted.
“They already know you bleed,” he said. “They just needed to see you still feel it.”
Taranis looked toward the sky. Smoke trailed like threads into the blackness. One dragon circled high above, a quiet sentinel.
“I keep thinking,” he said, “about when I was exiled. Alone in the wilds. All I had was that storm inside me and the promise that no one was coming.”
He looked down at the staff beside him.
“And now… now there’s you. Solaris. Lore. Drax. Rayne. Even Draven. I have everything I never thought I would. And I don’t know how to hold it without crushing it.”
Boldolph didn’t speak at first. Just poured a second jug of broth and handed it to him.
Then he said, low and hoarse:
“Every beast that’s ever bared teeth knows fear. Not of pain. Of losing what it’s fought to protect.”
He paused, eyes distant.
“I was exiled once too. Long before you were born. I clawed through snow and silence, not knowing if I was cursed or chosen. I still don’t.”
Taranis turned to him.
“You stayed. Even cursed. Even as a wolf.”
Boldolph nodded.
“Because someone had to. And because I believed that one day, the one I guarded would understand the weight of the fire he carried.”
The flames crackled beside them. Taranis took a slow sip of broth.
“I understand it now.”
Boldolph gave a grunt soft, almost approving. Then he stood, stretched, and turned toward the shadows.
“You’re not alone anymore, High Warlord,” he said. “Stop trying to fight like you are.”
Then he was gone, back into the night, tail flicking behind him like a whisper of old magic.
Taranis sat a while longer.
Then he smiled.
Not like a warlord. Not like a weapon.
Like a man who had bled, fallen, and been lifted again by the hand of a wolf.
Thank you for reading.© 2025 Emma Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this content is prohibited.
If you enjoyed this story, like, share, or leave a comment. Your support keeps the storm alive and the chronicles continuing.
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.
Thank you for reading.
© StormborneLore. Written by Emma for StormborneLore. Not for reproduction. All rights reserved.
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Further Reading
The Prophecies and Tales of Taranis Unfolded
A Journey Through My Poetic Collection
The hillfort rose like a scar upon the earth raw, unfinished, powerful in its promise.
Stones clattered as men worked shoulder to shoulder. Logs were rolled into place, lashed with thick rope and secured by wedges of bone and bronze. Children ran between the scaffolds, delivering water or watching with wide eyes as their future took shape.
It was a day like no other.
The sun hung low over the horizon, casting a golden sheen across the half-built wall. Birds circled above, uneasy. The animals in the nearby woods had gone silent.
Sir Gael, the oldest warrior among the fort’s guardians, paused to wipe sweat from his brow. His grey-streaked beard was heavy with dust. He glanced upward, his hand stilled mid-motion.
“Commander Drax,” he said, his voice strangely calm. “Look.”
Drax turned his shoulders broad, his eyes as sharp as the spear he carried.
Above them, the sky split.
A roar echoed across the valley not of wind, nor beast, but something far older. The builders dropped their tools. The children froze. Heads tilted toward the heavens.
The clouds churned as if afraid. And from them, something vast and terrible descended.
A dragon.
Wings wide as the river’s span. Scales that shimmered with green, gold, and a glint of crimson. Pendragon, King of the Sky. A creature from legend — spoken of in firelit whispers and dream-songs passed down by the Flamekeepers.
And on his back rode a man.
Tall. Armoured in blackened bronze. A red cloak fluttered behind him like a banner of blood and flame. His grey eyes gleamed with the fury of storms.
Taranis Stormborne.
The exiled boy. The returning myth. The High Warlord.
Sir Gael dropped to one knee. The others followed not out of fear, but reverence.
“Is it truly him?” someone whispered.
A small girl tugged at her father’s tunic. “Daddy… is he the one the Seer spoke of?”
Her father a scarred builder named Halvor looked to Drax for guidance.
Drax did not speak at first.
He simply nodded.
“It’s possible, young one.”
The dragon roared again. Pendragon spiralled downward, his wings churning the air so fiercely that dust clouds rose from the hilltop. Yet the High Warlord stood unshaken upon his back, one hand on the saddlehorn, the other raised in greeting.
He did not fall.
Not once.
He rode the wind like it was his birthright.
When Pendragon finally landed upon the high ridge, silence followed. Even the wind dared not move.
Taranis slid down with the ease of a seasoned warrior. His boots hit the ground with a thud like thunder. Behind him, the dragon crouched, its golden eyes watching all with quiet fire.
Drax stepped forward.
“Taranis,” he said, voice cracking. “You’ve returned.”
Taranis nodded. “And you’ve begun.”
He looked past his brother to the rising fort, half-finished but brimming with hope.
“Stone and sweat,” he said. “It’s a good beginning.”
Lore emerged next from the shadows, staff in hand. “The prophecy breathes,” he said.
“It was written: When sky and fire meet the hill. The son shall return to shape the land with storm and blood.”
A murmur passed through the gathering crowd.
Taranis took a slow breath, then turned to the workers.
“I am no king,” he said, voice deep and sure. “I do not bring crowns or glory. I bring a future. A place for the broken and the brave. A shield for our young. A fire for our old.”
He lifted his sword.
“This land this fort will stand not just for the Stormborne. It will stand for all who remember. For those cast out. For those who bled. We rise not to conquer, but to endure.”
Cheers broke across the hilltop.
Some wept. Others simply stared, mouths open, unsure if they stood in a dream or waking world.
The children gathered near the dragon’s feet, staring up in awe. Pendragon blinked slowly and lowered his head so they touch his scaled snout.
The girl from before her name was Marla reached out, fingers trembling.
“He’s warm,” she whispered.
Sir Gael stood beside Drax, smiling through his years.
“I thought the stories were just that,” he said. “Stories.”
“Some stories,” Lore said, “are simply waiting for the right time.”
That night, fires were lit along the hilltop. The beginnings of the wall gleamed in the torchlight, casting long shadows over the land. Meat was roasted. Bread was broken.
At the centre sat the brothers Stormborne Taranis, Drax, and Lore their heads bent together, planning the days to come.
Boldolph and Morrigan, the sacred wolves, lay on either side of the war table. Watchful. Silent.
Above them, high in the sky, Pendragon remained perched. His wings wrapped around the star-streaked air like a guardian angel of old. Next to the dragon was a black dragon
“They fought with us and now they returned “
“I’m staying as long as needed ” taranis knelt to the children “this beast us pendragon and that ones Tiarneach “
The hillfort was far from finished.
But something greater had begun.
Hope.
Thank you for reading.
© 2025 Emma Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this content is prohibited.
If you enjoyed this story, like, share, or leave a comment. Your support keeps the storm alive and the chronicles continuing.
If you would like to read more Taranis stories please see: The Prophecies and Tales of Taranis Unfolded
If you would like to read more about Drax : lThe Chronicles of Drax
If you would like to read more about Rayne: The tales of Rayne
If you would like to read more about Lore: The Keeper of Cairnstones: Myths and Mysteries Revealed
Tairneanach and Pendragon Spirits of Storm, Fire, and Fate
The Storm That Watches
They say a great wyrm once roamed Biddulph Moor. A beast of smoke and sky, hunted by men with spears of bronze and fear in their bellies. But no man killed it.
The creature rose into the thunderclouds and vanished, taking the storm with it.
The next day, nothing grew on the moor but blackened heather.
That wyrm became Tairneanach, the Storm Dragon not a creature of fire, but of prophecy. His breath is wind. His scales shimmer like wet slate. He is the first when a child is born under an omen sky. The last to vanish when a soul is cast out unjustly.
“He is not tamed. Not ridden. He chooses.”
Whispered in the dreams of outcasts and seers.
He spoke once to Taranis, though none saw him but the moon. And ever since, storms gather when the boy is near.
Pendragon the King of the First Flame.
Before the first stone stood upright, before wolves wore names, there was Pendragon the Flame Father.
He does not fly in the sky, but in the bloodline of heroes.
His heart is fire, but his wisdom is older than heat. Some say he shaped the bones of the land. Others say he waits beneath the earth, dreaming.
He is the King of Dragons, but he does not rule — he remembers.
Pendragon comes not in rage, but in reckoning. When a soul is weighed against fate itself, he is the one who tips the scale. He appeared in the old hills beyond Cannock. Curled in flame and sorrow when the first chieftain died protecting a starving tribe. That fire still burns in the soil.
The Blood Oath of the Stormborne
It is said the Stormborne line carries both marks:
The Eye of Tairneanach
vision, fury, and unnatural storms
The Flame of Pendragon
mercy, fire, and legacy
Taranis bears both.
He is not just watched by dragons he is of them.
Tairneanach: Name derived from Irish/Scottish Gaelic tairneanach meaning “thunder.”
Pendragon: Traditional Welsh/British title, here re-imagined as the Flame Father, not a king by rule but by spirit.
This lore blends:
The Biddulph Dragon (real Staffordshire tale)
Knucker folklore & storm-serpent myths
Cannock Chase legends & draconic omens
© StormborneLore. Written by Emma for StormborneLore. Not for reproduction. All rights reserved.
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