Hear me, hearth-folk and warriors, for I speak of the High Warlord who walks the storm. His name is Taranis Stormborne, breaker of oaths, rider of wolves whose eyes burn like embers.
He has raided the corn from the winter barns, struck down chiefs beneath the peace banner, and set fire to groves where the gods were honoured.
The druids name him outlaw; the kings demand his head on a spear. Yet the warbands whisper, his name in the night, and some would follow him, even into the jaws of death.
If his banner rises in your valley, bar your gates and guard your herds, for where the Stormborne passes, the thunder will follow and the land will not rest.
Rest your weary head, sweet child, For our lord and his men stand guard. Fear not the shadows, hush your mind They hold the dark ones far behind.
Sleep now, my boy, for dawn draws near, The Day of Selection is almost here. When the High Lord walks among the brave, To choose the ones with hearts unshaved.
Rise, my child, today you train, Chosen by the Warlord through ash and rain. He sees in you a warrior’s light So heed no fear, for he brings no fright.
He is kind, though forged in fire, A stormborne soul who lifts you higher. Stand tall, young one, your time is come— To walk the path, to beat the drum.
By the time the boy was dragged into the fire-circle, Solaris already knew what the verdict would be.
The child barely ten summers old had stolen from the Emberhelm kitchens three times in as many weeks. This last time, he’d taken smoked venison, enough for three mouths.
It wasn’t a clever theft either; he’d left claw-marks in the ash like some wild cub. They’d found him crouched behind the root cellar with a bone in one hand. His little sister clutched to his side, shaking from fever.
Taranis sat high above, throne of blackened oak behind him, his blade resting point-down in the dirt. His eyes storm Grey and quiet met Solaris’s across the fire.
“Third offence,” the warlord said, not unkindly. “You know the law.”
Solaris bowed his head.
He had known it would come to this.
The fire crackled between them amber light dancing against carved cairnstones. The gathered clan murmured like wind in the pines. Some looked away. Others watched with cold detachment.
From the shadows near the far cairn, Boldolph crouched in wolf-man form, eyes glowing red in the dusk. Morrigan stood beside him, silent and still, her white fur streaked with soot from an earlier hunt. Neither beast moved.
The boy trembled, snot running down his nose. His sister was nowhere in sight.
One of the younger guards bristling with duty dragged the child ahead. “What’s the order, High Warlord?”
Taranis looked not at the boy, but into the flame. “Three thefts. All marked. The hand goes.”
A stillness fell. Not outrage. Not shock. Just a silence.
Solaris stepped ahead.
He didn’t ask permission. He never had.
“My lord,” he said softly, “I speak?”
Taranis’s jaw tightened, but he nodded.
“Come.”
Solaris walked slowly into the circle, his linen tunic soot-streaked, hands calloused from tending both fire and blade. He stopped beside the boy who flinched at his nearness then turned to face Taranis directly.
“You talk of mercy, sir,” Solaris said. “Of giving your people hope. Of forging something better than the clans before us. Yet you would take a child’s hand for hunger?”
“It’s not the first time,” the warlord said.
“No,” Solaris agreed. “It’s the third. Which tells me we failed twice already.”
Murmurs rose again uneasy, uncertain.
Taranis said nothing.
Solaris went on.
“Do you remember when we met, Taranis? You were half-starved. Barefoot. Curled between two wolves like a dying branch in the snow.” His voice cracked, just a little. “You think Morrigan would’ve taken your hand? Or Boldolph watched you bleed?”
Boldolph’s snarl low, thoughtful rumbled through the circle.
“Do not compare me to that child,” Taranis said, but the edge was gone from his voice. “I was cast out by my own blood. He broke a law.”
“So did you,” Solaris said, gently. “You stole from death. You defied exile. You bonded with a dragon.”
The flames snapped high.
Behind them, Lore stepped quietly into the circle’s edge, arms crossed. Drax lingered further back, sharpening his axe with deliberate rhythm.
“The law is clear,” Taranis said, but softer now. “What’s your counsel, Solaris?”
Solaris exhaled.
“The hand stays. Cut his rations. He works the ash pits. But let the sister be seen. She’s burning from within.”
A pause.
Then: “Do we have a healer who treats the children of thieves?”
Solaris gave the barest smile. “We have a Flamekeeper who remembers that fire burns all the same.”
Taranis stood.
He turned to the guards. “The child’s hand stays. Halve his meals for two moons. The sister—tend her.”
“And after that?” the guard asked.
Taranis glanced to Morrigan.
“We watch,” he said.
Later that night, Solaris sat by the embers of the great hearth. The kitchens had long since emptied. The scent of root broth clung to the stones. He stirred a mix of wildfire oil and willow sap in a clay bowl, preparing a balm.
The door creaked. Taranis entered, shoulders still dusted with ash.
“She’ll live,” Solaris said, not looking up. “The girl. The fever broke at dusk.”
“You were right,” Taranis murmured.
“No. I remembered something you forgot.”
He set the bowl down and finally looked up.
“You’re not a tyrant, Taranis. But you are tired. Tired men return to old laws.”
Taranis sat across from him, resting his blade beside the hearth. “They look to me to be strong.”
“Then be strong enough to bend.”
They sat in silence a moment.
Then Taranis said, “What would you have me do? End the slave laws? Free them all?”
Solaris’s eyes softened.
“I’d have you start with one.”
A pause. Fire popped.
“My children,” Solaris said. “You let them stay with me. You feed them better than the others. You trust me with your fire. But still, by law, I am bound. My collar is light, but it is still iron.”
Taranis didn’t speak.
“I do not ask for release,” Solaris said. “I ask for meaning. If I am to be your Flamekeeper, let it not be as your property. Let it be as your kin.”
Taranis rose slowly.
He walked to the wall, lifted a flame braided chain from its hook, and placed it at Solaris’s feet.
“I will ask the cairn council to rewrite the bond,” he said. “You’ll take no collar again.”
Then, softly: “And neither will your children.”
Days passed. The fevered girl recovered. The boy, now under Solaris’s quiet supervision, took to the ash pits with a haunted gaze but steady hands.
At dawn, he brought Solaris firewood without being asked.
At dusk, he left a hand-carved wolf at the hearth.
Taranis watched from the upper cairn, Morrigan seated beside him.
“He’ll never steal again,” Taranis said.
“No,” Solaris replied, stepping beside him. “Because now he belongs.”
Taranis looked at his old friend, the man who had once been enemy. Then servant, then brother in all but blood.
“Thank you, Solaris.”
The Flamekeeper only smiled and added another log to the fire.
That evening, Solaris’s eldest son, Nyx, approached. He carried a plate of meat and grain, handing it to his father before setting his own aside.
“You scorn the meal, boy?” Taranis asked.
“No, sir,” Nyx said. “But it’s not right I get meat and grain while my father gets broth.”
Taranis tilted his head. Then smirked.
“Bring your father a plate from my stores.”
Then added, almost as an afterthought
“And Solaris it was never one dragon, was it? Two stood beside me all along.”
One Week Later Postscript to The Flame That Counsels
“He’s gone mad. The Highlord’s either broken or possessed.”
The guard’s words hit like ash in the lungs. Solaris said nothing, hands deep in the roots he was cleaning for poultice. He’d heard rumors all morning that Taranis had dismissed the old slave branders, torn the punishment scrolls in half, and ordered the cairnstones rewritten.
Another voice joined the first: “They say he talks to the dragons now. Not just rides them talks. Pendragon flew south and turned back. Refused to land in Gaedrix’s old territory.”
Then came softer steps. Young Nyx, barefoot and breathless, ran across the ash-warmed floor of the kitchen hall.
“Uncle Solaris!” he grinned, waving a carved wolf bone. “Father says you can visit him. No chains. No guards. Just you. He said it’d be good to see you without your collar.”
Solaris froze. Slowly, he turned — not to the boy, but to the collar hanging near the forge. Empty. Cold.
“Why now?” he asked, kneeling.
Nyx beamed. “He says the laws are wrong. That you helped him remember who he was. That it’s time to make them right.”
The fire cracked behind him. Solaris closed his eyes.
Later that dusk, in the central hall of Emberhelm, Taranis stood before his people — not in war-gear, but in storm-black robes, his sword sheathed at his back, Morrigan and Boldolph flanking him like ghosts.
A hush fell.
Then he spoke.
“I was cast out as a child chained not by iron, but by fear. I lived. I burned. I changed.
So hear me now.
From this day onward, Stormborne law changes:
First crime: a warning, carved in cairnstone. Second: servitude, no longer than a season’s moon. Third: magical judgment the storm or the shadow will decide. No child shall ever be born in chains. Dragons will not fly over lands where children are enslaved. All who labor shall eat. None shall go hungry. The broken, the maimed, the soul-wounded they will have a place. We are not the Clawclan. We are Stormborne. The fire will not consume us. It will make us whole.”
Lore lit the cairnstones behind him. Solaris stepped forward and cast his collar into the flame. Pendragon circled overhead.
Taranis met his gaze with quiet steel.
“You are no longer mine,” he said. “But you are still my kin.”
Solaris bowed low, not as slave but as Flamekeeper.
And above them, the wolves howled, and the fire did not flicker.
Taranis turned to Morrigan and Boldolph, who stood unmoving beneath the runestone arch. A chant had begun low in their throats a strange, old language from before the cairns were raised.
“That is, if you’ll stay, Solaris?” Taranis asked quietly.
Then to the wolves:
“Boldolph. Morrigan. You’ll be free of this too. The curse ends with fire and brotherhood. You’ll walk again in human form.”
The chant rose.
The fire roared.
And somewhere in the high wind above Emberhelm, the storm broke not in rage, but in light.
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 “
StormborneLore 