Chương 283: 58. Flight Plan 3

To be completely honest, riding on Ignicia's back and riding on a standard wyvern were two fundamentally different concepts. The latter was called flying. The former was more like signing your soul over to Calamity incarnate, and then having Calamity personally chauffeur you into the stratosphere. Once she leveled out, her speed was entirely in a different league compared to the formation cruising from earlier. The wind didn't just blow against my face; it felt like it was repeatedly, physically slapping me.

I pressed my body as flat as possible, both hands locked onto the specific anchor points she had left for me along her spine, practically gluing myself to her scorching, impenetrable red scales. Ignicia's body temperature was incredibly high. It wasn't an agonizing, burning heat, but a bizarrely comforting warmth. Especially up here at this altitude, where the wind from all directions carried a biting chill, her back felt like a living, breathing hearth. I suddenly realized that was a terrible metaphor.

Because my current posture strongly resembled a pathetic, freezing man desperately hugging a space heater in the dead of winter. And I was hugging the most violent space heater in the world.

"Hold tight." Her voice resonated directly through her scales and bone, vibrating deep into my chest. In her dragon form, she didn't need to turn her head, nor did she need to shout. Her voice possessed a strange, penetrating quality, like fire burning its way through the inside of an iron pipe.

"I have a question." I lowered my forehead a fraction more so the wind wouldn't permanently rearrange my facial features.

"Do all dragons believe that the only difference between flying and first-degree murder is the angle of trajectory?"

"You're still alive."

"Is that supposed to comfort me, or are you just bragging about your precision?" I felt a huff of air vibrate through her snout. Her massive red wings tucked and flared, pulling us up yet another altitude tier.

"When you used to run your mouth, it at least sounded like you were trying to act tough," she said.

"Now, it just sounds like you're used to it."

"That's called personal growth."

"That's called emotional numbness."

"Same difference, really," I sighed.

"When destiny body-slams you enough times, you naturally develop a higher resistance to blunt force trauma." She didn't reply immediately. The rhythm of her spine shifting beneath me altered slightly, as if she were laughing, or perhaps just marveling at the consistent, stable stupidity of my statement. The Yinglong Guard followed closely behind. I turned my head to look back over my shoulder. I could see the advance force, led by Lei Lian, split into two layered formations pressing just beneath the cloud line.

Dozens, hundreds of winged silhouettes pulsed in the morning light, looking like a massive, breathing ocean of steel. Occasionally, a signal flag would snap up, and the formation would micro-adjust in perfect harmony. The sheer discipline was staggering. One look, and you knew this wasn't just "cavalry that happens to fly," but a polished, razor-sharp system of aerial warfare. Then I looked at myself. I looked like a piece of contraband luggage that had been smuggled aboard.

Except this piece of luggage could talk, and frequently spouted nonsense at the vehicle itself. The cloud layer ahead began to thicken. These weren't the clean, fluffy, sheep-wool clouds from earlier. These were stretched out by the wind, their edges bruising dark gray, their underbellies sagging with heavy pressure. Just as I had predicted on the ground, once we entered the eastern belt, the weather immediately threw a tantrum. Ignicia clearly saw it too.

She banked slightly, avoiding the thickest core of the storm front directly ahead, and sliced upward to bypass it along the upper edge. Her flying style was gorgeous. She didn't just rely on brute draconic strength to smash through; she knew exactly how to fight the wind for dominance, and how to borrow its momentum when needed. In certain moments, it was easy to forget that she wasn't some tamed beast of war, but a creature that fundamentally owned the sky.

I stared at the line of crimson scales trailing down her spine and suddenly spoke up. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Ignicia."

"Speak."

"What you said down there, I thought about it."

"Said what?"

"When you told me not to pamper them." She stayed silent for two full breaths before replying.

"And?"

"I think you misunderstood," I said, resting my chin on the back of my hands, my voice slightly fragmented by the wind.

"I wasn't pampering them. I'm just terrified they're going to have an accident involving the fire oil and the thunder charges. After all, if the people die, the charges detonate; if the charges detonate, the people usually die too. From a pure cost-benefit analysis, doing a little extra preventative work is highly logical."

"..."

"Why aren't you saying anything?"

"I'm thinking," she said flatly.

"I'm thinking about what exactly you're trying to hide by framing your concern as an accounting ledger." I choked. This dragon was a nightmare to deal with. Normally she complains that I'm too sarcastic, but the second I try to drop a little truth, she immediately bites right through to the exact vulnerability I refuse to acknowledge. I coughed awkwardly, desperately trying to salvage the last scraps of my masculine pride.

"I've always been a very practical man."

"Is that so?"

"Absolutely."

"So when you asked me down there if I wanted a daughter, was that also a cost-benefit analysis?"... Well, karma certainly works fast up here. I nearly choked on the wind.

"Why are you still holding onto that?"

"Because it was incredibly stupid."

"I thought you'd say it was highly inappropriate."

"It was also highly inappropriate."

"So... are you angry right now?" She fell silent for a long moment. The wind howled between her wings, emitting a low, resonant thrum. In the distance, the color of the sky began shifting from the cool blue of morning to a harsher, brighter white. The terrain below was also drastically changing from the familiar lands around the Three Rivers Fortress.

The relatively gentle river valleys and rolling hills were increasingly scarred by artificial constructs—trenches, barricades, military roads, watchtowers, palisades, and the brutal, muddy tracks of marching armies slashing across the earth like open wounds. Finally, she spoke.

"If I were actually angry, you wouldn't still be on my back." That was an incredibly logical statement. So logical, in fact, that I instantly decided to cherish my remaining lifespan and permanently abandon any further academic exploration of that specific topic.

"Let me change to a safer question, then."

"You really should."

"Once this battle is over—" Before I could finish the sentence, she violently snapped her wings, banking hard to slice us right out of the shadow of a descending cloud bank. Our field of vision instantly exploded outward, revealing the vast expanse of the eastern sky and the sprawling military roads below. And right at that moment, her voice dropped low.

"We'll talk after it's over." Just those few words. No promise, no rejection. Even her tone remained locked in that same, unwavering calmness. But that was exactly what made it so lethal. She wasn't shutting the door. She was leaving it open. Lying there on her back, staring at the sunlight fracturing through the clouds ahead, I suddenly felt a strong urge to laugh.

Here I was, not even sure if I was going to survive the day, flying thousands of feet in the air on the back of a fire dragon, discussing "after it's over"—a luxury that only people with a guaranteed future had the right to touch. Sometimes, my life really didn't feel like a life. It felt like a script written by a mentally unstable bard who had consumed way too much cheap ale. Absurd. But also... not terrible. We flew forward for a while longer until the terrain at the very edge of the horizon finally shifted.

A heavy, oppressive architectural silhouette began to bleed through the morning mist and cloud shadows. We had arrived at Fort Louis. From the air, Fort Louis looked nothing like the Three Rivers Fortress. The Fortress had always felt like a colossal throat—built to swallow and disgorge men and supplies in an endless, grinding cycle of transit. Fort Louis was something else entirely. It looked like a single iron nail that had been driven into the earth by sheer, merciless force.

The outer trench lines, the forward-thrust barricades, the arrow towers staggered at careful intervals, the artillery emplacements—none of it existed for show. Every stake, every stone had been placed there to deliver one unambiguous message to anyone foolish enough to keep walking toward it: Past this point, you are no longer in the rear. Temporary encampments had already sprung up thick around the fortress walls. The banners were a chaotic clash of colors and crests, and the smoke hung heavier still.

Even from this altitude, it was easy to read the different military systems that had converged here: kingdom infantry, combat engineers, archers, firearms units, supply convoys, and even long columns of earthworkers dragging timber frames and quarried stone forward, inch by grinding inch. Seen from above, the entire fortress resembled a shield—one being simultaneously reinforced and consumed, layer by layer, at a pace that never quite kept up with the damage.

Behind us, Lei Lian's Yinglong Guard rapidly tightened their formation. Clearly, there would be no more graceful aerial sightseeing from here on. This was the final approach before we locked into the tempo of the front line. Ignicia dropped her altitude as well. She didn't bank straight for the fortress's central keep. Instead, she swept us low over the outer perimeter first.

Below, a considerable number of garrison troops had already tilted their heads back, faces following the shadow of her wings as it passed over them. Some raised a hand to shield their eyes from the glare. Others were already working signal flags toward the inner ring. A few simply shouted something outright—but between the wind and the distance, the words were stripped away before they could reach me. I didn't need to hear the words, though. I could read the atmosphere just fine.

And what I read wasn't the simple, uncomplicated relief of soldiers watching friendly reinforcements arrive. There was tension woven into it. There was urgency. There was a brittle, fraying edge of anxiety that had no business being present in a routine defensive rotation. I frowned, my gaze drifting instinctively further east. Then something closed around my heart and squeezed. Far in the distance, in the direction of the Eastern Wall, the horizon was churning with an unnatural ash-gray. Not a wisp. Not a thread.

Sheets of it. Pillars of smoke were clawing their way up from the horizon in broken segments, as if someone had simultaneously set fire to several enormous pyres along that stretch of earth. Even at this distance, I could see the columns twisting around each other, coiling upward like grasping fingers, staining the underside of the clouds—clouds that had been pale just minutes ago—a filthy, bruised black. I stared at that horizon.

Whatever warmth was left over from the banter we'd traded on the way here sank away, without a sound. This was not normal.