Adventure of Joseph Balefire 1

You arrive beneath Kiathfell’s black-stone towers as warning horns roll across the valley. Soldiers spill from the gates, while royal guards seal the roads, bridges, and nearby paths.

Crimson banners bearing the king’s crowned wyvern snap above the ranks. Painted beneath the sigil is your likeness, marked enemy of the king, wanted alive.

Armored troops advance in measured formation, chains dragging over the roadstones. Behind them, archers take the walls, leaving only a narrowing gap between two shield lines.

A royal captain, her angular face framed by a tightly braided black crest,, a broad-shouldered middle-aged woman in blue-steel plate, steps ahead of the soldiers. A white scar crosses her shaved temple beneath her raised visor.

The chains lift. Shield rims lock together. For one brief moment, before the formation fully closes, a narrow opening remains beside a rain-swollen culvert.

Golden fire ignites in Joseph’s palm, its radiance threaded with black-red tongues. Holy brilliance and demonic force coil together until the air shrieks around him.

He thrusts his hand forward. The fireball tears across the road like a newborn sun, blasting through the narrowing gap toward the royal formation.

The sphere strikes the army’s front with a thunderous flash. Shield ranks break apart, chains whip away, and soldiers are hurled across the black stones as banners ignite overhead.

When the glare fades, the road before Kiathfell lies scattered and smoking, the passage fully open. The captain remains standing beyond the shattered formation, staring at Joseph through the drifting gold and ash.

Joseph’s black wings snap wide, golden tips catching the firelit air. With one powerful beat, he rises above the smoking road and the broken shield line.

Ash spirals beneath him as the royal forces shrink into scattered figures. The rain-swollen culvert and sealed roads become dark lines below his ascending path.

Arrows hiss upward, but Joseph banks sharply through the drifting smoke. The shafts pass beneath his boots and vanish into the blazing wreckage of the road.

Joseph climbs over Kiathfell’s black towers, wind tearing at his coat and horns. Beyond the battlements, open mountain air receives him, and the king’s soldiers cannot follow.

Behind him, crimson banners whip in the storm as the captain watches his silhouette disappear into the cloud-shadowed heights.