Call of the Dragon

The Corruption

I woke up, but now with new thoughts in my mind. I craved chaos. I wanted the soldiers I came here with dead. I wanted to find the Commander, but not for good reasons. I wanted to kill him.

I stood up. I felt huge, at least twice my normal size. I looked down and...my legs... weren't mine. My whole body wasn't mine. My armor was gone, my skin was mostly pale and woody, and I was taller. I couldn't see my own face but I doubted it was the same either.

Then, I started moving, it was like my thoughts were guiding me. I wanted to find Isaac and his squad. I wanted to kill them. I wanted the dragon to turn them too.

I wandered around looking for survivors for hours. I did find some, they had made a little camp. I killed them all. The last thing they saw was my dragon corrupted hands tearing at their hearts. They had gruesome deaths.

After I killed them, vines came to get the corpses. The vines put their bodies into pod-like things on the side of a nearby tree. Blighting pods.

I instinctively stayed in the area, waiting for them to come out of their pods. After a few hours, they did come out. They were much smaller than me but other than that they looked the same. Same pale skin, same woody skin, same body shape. The three female ones walked over to where their camp was and picked up their weapons. The rest followed that example.

Once all of them were ready to leave, I started walking out of the area we were in. They followed me without a second thought. Like they knew that's what they were supposed to do.

As I walked, the dragon talked in my mind. He talked about how he can now speak in my mind more clearly because I am Mordrem. He talked about how I'm his best commander, and that he'll get me a nice big squad to lead as long as I do the killing for him.

I came across camp after camp, some small, around five people, others huge, around twenty. After I had around fifty corrupted men at my disposal, I led an attack on the main camp.

It was most of Isaac's forces along with some Vigil warriors. I sent in wave after wave at them. The whole time I could see Isaac trying to get to me. He knew I was the commander, thus the reason this was happening, but he didn't recognize me.

A few of Isaac's men tried to sneak around me and attack me from behind. They almost pulled it off, but one of my officers stopped them.

Eventually, I ran out of men to send in. At that point, I sneaked off into the jungle. I hadn't killed any of Isaac's men, but I did put a dent in the Vigil forces. Still, I wasn't happy with myself. I had failed an easy attack and lost all of my men.

I had always been proud of myself for doing simple things, but as Mordrem I was a changed man. Whether it was for the better or not, I didn't trust myself as much.

Soul always called me brave and outgoing, "a lot like a small child", but that me was gone. After this life experience, I'd have a different personality for a bit.

At least until I could fix myself. Or until my friends could fix me. I'd have to see which came first when I saw them again.

The thing there was that if I saw my friends while in this form, with these thoughts...they wouldn't make it. Even if it was Soul.

But..if I could lose a small army, I could probably mess a lot of things up.

I did the whole thing over again: gathering an army to assault the same camp. This time I took my time, I trained the soldiers, I made sure they had good weapons, I taught them battle formations and how to fight in unison. A lot of my tricks were things Isaac had taught me and the other troops while we were training for coming to the jungle. I used to be a member of Isaac's Front Line.

Isaac never had to train my mind. He helped me learn combos, but my mind was always strong enough. Isaacs Front Line is a specially trained and gifted squadron of Sylvari that can resist the call of the dragon.

All of our members are a member of it. Alwyn, Cai, Zack, Wynn, me, Trahearne, Ren, Islwyn, Light, obviously Isaac, and Soul is the second in command.

I did learn a lot from Isaac. Nobody knows where he got his tactics or knowledge, there weren't even rumors.

I had an advantage by knowing some of their moves. I trained with them for a year. I knew all their tricks, and they didn't know me.

At least, I hope they didn't. It's not like I looked like myself. If Isaac told Soul what the fight was like, there's no way he would suspect it was me. He knows I was never a commander.

When I was normal I didn't use a longbow either, he doesn't know what I'm like with one, he can't know it was me.

Even if someone had seen me testing a longbow, they wouldn't be able to connect it to the new trick I learned while fighting as a Mordrem commander. No way at all...

I stopped myself from worrying. I knew that I had better things to do. I got back to my battle plans and whatnot.

I started raiding camps again. For a month I focused on just getting men before training them all.

I had fun raiding, the training I had to put them through was rather annoying though. I'm not a drill sargent, and the Mordrem I was training aren't really smart.

Still, we all got through it.

After about four months of training my Mordrem force, I decided it was time for an attack. I sent some of my intelligent scouts out to survey the area for me. When they came back, they told me there were more forces there than last time, and the Pact Commander was there.