Wyrm Lord of Brockton Bay 9 (Patreon)

The Endbringer Siren rang city-wide with the presence of and everyone froze to hear it. 

Once, twice, thrice. It wasn’t Brockton Bay.

Once, twice, thrice. 

Pause.

Once, twice. It was in New England.

Pause. 

Once. Twice. 

It was Leviathan.

People began to panic. Even my disciplined Dragonteeth soldiers began to show minor signs of anxiety. 

Instead of choosing not to answer their anxiety with silence in contempt that they weren’t trusting me, I chose to answer them.

“Who am I?” I spoke through the speaker using the microphone that I had installed in my bedroom. “Am I not Wyrm? Am I not the dragon that even the Simurgh refused to fight?” I paused to let the words sink in. “Are you not the soldiers of Wyrm, the Dragonteeth? What is with this anxiety that I am feeling from all of you?”

It was in the way their feet shuffled uneasily on the earth. It was the way their heartbeat hastened faster, and the minute vibrations hummed like an annoying background noise to my power. 

“I will be going to the Boston Endbringer battle. For this lack of faith in me, I expect the Dragonteeth to participate as search and rescue personnel. Get to it.”

I waited for a moment before I felt the hurried yet disciplined movements of the ex-veterans start to move with the military discipline that’s been ingrained into them before I took them under my wing. 

Good. 

Taylor looked up at me with wide eyes from where she’d curled up when the Endbringer Siren rang. Lisa was right next to her, hugging Taylor and looking at me with equally wide eyes.

“Try not to burn the region, yeah?” Lisa asked hoarsely, her face pale and her body trembling. 

I snorted. “More likely than not, I’ll be fighting Leviathan,” I replied as casually as one could talk about Endbringers. “Fire is going to be useless.” But I also had control over water. I hadn’t tested my power over water, but it was going to be something I would test against Leviathan.

Lisa, ever being the information weasel, paled. 

“Y-You’re also a hydrokinetic…?!” she hissed out as I walked out of the bedroom.

-VB-

Instead of heading to the PRT ENE headquarters for a teleporter to pick me up, I stood outside of the warehouse I owned, watching the Dragonteeth prep the few armored all-terrain trucks I owned to make their way to Boston.

It was like watching an angry ant hill rise up against anyone who dared to disturb them. Unlike said ants, my soldiers were going to do good. Bao, my Steward, kept the soldiers moving as quickly as they could towards the direction they needed to by shouting orders as they were needed. 

But the moment he saw me, he handed his chart and the speakerphone to his own sub-steward(?)/secretary and ran over to me. He bowed deeply.

“Bao,” I greeted the loyal man, and he quickly straightened himself. 

“My lord. Your words earlier have roused the soldiers. Congratulations on your rhetorics,” he said smoothly. He was being very blunt with his bootlicking, but only because he knew that I didn’t care for it; I liked results more than words. 

“How goes the preparations?” I asked instead of responding to his ass-kissing.

“My lord, the preparations are being made as fast as possible,” he replied eagerly and seriously, forgoing further playful jests. “All four of the armored trucks will be loaded with our troops, and as you stated, we shall be traveling directly towards Boston rather than joining the PRT. May I… ask why, though, my lord?” 

“Because if I send you to the fight directly like the PRT likes to do for their troopers, then I will have dead soldiers. If I send you like this, then you will arrive after the fight is over to help the people get out of the ruined city.”

Bao looked at me blankly for a second before he frowned. “You are very sure that the city will be ruined, my lord.”

I barked out a laugh. “Of course, it will be. Even without me, Leviathan alone would flood a port city like Boston, if it doesn’t outright sink the city and the surrounding region underwater for shits and giggles like it did to India.”

It was something I learned. Before I was dropped into Earth Bet, I read Worm and there was no mention of Endbringer attacks between certain years. Namely, the attacks that happened in the mid 2000’s were missing.

Well, I came here and found out.

The southern half of the Indian Subcontinent got the power washing treatment from Leviathan. Half of Ceylon was sunk while the southern half of the subcontinent itself still suffered from fast desertification from the top soil washing away from Leviathan’s tidal waves. As if to mock the humans, Leviathan didn’t leave behind much human casualties. 

Rapid desertification, fear of the coast, and a large population without shelter, food, and water led to one thing.

Mass migration. 

India’s already massively populated north experienced so much influx of refugees from the south that … it broke. People fought seemingly for any reason. Money, religion, culture, and so on. India, as a nation, broke to a thousand riots. 

It was still better than what Russia turned out to be, but it was still bad. 

It was apparently the reason why the west coast had a lot of Indian immigrants, which led to more issues…

Speaking of…

“Are the Indians in the corp okay with going to fight Leviathan?” I asked without looking at Bao.

My Dragonteeth did not care for the trooper’s ethnicity, culture, and religion as long as they were professional, applied themselves to my rules, and didn’t let home life affect the work life. Despite this, I couldn’t help but worry about the few Indians I had in my Dragonteeth ranks, especially the Tamil clique. Making up seven of the thirteen “Indian” soldiers, Tamil people were the ones who suffered the most at the hands of Leviathan. 

“Some of them were eager, others weren’t,” Bao replied. “But since we will be entering the city after the fight…”

“It won’t be a problem at all.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And the rest?”

“We veterans are just happy that we have a job and happier that the job asks us to help people.”

I couldn’t tell if Bao was genuinely saying that or - again - attempting to bolster my ego. Regardless, I could tell that the morale of the soldiers weren’t bad, so I left it at that. 

“Bao, make sure nothing happens to the soldiers in the clean-up. It would be unfortunate if veterans who should know better to die to urban looters and thugs who haven’t even been in a real battle,” I said offhandedly, even if my words were serious and a command regardless of how I said it.

“Of course, my lord.”

“You may go. I’m about to take off.”

Bao bowed again as deeply as before and then backed off. He straightened himself and gestured, and the soldiers around us were quick to clear the space. Even then, it was an organic process within the overarching preparation that was happening in the deployment of the Dragonteeth. 

With that said, I grew. My body lengthened rapidly, more akin to a chemical reaction speed than any natural growth, and where a man stood two seconds ago, a long wingless dragon sat in a coil. 

I unfurled myself and flew up into the sky, causing gusts to blow in all directions. I flew over the skyline and then higher up into the air. Once I cleared the height of the highest building around here, I turned southward and blasted off.

Distance from Brockton Bay to the center of Boston was roughly forty-five miles. By car, it would take most people an hour to get there, following the road rules and all that.

I could fly.

And I could fly fast.

Crack-boom!

-VB-

Bao watched his lord break the sound barrier and fly steadily - and rapidly - fly away from the Dragonteeth base.

He sighed.

Talking to his lord, as always, was stressful. Just being around him caused his heart to beat erratically in fear, and it was fear; his response to fear was just to be snarky.

His lord scared him, and it was for a good reason. When he was found by his lord, he was nothing but a sniveling mass of a degenerate, getting by day to day on mere scraps despite the fact that he had been a USA veteran of ten years. 

Ten years, he’d served his country.

What did that get him? Some tax cuts that he never got to “use” because he could never get a job. The military, with its budget cuts, couldn’t afford to help him find a job; they had bigger issues and needs that needed their attention.

So what did he do? He went to his hometown only to find it in near rubble - what was Brockton Bay if not in near rubble? - and … became homeless. He couldn’t get a job, he had no house, he had no money because some debt collectors came calling because of his little sister, and things just went down the shitter. 

It really hurt to see the city he’d grown up in in such a state. Even though he was part of the problem, he wanted to help fix it. Alas, he was powerless.

Seven months into his life as a homeless, his lord found him being beat up by gangsters. 

And Bao smiled because he was afraid of the tall and muscular man who ripped apart gangsters with his bare hands, literally. 

When he saw this scene, Bao didn’t feel what most would have felt. Many would have thought to submit themselves or do something to get in the grace of the new dragon. Bao did this, but his purpose in joining Wyrm was not something as selfish as wealth and power. He wanted to use Wyrm to make this city better, which would make his life better. 

He knew that the said reasoning was his own patriotic twist to want something selfish out of this new life. He knew it then and he knew it now.

Wyrm, as much as he respected his lord, was a means to an end. 

His service under his lord began as a homeless bum, but he was now one of the three “councilors” of Lord Wyrm. He was the Steward of the Dragonteeth, and as such, he now had the power to change things the way he wanted. He hired veterans like himself, removing them off the streets, away from the influences of gangs and other degenerates. He urged his lord to get involved in the economy, and used the products of his lord’s power to help the economies in the city and beyond start to roll again. 

All of this was just in his favor. 

It was because of this that he prayed to the God above for the safe return of his lord.

Because everything he had worked for would fall apart if his lord died fighting Leviathan. 

He looked back down to the ground where he saw the Dragonteeth soldiers hurriedly load supplies. 

He snorted. His lord may have ordered the Dragonteeth to help with search and rescue, but Bao would do more than just a search and rescue. He would provide real aid (recruit more like minded people in the process) and make the Dragonteeth an organization to be respected within the minds of the people. His lord would provide the means for positive change to come to this side of New England. 

Bao would make it so.