The Flaming Rainbow - Prince Ryon
Katina, Kingdom of Magicians
Tel. VI - Year 18 4AOS
Hexacruz was the name of the Katinnian province that unfortunately bordered Naralia. It was a vast wilderness with a few towns dotting the map here and there. The fields were mostly home to wheat and milk farmers and herders of cattle. Watchtowers were built in the mountains to watch for the coming of Orcs or mountain raiders in the days of old. These days more were erected as the war with Naralia escalated. Hexacruz was Katina's last line of defense and was constantly assaulted by King Forrest's troops.
For as long as she could remember, the little farm girl woke up to armies marching by. Every night before going to sleep, she heard her father and her uncles discussing the war, the Alliance, and the disappearance of the Summoner of Dragons. Ever since she was captured by Naralians and taken away to who-knew-where, reports of Naralian troops coming into the province were becoming more common. It was only a matter of time before the war reached her front door and battles would start taking place.
This morning, her fears were soon realized. As she was milking the cows, she heard the ground rumbling. The milk in her pail rippled as if quaking in fear. She got up and ran to see what was happening.
The Naralians. They were here.
They crossed unchallenged through the Dorian Pass and could be seen washing the fields with their orange, brown, and gold banners and armor. The little farm girl heard their war horns bellowing in the morning mist. She saw a small blotch of black and gold, which was the small army of Black Luster Soldiers gathering around the mysterious tower that was built months ago by the river.
She had seen armies marching through the fields but never before had a battle been waged in the fields below the hills where her father's farm was perched. She held her breath, anticipating a violent contest of arms against the two armies. But no battle would be seen here today. Today, she was going to witness a massacre.
A thousand robotic knights, automatons created by machinists from the Naralian Army, marched across the fields toward a castle that had been the summer home of the King of Katina. The little girl gasped. No opposing army was supposed to make it this far into the province.
The castle they were marching to was made of glass and white stone. It stood a hundred feet over the plains with colored glass windows dotting the walls here and there. Embattled banners with all the colors of the rainbow trimmed in gold thread hung from the walls, covering the left and right half of the tower. Two long rows of the same banners waved in the morning breeze on either side of the white-stone path leading to it.
The tower stood majestically in front of the Rainbow Dragon Mountains, so-called for their multi-colored rocks, which painted the range in red, yellow, green, rusty brown, and turquoise. t was also said to house the legendary Rainbow Dragon, but no one has been able to prove that.
The Robotic Knights. stopped. As soon as they did, the doors burst open.
Their quarry revealed himself out of arrogance and...boredom. A young man in a stylish white jacket adorned with gemstones in all the colors of the rainbow. His white-scaled armored boots were tipped with gold heads depicting the great Lynx of his House, and a jeweled top hat adorned with a rose bejeweled in rhinestones. He wore round, purple-lensed spectacles with gold and silver trim. Underneath his trench coat was a chestplate of platinum steel emblazoned with leafy ornamentation and the head of a roaring Lynx near his neck.
He was Prince Ryon Augustus Balor. Otherwise known as The Prince of Many Colors.
Once more the foolish Naralians thought they could conquer his lands with their strange machinery and large numbers. He had no problem with it. He cracked his knuckles.
As soon as he did, a cavalry of robotic horsemen galloped past the regular troops and the automaton infantry. They raised their lances, forcing their horses to go faster, and steamed hissed out of their joints, forming an ominous cloud above them. As they approached, Ryon took a purple-colored plant out of a silver box in his coat. He rolled it into a piece of paper, licked it shut, then snapped his fingers to ignite the tip of his thumb in blue fire. He lit the plant and smoked it. The prince bobbed his head up and down as the world around him turned bright and the colors were enhanced.
The robotic knights were getting close, however, Ryon calculated he had time to get his phone out of his pocket and place the music pods in his ears, covered under long, curly reddish-brown hair. He searched through his library of songs until he found just the right one to prepare him for battle.
Once he was prepped and ready, he stood up straight and then held his arms up. The sleeves of his coat dematerialized to exhibit his toned arms. Iridescent runes covered his flesh and then multi-colored flames burst over his palms, creating bright hues. A crown of red, blue, and green flames formed on his brown. His eyes started glowing and he grinned.
The robotic cavalry was within striking distance. Ryon released a wall of rainbow flames that zoomed over a hundred meters across the battlefield, burning the robots in front of him. To the shock of the human soldiers, he was dancing to the music.
The little farm girl gasped. Never before had she seen such power. She was frightened, yet, awestruck. The stunning colors of the fire Ryon conjured, and the elegant aegises and glyphs he conjured to protect himself were like a work of art. He seemed like an artist painting the battlefield in so many bright and beautiful colors. As Ryon decimated the mechanical army, his legion of Black Luster Soldiers stormed out of the castle and joined the fight. The meadow below shimmered as thousands of golden swords caught the sunlight. Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash! The soldiers began to decimate the robotic army with little effort. The little farm girl could not believe what she was seeing. A teenage sorcerer with rainbow flames and Black Luster Soldiers fighting off an army of thousands of robots? Even in a drunken stupor, her father couldn't come up with something so outrageous.
More robotic knights charged him as he spun around, but they were swallowed by four twisters of fire, colored red, blue, purple, and green. When the tornados dispersed, all that remained of the robots were blue embers fluttering in the breeze. Ryon manipulated the flames in his palms to become fiery twin swords. He hacked and slashed through the army of robots, big, small, it didn't matter their size. Ryon was too strong and too high to even care about them anymore. Destroying a small army to him was like a little exercise.
A Robotic Knight tried to strike him from behind, but the Termnnian Prince was too quick. He spun around creating a flaming cloak that knocked him away.
Ryon stopped. Even though he could hear nothing but the music blasting in his ears, he knew that something was wrong. He felt the ground trembling beneath him. The pebbles were bouncing up and down as if trying to warn him of the coming danger. Ryon peered over his shoulder to see what was coming. Cavalry. Fifty mercenary horsemen were galloping towards him on armored warhorses, holding up their swords.
"CHARGE!" the leader called.
"Pfft," Ryon scoffed.
Once they got close to him, he got down on one knee. It looked like he was surrendering. The horsemen did not stop. They wanted to ground him into paste underneath the hooves of their steeds. Once they got close BANG! They rammed into an iridescent forcefield and scattered in all directions, the horsemen in the front were killed instantly. Ryon then pushed the aegis towards them, knocking both horse and rider into the air the way a child would if he was playing with toys.
Ryon hurried to a battalion of robotic knights marching from the hills to the east so he could have his fun with them. Too easy. Way too easy. And when the robots were destroyed, the Black Luster Soldiers raised their weapons and charged to attack the regular troops.
SMACK! Steel crashed upon steel. The little farm girl heard swords clanging against each other as the soldiers were locked in combat. From the throng of soldiers, she could see rainbow flames bursting from here and there, meaning the Prince of Many Colors was still alive and kicking down below.
Victory was near...until.
The Naralian war horns sounded. The troops for some odd reason cheered and then retreated across the river. Then a shadow covered the battlefield. Something was flying towards them from the mountains. It was a giant ship that looked like a floating monolith. It was colored bright white with the bear of the Ungard family embellished on the sides. Ryon could see the walls lined with blue lights, which were actually windows. The engines at the bottom of the ship were silent. Ryon took off his earbuds. He could hear nothing except the wind blowing and the flapping of the banners around him.
The young commander of the ship draped in a white and gold uniform got up from his chair, went down illuminated steps, then strolled casually toward the window with his arms behind his back.
He tsked mockingly at the army below. "So primitive. They still rely on swords and armor to win. Show them the power of Holy Naralian technology! Fire!"
The ship then let out an ear-piercing bellow like a giant war horn and then dropped a bomb no bigger than a boulder. But when it touched the ground, it let off a massive explosion that tossed Ryon and the Black Luster Soldiers around like toy soldiers. The little farm girl covered her ears and gasped as she saw the army buried under a colossal mushroom cloud of brown dust.
The commander snarled. "Good show, gentlemen. We sure showed that Katinian Prince what for. This should make our advance much easier."
"Commander! There are still life signs on the bio-scanner."
"Hmm?" The commander walked back to his chair and sat down. He ordered that a holographic screen be displayed so he could see. "Ah," he said. Ryon was still alive. He was shaken, but still standing strong, as were 1000 of the Black Luster Soldiers who survived the impact.
Below, the Naralian troops armed with advanced combat rifles stormed forward. They surrounded Ryon and his army. They aimed their weapons at him, ordering him to stand down. He did not. He incinerated them with a wave of vermilion and bright-blue flames. He then charged at more robotic knights and punched them a hundred times per second, denting their armor, steam hissed from their wounds before the collapsed to the ground as worthless heaps of metal. Ryon went for the next garrison of robotic soldiers. He zoomed around the battlefield like a blur of red. The troops with the combat rifles couldn't land a shot at him.
The rifles piqued his interest. After he slaughtered another squad of troopers, he picked one of the rifles up and held it in his hands. It was a huge weapon, chambered with a 7.8x54mm cartridge, this he knew because he was good friends with a young arms dealer named Zane Truesdale.
Such a large weapon, he thought to himself. But it was versatile and agile and built with all kinds of recoil control mechanisms to keep the kick from overpowering the shooter.
It was new, it was alien, but Ryon liked it nonetheless.
"Ooooh, yeah!" he said. Using a clever charm, he branded the weapon with his family insignia, burning with all the colors of the rainbow. He pulled the bolt back and started to use his new weapon against the troops. Just for fun, he enchanted the rounds with his rainbow flames. Each time the bullet struck a target, they were lit up with multicolored embers and turned to ash in seconds.
"So, the little prince thinks he can stand against the might of the Holy Naralian Empire. Unleash the claws of the grizzly once more!"
He snapped his fingers. "And someone please bring me a bottle of our finest champagne. Victory is at hand, gentlemen. And I wish to have a drink to commemorate our triumph."
"But sir, we still have troops down there."
"Then they will die with honor. Yeyu will have a place for them in his wine gardens."
The monolith let out another bellowing cry and dropped another bomb. Again, it knocked Ryon away, devastating the rest of the Black Luster Soldiers and the Naralian troops. Ryon got back on his feet. He used his palms and fired a blast of telekinesis to clear the dust cloud.
They're using their weapons against their own troops? Ryon thought. "Stay back!" he commanded the Black Luster Soldiers. "Guard the tower!"
The Black Luster Soldiers obeyed his orders and retreated over the bridge back to the tower. Ryon rushed toward the Naralian troops to continue his fight.
"FIRE!" the commander shouted.
Again the fields were bombarded by the strange bomb. Ryon braced himself. He was safe behind his ward, while the Naralian troops were killed.
No more. He jumped hundreds of feet high onto the ship with a great leap. He appeared to be flying. Ryon grabbed onto the wall and cut a hole with his flames, which he manipulated to be swords. He charged inside, killing soldiers and engineers. He didn't know how the machine functioned, so he hacked and slashed anything that looked large and important. Alarms sounded off. Computers sparked, and tubes exploded.
Ryon smirked. He didn't know what he just did but it sounded like the monolith was growing unstable.
"NO!" shouted the commander. "This ship was supposed to be indestructible! My victory! My beautiful award! NOOOOOO!"
The monolith exploded in the sky.
The little farm girl held her fingers to her mouth, which hung open in horror. Was the prince okay?
Woosh! A rainbow huge flew over her. Ryon landed elegantly in front of the girl. She stepped back, her mouth still open in shock. She marveled at Ryon's arms, glowing with the rainbow runes and his long reddish-brown hair and coat tails blowing victoriously in the wind.
He looked down at the little farm girl and smiled at her. She smiled back and handed him a flask of cold water. Ryon patted her on the head before he took it and drank it until the flask was empty.
The girl glanced over her shoulders as a group of warriors rode towards them. She felt her knees wobbling, for she knew who they were. The princes from Yugi's Alliance. She bowed her head and stretched her skirt as she performed a curtsey, which made them all chuckle.
"Ryon," said Prince Stas.
"You're late," Ryon said, handing the girl back her flask.
"Sorry about that," said Prince Marcel. "We were ambushed by CUIRASS pilots along the way. We turned three of them into scrap before the rest of the squad fled."
"What did you leave us?" Prince Jon asked.
Ryon shrugged. "Bodies and a large pile of scrap. They attacked us with a weird-looking ship. How's our boy doing?"
"You mean Yuri?" Stas asked. "Well...it should be an interesting day for him I hear a very special gift is on its way to him."
"You don't say?" said Ryon. "Serenity Wheeler still meddling in his affairs, I see."
"What else is new?" said Marcel with a laugh. "You can't keep that girl away from royal business." He surveyed the damage below. "Impressive work, Ryon. Master Yugi was wise in selecting you to be part of our alliance. With your beautiful rainbow flames, our enemies will regret the day they messed with us."
"It's not us that I'm worried about," said Ryon. "It's Yuri. I really hope this gift he's getting helps him out. Otherwise, we're all screwed."
Bakura's Report
Though he has made some sort of a family with the likes of Pamela, Nicholas, Tyson, and Carter, Yuri's true companionship lies with two youngsters named Crystal Anderson and Ren Kakihara. These two youths have been by his side since the day they were very young. I find these two individuals highly interesting. When these three are together, there is a grand radiance that causes the darkness within me to shudder and grow ill.
Crystal Anderson. Crystal is a girl who...tragically lost her father just a year after she was born in an oil rig explosion. She is a girl of great beauty and splendor, and of great skill, wielding the most powerful and rarest dragons in all Duel Monsters, earning her the name of Queen of Dragons.
Though her love for Yuri is great, she is the one who is furthest away from Yuri for a great deal many reasons.
One) She is what these people call a 'Pop' Singer. She is known all over the world and the city goes through great lengths to promote her music and her products. After following her for some time, I've learned she takes her academics very, very seriously, dedicating most - if not all - of her free time to her studies. When she's not preparing for an exam, she's working and working, always on the run.
Two) Her life is under control of the island's mafia, a very violent but well-orchestrated criminal organization operating in the underground world of the city. As I write this, she is dating the young man who had Yuri beaten to a pulp; and forced me to call upon the Paradox Brothers to train him in hand-to-hand combat, although those skills have faded since his Duel with the Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle.
Yuri's Duel with the Spirit was not the only magic behind the cleansing of all that I have taught him. The girl's love for him had a hand in that as well.
Curiouso r, curiousor.
I'll look into her a little more meticulously. My interest in the girl has been piqued to say the least. It seems that the main ladies in Yuri's life have strong ties to each side of the spectrum here. Pamela -or Patty- her heart is shrouded in supreme darkness. But Crystal...her heart showers all with radiant light.
And Ren...well...Ren is a rather difficult one. Very difficult. Curiously, he and his family just appeared out of nowhere. They both met when Yuri was still living in the orphanage. For a moment, those two were inseparable but upon turning sixteen, Ren frequently started vanishing for long periods of time. He even dropped out of school, which is odd considering he is one of the top students in his class. Someone or something is tearing him away from his friends and his studies. I have a hunch as to 'who' this someone might be.
If my hypothesis proves correct, we may have a problem here.
The bond in their hearts is a powerful one. Something I haven't felt since my battles with Yugi and his pitiful band. If I let Yuri linger in so much light, I will lose my grip on him, and all these years manipulating him would have been all for naught.