Calliope waited in the shadow of the white drake. The ancient creature – a minor queen – was eating loudly, in crunching bites and gulps.

“There’s a crispness…” she said, swallowing, “that you only get with lightning.” She looked longingly at a cage filled with prisoners. “I should have been a cook.”

Calliope grimaced, sweating in the armor of a Legion officer she’d ambushed outside the tower. At last the drake finished and rocked forward, summoning an image of the continent.

“Have you heard, Captain, of the Tempest Jules?”

Calliope was a Tempest Jule – a skilled warrior who had learned to bend lightning to her will, and a sworn enemy of this monstrous invader.

“Holdouts,” she spoke quickly, in the dead Captain’s tongue. “Meddling Brevanes who escaped at Tempest Bay.”

“Meddling?” Storms swirled in her eyes. “They’re killing our brethren – weakening our hold on the Steppes.” The drake concentrated, and ‘PELLADANE’ flared to life on the conjured map. “Here, they recruit initiates from the caves we haven’t cleansed.” Calliope tried to hide her surprise – the legion knew more than they expected.

“Here …” she paused, pointing a talon near the symbol of her tower. “They gather a storm to march on my citadel. These are your enemies, Captain.” Hissing through an arcane ritual, she transformed the map into a massive portal. “And this is the army – your army – that will cleanse them from our domain.”

The shimmering gateway offered a view of – and transport to – a waiting legion. Elementals and footmen crowded the legs of mechanical goliaths while winged beasts swooped overhead.

“Go,” the drake commanded. “Yours will be the tempest at the heart of the storm.”

“Yes,” said Calliope. “It will.” She drew a blade and flung a set of pulsing orbs through the gate. The drake shrieked in confusion as they began to explode on the other side, one after the next, punctuated by sizzling torrents of energy Calliope hurled through the portal.

Roaring, the drake chanted the gate closed, but not before the surviving soldiers returned a volley of fire. Calliope absorbed their strikes and unleashed focused lightning against the drake and her tower, leaping from the structure as it crumbled, riding the wind, nearly weightless, toward a column of advancing warriors.