Alexander The Great Mage

However, the sight that greeted his eyes shocked him to the core.

Before him were four people sitting down comfortably on a large sofa sipping wine! They were actually watching him have this farce of a conversation with Caerose!

"You will go back to Symphonia and begin your work to rally the nobles to support Anastasia. As to whether you will be her advisor or not, it is a question for another day." A beautiful woman that radiated power like the sun stood up and said.

Prince Flario stared at her, completely mesmerized.

Blink.

One moment they were there, and as suddenly as they appeared, they disappeared without a trace.

It was so sudden and so abrupt that Prince Flario thought he was hallucinating. He rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"You're not imagining things." Caerose chuckled. "They were there the whole time. Princess Aleyria, the woman you were drooling at, wanted to see Hilda and you at least once. Considering that you're still alive, I guess you're still ok..

Caerose stood up and glared at Prince Flario. "Make sure you do your job well. With or without your help, the old man will die, and Symphonia will be ours. Now is your chance to render merits while we still have need of your help. If not, I would be the first in line to petition for your execution. Make sure you get Hilda in line and on board when she returns in a few hours. I am done here."

With that, Caerose left the room, leaving Prince Flario completely flustered.

*-*-*-*-*-*

Kan-Dari stood silently atop a hill, watching the Wyvern Riders settle down for the night after a full day's worth of training. Thirty thousand Wyverns curled up to sleep while their riders tried to make themselves comfortable on their large bodies.

It was an incredible sight. Thirty thousand house-sized Wyverns curling up meekly to sleep in complete silence? An impossible sight, if not for Blackfire. Being a full fledged dragon, his bloodline suppression on the Wyverns made them fear him from every single fibre of their being. When Blackfire gave a command, the Wyverns obeyed him as though he was God.

The three regiments of Wyvern Riders are shaping up very nicely. Even before Blackfire had been assigned to train the girls to be generals and then lead them in conquest across the continent, the Wyvern Riders had already been training hard.

Being a senior dragon in his clan, Blackfire was a military veteran with countless battles under his belt. Training up fourth to sixth generation Wyverns and beating them up into remembering his formations was easy for him.

Training up generals to effectively lead them, however, was slightly harder.

Blackfire had assigned a regiment to each of the three girls and had them practice mock battles against each other and against a host of enemies which he conjured. Some days, they would fight at half or even a fraction of their strength against the rest of the Wyverns to simulate battle crises.

And on some days, they would even go up against him.

One versus one, two versus one, three versus one. It didn't matter how many enemies Blackfire faced up against, he was always able to lead his own troops to achieve victory against the three girls.

Liz'An proved to be the easiest to train out of the three girls. She had grasped the essence of military strategies and tactics very quickly. She was able to keep her eye on the big picture and the overall objective, and tailor her tactics to suit the strategies that he had prepared.

Shira was a reasonably good general. She was extremely aggressive, and had no qualms leading her regiment to go against a much stronger enemy. Thankfully for her, she was not just aggressive, but also very smart. Her aggression was always in the service of a deeper and very effective plan that more often than not, allowed her to succeed in achieving her objective (except against Blackfire, who saw through her tactics like reading a signpost).

However, the most difficult to train was definitely Kan-Dari. Ever since Princess Yellow died, she had never been the same. Liz'An and Shira had fussed over her endlessly, and tried with everything they had to comfort her, but she never really recovered. When Princess Yellow died, it seemed like a part of Kan-Dari died with it. Her attempts to lead her regiment had been barely passable. She was able to coordinate well with her fellow generals, and performed well when paired or placed in a team. But her individual performance was abysmal. Out of 10 attempts, she succeeded only once.

If the trend continued, Blackfire had half a mind to assign her under Shira or Liz'An and make do with two generals instead of three.

A slight rustle behind her told her that her two best buddies had finally found her.

"I'm not hungry." Kan-Dari sighed. While she was appreciative of her two friends' care and concern, Shira seemed to think that the best way to cure her from her mild depression was to get her to eat loads of food. She had been offering all sorts of food to her non stop. All sorts of meat cooked in all sorts of methods, grilled, roasted, fried, burnt you name it, Shira had offered them all to her. "I'm growing fat thanks to you two. Do you want me to remain single all my life?!" Kan-Dari grumbled.

"Hmmm? See? I told you we shouldn't have brought food." Alexander complained. "She won't be able to find a husband if she grows fat!"

"AHHH!!" Kan-Dari shrieked in shock. "Yo-Your Majesty! Princess! I didn't know… I thought…"

"Don't worry Dari." Aleyria said gently with a laugh. "Stop scaring her!" Aleyria gave Alexander a little push which turned out to be so powerful that Alexander, who was taken by surprise, stumbled and fell off the hill!

"OW!!" He cried out.

"Ah! Hahaha! Sorry!! I didn't mean to exert so much strength!!" Aleyria laughed out loud even as she quickly pulled him out from his embarrassing sprawled position on the ground. "Sorry! Sorry!"

"Pfffftttt!" Kan-Dari covered her mouth tightly with her hands, trying to stifle the laughter that was bubbling up powerfully within her.

Alexander glared at Aleyria then Kan-Dari before shaking his head helplessly. "I should have trusted my instincts and allowed you two girls to talk by yourselves." He sighed. "Ah well. I'll just go ahead and give those regiments a big scare to see how well they respond to emergencies. You two have a good chat."

"Have fun!" Aleyria said to Alexander brightly with no trace of guilt over what just happened.

Kan-Dari merely bowed deeply, not trusting herself to say anything without laughing.

Alexander jumped off the hill and began to release his power of death enhanced with battle intent and mastery over the elements.

"Hmm? I didn't realize that so many people and beasts died in this area. The history of Rin-TUrah must be richer and much longer than I had thought." Alexander sent his power deep into the earth and then summoned thousands of skeletons.

"I don't want to deal fatal damage to any of my troops. This is just a surprise test afterall. But I shouldn't make this test too easy. So I guess the best way forward is to overwhelm them with numbers instead of sending powerful entities that could accidentally kill my soldiers." Alexander reasoned, and then sent his powers down once more. This time, he did not hold back.

"GAHH!!" Alexander cried out lightly as he exerted his power and forced the undeads to rise from very deep within the earth!

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

Undead moans and groans began to fill the air as hundreds, then thousands then tens of thousands of undead burst out of the ground!

"Hehehe. Charge towards them at full speed, my minions!" Alexander laughed sinisterly.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

"ENEMY ATTACK!!" A loud, magically magnified voice screamed out in panic. Immediately, angry roars filled the air as the Wyverns roused from their sleep.

Blink.

"Your Majesty." Blackfire appeared by his side and bowed lightly.

"Blackfire. A surprise test is underway. I hope you've trained them well." Alexander smiled at him.

"I do not think they will disappoint you, Your Majesty, as insidious and despicable your minions and tactics are." Blackfire chuckled. "They are much stronger than you think."

Alexander laughed out loud. Ever since they had gone through battle together, their relationship had lost the formal edge, and had become much more comfortable.

"Really? I was thinking of swarming them with numbers instead of quality. If that's the case, I'll mix it up a little bit and send a few elites as well!"

"Go ahead." Blackfire nodded. "I would like to see if the girls would fight these elites personally or keep their cool and command their troops. Hmm? Those are the elites you mentioned?" Blackfire shook his head lightly while pointing at the thousands of slightly larger skeletons crawling out from the ground.

"You've not seen all of it yet." Alexander grinned evilly as he waved his hand once more.

WHOOSHH!!!!!! WHOOOSHHH!!!! WHOOSSHHH!!!!!

Those skeletons leapt up and took the skies, powered by space magic which caused them to glow blue.