Salem awoke at around noon the next day to the sound of explosions.
Alina and Ruby were awakened at almost the same time by the noise.
Salem materialized the new pure white Shadow cloaks and wings upon their bodies and moved to where the recruits were.
The three recruits were cowering in a corner, hugging each other.
"Why are you so afraid?" Salem asked them.
"I'm afraid that we're going to get hurt like last time." Rose wimpered.
Salem sent up bugs, drilling their way through the ceiling at the same time that he spoke.
"I am now a true king of the shadows." He comforted them. "You will not get hurt."
When the recruits immediately stood up, Alina glanced at him, impressed.
Above them, Salem struggled to keep his bugs alive. The area was constantly bombarded by cannons, which were mounted upon shoddy, improvised, rickety scaffolds.
The ground was quickly covered in craters, with the cannon balls still mostly intact.
"Looks like they were able to track us here." He said, staring upwards, still looking through the bugs. "I'm going to see how a few of my Shadows fare against them."
The new recruits looked fearful again.
"Oh, not you." Salem chuckled, severing some of the shadows from around them, forming them into humanoid figures. "Them."
He indicated the seven Shadows he had just created.
Sending them up through the small holes the bugs had created, he sent them to destroy the cannons.
Thirty seconds later, the bombardment stopped. Even though they were far from the cannons and there were only small holes for the sound to travel through, they still heard the panicked screams of the men operating the cannons.
Putting on his mask, the others followed suit.
"Let's go deal with them." Salem said coldly, leading the way to the surface, simultaneously adding a secondary mode for the Shadows to have pure white wings and robes and switching their robes to that mode.
Upon the surface, Salem noted another army of futuristic-looking mechs.
At the forefront stood middle-aged man, with greying hair and brown eyes, looking upon them with disdain.
"Surrender and we'll only expiriment on you!" He shouted at them.
"Starting off negotiations soft, I see." Salem noted sarcastically.
"Who are you?" Salem asked, his scythe glowing purple, starkly contrasting the white of his robe.
"I am Mon." The man said proudly. "You aliens should surrender or we'll be forced to study your dead bodies."
Salem mereley manipulated the shadows of the mechs and tried to destroy their outer shells.
The mechs only warped their plating, contrary to his expectations.
"Should I go dragon form?" Salem asked Ruby and Alina.
"This would be a prime opprotunity for you to test its power." Alina said.
"Your kind is not welcome, unless you offer yourselves as subjects!'' Mon shouted.
"Any of your kind...Can become one of mine." Salem responded ominously. "A little push is all it takes."
Mon stepped back, scared for a moment, before puffing out his chest and stepping forward once more.
"I am the city lord! You have no right to take my subjects from me!" Mon shouted.
"You almost took my subjects away from ME." Salem said menacingly.
"They were not your subjects to begin with!" Mon yelled.
"I'm going to finish this as fast as possible." Salem said to everyone close to him. "Back up, please."
They complied, expectantly waiting for him to transform.
"This is where the fun begins." Salem said, grinning behind his mask.
....
Mon was feeling smug. He thought that everything was under his control after the leader failed to destroy his mechs.
"You have ten seconds!" Mon shouted to them. "After that, we'll start firing!"
Mon's smugness vanished when shadows started coalescing into a massive form around the leader. The shadows began forming into a massive black, scaled form that was only seen in story books.
"DRAGON!" Mon screamed hysterically. "FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE!"
Madly pointing to the dragon and hopping up an down he repetitively screamed "Fire" until the people in the mech decided they would listen and open fire.
The shells easily reached their target, exploding upon its hard scales and dealing no damage.
"That tickled." The dragon said, startling everyone present. "My turn."
The dragon opened its maw wide and spat out a massive purple energy beam that it then swept across the battlefield, utterly annihilating almost every mech present.
Mon fell to his knees in terror.
"Spare me!" He sobbed, kneeling and plastering himself against the ground.
"No." The dragon responded, reaching out a claw and puncturing Mon's back. "I don't think I will."
....
Salem returned to his humanoid form and turned back to his companions.
"I didn't realize I had a breath attack." He said, inwardly marveling at the power behind the attack. "I had wanted to roar at them."
Alina and Ruby seemed to have expected this, but the recruits were sitting on the ground, positioned as though they had fallen in fear.
"With him taken care of, why don't we start branches in other cities?" Salem asked.
"We'd need more people, though." Alina said.
''You're right." Salem said. "And the growth of the population of Shadows is going to be slow."
"Why don't we make our first daylight appearance?" Ruby asked.
"Sure. This'll be fun." Salem said, taking off towards the city.
....
And so began a new era for the World of Sin. The legendary Black Dragon, followed by its faithful shadows, purged the blight known as the Old Era Lords.
The Black Dragon ushered in an era of peace and light, starkly contrasting the violence and depravity of the Old Era.
The Black Dragon's Sparks and Shadows became our protectors and guides.
The Shadows, while swift and just, are also merciless and should be feared. When interacting with the Shadows, be passive and compliant, lest your head no longer belong to your shoulders.
The Sparks, on the other hand, are much less likely to attack. However, that does not mean they should not be feared. Once angered, they won't even leave your corpse behind...
The Black Dragon ushered in an era that persists even to this day, a golden era, an era of prosperity, the Age of Enlightenment.
The prophets of the Light in the Darkness say that the Black Dragon will someday return, spurring our development even further than ever before.
But until that day, we can only try and advance ourselves in preparation for its second coming.
-The Old Era and the Black Dragon, by Jane Doe,
Rose Lalonde, and Maya Daniels.