Black Zuma

Military: Battle

During the Southern Cataclysm, a black-scaled man named Zuma appeared unexpectedly at a Greyfall outpost under attack.

I had heard of him long before I ever saw him. Whispers on the wind from the high crags, rumors passed among soldiers and villagers alike. They spoke of a creature—a towering figure clad in black scales that shone like obsidian in the sun. A monster, they called him. A demon in the shape of a man. Such is the way of fear, to fashion nightmares from half-heard tales and shadows in the mountains. And yet, none could deny that the world had gone strange, that the Southern Cataclysm had churned up all manner of beasts and horrors into our lands. The men talked in their idle moments, spinning threads of dread and awe. They imagined blood, fire, and doom in his wake. But it was always just a tale until it wasn’t.   I was there when he came down from those peaks. It was a day of blood and terror, the sort we had grown all too familiar with in those times. The creatures came upon us like a tide, a surging wall of claws and scales and gnashing teeth. Drakes, as big as horses, with their breath stinking of carrion. They moved as one, a pack driven by some foul instinct or unseen hand. And above them, a wyvern, its wings darkening the sky, its screech a knife in the ear. We were outnumbered and outflanked, but we stood our ground. We were men of the Greyfall, after all. We had faced worse than this, or so we believed.   It was then that I saw him. At first, I thought him another drake, but his movements were too sure, too purposeful. Where the beasts were all wildness and fury, he was deliberate, like a wolf among dogs. I called to my men to hold, to watch. And we watched as he moved. He walked upright like a man but with a weight, a presence that no ordinary man could possess. He was Zuma, though we did not know that then. All we saw was a creature of dark skin and darker purpose.   Some of the lads wanted to strike him down, to take no chances. They were afraid, and fear makes men foolish. But I saw something different. I saw in his eyes a light—not a kind light, mind you, but a knowing one. A look that said he understood more than the brutes around him, more than we did, perhaps. And then he turned from us, and without a sound, he set upon the drakes.   It was a sight to behold. He was a storm given flesh. His claws tore through those beasts as if they were made of parchment. He moved not with rage but with a kind of terrible grace, a deadly precision that sent a shiver through even the most battle-hardened of my men. He took them apart, piece by piece, until the ground was littered with the dead and the dying. And in that moment, the tide turned. The men found their courage again, seeing the creatures fall before him, and they charged. We charged, and the line held.   When the dust settled, the men cheered, but their eyes still held that flicker of fear. They did not know what to make of Zuma. Was he a savior or just another monster? When it was done, they chained him, dragged him into our camp like a beast of burden. It is a foolish thing to do, to cage what you do not understand, but I did not stop them. I watched as the commanders questioned him, as they shouted and threatened and tried to break the silence that lay between them. He said nothing. Not a word. His eyes, those dark, knowing eyes, they said enough.   Days passed, and the onslaught returned, fiercer than before. Monsters of every twisted kind poured over the hills, and our men fell back, our lines breaking under the weight. It was chaos—pure, unbridled chaos. And in that chaos, Zuma’s chains broke. I saw him, free at last, a beast uncaged. He could have run, could have vanished back into the shadows. But he didn’t. No, Zuma did not run. Instead, he picked up a fallen soldier’s pike, a crude weapon in his mighty hands, and he threw it. I watched it fly, a blur of iron and intent, and it struck a beast through the heart.   He fought then, as he had before, with that same grim purpose. And I knew, I knew in that moment that he was no monster. For he fought not out of bloodlust or fury but out of choice. A choice to stand with us, to draw the line in the sand and hold it. I was there beside him when the largest of them came, a beast as tall as two men, with scales like molten stone and a maw filled with jagged teeth. I was tired, my sword arm heavy, my breath ragged. But Zuma—he was tireless. He charged in, and I followed. Together, we faced it, man and dragonborn, side by side. My sword cut into its flesh, and Zuma’s claws ripped it apart. We fought until there was nothing left of it but blood and bone and the silence of the dead.   I learned something that day. I learned that the line between man and monster is not drawn by blood or by scales. It is drawn by the choices we make, by the battles we choose to fight, and the reasons we choose to fight them. Zuma showed us that a monster is not in the skin or the claws but in the heart. And sometimes, the true monsters are those who call themselves men.   That is what I saw. And that is what I will remember.