Dragon Alliance Dark Storm : Dark Storm by J. Michael Fluck Page B

man. His sharp features indicated that he had some elvish blood in his ancestry, but he had the intensity and drive of personality to match a dwarf. This was not surprising, for it was the dwarves who actually raised him, since his mother was killed by Morgathian raiders when he was seven. His father was Tridenth’s rider for many years until he was killed in a fight with the chromatics during the Great War.
    Bristurm spoke fluent dwarf and was the first dragonrider to coax them into venturing onto ships to provide protection when the Alliance Navy was unavailable. He wielded two weapons of power. His dragonstone axe was a weapon created with the help of his dwarf family of the Denar Mountain Province, whom he considered brothers, as did his fierce bronze dragon. The axe had a front main blade that had a unique inward curve. It was similar to Ordin’s thunder hammer in that Bristurm could throw it and control its flight to roughly a hundred yards. It struck with a lightning bolt shock on top of the tremendous slicing capability of the mithril blade and then returned like a boomerang. The shield it generated was of the same power as a holy sword’s. He also had a halberd-type weapon or a mithril-bladed spear/axe that could both stab in a thrust and slice like a long-handled axe. Both his weapons worked underwater as well.
    Bristurm was an intense but fiercely loyal dragonrider for the Alliance. He was a warrior through and through; he and his dragon eagerly waited for the word to be unleashed for battle. Mkel considered him a good friend, and they and their dragons’ conversations of politics and military matters would often go on for hours when they were together. Becknor and Therosvet did keep a close eye on him and Tridenth though, for they did have slight tendencies to be overly aggressive at times, and both harbored great anger toward the Morgathians and anything that had any sympathy for them and the chromatics.
    Denar Weir had a standard legion attached to it, and they were highly integrated with the dwarven armies in the southern chain of the Ferranor Mountains. The only difference the Denar legion had from Ferranor Weir’s was that they were a part of a combined weir and dwarf army group. It was a venture conceived by both Bristurm and the dwarf prince of the southern mountains. During the last Dragon War, it was noticed that the second largest force after the Alliance Army, the dwarves under King Drekar, were often unsynchronized with their human counterparts. This did not happen because of ill will, but rather a different style of fighting. Now the legions assigned to Ferranor, Denar, and Talinor Weirs, as well as Draden’s smaller contingent trained directly beside the dwarves. This enabled the dwarves to be more effectively integrated with the Alliance Army in the case of a massive call-up of forces. Denar also had a similar complement of dragons to Ferranor’s with six bronze dragons, seven copper, and seven brass.
    Of the coastal weirs, the copper dragons mostly patrolled the shorelines and a couple of miles out to sea. The brass dragons went out a little farther while the bronzes could travel great distances over open ocean, mostly because of their greater flying ability, swimming proficiency, and that fact that they could breathe underwater. The split in military commands from the regular Alliance legions and the weir legions was designed as a check and balance on the power of the central Alliance government. However, there was a great deal of cross leveling and cross assignment of officers and soldiers between the two commands to promote cooperation and standardization with them as well as developing mutual respect.
    Denar Weir itself was almost a southerly mirror image of Ferranor with the weir mountain fortress totally hollowed out and reinforced by the dwarves. It did differ in that it was actually an island weir that was situated in the middle of the shallow bay that stood in front of the port city