Phanar took refuge behind a small hill of gold cups and necklaces and jewels and coins, coins, coins – he saw the others doing the same, finding spots that would be hard to douse in acid, tucked up against weird statues or outcroppings of rock, locations with multiple escape routes. Each prepared themselves in their own way for the changed situation – Anathta selected a new knife, the spring-loaded one on a chain; Ibbalat gesticulated madly with his head bowed, fingers raking the air to summon magical energies; Kani had her chin raised and eyes closed, lips murmuring silent words.
Above, the words were not silent.
“This is more like it,” Redgate called approvingly, staring across at the dragon and hovering at eye-level, as though he still felt they shared equal footing. His voice shook – only a little, but Phanar heard it. “I-I’d feared this trip a waste of my time.”
“My hoard, a waste?” The druid-dragon laughed on, unfolding and then refolding his wings – he would have no room to fly in here, unless he adjusted his stature. “You amuse me, little archmage.”
“It’s not only about the money, you must understand. It is an honour, to say that I spoke with – to say I slew an Ord.”
The Mundian was only hovering fifty feet from the dragon’s maw, well-within range of the acid breath –
Does he recognise how close to death he is? Phanar wondered, smiling a little at the thought.
“Many Ords have died these last moons,” Ylon growled, and took one step forward.
The huge clawed foot fell half on the boulders, half in the gold.
Stone cracked. Coins hissed. Redgate backed away.
“None so great,” the champion said in a tone of agreement.
“No… more… will… die.”
The next foreleg followed, and Phanar noticed that the barbed end-section of Ylon’s tail was swaying back and forth portentously.
Redgate had no response.
“Those whose lives were stolen you shall find for me,” the steel voice grated on. “Their bones await you. Your city will be theirs for the reaping, when the time comes and all is put right in the world once more.”
“Mund itself is on the scales, is it?” the champion asked at last.
Redgate sounded only faintly interested.
“Your entire fetid empire,” the dragon gnashed.
“Good, good. Well… I suppose I shall have to do something about that, then, shan’t I?”
Phanar’s mind had hardly been keeping up with this banter. There was the implication that Ord Ylon knew Redgate was coming all along, or at least for a significant time – which was bad enough on its own! – but in addition to that, the implication that the recovery of Nil Sorog’s skull meant more to the dragon-prince than as an act of respect for the mother of his spawn…
And then this – Redgate’s insulting bravado! The warrior drew a breath of surprise and awe. Surely now Ylon would lash out, the tail that had been twitching, preparing –
But no – the champion lashed out first.
A scream of crimson wind went blasting straight into the dragon’s face from beneath Redgate’s shadowy hood.
Ord Ylon endured it, and then started to laugh once more. After a few seconds, the sorcerer’s scream faltered, died away, the crimson cloud evaporating.
“But you, little archmage. You will be mine. I will keep you from death’s door, rest assured, and if you behave yourself I shall allow you some autonomy – a trace only, befitting one of your lowness. One day, I will let you go, release you from this plane – but not until I am finished with you.”
On the last word, the dragon started to draw in his breath.
Phanar could see the way Redgate was pulled in, fighting to fly away against the airflow in the gargantuan lair, all streaming like a gale into the thing’s gargantuan lungs.
And even as the monstrous druid spewed his acid he threw himself at the sorcerer.
At first the warrior had no idea how Redgate survived the deluge of acid – the horrid, air-burning substance came over the champion not like rain in a shower, but a true wall of the stuff, all at once, more akin to the waves crashing over the deck of the Dremmedine that night when the sea was magic-mad than anything else Phanar had ever witnessed –
Then the red shadow-armour gleamed green briefly, the humanoid shape visible there in the midst of the acid as the dragon finished retching. The half-vaporous, half-fluid stuff fell about Redgate, spattering the ground below him, dissolving more wealth than any man had ever possessed in a single instant.
The archmage’s eldritch plate appeared to absorb the stuff, before the shadows consumed him entirely and Phanar could no longer see the sorcerer.
Ord Ylon shouldered his way through the acid-storm completely heedless of its corrosion, letting the stuff splash over him, his feet disappearing into the burning gold, head twisting, casting about, tail whipping again –
A scream of annoyance burst from the tremendous lips, and then the dragon turned, fixing his eyes on Kani’s hiding spot.
Except they couldn’t hide from him. You couldn’t hide from arch-druids – well, maybe Redgate could, but he wasn’t really a human anymore. Kani was human. Kani wasn’t hiding – she was waiting, only waiting for her doom to come get her…
This will not be, Phanar thought, rising to a crouch and judging the distances, gripping his hammer-haft tightly in his right hand. Kani, come to me, before it’s too late! He cried out the thought inside his head, as though by yelling he could make her hear it.
The sucking breath. The insistent breeze, pulling the air from Phanar’s throat and into the dragon’s.
It’s too late.
He broke out of his hiding place, running towards her.
Only then did he remember her ring – with its speed-spell she could leave it till the last moment, ensure that Ord Ylon wasted his second go of the breath-weapon before departing from the safety of the statue she was leaning back against –
And now Phanar was here, out in the open, protected only by his own ring –
He looked about madly for somewhere to hide, recalling only that he had to keep moving, moving as quickly as possible to ensure his location was masked –
It didn’t matter. Ord Ylon’s breath caught in his throat, and the dragon choked.
The immense creature reared back, coiling in on himself and clawing at his own chest – the great green-bronze scales shifted at his command, iron-like flesh flowing aside to let him reach into his own ribcage –
Redgate was there in the void of the dragon’s torso, a shadow slipping through the druid’s innards. His gauntleted hands were currently reaching between the giant ribs, tearing chunks out of the throbbing, drumming heart beyond – the sorcerer was absorbing or phasing-through the acid sloshing about him as he worked. Now that the chest cavity was open, the putrid stuff went spraying out into the air like horrid fountains, erupting from any number of lacerated organs.
Even as Ord Ylon reached in he stabbed Redgate with a talon, piercing the sorcerer through – but the titanic blade of a claw found no purchase on the champion’s flesh. It was like a lance dipping into water; when the talon was pulled free, it left behind no effect in its target.
Still, the sorcerer ripped at the dragon’s vitals.
“Your anatomy is truly bizarre,” the sorcerer said conversationally. “I shall have to devote some time to the study of it, afterwards.”
“For you there will be no afterwards!” Ord Ylon howled. “Enough! This ends.”
Phanar reached Kani’s side and placed his hand on her shoulder, but without opening her eyes or ceasing her constant voiceless praying she just shrugged him away.
Then he heard it, before the scent of it even came to his nostrils, seconds before the first of them started pouring from the tunnel behind them and bounding across the gold.
The tide of dire wolves.
We should have used another invisibility spell, he thought ruefully. At least Ibb’s got his ring.
And the wolves were not alone in responding to their druidic master’s silent will. The cavern roof was suddenly alive, the darkness descending towards the dragon – there were not thousands, not millions, but billions of insects dropping from above. The angry swarms were so densely-packed with wasps and beetles and flies that they seemed to be singular, separate living entities, a dozen or so of the thick, tangible clouds plunging down like fat black worms at Ord Ylon. At the champion.
Phanar couldn’t watch what happened to Redgate. His own challenge had been made clear – the very same hounds whose teeth had closed upon his people’s flesh.
He would stand over the praying cleric, sell his life dearly in order to protect hers for as long as possible.
Ismethyl, come. Heed my appeal. Give me the grips of your swords.
The wolves came, and he looked out on them now without fear. This many of them, all at once – there was no way they would survive this. The realisation brought only serenity, forcing the emptiness on him whether he wanted it or not.
The withdrawal of the pack had been a trap, indeed; Ibbalat’s instincts, and his own, had been right after all. These soldiers were being held back in reserve for the perfect moment to strike, hundreds of them, untouched, fresh and ready for the fight.
Some were barking intelligible orders: whole regiments of the massive, snarling beasts were peeling away from the pack in practised wedges, each unit fanning out behind its howling leader. They did not move like wolves in the wild. They had been drilled like men, like a militia.
Somehow that made it even easier, and he ran out to meet them. If he tried to stop them too close to her, they’d both get crushed together. He might be able to buy her a few more seconds this way.
The leader is the biggest one, Phanar said to himself, studying them in the three or four seconds he had left before that very leader crashed into him – before they crashed into each other… Before Phanar was chewed, trampled under the waves of rancid furred flesh.
He studied their gait. He studied the looks in their eyes, the set of their jaws. The lengths of their bodies. Shapes of their skulls. The eye-sockets, ears.
There were too many of them to study their number.
He did study the cacophonous sound of the Ibbalat Special over on his left side, and the sharp rays of light splashing in at his surroundings from that direction. He studied the way he hoped Anathta was with Ibbalat, that they’d found their way together in these last moments, as he had done with Kani.
Yes, he studied that hope, and knew it was his way of saying goodbye.
He couldn’t look to his left, to check, make sure they were fighting side by side as they died. The dire wolf in front of him was opening its mouth, ten feet from him now, charging at full speed. The coins were singing under its paws.
He studied his need to protect Kani at all costs, and it did not remove him from the emptiness – it only exacerbated it. He’d heard tales of the champion coated in ice, a wizard legendary in Mund – he felt like that wizard must, covered in chills.
I swallowed my ghost.
The leader was eight feet away – he met its eyes again –
That wolf, six feet from him, did not fear him –
No, the wolf four feet from him thought it would consume his head in a single powerful bite –
He knew better.
The wolf two feet from him would consume the head of his hammer, pick-end first.
The weapon clove down through its huge leathery tongue and split the magical beast’s lower jaw open – with a twist of his wrist Phanar reversed the motion, letting the upswing tear through the roof of its maw, up through its brain and out the top of its skull.
It collapsed instantly but it was still being propelled forwards by its own momentum and that of its pack mates wedged behind it – but it didn’t matter; he leapt up on its shattered face even as it moved, onto its shoulders, assessing the two dire wolves immediately behind the dead leader, the exact positions of their heads.
He couldn’t waste time swinging left then right, taking two strikes to kill them, not when he was about to be borne under in less than a second – he had to stay on top – so he spun instead, trusting to the weight of his hammer when loosed in an arc to help him deliver the blows quickly-enough –
The pick entered the nostril of the first dire wolf and carried its scalp through the air, punching half its face into the back of the second wolf’s head.
Both of them ended up needing another blow to stop them struggling, but halting the momentum of the charge was his focus, and that much he’d achieved. It was their fault, really, for putting the biggest, scariest ones up front. He was on a mound, created from the bodies of the three meanest dire wolves in the pack. The charge faltered, and the next ones to crash into him he slew faster, striking their throats, temples… The more rapidly he moved, the more they missed him – the faster he ended the threat they posed.
Only once it was over did his mind look back, reflect on the carnage.
The hammer’s head stuck, buried inside one wolf’s brain.
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Flicking out the remaining anti-dragon daggers bound to his forearm in order to blind the next assailants.
Spattering them in blood and bone-chips.
Pain spreading up his thigh, jaws closing savagely about his leg.
The sound of the beast’s spine shattering as his under-swing missed its ear, hitting its neck instead, popping its head loose and killing it instantly.
The warmth of Wythyldwyn’s amber light emanating from his wound.
Bearing down on them, howling at them louder than they howled back.
It was only as the wolves became noticeably smaller that the battle-coldness began to dissipate, and he looked about in wonder – he’d gone through almost thirty of them, and these remaining, younger wolves had no anger left in their eyes – they looked terrified.
They weren’t used to this. Usually when they died, Ord Ylon was free to heal them, keep them in the fray. Now their master was occupied, and their leaders were dead, never to return.
He laughed, but couldn’t hear his own laughter over the strangled screaming.
Screams?
It wasn’t the wolves.
Suddenly realising that an ear-splitting shriek was coming from behind him, he back-flipped off the corpse-hill, racing towards Kani before he even knew what he was doing.
But he realised in less than a second that it wasn’t her – he’d done his job, protected her – she was still sitting there, deep in conversation with her goddess… Over on what was now his right side, Ibbalat and Anathta were aloft, flying to evade the jaws of the dire wolves pressing at them even as they laid waste to them with ranged attacks.
No, this was a voice he’d never heard scream, never thought to hear in such distress.
Redgate was lying before the dragon, rolling about on the treasure, the huge swarms of insects moving over him, through him. Ord Ylon was watching him, clawing at him experimentally.
The demonic armour didn’t appear to be protecting the sorcerer; the stinging things were pouring into the darkness covering his face, and he was writhing, his hands clenching and beating at the gold coins. His ghostly form was pulsing in and out, off and on again. If not for some hidden power extending his time on this plane, extending his suffering, the sorcerer would’ve long since departed for the shadowland.
His screams…
The world hangs in the balance, Phanar thought. What are our souls, before the dragon’s menace?
Ord Ylon might’ve been lying, but if there was even a chance he’d been telling the truth about his plans…
His mind finally made up, the warrior looked down at Kani, her enticing red curls hanging in her face, not disturbing her serene expression.
How many times, he’d longed to touch those curls, move them behind her ear – cup her face in his hands, bring his lips to hers –
“I am sorry, my Kani. To think, what you and I could have been…”
He knew the remaining dire wolves would close on her, devour her. He knew that even now they would be pouring around the bodies of their pack leaders behind him.
He knew it, and yet he had to sacrifice Kani to save Redgate. The emptiness afforded him that much sense, but the irony was not lost on him, abandoning a saint to rescue a murderer.
He charged towards the dying archmage, the insects, the behemoth of a dragon.
Air burned like fire in his lungs, and he breathed it deep, enjoying the pain it brought him, enjoying life for the final time. Gold coins beneath his boots granted poor purchase, yet he increased his speed with each footfall.
When he judged the distance was correct he halted suddenly, cried, “Azgalam!” aloud, and kicked the toe of his right boot against the heel of his left.
The effect was instantaneous.
The password triggered the magic coursing through his Boots of Unbelievable Leaping, instantly making them feel hot to the soles of his feet – it would be hours before they cooled down, their magic ready to be used once more.
Phanar had little doubt he would be dead long before that.
He sailed high into the air – fifty feet, a hundred, coming closer and closer to the stony ceiling – had he misjudged it, he might’ve ended up impaled there on the blade-like rocks protruding from the cavern’s roof –
He landed on Ord Ylon’s neck, the last effect of the boots’ spells absorbing the impact, and as he set down his feet he drove the pick-end of his hammer into the thin gap between the scales.
The paltriness of the damage he was able to cause to the behemoth was ludicrous. Still, even if he was like a gnat in comparison, the bite of his weapon was nonetheless painful to the druid – half of the dragon’s insects reacted to Phanar’s presence right away, swarms moving almost automatically in concert, rising up to smash into him, flick this gnat from their master’s flesh –
Ka-koom!
Phanar shielded his eyes just in time as one of Ibbalat’s fireballs crashed into the swarms, obliterating millions of the critters with a bright-orange explosion.
But more and more rose up, in even thicker swarms than before – some were beginning to get through, flying into Phanar’s eyes, his mouth – he smushed them against his skin by bashing his face into the greaves on his upper arms, growling, teeth clenched and lips firmly pressed together –
Desperately, the warrior twisted his hammer’s haft, widening the hole his pick-end put in the softer flesh between the dragon’s scales – he felt the grating of ensorcelled steel against bone, and now Ord Ylon hissed in pain.
At that very moment a crossbow-bolt, streaming silver fire, came flying unerringly out of nowhere – from his vantage point Phanar couldn’t tell where it landed, but given the trajectory and the dragon’s thrashing reaction he guessed it’d sunk into Ord Ylon’s eye.
The second set of insect-swarms missed Phanar, as his enemy entered a series of stomach-churning rolls. He did his best to maintain his position on the dragon’s neck as Ord Ylon coiled, writhed and screamed. The warrior’s world turned upside down, tipping him forwards and backwards, left and right – one moment the scales were crushing in on him, and then in the next the floor was rising up at him –
Still, he clung on. He had his wrist through the hammer’s thong; Ord Ylon wasn’t making him let go unless he tore Phanar’s arm clean off.
The dragon raged, and the warrior heard more arcane attacks landing –
Kani? Kani! Are you alive, Kani?
He couldn’t see, couldn’t check; he could only hold on, could only listen –
The buzzing in the air had died down – the wolves’ barking too –
Then suddenly the dragon froze, and Phanar found his footing once more, using his grip on the hammer to steady himself atop the curve of the dragon’s neck.
He could hear hacking laughter.
He peered down, casting about for Kani in the chaos, but he couldn’t see her –
Is she still behind the statue?
He couldn’t tell, and in front of the dragon –
Redgate was back on his feet, coughing in both pain and mirth – and now he stood something like twenty feet tall. For just a few moments the huge archmage’s very substance seemed to flicker violently: at first he appeared entirely black, a sorcerer-shaped void – then entirely red, then white – and then he simply vanished. At last, he resumed his previous crimson shadow-armour, and fell silent.
While this went on, all about the champion the insects were falling limply from the air, separated from their wings that drifted slowly after them. Behind Redgate, tall orange flames walled off the wolves who hadn’t yet fled the lair.
Ord Ylon was panting – not drawing in breath to spew acid, but actually panting – and he seemed to be listening to the sorcerer’s calm words, the wyrm’s entire body frozen in shock at this turn of events.
“I must confess that initially I had thought to do this thing without recourse to summons, shields,” Redgate proclaimed, a bit self-contemptuously – exactly to whom he was speaking was unclear, but Phanar got the impression it might’ve been him. “One must always strive to improve oneself, must one not? I regret that I have failed. No longer, however, am I disappointed. If a crude approach is required, who am I to gainsay fate? If I must break your spine to be done with you, so be it. There is, theoretically, no substance through which I cannot cut. While it lives. But you? I’m going to pull your head off.”
The archmage threw his arms wide, as if in greeting, crying out commands in some unknown tongue. An arc of dark colours sprung up out of nowhere in response, scarlet flames and purple fogs forming a circle around Ord Ylon –
Phanar looked down from his perch atop the dragon as eldritches came racing into the material dimension. Undead stepped forth in vast quantities, the purple mists pulsing again and again, disgorging more and more of the creatures; as his sister and Ibbalat had guessed, the orc tribes of the Obarsk Waste had been turned into Redgate’s thralls. Hundreds of corpse-pale, skull-decorated warriors, both male and female, hurled themselves at Ord Ylon. Their crude axes and daggers were no match for the great wyrm’s scales, but some of the fastest-moving orcs had eyes that glowed amethyst, burning far more fiercely than the others’, and these orc-wights used their clawed fingertips to gouge deeper wounds than their blades could avail.
Yet these were all distractions, meaningless marbles scattered at a foe’s feet to trip them, make them falter and stumble. It was the demons – the demons were what most seemed to cause the dragon pain. They were seemingly everywhere, not only on the ground but in the air, climbing over his body. Ord Ylon whipped left and right, raking through the fiends with his claws, crushing them to dust with heavy thumps of his tail, slicing at them with the tip.
But he was still breathing heavily, moving with the frantic jerkiness that characterised panic, and it was all Phanar could do to keep holding on, riding the insane waves of Ylon’s undulating body. Many of the hellspawn could not be raked, crushed, sliced. There were things that looked like men made out of mirrors, and when one of them was smashed two would rise, whole, from the pile of shards left behind. Other demons were simply made from hair or darkness, or even less-comprehensible substances. Ylon continually tried to stop a tendril-covered sphere of viscous yellow fluid, stamping on it over and over, but the ball went trundling on in spite of the huge claws shearing through its gelatinous body. It was throwing out its tendrils regardless, barbed hooks piercing the softer hide between the scales, burying themselves within the ancient flesh.
A moment arrived when the dragon’s head was low to the ground, chewing on the yellow jelly-demon, and Phanar took the opportunity to yank his pick free; he jumped down, rolling over his shoulder across the churning surface of the hoard. It was only then, turning back to look at Ord Ylon, that he recognised why the dragon-prince was so distraught.
Firstly, Anathta’s missile hadn’t just pierced his eye – it had destroyed it. Silver stuff was gouting forth from the blackened socket – it was entirely possible the bolt was in his brain.
He wasn’t healing it.
Probably worse, for the wyrm at least, the now-gigantic Redgate hadn’t just summoned his minions around the dragon – he’d summoned them all over him. Inside him.
The chest cavity was somehow still open, its edges burning with a greenish radiance; but inside the pit which contained the dragon’s heart was a whirling maelstrom of crimson light. A demon in white armour was standing there in the gap, boots and gauntlets planted steadily to keep the flesh parted while imps poured out of the stick-man behind him, and allowing a horde of vampires to feast on the druid’s tender innards.
Then the sorcerer himself lunged forwards through the air, bringing his big plated fists crashing down into Ord Ylon’s nose, taking advantage of the fact the dragon was distracted with the impossible-to-swallow demon he was chewing.
Each one of Redgate’s punches burst a scale, cracking it, releasing jets of putrid green pus – but that wasn’t why the wyrm started squealing, thrusting away, turning aside.
No, it wasn’t the strikes from the heavy metal gloves – it was the sorcerer’s other weaponry doing the damage. Phanar saw the sprays of acid-blood that came from the dragon’s throat where Redgate’s invisible razors cut into it. Over and over, new cuts were appearing, the fluid gushing out to consume the sorcerer’s troops – but neither Ord Ylon nor Redgate paid them any heed as the things screamed and smoked away into oblivion. The two impossibly-powerful entities were focussing on their contest.
The dragon twisted, contorting, pressing himself up against the cavern walls in a futile attempt to rid himself of the demons infesting his body, shattering tons of stone in the process – the sorcerer pursued, hurtling around and reversing direction effortlessly, as though he had attached himself by a cord to Ylon’s jaw. All the while, the unseen weapons sawed into his opponent’s neck, again and again.
Then without warning the acid-blood stopped flowing, and Ord Ylon suddenly leapt for the ledge that would lead him out of his lair, up past the kobold-city and out into the chill mountain air.
He no longer bears Redgate ill-will? He seeks to flee, not fight?
It didn’t matter – Ylon’s tremendous reach exceeded his tremendous grasp and, borne under by hundreds, perhaps thousands of the sorcerer’s minions digging into his vitals, the dragon collapsed, a single claw resting on the ledge. His screaming ceased.
Redgate’s cold laughter replaced it, filling the air, and Phanar gritted his teeth against the sound of it, worse by far than the dragon’s wailing.
“Come, now,” the sorcerer said gloatingly, hovering above the wyrm’s stuporous head. “Are you not in truth an Ord? Is it perhaps conceivable that you stole your wealth, fr-“
The dragon raised his face and roared acid at the sorcerer, but it was a negligible amount – much of his stores of the stuff had long-since been expended, spreading all around in pools, continuing to eat the stone and dissolve the treasure. The miniscule amount that splashed on the sorcerer hit an invisible barrier and turned into smoke.
And, at the resurgence of ill-will, another series of devastating gashes appeared in the wyrm’s throat.
The severely-wounded dragon could take no more – Phanar could see it in his posture, the desperation of his movements as he put forth a titanic effort, teeth gritted against the pain of the things crawling through his insides, and wrenched his vast belly up onto the ledge. Tail dragging, wings brushing the walls, he scrambled for the safety of the outdoors.
“This is most unsporting,” the titanic Redgate commented.
The wicked wings came shooting from his shoulders, giving him the wingspan of a dire vulture – then the sorcerer gave chase.
As soon as Redgate departed, his remaining summons all charged after him as one, flying and leaping and climbing up the wall to reach the ledge.
Then within two seconds there was a great cracking sound, a thunderous thudding coming from up the incline, shaking the ground, making the coins stir and hiss – but Phanar paid it no heed. He had already fixed his purpose.
“Kani!” the warrior bellowed, spinning on his heel and sprinting towards the last spot he’d seen her in, heedless of the gold moving beneath his feet – in his mind’s eye he could see the cleric lying there, spread-eagled on the gold in a puddle of her own blood, half-eaten, white-skinned… But his mind’s eye was a traitor, it could lie, it was designed only to look into the empty spaces –
He sensed the calmness entering his body even before he rounded the corner of the statue, then felt the smile spread on his lips when he saw her.
She was still sitting there, still praying, while Ord Ylon was being destroyed somewhere just out of sight.
“Kani,” he gasped. Then, raising his voice over the din: “Kani, please…”
He didn’t want to disturb her, but he couldn’t let these seconds vanish into the emptiness. Not without his voice. Not without his affirmation. His words had to be birthed before they could be allowed to die.
Yet throughout the battle – and even now, while this apocalyptic tumult pounded at the cavern walls, the dragon and champion locked in deadly combat upon the slope – she’d been sitting here in a reverie, the Shield of Wythyldwyn tossed aside and her mace across her lap –
Her mace?
Phanar looked down at the weapon, and his eyes widened in surprise. Where before it had been a thing of steely appearance, now it was blue and gold, the colours banded like a snake all up the length of the shaft and the heavy, spiky head.
The heavy, spiky head that no longer looked like it’d been melted down to slag.
What in the name of Celestium…?
He looked up as Anathta and Ibbalat arrived, crossing the treasure-lake with faces flushed by exertion.
“If I’d known she could do that,” his sister shouted, eyeing the mace, “I’d have given her Toothdrill when it got all drillified.”
Phanar glared at her. “Not now, Ana!” He winced as another crack resounded down from the slope, shaking the whole lair.
“Oh, who cares, brother?” she yelled. “We’re dead. Why not enjoy our last seconds?”
She turned, threw her arms around Ibbalat’s neck, and kissed the mage forcefully.
It took Ibb a few moments to come to terms with what was happening, to settle his arms around her.
Phanar couldn’t help but chuckle a little, then another resounding crash rocked the chamber.
The rogue and mage broke apart, and she turned to face him.
“Since when do you call me Ana, anyway?” she asked.
“You two should run!” he cried, looking between Kani and his sister. “It is you he wants most of all.”
Ibbalat, still looking stunned from the impromptu kiss, was nodding wordlessly.
“But you know we won’t,” Anathta remarked. “Right, Kani?”
“Right.”
The cleric’s reply shocked all of them; the battle between Redgate and Ord Ylon was still continuing and it was so loud that at first Phanar thought his senses had to be deceiving him…
But no. Kani was looking at him without the faintest hint of blushing on her cheeks, cool determination in her eyes as she rose to her feet.
“We’re going nowhere,” the cleric went on, as though he needed clarification as to her meaning. She spoke in a steadfast voice, filled with holy fervour. “The real battle’s still ahead.”
Her words heralded a cataclysm.
At first they just shrank down, throwing their arms or hands over their ears to protect their hearing, trying to hold their brains steady while the whole world seemed to shake.
It didn’t take long – perhaps thirty seconds.
A vomit of rubble poured down over the ledge, carrying the limp-limbed wyrm on its wave then sliding him over the rim; he crashed down into the lair, landing unceremoniously on his back atop a pile of gems. The eldritches in his flesh were gone, but his legs and tail were flaccid, his head barely moving – the burning eye was still aflame, while the other was closed. He was lying on his wings, trapping them in what looked to be a painful manner beneath his colossal weight, and for the first time the dragon-prince didn’t look threatening. He just looked like an overgrown, dying lizard.
Huge chunks of stone and gravel showered down on his titanic serpentine body, and he didn’t react.
But Phanar could not pity him, in spite of the evil mage who came drifting down after him. He could, however, pity the kobolds whose annihilated bodies protruded in pieces from the rubble – a scaly tail here, a furred hand there…
“I’m afraid there’ll be no escaping me, Ord,” the sorcerer murmured. His size was such that Phanar could make out his softly-spoken words, even from here. “Not that way, at least.”
He destroyed the city?
But even as Redgate spoke the dragon seemed to put on a final burst of energy, wriggling over, burying his head in his hoard beneath him, attempting with sinuous motions to dive below the surface of the treasure –
Redgate stepped down from the ledge – the sorcerer had grown again in stature, standing taller than a fire-giant – and grabbed Ylon’s twisting tail.
The huge, shadow-red gauntlets gripped the dragon tight, the crimson armour clanking as Redgate braced his feet in the boulders and heaved back.
Phanar watched with awed, terrified fascination as the dragon was dragged, bodily hauled back out of the gold.
He watched, as those gauntlets plunged down into the trembling, steely flesh, then he could watch no longer. He closed his eyes, seeking the emptiness.
But he couldn’t help but listen, the sound reverberating across the lair, the dreadful cr-cr-cr-cr-crack, like an ancient tree being splintered in two.
The ripping noise, the soft spatter of acid against rock walls.
Redgate tore off Ord Ylon’s head, and it was all over.
It was beginning.
* * *