Edge of Destiny

BATTLE ON THE LAKE OF FIRE

Damned inconvenient," Zojja said a month later as she tromped behind Caithe and Snaff through deep jungle. "Why'd the Destroyer of Life have to rise so far from civilization?"

"Just be glad he did," Snaff said.

"But the mud," Zojja said, not for the first time. "And the bugs." She slapped her neck, and her hand came away red. The burst body of a gigantic mosquito was pasted to her palm. She shook the insect from her hand, then saw another giant mosquito land on Snaff's face. "You got one!"

Snaff went cross-eyed, staring at the gangly critter. "Look at that proboscis!" he said in genuine wonder. Just then, the bloodsucker rammed its snout right through Snaff's left nostril. He sneezed, a blast of air that shot through the proboscis, inflated the mosquito, and popped it. Snaff gazed cross-eyed at the limp thing, then dragged it from his face. "A design flaw, I'd call that."

From up ahead came a whistle.

Snaff's face brightened. "That would be Caithe. I wonder if she has found something."

The two asura pushed past ferns and fronds and entered a clearing. Caithe stood at its edge, looking down at a black rift in the ground. Sulfuric smoke rose in a long curtain from it.

"That looks like a way in," Snaff blurted.

Caithe held up a hand to signal that the two asura should stay still. Then she stalked soundlessly up to the rift, dropped to hands and knees, and stared within. After a few moments, she motioned her two comrades over.

The asura waddled toward her as quietly as possible, though their stubby legs stirred up the undergrowth and cracked sticks. Soon, they reached the brimstone-reeking rent, knelt beside it, and gazed within.

The jagged cleft descended into a dark cavern beneath the ground, south of Wildflame Caverns. As the asura stared, their eyes grew accustomed to the murk, and they could make out a red glow at the base of the cavern.

"What is that?" Snaff murmured.

In moments, it was obvious: A thousand feet down lay a huge lake of fire. At its center hulked a tormented volcano of ropy black stone. The caldera at its peak was filled with white-hot lava, and red stone poured down the sides. Gases hissed in gray jets from the slopes of the island, and the lake of fire boiled. The whole chamber rumbled like the belly of a titan.

"We're going to need a way to get down there," Caithe said.

Snaff nodded, writing on a pad of paper. He made a second bullet on his pad. "We'll also need some way to freeze the caldera. That's the source of all this lava."

"Isn't Master Klab working on a magic icebox?" Zojja asked.

Snaff sighed. "Klab. Yes. Magic icebox. He hasn't a romantic bone in his body. Here we are, trying to save Rata Sum from destroyers, and there he is, trying to keep food cold!"

"Still, we could use some of his arcane crystals," Zojja said.

Snaff scowled.

"Write it down. K-L-A-B."

Snaff dutifully scribbled. "Now, as to the enemy, there's neither hide nor hair."

"What do you mean? The chamber is full of enemies. Look!"

Snaff and Zojja peered back down into the rift and saw what Caithe meant: The lake of fire was boiling, yes, but not with gas bubbles. It was boiling with destroyers. They were being birthed from the lava-an army of them crawling onto the tortured sides of the island.

"I thought that's why you wanted to freeze the caldera," Caithe said.

"It was," Snaff assured. "Of course it was." He touched the tip of his stylus to his tongue and wrote down, Destroyers everywhere. He smiled up at the sylvari. "And I suspect those keen eyes of yours have clapped onto the Destroyer of Life itself?"

"Yes," Caithe said simply.

"Really?" Snaff blurted. He ahemed and regained his composure. "Show me."

"Right there." She pointed toward the caldera far below. "There, on the right edge. It's calling those creatures up out of the lake."

Snaff goggled for a moment into the darkness, then nodded sagely. "Very good, Caithe. Eir will be quite pleased with the reconnaissance we've gathered." He reached to smack his backside and fling away a bloody mosquito. "Now, let's get out of here."

Eir and Rytlock hoisted a massive metal chassis from the scrap heap and dragged it across the floor of Snaff's workshop. Steel skirled on stone.

Eir winced. "Dragging these things is like fingernails on slate."

"Or horns on the ceiling," Rytlock said.

The chassis shrieked all the way to the granite workbench where they laid it down.

"That should give him enough scrap for building," Rytlock said.

Eir swung her arms and cracked her back. "What do you think Snaff's design is worth? Fifty destroyers? A hundred?"

"You're fighting the battle already, aren't you?"

Eir smiled, brushing red hair back from her eyes. "Every day, I fight it over and over until one day I find that I've won. That day, I know the strategy I'll use."

"And this fight, coming up," Rytlock said, "on a lake of fire beneath the ground against an army of magma creatures-against the dragon champion of Primordus?"

"What about it?"

"You think we can win?"

"Ask me tomorrow."

A month of tomorrows had passed, and summer blazed over the Tarnished Coast. Caithe emerged from a thick forest of bamboo. She turned silvery eyes up toward a break in the forest canopy. A thin curtain of smoke rose there. She whistled and rushed ahead toward the nearby rift.

Behind her, a huge figure shoved through the bamboo and stepped out-Big Snaff, rebuilt and better than ever. He had a water cannon mounted above his left hand and rock drills inserted into his right. His chest was an armored cockpit in which Snaff hung on a harness, sending signals through a powerstone laurel. Big Snaff stepped forward, letting the bamboo snap back.

Luckily, little Zojja was too short to be hit in the face by it. Though Snaff had begun work on a new Big Zojja, she was far from complete. Instead, Zojja was controlling a group of golems that Snaff affectionately called the Wheels of Doom.

Fronds parted to allow seven great wheels of silver to roll placidly after Zojja, across the jungle floor.

"A good fire would clear this place," Rytlock snarled, stepping through the trammeled gap.

"Your solution for everything," Logan said as he followed.

Rytlock raised an eyebrow. "Haven't burned you down yet."

Behind the bickering pair came Eir, her face red from the sweltering march. "We'll be there shortly," she said as she flung sweat away from her brow.

Garm appeared at her side, looking equally withered by the heat. He was fitted out like a warhorse in fireproof metal bardings.

Eir fondly set her hand on his helmet. "I wish it'd be cooler below ground, but that's where the magma is."

Garm panted miserably.

Ahead, Caithe whistled.

"Sounds like she's found it," Eir said to Garm. "Let's catch up."

In a clearing ahead, Caithe gestured toward a black rift that rankled across the jungle floor. Big Snaff stepped aside as Zojja brought the Wheels of Doom through. The seven silvery wheels rolled one by one through the group and headed for the rift. The first of the great disks dropped into the crack, wedging half-buried. A second and third wheel rolled onto the rift and fell in behind the first. Soon, all seven of the special golems were bedded in a line down the crevice. Their metal frames began to hum, energy building within.

"You'll want to get back, Caithe!" Zojja shouted, her eyes half-lidded and fluttering.

Caithe looked up, blinked in realization, then bolted away from the disks.

A moment later, the wheels ignited with white blasts and red flames and a sound that drove the air from their lungs. The explosions tore the rift open. The ground came to pieces in blossoming fire and billowing ash. It slumped down. The floor of the jungle poured into the gap and became a great ramp of debris that descended into the cavern.

"Nice!" Rytlock said.

"If my calculations are correct, this ramp should lead to the volcanic island," Snaff said. "It also should have crushed about a hundred destroyers."

Eir smiled. "Time to crush more."

"Charge!" Snaff proclaimed, and his golem bolted into the roiling dust cloud.

The others followed close behind, running into that infernal realm.

They rushed down the ramp, leaving the green of the jungle floor and passing into the gray cloud. A thousand strides on, the dust cleared, and the crimson heat of the magma chamber flooded over them.

Now they could see: The ramp led across a bloodred sea of lava and ended on a volcanic island at its center. The ropy black stone was teeming with destroyers-their insectoid figures steaming as they cooled. Every moment, more of the monsters clambered up out of the magma pool.

"Be careful where you step," Logan advised as the group ran toward the island.

"And if you drop something," Rytlock added, "just let it go."

Eir laughed grimly. "The problem is, the lava isn't just in the flows. Some of it's walking around."

Ahead, destroyers were pouring onto the ramp. Black-backed creatures climbed up from the boiling sea, and red-backed creatures scuttled down from the volcano.

Eir shouted to Snaff. "Clear the way to the caldera! Let's see what steel and muscle can do against slag and stone!"

Big Snaff bounded down the ramp, unfolding the fingers of its left hand, which now were wide nozzles. Powerful jets of water erupted from them and struck the magma monsters, exploding into steam. The spray also hardened the beasts in midstep. They tumbled over, cracking, as more destroyers climbed over their backs. They, too, fell. Three rows, four rows, five-the destroyers formed a steaming henge before Big Snaff.

He arrived at a gallop, his metal feet coming down on destroyer backs and crushing them to the ground. He pounded the creatures flat and ran onward. His water cannons paved the way in destroyers, and his feet tamped down the road for the rest of the warriors.

Ahead, the ramp ended, and the slope of the volcano began. It swarmed with black-shelled destroyers.

Even as his left arm poured water on his foes, his right arm whirred with diamond-tipped drills. Big Snaff swung his grinding fist through a phalanx of magma monsters. It shattered their rocky hides and hurled apart their glowing guts. He rammed the drill down on lava heads, sending the bodies slumping.

Snaff gazed around at the carnage. His golem was delivering on his promise and more-perhaps a hundred destroyers were down, and the corridor to the island was open.

He was doing his job. Now it was up to the others to do theirs.

With twin axes, Eir smashed back destroyers. Blue powerstones embedded in the axe heads froze the monsters with one blow. A follow-up stroke shattered them like ice.

Garm meanwhile crashed into more of the magma monsters. The powerstones on his battle armor flashed blue as well, and he toppled the creatures like statues.

Rytlock wore powerstone gauntlets that ripped through the beasts, and Logan's hammer and Caithe's stiletto had likewise been enchanted.

Zojja, who had cast all these spells, brought up the rear, water spraying from her fingertips to hiss across any destroyers that rose behind them.

At the front, Rytlock roared, "Are we in range? Do you see it yet?"

"There!" shouted Caithe, pointing to the rim of the volcano high above.

The others looked to see a massive figure climb from the caldera and stand silhouetted against the vault of stone. The huge destroyer, covered in rocklike hide and steaming from magma joints, was amorphous and horrible, its body only just solidified from the lava sea where it lived. It seemed a gigantic mantis of stone.

Eir glanced at the molten lake all around them, at the shapeless figures swimming through it, heading for shore.

This was their general. This was a dragon champion, right arm to ancient Primordus.

And it was watching them.

"I'm going after the Destroyer of Life," Eir announced. "Guard me!"

Rytlock and Logan surged up before her, smashing destroyers.

Eir stepped back and slung her axes at her waist and lifted her bow. She pulled from her quiver an arrow with a blue powerstone head. Cold light gleamed from it, and frost drifted down in a glittering cascade. Eir nocked the shaft, aimed for the massive figure, and released.

The arrow soared like a comet, trailing ice crystals. It arced across the ceiling of the magma chamber and plunged to strike the Destroyer of Life in the chest.

The powerstone exploded, hurling a storm of ice off the massive figure. It did not fall, though, did not even flinch. In moments, the flurry ceased, and the blue stone went dark.

The Destroyer of Life batted the shaft away.

Gritting her teeth, Eir nocked three more blue-headed arrows and shot them into the superheated sky. They shrieked as they went and smashed side by side into the huge figure. More explosions, more spewing ice, but the Destroyer of Life yet again knocked the shafts away.

"Now what?" Rytlock roared, head-butting a destroyer.

Eir stepped back, gazing in dread at the dragon champion. Despite the searing heat, her face went white. "I don't know."