Edge of Destiny

BATTLE OF THE CRYSTAL DESERT

At the center of Glint's sanctuary, Big Snaff stood alone, so there was no one to hear the tinny shout of joy that came from Little Snaff: "She did it! Glint did it! She got the yoke on Kralkatorrik!"

The powerstone laurel on Snaff's head flashed, bathing the cockpit in an eerie glow. Those stones cast an even stranger light into Snaff's mind.

Everything went green-solid green, as if he was staring into an emerald. He could even see his own reflection in a facet of the stone. His face looked intent, squinting, trying to peer into the heart of the gem.

Snaff backed away.

This jewel had many facets, all reflecting his curious gaze.

But it wasn't a jewel. It was an eye-a huge compound eye.

The true eye of Kralkatorrik.

The dragon was staring at him, seeing him in a thousand facets. Its gaze was cold and calculating, inexpressibly cruel.

Then every reflection of Snaff in every facet began to crystallize.

"No!" Snaff yelled.

His flesh hardened, grew rigid and angular.

He was becoming a minion of the Elder Dragon!

Panicked, Snaff thrashed to get away, but the dragon saw all.

Snaff was dying.

Tap… tap… tap…!

What was that sound?

Tap, tap, tap- Was it the stony heart of the dragon, mesmerizing his mind with its monotonous beat?

"Did you call for me?"

His eyes flashed open, and he ripped the emerald laurel from his head. The cockpit was plunged into darkness. Through the windscreen, Snaff saw the concerned face of Big Zojja.

She crouched beside Big Snaff, tapping her finger on the glass. "Helloooooo? You in there?"

"Yes, I'm in here!" Snaff blurted. "Of course I'm in here. There's not an escape hatch." He blinked in sudden alarm. "Why isn't there an escape hatch?"

Big Zojja straightened up, and Little Zojja's voice rang from within. "I thought I heard you shout something, and I wanted to make sure everything was all right."

"I'm trying to wrestle a dragon's mind! Of course everything's not all right!"

"Don't get testy. I was just checking on you."

"Go guard." Snaff said, waving his hand vaguely toward the eastern colonnade. "I'll be safe. I'll be fine."

"Better be," she said, and Big Zojja pivoted away, her foot grinding grit into the floor.

Snaff watched that miracle in steel and silver-that genius apprentice of his-jog away through the sanctum. "You be safe, too."

And then Snaff closed his eyes and lifted the emerald laurel to his head and sought out the mind of the dragon.

It was not hard to find.

The dragon's eye was seeking him.

Its mind was in every facet.

As Big Zojja stood in the eastern colonnade, inside the cockpit, Little Zojja wondered if she or any of her friends would survive this day. They had fought dragon champions, yes, but never dragons, let alone Elder Dragons. And nobody in the history of history had ever tried to take hold of an Elder Dragon's mind.

But Snaff would succeed-wouldn't he?-if only so that he could brag about it afterward: "Did I ever tell you about the time I single-handedly wrestled Kralkatorrik to the ground? Or I should say, single-mindedly?" How annoying would that be?

Yet Zojja hoped against hope that Snaff would live to tell that tale-and that she would live to hear it.

The fact was, Snaff really was a real genius. No one could build golems the way he could. No one understood mind auras the way he did. He could think circles around anyone. That was what was so annoying and inspiring about him.

If anyone could take hold of an Elder Dragon's mind and drive it to the ground, Snaff could.

But not if those giant devourers reached him.

Ahead, a line of massive, two-tailed scorpions scuttled through the eastern gate and swarmed among fallen hunks of ceiling.

They'd never come close to her master.

Big Zojja's left hand splayed, and fire roared from her fingertips and engulfed a group of devourers, sizzling their joints until they couldn't move. It baked their innards until they burst like popcorn.

Pure genius. Snaff had stocked the water reservoirs with oil.

Big Zojja's right hand crashed into another batch of devourers. The rock drills cracked through stony carapace and ground the meat within.

Big Zojja cleared the hall, baking half of the monsters and grinding through the other half. In mere moments, she had cleansed the whole colonnade and stood, shiny and spectacular, in the sanctum's eastern entrance.

Let the dragon minions come. None would get past her.

Snaff stared at his reflection in the compound eye of the beast-stared so long that he passed through the reflection and found himself on the other side…

Within the dragon's mind.

It was like standing in the eye of a cyclone. All around, a great storm raged, tearing down the heavens and churning up the sands and whirling all in primordial chaos. Tortured coils of cloud mixed with dissolving seas of silt. The winds scoured away rock and rill, tree and blade, flesh and bone-and tossed them all in a crystalline tempest.

All things were fuel to that storm.

Everything was a feast to Kralkatorrik.

How does one fight a hurricane?

Snaff suddenly knew. The insight came from an offhand conversation he had had with Master Klab, the icebox genius. He was speaking about temperature differentials-how the air in the icebox was cold and dense, and the air in Rata Sum was hot and light, how opening the door of an icebox created a vortex of frost, where the dense, cold air sought to spiral into the light, warm air "like water swirling down a drain!" Klab had proclaimed this idea in his grating way, and Snaff had curled his nose and said that he had "gotten it."

But only now did he understand.

The center of every vortex is a great emptiness-a hollow longing. The storm tries to fill the emptiness, but the more it hungers, the deeper the emptiness becomes.

And Kralkatorrik's hunger was insatiable.

To draw the dragon, Snaff had to become the eye of the storm-to be what Kralkatorrik was not.

Where the dragon was fury, Snaff had to become bliss.

Where the dragon was rage, Snaff had to be delight.

Where the dragon was ancient and bloodthirsty and voracious, Snaff had to be new and altruistic and quite content, thank you very much.

Snaff thought of mathematics, the infinite beauty of numbers.

The dragon's mind whirled tighter around the intruder.

Snaff thought of the smile on Zojja's face when she invented a new ankle joint for her Big.

Around Snaff, the fury of the storm redoubled. The eye squeezed around this still center.

Snaff remembered the look of shock and betrayal on Klab's face when he became the director of pest control.

Enraged, the dragon sought this delighted mind, this maddening contentment. The eye of the dragon shifted, fixing on the ruined sanctuary far below.

That was where it lurked.

But not for long.

The minions of Kralkatorrik would root out this intruder.

At the south gate of Glint's sanctuary, a thousand-ton snake reared up, searching for Snaff.

"To get to him, you'll have to get past us," Rytlock growled. He leaned his crystalline lance toward the looming beast, daring it to attack.

The snake's gigantic head swayed from side to side. Blinking eyes the size of bucklers, the snake lunged past the lance and snapped down on the charr-or tried to. Rytlock leaped aside as the fangs buried themselves in sand.

Caithe meanwhile vaulted onto the creature's back and jammed its scales up and rammed her white-bladed stiletto into its spine.

The giant snake arched to snap at the sylvari, but she clung just out of reach. Each jolt only drove her dagger deeper into the beast's neck. It flailed back and forth upon the sands, trying to hurl its attacker away, but Caithe held on. At last, the snake slumped to the ground and twitched to stillness.

"Nicely done," Rytlock remarked as Caithe vaulted from the serpent's back.

"Like old times," Caithe said.

"Not like old times," Rytlock growled. "Logan's not here."

An enormous Gila monster charged the entryway. The charr rammed the lance into its neck. The crystalline spear cleaved through one side of the creature's jowl, spilling stony darts to the ground. The blade delved deeper until it bit through the spine, sending the huge lizard to its belly.

"Doesn't seem we need Logan," Caithe said.

Rytlock shot her an amazed look. "It should be the three of us guarding this gate, just like Eir planned. What happens when I go to attack the dragon? Can you hold this gate alone?"

Caithe stared unblinking at him. "I'll have to."

"Yeah, you will."

Just then, a giant spider rushed the two. Rytlock drove the lance into its mandibles and deep into its throat. Impaled though it was, the spider swarmed over Rytlock, knocking him to the ground and clutching him with spiny legs. Its swollen abdomen twitched as a dripping stinger slid forth.

Caithe stung first, plunging her dagger into the narrow joint that connected the spider's abdomen to its body. The spider shrieked. Caithe twisted the blade, cutting the abdomen free. It fell to the ground, its stinger gushing. The creature convulsed, and its legs seized up around Rytlock.

"Damnit!" Rytlock growled. Sohothin flared free of its stone scabbard and blazed through the tangle of legs. Rytlock climbed through the smoldering mess and strode to the front of the monster. He yanked out the crystalline lance. "Can't kill a bug. How's it going to kill a dragon?"

"It will," Caithe assured. "You have the strength."

"Yeah," Rytlock said as a pack of crystalline coyotes loped toward them. "The question is, does Snaff have the strength?"

If its minions could not reach the intruder, the dragon could.

"There it is!" shouted Eir, lifting her bow skyward.

The clouds burst open, and Kralkatorrik dropped out of them. Its wings reached from horizon to horizon, and its blazing eyes poured ravening power on the ground below.

Eir loosed three blood-stone arrows. They climbed the sky and smashed into the belly of the beast and lit up bright green. Three more shafts rose as the dragon plunged. The arrows exploded on the dragon's shoulders and back, embedding more powerstones. Three more. Six. Each bolt gave Snaff that much more hold on the dragon's mind.

But Kralkatorrik soared down toward Eir, opening its cavernous mouth.

"Get under cover!" Eir yelled to Garm. She glanced back at the sanctum, torn open from end to end, and then forward at a giant Gila monster. A blow from her mallet brought it down, and she dived beneath it. Garm crowded in beside her.

Plasma roared down from the cloud, and crystals erupted across the army. The dragon's first breath had turned these creatures to living stone, but this second breath made them dead monuments.

In hatred for all mortal flesh, Kralkatorrik destroyed the monsters it had made.

Scabrous backs bristled into heaps of stone. Heads shriveled to black nubs. Flesh melted, and creatures died, and the dragon winged on.

Eir and Garm crawled from beneath the stone beasts.

The world had been transformed. From the northern horizon to the place where Eir stood, the land had been blasted and fused and crystallized. Hundreds of minions of the great beast now stood as statues.

Eir hoped that Caithe and Rytlock and Zojja had found cover, but of course, the most important question was-had Snaff survived?

The dragon's ravening power had roared through the whole of the sanctum, crystallizing everything. Even Big Snaff had turned to stone.

But within the belly of the golem, Little Snaff hung unharmed. Gemstones flashed around his head.

Snaff was deep within the dragon's mind now. He had sunk past its consciousness and delved into the recesses of the lizard brain. This was the reptilian place beneath all that crystalline thought. It was a place of breath and blood, hunger and lust.

Here, Snaff was not just a maddening idea. He was an irresistible itch bedded deep in the spine of the beast.

Lungs, forget to breathe.

Heart, forget to beat.

Wings, fold.

Eyes, close.

The lizard brain battled back. It struggled to regain control.

Dragon, fall.

Eir drew more exploding arrows from her quiver, nocked them, and drew back her bow as Kralkatorrik approached for another pass.

But something was different this time. The dark center of the storm where it flew had begun to twist. Sand and wind and blackness knotted themselves around it in a churning ball. Lightning raked out from it and split the sky and lashed the ground. The crackling thunder gave way to an omnipresent roar.

Still, the wyrm turned, twisting the storm tighter and tighter around it. Here, a wing tip slashed through the black shroud; there, a claw raked free before being swallowed again. Golden beams of ravening light flashed all around that whirling core.

Then the Elder Dragon seemed to ignite. Fire roared out from it, the heat melting the sands, destroying the minions that raced along below.

Eir fell back into the archway, shielding herself.

Kralkatorrik shot by overhead, eating up the air. Its flaming form caused the stone walls of Glint's sanctuary to explode with heat.

A moment later, the burning dragon plunged toward the desert beyond.

Kralkatorrik fell like the fist of a god.

It smoked.

It roared.

It plunged into the sands.

A white-hot shock wave swept out, leveling any beast it struck. From the point of impact, a vast plume of sand hurled skyward, the particles catching fire as they flew. Still, the massive beast plowed through the ground, ripping a long furrow in the desert. Pyroclasts rolled out all around it. The world shuddered as the beast tore it open.

Then, at long last, the shaking stopped, and the fires flared out, and the cloud of debris lifted. It revealed a deep crater torn through the desert floor, a black and smoldering scar. At its farthest point thrashed an Elder Dragon. It was on its back, giant wings pounding the tortured ground, but it could not right itself, could not rise.

"Kralkatorrik is down!" shouted Eir. "Kralkatorrik is within reach!"

"I've got to go!" Rytlock said, lifting the crystalline lance.

"Then go!" Caithe replied. "The dragon has thinned the ranks for me."

Hundreds of dragon minions had been turned to stone, but dozens more clambered across the desert toward the south gate.

"You can't guard the gate alone!" Rytlock said.

Caithe's eyes blazed. "I have to! Go!"

The charr nodded and ran. In his claws, he carried the crystalline lance.

Before him, the glassy ground sloped away into a great black crater, wide and deep. Rytlock bounded into it and ran down the ragged rift. Crystals cracked beneath his claws as he went. Ahead, at the terminus of the great scar in the ground, lay the mountainous monster.

Kralkatorrik was upside down, thrashing with his breast bared.

Rytlock ran on, lifting the crystalline lance. The rift seemed impossibly long. He only hoped he could reach the dragon before the dragon's minions reached Caithe.

Caithe stood alone in the south gate as dozens of beasts came her way.

First was a crystalline coyote, enormous and whooping. Its rocklike teeth snapped at Caithe.

She feinted back and grasped one stony whisker and flung herself onto the coyote's back. She plunged her white-bladed stiletto into the creature's neck and twisted, ripping through its spine. The coyote's whoop devolved into a ragged gasp of pain, and it collapsed.

Caithe leaped free, only to see more of the dragon's minions pour past her. Horned lizards and giant rats and geckos and tarantulas and jackals and snakes all thundered by, heading for Big Snaff in the center of the sanctum.

Caithe rushed after the bounding horde. She jumped from beast to beast, ripping out their throats and pounding their skulls into the ground as she leaped away, squealing, but still the others ran on.

They converged on Big Snaff.

Snaff lay embedded in the deepest layers of the dragon's mind, choking off breath and pulse. The dragon could not find him here, could not root him out. It could not even right itself.

But its minions found Snaff elsewhere.

There came a crash-stone shattering-and the rumble of claws.

Claws dug, and jaws gibbered.

Snaff opened his eyes.

Big Snaff had toppled and shattered, and the monsters were on him.

Fangs snapped.

Muzzles bled.

Hungry. Angry. Insatiable.

Teeth clamped on Snaff. They bit through him. There was blunt pain and the sudden certainty that he was dying.

More teeth seized him.

Bones broke.

Breath burst through his wounds.

Blood foamed out.

Fangs met in his stomach.

Rytlock was galloping toward the downed dragon when it suddenly rolled over and righted itself. Its holocaustal eyes glared down the length of the crater at the running charr, a stone lance in his claws. Then Kralkatorrik spread massive wings and beat them against the air and rose from what should have been its grave.

"No!" roared Rytlock.

The dragon lifted easily away and climbed into the sky.

"No!" Rytlock bellowed, hurling the spear.

It arced up, cracked off the shoulder of the beast, bounding away. The lance fell, useless, in the crater.

Already, Kralkatorrik was out of reach. Its mile-long wings thrummed the air, blasting flat every creature on the desert below.

Rytlock Brimstone fell to his knees.

Winds buffeted.

The dragon retreated, unhearing, uncaring. Its wings boiled the clouds as it climbed. It ripped through them and rose, leaving only a troubled wake across the heavens.