Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III

THE CRYSTAL DRAGON
I

He woke to find his world invaded. A shadowy plague in human form swarmed over the glittering, rocky landscape, tainting it by merely existing. He concentrated, allowing the crystalline chamber to show him more. A myriad collection of images related to his request filled the walls. He saw the three great ships, black as pitch, anchored off the shore and wondered how they could have come so far without him noting them. It was a troubling sign, an indication that he had slept deeper than he had desired.

Rather than contemplate it further, he studied the other reflections. One facet revealed a detailed image of some of the invaders and this he brought to the forefront. He hissed. They were familiar to him although the name by which they went did not come to him at first. In contrast to the sun-drenched region they now occupied, the figures wore armor the color of night, armor unadorned save for the helm. Atop each, a crest fashioned into the snarling visage of a wolf’s head leered down, a reflection in many ways of the men themselves. In the distance he could see the banners fluttering in the wind. The profile of the same wolf, surrounded by a field of deep crimson, watched over the army, for that was what it was.

The name came to him at last. As a people, they referred to themselves as the Aramites. Yet to those they had preyed upon for generation after generation, there was another, more apt title.

The wolf raiders.

Now they were here, in his domain. He released the image he had chosen and sought among the others. At first glance they seemed all the same, reflection upon reflection of dark-armored men infesting his kingdom. He hissed again, growing ever more frustrated. None of this aided him.

The desire to return to his slumber, to ignore the situation, grew stronger. He knew, though, that falling prey to such a tempting choice was to invite the downfall of all that was his. Despite the danger to his mind . . . to his very being . . . he had to stay awake. The wolf raiders were familiar enough to him that he knew they could not be left unattended.

“Aaaah . . .” There they were. The officers. The overall commander the Aramites termed Pack Leader was not there, but the rest of the jackals, his subordinates, were.

With the exception of the black and crimson cloaks they wore, there was little to mark them as anything other than common soldiers. In addition to the cloak, the Pack Leader would have a more elaborate helm and a single badge with the mark of the wolf upon it, but that was all. The Aramites cared little for insignias of rank otherwise. An officer was an officer, whatever his level, and that was all that mattered. Officers were meant to be obeyed in all things. Blind obedience was part of the wolf raider creed.

His first glance at them revealed nothing of significance and he was almost tempted to seek another reflection when the scene as a whole suddenly registered. The wolf raiders had a prisoner. He could not see who or what it was at first, for the ebony-garbed soldiers surrounded the hapless soul, as if fascinated by what they had captured. They poked at the unfortunate with short swords and talked among themselves.

There was one among them who did not laugh, but rather stood to the side, his round, young face a mask of boredom. He might have seemed entirely indifferent to the world around him if not for the hunger visible in his eyes. They darted back and forth, drinking in everything yet never resting on any object for more than a few moments. Interested despite himself, the watcher sought a reflection giving him a closer view of this one raider.

He was smaller of stature and unassuming at first glance, but there was that about him that made one wary. When the eyes of the young Aramite suddenly turned in his direction, the intensity with which they stared was so unsettling that the watcher almost thought he had been discovered. Then, the wolf raider returned his own attention to the captive, breaking the spell.

Chagrined, the master of the crystalline chamber followed the Aramite’s gaze and, for the first time, beheld the wolf raiders’ captive.

It was a Quel. Even bound and on his knees, he was nearly as tall as the humans. Gray netting enshrouded him from the top of his armored head to the ground, but enough was visible. The watcher marveled that any rope could hold the creature, especially a male as huge as this one. The Quel’s long, tapering snout had also been bound, either to put an end to his hooting or to prevent him from snapping off the fingers of any raider foolish enough to reach too close. The raiders had also been clever enough to pull their prisoner’s thick arms back so that the Quel could not make proper use of his lengthy claws. Designed to dig through the harsh soil of this land, the claws of the underground dweller would easily pass through the armor and flesh of an Aramite soldier without pause. Likely, the wolf raiders had already learned that fact the hard way, for it was doubtful that the capture had been an easy task. Even he respected the incredible strength behind those rending hooks.

Why a Quel? He pondered that. Had the Quel attacked the camp? Had they somehow simply caught this one unaware as he had surfaced? The latter seemed unlikely, considering how well the subterranean creatures knew this region, for they had been here longer than even he. It was possible that the raiders merely thought their prisoner a beast of some sort and not of a race older than their own. Humans could be presumptuous when it came to their place in the scheme of things.

He had no care himself for the fate of the Quel. The race stayed clear of his domain, despite the fact that it had meant abandoning what had once been a part of their mighty, subterranean city. To a Quel, nothing short of death would make one of them invade his realm. They feared not only him, but the power he controlled.

The power he controlled . . . For a moment the watcher forgot his own task and laughed silently at himself. If he controlled the power, then it controlled him just as much. Likely more. He could never be free of it, for to be free would be to lose himself forever.

His mind began to drift and the chamber, responding to his every thought, conscious or otherwise, allowed the multitude of images to fade, almost immediately to be replaced by one and one alone copied over and over in the facets of the crystalline walls. It was a single, rough-hewed face partly obscured by a helm and a beard, a face in many ways too akin to the visages of the wolf raiders. A warrior, a soldier obsessively obedient in character no matter what the cause.

It was too much. Roaring, he rose from his resting place and waved a huge, taloned hand at the array of faces. The images vanished as swiftly as they had materialized. In their place returned the encampment of the invaders. Slowly, the fear and anger dwindled, albeit not completely. Once more, the Quel and his captors took the stage. They were almost welcome now, for anything was better than lingering too much on a past so long dead it no longer seemed anything more than another dream.

When he gazed at the walls this time, however, he saw that all was not yet well. Something, in fact, was terribly wrong. The reflections wavered, twisted, making it seem as if the world beyond the chamber had become fluid. At first, he thought it was his own raging mind, but that was not the case. He had lived with the chamber for so long that he knew its ways, knew both its limitations and idiosyncrasies as well as he knew himself. Possibly better.

Whatever the cause, it came from without and he could not doubt that somehow its roots led back to those who had dared to think they could make his dominion into theirs.

Reaching out with his thoughts, he used the power of the chamber to seek out the source. The pictures wavered further and many of them altered as he narrowed his focus. The cause was near where the Quel was being held, but try as he might, it was impossible to focus exactly on the location he wanted. That, too, was peculiar; nothing ever long escaped the chamber’s intrusive ability.

Briefly, the milky vision of a tent surfaced in several of the facets of the glittering walls. Peering closer, the watcher struggled to strengthen the images. He was rewarded with new visions, just as murky as the first, of an armored man seated in the tent. There was a glimpse of a beast of some sort wrapped around his shoulders and another picture that indicated a second figure standing behind the first. Of the second all that could be said was that he was as tall as the young raider guarding the Quel had been short and his skin appeared to be, of all things, a vivid blue.

More! I must know more! Few times had the chamber, his sanctum, failed him so. That it did now only made the need to discover the truth even more essential to him. If the wolf raiders were the cause of this, then they were truly a threat to the fragile balance he had maintained for so long.

His talons scraped at the floor, gouging the already ravaged surface. His breathing grew rapid. It was a strain to have to concentrate so, especially without sufficient rest. Now more than ever, there was danger that he might lose himself, become as the others before him had become . . .

Almost he had the image, a thing held in one hand of the seated Aramite, likely the Pack Leader he had sought earlier. In his eagerness to see it, however, he allowed his control to slip ever so slightly. The vision wavered again . . . then became a meaningless blur.

“Curssssse you, you malevolent mirror!” he roared, forgetting himself and the danger such rages represented to him.

Flame licked the multiple images of the wolf raider camp as his frustration became action. His tail lashed out and struck the opposing wall, where more than a dozen identical Quel gazed up into the dark eyes of more than a dozen identical young officers, each of whom had removed a foot-long rod from his belt. A second burst of flame momentarily scorched the reflections of a score of soldiers searching among the crystal-encrusted rock, their purpose in doing so a mystery that, for the time, held no interest to the maddened watcher.

As his eyes reddened in fury and he prepared to lash out again, the wolf raiders once more faded away. For a single breath, the chamber of crystal turned opaque. Then, the dull gray walls gave way to a new reflection. The flame within him died an abrupt death. He stared, paralyzed, at the legion of maddened, reptilian visages. They, in turn, stared back, a gleaming array of monstrous heads all bearing the same expression of disbelief and horror that he did. The toothy maws were open wide and from each a forked tongue flickered in and out. Eyes narrow and inhuman burned into his head. Gemlike skin rippled with each harsh, halting breath. Leathery wings unfurled and furled.

He recoiled from the condemning images, but there was no escaping the fact that each and every reflection was of him.

Yessss . . . I am the masssster of the Legar Peninssssula, am I not? I am the monster men call the Crysssstal Dragon . . . He faced the reflections again, this time in defiance. But I am also myself and I shall always be!

Despite his defiant stance, however, he knew he had come much too close to succumbing, closer than he had in centuries. The past few years were much to blame. Nearly two decades before, he had been forced to spend himself rescuing the Dragonrealm from his fatalistic counterpart to the north, the unlamented Ice Dragon. Reversing the spell of chilling death that the mad drake had unleashed had taken too much. The rage had almost overtaken him then. He had not come as close as now to being lost, but he had come close.

The wolf raiders would not leave of their own will. Like the parasites they were, they would remain until they had either been eradicated or had wrung from the land all that they could. If they did not know of the Quel’s legacy yet, the Crystal Dragon had no doubt that they would before long . . . and that legacy would also lead them to him. The monarch of the Legar Peninsula understood all too well that even his presence would not deter men such as these. Their tenacity was almost reminiscent of another time, another people.

And so, in the end, I must fight . . . even should it mean a victory in which all I desire to save is lost! He tried to erase the repellent notion from his mind, but it had already embedded itself firmly within. There would be no escaping it. It would haunt him awake and asleep. Finally surrendering to that inevitable fact, the Dragon King settled down. Sleep, which he needed, was no longer really even an option for him. He could rest, but he could not afford the luxury of deep, enshrouding oblivion. The blight upon his realm had to be removed before it spread beyond his ability to control.

The Crystal Dragon shuddered at the thought of what he would be forced to do if that happened. There would be only one choice left to him then . . . and it might leave behind a legacy compared to which the devastation attempted by the Ice Dragon would seem a blessing.

Still, to him it would be worth the cost.