The Dragons

Chapter 25

2693 PC

Deathfyre turned into a reckless dive, shocked at the speed with which several of the young wyrmlings were fleeing the deep valley. He had expected the creatures to fight to the death and had not anticipated the desperate flight that drove them toward the high ridges. Clearly the cowardly serpents intended to escape.

Now the powerful red twisted in the air, seeing that many of the metal dragons had in fact remained to do battle. Other wyrms swept above, and he saw a blue dragon shriek and writhe in the clutch of several silvers and a brass. A red pulled through the melee, rearing its head to blast a desperately maneuvering bronze from the sky. Recovering his own equilibrium, stabilizing himself on his powerful wings, Deathfyre curved through the air, still looking for victims.

The memory of Crematia’s death was a fire within him, a driving force for vengeance. Her loss was not a cause for grief-there was a clear advantage that came to Deathfyre, heir to the Dark Queen’s empire-but it was a wrong that called for revenge.

Deathfyre wheeled to pursue the fleeing dragons, but he saw several silver shapes slashing toward him, and his instincts compelled him to protect himself. Though all of them were small, they flew with deadly purpose.

Twisting like a corkscrew in the air, Deathfyre whipped his neck toward the enemy attackers. Jaws gaping, he belched a cloud of roaring flame, a billowing fireball of death that wrapped two of the silver shapes in its killing embrace.

Pushing down with hard strokes of his wings, Deathfyre fought for altitude, trying to avoid the scorched bodies that would tumble out of the dissipating ball of fire-but there were no bodies! The remaining silver serpent curled around, and the red barely pulled his wing out of the way of a vicious blast of frost. He saw that this young silver was a cripple, that its rear legs were weak and shriveled, but that did nothing to tame the deadliness of its breath weapon. Deathfyre tumbled backward, out of control, with a burning pain of ice freezing his tail.

At the same time, he knew how the crippled silver had eluded him. It had been the simple spell of the mirror image, an enchantment Deathfyre himself had known since his first hundred winters. Yet when it was used against him, the simple trick had fooled him completely. There had been only one silver dragon, not three, and his lethal fire had been wasted against a pair of magical impostors!

Infuriated, he swept after the silver as that gleaming serpent flew close to the ground, carving a wide arc back toward the battle raging in the skies. Some of the wyrmlings had escaped, aided by magical speed, but most of the brood had remained to fight. This silver newt was small, little more than half of Deathfyre’s awesome length, but he proved to be a surprisingly fast flier. The withering of his body clearly did not extend to his wings. Straining to the limit, Deathfyre found that he could close the distance only gradually. Finally he breathed, spewing a hellish cloud of fire that surrounded the impudent silver for a searing, fatal instant. The red dragon was already wheeling away as the wrinkled, charred carcass tumbled from the sky.

Clouds of dragons whirled through the sky overhead. A young bronze tumbled, horribly slashed, while blues and blacks caught a pair of coppers in a deadly crossfire of acid and lightning. Fire and smoke drifted through the air, and flashes of flame and clouds of green and noxious gas added a surreal beauty to the scene.

And still more chromatic dragons winged toward the fight, with vengeful challenges ringing through the air before them. Several greens dived from the heights, sweeping toward the smoldering patch of sky, and a wedge of whites, laboring hard to gain altitude, winged speedily closer, their pale, serpentine forms standing out clearly against the mountainous landscape to the north.

Another metal dragon, this one a golden female, plunged downward, writhing and shrieking in pain. As the pathetic creature tumbled past, Deathfyre saw that her entire face had been burned away by a blast of black dragon acid. Another gold, this one a larger male, roared in and torched one of the blacks with a breath of fireball, but then the gilded wyrm was forced to flee for his life as the other blacks whirled about in furious pursuit.

Then suddenly the skies were empty of Paladine’s dragons. A few of the metal serpents had buzzed over the high ridges, scattering away from the mountain valley. They fled in full panic, knowing their clan had been decimated, and for now the chromatic dragons let them go.

Looking down, Deathfyre saw dragons of every color lying in the ghastly stillness of death. The battle had littered the valley floor with corpses, great shapes scattered like bright scars on the ground itself. Here a blue wing twitched, or there a copper tail lashed back and forth, but for the most part the serpents on the valley floor were utterly and irrevocably slain. Even from this height, the awful wounds inflicted by breath and fang and claw were clearly visible, leaving great rends in the scaly bodies.

And central to this killing ground was the mighty golden serpent, Aurican. It pleased Deathfyre to know that not only had the mighty patriarch perished, but also that fewer than a dozen of the metal dragons had escaped the carnage. The few that had fled were no threat for now. They would be hunted down and killed at his leisure.

His mother’s teachings, the words of Takhisis herself, came to Deathfyre in a clear flash: Find your strongest enemy and kill him…

Now, with the dragons of Paladine defeated, he knew where that enemy lay. The power of magic still screened Silvanost, and it was time to reduce that stronghold.

There would be time for the metal wyrmlings later.