The Dragons

Epilogue

352 PC

The clans of Paladine’s dragons dispersed with the scattering of the Dark Queen’s armies and the final failure of Takhisis herself. Ariakas stood at the gate, but he died before he could witness his queen’s frustration-and the freeing of the Golden General. As the tower of Neraka collapsed, the dragons of good and evil took wing, once more flying free in the skies over Krynn, unbound by oath or pledge, by master or mistress.

Many of the metal dragons who had borne riders remained in the company of those humans, elves, or dwarves, aiding them in the strife that still raged across the face of Ansalon. Battles continued to rage in many places, but these were mere skirmishes by comparison to the vast campaigns of the war.

The brass dragons, led by Kirsah, resumed their social interaction with mankind. Many of the golds returned to their studies, and the coppers, vengeful until the end, hunted the evil wyrms throughout Ansalon. Some of the bronzes continued to fight as well, while others went back to their lairs beside the sea.

Two silver shapes flew side by side through the Khalkists, fighting chromatic dragons wherever they could find them, though for the most part the surviving wyrms of the Dark Queen took pains to avoid the massive, vengeful serpents of argent. Always the two flew slowly, one or the other carefully studying the ground.

After a long search, Dargentan and Darlant came around the shoulder of a smoking volcano to spot a mighty shape lying in the valley below. The two adult silvers settled beside the body of their great sire, still entangled as it was with the twisted remains of Tombfyre.

A tattooed figure emerged from concealment, coming forward to bow to the two mighty wyrms.

“I was waiting here, watching” said the wild elf brave, a warrior who bore the ram’s horn at his waist. “I knew you would come.”

Carefully the two silver dragons pulled their sire free, and with a spell of alteration, they rendered his body into that of a wild elf brave. It was a fitting tribute for now, and even more important than his appearance, it rendered the mighty ancient into a form that one of the dragons would be able to carry aloft.

“We shall bear him home,” Dargentan told the wild elf.

But that home would not be in the north, did not exist on the pastoral isles waiting off the coast of the continent. Without discussion, the two silver scions took wing, Dargentan carefully bearing the body of his sire in his mighty foreclaws. Their course took them over the plains, past the victorious armies of the Golden General.

For the first time in their thousand years of life, and the last time in the history of their mighty sire, they were going to their true home-home to the High Kharolis.