Dragondoom

CHAPTER 25

Early Summer, 3E1602

[This Year]

When at long last Black Kalgalath awakened from his fiery dreams, he found himself in his familiar lair. Dark basalt surrounded the great Wyrm: hot, some would say, but not a Fire-drake. Even so, the stone was warm to the touch, the air tinged with brimstone, for Kalgalath’s lair rested within the slopes of an aeons-dead firemountain. And far below churned the molten stone of a great burning caldera, its heat seeping up through the cracks raddling the fettering base of the towering rock cone.

Yet none of this occupied Black Kalgalath’s attention, for his first thought upon awakening was, Sleeth is dead.

The Dragon stirred, uncoiling his great bulk, gathering his mighty legs beneath him, and then he slid forward, ponderously slithering through the gaping crevices that shattered through the ebon stone. Up through the labyrinth he thrust, coming at last to the exit from his lair upon the outer mountain slopes.

He cast his senses forth, to discover that he was alone, and pressed forward into the light of the day, unfearful of the Sun, for Kalgalath was a Fire-drake, and Adon’s Ban held no sway o’er him. And as the great Dragon fetched out upon the high stone ledge, he shone ebon as the night, for he was scaled black-jet, some would say.

All about, the snow-clad peaks of the Grimwall Mountains burst upward, the crests still in winter’s icy grip, though late spring trod the plains below. The morning Sun cast glancing light among the crags, and high overhead, wisps of sulfurous vapor streamed over the lip of the hollowed cavity that gouged down into the peak, a great basalt cauldron forming the roof of Kalgalath’s lair within the dead firemountain.

The Drake flared his mighty pinions into the chill air, stretching them to the fullest and then folding them partway back as he slithered to the lip of the foreledge and stopped. Before him, a sheer wall plunged down the dark face of the mountain, driving into rocky slopes far below. Behind him, stone rose up toward the rim high above. Yet Kalgalath did not stop to admire the grandeur all about him; his mind was occupied with other thoughts.

Great muscles rippled and bunched, and with a roar that crashed over and again among the frozen crags and caused snow and rocks to avalanche down into the depths below, Black Kalgalath leapt into the air, immense leathery wings beating, driving him upward into the cerulean sky.

And when he was high above the clawing Grimwall, west he turned, west, vast dark pinions hammering, a massive wicked blackness striking toward the heart of Jord.