Dragondoom

CHAPTER 1

Year’s Long Night, 3E8

[Centuries Past]

Sleeth’s great yellow eyes slid open; behind crystalline membranes, long slitted pupils expanded wide in the ebon darkness. His great forked tongue flicked in and out, tasting the blackness of the cavern: Empty. Dire spume dripped from wicked fangs, and where it struck, froth sizzled and popped, and rock dissolved. Sleeth’s juices ran high, for he was ravenously hungry, yet this night he would not seek to fill his belly: he was after other prey.

Heaving his great bulk upward, Sleeth ponderously slid forward, long claws grasping stone, powerful legs propelling him toward the exit from the lair. Faint light shone ’round the bend before him, and Sleeth approached it with caution even though he knew that the glimmer came from Moon and stars, for Sleeth suffered the Ban, and to step into sunlight was to step unto Death.

Year’s Long Night had fallen, and Sleeth pressed his snout out into the clear, frigid, winter air. Around him, the ice-clad peaks of the bleak Gronfangs stabbed upward, as if trying to impale the glittering stars upon the jagged mountain crests. Sleeth glanced at the spangle above: night was but an hour old-more than enough time remained.

Slithering out from the den, Sleeth crossed the wide foreledge, fetching up against its precipitous lip. Stone fell sheer before him, plummeting down into the black depths far below. Silvery moonlight streamed through black pinnacles behind, pale beams splashing iridescently upon lapping scales-armored hide, virtually indestructible. Great muscles rippled and bunched, and with a roar that struck and clapped among the frozen crags, Sleeth leapt into the air, vast leathery pinions beating upward into the crystal sky, climbing toward the stars.

Circling, spiralling, up and up he flew, till he was high above the clawing peaks. And then he arrowed westward, into the angle of Gron, wings hammering across the night.

’Ware, Folk of Mithgar, a Dragon comes.