Edge of Destiny

LAIR OF THE DRAGONSPAWN

Beneath a frigid blue sky, Eir led her wolf comrade and her metal allies. Steel feet crashed on glacial ice. Cogs ground and servos whined. Stone heads and silver skins reflected triangles of light across ice-choked peaks.

They marched up a valley with a glacier running through it. The center section was smooth like a frozen river, but the outer sections had cracked into countless parallel crevices. A thousand feet ahead, a wide cave slanted into the glacier. It didn't seem so much a cave as the mouth of a slain titan, giant icicles like fangs jutting all around it.

From Big Snaff, a metallic voice spoke. "Those look daunting."

"They're worse than you think," Eir replied. "Look within the cave."

Creatures paced there-five-hundred-pound wolves of ice. Hackles bristled across their shoulders, and claws cracked the ice beneath them. With eyes that glowed blue, they stared out at Eir and her comrades.

"They're corrupted wolves that once defended our homeland," Eir said. "Now they defend the despoiler."

Snaff's golem shuddered, taking a step back.

"What's wrong?" asked Zojja.

"There are more than wolves there."

Staring through the huge eyes of his golem, Snaff saw giant, white bats dropping from the ceiling of the cave. They spread icy wings and shrieked, echolocating their prey.

"Let's take them on!" Eir roared, charging.

Garm galloped beside her.

"Charge!" Snaff roared as the Bigs followed.

Eir and Garm reached the ice cave first and bounded within. Icy bats swarmed them, but her axes and his teeth ripped their wings away. Bats tumbled from the air, shattering on the ground.

The ice wolves came on-baying as they charged.

Eir turned toward the first and smashed her axe through its brow. Metal crashed on ice, broke into the creature's watery brain, and pulped it. The ice wolf fell at her feet.

"That felt good."

Another wolf leaped for Garm's throat. He dodged to one side, caught a foothold, and lunged back to fasten jaws on the icy neck. Garm bit down, and the whole head broke loose.

More ice wolves converged.

One clamped its jaws on Eir's forearm, ice skirling on her steel armor, and a second lunged for her foot. She kicked, but the wolf held on, and she staggered unsteadily back.

Meanwhile, two other wolves circled Garm. One darted in to bite his throat, but Garm leaped atop it and smashed it to the floor of the cave, shattering its head. Even as it slumped, though, the other clambered atop it and bounded on Garm, shoving him to the floor.

But then steel pounded ice. Big Zojja struck the wolf's head, and cracks raced through it. The head calved and cascaded down in a glittering shower.

"Great job!" shouted Snaff from within his golem, which was marching through the cave, kicking ice wolves to pieces with his massive feet.

Eir also kicked hard, breaking loose the jaw of the wolf that held her foot. Pivoting, she swung her axe against the creature that clutched her right forearm. The beast cracked and fell. Eir rained more blows on it until it shivered apart.

In moments, only the ice bats were left, dying like mosquitoes with each sweep of the golems' hands.

When the bats were gone, Big Snaff strode jauntily up to his comrades and flexed his metal fingers in satisfaction. "Better than anything Klab could invent."

"Better than anything the Dragonspawn's seen," Eir said with a laugh, kicking at the remains of an ice wolf. She gazed deeper into the cavern, seeing a throat of ice that descended into the glacier. "Let's take this battle below!" Eir strode away at the head of the group. "I wonder what lies ahead."

A few giant strides later, they saw. The ice cave descended through a water-smoothed throat into a deep, dark belly. Meltwaters had formed ropy lines of ice, and on that rumpled ice stood warriors.

Norn or once-norn, they were tall, garbed in armor and furs, bearing staffs and spears and swords. They might have been defenders of Hoelbrak except for the dead blue light that shone in their eyes.

"They are recently turned norn," Eir said. "There will be no joy in killing them."

The rimed norn, now icebrood, raised a deep-throated war cry and ran at the heroes.

Eir strode toward them and spread a gauntlet tipped in chisels.

Roaring, the enemy rushed her.

She raked fingers through the first one, spilling him on the floor, and kicked the chest of the second to flatten him and ran across him to the third, who received her axe in his head. Garm, too, tore through these warriors.

Killing them was like killing her kin.

The golems were especially deadly. The icebrood gushed beneath their feet.

It was a sickening triumph to break bones and burst veins. But Eir and her friends did their grim work. Garm shook them like rats. Snaff and Zojja bashed them with metal fists. And Eir ended them on her chisels.

When it was done, Eir and Garm and the golemic asura stood side by side, mantled in gore.

Snaff said quietly, "We killed them here so that they would not kill in Hoelbrak."

Eir gazed around the dark cave. "We didn't kill them. We ended them. The Dragonspawn killed them." She peered deeper into the ever-descending cave. Another chute slid down into total darkness. "We're very close. Already, we've destroyed his defenders. Now we're poised to strike at the Dragonspawn's heart and be rid of him forever."

With that, she strode across the bloodstained ice and launched herself over the edge of the chute. Garm bounded close behind.

There was a moment's pause as Big Snaff and Big Zojja looked at each other. Then Snaff ran forward and leaped over the edge, and his apprentice followed.

At first, it was just sliding-velocity and vertigo. Armor and metal joints skirled on shoulders of ice. Eir and Garm slalomed down into darkness, and Big Snaff and Big Zojja followed, spinning like tops. Their minds were spinning as well, with a fear that Zojja voiced for them all. "How will we get back?"

Before anyone could answer, the chute dumped them out in a deep place, so deep that the glacial ice above no longer glowed with sunlight. They skidded across the floor of that cavern and spun to a stop, leaving chaotic score marks.

Eir rose, followed by Garm, Big Snaff, and Big Zojja.

"Well, here we are," Eir said.

It was preternaturally cold-bone-shattering. Spell conduits hardened and hydraulic humors thickened. Webs of frost formed on steel skins.

"Bigs, what do you see?" Eir asked.

"The ceiling is a mass of icicles, gigantic icicles," Zojja said. "Thirty feet long, some of them."

Eir asked, "What other threats?"

"The floor is clear," reported Snaff. "No defenders. No wolves. No icebrood. Nothing."

"Let's march," Eir said. As she and Garm led the charge, the Bigs marched behind.

Big Snaff stiffened. "There's something approaching, dead ahead."

"Halt," Eir said.

They did, staring into the murk.

Out of the depthless dark, something emerged.

Its body was fashioned of living ice. It had a long head like a cattle skull, and its eyes glowed with eerie blue flame. The rest of it seemed skeletal as well, with an arching spine draped in white robes. A blue-gray vapor circulated among its icy ribs, forming the body of the creature. Gaunt arms lifted clawed fingers, and gaunt legs spread talons on the ice. The creature reached to its sword belt and drew out a blade that was so cold it roiled with frost.

"The Dragonspawn," Eir said.

"He's not a man at all," Zojja murmured.

"A tibia of ice. A fibula of frost." Snaff spoke in a hushed voice. "Skull of a minotaur. Tail of a drake."

"Sounds like a spell," Zojja said.

"That's what he is," Snaff said. "He's just like the Bigs-a marionette moved by a hidden mind!"

"He's just like me…," Zojja replied in a dreamy voice.

Eir looked at her. A faint blue glow pulsed in Big Zojja's eyes, matching the eyes of the Dragonspawn. "Look away!" Eir shouted, averting her gaze. "Don't look at it. Don't lock eyes with it. It's trying to freeze you."

With an effort of will, Big Zojja turned away from the glowing visage. The blue pulse faded from her eyes, and she shook herself. "How can we fight something we can't look at?"

The Dragonspawn's elongated head turned toward his foes. Eyes glowed bright blue. The beams splashed across Eir, Garm, Snaff, and Zojja. They shielded their eyes, but the monster was seeping into their minds.

"Look away!" Eir called. She turned, seeing that Big Snaff and Big Zojja already stood motionless. "No!"