Edge of Destiny

DRAGONRISE

Tyria should have known. The signs of the dragonrise were everywhere:

The earthquake that shook Rata Sum.

The tidal wave that carried ships into the streets of Lion's Arch.

The geysers that erupted in the tundra beyond Hoelbrak.

The pall that hung over the Black Citadel.

Tyria had been wracked by such terrible birth pangs before.

The people should have guessed that a dragon was rising.

Ferroc Torchtail's hackles rose. He didn't like the look of that mountain-how it hulked there-spiky, scaly, massive… unnatural. He certainly didn't like that his warband was marching toward it. He had a feeling of doom.

The last time he'd felt this way, a landslide had buried his centurion.

It had been a year earlier, when Centurion Korrak Blacksnout was marching his legion through a narrow defile in the Blazeridge Mountains. Ferroc was posted in the rear, the position of ignominy-far from the initial charge and the first kill and (as it turned out) the landslide that crushed the leaders. Blacksnout's decapitated body was found on the other side of the landslide.

In shame, Ferroc and the rest of his legion had returned to the Black Citadel. For months, they'd gotten the worst assignments.

This one was no different: go investigate a strange mountain.

Locals said the mountain was moving. They said it grew every night. It shook, it rumbled, it sent down landslides.

Oh, good-landslides.

Land was sliding even now. Boulders rolled end over end down the slope and leaped as their edges caught the mountainside. They trailed dust behind them.

Ferroc's warband was marching to fight what-boulders?

"Why are we still heading toward it?" Ferroc wondered aloud.

Legionnaire Kulbrok Torchfist sneered over his shoulder, "To find out!"

"Find out what?" Ferroc asked. "How it feels to be crushed by a twelve-ton boulder?"

"To find out why the mountain is rumbling."

"Why do mountains rumble?" Ferroc mused, ticking off possibilities on his claws. "Maybe they're volcanoes. Maybe they're fault lines. These are reasons to march away."

Kulbrok cast a piercing look at him. "We're charr. We march toward such things."

Ferroc nodded. "Yessir." But he let his pace slow ever so slightly, allowing Kulbrok to stride out ahead and the other charr to sift past. He was going to end up in the rear of the column again. The place of ignominy.

The place of survival.

"Aha! There's something to fight!" shouted Kulbrok, a good fifty yards ahead by now. He lifted a great sword and pointed toward a crack in the side of the mountain.

The crack was bleeding-not blood, but creatures. A big, fat Gila monster waddled from the crack, only to get bigger as it emerged. Now the size of a crocodile, now the size of a marmox, now the size of an elephant-why was it getting bigger? And beside the giant Gila monster scuttled a horned lizard. It, too, was growing. Its scabrous skin swelled outward, and its eerie face grew larger and stranger, and its blood-spitting eyes became crystal-shooting eyes.

They were no longer creatures of skin and scale. They now were crystalline monsters. Jagged spikes jutted out all around their heads and all down their backs and sprouted from their gigantic tails.

"Does anybody else see those things?" Ferroc asked.

"Charge!" Kulbrok replied.

The centurion bolted ahead, followed by his lead warband. Swords darted up and down in their pumping fists.

Ahead, the horned lizard reared up. Crystals shot from its eyes and hailed across Kulbrok and his warband. Many fell, but others ran on. Kulbrok crashed against the raised muzzle of the beast and fell beneath it. Throat spikes gored him. A few warriors rammed swords into the horned lizard, but the blades clanged off its stony flesh. The lizard whipped its spiked head from side to side, impaling the charr.

"Didn't anyone else see that thing?" Ferroc repeated emptily.

Other charr attacked the giant Gila monster-with a worse outcome. It waited for them to strike, ducked back, then lunged to snap them up like so many beetles. Poisonous teeth clamped down on bodies and bones, armor and weapons. With horrid gulps, the giant Gila monster swallowed warrior after warrior.

"Charge!" shouted Legionnaire Longtooth, leading another warband toward the monsters.

But they no longer faced just a horned lizard and a Gila monster. Now vast snakes emerged from the cleft-king rattlers wider than a charr and longer than a warband. They, too, had rocklike bodies and bad tempers.

They ate Longtooth and his soldiers.

Ferroc had slowed to a halt, marching in place. At least he wasn't backing up-a fact that changed when he realized that giant horned lizards and Gila monsters and rattlesnakes were nowhere near as terrifying as whatever would create giant horned lizards and Gila monsters and rattlesnakes.

Who cared what came out of the cleft? What was coming out of the mountain?

The witnesses had been right. The mountain was moving, shifting, growing.

One of the foothills shuddered. Gravel and sand sifted down its side, revealing rows of horns. Beneath one curve-a curve that looked suspiciously like a giant eyebrow-opened something that looked suspiciously like a giant eye. More rocks shifted, and another eye appeared, surrounded by horns.

"Do you see what that thing is?" Ferroc shouted.

"Attack!" commanded another charr, charging up the hill. A dozen warriors followed.

Before they reached the thing, an enormous snout shuddered up out of the mountainside and bared great fangs. Fire bloomed out of the mouth, engulfing the charr.

As the horrible breath poured over them, they solidified like statues.

By all rights, the charr warriors should have died, but they were still moving-twisting, becoming something different. Fur became scales, hackles became spines, and everything seemed made of crystal. They no longer looked like charr, but like… giant stone monsters. And they turned around and stalked toward the remaining warbands.

Ferroc was unabashedly backing away now. Whatever was happening on this strange mountain, it was beyond him.

Then the titanic head broke free of the mountainside and rose on a muscular neck. The neck looked as if it would stretch from one end of the Black Citadel to the other. It was rooted in powerful shoulders of stone, and wing nubs, and actual wings. With an earthquake, the gigantic wings cracked free of the encasing ground and rose ponderously into the air. Those wings stretched to the unseeable distance on either side of the mountain.

They blocked out the sun.

Across the ridge, spikes of stone flexed slowly.

Rocks sloughed from scaly ribs.

Talons cracked out of bedrock.

The dragon rose from the mountain.

It was the biggest living thing Ferroc had ever seen. It was the mountain-a thousand feet high with a wingspan that shadowed the world.

The dragon inhaled its first breath in millennia and then released it in a titanic shriek.

The sound crossed all registers, pounding Ferroc's chest and hurling him back. He hit the ground, his ears bleeding. He tried to scream, but no air was left in him.

The sky had no room for another scream.

Then it all went silent.

Ferroc staggered to his feet and looked up.

The dragon was spreading its crystalline wings. They became the sky. Sinews flexed, and bones folded, and miles of wing gathered the air. A sandstorm roared out. It struck Ferroc and hurled him across the wastelands. He crashed to the ground-how strange not to hear the sound of it!-and felt his bones break.

He was going to die.

An Elder Dragon-a creature of legend that Ferroc had never thought to see with his own eyes-was rising above him.

Another gale.

The thing must have lifted into the air. A thousand tons of dragon was hurling down a million tons of air.

Ferroc Torchtail crawled across the ground. His broken limbs ached, but he struggled to find cover.

Then the dragon's breath flooded over him.

He was transfixed.

Transformed.

Hackles melted to spines, hair to scales.

Legs crystallized.

Ferroc was becoming something new. The dragon's kiln-hot breath was hardening fear into fury and turning him into a giant.

Then the golden gale moved on, pouring on new ground and baking it and transforming it. The dragon scudded away like a thunderhead.

Ferroc stood in the burned and branded wake of the beast, and with his last conscious thought, he hungered to serve Kralkatorrik.

Chief Kronon and his ogre warriors and their hyenas had penetrated deep into southwest Ascalon, only half a day's march from Ebonhawke. They had destroyed three human scouting parties already and planned to kill plenty more before storming the fortress. Charr had already laid siege there, but Kronon and his tribal allies would charge across their backs and take the walls of Ebonhawke.

The life of Chiefling Ygor was worth a hundred charr and a thousand humans.

What was this, though? A black cloud rolled across the sky, spitting lightning. What kind of storm was this, with eyes that glowed like coals?

A golden thunderstroke broke across Chief Kronon and his warriors.

It bathed them. It broiled them. It turned their muscles to crystals and their bones to stone.

He felt that he was dying.

He felt that he was solidifying-a pupa becoming a wasp.

He grew twice his height before his hide hardened. Then his bones warped to basalt. His hair elongated into stony spikes.

When the thunderstroke ceased, it left Chief Kronon and his army rocklike and massive, more powerful than ever. It left their hyenas like lions carved of stone, except that they moved.

The beam passed on, but the dragon's mind remained. It suffused Chief Kronon's thoughts-gritty like sand. Itchy. It made him forget vengeance for the dead chiefling. It made him only want to follow.

Chief Kronon watched the beam go. It was heading south, toward Ebonhawke.

That was where the master was going.

Chief Kronon flexed crackling arms. "Follow!" he shouted. Even his voice rang like crystal. "Follow!"

"Kralkatorrik is coming," Glint announced in her sanctum. "Fighting him will not be like fighting me. Your golems and weapons cannot harm him. There is only one thing that can."

With a grace that belied her size, Glint slid past the companions and reached the other side of the sanctum. She snatched up the crystal spear that hung there and swung it twice before her. It moaned hollowly as it cut the air.

"This spear was carved from one of Kralkatorrik's own spines," Glint explained. "It can pierce his hide, can find his heart." She thrust it out to Rytlock. "Take it!"

Rytlock stared for a moment at the spear, then clamped his claws around it.

"You must strike the killing blow, right here." Glint motioned to her side, tapping a groove between her ribs. "You must be running when you deliver the stroke, with all your weight behind the lance. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"I will battle him in the air. I will drive him down toward you. He may be on the ground for only a moment. That is when you must strike."

Snaff piped, "I can help you keep Kralkatorrik on the ground."

"How, little one? Fighting Kralkatorrik is like fighting a sandstorm."

Snaff grinned. "Yes. I have some experience with sand. One of my best friends was made of the stuff."

"This is no time to brag," Zojja said.

"I'm not bragging," Snaff tutted. To the dragon, he said, "I'm an expert in creating powerstone portals into minds. They are portals, except that you don't walk through them with your body, but with your mind. No one else has even attempted this kind of work."

"And how will you survive in the mind of an Elder Dragon?" Glint asked. "It has no reason. It has only hunger. Rage. Greed."

Snaff nodded. "I play to the hunger, rage, and greed. I become the itch that must be scratched."

"How?" Glint asked bluntly.

Snaff strode over beneath the emerald tree. "What are these green gemstones hanging here?"

"They are petrified drops of blood from Kralkatorrik-blood from his last battle. For thousands of years, I have gathered them from the sands of the desert and hung them on that tree, keeping them from mortal hands. They are magically potent."

"They're like powerstones," Snaff said avidly, "but tied to the life force of Kralkatorrik." He plucked an emerald leaf from the tree. "Do you know what I can do with these?"

Glint seemed almost to smile. "What?"

"That one golem I mentioned-Sandy-was made out of billions of grains of sand and thousands of powerstone chips. I controlled Sandy with a powerstone laurel, which sent thoughts from my brain into tiny gemstones within him."

"But you don't have time to build a golem," Logan objected.

"I don't need to build one. With these crystallized drops of blood-thousands of them-I could take hold of your former master."

Glint's eyes grew wide.

"We'll pack these blood droplets into exploding arrowheads, and each one that pierces his hide will fill him with thousands of powerstone fragments. They'll be salted through him by the time I need to take over his mind."

Glint shook her head. "You cannot match the will of an Elder Dragon."

Zojja set her hands on her hips. "He stared down Jormag. He can stare down this one, too."

"He can do it," Eir assured Glint, "but we're going to need more than powerstone arrows. We need to get more of these emeralds attached to the dragon sooner." She snapped her fingers. "Those laurels you make, Snaff-could you make something like that for the dragon?"

Snaff's eyes lit. "Yes. Yes, I could! It'll take a rib out of the cockpit of my Big, but I could fashion a powerstone piece-maybe a yoke or torc-that could clamp onto the dragon."

"And Glint," Eir said, "could you fasten the yoke about Kralkatorrik?"

"He would not submit to that."

Eir strode toward her. "Then battle him. For millennia, you have wanted to stop your master. Now, you can do it. Battle him in the skies and place on him a powerstone laurel-a yoke that will give us access to his mind."

Glint's eyes narrowed as if she saw the fight in the sky. "It will take time. You will be overrun by his minions before I can place the laurel."

"Trench works!" Eir said. "U-shaped fortifications in the sand. There are three colonnades-three entrances to this sanctuary. We'll dig a deep trench before each one-"

"And fill them with enspelled dragon-blood stones," Zojja said.

All eyes turned on her.

"I can make them stick to minions," she said. "I can make them embed themselves, and then Snaff can take over their minds. He can use the minions against each other-keep back the tide until you have placed the dragon laurel."

"Perfect idea," Eir said, giving Zojja a rare nod. "And when Snaff must shift his mind from the minions to the master, we all will guard the three doors, keeping him safe until Rytlock can deliver the killing blow."

"How can you keep back thousands of giant monsters?" Glint asked.

"Garm and I can hold one gate, Caithe and Logan can hold another, and Big Zojja can hold the third."