The Spectral Blaze

Cera crouched beside the girl.

“She’s just napping,” Gaedy

“Tell me what I need to know,” Aoth rapped.

Gaedy

“Right.” Aoth turned to Mardiz-sul and the other genasi. “Surround the cave entrance.” He pointed to the watersoul who’d vomited, leaving stinking spatters of puke on the front of his brigandine. “Except you. You run to the bridge. Whatever happened there, our squad should have it under control by now. Leave one man to stand guard and fetch the rest. Everybody, move!”

The genasi burst into motion. The watersoul sprinted with the inhuman speed of his kind, as if an invisible current was sweeping him along.

Cera looked up from her examination of Son-liin. “She just fainted,” the priestess said.

“Then leave her,” said Aoth. “We have to get into position too and break whatever enchantment Vairshekellabex already cast, if we can.”

He and Gaedy

His pulse beating in his neck, Aoth aimed his spear and chanted a spell whose purpose was to dissolve other enchantments. Cera murmured the start of a prayer.

Then the heap of stone fell in on itself. Vairshekellabex had finally succeeded in dragging his head and neck out the back end of it. A deep voice hissed a word of command, and the whole mound shattered into bits of gravel, which instantly hurtled from the mouth of the cave like a thousand slung stones.

It was pure reflex that made Aoth raise his targe in time to cover his face and eyes. The barrage clattered on his armor, stung him all over, and sent him reeling backward.

He caught his balance and looked around. Gri

Aoth returned Gaedy

But when Vairshekellabex lunged out into the open, it became immediately apparent that there were plenty of other reasons for concern. One earthsoul yelped at the dragon’s size and speed, or maybe at the sheer horrific grotesquerie of the jutting, tangled fangs.

Aoth took a step, shouted a word of power, and hurled crackling lightning from his spear. The dazzling flare burned into Vairshekellabex’s chest, and the gray threw back his head and howled.

Gaedy

Bobbing up from behind her stone, Cera stretched out her arm and said, “I pray for your holy light.” A brilliant beam shot from her fingertips and stabbed a smoking, black-edged hole in one of the dragon’s wings.

Mardiz-sul ran forward, shouted, and swung his sword at Vairshekellabex’s flank. The blade burst into flame as it arced through the air.

And at that point, all the other genasi started fighting too, shooting crossbow bolts and flinging javelins. Thank the Firelord, thought Aoth. Now we’ve got a chance anyway.

Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped through the air. Mardiz-sul ducked barely in time to keep it from smashing his skull. But at the same moment, the wyrm lunged forward. He was coming at Aoth and Gaedy

Mardiz-sul froze in place like a statue. His red-bronze skin turned gray.

Meanwhile, Vairshekellabex cocked his head back, snapped it forward, and opened his jaws wide. Gray spew blasted out, and Aoth and Gaedy

The caustic spray hammered the ground but didn’t splash like water. By the time it hit, it was already congealing, and it ended up as a freestanding web of interco

Then, spi

Gaedy

Meanwhile, braving the lashing tail, stamping hind foot, and pounding wing that could have swatted him like a fly, an earthsoul scuttled forward to Mardiz-sul. He gripped the Bright Sword by the shoulder and jabbered something Aoth had no hope of hearing, not with Vairshekellabex snarling, Firetormers screaming war cries and warnings, and all the rest of the cacophony. But maybe it was a charm or a prayer meant to help the earthsoul exploit his affinity with stone, because the red and gold washed back into Mardiz-sul’s face, and freed from the bonds of petrifaction, he staggered backward with his comrade.

Vairshekellabex’s forefoot snatched for Aoth. He sidestepped and tried to jab it but was too slow. The gray started to claw again, and another arrow appeared in his neck right beside the last one and the gory hole left by the one before that. He hissed and his talons fell short of the mark.

Aoth made the rainbow spear stab for the throat as well. Vairshekellabex snarled a monosyllabic word of command in one of the Abyssal or Infernal tongues that filled a man with instinctive loathing even if he didn’t understand them. The spear blinked out of existence.

Then the dragon’s head jerked to the right. He opened his jaws and spewed his breath weapon. But the acidic slime arced high over the heads of any of the genasi on that flank and spattered the ground well behind him.

Aoth felt a vicarious surge of Jet’s derision: You missed us, wyrm! Then the griffon focused his thoughts on his master. We’re back. Do you want us to keep ferrying genasi across or start fighting the dragon?

Get the firestormers off your backs and get Gaedy

The flying steeds swooped to land beside the same mass of granite that was protecting Son-liin. As Aoth created a shower of fist-sized hailstones to batter Vairshekellabex, Gaedy

Fortunately it was then that the windsouls came flying in from the east, and if any of them hesitated before actually joining the fight, it was only for a moment. In a sense, their advent made up for Gaedy