The Spectral Blaze

But Aoth was still going to need someone on the same patch of ground that he was currently occupying, someone to brave the very worst Vairshekellabex could do and very possibly die as a result. And it was Mardiz-sul’s bad luck to be the best hand-to-hand combatant among the firestormers.

“Bright Sword!” Aoth bellowed. “Come here!”

Mardiz-sul sprinted toward him immediately, circling wide enough that Vairshekellabex was unlikely to kill him before he arrived. The same earthsoul who’d turned him from stone back into flesh and blood followed along a stride behind him. Eyes wide and body trembling, the watersoul in the vomit-spattered brigandine edged forward to join Aoth as well.

Maybe several warriors, standing together with Cera’s magic supporting them, had a chance of surviving. Aoth could only hope so because he needed them there whatever it cost them.

“Hold this ground!” he said, and Vairshekellabex’s head hurtled down at them. Everyone tried to leap out of the way, but the earthsoul was too slow. The gray’s crooked fangs snapped shut on him, and when the gigantic jaws lifted away, nothing remained but hands, feet, and blood.

Jet bounded into the open. The genasi that he and Eider had just carried to the earthmote followed him.

Aoth swung himself into the griffon’s saddle. Responding to his will, his safety straps started buckling themselves to secure him in place. But Jet didn’t wait on that. He lashed his wings and took to the air instantly.

On their way up, Aoth spotted Gaedy

That, Aoth decided, was the way to do it. He and Gaedy

I like that plan, said Jet, sensing his intent. The familiar screeched, plunged at one of the gray’s sweeping, leathery wings, and ripped gashes in it as he hurtled past.

As he wheeled, Aoth had time to cast darts of azure light. Then Jet furled his wings and swooped. Aoth charged his spear with chaotic force and struck when his mount did. A century of practice allowed him to thrust safely past Jet’s body and pierce the dragon’s back instead. Power flared and blasted the wound bigger.

Then Jet wrenched himself sideways. Vairshekellabex’s gigantic teeth clashed shut just a finger’s length beyond the tip of his left wing.

Aoth immediately sensed another threat, although he didn’t know exactly what or where. Watch out! he said.

Prompted by either his rider’s intuition or his own, Jet plunged lower. Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped over their heads.

Wings beating, the griffon climbed, seeking to regain the high air. He turned for another pass.

Vairshekellabex snarled words in the same grating, repulsive demonic language he’d used before. The griffon’s black feathers and fur turned gray, and his body froze into immobility.

Jet spun end over end as he fell. Aoth closed his eyes to keep the whirling from impairing his concentration, rested his hand on the hard, ridged stone of his familiar’s neck, and rattled off the words of a counterspell.

Countermagic wasn’t a part of the comprehensive system of battle wizardry he’d studied in his younger years in Thay. It was just an extra trick he’d picked up along the way, and at that moment, he was grimly aware that he wasn’t nearly as good at it. But apparently he was good enough because Jet abruptly exploded into motion once again. Beating his wings, straining with every bit of his strength, the familiar pulled out of his fall.

Afterward his muscles shuddered and twitched. The residual pain of the two transformations and the extreme effort that followed bled across the psychic link and jabbed up and down Aoth’s body. For a moment he felt as though he had wings growing out of his own back, cramping, throbbing wings.

We can retreat for a moment, he said. Catch our breaths.

A man might have answered with an obscenity, but even griffons endowed with an equivalent level of intelligence didn’t grasp the concept. Still, Jet responded with a surge of disgust that conveyed the same message.

If we hold back, he said, it just gives the wyrm a chance to try the same trick again.

There is that, said Aoth. Let’s try this, then. He visualized the sequence of moves, making sure the griffon understood it completely. Then Jet lashed his wings and hurled them forward, straight at Vairshekellabex’s head.

When they were halfway to their target, Aoth hurled darts of crimson light. The dragon avoided them with a sideways curl of his neck. Then, jaws gaping, his head shot at his attackers. It was a move that would have surprised many an opponent. It seemed impossible that the creature could strike in such a blur of speed when he had to whip his head around in a horizontal arc.

But Aoth was ready. He pointed the spear, spoke a word of power, and a floating curtain of rippling rainbows burst into being. Vairshekellabex’s head stabbed through it, and he roared and convulsed as the various magical effects-heat, cold, poison, madness-ripped at his body and mind.

As he jerked his head back out of the sheet of light, Jet beat his wings and flew over it. The familiar then extended his talons and plunged them into the side of Vairshekellabex’s head just where it joined the neck. The sudden stop wrenched Aoth’s body, nearly breaking his own neck, or at least it felt that way. He set the point of his spear ablaze with power and drove it into the gray’s flesh. Jet clawed and bit.

Vairshekellabex raised a forefoot to swipe them to pieces as a man might brush away a mosquito. But he never completed the motion. Instead, he toppled forward, and Mardiz-sul and the other genasi in front of him scurried to get out from underneath. Jet sprang clear.

The dragon’s collapse shook the ground, and he rolled and flailed for a while. The tail was especially energetic, at first whipping even more furiously than before.

But gradually all the spasmodic motion subsided. Wheeling over the gray, studying him, Aoth decided the creature truly was dead. As he let out a long breath, he wondered who had finally delivered the deathblow.

Me, of course, said Jet, furling his wings and swooping toward the ground.

Below them, the genasi started cheering. They, too, had concluded that Vairshekellabex was really finished, and for the moment, the exultation and sheer relief of victory possessed them. There’d be time later to grieve for the several comrades who sprawled just as dead and mangled on the ground.

As Jet set down, Cera stood up from behind her rock. Aoth smiled to see her unharmed. Then Gaedy

“Why did you keep shooting for the neck?” asked Aoth.

“It was an experiment,” Gaedy

Aoth shook his head. “An experiment?”

Gaedy

As he prowled back and forth and up and down, peering, always peering, Alasklerbanbastos reassured himself repeatedly that he couldn’t possibly lose the phylactery, not in any ultimate sense. He was co

Still, it seemed to take forever to find it, and when he finally did, he saw why. Tumbling and bouncing down the steep wall of the gorge, the stone had landed in a drift of last year’s fallen leaves, mostly burying itself in the process.

His forefoot shaking, he picked it up. Its folds billowing as the breeze caught it, the servant he’d fashioned out of his own hide and his own pain looked silently on like a priest assisting with some esoteric rite.