The Spectral Blaze

The Cadre warriors rushed in from all sides. And the worm didn’t attack them, although the twisting, heaving convulsions of its colossal body threatened to crush them even so.

Fire blazed out of the beast’s mouth as, apparently still alive and capable of action, Biri unleashed incendiary magic.

Medrash spun his sword over his head with a flourish quite unlike his usual no-nonsense way of handling a weapon. The spin kindled a brilliant glow inside the blade, and when he attacked, the edge cut as though the worm’s thick hide and dense muscle were soft as melting butter.

The beast’s head toppled forward and thudded on the cavern floor. It convulsed for another few moments, then sprawled motionless.

“Get them out!” Medrash shouted.

Khouryn could guess Biri’s location. She should be just below the part of the worm that gave steaming, blistered evidence of having cooked from the inside. Using his axe alternately like a saw and a butcher knife, he ripped at the creature’s hide. Guided either by his deity’s prompting or simple inference, Medrash attacked a spot a few paces farther down. Cadre warriors scrambled to help them both. Khouryn was peripherally aware of the roaring cacophony and furious motion of the rest of the battle, of the fact that the ongoing violence could engulf the rescuers at any moment. But he still couldn’t afford to worry about it.

Gripping the head of the axe with one hand and its haft with the other, he sawed the hole he was making a couple of strokes deeper then, grunting, pulled the edges apart. A booted foot appeared amid the muscle, blood, and slime. He yelled, “Here!” Together, he and the dragonborn working beside him cut and tore the opening larger still then dragged Biri out into the open.

She came out, bleeding in a dozen places, but Khouryn judged that none of the cuts was serious. Torm’s blessing and her own power had protected her. Slippery with ooze, retching and coughing, she wheezed, “Nothing… to breathe.”

“You’re all right now,” Khouryn told her.

“Balasar,” she said.

Voices babbled behind them. By the time Khouryn looked around, Medrash and the cultists were pulling Balasar out of the worm’s body.

He was cut badly, indeed, covered in blood from head to toe. Ordinary armor of steel and leather hadn’t done enough to protect him as the purple worm’s countless internal teeth pierced and ground him and peristalsis crushed him again and again. But he was alive. He must be because, whispering, Medrash was praying the silvery light of healing into his hands.

Khouryn shifted position to keep Biri from getting a good look. “He’s fine,” he said then turned to one of the Cadre warriors. “Get her back on the ledge.”

Biri shook her head. “I can-”

“You can’t do anything more until you at least catch your breath,” Khouryn said. “Now, both of you, move!”

The warrior helped her to her feet. Khouryn pivoted to find out-finally-what else was going on.

Though it was pretty much all raw, oozing burns and bloody wounds from end to end, the second purple worm was still alive and striving furiously to reach several Imaskari wizards perched on a ledge. One of them was Nellis Saradexma, who held his orb of dark crystal paled in one long-fingered hand and shifted it up and down and side to side. A ghostly, floating shield made of green phosphorescence shifted with it to block the worm’s attacks. Meanwhile, Nellis’s fellow wizards and the dragonborn and Imaskari warriors surrounding the lower portion of the beast assailed it furiously.

Unfortunately the diplomat’s defense wasn’t impenetrable. Khouryn gave a wordless little snarl when the green shield failed to jump quickly enough, and the worm snatched a mage off the shelf. Like Balasar and Biri before him, the Imaskari slid down the beast’s gullet in an instant-golden staff, long, black greatcoat, and all.

But despite that loss, it looked to Khouryn as if the worm’s foes were wearing it down. He couldn’t say the same about Gestanius.

At the moment the green dragon was primarily concerned with killing Praxasalandos, a duel that, because of the difference in sizes, reminded Khouryn of a dog fighting a cat. And the dog was wi

The wyrms were lunging, whirling, and striking so quickly that no human or dragonborn dared to venture close and risk a trampling or the bone-shattering flick of a lashing tail. Instead, warriors shot arrows and quarrels, missing as often as not despite Gestanius’s hugeness. When they did hit the mark, the shafts frequently glanced off her scales.

Attacking with blasts of frost and howls of focused noise, Jemleh Bluerhine and a couple other arcanists-thank the Luckmaiden that the knack for magic ran in the Imaskari blood-were inflicting somewhat greater harm. But it was not enough to make Gestanius falter.

Gestanius suddenly opened her jaws and, without any of the telltale preparatory movements that Khouryn had learned to watch for, spewed acid. The attack seemingly caught Praxasalandos by surprise as well, for the sizzling acid hit him straight on, and he shuddered, jerked, and burned helplessly.

Gestanius pounced the instant the acid dissolved, before even another dragon could shake off the punishment she’d just inflicted. She caught Praxasalandos’s neck in her jaws and reared onto her hind legs, so the frills at the back of her head brushed the ceiling. She bit down and clawed at her opponent’s chest at the same time.

Blood gushed and Prax splashed apart into streams and globs, which rained down from Gestanius’s fangs and talon to make a gleaming pool on the floor. The colossal green immediately dropped into the center of it and kept on clawing. Now she looked like a dog digging, and her efforts flung bits of the quicksilver dragon’s substance far and wide. One spattered right at Khouryn’s feet.

As it did, Gestanius wheeled to glare at Jemleh and his fellow mages. Without Prax-or someone-to keep her busy with close combat, she was likely to destroy the spellcasters in a couple of heartbeats.

Khouryn yelled as loudly as he could, raised his axe, and charged. He was keenly aware that if he was the only one who rushed in, he might well be living out the last few moments of his life.

For a heartbeat, as Gestanius spun in his direction, all the crossbowmen, archers, and slingers stayed right where they were. Then Vishva yelled, “Bahamut!” She dropped her arbalest, snatched her warhammer off the floor, and charged. Other members of the Cadre followed her example, and Imaskari soldiers did it too.

That didn’t distract Gestanius from striking at the one mad dwarf on the field. Her huge jaws plunged down at him, and his own momentum nearly consigned him to the same ignominious disaster that had overtaken Balasar. But somehow he managed to fling himself aside and even chop at the side of the dragon’s head, although he only nicked it a little. Still charging, he dodged a raking forefoot.

He plunged into the shadow under the dragon’s belly and started chopping at a foreleg. The ceiling was too low for Gestanius to fly. If he could cut a couple of legs out from under her, it would immobilize her.

He created a couple of nice, deep gashes, deep enough to recapture her attention, apparently, for then she started stamping. She likely hoped to catch him squarely under her foot and squash him flat, but that might not be necessary. If she simply snagged him with a claw, she stood a fair chance of ripping him apart.

He dodged frantically and scrambled whenever Gestanius’s lunging and turning threatened to separate them. He swung the axe when he could manage it and, though intent on his own small part of the struggle, occasionally caught glimpses of the rest: