The Spectral Blaze

Jet tried to get out from in front of the dragon’s gnashing jaws and paralyzing stare. But Alasklerbanbastos matched him shift for shift, meanwhile snarling words of power.

Aoth stood up in the stirrups and drove the spear deep into Alasklerbanbastos’s brow, between the empty, glowing orbits and the bony spikes above. The undead blue jerked his head back and so tore his attacker’s weapon from his grip. Aoth cursed. But at least when the lich recoiled, he stumbled in the cadence of his conjuring, and it finally gave Jet the chance to swing out from in front of him.

As the griffon climbed, Aoth saw that they weren’t the only ones who’d engaged Alasklerbanbastos in close combat. Medrash, Balasar, and others were on the ground, hacking at the blue’s legs like woodsmen felling trees. Somewhat to Aoth’s surprise, neither the paladin nor his sword was glowing, nor were there any luminous runes floating around his body. Apparently he’d already expended every bit of mystical strength at his command.

But he must have been doing some damage even so because Alasklerbanbastos raised his foot high to stamp on him.

Aoth sent Jet diving back down onto the blue’s neck. Alasklerbanbastos staggered and Medrash scrambled out from under the creature’s talons.

Jet bit and tore at the dracolich. Aoth willed his safety harness to unbuckle, grabbed the warhammer strapped to the saddle to serve as a backup weapon, and clambered over the griffon’s rump. Without the reach his lost spear had provided, it was the only way to get at his foe.

A jerk of Alasklerbanbastos’s neck almost flung him off, but he crouched low and grabbed a projecting knob of bone. He stayed in that attitude as he began to pound. The impacts woke the enchantments bound in the hammer. The glyphs graven into the steel glowed brighter and brighter, and each blow hit harder than the one before it.

Finally somebody’s attack-Aoth had no idea whether it came from him, Jet, one of the dragonborn, Oraxes, or Cera and the priests-proved lethal. Alasklerbanbastos roared, convulsed, and shattered like a piece of porcelain.

That left Aoth with nothing underneath him. But he released the magic bound in a tattoo quickly enough to turn a plummet into a slower descent. Bits of bone clattering beneath him, he drifted down into a cloud of dust and ash.

Caught in the midst of it, Balasar coughed and spat. “This is why I hate fighting the undead,” he panted. “You always get filthy.”

The twin strands of fire-the one streaming from Tchazzar to Jhesrhi and the one leaping from the wizard up into the sky-winked out at the same moment.

The sudden loss of all that brightness muddled Gaedy

But he did see Tchazzar resume hobbling toward her, and he knew that if the red dragon reached her, she was going to die no matter what.

He sent Eider plunging to the ground. He tore at his safety straps and leaped off the griffon’s back. “Fly!” he shouted. Eider lashed her wings and sprang back into the air.

But Son-liin didn’t go along. She, too, swung herself off Eider’s back and snatched an arrow from her quiver.

His golden eyes burning as brightly as ever, Tchazzar glared down at the human and genasi who stood between him and the fallen wizard. “This is good,” he rumbled. “You’re another one I wanted to kill personally.”

“Shut up and die,” Gaedy

Tchazzar tossed his head, and neither arrow hit an eye or any other particularly vulnerable spot, although Gaedy

Then Khouryn charged in on the dragon’s right. He bellowed, “East Rift!” and chopped at Tchazzar’s good foreleg with his axe. Armed with lances, Hasos and other warriors jabbed at the colossal creature’s belly. Meralaine and a white-scaled dragonborn hurled jagged blades of shadow and bursts of pale frost respectively.

Tchazzar reeled. But then, striking like a snake, hammering his wings up and down, swinging his tail like a flail, he scattered his new assailants and kept coming.

Shooting as fast as she could, the argent lines in her purple skin shining like white-hot metal, Son-liin pierced the red with arrows charged with lightning. Each balked him for maybe an instant but no longer.

Meanwhile, Gaedy

He no longer had much hope of piercing an eye and the brain behind it. Tchazzar reflexively protected his eyes. But confident in his armor of scales, he sometimes disregarded attacks that mere human warriors aimed at other parts of his body.

That, Gaedy

He loosed. The shaft hurtled from the bow. And maybe Tchazzar somehow sensed it was a genuine threat because he started to twist his neck. But he was too slow, and the arrow plunged deep into the mark.

Tchazzar stumbled then swayed. He sat back on his haunches, lifted his good forefoot, and swiped the arrow out of his flesh, but that only made things worse. Gouts of blood spurted rhythmically from the wound, and the red dragon collapsed onto his side.

But then he rolled halfway onto his belly and somehow contrived to drag himself forward. And as Gaedy

Panting, Tchazzar visibly gathered his strength for one final heaving motion to drag himself within reach of Jhesrhi. Then Shala ran out of the darkness with a gory broadsword in her hand. She thrust it into the base of Tchazzar’s neck. The red wyrm shuddered, a tremor so violent that Gaedy

As soon as Gaedy

Fire still covered the unconscious woman from head to toe. It was hot enough that it took an effort of will to stand within a pace of her, and it had burned every thread of clothing away. But it wasn’t burning her. She didn’t have even a blister.

Phicos scurried through the cellars, grabbing a scroll here, an onyx statuette of Tiamat there, a five-headed wand elsewhere, and stuffing them into his satchel. Thanks to an enchantment, the bag was bigger inside than out, but it still couldn’t hold everything he and his fellow wyrmkeepers had used to equip and sanctify their shrine. Even if there were time to gather more, only the holiest and most powerful artifacts could go.

A footstep scuffed on the floor behind him. Startled, he spun and snatched for the dagger on his hip. He relaxed when he saw that it was Esvele who’d come up behind him.