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Knights' Attack, 9


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#1 Guest_Ananke_*

Posted 22 July 2007 - 01:37 PM

(9)

When Imoen, bleary-eyed and tired, entered the cave from which drafted the smell of meat, fat, garlic, onion, spices and chocolate—chocolate?—she saw a precious picture of familial bliss. Her brother and Anomen crouched over a big cauldron, talking quietly while Sarevok was stirring something bubbling and simmering which exuded the mouth-watering bouquet; shirtless over the steam, each with a necklace, each with, by now, a fairly unkempt beard, they looked uncannily like two old hags in a tale; or, perhaps, two young orc shamans. The familiars were missing; but in the corner of the cave there sat Kriemhild, mending her husband’s clothes while stealing an occasional frightened glimpse at him. If Sarevok had no use for her cooking skills, Imoen deduced from that gaze, he had one less use for her.

She wanted to go, and shake the half-orc, and tell her that they were going dragon-hunting together soon, and that not many people ever survived that, and that everyone was scared, and that if Kriemhild insisted on searching for something to prove her worth— She sighed, instead. Not everything at once. It would take a lot of time to reclaim Kriemhild for humanity; and someone far gentler and more patient than her brother or her. And, at the end of it, the woman would never be completely normal.

In the meantime, she had to stop her brother before he murdered them all with his cooking.

One day, he would find something which, however he applied himself to it, he would not be able to learn. She wondered what would happen then; an irresistible force meeting an unmovable object— He would break, possibly; though now, she hoped that he would not. Herself, she’d much rather that, instead of being decent at a great many things, he was just generally decent; but that was a long-term project, too, if possible at all.

Kriemhild noticed her, and gave out a small, stifled cry; both men looked up from the cauldron, and at her. She saw how their faces changed, and decided that she hadn’t managed to wipe out all the blood, after all.

“My lady Imoen?” Anomen asked, sounding extremely alarmed, and entirely unmindful of his shirtlessness. “What happened?”

Imoen looked at her brother, who already knew, or, at least, suspected, and answered, succinctly, “A bad dream, Anomen.”

-----


The lone woman was walking through a waste land of wasted blood, set under a sky of ichor green; wherever she went, chaos, death and destruction followed.

The topography of the dream-land was fluid and unstable, and changed with Imoen’s mood; but, by now, she knew that, since this place was her, and she was this place, she ruled here, and could find her way here at will and at whim.

She found the wasteland plateau over the plain of statues of who, and what, were, or were to be, her trophies. She studied the dragon. Was this Firkraag? Was she the one who would deal him the killing blow? Were there other dragons here, in this gallery?

The questions were vain; and it was not here that she meant to go that night. She shuddered in the cold wind, adjusted the cloak which appeared on her shoulders at that moment, and sought.

Mae’Var’s guild was surrounded by a ring of fire; an enormous, red fiery shield set over a sizzling river of lava flow, an arsonist’s and a pyromaniac’s murder weapon and mad delight. Of course, it fit. Edwin used to like his fireballs, and fire arrows, and minute meteors…

Imoen smiled, and stepped into the fire, walking lightly, like a cat, on top of the river’s surface. The heat enveloped her and greeted her as her own; and who knew? Perhaps, once she woke up, she would remember how to draw on the coldness within to protect herself from fire?

She stepped out of the fire, unscathed; she opened the door to the guild, and ran up the stairs to the topmost floor. Once there, she halted for a moment, leaning against the wall. The wizard was turned away from her, fiddling with something on the potions’ worktable, mumbling lightly.

At last, she coughed lightly to get his attention, and said, “Hello, Edwin.”

The wizard started; then, he turned towards her, irately, and announced, “I am not talking to you. You killed me. How dare you kill me, and then come to visit me, as if nothing happened? (And she waited so long, too.)”

Imoen smiled: Edwin looked just as he had looked in life, and muttered just like he had muttered in life, and was speaking in as nasal a whine as he had been speaking in life, and entirely managed to gloss over the small fact that he had been trying to kill her when she had killed him. In other words, death had not changed him much.

“I thought that you might be busy,” she replied diplomatically. “What with Father did to this place… But I see that you managed to tidy up.”

The stacks of papers were as neatly put as they could. Even the skull was in its usual place, and grinning at her. In this realm, the expression was even more sinister than it had been in Amn. It reminded her of the sigil of Bhaal Irenicus had carved into her skin.

“Why yes, I did,” Edwin replied, haughtily, “With no thanks to you. (Isn’t this what an apprentice is FOR? I should fire her… or fireball her… now THAT is an idea…)”

“Edwin, I need your help,” Imoen cut through the stream of muttering. “I really do. You were right that Aran Linvail cast a geas on our brother…”

“Of course I was right. (Edwin Odesseiron is ALWAYS right, foolish girl.)”

“Well, yes,” Imoen replied with perfect aplomb. “I must know how to take it off. And you’re the best wizard I know,” she added, figuring that, given the whole life-and-death situation, a little bit of flattery wouldn’t hurt. “Can you help me?”

Edwin shook his head. “No. (Yes.)”

Imoen grinned; apparently, Edwin’s lifetime habit of doublespeak was the perfect antidote to Father’s iron rule in this place. “All right. You can’t. How do I do it?”

Edwin approached one of the bookshelves, and started to pull out a book out of the thin air and the empty space within; halfway through, his hand started to shake; he started to push the book back and let it disappear.

Imoen dashed to the bookshelf, and put her hand on Edwin’s, stopping it. “Edwin,” she said softly into the Red Wizard’s ear. “I am not an apprentice anymore. And I know where this place is, and what this place is. It’s Father’s realm. We are in the Throne of Blood, in the Planes now, the place where ideas and concepts take shape and form… And this is our place, our home, the home of murderers. And I killed you. This, here, gives me power over you… The power to question you, and perhaps the power to do something else, too… And you are my memory as much as you are Father’s puppet here. He does not rule here alone; you exist as long as he needs you and as long as I need you— So, please, as your sister, who remembers you, and who killed you, I ask you. Try to fight him. I need your help. I need to know.”

Her hand was shaken off, abruptly, and she was flung across the room and into the opposite wall; she hit it with a crash and a massive pain all throughout her body.

“Fight me, daughter, will you?” her own voice taunted as she found herself viciously kicked, lifted, backhanded, then dropped, and kicked and kicked and—

“This is the third time you have defied me,” she heard as, for a moment, there was no new pain, and, coughing blood and rolled into a ball on the floor, she looked up, into her own, triumphant, twisted, unscarred face. “And now you have dared to do it here. In my home. In my realm. In my throne. I showed you. I let that dwarf failure show you. I let you taste of my power. Did you really think that your powers come to you as you command them, daughter? That you managed to wrestle even a fraction of my might from me?”

“Everything,” her voice derided. “Every prize, every treasure would be your reward. If you only obeyed. If you only listened. And this is how you repay me? By trying to incite an insurrection? For the sake of another failure? There are others, who will listen to me. We shall see how long you will last against them, shattered, exhausted and powerless. You will return here, on your knees and begging to be taken back, daughter.”

Imoen, in passing deciding that what she was about to do was utter stupidity, went for it, and coughed out, “—no.”

“No?” The other Imoen, who was Bhaal, suddenly grew cool and cold. “You are on your knees—”

There was a loud thud as a skull connected with another skull, and the avatar of her Father, blinking in incomprehension, doubled and slid, slowly, to the floor.

Imoen looked at the short, bearded figure standing on a desk with a cat on her shoulder and a grinning skull in her hands, and managed to mumble out, “Irene? Pangur?”

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Irene said. “Listen, Father will wake up soon, so… I can’t help you, and Edwin is now really dead, but— Remember, in Baldur’s Gate? Seek a seeker. A soothsayer. A diviner. And now, go.”

-----


“Nam hietha arw Firkraag arkvaissa!”

Lord Jierdan Firkraag, Fifth Baron Windspear, dragon, in his human shape was tall and stately, with a shoulder-length mane of dark-brown hair, and a long scarlet cloak which flowed after him, royally, in a great many folds.

He was standing, alone, turned away from the party who filed into the giant cavern through the passage the orcs used to reach their master. He was standing on the border of light and darkness: the light flowing from the outside, and the darkness of the gold-filled cave itself; he was watching the horizon with his heavily-gloved hands joined behind himself, and his voice was cultured, ardent and sweet, and poured into one’s ears and maimed one’s mind like spiced, hot chocolate. Imoen was, privately, grateful for the horrible orcish potions of clarity they had all drunk before entering his lair.

She scanned the battleground. There were piles of gold and jewels—dubious cover and unsound surface on which to fight; one escape route—the one by which they had come; one place definitely to avoid—the open ledge; a fall from this height would be certain death.

“Not to put it too bluntly, but we want a confession of your guilt,” she said; Anomen had pled for Helm to lend them courage before they had entered the lair, and she was grateful for it now. That man, out there, was making her uneasy as it was.

“Preferably a written one, although a verbal one will do,” she added. “We can’t leave without it, as you probably know.”

The man laughed. “Know? Do I know that? Do I?”

He turned around; and, for a moment, there was a glimpse of handsome dark eyes in a handsome dark face, a rapier by the side and a heavy, gold, ruby-set chain on the neck. Then, there was a dragon.

Massive, slender and lacertilian, he did not fill the lair, but his presence did: the air around him shimmered with the heat of his body’s furnace, and stank of sulphur and smoke. His was a deep, dull red, and his wings were purple and ashen grey; there were horns on his head, frills on his neck and a large, badly healed scar on his breast’s left side. Someone must have tried to kill him already, and almost succeeded.

“Perhaps I do,” he replied to his own question, in a dragon’s booming voice. “Yes. I do. Yes. I did it,” he added, bored, lifting his right claw, and then, for a moment, spreading his wings and blocking the light completely. “I was bored. I was curious. I wanted to know in whom Jon Irenicus had been so interested. I wanted to take revenge on my old Harper enemy, and, since the enemy is dead, I wanted to ruin his child. I arranged for Conster to fetch the paladins.” By Imoen’s side, Anomen, intently listening, clenched his teeth and narrowed his eyes under his helmet; and grasped his newly re-enchanted mace tighter.

“I let Lassal take Conster in return for relieving me of an end which had been too loose for too long. I demanded that you bring me the arms of Strohm… And you, manlings,” he added, looking at Kriemhild, now gazing unafraid into the adder’s eyes, “complied.”

Sarevok laughed lightly. “I like you, dragon,” he said. “Must we fight?”

The dragon took one brief, saurian look at him, and attacked.

-----


(Never laugh at living dragons, Imoen thought in passing, darkly.)

-----


Destroy his resistance to magic; breach his magic protections; hit him with cold; hit him with lightning; hit him with acid and magic missiles; if you shoot, shoot at his eyes. Haste us. Slow him. And run. Move. Hide. Make him bleed, but stay as far away from him as you can for your spells to still take hold.

Firkraag took one large swipe with his claw, and the entire mantra, simple as it was, repeated as many times as it had been, was almost forgotten. Almost.

Careful planning always defeats rushed actions in the end, the Helmite creed states; and so, the party had researched and planned. He should not breathe fire, they had decided: there are too many treasures in his lair.

He did not. He moved his wings, once, lightly, and sent all of the party flying into the wall behind in a cloud of gold debris— So much like Father, Imoen had the time to think.

Kriemhild’s furious charge awoke her; the long, black hair flew and the hard, black eyes glittered as, barely covering herself behind her shield, yelling, the half-orc attacked. She was swift; the drake was swifter still. He snatched her mid-air; he flung her at a wall, far away.

Anomen would pray for his doom, and then fight him; Sarevok would spell a malicious enchantment on him, try to enfeeble him and his mind alike, and then fight him, too. Whether they would succeed was theirs; Imoen downed a potion of healing, and set to do her part.

-----


The first spells held.

Running; trying to escape the claw and the bite and the tail and the wing; casting unfamiliar spells in a rushed, hasty, imprecise way—two days ago, she had known none of them; no abjurations; but she was not an apprentice anymore— The spells held. If the dragon were immune to magic (as the tale of the Dame Nadeen Anthara proved), she had lowered this resistance, if not entirely destroyed it; what magic protections there had been (and some dragons were wont to cast them; for reference, heed Sir Janur Lanthwar’s story), she had breached at least part of them— And she still lived. So did everyone else.

Kriemhild, bleeding and glorious, was attacking again, madly, trying to get through the ancient scar, where the scales had not grown as they should, straight to the beast’s heart; Imoen jerked her hands in a short, curt up-to-down move, finished, icily, “—lod”, and great hail stones started to pound on the beast’s head, body and wings; and then, she disappeared, for the wyrm took interest in her.

Firkraag roared, as if he were now an animal, and not a thinking creature, even though two of three Sarevok’s enchantments had failed: Anomen had made bleed the second of his hind legs. The squire, this time, managed to back off in time before the jaws snapped on him; Imoen had managed to haste the party.

Over the mounds of piled wealth, she ran; why hadn’t Sarevok even pulled out his sword yet? The dragon, under the ice, leapt forward, gracefully, sinking, lowering himself, trying to crush the half-orc under his weight, to grind her into a lifeless sack of blood and flesh and bones— She disappeared beneath him; Imoen shot a volley of magic missiles at the dragon’s eyes.

He rose from the bed of gold, and, smouldering in the dying hailstorm, looked straight at her. “You shall perish, manling,” he promised, charmingly; and she almost let herself be charmed. But her brother was standing on the dragon’s back, right where the neck joined the torso and the frills ended.

Firkraag hadn’t noticed the intruder yet; he hadn’t noticed the Peridan, Kriemhild’s dragon-slaying blade, broken at the hilt and buried in his breast, between the wayward scales; he hadn’t noticed Anomen, limping on his right leg and unable to hold a shield, praying equably for his doom again; his eyes of molten gold were only for Imoen. “My revenge,” he hissed out, “on Gorion’s child.”

Then, as Sarevok started to pry the scales on the drake’s sinuous neck, Firkraag started; the pain must be felt at last. He gazed back; roared; snapped his jaw; moved his wings; shook himself; none of this helped remove the pest from his back; and then, the dragon took wing.

“Anomen!” Imoen, remembering herself, herself snapped as they both looked after the serpentine silhouette disappearing together with its rider outside the cave. “Heal yourself. I’ll see if Kriemhild’s still alive.”

-----


The half-orc was, though barely; her crude, thick-boned and indelicate parentage was the only thing which saved her. Imoen could not heal her herself, not anymore, not after the night’s dream; and so, she put one of her last precious healing potions to the woman’s lips. The squire limped to her assistance; she looked at him. His armour, shining that very morning, was now dented in the back and in the front. Firkraag had almost bit Anomen in half when he had lifted him and dropped him onto his cot of gold; suddenly, she realised that the limp must be the least of his problems.

“I told you to heal yourself, Anomen,” she reminded him impatiently.

“Aye, my lady. A moment,” he replied gladly, crouching by the half-orc and murmuring a prayer. When the white, unbearably fair light enveloped Kriemhild, he looked at Imoen again. “Will we see him again, my lady?”

She shrugged. “If he dies, you will never learn of it. There will be no body.” She did not add, If he dies, I will meet him in my dreams, in my Father’s house.

Then, she wondered. If? Why if? When.

The half-orc, smeared red and gold by her blood and Firkraag’s gold dust, stirred, sat, heavily; and, looking at the two human faces, asked something in her uncouth tongue. “Sarevok? I don’t know,” Imoen replied. “I just don’t know. He went dragon-riding, you know, and that’s not something you return from.”

Kriemhild snarled and made a slight curvy move with her hand. “Firkraag? Oh. Firkraag. Well. He will be returning, yes. We are in his lair, after all. Will we still want to be here when he returns?”

She looked at Anomen, forcing herself to think and catalogue the magic and potions and all the other means at her disposal. One limping cleric without a shield; one barely moving barbarian warrior without a sword—oh: Kriemhild contemptuously threw away the broken Peridan’s hilt and pulled out her father’s filthy bone club from the scarlet royal sheath.

“We have what we came for,” Imoen decided, noticing, in passing, that she herself was also bleeding from her knees and elbows. Firkraag had not caught her, himself; but she scraped herself when she fell into some or other nugget of gold or finely-cut jewel. “We’re leaving.”

It was definitely not the answer Anomen Delryn was expecting. Indignant, he demanded, “My lady?! I do protest! ‘Tis not knightly to cede the field and abandon one’s comrade in need!”

“You nearly died the last time you tried that,” she reminded him before she thought; at the sight of his face, she sighed, and instantly felt sorry—an odd thought occurred to her, no doubt instigated by the night’s dream: this one man here was an almost exact opposite of Edwin’s; that one, she had had to push into danger. This one, she had to restrain.

She felt sorry; and, cruelly, added, “I am not my brother, Anomen. But he taught me your dogma yesternight. The whole creed, from ‘Never betray your trust’ to ‘Demonstrate excellence and purity of loyalty—’ Kriemhild!”

In the end, they followed the half-orc to the ledge outside.

-----


A red dragon was soaring on the south-west wind; a sight such as few behold without punishment.

Firkraag’s scales glittered crimson and scarlet as he danced among the clouds in the morning sun. He was wild, lithesome and magnificent; born to fly, and not to stay grounded; and breathtaking.

“I can’t get him from here,” Imoen said absently, unable to take her eyes off him. “He’s too far. Anomen—”

“My lady?”

“You’re a paladin. Smite him, or something.”

“But— My lady— Your brother—”

“—is dead,” she interjected as coldly and finally as finally did she realise the simple truth. Irene was dead; and Edwin was dead; and Gorion was dead; and Sarevok was dead. And, unfortunately for herself, she would mourn her brother after she avenged him: the tears would be there to be found.

To her left, Kriemhild brandished her club and her shield, watching the horizon intently, squinting in the bright daylight to which she was not accustomed; she curled her lips unconsciously, presenting fully both her upper canines and her boar-like tusks— She was as tense and expectant as Pangur when he followed Altair on one of her scouting missions.

Behind the orc, the squire sighed, deeply. Yesterday, when he had prayed for a life, the words of the chant had been unknown even to him; in the chaos of all that had happened, he had not realised it himself until much later, when he had set to the evening offices as he had cleaned his armour. Now, another unfamiliar prayer pressed itself on his lips— “Aye, my lady,” he muttered unhappily. “I hear and I obey.”

The plea was pronounced half-heartedly at best, stuttered and stammered rather than voiced and spoken proudly as it should; but, in the end, he was holding in his free, freshly healed, weaker, right arm a javelin of pure divine brilliance; a bolt of godly glory.

He hurled it forth, without specially bothering to take aim first; it would strike true if he only willed it.

The lance did; bright and sharp, it crossed the expanse of air between the party and the dancing drake, and, for a moment, before it disappeared, it pierced Firkraag’s breast and pinned him to the golden, light-filled cloud behind. Kriemhild laughed and jovially hit the squire’s back; Anomen, unhappily, hissed; the flesh under the armour, though healed, was still tender.

Firkraag was scattering a rain of scarlet blood, now; but he took notice of the party, and Imoen remembered that they were no longer in the dragon’s lair. Anomen and Kriemhild must have understood that, too, for he was pleading, now hastily and with full conviction, for Helm to shield Imoen against fire again, and she was putting up her dragon-shield to try and provide some protection for the party.

He’s too close, and too fast, the Bhaalspawn smiled as the air roared with the sound of a dragon diving at full speed; and then, drawing on her inner coldness, she shot. For whoever almost killed him before, she thought as she doubled in the new, sudden pain of her Father’s castigation; and then, because she wanted it to be so, she added, Gorion, perhaps.

The arrow struck and vanished in the flesh, piercing the eye and the eye socket to stop in the brain, where it shortly started to spread its poison; as it did, five feet of steel slid between upset scales and penetrated the nape of the drake’s neck, rending the spinal cord and rendering Firkraag’s limbs, lungs and wings, useless.

And therewithal, Imoen thought, So, it is possible to backstab a dragon.

And fainted.

-----


“—suffered a shock. The Lady Anchev departed to deal with the animals and find her kindred’s remedies to restock our supplies—”

“And what happened to my brother, Anomen?” Imoen, awoken at that moment, interrupted. “Tell me all. I want to know it all.”

The paladin in spe took one look at his second patient’s face and recited, briskly, “Your brother, my lady, suffered multiple fractures of ribs, arms and legs, several of them compound, multiple abrasions, internal and external haemorrhage, a cracked spleen and a concussion. ‘Twas, I daresay, but my Lord Helm’s blessing that he survived.”

“I don’t doubt it, Anomen,” Imoen said, looking at her brother’s ashen face; even Sarevok’s eyes almost lost their glimmer. “That, and a very good healer.”

“I thank you, my lady, for your kindness. And now, I think— I think I shall now leave you two alone, my lady,” the squire replied, perhaps finally noticing the uncanny, though entirely human, gleam in Imoen’s own eyes. As he was standing up, though, he must come across a novel idea; he perked up, and, turning to her brother, offered, “Mayhap I shall go and start skinning the wyrm? A hide this size shall make for a very fine suit of armour, I say! And I can—”

There was a brief, odd laugh, and a voice, hoarse and unlike itself, said, “No need to hurry, Delryn. Take rest. Have a look around the dragon’s lair, if you will, instead. My wife will fetch my sword.”

At that, Anomen smiled, self-consciously, and departed; Imoen rolled onto her stomach, and took a careful peek over the edge of the outcropping. A vertiginous distance below, there was a red, coiled, worm-like body lying amidst a spatter and a large puddle of blood; Firkraag in his death.

She rolled back to face Sarevok. Her brother was half-lying, half-leaning on his left forearm in the usual pose of a convalescent who would much rather rise and go and move and do something. “Have you acquired a taste for near-death experiences, brother?” she asked him coldly. “You must not pointlessly kill, so you decided to pointlessly die, instead? Men and alcohol and women… And now, this. Dragon-riding. What next? What of your grand ambitions?! You can’t become a god if you’re dead, brother.”

Though pallid, as usual, he rose to the challenge. “Then you should be glad, should you not, little sister?” he drawled lazily. “One less contender to the throne. One less moral quandary for you. One less enemy. And you would not even have to kill me, because I would be—” He did not finish, because Imoen, inexplicably to herself, burst into tears.

“—dead! Dead, dead, dead! Everyone dead—Irene dead, and Edwin dead, and now you, and—and just because you would be such a reckless idiot— I thought that you were dead— That the next time I would see you—” Her hands were trembling. Why was she trembling, again?

Next to her, her brother was looking quite alarmed. “Little sister—”

“Yes!” she yelled at him, madly. “Precisely! I’m the little sister! I’m too young for this stuff. I shouldn’t have to be telling you off. I should be the one who gets to be reckless and irresponsible. Irene always was telling me off for it— Isn’t that how it’s done, between normal people? I think that it’s supposed to be like this, that it’s the big brother chastising the little sister for stupidity, not the other way round—” Her memory supplied only very vague images, but they all agreed on this one important point. She calmed down. She was right. Her brother must bow to the force of her argument.

He did not. He smirked, instead, and hoist himself to a sit, bringing himself instantly much closer to her; and then, asked, “But have you considered that you may be actually my big sister, little sister?”

Imoen shot him a venomous look of pure spite and lied, “No.”

Sarevok made another of those self-conscious, arrested moves, and she decided to hug him to unsettle him further.

The embrace was awkward, because that there was a man who embraced his lovers, killed his sisters, was enemy to most of those he encountered, and currently tender after leaping off a careening dragon’s back and badly, gracelessly, falling. It was at times too stiff, and at times too tight, and in dire need of repeated practice to become as much as a decent five-minutes’-worth hugging. “Don’t ever joke again about dying, little brother,” Imoen said, vowing to force Sarevok to practice this particular art; if he applied himself, she would say that he could, possibly, yet learn it, even at his current age; he was a fast learner, and the timid promise appeared to be there. “I don’t want you to die any more than I want you to kill for me— If you really have to die, make sure to stay alive at least until I have some friends. I don’t want to be alone, and, even though I like your gift, Pangur is not enough. Not really.”

“What was it like?” she asked when her tears dried and they separated; then, seeing her brother’s sudden discomfiture, clarified, laughing, “Dragon-riding, I mean?”

Sarevok, obviously still shell-shocked, took a fairly long moment to gather his wits; then, shrugged apologetically, and said, “Everything it should be, little sister—” He laughed, too, seeing her face, and, clearly straining to elaborate, added, “I would tell you, sister, that it was better than flying Altair in hunt; but you haven’t flown her… He spoke to me.”

Imoen frowned; the way Sarevok said it… “Firkraag?”

A curt nod. “He told me that rare is the human who dares mount a dragon; rarer still the ones who dare do so against the dragon’s will; that to do so and stay on the dragon’s back is unsung of. He then told me that would speak to me, as he would to a dragon, for I was proud, selfish, malicious, and cruel, and in all that, almost like a dragon. He told me to taste his blood, and when I did, we spoke his tongue—humans cannot lie in the dragon-speak, did you know that? And we spoke this, and the language of birds, and the tongues of elves…”

He paused for a moment, and picked up in a very different voice. “Presumably, since I was in his blind spot and holding tightly, he simply wanted to keep me occupied until my protections dispelled, and the heat of his body and the cold of air killed me. I kept recasting the spells; but I was almost out of components as it was when Anomen pierced him, little sister…”

“Although, perhaps,” he added pensively, “he simply wanted company. He was dying already; Kriemhild’s sword was making its way to his heart, and he knew that… Either way, he spoke to me. He told me that he knew that I had slain Gorion and taken his revenge from him; that it had been Gorion who had given him his wound; that Irenicus’ name had been Joneleth and that he had been an elf; that he knew of one of his kin, and ours, called Abazigal. He told me to roast and eat his heart to learn his wisdom, if I wished, fill my bags with his gold, if I wished, and take his scales to arm myself, if I wished; yet he told me that he would rather that I minded Fafnir’s last counsel to Sigurd…”




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