The thin mouth jutted upward slightly at the edges in what almost would have been a smile. “You know me, then, human?”
“You’re . . . you’re Deathwing the Destroyer.”
The shadows around the figure moved, faded a little. The face that almost passed for human, almost passed for elf, grew slightly more distinct. The edges of the mouth jutted up a bit more. “One among many of my titles, mage, and as accurate and inaccurate as any other.” He cocked his head to one side. “I knew I chose well; you do not even seem surprised that I appear to you thus.”
“Your voice is the same. I could never forget it.”
“More astute than some you are, then, my mortal friend. There are those who would not know me even if I transformed before their very eyes!” The figure chuckled. “If you would like proof, I could do that even now!”
“Thank you—but, no.” The last vestiges of day began to fade behind the wizard’s ominous rescuer. Rhonin wondered how long he had been unconscious—and where Deathwing had brought him. Most of all, he wondered why he still lived.
“What do you want of me?”
“I want nothing of you, Wizard Rhonin. Rather, I wish to help you in your quest.”
“My quest?” No one but Krasus and the Kirin Tor inner council knew of his true mission, and Rhonin had already begun to wonder if even all of the latter knew. Master wizards could be secretive, with their own hidden agendas set ahead of all others. Certainly, though, his present companion should have been in the dark about such matters.
“Oh, yes, Rhonin, your quest.” Deathwing’s smile suddenly stretched to a length not at all human, and the teeth revealed in that smile were sharp, pointed. “To free the great Dragonqueen, the wondrous Alexstrasza!”
Rhonin reacted instinctively, uncertain as to how the leviathan had learned of his true mission but still confident that Deathwing had not been meant to discover it. Deathwing despised all beings, and that included those dragons not of his ilk. No past tale in history had ever spoken of any love between this great beast and the crimson queen.
The spell the wary mage suddenly utilized had served him well during the war. It had crushed the life out of a charging orc with the blood of six knights and a fellow wizard on his meaty hands, and in a lesser form had held one of the orc warlocks at bay while Rhonin had cast his ultimate spell. Against dragons, however, Rhonin had no experience. The scrolls had insisted that it worked especially well at binding the ancient behemoths. . . .
Rings of gold formed around Deathwing—
—and the shadowy figure walked right through them.
“Now, was that really necessary?” An arm emerged from the cloak. Deathwing pointed.
A rock next to where Rhonin lay sizzled madly . . . then melted before his very eyes. The molten stone dribbled into the ground, seeped into every crack, disappearing without a trace as rapidly as it had melted in the first place. All in only scant seconds.
“This is what I could have done to you, wizard, if such had been my choice. Twice now your life is owed to me; must I make it a third and final time?”
Rhonin wisely shook his head.
“Reason at last.” Deathwing approached, becoming more solid as he neared. He pointed again, this time at the mage’s other side. “Drink. You will find it most refreshing.”
Looking down, Rhonin discovered a wine sack sitting in the grass. Despite the fact that it had not been there a few seconds before, he did not hesitate to pick it up, then sip from the spout. Not only had his incredible thirst demanded it of him by this point, but the dragon might take his refusal as yet another act of defiance. For the moment, Rhonin could do nothing but cooperate . . . and hope.
His ebony-clad companion moved again, briefly growing indistinct, almost insubstantial. That Deathwing, let alone any dragon, could take on human form distressed the wizard. Who could say what a creature such as this could do among Rhonin’s people? For that matter, how did the wizard know that Deathwing had not already spread his darkness through this very method?
And, if so, why would he now reveal such a secret to Rhonin—unless he intended to eventually silence the mage?
“You know so little of us.”
Rhonin’s eyes widened. Did Deathwing’s powers include the ability to read another’s thoughts?
The dragon settled near the human’s left, seeming to sit upon some chair or massive rock that Rhonin could not see behind the flowing robe. Under a widow’s peak of pure night, unblinking sable eyes met and defeated Rhonin’s own gaze.
As the wizard looked away, Deathwing repeated his previous statement. “You know so little of us.”
“There’s—there’s not much documentation on dragons. Most of the researchers get eaten.”
Weak as the wizard’s attempt at humor might have seemed to Rhonin, Deathwing found it quite amusing. He laughed. Laughed hard. Laughed with what, in others, would have been an insane edge.
“I had forgotten how amusing your kind can be, my little friend! How amusing!” The too-wide, too toothsome smile returned in all its sinister glory. “Yes, there might be some truth to that.”
No longer complacent in simply lying down before the menacing form, Rhonin sat straight up. He might have continued on to a standing position, but a simple glance from Deathwing seemed to warn that this might not be wise at such a juncture.
“What do you want of me?” Rhonin asked again. “What am I to you?”
“You are a means to an end, a way of achieving a goal long out of reach—a desperate act by a desperate creature. . . .”
At first Rhonin did not comprehend. Then he saw the frustration in the dragon’s expression. “You—are desperate?”
Deathwing rose again, spreading his arms almost as if he intended to fly off. “What do you see, human?”
“A figure in shadowy black. The dragon Deathwing in another guise.”
“The obvious answer, but do you not see more, my little-friend? Do you not see the loyal legions of my kind? Do you see the many black dragons—or, for that matter, the crimson ones, who once filled the sky, long before the coming of humans, of even elves?”
Not exactly certain where Deathwing sought to lead him, Rhonin only shook his head. Of one thing he had already become convinced. Sanity had no stable home in the mind of this creature.
“You see them not,” the dragon began, growing slightly more reptilian in skin and form. The eyes narrowed and the teeth grew longer, sharper. Even the hooded figure himself grew larger, and it seemed that wings sought to escape the confines of his robe. Deathwing became more shadow than substance, a magical being caught midway in transformation.
“You see them not,” he began again, eyes closing briefly. The wings, the eyes, the teeth—all reverted to what they had seemed a moment before. Deathwing regained both substance and humanity, the latter if only on the surface. “. . . because they no longer exist.”
He seated himself, then held out a hand, palm up. Above that hand, images suddenly leapt into being. Tiny draconic figures flew about a world of green glory. The dragons themselves fluttered about in every color of the rainbow. A sense of overwhelming joy filled the air, touching even Rhonin.
“The world was ours and we kept it well. The magic was ours and we guarded it well. Life was ours . . . and we reveled in it well.”
But something new came into the picture. It took a few seconds for the suspicious mage to identify the tiny figures as elves, but not elves like Vereesa. These elves were beautiful in their own way, too, but it was a cold, haughty beauty, one that, in the end, repelled him.
“But others came, lesser forms, minute life spans. Quick to rashness, they plunged into what we knew was too great a risk.” Deathwing’s voice grew almost as chill as the beauty of the dark elves. “And, in their folly, they brought the demons to us.”