He corrected himself. Nothing but a sickly, doddering beast well past his prime who even now flew toward his doom.
“Tyran . . .” Deathwing would not dignify the other dragon by calling him by his full name. “You are not dead yet?”
“Give back the eggs!” the crimson behemoth rasped.
“So that they may be raised as dogs for those orcs? I will at least make them true masters of the world! Once more dragon flights will rule the skies and earth!”
His ailing adversary snorted. “And where is your flight, Deathwing? Aah, my pain makes me forget! They all died for your glory!”
The black leviathan hissed, spreading his wings wide. “Come to me, Tyran! I will be happy to send you on your way to oblivion!”
“Whether by the orc’s command or not, I would still hunt you down until my last breath!” Tyran snarled. He snapped at the black’s throat, barely missing.
“I shall send you back to your masters in bloody little pieces, old fool!”
The two dragons roared at one another, Tyran’s cry a pale comparison to Deathwing’s own.
They closed for combat.
Rhonin stared.“Krasus?”
The crimson dragon raised his head enough to nod once. “That is the name . . . I wear when . . . when human. . . .”
“Krasus . . .” Astonishment turned to bitterness. “You betrayed me and my friends! You arranged all this! Made me your puppet!”
“For which I will always have . . . regrets. . . .”
“You’re no better than Deathwing!”
This made the leviathan cringe, but once more he nodded. “I deserve that. Perhaps that is the path . . . the path he took long ago. S-so easy to not see what . . . what one does to others . . .”
The distant sounds of battle reverberated even here, reminding Rhonin of other, more important matters than his pride. “Vereesa and Falstad are still back there—and those dwarves! They could all die because of you! Why did you summon me here, Krasus?”
“B-because there is still hope of seizing v-victory out of the chaos . . . the chaos I have helped to create. . . .” The dragon tried to rise, but managed only a sitting position. “You and I, Rhonin . . . there is a chance. . . .”
The wizard frowned, but said nothing. His only concern now lay in seeing to it that Vereesa, Falstad, and the hill dwarves survived this debacle.
“You . . . you do not reject me out of hand . . . good. I thank you for th-that.”
“Just tell me what you intend.”
“The orc commander w-wields an artifact . . . the Demon Soul. It has p-power over all dragons . . . save Deathwing.”
Rhonin recalled how Nekros had tried to use it on the black leviathan with no visible effect. “Why not Deathwing?”
“Because he created it,” responded a quiet, feminine voice.
The mage whirled about. He heard a gasp from the dragon.
A beautiful yet ethereal woman wearing a flowing emerald gown stood behind the wizard, a slight smile on her pale lips. Rhonin belatedly realized that her eyes were closed, yet she seemed to have no trouble knowing how best to face either him or the dragon.
“Ysera . . .” the crimson giant whispered reverently.
She did not acknowledge him immediately, though, instead continuing to answer Rhonin’s question. “Deathwing it was who created the Demon Soul, and for a good cause at the time, so we believed.” She strode toward the wizard. “Believed so much that we did as he asked, imparted to it some measure of our power.”
“But he didn’t impart his own, didn’t impart his own!” snapped a male voice, strident and not completely sane. “Tell him, Ysera! Tell him how, after the demons were defeated, he turned on us! Used our own power on us!”
Atop a massive rock perched a skeletal, not quite human figure with jagged, blue hair and silver skin. Clad in a high-collared robe of the same two colors as his form, he looked like some mad jester. His eyes gleamed. Daggerlike fingers scratched at the rock upon which the figure squatted, gouging chasms into it.
“He will hear what he needs to hear, Malygos. No more, no less.” She smiled slightly again. The longer Rhonin looked at her, the more she reminded him of Vereesa—but of Vereesa as he had once dreamt of her. “Yes, Deathwing neglected to tell us that part, and certainly pretended that he had sacrificed as we had. Only when he decided that he represented the future of our kind did we discover the horrible truth.”
It finally occurred to Rhonin that Ysera and Malygos spoke of the black dragon as one of them. He turned his head back to the red leviathan, silently asking the creature he had known as Krasus if his suspicions were true.
“Yes . . .” the injured dragon replied. “They are what you believe them to be. They are two of the five great dragons, known in legend as the Aspects of the world.” The red giant seemed to draw strength from their arrival. “Ysera . . . She of the Dreaming. Malygos . . . the Hand of Magic . . .”
“We are wasssting time here,” muttered yet a third voice, another male. “Precioussss time . . .”
“And Nozdormu . . . Master of Time, too!” marveled the red dragon. “You have all come!”
A shrouded figure seemingly made of sand stood near Ysera. Under the hood appeared a face so desiccated it barely had enough dry flesh to cover the bone. Gemstone eyes glared at both the dragon and the wizard in growing impatience. “Yesss, we have come! And if thisss party takesss much longer, perhapsss I shall go, too! I’ve much to gather, much to catalog—”
“Much to babble about, much to babble about!” mocked Malygos from high up.
Nozdormu raised a withered yet strong hand toward the jester, who flashed his daggerlike nails at the hooded figure. The two looked ready to come to blows, both physical and otherwise, but the ghostly woman came between them.
“And this is why Deathwing has nearly triumphed,” she murmured.
The two reluctantly backed down. Ysera turned to face everyone, her eyes still closed.
“Deathwing almost had us once, but we joined ranks again and made it so that at least he himself could never wield the Demon Soul again. We forced it from his hand and into the bowels of the earth—”
“But someone found it for him,” interjected the red dragon, pulling himself together as best he could, now that hope had evidently returned. “I believe that he may even have led the orcs to it, knowing what they would do once they had it. If he cannot use it himself, he can certainly manipulate others into wielding it for his purposes—even if they do not realize it. I—I believe that it suited his plans for Alexstrasza to be captured, for she not only remained the lone power he feared, but it helped the Horde to wreak further havoc in the world without the dark one raising a paw in effort. Now . . . now that it is clear that the Horde has failed him, it better serves his purpose for the orcs to move her.”
“Not her,” corrected Ysera. “Her eggs.”
“Her eggs?” the former Krasus blurted. “Not my queen herself ?”
“Yes, the eggs. You know that the last of his mates perished in the first days of the war,” she replied. “Slain by his own recklessness . . . so now he would raise our sister’s get as his own.”
“To create a new Age of Dragonssss . . .” spat Nozdormu. “The Age of Deathwing’sss Dragonsss!”
Suddenly Rhonin noticed that the four now stared at him, even Ysera with her closed eyes.
“We cannot touch the Demon Soul, human, and out of distrust, we have never tried to make another creature wield it for us. I believe I know what poor Korialstrasz here desired so much of you that he had to drag you from your friends, but while it seems the best way, he will not now be the one who keeps Deathwing occupied.”