“Use it on the disk! Now!”
The ranger put a concerned hand on the wizard’s shoulder. “Rhonin, do you really think this will work?”
“I know the spellwork that will return it to them, a variation used by those of my order when trying to draw from other relics, but it demands that the artifact in question be shattered, so that the forces binding the magic within won’t exist any longer! I can give back to the dragons what they lost—but only if I can get the Demon Soul open!”
“Is that why, then?” Falstad hefted the war-ax. “Stand back, wizard! Would you like it in two neat halves or chopped into little fragments?”
“Just destroy it in whatever way you can!”
“Simple enough . . .” Raising the ax high, the dwarf took a deep breath—then swung so hard that Rhonin could see the intense strain in his companion’s arm muscles.
The ax struck true—
Fragments of metal went flying.
“By the Aerie! The head! ’Tis completely ruined!”
A great gap in the blade gave proof of the Demon Soul’s hard surface. Falstad threw down the ax in disgust, cursing shoddy orc workmanship.
Rhonin, however, knew that the ax had not been at fault. “This is worse than I would’ve imagined!”
“Magic must protect it,” Vereesa murmured. “Cannot magic also destroy it?”
“It would have to be something powerful. My magic alone wouldn’t do it, but if I had another talisman—” He recalled the medallion Krasus—or, rather, Korialstrasz—had given Vereesa, but that had been left behind after the wizard and the red dragon had headed back to the battle. Besides, Rhonin doubted that it would serve well enough. Better if he had something from Deathwing himself, but that medallion had been lost in the mountain—
But he still had the stone! The stone created from one of the black dragon’s own scales!
“It has to work!” he cried, reaching into his pouch.
“What’ve you got?” Falstad asked.
“This!” He pulled out the tiny stone, an object which in no manner impressed the other two. “Deathwing created this from his very being, just as he created the Demon Soul through his magic! It may be able to do what nothing else could!”
As they watched, he brought the stone to the disk. Rhonin debated how best to use it, then decided to follow the teachings of his craft—try the simple way first.
The black gem seemed to gleam in his grip. The wizard turned it on the sharpest edge he could find. Rhonin knew very well that his plan might not work, but he had nothing else to try.
With great caution, he ran the stone along the center of the foul talisman.
Deathwing’s scale cut into the Demon Soul’s hardened gold exterior like a knife through butter.
“Look out!” Vereesa pulled him back just in time, as a plume of sheer light burst from the cut.
Rhonin sensed the intense magical energy escaping from the damaged talisman and knew he had to act fast, lest it be lost forever to those to whom it truly belonged.
He muttered the spell, adjusting it as he thought needed. The weary mage concentrated hard, not wanting to risk failure at so critical a juncture. It had to work.
A fantastic, glittering rainbow rose higher and higher, flying up into the heavens. Rhonin repeated his spell, emphasizing as best he could what he wanted as results. . . .
The nearly blinding plume, now hundreds of feet in height, twisted around—heading in the direction of the battling dragons.
“Did you do it?” the ranger breathlessly asked.
Rhonin stared at the distant forms of Alexstrasza, Deathwing, and the others. “I think so—I hope so. . . .”
“Have you not been through enough? Will you continue to fight what you cannot defeat?” Deathwing eyed his foes with utter contempt. What little respect had remained for them had long ago died away. The fools continued to bang their heads against the proverbial wall, even though they knew that, together, their power still lacked.
“You have caused too much misery, too much horror, Deathwing,” Alexstrasza retorted. “Not just to us, but to the mortal creatures of this world!”
“What are they to me—or, for that matter, even you? I will never understand that!”
She shook her head in what he realized could be pity—for him? “No . . . you never will. . . .”
“I have toyed enough with you—all of you! I should have destroyed you four years ago!”
“But you could not! Creating the Demon Soul weakened even you for quite some time. . . .”
He snorted. “But now I have recovered my full strength! My plans for this world advance rapidly . . . and after I have slain all of you, I shall take your eggs, Alexstrasza, and create my perfect world!”
In response, the crimson dragon attacked again. Deathwing laughed, knowing that her spells would affect him no better than they had before. Between his own power and the enchanted plates grafted to his skin, nothing could hurt him—
“Aaargh!!” The fury of her magical attack tore at him with a force he could not have imagined. His adamantium plates did little to lessen the horrific impact. Deathwing immediately countered with a powerful shield, but the damage had been done. His entire body ached from pain such as he had not known in many centuries.
“What—have you—done tome?”
At first Alexstrasza looked surprised herself, but then a knowing—and triumphant—smile crossed her draconic features. “The bare beginnings of what I have these past years dreamed of doing, foul one!”
She looked larger, stronger. In fact, all four of them looked that way. A sensation coursed through the black dragon, the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong with his perfect plan.
“Can you feel it? Can you feel it?” Malygos babbled. “I am me again! What a glorious thing!”
“And it’sss about time!” returned Nozdormu, gemstone eyes uncommonly bright and gleaming. “Yesss, ssso very much about time!”
Ysera opened her arresting eyes, this time so arresting that it was all Deathwing could do to pull his gaze from them. “It is the end of the nightmare,” she whispered. “Our dream has become truth!”
Alexstrasza nodded. “What was lost has been returned to us. The Demon Soul. . . the Demon Soul is no more.”
“Impossible!” the metallic behemoth roared. “Lies! Lies!”
“No,” corrected the crimson figure. “The only lie left to disprove now is that you are invincible.”
“Yesss,” snapped Nozdormu. “I look forward to disssproving that ridiculousss fallacy. . . .”
And Deathwing found himself under attack by four elemental forces the likes of which he had never faced. No longer did he fight mere shadows of his rivals, but a quartet, each his equal—and he no match for all together.
Malygos brought the very clouds to him, clouds with suffocating holds around the black dragon’s jaws and nostrils. Nozdormu turned time forward for Deathwing alone, sapping his adversary of strength by forcing Deathwing to suffer weeks, months, then years without rest. His defenses already crippled by these assaults, Ysera had no trouble invading his mind, turning the armored behemoth’s thoughts to his worst nightmares.
Only then did Alexstrasza rise before him, the terrible nemesis. She gazed at Deathwing, still in part with pity, and said, “Life is my Aspect, dark one, and I, like all mothers, know both the pain and wonder that entails! For the past several years, I have watched my children be raised as instruments of war, slaughtered if they proved insufficient or too willful! I have lived knowing that so many died that I could do nothing for!”
“Your words mean nothing to me,” Deathwing roared as he futilely struggled to shrug off the others’ horrific assaults.“Nothing!”