Eir's hands trembled, numb, but she remained standing.
"How little you remember," growled Glint. "How little you know."
"We know who you are!"
"Do you?" roared the dragon, rearing up and spreading her wings through the vault. "I am Glint, Keeper of the Flameseeker Prophecies, Protector of the Forgotten, Foe of the Lich Lord, and Downfall of the Titans! Three thousand years ago, I was set here as a guardian of the world. Three hundred years ago, I welcomed heroes such as yourselves, hailing them as the Chosen who would destroy the titans and save the world. But did they remember? Did not the very heroes that I sent return to battle me again? And now you come to slay me?"
"Do you know who we are?" Eir shouted back. "We are Destiny's Edge, Slayers of the Dragonspawn, Ruination of Morgus Lethe, Damnation of the Destroyer of Life. We have crippled Jormag and Zhaitan and Primordus in their very lairs, and we will not stand aside while you raise yet another Elder Dragon to ravage the world!"
"I know who you are, Eir Stegalkin." Glint dropped her foreclaws to the floor again and stared into Eir's eyes. "I know the fight you have fought and the damage you have done to dragonkind. More, I know the fight that is ahead of you, and your vanishing hope of success."
"We will succeed!"
"If you stand together, you will," Glint said, watching as the other members of Destiny's Edge straggled to gather around Eir. "All seven of you, if you stand together-you can win."
Eir stared unblinking into the eye of the dragon while her comrades formed up around her. "Why would you tell us this?"
"Because your battle is not against me. As before, I am your ally."
"You would help us stop the dragonrise?"
"No one can stop it. But I will fight beside you against my master."
"Tell us his name!"
The dragon's massive eyes slowly slid closed, then opened again to focus on Eir. "His name is Kralkatorrik."
The name crackled through the air, as if it were crystallizing.
"Why would you fight against your very master?"
Glint nodded in thought and turned away. Her voice sounded ancient and hollow. "Long ago, I lived in a dragon-dominated world. I saw how they feasted on all flesh, on all minds, on all life. I saw how they ate until there was nothing left to eat, and then fell, sated. The darkness of those days slowly gave way to a new dawn-a bright world that did not remember the rapacious beasts. From that time to this, I have feared one of those sleeping dragons. My master, Kralkatorrik.
"But three hundred years ago, the dragons' bellies were empty, and their minds were awakening. Three hundred years ago, the sons of men fought me before they understood that I was their ally."
Eir's brow furrowed. "Why would you ally with humans against your own kind?"
The dragon's great eyes went gray. "I can hear the thoughts of creatures. I am an oracle. I heard their plots against my master, stopped them before they reached him, killed them in their tracks. But I also felt their agony, their loss. It grieved me.
"At first, for centuries, I defended my master. But I could hear his thoughts, too, and I knew that if he rose again, all good things would come to an end." Glint blinked, staring at Eir. "Now is that time. Even now, Kralkatorrik is rising."
Eir gritted her teeth. "Then we will ally with you. Your master will rise to face Destiny's Edge and a dragon such as himself!"
Glint shook her head. "If you call me a dragon, you must call him a mountain. If you call me a monster, you must call him a god. Even as I fight beside you-and I will-we will be battling a hurricane."
"How can we battle a hurricane?" Eir echoed.
Glint bared her fangs. "I will show you."
DRAGONRISE
Tyria should have known. The signs of the dragonrise were everywhere:
The earthquake that shook Rata Sum.
The tidal wave that carried ships into the streets of Lion's Arch.
The geysers that erupted in the tundra beyond Hoelbrak.
The pall that hung over the Black Citadel.
Tyria had been wracked by such terrible birth pangs before.
The people should have guessed that a dragon was rising.
Ferroc Torchtail's hackles rose. He didn't like the look of that mountain-how it hulked there-spiky, scaly, massive… unnatural. He certainly didn't like that his warband was marching toward it. He had a feeling of doom.
The last time he'd felt this way, a landslide had buried his centurion.
It had been a year earlier, when Centurion Korrak Blacksnout was marching his legion through a narrow defile in the Blazeridge Mountains. Ferroc was posted in the rear, the position of ignominy-far from the initial charge and the first kill and (as it turned out) the landslide that crushed the leaders. Blacksnout's decapitated body was found on the other side of the landslide.
In shame, Ferroc and the rest of his legion had returned to the Black Citadel. For months, they'd gotten the worst assignments.
This one was no different: go investigate a strange mountain.
Locals said the mountain was moving. They said it grew every night. It shook, it rumbled, it sent down landslides.
Oh, good-landslides.
Land was sliding even now. Boulders rolled end over end down the slope and leaped as their edges caught the mountainside. They trailed dust behind them.
Ferroc's warband was marching to fight what-boulders?
"Why are we still heading toward it?" Ferroc wondered aloud.
Legionnaire Kulbrok Torchfist sneered over his shoulder, "To find out!"
"Find out what?" Ferroc asked. "How it feels to be crushed by a twelve-ton boulder?"
"To find out why the mountain is rumbling."
"Why do mountains rumble?" Ferroc mused, ticking off possibilities on his claws. "Maybe they're volcanoes. Maybe they're fault lines. These are reasons to march away."
Kulbrok cast a piercing look at him. "We're charr. We march toward such things."
Ferroc nodded. "Yessir." But he let his pace slow ever so slightly, allowing Kulbrok to stride out ahead and the other charr to sift past. He was going to end up in the rear of the column again. The place of ignominy.
The place of survival.
"Aha! There's something to fight!" shouted Kulbrok, a good fifty yards ahead by now. He lifted a great sword and pointed toward a crack in the side of the mountain.
The crack was bleeding-not blood, but creatures. A big, fat Gila monster waddled from the crack, only to get bigger as it emerged. Now the size of a crocodile, now the size of a marmox, now the size of an elephant-why was it getting bigger? And beside the giant Gila monster scuttled a horned lizard. It, too, was growing. Its scabrous skin swelled outward, and its eerie face grew larger and stranger, and its blood-spitting eyes became crystal-shooting eyes.
They were no longer creatures of skin and scale. They now were crystalline monsters. Jagged spikes jutted out all around their heads and all down their backs and sprouted from their gigantic tails.
"Does anybody else see those things?" Ferroc asked.
"Charge!" Kulbrok replied.
The centurion bolted ahead, followed by his lead warband. Swords darted up and down in their pumping fists.
Ahead, the horned lizard reared up. Crystals shot from its eyes and hailed across Kulbrok and his warband. Many fell, but others ran on. Kulbrok crashed against the raised muzzle of the beast and fell beneath it. Throat spikes gored him. A few warriors rammed swords into the horned lizard, but the blades clanged off its stony flesh. The lizard whipped its spiked head from side to side, impaling the charr.
"Didn't anyone else see that thing?" Ferroc repeated emptily.
Other charr attacked the giant Gila monster-with a worse outcome. It waited for them to strike, ducked back, then lunged to snap them up like so many beetles. Poisonous teeth clamped down on bodies and bones, armor and weapons. With horrid gulps, the giant Gila monster swallowed warrior after warrior.