How do you fight a hurricane?
The answer hung in her fangs-the dragon-blood yoke. It had to fit down tightly behind the horns of the giant beast, pressed against its stony skull.
But where was that skull in this tumbling sandstorm?
Glint knew her master-rapacious and ruthless. Its gold-beaming eyes would even now be raking the ground for her. The best way to bring its head around toward her was to draw its attention.
Glint soared down through the pelting crystals of the storm until she could see the beast's broad back. A blow between the wings would bring that massive head around.
Shrieking, Glint dived onto that back and smashed into Kralkatorrik. Talons tore off scales, and fangs ripped through muscle. Green blood sprayed from it, emerald droplets plunging through the air. Glint vaulted off its back, rose up, and dived again.
This time, though, there was nothing to strike. The Elder Dragon's flesh had melted into a sandstorm. She tore at it with claws and fangs, but Kralkatorrik was as insubstantial as a dream.
The dream turned on her. In midair, the Elder Dragon rolled to its back, talons reaching up. Glint tried to loft away, but those claws solidified and grasped her. They pierced her leg and flank and held on crushingly as Kralkatorrik rolled again.
She flailed but could not escape. She could little breathe. Her lung was punctured and bubbling.
Kralkatorrik climbed into the sky, hauling Glint away from her lair. Its hissing bulk merged with the storm.
Eir ran back to her post at the shattered northern archway and loosed three more shafts. They rose past the gutted sanctuary and buried themselves in the storm. Three more flashes bloomed from the cloud.
A skittering sound came behind Eir, and she turned to see Garm rush up beside her. He halted and stared up at the boiling cloud.
Within it, flashes of light illumined two draconic figures locked in a death match.
"She's overmatched," Eir said breathlessly, nocking and releasing three more shafts. "She's a wren, and it's a hawk."
The three charges blew within the cloud, illuminating the hackled back of the dragon.
"I only hope she can place the yoke."
Garm nudged Eir's leg. She glanced at him, but he was watching the horizon.
There, on the plains of the Crystal Desert, marched new figures-giant Gila monsters and tarantulas, gargantuan lizards and snakes and coyotes. All had been turned to living stone by the breath of Kralkatorrik.
Eir stepped back and cupped a hand to her mouth and shouted through the archway. "Man your posts! The minions approach! Let none of them through!"
The monsters came on rapidly. They bounded over the desert-stone jackals and hackled lions and hulking hyenas. All moved with the hunger of the dragon itself.
Eir nocked three more arrows and pointed them at the flood of beasts that approached. She didn't want to waste arrows meant for the dragon on his minions, but they came so quickly. Eir stepped back, and Garm with her.
A stone-skinned lion and a gibbering hyena arrived first, leaping over the trench works. Their claws were spread before them, their fangs gaping in mad grinsBut stones shot from the trench into their bellies.
The lion and the hyena tumbled in midair and crashed to the ground. Their translucent hides showed where the dragon-blood crystals had bedded within them. Thrashing in fury, the two beasts scrambled to their feet and turned on Eir.
She backed up another step, the powerstone arrows jutting before her.
But the lion and the hyena only turned away. Side by side, they bounded back over the trench and rushed into the oncoming wall of monsters.
"Snaff's got them," Eir said breathlessly. "He's got control."
The lion and the hyena tore apart a number of the beasts, but more slithered and pounded and bounded forward. Some dropped right into the trench, and others tried to leap over it, but all of them were brought down by dragon-blood stones. All of them turned from attackers to defenders.
"He's buying her time," Eir said, at last releasing the three arrows to vault skyward and explode in the hide of the beast. "If only Glint can set the yoke."
Kralkatorrik held Glint in a death grip. It would never release her now. It wanted her dead, and to kill her, all it had to do was close its talons.
But then-boom! boom! boom!-three bright green blasts erupted across its belly. Pain ripped through it, and for a moment it was not thinking of the traitor clutched in its grip.
A moment was all Glint needed. She wrenched sideways, ripping the claws of the dragon from her side, and darted away from it on the wind. The dragon-blood yoke was still clutched in her fangs-this one slender hope for success.
Though her lungs were filling with blood, Glint labored skyward like a wounded dove. She would have but one chance this time. Kralkatorrik knew she was there in the storm, would be seeking her with all its focus. If only she could spot its head first.
And there it was, below her and to the left.
Glint tucked her wings and dived. She jutted her jaw so that the blood-stone yoke reached forward to take hold. She fell from the sky, millennia of vengeance packed into a moment.
The yoke stabbed down toward the dragon's horns and neck.
But it glimpsed her.
Its head darted up.
Before she could set the yoke, its fangs snapped onto her body.
Glint jolted, seized in the maw of the monster.
She could almost reach the back of Kralkatorrik's head, could almost put the yoke in place, but one more bite from him would kill her.
She lunged.
Kralkatorrik bit.
A dragon scream split the heavens.
Eir looked up. "Which one?"
The black cloud parted, and something plunged from it.
"No!" Eir cried.
The figure that fell was Glint. Broken wings streamed in the wind. Claws jutted stiffly. She fell like a comet, trailing smoke.
The other heroes saw it, too-staggering out into the sands.
She plunged toward the desert. Her body struck, hurling up a great plume of sand. Fire erupted around her, and she tumbled end over end across the ground.
Two seconds later came the sound of the impact-shattering stone, a mountain breaking. The ground trembled and reeled, and the dragon's broken body left a long furrow ending in a crater. A storm of sand rose into the heavens, and a rain of crystalline scales cascaded all around.
The dragon Glint was dead.
THE CHARR VANGUARD
Logan Thackeray and Flinteye Blazestone marched nearly a hundred charr warriors up from the bowels of Ebonhawke Keep. As they reached the ground floor, Logan gestured through a doorway: "Weapons in there, boys!"
The charr roared, piling through the door and greedily grabbing up swords, crossbows, axes, hammers, knives…
Logan strode to the banded-iron door and hoisted the beam. The door swung outward. "Whoever wants a fight, follow me!" He turned and bolted through the archway. "Charge!"
"Charge!" echoed Flinteye.
The charr vanguard rushed out past the ravaged body of Dylan Thackeray and into combat with the creatures that had slain him.
Crystalline hyenas ran rampant through the bailey and feasted on the fallen. The beasts looked up from their meals, jowls spattered in red. One loped away from its kill, and two more joined it. The pack formed up and came on. Stone hackles spiked across their backs, and they broke into a run toward the charr.
Logan and his allies lifted their weapons and charged. Logan's hammer crashed into a canine head, splitting the rocky carapace and smashing through to bone and brain. The beast was dead, but its momentum carried it forward so that Logan had to spin aside and let the hyena smash to the flagstones. The move brought his hammer wheeling up and bashing into the head of another beast.
Flinteye meanwhile brought his elbow down to break the back of a hyena. With a roar, the charr lunged at another, seized its crystalline throat in his teeth, and ripped it out.
Two crystalline creatures leaped at Flinteye. He sidestepped one and ducked down to head-butt the other. Horned brow crashed into stone brow. One skull cracked. The hyena yelped and fell to the ground, whining. Flinteye reeled back and grabbed his forehead. Even as he did so, though, he stomped on the hyena's neck and broke it.