The battle of Ebonhawke was done.
Kralkatorrik had declared the victors.
The last outpost of humans in Ascalon would now be a dragon fortress.
The Elder Dragon screamed, and its ogre minions bellowed in joyful reply.
Then the dragon's wings pulsed, and it pivoted massively above the fortress. Another stroke of those wings, and Kralkatorrik banked away, heading south.
The ogres and hyenas watched in grief as their master left them. Their faces fell, and they stared at the pathetic dragon minions all around. With looks of disgust, the ogres turned away and loped toward the shattered southern wall. They clambered through, their hyenas leaping at their heels.
The once-humans and once-charr did not move from their spots, as if rooted in place.
Still, the ogres followed their master. Let these puny minions hold Ebonhawke. The ogres would serve their lord directly.
Through the wall they went, and down upon the rocky lands beyond-southward, ever southward into the Crystal Desert. With bellows and cackles, they followed their ancient lord.
Kralkatorrik already was impossibly distant, and it flew at terrific speed. Soon, it would be lost to sight, but the ogres would follow until they were in the presence of their master.
Logan stood unmoving in the courtyard of Ebonhawke. He had been transfigured like all the rest-not transformed, but transfigured. When the dragon's eyes stared down upon him, his outer semblance became something new-stony and strange. It was as if every muscle seized up, and he had become a living statue.
But his mind still turned, still told him that his friends had failed. They had failed because he had abandoned them. And now, Kralkatorrik held him.
As the last of the ogres climbed through the wall and lumbered away across the rocky hills, the glamour that gripped Logan and the others faded away.
Logan panted, only then realizing he had forgotten to breathe.
A Vanguard warrior nearby staggered and clutched his knees.
A charr legionnaire whipped his head back and forth, eyes blazing. "What sort of sorcery was that?"
"My type of sorcery," came a voice high above, "mesmerism."
Logan and the others looked up to see, on the highest balcony of the keep, Queen Jennah. From that lofty spot, she had cast the illusion of the dragon in the sky. She had poured down golden light to lave the warriors below, had made them seem creatures of stone. Her spell had been so powerful, they had not known they could still breathe.
"I've deceived them, the minions of Kralkatorrik," Queen Jennah called. "I have saved you, human and charr alike. We have been enemies these many centuries, but now there is a new enemy for us both.
"This is a dark day, the first of many. This is a day of dragons. We must stand together against them, or we will all fall beneath. And so I am releasing these charr prisoners." She gestured down at the group of charr standing beside the fortress's portcullis. "They have fought beside us, and they are free."
Logan strode toward the line of charr. "Did you hear that? You're free."
One of the warriors said, "We fought beside humans. We will be outcasts."
"No," Logan said. "I've spent the last year fighting beside a charr. Am I an outcast?"
The charr looked him in the eye. "I will tell them I fought beside Logan Thackeray."
"Yes. Tell them that."
Zojja ripped away the straps that bound her into the cockpit and pounded the button that made the blast shield slide down. Vaulting from her golem, she landed achingly on the floor of the sanctum and ran to Big Snaff.
It lay where it had fallen, shattered stone and smoking servos.
Zojja stared hopelessly into the gutted belly of the golem. There, amid torqued stanchions, lay a limp figure, pierced in many places and bloodless.
He was dead.
Snaff was dead.
"No!" Zojja screamed.
Running feet approached-Eir arriving to grip the fuselage of the golem and stare within. "You can't die!"
"He's dead already!"
Eir reached into the cockpit, hands fumbling. "You can't die." Eir pulled Snaff's broken body from the wreckage and cradled him.
"Put him down!" Zojja yelled. "You have no right! Your plan failed. You killed him!"
Eir's green eyes opened wide. "I killed him?"
"Put him back!"
Eir stood for a long while, holding the asura genius. Then slowly, reverently, she lowered his body back into the ruined golem.
"Now, get out of here!" Zojja snapped. "I have to cremate him."
Numbly, Eir turned and wandered away through the shattered sanctum.
Zojja waited until the norn was gone. Then, with tears streaming down her face, she said, "Good-bye, Master." She lowered her hands into the shattered cockpit of Big Snaff and called forth cremating fire.
"Pointless," Rytlock muttered as he stared out at the battlefield.
Before him, the sands had fused to green glass, entrapping a thousand stone creatures. To his right lay Glint, destroyed in combat against her master. To his left lay her ruined sanctuary-once a haven in the Crystal Desert and now a ragged memorial.
"Pointless."
Especially because they had been so close. Just a few moments more and the lance would have pierced the dragon's heart, and Kralkatorrik would have died, and Snaff would have lived.
A few moments that Logan could have given them.
"Logan!" Rytlock roared, ripping Sohothin from its sheath and ramming it into the ground. "It's your fault!"
The shout rang false. It wasn't Logan's fault. It was Rytlock's, for trusting a human. For letting a human's softness make him… weak.
"I'm a fool," Rytlock said.
"You're a hero," said Caithe, stepping up to him. "We can't wallow in grief."
"Wallow!" Rytlock growled. "Two of our companions are dead."
"And more will be if we don't join together," she insisted. Her strange white face, so small and intense, stared at his own. "We have to regroup, come up with a new plan."
"There's no more group. There's no more plan."
"But we haven't finished-"
"I have." Rytlock crouched to pull his flaming sword from the ground, slung it in its sheath, and strode away.
"What does that mean?" she shouted after him.
Rytlock continued to walk.
"Rytlock, what does that mean?"
He made no reply.
Caithe strode through the ruined sanctum of Glint, heading toward the fallen golem.
Zojja was within. She had removed one of Big Snaff's epaulets and was using it as an urn to gather her master's ashes.
Caithe spoke softly. "Rytlock is leaving."
"Just like Logan."
"We have to stop him, or go with him."
Zojja smiled sadly. "I don't have to do anything."
"Don't be irrational," Caithe said.
Zojja's eyes clouded with anger. "Who are you to tell me anything? You're not my master. My master is dead."
Caithe said sincerely, "This could be the death of the whole world."
"My world is dead."
Eir stood stunned on the battlefield.
Logan was gone. Snaff was dead. Glint was dead. And Kralkatorrik lived.
She staggered toward the broken hulk that had once been Glint. Her wings had been sheared off on impact, and her body was bashed, her neck broken… But her head lay on the sands as if she only slept. Those ferocious horns, those wide and wise eyes, that noble muzzle all mantled in whiskers"Forgive me," Eir said. "I was sure we could keep him safe. With Logan, we could have. But now…" Eir looked away across the desert. "The plan went wrong. My plan."
Glint lay unmoving.
Eir leaned against the jowl of the beast and whispered into her torn ear, "Forgive me."
Only silence answered.
Caithe approached and said, "Rytlock is leaving and Zojja won't move."
Eir clung to the dead dragon.
"Kralkatorrik will be back. We have to regroup."
"Who?" Eir asked, infinitely weary. "You, me, and Garm?"