“Plainly, we’re not needed here at all,” said Zetetic, turning back toward the tunnel.
“Die!” Relic shouted. It took me a second to realize he wasn’t shouting at the Deceiver. Instead, he was shaking his bony fist at Greatshadow. “Your suffering is like wine to me! I drink in your agony as you die! Die! Die!”
Tower clawed back out of the hole he’d dug into Greatshadow, covered in flaming gore. He rose into the air, twirling, throwing off a halo of muck. When he stopped spinning he was clean again, his silver armor a dazzling light show reflecting the Gloryhammer, the lava, and Greatshadow’s pulsing blood.
“Your final page has been written, Greatshadow!” Tower shouted, his voice echoing from the walls of rock surrounding the battlefield. “Your name shall vanish from the One True Book!” Tower shot into the air, vanishing into the haze as he rose toward heaven to summon speed.
“Do it!” screamed Relic. “Kill him! Kill him!”
The resentment I felt toward my own negligent father suddenly seemed rather mild.
Zetetic’s retreat had halted only a few feet into the tunnel. He was looking back at Greatshadow. Apparently, the opportunity to witness the death of a primal dragon was overriding his desire to flee.
Greatshadow’s glazed eyes suddenly focused on the ledge we stood on. With a voice like a rumbling earthquake he growled as he spotted Relic, “This was your doing!”
“Yes!” screamed Relic, spittle flying. “I’ve plotted your demise since the day you tossed my twisted body onto the volcano’s slopes! Once you die, I shall become the new primal dragon of fire! No one will deny me my destiny!”
“Indeed?” said Greatshadow, his voice firm despite the fact he still flopped helplessly in the lava, unable to rise. “You’ve shielded your mind from me, but your dead companion has no mental defenses. I’ve just learned that the knight’s armor is made of prayer.”
He cast his gaze skyward as Tower reached his apex, the brightest object in all the heavens.
Relic’s waving fist froze in mid-air. A sudden look of horror filled his reptilian eyes.
“The monks would be too disciplined to light a candle,” he mumbled, sounding almost as if he was speaking to himself.
“I’m pretty sure none of them smoke,” I said.
“They don’t even cook there,” said Zetetic. “All their food is prepared in a nearby village and brought to them daily.”
“In that village, there is a bakery, with an oven that never grows cold,” Greatshadow said, sinking deeper into the lava as the light shot back down toward him. Tower punched through the clouds, his speed so great that a thunderclap sounded in his wake. Yet, as impressive as his speed was, he suddenly had no target. Greatshadow vanished completely beneath the bubbling rock with little more than a ripple. Tower punched into the glowing surface, throwing up a white-hot splash of magma.
For ten seconds, everything was quiet.
Then, the Gloryhammer shot up into the air, pulling Lord Tower from his blazing bath. Tower spun to clear his armor then surveyed the lava beneath him, searching for his foe.
His foe found him first, as a flame-wreathed talon punched from the surface and snapped around the knight like a man snatching an annoying fly. Greatshadow rose from the syrupy rock with a growl and slammed his talon down on the stone ledge we stood on, knocking us all from our feet. Tower was pinned beneath the impossible bulk of the massive lizard as Greatshadow brought his head to the platform and said, in very satisfied tones: “Embers rise constantly from the furnace of this bakery. They dance above the chimney like turbulent stars. A few may travel far, holding their heat until they land. Sometimes, such embers set roofs aflame.”
“Rrraahhhhg!” screamed Relic, as the bone-handled knife dropped from his talon. He fell to all fours and charged the larger dragon. He opened his jaws wide, to almost a perfect ninety-degree angle, before he sunk them into Greatshadow’s knuckle.
He shook his head from side to side, tearing at flesh, though in scale, he was doing about as much damage to Greatshadow as Menagerie was doing to Zetetic. “Da! Da! Da!” he raged. I think he meant, “Die! Die! Die!” Though, considering the relationship, perhaps not.
“You annoy me,” said Greatshadow, flicking Relic with his talon and sending him flying far across the lava.
Around this time, the last of Relic’s blood bubbled away from the bone-handled knife and I faded from existence. I watched with despair as my hands once more turned to mist, though I was slightly intrigued that, for some reason, this time I wasn’t naked. Zetetic’s clothing had made the transition with me back to the ghost zone I dwelled in.
Tower had grabbed one of Greatshadow’s nails and was bending it back. He said, in booming, heroic tones, “You’re bleeding, dragon. Your strength wanes with each heartbeat. Death is near!”
Tower was right. For the primal dragon of fire, Greatshadow didn’t look so hot. He had big, gory holes in the side of his face, and his blood gushed out by the bucketful. His vitals fluids no longer glowed like flame, but were now a thick brown-red stream that spilled down onto the knight’s face, splattering across the platform. I looked to where the knife had fallen, to see if there was a chance any of the drops might hit it.
The knife was gone.
I spun around.
Zetetic was nowhere to be seen.
“Your allies… have abandoned you,” said Greatshadow, his voice strained.
“A pure heart may face evil alone,” said Tower, defiant, as the strength of the Armor of Faith snapped the nail he wrestled with. He reached out and sank spiky fingers into the stone and began to drag himself free of Greatshadow’s weakening grasp.
“You aren’t… alone,” said Greatshadow. “Three hundred monks pray… for your victory.”
“Which is why I cannot fail!”
“The monastery has a library with ten centuries full of ancient books, dry as kindling,” said Greatshadow, as his eyelids drooped. “There is an open window. And now… there is fire.”
“Die!” screamed Relic as he rose from the lava near Greatshadow’s hips, climbing the dragon like a mountain, pausing every few feet to take a nip from his hide.
The prayer-driven gears within Tower’s armor purred at a louder pitch as he finally kicked himself free of the dragon’s failing grasp. He lifted the Gloryhammer above his head and shouted, “This ends now!”
At that moment, the metallic ring that covered the thumb on his left gauntlet vanished.
“One of the faithful… has abandoned his post,” said Greatshadow. Suddenly, a bolt popped out of the plate covering Tower’s left kneecap. “He is not alone in loving books more than duty.”
Tower answered by swinging the Gloryhammer with all his might toward Greatshadow’s mocking tongue. Greatshadow’s front teeth splintered with a wet sound that made me cringe. The dragon drew in a shallow breath as his mouth closed around the Gloryhammer and Tower’s hands.
The dragon’s scaly cheeks puffed out as he exhaled. A jet of white flame shot thirty feet out from Tower’s left kneecap, quickly fading into a stream of oily black smoke.
Greatshadow spit out the Gloryhammer and stared at the smoking husk of armor standing before him. With a creak, the armor tilted to the left, then toppled, landing with a clatter as it broke into scattered pieces. The interior was covered with soot half an inch thick.
Relic was now almost to Greatshadow’s neck. The larger dragon grabbed the annoying assailant gingerly between two claws and placed him on the ledge amidst the scattered armor parts.
“Die! You must die!” screamed Relic.
“I sense I may have — in some fashion — offended you,” said Greatshadow.
“You discovered me fresh from the egg and snapped my bones between your talons! You tossed my half-dead body from the caldera onto the slopes for the pygmies to scavenge! I was nothing but the unwelcome waste of your perversions, tossed away like trash! You will suffer! You will pay!”