Shal felt something snap inside her. She screamed loudly, but she did not look back at Tarl. She aimed her fingers straight for the creature’s mouth. Instantly flames jetted from her fingertips. The dragon’s head jerked back as the fire whooshed around its face, its lower jaw fried clear through. Shal cast a special Magical Shield spell and called for the Wand of Wonder even as the dragon shrieked and brought its head back down to launch more lightning.
Ren had never ceased in his attack with his short swords. Again and again, he stabbed deep into the dragon’s tough hide. When he saw Tarl hurled against the wall, his already frenzied attack became even more furious. Working his swords like a mountain climber’s picks, Ren scaled the dragon’s back. The gigantic tail slapped and flailed nearby, and when Shal’s flames sent the dragon’s head snapping back, it was all he could do to hang on and drag himself to the base of the dragon’s neck, where the tail was no longer a threat. His legs clinging to the beast’s broad neck, he used all his strength to plunge the two short swords deep into the tendons between the dragon’s shoulder blades.
The dragon shrieked and roared in agony and rage. Yellow lightning shot from its mouth, only to be reflected off Shal’s magical shield. An instant later, the dragon threw its head back as its own lightning returned and sizzled the flesh of its underbelly. It shrieked once more, flailing its tail and shaking its shoulders violently to try to rid itself of Ren, who had called for Right and was now stabbing with his two magical daggers.
Pain dictating its movements, the creature wagged its head, gulped a mouthful of fluid from the pool, and sprayed a jet of yellow acid breath at Shal through its drooping jaw. “Protect from poison!” Shal screamed, and she raised the Wand of Wonder. A million and more yellow droplets of poison hung suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, and then the cavern exploded with a riot of beating wings, as each droplet became a brilliantly colored butterfly. Under other circumstances, the sight would have been breathtakingly delightful, but now the thousands upon thousands of butterflies served only to reduce visibility to zero.
Ren continued to battle by feel alone, his magical daggers slicing through the dragon’s thick scaly hide as if it were butter. He stabbed and sliced as fast and hard as his arms would move, scooting ever higher up onto the dragon’s neck, hoping to find its jugular. Shal lowered her magical shield and cast another Burning Hands spell, aiming by memory for the dragon’s abdomen, below where she had last seen Ren. Jets of flame shot from her fingers, and thousands of butterflies popped and burst, caught in the magical inferno. The dragon screamed, an almost inhuman scream, as the flames struck and spread across its chest. Just then one of Ren’s daggers ripped through tendon and sliced through an artery in the creature’s neck. It reared high on its hind feet, then pitched itself over in its agony, slamming Ren to the ground beside it. It clambered tentatively to its feet, flailing wildly with its tail at the smell and presence of the ranger. With all the force left within its pain-racked body, the dragon tail-slammed Ren against the nearest wall of its lair.
Shal could feel, could hear, the big man’s bones shatter as his body thwacked hard against the stone wall, and she could see, even through the haze of the remaining butterflies, that he was not moving. She leveled her hands at the dragon again, even as it turned its head to attack her, and let loose with a fireball. Fueled by her fury, the fireball was huge and white. It burst square against the dragon’s already injured face and neck, and flames raged from its snout down its torso.
The creature spun wildly, crazy and blinded from the pain. By instinct or luck, it caught Shal with the tip of its tail as it spun, and she was hurled back against Tarl’s charred body. For a moment, Shal saw only blackness, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She knew she needed to finish the dragon off now, before it finished her, but pain and fear froze her body even after her vision cleared. She remained paralyzed, literally waiting to die, but to her surprise, the hulking creature failed to take advantage of her helplessness. Instead, it scrabbled backward and slid into the crescent-shaped pool. Her heart leaped as she realized the dragon must be retreating, perhaps even dying.
But her revelry was short-lived as she saw the snout come up from the golden water, and the neck after it. The dragon’s jaw was no longer dangling. There were no frostbitten or charred scales, no gaping bloody wounds high on its neck. The dragon was whole once more, perfectly healed, and it was coming up out of the pool toward her. Shal screamed soundlessly. She had no spell, no words. But she heard Cerulean’s cry loud and clear: The ring! Wish it dead!
Shal closed her eyes and wished with everything in her. She wished the damnable creature dead.
With its next lumbering step, the dragon toppled to the ground. It was in the best of health, but its heart stopped cold, and the body was dead in the fraction of a second that it had taken Shal to wish.
When they saw the dragon fall, Cadorna and Gensor came out of their hiding place in the next room. They didn’t know what had killed the dragon, nor did they care. Cadorna would assume power over all of Phlan and more, and Gensor would practice magic to his heart’s content. “Be sure all three are dead,” Cadorna instructed quickly, and he walked up to the dragon to touch it and pay a moment’s respect to its legacy of power.
Before his fingers ever touched the creature’s cold hide, Cadorna screamed. It was the scream Tyranthraxus had heard through the millennia each time he entered a new body. The scream of a being possessed.
To Tyranthraxus, it was a glorious sound. He relished it for a brief moment as he pushed Cadorna’s thoughts of power from his mind and replaced them with his own, which were subtler, infinitely more interesting, and grounded in thousands of years of experience. Tyranthraxus’s immediate desire was to get himself out of range of the mage-woman who had just killed his previous body. If she could kill a dragon, she could undoubtedly kill a man, and Tyranthraxus could not afford to risk another possession so soon. As much as he hated to leave the power he had gathered here behind him, he knew the secret now of the Pool of Radiance and the ioun stones, and it would only be a matter of time before he could possess them again. Without so much as a nod to Gensor, who meant nothing to Tyranthraxus, the possessed Cadorna leaped into the golden waters of the Pool of Radiance, calling on its magical energies to teleport himself and his possessor to a place far away.
“No!” Gensor shouted. Gensor and Cadorna had both seen the power of the magical hammer. They had both watched as the dragon emerged from the waters completely healed, and Gensor was not about to let Cadorna take all the pool’s energy for himself. The mage threw back his hood and dived in after Cadorna. But where golden fluid had boiled with incalculable energy only seconds ago, there was only plain water … deep, icy water. Tyranthraxus had absorbed all of the pool’s magical energies.
Gensor knew nothing of Tyranthraxus. He didn’t even know what had happened to Cadorna. But he did know what was hidden from sight at the bottom of the pool. The mage came quietly to the surface of the pool and uttered a spell to make himself invisible before climbing out of the cold water.
Gensor watched silently as Shal slowly recovered enough to begin to function again.