He held out his hands and shouted the words to a counterspell. His power engaged that of the summoner and overpowered it. The binding that held the elementals to the Prime Material Plane unwound and the creatures disappeared with a soft pop and a puff of smoke.
The wizard stared at him. He recognized that Brennus had overpowered his summonings with ease. He started backing away down the street, intoning a spell. Brennus walked after him, reciting the words to his own spell.
Heads poked out of windows.
"He banished the elementals!"
"He saved the city!"
"But what of the dragon?"
Brennus ignored the accolades. The summoner finished his spell, joined his thumbs, and blew on his hands. His spell amplified his breath, turned it frigid, and blasted it toward Brennus in a freezing sheet.
Brennus's body, infused with shadowstuff, resisted the magic of the spell and he endured the ice without harm. Completing his own spell, he pulled the summoner's palpable fear from his head and let the magic turn it against him in the form of an illusion.
Brennus did not see what form the illusion took, at least not clearly. He saw only a large shadowy form looming over the summoner. Its face suggested a muzzle; horns or large ears jutted from its head. The wizard collapsed to the ground on his knees, mouth open, eyes wide.
"Do not touch me!" he screamed to his fears.
Brennus's illusion reached out a muscular arm that ended in a pincer. It touched the summoner and he gasped, clutched his chest, and died. His fears blew away in the breeze.
Brennus walked over to the donkey. Its wild eyes rolled in its head and it backed off to the limit of its tether, but it was too exhausted to do anything more. Brennus reached out a shadow-shrouded hand, stroked its head. "There, now," he said.
His homunculi emerged from his robe and bit through the tether. The donkey turned and tore off down the street.
More and more heads poked out of windows and doors, all looking at him, back at the walls, up at the sky for the dragon. They wanted a savior and he had given them one. Rivalen would be pleased.
Through his ring, he reached out his mind for his brother Yder.
Come now, he said, and Yder returned a quick acknowledgement.
Brennus dared not transport himself blindly back to the walls, for fear he could materialize in a maelstrom. He did not know what damage the earth elementals had done. Using shadows as stepping stones, he worked his way back to the Khyber Gate.
The impact of Furlinastis's body drove Cale so deeply into the soft earth that the hole might as well have been a grave. The dragon's weight crushed him. His ribs shattered, his arm broke, his ankle. Pain lit a spark shower in his brain. He heard the dragon's roar, muffled by the mud that encased him.
Free us, said voices in his mind, and he knew them to be those of the souls trapped in the dragon's shadow shroud.
Cale? Magadon said, his voice tense. Cale?
He could not respond. He hung onto consciousness through force of will. Drawing on the darkness around him, he transported himself out from under the dragon. He appeared in another stand of twisted trees, a bowshot behind the dragon. Mud caked his cloak and trousers. He whispered the words to one of his most powerful healing spells and the magical energy reknit his bones. The shadowstuff in his flesh worked at the rest.
I am all right, he said to Magadon and Riven. He stood perfectly still and tried to control his breathing. His mind raced through his options.
Furlinastis reared back his long neck and cocked his head.
"I hear your heart, priest." He whirled his girth around with alarming rapidity. Shadows boiled around the dragon, faces formed, pleading with Cale.
"This is not as I would have it," the dragon said. "But one of us must die."
Cale did not bother to parse the meaning of the dragon's words. He invoked a spell that summoned a column of fire and immersed the dragon in flame. The spell appeared to cause no harm as the huge reptile roared and took flight out of the conflagration. The beat of his wings sent a gale of flames rushing across the swamp toward Cale. Trees and scrub shriveled in the heat. Cale ducked behind a tree and the firestorm did him no harm.
Airborne, the dragon pronounced a single eldritch word and the fog and shadows around Cale swirled, merged, and partly solidified. Cale could still breathe but could not see past his hands, and the fog resisted his movements as well as water. He knew what to expect next, even before he heard the beat of the dragon's wings above him and the inhalation of breath.
He frantically drew on the darkness to get him clear, but he was too slow. Furlinastis exhaled with a roar and the deadly, life-draining black vapor saturated the magical fog. Cale dived for a low spot in the earth but the fog stubbornly resisted his movements. The cold of the dragon's breath prickled his skin, entered his body through nose, ears, and mouth, and siphoned off much of his soul. He weakened; some of the power he used to cast spells drained away. He shouted with pain and rode the shadows to another stand of trees.
Riven's voice sounded in his head. Cale? Cale could hardly breathe. Soon, he answered, and leaned on a tree to keep his feet. Stand ready.
Rivalen watched the huge green dragon wheel in a wide arc. Its scales glimmered like emeralds in the morning sun. The same sun felt like needles on Rivalen's exposed skin. With an effort of will, he dimmed the light around him and flew toward the dragon, cloaked in shadow.
Below him, he saw the Saerloonian forces advancing through trebuchet fire on the double quick. Behind he heard the elementals, the world-shaking crash of their fists on the city's walls.
The dragon completed its turn, saw him approaching, and roared. It spoke a series of arcane words, beat its wings, lowered its neck, and arrowed straight for him. The moment the great reptile flew within range, Rivalen intoned the words to a spell that pit his will against that of the dragon. He had used a similar spell to cow a kraken. Few could resist its power.
The moment he completed the spell, the arcane energy rebounded on him, shaped by the dragon. He had only a moment to process the event-the dragon must have cast a protective abjuration that rebounded spells back on their caster, or perhaps bore a ring imbued with that power.
The power of Rivalen's own will twisted back upon him, tried to make him subservient to the dragon. His own voice sounded in his head.
Remain still and do not resist.
Magic made the words a compulsion. He fought it but his body went slack. He stopped in mid air and hovered. The dragon beat its wings, loomed larger in his sight. He could not move.
Roaring, the dragon exhaled a cloud of corrosive green gas that engulfed Rivalen. The gas burned his skin, melted his clothes to his flesh, and sheathed him in agony. The gas did not dissipate, as Rivalen expected. Instead it clung to him, continued to burn, to melt his flesh. He screamed as skin sloughed from him and rained down on the plains below.
Pain focused his mind. He fought his way free of the will-dominating spell a moment before the dragon's enormous form careened unharmed through its own breath and crashed into him.
The impact shattered bone, drove him backward through the air. The dragon followed up and deftly snatched him in a claw. The creature squeezed him more tightly than a vise. Ribs cracked, snapped. The dragon's corrosive breath, clinging to Rivalen still, burned his flesh more. He groaned and fought to stay conscious as his shadowstuff-infused flesh, sheltered from the sun by the dragon's body, sought to regenerate some of its injuries. Unable to concentrate to cast a spell, he swung his blade weakly at the creature's underbelly but did not so much as scratch the scales. Luckily, the creature's long neck prevented it from bringing its fangs to bear while flying and holding him in a claw.