"Not warded against fire," Rivalen murmured.
Rivalen swooped upward and hard to his right, forcing the dragon to turn again to pursue. The dragon roared in frustration as Rivalen incanted the words to a powerful evocation. When he pronounced the last syllable, he held his hands out before him, fingers spread, and a hellstorm engulfed the dragon from head to tail. Curtains of flame immolated the creature. It roared, smoking, and twisted in the air to get clear of the flames.
Rivalen spared another glance out over the bay-nothing. Where was Yder?
Below him and across the plains, he watched an elemental burst through Selgaunt's walls. Dust and rock flew into the air. The Saerloonian army flowed toward the breach.
Rivalen cursed but could spare the city little attention. The dragon was coming. It turned and wheeled straight for him, incanting a spell as it came.
Rivalen intoned his own spell and turned his body and gear incorporeal, immune to the dragon's claws, fangs, and deadly breath. He became a living shadow. As ephemeral as the wind, he dived downward and hard left, forcing the dragon to bank to reach him.
Instead, the creature shouted an arcane word, vanished, and instantly materialized beside Rivalen.
The moment it appeared, Rivalen returned to his physical form. His wards ceased to function, his flying spell ceased, he returned to normal size and strength, and every magical item on his person was drained of power. A moment of surprise froze him, and that was all the dragon needed.
It grabbed him in a claw, crushed him enough to steal his breath and crack bones. Rivalen's shadow-infused flesh tried to regenerate while the dragon spiraled downward at alarming speed.
He understood its intent. It would crush him on impact, or would finish him on the ground with its fangs.
He had no wards to preserve him. No charms to protect him. The creature must have surrounded itself in a field of anti-magic, suppressing even Rivalen's ability to transport himself through the shadows. He tried to squirm free, failed. He swung his blade against the dragon's scales-futile. He twisted his head to look down, saw Selgaunt burning, its walls breached, saw the ground rushing up to crush him.
Only one solution leaped to mind. He could try to disjoin the anti-magic field. Only a disjunction could work against such a field.
Enduring the pain and focusing his mind, he intoned the elaborate couplets of the abjuration while the earth sped toward him.
The dragon held him close beneath it. If his spell failed, he would be pulped when the creature slammed into the earth.
The dragon's scales rippled as the creature tensed for impact. Rivalen focused his mind on his spell, only his spell, and pronounced the final couplet.
Power went forth from him. Motes of green energy sparkled all around the dragon as the magic of the disjunction tried to unravel the threads of magic that created the anti-magic field.
The earth filled his field of vision. Rivalen shouted, anticipating impact.
His spell disjoined the anti-magic field and all his suppressed spells, wards, and charms began to function again. He turned incorporeal as the dragon hit the earth so hard it sank four paces deep into the dry plain. Rivalen's incorporeal form sank harmlessly into the ground.
He felt a tingle in his mind as Brennus contacted him through his magical ring.
Rivalen?
Where is Yder?
I was unable to contact you for a time. I thought-
Where is Yder?
Look up, Brennus answered.
Rivalen floated through the dragon-his ability to see even in pitch darkness allowed him to view the dragon's huge lungs, its heart, bones-while the reptile, unaware that Rivalen had survived, stood and looked under its body for his corpse.
Above him, Sakkors descended out of the sun. The inverted mountaintop upon which the city floated blotted out the light and cast the plain in darkness. Clusters of barnacles discolored the rough underside of the floating chunk of rock. Darkness clung to the city, trailed from it like a fog. Newly constructed spires, towers, and buildings pointed accusingly at the sun. Rivalen saw the dome of a new temple to Shar and grinned.
A cloud of veserabs flew below and around the city. Their tubelike bodies undulated with each beat of their membranous wings. A shade armed with a long spear rode atop each, buckled to a specially made saddle.
The dragon looked up, saw the city, the veserabs, and roared. It noticed Rivalen and whirled on him, throwing up clods of dirt, and spat a cloud of corrosive gas.
Rivalen, incorporeal, stood unharmed in the midst of the churning acidic vapors. Few things could harm him in his ghostly form, but he could do little to harm the dragon. With the field of anti-magic disjoined, the creature's spell-turning ward would be functional. He would have to use his sword.
Yder is to hold the troops until I give the order, he said to Brennus. And the bonded krinth are to order the Source to place all of its power in my sword. Now.
Brennus did not bother to respond. Rivalen assumed his brother was communicating the orders to Yder.
The green vapors dissipated, leaving the plains pockmarked and dotted with curled grass and withered trees. The dragon, seeing Rivalen unharmed, snapped its jaws at him. Teeth half as long as Rivalen was tall closed on him, passed through him, and did no harm. The dragon roared its frustration.
Rivalen backed off, holding his blade at the ready. The dragon prowled after, as graceful as a cat.
A charge went through Rivalen's sword. Power gathered in it. It vibrated in his grasp. Shadows bled from it as more and more of the Source's power filled it. Rivalen shaped the growing power with his will, took the weapon in two hands.
The dragon, wary, backed away a step and pronounced an arcane word. Five glowing green bolts of energy streaked from the creature's mouth and slammed into Rivalen. His ghostly form did not protect him from the magical bolts and the impact burned his chest and drove him back a step.
He recovered and bounded forward. The sword hummed in his hands, charged by the Source with magic that would reach through planes, with magic baneful to dragons, with the power of an entire mythallar contained within it.
The dragon slashed at him with claws, bit at him with jaws. Rivalen did not attempt to dodge the blows and they passed through him. The dragon, perhaps sensing its danger, tensed and leaped into the air. Rivalen clutched the blade in both hands, leaped forward, and drove the blade hilt-deep into the dragon's chest as the creature took off.
The blade tore through scales as if they were leather and cut a furrow in the dragon's flesh that started in its chest and continued the entire length of its abdomen. When his sword stuck and could slice no farther, Rivalen pulled it free.
Steaming blood poured from the ghastly opening and soaked the grass, sizzling and smoking. The dragon gave a high-pitched roar of agony. Blood rained down as it frantically beat its wings and struggled to stay aloft. Rivalen flew upward with it, slashed crosswise, and opened another bloody tear in the dragon's underbelly.
The dragon roared, wings beating. It snapped at him in rage, but its bite passed through him without effect. Rivalen pressed the attack, chopping through scales and flesh in great sweeping arcs. The dragon screamed in frustration, pain, and finally, fear. Its blood soaked the plains. Its screams saturated the air. Rivalen closed, intent to finish the creature, but it glared at him, spat a magic word, and vanished.
Rivalen hurriedly recited the words to a spell that allowed him to see magically concealed creatures and to pierce illusions, and scanned the plain around him. Nothing. The dragon had fled.