Khisanth's astounded mind drew up a vision of Yoshiki Toba similarly disappearing into the maynus, followed by the sight of his charred body tumbling to Led's feet. Frenzied, she raised herself on her hind legs and flapped her titanic wings to get away from the device, but no air beat against them. Her wings had no more substance than thistledown. Roaring furi shy;ously, Khisanth, too, swirled away into the globe.
Still roaring, the young dragon found herself immersed in a maelstrom of light and sound. Enormous bolts of blue-white lightning flashed all around her rematerialized body. Thun shy;derclaps buffeted her so that it was difficult to inhale. The air smelled heavily, even tasted strongly, of chlorine. She could see Pteros next to her, his jaw moving in speech, but the thun shy;der was so loud it was impossible to hear anything else. Green clouds boiled past in every direction-right, left, above, even below. There was no earth nor water beneath her, only air.
With that realization, Khisanth dropped like a rock. She instinctively clawed and scrambled and flapped her wings. Finally she rose, or at least was suspended. When she stopped the motion of her wings for a moment, she plunged again. Khi shy;santh wasn't at all sure that it mattered, since there didn't appear to be any ground to crash into. Still, she strained her wings to keep from falling.
Nearby Pteros appeared to have caught on to the same notion and was fluttering his wings, too. She saw him working his jaw again. A shimmering cone shape radiated through the air from his snout. The wide end of the cone engulfed her, and she suddenly heard Pteros all too well.
"I've cast a shout spell!" he bellowed.
Khisanth clapped her claw hands to her ear holes, certain the drums would break. "Where are we?" No cone of sound spread from her mouth.
"Your voice isn't affected by my spell!" he hollered in expla shy;nation. Khisanth winced from the ear-splitting sound of his voice. "I presume you're wondering what happened, too! Frankly, I don't know-"
Pteros's deafening words were cut off by the sound of breaking glass. Khisanth could see before Pteros that the gems in his elaborate pearl-and-ruby diadem and sapphire necklace were shattering from the vibrations of his tremendously amplified voice. She thought of her maynus. Raising a talon to her choker, she remembered in a panic that she and Pteros were now inside the globe.
Before the riled young dragon could even put voice to the realization, an unearthly sound cut through the thunder. "The
thing you call 'maynus' is here." The voice wasn't painfully loud like Pteros's.
Both dragons fluttered around to find the source of the sound. A round object, or perhaps a creature, floated about a dragon's length away, though distance was difficult to judge in the featureless ether. It was a sphere, about the size of a dragon's head, and pearly. It was lit from within by flashes of multicolored light. Spears of lightning shot and twisted out shy;ward from it as the object approached, seeming to draw itself along as if the crackling branches were legs.
The ball-like object passed near the dragons, where it spoke in an airy, reverberating tone, "Follow, Khisanth and Pteros."
Looking at each other in question, the two dragons found themselves drifting along behind the odd creature. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar to Khisanth. It led them to a blue, egg-shaped sphere and urged them to pass inside.
Instantly the booming thunder faded to a soft, distant thumping. The air was blue and clear; the odor of chlorine dis shy;sipated. Lightning continued to arc around the blue sphere, but never penetrated it.
"There's no need to flap your wings here," said the pearly globe. "You will simply float."
Khisanth let her wings drop to her sides and bobbed with shy;out effort. "Where are we?" she demanded. "How do you know our names? And where is my maynus?"
"In your Prime Material world, I was that which you called 'maynus.' "
"This is all gibberish," growled Khisanth. "Just tell me
where on Krynn we are."
"I believe I know!" screamed Pteros. His voice blasted through the clear air, reminding him that it was still magically amplified. Blushing self-consciously, Pteros ended the spell's effect. "We're not on Krynn at all," he finished much more softly.
Khisanth scowled at Pteros, dismissing him by turning her scowl on the glowing creature. "Just tell me where I can pick up my maynus on the way out."
"I am what the nyphids called 'maynus/ but I am no longer yours."
"You don't seem to understand what it is I'm looking for, so I'll explain it to you," Khisanth offered with mock patience. "My maynus is a little inanimate globe that glows. You're a big, 'animate' thing that, well, glows." She tried to peer through the bubble. "A tiny luminous ball would be easy enough to overlook in all this lightning."
The creature throbbed slightly. "I will say this one more time. The thing you called 'maynus' is me. Here in my home world, you see my true appearance at last."
"— Or perhaps Pteros dropped it by the pond when he caused us to teleport to wherever we are," Khisanth suggested as if the creature hadn't spoken.
"We didn't teleport here at all, did we?" Pteros asked the creature. "The maynus 'gated' us to the plane of elemental air, didn't it?"
"Yes…."
"I thought so," Pteros smirked.
"And no. I brought you to the plane of lightning. If s a plane of finite scope and tremendous energy, a 'quasi-plane' your wizards call it, which lies betwixt your world and that of ele shy;mental air. This haven where we can speak, and where you are safe from the lightning, is a pocket or bubble of elemental air."
Khisanth felt her patience run threadbare. "So what about my maynus?" she blurted.
Unperturbed, the creature continued. "I am an elemental being native to this plane. Millennia ago, I and others of my kind were taken against our will to your world on the Prime Material plane by the race known as nyphids."
Finally, something Khisanth could understand. "What do you know about the nyphids?"
"Everything. The very first of that species were the off shy;spring of a lightning elemental like myself and another ele shy;mental being from the neighboring quasi-plane of radiance. Being of two worlds, they belonged neither here, nor in the radiant world, and thus became our servants. Eventually they rebelled against their servitude and escaped to find a new home for themselves. They settled on the Prime Material plane. But they didn't leave alone. With the aid of the magic we had taught them, they captured many elemental beings and took us along as the source of their magic. I was one such victim.
"In your world, I was a slave, trapped inside my own form. Like a genie in a bottle, I could use my powers only to carry out another's orders. Unsuspecting of my true nature, you were also unaware of the many traditions and prohibitions regarding maynus use among the nyphids. Your carelessly worded request allowed me, after thousands of years, to finally return here, to my home.
"Unintentional though it was, you released me from bondage. As repayment I will return you to the Prime Material plane. Prepare yourselves."
Khisanth could hardly grasp all that the elemental creature had revealed about the nyphid's nature. What she did under shy;stand was that she'd lost her most valuable treasure. "If you truly are the maynus, your freedom has cost me a very valu shy;able and powerful artifact. We need to settle on a purchase price for your liberty."
The maynus darkened. "On the contrary, I have offered you something of inestimable value-passage back to your home. Take the word of someone who knows the pain of exile. You cannot leave this place unaided." "Now, look here-"