Ragh stopped in his tracks, letting out an exasperated sigh. “You said she can take care of herself, that she can breathe water, be a fish if she wants.”
“I’ll just take a look. You know I’d rather not.”
“Yeah, water’s not your favorite element, Dhamon.”
“Perhaps she needs help.”
“If she’s some sort of trout swimming around down there, you’re not going to find her. You may as well stand here and burn in the sun.”
“She can find me. I think I’ll be rather easy to spot,” Dhamon said as he moved out into the warm lake water. He shuddered, though not from the chill of the mist. No, he didn’t really care for water. “I can hold my breath a long time.”
“Fine,” Ragh cursed, kicking at stones on the beach. “Fine. Fine. I’ll wait for the both of you in the shade.” He struck out toward the oaks and only once glanced over his shoulder. He noted that the surface of the lake was as flat as glass behind the dragon, not even a ripple remaining in Dhamon’s wake. The sand had also smoothed itself again. “Like you say, dragons are easily noticed.”
The shadows cast by the thick oaks felt cool washing over the sivak’s scaly hide. But he couldn’t enjoy himself. He looked out at the lake, muttered a string of curses, and grudgingly headed back toward the bank. “I’ll wait for you, Dhamon Grimwulf. Just don’t be down there too long. I like this place less and less.”
The deep lake water was painfully cold, and whatever had a hold of Feril’s wrist was strong and equally painful and only added to her misery. It continued to pull her down swiftly. The pressure against her ears tightened, and the water that coursed through her gills felt like ice. She focused on her wrists and saw what at first she mistook for wispy vines, as if emanating from some plant that grew in the watery depths, hut as she peered closer, she realized that the tendrils were instead ghostly, gloved fingers. She fought against the grip, staring harder into the dark blue below her and finally making out the specter of a man. The specter was wearing transparent armor, with the faintest mark of a lily on his breastplate.
The ghost of a Knight of Neraka, she thought, as she struggled even more futilely. How could something that looked so insubstantial be so strong? How could those no longer a part of this corporal world hold and hurt the living?
“Join me.” The words came from the specter, sounding thin and hollow.
No, Feril raged.
“You are not strong enough to resist,” the dead knight insisted. “Join me. Together we will protect the Fallen Queen.”
What Fallen Queen? Feril thrashed wildly, trying to pull herself free from the icy grip of the strange specter, but the ghostly fingers only tightened, and Feril felt her willpower, her life, slipping away.
“You are not strong enough to fight me, elf. Join me in the Lake of Death.”
The water became an intense green color as she was pulled farther down.
“Join the Fallen Queen.”
By Habbakuk’s fist! Feril looked, blinking furiously. The green stretched as far as she could see and was coming more into focus the closer to it the dead knight pulled her. The green appeared to be the bloated corpse of the overlord Beryl.
She couldn’t see all of the huge carcass—only the head, neck, and just beyond its shoulder blades. Its front claws were outstretched and its head rested between them. It looked almost as if it was sleeping. Its horns curved up, looking pale like the specter and breaking the wall of green. Its massive eyes were closed, and for a moment she thought it looked peaceful and beautiful. How big the corpse was, she could only guess. A green mist and dark waters concealed most of its bulk.
Scales glimmered faintly along the dragon’s neck, and in places some of them were broken apart—with elven long swords lodged between some of them, spears, and the rotting shafts of arrows sticking out of the dragon’s head. From a closer look she could tell that two talons were broken, and there was a long slash in one of the front legs.
The dragon had died a long time ago, Feril thought to herself, wondering why the beast hadn’t started to rot; that was puzzling, but something Feril decided she would mull over later—after she was far away from the dead knight.
“Join me,” the ghost droned, still pulling her down deeper. “Join my brothers in service to the Fallen Queen.”
Other images were coalescing around the spines that ran down the dragon’s neck. More ghostly Knights of Neraka, floating shoulder to shoulder as though in formation. There were a few elves among them, and Feril wondered if these were the spirits of Qualinesti who died in the battle against Beryl or other visitors to the lake who had foolishly entered the water and been conscripted into the dead army.
I’ll never join you, Feril thought, redoubling her efforts to squirm free. Despite her considerable strength, she couldn’t break the specter’s grip. In that instant she finally realized brute strength alone would not work, so she opted for a different tactic. She closed her eyes and pictured one of the catfish she’d seen earlier. She began to change her form—waver and shrink, arms thinning and receding, gradually slipping out of the dead knight’s grasp. While the process was not painful, it was uncomfortable and unsettling, and the intense cold made it even more precarious. Her teeth chattered and she shivered uncontrollably as her legs grew together to form a tail, her feet flattening into fins. Her tanned skin turned black and her leather clothes and elf features appeared to melt away.
Smaller, she urged, much smaller. The specter made one last grab at her as the still-mutating fish-creature finally darted away and up, beyond its clutches. Smaller still, she commanded herself. Only a foot long now, the fish-Feril swam faster, angling sharply away from the carcass of the overlord.
When curiosity got the better of her and she finally looked hack, Beryl’s head was all she could make out, that and the small wispy forms of the dead knights clinging like moss to her scales. The dead knight intent on capturing her seemed to have vanished. After a few moments, she turned around and swam closer to the dragon’s nose, cautiously, so she could get a better look and so she could see if the undead paid her any attention. The water was still painfully frigid, but her catfish form tolerated the cold much better. She was quick to learn that the spirits of the knights and elves were uninterested in any small fishes.
There were decaying trees just beyond the dragon’s snout and what looked like the remains of a marble fountain. There were plenty of bones, too, human or elf, Feril guessed, deciding not to get that close to find out for certain. Pieces of plate mail, shredded tabards, shields, helmets, quivers, and more were scattered around.
The dragon probably collapsed on her Knights of Neraka and the elves, on the fountain and who knew what else as it died. Feril tried to picture the dragon’s final minutes and its fall, the impact its massive body made and that caused this huge crater near the White Rage River and the creation of this—what did the dead knight call it?—this Lake of Death. An apt name, Feril mused to herself.
How was there so much magic in the dead dragon that it kept the corpse perfectly preserved and kept the lake so still? Feril wondered. It was so oddly cold at this depth, yet warm and still and inviting near the surface.
Perhaps it was the unnatural cold that kept the fish away from these ghostly depths, or perhaps there was some other magical boundary that separated the realm of the living from Beryl’s realm of the dead. Nothing seemed to prevent Feril from exploring deeper, though the cold was threatening to drive her away.
Despite her trepidation, she swam closer still, until the dragon’s visage filled her vision. Her eyes searched the broken objects on the lake bed amidst the traces of the undead. Feril’s catfish eyes were acute, so she could tell that everything around the dragon was rotting, and therefore had been there for some time. Everything but the dragon itself was rotting. She couldn’t get over the size of the overlord’s head. She’d seen Beryl once before, when the dragon was alive. It was at the Window to the Stars but that was years ago, another lifetime it seemed.