She glimpsed a glint from the corner of her eye and turned toward the spear points swinging in her direction. For of course the foot soldiers among whom she’d advanced had seen her blast their mounted comrades. They’d stood stupefied for a heartbeat, but they meant to strike her down for her treachery.
She had no time for another prayer, whispered or otherwise, but her own innate vitality was sufficient for a second blaze of fiery breath. She spat it, and the two warriors who were threatening her reeled backward.
She darted out of the massed infantrymen, racing closer to Skuthosiin and the riders assailing him. Some of the foot soldiers hesitated to follow, but others scrambled after her.
She judged she had just enough time and distance for an incantation. She hissed Draconic words of power, touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her middle finger to make her hand resemble a saurian head, then, quick as a striking serpent, jabbed it at four different spots on the ground.
Each as big as a dragonborn, four rearing, snarling wyrms appeared where she’d pointed. Her pursuers quailed until they realized the apparitions were incapable of doing actual harm. By then she was close enough to Skuthosiin for the green to lash out at anyone who dared to keep following, and no one did.
Clouds shrouded Selune and the stars. To Aoth, the air smelled like a storm was coming.
It is, said Jet, and its name is Alasklerbanbastos.
I know, answered Aoth. Because the deepening darkness seemed blacker and felt somehow dirtier than just the clouds could explain, while the breeze carried a hint of old rot as well as the imminence of lightning. It was like the worst of his experiences in Thay, with something unimaginably strong and vile rising to poison all the natural world. I just wish he’d get on with it.
Back on the ground for the moment, Tchazzar incinerated a formation of kobolds with a blast of flame. Either he was trying hard to convince the Great Bone Wyrm that he was squandering his power-or else, in his excitement, he really was.
Whether he was thinking, the result was the same. At the northern edge of the battlefield, pieces of darkness seemed to thicken and arrange themselves into a structure, like ghostly hands were building it. And even wyrmkeepers and vampires instinctively shrank away.
In a moment, a murky skull with a spiked snout sat atop the stacked vertebrae of the neck, and fleshless wings arched to either side. Then, inside the core of the thing’s body, lightning flared repeatedly from rib to rib, and its eye sockets lit with a spectral glow. The structure changed from dark to leprous white as lengths and curves of shadow turned into bone.
Alasklerbanbastos strode forward. Chessentans who were nowhere near him screamed. So did some of the Threskelans.
Go ahead, said Jet, if it will make you feel better.
Aoth snorted. If he’d ever done any screaming, it had been a long, long time ago. But even to a man who’d survived the nastiest parts of the War of the Zulkirs, the Great Bone Wyrm was an appalling spectacle. Now that the two of them were in the same place, he could tell that the dracolich was even bigger than Tchazzar. And as they advanced on each other, and warriors left off struggling to scurry out of the way, it was difficult to resist the idea that here were the only combatants and the only fight that really mattered.
Aoth spat away that notion as well. Whatever their pretensions, neither wyrm could stand up to a proper army all by himself. That was why they bothered to command armies. Besides, what was about to happen would be very little like the duel of titans his imagination was suggesting.
Or so he hoped. Jaxanaedegor and his followers were taking their time about striking at their master. Aoth hoped they were simply making sure they’d take the dracolich completely by surprise when he’d have nowhere to run.
The battlefield was strangely quiet as the undead colossus and the self-proclaimed deity approached each other. That was because a good many warriors were simply standing and watching, and it enabled Aoth to make out the words when the wyrms spoke in the same esoteric form of Draconic that Jaxanaedegor had used when he first appeared to Tchazzar. Or maybe it was their innate magic, roused by their utter mutual hatred, that made their words audible even high in the sky.
“I invoke the Five Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Precept,” Alasklerbanbastos said. “To the death, and winner take all.”
“That’s exactly how it will be,” Tchazzar replied. “For I promise I’ll find your phylactery.”
“Take it if you can.” Without cocking his neck back or doing anything else that might have warned of a live dragon’s intent, Alasklerbanbastos simply opened his fleshless jaws and spat lightning.
The flare dazzled Aoth, and the thunderclap spiked pain into his ears. The attack pierced Tchazzar and made him thrash.
But as soon as it ended, the red dragon spewed a blast of flame. It cracked some of Alasklerbanbastos’s naked bones, sent chips of them flying, and jolted the dracolich backward.
Tchazzar instantly sprang high and lashed his wings. He plainly meant to pounce on top of his foe before the Great Bone Wyrm recovered.
Unfortunately, Alasklerbanbastos was more resilient than expected. He lifted his head, stared at Tchazzar, and the glow in his eye sockets flared.
Aoth remembered how the dracolich’s gaze had paralyzed him. Tchazzar merely seemed to twitch in midleap. But perhaps that was enough to impair his agility, for Alasklerbanbastos dodged out from under his adversary’s claws. And when the war hero came down, the dracolich met him with a clattering sweep of his bony tail.
The blow caught Tchazzar across the side of the head and bashed him stumbling to the side. Alasklerbanbastos backed away, opening up the distance, and hissed words of power.
A web of shadows seethed into being. It covered Tchazzar like a net, and wherever it touched him, scales sloughed away and the flesh beneath them withered.
With all his might, he should have been able to break free. But as he gathered himself to try, Alasklerbanbastos snarled another spell.
Tchazzar roared, then thrashed wildly, as a beast would struggle against a net without truly comprehending what it was. Without intellect to guide it, raw strength wasn’t enough to snap the strands, and they rotted their way deeper into his body.
Like the paralysis, the red dragon’s frenzied confusion only lasted a heartbeat. Then he stopped his useless flailing. But at the same moment, Alasklerbanbastos spat another bolt of lightning.
Tchazzar went rigid, then slumped when the flare blinked out of existence. He kept on fighting the web, but seemed dazed and too weakened to have any hope of escaping.
Alasklerbanbastos started another spell.
Aoth looked around. Jaxanaedegor and his minions were nowhere near the Great Bone Wyrm. Maybe they hadn’t expected the dracolich to gain the upper hand so quickly and completely. Aoth hadn’t expected it either, even though every soldier knew combat was often like that. A duel between even the greatest warriors could start and end with a single cut.
Anyway, one thing was clear. If Jaxanaedegor hadn’t already started maneuvering to attack, he certainly wasn’t going to do it now.
Aoth supposed he should order the Brotherhood to retreat. Try to get them off the battlefield and out of Chessenta without taking any more casualties.
But then they’d have lost again and further tarnished their reputation. He might never see Cera again. And he could guess what fate awaited a priestess of the sun in a land newly conquered by an undead monstrosity.