But the wretched creature had to fall! In desperation, Aoth shouted an incantation intended to shred enchantments to nothing. He didn’t know if it had any chance of working, but it was the only idea he had. Meralaine joined in on the first refrain, reinforcing his power with her own.
Alasklerbanbastos plummeted again, and this time fell all the way down to the ground.
Aoth prayed to Kossuth that the dracolich would smash apart, but the Lord of Flame apparently didn’t hear. Although Alasklerbanbastos hit hard enough to snap some bones and jolt others loose from their couplings, the damage looked relatively superficial. Worse, either because of some innate capacity or because he used enchantment, he instantly started to mend. Pieces of bone, the severed wing included, flew through the air to reunite with his body.
Curse it! thought Aoth. The thing seemed as unstoppable as Szass Tam himself.
Alasklerbanbastos flexed his legs and spread his wings. Then his head whipped around as a flash snagged his attention.
Jhesrhi was on the ground near Tchazzar, casting flame from her staff to burn away the web of darkness. Maybe to restore his strength as well, as she had in the Shadowfell.
Alasklerbanbastos took a first stride in her direction. Jet furled his wings and dived at the dracolich. Aoth hurled darts of scarlet light that stabbed into the undead dragon’s spine but failed to divert him from his purpose.
Springing from the ground, Scar flung himself at Alasklerbanbastos. Who snapped him out of the air and gnashed him into pieces.
Eider plunged down on top of the dracolich and began to tear with her talons. Alasklerbanbastos shook himself like a wet dog and sent the griffon and her rider tumbling.
Oraxes hurled his own darts of light. Lances leveled, Shala and Hasos galloped at the undead blue. Soldiers rushed in, swinging axes and jabbing with spears.
Still intent on Tchazzar and Jhesrhi, Alasklerbanbastos didn’t so much fight the other opponents seeking to bar the way as simply wade through them. Unfortunately, he seemed to do it almost as easily as Aoth could have walked through a puddle. Meanwhile, Jhesrhi stood her ground and threw fire from the staff. She plainly meant to free Tchazzar or die trying.
Put me on top of him, said Aoth. Right where Eider landed.
All right, said Jet, but I don’t promise that I’ll be able to hold on either.
You don’t have to. Just set me there. Aoth willed the straps that held him in the saddle to unbuckle, and they did. He released the magic bound in every protective tattoo on his body.
Then Jet thumped down. Aoth swung himself off the familiar’s back, grabbed a knob of bone, and shouted, “Go!” With a reluctance that throbbed across their psychic link, the familiar lashed his wings and took off again. Aoth charged his spear with raw force and stabbed at sections of rib that-he hoped-Gaedynn’s mount had already weakened.
Pieces of two adjacent ribs snapped loose and fell away. Aoth jammed himself feet first into the breach he’d created. It was a tight squeeze, and a jagged tip of broken bone scratched his cheek. But then, releasing the charm bound in another tattoo to soften the fall, he dropped inside.
Where he found it all but impossible to stand. The dracolich’s motion bounced him around, and the bottom of the rib cage was like a floor with planks missing. Small lightning bolts crackled across the space he occupied, stinging and jolting him. They’d do worse than that once they wore away his protective enchantments.
He grabbed a rib to find and keep his balance, released the remaining energy in the spear, and jabbed at the curves of bone around him. If Tymora smiled, maybe Alasklerbanbastos would find the assault from the inside as difficult to ignore as Gaedynn’s arrow rattling around in his head.
For two or three heartbeats, that didn’t appear to be the case. But then the dracolich whirled around like a hound chasing its tail. Head bent backward at the end of his long neck, he glared at the pest infesting his core.
“Not this time,” said Aoth. He made sure he didn’t meet the Bone Wyrm’s gaze. And wished the creature didn’t have a hundred other ways of attacking him.
Alasklerbanbastos’s fleshless jaws opened. Aoth shouted a word of defense, and the world blazed white.
Medrash’s vision had cleared, and to a degree so had his thoughts. He could see and understand what was happening before him, and that was hellish. Because his friends and comrades needed him.
Chopping with his urgrosh, or jabbing with the spike on the butt, Khouryn was fighting as brilliantly as any warrior Medrash had ever seen. Grinning, shouting taunts, waiting until the last possible instant to dance out of the way of an attack in order to land a counterstroke, Balasar was equally superb. And they had help. Dragonborn kept streaming into the heart of Ashhold. Bat riders wheeled and swooped overhead, hurling javelins or thrusting with lances and polearms. Some of the mages had arrived as well. Cloaked in a protective blur, Biri hurled bursts of frost from her rose quartz wand.
Yet Medrash’s instincts told him it wasn’t going to be enough. Skuthosiin had gashes and punctures all over his prodigious body, but they weren’t slowing him down. He seemed to fell an adversary with every snap of his fangs, snatch of his talons, or swing of his tail, and when he managed another burst of poison breath, he was apt to kill several at once. To make the situation even more dire, a couple of the ash giant shamans had shaken off their debility, some of the hulking barbarian warriors had retreated into the heart of Ashhold, and they were all making a stand with their dragon chieftain.
Medrash reached out to Torm. As on his previous attempts, he failed to make contact. Even though he felt like his thoughts had cleared, his injury seemed to hinder his spiritual gifts just as it had paralyzed his body.
It occurred to him that he was likely dying. In other circumstances, that might not have dismayed him. But now it felt like failure. Like he’d be abandoning Balasar and the others.
He groped uselessly in the void. Then a familiar figure crouched over him. “Patrin?” he croaked.
The newcomer’s eyes widened in surprise, and Medrash realized he’d been mistaken. The fellow was younger and thinner than Bahamut’s knight had been, and his hide was brown-freckled ochre, not crimson. Medrash decided that it was the youth’s purple and platinum tunic, and the dark, that had confused him.
“I’m … I’m not him,” the newcomer said.
“I see that now,” said Medrash. “Go. Fight. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not him,” the youth repeated, “but the wind whispered to me. It said that now the god needs me to be his champion in this place. It told me to heal you. But I don’t know how!”
Even with his body broken and useless, Medrash felt a twinge of repugnance at the thought of accepting any boon from a dragon god. But he was far too desperate to pay it any heed.
“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he said. “Now reach out to Bahamut with your mind. You just have to concentrate and believe the Power will come. And be ready when it does. Sometimes-”
The newly anointed paladin cried out. A cold, stinging Power burst out of his hands and surged through Medrash, sharpening his thoughts and washing the deadness out of his limbs. Which brought a certain amount of pain, because the magic didn’t entirely heal his burns and bruises. But he so rejoiced in the return of sensation that even discomfort was a kind of joy.
The dragon-worshiper’s eyes rolled up into his head. He toppled sideways.
Medrash sat up and caught the unconscious youth, then laid him gently on the ground. He wished he could put him somewhere safer, but with Skuthosiin slaughtering dragonborn every moment, there wasn’t time. Besides, nowhere in Ashhold was truly safe, nor would be until the fight was won.