Jean Rabe - Redemption

Live. Come to me, the voice said.

He felt a slight tug, as though someone had taken his hand, but there was no one there, and the sensation was more of an urging than a physical pulling.

“By the Dark Queen’s heads, you’ll not win! I will kill myself before I become your spawn puppet!”

There was deep, sonorous laughter—loud and long and haunting. The laughter enveloped Dhamon, yet he knew it was coming from inside him. The laughter was all inside his mind. The shadow dragon was thoroughly inside his head, he realized, and it was attempting to control him and draw him near.

“The beast wants to see me lose my soul,” he managed to gasp. “He wants to see the last of my humanity die.”

He looked around. Maldred had disappeared. Fled. Betrayed him again.

In the next instant not only could Dhamon hear the dragon, he could see it clearly—a bloated mass of shadowy scales breathing and moving and flying toward him in his mind’s eye. It was nearly as large as an overlord. Huge and terrifying, its image weakened his will. He felt his mind surrendering.

“I’ve got to fight it,” he told himself. “Stay strong long enough to kill myself. Where’s the glaive?”

All of a sudden Dhamon felt as if he were flying, the wind rushing beneath his leathery wings, his claws outstretched, his eyes scanning the ground below for… dragons. For magical energy. He had been mentally swept away from the mountainside and deposited… where? In a cavern? Hot and dry and smelling of sulfur. There was a blue dragon nearby, small and with a Dark Knight mounted on its back.

Dhamon felt his wings pulling into his sides, felt himself diving. He realized the cavern was incredibly immense. The air was laced with the scent of lightning and blood, filled with shouts of battle and the cries of the dying. When he looked around he saw other blue dragons, all ridden by Knights.

“The Abyss? Am I witnessing the Chaos War through the shadow dragon’s eyes? Is it forcing me to watch this catastrophe to stamp out my resistance?”

The blue dragon loomed in front of him. He stretched out his claws, felt them sink into the young dragon’s side. His claws began rending the creature, killing it quickly and sending the Knight-rider plummeting like a discarded doll. He felt a rush of excitement from the kill, felt a wash of energy pulse up through his claws and into his chest. Then he flew to another blue dragon. And another. And another.

Dhamon felt his mind slipping away.

Yet with each kill he felt renewed, stronger, infused with the life energy of the dying Blues. With each one that collapsed to the cavern floor, he felt an increasing power of pride—he knew that Chaos, the Father of All and of Nothing, would be pleased. He banked in the hot, parched air of the cavern, climbed to the ceiling and spotted the giant form of Chaos smiling at him.

This is the Abyss, Dhamon realized. This is indeed the Chaos War.

The great battle continued to play out before him, and when it was done, he—the shadow dragon—flew from the cavern, through a misty veil and out into the wilds of Krynn. He soared high and fast, hating the daylight, searching for darkness and finally finding it in a deep, dry cave high in ogre lands.

There he rested, cocooned by the blessed darkness. When he emerged from the dark, he joined the dragonpurge, feasting on the magical life energy of smaller, unwary dragons, all of whom swiftly died beneath his shadowy claws.

Come to me, Dhamon Grimwulf, the voice repeated. Spawn. Pawn.

The pull was stronger.

In his mind’s eye Dhamon peered through the shadows now, saw a pale, dull-yellow light, spotted a young girl with coppery hair in the far recesses.

He saw Nura Bint-Drax through the shadow dragon’s eyes.

“Let me see the beginning,” Nura cooed. “Let me see your birth again, my master.”

Dhamon witnessed the shadow dragon’s creation, a shadow detached from the Father of All and of Nothing, watched him take part in the Chaos War and watched his activities through the dragonpurge and since. He watched the dragon’s initial meeting with Dhamon and with others. He watched the shadow dragon spreading his scales.

Finally he saw the shadow dragon settling in the swamp, choosing the warmth and the heat pleasing to his form. He watched as the dragon’s seeds grew, scales spreading, killing some of its hosts. But not Dhamon. Dhamon was the one.

My pawn, the voice purred. My spawn.

Dhamon furiously shook his head and closed his eyes. He knelt and fumbled about for his glaive. “I am too late for my cure,” he told himself.

Live, the voice persisted.

“For just a while longer,” Dhamon returned bitterly. “I intend to prevent you from doing this to anyone else. You will create no more spawn! I’ll come to you, all right, you damnable beast, but on my own terms. Damn all dragons in the world!”

He thought he remembered the dragon telling him that his mind was more powerful than his body. He knew his body was very strong indeed.

“I’ll use my mind to fight you. Leave me now,” he said. His voice sounded strange, unfamiliar, deep and exotic. “Get out of my head!”

Dhamon concentrated all of his mental energy. He reached deep down inside, finding a spark he hadn’t known existed, kindling and nourishing it.

It felt like pushing a boulder, but after what seemed like an eternity, the boulder began to budge.

He shoved the boulder down the side of the mountain, out of sight and out of mind, then sat back on a flat rock, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes. The shadow dragon was gone, but he knew precisely where to find the beast.

Maldred was suddenly back, at his side, eyes unblinking, but almost moist with tears.

“Aye, my old friend. It’s too late for me,” Dhamon said. His voice still seemed so strange to his own ears. “There will be no cure.”

Maldred stammered something, but Dhamon waved the words away. He rose, discovering that he was very tall now and stood nearly eye-to-eye with the big ogre-mage.

“It’s too late now, and I’m going to damn well make sure it’s too late for the shadow dragon, too.” He knew the shadow dragon would be waiting for him, that it wanted him to come—to gloat, to punish him, to finish his condemnation.

“Dhamon, I will help you. You can still try….”

The mountain range rumbled again, smothering Maldred’s pleading and forcing both of them to leap behind a huge boulder to avoid falling rocks. When the tremors died down, the face of the mountainside had changed again.

“The shadow dragon knows I’m coming,” Dhamon said, when it was over, “and he wants me to come. He wants to punish me, wants revenge, and he wants to slay my mind and use my body as his puppet.” He paused, staring up at the mountain with eyes that could now see tiny details in sharp focus.

“But I want revenge, Maldred. So I’ll come to him all right, and let my cure be damned.”

Nestled deep in the cave, the shadow dragon growled gently, nonetheless sending a ripple of tremors through the rock.

In her little girl guise, Nura Bint-Drax padded forward. “You are pleased, master?”

The dragon slowly nodded. “Dhamon Grimwulf comes. Before the day is out, he will find our lair. He is ready, Nura Bint-Drax. Finally ready.”

“We are ready, too,” Nura Bint-Drax said in her woman’s voice. “And anxious.” She busied herself gathering all the magical treasures they’d accumulated from Dark Knight storehouses and elsewhere, methodically placing them near to the shadow dragon and between its claws. “Very, very anxious.”

The goblins followed Ragh closely. Each bore an expectant look on his smashed-in face. Yagmurth was especially happy, his smile showing off yellowed, broken teeth. The draconian had to ward off the stench from his army, raising his head toward fresh air.