Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

“Dlavin,” the dying sergeant gasped, and Pristoleph was thankful that Nevor had named the drake. In their natural forms, Pristoleph could never tell one from another. “To the ransar.”

Nevor fell to the floor again, breathing but unconscious, and Dlavin took wing just long enough to hit the wood floor between Pristoleph and the naga.

“Kill it!” Pristoleph barked, and before the words were even out of his mouth, the winged creature belched forth a cloud of black acid that sprayed over the naga.

Pristoleph could hear it sizzle, and he climbed to his feet, watching and waiting for the serpent to dissolve before his eyes. But that didn’t happen. The naga winced at what appeared to be a minor burn, then smiled into the black firedrake’s reptilian face.

The acid should have killed it.

Fighting down the fear again, Pristoleph tightened his grip on his dagger and glanced over to the stairs to see two more guards-Varnol, in his human guise-and a second firedrake in its dragonlike form emerge from the room below. It took them both all of a heartbeat to figure out what was going on and rush to the aid of the ransar.

Dlavin, surprised that his acid had so little effect on the naga, lunged to meet the serpent’s own charge. Pristoleph started to step to the side to flank the creature and try to slit its throat while it was caught up in a clawing grapple with Dlavin, but his foot wouldn’t move. He managed to bring the dagger up in front of his chest, then every muscle in his body locked in place.

A hideous, keening voice sounded in Pristoleph’s head, Stand and watch while I devour your guards, Pristoleph, then you will know what it’s like to be eaten alive while you cannot even scream your last breath .

Pristoleph’s skin crawled, but the rest of his body remained immobile. He hoped that he’d only imagined the voice, but he knew it was the naga.

Dlavin’s left wing tore free under the assault of the naga’s ragged claws, and the black firedrake shot out more acid while it screamed in rage and agony. The naga took the fullness of the acid in its face and blinked and spat. The dazzling blue of its eyes faded into white, then the white turned to gray, and though he couldn’t express it, Pristoleph thrilled at the thought that his firedrake had managed to blind the thing.

Dlavin fell to the floor, already bleeding to death, and on came Varnol with his longaxe. The stout wooden beams that held up the pyramidal ceiling were well enough above the black firedrake’s reach that even with the weapon’s long haft, he could hold it straight up above his head in an effort to bring it down onto the top of the naga’s head.

The blue in the naga’s eyes reappeared and it looked up at the axe coming down hard and fast. The serpent creature twisted away, but the axe still took off its right ear. Blood poured out, then more when the axe bit deeply into the naga’s shoulder. The creature screamed-at least it sounded like a scream-and slithered back away from Varnol, who wrenched his axe head out of the monster’s shoulder with a wet crack.

The second firedrake in its dragon form leaped at the naga, but the serpent looked up at him and disappeared. When the firedrake came down it landed on the floor next to its fallen comrade and whirled to find its foe, but the naga was nowhere to be seen.

The firedrakes cast about, Varnol with his axe in front of him, the other taking wing to roost in the rafters twenty feet above the floor.

Pristoleph tried to speak, but his jaw was locked closed, and all he could manage was to grind his teeth. Frustration and rage made his skin grow hotter and hotter, until Varnol finally felt it, glanced at him, and stepped away.

“Ransar?” Varnol asked. “Are you unable to move?”

Pristoleph just looked at him, hoping his total inability to answer would suffice as a “Yes.”

“Moraahl,” Varnol said, looking up at the firedrake in the rafters. “The ransar is paralyzed. Fly down and summon a priest. I think the naga has fled.”

Pristoleph tried to take a deep breath, but he could draw only enough air to sustain himself. He wanted to warn them that the naga was likely still in the room but simply couldn’t be seen. The firedrake named Moraahl leaped from the rafters and lit at the top of the stairs. It was at that moment that Pristoleph saw the blood on the floor. A drop first, then another, then too many to count. They appeared on the floor as if from nowhere-as if from the gaping wound of an unseen naga.

Moraahl looked at Varnol and opened his crocodile-like jaws to speak when Nevor suddenly rolled over, shook, groaned, and died. The naga appeared next to him, its hand on the dead firedrake’s chest. The wound in the naga’s shoulder was partially closed, but the side of its head was still a mess of bloody pulp. Blood still flowed, but not as much and not as quickly.

Moraahl didn’t get a chance to turn before the naga punched out with its left hand, digging deep into the black scales on Moraahls’s right side, just under his wing. The firedrake gurgled out a gout of acid that succeeded only in further ruining Pristoleph’s floor. The naga yanked back hard and came out with the still-beating, black heart of the firedrake it its clawed fist. Moraahl had time only to blink and close his mouth before he fell over dead.

Pristoleph began to panic then. The thing was making quick work of his black firedrakes, and he couldn’t move a muscle.

Terrible, isn’t it? the naga asked, invading his mind.

Pristoleph didn’t give it the satisfaction of a reply. Instead he put all his concentration into moving his elbow. All he wanted was to move that one elbow. While the ransar busied himself with that, Varnol charged the naga, his longaxe swinging in arcs before him so fast the weapon became but a silver blur. The air quivered with the sound of its slicing and reversing, slicing and reversing.

The naga backed away from the onslaught and its face twisted in strange, unreadable expressions. Pristoleph got the feeling it was trying to cast some spell or bring to bear some magical ability, but there was no visible effect on the firedrake. A sound from one side of the room stole Pristoleph’s attention from his elbow and he saw a dead-pale hand with nails like sharpened talons fold itself over the hip of a statue. What emerged was an undead thing so hideous Pristoleph had to force himself to look at it. A stench of decay and putrescence filled the room, and Pristoleph cursed the naga anew for leaving him so he could only breathe through his nose.

The sound of feet dragging on wood revealed that there was at least one more of the creatures-ghouls, Pristoleph decided-in the room with him. The one he could see hissed at the naga then looked Pristoleph in the eye. Its deformed lips twisted into a fang-lined grin, and it shambled forward from behind the statue. Pristoleph couldn’t even begin to imagine where it had come from.

But even as Pristoleph began to consider what it would feel like to be eaten alive, the black firedrake that had lain bleeding at his feet stood in front of him, staggering and almost falling to put himself between his master and the ghoul.

Dlavin, missing a wing and still slowly but surely bleeding to death, surged forward, stumbled again, but met the ghoul near the stairs. The undead creature lunged with its claws extended but never got within reach of the firedrake before a cloud of acidic mist mushroomed in its face.

The ghoul staggered backward, clawing at its face and tearing free great strips of flesh, revealing the bone beneath. It had no skin on its face at all when it finally fell still.

But Dlavin also fell, sprawling on the floor next to it. The black firedrake crawled, ever so weak, to the top of the stairs and let loose a roar that rattled the windows. The sound was suddenly choked off, though, when the second ghoul landed on the firedrake’s back and began to rip huge bites of flesh out of him in bloody mouthfuls. Dlavin twitched and grunted, trying to shake the thing off, but all he could really do was wait for the one bite that would finally kill him. The ghoul took its time.