Keith Baker - The fading dream

Thorn knew the idea was madness, that she had no way of knowing if anything Sarmondelaryx had told her was the truth. And yet… she thought of Lharen, the man who’d given her his heart and who’d been ready to give his life for Breland. She thought about Nyrielle Tam, the dreams a young girl once had. And in that moment, there was a part of her that wanted that vengeance for both of them.

“Drego told me I wouldn’t last if I merged with you. That you’d dissolve my personality.”

“In time, surely. But how long did you ever expect to live, Thorn? You’re mortal. You could last a decade before you fade completely. And in that time, you will see your enemies fall.”

Thorn thought about it, about how glorious it had felt when she’d battled Drulkalatar. How wonderful it would be to see those responsible fall. Thought they might share a thirst for vengeance, but there was little else she had in common with the fiend before her. Just a moment past, the dragon had spoken of slaughtering armies and devastating nations. As long as Thorn held her contained, that could never happen again.

She remembered the words of Drego Sarhain when she kissed Cadrel at the Silver Tree: You may be doomed, but do not go easily, Nyrielle. And don’t fall to the likes of this one. She didn’t know if there was truly anything of Drego in those words. But she was going to stand by them.

“Go,” she told the dragon. “You can’t fight me. You have nothing I want. Go now and maybe you’ll find a home in someone’s nightmares.”

Sarmondelaryx hissed. Yet she’d had time to think as well, and she’d come up with a new weapon.

“You’re clever, little one. I can’t kill you without killing myself. And yet…” she moved her foreclaw, placing a talon against Drix’s stomach. “I can certainly kill the boy.”

Surprised as she was, Thorn almost laughed. “Perhaps you missed the last week of my life,” she said. “But I think you’ll find it’s not that easy.”

“Perhaps,” Sarmondelaryx rumbled. “And yet here we are, standing in a circle designed just for that purpose. The eight shards of Ourelon’s Gift around us. If the fallen fey was right, I might even spread the Mourning in the process. I can’t kill you. But him? I’d kill him just to make you suffer.”

Her talon shifted and Thorn moved. Reaching out, she set her palm against the dragon’s claw and pulled. She called on all her anger, all her strength, and sought to drag the spirit down into the prison of the Preserving Shard.

It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. When she’d swallowed Toli, Daine, even the eladrin guard, it was instinct and desperation. When she’d forced Sarmondelaryx back into her chains down beneath the streets of Sharn, the dragon was weak, barely released. The nightmare was something else, a Sarmondelaryx who’d had time to savor the sensations of life again.

Thorn felt wings sprouting from her back. Her neck stretching as her tail thrashed against the floor. She grappled with Sarmondelaryx as an equal, two dragons struggling on the top of the tower of nightmares.

“You can’t defeat me,” Sarmondelaryx snarled. “Tonight you finally go to your rest, little ghost.”

Thorn couldn’t spare a moment to answer; the battle took every thought. She was the real one. She had the body. She’d thought that would give her the edge. And she did have a fierce strength that her enemy couldn’t match. Yet Sarmondelaryx was drawn from Thorn’s nightmares, from her very fears of falling to the dragon. And Sarmondelaryx had fought dragons before. She used her tail and wings in ways that had never occurred to Thorn. Within moments, she had caught Thorn’s throat between her jaws, pinning her head and increasing the pressure with each moment.

The battle was all in her mind, in her soul. Thorn was still standing with her hand pressed against the dragon’s claw. And in her other hand, she was clutching a piece of jewelry, a silver brooch shaped like a crescent moon with an opalescent crystal resting between the horns.

The Stone of Dreams.

With her last surge of strength, Thorn slammed the brooch against her chest. There was a burst of pain. She could feel flesh and bone part, feel her blood merging with the stone. She could feel the stone itself studying her… and accepting the bond.

New energy flowed through her. In her mind, a burst of force pilled out around her, sending Sarmondelaryx sprawling. Thorn opened her jaws, and a cone of light shone from within. Sarmondelaryx froze in that light, howling in frustration as her form became soft and indistinct. Her time was done. Her strength was gone. She was a fading dream caught in the morning light.

And in a moment, she was gone.

The light went with her, and suddenly Thorn was falling again, falling into the welcoming dark…

“Thorn?”

There was blue sky above when she opened her eyes, and the golden ring of Siberys glittered in the sunlight. For a moment Thorn wondered just how much she’d dreamed; then she saw the shattered walls around her, the chunks of rubble from the dragon’s wrath.

“Thorn? Can you hear me?” Drix was kneeling next to her.

“Yes,” she said. Her throat was rough and dry, and there was a terrible pain in her chest. “What happened?”

“The dragon was about to crush me. I couldn’t see all that you did, but there was a flash of light and then… the dragon vanished. Everything else… it changed. You’ll see when you look over the edge. The things in the courtyard-they’re gone.”

“You mean… I did this?”

“It’s difficult to analyze energies of such magnitude,” Drix said. “But I don’t think you were responsible. For a time we were on two separate planes of existence simultaneously. Your defeat of Sarmondelaryx coincided with a disruption of that planar juncture. The fey we were fighting, the forces that were assembling, even the bulk of the buildings have likely shifted back to Dal Quor. All that’s left is a shell.”

“That sounds like something Steel would say,” she said. It hurt to breathe too deeply.

“It is,” Drix said, holding up the dagger. “I found him on the floor. He’s told me all sorts of interesting things.”

“Really?” Thorn said. “Well… it’s good to have friends.”

She forced herself up on one arm, feeling a sharp pain as she did. She looked down and saw the sun gleaming off the silver brooch that lay between her breasts. Despite the pain, her skin was smooth around the crescent moon. The stone gleamed with an inner light, and she thought she heard a whispering voice, too faint for even her keen ears to catch the words. Then light and voice faded.

“Lovely,” she murmured, brushing one finger across the cold stone. “I’m sure that’s just what I needed.”

“We can go now,” Drix said. “I’ve packed everything, and I made all the preparations while you were sleeping. It should work just fine. Probably. Well, maybe.”

“Leave how?” She sat up and saw a circle traced in chalk among the rubble with tiny dragonshards scattered around the edges.

“It’s a temporary teleportation circle,” Drix said. “It should get us back to Ascalin. I was able to send a message to Lady Tira. By now there should be people there waiting to take us back to the Silver Tree.”

“You sent a message to Tira?” Thorn said. “And you’re just going to connect to the Orien network with… chalk?”

Drix smiled. “I know, it sounds crazy. It helps when you’ve got some stolen dragonshards from a gate anchor point to work with. And it’s even better to have a half dozen fey artifacts to play around with.” He pulled down his collar, and Thorn could see Lord Joridal’s emerald amulet hanging around his neck. “If I had a little more time to experiment with them, I think I could do all sorts of interesting things.”