James Wyatt - Dragon forge

“Enough, Aggrand,” the dragon-king hissed. “He has failed.”

Still snarling, the copper dragon stepped off Gaven and backed away to its place in the circle. There was a circle traced in the ground here, a faint echo of the elaborate carving in the chamber they’d left behind. It might have been scratched in the dirt with a stick, but its lines were carefully drawn to match the whorls and words of the original. Rocky canyon walls rose up on two sides, framing the sky.

He tried to sit up and look around, but the tip of Phaine’s sword appeared at his throat. His head fell back to the ground, and he watched a cloud begin to form in the cloudless sky.

“Knock him out,” the dragon-king said. “We will have no more storms to ruin this perfect day.”

Sword still at Gaven’s throat, Phaine kicked at his head. It was a precise blow despite its savagery. Gaven struggled for a moment to keep the darkness from closing in on his vision, but a second kick tipped him over the edge into oblivion.

Blue light. Gaven blinked, trying to clear his vision. Two human men propped him up between them, eyeing him warily as he lifted his head. They were burly soldiers in metal-studded leather, their hair matted with the dirt of weeks in the field. They stood facing an enormous mass of blue crystal that jutted up from the ground at the head of the canyon. At the top and sides, large facets blended into the surrounding rock of the cliff wall, but the front was a smooth plane, like a window into a vast blue sea.

Near the canyon floor, a tracing of gold wound its way from the edges of the crystal to a circle engraved in the center. Two great metal cylinders stood on either side, connected to the inlay with fine gold threads and covered with gemstones arranged in precise patterns. Glass tubes extended out from these cylinders, greenish liquid lying quiescent in their bottoms, linking them to what seemed to be construction in progress-the shell of a metal building surrounded by a deep trench.

Something nagged at the edge of Gaven’s memory, disjointed scenes from a dream that made no sense. The crystal-he’d seen it, a coil of silver writhing inside, a smear of darkness trapped in its grasp. On the lightning rail in Zil’argo he’d dreamed it, jutting from the ground in this canyon. Two spirits bound in a single prison.

A man stepped in front of Gaven, blocking his view of the construction. Another human in studded armor, this one was older than the soldiers holding Gaven up, and carried an air of authority. He wore a midnight blue coat over his armor and fashionable boots that marked him as something more than a soldier or even a military officer. He smiled warmly at Gaven.

“I’m so glad you’re awake to see this, Gaven,” he said. “It would be a shame for you to sleep through such a turning point in history, since you play such an important part in it.”

Gaven looked around and saw other people arrayed around the crystal, many of them familiar. Phaine d’Thuranni stood just off to his left, his sword still in his hand. Haldren ir’Brassek stood away to the right, arms crossed, glaring at Gaven with barely contained fury. Cart was in his accustomed place behind the general’s shoulder. Gaven felt a pang of disappointment and grief-Cart could have been so much more than Haldren’s lackey.

The dragon-king perched on the edge of the canyon above the crystal, but there was no sign of the other dragons. A scattering of soldiers with spears and swords, miners hefting picks and shovels, and what might have been magewrights-Gaven saw the Mark of Making on one or two of them-filled out a rough arc centered on the crystal. They watched him and the man standing before him with expectation.

“I’m Kelas ir’Darran,” the man said. “I see you recognize some of your old friends.”

Gaven scanned the crowd for Rienne, but of course she wasn’t there. His gaze fell on Cart again, and he thought of Darraun.

Could the changeling be here? he wondered. Perhaps wearing a different face? No, of course. Darraun is dead.

“I have no friends here,” Gaven said, his eyes still fixed on Cart. He saw the warforged shift, and he wondered if that were true.

“Indeed.” The smile fell from Kelas’s face. “However, at this point you are here merely as a witness-the Dragon Forge is not ready for you yet.”

Gouts of dragonfire in a furnace below him-another scene from a dream. The same dream? He wasn’t sure.

Kelas turned his back on Gaven and looked up at dragon-king. “The Prophecy, Malathar!” he shouted in Draconic. “Tell us!”

The dragon-king’s voice was undiminished by the distance to the top of the canyon. “One drop unites Eberron with the Dragon Below,” he said.

Kelas repeated the dragon’s words in the Common tongue, his arms spread wide like a priest in prayer.

Gaven whispered the Draconic words along with the dragon-king. “Blood is drawn from a serpent binding the spawn of Khyber and the fiend that is bound.” His eyes fixed on the crystal and the vague shapes within it. “Bound they remain, but their power flows forth in the blood.”

From somewhere inside his coat, Kelas produced a large silver ring, a torc in the shape of a twisting serpent. He held it up, and silver light flashed within the crystal in answer.

“The Torc of Sacrifice,” he said, addressing the entire assembly, “an embodiment of the power that allows the serpent of the crystal to bind the fiend. With this torc around her neck, a paladin of the Silver Flame took a possessing spirit into her body and bound it there, then gave her own life to destroy it. With the torc at the heart of the Dragon Forge, we will siphon power from the mighty beings in this prison-without setting them free.”

“Bound they remain,” Gaven said, “but their power flows forth in the blood.”

Kelas turned, all warm smiles again. “Very good, Gaven.”

Gaven looked at Cart, a willing participant in this… the only word Gaven could find to describe it was blasphemy. The emblem of a paladin’s sacrifice, used to draw power into this Dragon Forge. For what purpose?

Kelas walked to the crystal prison, holding the torc in both hands, and carefully placed it over the ring of gold at the center. It flared with brilliant white light, and white fire ran along the intricate gold inlays, outward from the ring, turning the gold to silver. Kelas stepped back and watched the transformation, flexing his hands in anticipation. When the fire had burned to the gem-covered cylinders and gone out, he drew his sword and held it above his head.

“The Ramethene Sword,” he said, “forged by fiends for their champion to wield in battle against the dragons of the world’s dawn. Haldren, what say the Serpentes Fragments?”

Ramethene Sword, Serpentes Fragments-the names meant nothing to Gaven, but the sword drew his attention. It was heavy and angular, almost as though it had been carved of stone. It looked like it might have come from the ruins of Paluur Draal or Xen’drik, but it was not really like anything Gaven had seen before.

Haldren cleared his throat and recited a verse, unfamiliar to Gaven. The Sunderer smote to the dragon’s heart, and its blood formed a river upon the land. The Fleshrender drew forth the serpent’s life and its blood gave life to the gathered hordes. For the blade drinks the blood, and the hand that wields it feasts on the life.”

The Sunderer seemed more like a name from the Prophecy, and Gaven racked his brain in an effort to dredge up anything pertinent.

“The Sunderer, the Fleshrender,” Kelas said. “This is the weapon that will smite to the heart of this prison and draw forth the blood to power the Dragon Forge.”

Gaven wondered whether Kelas had any idea what he was doing. He had noticed that the dragon-king omitted any mention of the Time Between from his recitation of the Prophecy. Almost without doubt, Kelas was a tool in the dragon’s claw, fulfilling the Prophecy of the Time Between while vainly pursuing his own ends.