James Wyatt - Dragon forge

“It’s here!” he crowed. “The dragonmark is perfectly preserved within the shard!”

Gaven could just make it out. What had been a mostly formless swirl of darker red within the pinkish stone had taken on a definite shape, but he did not recognize it as his mark. Then Kelas turned it slightly in his hands, and Gaven gaped. There they were-the familiar lines of his dragonmark, the Siberys Mark of Storm. There was a depth to the mark in the stone, so it changed when viewed from different angles. Kelas moved it again, and Gaven caught a fleeting glimpse of another shape before Kelas turned away, blocking his view. There was meaning in the depth of the mark, Gaven was certain. Through a haze of pain and weakness, a knot of resolve formed in his gut-he had to get that dragonshard, to untangle the Prophecy he’d carried on his skin.

Still chuckling with pleasure at his success, Kelas placed the dragonshard in another setting embedded in the apparatus, this one made of glass pipes and studded with gemstones.

“Wait,” the dragon-king whispered, and Kelas froze. “I must examine it first.”

“You’ll have your chance,” Kelas snapped.

Malathar lifted his head to loom over Kelas. “I will. And it will be now. Or at my command, the dragons that fuel your forge cease their work.”

Kelas stood looking up at Malathar, fists clenched at his sides, his face growing deeper red. The dragon-king returned his stare blankly. Finally Kelas broke. He lifted the dragonshard from its setting and handed it to Malathar, who held it gingerly between his two front claws.

Gaven found his feet and strained for a better view of the shard as the undead dragon held it, to no avail. A movement at the corner of his eye drew his attention to Phaine, who also gazed at the dragonshard with longing. Several pieces of the puzzle fell into place in Gaven’s mind.

Malathar and the other dragons helped Kelas build the Dragon Forge because of their interest in the Prophecy, and particularly in the Time Between. They had fulfilled their vision of that Prophecy, with three spillings of blood joining the primordial dragons in pairs. Gaven’s blood joined the Eye of Siberys and the Heart of Khyber. The Ramethene Sword spilled symbolic blood-the magical energy that powered the forge-to join the spawn of Khyber with the spirit that bound it, which must somehow represent Eberron. And Gaven’s blood again joined his Siberys mark with an Eberron dragonshard. By their reading, the Time Between must be drawing to a close, and the Time of the Dragon Below beginning.

More than fulfilling the Prophecy, though, Malathar sought to learn more about it, particularly as it was scribed on the skin of Khorvaire’s dragonmarked heirs. He had said that the Prophecy was defiled by being written on the skin of meat, and that the Dragon Forge would purify it. He wanted to study the marks separated from the skin of the mortals who carried them, and the Dragon Forge allowed him to do that.

Phaine’s interest in the dragonshard was more surprising, but Gaven suspected it arose from the same intent. The elves of Aerenal had almost as much interest in the Prophecy as the dragons, and House Thuranni might be making a study of it for their own ends. Or perhaps Phaine-or all of House Thuranni-wanted to understand dragonmarks better, or even to control the power of the other Houses’ marks. Could they harness the magic contained in a dragonmark that was held within an Eberron dragonshard? If so, they might be able to compete with all the other Houses-build and operate their own lightning rail, open their own message stations, control the weather and pilot airships and galleons.

Enough, Gaven thought. It’s time for the Storm Dragon to get out of the Dragon Forge. I am the storm…

But he was not the storm. It had grown easy for him, since walking the Sky-Caves of Thieren Kor, to submerge his mind in the atmosphere, to join himself with the storms that always accompanied his anger or distress. But there was no storm to join-he couldn’t find the weather at all.

It was not just his dragonmark they had stripped away. He was no longer the Storm Dragon.

Ashara’s hands moved over Cart’s inert body, finding the damage, the places where the knots of magic that gave him life were broken. Eyes closed, she saw him as a tapestry nearly ripped to shreds, almost every strand of warp and weft broken in one place or another. It would be some time before she could make him fully alive again, but he was not dead.

It was a strange thing about the warforged, and something that the living armies of the Last War had often forgotten to their detriment. A human soldier dealt a mortal blow would die before long, his life ebbing out with his blood. A warforged, though, could linger in that state of unconsciousness-still alive, but so badly wounded that he couldn’t function-for days, weeks, or months. She had heard stories within her House of warforged who lay in remote battlefields for years, then were repaired and rose up ready to battle.

She wondered what Cart was experiencing as his body lay inert. The warforged didn’t sleep, so they weren’t accustomed to dreams. Would he dream in his unconsciousness? Or was his mind simply blank, unaware of the passage of time? She would ask him when he awoke at last.

It was hard to work in the little tent, with Gaven’s screams of agony in the background, but by nightfall she was confident that Cart would be up and around. Then, under the cover of darkness, they could flee. Together.

Gaven’s resolve had drained away, and he hung from his manacles again. Without the power of the Storm Dragon, he had nothing to rely on but a sword and a handful of spells-and he had no sword. Before the Sky-Caves, before Dreadhold and his Siberys mark, sword and spell had been enough. But now, against Kelas, Phaine, Malathar, and a small company of soldiers, his situation was hopeless.

Malathar gave the dragonshard back to Kelas without a word. Gaven had neither strength nor will enough to strain for another look at the stone, though he saw Phaine shift again in hope of a better view. Kelas turned back to the eldritch machine and returned the dragonshard to the new setting of glass and gems.

“Now,” he said, “we learn the true power of the Dragon Forge.”

He grasped two crystal rods that jutted out beneath the shard, and a brilliant light flared to life between them. Gaven couldn’t look at the light, but he didn’t need to-the tracings of the dragonmark, his dragonmark, now filled the enormous room. Lines of scarlet fire etched the ceiling’s arch and turned slowly as the machine rotated the dragonshard in its setting. A cluster of artificers flocked around the machine and manipulated its controls.

The sky rumbled with thunder, a brewing storm that had nothing to do with Gaven.

It was all around him, the mark he had carried for five years, the Prophecy that had been written on his skin but out of reach of his understanding. His gaze darted around the room, trying to take it all in.

The Storm Dragon flies before the traitor’s army to deliver vengeance.

The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer.

When Rienne traced his dragonmark on his skin, it had been only a vague foreboding, a sense that his end might come at the hands of the Blasphemer. Now it took concrete shape in his mind, spelled out in the breadth and depth of his mark.

But did it apply to him? Without the Mark of Storm, without the Storm Dragon’s power, he couldn’t fulfill that part of the Prophecy. But if he was no longer the Storm Dragon, then who was?

A deafening clap of thunder made the soldiers cover their ears and even Phaine looked up nervously. Rain fell in huge, splattering drops, and shouts of fear and pain arose from outside, from soldiers and laborers seared by the acidic downpour.