James Wyatt - Dragon forge

“Thank you,” Phaine said. He darted to one side, and his blade was at Gaven’s throat. “I wish I could say I held you in such high esteem.”

Cart cursed himself. He’d been careless, oblivious to the field of battle while he focused on his enemy. He let the head of his axe droop to the ground. He’d hoped to be a hero, but proven himself a fool.

Gaven’s hand shot up and grabbed Phaine’s wrist, pulling the blade away from his throat. With a grunt, Gaven heaved Phaine forward, dragging the elf over his lap and slamming a fist into his gut while he passed over. Phaine landed in a crumpled heap on the ground.

“Give me the sword,” Gaven said. Cart saw that he’d worked his hands free, but his feet were still bound to the legs of the chair.

As Cart stooped to retrieve the sword, he saw Phaine vanish, and an instant later he felt Phaine’s blade slide between his armored plates. Strange lights danced in the darkness at the edge of his vision, and his thoughts clouded. With a final surge of effort, he lifted the sword and swung it and his axe together. It was a solid blow-he felt both blades hit flesh. Phaine’s body dissipated into wisps of shadow, and then he was gone.

Cart held both blades at the ready, waiting for the elf’s inevitable reappearance. Pain raged in his chest, but he managed to fight back the darkness in his eyes, clear the shadows from his mind. A moment passed-nothing. He stepped over to Gaven and handed him the sword, still watching-still nothing. Gaven cut the rest of his bonds and stood beside him, holding his sword in both hands, but the elf did not reappear.

A shadow took form amid the pulsing light of the Dragon Forge’s fires, and Cart and Gaven both whirled to face it. It was not Phaine. The enormous form of Malathar the Damned rose up from the forge, smoke and steam billowing around him, his blazing eyes fixed on Cart and Gaven as he leaped into the air.

Gaven crouched, preparing to cleave into the dragon’s bones when it drew near enough. Then he lurched forward, gasping with a jolt of pain. He tried to resume the stance, but he was favoring one leg.

“Come on!” Cart shouted, pulling at Gaven’s arm. Gaven gave a fierce shake of his head. “Not before I’ve dealt with him.”

“You’re mad.” Cart managed to pull Gaven back a few steps before the half-elf wrenched his arm free. “You’re in no condition to fight him.”

The dragon-king wheeled in the sky and dived toward them.

“I have to!” Gaven cried.

“Not now. It’s suicide!”

Gaven turned and fixed his gaze on Cart’s eyes. “If I leave here without that dragonshard, I might as well be dead.”

Darkness coiled and congealed in the dragon’s mouth, then burst forth in a spray like black fire. Cart rolled away from the brunt of it, but the blast drove Gaven to his knees. A purple-black light coursed along the edges of Gaven’s clothes, festered inside the many wounds on his skin, and sparked in his hair. He lifted one leg, but he didn’t have the strength to rise.

Shouts arose in the camp beyond the Dragon Forge, and Cart saw soldiers emerging from tents, donning helmets and seizing their weapons. Malathar circled around in the air for another attack. Cart stooped over, wrapped an arm around Gaven’s legs, and lifted the half-elf to his shoulder. Gaven went limp, and Cart ran.

He started for the cliff near Phaine’s tent, where Ashara had said she would provide a way up. He scanned the cliff face as he ran, looking for a rope or any other indication of Ashara’s presence. He saw only the sheer blue crystal jutting up and out from the jagged edge of the cliff. Had she been hindered or captured?

A rope dropped from inside the crevice between the crystal and the rock, above the strange metal strands that linked the crystal to the forge. He saw a glimpse of Ashara’s face, wide-eyed and pale, before she pulled back into the shelter of the gap.

“The excoriate cannot leave here alive,” the dragon-king said, its whispery voice somehow louder and more intense though still eerily voiceless.

Cart didn’t know or care whether Malathar was addressing him or the gathering soldiers. As he seized the rope, another surge of eldritch fire washed over him. It was at once searing hot and deathly cold, numbing his senses and his mind to everything but the burning pain. He shielded Gaven with his own body as best he could, but he felt the strength siphoned from him-his arm dropped from the rope and he staggered under Gaven’s weight.

“No!” Ashara called from above him. He wanted to raise his head, to reassure her, but he couldn’t.

Cart’s head drooped and touched the azure crystal, itself alive with black flame. He heard the voice of his despair in his mind, the same voice that had addressed him in the worg’s temple.

It is no use. You cannot hope to fight him, and you cannot escape him.

Cart lacked the strength of will to argue.

You and Ashara can’t stand against Malathar the Damned, dragon-king of Rav Magar! And Gaven is nothing more than dead weight.

“Cart! Up here!” It was Ashara’s voice, desperate with fear. He lifted his head and saw her face in the crevice again, her hand reaching down to him. “Take my hand!”

“Take her hand, Cart-the hand of a friend.”

It was the softest sound, so utterly unlike the dry voiceless whisper of the dragon-king or the rasp of his despair-it was the rustle of silk, almost too fine for his rough senses. A writhing coil, bright in the blue, moved within the crystal, and he took Ashara’s hand.

“We need to get out of here before he does that again!” she shouted.

“No!” Cart cried.

Malathar slammed down behind him, shaking the earth. Bone claws raked across his back, scrabbling at him as Ashara helped him climb, clumsily trying to pluck him from her grasp.

Wordlessly, the paired voices of the crystal-the silken rustle and the harsh rasp-fought for his attention, but Ashara’s hand held him, tight and strong, and he climbed up beside her. The crevice was narrow, and for a moment he feared he wouldn’t fit, but Ashara took Gaven from his shoulder so he could work his way through into a wider channel.

Malathar spewed one more eruption of unholy fire. The flames licked at the edges of the gap, and a few made it just inside, but the crystal inhaled the greater part of the fire. Cart saw it shimmer along the outside, and seep like rain inside.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” Ashara said, her eyes wide with fear. “He should know that. His fury blinds him.”

Cart heaved Gaven over his shoulder and Ashara took his hand again, pulling him deeper into the fissure, away from the raging dragon-king. He stumbled blindly after her, her touch the only respite from the pain. She led him up a spiraling ledge around the crystal column, glancing from time to time at the crystal as if she were afraid it might lash out at her.

They reached another crevice where the rock jutted closer to the crystal, and Ashara peered through. “It’s clear,” she said. “Can you get through?”

It would be a tight fit. “I’ll try. You go first and I’ll hand Gaven through.”

Gaven’s broad shoulders had trouble, and Ashara winced as the rock scraped the skin of his chest. But then he was through. Ashara staggered under Gaven’s weight but let him down as gently as she could on the ground beyond.

“You’ll never make it,” she said, her brow creased.

“Stand back.”

Ashara obeyed, and Cart pounded his fist against the edge of the rock. The adamantine plating on the back of his hand was harder than the stone, and soon chips were falling free and the gap grew wider. On his third try, he made it through and found himself in the smooth stone chamber, the temple where they’d found the worgs before.