Мэри Кирчофф - The Black Wing

“We've survived, if not emerged victorious,” Jahet said, trying to raise spirits. “Your brilliance in battle will be legend,” she added to the other dragon, casting a glance at the destruction surrounding them.

Khisanth eyed both Maldeev and Jahet sardonically. She made no reply to Jahet's comments. Instead, she asked, “You have dealt with Dnestr and Neetra?”

The other dragon nodded. “It is done.” She could see the anger in Khisanth's eyes. “What's wrong? We were losing, but look around us now. Hundreds lie dead. Solamnic knights litter the field.”

“We made the best of a bad situation brought on by treachery. Three of our own kind turned against us. What hope is there for the Dark Queen's cause if her agents so readily turn on each other?”

Khisanth rose to her feet. “I've spoken many times of my amazement that humans rule the world while dragons live in the shadows. I couldn't understand how such a thing was possible. After today, I begin to comprehend.”

Anger squeezed Khisanth in its enormous grip. She tipped her head back, raised a bloodied claw to the skies, and howled, “Takhisis, I've called you my queen! Can treachery be your plan?” The black dragon blasted her fury and frustration into the sky, exhaling a cloud of acid that rocketed upward. Spraying out, it rained back down in sizzling droplets and gobs. Ogres, men, even Jahet and Maldeev, scrambled out of the burning mist.

Only Khisanth did not emerge, for she was no longer on the Prime Material plane.

Khisanth stood among the burned and broken bodies… Her raised and clenched claw was extended toward the smoke-filled sky. Suddenly the dragon felt her bones contract and expand simultaneously, as if she were being squashed and stretched. The pain was excruciating. Khisanth wondered briefly if she hadn't suffered more grievously in the fighting than she'd thought. Craning her neck, the dragon looked down the length of her spine, but saw nothing that should cause such torment.

Is this how it feels to die? Must your soul be torn to incomprehensible bits or compressed into nothing, to leave no trace behind?

Khisanth didn't take a step, or even twitch a muscle, but the world around her shifted, wavered, like summer's heat on pond water. As she peered through the haze, the landscape around her altered dramatically. Battlements, even the mountains, were gone, and the land stretched on forever, empty and flat against an eerily glowing red sky. The sky itself seemed to merge with the sandy ground, leaving no horizon, showing no stars nor moons nor sun. And yet, for all the radiant red, the area seemed as black as shadow.

At least, unlike in the plane of lightning, there was ground here. Khisanth dropped to all fours and stepped warily, half suspecting the ground to drop away beneath her like quicksand. Movement was slow, but there was nothing to walk to, no landmark for which to head. Khisanth scanned the entire area, but still saw nothing.

Until she looked forward again. Misty vapors were slipping upward from the sand before her and coalescing into vaguely human forms. Blobby, molten flesh ran more than rested on their amorphous frames. They looked like anguished, twisted, mobile, melted candle wax. Only the occasional suggestion of a face separated one from another.

“What—who are you? Where am I?” she demanded.

Silence.

Suddenly, like an unstoppable, soundless tidal wave, a row of the hideous creatures surged forward. They raised molten claws from the depths of their blobby forms and raked the air before the black dragon.

Khisanth darted backward—into an equally dense row of the silent and bizarre creatures behind her. She saw more than felt claws sinking into her scales from before and behind. Each did little enough damage, but together the growing legions of nameless creatures were beginning to draw blood, and pain.

Like a sickle through tall grass, she swished her tail from side to side, sending the creatures tumbling across the sandy landscape. Some snapped in half like cold and brittle wax, then lay still, but more quickly rose from the sand behind her to replace them. The ones in front of her tore relentlessly at her chest, forelegs, anything they could sink a claw into. Khisanth kicked and lashed out and bucked around wildly like a horse, trying to throw them off. Then she noticed that the ones that had snapped in half had, like worms, formed into two new, tenacious creatures.

Desperate, she summoned the bile that waited in her stomach. It surged up her throat and shot out between her jaws in a hot green stream. Khisanth pivoted, aiming her acid downward, shaking gruesome creatures from her and into the corrosive acid. The creatures' faces twisted into even greater anguish as they dissolved. Hope flickered in Khisanth's breast. She shook and spewed with a fury, until every last creature was reduced to smoldering gray patches.

To Khisanth's utter shock, the pieces not eaten by acid had begun to reform into many, many more creatures. They seemed angered, even in their silence.

The grotesque beings suddenly darted back from her, though she had made no move, nor spoken a word. Then Khisanth saw the reason.

Rising up behind the last row of creatures, silhouetted against the glowing red sky, were much taller, winged beings. Perhaps half Khisanth's height, they were thin with wiry muscles. They stepped closer, kicking the trembling blobs from their path. These new creatures looked reptilian, with long, prehensile tails—though eight feet tall, they reminded Khisanth strongly of the much smaller stone gargoyles that were poised on the corners and turrets of Shalimsha Tower, meant by its builders to chase away evil spirits. These were not made of stone, but leathery flesh, like her own underbelly. Six of them were black as night, and two were vivid green.

“Who are you?” Khisanth demanded, repeating her last words to the newcomers. She pointed at the quivering creatures who had worked so hard to tear her flesh from her bones. “And what are they?”

Lemures—mindless spirits. They can't answer. Khisanth looked around, startled. The voice had spoken inside her head. She spotted a red reptilian creature staring closely at her and decided it was the one that had answered her telepathically.

“We're abishai, sentries on the Abyssal plane,” it said, its tone very low-pitched and slow, like stone would sound if it could talk.

“The Abyss?” Khisanth squealed, a sound she'd never heard from her own throat.

Without answering, the creatures snapped into formation, boxing Khisanth in with two abishai on each side of the dragon, save for the front. She began to walk forward, feeling a strange tug at her thoughts. Dimly she realized she must be under a spell, to respond without complaint or contest. Only after the spell faded was she able to resist.

Khisanth dug in her heels. The black and green creatures stopped in their tracks. Even eight creatures, large by any other standards, could not hope to budge a dragon who did not wish to move.

The red abishai extended its tail toward her and revealed the small stinger at its tip. “Poison,” it said. The creature looked around anxiously, as if something would emerge and slay it for communicating with the dragon. Nothing did.

The warning was enough for Khisanth. For now. They started forward again.

The sentries stopped marching abruptly, though their destination looked not a whit different from their departure point—dark red, glowing sky, like a fire the size of the world burned in the distance. The shifting sand made it difficult to tell up from down. “Wait.”

The small battalion of abishai disappeared into the dark red sky as mysteriously as they had arrived.

Khisanth detested mystery of any sort. Where did they go? Did their absence mean the lemures would return? The thought of those brainless creatures clawing at her relentlessly made her feel more trapped than the escort of abishai had. Every nerve tingled at the tips of her scales.