Richard Knaak - Day of the Dragon

“There must be something we can do!” Rhonin looked around for the Demon Soul . It had to be somewhere.

“Never mind it!” Vereesa called. She deflected the ax of an orc, then ran the warrior through. “We still need to save ourselves!”

Rhonin, however, continued to search despite the pitched battle around him. Suddenly, his gaze alighted on a glittering object half-covered by the arm of a dead dwarf. The wizard raced over to it, hoping against hope.

Sure enough, it proved to be the draconic artifact. Rhonin studied it in open admiration. So simple and elegant, yet containing forces beyond the ability of any wizard, save perhaps the infamous Medivh. So much power. With it, Nekros could have become War Chief of the Horde. With it, Rhonin could become master of Dalaran, emperor of all the Lordaeron kingdoms. . . .

What was he thinking? Rhonin shook his head, scattering such thoughts. The Demon Soul had a seductive touch to it, one of which he had to beware.

Falstad, atop the gryphon, dropped down to join them. Somewhere along the way, he had managed to gain an orc battle-ax, which he had already clearly used well.

“Wizard! What ails you? Rom and his band may have the orcs on the run at last, but here ’tis not the place to stand and gawk at baubles!”

Rhonin ignored him, just as he had Vereesa. Somehow the key to defeating Deathwing had to be in using the Demon Soul ! What other force could possibly do that? Even the four great dragons seemed not enough.

He held up the artifact, sensing its tremendous power and knowing that none of that power would help, at least not in its present form.

Which meant that perhaps nothing, nothing, would be able to stop Deathwing from achieving his goals. . . .

They threw their full might at him—or at least what remained of it. They threw both physical and magical assaults at Deathwing, and he shrugged all off. No matter how hard they fought against him, the fact remained that, diminished by their long-ago contributions to the Demon Soul , the other great Aspects might as well have been infants in comparison to the black leviathan.

Nozdormu cast the sand of ages at him, threatening, at least for a moment, to steal Deathwing’s very youth. Deathwing felt the weakness spread through him, felt his bones grow stiff and his thoughts slower. Yet, before the change could become permanent, the raw power within the chaotic dragon surged high, burning away the sand, overwhelming the cunning spell.

From Malygos came a more frontal assault, the mad creature’s fury almost enabling him to match Deathwing’s power, if but for a moment. Icicles of lightning assailed Malygos’s hated foe from all directions, intense heat and numbing cold simultaneously beating at Deathwing. Yet the enchanted iron plates embedded in the black’s hide deflected nearly all of the raging storm away, readily enabling Deathwing to suffer what little made it through.

Of all of them, though, his most cunning and dangerous foe proved to be Ysera. Initially, she stayed back, seeming content to let her comrades waste their efforts on him. Then Deathwing noticed a complacency in himself, a satisfaction that grew to distraction. Almost too late he realized that he had begun to daydream. Shaking his head, he quickly dislodged the cobwebs that she had cast within his mind—just as all three of his adversaries tried to seize him in their talons.

With several beats of his expansive wings, he pulled out of their grasp, then counterattacked. Between his forepaws formed a vast sphere of pure energy, primal power, that he threw into their very midst.

The sphere exploded as it reached the trio, sending Ysera and the others spiraling backward.

Deathwing roared his defiance. “Fools! Throw what you can at me! The outcome will be no different! I am power incarnate! You are nothing but shadows of the past!”

“Never underestimate what you may learn from the past, dark one. . . .”

A crimson shadow Deathwing had thought never to see aloft again filled his vision, surprising even him for once. “Alexstrasza . . . come to avenge your consort?”

“Come to avenge my consort and my children, Deathwing, for I know all too well that this is all because of you!”

“I?” The black behemoth gave her a toothy grin. “But even I cannot touch the Demon Soul ;you and yours saw to that!”

“But something led the orcs to a place of which only dragons knew . . . and something hinted to them of the power of the disk!”

“Does it matter, anyway? Your day is past, Alexstrasza, while mine is about to come!”

The red dragon spread her wings wide and flashed her claws. Despite the deprivations of her captivity, she did not look at all weak at the moment. “It is your day that is over, dark one!”

“I have faced the ravages of time, the curse of nightmares, and the mists of sorcery, thanks to the others! What weapons do you bring?”

Alexstrasza met his sinister gaze with her own determined, unblinking orbs. “Life . . . hope . . . and what they bring with them . . .”

Deathwing took in her words—and laughed loud. “Then you are as good as dead already!”

The two giants charged one another. “She cannot hope to beat him,” Rhonin muttered. “None of them can, because they’re all lacking what this damned artifact took from them!”

“If there is nothing we can do, then we should leave, Rhonin.”

“I can’t, Vereesa! I’ve got to do something for her—for all of us, actually! If they can’t stop Deathwing, who will?”

Falstad eyed the Demon Soul .“Can you do nothing with that thing?”

“No. It won’t work against Deathwing in any way.”

The dwarf rubbed his hairy chin. “Pity ’tis not possible to give back the magic that thing stole! At least then they could fight with him on even terms. . . .”

The wizard shook his head. “That can’t be—” He paused, trying to think. With the broken finger, his throbbing head, and the bruises all over his body, it took effort just to keep on his feet. Rhonin concentrated, focusing on what the gryphon-rider had just said. “But, then again, maybe it can !”

His companions looked at him in bewilderment. Rhonin quickly glanced around to assure himself that they were safe from orcs for the moment, then located the hardest rock he could find.

“What are you doing?” Vereesa asked, sounding as if she wondered whether he had lost his mind.

“Returning their power to them!” He put the Demon Soul on top of another stone, then raised the first high.

“What in blazes do you think—” was as far as Falstad managed.

Rhonin brought the rock down as hard as he could on the disk.

The rock in his hand cracked in two.

The Demon Soul glistened, not even blemished by the assault.

“Damn! I should’ve known!” He looked up at the dwarf. “Can you swing that thing with great accuracy?”

Falstad looked insulted. “It may be inferior orc work, but ’tis still a usable weapon and, as such, I can swing it as good as any!”

“Use it on the disk! Now!”

The ranger put a concerned hand on the wizard’s shoulder. “Rhonin, do you really think this will work?”

“I know the spellwork that will return it to them, a variation used by those of my order when trying to draw from other relics, but it demands that the artifact in question be shattered, so that the forces binding the magic within won’t exist any longer! I can give back to the dragons what they lost—but only if I can get the Demon Soul open!”

“Is that why, then?” Falstad hefted the war-ax. “Stand back, wizard! Would you like it in two neat halves or chopped into little fragments?”