Her reaction to the mirrors had but verified his suspicions, not that the knowledge did him any good now. Trapped, unable to transform, he had as good as given himself up to be flayed.
Like lightning bolts, the dark blades flashed back and forth. Below them, a pair of oddly-feminine human hands opened and closed eagerly. The monster would have had him already if not for the mirrors. It did not want to break the mirrors. It lived for gazing into them once it wore one of its stolen hides. Morgis watched as it moved gingerly past one, going out of its way when it could have tried to reach him.
More and more it resembled some upright combination of a skeletal arachnid and praying mantis, but with hints of human still in it. That it had probably once been human or of some similar race did not surprise him, not with the vanity it radiated.
He stumbled over something on the floor, nearly losing his footing. Immediately, one of the blades darted out to take his head, perhaps even pierce his skull and brain so as to minimize the damage to the skin. The drake barely deflected the attack as he fought to right himself. He crashed against one of the cabinets, which brought a furious keening from the demonic figure.
Smiling grimly, Morgis twisted around and brought the flames to the wooden piece.
The fire eagerly devoured the antique cabinet. The fragmenting visage of Kalena contorted further and the keening became a wail.
“My skins! My beautiful, wonderful skins!”
Almost unmindful of its prey, the creature moved toward the cabinet. Morgis leapt to the side, letting it focus on the piece. He glanced at the entrance, wondering if he could make it before the monster noticed.
But as he moved, another swordlike appendage shot to the side, almost skewering the drake. Morgis ducked back, trapped in the far portion of the secret chamber.
Kalena’s mouth widened, widened further… then ripped apart. An ebony skull with strands of gray hair still attached to the scalp materialized as the burnt tatters fell away. The mouth opened to impossible dimensions.
A gray, viscous substance spewed from the mouth, washing over the burning cabinet. Wherever it touched, the thick liquid instantly doused the fire. A heavy, musky smell arose.
With rising fury, the monster whirled on the drake.
He did the only thing he could think of, setting another cabinet afire, then doing the same to a third. As the scuttling horror moved to douse them, he tried once more to reach freedom, only to be cut off by a pair of lethal limbs, one of which slashed at the arm that held the torch.
The torch fell, rolling away but causing scant damage on the stone floor. Morgis hissed. Evidently his monstrous foe had reached the point where it considered a little damage to his scaled hide a necessity.
“Nasty dragon!” it hissed in turn, the second closet already covered in the gray, preserving soup it likely also used to keep the skins fresh longer. “The wolf soldiers, they made it so hard for so long to gather good skins, always marching past and scaring off others, but when they stopped coming, others returned! So large and joyous my collection became! So much better than the dresses I once kept, the faces I once wore when mine grew old!” The eyes, which had become black pits, again studied Morgis covetously. “But you’ll make up for it, yes, you will…”
Morgis rolled away again as the blades came down. One caught his injured shoulder, making him cry out. Again, the only thing that saved him was the creature’s desire not to damage its surroundings. This was the one place it could not attack to its full potential.
Which did Morgis little good otherwise. Sooner or later, unless he escaped, the thing would corner him-and if he did escape it would have an even easier time of hunting him down outside.
Somehow he had to destroy it here.
As it moved in on him again, the drake snagged one of the elaborate mirrors and twisted the piece so that it faced its monstrous owner. The skeletal creature gasped and backed up. As Morgis had guessed, it cared little for its own horrible reflection.
He tried to take advantage of the distraction, but pain made him instead stumble to the side-where his feet became tangled in the limp form of the late, unlamented D’Kairn.
A single sharp hole half an inch wide had been made in the keeper’s helmet-and skull. Despite the fact that part of the skin around the face had already been expertly peeled back, Morgis could still make out the Aramite’s expression, a combination of arrogance and confusion. D’Kairn had never quite realized he was dying, the victim of a thing of sorcery even darker than his own.
The creature had missed a chance by not taking the drake immediately after, but Morgis had already determined that its judgment was based on its ancient vanities and its desire for the perfection of its skins. Trying to slay Morgis on the harsh landscape would have not only ruined D’Kairn’s hide-clearly also a favorite-but risked damaging the dragon’s.
You should have listened, keeper! If you’d turned a moment sooner, you could have used that foul trinket of yours and maybe saved us both! Of course, then D’Kairn would have killed him.
Thinking of the Aramite’s stone, Morgis quickly searched the body. At first he could not find the amulet, but then realized it was buried under the head. He seized the chain-
Instinct made him move his head just before the razor tip of a blade would have caught him at the base of the neck. Instead, the monstrous appendage buried itself in the dead keeper’s throat.
“More cuts! More damage!” The black horror howled at him. “No more!”
Morgis moved too slow. Another blade sank into his dislocated shoulder. He screamed as the creature lifted him up by the wound.
The macabre faced filled his view.
“A cloak… a small covering… that’s all that’s needed,” it babbled gleefully. “Still a very, very precious skin! I will walk well with it, walk long with it!” It chortled. “I may even fly with it!”
As it had done with Kalena, the monster would take on the properties of the one whose identity it had stolen, make use of their abilities. Whether it could actually do what Morgis could not do-revert to a true dragon form-he could not say, but that would hardly matter to the drake once he was dead.
The blades drew nearer.
“Must be careful…” it murmured clinically, eyeing his head. “Must be precise, always precise…”
Morgis swung his good arm up, shoving D’Kairn’s stone into the unholy face.
Nothing happened.
His grotesque captor laughed at his antics and one pointed blade went up to brush aside the hand obscuring its view.
Dropping the amulet, Morgis quickly seized the appendage, twisted it around, and, with a force no human could muster-shoved it into the monster’s throat.
A gagging hiss escaped the creature as it struggled to remove the limb. Thick, dark red ichor escaped from the edges of the wound.
It convulsed. Morgis suddenly found himself slipping free without any hope of grabbing some other support.
The stone had only been a decoy. He had understood just enough of the Aramite’s sorcery to know he would not be able to figure out how to use the talisman in time. However, it had drawn the creature’s attention and elicited the overconfident reaction he had needed.
And there and then Morgis had used the only weapon he suspected could readily pierce the hard hide of the monster-the thing’s own bladelike appendages.
He hit the floor hard and was at first unable to move. Fortunately, surprise and his inhuman strength had enabled him to shove the appendage in so deep that a good portion of it also thrust out of the back of the neck, leaving him the least of the creature’s concerns.
A slight gleam shook him from his stupor. He blinked. The keeper’s stone. Morgis seized it-only to have it break into several pieces. The drop had cracked it open, ruining it. Worse, despite its destruction, the drake could still sense that D’Kairn’s treacherous spell remained intact.
A hacking sound reminded him that his ability to transform would be a nil point if he did not move fast. Morgis dragged himself forward, expecting each moment to be skewered.
He reached the area of the mirrors and glanced in one. Behind him he saw the monster-now turned away from him-still struggling, the floor around it covered with its foul fluids. The remaining limbs sought to pull the one free and looked to be finally managing some success.
