be heard. Then it let go, leaving Gerard spinning through the air, to come crashing down into a tumbled heap on the floor.
At once, Deezlxar pounced on the would-be-usurper. But Gerard wasn’t done. An explosive change, born from hatred, and anger, and the raw demonic power that both Kraw and Shokin afforded, came over him. He wasn’t going to die here in this endless blackened place, he told himself. He was going to eat the man who had killed his Shaella bite by bite, and he couldn’t do that if Deezlxar killed him. His dragon blood boiled, and his demonic essence swelled and morphed him. His devilish armor projected and exploded into a plethora of long sharp spear like projections. What Deezlxar landed on flared crimson and exploded into an orange and white bone-crunching blast. There was no escaping the power of it. The Master of Hell felt the projections shooting up through its under armor into its brain cavity and searing its life away. All the Dark One could do was use its bulk, and its last dying bit of magic, to try and destroy the thing that had just killed it. It let out a defiant death roar then turned itself to stone as it came down hard on top of Gerrard.
Gerard was pinned under the bone-crushing weight as it pressed on him. After the breath was driven from his lungs and the settled weight stopped snapping his twisted bones, all he could do was lay there and gasp. But then, as with all the other hell-born creatures he had killed and consumed, Deezlxar’s demonic essence, rushed in and filled him to the point of bursting. A darkness unimaginable reached up and enveloped him, and he was gone.
Flick could see the fading yellow aura of the weakening protective magic below him. It wouldn’t be long, he knew. Already Vrot’s acid was eating through the shell in places. Soon King Jarrek and his remaining men would have to come out and face him. If the shield somehow managed to hold, the few thousand Dakaneese soldiers who were circling back from the southwest would root them out and end them that way. Flick wanted so badly to kill King Jarrek himself, though. The Red Wolf King would be a poor substitute for the vengeance he wanted to unleash on the High King for killing Shaella, but for now Jarrek would have to do.
Flick was racked with emotion over the death of his friend and queen. She had been far more than either to him. Sure, Gerard had come along and stolen her heart away. How she had kept such strong feelings for the stupid mountain clan boy after he got caught up in Pael’s madness, Flick never understood. All he knew was that her happiness meant everything to him, and if that thing Gerard had become made her happy, then so be it. But now she was dead, killed in cold blood by the mighty High King. If what the red priest said was true, she hadn’t even had a weapon in her hand.
Flick was fairly certain that the man hadn’t lied to him. His spells would have detected the dishonesty. Besides, the priest had dutifully brought him the dragon’s collar and helped him perform the healing on Vrot’s wing. Flick sensed that the priest was hiding something, but if it had been important then Flick’s mentally intrusive magic would have picked up on it. Now was not the time to worry about the last priest of Kraw, though. Flick was about to slake his thirst by killing King Jarrek, and he intended to save his revenge for the High King.
Vrot cut a hard arc through the air and blasted forth another gout of wet sticky acid. It came raining down over the feeble shell that was protecting the building below. Flick snaked out with his mind and contacted the Choska demon. It was circling to the north, waiting for the dwarves to show themselves.
“Kill any and all of them that you can,” he ordered the winged demon. “No mercy whatsoever.”
The Choska didn’t comprehend mercy. It thrived on fear, and it lusted to kill and devour human flesh. It would follow Flick’s commands explicitly.
Flick wheeled Vrot around and darted to the southeast awhile. He spied the Dakaneese force marching double time toward him. Whatever Battle Lord that Ra’Gren had put in charge of them was pushing them to their limits. This would have pleased Ra’Gren, but Flick wanted them to take their time. If they arrived before the Red Wolf’s wizard’s shield failed, then they would get the pleasure of stomping over the King of Wildermont themselves. Flick wouldn’t get to do the deed. He looked at the last tendrils of sunlight reaching out of the sea to the west and estimated that, at their rate of travel, it would take them at least until the middle of the night to reach Jarrek’s force. He doubted that the spell shield would last that long, but he had learned long ago not to underestimate a determined Highwander wizard.
He sighed as he brought Vrot back around. Either way, Jarrek would be dead. As they flew back to the battlefield a thought occurred to him. After he, his dragon, and his Choska demon stopped the eastern forces from invading Dakahn, and after he took his revenge for the cold-blooded murder of his friend and queen, who would run Westland? The zard were still there, but would they follow him?
“King Flick,” he said out loud. It didn’t have the ring he would have liked, but the sound of it didn’t taste bad on his tongue. “The Dragon King,” he decided, sounded much, much better.
The Choska saw movement below and darted down toward it. A pair of dwarves were creeping out of the rocks and peering upward, looking for winged danger. General Diamondeen spotted the Choska a moment too late. The demon had tucked its wings back and was coming down in a streaking dive. The dwarven general had to leap head first into the rocks, but the Choska was the one who received the surprise. Just as its razor sharp claws would have torn into the General, a spear came launching out of the boulder-strewn hillside nearby. It missed horribly, and a few jeers at the shooter’s lack of accuracy came from the dwarves hiding in the surrounding hills. The missile shot past the Choska and buried itself in the ground a few hundred feet away. The rope attached to the spear fell like a dead snake across the earth.
The Choska shot back up out of range and sent warnings to its master. Had it known that three dwarves had wrestled one of the dragon guns against a rock and managed to fire it, it would have been far less wary, but the demon had to assume that at least one breed giant was hunkered below.
Just to remind them of its might, the Choska sent a cherry red blast streaking into the rocks where the limp rope ended. Two of the dwarves crouched there were killed instantly; the third was hurled through the air in the opposite direction, his flaming hair and trousers lighting the arc of his trajectory in the darkness.
A couple of heavy stones and an axe went hurling up out of the rocky hillside, but none of them came close to the winged beast. The Choska marked the location of one of the hurled objects and sent a blast that way. Another dwarf met his end, but two others managed to scurry to different hiding places undetected.
Mikahl flew too far south. Fearing that time was running out for his friend, he sped back to the north scanning for any sign of them on the ground. He had to pay attention to the skies as well. On his way he came across the fast marching Dakaneese troops that were coming to finish off King Jarrek’s force. In a sharp, steep diving swoop he shot across the ranks and let loose a series of massive lighting blasts. The crackling streaks split the force nearly in two, leaving hundreds of soldiers dead or writhing on scorched strips of earth. Mikahl let loose a few more blasts of lightning, and enough of Ironspike’s magical fire to burn down a city. When the Dakaneese lost their structure, he blasted them some more. Most of them survived, but they were no longer on the march.
Mikahl left them and found Jarrek’s position by the fading yellow glow of Master Sholt’s shield. The sun was gone now, but the evening sky had just a touch of rose left to it. As Mikahl swooped in to land, a soldier braved the open and waved him away, pointing up toward a sinuous shape in the distance.
Mikahl didn’t have a plan. He could think of nothing other to do than engage the dragon. He could tell by the pale egg-shaped head of its rider that it wasn’t the red-robed priest that had flown away from him over the marshes earlier. He could also see that the damage Ironspike’s blast had done to one of the wyrm’s wings had been healed somehow.
Men were shouting at him from below as he started toward the young black wyrm, but he couldn’t understand them. Flick sent a streaking fiery blast at him, and Mikahl was forced to twist himself out of its way. He answered with a crackling lightning bolt. The dragon veered around it with only the slightest tweak of its wings.
Mikahl thought he could see Flick laughing as the two of them came close to crashing in the sky. At the last moment both of them dove away. Mikahl managed to thrust Ironspike’s blade out into the dragon’s hide, but the
