Tarhun.
No lone swordsman, no matter how skilled, was a match for such a behemoth. Patrin decided he had to help, and quickly. He’d held off using Bahamut’s gifts, saving them for foes more formidable than his current adversaries, but now he reached out to the Platinum Dragon for aid.
Power thrilled along his nerves. It simultaneously seemed to descend from above and to well up inside him, a sensation impossible to describe to anyone who hadn’t experienced it for himself.
Patrin whirled his sword in a circle, and brightness-or the pure, rarefied idea of it-exploded from the blade. The light became a spinning horizontal wheel of glowing glyphs with himself at the hub. Assailed by their holy Power, the summoned creatures shrieked and floundered backward.
He didn’t know how badly he’d hurt them, nor did he care. Someone else could finish them off if need be. The important thing was that they didn’t have him tightly surrounded anymore. He ran toward Balasar and his enormous foe.
Flames leaping from its jaws, the crested, wedge-shaped head at the end of the long neck struck like a snake. Balasar managed to sidestep and land a cut three times. But on its fourth bite, the reptile caught the edge of his shield in its fangs. It used that hold to pick him up, whip its neck, and fling him to the side. He slammed down hard and slid, and the beast strode on toward Tarhun. Either it innately understood that the dragonborn monarch was the more important target, or its summoner had so instructed it.
Fortunately, Patrin judged that Balasar had delayed the beast just long enough for him to place himself between the reptile and Tarhun and play the same role his comrade had played. But as he put on a final burst of speed, as he neared the huge creature and saw it even more clearly, doubt suddenly assailed him.
It had nothing to do with fear for his own survival, although obviously that was uncertain in the extreme. Rather, it involved the essential nature of the creature he was about to challenge.
He’d noticed that all the beasts the giant shamans summoned with their crystal globes shared certain characteristics with dragons. All, even the brown, hunched sand things, appeared reptilian. Some possessed acidic spittle or poison breath.
Still, the fiery beast was different. Patrin didn’t think it was a true wyrm, but it was so like one that he wondered if, despite all the manifest reasons to do so, it could be right for a champion of the dragon god to oppose it.
But his uncertainty only lasted a heartbeat. Then came a surge of supernal strength he hadn’t even requested, and with it clarity. He often asked Bahamut for guidance. For once, the god had chosen to provide it, assuring him without the necessity of words that it was, in fact, his sacred duty to battle creatures like the one that loomed before him.
When the reptile struck, it was like a tree or tower falling at him. He leaped aside, which saved his life, but didn’t spare him from the blistering heat the saurian radiated like an oven. Grateful that at least at the moment flame didn’t shroud the thing’s entire crested head, he stepped in, shouted the name of his god, and cut.
Guided by Bahamut’s Power, Patrin’s sword found a place where the creature’s scales overlapped imperfectly. As a result, the stroke bit deeper than any of Balasar’s efforts. The creature jerked its head high. Hot enough to scald, blood showered down. Patrin twisted away to protect his face.
Unfortunately that meant he’d looked away from his foe, and instinct immediately screamed that he’d made a mistake. He sprang from the shadow of the immense foot hurtling down to crush him. Something-the tip of a claw, he realized-snagged the back of his surcoat and started to yank him down onto his back. But then the purple garment ripped instead. He reeled, then caught his balance.
As he turned, the ruined surcoat slid down low enough to hinder the action of his arms or even trip him. It was on fire too. But he didn’t have time to rid himself of it, because his foe was already striking at him again.
He leaped aside, then hurled more of Bahamut’s Power. Silvery light flared from his sword to splash across the side of the reptile’s head. Its neck twisted as it oriented on him once again, but it moved more slowly than before. The god’s Power had robbed it of its quickness.
Patrin tore the tattered, burning surcoat off his body, then dashed past the creature’s head to its body. He thrust, seeking the enormous heart that had to be beating somewhere behind its armor of scales.
The sword drove in deep. But it didn’t stop the beast, which tried to stamp on him. He dodged out from under its foot, slashed the extremity, then glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision. He turned his head. Blazing jaws open wide, the creature was twisting its neck around for another bite.
Good. Maybe this time, with Bahamut’s Power hindering the saurian, he could put out one of its eyes or even reach the brain behind it.
But then, in midstrike, the creature broke free of the lethargy with which his magic had afflicted it. Suddenly its head was streaking at him twice as fast as before. Caught by surprise, he couldn’t dodge, only attempt to interpose his shield.
It was enough to save his life. But the crashing impact flung him backward and slammed him down onto his back. Flame leaping and rippling across its entire body, his foe reared over him. He lifted his sword to impale whatever part of its body came hammering down to finish him.
Then a feeling of beneficent Power, not the glory of his own deity but surely something akin to it, wrapped around him. The world blinked. Afterward, he was still lying on the ground, but his foe wasn’t right on top of him.
He sat up and looked around. The huge reptile was a little way off, and Medrash was in front of it. He’d used one of Torm’s gifts to trade places with a comrade in distress.
The beast struck. But Medrash wasn’t supine or dazed by the shock of a blow he’d just sustained. He dodged, and his blade sliced across one of the reptile’s slit-pupiled yellow eyes. It shrieked and recoiled.
But then it struck again and would have snapped Medrash’s head off if he hadn’t dropped low at the last possible instant. Patrin scrambled to his feet and charged back into the fight.
Together, he and Medrash gashed their enormous foe with cut after cut and seared it with flare after flare of holy Power. Until Patrin felt himself slowing and his link to Bahamut attenuating to a useless, hollow ache. He insisted to himself that just one more cut or prayer might finish the beast. That it wasn’t as unstoppable as it seemed.
Then sharp, sibilant words, spoken in an esoteric language that even Patrin couldn’t understand, rasped through the air. Like himself, Nala had followed when the rest of the Cadre charged. Now she’d come to help protect the vanquisher.
Swaying back and forth, gripping her staff in both hands, she spun it through a complex series of loops and arcs. Then, on the final syllable of her chant, she thrust the tip at the saurian’s head.
A blast of flame leaped from her weapon, engulfed the beast’s upper body, and flickered out … leaving it unscathed. Head cocked, the reptile regarded Nala with its remaining good eye. Though Patrin had no real idea how intelligent it was, he had the feeling it was laughing at the fool who had attacked it with an element that constituted a part of its essential nature.
If so, then it was still laughing when bright, sizzling lightning leaped from the staff to complete the obliteration of its damaged eye. It convulsed, and Patrin and Medrash scrambled back from its stamping feet and lashing tail.
Next came a burst of fumes that set it retching, and then acid that dissolved scales and ate its way into the muscle beneath. Finally, frost extinguished the last of the flames dancing on its body, painted its head and neck white, and toppled it to the ground.
Patrin watched it, making sure it wasn’t going to get up again, then turned to see if anything else was threatening Tarhun. Nothing was, and appearing essentially intact, Balasar was clambering to his feet.
Patrin realized it was a glorious moment. Torm and Bahamut sometimes battled side by side against evil gods and devils. Their earthly champions had just done the same and, by combining forces, had staved off a calamity. Then his beloved Nala had used her own divine gifts to administer the killing stroke to their foe. He gave Medrash a grin.
His fellow paladin smiled back, and Patrin judged that it was a genuine expression of good will. Medrash was incapable of withholding gratitude and camaraderie in such circumstances. But his feelings weren’t wholehearted- there was ambivalence behind his eyes as well. Dismay that they’d needed Bahamut’s Power to achieve their victory.
Curse it, why couldn’t the Daardendrien just get over his prejudice? Why couldn’t he accept that he and his
