insect instead of studying one impaled upon a silver pin, but it did appear that he was a dragonfly.
And the dagger? Where was it?
He scanned his feet, but saw nothing. But then, right in front of his eyes, he saw a glint of steel. One of his mandibles, of course. He still had his weapon.
He checked the hunters again. One tended to his fallen comrade. The others looked around nervously, wondering to where the orc had vanished. Serreg would have smirked, had he been able to with his chitinous jaws. Instead, he turned back toward the west, keeping a careful watch for any predatory swallows or tree frogs.
As a dragonfly, Serreg didn't feel like he was going particularly fast, but he dismissed that to the apparent dilation of time and the very real dilation of the world. He knew he was out flying the best speed he could have made as a human. But what bothered him as he continued on his way, was how he would eat.
He started to feel a gnawing hunger. Had it been minutes or hours that he'd been a dragonfly? Serreg had no way of knowing. The hunger felt,different as an insect than it did as a human, a simpler sensation, but hunger just the same. And he had no idea what dragonflies ate.
Insects to him were pests to be swatted, or specimens to be inspected in a gallery, or a jar full of parts in an apothecary's lab. Beyond that, he'd never bothered with them. So what did insects eat? He thought about it, then decided he'd have to test potential foods. He knew different insects ate the pollen from flowers, others ate the plants themselves, and some even ate other insects. He also knew some ate dead animals or other, more repugnant substances, but he willfully neglected to pursue those lines for the moment.
He touched down on a stalk of wild grass waving in the breeze. It didn't look appetizing, but he tried to bite it anyway.
Nothing.
He flew farther until he found a wildflower, glowing brightly to his dragonfly eyes, but again, it didn't look appealing, he had no idea how exactly to bite it, and when he did manage something, it just wasn't right.
So he turned toward attacking insects. He lunged at a grasshopper, but it was far too large to handle. A gnat was too small to catch, and a fly too fast. Finally, he managed to catch a small fluttering insect-he didn't even know what it was called-and crushed it in his jaws. The meal filled his mouth-
For a split second. He found himself sitting on his haunches, surveying the landscape from a sizeable elevation. He drew his lips into a self-satisfied sneer, smearing a small insect across one jagged fang. He swiveled his head to look at the world from this new perspective, but his eyes did not really see anything. His attention turned inward, feeling the raw power that coursed through his veins. He stretched out his great leathery wings, and gave an experimental beat. He drew a deep breath into his cavernous lungs, and exhaled a stream of pungent acid.
Oh, yes. He was a dragon.
And he was hungry.
He sniffed the air, catching the musky scent of wild oxen on the breeze. His eagle-sharp eyes saw them half a mile away. They hadn't noticed his sudden transformation. No surprise, it's not every day that a dragonfly becomes a dragon. He folded his wings, and stalked them, catlike, through the grass. The herd startled at the noise of his approach. Serreg roared and took wing, moving like a thunderclap, low, heavy, and powerful. He circled the herd once, then struck the largest of the beasts with his lethal breath, liquefying its head as it ran.
He landed with a flurry of wings and a heavy thud as the herd stampeded away, screaming in animal panic. Serreg walked up to his kill and raised one paw to rend the meat when a glint of steel caught his eye. The foreclaw on his right front leg shone in the sun, carved with elegant glyphs.
The dagger.
His superior dragon intellect immediately understood: every time heti stabbed something, the dagger changed him.
Carefully Serreg set that black-scaled foot back down, and worked on the carcass with his other leg and his formidable teeth. He'd had no idea how much he would enjoy cracking bones between his jaws. Maybe it was part of being a dragon, or maybe he'd finally tapped into a heretofore unreachable part of his soul. Whichever the case, Serreg liked it.
The ox devoured, Serreg sat for a moment and contemplated the sky. Just as the dawn had driven away the darkness, so too had the day replaced the horrors of the past night with a bright new future. Life was looking good. Let those vile creatures sap the strength of the enclaves. Serreg didn't need them anymore.
Still, archwizards were not people to be trifled with, and they did not take kindly to dragons, no matter what their lineage. Serreg took one last look toward the skies where he'd grown up, then faced west again.
Serreg eventually found a luxurious swamp in which to lair. He exulted in feeling the mud between his talons. It was far better than the remote and isolated life on Delia's rock.
But what to do with the dagger? He didn't want it on his forepaw anymore. He didn't even really want it around. It reminded him of his pathetic past, and the last gasp of his cowardice. In the end, he did as dragons do: he used it to start his hoard.
Carefully placing his right foreclaw in his mouth, he closed his teeth upon it. He clenched it tight, then flexed his paw and neck, prying the claw out of his toe. Fiery pain raced beneath his magical fingernail, his limb quivered with nerves begging for peace, but he persisted. The dagger tried to hold to his tender flesh, but then he heard a ripping sound as he disembedded it. With one final pull, one last flash of pain, it was free.
And so was he.
Serreg turned his head to the corner of the grotto that he had chosen for his stash, and let the dagger drop from his teeth. It struck the muddy floor with a ring, a keening metallic sound of frustration, and bounced far higher than physically justifiable. It bounced again, and again, and again. Eventually it landed, rocking from side to side, and the vibrations rotated the blade around until it pointed accusingly at Serreg.
With the back of his left paw, Serreg nudged the blade aside, but the push carried the blade around until it pointed at him again.
Complain if you want to, thought Serreg, I have no further need of you.
Limping slightly on his right forepaw, he moved to the entrance to his grotto.
I've studied long enough, he thought. Time to put that knowledge to use.
So thinking, he soared into the sky.
GORLIST'S DRAGON
The Year of the Trumpet (1301 DR)
Ten-year-old Gorlist stared with open-mouthed dismay at the gift that commemorated the end of his word- weaning years. His reward for surviving a decade in the squalid outer caverns of Ched Nasad, for endless hours struggling with the intricacies of the dark elven speech, hand cant, and written language, was a book. A book!
His tutor, T'sarlt, watched expectantly. Gorlist snatched up his gift and hurled it across the room.
Folding his thin arms, he leveled a mutinous glare at the old drow and said, 'Soldiers don't have the time to read.'
'The time, or the wit?' T'sarlt snapped. 'Raise your aspirations, boy! Some drow are bred for battle fodder, but you-you are a wizard's son.'
According to the laws and customs of the drow, Gorlist was no such thing. The wizard Nisstyre had — sired him and sent T'sarlt to teach and care for him, but Gorlist was Chindra's son-Chindra, the gladiator who'd won free of the arena and worked her way up the ranks of the city's elite guard.
Chindra's son, Gorlist concluded sullenly, should have had a dagger as his word-weaning gift.
T'sarlt retrieved the book from the rough stone floor and placed it open on the table. He tapped the faintly glowing markings with a spidery black forefinger.
'You are entering your second decade of life. It is time for you to learn simple spells.'
The boy glanced at the book and quickly snatched his gaze away. The magical markings seemed to writhe
