All sense fled Grim as the pain in his shoulder became a dull throb. He roared again, releasing the dragonfear he'd kept within. The fear washed over the final assassin in waves, battering against his willpower in rhythm to Grim's massive heartbeat.
The man turned to run, dropping his sword behind him. Grim pounced then, painfully beating his wings in a single thrust, to land on the man's back. His weight had easily crushed the life from the doomed assassin, but in his blood-lust Grim tore the man's body to pieces anyway, crushing the bones and soft flesh in his powerful claws.
Then he stopped, hearing noises approaching from behind him, footsteps walking purposefully toward the grisly scene. Finally, Grim thought, the count arrives to see my work firsthand.
Appearing from a street to the north, a single guardsman stopped as the moonlight revealed the splashes of blood and crumpled bodies. His stomach twisted, seeing the violence of the scene. Looking up to his left he froze as he saw Grim approaching him.
Grim cursed himself for the noise he'd created in his killing. He'd attracted the attention of the civic guard. This one would soon be followed by many more.
Leaping forward before the man could scream or run for help, he clamped his jaws around the guardsman's chest, sinking his fangs through the thin chain shirt and drawing blood.
The man gasped and gurgled, one of his lungs punctured by Grim's bite, as the dragon carried him quickly away to hide in a darkened alley farther down the street.
The bite of the fang dragon, like all of his kind, was draining, stealing a victim's life, leaching one's spirit away in a vice grip of death.
The guard's struggles grew weaker as his life-force fed Grim's injuries, partially closing the wound in his shoulder. Despite the healing he received, pain flared through Grim's chest, causing him to squeeze the man's body even tighter as he collapsed to the ground, hidden in shadow. The pain was like before, but different somehow, coming from within as confusing images flooded his mind.
The amulet, the prize of his hoard that he'd left so long ago near Myth Drannor, floated across his vision. He'd forgotten it had once been his, a powerful artifact he had treasured for centuries. Ancient memories came rushing back to him, particularly the wizard who'd tried to steal his soul, using the amulet to augment his necromancy.
He remembered defeating the wizard, but after that his memories were broken and sketchy. Enemy after enemy had come searching for him, all with the amulet in hand, causing him pain and nightmares. Finally as the pain of memory grew to extremes within his mind, he saw the young face of the civic guard he just killed, stained red and framed in the amulet's glow.
The tortured face grew closer and new memories slammed into his mind with the force of ancient magic. Memories of growing up on a farm outside of Zazesspur, the smell of the fields at harvest, the desire to wield a sword, to help people, to become more than a mere farmer. The energy of the man's life, coursing in the dragon's veins, became a fire in his mind.
Grim passed out as the intensity of the barrage became too painful, his struggling mind too weak to resist such magic.
His skin grew tighter as his consciousness faded, scales disappeared and fangs receded.
The silence of the evening resumed its vigil, blanketing the remains of those that had disturbed it.
Three patrols of civic guard soon arrived from different directions. Their commander, one Captain Begg, began to oversee the investigation and removal of bodies. One of his officers approached him to report.
'Sir, our men have returned from Count Kelmar's estate, from which he'd been absent for a tenday according to the servants. They found no sign of him at the Whispering Maiden either. Should we continue searching for him?'
Captain Begg shook his head slowly, 'Don't bother, some hunters found the count's body yesterday, hidden in the woods near where his brother had been killed.'
Confused, the officer replied, 'But sir, I saw the count just yesterd-'
'I know. And I don't know.' The captain shook his head. It had been a trying tenday. He looked up, noticing one of his men standing just outside the murder scene staring aimlessly. 'Thaedras? Where have you been? And what happened to you?'
Thaedras turned his head, looked at the bleeding gash in his right shoulder. He could feel a strange warmth against his chest, could feel a necklace of some sort beneath his tunic.
A flicker of pain pulsed behind his eyes as he tried to remember, to answer the captain's question. He clenched his eyes shut as the pain grew, a single vision passing through his mind as the ache slowly faded. A vision of his own death.
He shuddered at the thought.
QUEEN OF THE MOUNTAIN
When the great wyrm Amrennathed, in peace and solitude, gave her last breath to the mountain, the village of Orunn died.
She knew it would be her last by the way the stone shifted, a final, protesting grate against scale and ribs that had shrunk to hold barely the breath of three men. Centuries had reshaped the mountain, sculpted it around her sinuous body, until bare stalactites plunged deep into her back, wormed thorny roots into her spine. There was no room left for life that was not stone.
Amrennathed couldn't see the changes in the mountain. Her far-staring eyes, bored out by stone into painful, dust-choked blindness long ago, gave her no hint as to the passage of time.
The dragon did not care to see her death approaching, nor had she acknowledged the loss other eyes. She had not cared to look at anything outside her mountain for a very long time. Do you hear me?
Her body was dying, but Amrennathed's mind was alive and working as furiously as it ever had against a foe. Time was her enemy now-only so much of it left to communicate her wishes, to pass on her legacy. Her thoughts were a fever raw and unfamiliar to the sedate mountain, and some of her words and desires may have been lost in the contest of wills.
Mountains, by nature and custom, are not easily stirred to speak, even to a dragon.
I have been patient. The dragon's mind-voice rumbled, banked against stone like settling embers. I have waited for you to slay my body, in your unhurried, meticulous way, a gift I would give to no living being. It is time for you to take the rest.
And from the mountain, in its unhurried way, came answer.
Aged as you are, we measure the centuries a pace apart. I will claim you, in time. We will become dust together a thousand years hence, as Faerun is reshaped, remade again and again.
Too long! Impatience flared-rock and slab felt the blow of the dragon's desperation. There must be certainty. I must know that what is in my mind and breast will not be left to scavenge.
If you leave nothing behind, will it be that Amrennathed herself never was?
This time, Amrennathed wasn't certain if it was the mountain speaking or her own traitorous thoughts.
It does not matter, the dragon insisted.
By the measure of your kind, will you have failed?
I am the measure of myself! Pride had not left Amrennathed's mind, though the mountain had laid waste to her body.
Arrow-bright, an image flashed before the stone. Unused to the hard color, light, and sound, the mountain shuddered at the sudden barrage of all three.
A Zhentarim spy crouched on his knees, head thrown back in agony as a purple-hued claw caressed his spine, shredding black robes and peeling a fine layer of flesh.
Radiances pulsed and fed from the man's slack mouth into the claw. Amrennathed's mind-voice was soft, at first coaxing, then demanding, as the man shrieked and sobbed and gave the last vestiges of the spells he'd gathered in his long life to the dragon.
