“You dare mock me? Are you too dim-witted to fear me?”
“I know better than to fear you, Vaskar.”
Another roar, and another blast of lightning from the dragon’s mouth coursed across Gaven’s skin, through his bones, and harmlessly out his hands and feet. All his hair stood on end, and his dragonmark tingled, but he felt no pain. I am the storm, he thought.
“It appears I underestimated your magic,” Vaskar growled. “But will your spells ward you from my teeth?” He lunged, faster than Gaven would have thought possible in such a tight passage.
Gaven stumbled backward, surprised. The dragon’s snout knocked him to the floor, the teeth slashing his shoulder. Vaskar pressed his advantage, pinning him to the ground with one massive claw. The dragon brought his mouth close to Gaven’s face.
“Now the Storm Dragon will feed.” Vaskar hissed.
Gaven grimaced. The dragon’s claw was tearing at the wound in his chest, and fear seized his gut. He saw death in the dragon’s jaws, and pictured his own neck severed like the wyvern’s had been. Then his eyes fell on the ceiling behind Vaskar, its bands of light and dark, and he perceived what he had missed before-a new word in the language of creation.
“No,” he said, and a clap of thunder exploded in Vaskar’s face, knocking his head back and shaking the tunnel around him. The dragon growled and pulled back, but he found himself stuck in the tunnel.
Gaven scrambled to his feet and drove his sword into the dragon’s mouth, cutting a deep gash.
Vaskar pulled his head back as much as he was able, spitting blood that sizzled and hissed where it splattered on the rock. He narrowed his eyes at Gaven. “What has happened? These are not your spells or even your dragonmark at work. What power do you wield against me?”
“If the Prophecy had opened itself to you, you wouldn’t need to ask.”
Vaskar lunged again, his head lowered this time. Gaven’s sword glanced off the armored plates on top of the dragon’s head, which hit him full on. He managed to dodge out of the way of the two curving horns, but the force of Vaskar’s charge carried him off his feet and backward. With no ground under his feet, nothing solid in his reach, there was nothing he could do but ride it out.
The tunnel fell away behind them. Vaskar emerged into the open air and spread his wings. Only then did he let Gaven fall.
Days had dawned and passed since Gaven had entered the Sky Caves, and the sun was somewhere high overhead, hiding behind a towering mass of thunderclouds. Storm winds swirled around them, and Gaven couldn’t see the ground through a cloud of dust. It was enough to note that the dust was a long way down.
Gaven’s stomach lurched as he fell, but he closed his eyes and calmed his mind, calling upon the power of his dragonmark. The wind tugged at him, slowing his descent, and he spread his arms and legs wide to catch it. Power surged through him, and he harnessed it, summoning wind and storm and bending them to his will. He stopped, cradled in the palm of the wind, and he exulted as it lifted him. He looked up to where Vaskar wheeled in triumph, and he gripped his sword tightly in both hands as he soared toward the dragon.
Seeing him, Vaskar recoiled in surprise. Then Gaven was on him, swinging his sword back and forth. The heavy blade clanged against Vaskar’s bronze scales, catching flesh behind and between them. The dragon’s claws batted at him, almost as though Vaskar hoped to knock him from the air. Gaven rewarded his efforts by cutting another bleeding gash between two of the dragon’s claws.
The clouds rumbled with thunder, and the wind howled as though it echoed Vaskar’s pain. The dragon gave a mighty flap of his wings and pulled away from Gaven’s assault, but the wind snatched him and dashed him against the side of the Sky Caves. For a moment his claws scrabbled at the sheer rock face, then he pushed off and into the air again, swooping directly at Gaven, his enormous teeth bared, his wings folded to cut through the gusting wind.
Again, power surged through Gaven’s dragonmark, and he funneled it outward. A cyclone lifted Gaven up and out of Vaskar’s path. When the dragon hit the whirlwind, he veered hard to the left, rolling over on his back as he swerved, stretching his wings out wide to bring his flight back under control. As he rolled, he spat a bolt of lightning at Gaven, but it flowed through Gaven’s body to dance in the clouds, touching off a cascade of light and thunder.
I am the storm, Gaven thought. He stretched his arms out then brought his palms together in a great clap. Winds buffeted Vaskar from either side, crumpling his wings, and another blast sent him reeling backward. The dragon was clearly working hard to stay aloft, and one of his wings looked oddly bent, perhaps broken. He beat his way through the wind to perch in one of the cave openings. Snaking his neck around, he let out a roar that drowned out the dying thunder.
“Thief! Betrayer!” he cried. “I freed you from your prison, and this is the gratitude you show? You stole my prize! Usurper!”
“The prize is not yet won,” Gaven said, his voice echoing in the thunder. He stretched out a hand, pointing at the characters formed by the gaping cave mouths. “The Crystal Spire has not yet risen, bridging the realm of mortals and that of the gods.”
“What?” The dragon drew his head back, evidently surprised at Gaven’s words. “But the Sky Caves-’The Storm Dragon walks in the paths of the first of sixteen!’ What have I not fulfilled?”
“Have you learned nothing? Are you blind? The Prophecy is written plain before you, and you have no eyes to see it. On a field of battle where dragons clash in the skies, the earth opens and the Crystal Spire emerges.”
As he spoke, the characters of the Prophecy danced in his mind, the layers of meaning that language couldn’t capture weaving themselves behind his words.
“A ray of Khyber’s burning sun forms a bridge to Siberys’s heights.”
Images flashed in Gaven’s mind from the tortured dreams of his last night in Dreadhold. Gibbering hordes rising up, following the brilliant light up from the depths of the earth. The hordes of the Soul Reaver.
“I will cross that bridge, Gaven! Not you!” Vaskar’s rage was all the more unsettling because the dragon’s face lacked any human expression. “I am the Storm Dragon!”
The bronze wyrm leaped into the air, lurching toward Gaven on his bent and broken wing.
The wind swelled into a hurricane with Gaven at its eye. Lightning flashed all around him, engulfing Vaskar and limning his scales in brilliant light. The winds battered the dragon and swept him off his path, carrying him around Gaven in a wide arc. Vaskar flailed his wings helplessly. The wind grew, howling through the cave tunnels, sending tremors through the whole mountain. Vaskar whipped around in the wind until he crashed into the side of the Sky Caves, sending a shower of rock in a whirling cascade to the ground.
Vaskar clung weakly to the rock face for a moment, then he let himself fall. He folded his wings and plummeted through the whirlwind, disappearing into the blooming dust cloud below. Gaven lifted his arms to the lightning-scarred sky.
“The Bronze Serpent has fallen,” he said, his words disappearing into the wind. “Must I then be the Storm Dragon?”
The wind carried him higher and higher, until he looked down on the top of the Sky Caves. At the same time, the wind lifted the dust and ash from the ground below into a whirling sandstorm that grew to engulf the floating rock.
Gaven lowered his hands, and the wind began to die. The whirling column of air that held Gaven aloft carried him down. As he sank, the sandstorm lost its fury-but even as it settled, it pulled the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor back down to earth with it.
Gaven came to rest on a level, featureless plain of dust. Somewhere beneath his feet, the Sky Caves slumbered again.
PART III
The cauldron of the thirteen dragons boils until one of the five beasts fighting over a single bone becomes a thing of desolation. Desolation spreads over that land like wildfire, like plague, and Eberron bears the scar of it for thirteen cycles of the Battleground. Life ceases within its bounds, and ash covers the earth.
