'Isn't that why you're here? Malathar never did give you a chance to study it, did he?'
'He didn't,' Phaine said. 'You have disrupted a great many plans.'
'Considering that those plans involved torturing me and stealing my dragonmark, I can't say that I'm sorry.'
'You will be.' Phaine's shadow-filled eyes were fixed on Gaven as if he were watching the poison spread through his body, waiting for him to keel over. As if in response, a sharp jolt of pain stabbed through Gaven's chest.
Gaven fumbled with his numb left hand at the pouch that held the dragonshard, then shifted his sword to that hand and reached for the shard with his right. Phaine chose that awkward instant to leap at him again, his dagger poised to swing in a broad arc across Gaven's neck.
Gaven's fingers touched the smooth crystal and lightning gave shape to his fury and hatred, leaping out from him to engulf Phaine. The elf's black eyes shot wide as twisting tendrils of lightning suspended him in the air between floor and ceiling, with a stream of blinding light connecting him to Gaven.
Gaven withdrew the shard from his pouch and shook it in Phaine's direction. 'Is this what you came for?' Sparks danced in his mouth as he spoke. A second bolt of lightning shot from the shard to spear through Phaine's middle for a moment, and smoke started to billow from his scorched clothes and hair. 'Here it is, you bastard. Want to take it from me?'
Gaven was a pillar of crackling lightning. It coiled in arcs around his body and cascaded down his outstretched arm, and tendrils of it danced over the walls of the room. He was more than the storm-he was destructive energy barely contained in mortal flesh, annihilation he couldn't restrain.
'Gaven?' The door swung open, and a tendril of lightning leaped to course over Senya.
'No!' He let go of the dragonshard, but it clung to his flesh as lightning continued to flow through him and dance across the walls, up to the high window and the ceiling, across the floor, and over the still forms of Phaine and Senya where they hung suspended in the air.
A sharp crack that sounded like thunder, muffled but not distant, caught Aunn's attention as he hurried toward Chalice Center. He slowed his steps, trying to determine what he had heard and decide whether to investigate. He scanned the sky, but it was clear and cold with winter's approach, with no sign of a brewing storm, either natural or sprung from the twisting lines of Gaven's mark.
He heard some commotion, distant shouts and running feet. Clearly, he hadn't imagined the sound. He was in a part of the city he didn't know particularly well-he remembered a tiny enclave of Aereni immigrants nearby, elves who clung to the ways of their ancestors, unlike most of the urbanized elves of Khorvaire, who worshiped the Sovereign Host and fit in smoothly with their human, dwarf, and gnome neighbors. What would Gaven be doing in that neighborhood?
A chill ran up Aunn's spine as he remembered the undead thing Senya had addressed as a revered ancestor, and he shuddered. 'All right,' he muttered, 'I'm coming.' He listened for the nearest sounds of commotion and followed them.
'Who you are now is who you have been and who you are yet to be.'
The cold, clear voice of Senya's ancestor echoed in Gaven's mind as he hung suspended in time, lightning like the twisting lines of his dragonmark binding him together with Phaine and with Senya. Pain seared along his every nerve, power too great for his body to contain.
'You are Gaven. You are the Storm Dragon. You are a dishonored child of Lyrandar, cut off from your line but still a product of it. You are Shakravar, and you are the murderer of the Paelion line.'
I've killed her, he thought. He tried to shake the dragonshard from his hand, but it was a part of him. He struggled to lower his hand, to bring it in to his chest so his other hand might pry the dragonshard free, but the lightning was like a swift-flowing river that would not release his arm.
'However, you are also, in this moment, who you will choose to be, and that is a far better thing.'
And so, Gaven thought, I now choose this.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. The air, heated by lightning, seared his throat and lungs, but he focused his thoughts on the dragon-shard in his hand. He saw the lines of the Prophecy winding within its rosy heart, and words formed in his mind-words he might have known once, in this life or another, but which were now part of his destiny and part of himself:
Under the unlight of the darkened sun, the Storm Dragon lays down his mantle; he stops his song before it can be unsung, and so his storm is extinguished.
The dragonshard clattered to the floor in a shower of sparks, and the writhing tendrils of lightning withdrew into its gleaming surface. Phaine and Senya, released by the storm, fell to the ground, shrouded in reeking smoke.
'Senya!' Gaven gasped. He stepped toward her, but his leg faltered under his weight and he toppled onto the floor beside her. He was vaguely aware of voices outside the door, chattering in confusion and alarm, but he couldn't lift his head to look. His face pressed against the cold stone, he could see only the death mask of Senya's tattooed face.
'Senya, I'm sorry,' he gasped.
Blackness swallowed his vision, but he thought he saw two smoldering green flames looking into his eyes before the darkness claimed him.
It would have been easy for Aunn to put on an elven face and blend in among the dozens of elves rushing into their temple to find out what was going on, but he did not. He saw some bluntly hostile glances, but no one accosted him as he moved through an open courtyard outside the temple. Flickering light-white like lightning, not the red of a fire-lit a high window near the top of the temple, and Aunn could feel the ground beneath his feet rumbling with the thunder of Gaven's storm. He could feel the fear of the elves around him, and it was no wonder. Aunn was terrified, and he had a pretty good idea what was going on. To the elves, this must have seemed like an angry divine manifestation.
As he climbed the stairs to the temple, he drew more angry glares. A few elves shouted at him in Elven, which he couldn't really make out. 'No go in,' one managed in Common, but Aunn ignored her and pushed his way into the building.
A pair of tall stone doors stood open inside the temple, and a few of the elves gathered inside, seeking solace in the spiritual presence of their ancestors in the absence of any priests. A dozen or so more huddled around the bottom of a staircase leading up in the direction of the storm-filled window, as if waiting for news to be delivered from on high. The flickering light cast eerie dancing shadows down the stairs, and the building trembled with the rumble of thunder. Aunn hesitated, unsure if he'd be allowed to climb the stairs or if he could even make it through the press of elves.
The building stopped shaking abruptly, and the flickering light went out. A hush fell over the crowd, but in a moment there were shouts from the top of the stairs. A murmur spread through the elves around him, and they turned toward the temple sanctuary.
Aunn bit his lip and started walking against the crowd. There weren't that many elves, but they were crammed into a narrow antechamber and moving with some urgency in the direction opposite the one he wanted to go in. Every time he collided with an elf, he provoked shouts and glares, and he understood just enough Elven to know quite clearly that he wasn't welcome.
Finally he reached the bottom of the stairs, and stopped in his tracks. A deathless soldier blocked his way, clutching the haft of a poleaxe with both bony hands and staring at him with eyes of green fire.
'You are not welcome here,' the soldier said. 'This is where we pay honor to our ancestors.'
Aunn swallowed hard. His fear of the undead was utterly irrational, but that didn't make it any less paralyzing. It took root in him years ago, on one of his first missions during the war, in Atur-the Karrn city rightly called the City of Night. He tried to answer the soldier, but his voice froze in his throat.
You are mine. He felt Tira's breath on his lips again. I did not call you to live in fear.
'Please,' he said, the memory of the presence in the cathedral giving him strength. 'My friend is upstairs.'
'Your friend? The Khoravar?'
