Kendra watched in horror as Bernosh rose, both lifeless dragons behind him, and staggered toward the portable dungeon. Frosty ice crystals coated his lower half, and most of the flesh was gone from one shoulder to the elbow, with only a charred black bone remaining. He coughed and stumbled, dropping to his knees.
“Now, that was a fight,” he said, his smile showing a couple of missing teeth. “More than I expected from a pair of dragons.” He blearily looked down at the fleshless portion of his arm. “Bit down and breathed right into me. Worthy beast. Might take some time to recover from this one.” From his kneeling position, using his sword like a cane, he got one foot out in front of himself and started to rise, then flopped facedown onto the rocks and mud.
The giant did not move after that.
“Is he . . . ?” Kendra asked.
“Looks that way,” Tanu said. He leaned out of the doorway, searching the skies. “We better get into the Dragon Temple before more company shows up.”
“Resolved!” Warren exclaimed. “If I am to be eaten by a dragon today, it will be indoors.”
“Would Celebrant send more dragons in this weather?” Kendra asked.
“Not normally,” Raxtus said. “But who knows? These are abnormal circumstances.”
“Plant the tree, Kendra,” Vanessa prompted. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
While the others gathered gear, Kendra ran over to the nearest fir trees, where the soil seemed rich. Rain pelting, she crouched in the mud and scooped out a goopy hole with her hand. Water flowed into it, but she pressed the seed down into the bottom and pushed mud over it.
A bolt of lightning struck a nearby clifftop, accompanied by an immediate explosion of thunder that made Kendra jump and shriek. “Grow quickly,” she told the seed. “Come protect me and my friends as soon as you can, Cyllia. We’ll be inside the Dragon Temple.”
A little green shoot rose out of the mud, stretching upward. It was strange to see it happening so fast, like watching a time-lapse film.
“Are you ready, Kendra?” Tanu called.
Kendra looked back to find Raxtus in his dragon shape and her three friends all waiting in the rain. Sheets of lightning strobed above, soon followed by thunder. Glancing up, Kendra glimpsed huge silhouettes of birds of prey made temporarily visible by lightning.
“Yes,” Kendra called. “Coming.”
She slogged over to her friends, who all started toward the carved cliff where they expected to find the Dragon Temple. Warren carried the key they had taken from Ptolemy.
“I’d fly us forward,” Raxtus said, “but I don’t trust my wings in this weather.”
The strongest gust yet nearly knocked Kendra off her feet before the wind subsided. Lightning blazed across the sky every few seconds, trailed by overlapping crashes of thunder.
They passed the motionless body of Bernosh. Raxtus bounded over to his head and sniffed the huge neck. “He’s dead,” the dragon confirmed.
Kendra avoided studying Bernosh. The giant had moved to protect them from the dragons so energetically, almost eagerly. And now his life had ended. She hoped it was not a sign of things to come.
The rain fell even harder and the day darkened. Little waterfalls were taking shape on the clifftops, and a stream began to flow out of the box canyon. Hair and clothes already saturated, Kendra had the mild consolation that she couldn’t get much wetter. She trudged forward and, by the pulses of lightning, caught harsh glimpses of the dragon corpses.
They paused in the lashing rain as they reached the rear of the canyon. “Where in a cliff do you insert a key?” Warren shouted.
“That’s the seal of Abraxas, the first dragon, on the key,” Raxtus said. “He’s depicted in the middle of the wall, bottom row. See the notch where his heart would be?”
“If you’re right, you just made a new best friend,” Warren said. He clambered up a slick boulder in front of the carved dragon, raised the spear-sized key over his head, and jammed it into the slot.
“Back away!” Kendra warned. “Dectus promised the storm would do the rest.”
Warren had already hopped down. “I remember,” he said. “Let’s get clear.” They all hurried sideways along the base of the cliff, squelching in mud and slipping on wet rocks. For a long moment, the wind whipped so furiously that Kendra fell to her knees and kept her head down until the gust relented.
Shortly after she stood, a searing bolt of lightning blasted the key. The deafening thunder hit like a physical blow. Kendra covered her ears too late—for a moment, all she could hear was a steady ringing.
As the ringing tone diminished and the roar of the wind became audible again, Kendra saw that the carved dragon had receded, leaving a doorway just over ten feet tall and five feet wide. Kendra and her companions scrambled back to the doorway, up the steps, and into the disquieting shelter of the Dragon Temple.
Are you sure you intend to leave the city?” the guard shouted from the top of the wall, his words barely audible over the rushing wind.
“Yes, thank you!” Seth called.
“You know the Perennial Storm is coming?” the guard checked, one hand holding his steel cap as the wind gusted. “Most folk are heading into the city and going underground.”
“We’re aware, thank you,” Merek responded.
“Gates will be locked and barred soon,” the guard called. “You may find some modest shelter on the far side of the eastern wall.”
Merek waved as they strode away from the gate. The guard squinted at the oncoming mass of dark, roiling clouds and then back at Seth and Merek, shaking his head.
Seth angled his head to keep the wind from blowing directly into his ear, because it was quite loud and uncomfortable. The relentless gale pulled at his clothing and threatened to push him off-balance. The front edge of the megastorm would be over Humburgh within minutes. Away to the north, lightning-laced thunderheads already blanketed more of the landscape, hovering above
