“What’s happening?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“In that case, maybe I’m not as impressed as I thought.”
He had a sense they were streaking along fast as lightning, and that combined with the flashing madness that was the sky made it impossible for him to judge where they were headed or how much farther in the past their destination lay. But the journey only took a moment or two, and then they were at rest again. It seemed like a relief until he took in their surroundings.
They stood on a ledge midway up one side of a sort of bowl in the ground. Crags rose all around the low place like the points of a crown. They looked natural, but not entirely so. Someone had dug and carved to make sure that the balconies were spacious and plentiful enough for all the enormous creatures that perched here under the stars, and that the openings in the rock were sufficiently high and broad to admit them to what must be a warren of tunnels within the spires.
Everything was silent. An animal odor hung in the chilly air.
“That smell,” Cera said. “Is something here?”
“Dragons,” said Aoth.
She stiffened. “What?”
“Dozens of them, perched all around. They must have some spell of concealment in place. That’s why you can’t see them.”
“What are they doing?”
“Not much. Talking, I think.”
“About what?”
“The enchantment that hides them makes them quiet too. And the Blue Fire changed my eyes, not my ears.”
“I don’t understand any of this!”
“I don’t either. But since we’re here, let me watch for a while.”
“If I call on Amaunator, maybe I can see them too.”
“Or maybe they’ll sense the use of power. I’m sure it’s frustrating, but leave the spying to me.”
For all the good it was likely to do when he couldn’t hear anything. He noted a preponderance of blues, greens, reds, and the other dragons collectively called chromatics, fewer gem wyrms, and only a couple metallics. Then all the behemoths in front of him raised their crested, wedge-shaped heads, and he turned to look where they were peering.
When he did, he felt a stab of fear, as well as incredulity that he’d only now noticed what perched on a balcony to his right. The entity was at least as huge as any of the other dragons, but made of nothing but bare bones, the sparks that danced on them, and the spectral blue light in its eye sockets. A horn jutted from its snout and bobbed a little as its jaws worked. Aoth could feel its malice and cruelty as plainly as he could see its scythelike talons, or the naked armature of its wings.
“By the Flame,” he whispered, “it’s Alasklerbanbastos.”
Up until then, he’d imagined he and Cera had a good chance of going undetected. But suddenly it seemed all too likely that an undead wyrm would notice the presence of discarnate spirits, and probably sooner rather than later.
It made Aoth glad that like every other ledge, the one he and Cera occupied had an opening to the tunnels. “We’re retreating into the caves,” he said. “And as soon as all the dragons are out of sight, you’re going to pray us back where we belong.”
She nodded. “If I can.”
They backed up. Given their status as living ghosts, they shouldn’t have needed to tiptoe or creep slowly, but they did anyway. With dragons and a dracolich only a stone’s throw away, Aoth found it impossible to do otherwise.
But even if his attempt at stealth made sense, it wasn’t good enough. On the other side of the bowl, on a shelf near the jagged top of the rim, a dragon sat up abruptly. A dull, mottled red with a black ridge on its spine- Aoth wondered exactly what sort of wyrm it was-peered at them with eyes like burning coals. Then it exhaled a cloud of vapor and cinders with a care that reminded him of a pipe smoker blowing a smoke ring.
The exhalation writhed and billowed, forming legs, batlike wings, and a serpentine head, neck, and tail. Becoming a vague, semitransparent parody of its creator. Then the smokelike image hurtled straight at Aoth and Cera. Startled, puzzled, other dragons and even the Great Bone Wyrm himself twisted to follow its flight.
Aoth had no doubt that the wyrm with the rust-colored scales realized the intruders were spirits, give or take, and had unleashed a magic capable of harming them. Kossuth grant that meant a living phantom could hurt it in return. “Run!” he rapped. He leveled his spear and spoke a word of power.
Wind howled out across the bowl. It didn’t disturb so much as a particle of dust existing solely in the material world, but it hurled the smoke-thing backward, frayed its limbs, and stretched them out of shape.
Still, the blast of air didn’t tear it apart as Aoth had hoped it would. The creature, if that was the right word for it, pulled itself more or less back into shape and kept coming.
As it set down on the ledge, he threw a pearly blast of frost at it. Seemingly unaffected, it sprang forward and lifted a forefoot to claw at him.
Then warm golden light shone from behind him. To him it felt pleasant, bracing, but the smoke-wyrm flinched.
“Its maker is undead,” Cera said, “so sunlight burns it as well.”
“I don’t care!” snapped Aoth. “I’ll hold it off. You concentrate on getting us back where we belong.”
The breath-entity plunged forward. Aoth sidestepped a silent snap of its hazy jaws, charged the point of his spear with destructive force, and thrust it into his adversary’s neck.
But had the attack actually hurt it? He couldn’t tell.
The smoke-thing clawed at him. He thought he jumped back far enough to avoid the raking stroke-although with the limits of the entity’s body so poorly defined, it was hard to be sure about that either. In any case, a chill stabbed through his body, weakening and numbing him. Tiny red droplets burst from his pores to drift up and merge with the swirl of sparks and vapor.
He drew strength from a tattoo to stave off feebleness, shouted words of evocation, and hurled a bright, twisting bolt of lightning into his foe. It faltered and shuddered, but only for an instant. Then it snapped at him again.
Aoth dodged. As, visible through the swirling vapor that was the breath-entity’s substance, Alasklerbanbastos crawled into the cave. Aoth looked into the seething blue light that was the dracolich’s gaze. Suddenly he couldn’t move, absolutely could not move, while the smoke-wyrm lunged-
Aoth shot upward through the solid rock above him and high into a sky flashing from dark to light and back again. He looked for Cera and found her to his right, just beyond arm’s reach. It occurred to him he ought to try to take his bearings, but it was too late. They were already hurtling through time and space.
He returned to his physical form with a sort of mental jolt, like he’d jumped out of a tree. For an instant, solid flesh and bone felt heavy as lead. He stumbled to the bench, shoved the box off onto the grass, and flopped down.
Looking as exhausted as he felt, Cera sank down beside him. “Are you all right?” she panted.
He realized he was winded too, even though his body hadn’t done anything. He pulled off his gauntlets and saw his hands looked the same as always. At least, unlike his spirit form, the physical Aoth hadn’t bled.
“The breath-thing hurt me a little,” he said, “but now that we’re back, I imagine I’ll shake it off. I’m just glad it didn’t take you any longer to end the spell.”
“So am I.” She closed her eyes, whispered something, and kissed the flaking yellow cover of her book.
“Do you have any idea where we were, or when?”
“No.”
“I didn’t recognize anything either. Well, nothing but the Great Bone Wyrm. I mean, I assumed it was him. Damn it! Why didn’t we stay where we wanted to be?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe the dragonborn’s defenses did interfere. Maybe I didn’t perform the magic properly. Or…”
“Go on.”
