Aoth cast a blast of focused sound at Alasklerbanbastos, and a tremor rattled down the length of the creature’s skeletal form. But the bones didn’t break apart, and the lich still didn’t falter. He whipped his head from right to left, and the pale light in the empty eye sockets flared. Aoth felt his muscles try to clench into immobility. He growled a word of denial and released the power of a warding tattoo, and his limbs relaxed.
Several windsouls were less fortunate. They couldn’t move or, apparently, even command the air to shift them as the Great Bone Wyrm snarled an incantation, and acid exploded in their midst. Bubbling and sizzling, their flesh dissolved, and their steaming bones showered out of the sky.
The vitriol dropped too and splashed on the ground below. It reared up into a rippling, flowing dragon shape and swiped at a nearby crossbowman with its forefoot. He fell down, thrashing and screaming until the liquid eating into his face and chest stole his voice away.
Alasklerbanbastos was close. Jet dodged to the right, and the dracolich turned to keep the griffon and his rider in front of his jaws and paralyzing gaze. Then like a bright, roaring waterfall, flame cascaded down on the wyrm from overhead.
Jhesrhi did her best to maintain the confidence and indomitable will that wizardry required. Still, as the dragons came driving in, it was hard to ignore the fear whispering that she and her friends were overmatched. And when the other wyrms came swooping into view, she felt a pang of near despair.
Then, its blue scales gleaming in the light of a fire, a swooping sapphire dragon punched a hole in Tchazzar’s wing with the shriek that was its breath weapon. The red jerked and veered off course, and before he could recover, an emerald wyrm plunged down on top of him and smashed him to the ground.
The emerald dragon leaped back into the air. Tchazzar lurched to his feet. His whipping tail killed men without his even intending it. He spewed flame at the green-colored wyrm, but the creature lashed its wings and dodged.
Jhesrhi had no idea why the lesser dragons had changed sides, but since they had, maybe she and her comrades had a real chance after all. She blasted Tchazzar with frost. Jabbing with a wand crafted from a wisp of cloud, a dragonborn with snowy scales and silver skewers for piercings did the same.
Cera led her gaggle of priests forward, toward the howl and clangor of battle. Then the mass of warriors in front of her parted for a moment, giving a woman of less-than-average height her first clear look at what was actually happening up ahead. She gasped and stopped short.
She and the rest of Amaunator’s clerics had indeed found wyrmkeepers holding other priesthoods prisoner in their own temples. The dragon worshipers apparently hadn’t possessed sufficient manpower to capture everyone, but they had neutralized every order known to be particularly unhappy about the ascendancy of the Church of Tchazzar.
Surprising the captors as they’d likely surprised their captives, the sunlords found it fairly easy to overwhelm them, especially since every victory added fresh recruits to their band. Cera tried not to feel too much vicious satisfaction as the wyrmkeepers fell, although, when she remembered how they’d imprisoned and tortured her, it was hard not to feel that, if anything, a quick death by sword thrust or battle prayer was too good for them.
When every servant of a true god was free, she took her company west, toward the armies who, judging from the echoing racket, had begun to fight in earnest. She and her comrades had to handle a couple of skirmishes, but they swung around the bulk of Tchazzar’s forces and avoided a major confrontation. It seemed the wiser course. Rich in magic though she and the other priests were, a band of trained warriors would still stand a fair chance of slaughtering them until they united with the soldiers on Aoth and Shala’s side.
Her success at reaching Shala’s company safely left Cera feeling a little smug about her own emerging talents as a war leader, and she knew a fierce resolve to do whatever she could to aid the defense. But that feeling fell away when she saw the heart of the battle, and awe welled up to take its place.
Dragons were fighting one another, and their struggle had all but become the entire conflict, at least on the part of the discontinuous, irregular battleground that she could see. Warriors had fallen back to keep a stray blast of breath weapon or the stamp of a huge foot from killing them. That limited their ability to engage one another, not that they seemed much inclined to do so anyway. No doubt experiencing the same amazement and dread as Cera, for the most part, they, too, were simply watching the dragons assail one another.
Which was to say, they were watching, not helping. Either they doubted the ability of mere human beings and genasi to affect the outcome, or they were afraid of hitting the wrong dragon. Only mages such as Aoth and a few master archers such as Gaedynn sent flares of power blazing or shafts streaking into the swooping, wheeling, lunging blur of motion.
For a few heartbeats, Cera wondered if salvation was at hand, if the dragons who had inexplicably joined their cause would take down Alasklerbanbastos and Tchazzar. After all, they outnumbered the blue and the red and had forced them onto the ground. The gold and the earthbound sapphire with the broken wing had burned or ripped a horn, alar phalanges, ribs, and other pieces of the dracolich’s skeletal form away. The emerald and the other sapphire had torn bloody gashes in Tchazzar’s hide. Their howls had hammered his left foreleg so the knee cocked inward, and he could no longer use the limb to slash or to bear his weight.
Then a dark liquid sprayed the gold from above, and it jerked in pain. An instant later, yet another wyrm, a black, plunged down on it like a hawk snatching a pigeon on the wing. The chromatic’s momentum slammed them both through the wall of a house, and they started struggling inside. Cera could tell because their fury was smashing and shaking the building apart.
With the gold otherwise occupied, Alasklerbanbastos glared at the sapphire and snarled an incantation. The living wyrm turned to run but not quickly enough. Tentacles of shadow erupted from the earth, whipped around it, and dragged it down onto its belly.
The dracolich whirled and spit a booming thunderbolt at the emerald dragon. The gem wyrm convulsed and crashed to earth. Tchazzar sprang, lashed his wings, and seized hold of the remaining sapphire’s forefoot in his burning jaws. He whipped his neck, yanking his foe out of the air and biting down at the same time.
The foot ripped off as the sapphire slammed to the ground. Blood spurted from the stump, and the creature spasmed. Tchazzar gnashed the extremity, bones and all, and gulped it down.
Then he and Alasklerbanbastos turned their gazes on the humans and genasi before them and, not even bothering to take flight again, lunged forward. Some warriors screamed and scattered. Others tried to fight, and the wyrms smashed them aside or trampled them flat.
Cera couldn’t strike at both dragons at once. But she prayed she could do something to hinder Alasklerbanbastos. Why not? He was undead and she had all the best priests in the city at her back. Even without them, she’d hurt him before, and although she’d lost the shadow gem that had made it possible, perhaps some vestige of the link it had forged remained.
She reached out to the Keeper, and he filled her with his light. She swung her mace over her head, and dazzling radiance leaped from it, passed harmlessly through any of the living who happened to be in the way, and burned into Alasklerbanbastos’s skull face. The undead blue lurched to a halt, then backward, some irresistible pressure shoving him.
Other sunladies and lords started chanting. Their warm light poured into her and through her to add to the force she was exerting. Then the rest of the priests began to pray, and although their might derived from sources other than the nurturing and purifying sun, it, too, lent a measure of strength to the forbiddance.
We’ve got him! Cera thought. We’ll burn him away! Then, defying the pressure of the light, Alasklerbanbastos came straight at her, picking up speed with every stride.
Tchazzar coiled his hind legs and unfurled his wings for a spring. Jhesrhi could tell the leap would carry him over most of the warriors who still stood between him and Shala and bring him smashing down on top of the former sovereign and her personal guards.
