surface, throwing up a white-hot splash of magma.
For ten seconds, everything was quiet.
Then, the Gloryhammer shot up into the air, pulling Lord Tower from his blazing bath. Tower spun to clear his armor then surveyed the lava beneath him, searching for his foe.
His foe found him first, as a flame-wreathed talon punched from the surface and snapped around the knight like a man snatching an annoying fly. Greatshadow rose from the syrupy rock with a growl and slammed his talon down on the stone ledge we stood on, knocking us all from our feet. Tower was pinned beneath the impossible bulk of the massive lizard as Greatshadow brought his head to the platform and said, in very satisfied tones: “Embers rise constantly from the furnace of this bakery. They dance above the chimney like turbulent stars. A few may travel far, holding their heat until they land. Sometimes, such embers set roofs aflame.”
“Rrraahhhhg!” screamed Relic, as the bone-handled knife dropped from his talon. He fell to all fours and charged the larger dragon. He opened his jaws wide, to almost a perfect ninety-degree angle, before he sunk them into Greatshadow’s knuckle.
He shook his head from side to side, tearing at flesh, though in scale, he was doing about as much damage to Greatshadow as Menagerie was doing to Zetetic. “Da! Da! Da!” he raged. I think he meant, “Die! Die! Die!” Though, considering the relationship, perhaps not.
“You annoy me,” said Greatshadow, flicking Relic with his talon and sending him flying far across the lava.
Around this time, the last of Relic’s blood bubbled away from the bone-handled knife and I faded from existence. I watched with despair as my hands once more turned to mist, though I was slightly intrigued that, for some reason, this time I wasn’t naked. Zetetic’s clothing had made the transition with me back to the ghost zone I dwelled in.
Tower had grabbed one of Greatshadow’s nails and was bending it back. He said, in booming, heroic tones, “You’re bleeding, dragon. Your strength wanes with each heartbeat. Death is near!”
Tower was right. For the primal dragon of fire, Greatshadow didn’t look so hot. He had big, gory holes in the side of his face, and his blood gushed out by the bucketful. His vitals fluids no longer glowed like flame, but were now a thick brown-red stream that spilled down onto the knight’s face, splattering across the platform. I looked to where the knife had fallen, to see if there was a chance any of the drops might hit it.
The knife was gone.
I spun around.
Zetetic was nowhere to be seen.
“Your allies… have abandoned you,” said Greatshadow, his voice strained.
“A pure heart may face evil alone,” said Tower, defiant, as the strength of the Armor of Faith snapped the nail he wrestled with. He reached out and sank spiky fingers into the stone and began to drag himself free of Greatshadow’s weakening grasp.
“You aren’t… alone,” said Greatshadow. “Three hundred monks pray… for your victory.”
“Which is why I cannot fail!”
“The monastery has a library with ten centuries full of ancient books, dry as kindling,” said Greatshadow, as his eyelids drooped. “There is an open window. And now… there is fire.”
“Die!” screamed Relic as he rose from the lava near Greatshadow’s hips, climbing the dragon like a mountain, pausing every few feet to take a nip from his hide.
The prayer-driven gears within Tower’s armor purred at a louder pitch as he finally kicked himself free of the dragon’s failing grasp. He lifted the Gloryhammer above his head and shouted, “This ends now!”
At that moment, the metallic ring that covered the thumb on his left gauntlet vanished.
“One of the faithful… has abandoned his post,” said Greatshadow. Suddenly, a bolt popped out of the plate covering Tower’s left kneecap. “He is not alone in loving books more than duty.”
Tower answered by swinging the Gloryhammer with all his might toward Greatshadow’s mocking tongue. Greatshadow’s front teeth splintered with a wet sound that made me cringe. The dragon drew in a shallow breath as his mouth closed around the Gloryhammer and Tower’s hands.
The dragon’s scaly cheeks puffed out as he exhaled. A jet of white flame shot thirty feet out from Tower’s left kneecap, quickly fading into a stream of oily black smoke.
Greatshadow spit out the Gloryhammer and stared at the smoking husk of armor standing before him. With a creak, the armor tilted to the left, then toppled, landing with a clatter as it broke into scattered pieces. The interior was covered with soot half an inch thick.
Relic was now almost to Greatshadow’s neck. The larger dragon grabbed the annoying assailant gingerly between two claws and placed him on the ledge amidst the scattered armor parts.
“Die! You must die!” screamed Relic.
“I sense I may have — in some fashion — offended you,” said Greatshadow.
“You discovered me fresh from the egg and snapped my bones between your talons! You tossed my half- dead body from the caldera onto the slopes for the pygmies to scavenge! I was nothing but the unwelcome waste of your perversions, tossed away like trash! You will suffer! You will pay!”
Greatshadow rolled the tiny dragon between his talons, turning him to his back, taking a misshapen wing and snapping it once more. Relic screamed in agony as Greatshadow twisted the flesh back and forth, until a sharp bone punched through the surface.
“Little Brokenwing,” said Greatshadow, tossing him onto the platform so that he bounced near the mouth of the tunnel. “Let the pain you feel at this moment linger. You have cost me dearly today. Nowowon required four centuries of incantations to properly enslave as my watchdog. You took him from me. I’ve worn my original body for thirty centuries, but the damage done by the knight may yet rob me of it. I saw your cowardly ally in possession of the Jagged Heart. You would dare bring her weapon to my lair, knowing what you know of our history?”
“I dare any price!” Relic hissed through clenched teeth. “Beginning with the pygmies who came to butcher my corpse, I have left a trail of death and destruction in my wake. My hate for you is a fire that can never be quenched!”
Greatshadow’s mention of cowardly allies made me wonder where Zetetic had gone. Assuming he had the bone-handled knife, I felt for the familiar tug, and instantly found it. I flashed down the tunnel only a few yards. Zetetic was pressed to the wall, his face drained of all color; the red D tattooed on his forehead looked pink. He was shivering, and not just because he had both arms wrapped around the Jagged Heart, hugging it like he was a frightened toddler. He had the bone-handled knife clutched in his right hand and what looked like a shard of glass in his left. He stared toward the opening of the ledge where Greatshadow busied himself with tormenting his overly ambitious offspring.
Greatshadow’s blood seeped and bubbled across the stone like a dark river.
Setting his jaw, Zetetic leapt from the shadows, diving toward the stream of boiling ichor. He slapped the flat of the knife blade into the fluid. Instantly I was on my ass before him, meeting his frightened gaze. From the corner of my eye, I saw Greatshadow turning toward us, drawing a breath. The Jagged Heart had saved Zetetic before, but the dragon was so close that Zetetic’s long, frazzled ponytail fluttered as the beast inhaled. This blast was coming at point blank range.
With a voice squeaking with terror he gazed deeply into my eyes and announced, “I understand the interspatial geometry of the ancients!”
He snapped the gleaming glass in his left hand, which I now saw to be a mirror.
At that second, Greatshadow breathed, a great blinding gush of fire licking around me in all directions. Yet, I wasn’t burned. The flames danced behind me, swirled above me, spun before me, but I remained safe in a bubble of cool air.
The conflagration died away. It seemed to me that Greatshadow, in his weakened state, had lost much of the power of his flame. He looked odd as I stared at him, distorted and wavy. Then I realized I was seeing him through a wall of pure ice at least a yard thick.
The wall of ice had materialized from the tip of the Jagged Heart. The Jagged Heart was being held by a humanoid figure nine feet tall, broad across the shoulders, wearing a long black walrus-hide coat. I looked up and saw the mostly bald, blue-white scalp and the curve of ivory tusks. Never had I been so happy to see a woman whose last words to me had been a not so subtle threat of butchery.
Aurora looked down at me. As usual, her expression was one of utter coolness; she seemed unflustered
