Power of the Overlords - Prologue
Power of the Overlords by Kevin Potter
© 2018 Kevin Potter
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
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Cover art by Dragan Paunovic
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
Blood of the Dragons book 2
Power of the Overlords
For mom. One day the Tears of the Dragon will shine as bright as any star.
-Kevin
THE GREAT DRAGON WAR
IN THE DAYS after the rising of the dragons, Humanity came together like never before. As one, they rose against the threat that came seemingly out of nightmare and myth to threaten their world.
For a time, none had dared name the threat. Nearly every man and woman the world over denied the truth their eyes showed them. It was the children, finally tired of the denials, who made the adults face the fact of the creatures rising against them. Even then, however, many wanted to deny. Many still refused to admit the truth before them.
None could deny, however, the destructive powers of the creatures flying against them. Talons like knives, teeth like swords, breath that summoned the very elements against them. And unlike the creatures popularized in fiction, these were highly intelligent and possessed unexplainable powers.
After the first few attacks obliterated major military bases, the whole of Humanity, or near enough as made no matter, came together en masse to organize concerted attacks against the dragons.
Those battles, one and all, became charnal houses of blood and viscera on both sides. Yet the death of each dragon took a hundred thousand men with it.
Finally, all other options depleted, Humanity made the decision to launch nuclear weapons at the beasts.
Massive explosions lit the skies, mushroom clouds erupted in midair as the warheads struck flying forms. The very air ignited in flames.
Some of the dragons fell during these attacks, but many more flew on as though nothing had happened.
In the battles to come the seas rose, some mountains fell while others were raised. Nearly all human-built structures were razed to the ground. Volcanoes erupted, the very Earth Herself was split asunder by quakes of god-like proportions. Tsunamis ravaged the coasts. Tornadoes ravaged the inlands. Hurricanes swept farther from the oceans than had ever happened in recorded human history.
Within weeks of the first nuclear strikes, Humanity went underground and the fighting became guerrilla warfare of the worst sort. It left many of the military commanders wishing they had paid more attention to the battles fought by the colonists during the American revolutionary war, among other such conflicts.
But eventually, after many long decades of bloody battle, the Great Dragon War ended.
No one was ever certain exactly how long it took or what led to it, but eventually the last pockets of human resistance vanished. The only humans who survived were those in captivity under the dragons, who now took to speaking to them on occasion. Nothing had prepared the humans for the reality that dragons could speak to them. Could communicate intelligently. Or, even worse, that they understood human ideas and ideals. That, if things had happened differently, the dragons might have come in peace. Perhaps even to help them. Such things were only ever whispered in the dark of night, but the thoughts were there. The thoughts came to a great majority of the humans who still lived after the battles ended.
And unknown to any of them, those thoughts were heard by the few dragons who cared to listen. And a great many of the wyrms were moved to tears by them. By the idea that had their leadership made different choices, all the death and destruction might have been avoided. That they might have gone back to a peaceful coexistence rather than the wanton destruction they had wrought.
Many wished to topple the leadership and begin anew, but the choices had been made and nothing short of a violent revolution could rectify the matter.
War between dragons had never happened. Not on a wide scale. And not one dragon the world over was willing to be the one to bring it about. Too much had already been done. Too much destruction wrought. Too much death. Too much sorrow. Entirely too much of the glory of the past was already gone for any of them to be willing to bring a new wave of war and death to the Earth.
But Baalhalllu had a plan…
THE END OF AN AGE
BAALHALLLU PEEKED AROUND the curving tunnel wall, muscles bunched as he prepared to spring from the niche he pressed his body into.
The tunnel was clear.
Then what was that clicking and scraping I heard? he thought.
With a mental shrug, he moved out of the niche to creep down the tunnel.
What sort of stone is this? he wondered, looking more closely at the jagged black rock which jutted from the walls of the wide tunnel.
The stone was not natural, that much was obvious. Raw, unworked stone was dull and lusterless. Not like this at all.
The glossy sheen was something common in skillfully cut and polished onyx, but this stone looked raw and jagged. The way unworked stone might, but for the high gloss.
Although few wyrms would willingly live in a cave of unworked stone, those few took great pride in doing so. Naturalists, they typically called themselves, for their desire to live as naturally as possible. Although he couldn’t understand the motivation, Baalhalllu admired their dedication.
These tunnels, however, were carefully crafted. Their owner wanted them to look raw, jagged, and sharp. He wanted them to look rough and angular. He wanted them to look as though no care whatsoever had been taken in the formation of this deep, massive lair.
But Baalhalllu knew better.
This was a wyrm who took great care in crafting his image and his home. A wyrm who went to great lengths to ensure others perceived him in exactly the way he desired. A wyrm who left nothing to the whims of chance.
Vordillainsura. The leader of the draconic Council these last centuries, since the coup he carried out right under Baalhalllu’s snout.
Am I in over my horns? He wondered for the thousandth time.
Of course you are, you old fool, said a soft voice in the back of his mind, disturbingly similar to Kwallindauria’s.
Baalhalllu grunted softly in the darkness as he crept down the long, straight tunnel. Since he’d entered through what he hoped was an unknown entrance on the surface, he had seen precious few connecting tunnels or chambers.
Why would he design it this way? he thought in wonder. It made almost no sense for a wyrm to construct such a massive lair with a long, straight tunnel this long. What was the purpose?
And why would he waste the space?
Perhaps to catch intruders? he thought with not a little trepidation. If he were caught here, it would be the end of not only the rebellion, but his life as well. Sura had been looking for an excuse to execute him for decades.
Ryujin’s tail, why did I insist on doing this alone?
With a shake of his head, Baalhalllu pushed the thought away. The time for worrying about that was long past. The decision had been made, he’d insisted, and now he was alone in the lair of the most powerful wyrm in the world.
For something that may not even exist.
Clenching his teeth in frustration, Baalhalllu retracted his talons to keep them from clicking against the glossy black cave floor.
His scales scraped softly with each step, the sound muted and indistinct. He winced at the sounds, but it was a vast improvement over the clicking of his talons, which still seemed to ring in his auditory receptors.
The scraping of scales on stone slowly faded from notice, blending in with the dripping and wind gusts inherent in any underground dwelling. How much farther could this straight tunnel go on? How many leagues had Vordillainsura excavated to create this lair?
A long time passed before the tunnel began to curve toward his left.
Baalhalllu flattened himself against the inner curve of the tunnel and peeked around the corner.
Blast it.
Three agate wyrms stood around the entrance to a deep chamber at the end of the tunnel. Two of them stood just outside the chamber facing the tunnel and the third faced the other two.
Their lips moved, as though speaking, but the sound didn’t carry well enough to reach the bend in the tunnel.
“What are they talking about?” he whispered under his breath.
Baalhalllu’s pulse began to pound in his ears as the conversation between the agates continued for long minutes.
“What am I going to do?”
He glanced up and down the tunnel, but there weren’t any side chambers or connecting tunnels the agates might turn into— or for him to hide in —once they finished.
Curse them to Infernalis, he thought grimly.
As though on command, the third agate spun, lips twisted in a snarl, to stalk down the tunnel toward Baalhalllu.
Snapping his head back from the bend in the tunnel, he looked around, desperate for some place to escape to. A battle with the agate here, this close to the other two, couldn’t help but draw the attention of the guards and probably half a hundred others besides.
What can I do?
Snapping his head up and down the tunnel again, Baalhalllu searched in vain for an escape. He clenched his jaw in frustration and looked up to the ceiling and down to the floor.
Nothing.
He had nowhere to go.
The sound of talons clicking against the cold floor echoed from around the bend and Baalhalllu’s racing pulse thundered behind his eyes.
With time running short, he flashed through his memory of every trick he knew, every arcane power he’d mastered, every ritual he’d ever learned, for anything to get him out of this.
Although he had no doubt he could defeat this one agate wyrm in combat, the host of others the noise would bring was another matter altogether.
Now the scraping of scales on stone accompanied the clicking of talons. The shifting sands of time were almost gone, and he had no idea what he was going to do.
Wait, shifting! he thought, stumbling into an idea.
It was the most basic ability, the simplest one every platinum wyrm learned before leaving their dam’s lair for the first time.
Under ordinary usage, it wouldn’t have been much help in this sort of situation. It certainly would have been useless in combat.
With a new spin on that old ability, however, maybe, just maybe, it could get him out of this.
Immediately, he yanked a stream of power from his apex and initiated the transformation.
“Clever,” Vordillainsura rumbled as he watched the images shift in a pool of placid, black liquid a few scant talon-widths from his foreclaws. “Very clever, Baalhalllu. But not clever enough.”
The malachite wyrm at his side shifted. “Is it time?” she asked is a soft rasp. “Can we finally strike at the foolish platinum?”
“Nearly,” he said.
Bristling with impatience, the female’s muscles trembled and her scales clicked together softly. She offered a stiff bow of obeisance.
Is he truly foolish enough to think I am not aware of his presence? Sura wondered. He ruled the council for so long. In spite of his failures to act, I always thought him wise and intelligent.
Perhaps wisdom was a greater compliment than he deserved.
Sura thumped his tail against the floor, the glossy black surface shining almost as brightly as his scales, and turned to stride from the chamber in a rush, his malachite consort in tow.
At last, he could confront the thieving platinum. At last, the blasted dragon had given him an excuse. At last, justice would be done.
At last, the platinum bastard will die, he thought with a grin of satisfaction.
Now in the form of a tiny, black beetle, Baalhalllu skittered along the seemingly endless wall toward the chamber at the far end of the tunnel.
He marveled at the texture of the wall. It seemed so smooth and pristine as a dragon, but he now found it one of the most pock-marked surfaces he’d ever seen. The intact portions were rough and gritty, like the material the humans had once called sandpaper. But every one to two paces in any given direction was a deep, circular crater with rough, gritty sides.
Interesting, he thought. I never would have expected that.
He already seemed to have been running for years.
In the eons-long existence of a dragon, a few years was not such a long while. But he didn’t have years to spare. The time to strike at the farce of a council had come, but he needed the power of the Dragon Scepter to do it. There simply weren’t enough dragons with the courage to fight. But with the power of the scepter behind him, he could convince them.
Ignoring the passing of time, he raced on as fast as his tiny, chitinous legs would carry him. Which, when he considered the tininess of his body in this form, was far greater than he would have expected.
Blessedly, even after how long he’d maintained his fastest running speed, this body suffered no exhaustion. In fact, he was less tired now that he had been just before the transformation.
With no real sense of how much distance he’d covered, though, his body’s endurance didn’t mean a whole lot. With the new perspective of his tiny, insectoid eyes, he saw neither the bend nor the wyrms at its end. The entire Universe seemed to be this straight stretch of wall he clung to. Eons seemed to come and go while Baalhalllu made the journey along the now-rough, pock-marked wall of the tunnel toward the chamber at its end.
Finally, he looked up to find the roughly triangular shape of an agate dragon’s glossy-black head.
Blessed Ryujin, he thought. I’m nearly there.
Baalhalllu ran along the rough wall for what seemed another year or two before he deemed he’d gone far enough. With a whispered prayer to Ryujin, he leaped away from the wall and drifted on wind gusts toward the distant floor.
The descent seemed to take days. The gusting winds, which he felt certain he wouldn’t have even felt as a dragon, tossed him this way and that, keeping him aloft longer than he otherwise would have.
As the floor grew nearer, the dragon-turned-beetle grew nervous. After such a long fall, would he splatter onto the floor? He realized he didn’t know. With the light weight of his current form, logic suggested he would sustain little damage. But what if he was wrong?
What if he had gone to all this trouble only to find ignominious death splattered on a cave floor where no one would even find his body?
When he finally reached the cave floor, the impact of his landing was non-existent. It was as though he had dropped from a jump of a claw-width.
With a slight self-deprecating laugh, he glanced at his surroundings. As before, his limited vision encompassed a long expanse of black floor on to the horizon in all directions. Not a single landmark broke up the monotony.
He took a deep breath and whispered a prayer to Ryujin that he was correct and was far enough beyond the guard to not have this turn to disaster. Reaching into his Apex, Baalhalllu brought forth a stream of power to fuel his change back to his natural form.
He took his time, making the change a little at a time and bringing his lost mass back by incremental bits.
The process was long and grueling and induced greater agony than he ever would have imagined. He supposed it must be a result of changing to such a small form. Perhaps there was something to Dauria’s question of where the mass went when one transformed?
Baalhalllu glanced back toward the entrance. The two agates there were still unaware of his presence.
Good, he thought. Let’s keep it that way.
He turned back to survey the cavern and his breath caught in his throat.
Everything else in the room faded to static in his mind as his eyes fell on a small platinum form trapped in what appeared to be a cage at the far corner of the room. The metallic form was surrounded by a semicircular mass of stalagmites and stalactites of the same glossy stone as the walls. The conical shapes were spaced almost perfectly with less than a claw-width between them, and positioned to resemble the sharp teeth of a predator nearly clamped shut.
As with all else in these caves, he didn’t believe for a second that this formation was in any way accidental.
Lying motionless in the center of the cage was Balhamuut.
His son.
Dimly, the thought came. There must be a way in. He was put in there somehow, after all.
Baalhalllu couldn’t fathom how his youngling had come to be here. Couldn’t fathom why Vordillainsura would want him. What was going on?
Regardless, he thought in an attempt to order his mind, I have to get him out of there.
Moving toward the cage, Baalhalllu spoke in a pitched whisper, “Balhamuut. Can you hear me?”
There was no response.
“Balhamuut!” he called a little louder.
Still nothing.
Baalhalllu stopped, his snout just a few claw-widths from the bars of the cage. Reaching out, he tentatively touched the younger wyrm’s mind. The chaotic swirl of surface thoughts seemed indicative of natural sleep. He snorted. That state can be created artificially.
In spite of knowing how intrusive it could be, he sent a telepathic shout into his son’s mind.
But still, there was no response. There was no change whatsoever in the younger dragon’s mental state.
With a frustrated sigh, he looked over the stone bars. He found no obvious flaws, however. No cracks, no thin points, and no chips in the surfaces. Planting his hind legs at the base of several stalagmites to anchor himself, he gripped a stalactite between both foreclaws, just wiggling them between the gaps, and heaved.
The bar didn’t budge. Turning to another angle, he yanked again with all his might, but still it didn’t so much as quiver.
“That would have been too easy,” he grunted.
Releasing the stone, Baalhalllu took another minute to study the prison. I need to know what these are made of, he thought. The exact composition of the stone.
It galled him to admit that he needed more information— to say nothing of patience and calm —to release his wyrmling.
With a deep breath to calm himself, he summoned a tendril of power from his Apex and directed it into the stalagmite only inches from his claw.
The moment his stream of power touched the surface of the stone, he was struck by a backlash of psychic force, a mental war-maul that slammed into his mind and thrust his body several wingspans backward.
He landed in a heap on the smooth floor. When he opened his eyes, the world spun around him faster than his mind could process.
Baalhalllu clenched his eyes closed and shook his head to clear it. After a few moments, he pushed himself back up and opened his eyes. His legs trembled.
“What in Ryujin’s name was that?” he muttered.
“That,” said a deep, gravelly voice from behind him, “was a power you will never understand.”
Baalhalllu spun to face the speaker and his jaw fell while his eyes widened, though only for an instant.
Vordillainsura grinned, his eyes shining with malice. The malachite female beside him offered a slowly spreading, toothy grin.
What’s she so excited about?
Baalhalllu groaned inwardly. Behind the two were the three agates he’d seen in the tunnel and a quartet of garnets.
“Have you become such a coward that you need eight wyrms to fight me for you, Sura?”
The massive agate boomed a mirthless laugh. “The day I need help to dispose of the likes of you is the day I step down and give the Council over to that pathetic wyrmling of yours!”
“Then prove it,” Baalhalllu taunted, tossing the scales on a desperate gambit. “Hold your minions back and face me one-on-one, but let my son go.”
The agate cackled madly, and Baalhalllu wondered if he hadn’t lost his mind.
“Take him,” the cowardly wyrm croaked through his laughter, and the other eight wyrms surged forward.
Baalhalllu dropped into a loose, almost-crouching stance. He held his tail coiled to strike, his muscles tensed and waiting for the best moment to attack.
The others maneuvered around him, obvious in their efforts to surround him.
He let them.
It didn’t matter. With his back to a solid wall, he had little choice. He had nowhere to go, and with eight full-grown wyrms set against him he had little chance of surviving the encounter.
The slim malachite struck first, snapping her head forward toward his throat.
He pounced, throwing all his weight into a powerful leap and struck her full on, jaws about her throat. With the advantage of greater mass, he powered through her attack and forced her onto her back where he pinned her to the ground, talons gouging into her flesh.
Show no mercy.
His mentor’s words echoed hauntingly in his mind as he slammed his jaws together and pulled, ripping the female’s inner throat from her body.
A streak of red flashed by in his peripheral vision and Baalhalllu tumbled from atop the malachite female’s rapidly cooling form. He thrashed and snapped and swung his tail at his attacker in desperation. After a moment, he found himself free once more.
Leaping back to his claws, he pulled a stream of power to summon an arcane shield to block the two agates who leaped at him.
A feral half-growl, half-shriek split the air and Baalhalllu swung his tail up just in time to knock Vordillainsura to the side. The agate’s momentum carried him far off course to slam into the cavern wall. His jaws had been on course for Baalhalllu’s throat.
A sharp pain in his left wing brought his head around to a garnet with its jaws around the main bone. Without thinking, Baalhalllu unleashed his devastating fire breath from his Golar, showering the garnet and the three smaller agates in liquid fire.
The exposed flesh of the agates melted in the heat. Their eyes popped, gushing milky, white fluid which instantly turned to steam in the flames. Even their scales were set afire. Within moments, the three fell in a congealed mass of smoking flesh.
The garnet, however, released Baalhalllu’s wing long enough to laugh, deep and hearty, then chomped down on the wing once more.
With an audible snap, agony raced up Baalhalllu’s wing. He grunted, clenched his teeth against the pain, and flung his tail up to strike the wyrm.
The other two garnets rushed in to snap at his face and neck.
Baalhalllu twisted and struck with a vicious slap of his tail. With a hollow thud, he struck the first garnet, flinging it from him but taking a sizable chunk of his primary wing muscles with it.
Searing pain at the base of his tail brought a shrieking roar to his lips. Slashing at one of the garnets in front of him, he snapped at the other while he tried— in vain —to strike at the third wyrm with his tail.
The two garnets pulled back just in time to avoid his strikes. Fighting through the agony in his tail, Baalhalllu hopped forward and slashed at both wyrms with his talons.
Again, they backed up just in time to avoid him.
Talons pierced his spine behind his rear legs and an agony unlike anything he had ever experienced wracked his body. It began at the base of his tail and rapidly radiated out in every direction.
Adrenaline surged through him and he leaped for the two garnets, pain driving him to mad fury. His agonized shriek echoed in the cavern, threatening to rupture his auditory receptors.
Reaching the two startled garnets, he raked deep furrows down their chests and shot his claws up to grip their heads. Thrusting his talons deep into their skulls, he slammed their heads together once, twice, thrice. Then, holding their heads together, he pulled them in close to his mouth.
The garnets struggled against his grip, but could not break it. A roar of fury sounded behind him, but he ignored it without difficulty. He devoted his focus entirely to his agony and his fury.
Pulling in a deep breath, he circulated it through his secondary Golar— so few dragon species had a second that many forgot about it altogether —and spewed forth a massive cloud of sickly green mist. The garnets, trapped as they were, breathed it in.
Their shining scarlet bodies jerked, trembled, and stilled.
Baalhalllu twisted back to face Vordillainsura and was shocked into still silence.
Still clutched in the agate’s claws were a massive chunk of Baalhalllu’s back flesh on one side and a thick section of his tail on the other. The end of the tail still bubbled with the yellowing fluid which could only have been Sura’s acidic breath. Both chunks of his flesh were melted almost into unrecognizability.
A dozen splatters of bubbling, yellowish acid marked the floor between the two dragons, clearly displaying the distance and direction of Baalhalllu’s leap away from the agate wyrm.
Vordillainsura offered a malicious grin and stalked toward Baalhalllu. The movement pulled him from his shocked stupor.
He struggled against the adrenaline surging through his body to move with slow caution as he stepped toward the agate wyrm, now hyper aware of the agonized hole where his tail had once been.
Clear thought soon vanished, however, and he leaped forward to snap at the other’s long neck, suddenly anxious for a swift, killing blow.
The agate moved aside and raked two sets of talons across his chest. Baalhalllu shrieked and leaped again, to land fully atop the agate.
But again, the smaller wyrm moved aside, dodging the attack entirely. A swing of the agate’s tail bashed him in the head, leaving his dazed. The world spun slightly.
Baalhalllu looked about, but couldn’t see the agate. “Now I see the reason for the glossy black stone,” he growled in frustration.
As he glanced about with neither sight nor sound of the agate wyrm, his rage cooled somewhat. Oddly, his agony dimmed along with it. With the measure of calm, rational thought came a bit easier and an idea struck him.
The Dragon Scepter! That’s what I was here for anyway! It could get me out of this as well as allow me to free Balhamuut!
But where is it? It must be here somewhere.
Booming laughter echoed from nowhere, yet from everywhere. From every direction, from every wall, floor, ceiling, and formation, the sound blasted all around him. He used the excuse to look around, all throughout the chamber.
He still couldn’t find anything, however. The shining black walls reflected all the light he could ever need, but that light was black, making it useless in his current endeavor.
Baalhalllu breathed a soft sigh and stilled his body. Using his breathing as a medium, he focused his mind to block out the laughter from his receptors. He forced himself to go slow and take the time to look closely at each and every surface in the cavern.
The process took ages, but for some reason the agate seemed content to cackle at him while he did it.
There! he thought, as his eyes picked out a black handle embedded in the wall.
So that’s the real reason, he thought.
Then a section of wall seemed to obliterate the shaft he’d seen. He understood immediately. Vordillainsura had moved to block his view of the Scepter.
A new thought dawned in his mind and panic seized him! Where had the third garnet wyrm gone? The wyrm should have been there still, but there was no trace of it. He mentally kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner.
There must be more hiding places in here than I would have expected, he thought, worried. How many hidden chambers and secret alcoves have I missed in this place?
With a soft growl, he struggled to push the thought away. There was nothing he could do about it, anyway.
Baalhalllu leaned back, tensing, then launched himself at the agate, his jaws wide and foreclaws outstretched.
The smaller wyrm sidestepped, but thrust his tail upward, slamming Baalhalllu off-course. When he landed, the agate was there on one side and the remaining garnet materialized on the other. Both snapped and raked at him as he leaped to his claws.
With silvery blood leaking from numerous wounds, Baalhalllu snapped and clawed at each of the wyrms in turn, while doing his best to evade their attacks. The blood loss slowed his reactions, however, ebbing his strength.
They each traded devastating arcane attacks and defended against those of the others. The garnet didn’t waste energy using its fire breath, and neither did he. The garnet was surely just as aware as he was that the fire would not affect either of them.
Vordillainsura, however, spewed his acid breath with fair frequency and Baalhalllu employed his poison mist.
The other two wyrms were weakening, that much was clear. But were they weakening faster than he? He wasn’t so sure.
More slashes. More chunks bitten out of his flesh. His silvery blood gushed now, mingling with the black and orange blood from the others in a wide pool of slick fluid beneath their claws.
Baalhalllu backed up, his vision swimming. The two wyrms before him spread into four. Then eight. Then sixteen. Then they merged back to two again.
Oh, no.
The wyrms split again.
Baalhalllu threw up an arcane shield and slammed his eyes closed.
The sounds of dragons scampering around him intruded on his mind. He did his best to ignore them, trusting his shield to do its work, while he analyzed his situation.
It took him scarcely an instant to determine the truth of his situation. He had allowed himself to hope, but it seemed that hope had been in vain after all.
He was going to die here.
He allowed himself only a moment to indulge in hopelessness before he snapped his eyes open and launched a frozen storm of ice and hail at the other two wyrms. If he was going to die, then by Ryujin he would take as many of these traitorous wyrms with him as he could!
They staggered, struggling to remain standing as the storm ran its course, the wind buffeting all three of them.
As the winds died down, Baalhalllu spewed his poison mist breath at them and called a raging torrent of power from his Apex.
Holding the arcane power, he savored it for an instant while the other two wyrms choked on the greenish mist.
With a regretful sigh, he unleashed all the raging power he’d summoned to yank the Dragon Scepter from its alcove. He sent it spinning end over end toward the glistening black bars of the prison cell at the corner of the chamber.
The large, round fire opal which capped the Scepter struck a bar of the cell with a bright flash of prismatic light, blinding Baalhalllu.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, insensate, before his vision returned and his mind stopped swimming in dreams.
When it did, pulled himself up to his claws with agonizing slowness and called out telepathically. BALHAMUUT! WAKE UP!
The younger platinum wyrm stirred almost immediately, then raised his head to look into Baalhalllu’s eyes. The youngling’s own eyes were bloodshot and dull.
Baalhalllu smiled and projected all the love in his being through the telepathic link. His vision swam with silvery tears. For you, my son, he mouthed silently. Scales scraped and talons clicked on the smooth floor behind him. The wyrms were moving closer.
Baalhalllu closed his eyes and pulled forth every last iota of arcane power from his Apex. Immediately, he sent it up to the ceiling of the cavern and pounded at the rock above and in the wall. He struck it with Earth-shattering force again and again and again.
The cavern shook, dust tumbled down from the ceiling. It shook again and jagged rocks tumbled down, striking Baalhalllu’s body in a hundred places. Another shake, and larger rocks tumbled down.
On the eighth such shaking of the cavern, the rocks fell and didn’t stop. A large piece of rock struck the top of Baalhalllu’s head and he toppled. With his last vestige of strength, he looked to the cell and found Balhamuut standing, the bars gone, with the Dragon Scepter clutched in his foreclaw.
The younger wyrm smiled down at Baalhalllu. A smile which, he felt certain, even in his dazed state, reflected back all the love and pride he felt for his youngling.
He will save them all. He will keep Dauria and the others safe, he thought. Then sighed out his final breath and closed his eyes, ready at last to meet the Astral Dragon in judgment.
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