Prologue #2
The crimson light flickered and died. The orc’s remaining hand drew a crude blade, but now his movements were predictable, mortal. Tel deflected each wild swing with practiced ease, his mind racing. “What are you doing here, chasing after a Hyalite in Lamar?”
The monster’s only response was a pain-filled roar as he pressed his assault. The amulet’s light sputtered back to life, and Tel struck with precision, severing its chain. “Who sent you?”
The change in the Morsythian was immediate and disturbing.
His blue skin paled, his movements grew unsteady.
Red eyes lifted to track Ingamar’s circling form overhead with an intelligence that shouldn’t exist in such a creature.
His mouth opened as if to speak, then his massive form toppled forward into the ash.
Tel recoiled as angry red welts began to appear beneath the creature’s skin, spreading like poison through its veins. He kicked the amulet away, its dying light fading to a hollow yellow husk.
Tel felt Ingamar’s desperate need to flee this corrupted place. He launched himself skyward, brismil power carrying him above the burning canopy. His dragon swept beneath him with perfect timing, their movements synchronized through years of partnership.
“Venrick,” Tel commanded as he settled into the saddle, “take me to him.” The words were unnecessary, their bond would have been enough, but something about this encounter made him need the comfort of spoken orders.
A shadow fell across their connection like storm clouds blotting out the sun. Ingamar’s mighty form trembled beneath him, instinctual terror flooding through both of them. Tel had never felt such fear from his dragon, not in all their years of battle together.
“What is it?” Tel asked, though the answer was already darkening the horizon. Two dragons emerged from the storm clouds, their riders’ cloaks snapping in the gale. The larger beast’s scales were darker than a moonless night, its milky eyes rimmed with gold, unmistakable even at this distance.
“Into the spires,” Tel commanded, his thoughts and voice merging into a single imperative that sang through their bond.
Ingamar banked hard, relief flooding their connection as they raced toward the Floating Islands of the Everburning Forest. Ancient magic kept these fragments of earth suspended; their surfaces crowned with twisted trees whose roots dangled like golden curtains in the wind.
Ingamar’s terror drove them deeper into the maze of floating stone, each beat of his wings carrying them through gaps barely wide enough for his wingspan. Tel felt every twist and dive as if they shared one body, their movements flowing together with the precision of decades spent as one being.
The golden dragon latched onto a limestone cliff face, talons scoring deep grooves into rock stained amber by centuries of leaching roots.
Tel’s hands tightened on the saddle’s worn leather, the Hyalite’s divine energy pulsing against his side where he’d secured it.
He could taste Ingamar’s desperate need to flee, to take wing and not stop until they reached the safety of the Vermillion Keep.
But fleeing would mean death. Tel had seen Marcel Heartfell’s work too many times; the blackened ruins of villages, the twisted remains of dragons and riders who’d tried to escape rather than stand and fight.
He pressed his consciousness against Ingamar’s, offering centuries of shared courage against primal fear.
The larger black dragon emerged around a neighboring spire like a nightmare taking form.
Where Ingamar’s smooth golden muzzle transitioned into a spiked mane of scaley spines, White Eye’s spiked muzzle led to curling horns.
Where Ingamar’s eyes were a deeper gold than his scales, White Eye’s were an unsettling milky color rimmed with thin a golden line.
Marcel Heartfell sat astride the muscular dragon, protected with black brismil plate armor trimmed with white and wearing a copper cape.
They were the colors of death in the Northern Kingdoms.
Stone shards suddenly formed in the air like spiked daggers being ripped from the cliffs of the Floating Islands.
They tore through the air, narrowly missing Marcel and his mount.
The Nordraven rider wheeled away, revealing Tel’s unexpected ally.
It was a dragonrider in Vermillion red, its dragon’s scales gleaming an unfamiliar emerald in the storm light.
Tel seized the moment, spurring Ingamar into a backward dive off the cliff.
They twisted in free-fall, dragon and rider moving as one, before descending toward the distant canopy.
The forest below offered cover, but more importantly, it offered closer quarters where White Eye’s superior size would work against him.
They burst through the unburnt canopy, Ingamar’s instincts guiding them through a maze of trees.
Tel relinquished control entirely, trusting in Ingamar as branches whipped past close enough to brush his armor.
They emerged into a clearing where Venrick waited with the supply wagon.
The two draft horses danced nervously at their sudden appearance.
“Venrick!” Tel called, leaping from the saddle with the Hyalite tucked against his chest. “The chest, now!”
His Squire’s green eyes widened at the sight of the orb, but he moved without hesitation, tossing the enchanted chest designed to transport the Hyalite. Tel caught it one-handed, his fingers already tracing the protective runes that would secure the Hyalite within.
“Ready yourself with the brismil bow,” Tel commanded, his voice tight with urgency. “We’ll have unwelcome company soon.”
“You’ve always been a better shot,” Venrick countered, reaching for the dragon horn bow. “Lend me your blade instead.”
“I’m afraid I can’t this time, friend.” Tel’s gaze lifted to the horizon. “Marcel Heartfell is coming.”
The name fell between them like a death sentence.
Venrick’s face drained the color from his half-elven features.
An instant later, iron discipline reasserted itself.
He stood tall, his muscular shoulders pulled back and his square jaw raised.
“I thought Marcel was serving in Skol to the east, outside your range.”
“Apparently not.” Tel pressed the locked Hyalite into Venrick’s hands. “Secure this in the wagon and arm yourself as I asked.”
The black dragon’s massive form blotted out the sun as Marcel Heartfell descended, trailing ribbons of darkness that seemed to drink the very light from the air.
Power gathered around his blade. Tel felt the magical pressure building in his bones, in the vibrating plates of his brismil armor, in the very air between worlds.
“Now!” Tel commanded, and Venrick’s arrow sang through the air with impossible speed.
The brismil-forged shaft pierced White Eye’s protective wards as if they were mist, finding its mark in the soft flesh where wing met breast. The great beast’s roar of pain shattered the air, its fire-breath dying in its throat as it spiraled down toward the edge of the clearing.
Tel vaulted into Ingamar’s saddle, their minds sliding together like pieces of a puzzle finally made whole.
But before they could take flight, a red flash sparked near the fallen rider.
Tel’s senses screamed in warning. The explosion that followed wasn’t fire or lightning, but something older, something that he hadn’t faced before.
The blast shattered Marcel’s wards like glass, and in their wake came something Tel had never seen in all his decades of magical combat.
Ghostly tendrils of pure force materialized from the forest’s shadows, hundreds of dark spectral arms writhing with impossible purpose.
They wrapped around Marcel like living chains, crystallizing into ice that should have held any normal rider immobile.
But Marcel Heartfell was far from normal.
His black armor flared with energy, and the frosty bonds that were forming a cocoon of ice around him shattered.
A dozen more shadow-arms lashed out from the treeline, but Marcel moved with horrifying speed, his blade leaving trails of smoke and flame in the air as he spun.
The power flowing through Marcel’s sword wasn’t just magic, it was something from another realm.
He launched himself from White Eye’s back, trailing celestial blue fire as he arced toward the forest edge.
Tel caught another glimpse of their mysterious ally, a figure wearing a red cloak matching other Paragons in the Vermillion Keep.
Impossible, Tel thought, then Marcel struck.
The resulting explosion stole both sound and sight.
Tel felt Ingamar tumble beneath him, their bond fluctuating wildly as the dragon fought to maintain control.
The impact when Tel hit the ground drove the air from his lungs and sent fractures through his perfect connection with his dragon.
He rolled through dirt and debris, his enhanced senses struggling to pierce the supernatural fog that now blanketed the clearing.
Through the haze, Tel saw White Eye’s massive form, jaws locked around the throat of a green dragon that thankfully wasn’t Ingamar.
Marcel emerged from the fog like a demon, his blade still glowing with flame.
Tel called Stormbreaker to hand, reaching through Ingamar to summon the heavenly strength that had served them for so many years.
The first rule of magical combat was simple: strike first, strike hard.
Tel sent his power coursing through the earth, turning solid ground to hungry quicksand beneath Marcel’s feet.
But the Northern rider countered with horrifying precision, transmuting Tel’s trap into a sheet of black ice that reflected the strange light of their battle.
They clashed in a fury of steel and sorcery, every strike carrying enough power to level a fortress. Marcel’s blade threw impossible shadows as they fought, and something dark and hungry pulled at Tel from behind, but his armor’s added strength let him press through.
Yet something was wrong. The bond with Ingamar felt increasingly distant, like a voice calling from the bottom of a deep well.
Tel fought to find an opening in Marcel’s defense, but his focus was now divided between this immediate threat and the weakening of his connection to Ingamar.
When a fraction of his attention slipped, something from behind him whispered past his guard.
Tel barely felt the cut. It was a ghost’s touch, a winter breeze across his neck.
But suddenly Ingamar’s presence in his mind wavered.
Desperate, Tel reached for his power, casting the spell for the earth itself to swallow his opponent.
The magic responded, but it felt wrong, hollow, draining away his very essence as the ground cracked beneath them.
His head titled sideways, no, fell completely away, and Tel found himself looking up at his own body from the blood-stained grass.
His last sensation was the feeling of his magic pouring out uncontrolled, taking with it everything he was or would ever be.
The spell he’d begun exploded in a final burst of golden light, and Tel Roan, Paragon of the Vermillion Keep, felt his bond with Ingamar snap like a heart breaking before the eternal darkness claimed him.