But Olive was not to discover whether the lizard paladin was more concerned with the warrior woman or destroying Moander. Moander took the decision out of his hands. Once it had unloaded its passenger, the god launched itself toward them.
Mist banked sharply, and the mass of fungus, slime, and forest rocketed past them. The sudden movement caused the halfling to lose her grip on the safety rope. She would have fallen to her death if Akabar had not seized the hem of her skirt and pulled her back. Olive suddenly was not feeling hungry—the human equivalent of feeling frightened out of her mind. Mist completed her banking maneuver by turning about to face Moander’s return charge.
This time, however, dodging the god was not so easy. As it streaked toward them Moander increased in size. In its approaching side a great maw opened, lined with duskwood tree trunks sharpened to fanglike points.
The Jawed God it was sometimes called, Akabar remembered. But how did it grow without absorbing more mass? he puzzled. It was now four times Mist’s size, and the open cavity could swallow the dragon whole.
Mist struggled to gain altitude. She managed to rise above the gaping mouth, but a tree-weighted vine shot out at her, entangling her neck and her wings. The dragon beat her wings furiously, but she was held fast. More red vines, pulsing like blood veins, snaked up the snarevine.
Cursing, Olive drew her dagger, preparing to cut any plants that came her way. She turned, thinking to offer Akabar her sword, but to her surprise he began chanting another spell. She thought he had exhausted the last of his magic on the enchantment to haste the dragon. Apparently he was getting better at the game. He looks worn, though, Olive thought, noticing the lines in his face, deeper and more plentiful than when they’d first met in Cormyr. He was beginning to look like a real wizard, she decided.
With furrowed brows, the Turmish mage completed the last sharp syllables and tossed a handful of iron powder over the dragon’s scales. The metal filings sparkled in the air, causing Mist’s whole body to glow.
The struggling dragon’s scales shifted beneath them. The halfling grabbed at the safety ropes, but they snapped away, as did the majority of the vines tethering Mist to Moander’s form. Olive gripped at a scale, but it was difficult to grasp as it grew in size. Akabar, she realized, had enlarged the dragon with his magic.
“Should even the odds,” the Turmishman said.
Mist, using her back claws, slashed open Moander’s side. A foul vapor burst from the god’s wound, and it screamed. The air smelled like a swamp.
Mist jerked her head up, breaking the last cord holding her near the god. The suddenness of her movement sent Dragonbait bouncing high into the air. With a gasp Olive tugged on Akabar’s kilt and pointed at the lizard.
Akabar was already aware of the saurial’s plight. He stood up nimbly on Mist’s shifting back and stretched out his arms. In each hand he held a single feather. He incanted fast and furious and then fell from the dragon’s back. Reflexively Olive grabbed at the mage’s ankles. She’d forgotten she was no longer anchored. The pair of them, mage and bard, plummeted toward the ground.
As Akabar pulled out of his dive and began to fly upward, he became aware of the halfling’s weight. Would he be able to carry her and Dragonbait? he wondered.
The saurial had begun arcing downward. He’d lost his grip on the finder’s stone, but still clutched at his sword. Akabar flew upward to intercept him.
Drat the halfling, the mage thought as he struggled to reach the saurial. He would not be able to cross the horizontal distance between himself and Dragonbait before the lizard fell past him. If Olive had not tagged a ride, he could have done so with ease. As it was, he was forced to angle down, arms forward like a diver.
Dragonbait fell with his arms spread open, presenting the most resistance to the air. Akabar did not think the saurial was the least panicked, but he was willing to bet the air around Dragonbait smelled of woodsmoke.
Behind the mage, Olive swore loudly and profusely. She had no idea how to present the smallest profile when flying, so she slowed the mage’s movements even further with the resistance of her body in the wind. Akabar offered his own prayer that he would reach the saurial in time.
The flying mage’s path intersected the free-falling lizard’s about thirty yards from the ground. By then Dragonbait was plummeting like a comet, and Akabar’s tackle hit him with so much force that something gave in the mage’s shoulder and the saurial’s ribs. The trio of wizard, halfling, and lizard was too heavy to remain in flight long. From their mid-air impact, they lofted in a very low arc, before they began to sink earthward.
They landed in a dell between hills. The ground was soft, but littered with boulders. The threesome rolled and slid, lost their grip on one another, and fell apart. Akabar kept flying after he lost the added weight. He pulled up and landed smoothly on a large rock. He touched his shoulder gingerly; the flesh dimpled inward and his wrist and arm buzzed with a thousand tiny needle-pricks. A dislocated shoulder, he realized, almost intrigued with the injury.
The halfling, with the luck endemic to her race, had skidded to a stop in a particularly soft, boggy area. She rose to her feet completely uninjured but quite slimy, smeared with mud and grass stains. Dragonbait needed to lean on his sword to rise to his feet.
Akabar turned his attention to the battle between the now-gigantic Mist and the monstrously swelled Moander. The Jawed God had increased its size once again and regained its hold on the red dragon. The two behemoths tumbled in midair, though why they did not crash was yet another mystery puzzling Akabar. Mist’s wings were too entangled to fly, and the blue flames that had propelled the god through the sky were no longer apparent.
The air shimmered around them like heat rising from the desert sands. Beneath the tattered shards of the god’s body, which Mist had ripped away with her claws, lay only great vacuities. The smell of fetid swamp Akabar had noticed aboard the dragon reached his nose even on the ground. Along Moander’s side, a second huge, duskwood-fanged mouth split open. So wide did the jaws part that the god resembled a giant clam.
Confronted with this new set of jaws, Mist began thrashing like a wild beast. She was a great wyrm, one of the most powerful of her race, and much enhanced by the Turmish mage’s magic, yet, while her opponent seemed to be made of nothing but that great maw, she was still flesh and blood. Then she remembered she was also fire.
Mist breathed a long stream of flame from her bloody mouth and nostrils. The fire plunged deep into the god’s mouth. With a sudden horrifying insight, Akabar understood the significance of the swampy smell, Moander’s great but empty size, and its ability to hover. The mage squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away from the battle.
A small star exploded in the sky over Westgate. The shell that was Moander the Darkbringer and the curved figure of the dragon were black pieces of ash against the blaze that consumed them. Mist’s fire-resistant scales ignited, her flesh became translucent, and her skeleton visible to any eyes unfortunate enough to witness her demise.
A booming sound rolled across the plains. The three adventurers were knocked from their feet by the force of the blast. Ruskettle lay toppled in the mud with her fingers pressed into her ears. The mage fell from his rock.
When Akabar looked up again, the star had faded, leaving behind the falling, burning shards of the god Moander. The long, blackened body that had once been Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco spiraled to the earth. From the small valley, the mage could not see where the dead beast landed, but he felt the ground shake from the impact.
Akabar felt very tired. He prayed he had been right in his assumption that the package Moander had dropped off on the hilltop had been Alias. A further fear crept over him and tightened his gut. If Moander were indeed a god, they had destroyed only its earthly incarnation—somewhere beyond the borders of reality, it still lived. Should the Darkbringer find a way to return to the Realms, the mage knew that he would be at the top of the god’s list of enemies.