No dragon should die this death, Mirror thought to himself. Not even my worst enemy. He regretted having used his magic to bring Skie back to life, but Mirror had to know more about this One God, he had to find out the truth. He inured himself against pity for his foe and continued asking questions. Skie did not have much time left to answer.
“You say Takhisis planned this removal,” Mirror said, during another conversation. “You were part of her plan.”
Skie grunted. Mirror could hear the massive body shift itself in an effort to ease the pain.
“I was the most important part, curse the eon I met the conniving bitch. I was the one who discovered the Portals. Our world, the world where I and others of my kind were born, is not like this world. We do not share our world with the short-lived, the soft-bodies. Ours is a world of dragons.”
Skie was not able to say this without many pauses for breath and grunts of pain. He was determined to continue his tale. His voice was weak, but Mirror could still hear the anger, like a rumble of distant thunder.
“We roamed our world at will and fought ferocious battles for survival. These dragons you see here, this Beryl and this Malys, they seem to you enormous and powerful, but in comparison to those who ruled our world, they are small and pitiful creatures. That was one reason they came to this world. But I jump ahead of myself.
“I could see, as could others of our kind, that our world was growing stagnant. We had no future, our children had no future but to eat or be eaten. We were not advancing, we were regressing. I was not the only one to seek a way off the world, but I was the first to be successful. Using my magic, I discovered the roads that led through the ethers to worlds far beyond our own. I grew skilled at traveling these roads. Often the roads saved my life, for if I was threatened by one of the Elders, I had only to jump into the ethers to escape.
“It was while I was inside the ethers that I came upon Her Dark Majesty.” Skie ground his teeth as he spoke, as if he would be glad to grind her between them. “I had never seen a god before. I had never before beheld anything so magnificent, never been in the presence of such power. I bowed before her and offered myself to her as her servant. She was fascinated by the roads through the ethers. I was not so enamored of her that I foolishly revealed their secrets to her, but I gave her enough information so that she could see how they might be of use to her.
“Takhisis brought me to her world that she called Krynn. She told me that on Krynn she was but one of many gods. She was the most powerful, she said, and because of that, the others feared her and were constantly conspiring against her. She would one day be triumphant over them, and on that day she would give me rich reward. I would rule Krynn and the soft-bodies who lived on it. This was to be my world in exchange for my services. Needless to say, she lied.” Anger stirred in Mirror, anger at the overweening ambition that gave no thought or care to any of those living on the world that was apparently little more than a bauble to Queen Takhisis. Mirror took care to keep his own anger hidden. He had to hear all that Skie had to tell. Mirror had to know what had happened. He could not change the past, but he might be able to affect the future.
“I was young then,” Skie continued, “and the young of our species are the size of the blue dragons on Krynn. Queen Takhisis paired me with Kitiara—a favorite of the Dark Queen. Kitiara ...”
Skie was silent, remembering. He gave a deep sigh, an aching sigh of longing. “Our battles together were glorious. For the first time, I learned that one could fight for more than survival—one could fight for honor, for the joy of the battle, for the glory in victory. At first, I despised the weaklings who inhabit this world: humans and the rest. I could not see why the gods permitted them to exist. Soon, I came to find them fascinating—Kitiara, especially. Courageous, bold, never doubting herself, knowing exactly what she wanted and reaching out to seize it. Ah, what a goddess she would have made.”
Skie paused. His breath came with a painful catch. “I will see her again. I know I will. Together, we will fight.. . and ride once more to glory....”
“And all this time,” Mirror said, leading Skie back to the main topic, “you worked for Takhisis. You established the road that would take her here, to this part of the universe.”
“I did. I made all ready for her. She had only to wait for the right time.”
“But, surely, she could not have foreseen the Chaos War?” A terrible thought came to Mirror.
“Or did that come about through her machinations?”
Skie snorted in disgust. “Clever Takhisis may be, but she is not that clever. Perhaps she had some inkling that Chaos was trapped inside the Graygem. If so, she had only to wait—for what is time to her, she is a god—for some fool to let him loose. If it had not been that, she would have found some other means. She was constantly watching for her chance. As it was, the Chaos War played right into her hands. All was in readiness. She made a show of fleeing the world, withdrawing her support and her power, leaving those who relied on her helpless. She had to do that, for she would need all her power for the enormous task that awaited her.
“The moment came. In the instant that Chaos was defeated, the energy released was immense. Takhisis harnessed that energy, combined it with her own power, and wrenched the world free of its moorings, brought it along the roads I had created with my magic, and set it here, in this part of the universe. All of this happened so fast that no one on the world was aware of the shift. The gods themselves, caught up in the desperate battle for survival, had no inkling of her plan, and once they realized what was happening, they were so depleted of their own power that they were helpless to stop her.
“Takhisis snatched the world away from them and hid it from their sight. All proceeded as she had planned. Bereft of the gods’ blessing, stripped of their magic, the people of the world were thrown into turmoil and despair. She herself was exhausted, so weak that she was reduced to almost nothing. She needed time to heal herself, time to rest. But she wasn’t worried. The longer the people were without a god, the greater their need. When she returned, they would be so thankful and relieved that they would be her abject slaves. She made one minor miscalculation.”
“Malys,” said Mirror. “Beryl and the rest.”
“Yes. They were intrigued by this new toy that had suddenly dropped down among them. Weary of struggling to survive in their world, they were only too happy to take over this one. Takhisis was too weak to stop them. She could do nothing but watch in helpless frustration as they seized rulership of the world. Still, she lied to me and continued to promise me that someday, when she was again powerful, she would destroy the usurpers and give the world to me. I believed her for a while, but the years passed, and Malystryx and Beryl and the rest grew more powerful still. They killed the dragons of Krynn and feasted on them and built their totems, and I heard nothing from Takhisis.
“As for me, I could see this world degenerating into a world like the one I had left. I looked back with joy to my days of battle with Kitiara. I wanted nothing more to do with my kind, nothing more to do with the pathetic wretches who populated this place. I went to Takhisis and demanded payment.