His breath caught, and he turned to look Dhamon directly in the eyes. “No.” The ogre-mage swallowed hard. “That’s not entirely true. I have no doubt he caused the quake, but he doesn’t want to keep you away. He wants you to find him. I know it. But he doesn’t want you getting close until he’s ready. He’s delaying you. The scales on you, he wants the scales to…”
He’s delaying me while my body becomes more grotesque, Dhamon realized. “Yes, he’s delaying me until it’s too late. As punishment he’s delaying me until I become a spawn or a draconian or some mad meld of the fiendish creatures. Until I’ve lost my mind and my soul and am no longer any threat.”
“Let’s get going, then,” Maldred said, looking up the mountainside. “Let’s not allow the shadow dragon to win.”
Dhamon took the lead again. The quake had altered the face of the mountain, and Dhamon worried that the mouth of the cave had been erased.
They climbed for a few hours. Dhamon felt increasingly concerned that they were irretrievably lost.
He thought of Riki and the child—and of Varek, too, who would have to act as the father of Dhamon’s child. He wondered if they were all safe, and wondered if Riki ever thought of him, wondered if in some small way the child favored him. Wondered if…
You will never know those things, Dhamon Grimwulf.
His eyes flew wide, as these were not his words, but he heard them clearly inside of his head.
You will never see them… Riki, the baby… you will never let them see your scale-ridden self. You will never touch your child.
“No!” Dhamon shouted. “That’s not true!” He screamed in rage, then he screamed again—this time in sudden, sharp pain. He felt as though flames had attacked every inch of his body, burning away his tattered clothes. He dropped the glaive, and his fingers ripped at his clothes, pulling them off and tossing them aside. His hands flew to his ears, trying to drown out the words that persisted.
You will never let them see that there’s nothing human about you anymore. You will never let them see the creature you have become.
“No, you damnable beast! I will see them!”
Maldred, close behind, shouted at Dhamon, but he couldn’t hear anything except the words inside his head. He forced himself to walk, despite the agony and the taunts in his head. With each step he felt his bones crack and stretch, felt his skin burn away to be replaced by scales. He reached to his back, felt something growing.
Wings, the voice said. Spawn have wings, Dhamon Grimwulf.
His fingers registered a snout forming on his face. He opened his mouth to scream a protest, but his tongue felt thick and foreign.
There is no humanity left in you, Dhamon Grimwulf, and soon you will have no soul.
Dhamon reeled. He tried to imagine what he must look like. He turned around and saw Maldred gape, take a step back away from him. Even Maldred was shocked, afraid.
I have no intention of turning into one, no intention of sharing Ragh’s existence. I still have my mind, he thought. If for only a while longer. While I can yet think on my own, I can always take the glaive, end my life.
Live. Come to me, the voice said.
He felt a slight tug, as though someone had taken his hand, but there was no one there, and the sensation was more of an urging than a physical pulling.
“By the Dark Queen’s heads, you’ll not win! I will kill myself before I become your spawn puppet!”
There was deep, sonorous laughter—loud and long and haunting. The laughter enveloped Dhamon, yet he knew it was coming from inside him. The laughter was all inside his mind. The shadow dragon was thoroughly inside his head, he realized, and it was attempting to control him and draw him near.
“The beast wants to see me lose my soul,” he managed to gasp. “He wants to see the last of my humanity die.”
He looked around. Maldred had disappeared. Fled. Betrayed him again.
In the next instant not only could Dhamon hear the dragon, he could see it clearly—a bloated mass of shadowy scales breathing and moving and flying toward him in his mind’s eye. It was nearly as large as an overlord. Huge and terrifying, its image weakened his will. He felt his mind surrendering.
“I’ve got to fight it,” he told himself. “Stay strong long enough to kill myself. Where’s the glaive?”
All of a sudden Dhamon felt as if he were flying, the wind rushing beneath his leathery wings, his claws outstretched, his eyes scanning the ground below for… dragons. For magical energy. He had been mentally swept away from the mountainside and deposited… where? In a cavern? Hot and dry and smelling of sulfur. There was a blue dragon nearby, small and with a Dark Knight mounted on its back.
Dhamon felt his wings pulling into his sides, felt himself diving. He realized the cavern was incredibly immense. The air was laced with the scent of lightning and blood, filled with shouts of battle and the cries of the dying. When he looked around he saw other blue dragons, all ridden by Knights.
“The Abyss? Am I witnessing the Chaos War through the shadow dragon’s eyes? Is it forcing me to watch this catastrophe to stamp out my resistance?”
The blue dragon loomed in front of him. He stretched out his claws, felt them sink into the young dragon’s side. His claws began rending the creature, killing it quickly and sending the Knight-rider plummeting like a discarded doll. He felt a rush of excitement from the kill, felt a wash of energy pulse up through his claws and into his chest. Then he flew to another blue dragon. And another. And another.
Dhamon felt his mind slipping away.
Yet with each kill he felt renewed, stronger, infused with the life energy of the dying Blues. With each one that collapsed to the cavern floor, he felt an increasing power of pride—he knew that Chaos, the Father of All and of Nothing, would be pleased. He banked in the hot, parched air of the cavern, climbed to the ceiling and spotted the giant form of Chaos smiling at him.
This is the Abyss, Dhamon realized. This is indeed the Chaos War.
The great battle continued to play out before him, and when it was done, he—the shadow dragon—flew from the cavern, through a misty veil and out into the wilds of Krynn. He soared high and fast, hating the daylight, searching for darkness and finally finding it in a deep, dry cave high in ogre lands.
There he rested, cocooned by the blessed darkness. When he emerged from the dark, he joined the dragonpurge, feasting on the magical life energy of smaller, unwary dragons, all of whom swiftly died beneath his shadowy claws.
Come to me, Dhamon Grimwulf, the voice repeated. Spawn. Pawn.
The pull was stronger.
In his mind’s eye Dhamon peered through the shadows now, saw a pale, dull-yellow light, spotted a young girl with coppery hair in the far recesses.
He saw Nura Bint-Drax through the shadow dragon’s eyes.
“Let me see the beginning,” Nura cooed. “Let me see your birth again, my master.”
Dhamon witnessed the shadow dragon’s creation, a shadow detached from the Father of All and of Nothing, watched him take part in the Chaos War and watched his activities through the dragonpurge and since. He watched the dragon’s initial meeting with Dhamon and with others. He watched the shadow dragon spreading his scales.
Finally he saw the shadow dragon settling in the swamp, choosing the warmth and the heat pleasing to his form. He watched as the dragon’s seeds grew, scales spreading, killing some of its hosts. But not Dhamon. Dhamon was the one.
My pawn, the voice purred. My spawn.
Dhamon furiously shook his head and closed his eyes. He knelt and fumbled about for his glaive. “I am too late for my cure,” he told himself.
Live, the voice persisted.
“For just a while longer,” Dhamon returned bitterly. “I intend to prevent you from doing this to anyone else. You will create no more spawn! I’ll come to you, all right, you damnable beast, but on my own terms. Damn all dragons in the world!”