You lie, dragon. Your spell isn’t done, but your puppet Nura is trying to buy you the little time you need to finish it, Dhamon raged. All those weeks he’d thought the shadow dragon was turning him into a simple spawn or abomination—baiting him, threatening the ultimate transformation if he didn’t kill Sable, promising a cure if he did, throwing in a threat to Riki and Varek and Dhamon’s child for good measure.
All those weeks he was slowly being turned into a vessel for the dragon’s essence, for a dragon crafted by the god Chaos.
“No!” Dhamon shouted, startling everyone by the roar that erupted from his dragon’s mouth. “I will not let you win!”
He tried to say other words, but the shadow dragon came into his mind like a storm and overwhelmed his consciousness. In Dhamon’s shrinking mind’s eye he saw the image of Chaos pluck his god-shadow from the cavern floor in the Abyss and give it life and the form of a dragon. He saw it all again: the newly birthed dragon—the shadow dragon—slaying Knights of Takhisis and Solamnic Knights. The shadow dragon fighting and killing blue dragons and drinking in their energy.
As I killed all of them, I will kill your spirit. I will fly again in my new, perfect form, the shadow dragon hissed in Dhamon’s mind. I will banish your very soul.
Dhamon felt his awareness slipping away, his life’s blood spilling away. The dragon was winning.
Everything around him dimmed—Nura’s continued incantation, Fiona’s shouts. He heard what sounded like thunder, perhaps the beating of the dragon-body’s massive heart invading his body, then he heard nothing. He sensed a blackness, welcoming and frightening. His end beckoned, and he felt himself gradually drawn toward it.
“You did it!” Ragh shouted. “You did it, ogre! The barrier’s down!”
At Ragh’s suggestion Maldred had grabbed some of the carved magical figurines in the pouch and lobbed them against the enchanted barrier. The explosion was small but enough to shatter Nura’s spell, as well as collapse part of the cavern’s ceiling.
Fiona rushed forward, dodging falling rocks.
“In the name of Vinus Solamnus!” she cried. “For the memory of my Rig!”
Ragh hesitated, eyes shifting from the Dhamon-dragon to the husk of the shadow dragon. Maldred was staring at Dhamon.
“By my father,” the ogre-mage said in a low voice. “By all that’s sacred. Just look at him, Ragh. Look at what he’s become.”
Dhamon in dragon form was not quite like any other dragon that had ever been seen on Krynn. His scales were black mirrors, reflecting the cavern and everyone in it. His scales were mostly shimmering silver. In a few places the scales were glossy.
The dragon-Dhamon was an impressive creature, not so large as the shadow dragon, yet far more elegant-looking. It was as if a great artist had sculpted the creature, stealing the best traits from Krynn’s various dragons and creating a unique composite.
The shadow dragon had borrowed the shadowy black horns from a young Red he slew in the purge.
The magnificent wings were from first Blue he killed in the Abyss. The claws were copied from a white dragon, webbed and deadly as a well-worked blade.
“Beautiful,” Ragh admitted, staring wide-eyed at the Dhamon-dragon now. “He—it’s a beautiful creature, to be sure. Incredible.”
“Beautiful or not, it will die,” Fiona hissed. She had edged close and now raised her sword and continued inching toward the dragon. The dragon was moving sluggishly. The spell was still working its last vestiges of magic. “Now is the time to strike! While the beautiful beast is still vulnerable.”
“Nooooo!” Nura howled. The naga had been watching with pride, awestruck by the final transformation, but now she belatedly roused herself to action. “You’ll not scratch my master’s new body! You’ll not hurt him, you wretched woman!”
Nura raced toward Fiona, changing as she went, becoming taller, her legs melding together to form her hideous snake-body, stretching twenty feet from the top of her head to her tail. Her coppery hair fanned away to form a hood.
Ragh simultaneously leaped into action. Dhamon can take care of himself against Fiona, he thought, but the naga is dangerous.
The draconian shot at the snake-woman.
At that very moment, the dead body of the shadow dragon gave a twitch.
Maldred noted it and stopped the incantation he had begun. He had to take a second look because he was so astonished—he had thought the shadow dragon dead.
“Ragh! Fiona!” Maldred boomed. “The shadow dragon controls both forms! We’ve got two dragons to deal with here, not one!”
The ogre-mage halted the one spell and thrust his fingers into his pouch, closing on the last figurine he had left. He ran forward, hurling the carving. Maldred had aimed it at the shadow dragon, but his aim was off. It struck the cave wall, sending chunks of rock flying and a piece of the ceiling crashing down. The vibrations threw Maldred to the ground.
In the haze of debris Maldred thought he’d actually struck his target, but then the dust and rocks settled, and the shadow dragon moved again, more noticeably this time.
The sleek, new dragon tried to move, but was still sluggish. It seemed the shadow dragon could not effectively power both bodies at the same time.
Dhamon opened his mouth and roared his rage.
The shadow dragon howled in return.
“Kill the shadow dragon! The shadow dragon!” Maldred shouted as he pushed himself to his feet. “Kill it and we might break the spell. We might save Dhamon!” He picked up the glaive, and madly charged toward the dragon to whom he owed his own debt of revenge.
The cavern rocked from all the energy—from Maldred’s enchanted carvings, the shadow dragon’s and Nura’s spells, and the release of magic from the treasure horde.
The noise and constant quakes finally proved too much for Nura Bint-Drax. She spun one way, then the next, as if tortured by her choices. She whirled against unseen foes, stretched toward the shadow dragon, considered an enchantment, then dismissed it while thinking of another.
In her moment of indecision, Ragh’s fingers closed around the hood of her snake-throat.
“Dhamon thinks I should know and hate you, snake-woman,” the draconian spat. “Well, I do hate you, but I don’t want to know something so foul as you.” He squeezed, wrapping his legs against the sides of her snake body and holding on. “I just want you dead.”
Yards away Fiona stood suddenly frozen, her own indecision mirroring her divided soul. Her Knight’s honor bound her to attack the shadow dragon, but she desperately wanted to pursue her revenge against Dhamon.
“Where have you gone, Dhamon Grimwulf?” she screamed. “Where is my revenge?” A tear streaked her dust-covered face. “How do I know who I should fight?”
A part of her recognized the sparkle in the dragon’s eyes, the sparkle of his dark, mysterious gaze. It was the same sparkle she’d noticed in the baby she held in her arms hours ago. Rig’s eyes had been dark, too. Oh, how she missed the mariner.
“I will never have my own child,” she said, lowering her sword slightly. “I will never have….”
In that instant, Dhamon finally moved, creeping forward. He still felt as though his soul was plunging toward the darkness, but he fought against oblivion with the few ounces of humanity left in him.
I can’t let you win, he told the shadow dragon. Not just for Riki and his child’s sake, but for Fiona and Ragh and Maldred, and for the countless others who had fallen and would fall to this reborn shadow dragon in the centuries it would roam the face of Krynn. Perhaps this is my sole chance at redemption, Dhamon thought, sending his thoughts to the shadow dragon. To stop you from walking the face of this world.