Chapter 15

 

        Darkness was shattered by the brilliant flash of lightning, illuminating a chaotic scene of controlled insanity.

        Tens of thousands of human troops rushed through the narrow valley that was the Dura’s defensive position with tens of thousands more waiting, charging towards a trench lined with stakes, beyond which stood the army of the Dwarves and their unusual allies who maintained their position behind the remains of a palisade made of logs.  No reserves were being held back; those who had not yet moved were simply waiting for the chance to rush forward behind their compatriots.  The human troop leaders were confident that their Demonic allies had won them the battle, had weakened the Defiled and the Damned beyond the trench and had tired out their witches.  To their thinking, all it would take now would be a charge of the Duran lines, to break them and allow their superior numbers to overwhelm their dogged, frustratingly competent adversaries.  They were very wary of the Demons who were among them, but the strange female Demon who led them was a strong, brilliant commander, and they took faith and morale from her ability to lead, even if she was Defiled herself, one of the unholy slaves that would serve the will of the One until he no longer had use for them.  The armies of the One charged across that narrow valley as crossbow quarrels rained down on them very sporadically from the valley walls, as only a few of the archers tried to slow them between shots at the climbers that were trying to overrun their elevated positions.

        The first men among that charge reached the trench, and followed the paths of the Demons that had come before them, lanes in the trench clear of stakes.  They surged over the rampart, and hesitated just a moment to survey the land before them.

        A jagged, cratered, blasted wasteland with small fires burning here and there, and wafts of evil black smoke rising from the ground.  And beyond that, rows upon rows of armored Dwarves, pikes set and ready to receive them

        There would be no hurried charge across that ground.

        But, there was no turning back now.

 

        High above the bipeds, another clash was about to commence.  The night-scaled shadow dragon was diving at the climbing blue, using altitude to its advantage as it rushed at its larger opponent.  The blue dragon kept a close eye on it, for it remembered its lore about these dangerous monsters.  Part dragon, part shadow, they dwelled mostly on planes of existence other than the material plane, wherever there was shadow and an absence of the guidance of the gods of good.  This one came from the Abyss…but it wasn’t a true Demon.  Much like a Hellhound, it was a product of the Abyss, but lacked the bloodline that made it a true Demon.  Just like Forge, this monster lacked the basic powers of the Demon—teleportation, the ability to create darkness—but it was a dragon, which meant that it had the strength, the size, the power, the intelligence, and of course, the breath weapon.

        It dove straight at the blue, wings folded back, glowing red eyes narrowed, neck locked.  Tarrin turned to meet it head-on, shrieking a thundering cry of challenge and rage, which the shadow dragon answered with its high-pitched keen.  Tarrin pulled in his wings as the shadow dragon streaked towards him, and both dragons inhaled sharply as the other came close to being in range of breath weapons.  They hurtled towards one another at incredible speed, but despite that speed, both knew instinctively when the other was in range of their breath weapons.

        The blue dragon unleashed a single bolt of lightning, highly controlled, from its maw, which arced across the space as straight and true as an arrow.  But the Shadow dragon closed its eyes, and its form was lost in the dark shadow of the cloud above them.  Its outline became murky, hard to make out, and then it was completely gone.  The lightning bolt arced through empty air, sizzling up into the cloud above.

        It was gone!

        Tarrin banked hard, unsure of what had just happened.  There was no sense of magic about what the enemy dragon did, it was like it simply melted away!  Those night-colored scaled had simply been swallowed up by the shadows of the storm cloud over them!  He didn’t have much time to think about it, for his experience with monsters and creatures with the ability to Teleport—whatever it did wasn’t that, but he wasn’t taking any chances—told him where and how it would be most advantageous for the enemy to attack, and wasn’t going to fall into those traps.  Instead of climbing, he put his wing over and began a steep descent, sacrificing the advantage of altitude because that was what he should do, get higher than the enemy.  A high-pitched screech from overhead told him that he had made the right decision, for he looked up and saw that dragon now—

        —diving right at him!

        He had no chance to turn in time.  The night-scaled dragon struck him like a catapult stone, ramming him from above with its smaller, lighter body, slamming him out of his flight path.  Long black claws ripped into his sleek blue scales, sending blue scales, blood, and bits of tissue flying as the shadow dragon attacked the joints of his wings, trying to disable his ability to fly, even as the spines that ran down the ridge of his back punched into the softer belly scales of the shadow dragon’s torso.  Tarrin was pushed down into a steeper and steeper dive as the dragon sought to tear through the tendons that gave him control over his wings, even as the blue dragon thrashed under it to keep it from getting a clear strike.

        Tarrin reacted out of instinct.  His whip-like tail careened in and slashed the shadow dragon directly across its left wing, ripping a bloody rend through the membrane almost halfway up to the bone.  The dragon screeched in pain and let go, kicking off to keep Tarrin from hitting it again, for if he slashed a deep enough cut through that membrane it would cripple the dragon’s ability to fly.  Tarrin heard the shadow dragon blast out its breath in a strong whoosh, and in terror he realized that he had nowhere to go.

        It struck him directly.  The shadow dragon’s breath weapon wasn’t fire, or cold, or lightning, or acid, or anything Tarrin would have expected.  It was solid shadow, dark as pitch and colder than the touch of Jegojah.  It stuck him with little physical force, enveloping him quickly like a cloud of fluff, but in that touch it sought to rip out every iota of warmth within his body.  He thought to tuck in and dive out of it, he thought to bank away, but the cold literally paralyzed him, and his mind was sent spinning into a shock, as if it had been dunked in icy water.  There was nothing but bright lights popping behind his eyes as he lost the ability to see or hear or taste or smell, and the only thing he could feel was the biting cold that reached inside of him and sucked out every bit of his warmth.  That cold touched him, touched him to the soul, and leeched away the warmth of flesh and spirit both.

        He literally fell out of the inky cloud, for he was suddenly too weak to move.  The cold had drained him of his strength, and he found it hard to think, hard to move.  The ground hurtled towards him with shocking speed, but he could barely move, even as his mind understood the danger.  He barely managed to get his wings out, which arrested his downward momentum as he arched out of the dive.

        Tarrin’s belly scraped the ground, grating away the grass and leaving a long scar of torn earth as he just barely managed to pull up in time, as he felt his strength slowly flow back into him, the icy cold pushed away by the boundless energy of the divine soul inside of him.  Just as the All had once reacted to the kiss of a Succubus so many years ago to replenish energy stolen from him, his divine soul reached into his mortal coil and brought back sweet, wonderful warmth to his muscles, burning away with the purity of heat the dark, tainted cold that the dragon used as a weapon.

        By the fires, what a weapon!  That dragon’s breath weapon was, in its own way, the most dangerous breath weapon of any dragon!  Had he not been who he was, he would now be too weak to fight!  Even if the cold of the breath weapon didn’t kill outright, its strength-draining cold would ensure that the victim was incapable of fighting back aftwards!

        And it had touched him.  In that touch, everything that was the shadow dragon was open to Tarrin’s inner eye.  What it did, that trick where it melted away, that was a natural ability of the creature, the ability to become one with shadow and move through it, exactly the same way that Tarrin could become one with fire and use it to move from one place to another.  It had the ability to control shadow as well, moving it, changing it, manipulating it to its own ends.

        And it was not a Demon.  It was a dragon.  If it came from the Abyss, that just meant that it lived there.  There was nothing Demonic about this creature, its bloodline was pure, it was to the very core of its being a dragon.  But, in its own way, that made it even more dangerous.  Tarrin had weapons to use against Demons that wouldn’t work against a dragon.

        It was smaller, but oh was it dangerous.  Tarrin had a newfound respect for this adversary.

        He had touched it, he now knew what it could do, and that knowledge gave him an understanding of what he had to do to defeat this creature.  It was not a creature of direct confrontation.  It was like Miranda, it was a creature of guile and deceit, saving the physical confrontation for that moment where it would be most advantageous, just as it had attacked before by trying to rob him of his ability to fly.  It would stalk him, use its ability to control shadow to try to trick him, then it would attack in a way that maximized its advantage.  And it would certainly try to get into a position where it could use its breath weapon again without retaliation.

        The first step to beating it was that breath weapon.  He looked back and saw the rain coming, and smiled inwardly as he banked towards it.  That cloud the dragon breathed would not fare well in a thundering downpour, he’d wager.  And the lightning would work to his advantage.  He could get an instant recharge off it, and blue dragons could attract that lightning; it was one of their natural abilities.

        It was time to start using his brain, and force the shadow dragon to play the game by his rules.

 

        The first contact with the restored lines of the Dura was sporadic.  The more nimble of those first human soldiers managed to pick their way across the tortured wasteland between the rampart and the palisade, dodging the steady rain of arrows and crossbow quarrels that fell on them from behind the Dura lines.  They made contact with the Dwarven forces, trying to get past the pikes and spears and push into the lines.  Those first humans were skewered or chopped down by the front line, who were armed with swords and axes rather than pikes, but there were five humans to replace every one that fell.  More and more, faster and faster, those humans, screaming war cries and rushing to avoid getting trampled by those coming from behind, crashed into the lines of the Dura and were quickly rebuffed.   The bodies fell where they were, unable to retreat, unable to pull back, unable to move forward, and almost immediately a pile of bloody corpses began to amass outside the palisade’s remains.  Human soldiers were quickly running atop their own dead as they charged the line with almost mindless ferocity and utter fearlessness, lost in the religious hysteria that had whipped them into a frenzy…or perhaps they were simply more afraid of their Demonic leaders than than they were of death.

        Though sporadic at first, the Dura and their allies found themselves trying to hold back a virtual sea of seething, furious humanity within minutes, as more and more of the human armies crossed the wasteland and pressed the line.  Humans were literally stacked two deep on the pikes, pushing up against the shields with their bodies even as they tried to stab at the Dura through the gaps between their interlocked shields, and still more pressed in from behind like some kind of living tidal wave.  The magicians behind the lines held their spells as Dolanna and Lorak shouted commands, as Kang barked orders and pointed at a part of the line with his sword, which caused Tsukatta to rush forward with a company of reserves behind him.  That part of the line began to press inward, and then, like the opening of a lock, a single human soldier managed to drive his sword through the visor of a Dura soldier, and his fall broke the line.  That single small gap suddenly got pushed wider and wider apart as humans poured into the gap, three men replacing every one the Dwarves chopped down.  Dura looked to the hillsides and the withering fire of their archers, but they saw the hillsides crawling with humans, and their archers fighting hand to hand with them, unable to assist.  The archers behind the lines kept a steady rainbow of steel and wood flying over the front lines, but their arrows and quarrels were not managing to slow the advance, only reducing the numbers that reached the lines by a pitiful amount.

        Then Phandebrass struck.  That hole in the line became empty as the Wizard stepped forward and used his magic, causing a savage blast of fast-moving shards of ice to rake through the humans who had managed to get over the palisade, literally tearing the soldiers apart.  The surge was halted by that single spell, and the Dura closed the hole.

        But the magicians weren’t done.  A brown-haired Elementalist used her magic as well, and before them, the rushing mass of human soldiers, screaming in anger and challenge, suddenly cried out in surprise as the ground beneath them became suddenly soft and pliable, the hard-packed earth and torn sides of craters becoming as soft as mud, sucking under their feet.  The charge of humanity was stopped almost in its tracks as ever soldier in the no-man’s land between the rampart and the palisade suddenly was knee-deep in a thick, sucking, hungry mud that would not break its grip upon them.

        Those struggling to get free of the mud did not do so for long.  Much to the horror of the Dura, they saw the humans coming over the rampart hesitate, then, as if by some unspoken command, start using their own men as bridges over that gooey trap, trampling upon their own and pushing them deeper into the mud to get across and to the Duran lines.  Those that struggled too savagely against being trod upon were quickly executed by those above, sacrificed to become little more than a stepping stone for those behind.

        Never before had the Dura seen such mindless fanaticism out of their human foes.  They had fought them many times, and always before they had displayed quite normal traits for any sentient race, among them a regard for both their own lives and the lives of their companions.  But this was almost terrifying, to see them killing their own with callous disregard, and it made the Dura on the front line nervous and tentative when the first of those treading on the backs and heads of their own soldiers reached the palisade.  Perhaps the reason for that fanaticism breached the rampart quickly after the first of the humans reached the palisade, that six-armed Demoness, pointing at the line with one of her ornate swords and shouting aloud for them to attack without mercy.  One of the huge lizard-things—Vendari, they were called Vendari—bellowed in challenge to that voice, a massive monster of a creature wielding a huge warhammer, pointing the head of it at her and saying something in a language none of them understood.  The Demoness hissed defiantly, and then she rushed forward with her troops, obviously intending to join the battle personally.

        Behind the Demoness a series of robed figures appeared, and at their arrival, all the magicians behind the lines reacted.  Dozens of spells—bolts of fire and lightning, beams of light, fiery missles, black arcs of energy—were unleashed at them from the magicians, sizzling across the air and striking true.  The rampart at the feet of those robed figures erupted in a gout of dust and flying dirt, but the fringes of some kind of protective magical barrier were clearly visible through the dust as it actively repelled the magical attacks.  Those robed figures began to cast spells back towards the Dura, but those reciprocating bolts and beams and arcs went over their heads and attacked the magicians.  But just as the magicians failed, so did those robed figures, as their spells changed directions and were sucked into the strange glowing pinwheel which seemed to rotate over the head of the white-haired Wizard.

        The Dura quickly lost track of the doings of the magicians as the humans again crushed into the lines, coming harder and faster than before, such an incredible press that the line was forced backwards, driven back by the sheer force of their numbers.  But the line did not break, did not fail, this time backing up at Kang’s command rather than try to hold fast and risk another breach like the one before.  But one step became two, and two became four, until the front line found itself nearly ten paces from the palisade, the orderly line bulging in several different locations as Dura fell and those behind quickly stepped up to take their places before the humans exploited the hole and tried to break the line.  The Dura held the line with all the valor and determination for which they were famous upon two worlds.

        But they were in no way prepared for Shaz’Baket.

        She was careful not to assault the line where the Vendari and Knights were stationed.  She struck not in the middle, but at the extreme east side of the Duran lines, almost against the valley wall.  The marilith swept the pikes and spears from doing her harm with contemptuous swipes of her six weapons, then crashed into the Dwarves with an eerie, haunting grin of eager anticipation, her weapons immediately setting to the task of slaughtering any Dwarf within reach.  The Dura withered under her assault, and immediately a hole was opened in their lines, a hole that was deepened by the Demoness as she advanced.  She pushed spans behind the line, then reared up on her snake body and brought forth fire from two of her hands that gripped sword and axe, then projected it into the Duran lines.  The shrill shrieks of those on fire split the din of the battle, as some charred and died where they stood, some convulsed on the ground, and some broke and fled trailing flames, trying to push through the press of other Dwarves around them.  That act widened the breach and allowed more humans to pour in, until the armies of the One had an established penetration of the lines.  The marilith continued moving in a straight line along the valley’s edge, pushing deeper and deeper in, trying to drive through the Duran forces and breach into their reserves, using the valley wall as an anchor to which her forces clung, preventing the Dura from flanking them.

        But that steep hillside could serve both sides.  Kimmie broke off from battling the Wizards of the One’s forces and turned to deal with the breach, a single magician tasked to stopping the penetration, and the Were-cat quickly took in the situation and selected the best means to go about it.  She threw a handful of pebbles into the air and chanted loudly and strongly in the language of magic, then completed her spell with a stab of both paws towards the breach.  The spell was not aimed at the enemy forces, but instead at the hillside behind them.  Her spell caused the earth to shake, and then caused an explosion of dirt and rocks to erupt from the hillside higher up, but just under where the Duran archers and the human climbers were engaged in furious hand to hand combat, blasting out a section of the hillside and creating a landslide.

        It wasn’t deep or large, but it was large enough.  It was no avalanche that came down the mountain, but the shower of dirt and rock was moving fast enough to sweep the feet out from under the humans that were caught in it, right where the Dura had set up their front line, just behind the palisade.  The Dura tried to swarm over that landslide almost as soon as it had ceased, quickly killing those humans who had been knocked down by its power, but they and everyone else stopped for just a moment when they heard a thunderous detonation high above and well down the valley, which made them all turn to look.

        Just as the rain hit the front line, they saw it.  The black dragon was locked in savage claw-to-claw combat with a brilliant blue-scaled dragon, as lightning thrashed around them, and struck the blue dragon repeatedly.  They were easily visible because there was a brilliant nimbus of light that surrounded the blue dragon like the sun, a kind of inner radiation that was almost too bright to look upon, a light so bright that it illuminated the clouds above and the ground below, taking the place of the bright sunlight which those clouds were blocking.  The detonation was some kind of spell that one of them cast, and it was apparent to all that not only were they fighting tooth and claw, they were fighting spell for spell, as magic was cast back and forth between them even as they sought to rip the life from one another.  The two thrashed in the air, locked in physical combat even as each hissed and spat the words of magic at one another, wobbling erratically in the air as they tugged and pulled and raked.  A sudden swarm of hailstones rained on them, obviously magical in nature and not a product of the storm, pounding the blue dragon’s back as the night-scaled beast pulled itself under its larger foe, but the blue caught a clawhold on its foe and completed its own spell, which caused the night-scaled dragon’s head to bob dangerously and caused its actions to become erratic as it fought off some kind of effect that wasn’t readily visible.  The blue raised its head and unleashed its breath weapon into the air above it, a wide fan of arcing lightning bolts, but the rain caught the blast and deflected it in every direction, even caused it to arc back into the two dragons.  That blast made the black-scaled dragon let go and veer off, then bank frantically as the thunderstorm above unleashed its own lightning, lightning which directly struck the blue dragon!  But instead of hurting the beast, it seemed to be absorbed by it, then it turned its head and immediately unleashed another blast of its own breath weapon, this time a tightly compact blast of intertwined lightning bolts, again diffused by the rain and spread out.  But even with that diffusion, the attack missed as the night-scaled dragon dove towards the ground, seemingly free of whatever affect that had gripped it seconds before, as tendrils of pure darkness seemed to start to ooze out from between its scales, leaving behind itself a trail of liquid night as it streaked towards the ground, then disappeared from sight behind the valley wall.  The blue dragon hovered high in the air for a moment, its voice audible over the rain and the shouting as it chanted in the language of magic.  The nimbus of light around it had started to fade noticably, but at the conclusion of that spell it rejuvenated itself, became bright as the sun once more, and the blue dove down and out of sight as it chased its quarry.

        Their disappearance caused the fighting to erupt once more with even more savagery.  The Dura struggled to close the hole and trap those who had breached the line, and for long moments there was unorganized, chaotic fighting on top of the landslide as Dura and humans fought in a jumbled mass, trying to secure the area for their side and organize coherent lines to prevent it from being retaken.  As they did that, Shaz’Baket continued her forward push, spreading her human forces that were behind that melee thinner and thinner as she drove towards the far end of the valley along the wall.  Her forward movement was almost completely unchecked as she raced ahead, slaughtering Dura like a reaper harvesting wheat, leaving a long trail of the dead behind her as her humans filled the space she left behind.

        Until she met Tsukatta.

        The samurai warrior reached her when she had nearly gotten halfway to the far side of the valley, joining the battle with an undulating warcry, holding a sleek katana in each hand.  The human waded into combat with the marilith with neither hesitation nor reserve, engaging her confidently.  The Demoness at first simply sought to sweep the human out of her way, but her attempt to simply kill him with a cascade of attacks with all six weapons nearly cost her her head.  He parried all six of those attacks with ease, and she was out of position to defend when he turned that parry into a sweeping slash directly at her neck.  She slowed to a halt and tried again, using a complicated and deceptive series of slashes, stabs, and feints with all six weapons to confuse her opponent and leave him open, but he again parried every attack with ease, and saw through her feints and correctly predicted exactly where and how the true attack would be executed.  She was shocked when he turned aside the axe blow meant to carve a deep hole in between his ribs with both of his swords, then stepped up and kicked her directly in the abdomen, just above where her snake scales began, and kicked her so hard that it left spots in her eyes.  She slithered back and out of range as those two weapons tried to carve a V in the front of her neck, literally scissoring off her head had it managed to land.

        She engaged the human again, using every weapon she had to its utmost, seeking to swarm the human under her six weapons and do him in, but found herself becoming frustrated and flustered by this strangely armored human.  Every attack was parried or evaded, and she was quickly put on the defensive by his two weapons and his feet, as he used his arms and legs in addition to his swords to combat her.  She quickly became unsure what was coming next, whether he would attack with his swords, or try to kick her, or if his elbow or knee would come seemingly out of nowhere and strike her, seeking any vital or sensitive area. How could he hold his own against her!  He did not move with superhuman speed, and though he seemed stronger than a human should be, he was not much stronger than she.  But her every attempt to overwhelm him with martial prowess or simply outnumber him with her six swords against his two was met with defeat, as the human simply saw through her feints or was prepared for her attacks, and she found herself heavily challenged to meet his answering forays, for his swordwork was exacting and brilliant, the two weapons weaving before him with such stunning complexity that it seemed that there were fifty blades whirling between them.

        So dazzling was the martial challenge before them that Dura and human both paused fighting one another to watch, captivated by two masters of the art of war locked in deadly combat with one another.

        As she fought him, she realized that his advantage was not speed, or strength, or magic, it was experience.  This was a warrior so well versed in his art that it gave him the capability of battling a mighty marilith in her own realm of expertise, armed combat, and give her a serious challenge.  This human, she decided, would be a much better slave than a trophy.  She could find many uses for someone of his ability and skill.  And when she was done with him, there was always his soul to claim.

        And then there was another!  Shaz’Baket nearly lost her head when a dark-skinned female joined the fray, one of those cursed Selani, and then a white-haired male whose hair was plastered to his head and face by the heavy rain, both armed with swords.  Her intelligence from when she was on Sennadar marked these two as Var and Denai, personal friends of that damned Were-cat Tarrin Kael.  They joined with the human warrior and attacked the marilith with utterly perfectly aligned attacks, each unconsciously aware of the other two as they attacked in a perfect symphony of lethal, dizzyingly complicated and swift strikes with sword or katana.  The marilith found herself giving ground to avoid losing her head to those deadly swords, as the air around them rang with the continuous chime of metal against metal, as the Demoness was put completely on the defensive.  Six ornate swords and axes worked feverishly to stop the four swords and two katanas of her adversaries, as her snake body began to slither backwards to give her more room.  The three of them managed to stop the Demoness’ advance, but a marilith had more weapons than just swords.

        And she used those weapons.  She slithered backwards very fast, just enough space to give her time, and then shouted in the language of magic.  She screamed only one word, but it was a word of such mystical power that any who had the ability to hear it was struck by its force, the power of the Word of Stun.  Everyone around her, human, Dura, and Selani all, shivered and flinched, and then were knocked backwards away from her by the power of that mystical utterance, knocked to the ground where they lay senseless, unable to move or act or think.

        All save one.

        The wicker-armored warrior stood before her, the only standing human, Dura, or Dwarf within twenty paces, his swords held low at each side and the eyes behind that gruesome visage on his mask looking directly at her.  There was a mystical symbol glowing on the front of his armor, a power she recognized as being laid into it by a Wu Jen, a mystical user of magic from certain universes who shared a culture similar to that from which this warrior had originated, a sigil that deflected the power of her mystical word and protected him from its effect.

        Behind him, the scaled Vendari who had shouted his challenge at her was reaching them, a monster of a creature, the size of a glabrezu, wielding a massive warhammer, his green scales glistening as the thundering downpour streamed water over him.  There was another, wielding a huge axe, and yet one more, holding a huge two-handed sword, and these were not opponents to take lightly.  Shaz’Baket knew what Vendari were, and knew that one of their most potent weapons was the fact that they were extremely hard to affect with magic.  With three of them and that magnificent human warrior, she would be hard pressed to hold her own against them.  Shaz’Baket was arrogant, but she was not stupid.

        Now, perhaps, was the best time to end this.  She had achieved enough penetration.

        With a single telepathic command, it began.

        The hillside exploded outward with dust and dirt and rock, dust and dirt that quickly fell to earth within the rain as mud, and large numbers of stubby, barrel-like creatures called Xorn erupted from the earth itself, each with three arms and three legs distributed at regular intervals along the circumference of its body, and an eye between each of its arms, with a maw on its rounded top.  Each of those creatures was a denizen of the Elemental Plane of Earth and enslaved to the Demon’s cause, and each of them had in one of its three hands the hand, pincer, tentacle, or claw of a Demon.  Xorn had the power to walk through earth and rock, and they could take with them anyone that they were touching.  And at the forefront of those Demons was the balor that had survived the initial assault.

        In the blink of an eye, Shaz’Baket had dozens of Demons at her side, every one of the surviving Demons from the attempts to kill Tarrin and break the lines of the Dura, deep behind the lines of the Dura.  The Were-cat’s Ward prevented them from teleporting in or out, but there were other ways to use magical travel to achieve optimum surprise.

        The balor was the first to act, and that was as it was meant to be.  It would be unleashed upon the enemies now that Tarrin was locked in combat with the shadow dragon and their magicians were busy fighting the enslaved Wizards.  The balor was nothing more than a force of furious destruction, chaos personified, and it easily filled that role by standing at the forefront and leading the Demons as they rampaged through the lines of the Dura.  The great Demons charged right at the human warrior, but it was one of the Vendari that stepped up to meet its charge, the hammer-wielding one.  The balor tried to project its aura of fire, but the thundering downpour smothered the flames as quickly as it could create them.  It was nonplussed, however, meeting the Vendari with its jagged sword and brutal whip confidently as the scaly beast took up its hammer in both hands and met its charge without so much as blinking.

        In moments, a pitched battle raged around the breach, as the rest of the Vendari, Knights, and Selani reached the area, where the strongest of the Demons battled with the best of Sennadar in a furous melee that might decide the outcome of the battle.  Two Knights, one Vendari, and one Selani were already dead by the time the last of the Knights joined with battle.  The balor and marilith, the two mightiest of the Demons, had their hands full with a single Vendari and a single human warrior, as the remaining Demons and the otherworldly mortals battled in a furious frenzy that left the Dura watching a little dumbfounded, so dumbfounded that a thunderous series of detonations back near the center of the original line did not attract their attention.  Steel and magic clashed with claws and fangs as the titanic forces struggled against one another, with casualties on both sides.  A glabrezu crumpled and fell decaying to the earth, victim to a Selani longsword, as a huge Knight was impaled on the glaive of a vrock and tossed aside, even as the mortal defiantly stabbed the vulture-Demon with his sword, crippling it.  That vrock had its head split in half by one of the huge Vendari and its axe, who was then bathed in a blasting cone of intense frost that was issued from the paw-hand of a boar-headed nalfeshnee.  The Vendari simply shook off the frost and turned on the fat Demon, but before the Demon could face the Vendari, he was skewered from the flank by a Knight with a scarred face.  That Knight and Vendari then teamed up to help the hammer-wielder battle the balor, and the two Selani that had been stunned on the ground recovered before the humans and Dura, and again aided the human against the marilith.  The other Knights, Vendari, and Selani battled against the remaining Demons, outnumbered by them but proving that those superior numbers only made it an equal fight.  The Dura and the forces of the One also jumped into that fight, until it was a chaotic, nightmarish scene, the sounds of the dying, the sounds of magic, the sounds of steel on steel raging over the sound of the driving rain.

        Just as the forces of the Dura and their allies began to take the upper hand against the Demons, as Binter fought the balor literally to a standstill, and started pushing it back once he received help from Ulger and Sisska, as Tsukatta, Var, and Denai pushed Shaz’Baket back further and further towards the wall, a similar explosion shuddered the earth on the far side of the valley.  Another incursion of Demons shuffled in by Xorn appeared on the far side of the valley, well ahead of  Shaz’Baket’s position on the east side, consisting mostly of cambion, vrock, and hezrou, the halfbreeds and the weaker types of pure-blooded Demons.  But just because they were weaker than marilith or glabrezu did not make them any less dangerous.  They tore into the Dura on the far side of the valley, ripped into the first formation of reserves waiting to rush forward if needed, causing immediate chaos behind the lines.  Kang and Bragg screamed orders and caused the reserves to react swiftly to the assault, but the Demons had already carved a deep breach into the Dura formation, and they broke through and into the open ground between formations within seconds.  Other formations quickly converged on the Demons and attacked, creating a pitched battle behind the lines, lines that were inexorably being pushed back towards the Demons everywhere but in the center.  But the Dura were out of position, and the Demons were moving very quickly, almost at a run, ignoring their rear, rushing forward with all speed towards their objective.  Kang himself interposed himself once he realized where those Demons were going, drawing his sword and waiting on the back of his Pegasus for them to reach him, for the magicians were behind him.  The warriors that had been charged with the protection of the magicians surged forward, led by Camara Tal, who was personally defending the safety of her husband, and Darax, who had been given command of the Elementals by Binter, got word of what was happening and dispatched Tarrin’s Elementals to assist Kang.  The four Elementals took up position around Kang, as did Haley, who had pulled himself away from the front line when Shaz’Baket had broken through, but had taken up a position near the magicians just in case she attempted to reach them herself.

        With a powerful cry, Kang spurred his Pegasus to rush forward as the Demons broke through the second attempt to contain them, and the others charged with him.  Kang met the Demons head-on, decapitating a vrock an instant after deftly parrying its halberd, and the others fell on the Demons instants later.  Haley, in his hybrid form, drove his rapier through the heart of a hezrou with a deft and subtle thrust, slithering around the swipes of its clawed webbed hands with graceful ease.  Camara Tal and the Elementals met their charge stoically, sword and arms and tendrils striking at the Demonic foes with lightning speed, even as Demon after Demon twisted and fell as Bragg used his axe to chop them down at the knees.  The Demons were halted in their rush forward, forced to fight, and fight they did.  Camara Tal was surrounded by four cambion, her sword and shield blurring in the murky light as she frantically defended herself from their lethal weapons, but the Water Elemental swept all four into the darkness of death with a pair of lashing tentacles of ice, so sharp and striking with such force that it sheared through their heavy metal armor.  Haley danced around the head and haft of a vrock’s poleaxe, stabbing the much taller vulture Demon in the leg, and again in the lower hip, but he yowled in pain when a hezrou slipped up from behind and ripped its claws through his back.  The Were-wolf sagged to one knee as Bragg chopped down the attacker, then the Earth Elemental grabbed hold of him and dragged him backwards, towards the magicians, towards safety.  The Dura converged on the Demons again to support their generals, and the charge of the Demons was slowed, and then halted, with Kang, Bragg, Camara Tal, and Tarrin’s Elementals holding them at bay.  They only had to hold them long enough for the magicians to take notice of the assault and intercept them, and that was exactly what they did.  Phandebrass’ voice was audible over the din of the battle and the pounding rain, and when he completed his spell, dozens of small, fiery little missles issued forth from his hands and streaked across the battlefield.  They weaved and bobbed and danced around anything in their path, leaving glowing trails behind them, and then they slammed home into the Demons, again and again and again, each missle evading all others and unerringly striking that one target it had been created to attack.  Those missles burned through armor, burned through hide, burned through feathers and drove deep into flesh, causing the Demons to squeal or squawk or scream in intense pain…for they had no intrinsic defense or immunity from the white-haired Wizard’s magical missles.  Phandebrass’ magical attack withered the Demonic combatants to but a handful that were still mobile enough to fight, and those few were quickly swarmed over by the Dura, Amazon, and Elementals.

        The pounding rain’s drum on the ground and on armor was split by a screeching cry, which caused all eyes to look upon it.  The shadow dragon appeared over the valley wall, hard to see in the rain, but those glowing red eyes did not give doubt as to what it was.  It rose into the air and turned, then it became apparent that it was coming towards the armies.  It was apparent even from that distance that the creature was seriously wounded, its wings torn and tattered, blood visible along its night-colored scales, but it was obviously strong enough to fly, and it flew with a steady deliberance, a seeming nonchalance, that made it seem that it was confident that the skies belonged to it and to it alone.  It screeched again, a cry of triumph, as it turned to approach the armies below, silhouetted briefly by a brilliant cascade of lightning.

        And the blue dragon was nowhere to be seen.

        Now you will taste defeat! Shaz’Baket’s telepathic communication boomed from her, audible to all around her as she rejoiced her impending victory.  Your god has failed you, mortals, and now your souls belong to me!

 

        “Could it be?” Kimmie asked in fearful disbelief between spells, as she dug a single emerald from the pouch at her belt, preparing to cast another spell.  They had been locked in magical combat with the enslaved Wizards of their enemies for long moments, until Neh had grown tired of it and had used one of her rarest spells to cause a prism of colors to erupt around the magicians of the Duran forces, a spell that suddenly caused every spell cast at them to reflect back upon the caster.  The spell only lasted for a few seconds, and sent Neh spiralling into unconsciousness, but it was enough, for Phandebrass struck at that same instant, again casting the Meteor Strike spell to virtually vaporize the opposition, leaving nothing behind but a smoking crater.

        After they were dispatched, the magicians found themselves facing a line that was about to buckle all up and down its length, and not just that one area to the side where the Demoness had punched through.  They were forced to not help Tsukatta and the others, but use their magic all along the rest of the line to help prevent it from shattering and having the forces of the One completely overwhelm their entire line.  They had to have faith that Binter, Sisska, Tsukatta, Ulger, Azakar, and Var and Denai could bolster the others and hold the breach against that sudden onslaught of Demonic adversaries, for all of their magic had to be devoted to keeping the Duran lines from folding.  That one moment where Phandebrass had turned his attention to the Demons attacking from the opposite direction caused the Duran lines on the west side to sag visibly, as the endless numbers of the humans pressed in on the Dura and pushed them back.  The only place where the line was strong, where they did not buckle, did not fall back, was where Darax stood, the Axe of the Dwarven King flashing in the dim light and the flashes of lightning, chanting one of the most ancient war songs of his people as the human forces that crashed against him were sent crumpling to the earth with every swing of his axe.  Other Dwarves began chanting that song as well, taking strength and courage from their young king as he stood at the very center of the line, willing to be the rock to which his people could anchor themselves…and anchor themselves they did.  The ruler of the Dura was once again assisted by the four magical creations of the winged furry one, the Were-cat Tarrin, who had been left by the Vendari Binter and told to fight at the side of the king, to protect him and do battle with their enemies.  Those four magical creations had returned from helping stave off the Demons’ attack on the magicians, and again fought at the king’s left and right, felling foes with each strike, obeying the commands of the king even as he uttered them between words of his song.  The line bowed in to both sides of them, threatening to break and leave Darax surrounded, but then the magicians of the Shadows used what little magic they had left to assist their allies.  Explosive balls of fire, lethal rains of acid and ice rained down on the forces of the One even as the earth itself rose up to do battle, faltering the charge of the armies of the One, but only for a moment, as the endless sea of humans behind surged ahead to take their places.

        And then the shadow dragon appeared.

        “Do not count Tarrin out so quickly, dear one!” Dolanna shouted as she used up the very last of her reserves of Sorcery, incinerating a large group of human soldiers in a withering blast of fire.  She then drew a small dagger from her belt, her utility dagger, meaning to join in hand to hand combat if it was necessary.  She knew, they all knew, that there was no retreat from this battle.  It was victory or death.

        Kimmie chanted another spell, throwing her emerald to the ground, and the earth before the Dwarven king suddenly became as glass, the earth turned to crystal, crystal that was both slicker than wet ice and whose every edge along the contours of the shattered landscape was razor sharp.  Humans slipped and fell on that crystal, slid forwards or backwards up the inclines, and were sheared to the bone by the lethal edges along the changes in gradiant.

        “I never do, friend, but this doesn’t look good!” Kimmie called urgently as she took up her last spell component, a cat’s eye agate, as the shadow dragon landed on the valley wall on the far side of where Shaz’Baket had breached the lines, south of where the other Demons had erupted from the valley wall and had tried to reach the magicians.  It screeched once again, an eerie cry that made all the hair on Kimmie’s neck stand straight out, and it was a horrifying sight.  Its scales blended in with the shadows of the rain, making its form hard to see, but the bloody wounds on its flanks and in its wings were more than visible, as were the glowing red eyes, eyes that froze Kimmie’s blood, eyes that transfixed the entire battle below.  Human, Dura, even Vendari and Selani and Demon alike all looked up at the ominous creature as it screeched that high-pitched keen, and it drew in its breath meaningfully.  Dolanna put her hand up in reflex as every magician who still had any magic left began casting their spells to protect themselves.  There was a sudden collective shout from both armies, a shout of fear from the Dura and their allies, a shout of victory from the armies of the One.

        But there was one more voice that rose over that, a voice that cause Dolanna to look in that direction.  It was a female voice, and the diminutive Sorceress saw that it belonged to the Demoness, Shaz’Baket.  She was staring at the shadow dragon in shock, and that voice cried out over the din a single word.

        “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

        The shadow dragon’s neck lanced forward, and it unleashed its breath weapon, a blast of what could only be called liquid darkness, an enveloping cloud of clinging shadow that blasted forth.  It did not blast down upon the Dura.

        It blasted down upon the humans.

        That cloud of inky blackness billowed forth over the armies of the One, far enough away from the Dura that its edges did not touch them, spreading out and sucking the very warmth out of any flesh it touched, clinging to them, invading them, draining away their warmth and their strength.  Within the cloud, the forces of the One shrieked in mindless agony, the agony of the cold of the grave, of Death Himself coming for them, and then they died in mid-scream, their very souls frozen within them and falling away into the chasm of eternity.

        Dolanna laughed with great delight.  “Never count him out, dear one!” she cried exultantly.  “That dragon is Tarrin!”

 

        It was indeed Tarrin.  The shadow dragon had been a dangerous and competent adversary, but it was not capable of defeating a creature like Tarrin, who had the ability to change, and could rely on tremendous reserves of hidden power.  Tarrin had chased it down into that cloud of shadow it created to provide it with what it needed to fight Tarrin, had faced it in its own element by changing into one of its own kind.  Shadow dragon had fought shadow dragon in that valley, within the shadows, even in that alternate reality which was the Shadow Plane.  The use of the shadow dragon’s own form had nullified its greatest advantage, that lethal breath weapon.  Dragons were immune to the effects of their own breath weapons.

        Robbed of its ability to use stealth and its lethal breath weapon, the shadow dragon had turned to face him head on, with claws and magic.  This shadow dragon was old, intelligent, and it—no, she, it was a she—was well versed in the arts of arcane Wizard magic.  They had battled one another with teeth and claws, with spells of Wizard magic, and with cunning and guile.  Their battle had begun in the mortal realm, but had ranged into the realm of Shadow, a quasi-state of existence that paralleled the real world, existing within it and apart from it at the same time.  As a shadow dragon, Tarrin had instinctual knowledge of this place and how it operated, so he had no trouble battling the opponent within this realm.  She had moved to that state of existence where her greater experience would be an advantage, and it had been to her.  Though he had knowledge of that dark, mysterious place through his dragon blood, she had been there many times and knew the nuances of the place better than he.  It was there that they had battled, resorting to teeth and claws after both had used spells of protection to stop their adversary from using magic against them, a type of combat that Tarrin was much better at than the female.  He had beaten her, but had not killed her.  By becoming a shadow dragon, facing the female in her own form, she had surrendered to him in an ancient rite of her breed rather than face death in his jaws.

        By rote and custom of shadow dragon society, Tarrin had earned a single service from his vanquished foe.  Tarrin exacted that service from her by forcing her to swear never to work with the Demons again under any circumstance, an oath that would force her to move her lair from the Abyss and to a new location.  He had released her and returned to the physical world after that to come and lay a nasty shock on the armies of Shaz’Baket.  Demons could see him for what he was no matter what shape he wore, but that was a function of sight, and distance and the heavy rain would conceal his true nature from them long enough to get into position to do something.

        Goddess, he would go to his grave with the sweet memory of the look on that bitch Shaz’Baket’s face when she looked up at him and saw the truth.

        As the dark cloud of Tarrin’s breath weapon evaporated, the carnage it left behind was absolutely ghastly.  Hundreds and hundreds of the soldiers of the One lay on the tortured ground, their skin a ghostly white, limbs frozen in erratic postures as they clawed at the air itself in their death throes, and then the cold of the darkness locked their corpses into that position.  The mad charge of the human armies, which had been absolutely unstoppable, suddenly began to waver, and then it ceased.  Those who had been close to that breath weapon had turned to flee in panic, and even more began to turn and flee when they saw the shadow dragon, saw it attack its own forces, saw that one of their most powerful allies had turned against them.  Demon or no Demon, competence or no competence, those Demons were not there now to protect the human forces from its own dragon, and the awesome size and power of the dragon and the fear it inspired had done its work on the humans who beheld it and realized that they now had to fight it.  More and more humans turned back into the press of their own forces, causing the entire charge to get jumbled up within itself, halting the charge as those men behind who had not seen the attack and did not know what was going on were tangled up with the ones who knew the truth, those struck with the terrified panic that a dragon could instill in a biped, a panic so powerful that it gave those men stricken with it the frenzied strength to push against the charge of their own army.

        That massive head whipped around, neck extending it over the magicians on their raised platform, and those glowing red eyes glared balefully directly at Shaz’Baket.  Now you are mine, bitch, his thought issued from within his mind, using another innate ability of a shadow dragon, the ability to project thought.  It wasn’t true telepathy in the manner of the Demons, for a shadow dragon could only make their thoughts heard, not hear the thoughts of others in return.  Those eyes closed, and the dragon’s form seemed to waver in the darkness and the rain, until it was apparent that it was no longer there.  But the Demons all turned their heads in unison, turning to look over their own shoulders, as those glowing red eyes appeared on the side of the hill directly over them.  Those eyes took in the entire sight, and burned with sudden rage when they saw the form of Azakar laying on the ground, blood smearing a hole in the side of his breastplate, his eyes closed and his body inert.  He gave out a screeching howl of outrage, fury, and loss, and those eyes suddenly burned like coals stoking the eternal fires of the Nine Hells.  The look that it put down on the Demons was enough to make a Demon, even a mighty balor, feel fear.

        And to fear was to flee.  All of the survivors except Shaz’Baket took hold of the Xorn which lurked by the valley wall, and demanded that they take them back into the earth, out of the reach of the deadly creature above.  The Xorn obeyed, merging with the earth and rock and carrying the Demons away, drawing them into the earth.  But that was not far enough to escape Tarrin’s wrath.  A single paw in the hillside was all the touch he needed as he wove a spell of sorcery into the Earth, weaves of Earth and Divine, infusing them into the earth and rock, weaving it, then snapping it down and releasing it.  The spell picked up those barrels of gunpowder and pulled them through the earth swiftly, so swiftly that it created a furrow in the ground, until they were directly before the Xorn and their Demonic passengers.  They paused just a second when they sensed the objects, and that turned out to be fatal.  Tarrin touched those kegs with his power and caused them to explode, sending a muffled WHOOMPH through the air and a shudder in the ground around them.  The shockwave shattered the rock bodies of the Xorn, killing them, and their destruction caused those Demons who had been relying on their power to become fused with the earth and rock through which they had been moving, killing them instantly.

        And there was only the marilith left.  She glared up at Tarrin with defiance, not fear, her six bloody weapons still in her six hands.  Those six arms then moved with perfect harmony, causing her to strike the bracers adorning the wrists of her two highest arms together, which triggered a magical effect.  A pool of magical energy appeared beneath her snake-like lower body, and gravity asserted itself upon her, causing her to fall through the magical hole and out of sight.

        Tarrin sensed her some distance away, behind her armies.  She was beyond the Ward that prevented teleportation, but she did not flee, she did not teleport away.  Despite losing her shadow dragon, despite losing her Wizards, despite losing the rest of her Demons, she was not fleeing, she was not giving up.  She obviously thought she still had a weapon at her disposal capable of countering Tarrin’s power—

        His power.  Of course!  She was trying to make him use his divine power, the one thing he had come into this battle determined not to do!  She was trying to make him use it, so she could tell the Demon Lord how strong he was, how much he’d healed!  She hadn’t retreated because she had not succeeded in that mission!  She would remain on the field, keep coming at him until she forced him to use his power, so the Demon Lord could see how strong he was!

        Her presence on the battlefield suddenly made perfect sense.  She wasn’t here to destroy the Dura, she wasn’t here to lead the armies of the One…she was here to test Tarrin’s power.  The Demon Lord didn’t care about the human soldiers, because they were all going to die anyway once he killed the One and started the destruction of Pyrosia.  He was probably willing to sacrifice a few Demons to the cause as long as it forced Tarrin to reveal his power, to let the Demon Lord see how strong he was.

        Actually, once he thought about it, maybe she had completed her mission.  Tarrin had not used his divine powers outside of his ability to shapeshift.  He had used Sorcery, Wizardry, and had taken the form of the shadow dragon to gain access to its powers and use it to surprise Shaz’Baket.  He had beaten her without having to fall back on that power, and now she had nothing left dangerous enough to make him reveal that power to her.  She could construe his actions to mean that either he did not have that power and simply managed to fight it out and win with what power he had, or she hadn’t worked hard enough to force him into a situation where he was required to use it.

        What she would do next would tell him which conclusion she made.

        He looked down, and saw Ulger and Sisska attending to Azakar.  The wound was deep, almost all the way through him, but he was still alive.  They quickly assessed the situation, then Sisska took him up in her powerful arms and carried him off the field.  He looked past them, to the Dwarven army, and saw that Kang and Bragg were forming them up to charge the disorganized front ranks of the enemy.  He saw immediately what they intended, and saw that it was a dangerous gamble.  The humans still outnumbered them five to one, and if they were so packed into the valley that those in the front literally had nowhere to go.  They’d fight because they had no choice, not with the reserves still trying to push into the valley from behind.  What they needed was something so terrifying, so powerful, that it would panic the entire army and allow the Dura to charge the army while it was trying to flee.  Tarrin’s dragon form certainly would fill that role.  After he got them panicked, he could simply fly over them and cut them off from behind, then the Dura could use Tarrin as a chopping block to grind them into dogmeat.  Tarrin had to move quickly to wipe out the armies of the One, to keep Shaz’Baket from coming up with some plan that would force him to reveal his power, if she intended to try again.

        “We will see to him, Tarrin,” Binter called.  “He honored himself this day, and even now Sisska seeks out the Priests of the Dura so they can use enough healing magic to sustain him until Miranda can make him well.  You have much left to do.  Do not dawdle here when you are needed elsewhere, it is a stain on your honor.”

        Tarrin nodded.  If Binter said it was going to happen, it was going to happen.  Take good care of him, he’s as much family to me as you are.  I’ll go make sure they don’t try to hurt him again.

        “Fight with honor,” Binter said, saluting him with his bloody warhammer, then he rushed off to assist his mate.

        With a furious screech, the shadow dragon which was Tarrin Kael flared his battle-torn wings and launched into the air, soaring over the armies of the Dura and landing quickly in the no-man’s land between the Dwarves and the human army, a void created with his own breath weapon.  His massive paws crushed the cold bodies of the dead as he landed between the two armies, and he snapped out his wings and screeched a keening cry of challenge at the armies of the One, a high-pitched cry that made everyone who heard it cringe.  Your Demon bitch of a general has nothing left to save you from me! he sent his thought out towards them, even as he started drawing in his breath, even as a dark, ominous mist began to billow out from between his scales, as Tarrin called on the shadow dragon’s innate ability to create deep shadow, a move that would put him into shadow and give him the ability to use some of his other powers, as well as conceal the actions of the Dwarven army behind him.  Now join the ones I stand upon in the cold of death!

        A jagged flash of lightning illuminated the shadow dragon in brilliant light for an instant, just as it snapped its head forward, just as the first tendrils of its inky breath weapon began to billow from its mouth.  It was an image of unmitigated terror for those humans before it, those humans who had nowhere to go, those who were looking into the maw of Death.  But the instant passed, and a powerful jet of inky blackness blasted forth from the dragon’s maw, quickly billowing out into a fast-moving cloud of soul-numbing, strength-sapping cold.  The inky cloud enveloped another large swath of the armies of the One, and all whom it touched had the very strength sucked out of them by the icy cold of shadow, had the warmth of body and soul consumed by the hunger of the darkness and the cold.  Everyone within the cloud of darkness shrieked in mindless agony, and then those shrieks ended with horrid finality as those who screamed died before they could run out of breath.

        Tarrin realized as the cloud evaporated, and as the rain finally began to stop, that he had stumbled across what was probably the best shape he could have used to inspire terror.  Dragons could create fear and panic because of their size, but there was just something about a shadow dragon that took it one step further.  Golds and blues and reds looked both frightening and majestic.  A shadow dragon looked frightening and evil…and that was a much more effective combination when one wanted to incite terror.

        The results certainly could not be disputed.  The humans in the armor began to scream in fear and horror, and more and more began to turn and push against those trying to move forward, who themselves stopped and turned to flee as Tarrin began ambling forward on his huge paws, as his form shed off dark shadows as he moved, concealing that behind him and partially hiding his form, letting their imaginations create much more terror than seeing him completely ever could have.  The officers in that jumbled mass had tried to shout orders at first, but they too lost their nerve and turned to flee when they got a good look at the windrows of the dead, all slaughtered by a single attack, a carpet of white-skinned corpses locked in hideously agonized positions, as if they were frozen in the instant of the most horribly painful event in their lives.  A carpet upon which the dragon tread with a terrifying, measured, almost stately pace forward, letting them look at him, letting them see him coming, letting them see the dead and the shadowy mist emanating from his form, letting them associate that dark cloud with the killing breath weapon, even though it was actually nothing but harmless shadow.  To fall into that dark shadow would mean death, and that shadow advanced on them.

        One more teeth-jarring draconic shriek just about did it.  Tarrin flared out his wings and keened that high-pitched cry one more time, which caused the shadow-creating mist around him billow out to surround him as it emanated from his wings.  The entire advancing army saw that because he was now standing atop the rampart, was easily visible for everyone in the valley for he stood upon the highest point on the valley floor.  They saw it, and even those who didn’t yet know about what he could do remembered his voice in their head promising the cold of death, and as they saw him and heard his shrieking keen, they were stricken by terror.  Those who had witnessed the carnage of his breath weapon were gripped by total and utter panic, and that caused the army to stop its forward advance.  The reserves stopped trying to come forward, and then, as the shadow dragon sucked in its breath and started forward with a fast gait, obviously moving to attack the human army, they turned and fled.  Those closest to him were so driven by panic that they trampled men under them, tried to climb over the backs of those in front, even used their weapons to slaughter the men that stood between them and safety.

        Tarrin thrust himself into the air even as Kang called for the Dura to charge, getting out of their way.  He meant to fly over the army and attack it from behind, but he spied Shaz’Baket atop a small hill south of the valley, and instead changed course to intercept her, to kill her before she could cook up something else.  He traversed that distance quickly, landed at the base of the hill and immediately started charging up it, his red eyes glowing so brightly they actually stained the rest of his face and the top of his muzzle with reddish light.    But he skidded to a stop when she presented a new weapon, an ornate two-handed sword with runes that were etched into the blade, runes that glowed with a blue light, and even from that distance he could sense the power of that weapon.  It was an Artifact of some kind, probably a lost relic from another world and another time, but this artifact’s primary power dealt with one thing and one thing only, a power he could almost feel trying to press against him.

        That sword killed dragons.

        I see you’ve lost little of your ability to surprise, Shaz’Baket remarked with strange calm, and as you can see, neither have I.  Want to try yourself against this, Tarrin Kael?

        Tarrin’s dragon body dissolved into flame, and then it burst forth in all directions and evaporated, leaving behind the armored form of Tarrin’s natural shape.  He dropped to the ground lightly, holding his burning sword low in one hand, his wings flared out behind him.  “Bring it on,” he hissed, his eyes exploding from within with that unholy greenish aura, which illuminated the entire visor from within.

        Shaz’Baket’s face took on a surprised look, but that surprise faded into resentment as Tarrin’s armored feet left the ground, and he lanced forward with his sword in both paws, the blade trailing angry red fire as he charged at the Demoness.  She twisted around herself quickly, coiling her body to receive his charge, presenting her five weapons and waiting for him to reach her.  Her look turned to surprise when Tarrin’s wings splintered into uncountable numbers of whip-like tendrils that flared out behind him like a giant fan, promising swift and lethal retaliation if she tried to teleport out of his path and appear anywhere near him, forcing her to either meet his charge or flee.

        She met his charge, much to his surprise.  Her runed two handed sword locked with his burning weapon confidently, and three swords and an axe also clashed with that fiery blade as Shaz’Baket stood against his high-velocity assault, her snake body sliding across the muddy ground as four weapons pushed against one.  Tarrin’s helmeted head pressed down, until the dragon-snout protrusion over his head was over the Demoness’ bangs, as his entire visor glowed from within with the green aura of his fury and glared down upon her with vengeful spite.  That face vanished instantly, however, when the numerous whips that had once been Tarrin’s wings lashed forth from behind him, trying to carve her into tiny pieces, coming at her with so many different weapons that she had absolutely no way to defend herself.

        He stumbled forward when her opposing force vanished, as she teleported away, and his wings reformed into their normal state even as he turned towards the sound of her voice.  Veshak! she shouted, thrusting one of her arms at him.  The ornate steel cuff on her wrist suddenly glowed with bright white light, and a jagged bolt of lightning lashed out at him.  Tarrin thrust his sword out flat first and braced the blade against his other paw just as the lightning reached him.  It struck the fire of his blade and magic attacked magic, as the fire of the sword, the magic of his divine nature, turned that magical spell aside, causing the bolt to split into two and arc to either side of him.

        Voshen sumdachera krethandi! Tarrin retaliated, making a single gesture with his free paw, then causing a handful of sparkling dust to appear in his paw by summoning it from the elsewhere.  He threw that dust into the air, and it glittered in the light of the sun as it started peeking through breaks in the clouds.  One of those sunbeams illuminated Tarrin for a moment, just as the dust was released, creating a dancing whirlwind of sparkling magic to surround his armored body.  The whirlwind became a sphere, whose boundaries were visible for the briefest of moments before winking out, a sphere that completely covered Tarrin’s armored form.

        “If you want to fight, bitch, let’s fight,” he growled in a cold, ominously calm tone, raising his burning sword and pointing its tip at her.

        Shaz’Baket gave him an eerie, malicious smile.  Oh, no, Were-cat, I won’t fall into that trap.  I know fully well you can use your divine power inside that shell.

        “That’s too bad, because now the only way to kill me is to come inside.  Come in and play, bitch,” Tarrin hissed, taking his sword in both paws and holding it low before him, snapping out his wings in an instinctive need to display threat.

        He charged forward with a mindless scream of utter hate before she could decide, and slammed into the Demoness with his sword already slashing.  Shaz’Baket parried a savage series of brutally powerful chops, as the Were-cat hacked wildly at his foe, his form losing its usual fighting edge as he seemed to fighting to keep in control of himself.  He left himself open with every blow, but the raw power behind them pushed the Demoness out of position and prevented her from retaliating.  The weapons that intercepted his sword were slammed back, jarred aside, as she strove to match the inhuman strength the Were-cat was unleashing into every blow, using both paws on his sword to swing as hard as he possibly could.  She caught his sword as he delivered a vicous overhanded chop between a sword and axe and pinioned it to the side, then tried to stab him in the exposed flank.  Her serrated sword bounced off his armor, but the axe she slammed into his lower back managed to drive through, cleaving a rend in the back of his armor.  The half-moon blade that pulled away threw an arcing trail of blood along its path.  The Were-cat did not even flinch, totally ignoring the injury she had inflicted as he used his size and strength to push her off his weapon, throwing her to the side, and she had to slither low and almost dive aside as he tried to chop her humanoid torso right off her snake body.  He put so much into it that he spun around with the weapon, and she lunged in as she saw his exposed back, only pausing to ensure that he wasn’t going to try to strike at her with his wings.  But when he finished coming around, she realized too late that that glint she saw in the sunlight was the shinguard of his armor, and that his armor-shod foot was whistling through the air and screaming right towards her head.  She slithered backwards just as it almost ripped her jaw off, then parried aside the flaming sword as it came around after his foot.  She lunged forward and began a complicated series of slashes and thrusts with her four one-handed weapons, forcing the Were-cat into a defensive posture, then knocked his sword high with her two-handed weapon and again buried her axe in his side, again drawing blood as it pulled free of the rend in his armor, but a dozen angry spikes of solid fire erupted from the inner slope of his wing as she pulled back her axe.  She managed to slide aside of most of them, but one of them managed to impale itself through the upper slope of her breast…a flesh wound, minor, but having him impale her in a sensitive area like that made it sting like all fury.  Those spikes became whips, and they suddenly flailed at her like an angry displacer beast.  She used her weapons and her mobility coolly and efficiently, presenting edges to those whips to cut them as they tried to lash at her, but her weapons could not shear through the solid fire.  The edges did seem to draw blood in some way, for the Were-cat hissed and retracted those whips quickly after they had met her blades.  He tried to take her head off with a wide slash, but she ducked under it, then ducked again when he tried with a backswing, but she ducked right into his foot.  It slammed into her cheek and snapped her head aside, but she had the presence of mind to hook that foot with the blade of her axe and yank, dragging him off his feet, then sweep up and over him.  She quickly reversed her two handed sword and tried to impale him, pin him to the ground, but the Were-cat’s long and flexible leg whipped up and struck her in the wrists, preventing her from delivering that blow.  Her three swords slashed several deep furrows in the armor of his legs and hips but did not penetrate, but a sudden lancing pain on her back, just below where the scales of her snake body began, which made her cry out and backpedal furiously, giving the Were-cat enough room to get up.  She caught a flash of blue, and then felt the pain again in her shoulder, then whirled and found herself looking at an exceedingly tiny little female with blue skin and chitinous, multicolored wings, holding what looked like a rapier, but really looked like a sharpened steel knitting needle…stained with her black blood.

        “About time we got rid of this pain in our butts, Tarrin!” the Faerie, Sarraya, said impudently, grinning at the Demoness.  She looked past Shaz’Baket meaningfully, which made the Demoness reflexively teleport ten spans behind herself and a little to the right.

        A good thing too, for another figure appeared, that of a small gold winged lizard.  It unleashed a blast of some kind of greenish gas right where her head would have been, but then flew through its own attack and landed on the Were-cat’s shoulder, hissing threatening in her direction.

        The Faerie held up her rapier and waved it in circles, then pointed it at the Demoness.  “Let’s get ‘er!” she said with exuberance, and she streaked forward with an angry buzzing of her wings.

        The Were-cat rushed forward as the gold drake jumped from his shoulder and flew out wide, and the Faerie flew out wide to the opposite side.  The two little ones were nothing but an annoyance, but if they could distract her at the right time, it would give the Were-cat the opportunity to take her head off…or seperate her human half from her snake half, so she afforded both of them enough attention to prevent that.  She parried a savage series of heavy blows from the Were-cat, then smacked the Faerie away with an elbow, unable to bring her axe to bear against her at that angle, then took a slash at the agile drake as it tried to get in her face and deliver its breath weapon at point blank range.  She parried another blow, then cried out in surprise when her entire field of vision was covered in fire!  The little drake had breathed fire from a distance and directed it right at her head!  The fire could do her no harm, but it made her lose sight of that dangerous Were-cat for an instant…and that would be long enough for him to kill her!

        She teleported again, this time twenty spans to the left, oriented so she would be facing him, and found herself looking eye to eye with a Water Elemental!

        She just barely managed to parry aside two strikes at her with jagged lances of ice that were attached to the creature’s amorphous form, then sheared two swords and the two-handed weapon through its liquid body.  The weapons could do no harm, but the magic imbued into them could.  The slashes caused anomolies along the creature’s watery skin, jagged furrows that marked the injury those weapons had done to the integrity of its form.  She tried to stab it through with her two-handed sword, but its amorphous body simply split in two and caused the weapon to pass through the void harmlessly.  The Demoness backed away from the Water Elemental as the Were-cat reached her once more, and she found herself furiously working to keep his burning sword and the icy spears of the Elemental away from her, even as she kept her mind on the locations of both the Faerie and the drake.  The Water Elemental was very careful not to get too close to the Were-cat, that telepathic communion they shared allowing him to guide its movements to keep it from crossing into the anti-magic shell and being disrupted.  Shaz’Baket’s only area of protection from them both was literally breast to breastplate with the Were-cat, keeping herself completely inside his anti-magic shell…so long as she exploited that shell, she was protected from the Elemental.  Tarrin and the Demoness fought face to face for a long moment, inside the sweep of his burning sword and her runed sword, but not inside the reach of her swords and axe, or his arms and legs.  The Were-cat fell back on his old style of parrying with the heavy metal of his forearm greaves, using them as shields against her swords, trying to back up to get both room to use his burning sword and to push her out of his shell and allow the Elemental to attack, but she kept as close to him as possible, used his own shell to protect herself against his Elemental.

        She enacted one of her base magical powers while outside of the anti-magic shell, as the Were-cat backed off quickly to give his Elemental a chance to strike at her, creating a huge cloud of lethal, poisonous gas to form around her body.  The cloud vanished as soon as it touched the anti-magic shell, but it did force the Faerie to retreat with a squeak of surprise, coughing and gagging uncontrollably as she breathed in some of the fumes before managing to get out of it.  To her surprise, though, the drake charged right through it, over the Were-cat’s head, and right into her face!  She cried out in pain with sharp little teeth and sharp little claws savaged her, drawing black blood, almost ripping out one eye, forcing her to teleport away one more time because she had lost sight of the Were-cat.  She was right over the Faerie, who was on the ground on her hands and knees, coughing and vomiting, and she could not resist this opportunity.  She raised her axe and prepared to cut that annoying bug in half, right between her wings—

        —but the ground literally swallowed the sprite!  Her form sank into the earth so quickly it made her flinch, and she quickly realized that the Earth Elemental had also reached the battle, for it had pulled the Faerie into the ground to save her from death!  The Water Elemental charged at her again, but this time she had enough separation and the presence of mind to respond.  She enacted another of her base powers, disrupting the matrix of magical energy of the Water Elemental’s form.

        The attack worked.  It unravelled the magic holding the body together and holding the spirit of the creature in the material plane.  With a wet splash of all the water of its form falling to the soggy earth, the Water Elemental was dispelled, and was taken out of the battle.

        She paid for it.  She howled in pain when a crossbow quarrel buried itself to the vanes in her left shoulder, fired from almost directly above.  She looked up and saw that damned Aeradalla already halfway done reloading her deadly crossbow, a foot on the brace and pulling in a weird jerk that almost made her somersault in the air, and before she was righted she already had the next quarrel down in the crossbow.

        Shaz’Baket turned her heard curiously, and Tarrin himself thought he heard, just on the edges of his consciousness, a voice that dripped with a dark evil so powerful that it made Tarrin’s soul shiver to listen to it.  Enough.  I have seen all I need to see.  Return.

        Shaz’Baket immediately vanished, reappearing some thousand spans away, still within his sight but too far away to get to her before she could vanish once again.  Consider yourself lucky, Were-cat, she sneered through her telepathic gift, one of her hands on her injured shoulder.  My Master calls to me, and I obey.  Had I been allowed to finish our fight, you’d be laying dead on the ground.

        Paint your picture however it makes you happiest to avoid the truth, witch, he countered.  The simple fact is, if I get my paws on you I’ll rip you in half, and you know it.  Even without my divine power, you are no match for me, and you know it.  You just don’t want to fight me, because you know you’ll lose.  Run away, little girl, run back to your master and tell him how miserably you failed.

        Oh, I haven’t failed, she purred in his mind.  In fact, I have succeeded in my mission, succeeded more than you will ever know.  The Dura mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, and we both know it.  I was here for an entirely different reason, Were-cat, and I have performed my task.  We’ll see one another one more time, Tarrin Kael.  Know that that will be the last day that you see.

        And then she vanished once more, and Tarrin sensed that she was far and away from him.

        She had fled.

        Tarrin lowered his sword, causing the helmet to pull back and vanish, freeing his ears and his braid.  His eyes still glowed green, but that glow faded away…and he smiled.

        Of course.  She was here to assess his condition, to force him to use his divine power.  That was what this entire battle was about.  She had brought a vastly superior army, had brought Demons, then had deployed them and used them specifically to try to make Tarrin use his power.  Everything, even that little personal confrontation at the end, it was all just to make him reveal his power…and it had failed.  Faced with one of his most hated foes, one that could incite rage in him just with her presence, he had not resorted to his divine power and blasted her to the moon with it. He had tried to fight her weapon to weapon…and he would bet his braid that they had assumed that since he hadn’t used that power, that meant that he couldn’t.  Tarrin was never one to hold back when he was angry.  He was infamous for his displays of destructive force when in a fury.

        Tarrin smiled, because he had managed to get through this without showing that power.  Shaz’Baket was right, this battle hadn’t been about the Dura…but they had still won.  Tarrin could have annihilated the entire army at any time using his divine power, but he did not.  He held back, let the Dura fight this battle, let them see the Demons and fight them and know that they could win, and that confidence would serve them well in future conflicts.

        Ariana landed lightly beside him.  “Is your Elemental—“

        “She’s fine,” he said as the Earth Elemental rose from the ground, cradling Sarraya in its clublike hands.  She was still coughing, and her complexion looked a little peakid, but she gave him a weak smile.  “She can’t be hurt in this world in any way. The Demoness just dispelled her and sent her back to her home.”  Sarraya gave him a thumb up, then she flopped back down into the Elemental’s hand.  Fireflash landed on his shoulder and looked down at the Faerie, then nuzzled Tarrin’s neck and cheek affectionately.  Tarrin banished his anti-magic shell with but a thought, ending it, then chanted a soft spell, a Priest spell, and felt that strange surge and wild rush flow through him as power was called from the immortal soul within and channelled into the physical world.  The spell was a simple one, one any acolyte was taught, a spell that purged venoms and toxins from the system of the recipient.  His finger began to glow with a soft, gentle light, and he touched it to Sarraya’s stomach lightly.  Her peakid complexion faded almost immediately, and she took a deep, cleansing breath.  “Your arrival was timely.”

        “I saw what was going on.  I was just waiting for a clean shot,” she said with a smile, shouldering her crossbow.

        Tarrin looked towards the valley, where the battle still raged between the Dura and the forces of the One, who sought to try to salvage this disaster and use their superior numbers to win.  “I guess we’d better go clean that up,” Tarrin grunted.

        “You like my sword, Tarrin?” Sarraya asked, recovering from her poisoning completely.  She stood up in the Elemental’s hand and showed it to him.  “A Dwarf made it for me!  Isn’t it nice?”

        “You enjoyed stabbing her in the butt, didn’t you?” Tarrin asked her, which made Sarraya howl with  laughter.

        “You bet I did!” she agreed.

        “Ariana, take Sarraya back to the Iron Mountain.  She needs to rest a little while, and then she’ll be fine.  Fireflash, go with her.  You did what you needed to do, little one.  I’m proud of you, but I’d like you to get somewhere safe now.  You can return home, my friend,” he told the Earth Elemental.  “I won’t need your service anymore, but if you’d like to stay, you’re more than welcome to do so.”

        It told him quite austerely that it would be happy to remain.

        “Alright then,” he said, causing his armor to again become liquid, moldable.  It retreated away from him like water, flowing back down to his wrists, until they were again the black metal bracers everyone was used to seeing.  “Let’s go finish this.”

        Fireflash jumped from his shoulder as the Were-cat launched into the air, his body dissolving into flame.  That flame grew, expanded, twisted and stretched until it was in the shape of a massive, mighty dragon. The flames flared brightly for a moment, and then blew away, leaving behind flesh and blood and bone.  The ominous, red-eyed, night-scaled shadow dragon became visible behind that evaporating flame, all of its wounds gone, whole and well as its powerful wings thrust it through the air.  It gave out that keening, high-pitched cry, a cry that generated fear in those who heard it as it soared low to the ground, wings blasting powerful gusts of air as they carried it towards the raging battle being fought in the mouth of the valley between the forces of the One and the forces of the Dura.

        That battle that would end in just a few moments, just as soon as he got there and eradicated the reserves, killed any human that wasn’t so close to the front lines that he couldn’t risk using his deadly strength-draining breath weapon.

        This battle was over, and the Dura had won.

        This battle was over, and Tarrin had won.