BECMI Chapter 278 – Pearls of Wisdom
Charred-Eye listened as he sat there.
Listened as dragons shouted that humanoid apelings were in the Dragonfangs, raiding lairs and cleaning out hoards, and killing any dragons who got in their way. Listened as dragons returned slowly from their raid, one by one in haggard fashion, their words trying not to show fear as the tales echoed of magic and weapons, fire and lightning, that had shot them out of the sky and brought them down to the ground. Weapons that had easily torn apart the youngest dragons, and more powerful weapons had obviously been awaiting the greater ones who had thought themselves ready for the devices that had come down from some very, very old tales of a human nation that had once risen to great heights, and then perished in the flames of their own arrogance and carelessness.
A human nation that had once put dragons in their place without any difficulty whatsoever if the legends were true, and also had killed two of the Dragon Rulers of that age who had sought to interfere with them. Something about other-worlders and fantastic weapons of steel and crystal and light...
His great nation of dragons, all bowing to him, submitting before his might, was shattered and broken. Of the survivors, many would now flee the area before the power of the arriving humanoids.
He, he could not flee.
“Was this to your satisfaction, my Ruler?” he asked bitterly into the silence, knowing She was listening.
There were sparkles in the air, like particles of the clouds condensing into a greater form. Helplessly, he bowed his head, having not the strength or power to defy Pearl the Moon Dragon as she manifested before him.
She was half again his size, colored in sparkling scales equal parts mists and shadows. Her horns and crest bore signs of all the Chaotic dragons: the flat shield of the Whites and solid ridges growing into the proud spikes and sweeping crests of Reds, the sleek long whipping tail of the Black, the elegant and powerful jaws of the haughty Amber, the deadly proud horn of the Green.
Truthfully, it was more like the dragons over which she ruled had borrowed some small part of her bloodline and it had become the hallmarks of their own, only less grand, less imposing, inferior to her magnificence.
Her dark eyes were aswirl with writhing energies, and he dared not raise his gaze to meet hers without her leave. At his mightiest, he could consider such a move, but not now, wounded as he was and bereft of magic which had barely aided him at all.
“We were misled and used,” Pearl hissed to him, her gaze raking the horrible impact wound on his flank, the holes in his wings, the chips and gouges in his facial scales… including a particularly long ten-foot gash down the side of his neck, visible for the lambent heat pulsing regularly beneath it.
He was certain she was reading his mind, and did not care, truly. His Kingdom was lost, the insult and blow to his pride and power would be impossible to replace. The mortals would be coming for him… and they had already proven they could beat him in his own home.
His days, he knew, were numbered. The Fangs of the Dragons were about to be plucked, and the wiser dragons were already leaving his domain for lands elsewhere. Better barren lands to rule than to perish to more scuttling monkeys thirsting for their gold!
He could feel his power and prestige slipping away by the hour. Soon, he would no longer be a Dragon King at all, merely another Great Wyrm nearing the end of his centuries of life, waiting for death to claim him in either battle or a final dragonsleep into nothingness.
He had not been played. He had obeyed his Ruler. Pearl had been misled, not he! He would not have fought the waves of incoming humans head-on like that, remembering the old stories. Constant small losses of foolish younglings seeking to gain territory or hunt prey was completely acceptable as long as his own kingdom stayed intact, and if his rivals wished to paint him as weak or subservient, he had only to dare them into attacking the humans and watch them fall to prove his point.
Even a full dragonflight, commanded by Pearl Herself, had not proven sufficient.
The Moon Dragon’s long serpentine tail writhed around like a lash of shadows and moonlight, swatting him across the nose. Divine magic sparkled and swirled upon him, Healing magic that poured through his body… and in many cases, did nothing save ease his fatigue, although the holes in his wings flared with subdued light and grew back quickly.
Pearl hissed at this denial of her power, another blow to her prestige and her ego, arching her neck to look down at him as the worst of his injuries refused to be mended.
“Cursed wounds that will not heal to magic, although the power is fading. The restriction will be gone with the dawn,” she judged thoughtfully.
Which meant… if they wished to follow him and kill him, the best time to do so was before the dawn…
There was motion at the top of his cavern.
The female was jumping down, not up, moving far faster than a merely falling object, covering the hundred feet down to Pearl’s head in less than a second. The Ruling Dragon had no time to react as a solid bar of Banefire to Dragons bisected her left eye and tore through the orbital ridges, sending agony slicing into her brain.
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At the same time, on the far side of his cavern, magic crackled and was unleashed.
Two massive screaming Skulls, black as night, but glowing with painful, alien energies it hurt to look at, howled towards the massive bulk of Pearl, escorting what looked to be a writhing array of black thorns, white roses blooming from them even as they grew through the air as fast as lightning. As Pearl was reeling from the explosive wound going down her skull, and the falling woman who’d just taken her stopped abruptly a foot from the ground, golden hair aswirl about her as if alive, the Skulls drove into the side of Pearl and the Thorns wrapped around her six times in an instant, dozens of white roses blossoming in full. Then they discharged crackling white energies in a searing nimbus of arcane magic like nothing Charred-Eye had ever seen directly into the lustrous hide of the Ruler Dragon.
The shrieking Skulls themselves slammed into Pearl’s scales, and even the explosions sounded like howling laughter. Bone cracked and glowing scales flew as the impact shattered her shoulder and nearly bowled her over.
Pearl’s cry of agony rose to a fevered pitch as the energies from the Roses seemed to gather up towards her skull and dance within it in a parade of agony, her Anti-Magic having no effect whatsoever on the mortal magic that should barely be noticeable to her.
Ding! Ting!, rang out proudly, as if he couldn’t identify the woman on sight.
There was an answering thump, like one beat on a great drum. Charred-Eye lifted his head enough to see the very large man with the very large Hammer, said Hammer now surrounded by a force-shadow large enough that the head resembled something a Titan might wield, arcing through a great leap, stepping on the air itself to adjust his course as the head of Pearl swung down and her eye turned to look at him…
THOOM!
Her head was smashed away like a pinata, for all that it was larger than a human wagon. Bone and lustrous scales flew like scattered china, Banefires exploded over the injury, and her remaining eye exploded from the shockwave as her head whipped completely in the other direction.
All of which left her heartscale open and basically right in front of the swordswoman whose Blade looked ten feet long right now.
She moved with improbable, magical speed, and he could not have stopped her if he’d had the desire to, which he did not. She flashed forward, and it seemed to him a giant’s lance had replaced her Sword as she drove forward and buried it to the hilt in Pearl’s chest, cleaving precisely between armor plates a foot thick like butter and driving the ringing Blade hilt-deep into his Ruler’s chest.
Pearl spat and gawked, her remaining eye and the gore in the other socket flaring with Immortal Light. She would not die so easily, and-
The bright emerald beam of light came from the distance again, hit her wounded shoulder, and drove down and in. For a foot around it, matter ceased to exist, and when it exited the far side, a perfect tunnel followed it through Pearl’s body, right where her heart had been, and continued on into the stone floor.
Pearl lunged down at Sama Rantha instinctively, not even thinking, one claw and gaping jaws trying to catch the swordswoman, who actually moved under the crippled shoulder and out of reach with preternatural speed…
Leaving Pearl’s head right below the brute now dropping from above, Hammer upraised once more.
The KRAK of the Hammer’s impact was quite final. Scales and dragonbone split, and Pearl’s head smashed into the ground with crushing force under the boots of the descending Hammer-wielder landing on it Hammer-first.
The shadow of the memory of cutting pain in three of his ribs rose up, and Charred-Eye did not move.
There was only a rippling shudder of death throes, now. The Hammer was embedded a foot into Pearl’s skull, her heart was likely Disintegrated completely. Two Weapons of Dragonslaying and Dragonbane were wrenched out of where they were to turn towards him.
From the distance, a chalk-skinned, raven-haired elfin in a bright scarlet dress he’d heard of, but never seen personally, swept forward at incredible speed, her Staff topped by the Baneskull of a Red Dragon, its eyes blazing with Banefire the color of dragon’s blood as they turned eagerly upon him.
An elfin capable of wounding an Immortal with her magic, hitting with impossible force and pressure as she did so. Pearl should have been able to withstand the Disintegration effect without effort, and yet it had been a true lethal blow, drilling through her heart and removing her ability to fight back.
He would not have believed a Ruling Dragon could die so quickly, and yet he had watched it happen before his eyes!
“King Charred-Eye,” Commander Briggs of Eismoor stated firmly, and though he looked like a primitive, the apeling also carried himself like a king!
“Commander Briggs,”Charred-Eye responded grimly. “You’ve had a busy night, Commander.”
“You had a busy day,” the ogrish brute, more reminiscent of a cave-dwelling ape-man than a terrifying warrior like this, replied affably.
The elfin swept up to the edge of Pearl’s corpse, and tapped it with her Staff.
To his complete astonishment, Charred-Eye watched in amazement as the massive body of his Ruler was picked up and whisked away dimensionally, leaving no trace behind her that she was even here… save a perfect shaft bored diagonally into the stone of his hoard chamber.
“We will be going now. Have a good sleep.”
And with that, the mated pair turned around and walked away from him.
That they showed him their backs indicated their confidence. What was he going to do, breathe on them? The slag marks and sudden unbroken stone of the two times he had done so before were still visible upon the floor of the chamber!
Use magic, and watch it fade before it could touch them?
Lunge at them, knowing they could hear him coming, and just how hard their Weapons hit?
“I would know who misled my Ruler and spurred her to order me to attack, Commander Briggs!” King Charred-Eye carefully did not demand, as that would likely not go over well.
Still, he had anger to vent on someone, and the monkeys of Eismoor clearly were capable of clearing them off entirely, and killing him here and now.
They weren’t going to kill him over a question.
One flying, two pacing, they all turned to face him.
“In the old times, He was known as Gulguz. More recently, He called Himself Nimbus in Sythia, before it fell, Your Majesty,” the elfin wizardess informed him coolly.