It Was Still a Bargain

Aurinax answered with fire.

His head thrust toward the breach, and the blaze rolled across Xanathar into the tunnel behind it. Rishi dropped beside the pillar on the dragon’s left. Heat passed across its farther face and drove him lower.

Maeril drew the unicorn back along the wall. Beyond her, the spellguards braced at the entrance as burning nightmares broke clear of the dragon’s breath.

Rishi pressed his right hand against the binding at his shoulder. Warmth gathered beneath his palm and entered the torn muscle. He worked it through the place that failed whenever he tried to close his left hand.

The fingers curled. Pain remained, but he could grip his staff again.

Gold glowed red around the breach. A many-armed creature fell burning into the coins, its long arms folding beneath its broad body. It lay still.

Xanathar came through the fire.

Its hide had blackened along one side. Several eyestalks hung against it. It forced them upright as the great central eye closed.

A black ray struck Aurinax’s chest. The dragon’s head dropped, and his foreclaws drove through the coins to the stone below. A second beam cut across his shoulder. Scale vanished along its path, leaving gray dust above the blood that followed.

Aurinax held his ground. The central eye opened on him again, and light forming above his claw went out.

Near the entrance, Vajra raised the Blackstaff.

Pale light reached her from one of the smaller eyes. She stopped with one foot lifted and the staff held across her body. The nearest spellguard caught her elbow, trying to pull her behind him. Her limbs stayed fixed.

“Vajra, can you hear me?” Renaer called.

Another stalk turned. A violet ray struck Renaer’s face. He wheeled toward the guard beside him and raised his rapier toward the man’s throat.

“Get out of my head,” he gasped. His sword arm kept driving the point forward. He caught his own blade in his bare hand and dragged it aside, the edge cutting into his palm.

He squeezed harder. Blood ran between his fingers, and he cried out. The sword arm stopped straining against his grip. Renaer looked from the guard to Xanathar, then released the blade and turned its point toward the nightmares coming around the dragon.

The guard stayed at his shoulder. Together they met the first rush.

Rishi pushed off from the pillar. Coins slid beneath his feet, carrying him sideways until he planted the staff against buried stone. He used it to turn toward Vajra.

A floating creature lunged at his face. He drove his staff between its teeth and passed beneath it. A crawling nightmare caught his ankle and hauled itself closer through the coins. He stamped down on its wrist, freed his foot, and reached the ring of guards closing around the Blackstaff.

“Let me through to her,” Rishi said.

One of them moved aside. Rishi laid his right hand against the base of Vajra’s neck.

Her pulse beat hard beneath his fingers. He sent warmth into the locked muscles, following the restraint down toward the shoulder until it loosened.

Vajra drew breath. Her raised foot came down, and Rishi ducked beneath the staff as she completed its interrupted arc.

Seven bands of color swept through the nightmares pressing the entrance. A floating creature caught fire. Beside it, a many-armed nightmare hardened into stone as it sprang forward. Another vanished, dropping the coins caught against it.

Force Grey advanced into the opening. Renaer moved with their left edge, his bleeding hand held close while his rapier worked in short thrusts.

On the right, a crawling nightmare reached between two spellguards. Hazarak caught its outstretched arm, hauled the creature upright, and tore it open with the claws of his free hand. A floating creature swept down as he dropped the body. He stepped clear of its jaws and ripped through its flank with his other hand. It fell across the first, and the guards closed ranks beside him.

Across the hoard, Aurinax’s wounded foreleg had begun to slip. Xanathar floated just beyond his reach, turning the great eye whenever light stirred around the dragon’s claws. The crawling creatures clung to the flank nearest the breach, their many hands hooked beneath the edges of his scales. Small mouths opened across their flesh and bit at the gaps.

Hooves struck gold behind Rishi.

Maeril brought the unicorn along the wall, passing behind the defenders. Manshoon’s staff lay across her forearms. “Rish. He needs help at his flank. Monkey time.”

Rishi looked along the pillars beside Aurinax’s left flank. “I can reach him from here.”

He set his staff beside Vajra at the foot of the nearest pillar, then moved clear of her guards.

“Keep the dragon between you and that eye,” Maeril said.

Her spell reached him. The crystal beneath his coat pressed briefly against his chest. Then cloth, cords, and blue light folded into the changing body. Rishi lowered his hands to the floor as they grew, spreading his fingers through the coins before his new weight could throw him.

His arms lengthened. Dark fur rose across them, and his back broadened beneath a strength he remembered carrying. He moved on his knuckles toward the next pillar.

Xanathar’s central eye turned away from the dragon and followed the unicorn along the outer wall. Its horn went dark. Maeril bent low and guided it behind a pillar; when they emerged on the other side, light returned.

Behind Rishi, Vajra called her people closer to the doorway before the gaze could reach them.

Gold light gathered above Aurinax’s claw. This time it held, and he flung it into Xanathar. Radiance spread through the beholder’s burned hide, and the body recoiled toward the breach. Aurinax caught it with a claw and drove it against the broken rim.

Stone cracked, sending a wave through the hoard beneath Rishi’s hands. He braced beside the pillar and looked up. Dust poured from a seam in the ceiling above the dragon. The slab on one side shifted, sagged, and fell before Aurinax could withdraw.

It struck the dragon’s left shoulder and folded his wing beneath him.

The pillar beside Rishi split at its capital. He threw himself clear as the upper stones came down, piling gold against the fallen masonry.

Aurinax tried to rise. The slab held his wing, and his claws slid through the disturbed coins.

Xanathar lunged into his neck, its teeth closing between rows of scales. Aurinax turned his head, dragging the beholder sideways, but the trapped wing stopped the movement before he could wrench free.

The great eye shut. Blackness poured from a smaller eye into the dragon’s throat. Green-white light followed along his flank, opening a wound whose edges fell away as dust.

Rishi felt the roar through his hands.

Xanathar reopened the central eye against the dragon’s neck. A golden flare died before it reached his jaws.

Rishi climbed the mound against the fallen pillar. From there he could see across the trapped wing. The great eye faced down toward Aurinax; above it, the beholder’s stalks bent close to the struggling head.

Rishi drove his feet into the mound and jumped over the dragon’s shoulder. One hand caught an eyestalk against the hard curve beneath it, and his weight crushed the eye before the other fist landed above Xanathar’s mouth.

The blow forced the beholder down. Rishi struck again, driving it into the loose gold until its jaws opened.

Aurinax tore his neck free. Blood ran between Xanathar’s teeth.

The dragon dug his right foreclaw into the stone and heaved. His pinned wing dragged out beneath the slab, leaving scales caught under its edge. He pulled it against his body and staggered toward the entrance.

Rishi stayed between the two long enough to drive Xanathar back another length. Then the central eye began to turn upward.

He dropped low beside Aurinax’s shoulder. The gaze crossed the place where his head had been and struck the fallen pillar beyond him.

Maeril felt the unicorn falter beneath her as it turned along the outer wall. Its injured foreleg shook when it took the weight. She let it find firmer footing and looked past the dragon.

Xanathar was rising above the hollow Rishi had made in the hoard. Blood and clear fluid ran from the crushed side of its face. Its remaining stalks spread, searching for the people withdrawing behind Aurinax.

Vajra’s line had yielded almost to the doorway. The two wizards kept firing through gaps between the guards, but the many-armed creatures still dragged themselves around the dragon’s wounded body. One of the floating creatures swept over them toward a guard. Renaer pulled the man off his feet before its jaws could close around his head.

Another strip of stone fell from above the breach.

Maeril looked up at the widening break. Somewhere above those shaken supports were the streets they had crossed, the people still being carried out of their houses.

Aurinax tried to lift his injured wing. It dragged through the coins, leaving a dark furrow.

Maeril ran her thumb over the staff’s binding runes. The power was still there, held tightly inside the wood.

Vajra’s people had the pillars behind Aurinax for cover. The path along the wall would bring Maeril clear of his shoulder.

“Vajra! I am going to break the staff,” Maeril shouted. “Get them behind cover.”

The Blackstaff turned. Her gaze moved from Maeril’s hand to Xanathar, then to the people around her. “Back to the pillars! Bring the wounded with you,” she shouted.

Her guards began falling back in pairs, one blade covering the other. Renaer hauled the man he had rescued behind a broad stone base. Hazarak ducked behind the next pillar. Vajra drove the Blackstaff through the coins to the floor. Pale light spread from its tip and rose around the defenders.

Rishi looked toward Maeril from the exposed side of Aurinax’s injured wing.

“Rish, get behind his wing,” Maeril shouted.

The ape turned toward the dragon. Another tremor sent the coins sliding under his hands, drawing him back toward the hollow.

Aurinax lowered his head toward him. “Behind me, Rishishura.”

He dragged his injured wing outward, making room on the side toward the entrance. Rishi began moving into it.

Maeril bent against the unicorn’s neck. “Along the wall. Past his shoulder.”

The unicorn lengthened its stride. Maeril kept the wall on her blind side as they passed the last standing pillar. Beyond Aurinax’s shoulder, Xanathar turned toward the defenders.

Its central eye held on Aurinax. Maeril waited, gripping the staff near its lower end.

The power inside it could tear more stone loose. Beyond the pillars protecting the defenders, cracks ran into darkness. She could not judge how much of the city those stones still held. Aurinax’s foreleg sank beneath him.

Xanathar’s smaller eyes gathered toward the dragon and the light Vajra was raising behind him.

The central lid closed.

Maeril rose against the unicorn’s movement. Aurinax lifted his injured wing toward the defenders, leaving Xanathar’s mouth clear beyond its torn edge.

She threw.

The staff turned through smoke and falling dust. It passed clear of the ragged wing and struck across Xanathar’s jaws.

Its teeth closed around the wood.

Fire was already gathering in Maeril’s empty hand. She sent the bright point after the staff before the great eye could reopen. It struck the runes between Xanathar’s teeth.

The wood split. Every mark along it shone, and the light inside broke outward.

The unicorn wheeled and braced with its wounded side away. Clear radiance sprang from its horn and closed around them. Maeril dropped against its neck and locked both arms into the mane.

Across the hoard, Aurinax held his injured wing before the defenders. White-blue force struck the gold beneath him and rose against Vajra’s ward. Its pale surface bowed toward the people crouching behind it.

Rishi bounded out of the hollow toward Aurinax’s sheltering wing. The expanding force caught his back on the second leap and hurled him down behind the dragon.

Maeril held his shape through the impact, her teeth shut against the cry forced out of her. The unicorn’s light filled her good eye.

Beyond it, Xanathar remained at the center of the blast.

One eyestalk tore away. Another disappeared inside the fire. Its great eye opened as the power broke through it from within.

It screamed. The sound divided into several voices, each trying to name a different betrayal.

None completed the word.

Manshoon’s stored power tore open the body that held it. Maeril’s fire spread through the wound. Flesh, teeth, and the remaining eyes came apart above the hoard.

Coins became bright, shrieking lines. The edge of the breach dissolved into dust. Aurinax’s shielding wing struck the floor, and a crack ran through the ward above the defenders before its light thickened again.

Then the glare withdrew.

The unicorn still stood beneath her. Its legs trembled, and blood had started again along its flank. Behind the dragon, Rishi’s enormous hand pushed through the scattered gold. Vajra remained at the pillars, bent over the Blackstaff.