Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [120]
Rytlock ran on, lifting the crystalline lance. The rift seemed impossibly long. He only hoped he could reach the dragon before the dragon’s minions reached Caithe.
Caithe stood alone in the south gate as dozens of beasts came her way.
First was a crystalline coyote, enormous and whooping. Its rocklike teeth snapped at Caithe.
She feinted back and grasped one stony whisker and flung herself onto the coyote’s back. She plunged her white-bladed stiletto into the creature’s neck and twisted, ripping through its spine. The coyote’s whoop devolved into a ragged gasp of pain, and it collapsed.
Caithe leaped free, only to see more of the dragon’s minions pour past her. Horned lizards and giant rats and geckos and tarantulas and jackals and snakes all thundered by, heading for Big Snaff in the center of the sanctum.
Caithe rushed after the bounding horde. She jumped from beast to beast, ripping out their throats and pounding their skulls into the ground as she leaped away, squealing, but still the others ran on.
They converged on Big Snaff.
Snaff lay embedded in the deepest layers of the dragon’s mind, choking off breath and pulse. The dragon could not find him here, could not root him out. It could not even right itself.
But its minions found Snaff elsewhere.
There came a crash—stone shattering—and the rumble of claws.
Claws dug, and jaws gibbered.
Snaff opened his eyes.
Big Snaff had toppled and shattered, and the monsters were on him.
Fangs snapped.
Muzzles bled.
Hungry. Angry. Insatiable.
Teeth clamped on Snaff. They bit through him. There was blunt pain and the sudden certainty that he was dying.
More teeth seized him.
Bones broke.
Breath burst through his wounds.
Blood foamed out.
Fangs met in his stomach.
Rytlock was galloping toward the downed dragon when it suddenly rolled over and righted itself. Its holocaustal eyes glared down the length of the crater at the running charr, a stone lance in his claws. Then Kralkatorrik spread massive wings and beat them against the air and rose from what should have been its grave.
“No!” roared Rytlock.
The dragon lifted easily away and climbed into the sky.
“No!” Rytlock bellowed, hurling the spear.
It arced up, cracked off the shoulder of the beast, bounding away. The lance fell, useless, in the crater.
Already, Kralkatorrik was out of reach. Its mile-long wings thrummed the air, blasting flat every creature on the desert below.
Rytlock Brimstone fell to his knees.
Winds buffeted.
The dragon retreated, unhearing, uncaring. Its wings boiled the clouds as it climbed. It ripped through them and rose, leaving only a troubled wake across the heavens.
SUNDERING
Logan’s hammer shattered the knee of an ogre. It toppled like a tree and smashed into one of its comrades, which crashed on top of a charr. A second charr vaulted onto the fallen ogre and ripped out its throat—only to be cleaved by a great axe.
It was a bloodbath in the courtyard of Ebonhawke. Seraph and Vanguard, Blood Legion and Iron Legion, ogre and hyena, fought and fell. The battle roared like a ravenous monster that would not rest until it had eaten them all. At the heart of that maelstrom, Logan Thackeray held the line by sheer force of will and rallied the defenders for one last, desperate surge.
Then, above the fortress city, a greater monster arrived. Its wings blackened the sky, and the beat of those wings pounded down on the warriors below. Ogres and hyenas looked up and wailed in glee. Humans and charr groaned in dread.
Kralkatorrik had returned.
It shrieked, a sound bigger than the sky.
Every mortal creature dropped to its knees.
Kralkatorrik’s eyes lit, and twin beams of ravening power raked down upon the warriors. Charr hackles hardened to spikes. Human muscles clenched to stone.
The ogres grinned to see their enemies transformed. It turned them to rock but left them puny—punishment for their resistance. The beams blazed through the courtyard, catching every last human and charr.
The battle of Ebonhawke was done.
Kralkatorrik had declared the victors.