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“Ha ha!” Logan shouted.

Rytlock roared, “The Destroyer of Life is destroyed!”

But there was no time to celebrate. Destroyers were pounding Big Snaff, denting his chassis and tearing away the armor around the cockpit.

“Help Snaff!” Eir ordered as her mallets bashed a pair of destroyers away.

A moment later, Logan and Caithe and Rytlock arrived. Logan’s hammer knocked the head from one destroyer, sending the pulpy thing flying. Rytlock’s gauntlet ripped out the chest of another. Caithe’s stiletto severed the neck joint of a third.

They were falling more easily now. The Destroyer of Life had been their conduit to the power of the dragon. With him fallen, the destroyers staggered, stunned.

Still, there were dozens to slay.

Eir and her comrades demolished the rock beasts that swarmed Big Snaff, but the golem was burning.

“Get him out!” Eir called, ripping back the heat shield over the cockpit. A great cloud of steam rose from it, but once it cleared, Eir could see Snaff lounging in his harness and grinning in triumph. “We did it!”

“Yes,” Eir said, helping Snaff climb from the golem’s chest. “I’m glad.”

Snaff rubbed his hands together. “Time to deploy the caldera plug.” He reached to one corner of the cockpit and hoisted a bluish cluster of arcane crystals, dangling from a single cord.

Rytlock rolled his eyes. “You think that thing’s going to work?”

“Probably not,” Snaff replied with a shrug. “After all, Master Klab made it. Still, we need to give it a try.”

“Let’s go, then,” Eir said, returning the gauntlet to Rytlock.

He slid it on, grinning, and flexed the metal gloves. “On to the caldera!”

With powerstone mallets in hand, Eir led the group in a march up the subterranean volcano. Logan followed to her right and Rytlock to her left. The two asura trundled along behind this advancing wedge, trailed by a watchful Caithe and a growling Garm. Here and there, a destroyer would rise from the smoldering wreckage of the army and charge the group, only to be frozen and bludgeoned and shattered.

Minutes later, the companions reached the crater where the Destroyer of Life had exploded. The blast had carved out a fifty-foot hole in the basalt, and chunks of the champion lay all around. A hundred feet farther on, the team reached the caldera itself, a vast pool of white-hot lava. Within it swam the figures of half-formed destroyers.

Snaff hoisted the caldera plug and stared dubiously at it. “Let’s hope Klab knows what he’s doing.”

“We have to get the stones to the center,” Eir said, “but my bow is destroyed.”

Snaff took a long look up Rytlock’s arm. “Looks like we’ve got a natural catapult.”

“Heh heh. Hand me that thing.” Rytlock took the crystalline bundle, sniffed it once, and said, “Stand back.” Rytlock pivoted, letting the bundle swing in the air around him. He whirled around and around, gathering speed, and the bundle whistled with wind. At last, grunting, Rytlock released it.

The crystalline bundle flew through the air. It arced upward, growing small, and soared to the center of the caldera. The plug plunged like a meteor, struck the lava, and sank, leaving a black hole. A blue light erupted from the hole, and the edges cooled and hardened.

“Well, that was pretty much a bust,” Snaff said.

But the caldera plug wasn’t finished. The white-hot magma cooled to red-hot, and then to brown. In a wave out from the central hole, the molten rock solidified, first a mere skin, then a thick plate with cracks running through it. Steam shot up through cracks, and the plate darkened as it thickened.

“It’s working,” Snaff said incredulously.

Rytlock shook his head. “The crystals did nothing against the Destroyer of Life.”

“It was made of elemental fire,” Eir said. “Now that the Destroyer of Life is gone, the power of the dragon is cut off. This caldera has once again become natural lava.”

The solidifying plate turned black as the heat below it went out. Rivulets stopped flowing from the caldera. Soon, the sea