Thrall - Christie Golden [75]
The human nodded. “Very well,” he said. “A risky plan, but what is life without risk, eh?” He grinned suddenly, white teeth flashing, the smile of a predator.
“Only a little risk,” said Arygos, “for such a great reward.” He was more relieved than he had anticipated. He knew the history of this human, knew his hatred for Thrall. Blackmoore wanted the orc dead. Just as Arygos wanted Kalec dead. Arygos flew toward the platform bearing the human, positioning himself next to and slightly below it so that Blackmoore could easily climb atop him.
They could do this. He knew they could. Then the obstacles would finally be cut down. He would be Aspect, as he had always yearned to be.
His heart lifted with each wing beat as he rounded toward the whirling portal. Below him, the pieces of the platform turned almost lazily. Arygos looked down in time to see one of them roll over, revealing the Focusing Iris directly below him.
The pain was sudden, shocking, and brutal: a white-hot needle piercing the base of his skull. As Blackmoore’s sword thrust down, down, Arygos clung to life long enough to see a drop of his red blood splash on the Focusing Iris, to watch it snap wide open. And as he hurtled downward, watching Blackmoore make a daring leap from his back to land on a slowly turning piece of platform, Arygos, son of Malygos, understood that he would die betrayed.
Holding the Doomhammer in one hand, Thrall lifted the other. Lightning crackled, zagging in a chain of scorching death between no fewer than four twilight dragons. The strike stunned them momentarily, blackening their sides and searing their leathery wings. They shrieked in pain, staying in their corporeal forms long enough for Thrall to again leap from Kalec’s back onto a twilight drake, lift the Doomhammer, and bring it smashing down on the drake’s skull. It was a glancing blow, though, and the drake had the wherewithal to turn incorporeal. Thrall abruptly started to fall. He glanced downward at the snow rushing up to meet him, but then suddenly he saw the broad, shining blue back of Kalecgos. Thrall landed hard, but safely.
Thrall was just about to lift his gaze to meet the next foe when the Nexus was suddenly rocked. Light seemed to explode from everywhere, and even the mighty Aspect wheeled and dove away from it, with Thrall clinging tightly to Kalec’s back.
“What happened?” Thrall shouted.
“An explosion of arcane magic!” Kalec shouted back. His long, sinuous neck was lowered as he stared down below at the Nexus, which was still spurting magical energies like dying fireworks. “I am not sure what—”
“The twilight dragons!” Thrall was looking around as Kalec was looking down. “They’re fleeing back to the temple!”
“Blues! To me!” Kalec cried, his voice sounding amplified and deeper and trembling through Thrall’s very sinews. “Our enemy is escaping—we have the advantage! Destroy them before they can reach their lord!”
If Thrall had thought Kalec was swift before, now he found himself barely able to breathe, so fast did the Dragon Aspect fly. The twilight dragons were giving their best to their frantic, abrupt escape. They were too busy fleeing to fight, all of them in their incorporeal forms. The blues responded with solely magical attacks. The air crackled and sparked with white arcane energy, shimmered with icy frost and the sudden squalls of an isolated blizzard. Several fell, but more escaped.
The blues followed, grimly determined.
Kirygosa stared, horrified, willing with all her heart that what she was watching would not succeed.
She’d felt her brother die, felt his life energy, the blood of a scion of Malygos, being harnessed and channeled in a way that was disturbingly familiar to her. The Twilight Father, no doubt thanks to information supplied to him by Deathwing, seemed to know exactly what he was doing.
Seconds after her brother’s death, a storm appeared in the skies above Wyrmrest Temple. Purple-black clouds swirled angrily, like a whirlpool, and then with a mighty crack that made Kirygosa cry out and clap her hands over