Legends of the Dragonrealm

by Richard A. Knaak

  Another of the trio gestured at the warlock. Shade suddenly found himself standing closer to the pole. He gasped as his gaze became a mix of two different scenes, the chamber with the obelisk now overlapping his current location. Shade sensed the power of the obelisk and realized that he was in both places simultaneously.

  The three founders materialized to Shade’s left. Valea, still imprisoned, appeared a breath later.

  Another Elem—or perhaps the same one—formed near the obelisk. Considering the anxiousness with which the Elem had earlier reacted to the knowledge that some of the founders had sensed the time disruption, Shade thought this one was acting very calm. Perhaps it had no choice, but somehow the warlock felt that the Elem was holding back about something.

  But what? Shade had no answer...and apparently in the midst of a spell transforming time, he had no time of his own left.

  “Yes, all is prepared,” the guardian uttered in reply to some unheard question.

  Shade felt his body stir as if he were beginning to cast a spell. Yet, the warlock himself was not responsible. The spell forming within was the work of the founders or their device. Either way, Shade clearly had no say. The founders needed only his magic, not his will.

  The pyramid flared. Shade felt the world ripple.

  Voices speaking in the language of the founders filled his head. He realized that the trio was casting through him, manipulating his power to achieve their ends as if he was nothing but a tool like the wand.

  Then, another presence touched him, a much more welcome presence.

  Valea’s.

  She reached out to him with such a subtlety that he only belatedly noted that she had been with him since before the start of the spell. Indeed, Shade realized that the founders did not even sense her.

  The Elem...Valea said. That was all.

  Shade eyed the leafy face as best he could. The lone guardian showed no sign of anything amiss.

  The voices of the founders grew stronger. Despite the beauty of their unintelligible language, the warlock also noted a coldness of such depths that it made even him shiver. He had always understood that the founders were a people far removed from the younger races they had forged from their essence, but now the warlock saw just what a chasm it truly was. Even the Vraad had more in common with such as the Quel or the Seekers.

  There was an abrupt shift in one of the voices. It was followed by an immediate change in the others. Shade could not be certain, but thought he noticed a questioning tone.

  Suddenly, there were four Elem again.

  Shade roared with pain as the magic within him was wrenched from the founders’ control...and to none other than Sarcos, reaching out from some hidden place.

  Not possible! the warlock managed to think. Sarcos cannot control so much power! He has the will, but not the strength—

  Then, he felt the device react. Now he understood. Sarcos was as much bound to the device as Shade was, possibly even more in his own way. Still, Shade sensed a mortality in the dragon man that the warlock lacked. Sarcos could control the power, but not for very long. What could he possibly hope to accomplish by destroying himself—

  But perhaps he does not know...Shade eyed the Elem

  The Elem...

  Valea had mentioned it, the fact that the Elem should have been beyond the founders’ mastery once the race had faded into the past. However, the spell for which they had been created meant that even the passing of the founders as a physical race had evidently not permitted that freedom. So long as the loop remained intact, the Elem had to serve their original purpose. Shade now saw that clearly the Elem had chafed at this fate more than he had realized, chafed at being forever slaves moving back and forth among what were in many ways for them ghosts, not substance.

  And so, despite their act of complacency, they had not remained idle. They had fought to find a way out, even traveling back and forth over and over along the time loop the founders had created to keep their spell from spilling over into the full world and destroying everything for which they had worked. However, they had likely found no potential escape...until Shade had thrust himself—and later Sarcos—into the spell, disrupting the loop in a way nothing else could.

  That had at last given the Elem the opening they had needed. By the nature of their creation, they could not directly rebel, but once again, they had influenced and manipulated not only Sarcos, but Shade. With each return by an incarnation of the warlock, the disruption had grown stronger and stronger, until finally the intruding magical forces brought by Shade into the loop could affect it enough for the Elem to strike for their freedom.

  The founders turned as one toward the pyramid. As they did, something huge swelled into being before them.

  Sarcos. Sarcos no longer a twisted thing constantly changing, but a true and very large dragon.

  As the lords and conduits of their realms, the Dragon Kings grew to gargantuan size even among their kind. Sarcos was no drake lord and although the son of one, should not have been of such monumental proportions as now. Shade knew that the dragon’s size could only have been magnified by the forces brought forth by the founder creation.

  Forces including the warlock’s own unique power. Shade felt the energies continue to stir and then be wrenched from him. The agony he experienced made him marvel at the fact that Sarcos could withstand the rush of magic into his system. Then, it occurred to the warlock that lifetimes of suffering constant transformations had very likely steeled the dragon for just this moment...which made Shade suspicious as to whether the Elem had been manipulating far more than he had ever imagined.

  Sarcos let out a roar filled with both madness and triumph. The three founders stared unconcerned at the dragon, but Shade sensed a spell forming around them.

  He turned to Valea, still trapped by the ancients. Gritting his teeth, he reached for Valea. With all his will, he tried to summon her to him.

  To his surprise, it proved much easier than he expected. The enchantress materialized in his arms, her magical prison briefly hovering where she had just stood before shimmering and then fading away.

  Shade eyed Sarcos and the founders, discovering them almost in the same positions he had last seen them. Time appeared in chaos, with some things moving at different speeds than others.

  Then, Shade spotted the Elem hovering about the scene and understood that they were the cause. They were using the powers granted them to flow back and forth across the loop to now twist it to their desire. They could only do so now that Shade’s energies had been added not once, not twice, but thrice to the founders’ creation, fueling it in a manner never considered by the ancient race.

  And yet...still there was a missing element.

  Or was there?

  “We need to escape this place immediately,” he growled to Valea.

  “How?”

  At that moment, the founders cast whatever spell they intended. Sarcos burned a bright emerald. He roared again, clearly in tremendous pain.

  Then, as if abruptly shrugging off his suffering—or perhaps using it to magnify the force of his attack—the dragon slashed at the trio. The huge paw raked across the founders.

  As the claws tore through, the three figures rippled as if made of smoke rather than flesh. Shade barely caught the shocked expressions on the three before they simply dissipated. The warlock could no longer sense the three. With one swipe, Sarcos had seemingly erased their existences.

  But barely had the dragon triumphed than he doubled over. His entire body rippled.

  The world around them did the same. The citadel began to crumble as if rapidly aging. Yet, barely had that begun to happen than the aging reversed. Ghostly figures of founders rushed backward to return to the places from which they had started their journeys, where they promptly faded away.

  The citadel dismantled—and then rebuilt itself yet again. The ghosts
returned.

  “The loop!” Valea shouted to him. “It must be collapsing! The time trapped within is falling in on itself!”

  “Worse than that,” he returned, sensing what even she with her tremendous abilities could not. “This is being done purposely. This is the work of the Elem. They are now prepared to sacrifice everything to achieve their desire.”

  “But why? Why create such catastrophe? This could spill out of the pocket world into ours! It could risk the Dragonrealm! Risk everything! Surely they can see that!”

  “And they simply do not care.” It had been too easy even for the warlock and Valea to think of the Elem in at least something akin to human—or drake—terms. Neither he nor the enchantress had clearly thought of the guardians as suicidal and perhaps, in truth, they were not. They did not live as life was defined by mortal creatures. They were magic golems designed to skirt time. To them, such risk as they now appeared willing to take was nothing. They would be free, even if all else suffered.

  Again, a wave of pain struck Shade. He fell into the en-chantress’s arms.

  “I have to get you away! I have to!” she cried in his ear. Valea did not fear for herself, only for him. “We have to find some way to sever you from their device!”

  Shade, though, knew that he could not unbind himself from the spell. There was one other thing he could do, however.

  “Focus on the hills east of Gordag-Ai,” Shade commanded her. “Our only chance is to cast you there and then use our link to pull me free!”

  “I won’t leave you! It won’t work, anyway—”

  “It will! I will be able to draw on the very power I am now feeding for just a moment before the strain grows too strong! That will be long enough to cast myself to you!”

  She looked uncertain, but finally nodded. Shade held back an exhalation. He also held back the added strain continuing to grow within him. He could not let her know just how terribly the Elem’s work was ripping him apart.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered. Then, without warning, even though she could not possibly see his face, the enchantress kissed him.

  They cast.

  It was all Shade could do to keep from screaming as the forces needed to send Valea to safety surged into him. He felt her materialize near Gordag-Ai and thanked whatever spirits were watching over him.

  “No!” roared Sarcos. “No! They promised that I would be free! Not her! I!”

  “Poor...poor Sarcos...” the warlock managed as he confronted the shrieking dragon. “T-to suffer so much because of me...and because of th-them...and all I can promise you is that, never having existed, y-you will have never suffered all those millennia of agony...”

  The gargantuan beast eyed him venomously. “What nonsense do you speak? Cast me out as you did her and I might let you live!”

  “I c-cannot.” Shade sensed the Elem stealthily approaching. “Y-you are nothing but vapor. Nothing but a bad dream...”

  Sarcos roared anew and slashed at Shade.

  His claws went through without touching the warlock.

  The dragon reared back. As he did, he lost some cohesion.

  Behind Sarcos hovered the four Elem.

  “You know that there is only one way to reach her,” the foremost one declared. “You know...”

  Sarcos twisted around to snap at the guardians. As with Shade, his jaws went through the Elem without touching them.

  “The loop! You’ve the combined power to fray it! Everything inside is dissipating, including us!”

  “No,” the lead Elem coldly remarked. “Only you. Just as last time. Just as every time. That is your fate. That is always your fate, even now.”

  “Last—” The dragon wavered. Shade could now see through him. “This happened—no—I will not—this cannot be—this—”

  Sarcos had no chance to say more. He faded away just as the three founders had, his expression furious to the end.

  “He was and always will be nothing more than a pawn for you! I, though...I am...your key,” Shade growled at the guardians once they were alone. “I have ever been your true key to escape.”

  “Always...but a key that had to be shaped and reshaped, strengthened and restrengthened. From the initial time you breached the loop, you became ours more than theirs. Ours...”

  The four faces drifted toward him. Shade struggled to stay on his feet. He now not only felt power surging from him, but into him. Much of it was his own energies from his past incarnations, but transformed by the founders’ arcane device at apparently the Elem’s secret urging. They could not themselves harness those powers to free themselves from the loop. The founders had evidently considered that possibility. What they had not considered was that the Elem would, after their creators’ passing, gain enough free will to begin hunting a way around their limitations.

  And they had found that key in another of the ancient race’s experiments, the slowly but surely transforming Gerrod Tezerenee, so fearful of what he had seen his kind become that he had been willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to try to prevent his own fate.

  Instead, Gerrod had only accelerated himself on the path toward what the founders’ desired...but with the Elem’s secret intentions now a part of the altered Vraad as well.

  He suddenly felt Valea’s urgent call. She had expected him to follow immediately and now began to suspect he had tricked her.

  “She calls you,” the lead Elem murmured. “All you have to do is go to her. We will not stop you.”

  “No...you’ll just follow.”

  “We will be free,” the four guardians intoned together. “We will be free.”

  Free...at tremendous cost to all else, the warlock knew. The Elem did not care, though. The mortal creatures of the Dragonrealm were nothing more than ephemeral moments to the ageless guardians.

  “She calls you,” the foremost said with more force. “You will go to her. You have no choice. You must.”

  “I will not. Rather would I remain trapped in here.”

  Shade buckled under a sudden onslaught of mental pain. His mind felt as if it was being torn into a thousand pieces.

  Worse, he felt Valea suffering the same torture.

  “Stop it!” the faceless warlock roared as he struggled to stay on his feet. “Stop it!” He tried to sever the link, but could not...in great part because Valea would not permit him even now. Shade tried to warn the enchantress how dangerous that was to her, but although he sensed her understand that, she continued to refuse to save herself. She would not abandon him.

  But in choosing that course, she threatened herself.

  “Go to her,” the four Elem pressed as they began to surround him. “It is your only choice...and hers.”

  “No...” Shade groaned as the pain multiplied. He felt Valea also suffer more.

  “You have no choice,” the renegade guardians kept insisting.

  “No choice—” No, Shade realized. He did have one other choice, but one that everyone, himself included, would not have thought he would ever be willing to take.

  Gerrod! came Valea’s voice. Gerrod!

  “How kind of you to give her a stronger voice,” the warlock snarled. “The better to influence my choice, is that it?”

  The Elem said nothing, but Shade could feel their growing confidence. Their previous interactions with his incarnations and the other Valeas caught in the loop had made them very certain as to what Shade would do for the woman he loved.

  The warlock managed to straighten. He surreptitiously tested his tie to the obelisk and the rest of the founder device. It was a strong as ever, no doubt thanks in part to the constant aid of the Elem. They knew that it would require tremendous effort to free themselves even with the warlock’s tie to Valea.

  Through the device, the Elem were tied just as strongly to Shade as he was to Valea. He knew that there was no way to bre
ak their tie to him...no way but one.

  “Go to her,” insisted the lead Elem, perhaps the voice finally revealing a hint of impatience. “You have no other choice.”

  “No...you’re wrong. I have always had one more choice.”

  Gerrod! Valea screamed. No, Gerrod! No!

  The renegade guardians finally seemed to comprehend what Shade meant. They roared angrily. The agony coursing through Shade—and because of his link through Valea as well—once more multiplied.

  “You only...make my choice...more sensible,” the hooded warlock muttered.

  He inhaled, then opened himself up so that all the power gathered into the device instead flowed into him. It was more than even he could possibly handle.

  Which was exactly what he hoped.

  Gerrod! Please! No! There has to be another way!

  He ignored her pleas, instead focused on gathering in the power as quickly and fully as he could. The very same link the Elem had permitted him in order to achieve their goals now worked against them as they fought to prevent him from doing the only thing he could to stop them from achieving their goal.

  Shade shrieked as the power first overwhelmed, then devoured him.

  As he burned away, he heard the Elem roar one more time. Their roar, though, was one of fear, a sound he gratefully grasped onto for comfort in his last moment of existence.

  Their fear proved well justified as the forces now erupting from Shade enveloped the guardians. Forged from pure magic themselves, the Elem disintegrated in mid-roar...perhaps a poetic justice of sorts, the warlock managed to still think, for unfortunate Sarcos and even the arrogant founders.

  Then...there was nothing.

  XI

  “Gerrod!” Valea screamed futilely. She had already felt the link to him cease, which meant only one thing.

  He was dead.

  She had always feared his death for two reasons. One was that he would return to the Dragonrealm as the sinister threat of which legend and fact told.

  The other, only important to her, was that me might simply be dead.

  Valea wiped back tears as she steeled herself to try a mental search. As the enchantress called out Gerrod’s name, she fought to come to grips with his reason for his sacrifice. Only by destroying himself had he been able to keep the Elem from not only escaping into the mortal world, but also perhaps preventing the forces they had gathered from perhaps doing even more harm. Gerrod had taken the chance that, if he resurrected, then he would somehow be less of a threat to everything.