Archerax
Castle Kellar, North Kell
A new moat encircled the keep, an ever-tightening ring of glowing metals and burning stone. Ash filled the sky and covered the moon. Screams rose from the tortured city like smoke. Only the castle itself, perched high on the rocky shoulder of the Howling Giant Hills like a moribund falcon of gray stone, was unburnt. Its walls bristled with spears and bows. The hated spear-throwers sat ensconced in towers a hundred feet high. The gate itself, supposedly a castle’s weakest point, resisted the flames that the hybrids hurled at it. The metals gleamed after every assault as though poured afresh from the cast each time. Even the wood was unmarred. Some rune magic rendered them proof against dragon fire. But it was dragon magic that allowed them to defy him, and Archerax would see it unmade.
His nostrils smoked as he pondered.
“I promised the Uthuk witch that Kellar would fall ere the dawning of the fifth day, and lo, it shall. Even if it is by the murder of my own claws that it must be done.”
He raised his head on its long neck and split the night with his call.
A moment later the green dragon, Grievax, settled onto the ruin alongside him. She beat her wings slowly, as though unwilling to set great weight on her leg.
“You are injured,” said Archerax.
Grievax hissed. “Dragonslayer’s Heir,” she managed, in the halting dragon speech she had learned from the elder hybrids. “He has claws of his own.”
“Such is the reason that I have flown so far from the molten hearthlands of Mennara’s Heart. To return you, of course, kindred of mine, lost childe of Shaarina Rex, and to lay low this savage outpost of the dragons’ rightful dominion, but to end him also, and his hated line, before the storm from the Heath rises in full.”
The green dragon panted and fumed, as eager as a hatchling and as stupid.
Not unlike the Uthuk Y’llan.
“But you have failed me,” he said. “The Dragonslayer’s Heir has barred his gates and now we must unmake his fastness stone by stone.”
“It will be done, lord!”
“You assured me that this one was soft and would not hide behind walls while his city burned.”
Grievax hissed, but did not respond.
“Prove your worth to Levirax now. Make me an entrance. I will deal with the Dragonslayer’s Heir myself.”