"I did," Curatio said. "These are the very dragons that killed my friend who worked on this shrine." He folded his arms in front of him.

Cyrus pulled his head around in surprise. "Killed him? Didn't he build this place for them? At their request?"

"Indeed," Curatio said, expression utterly flat. "But there is no grat.i.tude like dragon grat.i.tude, I suppose." He turned his head. "They view us all as lesser creatures, beneath their notice nearly, except when we are useful. Ashan'agar was not unusual in these beliefs. Ehrgraz may act civilized, but he is no friend to our kind, either. We are a convenience to him, and one which he will not hesitate to discard in the future when we cease to be of use."

"So you think he's betraying us, then?" Cyrus asked.

"I don't know," Curatio said, now looking tired. "But I doubt it. We're still of use, after all."

"Another grim reality I don't want to deal with," Cyrus said, lowering his head and his voice. "I was almost starting to feel guilty about coming here to-well, to do what we've come to do."

"Commit murder?" Curatio asked. "I wouldn't feel too terrible about it. Indeed, I don't. That's why I am here, though I disagree on this course of action most strongly."

"Indeed you do."

"This is not going to be an easy fight," Curatio said. "For any of us." Cyrus caught his gaze, and the healer's weariness faded for just a moment. "You should prepare yourself now by asking yourself how far you're going to be willing to go to see it through."

"Curatio," Cyrus said with a subdued smile, "I've dragged an army across the Ashen Wastelands for a week with the intent of killing dragons and desecrating a holy site. I think I'm in this all the way up to the hilt."

"Very well, then," Curatio said and gathered his robes as he stood. He started to walk away, then turned back. "When you were in the Society of Arms, and they taught you to kill ... what would they have said if you plunged a blade into someone up to the hilt and they still lived?"

Cyrus looked at him evenly. "You either bury your arm in them up to the shoulder or pull it out and do it again to finish the d.a.m.ned job."

Curatio smiled, but his face was tight and absent any joy. "I had a feeling you would say that." With a bow of the head, he went to see to the recovery of the wounded, leaving Cyrus to prepare for the next in a long string of battles.

Cyrus could feel the cold seeping out of the next dragon's quarters several hundred feet before they reached the door. There was a ghastly chill in the air that called to mind the frozen Realm of Life, where every spot of green had been covered over with snow and ice.

The chill seeped through Cyrus's armor, finding the cracks and drawing to mind comparisons with the frozen room in the back of the Sanctuary kitchen. He stopped to shiver and beckoned Nyad forth. As they grew close to him, he whispered, "We'll need fire spells. Continuously. Let your people know."

"I will," Nyad said, nodding firmly and then slipping back toward the ranks of the spellcasters. The grey sky hung out beyond the columns of the shrine's outer exterior, still heavy and forbidding.

With a grunt of reluctance, Cyrus turned his eyes to the door and motioned forward a few of Sanctuary's warriors. They pushed it open enough to pa.s.s through, and once more Cyrus led the way. Once more, he found a sleeping dragon in a corner, though this time the nest was of ice rather than water.

It had piled snow in a circle ten feet high around its abdomen. Cyrus wondered idly if the snow was fresh or if it had been in here for a period of years. It had little smell to it other than a cold winter's day, infusing its way into his sinuses and making him crinkle his nose.

"What's this one named?" Vara asked, suddenly at his elbow.

"Gren'averr," Cyrus said, so softly he could scarcely hear any sign of his own voice.

He crept forward on crunching snow, a thousand others making their way in behind him. The bitter chill was heavy, like a gremlin of cold climbing its way into the cracks of his armor. It felt like it was stabbing gently at him, icy claws trying pry him out of his skin with burning intensity. He exhaled and the air in front of him clouded into mist with his breath.

Cyrus was almost to the dragon when it awoke, prompting him to dash forward. The Falcon's Essence spell landed on him as he sprinted forward, and he took to the air as the long neck flew up and the eyes sprung open with alarm and rage.

Gren'averr was a shorter beast than its brother, with scales as white as the snow it inhabited. When it took a simple breath, Cyrus felt the winter wind whip around him as surely as if he'd been teleported to the Northlands without warning on the coldest day of the year.

Gren'averr did not waste time with any taunts, if he even knew the human language. He merely opened his mouth and breathed ice, turning the air around him into daggers of cold.

Cyrus moved fast enough to avoid the winter breath, but ice crusted up his back as he charged sideways to avoid the attack. Gren'averr did not follow him, instead directing his attack at the army still coming at him from behind Cyrus.

Cyrus whipped around, turning in the air when he realized the dragon's stratagem. Thought he'd chase me, but apparently I haven't p.i.s.sed him off enough to take his eyes off the army charging him down ...

The wintery attack hit the first rank of the Sanctuary army and spread over them like ice rolling slowly up spilled water on a frigid morning. Cyrus watched fifteen of his finest dusted with cold, frozen in place, their armor their only defense against the instant freezing- And then he saw someone hit with the breath of ice that was not wearing armor at all.

Nyad had a fire spell glowing in her fingers, ready to fling it, as Gren'averr's exhalation hit her. She did not even have time to flinch before it rolled through her hair, blowing it back as it turned her pale skin a deathly white. It covered her over completely in mere seconds. Cyrus watched it all with the benefit of Praelior in his hand, the entire spectacle slowed down to a horrible, lethargic pace, until Nyad, the heiress of the entire Elven Kingdom, was nothing but an ice statue.

A warrior, his armor frozen over from Gren'averr's attack, staggered sideways at exactly that moment. He collided with Nyad, his footing lost on the ice slicking the floor below, his upper body hopelessly entangled in her outstretched arms, and the pair fell to the ground, the warrior coming down hard upon the ice princess.

She shattered like gla.s.s dropped out of a window's frame, into fragments no bigger than a simple icicle, and Cyrus almost felt he could hear her scream in the sound, but it was nothing more than the howling breath of a winter dragon, screaming in triumph at the death of the elven wizard.

Shock ran through Cyrus's limbs like cold tingles twitching at him, compelling him into action. He ran at the dragon's face in a pure sort of rage, and Gren'averr dodged away, twisting his long neck to protect his face from Cyrus's attack.

Cyrus found he did not care, that an eye was too easy a target in any case, for this particular b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a dragon, and he plunged Praelior hard from the hip into the dragon's scaled neck, twisting it as he drove it in.

He was rewarded with a cold wash of blood, a shade of orange that he couldn't have guessed at if he'd been forced to. Gren'averr bucked and recoiled at his attack, twisting his head back down to snap at Cyrus, but Cyrus was already rolling to the side. Gren'averr's head presented itself perfectly to him as he brought it down, and Cyrus jabbed the blade into the joint behind the dragon's jaw, neatly skirting the scales and knocking two of them loose with the force of his attack.

This drew a shrieking from the winter dragon, not unlike the one he'd emitted when he'd caused Nyad's death, but more pained this time. Cyrus pulled his sword back and noted a crust of icy ichor on the surface, then plunged it in again and pushed upward this time. Orange blood dripped down the dragon's neck, staining his pristine white scales as he tried to twist to look at Cyrus, but reaching his full extension and failing.

Cyrus dragged his blade around, cutting a jagged path between scales as he ripped his way through dragonskin. Gren'averr ran his head around slowly, twisting and drawing still more orange liquid out of the gaping wound as he tried to attack what ailed him. With every foot further he cut, Cyrus watched the strength fade from the dragon's motion as it fought helplessly to try and strike at him until it started to sag, and finally, when he had almost reached the back of its neck, went limp and dropped to the icy ground beneath him, a great cloud of snow arising on either side as he landed.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h," Cyrus said, staring down at the dead dragon. Gren'averr's tongue did not hang out of his mouth like his brother's had, and for a moment Cyrus considered running down and ripping it with his own hands in hopes that some small, ebbing part of the dragon's life still existed enough to feel it before it perished forever.

"Well done," Vaste called up to him. Cyrus stared down at the troll, who wore a wide smile. There was a thick crust of ice on the armor of the warriors at the fore, but Cyrus could not see any other bodies, and already it looked like the victims of Gren'averr's a.s.sault were being pried from their frosty entrapment.

Cyrus drifted down slowly. Vara was lingering not far from where Nyad had perished, looking at the ground carefully, Curatio at her side. Simply in the way they were moving, the stiff way they carried themselves, he was certain that they knew.

"What are you so d.a.m.ned grim about?" Vaste asked as Cyrus reached the floor. "We'll have the frostbite cleared up with some healing spells in a few minutes, no problem."

"Come with me," Cyrus said, beckoning him forth as he headed for Curatio and Vara. He motioned toward Andren, whose fingers were glowing with the light of a healing spell. "Get the other officers," Cyrus called, and with a nod, Andren moved off to fetch them.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on over here?" Vaste asked as he and Cyrus came up to the spot where Vara and Curatio were quietly standing their vigil. "You look someone died-" The troll paused. "Oh. Oh, G.o.ds. Someone died, didn't they? Some poor, unfortunate warrior whose name none of us even knows-"

"Vaste," Cyrus said, voice low and hushed. "It was Nyad."

The troll's eyes flickered, his lids closing and opening rapidly. "I'm sorry?"

"Nyad was up front to cast fire spells to keep the cold at bay," Cyrus said, his voice low, as Thad, Longwell and Odellan trotted up. He knew each of them was catching his words as he threw them out. "She was. .h.i.t by the dragon's breath, and ... she got tripped over by one of the warriors at the fore."

"Who was it?" Vaste said tightly. "I want to remember this clod's name. Forever."

"It doesn't matter," Cyrus said. "It was an accident. Gren'averr did it, not the warrior."

Vaste clutched a mighty hand together. "If he weren't already dead, I'd kill him."

"You could resurrect him if you feel that strongly about ... whatever it is," Andren said as he and Erith joined the circle. "What are we mad about?"

"Nyad is dead," Vaste said in a voice that suggested he was without life of his own.

"And there's no way to ... piece her back together?" Odellan asked, looking as ashen as the lands they had just traveled through.

"There's not enough left of her to properly fill a coinpurse," Vara said with a muted savagery.

"Good G.o.ds," Erith said. "Nyad? Truly. We're not just ... joking or something?"

"Do I look as though I'm in a joking mood?" Vaste asked, menace in his voice giving it a quiver. He half turned, and in his profile Cyrus saw danger, his anger on a thin leash. "What do we do now?"

"We go on, of course," Thad said, frowning. "We're not done yet."

"We just lost the heiress to the Elven Kingdom," Vaste snapped at him. "Continuing is hardly a foregone conclusion."

"We go on," Cyrus said, and every head snapped to look at him. "We gain nothing by leaving now. It certainly doesn't honor her sacrifice, and we have ... people counting on us." He set his jaw.

"Fine, then," Vaste said in a voice that suggested it was anything but. "I'm going to go pound on the dead corpse of that ice dragon with my staff for a while. Let me know when we're ready to kill the next one." And he spun and left before anyone had a chance to respond.

The rest of the Council stood in shocked silence for a moment after that then began to break up, separating into smaller groups. Cyrus could hear the hushed voices, the quiet surprise, the disbelief as the word started to spread beyond them and into the army.

"Are you sure about this?" Vara asked, under her breath, from just behind his ear.

"No." Cyrus did not turn to face her. "But we're going on anyway." The chill in the room felt suddenly unbearable, and he was filled with a desire to say anything but, to take her in his arms and have a wizard cast them home, where he could strip off his armor and throw it to the ground along with his sword, leaving it all behind forever. He did not say this, though, but he was certain Vara could hear it anyway.

When they went charging into the next room, they found a dragon very much awake, and very quick to respond to them. This dragon, called Groz'anarr, was brown-scaled like the earth he represented, and even before he came at them, he swung his spiked tail into one of the boulders piled around his quarters and sent it rolling into the ranks of the frontline warriors charging at him. Cyrus dodged it, watching it spin past and slam into the armored forms behind him, drawing screams of pain as it struck and rolled through, chewing bodies under it as it went.

G.o.ds, let their armor protect them, Cyrus thought as he sprung off the ground with Falcon's Essence as his aid.

The smell of earth was thick in the chamber, like fresh upturned dirt and rock dust. It would have been nice to have Fortin for this one, Cyrus thought, but knew that leaving the ma.s.sive rock giant out of the expedition had been the most expedient course.

The flat, blunt face of Groz'anarr wavered, then decided on Cyrus as his target. He took a breath as Cyrus drew closer, and when he opened his mouth, a stream of rocks as wide as Cyrus's thighs came shooting out as though propelled from a trebuchet. One of them clanged off Cyrus's armor, spinning as it ricocheted. It left a numbness where it had struck, not so hard as the punch of a G.o.d, but most certainly noticeable and definitely fatal without armor as protection.

Groz'anarr saw the impact of his attack and switched targets immediately, directing his breath toward the advancing Sanctuary horde. He sprayed into a field of warriors advancing at a run, and Cyrus watched them bowled over as surely as if the dragon had sent another boulder through their number. Cyrus, for his part, advanced toward the dragon's head, heedless of the danger.

Spells were impacting all along the dragon's flank as he turned sideways to snap at Cyrus. The dragon moved quickly, but not so quickly that Praelior did not give Cyrus advantage. He dodged as the dragon halted its breath and snapped at him. Cyrus landed a swipe against its nose as he pa.s.sed, and it bucked its head and smacked him in the back as he ran past it, dragging Praelior into the side of Groz'anarr's face.

The dragon's attack was offhand and somewhat lucky, but it did not stop Cyrus from being staggered nonetheless. It knocked him off balance, sending him stumbling on air, knees wobbling and trying to catch himself. He failed and hit the air in an ungainly face-plant, spared injury or pain by virtue of the Falcon's Essence spell. Cyrus fought back to his feet and turned his head to look, antic.i.p.ating another dragon attack.

Warriors were crouched around Groz'anarr's legs now, hacking away at his scales to some effect, mystical swords carving swaths of damage with their blades. The dragon paid little attention to this, however, as his head was engulfed in a swarm of arrows like nattering insects in his face. A few of them stuck out of the wound Cyrus had made, and Groz'anarr swung around to direct his attack toward the rangers below, stomping away from the warriors at his belly.

"No!" Cyrus shouted, getting to his feet and propelling himself into motion, chasing the back of the dragon's retreating head. The beast's long strides carried him past and through the scattering frontline warriors, toward a patch of green cloaks crouching near a series of boulders, Martaina in the front.

The bombardment of arrows did not slow as the dragon drew nearer the rangers, slinking along like a lizard with his belly near to dragging the ground. "Scatter!" Cyrus shouted, but it was too late.

Groz'anarr unleashed his breath of rocks only thirty meters from the formation of rangers, and few enough bothered to seek cover. Cyrus watched Calene Raverle dodge behind a boulder, but she was one of the few. In some he saw the steadfast defiance, the courage that sprang from wanting to face down their foes. On one elf, he watched the movement of lips throwing out some curse, and in a few others he saw surprise as the first rain of rocks came down and the rangers finally began to react.

Martaina was at the fore, and she moved at the last second, throwing herself to the ground. The blast of rocks struck her on the hip as she dove, and Cyrus saw blood, though whether it came from her or the rangers behind her, he could not tell in the chaos that followed. Screams filled the air, filled his ears, and he saw at least one head completely destroyed, splattered as surely as if a t.i.tan had landed a foot upon it. Another ranger seemed to dissolve into red as if a strong wind had blown him apart, and yet another, a dark elf, exploded in dark blue, his chainmail falling to the ground as if uninhabited.

"NOOOOOO!" Cyrus screamed, slamming into the dragon's head with nothing but rage. He hit the scales at full sprint, his Praelior-enhanced speed and reflexes allowing him to strike with the force of a boulder dropped off a cliff. Groz'anarr's long neck dipped from the impact, then slammed down to the ground as Cyrus's momentum carried him forward. Scales burst free from the back of the dragon's neck and flew through the air like tossed rocks, and while Cyrus staggered, he came back to his feet as Groz'anarr's head wobbled back up.

This time, he faced the dragon head on, and in a flash he saw Nyad in his mind, the icy statue, shattered forever, and it spurred him on in another charge. Cyrus ran at Groz'anarr's face, ignoring the mouth and focusing on the punch-drunk eyes. He saw the dawning awareness just before he hit, the late-term attempt to simply open its mouth and swallow him, and he corrected for the lazy motion, slamming shoulder-first into the dragon's nose, knocking asunder more scales and not even bothering to plunge Praelior into flesh as he shoulder-charged the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

This time Cyrus did not give ground; he merely slammed into the dragon's nose and held his position, letting the force of impact run through him as though he were a wall. The dragon's face gave against his anger, and Groz'anarr's neck snapped back some twenty feet while Cyrus held his place in the air. This time the dragon's eyelids fluttered.

Cyrus howled with rage and charged again. He knew that Groz'anarr, in his present state of near-unconsciousness, would not be able to avoid his attack. This time he caught the dragon under the chin. His head snapped back harder this time, the sound of breaking bones running down the thin neck. Groz'anarr's head fluttered like a leaf for a few seconds, and then dropped without ceremony to the ground, landing on a boulder, deep purple blood oozing out from under his head. His eyes were fixed, a deep green, staring straight ahead, unmoving.

"Sacred s.h.i.t," the unmistakable voice of Calene Raverle said from below him. "Our Guildmaster just beat a dragon to death."

"He is not dead," Curatio said from somewhere below. Cyrus's eyes found him with the healers, standing short next to Vaste's immense bulk. At the mere statement, however, Vaste started forward in determination, long strides eating up the distance to the dragon's head, where he drove his staff through the dragon's almost unnoticeable ear, with its trickle of purple blood, slamming through the ca.n.a.l and burying it almost up to the crystal at the tip. The troll then stirred the staff around like a brew in a cauldron, his muscles straining and the effort showing on his face as he flushed a deeper green before he ripped the staff back out of the ca.n.a.l, covered entirely in purple gook.

"Now he is dead," Curatio p.r.o.nounced somewhat flatly.

"Martaina!" Andren's shout drew Cyrus's attention back to where the rangers had been attacked. He stalked over to where the healer already crouched over the fallen body of Martaina, who clutched at her hip, which was bleeding profusely.

"I'll be fine," Martaina said, face tightly suffused with pain.

"Of course you will," Andren said soothingly. "You're so tough-"

"I mean I'll be fine once you heal me!" Martaina spat. "What are you waiting for?" She writhed and grimaced, blood spurting from between her fingers.

"Oh, right," Andren said and thrust his hand aloft, spell light flickering from it. Within a few seconds, Martaina had ceased her writhing, soothed and settled, and then she went stiff, her eyes flickering around the area where she had fallen.

"How many did we lose?" Cyrus asked, low, taking the last few steps to stand by where she lay.

"I count six," Calene said, coming out from behind a boulder. She nodded with her head to where armor and cloaks lay, remains so obviously destroyed by the dragon's breath spread before them among a few other wounded.

"d.a.m.n, that could have been you," Andren said under his breath.

"But it wasn't," Martaina said stiffly, and Cyrus could hear the familiar guilt of a surviving commander in the way she said it.