"Martaina!" Thad's voice echoed as he pushed through the crowd thickening into a line around the site of the ranger fallen. "Oh, thank the G.o.ds." His hand fell to his chestplate, where the red had been sc.r.a.ped from his armor.

"Should we even bother to have an officer meeting about this?" Vaste asked in Cyrus's ear, whisper-quiet. Cyrus had not even heard the troll's approach.

"To what purpose?" Cyrus asked coolly.

"I don't know," Vaste said sarcastically, "maybe to discuss the sheer number of people we've lost today? To consider, for perhaps sixty seconds before charging foolishly ahead, whether the price we are paying is going to be even close to worth it? Or we could just have a talk about other ideas that could have become inspired by these losses, alternatives to this mess we find ourselves charging headlong into?"

"Do you have any ideas?" Cyrus asked, and waited for the troll to shake his head. "Anything to stop the advance of the t.i.tans?"

"There is no t.i.tan advance, Cyrus," Vaste said, the anger in his voice threatening to burst out of a whisper. "Perhaps we should reconsider and come back when there is."

"It'll be too late," Cyrus said, shaking his head. "Once they figure it out, the north is done."

"If we keep going, we may be done," Vaste said.

"We're not done," Cyrus said quietly.

The troll waited for just a moment before replying. "Well, maybe we should be." And with his bit said, he walked away, slapping his staff into the eye of Groz'anarr as he did so, as futile-and as understandable-a gesture as Cyrus could imagine.

The next dragon lay up the stairs, on the top level of the temple. It took the battered Army of Sanctuary almost an hour to make their way up to that dragon's chambers, Cyrus carefully following the instructions given by Ehrgraz. He knew what rested behind the door before he came to it, but held out his hand for a quiet regroup a few hundred meters from that door, not willing to face it without a break first.

"What are we up against next?" Vara asked, settling next to Cyrus on the hard stone floor. It was flat and surprisingly cold to the touch, when Cyrus took his gauntlet off to wipe the acc.u.mulating perspiration from his palm.

"Weck'arerr," Cyrus said. "A poison dragon."

Vara frowned. "Poison? How poisonous is this thing?"

"Corrosive, supposedly," Cyrus said. "The way Ehrgraz explained it, his breath can burn through flesh in much the same way as fire, but slower."

"That sounds like a wicked sort of alchemy," she said, shaking her head. "I have heard of similar solutions created by potion, but to imagine a dragon with that sort of substance at his command defies my imagination."

"We face creatures several times our size," Cyrus said with a sad smile, "dragons that live in cities and shrines, even gnomes and goblins and trolls, things that are so much different. h.e.l.ls, you and I are a human and an elf, and while we mostly look alike save for our ears-"

"And I am much prettier than you."

"-and that, of course, but there are differences." He still smiled at her wistfully. "Even the closest related of our races is dramatically different. Our world is a ... peculiar place, I would say, filled with wondrous and horrid creatures."

"That was quite the little speech," Vara said, eyeing him.

"Well, I didn't get to give a motivational one before we came here, so I suppose the need to fill the air with my words leaked out in the form of dull introspection instead."

She leaned against his arm and held still for a moment before she asked her question. "Do you want to talk about the deaths?"

"Not now, no," Cyrus said, meeting her gaze and finding earnest concern in those blue eyes, bright as a sky he had not seen in a week. "But later, I'm sure I will."

She nodded once, then stood, shuffling past Scuddar In'shara, who sat only ten feet away, his robes gathered around him, Calene Raverle sitting across from him, the two of them saying not a word, but looking at each other intensely. "Stop it, you two," Cyrus said, drawing the attention of both of them, "your staring contest is quite disturbing to those of us watching."

"It's a tradition of the desert," Calene said with youthful jubilance that did not match Cyrus's current mood. "Staring into the eyes of your battlefield compatriots before a fight. Builds trust."

"If you don't trust him yet," Samwen Longwell said, plinking the end of his lance into the rock next to where Cyrus sat, "I don't think staring into his sun-yellow eyes for a s.p.a.ce is going to do much more other than perhaps blind you when you look away." He paused, looking down at Cyrus. "How are you doing, Guildmaster?"

Cyrus glanced away from Calene and Scuddar to return Longwell's eye contact. "Hanging in there. And you?"

Longwell squatted down, his armor squealing as he did so, dropping the grip on the haft of his spear to its base. Cyrus watched the tip waver, but it did not once threaten to fall even once. "Better than you, I'd wager."

Cyrus smiled wanly. "And why should I not be in finest form, Samwen? Am I not a warrior, bred for combat, here in the middle of most inspiring battle?"

"I was wrong in what I said to you when last we spoke." Longwell lifted the lance up a half-inch and tapped it back down again. "It was unfair, and it was unkind."

"It was inconvenient," Cyrus said, looking away, "as most truthful things are. Your people have suffered-"

"My people volunteered to join Sanctuary," Longwell said, looking straight ahead, "to earn their keep. And Sanctuary has paid them well, seen them through, helped give us a home. For me to complain about the sacrifice war entails was foolish, minimizing the sacrifice that the dead have made. It was a willing one, and for me to say what I said cheapens it, as if those men didn't have a will of their own to do what they did." He turned his head. "Nyad had a will of her own. The rangers in that room back there, they had wills of their own as well. We all do, and we're here."

"You're here because I've led you here," Cyrus said darkly. "I use your trust in me to compel that will to action. That's leadership."

"But we embrace it," Longwell said. "We choose to follow."

"And I choose to lead," Cyrus said, "but I don't choose to lead you into death; death happens in spite of my best intentions, or maybe even because of them." He turned his head to look at Longwell as he spoke. "We face dragons and t.i.tans, and they can kill us in a way that we don't normally face on the battlefield-"

"Begging your pardon, sir," Longwell said, "but we faced an army at Leaugarden, and they killed more people than anything I've seen since the scourge killed almost all my people." His lips remained a tight line until he spoke again. "War is an uncertain thing. Leadership is an uncertain thing as well. You do the best you can. Better than most, I'd say."

"What if my best isn't good enough?" Cyrus asked, letting a question slip out that he might not have dared let anyone else hear. It rang with uncertainty and with pure honesty as he stared into the eyes of a man who should have been a king.

"Well, then I guess we're all up s.h.i.t creek," Longwell said with a muted smile as he stood, "because there d.a.m.ned sure isn't anyone else who could do any better, I a.s.sure you." He tipped his helm to Cyrus and went on his way, walking with a confidence that he had not shown only a few days earlier.

Weck'arerr was sleeping, his snores as loud as the shouts of a rock giant going into battle. As he entered the chamber, Cyrus froze at the sound, afraid the dragon was already alert and ready to attack. The attack did not come; instead Weck'arerr simply extended a wing momentarily up from the nest in the corner, stretching in his sleep. Cyrus did not relax, but rather crept on quietly.

The floors were smooth and flat, but in the corner, over the sound of Weck'arerr's prodigious snoring was a low bubbling, like lava. Cyrus saw it as he grew closer, a pit of acidic green sludge that bubbled as though it were at a low boil. He drew closer, stepping up to the dragon, only twenty feet away now, feet off the ground as he came in closer, moving not quite silently as he- Weck'arerr snorted in his sleep and turned again onto his side, his light green belly not as dark as his scaled back. He lifted another wing straight into the air, revealing the soft tissue strung between the bones. They were covered in the pungent acidic mixture that filled the poison dragon's nest, dripping down onto the body and sizzling as they hit scale and rolled off like beads of water. It had a harsh, metallic smell, and it made Cyrus want to plug his nose with whatever he could find.

Cyrus made his way to where the dragon's head was tucked under his front shoulder. His nose was slightly submerged, the solution bubbling even more where his head was planted, air burbling from beneath the dragon's lips. Cyrus pondered his course of action, deciding where to strike first. The back of the neck seemed a ripe target, with the possibility for an instant end to the fight. Taking the eyes would also similarly put things on an uneven footing, though not as surely as the strike to the spine.

He ultimately decided on the quickest, most expedient path, and positioned himself just above the nape of the dragon's neck. He raised his sword silently, and brought it down- Just as Weck'arerr rolled to the side.

Cyrus planted Praelior squarely in the side of the dragon's neck, trying to adjust to the unexpected movement but failing. He struck off some half-dozen scales in the process, but missed the artery that he had aimed for. Some blood was drawn, yellowish like Scuddar's eyes. Weck'arerr's own eyes sprang open and his head lifted in fury. Cyrus struck again, running a jagged cut along the side of the dragon's face, skipping along the jawbone and ripping another ten or so green scales off the beast.

Weck'arerr roared in pain and outrage, taking in the whole army and Cyrus in one glance. Cyrus could read the emotion on the dragon's face, transfusing into anger as he opened his mouth to belch forth toxicity. Weck'arerr wavered between Cyrus and the army beyond, and instinctively, Cyrus leapt in front of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's mouth, stabbing him in the discolored, light green gums and cutting a tooth clean out of its mouth as the dragon roared and sprayed him with green liquid.

It covered Cyrus's face and armor, blinding him instantly. His skin burned, nerve endings screaming in pain. Cyrus held onto his sword, clenching it tightly as the corrosive spray ate into his face and eyes, and he struck blindly at where he knew the dragon had been only a moment earlier, not ignoring his pain but channeling it into a rage of his own. His reward was a scream, the hint of resistance that told him Praelior had hit scale or tooth or bone, and he stabbed back once his strike was through, ignoring the sensation of his very flesh peeling off his face.

A healing spell brought warmth and feeling back to Cyrus's face, and his sight was restored long enough for him to catch a glance of blood and skin and a toxic green hissing on his breastplate and below. His armor looked as though it had been dipped in Weck'arerr's bed, but he felt nothing beneath it to concern him, just the sense of residual burning from where the healing spell had left him phantom pain.

Weck'arerr stood before him, jagged cuts on his lip and nose, and Cyrus struck at him again as the dragon spat another burst of bile directly at him, a spray large enough to cover him completely. Cyrus's vision once again vanished. The pain followed a moment later, as though someone had taken a torch and thrust it into his helm's open face, rubbing it into his eyes, against his forehead and nose, burning them off completely. Stray searing bolts ran across his scalp, and the smell of disgusting acridness disappeared as his nose was once more burned completely off by the acid bath.

In spite of this, Cyrus struck twice more into the face in front of him, staggering ahead blindly, sensing the dragon reeling away from him by the sound of his screeches. He swung again and missed, then struck once more as he raised his blade and speared it forward.

The next healing spell hit him and threw the pain back some distance, leaving a little more than the normal residual pain. Cyrus realized that some of the acidic liquid was trapped between his helm and his skull, and the scent of chemicals burning his hair drifted into his reconst.i.tuted nose. He ignored the feeling like a claw rubbing against his scalp and drove himself into the face of the dragon again as it recoiled away from him. He plunged his blade under its jaw as it tried to lift its neck higher, and then it jerked down, yanking him toward the toxic nest below. Cyrus caught his footing on the invisible platform the Falcon's Essence spell provided and extracted Praelior from where it was stuck, plunging it into the roof of Weck'arerr's open mouth just as another splash of the dragon's breath belched forth.

Cyrus lost his vision again, but more slowly this time as his face was inclined downward when the spray came out, his body half-lodged in the dragon's mouth. One moment he was looking at brown-stained tongue, the next his face was once more alight with what felt like the hottest fire spell Cyrus could imagine. Through it all, he stabbed and stabbed, upward, as teeth clanked futilely against his armor and Weck'arerr breathed more acid to no effect.

Cyrus made one last strike as his strength started to fade, driving the blade up and punching through bone. The teeth clinked against his armor, but more weakly this time, and suddenly he was dragged down inside the mouth of his enemy. Cyrus's sight returned with the wash of the healing spell just as the dragon's mouth hit the ground, and he lay there, stunned, even as shouts grew closer and light flooded in. Strong hands propped open the dragon's mouth and tugged him out, his armor dragging along the front teeth, breaking them with a crack as his backplate hung up on them.

"G.o.ds, you idiot!" Vaste shouted, his face clouded above Cyrus. Cyrus's eyes still burned, as though he'd dipped them into something hot. Water splashed in his face from a skin held above him, forcing Cyrus to close his eyes. Another healing spell ran over him, and this time his vision cleared completely. Someone pulled his helm off as Cyrus tried to force open his eyes again, bleary, and another splash of water rushed over him and down into his helm. He could hear the sizzle of the toxic brew as it washed out onto the stones below.

"All of you, back away!" Vara said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Officers!" she snapped. "Get over here!"

Cyrus tried to sit up but felt a troll foot land on his breastplate. "You can take part in this from right there," Vaste said. "No need to strain your already clearly impaired faculties."

"I'm ... fine," Cyrus said, managing to finally open his eyes. There was a circle of the officers around him, Vaste standing just above him, tree-like foot still planted in the middle of his chest like he wanted to take root there.

"You are out of your G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned mind," Vaste said in a hushed whisper.

"The elves can still hear you, probably," Thad said, shuffling from side to side on alternating feet as he stood uncomfortably in the circle.

"To h.e.l.l with anyone listening," Vaste said. "Did anyone else just see what I saw? Because I'd wager some of the members did."

"Saw what?" Cyrus asked, trying to stand again as Vaste planted all his weight on Cyrus. "Saw me go toe-to-toe with a poison dragon? Good. They should know I'm not above standing in the middle of the fight."

"It seems to me there is a difference between standing in the middle of the fight," Curatio said quietly, "and thrusting yourself heedlessly into certain danger."

"My armor could take the breath," Cyrus said, not remotely relaxing where he lay. "Others couldn't."

"d.a.m.nation, man," Andren said, and Cyrus caught a glimpse of him, face as white as sheep's wool. "Do you know even know what happened to you there?"

"I fought him," Cyrus said, jerking his head at the carca.s.s of Weck'arerr, staring dully at them from a few feet away, mouth wrecked and blood pouring out from where his rescuers had ripped him from the grasp of the dragon's teeth. "We won. Yay for victory."

"He burned your face off," Vaste said with a little acid of his own. "Three times. I counted, because-well, because do you have any idea how that looked? I mean, I was surprised, because I honestly thought it would be an improvement, but it wasn't. At all. It was horrible."

"I did what had to be done," Cyrus said.

"This is a familiar song," Curatio said.

Cyrus clutched Praelior tight in his hand and bucked Vaste's foot off his chest with a concentrated effort. The troll staggered a step back, and Cyrus got to his feet before the troll could recover. "Then I hope you enjoy the chorus," Cyrus said with a little bitterness, "because you're probably going to hear it again after the next dragon, too."

"Cyrus," Erith said quietly. "You just got into a fistfight with the earth dragon, and you threw your face literally into the dragon's mouth with this one. We're concerned about you." She looked at Vara. "We are, aren't we? All of us?"

Vara said nothing.

"Well, most of us are," Vaste said, "because to the untrained eye, it's starting to look like our esteemed Guildmaster has a death wish he wants to play out right here in front of us." He held his gaze steady on Cyrus. "Is that right? Because the next dragon, if I'm not much mistaken, is going to give you a wonderful opportunity to prove us right, if we are."

Cyrus felt the bristle of cold tingles down his back, the hot phantom pain still upon his scalp where the acid had been healed away. "The next dragon is fire, yes."

"And are you planning to go nose-to-burned-off-nose with him as well?" Vaste asked. "Because I can tell you how that will end out before we even get there."

"I've done it before," Cyrus said as coolly as if Gren'averr had frozen him and not Nyad.

"This is insanity, Cyrus," Andren said. "You shouldn't have to face these things alone. You're not a one-warrior army."

"I think that I have to be in this case," Cyrus said, holding up Praelior. "Because the alternative is to let him turn his attention to the rest of you, and let the consequences-and the death-fall wherever they may."

"Or we could-here's a brilliant idea-leave." Vaste folded his arms. "We've done our part-"

"Our part is not done yet," Cyrus said, the fury rising.

"You're out of your d.a.m.ned mind," Vaste said, "I'd say the acid got into your brain, but you were acting irrationally even before that-"

"This isn't happening," Erith said, shaking her head. "I'm dreaming this."

"I think this is tending a little toward a nightmare, really," Odellan weighed in, looking solemn.

"How many deaths since I put myself out front?" Cyrus asked, spinning in a slow circle to face each of them in turn. "I let that earth b.a.s.t.a.r.d turn away from me and we lost six. Gren'averr attacked our army, and we lost Nyad." He slammed his palm into the center of his breastplate and it clanged loud enough that Vara flinched. "I got their attention, their focus on me, for these last two, kept them attacking me, and how many did I-did we-lose-" he corrected himself at the last second.

A silent pall settled over the officers. "Cyrus," Curatio said, looking as if some of the life had drained out of him. "You can't blame yourself for-"

"This is not a discussion we're having right now," Cyrus said through gritted teeth. "If you don't want to be in this fight any longer, I invite you to have a wizard send you back to Sanctuary." He looked at each of them with angry eyes. "The rest of you," he said, raising his voice to let it roll over the army, "fall in. We have two more dragons to kill."

He ignored the shocked silence as he pushed his way past Thad out of the officers' circle, the warriors the first to fall in behind him, hurrying to catch up. He lifted the door out of Weck'arerr's acid-stinking quarters and squeezed out, following the circle around the shrine to his right. The grey skies between the columns taunted him, the first hints of blue in days showing between them.

The clouds of ash seemed thinner up here on the highest floor, as if they'd ascended to near the peak. Cyrus suspected they were only halfway up the volcano based on his observations from outside, before they'd begun their climb. He stalked on along the circular corridor that opened to the sky outside, but the breeze between the columns did not reinvigorate him. He only turned once, to take stock and see if anyone was still following beyond the warriors at his immediate back. The officers were there, a ways further back, Odellan and Thad almost right behind him, along with Scuddar and Longwell. He caught a hint of a green-robed shape lurking behind one of the warriors and snapped, "Larana-back with the spellcasters." He watched until she shuffled back in the formation, head bowed under her cowl.

Cyrus saw Vara about a third of the way back, her face still and settled, like she had been carved into statuary. This is the way it has to be, Cyrus thought as they approached the next door, the ma.s.sive wood structure hanging from the ceiling like it had been carved out of the largest tree Cyrus could imagine. He felt his breath catch in his throat as he walked up to it, and had a brief flash, wondering if it was in fact death's door he stood before. His nerves stirred, p.r.i.c.kling at him, but duty pushed him on regardless.

This is what needs to be done.

This is the only way.

I am the only one who can stand before the might of these things.

His mouth was dry and filled with bitterness, like he'd fallen on the earth outside and it had filled him up to the overflowing, dripping over his lips and absorbing every last ounce of moisture.

If I have to die to protect my people ... so be it.

He hesitated only a second before the door and began to lift. Other warriors came forward to help, Odellan sneaking in at his side, Scuddar next to him, Longwell balancing his spear as he brought his shoulder low to help lift.