Session Twenty-Nine --- 09/27/26
1832 AS --- Namal 29
The Things That Would Not Stay Down
The wings were real, dear reader.
I mention this because, after everything we had learned about the Wand, a small part of me hoped the sound outside belonged to something manageable. A roof collapsing, perhaps. An avalanche. Some ordinary disaster with the decency to remain geological.
Instead, a gargantuan white dragon waited outside the Monastery of the Open Hand.
Someone was riding it.
I have known people who arrive at a monastery seeking peace, wisdom, or forgiveness. This woman had brought a dragon. We were unlikely to settle the matter over breakfast.
Mother Hestera’s voice carried through the monastery, calling defenders to the perimeter. We were being attacked from all sides. Whatever protection her walls offered, it now required people willing to stand outside them.
Gustan was here.
So was Bridget’s grave.
We went out.
Doors to other places and Dragons
I began with a sensible proposal.
“Roon, I can get you right next to it.”
He agreed, which ought never to be mistaken for independent confirmation that a proposal is sensible.
I took him through Dimension Door.
The monastery fell away. Space folded, and we appeared behind the dragon, close enough to appreciate details that distance had mercifully concealed. The scales. The tremendous weight of it. The amount of creature extending beyond any reasonable allowance for creature.
Still, we had arrived before it expected us.
I summoned the many blades of Melkior.
Cloud of Daggers, if one prefers the scholarly name. Cuisinart, if one has watched it work.
I placed the blades where they could bite both dragon and rider, and gave the spell all the strength I could afford. Steel spun into being. The first cuts opened.
The rider answered by setting me on fire.
A discourteous response to an admittedly discourteous introduction.
I held the spell and sang of Urgan for Roon, who set to work with the enthusiasm of a man finally delivered directly to his problem.
For a moment, our entrance was magnificent.
Then the dragon turned its attention upon us.
I have described Roon as fearless. This is an exaggeration for which I must now apologize to history.
I have occasionally described myself as fearless as well.
History may stop laughing whenever it pleases.
The terror took us bodily. Roon dropped his weapon. Whatever brave instruction I had intended to give next disappeared beneath the certainty that I needed to be somewhere else immediately.
We fled.
There. Written plainly.
I had transported us across the battlefield with considerable magical sophistication so that we might run away from a closer starting point.
But the daggers remained.
Some stubborn part of my mind kept hold of them even while the rest of me was occupied with escape. The dragon could frighten me away from its flesh. It had considerably more difficulty persuading the blades to leave.
The Dragon and Rider attacks the others
It took wing and descended toward the others.
Then came its breath.
Cold swallowed the space before it. Companions who had been standing ready were suddenly struggling beneath a force that made the Gale itself seem almost temperate.
Gildas answered with a wall of fire.
Flame rose against white scales and storm. Mikani called upon Namaloa, sending sacred power against the dragon and healing toward those she could reach. Corvinas advanced with his burning sword.
The rider took particular exception to Corvinas.
Once she came down from the dragon, we could see her properly: red skin, scars, armor, horns reduced to stumps. A woman thoroughly accustomed to violence and apparently determined that we should become better acquainted with hers.
She reached toward him with a spell meant to kill.
Gildas stopped it.
I want that recorded with sufficient care.
There are magics that announce themselves beautifully. Fire lights the sky. Lightning gives every witness a sound to remember. My daggers, I am pleased to say, are difficult to overlook.
What Gildas accomplished left us with something that did not happen.
The killing spell unraveled before it could finish its work.
Later, when she tried to impose another terrible spell upon us, he countered her again.
How does one make a crowd applaud the death that never arrived?
I shall have to find a way. He deserves the verse.
The assisting Monk
We called to the monks for help.
I called with all the authority, urgency, and persuasive power available to Faban Colon in a snowstorm.
No one joined me.
I would prefer not to dwell upon this professionally.
Rayetta called, and one of her own answered.
There is a difference between being eloquent and being known. These were her people. She had lived and trained among them. When she asked someone to stand beside her, there was a history behind the request that I could not supply by raising my voice.
The monk entered the fight.
Rayetta pressed the warlock with staff and fists, slipping clear of the answering hellfire. Her companion struck too, and struck hard. Mikani brought lightning down upon our enemies while Gildas continued his work.
Roon, recovered from the dragon’s terror, helped me down from the ledge with his winged boots.
I had brought him into battle through a fold in reality. He returned the favor by carrying me down a cliff.
Friendship makes peculiar arrangements.
Once below, I returned my attention to the blades.
Again and again I placed them against the dragon. Its face. Its great body. Wherever I could make it pay for remaining near us.
The spell was working.
Gods, it was working.
The Dark and Dying
And still the creature fought.
The warlock filled part of the battlefield with a darkness we could not see through.
Within it, cold and acid did their work. Outside it, we could no longer see the people who needed us.
Corvinas had already borne too much. The dragon had clawed and battered him, then struck him down. Now the darkness lay over him while we struggled to reach him.
Mikani was caught in it too.
There are details of battle that sound like mere inconvenience when discussed beside a warm fire. A few paces. A blocked view. The need to see someone before a healing word can find them.
Then your friend is dying within those few paces.
Then the person who might save him falls as well.
Mikani went down.
Corvinas died.
Again.
I have no wish to become practiced at writing that sentence.
Elsewhere in the fight, the dragon turned upon the monk who had answered Rayetta. Three terrible attacks, and he was gone.
I do not have his name to put here.
That omission needs repairing.
He came when she called. He struck our enemy. He died defending his home alongside strangers.
He deserves better than to become merely the monk who helped us.
The Fight Continues
I kept the daggers moving.
There was nothing elegant about my purpose by then. The dragon needed to stop. The woman needed to stop. Every moment they remained standing made the next loss more likely.
They seemed to find fresh endurance even as we wounded them. We cut them down toward death and watched them continue beyond what should have been enough.
So we gave them more.
I closed with my own blade and struck the dragon twice. Rayetta needed healing; I gave her what I could and saw her rise again.
Then the dragon’s borrowed endurance failed.
The great body collapsed.
Its rider was caught beneath it.
For all the ancient power assembled there, gravity contributed a remarkably practical opinion.
Roon reached her.
She looked up at him, almost laughing, and told him we would not stop her master.
Roon finished the fight.
I have heard more elaborate rebuttals.
Few have been as final.
Or so we believed.
After the Battle
We got Mikani back on her feet.
She brought Corvinas back.
Another diamond spent. Another breath returned to a body that had stopped taking them.
I was grateful.
I am grateful.
Bridget came into my thoughts anyway, and I hated myself briefly for allowing grief to intrude upon relief, as though love were a room with space for only one person at a time.
Corvinas deserved to return.
Bridget deserved to return.
I still do not know where to put those two truths.
For now, I put them here.
Interesting Findings
The warlock carried a contract with Salazar.
After secret passages, borrowed faces, stolen books, and lightning heard beyond a portal, we finally held his authority in writing. She had served him.
I searched her belongings and found coin, an enchanted longsword, an infernal rod, a ring, and an amulet bearing words in Old Common.
The amulet promised greater constitution.
I proposed giving it to Corvinas.
He had made a compelling demonstration of need.
The ring went to Gildas for examination. It protected the wearer’s mind against intrusion and could conceal itself from sight.
It could also shelter a soul after death.
Gildas put it on.
Apparently, the woman we had just killed had more to say.
Her opinion of us remained unfavorable.
I am trying to appreciate the useful possibilities of carrying an enemy who may know something about Salazar. At present, I am chiefly struck by the fact that we defeated a dragon, killed its rider, and somehow acquired a conversation.
Gildas now wears it.
I carry my own burden close enough to know that I should be careful with the jokes.
I shall make some anyway.
Curse lifted
Roon’s attachment to his life-stealing sword was finally loosened when the curse was lifted. He could choose another weapon again. Among everything else that happened, that small restoration of choice might easily be overlooked.
I do not intend to overlook it.
He also wanted a dragon’s tooth.
Naturally.
He had managed some scales, but extracting a tooth intact proved more demanding. Mother Hestera agreed to arrange help.
She was badly wounded herself. The defense elsewhere had cost her dearly. I offered healing; she told me to hush.
I healed her anyway.
She also praised Gildas. I was glad of that. Someone besides me should tell him how much his counterspells mattered.
We asked after diamonds. Most of the monastery’s were already embedded and unavailable.
So we must find more.
That is now among the practical necessities of our journey: provisions, shelter, and the means to ask death to reconsider.
A poor replacement for Briget
Rayetta will travel with us against Salazar. Hestera expects her to return when that work is done.
I hope she does.
There was talk of another verse for the company.
There is room.
Bridget’s remains.
Later, I sang about Roon and his dragon tooth. An absurd song, which suited the occasion better than any grand declaration I could have managed. We were exhausted and battered, and laughter came out of us with very little dignity.
I busked afterward and gave the proceeds to the monastery.
They had sheltered us. They had buried our friend. One of their own had answered our need and died beside us.
Coin was something I could give.
So was music.
Tonight, I can still give both.
The dragon is dead outside the walls. Corvinas breathes. Mikani rests. Roon is planning jewelry. Gildas has an unwelcome voice in his ring, and Rayetta has a road ahead that will take her from home.
I am writing while I can still remember who did what.
Before the song becomes simpler.
Before I am tempted to make myself braver.
I ran from the dragon.
My friends kept fighting.
I came back.
