Edge of Destiny

by J. Robert King

  “They conquered it only to vanish?”

  Caithe nodded grimly. “Destroyers care only about killing. They are forged from the molten heart of their master—Primordus, first of the Elder Dragons to rise. The dwarves forestalled his coming, but at a terrible price. They are all but gone now, and Primordus is rising to destroy all races.”

  Logan took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s try to keep things a little lighter, yeah? How about finding this presence of yours down here?”

  Caithe lifted her head, listening, and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply and pointed. “This way.”

  She set off down the street—a wide, cobbled way that grew wider as they went. Soon, the avenue split around medians, where stone sculptures depicted dwarves—working, fighting, drinking. One tableau showed dwarves in battle against destroyers.

  “Just ahead,” Caithe said, hurrying forward.

  Logan marched double time up the avenue, which bent around the massive wall of a dwarven palace. On the far side, the avenue entered a great arch against the stone wall. Logan scratched his head. “They must have been carving a new passage when the destroyers attacked.”

  “No.” Caithe pointed toward the base of the arch, where a massive blue crystal hung loose from its facing. As a breeze wafted past, the stone swung toward the wall, which sparked slightly. “This is an asura gate. It’s probably from when Primordus was first put back to sleep. Watch.” She knelt beside the stone and pressed it into its housing.

  Suddenly, the gate flashed with light.

  Logan and Caithe shielded their faces. Only as their eyes adjusted could they see what strobed within the archway.

  Visions. Beautiful visions . . . a grassy plain where wild horses ran . . . a deep lagoon encircled by leaning palms . . . a great glacier with snowcapped peaks in blue . . . a sere desert where crystalline statues stood . . .

  “Ow!” Caithe said, letting go of the crystal. It was glowing red, and smoke rose from a chunk out of one side. “It’s damaged. Someone smashed it to close the gate.”

  “Can we get it to work long enough to get out of here?” Logan asked, pushing the stone into place again.

  . . . a deep rain forest . . . a hamlet in a hanging valley . . . a bustling harbor jammed with junks . . . a white city with gleaming spires . . .

  “That was Divinity’s Reach!” Logan said, stepping toward the gate. Already, though, the scene had changed to a city-size white tree within a steaming jungle . . .

  “And that was the Grove!” Caithe said.

  Logan hissed, releasing the crystal and shaking his hand. “That thing’s overloading. We’ll have just one last chance at this before it blows completely. And if we jump through at the wrong time, who knows where we’ll end up.”

  “Maybe I can call to the Grove. Maybe the tree can prolong the contact.”

  She began to sing:

  Oh, come to me, heart of the wyld.

  Oh, hear this lost sylvari child,

  Away from wood and glade and briar—

  Entombed within a world of fire.

  Rytlock was still hearing Caithe’s vibrant voice echoing through his head. It was almost as if she were just around the corner.

  “That’s it,” Rytlock growled, sliding Sohothin upward. A feeble blue flame flickered around the twisted metal blades and then flared to life, roaring and crackling. “Ah! Light!”

  The fire shone across the ruined street where he stood, revealing burned buildings and shattered walls, dwarven skeletons and dead destroyers. But it also revealed something else. Something worse.

  Live destroyers.

  They hunkered in an alcove of the cavern wall, their lava figures barely flickering with fire. But the flaming sword seemed to awaken them. One destroyer shifted, its insectile head rotating toward him. Fire blazed from eye sockets and mandibles. The beast jolted up, joints liquefying to lava and arms rising.

  Rytlock took a step back.

  The other two destroyers shifted, too, standing.

  Oh, come to me, heart of the wyld . . .

  That wasn’t a memory. That was Caithe’s voice.

  Two more destroyers rose. Now there were five of them.

  Rytlock could take five destroyers. He’d be a little charred by the end of it, but—

  Then about ten more stalked out of the alcove.

  He turned and ran. These were destroyers, and there were too many of them, but he could even the odds if he found Logan and Caithe.

  Entombed within a world of fire . . .

  “Not yet, I’m not!”

  Logan heard the bray of a drunken mule. “What was that?”

  “Someone’s coming,” Caithe replied.

  The air shook with massive footfalls.

  “By the sound of it, a bunch of someones.”

  “Maybe destroyers,” Logan said. He was using his shirt to hold the broken crystal in place. “Do you see the Grove?”

  Caithe turned back to the archway as images flashed, one after another: a desolate tundra . . . a deep-hewn canyon . . . a storm-tossed sea. “No.”

  Logan looked behind them where a fiery light glowed along the palace wall. “We’re just going to have to jump for it.”

  “We don’t want to end up in the sea.”

  “Watch for a good place.”

  . . . a smoldering battlefield . . . a calving glacier . . . a trackless swamp . . .

  Logan looked back again and saw that the fiery light came from Sohothin, clutched in the pumping fist of Rytlock. The charr ran full out down the avenue with an army of destroyers right behind. “Just about anyplace!”

  . . . a blazing desert . . . a venting caldera . . . a green glade—

  Caithe grabbed Logan’s arm and hauled. “Now!”

  He barged after her through the flashing gate and tumbled down on a grassy meadow. A moment later, the magical membrane burst apart again, emitting Rytlock at a run. He stumbled and rolled beside them.

  “Together again,” Logan noted.

  Rytlock had no time to reply, though, as the gate popped thrice more before closing.

  Three destroyers had vaulted through the magical meniscus, and they landed in the meadow.

  LAIR OF THE DRAGONSPAWN

  Beneath a frigid blue sky, Eir led her wolf comrade and her metal allies. Steel feet crashed on glacial ice. Cogs ground and servos whined. Stone heads and silver skins reflected triangles of light across ice-choked peaks.

  They marched up a valley with a glacier running through it. The center section was smooth like a frozen river, but the outer sections had cracked into countless parallel crevices. A thousand feet ahead, a wide cave slanted into the glacier. It didn’t seem so much a cave as the mouth of a slain titan, giant icicles like fangs jutting all around it.

  From Big Snaff, a metallic voice spoke. “Those look daunting.”

  “They’re worse than you think,” Eir replied. “Look within the cave.”

  Creatures paced there—five-hundred-pound wolves of ice. Hackles bristled across their shoulders, and claws cracked the ice beneath them. With eyes that glowed blue, they stared out at Eir and her comrades.

  “They’re corrupted wolves that once defended our homeland,” Eir said. “Now they defend the despoiler.”

  Snaff’s golem shuddered, taking a step back.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Zojja.

  “There are more than wolves there.”

  Staring through the huge eyes of his golem, Snaff saw giant, white bats dropping from the ceiling of the cave. They spread icy wings and shrieked, echolocating their prey.

  “Let’s take them on!” Eir roared, charging.

  Garm galloped beside her.

  “Charge!” Snaff roared as the Bigs followed.

  Eir and Garm reached the ice cave first and bounded within. Icy bats swarmed them, but her axes and his teeth ripped their wings away. Bats tumbled from the air, shattering on the ground.

  The ice wolves came on—baying as they charged.

 
Eir turned toward the first and smashed her axe through its brow. Metal crashed on ice, broke into the creature’s watery brain, and pulped it. The ice wolf fell at her feet.

  “That felt good.”

  Another wolf leaped for Garm’s throat. He dodged to one side, caught a foothold, and lunged back to fasten jaws on the icy neck. Garm bit down, and the whole head broke loose.

  More ice wolves converged.

  One clamped its jaws on Eir’s forearm, ice skirling on her steel armor, and a second lunged for her foot. She kicked, but the wolf held on, and she staggered unsteadily back.

  Meanwhile, two other wolves circled Garm. One darted in to bite his throat, but Garm leaped atop it and smashed it to the floor of the cave, shattering its head. Even as it slumped, though, the other clambered atop it and bounded on Garm, shoving him to the floor.

  But then steel pounded ice. Big Zojja struck the wolf’s head, and cracks raced through it. The head calved and cascaded down in a glittering shower.

  “Great job!” shouted Snaff from within his golem, which was marching through the cave, kicking ice wolves to pieces with his massive feet.

  Eir also kicked hard, breaking loose the jaw of the wolf that held her foot. Pivoting, she swung her axe against the creature that clutched her right forearm. The beast cracked and fell. Eir rained more blows on it until it shivered apart.

  In moments, only the ice bats were left, dying like mosquitoes with each sweep of the golems’ hands.

  When the bats were gone, Big Snaff strode jauntily up to his comrades and flexed his metal fingers in satisfaction. “Better than anything Klab could invent.”

  “Better than anything the Dragonspawn’s seen,” Eir said with a laugh, kicking at the remains of an ice wolf. She gazed deeper into the cavern, seeing a throat of ice that descended into the glacier. “Let’s take this battle below!” Eir strode away at the head of the group. “I wonder what lies ahead.”

  A few giant strides later, they saw. The ice cave descended through a water-smoothed throat into a deep, dark belly. Meltwaters had formed ropy lines of ice, and on that rumpled ice stood warriors.

  Norn or once-norn, they were tall, garbed in armor and furs, bearing staffs and spears and swords. They might have been defenders of Hoelbrak except for the dead blue light that shone in their eyes.

  “They are recently turned norn,” Eir said. “There will be no joy in killing them.”

  The rimed norn, now icebrood, raised a deep-throated war cry and ran at the heroes.

  Eir strode toward them and spread a gauntlet tipped in chisels.

  Roaring, the enemy rushed her.

  She raked fingers through the first one, spilling him on the floor, and kicked the chest of the second to flatten him and ran across him to the third, who received her axe in his head. Garm, too, tore through these warriors.

  Killing them was like killing her kin.

  The golems were especially deadly. The icebrood gushed beneath their feet.

  It was a sickening triumph to break bones and burst veins. But Eir and her friends did their grim work. Garm shook them like rats. Snaff and Zojja bashed them with metal fists. And Eir ended them on her chisels.

  When it was done, Eir and Garm and the golemic asura stood side by side, mantled in gore.

  Snaff said quietly, “We killed them here so that they would not kill in Hoelbrak.”

  Eir gazed around the dark cave. “We didn’t kill them. We ended them. The Dragonspawn killed them.” She peered deeper into the ever-descending cave. Another chute slid down into total darkness. “We’re very close. Already, we’ve destroyed his defenders. Now we’re poised to strike at the Dragonspawn’s heart and be rid of him forever.”

  With that, she strode across the bloodstained ice and launched herself over the edge of the chute. Garm bounded close behind.

  There was a moment’s pause as Big Snaff and Big Zojja looked at each other. Then Snaff ran forward and leaped over the edge, and his apprentice followed.

  At first, it was just sliding—velocity and vertigo. Armor and metal joints skirled on shoulders of ice. Eir and Garm slalomed down into darkness, and Big Snaff and Big Zojja followed, spinning like tops. Their minds were spinning as well, with a fear that Zojja voiced for them all. “How will we get back?”

  Before anyone could answer, the chute dumped them out in a deep place, so deep that the glacial ice above no longer glowed with sunlight. They skidded across the floor of that cavern and spun to a stop, leaving chaotic score marks.

  Eir rose, followed by Garm, Big Snaff, and Big Zojja.

  “Well, here we are,” Eir said.

  It was preternaturally cold—bone-shattering. Spell conduits hardened and hydraulic humors thickened. Webs of frost formed on steel skins.

  “Bigs, what do you see?” Eir asked.

  “The ceiling is a mass of icicles, gigantic icicles,” Zojja said. “Thirty feet long, some of them.”

  Eir asked, “What other threats?”

  “The floor is clear,” reported Snaff. “No defenders. No wolves. No icebrood. Nothing.”

  “Let’s march,” Eir said. As she and Garm led the charge, the Bigs marched behind.

  Big Snaff stiffened. “There’s something approaching, dead ahead.”

  “Halt,” Eir said.

  They did, staring into the murk.

  Out of the depthless dark, something emerged.

  Its body was fashioned of living ice. It had a long head like a cattle skull, and its eyes glowed with eerie blue flame. The rest of it seemed skeletal as well, with an arching spine draped in white robes. A blue-gray vapor circulated among its icy ribs, forming the body of the creature. Gaunt arms lifted clawed fingers, and gaunt legs spread talons on the ice. The creature reached to its sword belt and drew out a blade that was so cold it roiled with frost.

  “The Dragonspawn,” Eir said.

  “He’s not a man at all,” Zojja murmured.

  “A tibia of ice. A fibula of frost.” Snaff spoke in a hushed voice. “Skull of a minotaur. Tail of a drake.”

  “Sounds like a spell,” Zojja said.

  “That’s what he is,” Snaff said. “He’s just like the Bigs—a marionette moved by a hidden mind!”

  “He’s just like me . . . ,” Zojja replied in a dreamy voice.

  Eir looked at her. A faint blue glow pulsed in Big Zojja’s eyes, matching the eyes of the Dragonspawn. “Look away!” Eir shouted, averting her gaze. “Don’t look at it. Don’t lock eyes with it. It’s trying to freeze you.”

  With an effort of will, Big Zojja turned away from the glowing visage. The blue pulse faded from her eyes, and she shook herself. “How can we fight something we can’t look at?”

  The Dragonspawn’s elongated head turned toward his foes. Eyes glowed bright blue. The beams splashed across Eir, Garm, Snaff, and Zojja. They shielded their eyes, but the monster was seeping into their minds.

  “Look away!” Eir called. She turned, seeing that Big Snaff and Big Zojja already stood motionless. “No!”

  MAGMA MONSTERS

  Three destroyers advanced across the meadow, searing plants with every step.

  “I’m not afraid to play with fire,” Rytlock snarled, hoisting Sohothin. He shot a glance at Caithe. “Careful, twig. You might get yourself singed.”

  Each destroyer strode steadily toward one of the comrades.

  Rytlock lunged at the nearest destroyer, thrusting Sohothin. The blade burned through the creature’s stony skin and plunged into its heart.

  The destroyer halted, arms shuddering and head falling back as Sohothin transfixed it. The creature’s molten joints flared, and its chest expanded with spinning energy. Fiery light intensified in its amorphous face.

  “Damn,” noted Rytlock.

  The destroyer brought its pincers swinging together to crush Rytlock’s head. Stone knuckles crashed—

  But the charr rolled away beneath them. He scrambled up and stared accusingly at his sword. “What’d you do?”

  �
�You’re feeding it,” Logan said while backing away from the destroyer that stalked him. “You might as well attack a Krytan with a baguette. Move back.”

  Rytlock growled, “Retreating is a good strategy. Very human. Use your hammer, for blood’s sake! Break some stones!”

  “All in good time,” Logan said, leaping back over a patch of long grass. His hand painted a blue aura in the air, a slim band meant to trip up a destroyer.

  His pursuer swung a stone claw that missed, then stepped in the long grass and tripped on the guardian aura. The destroyer overbalanced and crashed into the ditch.

  A blue aura lit Logan’s hands and spread to encompass his hammer. The glow seemed to hoist him into the air, and he brought the weapon down in a massive overhead stroke. The blow struck the destroyer’s solar plexus and shattered it into five pieces.

  “Let me get in on that!” Rytlock said, bounding over to land flat-footed on the creature’s spine. Rocks snapped, and lava welled up between the broken parts.

  “Nice footwork,” Logan said, “but, of course, you’ve brought yours over here.”

  Rytlock’s destroyer rushed the man, reaching for him, but Logan ducked beneath the grasping claw, spun on his heel, and hammered the beast’s thigh. More rocks snapped. The destroyer roared, stumbling toward Rytlock.

  “Get out of the way!”

  Rytlock jumped off the fallen destroyer as the other one crashed down on its back. “Better yet!” the charr enthused. He scooped water from the spring and flung it on them. The droplets struck and sizzled, solidifying magma. “How do you like that?”

  “Nice,” Logan said, splashing both monsters.

  “While you two mess around,” Caithe said, “I’ve had to keep this one occupied by myself.” She moved wraithlike, ducking beneath an arm, reeling back from another, and diving between its legs.

  “Nice, as well,” Logan said.

  Behind him, the two destroyers climbed up from the ditch.

  “None of us can take a single destroyer,” Logan noted, “but maybe together, we can beat all three.”