He dropped quickly to the ground, trying desperately to think. Already he understood something important about his enemy: The Overlord's powers were most effective when directed through his servants like the Masters and the warriors, but he wasn't very good at defending himself. That might have been due to the nature of his magic or perhaps a reflection of his inexperience; the reason hardly mattered now. Thelvyn decided the time for caution was past; he would reveal his true powers as an Immortal and press the contest to its conclusion.
Again he leapt into the air, and his mortal manifestation melted away in the glare of silver light as he revealed himself to be the Immortal Diamond. This time he made no effort to contain his powers but allowed the radiance of his true being to shine forth, many times brighter than the sun itself. The pure, intense light drove away the fires of the Masters like a wind blowing out a candle flame. The Overlord's command of their minds and will was broken, and they fled.
Even the Overlord had been forced to turn his monstrous face from the radiance, shielding himself with the grotesque armor of his back as he began to slink away. The pure light of the Immortal seemed to be causing him great pain, burning into his very being. Diamond continued to press his attack relendessly. Suspended in the air above the scene of battle, he arched his long neck and opened his mouth to release a shaft of silver light that washed over his enemy's long back. The Overlord crouched with his head down in an effort to protect himself while smoke and flames spread across his back, eating into his armor.
And then he vanished, retreating from a fight that he had already lost. But Thelvyn was too cautious to believe that he had achieved ultimate victory, knowing he had only forced the Overlord to retreat to a place where he would be stronger. Thelvyn turned to fly swiftly toward the west, following the wide path trampled by the invading army. He was still half of an hour's flight from where he expected to find the stronghold, time that he could not afford to spare if he was to catch his true enemy off guard. He held his wings steady, as if soaring on the winds, but his speed began to increase rapidly until his form began to blur into a shaft of silver light, crossing a hundred miles in as many seconds.
In a region scattered with low, steep hills, he came upon the hidden stronghold abruptly. Like the main stronghold in the world of the Overlord, it consisted of a group of massive fortresses, imposing in size but simple and nearly featureless in design, arranged not in a grid but in two concentric rings. In the center of the stronghold stood the stone arch of the immense worldgate. The land for miles around had been stripped of trees, perhaps during those final days while the invading army had gathered there before marching to the east. The stronghold was nearly deserted now, defended only by a score of gemstone dragons that had already risen into the sky in defense.
Thelvyn slowed quickly from his tremendous speed, although he remained in immaterial form for the moment, rising upward a short distance as he cast about with his mind for the presence of the Overlord hidden somewhere deep within the stronghold. Then he gathered speed again, streaking down like a bolt of lighting as he crashed directly into the roof of the largest of the fortresses. Massive stones shattered before him as he blasted his way deep into the center of the fortress. Then the fortress itself exploded outward in a blinding flash of clear light.
The central chamber of the fortress lay exposed to the sky. The middle part of the ceiling had been rent asunder, and a gaping hole reached up through all the levels of the fortress to the air above. Dark clouds above rolled and flashed with lightning. The dust cleared slowly, and the vast, threatening form of the Overlord stepped slowly out of the darkness to confront Diamond a second time. There was no sign of the damage that the dragonfire had done to the armor of his back; he had renewed his form, and he appeared to be stronger than ever.
"Clever little dragon," he said contemptuously. "You have grown more than you let on."
Thelvyn did not respond, knowing he had to proceed cautiously. He could fight and defeat the Overlord time and again and never win the real war. It was crucial for him to discover his opponent's secret, to find the source of his hidden power.
He moved slowly to one side, circling around his enemy and watching the Overlord closely for any clue to his secret. The source of his power was somewhere very near, he was certain, but he could not sense what it was. Nor could he see through the manifestation of the Overlord to his true self. The retreat of the Overlord from his first battle and his appearance here unharmed proved that this was not his true being. The source of his magic and his consciousness had always prevented him from going into any of the worlds he had conquered. Apparently he had brought it with him into this world, but with great difficulty.
Was it something large? Something difficult or dangerous to try to move? Or perhaps, Thelvyn wondered, it was something too delicate to risk. Somehow it managed to avoid betraying its presence as a tremendous source of magic even as it sent its full power direcdy to its manifestation.
Thelvyn was caught off guard, having given too much of his attention to his thoughts. The Overlord opened his massive jaws and let forth what at first appeared to be a flash of misty white light, except the light turned solid almost immediately. It struck Thelvyn in the shoulder with crushing force, smashing him backward across the floor of the dark chamber until he was hurled against the stone wall. The shaft of white shattered with the impact, fragments exploding in all directions. Shaken by the attack, Thelvyn was picking himself up when he saw that the object that had hit him had been a column of ice, which now lay scattered in shards across the floor.
Then another massive shaft of ice struck him, blasting him backward against the wall even harder than before. A third column of ice struck him, then another. Spears of ice continued to crash against him and the surrounding wall, like a hail of heavy stones from an army of ballistae, until the stones of the wall itself began to crumble and collapse about him. Thelvyn clawed his way desperately out of the rubble, pushing aside broken stones and emerging moments later from the top of the dusty wreckage.
He had been rather shaken by that last assault. He moved slowly at first as he climbed out of the debris and paced back out into the vast chamber to confront his enemy, his back and neck arched in challenge. The Overlord was watching him in growing rage, but Thelvyn also noticed a hint of fear.
"What are you?" he demanded. "What manner of creature have you become?"
Thelvyn had no intention of answering, but he would not have had the chance in any event. In the next moment, bolts of lightning streaked down from the dark clouds through the gaping hole in the ceiling to strike him. For a time, he could only crouch low, his face turned down toward the floor to protect his eyes, enduring the deadly touch as fingers of lightning played across his back. Even as powerful as he had become, the unrelenting blast of such tremendous energy was unbearably painful. He knew that if he tried to run, the lightning would pursue him. And so he crouched, waiting for it to end. The flash of brilliant light was blinding, and the stones shook with the blast of thunder.
He was not even aware that the attack had ended until he realized that the darkness had returned and the last echoes of thunder were dying away. He lifted his head slowly and beheld a remarkable scene. The hail of raw lightning into the depths of the chamber had filled even the vast space with a tremendous amount of power, burning away the air so that no mortal creature could have lived in that place. Wisps and streams of ghostly lights hung in the air like fog or crawled across the seared floor like mist, glowing in shades of red, yellow, and orange, filling the great chamber with an eerie radiance.
The Overlord stood in the midst of the thin clouds of fiery mists, his head raised high. The crests and spines of his grotesque armor shone with ghostly lights of their own, and he seemed to pulse from the power that he was drinking in, as if he thrived in the deadly environment. Now Thelvyn understood. The Overlord was so distracted with pleasure that he had just inadvertently betrayed his own deepest secret. It was the outer world that
was alien to him, robbing him of his powers-warm sunlight and fresh, cool winds and green, growing things. He had nearly destroyed one world to protect himself from the lifegiving things that were like poison to him. Hiding himself in dark storms and deep, remote places like his strongholds renewed his strength.
The revelation told Thelvyn which of his weapons would be most deadly to such a creature. Lifting his head high, he summoned his powers as the Immortal Diamond. The pure, jeweled facets of his armor shone with blinding light, a pure, brilliant white that chased away the ghostly lights that played in the darkness of the chamber. Then, standing tall on his hind legs, he seemed almost to explode in the radiant pure crystal light.
The Overlord flinched and drew back, desperate to shield his eyes from the light. With nowhere to retreat, he tried to turn the heavy armor of his back toward the blinding brilliance, as if the light itself caused him tremendous pain. The white radiance began to cut into him with each passing moment, shredding his substance and tearing it away like scraps of paper. Diamond released a final sustained flash of intense light, and the massive, grotesque body of the Overlord dissolved in the glare.
But even that was not yet the end of the Overlord. Floating in the air where his body had been was the source of his will and power, the true self he had kept hidden inside the shell of the Overlord. It didn't even seem alive. What Diamond saw was a strange, utterly alien entity of crystal, bristling with quartzlike spikes of rose and gold and blue and green. This was a creature of the most remote of the outer planes, where all things were utterly different from the familiar life of the mortal realms. Long ago it had wandered through the planes, whether by chance or by misfortune or by deliberate choice, coming at last to a world where its unearthly powers had made it seem like a god. But mortal life was deadly to it, so it had been forced to create the protective form of the Overlord in which it could hide.
The pure light of Diamond's very being was destructive to it. The crystal structures of its being began to grow cloudy and pale, cracking and crazing. Then the dying shell exploded, and thousands of small lengths of crystal flew apart and scattered across the floor of the chamber, where they evaporated like mist.
Diamond subdued his brilliant light, transforming himself once more to the manifestation of his mortal form, the Dragonking. The battle was done, and he realized now that the Immortals had chosen their champion wisely, for the pure diamond light of his very being had proven to be his most deadly weapon. Spreading his wings, he leapt into the air and flew up through the great hole that had been blasted through the fortress. As he emerged into the sky above, he employed his powers a final time to seal the chamber and transform it into the tomb of the Overlord. The vast stronghold shook and began to collapse. In moments, the chamber that had been the
place of his final battle with the overlord was buried deep in a mound of crushed and broken stone.
Thelvyn turned and flew back toward the mountains of the east. There was no longer any need for haste All the creatures and objects sustained by the will of the Overlord weie now falling apart. The great worldgate sealed itself in a sudden flash of flame, while the last of the gemstone dragons fled into the wild. The Overlord's armies were now without direction, lost and frightened, and the strange beasts that had been enslaved to his will ran wild in an unfamiliar world.
For the moment, Thelvyn felt as lost and bewildered as any of the Overlord's former slaves. The purpose of his very existence had been fulfilled. For the first time in recent memory, there were no immediate challenges to face, no dire enemies to be fought, no sense of desperation driving him from one moment to the next. For the first time, his life was now his own. He hardly knew what to do with it.
Of course, there was still a large part of his world needing to be set right after the devastation of war. But that was a task he
would leave to others, for his time was drawing to an end.
The dragons sensed that Thelvyn had defeated the Overlord when they saw the fortress of storms begin to disperse, the lightning grow still, and the dark clouds blow off in the wind. But they had not truly dared to believe in their victory until the Dragonking himself returned out of the wilderness to assure them that their enemy was destroyed. That night they celebrated the triumph of their king in the mountains of the Wendarian Range. They hunted that afternoon and roasted the meat they caught in great, cheerful blazes, drinking from barrels of wine and ale their messengers had brought back from the Highlands and Darokin and other lands when they spread the news of the Dragonking's victory. It was the first time in their long history that the entire race of dragons had been brought together in celebration.
The dragons had more than enough to keep them busy over the next few days. The most immediate problem was what to do with an invading army of vast proportions that no longer wished to fight. The Masters had ceased to exist with the passing of the Overlord; they were now only gemstone dragons, not so terribly different from their estranged brethren. The moment they felt the death of the Overlord, they had become free of him forever. And so they had begun to timidly seek out the dragons even that first night, drawn by the lights of the fires of celebration. The Dragonking had pardoned them and called upon them to gather together their scattered numbers so that they could help to set right many of the troubles left from the invasion.
The Overlord's countless other slaves presented a much larger problem, and one that proved more difficult to solve. With the help of the gemstone dragons, the dragon sorcerers reopened the great worldgate to the main stronghold of the Overlord in his old world, and from there they were able to locate many of the lesser gateways into other worlds that had been invaded. In this way, many of the slave races of the Overlord had returned to their own worlds, homes that most of them had not seen in generations. There were some who could not be sent home, either because their worlds had been destroyed or the gates were lost. After some negotiation, many of the nations of the Grand Alliance agreed to take in these wanderers, so that they came to settle in the Highlands, in nearby Darokin and Traladara, and even in distant Alphatia.
The beasts were also a problem, not only in the mountainous west but also in places like the Highlands and Rockhome, where large numbers of them had escaped during previous battles. Most were of exotic breeds, too dangerous to be allowed to run free in this new world, and there was nothing else to be done but have the dragons hunt them down and slay them. Those that could be captured were returned to the worlds of their origin whenever it could be determined. Inevitably, some escaped into the wild despite the best efforts of the dragons.
At last the day came when the dragons had done all they could, and it was time for them to go home. Some departed for Windreach in the distant east, but most of the dragons would be returning to their own territories throughout the world. Thelvyn would soon be going to Windreach himself, but first he had to go to Braejr with his companions for a final meeting of the Grand Alliance. Marthaen and Jherdar had to leave for the east immediately to attend to responsibilities of their own, but Kharendaen would not be parted from her mate. Once again Sir George rode in the saddle she wore.
The Highlands had been greatly unsettled during the war, and Braastar stood partly in ruins, but the Flaem were joined by many of their kinsmen who had been held in slavery by the Overlord. Some other captive races settled there as well, and the newcomers worked very hard to rebuild their new homeland. Thelvyn met with the delegates of the Grand Alliance for the last time, thanking them for their assistance before dismissing them to return to their own lands.
Of course, no one but the dragons knew that Thelvyn was now the Immortal called Diamond; that was a secret they would keep to themselves forever. After his battle with the Overlord, he didn't resume his Immortal form but returned to his manifestation as a gold dragon. He was now a lesser Immortal and bound by the laws that governed the actions of the Immortals; soon he would be required to distance himself from the affairs of the world. He met that night for the last time wi
th his companions in the lair at Solveig's house. Darius Glantri was there, as well as Korinn Bear Slayer and Perrantin, who had arrived by dragon that same morning to represent Traladara in the Grand Alliance. As much as Thelvyn regretted it, he couldn't allow even his old friends to know his secret, and so he didn't know what to tell them when they asked what he would do now and when he might return.
"Are you well?" Solveig asked Thelvyn as he reclined in the large bed, a barrel of sweet Flaemish ale beside him.
Thelvyn was surprised by the question. "Don't I look well?"
Solveig shrugged. "Actually, you do. That's the part I'm worried about, considering all you've been through these last few weeks. When you came here a few days ago after your adventures in the world of the Overlord, you looked nearly dead."
"Be assured that I am feeling very well indeed," he insisted. "For the first time, my life now belongs to no one but me. And
I have places to go."
"But first to Windreach," Sir George declared as he stared at a glass of his favorite cherry liqueur.
"Are you going along as well?" Korinn asked the old knight.
"I have asked Sir George to come with me," Thelvyn said. "Perhaps this will be our last journey together. We will see."
"Well, I've been keeping you out of trouble this long," Sir George said, a remark that caused the dragons to twitch their ears.
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