"Well, then, lead the way."
Caithe stepped out ahead of him and strode down the slope. Logan hoisted his war hammer and went along.
The city was indeed built on a dwarven scale: Logan had to duck his head to look through windows. Markings on the walls had the deep-etched angularity of dwarven runes, and along the main way was a metalwork shop every hundred paces.
"Definitely dwarves," Logan said. He peered into a burned-out building, with charred tables and chairs and a burst beer tun.
Caithe meanwhile stood at the corner of the building, peering down the cross-street. "Yes. Dwarves."
Logan came to her, rounding the corner to see the undeniable proof-a dwarven skeleton in chain and plate armor lying on a pile of rubble.
Caithe crouched down to look more closely at the rubble pile. The broken stones seemed almost to fit together. "Here"s what killed him."
"What?" Logan asked. "These stones killed him?"
"These stones are the remains of a destroyer-a monster of elemental magma. A whole hive must have erupted into this chamber and burned every living thing in it."
"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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sage when the destroyers attacked."
"No." Caithe pointed toward the base of the arch, where a ma.s.sive 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 s.h.i.+elded their faces. Only as their eyes adjusted could they see what strobed within the archway.
Visions. Beautiful visions . . . a gra.s.sy 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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. 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 s.h.i.+fted, 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 s.h.i.+fted, 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 ma.s.sive footfalls.
"By the sound of it, a bunch of someones."
"Maybe destroyers," Logan said. He was using his s.h.i.+rt 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 flas.h.i.+ng gate and tumbled down on a gra.s.sy 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 DRAGONSp.a.w.n.
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 t.i.tan, 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 within the cave." 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 ma.s.sive 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 Dragonsp.a.w.n"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. Melt.w.a.ters 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.