“I have eaten so many people,” the person wearing a white wizard’s robe and a white mask over his face said. “I am sure your sister numbers among them, if you say that I ate her, although I do not remember her. But you look absolutely delicious, so if your sister tasted anything like you, I would guess that she proved highly flavorful.”

  Glorissa drew her sword and angrily crouched into a combat pose, her blade poking out in front of her. The dragon-in-human-form saw this and laughed.

  “Where is the White Wizard?” Rose asked. “What have you done with him?”

  “Bah! You humans are so weak and pathetic,” the dragon said. “Soon after I put your pitiful human king under my mind control, I sensed that the White Wizard was becoming suspicious of something going on. So I sought out your greatest and most powerful wizard. I challenged him to a duel, and he accepted. He told no one else, such was his overconfidence that he would defeat me. After all, he was humanity’s great champion and most valiant protector, the hero who never lost, the wizard who could defeat entire armies single-handedly. He did not fear me. He should have. I and the White Wizard met in single combat, in a duel to the death, in a deserted canyon out west beyond the Dark Mountains. His magic was no match for mine. I defeated him, and then I ate him. He did not taste very good, and his magical powers that I absorbed by digesting him were merely a drop in the bucket compared to the vast oceans of magical energy which I already possessed. But his death opened the door for me to impersonate him, take his form, seize control of the Order of the Priests of the Temple of Light, and proceed with my plan for how to use and destroy the Crystal of Light.”

  Rose gasped. “Oh no,” she said. “The White Wizard was humanity’s most powerful wizard… and he fell to the dragon that easily?”

  “Oh no? Oh, yes,” the dragon said. “You six are the ones sent by the Star Knights to steal the Crystal, I assume. And you shall soon be joining the fate of the White Wizard and this girl’s sister, when I have you for dinner.”

  “Wait,” Rose said. “You know about us? How do you know about us? And how much do you know?” The wheels in Rose’s head were spinning as she parsed the dragon’s words. “You knew someone was planning to steal the Crystal of Light,” Rose said. “And you say that the Star Knights are the ones behind the Dark Wizard? What else do you know? Do you know why the Star Knights sent us?”

  The dragon-disguised-as-a-wizard reached out his hand. The Dark Wizard’s box rose up off the floor and floated over to him and settled into his outstretched hand. The box then vanished. The dragon had not pocketed it nor put it in his robes: he had made it disappear.

  “You stupid humans,” the dragon said. “God lied to you, as God always lies. Good will only tell lies, because it is evil that is the one truth. There is no covenant between humans, elves and God, that caused God to banish the dragons. No such covenant exists, and it never did. Instead, when God answered the prayers of that repulsive human king and that disgusting faerie ruler, God created a White magic spell that protects your world from the dragons, and God put that magic spell inside of two magical crystals, one of which you humans call the Crystal of Light. God told you the lie that those crystals embodied a covenant to trick you into protecting them, because the spell was tied to those crystals, so if you allowed them to be destroyed, God’s spell would end. God put the very light of God inside the Crystal of Light. The light inside the Crystal of Light is the power of God. The light within the Crystal repels the dragons, so that they can never return so long as it shines. God had to do this, because only the most powerful magic in the cosmos would be able to banish my army of dragons and keep us from returning to your realm, so God used God’s own power to lock us out of your world.

  “I dwelled in disguise for too long at the Star Knights Estate, hunting for the Ancient Crown. The Star Knights’ Council of Elders caught wind of me and learned of my return. But my spies within the Star Knights are loyal to me, and they warned me that the Star Knights knew of me. I fled the Estate, assumed the guise of the White Wizard, and acted to seize control of the Temple of Light while disguised as the White Wizard. The Star Knights suspected that I had taken control of the Temple of Light from within, but they knew that the spell guarding the Crystal, that web of rays of light which holds it in place, was so powerful that even I would have difficulty dismantling it. Yet they feared that it was only a matter of time before I solved and destroyed the final spell protecting the Crystal of Light.

  “The Star Knights were correct in their fears: after almost a year of magical research, I have solved the final spell that protects the Crystal. I have already cast my magical spell that is currently in the process of breaking apart the magic spell which protects the Crystal. You can already notice that certain rays of light are missing from the network of light-beams around the Crystal. Soon, all of them will be gone, and then the final spell that protects the Crystal of Light will be gone.

  “When I posed as an imposter of the White Wizard and took control of the Temple of Light from within, my plan was simply to gain access to the Crystal of Light, shatter and destroy it, and set the dragons free. But, once I stood before the Crystal of Light and gazed upon it, I formed a new plan. I had never seen the Crystal of Light or the Crystal of the Elements before. I was banished at the precise moment when they began to exist. But when I first looked upon the Crystal of Light with my own eyes and saw the light of God dancing around inside it, I understood what I must do.

  “Do you know what I will do? I will drain the magic out of the Crystal, both destroying it to free my dragons to return to the world and absorbing its incredible magical powers to ascend as a god-dragon and ruler of the cosmos. Once l gain physical access to the Crystal of Light and am able to touch it, I will hold it in my claws, bring it to my fanged mouth and devour it. I have developed a magic spell by means of which I can absorb and consume the magical light contained in the Crystal of Light after I eat it. Unfortunately for me, I told my plans to some of my followers, but then I learned that the Star Knights had planted spies within the conspiracy that I had formed within the Star Knights. So the Star Knights’ Council of Elders learned my plan from their spies.

  “The Star Knights knew they could never win if they attacked the Temple directly and waged a full-scale war against me, so instead they formed you, a small, nimble team of thieves, to infiltrate the Temple and sneak up to the Crystal, right under my nose. The Star Knights’ Council of Elders wanted to use rogues whom they would be able to disclaim all knowledge of and involvement in if you were to be exposed, to protect themselves from the threat of the Kingdom going to war against them—which I would have done to them, had they given me some excuse with which I could make the Noble Houses go along with it. So they chose to send you, because they could allow you to be captured or killed without any consequences to themselves, instead of sending their own rogues and spies. The Star Knights used some sort of magical meat-puppet flesh-golem to pretend to be an evil wizard, who led you on with dreams of gold, and you selfish, greedy pigs fell right into step behind the evil plan they sold to you like the idiots that you are. The Star Knights never knew that my spies within the Star Knights Estate had gotten wind of the Council of Elders’ plans and warned me that someone would come to steal the Crystal. I was on high alert, although I did not know the precise identity of who the rogues would be, nor did I know the precise details of the plan for how you would break in.

  “That magical box which the Star Knights gave you? It was a magical bomb, which would have exploded when you opened its lid. The explosion would have been so powerful that the entire Temple of Light would have come crashing down. The Star Knights intended for you to break past the Temple’s many defenses, reach the Crystal, open the box, and detonate the bomb. The explosion would have had enough force to blast its way through the final spell that protects the Crystal, and it would have shattered and destroyed the Crystal of Light. Without a physical crystal to serve as its host, the light of God would have dissipated and vanished, preventing me from eating it. You six would have died in the explosion, but your lives were a sacrifice the Star Knights’ Council of Elders was willing to make, to protect the realm from me becoming a god. You unknowingly marched to your deaths, baited by your sins, although the Star Knights believed that it was all for a good cause.”

  “I can’t believe my own Star Knights would throw my life around like that,” Glorissa said. “We thought it was you. We thought you were the one pulling the strings of the Dark Wizard.”

  “You insult me!” the dragon said. “You should have known it could not possibly be me: a dragon would never rely upon humans or an elf to do important work! If I wanted to steal the Crystal of Light, I would do so myself—and, by taking control of the Temple of Light as the White Wizard, for all intents and purposes, I already did. And, yes, the Star Knights were willing to use you and throw you away, and for almost no benefit, too!” The dragon laughed, and then it continued to speak. “Of course, my dragons would have returned to the realm the moment the Crystal was destroyed by the explosion if you had opened the box, but the Star Knights preferred to fight a new war against the dragons instead of allowing me to drain the light out of the Crystal of Light and ascend to become a god. The Star Knights, in their pride and vanity, believed that they were better prepared to fight a war against the dragons than the elves and humans had been ten thousand years ago. They felt that they might defeat an army of near-immortal dragons, but they could never defeat an immortal dragon god.

  “But you stupid humans, and the stupid elf among you, chose your stupid, ignorant, blind faith in God, and chose not to open the box, instead of doing the smart, rational, intelligent, greedy, selfish, evil thing and opening the box for a pile of gold coins and the stale, stinking corpses of whatever rewards the Star Knights and their Dark Wizard promised to give you in return for your pride and your vanity and your ego. You humans and elves truly are stupid pigs; we dragons are the superior species, and we deserve to rule you, and to eat you. As a result of your decision, because you chose virtue instead of sin, the Star Knights’ plan has failed. I will become a god by means of the very powers that God sought to use to defeat me and to bind me and imprison me outside of your realm, and it was all made possible by you six idiots!

  “Bah! Humans and elves are no match for the power of a dragon! Now I will kill the six of you, eat you, and then drain the Crystal of Light of its light, liberating my dragons to return to this world and ascending to godhood at the same time!” The dragon laughed again, a long, evil, malevolent cackle. “Now die, you stupid fools, and with your last dying breaths as you slide down my throat you shall witness the rise of the dragon god of the cosmos! Once I consume and absorb the power of the Crystal of Light, not even God will be able to defeat me, and my iron grip over all life in this realm will become absolute and never-ending!”

  A blinding flash of white light flared through the room, and then the room filled with gray smoke. Sylis began to cough from the smoke, as did the others. Then Sylis choked and gagged, but for a different reason: the room had filled with a bad smell, the most foul, hideous stench Sylis had ever smelled in his entire life, like something that combined old food left to rot for months with feces, urine, and vomit, all mixed together and then fed to worms and insects.

  The smoke cleared. Sylis looked up. Towering above him was a dragon. The dragon was a large red reptile, its dragon-hide skin made of shiny, fine red scales that coated its entire body like a suit of chain-mail armor. Its eyes were black pupil slits within yellow irises inside of red eyes. Its mouth was long, ending in a pronounced snout, and jagged white fangs protruded from its lips. Its hands and feet ended in sharp white claws, each with three fingers and a thumb. Its serpentine head was topped with long, straight yellow horns, and below its head a very long neck descended to the base of its body. Yellow spines ran down its neck, across its back, and down the length of its long, slender, whip-like tail, which ended in a sharp, jagged barb, which was also yellow like its spines and horns. Leathery reptilian red wings sprouted from its back, but it kept its wings folded against its body. It looked like a cross between a giant snake and an enormous lizard, or as if its middle was a reptile’s body that someone had grabbed at each end and pulled, stretching it out to give it a snake’s head and snake’s tail. As a result, it was very long, but its body was thin and slender in relation to its massive length.

  The dragon was gigantic; it was too tall to properly fit inside the Crystal Chamber: its head and body were just barely able to fit themselves in, and its horns scraped against the ceiling when it uncoiled and rose up. The dragon’s entire body was a bright fire-like red color, except for its eyes, fangs, claws, horns and tail-barb, but there was one other exception to its monochrome red: a series of diamond-shaped yellow-and-black markings ran along its back, around its neck and behind its eyes. The dragon slithered into and out of itself and coiled and uncoiled itself constantly, undulating and always moving even while it remained in one place.

  Sylis gagged from the stench of the dragon’s body odor, and he had to hold his hands over his mouth to keep himself from retching and vomiting. It was a smell like none other he had ever known. It was the smell of death.

  Nathan wasted no time: he pointed at the dragon and cast his Black incineration spell. An explosion detonated and the dragon’s entire head caught fire and burned. But then the flames faded, and the dragon appeared completely undamaged. The dragon even grinned and laughed.

  “This will not be easy,” Nathan said. He turned to the others. “Well, what are you waiting for? Attack!” Nathan said.

  Sylis formulated a Blue magic spell in his mind and cast it mentally, without any physical gestures or actions. His Blue spell hit the dragon and drained time out of it, returning that time back to Sylis. The dragon’s movements immediately slowed, while Sylis began to move much faster. Sylis cast a second spell, giving some of the stolen time to his teammates, and all of them began to move faster. The dragon’s slithering became slower and slower, and then it stopped moving.

  “Hey! It worked!” Sylis said, smiling.

  Suddenly, the dragon began to move again. It fixed its gaze on Sylis, staring at him with its red-and-yellow eyes. Sylis felt a Blue magic time-stop spell coming at him, and he was just barely able to throw a Blue magic spell up to shield himself, throwing time at the dragon’s spell to freeze the spell in place. Sylis’s counter-spell hit the dragon’s spell, and the two spells froze, stopped in time together with each other. The dragon waved its claw, sending out a Blue slow spell that hit everyone on the team, undoing Sylis’s speed spell so that they all moved at their normal speed again.

  “Um, so, the dragon can do Blue magic,” Sylis said. The dragon laughed but said nothing. It then swept its head around to direct its gaze at each of the party members, and everywhere it looked, the floor exploded, causing the entire room to shake and throwing up a shower of white stone fragments. Sylis ducked behind a nearby pillar, and the other team-members also scattered and tried to hide behind the pillars.

  “That was Black magic!” Nathan said. “It cast a Black death strike spell with its eyes!”

  “Uh oh. Can it use magic of every color?” Sylis asked. He was behind a pillar with his back against it, so he could no longer see the dragon, but he could sense the malevolent serpent watching him and gathering its magical energy for another attack.

  Yarid laughed. “Surely it can’t use Yellow magic!” the elf said.

  Just then, the dragon appeared right in front of Sylis, so close that his entire field of vision was full of the red dragon’s body. The dragon’s head came at him, mouth open, and Sylis stared into the fang-lined hole as it shot at him. He had one moment to react, in which he could do nothing other than close his eyes and wait for death.

  He opened his eyes. Yarid was holding him, and the two of them were across the Chamber from where he had been, which is where the dragon still was. Yarid had teleported Sylis away at the last moment.

  “It can teleport! That was a Yellow magic spell it used to flash into you!” Yarid said. “How is that possible?”

  The dragon teleported back to where Sylis and Yarid were, and it raised its tail up and smashed its tail down at Sylis and Yarid. Yarid grabbed Sylis and teleported away, again vanishing just as the dragon’s tail smashed down in the precise spot where they were. The Chamber shook again as the dragon’s tail slammed into the floor. But Sylis was back behind the pillar where he had been moments before, with Yarid grabbing his blue robe in one elf hand.

  “We need to kill that stinking lizard now!” Rose said. “If we don’t win fast, this fight could go to hell in a hurry! Let’s all six of us hit it with our most powerful attacks at the same time! That will be our best shot! Fire your strongest attack at it, on my mark: three, two… one!”

  The six of them ducked out from behind the pillars, saw the evil dragon before them, and attacked as one. Sylis threw another time-stop spell at it; Nathan cast a Black incineration spell at it; Kylus drew the Sword and charged at it; Yarid teleported in next to Kylus and joined his charge with his huge longsword in his hands; Rose took out her magic dice and a dice cup from her robe and rolled her dice into the cup; while Glorissa drew her sword, which began to glow with white light, and she started to speak the words of a prayer. Glorissa’s entire body shined with silver-white light that made her Star Knights sword and enchanted armor glow, and she said: “Star Sword Strike!” and slashed with her sword from a long distance away; a beam of white light shot out from her sword and hit the dragon, just as Kylus and Yarid reached the giant reptile. Rose also laughed with joy as she saw her roll: needing to roll numbers above the mean, she had rolled an 11, 13 and 16 on three twenty-sided dice, which was good for ten hits against her foe.

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  The dragon looked down at Kylus and Yarid, with amusement in its serpentine eyes. The dragon coiled itself up and then swung its tail out, and its massive tail hit both Kylus and Yarid and batted them into the air. The two men sailed through the air, hit the far wall, and fell to the ground. Then Glorissa’s beam of white light and Rose’s Red spell, Nathan’s Black spell and Sylis’s Blue spell hit the dragon. The spells converged at the dragon’s head: Rose’s magic punched it in the head ten times, Sylis’s spell froze its head and Nathan’s spell exploded in a fiery blast. But when the smoke cleared, the dragon was still there. It looked unharmed, and Sylis even saw the creature’s fanged mouth grinning, while amusement glittered in its eyes.

  Sylis saw Kylus on the ground and ran to him. By the time he reached him, both Kylus and Yarid had gotten to their feet: they were a bit wobbly on their legs, and Yarid had a bad bruise on his face, but they looked mostly okay.

  That did not last long, however: in the next moment, the dragon teleported over to where Sylis, Kylus and Yarid were, and it rapidly shot out an open claw at Yarid. Yarid sensed it with his keen fae senses and turned and swung his massive sword as the claw came at him, using a Yellow magic spell to enhance his strength as he slashed with his blade. His sword hit the dragon’s scaled hide and bounced off, and the giant red claw closed around Yarid, grabbing him and scraping his flesh with its claws in multiple places. Yarid screamed in pain and bled from the places the claws had cut into his skin while the dragon opened its mouth and raised Yarid to its fanged maw.

  “Oh no!” Sylis said. “Yarid!”

  “Hey, lizard! You think I look delicious? Then come take a bite!” Glorissa said in a loud voice from across the Chamber. The dragon paused and shifted its gaze to her. She waved her enchanted sword in the air and said: “Shooting Star Thrust!” Glorissa jumped into the air, and her enchanted armor shot her forward, right up to the dragon’s face, where she unleashed a series of sword strikes, slashing her blade into the dragon again and again and again in a flurry of slashes so fast that her motions looked like a blur. The dragon hissed and let go of Yarid, who fell to the floor, and it clawed at Glorissa with both of its arms, trying to get her away. She nimbly alighted on its neck and jumped, propelling herself through in the air in a backflip, and landed on her feet.

  She raised her sword high in the air and said: “Starlight Blast!” and a column of white light appeared where the dragon was; the light seemed to burn the dragon, and it roared in pain. She waved her sword in a wide arc and said: “Falling Star Rain!” and sparkles of white glitter fell from the ceiling like a shower of rain, and the droplets of light seemed to burn the dragon’s skin where they made contact; black splotches appeared all over its hide where the spell was burning it.

  “Hey! Glorissa is good!” Sylis said. “That Star Knight magic sword and armor is really doing something!”

  The dragon, too, had noticed this. It turned invisible. Glorissa looked left and right, gazing all around. She could not see it. Suddenly the dragon appeared right next to her. It grabbed Glorissa, picked her up, and threw her at the wall, before she had a chance to react. She slammed into the wall, making a loud, sharp crack-noise as her armored body crashed into the stone wall. She fell to the ground, and lay there, motionless.

  “No! Glorissa, my beloved!” Yarid said, pain etched into his voice. The elf, who was still bleeding from gashes in his skin but seemed to have most of his strength and health, ran to the girl and crouched at her side.

  “She is alive, but dazed,” Yarid said. He turned to the dragon. “You will pay for this, beast!”

  “This needs to end!” Rose said. “Every moment that passes gives the dragon a better chance to figure out how to kill us!” Her eyes narrowed, and she gulped, but her face then assumed a look of fierce resolve. “If I have to do this myself, I will,” Rose said. She took hold of her dice and rolled them, but as soon as they landed, she grabbed them and rerolled them. Rose rolled the dice again and again and again. Every above-average roll punched the dragon in the head, and its serpent-like neck wobbled and jerked as Rose’s spell punched it repeatedly. But every below-average roll punched Rose in the head. Rose was punched in the head again and again, until her face was bruised and blood dripped from her mouth and both eyes were black-and-blue. She made one final roll, scoring on two dice, which connected to the dragon with a strong uppercut punch, knocking it back, but the third d20 came up with an unlucky number of 3. The seven punches knocked Rose’s mask clean off her face, and she dropped to her knees and held her head in her hands, trying to make her head stop spinning and to stop seeing stars.

  Glorissa rose to her feet; she was unsteady yet somehow remained upright. Her, Sylis and Yarid were against the wall, and the dragon saw them. It roared, uncoiled itself and slithered at them. Nathan ran up to them, his black robes billowing about him like a cloud of black smoke. He snapped his fingers, and the entire room went dark. All light was gone, even from the brightly glowing Crystal of Light. Sylis could not see, but he felt a hand grab him and tug at him—the hand felt human, so he meekly followed, and let someone lead him away.

  “I can only blind the dragon for a short time, but we need to come up with a plan!” Nathan said. “None of our attacks are working! It is pointless futility to attack an enemy in a way that has no rational prospects for success!”

  “You… seem to be… uninjured,” Glorissa said, her speech slightly slurred.

  “Yes, well, this is not the first war I have fought in,” Nathan said. “By the way, Glow, I’ve been meaning to ask. Why do you keep saying those names of your attacks when you cast them?” Nathan asked. “I hate to say this, Glow, but it’s weird.”

  “My Star Knights sword and armor are enchanted to empower my attacks!” Glorissa said. Her voice was thick with indignation, and her outrage at Nathan seemed to have cleared her mind and cured her of her slur. “When I name the attack, that activates the spell!”

  “Whatever works for you is okay, I guess,” Nathan said.

  “I’ve never fought in a war before,” Sylis said to Nathan. “How do you win?”

  “Through being better prepared than your opponent, except that ship has already sailed,” Nathan said. “If not by being ready, then by identifying your enemies’ weaknesses and exploiting them, or by knowing your own strengths and putting them to their best use. I’m not convinced we have any strengths, and I do not know the dragon’s weaknesses.”

  Sylis heard the dragon roar loudly, although it was still pitch-dark, and he could not see where it was.

  “What weaknesses does the dragon have?” Sylis asked. “Do we know? Does anyone know?”

  “I do not,” Nathan said. “Dragons have been gone for ten thousand years. I had no need to know.”

  “I don’t,” Glorissa said.

  “I do not,” Kylus said.

  “I do!” a female voice said. Sylis jumped.

  “Who? Where?” Sylis said. In the darkness he could not see if someone new had joined the battle.

  “I can tell you! I was created ten thousand years ago, and my original purpose was to slay dragons. Every dragon has a natural magical shield that renders them invulnerable to all physical and magical attacks. But if you hit it with a Mythic and Legendary Weapon, like me, it loses its magic shield for a few minutes. During that time, you have a window of opportunity to kill it, and then after that the shield comes back, and you must hit it again with me to open another window. It’s the one and only way to kill a dragon.”

  “Um, who or what are you?” Sylis asked.

  “It’s the Sword!” Kylus said. “I didn’t tell you guys, but I took it! I have the Sword!”

  Sylis whistled in awe. “This is the Sword? Well, we didn’t steal the Crystal, but we sure stole something valuable!”

  “I didn’t steal it! I just happened to end up with it!” Kylus said.

  “That doesn’t matter! We need to find some way to get the boy to hit the dragon with the Sword!” Nathan said. “My darkness spell is about to end, I can’t hold it much longer, and when it does the dragon will see us again!”

  “I think that I remember something similar to what the Sword just told us,” Glorissa said. “The vision that God gave me is kind of blurry in my head—maybe because my head recently slammed into a stone wall—but I think Zebyx or Gargarez mentioned that they were killing dragons by hitting them with Mythic and Legendary Weapons and then attacking the dragons with fatal damage while their magic shields were down.”

  “I have an idea,” Kylus said. “Yarid, I know you can teleport other people. Use that ability. Teleport me so that I am in the air right above that hideous thing. I’ll fall right onto it, holding the Sword down, so that its blade stabs right into it when I fall on it.”

  “But then the dragon will probably be able to grab you or bite you,” Yarid said. “I can make no guarantee that I can reach you and teleport you back out. You will literally be sitting on the dragon once you fall onto it. You will surely die.”

  “I’m a soldier,” Kylus said. “Do you hear that, Sword? I’m a soldier! That’s what we do: we sacrifice our lives to save others, and for the good of the realm. I am willing to die to win this fight.”

  “Well, this seems to be the plan, so go with it!” Nathan said. “I can’t hold my spell anymore…. Go now!”

  The darkness vanished, and Sylis could see everything in the room again. The dragon was on the other side of the room, craning its neck around as if trying to see where its victims had gone.

  Yarid grabbed Kylus, taking hold of Kylus’s wrist in his strong fae hand. Yarid looked Kylus in the eye. “You ready?” Yarid asked. Kylus gulped. Kylus nodded. “Okay. Here you go!” Yarid said.

  Yarid shot a bolt of yellow light into Kylus through his hand, and Kylus’s entire body began to glow with yellow light. Then Kylus vanished. He reappeared, high up near the ceiling, directly above the dragon, and began to fall towards the dragon. Kylus managed to adjust his body as he fell so that he was holding the Sword below him, pointed down, ready to stab the dragon using the sword like a lance. The dragon looked up, but it noticed a moment too late to dodge aside. Kylus fell onto the dragon’s neck, using his entire body weight as he crashed into the dragon to force his blade into the dragon’s neck. The Sword’s blade dug a foot deep into its flesh. Purple blood spurted out of the wound, splashing all over Kylus, but Kylus grinned, paying no attention to the ichor all over him.

  The dragon roared in anger, and its entire body began to glow and shimmer with yellow light, except that this was a pale, white, glaring shade of yellow, unlike the deep golden yellow of Yarid’s fae Yellow magic spells.

  “That yellow light must mean the dragon’s natural magic shield is down. I think that’s our cue to attack!” Nathan said.

  Sylis began to mentally prepare more spells, but while he did, his eyes went wide in horror with what he saw. Kylus was clinging to the dragon’s neck, trying to dig the Sword into its neck deeper still. The dragon reached up a claw and plucked Kylus off its neck. Kylus managed to grab the Sword and take it with him as he was pulled off, but he did not have time to swing the Sword again before the dragon had raised Kylus up to its wide-open, fang-lined mouth. Kylus stared in horror at the rows of fine, needle-like, long, sharp teeth, lining a mouth dropping into a throat that yawned like a bottomless chasm, leading into the dragon’s stomach. The dragon pushed Kylus into its mouth and bit down. Kylus screamed as the dragon bit him.

  “No!” Sylis said, yelling at the top of his lungs. “NOOOOO! KYLUUUUS!”

  Just then, Yarid appeared at the dragon’s face and fell onto its nose, having teleported in. Yarid grabbed Kylus’s leg and cast another Yellow teleportation spell. Yarid and Kylus disappeared.

  Glorissa unleashed a series of Star Knights magical attacks while Nathan hurled Black curses at the dragon and Rose drew out her deck of magical playing cards and began to play card after card after card, throwing every trick she possessed at it to try to kill the dragon. Sylis, however, was staring at Kylus, whom Yarid had deposited onto the floor at Sylis’s feet, before turning back to join in the attack against the dragon. Yarid kept teleporting into the space between the dragon’s feet, swinging his massive fae longsword at it, hitting it, and then teleporting back before the dragon could hit him in reprisal. Rose played one card that unleashed a sea of scorpions that crawled all over the dragon, stinging it; another card sent a flock of birds made of fire crashing into it and exploding as each bird hit; a third card dumped a pile of quicksand onto it, which coated it and pooled at its feet and then began to harden, locking the dragon in place. Glorissa, Nathan, Rose and Yarid hit the dragon again and again and again, and with each attack the dragon roared in extreme rage, its screams so loud that the very sound caused the Crystal Chamber to shake.

  But Sylis saw none of it. He was looking only at Kylus.

  Kylus looked up weakly at Sylis. The dragon had bitten Kylus in the side of his torso, and his Serve-Sword armor was mangled and dented, with holes in it where each tooth had stabbed through it. Red blood was pouring out from those holes, staining the white floor underneath Kylus red with blood.

  “I’m sorry you and I didn’t get to spend more time together,” Kylus said. Blood poured from his mouth with each word. “You seemed nice, Sylis. I think you and I could have been happy together. I think that… I love you,” Kylus said. Then Kylus closed his eyes. The expression on his pale white face went slack and expressionless, with his lips open and loose, as if no mind was there any longer to run the muscles of his face.

  “I will not let this happen,” Sylis said. “Blue hero magic to the rescue!” Sylis moved so swiftly that he did not give himself any time to doubt himself before he acted. He reached a hand to Kylus’s neck and felt something that gave his heart a burst of warm hope: Kylus still had a slight, faint pulse. Sylis cast a Blue magic spell, taking the time that he had stolen from the dragon at the start of the fight, and pouring it into Kylus, giving the flesh around the wound months in which to heal during a span of time that lasted only a moment, while making the rest of Kylus’s body go in reverse, causing it to gain youth and the health that comes with youth, so that his body became months younger, stronger and healthier in one second.

  “Come on, Kylus,” Sylis said. “Come back to me! Come on, Blue magic! Work! If I ever wanted you and needed you, Blue magic, now is that time! Work! Work! Work!”

  Sylis could not see the wound itself because Kylus’s Serve-Sword armor covered his body, so he had no idea if it was working. Kylus remained motionless, although his skin was a shade pinker and less pale. Blood continued to trickle from Kylus down to the floor. Sylis decided to say a prayer, because he could do nothing else: Please, God! I tried my best! I did everything I could! Give Kylus back to me!

  At that moment, Kylus opened his eyes, and began to sit up. Sylis and Kylus looked at each other, and they both grinned. “I love you too, Kylus!” Sylis said. Kylus sat up, but Kylus winced in pain and clutched at his side, and Sylis saw that drops of blood were on Kylus’s hand where he was grabbing his wound.

  “Kylus! You’re hurt! Did my spell not work?” Sylis said, his voice thick with pain and fear.

  “I feel a lot better, Sylis! I’m healed enough to stay alive until we get out of here and get me to a proper Green healer to heal the wound,” Kylus said. “Being bitten by a dragon isn’t the type of wound that’s easy to heal from. I know you love me, Sylis. We’ll have time for hugs and cuddles later. Now let’s go kill that dragon!”

  I wonder if it was Blue magic or White magic that brought Kylus back to life, Sylis thought. I’ll probably never know.

  Sylis and Kylus stood together and turned to face the dragon—just in time to see the yellow glow that had surrounded the dragon’s body fade and disappear, leaving behind a very angry, very alive and very healthy evil dragon. The dragon swept its head around and cast more Black attack magic spells with its eyes, causing explosions to rock the Crystal Chamber. Rose, Nathan, Glorissa and Yarid were thrown back by the blasts; they fell to the ground, got up, and retreated, coming back to the position that Sylis and Kylus held, near the room’s back wall. The six of them ducked behind a thick pillar to hide from the dragon. Their breathing was deep and fast, their bodies were sore and exhausted. They looked at each other, and each saw their own look of panic and fear reflected in the others’ faces.

  “The dragon’s magic shield is back up,” Nathan said. “The yellow glow ending means that it’s restored it. We do not have nearly enough firepower to kill that thing in under two minutes—yet that is how long the shield stays down after a Mythic and Legendary Weapon hits it. Even if the boy were to hit it with the Sword twenty times, I doubt we could kill it—and my calculations don’t even consider the possibility of the dragon healing itself while its shield is back up, which I suspect it probably can.”

  “I can’t go back in there and hit that thing twenty times!” Kylus said, his eyes wide with fear. “Sylis healed me, but the dragon bite still hurts and burns like hell! I’m not letting it bite me again!”

  “Don’t worry, it would be pointless for you to try,” Nathan said. The dragon was slithering along the floor, coming at them as they spoke. “My point is we failed. We’ve lost. We are all about to die. We can try to run back out through the door we came in, or go for that other door, but the dragon will see us, so we most likely die if we do. If there were many dead bodies anywhere near here, I could raise an army of undead soldiers and stage a proper attack. But I sense no corpses nearby. If the dead kings are entombed in the Tomb of Kings, my necromancy is not sensing them, so I assume some spell protects them from Black magic.”

  Sylis’s eyes lit up. “Wait a minute! I may have an army!” Sylis said. He raised the scepter up, and its sapphire glowed a strong, intense blue, with blue rays of light coming out of it in all directions. “Yes! They’re coming!” Sylis said.

  That was when the dragon reached them. It slammed its tail at them; they all dodged out of the way, but the dragon’s tail smashed into a stone pillar, knocking it over. A huge chunk of stone fell at Sylis; he jumped aside, and the stone fell to the floor, narrowly missing him, and crashed down with a resounding thud. Sylis twisted his ankle as he landed from his jump, but he gritted his teeth and chose to ignore the pain. Sylis turned and saw that a chunk of stone had hit Yarid in the head, and the elf was wobbling and seemed dizzy, with blood dripping from his forehead, and then Yarid fell to the ground.

  Glorissa, showing almost superhuman strength, reached down, slung Yarid’s arm over her shoulder, and dragged him with her while she ran. The six of them fled as fast as they could, although Yarid slowed Glorissa down, and Rose was also walking with a limp from having been hit by its tail when she had battled the dragon while its shield was down. They were trying to get as far away from the dragon as they could, but they went slowly due to the party’s injuries—so Sylis was puzzled when he saw that they had put some distance between themselves and the beast, and it was not coming after them.

  “Why did the dragon stop chasing us?” Sylis asked. “And why is it suddenly so hot in here?” Sweat was dripping down his face, and the air was crisp and dry and warm, like standing next to a furnace.

  “I think it’s because dragons can breathe fire,” Glorissa said.

  The dragon spit a fireball at them. They turned and ran, but the fireball was upon them. Sylis turned around and watched as the fireball was upon him, ready to engulf him—and then something redirected the fireball, and it sailed away, hit a far wall and exploded. Kylus was standing in front of Sylis, the Sword outstretched, its blade glowing red.

  Kylus was grinning.

  “Hey, the Sword can bat the dragon’s fireballs away! This is really cool!” Kylus said, as if he were a boy who had just found a new toy to play with.

  “Can it deflect all of that? Please?” Rose asked. The dragon had begun to sweep its head around while breathing out a solid sheet of flame, with waves of fire pouring out and flowing in every direction, filling the entire chamber with fire. The flames billowed forward, coming at them.

  “I cannot deflect that!” the Sword said, in answer to Rose.

  “No, but I can!” Sylis said. He waved his arms, casting another time-stop spell. The time that the fire was inside of began to slow, and the flames’ spread slowed, so that the fire was just inching along, flowing as slowly as molasses pouring from a spoon.

  The dragon roared again and flapped its wings angrily. But then, suddenly, the white door at the far side of the room opened. Both the six rogues and the dragon turned and looked at it.

  The enchanted suits of armor from the Hall of Kings poured through the door, soldier after soldier after soldier, racing in. The armor soldiers formed ranks, held their shields in front of them and kept their swords ready behind their rows of shields, and advanced on the dragon. The dragon turned away from the six rogues and began to attack the metal knights, clearly viewing these magical soldiers as a bigger threat than the five humans and the elf.

  “I feel like this may be our one and only chance to escape,” Nathan said. “While the dragon is distracted by whatever those things are, we make a break for it and run for that door they came from. If we run, we may make it out before the dragon turns its attention back to us. This is the choice we face: do we run and flee like cowards, or stay and face certain death like brave and stubbornly proud men?”

  “I am no man, I have no stubborn pride, and I am not dying here with you idiots!” Rose said. “We run!” Sylis and the others nodded agreement. They ran for the exit.