Runestalker

Abbadon

I hoped in vain: the flight stretched into several cold hours. To make matters worse, I found first Setsia, then Mrova huddled against me, shivering with cold.

"How, how can you be so warm?" Mrova stammered through chattering teeth.

I glanced at her before returning to my meditation.

"Long years spent underground." I replied in a distant voice. "It hardened my people to extreme heat and cold." I then pulled back my tattered sleeve to reveal several glowing runes.

"My magic also provides some protection."

"Curse the high elves for binding us in these fragile shells." Setsia hissed even as she moved closer to me, pressing her naked body against my side.

"As a dragon, my inner fire and burnished scales kept the cold away." She turned her face to me, the winds of passage whipping her long, blonde hair around her head.

"Do you have a rune you can scribe on my flesh that will keep me warm, Vren?"

"Not one you'll like." I replied, turning my head just enough to catch her eye. The feel of high elf skin against mine was enough to make my flesh crawl. I was barely holding back the urge to push them both off the dragon's back. Considering, however, that the dragon carrying me to Abaddon bent the knee to Bratak, I needed to show his sisters some kindness. And that translated directly into me not pushing them off into space.

Still, I wish they wouldn't crowd me so.

Thankfully I didn't have long to feel them close. Looking to where Bratak was talking to the dragon on his neck, I spotted a break in the clouds ahead. An instant later I could feel the dragon slow as he began his descent.

"Prepare yourselves." The dragon rumbled in a voice easily audible over the wind's shriek, the thick cloud that had clung to us for the greater part of the trip, shredding all around us into wispy remnants as he continued his descent.

"We are are almost directly over Abaddon. If we're lucky, we'll be able to avoid their wards,..."

Without warning the giant hand came reaching out of the clouds. Sensing it at the last moment, I flattened against the dragon's back, runes shimmering in their effort to keep me in place against the slick, black scales. Pressed tightly against me, Mrova felt me move and instantly did the same.

Still trying to get closer to me, Setsia wasn't so lucky. Before she could react, the hand scooped her off the black dragon's back and bore her off into space with a wail.

"Setsia!" Mrova screamed, lunging across me in a desperate effort to catch her sister by the leg. Then I was twisting to grab her and bear her back down onto the polished scales beneath us as a second hand swooped out of the swirling gray to snatch at us. It narrowly missed, passing by so close we could feel its damp chill against our skin.

"Fool!" I hissed into Mrova's ear. "The attack is nowhere near done!" Then the clouds all around us erupted into fire as the dragon let loose with a fiery blast.

"Buuuuuuuuurn!" The dragon roared, then let fly with another volley, the clouds peeling back before its relentless heat.

A face loomed out of the gray, as giant as the hands that had grabbed at us, a withered old crone with a face twisted into a visage of anger and hate. Her hands came back into view, a wildly struggling Setsia still visible in one before the other again lashed out at us. Diving under the reaching hand, the black pulled hard on the dense air to regain height before he sent a focused stream of black-tinged flame directly into the apparition's face.