Chapter Text
The sky was alight with the fire of dragons.
Anyone unfamiliar with the goings-on of the Astral Plane would be stunned to see so many of Tiamat’s children at all, but here, they were locked in battle with one another. Red dragon claws sheared red dragon scales as powerful wings propelled the combatants in the air, and the young wizard watched, breathless, as his mother leapt from the wing of their airborne companion to drop onto the back of another, silver greatsword held aloft. She came down first not on the rider, but the dragon, burying her sword between thick scales before shoving the knight upon its back with her shoulder and all the force she could muster. The Lich Queen’s knight had no chance to react before he was careening through the sky, and though the dragon roared and flailed its wings, it abandoned the cause of attacking the interloper to dive after its ally instead.
The moment the huge creature twisted downward, the woman on its back was pushing off, back up into the waiting claws of Quulos above her. She gripped onto the base of the dragon’s wing to pull herself up.
On the battlefield, there was a moment of still—it was as though time itself had slowed, and Vlaakith and Orpheus’s warriors alike moved lethargically through the sky, the jaws of dragons opening slowly with fire expelling from them at a lazy pace. Maybe time itself had slowed.
But then, a shattering roar, and it snapped back into place with disastrous results.
One of Vlaakith’s dragons collided with a spire of stone with a heavy crack, its wingbeats sent awry by the bizarre disturbance—two of Orpheus’s nearly smacked into each other in the air. Quulos’s giant form swayed beneath the riders on his back, but he regained himself quickly. Xan felt himself shiver with some fear, some excitement, and no small amount of wonder. “Was that—”
And before he could finish, that broke the ground.
It was the biggest thing he had ever seen.
Incredible white wings thrummed with rings of prismatic sheen as the time dragon revealed itself—its antlers alone were five times Xan’s height, maybe more, and its massive whiskers whipped and flittered in the wind. The fantastic creature opened its maw, and a line of iridescent light pulsed up its throat as light so bright it was blinding built in its throat. When it unleashed the building energy in a line of striking white, the very air around it seemed to prickle, and the riders watched in wonder and horror as several adult red dragons caught in the blast lost control of their wings and fell to the ground like gigantic flies.
Before they could react, though, another dragon swept past them, a massive crimson crystal clutched in its claws. Quulos was the first to notice, and he took it upon himself to dive after his adversary. Xan waited until he got close enough, and then—with a whispered incantation and a flip of the fluorite shard he used as a focus between his pointer finger and thumb—he let loose a stroke of lightning aimed straight towards the dragon’s legs. Its claws scraped against the crystal as it struggled to keep ahold of its cargo; the crystal slipped and began its heavy fall towards the rock and dirt so far below, but the dragon snatched it up again and flapped its wings fiercely to keep it held aloft as it adjusted its grip.
“Tsk’va!” Xan heard his mother swear as the dragon slipped away, and though Quulos dashed after it, he was not quick enough to catch it before it dropped the crystal near the time dragon’s feet. Foot soldiers swarmed around it to lift it up into some metal contraption that held it upright, and subtly, it began to glow. An enraged shout echoed out across the field—Orpheus.
“Intercept the dragons!” the Prince’s voice reverberated in Xan’s mind. A psionic command to all his soldiers. “We can’t let them put the crystals in place!”
It was clear Quulos did not need to be told twice. Xan nearly yelped when the red dragon pivoted suddenly, sweeping over the time dragon’s head—out of the way of the next blast of pure white power it unleashed from its gargantuan jaws—to dive down after another crystal-carrier with front claws extended. No matter how much the young wizard braced himself, the impact was immense as Quulos collided with the enemy dragon, who roared in shock as it was sent twisting through the air. The crystal slipped its grasp and fell to the ground below… just as Xan slipped from the back of Quulos.
His mind swam with memories of his training, of what spells might help him reorient himself and land safely, or how and where he should grip Quulos’s tail to pull himself back, but he didn’t need to. A hand gripped his torso and tugged him back forcefully, and he thumped against Quulos’s back in the grasp of his mother. There was no time to thank her when he had to put all his strength into keeping hold of the bucking dragon’s back as Quulos struggled against their adversary, clawing at thick scales. After that blunder, Xan knew he had to help somehow, so he shouted another incantation over the wind to flood his companion with relentless energy.
The haste spell gave Quulos an instant advantage over the other dragon, and when it tried to dart away to grab ahold of the falling crystal once again he punished it fiercely with teeth to its neck. Xan began to feel sick as the combatants spun in the air, locked onto one another, but the concentration he kept upon the spell helped him stay centered. A loud crash, and it was clear the crystal had landed, but then—an even louder roar.
Time slowed around them once again, but thanks to Xan’s spell, Quulos moved at normal speed. He took advantage of this to tear from the other dragon for the briefest moment and let loose a fireball from his throat down onto the soldiers on the ground attempting to keep the crystal moving. The twist of his neck let Xan, slow as his body moved, look over at the time dragon once again, and realize—with an incredible dread—that two crystals now were in place, and from them, seeming chains of red lightning reached out to lance around the giant forelegs of the epic dragon.
The flow of time snapped back to normal, and Xan shut his eyes tight and clung to Quulos’s back. It seemed the red dragon had marked the path towards the crystal for his jhe’stil, for the time dragon turned its own head and another line of white power raked over the foot soldiers. They seemed to decay within moments, their bodies growing old and thin and weary—those who had the crystal up on their backs found it collapsing upon them, crushing them for their inability to hold it aloft in their current state. The buzz of the electric chains thrummed through the air.
Xan’s breath caught in his throat as he caught a sliver of red in the corner of his eye and realized that, in the midst of the fighting and fire and chaos, another crystal carrier was flying low to the ground with immense speed and focus. It was small, more than likely the youngest dragon on the field, and that seemed to mean it went undetected. The wizard looked around the field frantically—Voss and Quuthos were perched atop a crystal on the ground, defending it from any soldiers who tried to drag it to its place or dragons hoping to snatch it up again. Orpheus was living up to his title, diving down to block off another crystal-clutching dragon with an aura of flame like that of a true comet bursting out around himself and his own companion. All the rest of his knights were caught up in their own fights, and none, it seemed, were going after this interloper. None had noticed it. Except for him.
“Htak’a!” he cried to mute any fear or panic that may have swept over him as he sprung off of Quuthos’s back, feeling himself become weightless in the air. He shouldn’t have been doing this, that point made even clearer when he heard his mother shout at him over the wind that whipped about his ears, but he didn’t care. He had to stop that crystal from reaching its destination.
The young dragon yelped and swerved when it felt the wizard’s weight upon its back, and the rider that clung to its back seemed just as startled. Xan nearly startled at how young she was—not much older than himself, and yet soaring on the back of her own dragon, the both of them all alone on the ravaged battlefield. He’d only managed to secure a place on this mission because his mother was here, and because it had seemed to be a trivial one. Vlaakith surely hadn’t actually found a time dragon’s lair, much less sent any real number of knights after it, much less had any actual way in which to trap it.
The power in Orpheus’s psionic command and the racing red of the lines of lightning charging off of the towering red crystals made Xan think differently, though.
Not breaking eye contact with the panicked knight, he pointed a finger down towards the dragon’s face, and its wings flapped wildly as its vision blackened. It was flying completely blind, and quickly enough, its face was colliding with the dirt and rubble as it came to a rocky halt. Xan smiled despite himself—he couldn’t believe he had actually blinded a dragon.
Unfocused, his mother would’ve criticized. You must not celebrate until the battle is won. He’d never understood the true weight of her words until Vlaakith’s knight was coming up behind him and bludgeoning him right in the head with the hilt of her greatsword.
The wizard’s vision blurred and doubled, and for a moment he wondered if the epic dragon at the center of the field had slowed time once more. That didn’t seem to be the case, though, for when his legs gave way beneath him and his weight dropped to the rocks below, the impact was just as swift and hard as always. The young dragon shook herself off, her pupils refocusing as she shrugged away the blindness, and she caught the eye of her knight companion before taking the crystal up in her claws once more and taking flight without her. Xan cursed himself out for how rash and foolish he had been as the knight approached him, but though he was dazed, he wasn’t downed yet. Another circle of his focus in his hand, and another bolt of lightning was bursting out from his palm to strike directly at the hostile knight’s head. She staggered backwards, gripping her own face, and Xan’s stomach twisted at the smell of burnt hair and the smoke that swirled up from her. What had he done to this girl?
The knight reoriented herself and started towards him again, letting her hand fall from her face to grip onto her greatsword again with a look of pure fury. A fractal pattern had burst across her face, fresh scarring reaching out like a dead and twisting tree, her eye half-closed from the way it swelled. She opened her mouth to scream at Xan, but just as the first sound began to leave her throat—
The both of them lost their footing entirely as if shoved by an invisible force, going flying to the side and landing together in the rock. Xan was unable to resist the urge to tear his eyes away from her as she swore and struggled to get up again, hoping to find the source of the sudden shockwave.
The time dragon.
The crystal the young knight’s dragon had carried away had been locked in place, it seemed, and the line of lightning from it had shot straight for its wing. It threw its head back and let out a deafening roar, and Xan put his arms over his head and braced himself as another shockwave pulsed out from it, succeeding in little but keeping his feet on the ground as the great force pushed him through the rubble. It stomped its legs and flapped its gargantuan wings, but it was clear it could not take flight. No matter how much it twisted around and unleashed its magic upon the githyanki around it and the crystals that bound it, the electric chains did not listen—an even stronger shockwave reverberated from it, and Xan felt himself thrown like a ragdoll all over again. A sharp pain in his cheek let him know some shard of rock had sliced the skin, and now, the wetness of blood was rolling down his jaw.
Off to his side the young knight was slumped over in the wreckage, propped up upon an outcropping of rock. Each breath that left her throat came with a wheeze—she gripped onto her stomach, and her forearm was stained crimson with the very blood she was trying futilely to suppress from gushing out of her torso. The dragon had not returned for her.
The same was not true for Xan, though, for when he looked up, Quulos was circling overhead. His mother was too far away, too small in the sky, to make out much detail in her face, but he thought could catch glimpses of a mixture of panic and anger. She had come back for him. But no one had come back for Vlaakith’s knight.
The wizard was not sure quite what compelled him to do so, but he found himself muttering a phrase of healing under his breath, eyes focused upon the young knight. Something small and simple, just to quell the bleeding. She drew back her head, startled, before snapping her gaze in Xan’s direction. Confusion had overtaken her dirt-stained face, and for a moment, she just stared at him in stunned stillness.
That moment passed quickly, though, for both of the githyanki youths looked wide-eyed up towards the time dragon when it let out another thundering roar. The cacophony of the sound made Xan’s head throb, its powerful voice seeming to overlap upon itself several times over, as if it shared the voices of countless of its kind instead of one. As its jaws stretched agape, more radiant white energy gathered within them, a blinding light building up from within its throat and the slats between the scales of its neck pulsing with the same. He wasn’t sure what was happening or why, but Xan felt an iron taste upon his lips and another sensation down his face. His nose was bleeding.
“Xan!” he swore he heard his mother’s voice, but a ringing sound was gathering in his ears as his eyes fixed fast upon the growing light in the time dragon’s throat, growing more powerful moment by moment. He felt his vision distort again, and everything around him seemed to shift and warp. The rocks coiled into swirling shapes—they were floating in the air. Though he tried to reach up to wipe his nose, Xan found his arm moved impossibly sluggishly. His head pounded. It was as though his skull was over-full to bursting. “Zhak vo’n’fynh duj!”
And then, as the white light shone like a blazing star from the time dragon’s jaws, the largest and brightest thing that Xan had ever seen—
He felt his body tip over, and everything went black.