SOLAR KNIGHT

With an arrogant grin, Cinder allowed his gaze to wander over the disparate gaggle of mortals opposing him. First there was the Phaetusian with her war-mount, a dogmatic soul unfairly held back by the limitations of mortal form. Then there was the kobold up the back with a crossbow levelled at his heart. A pathetic specimen of dragonkind; nothing more to be said. The girl hiding in the entrance chamber was interesting, though. The rank astringency of the void hung on her like an aposematic musk. Elves, especially juveniles, took on ambient magic like an odour, so it was only natural that the local settlement would start producing such tainted creatures. That left the dwarvish pyromancer. There was something in him, Cinder felt, that suggested a kind of kindred spirit. Each of them carried in his heart the hunger, heat and need characteristic of true red dragons. But this fool thought he could tame it, that he could get away with play-acting at civility. Cinder laboured under no such delusions.

"Have none of you any manners?" he admonished the irregulars before him after it became clear that none of them would make the first move. "Are you not going to introduce yourselves?"

"You first," snapped Kaellatch from the back of the room.

"If you insist," purred Cinder, "I am Cinder, one of the co-leaders of the expeditionary group currently exploring this ruin. Now, what are you doing in the middle of our investigation?"

"If there was another group involved, we would have been informed," said Azinax. "I'll need more than your word to be convinced. And incidentally, you wouldn't happen to know anything about the thugs who tried to jump us at the entrance? If they were yours and you paid anything more than bargain basement rates, you got scammed."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but if I find out, I'll pass on the message," said Cinder.

"You still haven't properly answered my first question," pressed Azinax. "What's your objective?"

"What my incorrigibly blunt friend means…" began Dain.

"Is precisely what I meant," interjected Azinax. "What's really going on here?"

Cinder considered his next move. Important as it was to get the interlopers out of here by whatever means necessary, it would be nice to know where they came from. He could make an educated guess, but wanted confirmation. Once he was confident of the nature of the situation, he could pick them apart at his leisure.

"What's going on here," said Cinder, selecting his words carefully and injecting each one with a facsimile of venom, "is that management is incompetent. They didn't tell us about you either. They never tell anyone anything useful at all."

"Oh, absolutely," Azinax found herself agreeing before checking herself. He still hasn't answered the question,she reminded herself. What he's doing is no better than cold-reading!

Cinder decided that the Phaetusian was a lost cause and shifted his attention to the dwarf.

"You know what I mean, right?" he prompted, gesturing to Dain as he spoke. "Keeping you out of the loop, cutting you off, not letting you play to your strengths… What's a proud Giltflame like you doing letting an Essokian boss you around, anyway?" Dain glared, but said nothing. "Don't try to deny it. Even if those beautiful eyes of yours weren't a dead giveaway, your sorcerous skill would be. The way you carry that flame like it's a part of yourself? Magnificent. Our team could use someone like you once all this is tied up. Our chord-founder's gifts never fail to impress."

Our? Azinax thought to herself. Then that can only mean…

"Die, vile spawn of Neratokthian!" she shouted, her killing-edge blazing with holy light. Cinder stepped back, deflecting the sword away from his body with one hand. His palm smoked, marked with a scorched stripe. With his other hand, he shoved Azinax in the chest, cutting her momentum dead and sending her flying back, slamming her spine-first into one of the benches near the rear of the room. After falling to the ground with a clatter, she lay on the ground a crumpled heap, silent and immobile. The others stared in a state of mortified inaction.

A muffled groan broke the silence.

"Now, it's a good job for you that you didn't kill her, because if you did…" attempted Dain before again being cut off.

"Get his ass!" yelled Kaellatch, but the rallying cry was unnecessary; Razorfang was already mid-leap. Cinder staggered under the crashing weight of the collision but stayed standing as Razorfang's teeth struggled to find purchase against his scales, leaving the two of them grappling in the middle of the doorway. Grasping Razorfang by the shoulders, Cinder tossed him to the ground.

As he glared down at the snapping, squirming animal that had dared oppose him strength for strength, Cinder inhaled.

Before he could unleash a gout of flame like he intended, he felt his head jerk back as something he didn't see struck one of his horns. As the incandescent spray was sent haphazardly across the room instead, Razorfang squirmed away and righted himself, infuriated but conflicted as he kept the prone form of his partner at the edge of his vision. Cinder blinked to clear his vision and shifted back into an aggressive posture, furiously scouring the room with his glare for the source of the attack. Then he spotted Kaellatch frantically reloading her crossbow atop one of the benches at the far end of the room.

As the sudden change in priorities in the group's mutual enemy became apparent to her, Kaellatch scuttled down from the bench she had been using as a vantage point and scampered under another. Cinder barrelled after her with Razorfang in hot pursuit.

"If you're not going to do anything with that fire, put it out!" called out Micaiah to Dain.

"I don't see what good that will do," rebutted Dain as he watched Kaellatch duck a swipe of Cinder's claws.

"The four of you together have barely put a scratch on that monster! I'm your only chance!" insisted Micaiah. "Just do it!"

Out of arguments and out of options, Dain doused the magical flame they had been using for illumination, plunging the chamber into darkness. Though not a direct obstacle to him, whatever the darkness portended gave Cinder pause. Though he doubted what the elf girl had in mind was a genuine threat to him, no defeat was quite so embarrassing as one at the hands of an inferior enemy. He broke off his pursuit of the kobold, as much as its pathetic yips delighted him, and turned his attention to the elf in the hallway. At first, she appeared to do nothing but stare him down defiantly, but as he approached a bestial form began to coagulate out of the gloom, pulling itself into being in the space between the two of them.

"What kind of petty conjurer's trick is this?" mocked Cinder. "It can barely even hold its own shape!"

He spat a globule of flame dismissively at it, and it dissolved into the firelight. But another shadow-beast was already on him from behind, its claws and fangs lunging for his flesh. He reached behind himself, raking at it with his claws, but they passed through its insubstantial body as if it were made of water. As ice-cold needles pierced his neck, he slammed himself backwards against the wall in an attempt to crush whatever was behind him, but it simply melted away, pooling at his feet before reforming back in front of him. Now that he could see it clearly, this one was bigger than the first, and still growing.

Pressing the attack with the only weapon he knew to be effective, Cinder breathed out another rush of flame and the shadow-beast flinched back, hissing in pain. Then, as he was forced to pause to draw another breath, the shadow-beast slithered forwards and engulfed him in its hazy mass. He gagged on its noxious emanations, and struggled to claw his way free. He could feel himself being dragged away, back into the chamber. But in the corner of his eye through the smog, he could see more shadow-beasts approaching, almost puppy-like in their enthusiasm. Finally with a ragged snarl Cinder clawed his way free from the larger shadow-beast's suffocating haze, and cleared the smaller ones with another incendiary spray.

Micaiah watched as her shadow-spirit drove Cinder back further into the chamber. Dividing into several bodies had served well enough when coralling Cinder away from the others, but the time had come to strike the final blow.

"Now!" she shrilled. "Finish him now, with all your strength!"

The shadow-spirit swelled as it drew back into itself all the shadow-stuff that had become scattered about the chanber, growing until its ears brushed against the ceiling of the. No longer shifting and insubstantial, it was now a monstrous and tangible lupine beast, its fur rippling and seething like smoke in the wind, its eyes black like two holes in the world. It grabbed Cinder in its jaws, shredding one of his wings between its teeth, and began to shake him like a terrier with a rat. Cinder flailed desperately, slashing violently at anything that might be solid. Finally he felt his claws catch on something, felt the lurching motion of the world falter. He twisted around in the shadow-beast's grip, spat a mote of fire in its eye, and kicked his way free, landing heavily on the stone floor. As he stood to face the beast once more, he threw back his head with a keening cry, a prayer to the fell denizens of the deepest hells that he might not die alone.

"Stop him!" howled Micaiah.

"We have to leave!" yelled Dain at the same time.

Micaiah's shadow-spirit charged Cinder, ramming him. The two of them careened back towards the crumpled balustrade, and Cinder felt wrought metal over empty air below his hind-claws. He tried to fend the shadow-beast off with what little fire he had left, but it was no use; the sparks sizzled ineffectually against it's miasmic hide. With one last heft as the world shook around them, the shadow-beast slammed into him again with a tackle, sending both of them tumbling into the black.

At the same time, Razorfang was racing towards where he had last seen Azinax but as the earth trembled, dust and rubble were falling all around. As the floor crumpled and the ceiling shed, every which way was always blocked.

"We have to go," Dain repeated to Micaiah, quieter this time. "I'm sorry about your friend but this place is coming down around us as we speak! If we delay any longer we will die!"

"Don't worry about him," said Micaiah, gazing vacantly at nothing and allowing herself to be ushered back along the corridor. "He always comes back. I'm sure Azinax will be fine too."

Dain glanced back into the collapsing room. Kaellatch was nowhere to be found; with any luck that was because she had already made herself scarce. Razorfang was still trying in vain to fight his way across the room towards Azinax.

"Get up! Get up!" urged Razorfang through their mental link. No response. "I can't find you! Where are you!" A massive hunk of stone crashed down from the ceiling, barely missing him. "Where are you?" he repeated, undeterred. This time he got a response, a pulse of pain followed by a feeble but undeniable command.

"Get out while you still can. I'll only slow you down."

Razorfang froze, transfixed in the surrounding chaos. It was not in his nature to abandon his charge, nor was it to disobey. He clambered over the rubble to where he was certain Azinax had been lying before the tremors started but still couldn't see her. He took a step up onto a large slab of stone, only to recoil as more pain flooded the link. As he stepped back he peered around frantically in confusion.

"Down here," called Azinax. Razorfang dashed after sound of her voice. There on the opposite side of the slab he saw her sprawled on the floor poking out from under it. She had partially crawled under the bench and so the top half of her body was partially protected from the debris, but her legs were pinned under the rock that Razorfang had previously attempted to climb.

"I'll move it!" Razorfang told her, and before she could protest he put his shoulder to one side of the slab and pushed. There was a scraping sound as it slowly started moving, but this was drowned out by a great crack overhead as the ceiling began to give way completely.

"There's not enough time!" insisted Azinax. "I'm a lost cause! Just get out! Leave!"

Ears flat and tail down as the chamber crashed down behind him, Razorfang obeyed.