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After tacking aimlessly back and forth across miles of barren terrain, the monster finally spotted a goal whose existence seemed to drive it into a rage.  Far out at the edge of its perception, at the very border of the Badlands, an old town huddled against the foothills of the Stalrange—mostly flat and practically invisible across such a distance except for its newest construction: the zeppelin dock, at which an airship was tied up, an unmissable target.

The necro-drake roared in mad fury and straightened its course, heading directly for Desolation at the greatest speed its unnatural flight could propel it.  Thus fixated, it was oblivious to the shadow which fell across it from above.

“I can get you closer,” Razzavinax the Red offered, his voice lowered to a relatively discreet rumble, inaudible to the monstrosity below then and just barely heard over the noise of wind by his passenger.

“We’d better not risk it,” Gabriel replied.  “This should be fine.”

The dragon snorted, emitting a gratuitous little puff of flame as he pumped his wings once to maintain altitude before settling back into an effortless glide.  “It is quite a thing, after the life I have lived, to be reduced to a…taxi service.”

Grinning, Gabriel patted the crimson scales once.  “Would you prefer to be reduced to the catapult stone?”

He launched himself off Razzavinax’s side, immediately ruined his attempt at a graceful dive by catching his foot on the dragon’s spines, and went tumbling into space, barely avoiding being clipped by the red’s wing.

“Smooth.”

“Shut up, Ariel.”

Fortunately the wind noise was too intense for the exchange to be audible to his erstwhile mount, now receding upward as Gabriel plummeted toward the necro-drake and the prairie below it.  Even more fortunately, straightening out his descent in freefall was easier than regaining his footing on flat ground, at least now that he’d practiced it a few times.

The magic he carried—divine, arcane, and infernal—was protected from chaos by the direct attention of Vidius himself.  Razzavinax had no such defense, and the necessity of keeping the dragons out of range of the necro-drake’s chaos effect was a strategic hardship, but he and Gabriel had found a way to use it to their advantage.  The distance gave him ample time to straighten out and direct his fall, assisted by Ariel—not that he could spare the arcane energy for actual powered flight, a notoriously difficult feat, but Gabriel kept a grip on her handle and was able to channel their combined energies into subtle bursts of kinetic force that enabled him to adjust his course.

Angling his body, he pushed slightly to augment his forward momentum, which was starting to lag behind the necro-drake’s.  Waiting until the last moment to draw his divine wand, he extended it to full scythe form just in time to bring it down overhead as he slammed into the monster from above.

Gabriel barely had time to feel the impact of its glass body against his own invulnerable legs before the magic of the scythe bit into it, finishing the job.  Pure entropy tore the beast apart, snuffing out its animating magics and reducing its physical form to shards and dust before it had a chance to react.

Immediately it began trying to re-form; whatever the source of this thing’s animating power, it was resilient and not so easily dispatched, as they had discovered.  But for a span of some seconds at least, the thing was shattered and vulnerable.

Despite Razzavinax’s complaints, the Conclave of the Winds had rendered far more aid than just transportation.  The dragons knew ancient and powerful spells of every kind; it was Ampophrenon the Gold who had swiftly walked the paladins through the methods he knew of dealing with chaos through divine magic.

Calling on that knowledge now, Gabriel lit up a divine aura and pushed it outward, causing the tumbling fragments of glass to shimmer beautifully around him.  His own attention he focused on the one all-important spot, the place where he could sense the disruption of the chaos source fighting against the direct power and attention of his god.  He angled himself again in freefall, drifting that way with his hand outstretched and sparking a surge of Ariel’s arcane power to close the gap.

By the time Gabriel’s fingers closed on the shard of dragonbone from the skull of Belosiphon the Black, it was already sheathed in regrowing black glass as the necro-drake sought to reconstitute itself.  He and Vidius did not give it that chance.

It was a trick of concentration Ampophrenon had taught them; he’d been the last of the three to get the hang of it, but he had it down now.  Focusing the intent of the god onto one specific target was as simple as focusing his own, once it had clicked for him, and the gold dragon had said it should remain that way so long as it was only done with good and proper reason.  Gods did not appreciate having their presence invoked frivolously, but none of the Trinity would begrudge having their aid called upon to snuff out chaos.

The god of death and duality exerted his will, and the dragonbone shard cracked neatly in half in Gabriel’s hand as the chaos within it was utterly purged.  Instantly, the glass fragments around it shattered, falling away in slivers.

Of course, he was still plummeting toward the ground, but Gabriel had hit the planet from much higher up than this with little ill effect.  And this time, he had help.

The enormous bulk of a dragon belied the sinuous grace with which they moved; Razzavinax’s massive shape swooped beneath him as fluidly as a waterfall, aligning himself flawlessly and matching Gabriel’s velocity in every direction for the moment it took the paladin to alight gently upon his back.  Then he banked, descending less precipitously and pumping his wings to slow as they came to rest on the ragged terrain where the prairie trailed off into the Badlands.

“Neatly done,” Razzavinax rumbled as Gabriel slid off him again, landing much less clumsily this time on the ground.  All around them, chunks of black glass were plummeting from the sky, harmlessly inert now—though still razor-sharp and moving alarmingly fast.  They bounced off dragonscale with no effect; Gabriel’s half-hethelax skin would have been just as impervious, but he ignited an energy shield to prevent his clothing from being shredded.

“And yourself, my lord,” he replied, bowing.  “For someone with vastly greater skills than taxi service, you do it well.”

“No task is too humble to deserve one’s best effort, if it is worth performing at all.”  Razzavinax shrunk in seconds to his smaller form, in which he was a pale man with flame-red hair and featureless crimson eyes, dressed in a combination of tight leather pants and open-fronted frilled shirt which looked like something Professor Rafe would wear—an observation Gabe had not shared with him, as you never knew who Professor Rafe had managed to piss off but it was always somebody.  “Let us report in and get our next marching orders.”

Gabriel nodded seriously and stepped up next to them.  A full-sized dragon would have posed logistical problems, but two men were shaped and sized appropriately to make use of the designated teleportation pad attheir improvised command center inthe Conclave’s embassy in Tiraas.

The dragon laid a hand upon his shoulder the moment he stepped close enough, and then in a brief swell of shadow the two vanished, leaving behind nothing but a swath of prairie sprayed with shards of black glass.

***

Howling in mad, unearthly rage, the necro-drake flashed across the plain in pursuit of its tormentor, unleashing its feral roar far more continuously than a being with flesh and blood lungs could have managed.

For its trouble it was hammered by a fusillade of lightning bolts out of the clear sky, pounding it into the prairie below in pieces.

Of course, it immediately began to reassemble itself, already clawing and flailing out of the scorched depression and once more rising to the bait.

A blast of pure arcane energy zipped straight into it, but of course fizzled and spun away in a spray of what looked like confetti before it could impact.

“Oh, that one was just insulting,” the dragon complained.  “Really, now, have a little dignity.”

The necro-drake howled at him, beating its skeletal wings furiously and launching itself aloft.

Zanzayed the Blue grinned and exhaled a blast of pure fire over his shoulder; like the lightning attack, it was nothing but mundane physical energy by the time it impacted and thus was not sent askew by the chaos effect, though it was even less effectual.  The monster charged straight through it, following him again as he sped up.  Both of them beat their wings furiously, the dragon deliberately keeping himself just out of range of the unnatural beast’s magic-disrupting effects.

He’d done his job, though, luring it down to skim directly over the surface of the prairie.  And now he’d succeeded in bringing it to the target point.

Twisting his long neck to deliver a mocking grin over his shoulder, Zanzayed was suddenly lit by a corona of flashing arcane sparks, causing him to leave behind a trail like a comet for a brief second before he vanished.

For another second, the necro-drake hesitated, slowing and roaring in frustration.  Immediately, though, it resumed course with renewed fury.  With the dragon out of the way, there was another target dead ahead: a small and slim figure, but one blazing like the sun with a divine aura.

Screaming its challenge, the monster rose upward in order to meet its foe in a dive, glass claws extended.  Standing upright in silence, she watched without fear as it fell upon her.

At the last second, the Hand of Avei was suddenly surrounded by a hardlight construct the size of a house: a single, huge fist of pure divine light.

The necro-drake plowed face-first into Avei’s unyielding power and was utterly pulverized by its own momentum.  The force of the impact practically splattered it, sending shards of broken glass spraying in all directions.

Immediately she dropped the construct, golden wings flaring into place behind her even as the giant fist dissipated.  Trissiny strode forward through the flattened tallgrass and the wreckage even as the necro-drake’s pieces tried to drag themselves back together.

She smashed one booted foot down on its skull, interrupting the process of its reformation, then bent and unerringly closed her gauntlet around the all-important chaos shard.

Straightening up, Trissiny clenched her fist and focused.

Avei’s presence and full attention descended, smashing into the piece of dragonbone with the force of her wrath.  The taint of chaos was annihilated utterly, the shard itself reduced to atoms in the paladin’s grasp.

All around her, the pieces ceased trying to reconstitute themselves and tumbled to the ground where they were, leaving her standing amid the partially-reconstructed shape of a skeletal dragon made of broken black glass.

This time, the flicker of blue lights upon the air was much smaller, and when Zanzayed reappeared it was in his lesser form, complete with bejeweled robes and elaborate pinned hairdo.  Somehow, his grin seemed no less broad for being a fraction of the size.

“Well, you don’t lack panache, do you?” he said cheerfully, clapping Trissiny on the back hard enough to maker her armor clang.

She grunted and opened her fingers.  What had been a shard of Belosiphon’s skull immediately drifted away in the merest puff of breeze, dissipating in a fine powder of carbon, calcium, and elemental miscellany.

“Same goes.  Does it have to be so flashy when you do that?  When Tellwyrn teleports you almost can’t even tell anything happened.”

“Ugh.” His featureless blue eyes did not visibly roll, but Zanzayed made it a full gesture of his head and shoulders to make the effect unmistakable.  “That’s because Arachne has gotten boring in her old age.”

“I’m telling her you said that,” Trissiny announced, turning her head to give him a mischievous smile.

“Good, then you can also tell her I want my copy of Planes of Plentitude back, and her mint chocolate souffle is overrated.”

“I dunno, that last one sounds a little too rich for my blood.”

“Well, she does have some sense in that little head, after all!”

He ruffled her hair by way of distraction, and in the next second the blue sparks flashed around them again and the world vanished.  Both were now standing on the small antechamber in the embassy with two armored Conclave guards standing at attention near the door.  At the appearance of a dragon before them, both women thumped their spears against the floor in unison and bowed.

“A little warning next time!” Trissiny exclaimed.

“Complain, complain, complain,” Zanzayed complained, already stepping off the marble platform which was their designated arrival and departure point.  “You are so part of this family.”

“Oi, that’s below the belt.”

“Zanzayed, Avelea.”  They were met approaching the other way by Razzavinax and Gabriel, returning from the next room.  The red dragon nodded to each of them.  “The word is we are gaining ground.  She mentioned taking the opportunity to experiment while we have a little leeway.”

Trissiny raised an eyebrow.  “She?”

“Yeah, by the way,” Gabriel said, clearing his throat.  “My first instinct was to not poke into a dragon’s personal business, but, uh, just for the sake of insuring I don’t actually commit some huge breach of etiquette later on…  I thought all dragons were male?”

“Biologically, from birth,” Razzavinax said with a shrug.  “All dragons are definitely individualists.  Beyond that, we do not pry into one another’s personal matters.”

“So…my first instinct was the right one?  Damn, I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

“You are young enough it is still not unimpressive,” the red replied with a small smile, “though on the other hand, that is sort of an obvious universal.”

“Yeah, that sounds more my speed.  Knock ‘em dead, Triss.”

“Stay safe out there.”

As the two groups strode past each other, he held up one fist and she thumped her own against it, and then Trissiny and Zanzayed were striding down a short hallway while Razzavinax and Gabriel ascended onto the teleport platform and then vanished in another rise of shadows.

The chamber beyond was larger, occupied by more guards and several other Conclave personnel, all of whom seemed to be scribbling or organizing notes.  The sole exception was a gnome with cerulean blue hair wearing a sharp suit of sapphire-colored fabric with thread-of-gold pinstripes, her back to the entry as she studied the huge map table which predominated the center of the room.

“Trissiny, may I present Mirinexes the Blue,” Zanzayed declaimed as they entered, “the Conclave’s newest member, and one we are very fortunate to have.  She is the expert on chaos effects.”

“One of them, anyway,” the gnome replied, turning to shoot them a smile, eyes featureless blue orbs just like his.  She was standing on a floating platform of pure arcane energy which fizzed constantly under the weight of her small feet.  “Nor is the timing a coincidence.  I had fully intended to sit back for a few decades and see how badly this Conclave thing crashed and burned before I formed so much as an opinion.  But then all this kicked off, and imagine my amazement when my esteemed brothers stepped up to make themselves useful in a crisis!  I’ll not stand for being upstaged.”

“A true dragon,” Zanzayed said approvingly.  “What’ve you got for us, boss?”

Mirinexes turned back to the map table, frowning.  It depicted the Empire, or more accurately the continent, and was clearly magical—and just as clearly malfunctioning.  What its enchantments were meant to do Trissiny could not discern, but sections of it throughout the great plains surrounding the Golden Sea were clearly misfiring, obscured by shifting areas of blankness or small fountains of sparks or arcs of electricity.

“The good news is that there have been no more of the damned things emerging,” the blue dragon reported.  “Once we finish this cleanup, it should be done—at least until the next batch, of which I am grimly certain there will be one.  The more immediate news is also good, or at least better than when you set out.  We have a bit of breathing room—not that we should dawdle, but none of the aberrations are currently close enough to inhabited territory that we must rush.  At least not—ah, there, you see that section that just cleared up, near Saddle Ridge?  That’ll be Caine and Ampophrenon polishing off their target.  I’ve sent Razzavinax and Arquin to pick them up and take them to the next site before moving on to their own.  I’m sure Ampophrenon can get about fairly quickly, but Razzavinax’s shadow-jumping is second to none and we should not waste time.  On the subject of which, there’s something I’d like you two to try, in the interest of gathering more information on our foe before we dispatch them.”

“That’s incredible,” Trissiny murmured.  “I thought these things were impossible to track by magic?  At least, that was the word before we set out…”

“I didn’t call Mirinexes the expert just to butter her up,” Zanzayed replied, grinning.

“Yes, standard scrying such as this map table is meant to do wouldn’t be able to,” Mirinexes agreed, gesturing at it.  “It would naturally try to compensate for the disruption of chaos effects by showing…nothing.  A conscious scryer focusing on one directly risks deadly feedback.  I’ve re-tuned it to display the errors where it can’t focus in, refined the margins around those and am using the disruptions themselves to track the chaos incidents on the move.  It’s not terribly complicated but does require constant attention, and it’s less precise than I’d like, but there’s no real way around that.  I’m sure the Empire is working on a similar method; I just happened to have developed this one already, some time ago.  Here’s where I want you two next.”

She pointed at one patch of disruption crawling across the map’s surface just west of the Golden Sea.

“That little bastard in particular will come across a Rail line within the next ten minutes.  I’d like you two to intercept and observe it discreetly before engaging.  So far these things have reacted like demons, all aggression and no thought, but they are not demonic and whatever’s causing their…attitude problem is by definition not the same as infernal corruption.  I want to have a look at our buddy’s cognitive abilities.  It will either ignore the Rail, attack it, or—worst case—recognize its general purpose and follow it toward a bigger target.”

“We can do that,” Trissiny said warily.  “If it attacks the Rail line while we’re hanging back to observe, though…  I don’t know if we can intercept before it actually destroys the line.”

“The network itself is shut down, so there’s nobody on it.”

“Okay, but that’s still…”

“If you live in a prosperous country, never shy away from wrecking government property.  Repairing it means buying materials and paying laborers.  It’s good for the economy.”

“It must flow,” the paladin acknowledged, nodding.

Mirinexes looked up from the table, studying her face.  “Hm.  You’re a peculiar Hand of Avei, aren’t you?”

“I can live with peculiar.”

“Oh, it was the farthest thing from an insult,” the dragon clarified, grinning.  “I’m a mage; the peculiar fascinates me.”

“It’s a shame about the timing, though.  There were some women in Tiraas very recently whom I’d have loved to introduce you to.  But I guess that ship has sailed.”

“And so should this one,” Zanzayed interjected.  “Anything else we need to know, Mirinexes?”

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell a paladin of all people, but just for the record, humanitarian concerns trump intellectual curiosity.  If there are any people in the line of fire, take that thing down fast and hard; we can experiment later.  By the same token…”  She pointed again at the map.  “That Angelus thing is moving a lot more slowly than you three; it’s currently intercepting another necro-drake near the Green Belt.  I realize it’s no less of a monster than the chaos creatures and based on the intelligence you’ve brought it was unleashed by the same man, but right now it is protecting people rather than attacking them, so I’d prefer you lot keep away and let it work.”

Trissiny bared her teeth, then rolled her shoulders and deliberately marshaled her expression.  “Yes…right.  Priorities.  All right, Zanza, let’s get back to breaking rare and expensive objects.”

“We should party more often, cousin.  I hear you like punch?”

***

“Stop.”

It had stopped…and it had not.  Divine light suffused the area with an intensity that made the very air vibrate from the pressure of a god’s personal attention.  Toby paced evenly forward through the tallgrass, as all around him the stalks perked up further and began to sprout green shoots despite the season, while tiny rocks and bits of dirt drifted up from the ground.  In the localized area inundated by the holy nova, physics itself had become…subjective.  There were no rules; there was only Omnu’s light, centered upon his Hand.

The necro-drake was held in place as firmly as if pinned, though nothing was exerting force directly upon it.  Snapping its jaws and snarling, it shook its head like a dog trying to shed an ill-fitting collar, bellowing a challenge at Toby.  But not attacking, or retreating.

He stepped forward slowly, eyes aglow, expression impassive.  As he drew close enough, Toby held up one hand.

“Is this truly all there is to you?” he murmured, gently reaching forward as if to pat the monster’s nose.  “Are you only rage, or do you have a mind?  Is there anyone in there?  If you can feel, if you know yourself, if you want something…then perhaps there is some accord that can be reached.”

It quivered, vibrating with restrained fury, but slowly lowering its head.  Toby took the final step, extended his arm those last few inches—

The necro-drake howled savagely and snapped its jaws to cleave him in half.  He was already flowing around it like the very air, however; his outstretched hand drifting away even as his other slashed forward in a spearpoint strike, directly between its eyes.

One touch was all it took, all of Omnu’s own power and direct regard channeled into that tiny point.  The chaos-tainted shard was blasted from existence in the instant, and all the rest fell to the ground as so much twisted glass in the shape of bones.

Slowly Toby let the power recede, the crystalline music of divine magic fading to be replaced by the gentler sounds of winds through the dry winter tallgrass.

“Never have I seen such a thing,” Ampophrenon the Gold stated in apparent calm, stepping up behind him in mortal form.  “Even Hands of Salyrene have seldom wielded the divine with such precision, or mastery.  And…this was not done by technique, was it?”

“Not by…magical technique,” Toby whispered.  “Damn it.  I hoped…  Well, I suppose we knew it was futile, but…  Even demons have thoughts and agendas, you know?  These things are so angry, at everything and nothing.  That kind of anger always comes from pain.”

“Yes,” the dragon agreed, stepping up and laying a hand on his shoulder from behind.  “And there are demons which can be exceptions to the rule.  These are not demons, though.  That anger, that pain…  I see nothing else inside them.  If they suffer, it is one more crime we shall lay at the feet of their creator, when the time comes to confront him.  For now, the only kindness we can offer them is oblivion.”

“Omnu is paradox,” Toby said, staring at nothing.  “There’s no true peace, except in death.  To live is to hurt; the point is to make it mean something.  The paradox is in everything that makes the pain worthwhile.  I can’t accept that the only kindness is death; what’s the point of life if not to fight against that?”

“You are surprisingly full of both wisdom and doubt for one so young, Tobias.”  Ampophrenon gave his shoulder a gentle shake.  “It is good to mull these things and seek your answers rather than accept the blithe maunderings of your elders.  There is a time and a place, however.  We still have work  today which no one else can do.  When we have achieved a breather, I would be glad indeed to talk with you at more length.”

“Yes.  Right.”  Toby shook himself, drawing a deep breath.  “No standing around being existential while monsters are attacking people.  Sorry, all this just…it hits close to exactly the things I’ve been struggling with.”

The dragon nodded, squeezed his shoulder once more, and let his hand fall.

“Then let that be tomorrow’s battle.  Today, we press on.”