A flash of dark steel pierced the dark peace of his sleep and a terrible ruckus from hundreds of mouths rattled his ears.
In a flash, he realized where he was.
He was home, he was back in his volcanic village. Terror filled him as he recognized the stone of the sepulcher, A thrill of adrenaline sent electrical tingles shooting to his fingers. Looking around, he saw the populace of his village cheering and roaring down at him. Lord Cyrus was there too, staring down from the great stone circle of elders.
“Do it, finish!” He screeched down at Harktoum
“no…no….nonono……” he whispered under his breath as his body turned on it’s own to face the great stone tablet behind him. When he saw who was on the table, he wished he would, could, wake up with every iota of his being.

Like all bad dreams it seemed though, he was stuck as a captive audience until the very end. He struggled as much as he could, but his slumber was like a bear trap, steel jaws sunk into his very consciousness holding him in place in the one place he wished most not to be.

On the slab, held by the ceremonial chains lay Linriel. Although, in his dream, she wasn’t wearing his image, she was dressed as she was the last time he saw her, and she was staring up at him with pleading eyes, tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes. She could see death in him and she was scared.

“kill her” Cyrus’s voice echoed through the dream and Harktoum felt his head nod and his hand tighten on the long knife.
With agonizing slowness, his hand moved up and over Linriel’s chest, holding the knife steady for the killing blow.
NOW! Now! Please let me wake up please….please…..
His mental pleas didn’t make a difference and almost as a mockery of the slowness that he hefted the knife, his hand shot down and sunk the blade deep into Linriel’s chest.

She screamed, oh god the noise! Unlike in real life, Linriel screeched in mortal agony at the blade sunk into her. Harktoum recoiled from the body and the sound, finding himself back in control of his body. He slammed his hands over his ears to try to stop the horrible sound, but Linriel’s screams slipped through and echoed in his mind. He realized that he too was screaming, a strained chorus to Linriel’s pained yells. He closed his eyes tight and screamed until Linriel finally lost the last of her life and fell limp on the stone.

trembling, he looked up to where he had stood in real life. There was a hooded figure there, but as it pulled its cowl back, Harktoum saw blazer’s great head rise from the cloth at the end of a neck that seemed to spout from the ground. The great dragon shook his head slowly, eyes cast down.


“AAH!”
Harktoum jerked awake, the panicked muscle twitch sent him several inches up in the air.
He looked around in an unexpected silence. He knew something was watching him and he looked out to the entrance of the cave. Blazer was there with a smaller dragon. The younger dragon was also a red male, small horns were growing from his brow and a bristly mane of fur spouted from the nape of his neck to the tip of his tail.

They were both looking Harktoum’s way, obviously interrupted from a conversation.
Looking back to Blazer, the younger dragon let out a noise that sounded like at crackling of a fire. Blazer let out a burst of fire and grinned before making a similar noise. It occurred to Harktoum that they were talking, in a language he couldn’t understand, but talking nonetheless.

After Blazer finished “speaking” the younger dragon nodded it’s head and leapt from the cliff. Harktoum could see it winging itself away as Blazer began padding back into the cave.
“Morning, Harktoum, bad dream?”
“Oh, the worst….who was that?” He motioned in the general direction of the fast disappearing dragon.
“A member of my clan…as it were. He is serving as a messenger for my patron. We have been called back…well I have been called, but you’ll come along now as well.”
“Called? What for?”
Blazer tapped a claw to the side of his jaws, “Pyros wishes to speak with us.”
Harktoum, puzzled, crossed his arms, “Pyros? Who the heck is Pyros”
Grinning, Blazer put his head close to Harktoum, “MY clan’s leader. And current Shalkith.”
“What in all hell is a SHalkith?”
Blazer drew back, genuinely surprised, “You don’t know? The Shalkith is the victor of the last great dragon wars. He is the de facto supreme warrior of dragon kind.”
“Dragon wars? Dragonkind? Aren’t all dragons like you?”

CHuckling, Blazer leaked flames from his mouth.
“Grab your things, I’ll explain on the way.”
Grumbling, Harktoum filled his meager possessions into his sack and followed Blazer to the cave’s entrance.
“Well, I’m ready when you are.”
Blazer stretched his wings wide, huge muscles in the dragon’s chest stretched under his scaled hide and the tips of his wings twitched as the dragon worked out the kinks.
“Climb aboard then.”
Blazer lowered his head down to Harktoum’s level.
“Huh?”
The red rolled his eyes in resignation
“We’re going to travel faster than you can fly, so climb aboard. I’ll still be able to speak to you, just hang onto my horns or else you’ll fall off.”

Shrugging, Harktoum flapped his wings and landed on Blazer’s massive head. Grabbing hold of one of the horns, he settled himself down, surprised at the heat coming from the reptile’s body.
“Ready?”
“Ready!”
“Okay then hold on.”
Blazer took a few steps and leapt. For a sickening instant, Harktoum’s stomach was in his mouth before Blazer pulled his wings wide and began flying. The massive red membranes made a massive flapping sound like the sails of a ship when Blazer forced his wings into movement. Soon, they leveled off and the mountains began to drift by and Harktoum fell into the rhythm of blazers flight. Relaxing, he gave a sharp rap on Blazer’s head
“So..”
“ Right to the point as usual hey? Alright. Dragonkind is defined by the four primary elements of life. Earth, fire, air, and water. You already know that I am a fire dragon. Water dragons tend to be associated with individual bodies of water. Air drakes are quite elusive and mainly float about in the sky. Earth dragons can be found above and below ground, some can grow to monstrous sizes, I know that that wasn’t overly detailed but you don’t really need to know the exact mechanisms of how an air dragon can fly with no wings as or how an earth dragon can travel as fast as I.

We dragons are tied to the pure elements. The first spirits of dragonkind to answer Gaia’s call were drawn to instances of human abuse and environmental disasters, which are potent moments in Gaia’s ongoing pain. The type of dragon that is attracted to a disaster depends on which elements are involved. A volatile volcano may attract a red dragon such as I, while a powerful hurricane may call one of the devious blue dragons

We are not limited to a single dragon per event. Large tragedies such as the original Cauldron can give birth to literally dozens of dragons

As for the dragon wars, they are actually called the Shalkith wars. Once in a great while Gaia feels the need to make her wrath known to the inhabitants of this planet. On these occasions, Dragons feel the pull of a bloodlust that draws us together in conflict, where our blood spills and stains the ground. During these great wars, many are slain through their quest for supremacy.”

Blazer stopped for breath at that point, the only sound was the rushing wind over his massive wings.
Harktoum was busy trying to absorb the information.
“My god….I’m glad that I didn’t have to live through such an event as that”
Blazer’s bitter laugh shook Harktoum from below.
“If you think that the wars are over you are sadly mistaken. Sad as it may be; the wars rage on, though there have been less mass killings and great debacles of slaughtering in the last decades.

Pyros IS the current Shalkith, but he has challengers calling very regularly, seeking his title and the power that comes with it. He fights less than when I first met him because honestly, there are fewer and fewer opponents that can rival his might.”

Harktoum nodded, “Well that makes sense, if you kill your opponents then you won’t ever have to worry about them coming back to kill you. Then all you have to do is deal with the few idiots that always come with each new generation.”

Blazer’s laugh rumbled again, more filled with mirth this time, “Well, you are mostly correct, but Pyros does have to worry about rivals coming back. I myself have fought him. I lost on that day, but here I am.”

Harktoum was stunned, “What? You’re dead?”

The draconian could almost feel Blazer’s amusement. “I’m not dead, otherwise you couldn’t be riding me. I think you are thinking of dragons in the terms of humans and draconians. Dragons do not die. That is unless we are deemed useless or unjust by Gaia –“
“WHAT?” Haktoum butted in, “You have seen Gaia?”
Blazer nodded his head in irritation, jostling Harktoum a bit, “A grand total of four times, I have gazed on the beauty of The mother. She is magnificent, but I don’t wish to repeat the process overmuch. Now…If we are condemmed by—“

“Wait. What is it like to see Gaia? What is she like?”
“mmph” A bit miffed, Blazer gave a deep frown, though Harktoum couldn’t see it, “to see Gaia is to see Truth. She is power, pure unbridled power. It is beautiful in a terrifying way. When I stood before Gaia, my soul, my life, my ESSENCE was laid bare for her to see. It was the most incredible experience of my life, and it scared me.

Now, if we are judged to have worth, we are returned to the earth, holding all of our accumulated self except that our bodies, shed when we are defeated, are regenerated and we are born anew as hatchlings. From there we must work back to power. Pyros, being Shalkith, is one of the longest lived dragons on earth.

If we are judged unworthy of rebirth we are sent to the Creeping Tar pits,” Harktoum felt a shiver of terror run up Blazer’s massive spine “They are said to be the final path for all dragons. Not a heaven or hell, but pure oblivion. It is a nothingness that consumes even our souls.”

Blazer fell silent then, and Harktoum felt it best not to bother him more for the moment. His mind was buzzing with all of the information that Blazer had just revealed to him. Silence gripped the pair as the miles trailed away behind them. Quickly, Blazer’s mountain faded away, obscured by an incoming bank of clouds.

Harktoum, growing bored, gave another rap on Blazer’s head.
“Where, exactly, are we going Blazer?”
“We are headed to the great volcano where my clan makes its home. It lies north of here, though it is still in the same mountain range and shouldn’t be more than a day or two of travel.”

Harktoum settled himself more comfortably on blazer’s scales, and looked down over the crest of Blazer’s head at the ground whizzing by. The wind was whipping his hair into an unruly tousle and he held it back irritably. The mountain valley they were following was a sea of green with a bright blue ribbon of a river cutting its way through the forest. For an instant, the river disappeared into a could of vapor and the ghost of a rainbow as the river went over a small waterfall, before continuing it’s way through several massive oxbow curves through the forest. His eyes drifted further up, past the treeline, to where the wind blasted rock stood higher than they were flying. Snowcaps perched precariously on top of the gigaton heavy piles of stone. As he watched, one of the massive shelves of ice and snow gave up the battle with gravity and collapsed, rolling down the mountainside and smashing into the Treeline.
He heard the dull roar of the avalanche well after it had stopped, the sound having to travel over at least a mile.
The day passed on rather slowly for Harktoum, he had nothing to do besides hold on, so he found his mind wandering to useless thoughts and to what little blazer had taught him over the week and a half he had spent in the dragon’s cave waiting for his arm to heal. Idly, he used a length of rope and tied himself to one of blazer’s horns and turned his back to the wind. Pulling out his sword and a sharpening stone, he zoned out to the sound of the rasping of the stone on steel.

He was jerked back to attention roughly, how much time had passed he didn’t know, but he put his sword away fast, and grabbed white-knuckled onto the horn he was tied off to.
“What the hell is going on!?” he yelled down to Blazer over a blast of wind blown rain.
“A storm!” Blazer’s voice carried much better than Harktoum’s voice in the storm, “If you hadn’t been daydreaming you’d have known about it a half hour ago!”
Frowning, Harktoum shot back “Well if you knew about it a half hour ago, why the hell hadn’t you landed?”
Blazer dropped alarmingly before clearing the low pressure air, “I can’t the cloud is ground level here in the mountains, I can’t risk landing and impaling myself on a tree!”
“WELL HELL!!”

Suddenly a jagged bolt of lightning split the sky in front of them. The light blinded Harktoum and the blast of thunder nearly threw him from Blazer’s head. He held on blindly, hoping his vision wasn’t permanently gone and hoping even more that Blazer was still competent enough to fly. He felt his ears, and gave a muffled sigh of relief when his fingers came away blood free. Another bolt had struck but, still blind, Harktoum only felt another huge blast of thunder. Fumbling in his satchel, he ripped a small cloth apart and shoved the rain soaked material into his ears. Rain beat him senseless and chilled him to the bone, but his vision was coming back slowly. He squinted his eyes not only to keep out the stinging rain but to prevent lightning from blinding him. The sky was alight with the static energy, and the sound of air exploding still shook Harktoum roughly, though the makeshift earplugs prevented the sound from breaking his eardrums.

Ducking his head down, and pulling his wings tight to his back, so they weren’t torn apart from the wind, the draconian realized that Blazer was yelling at him, and evidently had been for a while.
“Goddessdamn you answer me! HARKTOUM! Are you alright?”
“Yes! YES! I’m fine!” Harktoum screamed into the storm, it was a miracle Blazer could even hear him over the storm.
“Good, that was too close! I feared you had been fried.”
“FRIED?! How close was that bolt?”
“Look backwards!”
Harktoum turned his head and saw a black jagged path cutting its way from between Blazer’s shoulders to the end of the red dragon’s tail. Steam was pouring from the scar and he could see a flicker of flame beneath the blackened skin.

“Why are we still in the air?!” Harktoum got about half his question out before another blast of electricity forked across the sky right in front of Blazer. Pain arced through Harktoum’s body as he realized that Blazer had plunged right through the lightning. His skin was blistered and he was sure the cloth in his ear was charred.
Amazingly, miraculously, Blazer was still flying. The dragon was bobbing dangerously in the air, nearly turning a barrel roll before righting himself.

“Blazer? Blazer!” Harktoum beat on the dragon’s head trying to get the huge reptile’s attention, “BLAZER!”
“WHAT! Stop talking and let me concentrate!”

Lightning was blasting all around them as they crossed the center of the storm. The wind forced rain into them, and the hail forming battered Harktoum almost into unconsciousness. Great winds tossed Blazer this way and that despite his efforts. Pumping his wings, he struggled for every foot of altitude, but soon he felt the rain abating, though the rarefied air chilled even the great fire dragon to the bone. Ice began to form on his body and he felt Harktoum shifting about, shrugging of the film of ice that formed almost instantly. The freezing wasn’t helped by the fact that they were still in the towering storm cell. The sun began to shine through the obscuring clouds as Blazer rose higher. At last, they broke free of the top of the cloud, soaked and quickly becoming rimed with ice, but the sun was bright and the massive dark cloud below them could only growl ominously as they cruised above the tempest among the light misty cirrus clouds.

From the haze of obscuring cloud to the left of them loomed a gargantuan structure of stone. Made of some great pale stone, the structure jutted at least five hundred feet in the air, and its base sprawled down over the mountain’s cap for hundreds of feet more. Perched atop the peak of the great mountain, the bastion was so massive and it radiated an aura of quiet confidence and power so that it seemed heedless of time itself. The illusion of invulnerability faded quickly as the great rents on the great stone walls showed themselves as sharp edges against the wind smoothed stone. Huge sections of the wall were torn away, and some massive blocks of rubble still littered the mountainside. the building was torn open by some tremendous forces and then left, like a carcass, to rot and decay as it would. Already Harktoum could see plants like creeping vines and great patches of moss beginning the eon long task of reclaiming the stone.

Harktoum felt blazer veer in the direction of the building. It was a very good idea to him to take a rest after the beating they had just received, but the ziggurat of stone before them put Harktoum on edge.
“Blazer, What is this place?” Asked Harktoum in wonder “The last remnants of a great and bygone civilization, and the only place we will find locally that is out of the reach of this storm. The creators were called the Ahraim. They were once masters of all to be seen. Holding great technology far more advanced than any civilization, they ruled the lands from their cities of wonder, high in the sky. Those great bastions of power once numbered in the hundreds, stretching ever skyward, seeking greater heights. Now, this is all that remains of their glory. This hulk of granite is all that remains from the great tether of the Ahraim’s final sanctuary.”

Blazer came to land on one of the four massive visible balconies. Harktoum assumed that there were more on the other side of the tower. He untied himself and drifted to the stone ground before being showered by particles of ice flung from Blazer’s hide as he shook himself like a dog.
Brushing the ice from himself, Harktoum looked up at Blazer,
“Thaanks, I really needed that. What did you mean by ‘the great tether’?”

Blazer motioned at the massive archway leading from the balcony to the interior of the structure. He began padding under cover,
“The tether once held the great floating city in place above this mountain, for you see, the Ahraim belived the closer they were to the stars, the closer they were to the gods. Extending for thousands of feet, the metal of the tether provided the safety the Ahraim needed to contemplate their great mysteries in the rarefied air in the City of Light. We dragons old enough to remember the Ahraim name the city Falerin-amash, the humans called it Avalon, but none but the Ahraim ever knew the name given to that sanctuary by its creators.”

Harktoum followed the dragon into the anchor, looking around at the architecture as he followed the dragon further into the bowels of the massive structure. Everything was so large! Even Blazer only measured half the height of the walls, and the hallway they were in was wide as a four-lane highway. Great twisting pillars that reminded Harktoum of twisted licorice spouted from clawed bases on the ground, disappearing into the shadows of the roof.
The darkness of the inner passageways was banished in an instant as they rounded a final corner.
“oh my god…” Harktoum whispered as he saw the ragged wound across the massive span.
The opposite side of the anchor was torn away, massive blocks of stone littered about the ragged wound opening in the anchor’s wall. He followed the damage from the top of the anchor’s rim where a thousand foot half circle gap lay open like the rind of a broken melon, to the unseen floor of the anchor, where the mountain stone itself was broken, as if ripped by the great jaws of some titanic beast.
Blazer idly shuffled his wings and knocked a loose stone over the edge and into the gaping hole in the mountain.
”When the final moments struck, for whatever reason, the tether ripped itself from the heart of the earth and whipped across the land, devastating all in its path like a demonic whip. Terror and destruction reigned that day. Entire cities were swept from the face of the earth and the surrounding landscape was forever changed. On the fateful day this final tether snapped, the world shook and Gaia herself weeped for the loss of the race. The recoil from that break sent great storms whipping across the countryside, and the sound was said to be maddeningly powerful. It was the final act of that race to guide their final resting place deep into the ocean, and the city’s thousands of lives, the one last hope for their race faded from existence that day.“

HArktoum was speechless. Though some questions buzzed about his head, he was capable only of staring open mouthed at the gaping void in front of him. Looking around the ruin, Harktoum realized that this anchor was larger than his village’s volcanic home. And this was only the anchor point! His mind tried, and failed to grasp the sheer scale of the tether and of the great city itself.

A sharp crackling brought his attention back to the interior of the anchor. Blazer was settled down, he had procured a large supply of wood from somewhere and had set it aflame on the dark cobblestones. Harktoum’s joints groaned as he heaved them into motion and he headed gratefully to the warmth of the fire. The storm must have taken more time to traverse than it seemed because the sun was already well past the zenith, already in its downward trek. The great rent in the stone was pointed away from the sun so the entire place was cast into presunset gloom, and the temperature was dropping slightly in the cool mountain air. Emptying his pack, Harktoum laid out his possessions to dry out from the storm. He cursed when he dug down to the food he had stored in his pack. The meat was soggy, though the fire could make it modestly edible. His bread was useless, it fell apart into a sogy pile of mush as he pulled it from the pack. What few vegetables he had were pulverized by the hail, his favorites, wild tomatoes, were a sour red stain dripping from the bottom of the pack. Grumping, he emptied out his pack, turning it inside out before realizing that the small wheel of sharp cheese that had managed to survive the trek to blazer’s den was now a whitish yellow ball of goo stuck to the leather.
“UGH!” He scraped it off as well as he could, but with no water source nearby, his pack would keep the stain. At least his waterskin hadn’t been pierced, he thought as he took a long draught and waited for the fire to dry the meat enough or him to gag down.

Blazer, now fully reclined, kept staring at the great chasm of the anchor, the sheer weight of what happened there seemed to grab one’s attention and hold it.
“No matter how many times I see this… The first time I viewed this place, I simply stared for several days, awed at the majesty”

Harktoum looked towards the dragon, grimacing as he chewed into a not-quite dry piece of meat.
“What did the city look like anyways?”
“I have no clue.”
“huh? You said dragons didn’t die, and you obviously keep your memories. You never saw the city?”
“No…the city fell millennia before I was born. Only a handful of dragons alive today lived in that era, and only a few of them were anywhere near the city when it was still standing. They were only the few dragons that Gaia keeps alive, Shalkith wars or no, to keep some authority here.”
“Was this Pyros alive then? Does he know what the city was like?”

Blazer le out a stuttering hiss, and shook his head,
“No, actually Pyros was born after I was. He just has a great knack for combat.”
“I wonder what the Ahraim looked like…everything here is so big, they must have been gigantic creatures.”
Sweeping his gaze from the ruin, back to their makeshift camp, Blazer looked down at the still burning fire.
“no one can remember. At least no one that I have ever spoken too. Nearly all of the Ahraim’s culture has simply faded, having no one to carry on their traditions. It is a pity, but many civilizations have shared the same fate. As it is, I am going to retire. Tomorrow the storm will have passed and we can ride its fringe winds and make up some time.”
Turning, Blazer padded into a darker area and lay down, resting his head on his paws and closing his huge eyes. Soon the rhythmic blasts of his breath slowed and trickles of smoke drifted idly from his nostrils.

A sharp wind gusted through one of the dark corridors, causing Harktoum to shiver. He huddled closer to the fire, staving off the chill a little bit longer, wishing that his blanket hadn’t been soaked in the storm. Pulling his wings close to him, he stifled a yawn, trying to stay awake. He hadn’t really done anything that day, but he was utterly bone tired. Running a hand through his hair, he pulled the tangled mess it had become into some semblance of order.

He jumped in pain as he realized that he had nodded off and his tail had drifted too close to the fire.
“ow ow ow sss” he hissed as he rubbed the scorched flesh gingerly.
He moved away from the fire and stuffed his soggy pack under his head, deciding to try to get some sleep.
He was snoring before his head smashed into the ground.

Tap tap tap
…a small flicker in the back of his mind forced him further out of his dreamless sleep
Tap tap tap
“huh” Harktoum opened his eyes halfway, still bleary eyed. He propped himself up on one shoulder, wincing at the ach in his shoulder.
Tap tap taptap
“stop making that noise…stupid lizard….” Harktoum mumbled, assuming that blazer was merely twitching in his sleep, clicking his talons on the floor.
TAP TAP TAP
The noise grew louder when he spoke, and he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, resolving to plant his sword in Blazer’s eye. When he sat straight up, he noticed Blazer was still fast asleep and motionless, the same small trickle of smoke drifting from his nose. Looking around, he searched for what it was making that infernal tapping. He was going to break or kill it!
It was the full dead of night, the fire had gone out and the clouds had risen in the night, one had taken a fancy to sit on the anchor. Tendrils of fog drifted in from the direction of the center, and what moonlight there was, was diffused into a dull glow.

An odd green-blue glow flickered at the peripheral of his vision, and he shifted around to look. Something was peeking around the corner. Harktoum started violently, he gripped his sword and had it out of it’s scabbard in a second.
Tap tap tap
The creature hit the wall with one of its arms again. Harktoum hopped to his feet, peering at it.

It was smaller than him by at least two feet. Wearing only what looked like a helmet, it had dark, almost scale like skin. Without his vision, Harktoum doubted that he would have been able to pick it out from the darkened corridor it peered from. His clairvoyance limned the creature’s features, outlining the slender torso, sharp joints and numerous limbs. It had six limbs, that Harktoum could see. Vaguely humanoid, the creature’s first set of arms terminated in a three clawed hand, and the feet were the same, even having the opposable thumb. The last set of limbs terminated in a single tapered end, dainty at the tip but thicker than Harktoum’s own forearm at the joint. At first, Harktoum thought that the fifth and sixth limbs were the leading edge of wings, but as the creature rapped one against the wall again, he noticed that there were no membranes.
“hello?”

At the sound of Harktoum’s voice, the thing scampered back until only its head was visible. It crept back slowly, tapped the wall again and beckoned towards Harktoum in a ‘come here’ motion. Frowning, Harktoum merely stood up straight, holding his sword low, but ready. Moving out from the corridor, whatever it was stood up in imitation to Harktoum, made the motion again, and tapped the wall harder. It even stomped one of its dainty feet.

Looking over to the sleeping dragon, Harktoum hissed, “Blazer, blazer wake up!”
The big dragon merely snorted in his sleep, sending a gout of flame from his nose, and causing the creature to scramble back into the safety of the corridor.
“wake up you big lummox”
TAP TAP TAP!

The creature was back, beckoning to Harktoum again, and creeping further from the corridor wall.
“who, what are you?” he asked
Moving closer, the creature drifted past a ray of the moonlight, casting more light onto it. What Harktoum had first assumed was a helmet, was actually the creature’s face. The draconian was shocked to see that the sloped head merged seamlessly into its neck. The most surprising thing was that the face was just so…odd. The creature had no mouth or nose, instead that portion of the head was taken up by a flat, almost scaled bulge, covered by a dark tattoo he couldn’t make out in the light. The creature’s eyes, previously shadowed, shone with a pupil less silver gaze that fascinated the draconian.

He tensed as the creature drew to within about five meters, his right hand gripped the sword in a white knuckled grip, and his left drifted towards the rest of the hilt. The creature moved towards the pile of his belongings and he yelped, hopping forward.
The creature skittered back again in the face of Harktoum’s charge. Blazer grunted in his sleep but otherwise didn’t do anything.
“Get out of here, go!” Harktoum moved sharply at it and it hopped back, It tapped the ground again and beckoned again.
“Wha- HEY!” Harktoum noticed that it had tow rubies grasped in it’s left hand. “Those are mine!”
He jumped at the creature, meaning to grab it and get the golem rubies back, but the creature was faster than he though and it jumped back, skittering away around the corridor from where it came.

Harktoum leaped after it, cutting fast around the corner and grazing a wing on the rough stone. He caught a glimpse of the creature cutting around another turn, around the wall’s side. He ran a claw around the corner, helping him cut the turn faster. His speed carried him too far and he slipped on the windblasted stone, caroming into the opposite wall.
Picking himself up, Harktoum noticed that the thing had clambered up to the side of the wall and was at the end of the hallway, perching just before another sharp turn.
TAP TAP TAP
The creature pounded the stone again in a sharp staccato beat as it watched Harktoum brush himself off.
He crouched to sprint after the thing again before he realized that he was in a typically massive corridor. Spitting on the floor, Harktoum took a running leap and jumped into flight.

Seeing Harktoum speeding at it, the creature disappeared around the corner in the blink of an eye. Harktoum cut around the corner fast and found that, while flying at least, he could almost match the thing’s speed, if not it’s agility. Like a hyperactive spider it skittered down the wall, seemingly oblivious to gravity, and leaped across the span before cutting another corner. The draconian followed, managing to make the turn to find the creature…nowhere. It seemed to have completely disappeared. Harktoum hovered in place, looking for any sign of it’s trail, but no sign showed itself against the stone.

Taptap tap
again the creature beat the wall, the echo coming from…ABOVE!
Looking up, the draconian saw a perfectly circular vertical shaft, the creature was hanging close to the lip and was looking at him with what he could only assume was impatience.
Growling, he flew after the creature, climbing straight up after it. The creature, almost mocking him, crawled around the circumference of the shaft, and still managed to keep above him.

With a final skittering step, It hopped over the ledge, and shot off to Harktoum’s right. Harktoum crested the rise and followed the echoing skitters down another corridor, this one lined with great multicolored pillars in an octagonal shape.
“Get Back here you vermin!” screamed Harktoum as he followed the slight tapping of the thing’s feet. He couldn’t see it anymore, but the corridors it was leading him down seemed not to have any escape points so Harktoum was certain it had gone this way.

Suddenly, as he rounded a corner, Harktoum flared his wings painfully, but still caromed head on into a great double door made of great bands of some silvery metal and a dark hardwood tree he didn’t know of. Picking himself up off the ground, he looked around for someplace that the thing could have gone. Opening and closing such massive door would have taken time and made noise. The draconian was sure that he had been following too close for it to escape this way. He heaved against the door’s iron ring handles, but the huge hinges merely squeaked and ground to a halt after moving only inches.

Cursing and spitting Harktoum wrenched on the doors, hacked at the doors, even kicked the doors, but nothing seemed to move them.
“Open the hell up!” he railed at the door, pounding on the iron bands with the pommel of his sword, before slumping down against them
Grumbling to himself, he was oblivious to the small noises that echoed through the door. As they rose in tempo and volume, though, they gently drowned out his complaints.
A steady drumbeat shook the floor gently beneath him
A sound like that of a flute trilled away in high notes
He picked himself up and dropped back a couple of steps from the door, cautiously holding his sword at his side.
A massive cymbal crashed behind the doors.
With only the cymbal to warn him, the doors burst wide open, creating a blast of wind that nearly blew Harktoum off his feet.

When the doors opened, the sound of the drum and the flute grew twice as loud, the drum was shaking the stone harder and harder with every beat.
He crept to the now open portal and peered inside.
The room was a perfect circle, the walls had no decoration, and no seams, it tapered into a perfect dome at the limit of Harktoum’s vision, and a dull sparkle hinted at a metal mural at the apex of the dome.

Directly below the center of the roof, there was a circle of some golden substance, in a shape of the sun, it’s twisting radials pointing in sixteen different directions.
Centering the room was a single waist high pillar, a perfect cylinder of what looked like ivory, shot through with veins of red, blue, amber and silver materials.
The creature was nowhere to be found.

He took a cautious step into the room, then another, and finally he strode fully into the empty room, peering about for any doorway, or escape route that the creature could have taken.
Suddenly, both the drum and the flute stopped, and dead silence reigned in the room until, with a tremendous noise, that sounded like a thunderclap the great double doors slammed shut behind him.
Instantly, he dropped low into a crouch, his sword held firmly, waiting for something to leap out at him.
A slow hum began, a sound between the buzz of electricity and the string instruments the town bards used to use.
Harktoum put his back against the wall and edged his way back to the door.
The humming increased in tempo, as if some great machine was preparing for action. From the center of the room, a subtle glow began to brighten from within the pillar.
Creeping towards the center of the room, Harktoum chanced a look at the pillar.

At the top, instead of a perfectly flat surface, the pillar was hollowed out down to about twelve inches. Inside the depression, Harktoum could see something causing the glow.
He reached out to grab it, but his fingers met resistance as hey passed the rim of the pillar.
A skittering sound behind him spun him around, his sword coming up fast, halting below the chin of the creature.

Harktoum backed against the pillar as he realized that the creature wasn’t alone. Behind the one at the point of his sword, stood at least fifteen more of the things. Identical physically to the first one, each had a different and vibrant color of eyes. Colors ranging from a mother-of-pearl opalescence, to a swirling turgid red peered back at him from the shadows.

Outnumbered, Harktoum didn’t resist as the one with the silver eyes gently pushed his sword away from its throat.
“What are you?” he said, trying to keep an eye on all of them as half began circling around the golden carving.
The silver eyed one tilted its head to one side and looked at him, blinking its huge eyes sideways.

Harktoum felt a tickling at the back of his mind, like he was trying to remember something, but only managed to find an impenetrable fuzz. A flash of sensation flooded his mind, a burst of emotion more than any coherent thoughts
Confusion.

With a start, Harktoum realized that the thing was talking to him, in his head.
“You. What are you?” he said, pointing for good measure.
Last.
“The last of what?....are you the Ahraim?” Harktoum eyed the creatures gathering around the circle,
A moment passed then Negative.Positive. And a sense of being close flooded his mind.
“so you are, but you aren’t the Ahraim? What are you then?”
Confusion. Then the silver eyed creature held up the hand with the two rubies in it and motioned from them to itself.

Puzzled, Harktoum watched for a moment before realizing, “You’re golem aren’t you? Ahraim golem.”
Elation. Elation. Positive.
The silver eyes hopped up and down slightly, and the other fifteen formed an odd chorus of positive to the silver eyed golem.

“okay, okay, so you’re golem. Ahraim golem” Harktoum added at the sharp look he received from silver eyes.
Expectation.
“What? What do you want? Do you want me to do something? To help you?”
Positive! The silver eyes motioned to the building around them, and sent Harktoum a sense of expectation again.
“I..I don’t understand what you mean. If you let me go get blazer I’m sure he could-“
Harktoum was cut off by an overwhelming negative and a rush of fear and mistrust at the mention of the dragon.
Harktoum reeled, “okay, okay, no dragon,” Relief. “What happened here? Why don’t you want Blazer’s help?”

All sixteen golems stamped their feet and chattered, clicking their back limbs together rapidly. As Harktoum watched, silver eyes seemed to call the others to order, or at least to quiet, and made a long and complicated series of tapping to the other fifteen. None chattered back, and the golem gave a very lifelike nod.

Silver eyes walked back to stand on the carved vane in front of Harktoum. It looked at the others, and raised its hands high in the air, it’s second pair of arms held out straight behind it. As one, the others mimicked the pose, and a chorus of telepathic sound filled Harktoum’s mind. Silver eyes began a slow walk towards him, but the others remained at the vertices of the carving. With every step of its dainty feet, the music grew louder in Harktoum’s ears until, as Silver eyes was a mere foot away, it threatened to split his head apart.
Wincing, Harktoum only saw a blurred image of the silver eyed golem pull its hands down and placed them on Harktoum’s temples.

Immediately, the world fell away, disappearing in a swirl of color and the crescendo of the golem’s music.
Instead he found himself looking at flashes, memories perhaps, seen through a metallic filter that left everything glinting.
He saw the great Ahraim tether, felt the titanically strong strands beneath his six limbs as he moved about the edge, cleaning the crevices of the strands away until they gleamed in the sun.
A terrible roar split the sky and something descended from the sun. From the silhouette, Harktoum realized that it was a dragon of some kind. His body shook in fear as the dragon plunged past the tether, causing a terrible shudder to ripple through it, nearly tossing him from the surface into the thousand foot drop below.
Skittering to the anchor in terror, looking for somewhere to hide, Harktoum felt a horrible vibration begin below him, working its way up the massive cable, shaking him from the surface and bouncing him out into thin air.
Surely he would die. That one thought passed through his head over and over again, Surely he would fall to his death. The ground rushed up at him, and all of a sudden he was being pushed sideways. He grabbed frantically at what was pushing him before realizing that the tether was flinging itself back and forth wildly, caught in its last throes.

He slid down the tether as fast as possible, barely managing to touch down on the anchor’s top before the world ripped itself apart and as he looked up, the tether snapped, hundreds upon hundreds of feet of cable snapping apart from itsself, sending the small disc of the city drifting away.
Terrified, Harktoum didn’t look away as the cable folded over on itself, toppling to one side in a slow beginning, but speeding up rapidly as it hurtled towards the ground.

With a terrible silence, the far point of the cable slammed into the ground at the base of the mountain. The cloud of dust it raised blotted out the forest below in a cloud of debris. The cable smashed into the ground in a horrific wave of destruction, bringing with it a sound more blatantly powerful than a thousand peals of thunder.

Suddenly Harktoum found himself fifteen feet above the roof as he realized that the wave had finally reached the anchor. With an apocalyptic power, the cable flung itself free of the anchor, tearing away hundreds of tons of stone, ripping away pieces of the great mountain itself. Surely the world was at an end.

Amazingly, the massive metal cable bounced from the impact against the anchor, soaring in a terrible arc above the anchor, directly above Harktoum’s head. The shadow it cast as it passed over chilled Harktoum to the bone, and the debris trailing it cast many of the horrified onlookers into the oblivion of death.

Harktoum dug his claws in against the blast of seismic energy, noise and sound as the cable collapsed against the ground on the other side of the anchor, thrashing about like a wounded animal, digging massive trenches into the mountain stone before laying like a miles long, dead snake. Like an nstoppable wave, the cloud of ash and dust rushed up the mountain at the anchor, and blotted out the sky.

Shuddering, Harktoum returned to the circular chamber, his eyes focusing back on the silver eyed golem as it pulled his hands away from Harktoum’s head and wrapped its arms about itself like it was cold.

“…uh..damn…” Harktoum was speechless, “okay…no dragons…”
Again he felt the tickle in the back of his mind. An image of the distant city, difting away flitted through his mind, and a sense of question followed.

“you want to know about the city?” Harktoum asked the silver eyed golem, “what happened to it?”
Positive.

Harktoum rubbed the back of his neck in nervousness, “Well, all I know is what I was told by Blazer.” He felt a small twinge of alarm at the mention of the dragon, but he continued, “As well as I can figure, those in the city, the Ahraim, were able to pilot their city, with what tether it had hanging from it, into the deep sea closest to here.”

Harktoum felt hope radiate from the circle, and silver eyes managed to convey a sense of Survival?

Solemnly, Harktoum shook his head, “Sorry, it seems they all passed on as the city crashed into the sea.”

Anguish. Silver eyes dropped to it’s knees and slowly, the others followed suit, a feeling of utter purposelessness pervading the room.
“look…I’m sorry about that…I really am…but I need Dante back. Now.” Harktoum held out is hadn to Silver eyes, waiting for it to return his golem to him.

Silver eyes looked down at the two rubies in it’s hand, before looking up at Harktoum, its alien face unmoving.
Harktoum nodded his head, he felt like he was talking to a child. “Yes, those are mine.”

Silver eyes clacked it’s back arms together, and a shuffle of movement caused Harktoum to spin to look at the others. It was too late, and the golems geabbed him. Their hands, deceivingly dainty, held Harktoum immobile. Moving towards Harktoum, Silver eyes passed the rubies to one of the others before grasping harktoum’s arms, holding him tight as the others released their grips and moved back to their individual rays.

Silver eyes turned to let Harktoum look in the direction of the low pillar as the golem who now had the two rubies stepped up to the opposite side, holding one gem in each main hand.

“let me go goddammit! Let me go!” Harktoum twisted and stuggled, but the strong as steel grip of the golem didn’t allow for any competition, he was well and truly stuck.

In a ritualistic fashion, the ruby holding golem, one with brilliant yellow eyes, raised the prescious stones high and, with a yelp of protest from Harktoum, brought them smashing together.
Red dust sifted through the golem’s fingers, falling into the hollowed pillar, causing a soft red light to trickle from the inside.
“NO! You bastard!”

The golem didn’t pay attention to him, merely moved back to its place in the circle. Again they began a keening telepathic cry, their arms held skyward, this time, their second arms joined in the silent entreaty.
One by one, slowly, a bright wisp of magic flowed from their upraised hands, funneling itself into the pillar. As the last one in the circle gave up its wisp, all the brilliant eyes turned the same featureless color as their skin. The telepathic chorus fell silent.

“Wha…Why?!” Harktoum spluttered, looking out of the corner of his eye at Silver eyes who still held him.

Nessecity. Duty.
Silver eyes released Harktoum, who barely managed to catch himself from falling to the ground. The golem strode around Harktoum, and stood in front of the pillar. With infinite care, Silver eyes lifted something not quite there from the bowl in it and turned back towards Harktoum.

Cautious, Harktoum looked at the grapefruit sized object in Silver eyes’ hands, and crept forward for a better look.
With whiplike speed, Silver eyes jumped forward and pushed the thing against…INTO Harktoum’s left arm.

With a panicked yelp, Harktoum fell backwards, landing painfully on the flagstones as Silver eyes turned to mimic its fellows’ pose, and the color drained from its eyes.

Trembling, Harktoum ran a hand up and down his left arm, looking for a scar, a bruise, something. His skin was unmarred though, and Harktoum had nothing to convince him that anything had really happened.
“Hello…hello.” The draconian called to the circle of motionless golems. He even tapped what was Silver eyes on the forhead, before jumping up and running for the great double doors. This time, as he pulled on the massive portals, they swung open easily. Harktoum’s efforts sending them swinging hard into the sturdy walls with a resounding bang.

He raced through the corridors, back to the camp, back to where the great red dragon was sleeping. Taking a running vault, Harktoum planted a two legged kick on the side of blazer’s nose, hoping to wake the great lizard up.

He succeeded better than he coudd have expected. Blazer came out of his dreams with a loud growl and a blast of flame that Harktoum ducked under to avoid being fried on the spot.

“Blazer!blazer! there! In the anchor! The golem! Dante! Ahraim!”
“What in the name of the goddess ARE you doing!” Blazer roared at the draconian, genuinely mad, “It’s well past cursed Midnas!”
“But blazer! The-“
”I don’t bloody well care! In. The. Morning!” Blazer punctuated each word with a blast of flame before turning sharply, and settling down, back turned to Harktoum.

“But..But…” Harktoum used his wings to hop over Blazer’s bulk to stand in front of the lizard’s nose, “The anchor…”

“IN THE MORNING!!” Blazer’s roar shook the stone, and Harktoum was pushed back by the sound, and by the heat blasting from Blazer’s body.
Grumbling, the dragon buried his head behind his paws and appeared to go to sleep.

Harktoum sat down roughly against a stone wall and wrung his hands nervously.
He didn’t manage a wink of sleep that night.