"Fine I guess"

Garthag said with a sincere shrug and thought back on hid dealings with demon, the dragon had proven faithful, but suspicious of Garthags intentions. It didn`t really matter what the dragon was up to at the moment, he had been left alone and had surely gone on his way or joined the Meiltha cause again. Why would Kendath want to know about Demon?

"I left him behind"

Garthag stated with a dry tone.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Right... Kendath thought, now furious at himself for his display of weakness. Curse it, what was wrong with him? He clenched his fist, the pain in his palm a cold reminder of their current task. They had a report to make.

"We can't be far from Vryngard," he said, his tone harsher than he'd intended. "Whoever knows these mountains best... Merrin?" He stood with his back to her, refusing to meet those tear-filled eyes he knew could rip apart his composure in an instant.

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Garthag noticed how Kendath showed yet another weakness, he actually couldn`t face Merrin while she had her eyes filled with tears and sadness. Garthag had thought Kendath to be tougher than this, when Kendath had been a Meiltha Garthag would have expected him to have killed him when the opportunity would have risen.

Yet not now, no, Merrin had changed him. `Wonderful! Simply wonderful!` Garthag thought with a malicious smile on his face as he drew his hood over his head. Garthag turned to look at Merrin, Garthag wouldn`t mind her tears or be affected by them, actually he wanted to see the renegade broken. She had been so cold and harsh towards him once, but now Garthag could laugh quietly to himself whenever he would look her way. Such power Merrin had over people yet she never realized it! She had turned Kendath into a full fledged renegade from a ruthless meiltha, she was truly blessed by the gods.

"So Merrin our course is set, you know the way and now you must take the lead"

Garthag`s words had a certain sub-conscious meaning that was silent, but it didn`t really matter, if anyone realized it`s meaning. On the outside it sounded like an encouraging sentence to rally Merrin to dry her tears and move onwards.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Merrin swallowed, blotting her tears with a sleeve of her tunic. She could feel them ready to spill over again at the slightest provocation. Without thinking of Wyvern - that was provocation enough, no doubt about it - she scanned the surrounding mountains, and briefly made out the smallest flash of color in the sky, a dragon rising and diving back to earth. A dragon. No! I must take the lead...oh, gods, why? "Southwest," she indicated, voice still shaking abominably. "I - I don't know how long." She'd known by dragonback. Numbly Merrin started down into the nearest valley between peaks, knowing there was nothing else to do.

Suddenly everything hit her at once. Wyvern and Gyre were gone. Merrin refused, now to even think the word dead. Her body felt like one large bruise, particularly the sharp ache in her side, and now they had Garthag spouting inflammatory comments while both she and Kendath had lost the most important companion they could ever have had. To think she had looked forward to coming back.

_________________

It was nightfall when they first saw the flames. Silhouetted against the velvety blackness, they streaked high like infernal pheonixes, lighting the night with an almost diabolical glow. The impact as they struck the mountainside shook the solid granite beneath their feet.

The impromptu companions ascended a jagged bluff. Only then did they see the ordered chaos unfolding beneath them. No, not just the mountainside. Vryngard. The seat of Renegade might.

A sea of torchlight assaulted the pristine walls, the graceful guard towers that stabbed into the insensible heavens above. The trebuchets, launched in perfect unison, filled the sky with flame. Gusts of magical force, wreathed in lightning, arced over the infantry to slam into Vryngard's seemingly impregnable walls. The Renegades retaliated, turning back lightning with divine storms, answering arrows by the volley.

And above them...

Dragonfire obscured the stars. Flashes of scales, whirlwinds of tooth and talon. Magnificent, mesmerizing, lethal. Blood seared through the air like steaming rain.

How many? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? These were not mediocre thugs or self-serving assassins. These were soldiers, trained by the Meiltha to fight and maneuver as one. Seasoned killers.

Kendath backed down from the edge of the bluff. "Any ideas?" he asked dryly.

_________________

Merrin remained where she was, transfixed by the scene below. Why must events persist in spiraling uncontrollably into chaos? If Wyvern - Merrin cut her thought off and dashed a hand angrily across her eyes. They were red enough already, and the dust still caking her cheeks had seen enough rivulets of despairing tears. Time enough to grieve when they were back.

When they were back...that didn't seem likely at the moment. She half-slid back down the bluff, shaking her head mutely. Ideas were not forthcoming when you were used to everything you did being augmented by the presence of a dragon. Gods, could she not keep coming back to that subject?

Merrin couldn't bring herself to look either of them in the eye. "If we had..." she started, and broke off. They didn't have the dragons, and it was no use wishing they did.

_________________

"Dragons?"

Garthag said and broke into a chuckle, this was all too amusing as his former opponents seemed so pitiful. They had been lowered like he had been, they felt pain, Garthag felt humiliation and he could only guess that their losses were the same in a way.

"Where is your power now riders? Where will your power go when you mindlessly use your dragons? What happens when the last drop of dragon blood runs out? You will become nothing out of the ordinary, the very thing that made you special is lost. And now you must how did we come to this?"

He spoke an inquiry into the winds to no one particular, but he stretched his open palm upwards and towards Merrin.

"We have the crystals"

He reminded with a cold tone.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Merrin looked as though she would very much like to hit Garthag - that much could be gleaned from the furious expression she wore when his words jolted her out of despondency. "We have one crystal," she corrected, her tone of voice akin to ice. She nearly tripped over her next words. "You - you know nothing of the dragonriders! Tell me, do you know how it feels to be bound to a dragon, to feel their consciousness as one with yours - and then to lose it? No! So keep your - your own council, mage, I have not asked you for it!"

She turned, crystal in hand now, to look back up the steep bluff where dragonfire made black skies crimson. To use it...Merrin, in all honesty, was not sure she could. She had used the power of the gods through her well enough, but this? It was warm to the touch still, warmer where her fingers held it. Merrin shifted her grip.

_________________

"The dead are so easily forgotten"

Garthag said with a grin as he gazed back at Merrin who had preached him about knowing nothing of a connection between a dragon and a rider. Garthag doubted she even wanted to remember, but he might as well remind her.

"You remember Kalma don`t you? He hasn`t been dead that long, but when he and I were allied, we were rider and dragon. We were bound to each other, not that you ever want to acknowledge that, but you know that I was a rider as well in one sense or the other.

I know how it feels like to be severed off from a dragon, Kalma was the closest thing to a friend I once had, but our connection was severed by common mistrust... Greedy as we both were it was no miracle that it eventually happened.

So don`t try to act like a hypocrite with me, Merrin. Don´t try to elevate yourself to a higher level of nobility than me, we are all down on the same level. We are only mortals and each mortal has their own task or they can choose their tasks..."

Garthag said with a mocking tone as she once again tried to act like she was somehow higher above him or that the loss of their dragons had hurt them more than Garthag could ever suffer.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"Shut up. Both of you," Kendath snapped. His mind raced as he glanced from Vryngard's impregnable walls to the siege below. They had no dragons, which meant they had to break through the Meiltha ranks - an easier feat done alone.

"I've decided. I'm making the report alone. The Cloud Crystal goes with me." Best get the artifact as far from Garthag as possible, which meant if Kendath got captured holding the Crystal... He shook the thought off. He glanced at Merrin. "Vryngard has to have a secret entrance."

_________________

[ignore]

_________________

Garthag gazed at Kendath and judged he stood close enough, with a quick wrist move a dagger appeared into Garthag s hand and glimmered in the sunlight as it pressed against the throat of Kendath.

"You know I can`t allow that"

Garthag said with an impatient and annoyed tone, he didn`t turn his eyes away from Kendath.

"You take the crystal inside the keep and it will never be allowed to leave again, I can`t have that, the crystal was never yours to begin with and it was I who gained it first. That makes you a thief and the only reason I let you keep it thus far was because I couldn`t use it.

Nothing personal, but I am looking out for my best interest because you wouldn`t feel one bit sorry, if you abandoned me here. Where the crystal goes, I go."

Garthag said with a commanding tone.

(btw are our chars in their own time or still in the past?)

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Kendath's eyes blinked away for an instant, and suddenly he found unmerciful steel pressed against his neck. He met Garthag's equally unmerciful gaze and saw his own death. He stood still, tilting his head, his hand inching along for the numerous hidden daggers at his belt.

"And do what? Hand me over to the Meiltha while you're at it?" he returned, his voice no less cold. "The puppet lords would welcome you with open arms. Garthag the mighty, wielder of the Crystals, servant of the Meiltha."

Their gazes did battle, and Kendath slumped in defeat, letting his ragged hair shadow his eyes. He surreptitiously met Merrin's eyes. Kill him, he willed her, hoping she would act. If Garthag reclaimed the Crystal, everything was lost.

_________________

Garthag hmhed with clear amusement in his voice and he flipped the dagger back into his sleeve as he realized that there was nothing to gain from a confortation with Kendath.

"Well keep the crystal then, but remember this, you owe me one for saving your lives in the caves. That you can repay me by helping me find that lich and destroying him."

Garthag said as he stepped back and glanzed at Merrin before looking back at Kendath.

"Yet do not take me wrong, I have never wanted nor had the intention of serving the Meiltha.... they are too... extreme for my taste... destroying the gods? Please..."

He muttered quietly as he waited for Kendath to go about his way.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

((I is here! Unfortunately I don't have much hope of using our other computer and am on my dad's laptop, which is not MSN enabled. But I'm here))

Merrin's rapier had paused halfway out of the sheath, and now she sheathed it again with a wary look and regarded Garthag a moment before quite letting go her grip on the hilt. He didn't seem to harbour further less than benign intentions, so she turned to scramble down the rocky slope to their left. "...right. Follow me."

Garthag's actions up to this point had only proven her right in thinking they should have left him back in time, Merrin reflected with a glance over her shoulder to see that they followed. Uneasily she wrapped her fingers tighter about the crystal. If she relinquished that, it would be to Kendath and nobody else.

_________________

Another fireball exploded over their heads. Flame rained down around them. They ate away at the bare rock for a moment before diminishing. Vryngard answered with a streak of lightning that sent the very air on edge. As Kendath ducked, he swore he could feel his hair standing up.

They stumbled back down the rocky bluff, slipping in the disorienting darkness. The eerie flashes of light, coupled with the screams of dying men, seemed to stretch the shadows of the towering mountains to uncanny proportions. Impossible, Kendath thought as they crested another bluff to see the Meiltha army below in all its fell majesty. The Meiltha were infamous for their vigilance, and neither did the Renegades -

A shadow loomed over them, disrupting that cheerful thought. Glancing quickly at Merrin and Garthag, he reflexively retreated under a rocky overhang. He glimpsed a flash of blue scales above them.

_________________