***
Light exploded in his eyes and suddenly he was falling.
Barking in surprise, he reached out with his forward talons, trying to dig them deep into the warmth of the mountainside in an effort to stop himself. There was no time to waste; the bronze dragon would be on him in moments.
But instead of rock, the massive curved weapons simply carved a trail through snow cover, not digging deep enough to encounter rock. He was sliding down the mountainside on his stomach now, building up speed. His wing took out a tree, but the force of it started him spinning until he was going backward down the slope.
“OW!” he shouted as a rock slammed into his rump and flipped him up and over it.
Now he was sliding downhill on his back, headfirst, with absolutely no traction.
Well this is embarrassing.
Noticing another clump of rocks jutting up from the snow, he scrambled to find some purchase before impact. But he was still disoriented, and this time he hit them head-on, the impact leaving him with even more of a headache.
It had stopped his momentum as the rest of his body piled into him, depositing him in a jumble of wings, limbs, neck, and tail in front of the unforgiving earth. Angrily he got himself to his feet and looked around, trying to gain his bearings.
Where had all the snow come from? Had it fallen from the very peak of the mountain during their fight? More importantly though, where was his enemy? He crouched, wings spread wide and ready to launch himself into the air with a moment’s notice. Looking around, he realized that it wasn’t just a bit of snow. The entire mountain was covered in it, as were all the ones around him.
“What sorcery is this?” he hissed, starting to climb up the mountain as swiftly as he could.
Eventually he reached the hole in the mountain that had opened up, spilling him out as a chunk of it fell away. He casually worked the rock with his power, reforming and reshaping the opening so it blended in more seamlessly with the surroundings. There was still a massive trail of rocks down through the snow that gave it away, but he knew that would cover itself up in a few days.
For now his main concern was the invading bronze dragon’s whereabouts. Hissing angrily, he batted a boulder the size of a bear down the hill with one casual sweep of his silver foot. Something was not right. Even as powerful as he was, the bronze dragon couldn’t have caused all of this. To his knowledge, illusion was not a skill that dragons possessed. Which meant it was very real.
But how? The rock had fallen around him, and then the cave had simply fallen away from the mountainside. How could all of this have happened in but a few moments? He vividly remembered the sun and its heat. After all, he’d been spread out on the side of his mountain soaking it in when the invader had arrived, claimed that all the mountains were now his, and proclaimed bluntly to “get out.”
Never one to let himself be commanded, Rhyolite had fought back. Their battle had gone on for hours as they took to the air first, seeking a swift end. When that hadn’t worked they had gone to ground, where they could draw more power from the earth itself to augment their attacks. Lances of black stone had shot back and forth, and both bronze and silver scales had littered the landscape as they took hits and inflicted them. It had been the most intense fight Rhyolite had ever been involved in.
But it wasn’t over until he saw the corpse of his foe, or received his word that he would retreat and cede the territory to Rhyolite. Now though, as hard as he listened, he couldn’t hear a sound. He looked around his cave and then peered back out into the lowlands between peaks.
Something was amiss. But he didn’t know what. It was something that needed to be checked out. Slowly he slithered out the opening and onto the slope, walking around as he searched for signs of the other dragon. He thought about taking to the sky, but he didn’t wish to present such an open target. So he stayed on the ground and clawed his way around the upper reaches of the peak.
By the time Rhyolite had made it halfway, he was beginning to suspect the bronze dragon wasn’t nearby. His foe had never struck him as the patient type. Scheming and devious, yes. But not patient. He preferred to attack and be done with it. If he was still around, the silver dragon would have found him by now.
“Coward!” he roared, unleashing a fireball up the mountainside.
The blazing ball of fire disappeared into mist and steam as it evaporated the snow instantly. A crack from the superheated water reverberated out over the mountain and Rhyolite.
A low rumble reached his ears moments later.
“Uh-oh.”
Four hundred feet upslope the snow began to give way. It started slowly at first, but built up speed at a breathtaking pace as more and more of it was shaken loose by the avalanche.
Rhyolite turned and spread his wings, aiming to take off, but before he could the snow and packed ice underneath him gave way, tumbling him down the mountain. He was caught up in the forces of the very earth which he strove to control.
This is really embarrassing.
Tucking his wings in around him, he moved with the snow, waiting for the downhill ride to stop. Inside his little cocoon he sighed.
“This is just not my day.”
***
Halfway around the mountain the sun burst out from behind its cloud, stabbing down at the landscape below, uncaring how it had changed. Its brilliant rays of light reached into many of the cracks and crevices of the mountain.
In one in particular it found something that began to glint and shine as the burnished surface of it was exposed to the light for the first time in nearly six hundred years. It sat there unmoving, stacked in neat piles.
As the rumble on the mountain subsided at last, one piece shivered loose and fell to the ground, hitting with a resounding clang that echoed through the chamber. It rattled around for several seconds before lying still.
The sun didn’t notice. It simply continued to shine, lighting anything it touched.