Instead, Flayze had decided he'd had enough of fighting, at least, enough of the kind of violence required for the execution of the emperor's grandiose plans. The rogue red dragon had veered south, crossing the New-sea, finally coming to rest in this rugged region of Kharo-lis. The cave where he had recently secluded himself had been a fortuitous discovery on his earlier campaign. Subsequently it had provided a refuge wherein he could wait out the war in safety and comfort.

Now clean of the sticky mud, Flayzeranyx took to the air, flying high through the night and wondering about the fate of the world during the interval of his long nap. For a long time he glided through the skies, skirting the massif of Thorbardin-he knew that even the most deadly attack of Ariakas's legions was not likely to have reduced that dwarven stronghold-and seeking familiar spoors on the night breeze. He smelled proof of humans and elves in the forests and plains below and caught the acrid stink of a hill dwarf village well to the north.

Finally he detected the reptilian scent that he had been seeking. He soared low, silently gliding through the skies, drawing closer to the source of the odor that brought so many familiar and tangible memories. Acrid smoke tickled his nostrils, and he suspected the creatures he sought were gathered around a dying fire. A glance at the stars showed him that it was nearly dawn, and then he crested a low ridge and saw a dozen or more human-sized figures wrapped in cloaks and lying motionless around the embers of a large blaze.

Settling to the ground in a rush of wings, the dragon lowered his head and glowered balefully at a lone sentry, one who dozed, half standing against a nearby tree.

"Y-Your lordship!" stammered the draconian, dropping its sword as it scrambled to come to attention. "Get up, useless scuts!" it barked at the sleeping company. "Greet his crimson lordship!"

Alerted by the shout and the wind of the dragon's landing, more of the reptilian dragonmen rose from their sleep, muttering and cowering, regarding the monstrous serpent with slitted, fearful eyes.

Flayze was pleased to see that the draconians reacted to his august presence with instinctive obedience and fear. The red dragon huffed a deep breath, a thudding sound like a distant boom of thunder, and the creatures cast themselves facedown onto the ground.

"Tell me, little snakes," he hissed, slowly articulating each word. "What news of the war?"

The draconian guard, apparently used to the slower time sense of great wyrms, raised his head to ask a question. "You refer to the Draconian War, Mighty Lord? The campaigns of the Highlord Ariakas?"

"I do."

"Sad to say, Excellent Fire Breather, the dragons of Paladine and their cruel lances inflicted tragic defeat. The highlord is dead, his armies disbanded."

"I see." Flayze was not terribly displeased by the news. "And what of these lands? Who rules?"

"Much of this land is wild, O Mighty Wyrm. That is why we are able to survive here. The Plains of Dergoth, to the north, are a barren desert. But we have seen a brass dragon there, near the mountain of the great skull."

"Aye, Skullcap." Flayzeranyx remembered flying over the place. He had been curious during that earlier exploration, had even thought to land and investigate, but his rider had ordered him on, no doubt driven toward some other pointless matter of the war.

"He is a bold one, that brass," declared one of the other draconians in a sibilant accusation. "He killed Dwarfskinner, just last month."

"Aye, a killer," murmured several others. They looked at Flayze hopefully, and he understood why: They wanted him to kill the brass.

"Perhaps Dwarfskinner may be avenged," Flayze allowed. "But tell me more. How many winters have passed since the coming of the metal dragons?"

"Four, Excellent Flaming One," replied the sentry who had done most of the talking. "The latest just recently melted into water."

"Good," Flayze declared, with a nod of satisfaction. That meant that enough time had passed for certain concerns, such as his disobedience to the commands of Ari-akas, to become irrelevant. At the same time, however, there were likely to remain aftereffects from the war, factors of chaos and violence that would make the red dragon's existence a little easier.

"Would his lordship care for a taste of jerky?" asked one of the draconians, with obvious reluctance.

Flayze snorted contemptuously, looking at the scrawny dragonmen as he remembered his sumptuous repast in the marsh. "No," he replied curtly. "I take wing again- and I shall look for scales of brass."

Third Kirinor, Yurthgreen

Recalling the location of Skullcap, Flayze flew toward the great mountain with unerring accuracy. Fire pulsed in his belly, and his mind was inflamed with eager thoughts of battle. A brass dragon! None of the metallics was more hot-tempered, nor more irritating to the presence of a beautiful chromatic such as Flayzeranyx. The thought of a vicious battle, of the killing that would follow, drove him near to a frenzy as his broad wings soared northward through the dawn.

A brownish-gray fog lay low across the Plain of Der-goth, and the fire-breathing dragon had to forcibly resist the notion that he flew through a realm of ether, a place lacking substance and boundary. Occasionally the vapors would part to reveal a glimpse of the cracked and broken ground below, and this was enough to reassure Flayze about his bearings. So he swept onward, slicing the vaporous cloud with his sharp wings and smooth body.

He could have risen above the blanket of mist, but it suited him to remain within the concealment of the fog. He remembered that the plain below him was featureless and flat, offering no upthrusting obstacles that would suddenly burst from the fog to endanger him. And if there was in fact a brass dragon at Skullcap, Flayze felt no obligation to give the serpent a great deal of warning about his approach.

Other reds might have handled the situation differently, Flayzeranyx knew. Perhaps they would have concealed their flight beneath a spell of invisibility, or even altered their beautiful, perfect shapes with a polymorph spell, flying in the feathered guise of an eagle or condor. The red snorted, scorning such arcane deceits. Like all of his clan dragons, Flayze had an arsenal of magic at his command, but as he had throughout his life, he now disdained the casting of spells. He preferred instead the integrity of hot fire, the trustworthy strength of powerful sinew and sharp, rending claw and fang.

By the time the sun started to burn away the fog, the red dragon was only a few miles from the skull-shaped mountain that gradually materialized in the middle distance. He approached the mountain from the front, flying at an altitude that was even with the great pock-marks in the cliff that so resembled the eye sockets of an actual skull. The rounded dome formed a smooth summit of whitish-gray stone, and the whole edifice was still and ominous.

Drawing closer, he saw no sign of any inhabitant, not in the yawning maw of the entrance cavern at ground level-the skull's "mouth"-or in the large apertures that gaped above the craggy cliffs of the preternatural cheekbones. Any one of the three entrances was large enough to have concealed a good-sized dragon, so Flayze didn't allow his caution to recede. Instead, he banked, gliding through a leisurely circle around the edifice. On the back side, downwind from Skullcap, he caught a hint of sulfurous, steaming heat, the distinctive spoor of the brass confirming the draconians' reports.