Flayze dived past the face of the ghastly mountain, bellowing a challenge, turning to spit a gout of fire that raked all three of the entrances scarring the rocky face. Then he veered to the side, circling sharply, looping to come to rest on the smooth, rounded summit.

His blast had no sooner dissipated along the craggy rock than did the front of Skullcap exploded in a hiss of blistering air, a gout of heat that seared outward, emerging from the skull's left eye to linger in the space before the mountain. Flayzeranyx prepared to leap, expecting the serpent to burst out of that same hole.

But the brass took him by surprise. It lunged from the right eye socket, curving sharply down and away. The red leaped after it, breathing fire, only to see the brass tail flicker out of sight around the side of the mountain.

Reacting by sudden instinct, Flayze flew upward, tilting to the side, flying in a wild, rolling cartwheel over the rounded crest of Skullcap. Immediately he saw brass jaws gaping before him, realized that the metallic had tried the same tactic-but the red was faster. Flayze's lethal fireball exploded around his enemy, searing the scales back from its face, boiling the glaring eyeballs in their sockets.

The two dragons met in a crash of talon and fang, but the brass was blinded and too sorely hurt to make an effective attack. Flayze seized his enemy's supple neck in his foreclaws, then struck with a single, crushing bite. The serpents, coiling together almost like lovers, collapsed to the dusty ground, shivering and lashing about for a moment, then settling into utter stillness.

Slowly a single head-a head cloaked in scales of bright crimson-rose from the corpse of his foe. Flayze twisted, uncoiling from the tangled body, shaking the sulfurous stench away. One final sniff confirmed that the brass was utterly dead.

Finally the red dragon turned toward the mountain. Already he entertained thoughts of making this his lair. Indeed, with the forbidding aspect of the skull visage, it seemed a perfect place for a red dragon. He padded through the entrance, ducking low to pass beneath the stalactites jutting down like great fangs.

A short distance into the cave he drew up short, puzzled by an object on the smooth floor. Squinting, Flayze discerned that it was a skull-a human skull. Surprised, the dragon picked it up, balancing it between two massive foreclaws. He felt a pulse of magic in the bony object, and at the same time knew a strong sensation that he should leave this place.

He scuttled out of the cavern with alacrity, looking over his shoulder at the mountain with a newly critical eye. In fact, he now perceived, this place had many faults as a lair. Most notably, it was stuck here in the middle of a desert. His comings and goings would be observed, on a clear day, by any creature within dozens of miles.

No, Flayze decided, taking wing again, he would find another lair. There was certain to be a better place around here; perhaps he would even return to the cave where he had hibernated.

At the same time, he pinched the piece of bone between his powerful claws. For some reason that he didn't clearly understand, he was utterly determined to keep the skull.

Fourth Bracha, Paleswelt

Flayze lounged easily in the steaming depths of his cavern. Water spilled from a narrow chute high in the cave wall, pouring in a cheery rivulet down the steep slope, then splashing into a pool of crystalline water. The overflow of that pool sloshed down a sloping slab, then gushed into the depths of the lower caverns. There it spattered onto rocks that were deceptively dark, but the sudden burst of hissing vapor provided quick proof that those stones were very hot indeed.

In fact, Flayze knew that, should he break one of those lower rocks in half, he would find that the center was a fiery red core of viscous lava. He knew because, more than once, he had done it. He relished the fiery depths of his lair, delighted in the fact that living, flowing rock slowly oozed into the lower reaches.

The perch where the mighty dragon coiled was, in fact, a sort of island surrounded by a gulf of black space. In the depths of that space, lava oozed and occasional spumes of fire burst from cracks in the rock, wafting upward to flicker soothingly through the lair.

He had discovered this cavern a decade or so ago, after abandoning the cave where he had gone to avoid the end of the Draconian War. That place, in truth, had proved to be too close to the dwarves of Thorbardin. This cave was larger and lay much farther to the south and west, overlooking the Plains of Dust from the terminus of the Kharolis Range. The climate outside tended to be a little frosty, by red dragon standards, but Flayze relished the natural heat of these deep caverns. He was content to remain here during the deepest months of winter, when the frigid expanse of Icewall Glacier seemed likely to extend all the way across Ice Mountain Bay and grind against the very base of this massif.

But now it was spring again, and Flayzeranyx was restless, ready to fly, to plunder and kill. As befitted an ancient and lordly wyrm, first he would do some planning.

His huge yellow eyes, the black slits of the pupils spread wide in the darkness, swept across the glorious extent of the fiery cave. Beyond the lava bubbling around his perch, he could see grotesque shapes, smooth and flowing formations frozen into the shapes that outlined the manner the molten rock had cooled into natural stone. Smoke wafted through the air, and several deep niches were illuminated with more or less permanent flares of glowing rock or wisping, flaring fires.

From one of those niches, black eye sockets stared back, and the dragon uttered a grim chuckle. There were many treasures scattered about the niches and corners of the cave: piles of steel and golden coins, weapons of dwarf-crafted steel, gems and jewels of spectacular value and sparkling beauty. Nearly every other item had an intrinsic value or purity of beauty that was far more tangible than the piece of dry bone. And though he valued many things, he treasured nothing so much as the skull he had claimed from Skullcap following his battle with the brass dragon.

The dragon didn't know what it was about the bony artifact that made it so compelling to him; he merely understood that it gave him a sense of power and well-being to look upon the object. Now he rose, spreading his wings to add a bit of lift to his gliding leap across the searing rock of the moat. He came to rest before the skull and squatted, staring into those black eyes.

He felt it again, a sensation that had become increasingly common when he regarded the thing. It was a feeling that the skull was trying to talk to him, to communicate something that was terribly important.

"What is it, my skull? Show me… speak to me!" he urged, his words a whisper hissed on a breath of soft flame.

As always, there was no reply. Gingerly, carefully, Flayze reached out and picked up the skull. He looked at it from every angle, flicking his forked tongue into the mouth, through the empty sockets of the eyes. He felt as though there was a mystery here, a locked treasure that he should know how to reach, to understand.

Yet though he had possessed the skull for nearly twenty years, he had never been able to learn how to release the secrets held within. Naturally he had tried many times. Perhaps sorcery would have helped to decipher the puzzle, but as always Flayze disdained magic, scorning the arcane arts as the tools of weaklings.

On an inexplicable impulse, he lifted the skull and placed it atop his own head, the eyeless face turned toward the front.