‘Inside, inside!’ shouted Ilkar, racing for the pyramid tunnel but pulling up short, The Unknown all but clattering into his back. He turned. ‘Where’s Hirad?’

The Unknown spun and shouted after the barbarian, who had covered several hundred yards and showed no sign of slowing, but the tumult in the square stole his words.

‘I’ll get him,’ said the big man.

‘No,’ said Ilkar, an eye on the dragon swooping towards the city. The Unknown gripped his arm.

‘I’ll get him,’ he repeated. ‘You understand.’ Ilkar nodded and The Unknown ran after Hirad who had just turned a corner and was out of sight.

From the entrance to the tunnel, Ilkar saw his friend hunch instinctively as the dragon passed by, not twenty feet above the highest flat-roofed building, its bulk that of fifty horses. He saw its head twisting, looking down on the fleeing men, elves and animals, heard its bark and felt fear deep in the pit of his stomach and a clap of pain in his receptive ears, their protective inner membranes closing instinctively.

The dragon rose, banked incredibly gracefully, and turned, diving lower, mouth agape, white fangs clearly visible against the black of its maw. Ilkar shuddered, watching it move, then paled as the sun cast a great shadow of the dragon over the running figure of The Unknown Warrior.

Everything was happening too fast. The Unknown looked up as the shadow engulfed him in an instant’s dusk, turned and ran at right angles to the dragon’s flight. Above and behind Ilkar, the rip shimmered and tore again, a sensation the elven mage felt through a repeat of the stillness in the air. Far from unleashing its fire, the dragon abruptly swept skywards, its bellow of disappointment echoed by another of pure rage.

Hirad, tearing through the empty streets at the edge of Parve, heard the second roar. He gasped as a weight pressed on the inside of his head, already stumbling to a halt, hands covering his ears when the voice boomed ‘Stop!’ and sent him sprawling to the ground.

Climbing towards the boiling in the sky, Sha-Kaan felt the anger grow. It had been but a blink of an eye to him since he had warned the man, Hirad Coldheart, of the dangers posed by the knowledge he held and the amulet that had been entwined in his talons for so very long. And this was how he had been repaid.

First, the theft of the amulet, then surely the use of its text and finally, the opening of an unrestricted corridor to his melde-dimension. The melde-dimension of the entire Brood Kaan.

Behind him, the Brood flew from the Choul, unhappy at the sudden break from their sleep. Thirty Kaan, flying to join those already circling the gate in the sky.

And from all corners, drawn by the presence of the gate and the surge it sent through the nerves of every dragon within its compass, came the enemy. If they could not warn away the opposing Broods, there would be a battle as had never been seen in the skies since the appearance of the one great human, Septern. Septern who had rescued the Brood Kaan, offering them the melde they sought at a time when their numbers had dwindled close to extinction.

Sha-Kaan beat faster, a warning sounding in his head. From a bank of cloud behind the rip, a single dragon from the Brood Naik swept towards the undulating mass. His speed took him beyond the rough guard, his call of victory cut off as he plunged into the gate and was lost from sight.

Others made to follow but Sha-Kaan pulsed them to hold. ‘I will deal,’ he said. ‘Hold them at bay. Do not surrender the gate.’ He swept up and around the rip, judging its size and depth before angling his wings and plunging through.

The journey was a miasma of pressure, blindness, half-grasped messages and near knowledge of what lay outside the corridor. Sha-Kaan exploded into the skies of Balaia and immediately felt the presence of two beings known to him. The enemy Naik dragon loomed large in his consciousness and he bellowed his call to fight, knowing the Naik could not refuse. The other presence was smaller, much smaller, but no less significant. Hirad Coldheart. There would have to be words. As he dived on the Naik, Sha-Kaan pulsed the command to stop.

Ilkar’s skin crawled, his fear complemented by total helplessness. At every moment, he expected more stillness, more dragons, more terror. Behind him, he knew, Styliann and the rest of The Raven were staring out into the sky. For the first time in their long and successful career, all they could do was watch.

The fight was fast and violent. The two dragons closed at a frightening speed, the smaller one from below, the larger, much larger, golden animal dived from above.

‘Sha-Kaan,’ breathed Ilkar, recognising him by the movement of his head.

Sha-Kaan tore through Balaia’s cloud-scattered sky, bellowing rage and threat. He angled a wing the instant before clashing with the rust-brown enemy, the manoeuvre taking him below and, as he passed the belly, he breathed, fire coursing the length of the shorter dragon.

The scream of pain cracked the air, the wounded beast spiralling upwards, neck twisting, head searching for its tormentor. But it looked in the wrong direction. Sha-Kaan, his mouth closed to extinguish his fire, turned up and back sharply to come around behind his foe. While the rust-brown dragon, disorientated and in pain, searched for him, Sha-Kaan stormed across the dividing space, beat his wings to steady himself above his prey, arched his neck and struck down with terrific force on the base of his prey’s skull. The rust-brown convulsed along the seventy foot length of its body, claws scrabbling briefly on thin air, wings thrashing wildly, its bark turning to a gurgle as its body, now a dead weight, fell from the sky.

Ilkar watched, his breath held, as Sha-Kaan dropped with his kill, not releasing it until they had both reached roof level. Then, with a final twist and deep growl of triumph, he swung away to hover as the dead dragon thudded into the ground in the central square, shivering the earth under Ilkar’s feet. A huge cloud of dust billowed up, the waiting pyres of bodies slipping, a grotesque movement of the dead.

Unease swept across Parve. A gut-turning feeling that so much was terribly wrong. In the quiet that followed the fight, the only sound clearly heard was the beating of Sha-Kaan’s wings as he circled his victim. This close, the victorious dragon was truly enormous. Almost twice the size of his foe, Sha-Kaan dominated the sky, eclipsing even the rip with his raw power. Three times around he went before, with a long, guttural roar, he swept low into the square, passed scant feet above the corpse of the dragon, turned into the air and flew off directly after Hirad.

‘Oh no.’ Ilkar started moving into the light.

‘What good can you do?’ Styliann’s voice, though quiet with shock, still carried power, menace and cynicism.

Ilkar turned. ‘You don’t understand, do you? People like you never will. I’ve no idea what I can do but I will do something. I can’t leave him to face that thing alone. He’s Raven.’

The elven mage ran out into the square, following in the footsteps of The Unknown. After a pause, Thraun and Will did the same. Denser slumped back to the ground, his energy spent, his eyes locked on the still mound of the dragon Sha-Kaan had killed so effortlessly. Erienne crouched beside him, cradling his head.

‘Gods in the sky,’ he whispered. ‘What have I done?’

Hirad lay with his hands over his ears as the cries of battle in the sky slammed around inside his head. When it was all over, he moved groggily to his knees and dared to look back towards Parve. He vaguely noted The Unknown Warrior running towards him, shouting, but his attention was fixed on the shape of Sha-Kaan, wheeling in the sky over the dead city. The dragon’s sudden dive jarred him from his almost hypnotic state and the sight of him appearing over the near buildings struck a fear in him deeper than he had ever felt before. His nightmare was about to become reality. He did his part. He picked himself up and ran.