After reforming their scattered troops into ranks and companies, the two dark dwarf thanes and Garimeth led the army into the newly bored passage.

The final attack had begun.

Interlude of Chaos

Zarak Timid rode Primus into the stone, and the bedrock of Hybardin parted before him like waters breaking before the prow of a sleek ship. Wings of fire seared through the layers of sediment, rock sizzled into dust, and smoke billowed in a great cloud as the mighty serpent forged ahead, digging, driving, boring upward into the great Hylar city.

Primus brayed into the bedrock, and the daemon warrior laughed, relishing the power and the destruction, all the while, fondly thinking of the dwarven female who had sent him such relentless and powerful appeals. She was intriguing, that one, undeniably intriguing and tempting. What was it that made her so different, so appealing? He didn't know, but he realized keen pleasure in working her will. There was one who was worthy, who brandished the unusual power to motivate him. In her name gladly would he destroy.

Despite his glee, the daemon warrior took care to keep the grade of the ascending spiral shallow enough for the footbound creatures to follow, for this was as the dwarven female had wished it. Weapons held ready, cries of war echoing from a thousand throats, the horde of Daergar and Theiwar marched in Zarak Thuul's wake, led by that entrancing female. In other places the shadow-wights wafted upward in their own way, following the surface of broken rubble, clinging to pipes and shafts and debris as they slithered over faces of bare rock.

Soon the daemon warrior and his fire dragon burst from solid rock into an inhabited upper level of the Hylar city. Some of the more foolish dwarves stayed to fight, and they died in cinder and ash without putting a single blade to Zarak Thuul or his mighty mount. The others turned and fled, vanishing into the maze of their city's Level Three.

Now Zarak Thuul and Primus flew down the wide avenues, crashing through walls and buildings, igniting fires that burst from the rock itself and soon filled all this level with a thick, choking smoke. Back and forth they flew, scorching their way through the maze, exulting in the powers of raw destruction and pure, unadulterated chaos. The killings were plenty, the dwarves burning and dying in numbers gratifying to behold.

Sometimes, for the sheer pleasure of power, Zarak Thuul dismounted from his blazing steed and swelled his body into monstrous size, striding through the streets in the guise of a great, skeletal dragon. In this form, devoid of flesh but grinning with razor-sharp fangs, the daemon warrior brought death to any who opposed him.

Then the blazing dragon and his master continued on, boring again into the rock, climbing higher and higher in the Life-Tree. As a worm might bore through the rotten wood in the trunk of some forest giant, Zarak Thuul and his dragon ascended upward into the highest reaches of the Hylar city.

And like that worm, the fire dragon was an agent of weakness and decay, twin factors that in any tree must eventually bring about its fall.

Darkest Night

Great gears squealed in protest as the lift lurched to a sudden stop. The massive links of the support chain stretched taut as their tempered steel groaned under a slowly increasing strain. The world itself seemed to shake in a series of rumbles and tremors that brought dust and pebbles cascading down the long tube of the transport shaft.

"It's jammed!" Axel snarled, kicking at the bars of the cage. He turned to shout into the darkness overhead. "Get this thing moving, by Reorx, or I'll come up there and do it myself!"

"Patience, my friend," Baker Whitegranite said quietly, laying his hand on the agitated dwarf's sturdy shoulder. The thane blinked, trying to focus his blurred vision on the face of his fellow Hylar.

"But what if she's up there-if she needs me?" demanded the venerable warrior. "Damn it all, we've got to keep moving!"

"I know. I'm worried too. I have a son somewhere in this mess," Baker said quietly.

"I'm sorry. You're right," said Axel in sudden chagrin.

Before Baker could reply, the scream of straining metal rose to a shriek around them as the lift jolted free, once more rumbling upward toward the darkness of Level Six. Capper Whetstone and the rest of the thane's bodyguards looked relieved. The loyal Hylar had been most uncomfortable when their leader insisted on being on the last transport lift leaving Level Five.

The respite lasted only a few seconds, however. Once again the cage screeched to a halt, pinned in the girders that had been gradually twisted by the wrenching forces of Chaos.

Apparently drained, Axel slumped onto a bench in the corner of the cage. He looked at Baker, his expression pleading, and the thane was deeply moved upon seeing the defeat and deep furrows of age so clearly etched into his friend's face.

"And how do we know she's alive?" Axel asked for the tenth time. "She could have been killed by Daergar or buried in a landslide. We'd still remember her. It's only the shadow-wights that sap the memory!"

Baker had already acknowledged these suppositions, but he refused to give in to despair. "We don't know she's dead, and until we do I'm going to believe she's still fighting somewhere, still down there-perhaps fighting a rearguard action or trying to move her company up higher into the Life-Tree."

He didn't speak further, but in the dark silence both of them keenly relived the frantic scene below. They had taken stairs down to Level Four in order to seek information on the enemy advance. In the stairwell they had met panicked survivors who had been racing upward. They had reported that Level Four had been overrun before they fled. Those survivors, some of whom were now huddled on the lift with them, had told of the fire dragon bursting onto the level and moving swiftly through the streets of smiths and forges, setting fires that seemed to burn the very stone itself. That flaming monster had eventually disappeared, but the survivors believed it was boring a hole farther upward, extending the assault route toward Level Five and beyond.

Even worse, the dragon's onslaught had been followed by hundreds upon hundreds of Daergar who had charged through the tunnel that the fiery serpent had left behind in the rock. This was the first clear sign that the dark dwarves and Chaos creatures were now working together. Both Baker and Axel understood how hopeless that alliance made the Hylar's chances of a successful defense.

Then, as the thane and his party had reached Level Five, the attack had begun anew. The fire dragon and its black rider had torn through an entire quarter of what had once been the finest silver smithies on all Krynn. The few Hylar remaining here had either died in flames and ash or fled in panic from the horrific wave of destruction.

And there had been another beast as well. Though Baker's guards had shuttled him away at its first appearance, he had a fleeting glimpse of a massive, skeletal body. His weak vision had not provided much detail, though he was forced to wonder if perhaps that was not a slight blessing. Like the fire dragon, this vision of undeath had stormed through the streets and alleys of Hybardin, feasting and slaying with frenzied abandon. Baker had cringed at the noises of the doomed and dying.

All the dwarves could do was fall back to the lift station on Level Five with as much haste as they could manage. Even Axel, despite his bad foot, had made the trip rapidly without flagging. But now, as they tried to ride the cage up to the next level, Baker was forced to wonder what they could really hope to accomplish if Chaos beasts were aligned with the enemy clans.