What do you mean, no reports?” hissed DarkThorne, fixing his bright, fiery eyes on the terrified messenger.

     DarkThorne was one of the oldest raks on Tharia, so old that even his undead body had begun to crumble away, leaving only a grinning skull peeping out from beneath the hood of his dark, heavy robes. The only purpose his robes now served was to give shape and form to what remained of his body, which now consisted only of a few crumbly bones and a handful of dust.

     DarkThorne had been ancient when the Agglemonian Empire had been young, and had watched the nations and kingdoms of mankind rising and falling with the monotonous regularity of the passing of the seasons. To him, the communities of the living were of no more importance than anthills, swarming with puny, short lived creatures whose very existence was of no consequence whatsoever.

     Now, though, he had become part of something great and glorious, something that wanted to put this planet to a wonderful purpose, and this meant that the anthills had to be cleared away. He went to the task with no sense that he was doing any evil, with no thought for the inconsequential creatures he was destroying. To him, it was just a nasty job that had to be done. So far the job had gone more or less according to schedule with only a few minor delays that were hardly noticeable to a being of his longevity, but now it seemed that another problem had cropped up and he fixed his gaze on the messenger with almost no idea of the terror he was causing him.

     The messenger, a spectre whose transparent, spiritual form was that of a young peasant boy whose entire body was covered by the festering sores characteristic of running blight, cringed before the rak, wringing his hands piteously. In almost any other company he would have been the cause of almost insane terror, but in the presence of DarkThorne he was the recipient of terror, not the cause. He was fully aware of what the rak could do to him, having seen him do it to many other spiritual undead. Not out of any malice but because they were not serving him well. He disposed of an underling who failed him with the same casual indifference with which a carpenter might discard a blunt chisel. The spectre didn’t understand this, however, and only knew that he was delivering a message that the rak might not want to hear.

     “None of our scouts have returned from Bula Pass,” he repeated, expecting to be blasted to oblivion at any moment. “They must have been captured or destroyed by the enemy.”

     “All of them?” mused the rak thoughtfully. The burning points of light that served him as eyes flickered in the orbits of the skull as the ancient being turned various possibilities over in his mind. “They must have increased their surveillance of the valley, which means they’re preparing their defences and don’t want us to know what they are. They don’t want us to take the valley without a fight.” He thought a moment longer. “I will go myself to inspect the valley. They have no secrets they can hide from me.”

     He wasted no time but cast the spell immediately, transforming the crumbled remains of his material body into the form of an undead crow that flew off into the night without a thought or a word for his subordinates.

     DarkThorne flew faster than any normal, living bird and arrived at Bula Pass an hour before midnight. It was cloudy and dark, but his rak vision could see the valley as clearly as though it were full daylight and as he flew between the towering mountains he was as surprised as Naple had been by the total absence of defenders or observers. The rak was far more intelligent than the short lived beings who served him, though, and was able to form a very good idea of what had happened here. When he saw the Shield Bearer, striding slowly and confidently along the centre of the valley and scanning the ground around it for any sign of intruders, his suspicions were confirmed.

     DarkThorne turned and fled at his first sight of the Shield Bearer, recognising that he was in the presence of a being even older, even more powerful than himself, and he returned to his army, camped a few miles beyond the entrance to the valley. Arriving back in his tent, he returned to his ‘natural’ form and gathered his Captains around him.

     “The enemy have summoned a being from the next world to guard the valley.” he told them. “It will have to be destroyed before we can pass through to Belthar.”

     “How?” asked one of the Captains, a crumbling corpse wrapped in bandages from head to foot who was surrounded by the desiccating heat of the burning desert.

     “We will send in the dragons,” replied the rak. “We will lose many of them, maybe most of them, but if they can cause sufficient damage to its material body its spirit will have no choice but to depart. I am guessing that those who summoned it had to pay a heavy price, a price they will find it hard to pay again. It is even possible that the cost to them was greater than the harm it will cause us. Give the order.”

     The Captains obeyed, and a few minutes later a dozen of the giant flying reptiles were heading west into the valley.

☆☆☆

     Up on Kronos, the observers watched excitedly through their Lenses of Farseeing as the dragons closed in on the Shield Bearer. From their vantage point ten thousand miles away, it was difficult to get any idea of the scale of the images they were seeing, and the giant looked like any ordinary man, its true size given away only by the ponderous slowness of its stride and the tiny dolls house buildings it passed from time to time. Antony Harper, the observer who’d been given the task of monitoring Bula Pass, and the only one who was really supposed to be watching this particular scene, gasped in awe as he contemplated the power of the giant, left to guard the valley all alone, and he wondered what was going on in its colossal alien mind as it paced endlessly up and down, walking the valley from one end to the other. Does it get bored? he wondered, or is it somehow still in communication with its fellows back in the next life? He could only guess at the answer.

     Then he saw the dragons speeding down the valley towards it and yelled to his supervisor. “It’s started!”

     “Already?” said the Captain, coming over to look through the lens. “Dragons! How many?”

     “I count twelve,” replied Harper, trembling at the magnitude of the events unfolding before his eyes. “That must be every dragon they’ve got west of the Shadow!”

     The Captain went away and came back a moment later with a Helm of Farspeaking, which he placed on his head. “I relieve you," he snapped, and Harper stood reluctantly, stepping aside as the Captain dropped into his seat. The younger man didn't leave as he was supposed to, though, but hovered nearby, keeping silent so as not to bother his superior, and peered over his shoulder at the spectacle unfolding in the lens.

     Captain Foss swallowed nervously at the thought of who he was about to be in mental contact with. “Captain Resalintas?” he asked apprehensively.

     “General,” corrected the old priest, his voice echoing in the observer’s head like a whisper in a cathedral. “What’s going on?”

     “There are twelve dragons converging rapidly on the Shield Bearer,” said the observer, wiping perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve. “Estimated time of arrival five minutes...”