By then Inthalgar had changed course and was flying directly for the fulcrum. All the other dragons, Khalathamor included, did the same. The sky was filled with the rush and clap of wings as all the other drakes wheeled towards the same point.
Up on the summit of the fulcrum, the body of the mage was ripped apart with a echoing crack. A thin scream hung on the air for a moment before being obscured by a massive roar of rage and release. What remained of her limbs stretched out obscenely, extending high into the air and bulking out with astonishing speed. The flesh rippled and snapped as it wrapped around rapidly growing bones. A vast head, bull-horned and snarling, rose up from the ruins of a mortal neck, and blood-red batwings unfurled.
With a massive bellow of triumph and liberation, the daemon soared up into the air, tearing upwards through the heavens even faster than the dragons. A sword unfurled from a clawed hand, and green-edged flames trailed in its wake.
No sign of the elven mage remained on those grotesque features of ruin. If her self still existed in any form at all, then it was imprisoned within the nightmarish monster that her own magic had unleashed.
The dragons swooped after the daemon, rushing to engage it. They filled the air with furious spears of flame, lost in their frenzy of hatred.
The daemon remained beyond them and swept its blade up in a savage stabbing motion. For a moment, it looked as though the cutting edge had connected with nothing more than air.
But then there was an echoing crack, and what sounded like tearing. A glittering rent opened up in the sky. Multicoloured light, vivid as peacock’s tail, spilled out through it. The wind screamed, tearing at the edges of the rip. The gulf ripped wider, exposing a lattice of shifting madness beyond.
Haerwal stared at it in open-mouthed horror. The gouge in the sky revealed a swirling, throbbing cacophony of lurid hues beyond. The effect was literally sickening—a stomach-churning overspill of pure Chaotic essence. Haerwal didn’t need the senses of a mage to see what unnatural destruction had been unleashed. A rolling stench of corpse-sweet aromas blotted out the harsh metal smell of the dragon and he gagged on it.
