The Well of Eternity Read Online Free PDF

an almost transparent layer of skin covered the ribs and other visible areas.
    The wizard scrambled back just as the monstrosity grabbed at his foot. The slime-encrusted mouth opened, but instead of a hiss or a shriek, there came a childlike voice.
    “Papa!”
    The same voice in Rhonin’s dream.
    He shivered at such a sound coming from the ghoul, but at the same time the cry sent an urge through him. Again he felt as if his own children called to him, an impossibility.
    An earth-shaking roar suddenly filled the ruined building, eradicating any urge to fling himself into the deadly talons of the fiend. Rhonin pointed at the creature, muttering.
    A ring of fire burst to life around it. Now the pale monstrosity shrieked. It rose as high as its ungainly limbs would enable it, trying to climb over the flames.
    “Rhonin!” Korialstrasz shouted from without. “Where are you?”
    “Here! In here! A place no longer with a roof!”
    As the mage replied, the gaunt creature suddenly leapt through the fire.
    Flames licking its body in half a dozen places, it opened its maw far wider than should have been possible, wide enough to engulf Rhonin’s head.
    Before the wizard could cast another spell, a huge shadow blotted out the stars and a great paw caught the ghoulish beast square. With another shriek, the still-burning horror flew across the chamber, crashing into a wall with such force the stones caved in around it.
    A breath of dragon fire finished what Rhonin’s own spell had begun.
    The stench almost overwhelmed the wizard. Holding one sleeve over his nose and mouth, he watched as Korialstrasz alighted.
    “What—what was that thing?” Rhonin managed to gasp out.
    Even in the dark, he could sense the leviathan’s disgust. “I believe…I believe it was once one of those who called this home.”
    Rhonin eyed the charred form. “That was once human? How could that be?”
    “You have seen the horrors unleashed by the Undead Scourge during the struggle against the Burning Legion. You need not ask.”
    “Is this their work?”
    Korialstrasz exhaled. Clearly he had been as disturbed as Rhonin by this encounter. “No…this is much older…and even more unholy an act than the Lich King ever perpetrated.”
    “Kras—Korialstrasz, it entered my dreams! Manipulated them!”
    “Yes, the others sought to do the same with me—”
    “Others?” Rhonin glanced around, another spell already forming on his lips. He felt certain that the ruins swarmed with the fiends.
    “We are safe…for the time being. Several are now less than what remains of yours and the rest have scattered into every crevice and gap in these ruins. I believe there are cata-combs below and that they slumber there when not hunting victims.”
    “We can’t stay here.”
    “No,” agreed the dragon. “We cannot. We must move on to Kalimdor.”
    He lowered himself so that Rhonin could climb aboard, then immediately flapped his wings. The pair rose into the dark sky.
    “When we have succeeded with our mission, I will return here and end this abomination,” Korialstrasz declared. In a softer tone, he added, “There are already too many abominations in this world.”
    Rhonin did not answer him, instead taking one last glance down. It might have been a trick of his eyes, but he thought that he saw more of the ghouls emerging now that the dragon had left. In fact, it seemed to him that they gathered by the dozens, all of them looking up hungrily…at the wizard.
    He tore his gaze away, actually happy to be on the journey to Kalimdor. Surely after a night such as this, whatever awaited the pair could hardly be worse.
    Surely…

THREE

    K orialstrasz reached the shores of Kalimdor late in the day. He and Rhonin paused only to eat—the dragon imbibing in fare away from the wizard’s sight—and then set off again for the vast mountain chain that covered much of the western regions of the land. Korialstrasz flew with more and more urgency as they neared their