Ultimate Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

single snowflake would force her to retreat. Basilgarrad seriously doubted the truth of those stories, especially now that he’d seen all the scars on her face and arms from a lifetime of battles. Tempted as he was to ask her how she really felt about snow, he knew this was not the best time.
    Instead, he bowed his huge ears and said, “My apologies, great warrior.”
    Such humble words are most unusual from a dragon, but Babd Catha didn’t show any trace of surprise. After all, to her mind, an apology was certainly due. She merely grumbled, “All right, dragon. Jest don’t interrupt me again.”
    With that, the feisty old warrior spun around, raised her broadsword, and plunged back into the fray.
    As he watched Babd Catha charge back into battle, Basilgarrad turned his head toward the dark tower in the center of the fighting—the only flamelon contraption he hadn’t yet destroyed. Was it perhaps some sort of catapult? That might explain the web of wires and levers along its pyramidal frame. Yet would a catapult so huge actually work? And what would it throw? The structure didn’t seem to hold any stones, oil vats, or other dangerous objects. In fact, it held nothing but that massive wooden crate at its base.
    Truth was, the structure didn’t look dangerous. Nothing about its actual appearance gave any genuine cause for alarm. It merely smelled somehow dangerous.
    Peering at it from across the battlefield, he shifted his bulk on the muddy ground. Then he noticed something strange. All the flamelon soldiers he’d seen crawling over the tower, working on its various components, had vanished. Now not a single warrior could be found anywhere on its frame, wires, or base. Even the soldiers fighting near the tower’s base seemed to keep their distance—ignoring it, as if the whole contraption was not there.
    That’s curious , he thought, scrunching his massive nose in puzzlement.
    Glancing at the sky above, he searched again for Lo Valdearg, the only target even more tempting than the strange tower. Seeing no sign of the fire dragon, not even a stray trail of black smoke, he growled furiously and thumped his gargantuan tail on the ground. Time to destroy that tower! He rustled his great wings, preparing to fly. The flamelons’ weapons have killed too many people already.
    His own words prompted him to scan the battlefield one more time—more closely than he’d done before. Everywhere, amidst the frenzied battle, he saw the corpses of his allies, more than he wanted to count. Fallen eagles and owls, trampled by flamelons’ boots, peppered the ground. Brawny bears, once so powerful, lay forever still. Men and women, elves and dwarves, and more than a few sturdy centaurs, were now mud-splattered bodies left to rot.
    The memory of a dark, writhing monster filled his mind, obscuring the carnage at least for a moment. The monster whose wicked schemes had spawned this war. The monster whose lair was deep in the Haunted Marsh.
    When this battle is over , he thought with a savage snarl, I will hunt you down! And end your horrors once and for all.
    Yet . . . would even that vengeance, that triumph, outweigh all these losses? All these needless, innocent deaths? Basilgarrad surveyed the corpses, bloody and maimed, that surrounded him. There were so many people—good people—who, despite all his efforts, he hadn’t been able to save!
    He ground his jaws together, scraping his titanic teeth. Had those fallen warriors died in vain? What could possibly justify so many deaths?
    “Nothing,” he grumbled aloud, his voice as bitter as his mood. “They were fools—just like me. And I’ve been the worst fool of all. Thinking all this time I was fighting for something more than myself—for my friends, my world.”
    He snorted. “Well, most of my friends—Merlin, Rhia, Aylah—have left. And my world, what’s left of it, reeks of death. The truth is, I’m alone in this. Fighting for what I want: revenge, and a life of my