The Black Wing Read Free Page A

narrow ledge. Pressing her neck and spine
     into the stone wall, she tried to settle on her right side, but her long, heavy tail
     slipped over the edge. Its great weight dragged her down, hind feet scrabbling futilely.
     Suspended for a moment in midair, Khisanth flapped instinctively. She heard a snap in one
     of her wings as it caught on the walls. She fell, plummeting, spiraling head over tail,
     every part of her scraping and slamming into the rough stone walls. In her descent, she
     became aware of a regular pulse of light, dim at first, then bright and hot like
     blue-veined lightning. Takhi-sis's evil realm would be filled with fire and lightning, the
     dragon thought distantly. Perhaps the Dark Queen has summoned me, and I am on my way to
     her side. Khisanth could barely keep her enormous, golden eyes open. She struggled against
     unconsciousness, wanting to witness her first journey into the Abyss, the plane where the
     evil goddess made her domain. Yet the dragon lost the battle, even as she felt the strange
     surge of energy pulse through her body.

Dragonlance - Villains 2 - The Black Wing
    Chapter 2
    “The sun will energize thee, Joad,” Kadagan said kindly. He brushed the silvery hair from
     his elder's shoulders to make way for the beloved sunshine, which cut through the canopy
     of trees just beyond the mouth of the pit. Truth to tell, Kadagan doubted anything but
     Dela's return would restore Joad's vitality.
    Joad's well-being was but one of countless reasons Khisanth had to help them rescue Dela.
     Time was running out, and Kadagan knew the dragon was their last hope. Secretly, the
     nyphid had grave doubts that the quick-tempered dragon would ever cooperate with them.
    Kadagan and Joad stood watching the bands of blue-white lightning illuminate the darkness
     of the pit, lifting the unconscious dragon like a gigantic sling. Just ten more
    feet and the creature would be aboveground. In anticipation of her arrival, the nyphids
     had cleared the passage of rock and dirt days before, when they had left the stubborn
     dragon below to begin her climb. The opening had been little more than a gopher hole when
     Joad had first sensed the strong, magical life-force far underground. At Joad's
     insistence, they had widened the abandoned burrow to a mere two feet to permit their own
     passage. It was now a crater vast enough to accommodate the dragon. Kadagan and Joad
     jumped back as the sizzling, buzzing bands of electrical energy bearing the dragon rose
     past the mouth of the pit, then levitated her to the side. Waggling a tapered digit,
     Kadagan commanded the lightning to follow him and Joad as they set off into a shadowy
     forest. The trail was not nearly large enough to accommodate the passage of a dragon, but
     the white-hot energy carrying the comatose creature singed a wide swath through the
     undergrowth. Large trees toppled left and right, severed from their now-smoldering stumps.
     A half-league from the pit, the nyphids led their burden through the last dense ring of
     pines in the darkened wood. The sun pounded a grassy field that stretched as far as the
     eye could see, the horizon broken only by the occasional cot-tonwood tree jutting skyward.
     Goldenrod, purple bull thistles, and lacy wild carrot swayed in the breezes above the tall
     grasses. Grasshoppers and yellow-breasted meadowlarks sprang from the path. Well into the
     grasslands, Joad and Kadagan stopped. The dragon-bearing lightning hovered momentarily,
     then gently lowered the body into the stiff, late- summer grass. Abruptly, the fingers of
     lightning disappeared into the maynus globe which hung, imperceptible in daylight, at
     Joad's side. “She is gravely injured,” observed Kadagan, walking a path through the
     head-high weeds around the dragon's crumpled form. Crimson trails of blood cut the dust on
     Khi- santh's black scales. The pink flesh of one nostril was split all the way to her