Chapter 18 - Part 9

They moved like a herd of cattle, except that they were giant shapes, hunched over as they walked. Had they stood upright they would have given the ogres of Droaam a contest for size. In fact, they were relatives of the ogres, of a sort, having been bred from them to be stronger, faster, and most importantly, stupider.

Driving the herd were fiends with moist, scaly skin and pointed ears, riding great lizards that were plainly bred from some devilish hatchery. The fiends had clawed hands and feet, long tails, and snaky, disgusting beards brimming with loathsome things. The riders worked in concert, driving the herd with their massive saw-toothed glaives. Their army was moving southwards, towards a cave system in an escarpment that their rakshasa master had ordered them to occupy. The fiends did not know why they were being sent to this long-abandoned place, and neither did their master, who was only acting on a suspicion regarding a fellow rakshasa’s strange behavior.

One of the riders looked up, suspicious at a shadow within the clouds. It was not yet dawn on the ground, but there was some light in the clouds far above. The clouds had been dumping light snow and balls of hail on and off for a few days now but they hadn’t acted liked that.

Another rider came up to him, snarling at the one who gazed upwards for lagging behind in formation. He did not get to finish his imprecations before Meschashmal dived from the sky, blasting the riders to smoking pieces with his lightning.

The blue wyrm flew back and forth, letting his dragonfear break the herd up, pausing only to blow up another rider here and there. They had no weapons or spells that could reach him as high as he was, and as the sun came up over the horizon all of the riders and half of the herd lay dead, with the rest scattered in all directions.

Meschashmal flew back to the safety of cloud cover. It would not be long before rakshasa divinations determined what had happened, but for now, the three who were to become four would have a lot less to deal with in the area.