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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2225175" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 385Dana spun around, the words of a spell ready on her lips, poised to flee or fight for her life. Her eyes widened as she saw Arun Goldenshield rising out of the lava, the molten rock clinging to his armored body as he lifted into the air, reluctant to release him.  Somehow, the gold dwarf yet lived, although it was clear that he had to be in agony.  His mithral armor glowed with heat, and his sword was a white bar of bright steel, as though it had just come from the depths of an active forge.  The cold iron should have melted, but like the paladin it was made of stern stuff, infused with power and purpose to survive in the face of evil.  The paladin rose higher into the air, buoyed by the power that Dana had infused into him earlier, the levitation magic possessed by her cloak.  She’d never before directed the power of her mooncloak into another, and she inwardly thanked Selûne for sharing her blessing with one dedicated, like her, to the eradication of darkness and blight from the world.  Dana concentrated momentarily, and the paladin stopped rising, hovering now about twenty feet above the lava.  “Hold on!” she shouted, wishing that there was a way that she could reach him, to ease his obvious suffering.  But the paladin had emerged from the lava a good fifteen feet away from the edge of her island, and levitation only empowered vertical movement.  She glanced over at the far ledge near the entrance, and could see that her companions were doing something together; hopefully enacting a plan to extract the two of them from this mess. She drew back in alarm as the lava below the dwarf bulged suddenly upward, exploding a heartbeat later as the injured dragon reappeared.  Dana fell back, shouting a warning, screaming in pain as hot gobs of liquid rock splashed onto her arms and thighs.  Moltenwing surged up again, its jaws opening wider than before, a dull roar coming from deep within its body.  That roar became a cacophony that shook the cavern as another stream of focused sonic energy exploded in a narrow line from its throat, driving into the paladin with enough force to drive him several paces higher into the air.  It was the same potent attack that had destroyed Mole.  But Arun, full of the blessing of his patron, fought off the disintegrating power of the blast, crying out in defiance as the dragon’s breath washed over him and faded.  Moltenwing roared in anger and splayed its wings out over the surface of the lava.  Ignoring the missiles that stabbed into it from the bows of the companions on the entrance ledge, it pushed its upper body up out of the lava, its long neck stretching toward its enemy.  Cheated once of its prey, this time it would not be denied. Arun saw it, too.  Looking down at Dana, he shouted, “Release the spell!” Dana saw only death for the paladin, but caught up by the fire in those words, she complied.  The dwarf suddenly plummeted, directly toward the waiting jaws.  Moltenwing was caught slightly off guard, but no matter; it quickly snapped its mouth shut to crush the life out of this annoying foe.  But even as the dragon’s powerful jaws closed around Arun, the paladin drove his holy sword, still glowing like a lance of pure sunlight, through the roof of the dragon’s mouth, through the cavernous interior of its skull, into its brain.</blockquote>

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