The Temple of Yellow Skulls by Don Bassingthwaite

revealed itself again? Dragons had no flaws. They were perfect beings.
    And here were Tiktag’s fears come to pass.
    The red taint wasn’t the only change, Tiktag realized as he stared. Vestapalk had grown thin, as if fever had eaten away at his body. His torso and limbs were thin, skin shrunk tight to corded muscles. His belly was wasting away in the manner of a starving animal. Even his tail seemed narrower. Yet somehow the dragon had still grown. He had been big before, but now he was even larger. If he reared back, his head might brush the roof of the cave. He had been majestic. Now he was awe-inspiring. And more than a little frightening.
    Vestapalk still had not noticed him. Tiktag swallowed and stepped forward. He could feel the heat that rolled off him. The fever hadn’t passed yet, not entirely. “Master,” he said.
    There was no reaction. Vestapalk continued staring at himself, running talons along limbs that had healed while he slept and over belly scales marked only by a dark line where the deepest wound had been. For the first time, Tiktag noticed strange blisters bigger than his fist forming along the joints of Vestapalk’s limbs. He swallowed and called again. “Master!”
    Nothing.
    He moved closer, crouching low to show proper reverence. “Master, you are beneath the cavern of tombs where you fought the death knight and the human female who came to his aid. You were wounded—you slept for a whole cycle of the moon while your body healed.” Tiktag paused, hoping Vestapalk might answer, but still the dragon seemed to see nothing but his reddened body. “I found a new tribe to serve you,” the kobold continued. “We dragged you here to this place of safety, all of us working together. The hunters of the tribe have brought you meat. I made sure you had food. I fed you myself.”
    That had been a harrowing experience. Vestapalk might have been asleep, but waving a piece of bloody, poison-soaked meat past his nose had provoked a response. The first time Tiktag had tried feeding his master by hand he had almost lost an arm as Vestapalk’s massive tongue had licked out of its own accord to take the offered meat. After that, he’d used a long, sharp stick to skewer and present the gobbets of flesh.
    Still nothing. Maybe he should have brought the trough of meat. “Master?” said Tiktag again, then louder. “Master!
Master!”
He drew a breath and screeched, “
Vestapalk!”
    The dragon turned. Tiktag’s legs trembled. He would have dropped to the rocky ground except that Vestapalk’s gaze seemed to pin him up. It felt as if his master’s red-rimmed eyes saw right through him.
    “Tiktag,” said Vestapalk. “Loyal servant.”
    The trembling in the wyrmpriest’s legs spread through his body. Vestapalk’s voice had changed with his appearance. Every word that he spoke was strangely doubled, as if spoken by not one but two voices. One was Vestapalk’s familiar, commanding roar. The other was strange but compelling, unworldly yetpowerful, like mining picks striking a vein of quartz that refused to shatter. The play between the two voices rang in Tiktag’s ears and struck unease into his gut. Surely this was what the voice of a god—or if not a god, then a godling, still growing into his power—sounded like.
    And Tiktag finally grasped the meaning of the changes that had taken place in his master. “The transformation. Oh master, is this the transformation promised to you by the Eye? But you said we were to find the Herald and we failed.”
    “The Herald failed. Vestapalk did not.” The dragon held out talons for Tiktag to see. The red stuff had spread into them, too. What had been yellowed and opaque was now silvery red and translucent. “Vestapalk feels it in his blood. It is the source of the transformation. It burns—and this is only the beginning. It will transform Vestapalk and Vestapalk will transform the world.”
    “How?” Tiktag asked. “When? Did it come on you while you