The man spread his arms wide and looked up at the spirit. Black and silver lightning danced just beyond his reach. "The ward is not mine, and so protects you from me more than I from you."

The spirit laughed, and a high, sharp, cracking tone began to grow. "Who are you, child of the earth, to stand against one such as I?"

The man brought his arms together, one held straight out, the other touching the first at the elbow in a well-practiced, fluid gesture. Power shifted and grew around him. "I may be born of this earth, spirit, but that is not where I have been of late."

Part of the ward gave, and a black limb gouged into the floor within the circle of light. The spirit's chitinous, ebony body slammed against the circle as it began to buckle.

"Many of your kind wander the greater planes, I feast on them often."

"Wrong realm. Knight suspected something would try to kill him, so the corporation brought me down to protect him. Magic is so much easier here."

The ward shattered, raining white sparks down around the man. The spirit's legs caged him and its impossibly grinning face came closer to the man. "Magic is easy for me everywhere. There is nowhere I am weak."

"Nowhere on the Earth, perhaps, but what of above it?" The man pulled his arms toward himself, and held his palms parallel. Power flowed inward, cleanly, from everywhere around him. A light grew between his hands.

"Your tricks will avail you not, human, I am power incarnate." The spirit reared again.

The man laughed. "I've shaped power among the stars and danced with hearts far darker than yours." The spirit fell upon him, a wave of darkness pierced by a shaft of light brighter than a hundred suns. "Taste what I have learned."

WYRM TALK

by Tom Dowd (1991)

"There's a dragon here to see you." I was proud of how steady I kept my voice.

He glanced up from either the papers strewn across the coffee table or the datascreen sitting on top of the pile; I couldn't tell which he was working on. The slice of pizza in his hand dripped grease onto the papers. "Oh. Which one?" he asked.