Read Beyond the Pale for Free Online

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    Ryan’s power grew from his core, expanding outward until it touched the Dragon Heart, resting in its pouch by his gut. He sensed the immense puissance from the item, radiating like white-hot spray of sunfire. He could feel it like a molten orb, a searing ball of slag in his stomach, but he did not tap into its power. He had decided to use it only when absolutely necessary.
    As his power brushed over the Dragon Heart, the nightmare dream flooded back through his mind . . .
    In the dream, he stands on a cracked plane of rock, a rough and windswept wasteland bathed in a light so brilliant and so lustrous that he cannot bear to look at it.
    The light sings to him, beckoning for him to come to her. To help her. And all he can think about is pleasing the light. He wants to protect the joyous voice that sings like a chorus of angels.
    When he sees the wedge of darkness growing on the rock, a vile stain spreading against the light, he tries to move. He tries to run to the light. He can protect her, he can help.
    He finds that he cannot move. An invisible membrane surrounds him, like clear latex, and prevents him from going into the light. The membrane stretches and yields when he pushes against it, but it does not break, and the more he tries, the more he finds himself tangled up in it, struggling to breathe.
    Suddenly, the voice stops and the light fades. Ryan has failed, and great sadness washes over him as he holds his breath and watches the woman who had been singing. She falls under the onslaught of darkness, her throat ripped out first. Then her heart. Her eyes. Until she is in fleshy tatters, and the light that had radiated from her is blanketed by the stain of blackened blood.
    The dream faded from Ryan’s awareness, and he remembered to breathe. He knew some of what the dream meant now. The place was a spike of mana in the astral plane, a point where the world was closest to a plane where horrible creatures existed. Dunkelzahn had called these creatures the Enemy in his message to Ryan.
    The light was Thayla. She protected the site from those who would use magic to finish the bridge to the plane of the Enemy so that they could come across and destroy the world. But Thayla’s song was not impenetrable, and perhaps the dream was telling Ryan that the place had been breached.
    Perhaps it's paranoia and means nothing.
    Dunkelzahn had given Ryan instructions to take the Dragon Heart to Thayla; she knew how to use it to stop the darkness. If he didn’t get the Heart to her soon, it would be too late to stop the war.
    Now, in the ruins of Dunkeizahn’s arboretum. Ryan drew mana around him as he moved. As he walked the forms of the Silent Way.
    Magic built inside him, and he remembered his mission—told to him by a messenger spirit that had been instructed by Dunkelzahn. The messenger had emerged from the shining silver statue of a small dracoform deep inside the dragon’s lair.
    “I have taught you of the cycles of magic,” it said, speaking with Dunkeizahn’s voice, “but no one has dared manipulate them as they do now . . . The discovery of a Locus by Darke may be the single most devastating event in all of history. If the metaplanar Chasm is breached before we are ready, we will all suffer. All beings will die. All beings."
    “My fellow dragons are overconfident. . . Technology changes everything. No magic can protect against it. There will be no hiding this time. There will only be war. We must gain the time we need to build up our technology so that we have the ability to fight the Enemy when it can cross. But to gain that time we must protect our natural defenses. They must not be allowed to fail, and the Dragon Heart will ensure that they don’t. Thayla will know how to use it. Get it to her before it is too late.”
    Now, in the decimated arboretum, the spirit’s voice faded from Ryan’s memory as he finished his dance. He stood perfectly still for several seconds, trying to prepare himself