"I am Nil'giccas- I am Cleric! And you will hear my sermon!"
Even high and hidden, Achamian could tell the Nonman ran as he called out, sprinted over ruin.
Above the ceiling, the old Wizard floated through a second, more barren world, one roofed with hanging precipices and floored with racks of masonry, ancient and enormous.
"You are blind!" Cleric shouted, the resonance of his voice thinned by the thunder that it followed. "You are a beggar, a scavenger, a prisoner of your own spite! Your flesh is rotted. The stone of your strength cracked long ago!"
The beast spit another cataract of roaring fire, illuminating all the chinks and breaches in the ceiling. Achamian walked across emptiness, toward the central pit, which given the darkness of the cavernous attic, glowed like an afterlife of fire. Robbed of their supporting columns, the granite lintels had sheered according to the caprice of load and fracture. He alighted on the longest of these ribs, strode down the length of its powdered back. Fires small and large burned throughout the pillared spaces below. He saw Cleric-the briefest of glimpses-flit between distant pillars and vanish into far shadows. He was running circles…
"If I perish a fool!" the Nonman cried, "then I perish my own fool! Not a slave like you, Wracu'jaroi!"
Achamian paused at the hanging precipice, gazed down upon the heaving beast. Coiled like a bloated serpent, the Father of Dragons turned and turned to the sound of Cleric's voice, like a leashed dog about its stake, only retching fire instead of barking, maelstroms that engulfed the scorched aisles.
"I EXCEED MY MAKERS," the scale-shining beast thundered. "NOT EVEN