Time to leave, Jedra thought. He built up his mental barrier again to block the mindlink with the crystal world, but the world refused to fade. Either he didn't have the strength to build a complete barrier, or else the barrier didn't make any difference now.

The footfalls and the roaring grew closer. Jedra saw a treetop disappear, and a moment later the loud crack of its trunk breaking reached him. He heard more trees topple over, then the last one separating him from the creature crashed to the ground, and he got his first glimpse of the beast.

It was some kind of dragon. It had scaly, purplish green iridescent skin, and stood erect on two enormously powerful rear legs, with a long, massive whip tail stretching out behind. Its body was at least thirty feet tall, and its head was a scaly oblong slashed across by a toothy mouth easily big enough to swallow Jedra in one gulp. Its forearms were short in comparison with its legs, but they were still at least six feet long and heavily muscled. They ended in cruel claws, and Jedra recognized the limp form clutched in them.

"Kayan!" he screamed.

The dragon bellowed at him, its hot, fetid breath washing over him and making him choke. Jedra struggled against the vines, but they clung tight. He tried mind-linking with Kayan again, and this time he felt a faint response.

Kayan, wake up! he sent.

Mmm?

The dragon lifted her up to its eye level and peered at her through first one, then the other of its foot-wide pupils. Then it lowered her toward its toothy mouth and opened its jaws.

Jedra shoved at its arms psionically, pushing them aside, then he tugged at Kayan and wrenched her free of the dragon's grasp. It bellowed an ear-splitting roar and lunged after her, but Jedra swept her aside. The motion set him swinging wildly from the vines, and Kayan nearly smacked into a tree trunk, but he managed to bring her around just in time and fly her out of the monster's reach.

But not out of the trees' reach. Dozens of vines whipped out and snared her, and Jedra could do nothing to stop them. Within seconds she hung beside him in the trees, while the dragon bent low to examine them both.

It rubbed its hands together like a gourmet contemplating a sumptuous meal, and a thick rope of drool spilled over its teeth. It grunted softly-for a thirty-foot dragon-and its nostrils flared in and out with its excited breaths.

Jedra? Kayan's voice said in his mind. Her mind-sending was weak, but she was conscious.

I'm here, he sent. He tried again to link with her, and this time he was rewarded with a rush of sensation. Fatigue and anger washed through him, but fear overrode them both.

The dragon backed up a step. It opened its mouth again, and Jedra braced himself for another roar or even a blast of flame, but instead it spoke in a deep, rumbling voice. "Worship me," it said, "and I will spare you."

The language was one that Jedra had never heard before, but he realized he was understanding it through Kayan's mind. He mindsent to her, What is this thing?

I don't know, she replied. I just got here.

The dragon roared again. "Worship me!" it bellowed.

"Who are you?" Jedra shouted back.

"I am Yoncalla, lord of all creation." The dragon held its head high and bellowed at the sky. Wind swirled, and thunder boomed.

"Pretty impressive," Jedra admitted, but he was thinking that Kayan had called up a thunderstorm without even intending to. In this world, practically anything was possible.

"I will impress you more," Yoncalla said, and the dragon body began to elongate. The arms and massive legs shortened and the head narrowed, while the body stretched out and up until it was a sixty or seventy foot snake. Its five-foot-wide body coiled around and around until the head was once again level with its dangling captives, and its forked tongue flickered out and waved just in front of their faces. Its eyes had become yellow slits that didn't blink.

"I can be whatever I choose," the snake said, its improbably flexible lips forming the words. Jedra had no doubt it could. He and Kayan probably could as well, if their enhanced appearance earlier was any indication, but they still didn't know how to control this bizarre world.

Wonderful, she said. I'm open to suggestions, if you've got any.

Last time I was able to have by breaking our mindlink, but you stayed behind. And when I came back, I didn't link with you first. I think the crystal has its own kind of link.

The snake had become a round, furry blob about fifteen feet thick. Gravity flattened it on top and bottom, and a single eye on a stalk protruded like a flower from the top. A round mouth below looked like a rodent burrow in the creature's sandy brown hide.

The mouth spoke. "Worship me."

Don't laugh, Jedra warned.

Kayan tugged on the vines holding her in the air. That won't be hard.

They needed to know more about this place and about this bizarre being who had captured them. Aloud, Jedra said, "We hardly know you. You're Yoncalla, lord of creation, but who is that? Where did you come from?"

The furry blob expanded like a balloon. "I am the original being. I built this world with the power of my own mind."

Kayan asked, "And you live here all alone?"

The blob shrank again. "There were once many of us, each with our own world. We crossed back and forth at will, and we fought great battles. But one by one the others grew frail and died, until only I remain. I am the last of the mighty conquerors, the last immortal."

The blob stretched out again, growing arms and legs and a regular head until Yoncalla stood before them, a fifty-foot-tall, perfectly proportioned human. He was nude, and his skin was tanned bronze over his entire body. His muscles rippled as he bent down to put his head on Jedra's and Kayan's level, but then he evidently thought better of it and with a wave of his hands the trees holding them grew upward instead.

Now they dangled over an even greater drop, but that seemed to be the least of their worries.

"This was my original form," Yoncalla said. "Pleasing, is it not?"

"Very," Kayan said.

What? Jedra demanded. He's a musclebound freak.

Kayan shrugged. I'm just humoring him.

Yoncalla said, "In this form, I was king of all Athas. I ruled the entire land with an iron fist."

Kayan said, "Wait a minute. You know about Athas?"

Yoncalla's laugh shook the ground. "Of course I know about it. I owned it, until my physical body could no longer be sustained. Tell me, how fares it now?"

Kayan looked to Jedra. Jedra shrugged and said, "Not very well, compared to this. It's mostly desert, and your city is a complete ruin."

The fifty-foot immortal balled his fists, and tiny bolts of lightning flashed in a halo around his head. "What! A ruin? How did that happen?"

"It was that way when we found it," Jedra said. He neglected to mention that he and Kayan had finished it off.

Yoncalla shook his head. "My city. My glorious city. And the world is... a desert?"

"That's right."

"It was those damned mages, wasn't it?" Yoncalla asked, but he didn't wait for a response. "I knew they would get greedy. I should have crushed them all the moment they learned to power their spells with the energy of life." He swept his hand through the top of a tree beside him, snapping it off with a loud crack of splintering wood. "Maybe I should do that yet."

"Uh, that might be kind of hard to do," Jedra said. "They're running things now, and this world exists in a crystal no bigger than my thumb."

"I know that," Yoncalla said. He snapped his fingers and thousands of similar crystals fell out of the sky like hail. "New worlds, all of them," he said, "but all are subordinate to mine. Just as you are now. I am the master here."