Embar Dea watched as the King of the dragons, the lost and exiled lord, snaked through the dusts of Hell's skies. He was directly beneath her now, with the great kuei that carried the Emperor streaking toward him. Our king will prevail, Embar Dea thought. He has to. Then the kuei gave a hissing whistle that scraped across her hearing and more kuei poured down out of the sky. A cry of protest rose up from a dozen dragon throats—this was ancient law, now violated, but who says Hell has to play fair? Embar Dea thought bitterly.
The kuei fell in a writhing knot upon the bronze-green shape of the Dragon King. Embar Dea watched as he twisted and bucked through the air, trying to shake off the pincered forms, but as he did so, his jaws gaped in pain and the pearl that gave him his power shot out from his mouth.
In horror, Embar Dea watched the pearl as it fell; hurtling down through the grimy airs of Hell like a round, white grenade. An Imperial dragon would not last long without it and the kuei knew this, too, for they dived, racing after the descending pearl. Embar Dea's gasp sent a shiver through the clouds but she could not take on the kuei, so many of them all at once.
And the Dragon King was in trouble: still flying, but writhing as he began to suffocate, unable to breathe without the magical properties of the pearl. The kuei had sensed this, Embar Dea knew. One of them continued to streak after the pearl, but the other Storm Lords headed back, to attack and to rend. The kuei who had gone after the pearl reached it; there was a grinding sound, a screeching shriek, and then a vast soundless explosion as the kuei's pincers met across the pearl. The pearl splintered into dust. It disembodied the kuei that had destroyed it, blasting it apart into a mass of legs and vertebrae, but it was too late: the pearl itself was gone.
Embar Dea saw, suddenly, not yellow dustclouds, but a thin light through a cold sea, the pale shapes of ghosts drifting across the seabed, the black bulk of a hull rising ahead of her, encrusted with ancient shells. She saw the pearl she had rescued from the Veil of Day, the sunken ship of Heaven, resting in shimmering perfection in her own old claw.
"Rish!" Embar Dea shouted. "Rish!" She arrowed across the sky toward the Dragon Prince. "Give me the pearl!"
He knew what she was going to do and did not hesitate. His trust in her stirred her heart and then the pearl was once more back in her claws. Embar Dea dived after the Dragon King, into the writhing mass of the kuei.
Their iron pincers streaked her sides but she was barely aware of it, barely aware, too, that the hot rain that spattered the desert sands of Hell was her own blood. She looked down into a golden glazing eye.
"Here!" she cried. "Take it, it's yours by right."
And the King of All Dragons reached out and took the old king's lost pearl from her claws. It was the last thing that Embar Dea saw in the three worlds. The kuei closed in and she felt no pain, only triumph, and a growing sense of wonder at the last glimpse of the Wheel of Life, before she drifted from it into the soft and glowing dark.