Theros couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Dragons, small red dragons that seemed to be made of flame, were crawling off the sword that now glowed red in the heat of the blazing fire.

He shut his eyes, rubbed them, looked again. The dragons were still there … scuttling across the white-hot coals. One jumped out of the fire, landed on a wooden bench. The dragon vanished, changing to flame. The bench began to smolder and smoke.

The firepit was filled with the tiny dragons now, hundreds and hundreds of them. They dashed up the wooden beams that supported the roof. They crawled to the worktable, dropped among the tools. And everything they touched—even metal—burst into flame.

“Come away, master! Come away!” called Theros’s apprentice. “There’s nothing you can do! Give up!”

“By Sargas!” Theros roared. “Never!”

Then one of the dragons jumped on his leg. It burned through his long leather apron in just an instant, touching his flesh. The pain was excruciating, far worse than any burn Theros had ever received.

He felt himself starting to black out …