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.Abazigal, once spurned as a half-breed, would be hailed as a hero by all of dragonkind as he led them to their true destiny as rulers of Faerun.He had come far since his humble beginnings.Abazigal remembered nothing of his dragon mother.Did she reject him as the abomination he was, or did she protect him and nurture him? It didn't matter.Her existence was nothing but an idealized concept, his link to the glory of dragonkind, and a way to deny the history of his youth.Abazigal's earliest memories were of his cruel master, the nameless wizard who had sought to unlock the secrets of dragons through torture and experiments.Abazigal had served as a slave to the sadistic mage, cleaning the laboratory, caring for the dragon's eggs the wizard had managed to steal, feeding the young hatchlings as they were born, and disposing of their mangled, broken bodies when the wizard's experiments went awry.He was often experimented on by the master, though the mage was careful never to bring about Abazigal's death.Dragon eggs he had by the dozens, but a half-breed, the link between man and wyrm, was a rare beast indeed.That was exactly how the master had treated Abazigal and the dragons he kept imprisoned in his lab, as beasts.The experiments of the wizard destroyed most of his subjects' minds, the dragons lucky enough to survive his torturous research were left little more than brutes—incapable of speech or spells, stripped of their magnificent intelligence by a sniveling human wizard who dared to use the wyrms for his own twisted purposes.Abazigal was no mindless brute, though he pretended to be an imbecile in the master's presence.His act resulted in many beatings and painful punishments for failing to follow even the simplest of instructions, but they were a small price to pay for maintaining the ruse.Believing him to be stupid and harmless, the wizard allowed Abazigal free run of the laboratory.While the mage studied the secrets of Abazigal and the dragons, Abazigal studied the wizard's own secrets.With his dragon mother's innate intelligence, Abazigal mastered the intricacies of sorcery, teaching himself over many, many years—all the while slaving beneath the master's heavy hand.Once he had learned all he could from the wizard, Abazigal turned on his captor.The mage's death was slow and painful.Abazigal extracted retribution for not only his own sufferings but the sufferings of the pure-blood dragons whose torture he had witnessed over the years.Every shattered egg, every dead hatchling, every wyrm that had been transformed into a dumb beast no longer worthy of the title "dragon" by the master was avenged in the wizard's agonizing end.Winning his freedom did not end Abazigal's responsibilities to the young dragons the wizard had imprisoned.A dozen wyrms still lived, all too mentally damaged to fend for themselves.Abazigal had adopted them as his own.He tried to restore their minds, to elevate them to their rightful status, but the damage done by the master was irreparable.Perhaps killing them all, aborting their pathetic existence, would have been the right thing to do, but Abazigal could not bring himself to destroy them, flawed as they were.Instead, they became his pets, his army of quasi-dragons.Fiercely loyal, they served him without question to the best of their limited abilities.He was careful to hide the existence of his pets.If the true dragons learned of their existence, they might destroy them as an affront to the species.Yet Abazigal had allowed the greatest of his pets, a young but nearly full grown red, to participate in the siege of Saradush.His pet had done well, slaughtering dozens of the cowering Bhaalspawn during the battle.Part of Abazigal had hoped the battle would help the creature understand its own power.Part of him hoped it would not come back, choosing to try and survive on its own in the world, but instead, the young red had returned bearing a gift: a female half-elf.Abazigal knew the identity of the half-elf.She was the lover of Gorion's ward, and Abdel Adrian was coming for vengeance.No doubt he was currently trudging across the plains beneath the newly risen sun, following the path of Abazigal's pet toward the Alimir Mountains.Even if his enemy rode a horse, Abazigal knew, he would still be several days away.The wise course of action was to simply wait, bide his time until Abdel arrived, then unleash his pets on the Bhaalspawn.No single man, not even Bhaalspawn, could withstand the assault of a dozen dragons.Since his meeting with the council of dragons the previous morning, Abazigal was nearly out of patience.He had spent years suffering beneath the master's tyranny, futilely hoping he would learn some way to rid himself of his half-breed status.He had spent years plotting and conspiring with the foul drow Sendai and the rest of the Five to bring back their father.Now his greatest desire was nearly within his grasp
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