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Through the shadows of the Unworld rode the knight Starkiller. Under the dim green glow of the distant horizon, he merged into the dark, a shape of endless menace, and any who might have offered him harm knew him for what he was, and stayed away.

On and on through the wastes of the Unworld rode the knight Starkiller. In one hand he bore the gigantic shield of ur-metal that had served him so well through a thousand campaigns and helped protect him against a thousand times as many enemies. In the other he carried his titanic sword of obsidian, sharp enough to be able to part a hair, which he never placed in its scabbard, and carried as lightly as if it weighed nothing at all. The green light from the horizon reflected faintly from its edge, and any who saw the green line of it knew not to approach closer, for it was carried by the greatest hero the realities had ever known.

The knight Starkiller was astride his favourite war-mount, the gigantic super-horse named Lightning. It had been his mount for many years and through many campaigns, and was sheathed in bands and scales of metal, its snout and legs protected by armoured mask and spats. Yet even though Lightning had carried its master fearlessly through battles without number, it skittered nervously now, its great spatulate hooves skittish on the stones.

Tirelessly through the space between the realities rode the knight Starkiller. If he thought of what he had left behind, or what lay before him, he kept those thoughts away from his conscious mind. And that conscious mind was endlessly vigilant for danger, for he was aware of the vermin which dwelt between the worlds, and expected attack. But his fame preceded him, as a wave of fear spreading over the Unworld, and he passed in safety through the dark.

As he came closer and closer to the centre of all the realities, the point where the shells intersected, the green glow in the horizon spread slowly over the sky, and took on a steely bluish hue. And the rocks rose to form mountains, crags and pinnacles of stone, between which lay blue sheets of ice and from the summits of which rose smoke and fire; and so, through fire and ice, the knight Starkiller came finally to the centre of all the realities, where dwelt the dragon Chedupuram.

The dragon Chedupuram dwelt in a tremendous pit in the centre of a ring of fire spewing, ice-shrouded mountains, a pit so huge that from one side of it one could scarce glimpse the other, and so deep that unless one stepped right to the edge one had no idea how far down the bottom lay. And when the knight Starkiller came near the pit, Lightning dug its hooves into the ground and would go no further, nor could the knight persuade it.

Finally, finding no other way, the knight dismounted from the back of the super-horse, threw the reins over the beast’s armoured nose, and walked to the pit. And as he went, the air around him grew hot and filled with a smell as of burning.

"Who comes?" a deep voice echoed, as if from the depths of the earth. "Who dares disturb my rest?"

"Dragon," the knight Starkiller said in an even voice, "I have come to reach the centre of all the realities, to know and control it. You will move aside and let me pass."

"And why should I let you pass, Starkiller?"

The knight paused in surprise, still a little short of the edge of the pit. "You know my name?"

"Oh yes," the deep voice responded, with what might have been a chuckle. "I know who you are, knight. I know why you have come. And I know the way your quest will end – and why."

"So," Starkiller said equably, "you know that you’ll move away and let me to the centre of all the realities. Or else, as you also know, I shall have to kill you."

There was a rumbling roar, and from the depths of the pit, where he had lain for countless aeons curled around the centre of all the realities, rose the dragon Chedupuram.

He rose like the wrath of a primeval deity, in a column of armoured flesh, his body wrapped in plates of copper-coloured bone which could turn aside the mightiest weapon ever forged. He rose, like an avenging god, poised on hundreds of pairs of grappling legs, legs that could pluck an enemy off his horse, twist him and pull him apart. High atop the armoured body, his great head swivelled, a head that was a mountain aloft, a head to inspire terror even in the most fearless. His eyes were portals of unfathomable darkness, bottomless wells of night which seemed to suck the light out of the souls of any who beheld him. His four pairs of terrible antennae, armed with serrated teeth, lashed to and fro; antennae the touch of which would flay steel and cloth and flesh from bone. And all along the great length of his body, the copper-coloured plates of bone rubbed and clattered together, with a noise as of a thousand war-drums on a distant plain.

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