Thickly the head bristled with them, poised motionless upon spinning globes as huge as they.

For hundreds of feet that incredible neck stretched ahead of us and for twice as far behind a monstrous, lizard-shaped body writhed.
We rode now upon a serpent, a glittering blue metal dragon, spiked and knobbed and scaled.

It was the weird steed of Norhala flattening, thrusting out to pierce the rift.
And still as when it had reared on high beat through it the wild, triumphant, questing pulse.

Still rang out Norhala's chanting.
The trees parted and fell upon each side of us as though we were some monster of the sea and they the waves we cleft.
The rift enclosed us.

Lower we dropped; were not more than fifty feet above its floor.