Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

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What Now?

Copyright © June, 2016 by Travis Simmons

The Chronicles of Dragon Aerie

Plague Born Book One:

Dragon Plagued

Published by: Wyrding Ways Press

Cover Art by: Kip Ayers

Formatting by: Wyrding Ways Press

Editing by: Wyrding Ways Press

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means—by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either are the product of the authors imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Wylan Atwater had to kill the great blue dragon, even if it meant her death.

The Dar Desert spread out before her in an endless sea of glittering sand, but she didn’t see it. She was used to the sand, what Wylan wasn’t used to was the searing pain that stiffened her muscles. Her recent transformation to something akin to a dragon—red scales, fiery breath, talon tipped feet—was the cause of the agony. What was she? A wyrm for sure, though nowhere near as big as the blue dragon she raced after through the swells and updrafts of wind. She’d never considered that the air would have currents and shifting pressure systems, but here she was, battling her way through it while the glittering sapphire dragon sailed ahead of her with ease.

She was nowhere near as big as the dragon—less than half its size with her forelegs part of her wings, unlike a true dragon. What was she, that she could shift from human to wyrm. Was she able to shift back?

Wyvern, she thought. That’s what the dragon had called her moments before he’d robbed her of her old life.

But it didn’t matter if she could shift back because her parents were dead; her home was gone. Everything she’d ever known, taken from her in an infinite anguish that sped by so fast she still felt dizzy from the violent change. She could still smell her father’s blood, sweet and metallic to her nose as his life spilled out of the dragon’s mouth, soaking into the sand in a scarlet stain. She could still see her mother encased in flames, her skin and hair shriveled and blackened by the heat.

Wylan had just convinced her father to move to the city, to get away from their farm and the destroyed towns around them. She had plans of joining the dragon guard, she was going to fight to keep them safe…she’d already failed. She’d let her parents die. If only she’d transformed before the blue dragon had killed her father, Cuthburt, he might still be alive. They might be heading across the long desert to the imperial city of Darubai even now.

She couldn’t think of what could have been—what should have been. She could only think of this—killing the dragon. He’d ruined every bit of her life, ruined so much more than her own life, according to the decimated towns she’d visited with her father to scrape together some measly life. Dragons were the blame for all of the anguish in the long desert, and this one was going to pay for what he’d done.

She could still see its blue scales shimmering in the sky far ahead of her. She pushed her wings harder. At the height she kept, the winds fought her every inch. Her wings were tired, her heart thrummed near bursting and she feared at any moment it might give out. Her body ached from fighting the wind and urging herself south against the currents and updrafts. Her tail snapped out behind her like a pinion.

But the memory of her mother’s body engulfed in flames and torching her home wouldn’t let her rest. The memory of that great blue dragon devouring most of her father with a single bite was terrible enough that she didn’t care if her heart exploded from exertion.

Nothing was ever going to be the same. She had no home, no family left. If she did have family still alive, it was family who had abandoned her when she was a baby. No, her only family had been Kethill and Cuthburt, and now they were gone. Never again would she listen to her mother sing while sifting through dried beans. She’d never go with her father again to a ruined town in hopes that there might be something remaining to supplement their dwindling food storage.

Sickness welled in her and she thought the contents of her stomach might empty out of her toothy maw all over the ground below. She opened her mouth and tried to vomit, hoping that would ease her stomach. Fire burned along her tongue and a great gout of flame charred the sand beneath her.

If she could have wept, she would have.

The blue dragon was faster than her, and despite her better judgement, Wylan rose higher to gain ground.

At the crest of her flight, a vision filled her mind.

A woman stood among trees like Wylan had only ever seen in her dreams or in her mindful wanderings through the pages of a book. Her skin was tanned, caramel in color and her hair was like ribbons of a rainbow, wavy and soft as silk. She turned to Wylan, her body thin, her breasts large and soft, as if swollen in motherhood. Her lavender gown drifted in the shifting breeze as though made of the softest gossamer.

She reached out a delicate hand to Wylan. As Wylan’s mind felt the grip of her hand, the rainbow lady slowly shifted—her body grew smaller, her features softened, and her hair bleached out to a ghostly whisper of what it would grow to be. The rainbow lady was now a baby, cradled in a mossy expanse of flattened stone between the roots of a great oak tree. Her violet eyes searched into the deepest reaches of Wylan’s soul, and the wyvern hummed a tranquil song akin to the baby’s power. The baby spoke into her mind.

:Come to me, wyvern. Come to me and protect me with your life so I can grow to become what you’ve seen.:

I need to kill the blue! Was all Wylan could think. She struggled against the pull of the rainbow lady, desperate to keep her pace with the dragon. But there was another presence in her, another mind that she recognized belonged to the other half of her new life—the wyvern. The wyvern mind, the wyvern soul wanted more than anything to obey the rainbow lady. The wyvern soul was ensnared as easily as a moth to flame. It’s only desire to obey the whim of the vision-lady. Wylan struggled against the other mind as surely as she struggled against the breeze.

:If it’s killing dragons you seek, I will help you.:

Before Wylan was certain what she was doing, she’d turned south drawn on by the call of the rainbow lady. She could see another path before her, one of eddying, rainbow light that trailed through the air like wisps of clouds. The light infused her mind, putting to ease thoughts of her family and the life she left behind. The light spoke to the deeper part of her, the wyvern mind, and that mind rose to the surface. A mind of scales and fiery desires. A mind filled with concern of safety and longevity. It pushed Wylan’s desires aside and took command of their new body.

Wylan railed against the mind, pushing at it, trying to swallow it down, hide it away deep within her where she could control the wyvern body once more. The mind was resolute and strong, but her need was stronger. Whatever this other presence was, it grudgingly gave ground. Before long, her mind aching and sore from the mental battle, Wylan had the upper hand. She turned her focus back the way the blue dragon had gone and away from the rainbow light. She couldn’t see the dragon any longer, but she knew the direction he had fled.

She followed.

For hours she struggled against the other mind inside her and ignored the call of the rainbow lady, who was urging her south. Instead, she’d chased after the blue dragon hoping that she would catch it. What she expected to do against such a powerful beast once she caught it, Wylan had no clue. There was no doubt that she would have died facing a wyrm nearly four times her size as the blue dragon was. At that moment, she hadn’t cared.

Dying would be preferable to this.

:We will not die this day!: a voice from the wyvern mind, roared through her skull.

Exhaustion took Wylan. Power thrummed hard and violent from the other mind, and she felt the transformation coming upon her. She felt the other mind recede, and with it went the wyvern form. The human soul swam up from the darkened depths of the wyvern and claimed her. Red scales retracted, faded to caramel skin and black hair. Her teeth shortened and the wings vanished like smoke, replaced by human arms. All that remained the same were her golden eyes with their elongated pupils. Naked, and with a scream of terror on her lips, Wylan plummeted from the sky. Her body rocketed into a dune and plumes of sand exploded around her.

She screamed again, feeling bones pop and snap deep within her body. She rolled down the dune, her arm bending in ways it shouldn’t bend. Her throat was sore and blistered from the burst of flame she’d let out when she thought she was going to vomit. She was distantly aware of the chaffing sand in places it had no business being, but the pain of that was miniscule compared to what she was already feeling.

Wylan came to rest at the base of the dune, her body broken and bruised from the betrayal of wings and scales. She cried out, more in frustration and anger than pain, though there was enough pain to make her sob as well. Bones snapped again, but this time they weren’t breaking, they were righting themselves. A moment of searing pain blinded her and when it passed, there was nothing but the relaxation only terrible pain leaves in its wake. She stared up at the cornflower sky. Heat wavered her vision making the sun dance before her eyes.

Wylan lay there for several moments hoping a wild tellik might find her and rend her body in two with its powerful jaws, bloodying its muddy green scales with her life. Only the call of the rainbow lady answered her. It urged her to her feet where she shuffled along, alone and afraid. The power ensnared her mind, fighting back her urge to find the blue dragon, and instead to go to the rainbow lady.

Hours it seemed she trudged through the hot sand. Wylan hoped for the heat to roast her, but it didn’t touch her skin. She didn’t thirst. She didn’t burn. Once more she cursed the beast that lurked within. She could feel it resting in her belly like a coiled snake waiting to strike.

She wished it would. She wished the wyvern would bust free from her body, scattering her parts over the desert as her father’s legs had been. She collapsed, a cry of anguish tearing from her throat. Tears slid unbidden down her cheeks as she clawed at her chest, willing the pain inside to be free. She wanted nothing more than to sink her fingers deep inside and pull the pain and sorrow out and make it stop.

She’d considered many times what would happen when her parents passed, but she never thought it would be so soon. She knew it would be hard watching them die, but nothing had prepared Wylan for the torment of losing one she loved as much as Kethill and Cuthburt. She cried until her head hurt and her eyes swelled when there were no more tears to shed. The heartbreak remained, with no way to sooth its sting. Still she sobbed. Her entire life was over. What was left for her now? How was she to go on when there was nothing to go to? Everything had changed in a split second, and there was no way to make it right.

But she went on. When the tears would no longer spill, and her body quivered with pain, and her sobs had finally abated, Wylan pushed to her feet and trudged on. She was fueled with a single purpose—to see the sapphire dragon dead. To make him pay for what he’d done to her, to kill him as surely as he killed Cuthburt. Even if she couldn’t kill him in her wyvern form, she would find a way to make him pay.

And the rainbow lady was the key. If she could control Wylan this easily, there was a chance she could do the same to dragons.

How could I ever have found them lovely? She wondered, remembering a time before the attack when she’d watch dragons dance in the sky, their songs echoing across the dunes like some alien prayer that called to her soul and urged her to fly. How could she have found that so lovely when all that existed on the other side of those dances and songs was terror and hunger for death?

Eventually the town came into sight and Wylan stopped to stare. In all of her travels with Cuthburt she’d never seen a town so whole. Buildings still stood and there was no sense of dragon fire about the place. How could it be? How had the town escaped the wyrms? Furthermore, why? Why would this place stand, but the dragon had sought out her home to destroy? This place was much larger than her home and, from the look of it, had never seen dragons.

The air shimmered around the town, wavering with heat before Wylan’s eyes. If it weren’t for the incessant call of the rainbow lady from within the town, Wylan would have thought the heat was finally getting to her. Mirages happened in the desert all the time, and the mind played tricks with the heat.

She was sure this wasn’t the case. This town was real and somewhere inside the rainbow lady awaited her.

On bare feet, Wylan made her way to the town. Her eyes were trained on the mud brick buildings. She waited for them to vanish; waited for them to show any sign of dragon attack. Waited to see the claw marks along the walls, to see roofs blackened with dragon fire, to see the blood and gore that was partially hidden by drifting sand. But it didn’t happen. The town was untouched by the ravages that scarred the rest of the long desert.

Still, the town wavered in her vision.

The town was like so many others with streets packed hard from use. The walls of the buildings were clean showing no sign of wear from the elements. Wind moaned around buildings, like ghosts unwilling to pass from the living world.

She stopped, listening for the bark of a dog, the call of a mother to a child, the scream of a baby…anything. Only the ghostly wind greeted her ears. She shivered at the complete absence of life.

Wylan set foot on hard-packed ground and ambled, naked, through the town. Doors stood open, but when she looked there was nothing but darkness within.

“Hello?” Wylan called. “Is anyone here?” Her voice was hoarse from crying and sounded foreign to her ears. More croak than actual voice, but still it echoed through the empty streets and vacant homes.

Silence fell. Even the wind eased as if waiting for a response to her call, waiting for life to return.

There was none.

“Rainbow lady?” Wylan called. “Are you here?”

She felt dumb calling out to something that only existed in her mind. Now that she was within the town, the power of the vision vanished leaving her alone once more, wondering what she was doing here when she should be out hunting the dragon that stole her life. Was the rainbow lady nothing more than hopeful ponderings that something more than her—more than dragons—existed? A being that was shown to her mind to bend dragons to her will. She felt how absurd it was to have come all this way for something she’d seen when going through such terrible pain.

“You’re an idiot,” she scolded, unsure if she was speaking to herself or the wyvern mind that rested at the base of her spine. She was too old to believe in fantasy now. Nothing greater than dragons existed. The gods had turned their back on the Dar Desert ages ago, before the dragons vanished. No one was going to save her, not ghosts or memories or gods, not even a rainbow-haired lady.

Still, the town was an oddity in such desolate times, and Wylan peaked inside the nearest house. It was cold inside. Not just cool from the shade, but cold like a hand from beyond the grave reached out to brush its questioning touch over her face, wondering at her living form. Gooseflesh prickled along her breast and Wylan shivered. She was aware then just how naked she was. The need to cover her flesh before anyone appeared—if there really was anyone around—was greater than her fear of the harrowingly cold house.

Wylan stepped inside. “Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone home?”

She wasn’t expecting an answer, so she wasn’t surprised when none came. The front door opened into a dining room. Platters of steaming food sat on the table, untouched, their scent drawing her closer. A large pitcher of water rested in the center of the table, sweat along its surface as if it had just been drawn.

Her stomach growled; Wylan was painfully aware that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Hunger hadn’t intruded on her until she saw the meal spread out on the table, steaming hot in the coldness of the house.

She was angry at how she could be so hungry when her parents had just died. How could she think about eating when they’d never eat again? It seemed such a human need, a mockery of her pain and an affront to their memory. But she would need her strength if she was to face the dragon.

“Clothes first,” she told herself, looming over the table. There was food the likes she’d never seen before, but smelled delicious all the same.

She tore herself away from the table and explored deeper in the house. While there was no sign of people save the fresh meal on the table, the house had all the trappings of home equipped with rooms, beds, and clothes. She selected a pair of brown trousers that fit the best—though she still had to bind them tight around her waist—and a mauve tunic that she could have worn alone as a dress. She tied her long hair behind her with a length of leather she found in the washroom, and made her way back to the table.

Wylan was dubious about eating a mysterious meal that seemed to have appeared out of thin air, but her hunger made her throw caution to the wind. Besides, if this killed her would that be so bad? At least then she’d be with her parents in the Great Above. She tore into the delicacies laid out before her. There were sweets and there were creams. She devoured a large portion of white meat she’d never seen before, but it was delicious all the same. After copious amounts of root vegetables and gravy, Wylan finished. She was afraid she might not be able to move after the meal, but the eerie feeling of emptiness that infused the town made her stand.

Rummaging through the kitchen she found several canteens that she filled with water and slung across her chest. Pounds heavier with the burden, she went in search of anything she might be able to use as a weapon. There was nothing within the house.

It took her searching through three more homes—all as cold as the first, though not laid out with food—before she found a short sword. It was certainly not the kind of weapon to go up against a dragon with, but the blade was sharp and she felt infinitely safer with it in her grasp. She paid no mind to the voice in her head that said she knew less about using the weapon than she knew about tracking the blue dragon.

Wylan stopped in the center of town and looked around. The town center was largely composed of a rock garden with various statues of lizards and cacti. Elaborate curved benches dotted the garden, and Wylan chose one seat to ease her stomach and wondered what she was going to do next.

Family dead. Home gone. Visionary rainbow lady nothing more than a fantasy. She was lost with no call to lead her wyvern soul. Despite having the canteens, they didn’t provide an endless supply. It was unlikely she would find more food or water before hunger or thirst killed her.

And out there somewhere, the dragon lurked. How she was going to locate the beast, she hadn’t the faintest idea. With any luck, maybe it would find her.

She refused to cry. She could mourn when that bastard dragon lay dead at her feet.

And how do you expect to do that? She asked herself. It didn’t matter. She would figure it out.

A thunder of wings shook the air and Wylan jumped to her feet. Fear thrummed through her body, she fled to the nearest home. Ducking inside, she tried to silence the voice within her that pointed out she would be a pitiful match for a dragon if she ran from the sound of wings.

But the wings didn’t belong to dragons. The wings belonged to a green and a blue wyvern who landed elegantly near the stone garden. Their figures shivered; their scales seemed to boil and recede until a naked black woman and a naked blond man stood on the hard-packed road.

Wylan blushed and averted her eyes, despite her desire to study the man in more detail. She found her eyes wandering up his sculpted legs, but she averted them again. Her face burned in shame, but he struck a nice figure.

“Since when does a town still stand?” the man wondered.

Wylan glanced up at the question. They were dressing now. The woman tied a sage dress behind her neck and stepped away from the man. She was lovely, her skin like coffee, her eyes clear and dark.

“Do you still feel her?” the woman asked.

The man tied his trousers around his waist and riffled around inside a sack, coming out with a white tunic. His hair was blond and tousled, his nose sharp, his eyes penetrating and blue as a stormy sky. “No.”

“What does that mean?” she asked, belting a sword to her side.

“I don’t know, Millie, do I look like a yellow?”

Millie didn’t answer him. “The town is so…cold.”

“A white dragon you think?”

“I don’t know, Josef, it feels haunted somehow.”

Josef shivered. “I’d rather deal with a white dragon than ghosts.”

“You and me both,” Millie mumbled.

The man tucked their bags under a bench and joined the woman. “We know she’s here.”

The woman nodded, her bushy hair barely moving with the action. “We will have to spread out, look for her.”

“Your plague won’t work on ghosts,” Josef said.

At the mention of ghosts, Wylan glance around her. She stood in a cold hallway that stretched into darkness. She could imagine any kind of specter leaping out of the shadowy depths to drag her to some Dark Below where she’d suffer an eternity. She placed her back against the wall, keeping her eyes on the wyverns as much as she could fight the desire to look behind her and make sure nothing was creeping up on her. If only I could learn to shift like that, she thought, then I could be a match for the blue dragon.

:You’re obviously forgetting its size,: a voice scolded her. She looked around the dark interior, the walls without a trace of sand or grime, as if freshly washed. Where had the voice come from? She didn’t see anyone near her, and she wondered if it might have been one of those ghosts Millie and Josef spoke of.

“Like water is going to touch them?” Millie laughed at Josef, drawing Wylan’s attention back to the street.

“Well, they’re misty-like…”

“Like being the operative word.” Millie turned to Josef and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

Josef scoffed.

Millie laughed. To Wylan, it sounded like music.

“Just come on,” Josef said. They walked down the street and vanished from sight.

Wylan stepped out into the street. She followed in their wake, keeping to the shadows as much as she could. With the sun high in the sky she knew it was no use trying to hide.

Poison? Water? She wondered. Did they have powers like she did? That would only make sense, right? But if I breathe fire, does he spit water? It was a comical thought and gave her hope for facing the blue dragon. Unless it spits in my mouth when I breathe. The thought made her gag.

“What was that?” Millie asked, dragging Josef to a stop.

Wylan ducked around a corner as Millie turned. Wylan cocked her head in their direction, waiting to hear footsteps come her way. She was worried she wouldn’t hear them coming over the racing of her heart and her ragged breath. What if they weren’t good? What if they sided with dragons? What if they were hunting the baby for the dragons? They seemed to laugh and joke like friends, but that didn’t mean that they were nice. Even bad guys had to confide in someone, right? Maybe villains even joked when they weren’t hatching evil plans and cackling maniacally.

What if they find me? Wylan wondered. What do they intend to do with the baby? The thought of them finding the baby before she made her blood run cold. Josef said he couldn’t feel her any longer once the entered the town, just like Wylan couldn’t feel the rainbow lady.

And then what are you going to do with her? She wondered. If the baby could control dragons, did that same control extend to wyverns?

“I didn’t hear anything,” Josef said.

Wylan peaked around the corner to see the couple move farther down the road. Just as she stepped into the street to follow them, she heard a baby cry behind her.

“I know I heard something that time,” Millie said.

The voices grew quieter as Wylan crept away from the main street, searching for the baby. Her spirits nearly sang. She hadn’t been stupid; she had felt the call of the rainbow lady. She was here in this ghost town. Never mind how the baby was in this town, she was here, and Wylan was going to find her.

She tried to quell the thought in her mind that told her the baby could be used against the dragons. If the call had been real, then the vision must as well. If the baby could bend dragons to her will, then she could…

:Stop,: that other voice said. Wylan halted her progression down the dusty street and looked around. There was no one there. :You of all people should know what it’s like to be unwanted as a baby.: The words stung, but they were true. Until Kethill and Cuthburt had rescued her from Dulasan hours after dragons had struck, she’d been abandoned. She wasn’t sure if her true mother had been killed in the attack, or if she’d simply left her. Whenever she thought about her old mother or the town she got a sense of being unwanted. Wylan pushed the thoughts away, they couldn’t help her now. She continued walking but she couldn’t stop her thoughts from how the baby could help her. But she was just a baby. She was a baby deserving of love and protection just as she had been. She couldn’t let the child be used…

But how much of that thought was the influence the rainbow lady had over Wylan? She’d commanded Wylan to protect her with her life…what if she could make Wylan do that?

The thought of how the baby could help her stayed with her. This child was different. This child had power over the dragons and that meant power over the blue who had killed her parents.

Only slightly more worrying was the voice that kept coming to her. Was it that wyvern presence that had taken her over? It had a similar feel, a deep resonant voice reminiscent of dragons, but she couldn’t be sure. What she was sure of was the voice was coming from within her, not outside.

An infant cry sounded to her left, and Wylan ducked down an alley sure that’s where the cry came from. The sound of chatter and scuff of footfalls was close behind her. The others were catching up to her.

Her heart hammered, but she wouldn’t hide this time. They wanted the baby, and so did she. Whoever got to her first could claim her, right?

:Not sure that’s how this works.: She pushed the voice aside.

There were two of them and one of her. Not to mention she didn’t have the first idea of how to call her wyvern or how to control the fire she’d belched out.

Wylan ducked into a house and was only mildly surprised that this one wasn’t cold like the others. This house welcomed her in a wash of warmth and acceptance. The inside was lit as though there were no roof at all and the sun shone down on the interior. Wylan could feel music in the air. It wasn’t anything she could hear with her human ears. Instead, it was a sound she could feel with the part of her that was wyvern.

The serpentine power shifted in her lower regions as if the noise were putting it to restful sleep. Wylan felt the ease the beast felt, as if they were as bound as they had been when she wore the wyvern’s scales.

She felt the peace infuse her and turn her mind from thoughts of using the baby to thoughts of keeping her safe. Thoughts of collecting her and taking her to a city. Not just any city, but Darubai itself. The imperial city was where the baby needed to be, in the safety of other humans where she could work the best.

She couldn’t turn away from her quest.

Darubai is safety. The thought intruded on her, and this time she knew it wasn’t her own thought. It’s reasoning spread through her body, and she found herself agreeing. Darubai would offer many safeties that life in the long desert didn’t. Wasn’t that what she’d argued to her father, to get him to agree to a move?

She followed the music deeper into the house, through sprawling rooms and ambling hallways. All the while the light grew brighter. It wasn’t a light that hurt her eyes, it was a soft light, a light that drew her on just as the vision had drawn her to the town.

She was distantly aware that the other wyverns were within the house with her. She didn’t care. All that mattered to Wylan was the music and the call of the vision.

And then she found her.

The baby rested in a downy crib of intricate knot worked wood. Light emanated through the slats and carvings from the baby just as surely as the song came from her. Wylan stopped in the doorway, uncertain that she was actually seeing what she saw. The baby turned her head and gazed at her with silver eyes that held more intelligence than a baby’s eyes should ever hold.

Wylan slumped against the doorway, all motives of using the baby as a weapon seeping from her. The baby smiled at her. She was soft, as if Wylan were seeing the baby through a haze or a dream. Her hair was pale, though it held a hint of the coloring she’d bore in the vision. In time, Wylan knew the baby’s hair would be as vibrant as any rainbow she’d ever seen.

The baby reached toward Wylan and cooed. A smile spread over her impish face and the music shifted within the house from one of calling to one of rejoice. As the power infused her and pulled her thoughts from those of loss and to those of joy, Wylan laughed, her hands going to her mouth.

She stepped into the room, neared the crib, and reached for the baby.

“Stop!” a voice commanded.

Wylan spun to the door, a gasp frozen on her lips. In the humbling power of the baby, she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone in the house.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“Millie,” Josef said, easing past her. Millie pushed him back.

“I said who in the long desert are you, and what are you doing with that baby?”

“I—I’m Wylan Atwater and she called to me.”

Millie stepped further into the room. “Tellik shit, what happened to this town? Who sent you? Was it a dragon?”

“She may be one of us,” Josef reasoned.

“I am one of you. I’m a wyvern!”

“Prove it!” Millie said.

Wylan looked to her feet. “I can’t.”

“And why’s that?” Millie wondered.

“I can’t control the beast,” Wylan said.

“I’m going to give you another chance to come clean. What are you doing here?”

“The wyvern soul might be new to her,” Josef said.

What was she doing here? What brought her here? What happened to the town?

It was more than Wylan could handle. Tears spilled hot down her face and a sob broke from her lips. Her parents dead. Her home ruined.

“Dragons brought me here!” Wylan growled. “That damned beast tore my house apart. My mother burned before my very eyes!” She was yelling at Millie, taking threatening steps toward her. She could feel the wyvern soul within her, bubbling to the surface, threatening to spill over. It must have shown in her eyes because Millie took a step back. “It killed my father! And you have the nerve to ask me what I’m doing here? What in the long desert are you doing here?”

The ground beneath her smoldered with each step she took. Millie’s eyes were wild with fear, no longer looking at Wylan, but instead the ground beneath her.

The baby began to cry.

“This plague brought me here!” Fire kindled along the walls, fueled by her rage and smoke billowed to the ceiling. “It changed me. It killed everything I’ve ever loved. So do it. If you’re going to kill me for answering her call, do it!”

The wall to her left exploded outward in a fury of fire and she couldn’t hold the beast in check any longer. The wyvern soul consumed her. The shift happened faster than she thought possible.

Millie couldn’t believe her eyes. Rather, she couldn’t believe Wylan’s eyes.

Dragon eyes, she thought. She’d only ever seen them once. The baby from Dulasan. Can it be? It was like she was there again. She could hear the mother yelling that the baby was a monster and to get rid of it. She could hear her assistant, Sasha, telling her that the baby was the reason for the dragons coming back and she hoped they killed her. She could feel the heat of the burning town searing into her skin and she could hear the screams.

It's her! Millie thought. All these long years, someone had survived. She had a unique chance she never thought she’d get—to salvage something from that night. Maybe it would even let her mind rest easy, knowing that she could care for someone she’d left behind to die in dragon fire.

“Millie, get back!” Josef commanded. He pushed the startled healer behind him as Wylan roared a gout of fire straight for them. The wyvern soul gleamed around Josef like a blue aura of scale armor. When the fire struck his water shield, it hissed and steamed. Fire rebounded from the shield and lit the ceiling aflame.

Millie was helpless in this fight. There was no way she could protect against the fire, and there was nothing she could do save poisoning Wylan, and she refused to do that. It had been eighteen years since she’d left Dulasan. Eighteen was old for someone new to the wyvern soul. They typically shifted at a young age, and could then be trained. She’s new, she’s untrained, was all she could think despite the flare of anger that shook her slight figure.

:Well, you asked for proof.: Josephine, her wyvern soul, chimed in. She pushed the anger aside. Millie recognized it as belonging to Josephine. She had to be clearheaded. She had to figure out how to get the baby out of danger without giving into her wyvern’s anger. Then she could worry about Wylan.

At the end of the hall to her right there was a slight opening. Wylan had blasted the wall out of the room, and where the room joined with the hall, there was a hole that might be big enough for Millie to climb through. She glanced at Josef. The soldier showed no signs of weakening, but Wylan did.

At the time, the red wyvern was intent on battering through Josef’s water shield and had little mind for Millie. She slipped down the hall, her hand running over the hole. It wasn’t nearly as big as she’d hoped, but she would have to make it work. She slipped a leg through the hole and bent low. Reeds from the wall’s interior scraped against her dark skin, drawing blood. She winced, but pushed further. A reed stabbed her leg and the wyvern soul shifted within her like a snake uncoiling and ready to strike.

She pushed it aside and tried to ignore the pain. She’d have to work fast, already she could feel the healing energy Josephine was directing at the wound. It wouldn’t be good to have the wound heal around the reed jabbed into her leg. She winced and pushed further through the hole and emerged into the sunlit streets of the mysterious town. She took a deep breath and stretched her cramping muscles. The town was just as silent as before, even the sounds of fire and the roar of Wylan within the baby’s chamber was somehow muted in the street, as if it happened a mile away, rather than just a few feet. Nothing seemed to stir, yet at the same time she felt a definite stirring in the energy of the town.

Get the baby, and get out! She thought. Something was happening in the town, something was waking. She could feel the energy whisper over her skin, speaking to the wyvern soul within. Josephine shivered within her and Millie shivered as well, turning back to the hole in the wall.

Wylan was larger in wyvern form than most of the wyverns she knew. It wasn’t unheard of to see one as large as Wylan, but it was certainly rare. She hoped that Josef could keep her attention long enough for Millie to get the baby.

Josef saw Millie creep toward the wall, and he frowned at her. Millie shrugged and pointed to the crying baby. Each time the baby cried out, the wyvern soul cringed and shifted. It was getting harder for Millie to keep it at bay. The baby was in danger. The thought filled her mind and the wyvern lurched within her. She stopped and had to close her eyes to calm Josephine once more. It had been a long time since she had to go through the breathing exercises that calmed her beast.

Josef cried out. Millie’s eyes snapped open in time to see Wylan advancing on him. Blood flowed from Josef’s arm and the scent of battle and danger filled every one of Millie’s senses. The cries of the baby, the burning house billowing black smoke into the sky, the prospect of battle…it was too much. The wyvern soul consumed her, drowning out the better sense of her human half until there was little thought in her mind other than protection from a greater threat.

Green scales bloomed along her skin, shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight. The wyvern soul claimed her so fast that it was like stepping from one piece of clothing right into another. In moments, the green wyvern crouched where she once stood.

She roared and Wylan turned to face her. Wylan crouched low, stepping through the opening in the wall. Snakelike, she slunk along the ground, circling Millie. Mille backed away. She wasn’t sure if it was her desire to protect the baby that drove the wyvern, or if the wyvern was concerned with Wylan’s safety as well. Normally she could control the beast, but not this time.

Wylan lunged at her, and Millie lashed out to meet her. Her talons raked across Wylan’s face tearing scales loose. Wylan roared and Millie was surrounded by searing flames. They bit at her, consuming her in an orb of dragon fire. She held her ground, sinking into her hind legs. Her forelegs, or arms, held her wings tight to her body.

She opened her mouth to let loose her own power, but strained to hold Josephine in check. She couldn’t blast Wylan with poison. The green dragon in her town had done that same thing to her…the green dragons had started the plague that had brought them to this point. She couldn’t poison Wylan.

As she readied another attack, the baby’s crying stopped, changed, and rainbow music flooded them once more. In her wyvern state, through a haze of fire, she saw rainbow light spilling across the hard-packed street, meandering over the rubble of the wall to ensnare Wylan.

Immediately, the red wyvern changed back to the girl and she collapsed on the street, tears streaming down her face, her body wracked with sobs.

The music-light eased toward Millie. She could taste the colors; she could feel the song within her very soul. The wyvern hummed with the power and eased to one leg, relaxing from its battle stance. When the light completely covered her, the wyvern vanished without any encouragement from Millie.

Millie went to her knees beside Wylan and pulled her into her embrace. Wylan accepted, latching her smooth arms around Millie’s waist. She sobbed harder, her shoulders shaking.

“Oh, awesome, you’re both naked. Am I dreaming?” Josef winked.

Millie rolled her eyes. “I remember you,” Millie said to Wylan. “I was there the night you were born.”

Wylan’s sobs eased.

“I midwifed you in Dulasan that night. I had no idea that you’d survived. How did you survive? Oh, I should have never assumed you were dead. I should have sought you out. I’m such a fool!”

Through tears, Wylan told her how she’d been found by water farmers, how they’d taken her as their own, raised her and loved her until the blue dragon came and destroyed everything.

“And you followed the baby’s call here,” Millie finished.

Wylan nodded.

“There’s something special about her for sure,” Millie said, looking at the baby. “The visions show her controlling dragons. I never thought she might have the same control over us.”

“But what is she?” Jose asked. “It can’t be a dragon tamer. Tamers haven’t been alive since…”

“The time the dragons vanished,” Millie said. “It is a strange time we live in, for sure.”

“We have to take them both,” Josef told Millie. “Wylan needs training, and this baby needs safety.”

Millie nodded. “Of course.”

Wylan pulled away from her. “No.” She shook her head vehemently. “The blue dragon is still out there. He has to be stopped.”

“And what will that prove?” Millie asked her, loosening her arms enough to let Wylan pull away. Wylan dashed her tears away and looked deep into Millie’s eyes. Millie shivered staring into the depths of her golden eyes, so much like a dragon. She couldn’t feel any dragon fear from this girl, but she could almost see a woman, clad in red scales, dancing behind those eyes. The wyvern soul. Josephine recognized the image just as Millie did. This one was going to be hard to learn to control.

“Dragons can’t be mindless. He will know what he’s done, and then he will die,” Wylan nearly growled. She was so sure of herself. “And then the rest of them will pay.”

“And you, a lonely girl that can’t control her wyvern soul, is going to do all that?” Millie asked her.

Wylan broke their gaze and didn’t say anything.

“You will never make it on your own,” Millie told her.

Wylan detached herself from Millie and crossed her arms over her naked chest. She blushed and glanced at Josef. Millie felt the girl closing in on herself, like she was shutting them out; not paying attention to what they said. Millie knew that given a moment, Wylan would bolt and try to take on the dragon on her own.

Josef must have sensed it too, because he saved the day. “So you want to hunt down this dragon?”

“Absolutely.” Wylan didn’t look at either of them.

“Then you’re coming with us, soldier,” Josef told her. “That’s what the dragon guard does, and I’ve just picked up a new recruit.”

“Do you have that kind of power?” Wylan wondered.

Josef shrugged. “This hasn’t really happened before, but everyone that comes to Darubai has a job, and if you’re a wyvern and want to fight dragons, then you’ve got a spot in the guard.”

Wylan gave a small smile that turned to a blush. She glanced back down at her nakedness.

“I’ve seen boobs before,” Josef said. “You get used to being naked around people when you’re a wyvern like us.”

“Sadly, it’s true,” Millie said. “Come on, let’s find some clothes.”

“Um, I hate to be a party pooper, but I think we have a bigger problem,” Josef said. His face had gone pale.

Millie followed his gaze and there, at the end of the street, a wall of mist rose. Millie could feel the power she’d felt before—the dead had come back to claim their town.

“Can we fly?” Josef asked.

Wylan shook her head. “I don’t know how to shift. The wyvern just comes when I get mad.”

“That’s normal,” Millie said. Wylan noticed how comfortable the woman seemed being naked. She wasn’t sure it was something she’d ever be comfortable with. Being naked around other people wasn’t normal…was it? What’s normal now? Wylan wondered. She’d been shut up in her parent’s farm for so long and her only interaction had been with her parents. Maybe things were different now.

“We could piss you off again,” Josef said. He didn’t take his eyes from the mass of ghosts forming at the edge of town.

Wylan didn’t want to look. She could only imagine what was happening. She would rather face the ghosts with some clothes on. Hell, she would rather stand before Josef with clothes on. She needed clothes. “I need clothes,” she said.

“We will get you some,” Millie said. She helped Wylan stand. “For the moment they don’t seem to be coming into town. Maybe there’s another way out?”

Josef handed Wylan her sword and a couple canteens that hadn’t been destroyed when she shifted. She thanked him, slung the canteens over her shoulder, and gripped her sword, as if that would help her fight off the ghosts. But even if she did know how to use them, she couldn’t imagine steel would be any use against spirits.

At the end of the street the ghosts parted, and a dark figure stepped forward. There was a chill to the air that Wylan felt the moment she laid eyes on the hag. She was shorter than the rest, not as translucent, and covered in tattered black robes. Tendrils of thin, white hair spilled out of her hood, and Wylan could just see the end of a knobby, hooked nose protrude from the darkness of her hood.

“How do you even fight ghosts?” Wylan wondered, allowing Millie to lead her from the scene and, thankfully, the hag. They couldn’t get out of town fast enough. Wylan accepted Millie’s help.

It felt awkward for her to have been accepted so quickly by these two. Where did they come from? It felt strange for her to accept help from two people she’d just attacked.

“You don’t,” Millie said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“Fire might help,” Josef said, glancing sidelong at Wylan.

“Fire wouldn’t help,” Millie said. “They may look like mist, but they aren’t. Spirits are trapped here, there’s nothing physical about them. Even destroying their physical bodies doesn’t help. If we had a black wyvern with us…”

“What do the blacks do?” Wylan wondered.

Josef shivered. “You don’t want to know.”

“They can control the dead,” Millie told her. “Black dragons can create or destroy as well as control the dead. The wyverns aren’t as strong, they mainly deal with spirits and the undead.”

Undead…A shiver ran through Wylan and she wished she hadn’t asked. She’d read about death magic before. In her books, bad people were often adept in necromancy, and she didn’t want to run into a black wyvern. She could almost imagine that they lived secluded lives in desolate mountain passes. They’d most certainly have dry, frayed hair, with white eyes and…she shivered again fighting the urge to look to see if the hag and her legion were gaining on them.

“Is there anything ghosts can do to us?” Wylan wondered.

Josef followed in their wake, carrying the baby. “It depends on how strong they are. If they are weak ghosts, like those trapped between worlds, they can’t make much happen in the physical realm.”

Josef handed the baby off to Millie and jogged across the rock garden to retrieve their bags. Millie had a hard time holding the baby and carrying her sword.

The baby started to fuss, and Millie tried soothing her. Wylan figured if the baby had worked so well with the energy to calm them, that the tumultuous energy of the ghosts would only further her aggravation.

Wylan glanced behind them, and breathed a sigh of relief that the crone hadn’t moved, and neither had the ghosts.

“I think the baby likes me,” Josef said, a smile playing across his lips as he they met him at the opening of the street Wylan entered the town through. “Millie, the midwife, losing her touch?”

Millie rolled her eyes and handed the baby back to Josef where she instantly settled back to sleep.

“We can’t keep calling her ‘the baby’, she needs a name.” Millie shouldered both of their packs, gripped her sword in one hand, and motioned them to follow her. The fastest way out of town, along the street they’d been following, was already blocked by translucent beings. Wylan refused to look directly at them.

“How about Kira Dragonkin?” Wylan suggested.

“Oh, like the dragon slayer from the series, right? I loved Amaranth, it sucked that they killed her all the time,” Millie said.

“Those bastards,” Josef muttered.

“Yea, it’s a good strong name,” Wylan said. “And considering what she can do in the visions…”

“I agree. Kira Dragonkin it is,” Millie said with a note of finality, as if any of them were going to argue.

“So we are just going to run away?” Wylan asked, fighting the urge to glance at the ghosts again.

“Yes, there isn’t much we can do against them. The longer they stay, the more they brew on their death and the anger that’s keeping them here…” Millie trailed off.

“Bad?” Wylan asked.

“Very,” Josef said.

Wylan eased away from Millie and led them down the streets toward the house she’d found her clothes in. Every street she gazed down Wylan saw misty banks of fog clogging the end. It didn’t look like there was any escape.

She pushed the thought from her mind as she turned into the house where she’d feasted. She stopped abruptly, a gasp frozen on her lips. There, around the table, sat three ghostly forms—a mother, a father, and a little boy. While they were opaque, Wylan could see their features were webbed with frost, as if they’d been caught in a freezing storm. None of the spirits looked toward them.

Millie took several steps into the house toward the table, but the mother continued to cut her meat, taking small bites. The boy continued to kick his feet as if nothing was out of place.

“They don’t see us,” Millie said. She waved her hand before the father’s frosty figure. He didn’t flinch.

“Trapped in some living loop,” Josef said. “Maybe they will all be like that.”

Wylan could only hope. She didn’t want to stick around this town longer than she had to. She grabbed Millie’s arm and led her down the hallway and to the closet she’d found before. She tossed the woman a pair of trousers and a green tunic. The clothes were a bit large on them, but they dressed, bound the pants tight around their waists and fastened their sword belts over their hips. They rejoined Josef in the dining room where he was poking his finger into the side of the mother’s head.

“Josef!” Millie cried. “What in the long desert are you doing?”

“What?” he tucked his hand into his pocket. “It’s not like she can feel it!”

“And could you?” Wylan asked.

“Yea, it feels almost spongy. I’ve never touched a ghost before. It’s like air, but there’s some give to it.” He trailed his fingers through her face. “Like I can feel her chewing…kinda. Strange.” He shivered.

“I think it’s stranger that you’re poking a ghost,” Wylan told him.

“We need milk, something for her to eat.” Millie ignored him.

“Um…” Josef looked around the house. “Where do you think we will find that?”

“When I first came in, there was food laid out for me,” Wylan said, pointing to the table.

“And you ate it?” A look of disgusted astonishment on his face.

“I was hungry…”

“Foul.” He groaned.

“Go see if there’s librak milk in there,” Millie ordered, taking the baby from him. “Did you take all of the canteens?” Millie turned her attention to Wylan.

“There’s some in here!” Josef called. “Damn, we need one of these self-replenishing houses.”

“Fill up a couple canteens with milk if you have enough,” Millie called.

“How do you think she’s been eating?” He asked.

Millie shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe she had a magic milk jug too.”

Josef appeared in the doorway and handed out canteens. There was only four and Wylan wasn’t sure which ones had milk in them.

“You don’t think that old crone had been feeding her from her wrinkled old teat do you?” He made disgusted face.

“Let’s just go,” Millie groaned.

But when they stepped into the streets they realized leaving wasn’t an option. The family in the house might not have paid them any mind, but the ghosts clogging the streets were all too aware of them.

The ghosts had surrounded the house. The townspeople all looked the same as the family dining behind them. They were ethereal, like clouds of the people they’d once been. Frost covered their features, spider webbed across eyes, blooms of winter chill along arms. Wherever Wylan looked, there was some indication that the ghosts had been exposed to extreme cold. One face was completely black with what Wylan could only imagine was frostbite. It was said some tribes in the Northern Mountains had suffered from such afflictions.

There was no evidence of the crone in black.

“I defer to your better judgement,” Josef said, slinking behind Millie with Kira, who was fussing again.

“Gee, thanks,” Millie said. She let her gaze travel along the crowd. “We will just be going now,” she told them.

None of the ghosts moved.

“Not just yet,” a wizened voice said to their right.

They turned toward the voice to see the stooped hag approach through the fog of ghosts. Her hood was thrown back, her white hair swooped up on top of her head in a messy knot where some strands of hair had fallen free. She shuffled forward, her wrinkled face in a grimace of pain, as if walking hurt.

“Wh—who are you?” Wylan asked.

The old lady drew to a stop before them, her black robe whispered to a halt around her knobby ankles. Amidst the folds of her dress, Wylan saw a long, gnarled wand that appeared made of bone. “I am Baba Yaga,” the crone wheezed. “What are you doing in my town?”

Josef peaked between the women. “Normally you greet guests when they arrive, not when they’re leaving.”

Baba Yaga made a sharp, strangling gesture at Josef, and his voice cut off with a high-pitched yelp.

“Whoa!” Wylan said, holding up her hands as Josef made choking noises. He pawed at his throat with his free hand and rose up to his tiptoes as if he were being lifted, or trying to escape the strangling might of Baba Yaga’s magic.

“We were just leaving,” Millie said. “We didn’t know this place was occupied.”

“But you took something that belongs to me,” Baba Yaga wheezed.

“The canteens?” Wylan hedged. “I’m sorry I ate the food, I was—”

With her free hand, Baba Yaga let loose a blast of blackened magic that tumbled Wylan to the side, near the spectral feet of the ghosts surrounding them. The ghosts began to churn anxiously, and Wylan had the feeling that if Baba Yaga wasn’t holding them back, the ghosts would have torn into her.

“The Baby,” Millie said. She took Kira from Josef, and held her protectively to her chest. Her other hand reached for her sword, but didn’t draw it.

“Ah, now you’re catching on!” Baba Yaga cackled.

“But she’s living,” Millie said. “You hold no power over the living.”

“Nonsense,” Baba Yaga said. “I hold sway over all the living, in the end. Some people’s ends just come sooner than they should…”

“And she’s to die?” Millie looked down at the baby in her arms. “I won’t let her.”

“She’s not to die, but she’s certainly of value to me.”

“Why?” Millie asked.

Baba Yaga only chuckled, a phlegmy wheeze of a laugh.

Wylan didn’t rise from the ground. She didn’t want Baba Yaga’s attention turned to her. Instead, she surveyed the area, thinking of anything she might be able to use to fight back the ghosts. What use was there? They weren’t physical. She couldn’t actually harm them. Or could she?

Her eyes were drawn back to the knobby, bone wand that hung from Baba Yaga’s waist. If this hag was controlling the ghosts, there had to be a way she was doing it, right? Wylan didn’t think her power over the dead would extend past the Dark Below. Maybe she was using magic? That made the most sense.

Baba Yaga finally spoke. “She was born of the ether. She was born from the discontent in the land. She’s mine!”

“Discontent?”

“Give her to me, or you will all die,” Baba Yaga said.

The ghosts shuffled forward, and that’s when Wylan acted. She launched herself at Baba Yaga, knowing she would likely pass through the specter, but she wasn’t aiming for a collision with the ghost, she was aiming for the wand that looked all too physical against the translucent hag.

Her hand gripped the bone wand, and it tore free from the ghostly energy of Baba Yaga. The hag laughed as Wylan tumbled through her and then rolled to her feet. “I’m not physical, you cow.”

“But this is,” Wylan said, holding up the bone wand. It was like ice in her hand and her wrist throbbed as if she’d dunked her arm in ice water. She tried not to show her discomfort, refused to show weakness before the hag. Webs of frost bit at her flesh. Where her blood flowed through, her hand felt as though it was being chilled to ice.

Baba Yaga’s eyes narrowed, and she immediately released her grip on Josef, who slumped to the ground, coughing and gasping for air. “You will give that back to me,” Baba Yaga commanded, holding her hand out expectantly.

All of the ghosts turned toward Wylan, wonder and awe showing in their dead, frosty faces.

“Now!” Baba Yaga said with more urgency, eyeing the ghosts.

“I don’t think I will,” Wylan said, circling around Baba Yaga so her back faced the closest way out of town. “I think this is your source of power, and when I give it back, you will likely kill us.”

Wylan could feel a glimmer of power within the wand. She could feel the tenuous thoughts of the ghosts that circled them, thrumming through the wand and down her arm with the cold of her bones. She could feel their dread at the sense of dragon power that surrounded the living people. Wylan could feel the brush of fear associated with white dragons, and she knew how these people had died—in a frozen storm of dragon ice. She could sense the desire for freedom, but the eagerness to please the one with the wand. But she didn’t have control of them yet, and how she would ever take control of them, she didn’t know.

“I will kill you regardless!” Baba Yaga held up her hand, and in the palm gathered a glowing, black nimbus of light. There wasn’t any time to waste. Wylan pointed the wand at Baba Yaga, and somehow it sensed her need, her desire to escape the town.

Along with the cold energy from the wand, another power slithered down her arm, like worms, or snakes slipping across her flesh; cold bodies leaving trails of slime in their wake. Wylan shivered with the power, and deep in the recesses of her mind she could hear words—foreign words to her, but words that could only be the language of the Dark Below. Words that would forever haunt her dreams with specters and apparitions too ghastly to mention. She saw a great skull loom up before her mind’s eye, crusted with dirt and blood. Deep within, bugs skittered and slithered.

Wylan screamed out with the horror of the wand, and it detonated. Lightning, blacker than anything Wylan had ever known lanced from the wand and collided with the nimbus of power Baba Yaga summoned. The nimbus exploded into a vortex of black and ghastly purple power.

Around them houses moaned with the release of energy. Sand and splinters tore through the air, swirling debris through the street, blasting back everything that wasn’t tethered down. In the distance, a house groaned and collapsed, adding its own rubble to the swirling power of the vortex.

Baba Yaga screamed, and her shriek was echoed in the mouths of the ghosts that filled the street. Their bodies stretched, lengthened, and streamed upward, pulled toward the vortex. An inhumane laughter issued from the swirling energy as Baba Yaga was engulfed in its power.

There was a concussion along the lightning into the wand. The power was so strong, so forceful that Wylan was blasted backwards. She hit the sand hard and slid for several yards. Her head spun, her limbs shook. The power of the wand whispered to her, and though she didn’t know the language, she knew what the wand was saying.

Come to me.

She dropped the wand in the sand. Moments before she blacked out she heard the thundering beat of dragon wings, and the shrieking bellow that reminded her of dragons and the destruction of home.

Wylan awoke suddenly when cold water splashed her in the face.

She sat up, coming face to face with a grinning Josef.

“Rise and shine,” he said. “We have to get out of here, and fast!”

Her arm throbbed as if she’d just pulled it from a block of ice. She had a hard time feeling her legs—they tingled and sharp needle stabs made her wince every time she moved. Her head felt as though it were filled with fog that every sound echoed through.

She shook her head, and the sandy dunes spun before her. She tried to lay down, but Josef gripped her arm, pulling her to her feet. Her legs sang with tingling jabs, and she gasped, falling against him, unable to feel her feet in the sand.

That’s when she got a good look around her. The long desert was full of roaming people, translucent like the ghosts had been. Unlike the ghosts Baba Yaga controlled, these ones were seemingly unaware of her. They milled about in various states of decay. The ones who still had eyes were vacant of any sight. The ghosts milled around without purpose, lost to torment.

She cried out and stumbled back away from the ghosts. Her legs burned with prickling sleep, and Josef caught her. The closest ghost glanced her way, its eyes glossed with cataracts, but seemed uninterested, and went back to its pointless wandering.

“Do you see them?” she wondered.

“Yea, a large clutch of dragons not more than a mile away,” Josef said.

“It isn’t safe here, come on,” Millie said. One hand tugged at Wylan, the other arm held the baby close to her chest. Her eyes weren’t looking at Wylan, or the ghosts gathered around them. Instead, her eyes were frozen with fear on something overhead, something large enough to cast a shadow over the ghost strewn desert.

“No…all the ghosts. You don’t see them?”

Millie glanced around, and then frowned at Wylan. “What’s wrong with you?” Millie tugged her arm again. “The longer we stay here, the more likely we will end up as food.”

Wylan shook her head again, but it made the ground around her spin, and she leaned heavier on Josef. He slipped the bone wand into her pocket and nodded at Millie.

They set out away from the ghost town, but not before Wylan saw the dragons.

It was an army of dragons—a storm of dragons larger than any clutch she’d ever read about. They streamed to the ghost town from all directions, converging on the settlement. Their wings blocked out the sun, like clouds covering the heavens casting shade on the roofs and the streets. Fire bloomed from the mass of dragons, and the town burned. Black smoke cascaded to the sky, bricks popped in the heat, and houses snapped. The sound of brick raining to the hard streets came to them like a pounding rain. Dust rose high in the breeze, streaming trails of gloom into the long desert.

Wylan stopped in her tracks, pulling Josef to a stop with her. She stared at the dragons, fury filling every fiber of her being. Her hands shook with anger as she remembered her home, blossoming in a similar fire, her father, half-eaten.

She reached for the pocket where Josef had slipped the wand. It had worked before on Baba Yaga, maybe it would work just as well on the dragons. She wondered if the blue dragon was among them, but did it matter? The dragons were there, and they were a pestilence that needed to be extinguished.

Wylan gripped the wand in her hand, and when she did, the ghosts around her suddenly noticed she was there. They turned her way, streaming over the dunes, their mouths opened in silent cries for release from their wretched existence. Rotting hands reached for her as if they might cleave the wand from her grasp and use it to open a portal to whatever afterlife waited for them.

Deep in the spirit realm, something else took notice of her, and she heard Baba Yaga’s cackle from far off.

Josef yanked her hand free from her pocket, and the wand came loose from her fingers, sinking back into her trousers. The moment her fingers left the wand, the ghosts went back to ignoring her, but she could still feel Baba Yaga’s eyes on her. She could still hear her distant cackle, and she knew before long, the hag would be on her no matter how far she ran.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to kill those dragons,” Wylan said, trying to yank away from him. She still couldn’t feel her feet, and the moment she was out of his grip, she stumbled.

“Do you hear this, Millie?” Josef laughed. “This girl thinks she’s going to take on an entire clutch of dragons all on her lonesome. Wylan, it takes at least two wyverns to take down one dragon. Even with that wand, you’d likely be dust before you got a chance to lift it.”

Millie shook her head. “You got that wand from a powerful spirit from the Dark Below…it can’t be good for you. And Josef’s right, there’s no way you can take them on and survive.”

“You were there, right?” Wylan asked. Their voices still echoed through her head. Just the conversation was enough to make her head spin. “You saw what the wand did. Do you think the dragons could live through that destruction?”

Millie shook her head losing patience. “No, I don’t think they could. However, I also know you wouldn’t make it through wielding that wand one more time even if they didn’t destroy you on sight.”

“What do you mean?” Wylan asked, her gaze finally breaking from the dragons and settling on Millie’s face.

Millie nodded to Josef, who drew his sword with one hand and held it up before Wylan so she could see her reflection in the tempered steel.

She didn’t look anything like herself…she looked like a shadow, or a dream, of what she had been. Her hair had faded to gray, her eyes were no longer golden, but shadowed yellow pools. Her skin was washed out and pallid; her lips cracked and gray. She raised her hands before her face and stared, stunned. It wasn’t her own skin—she was covered in red scales. She flexed her hands remembering when she’d transformed. She didn’t feel the scales at all, but there they were, like ruby gloves covering every inch of exposed flesh. But why didn’t her face show the transformation?

:It’s me,: the voice from before spoke into her mind. :The wyvern…your wyvern. I’m Lissandra.:

What? Wylan thought, shaking her head. The wyvern didn’t answer.

She ignored the voice and glanced back into the sword, but all she could see was her pale features. When she looked down again, her arms and hands were covered in blood-red scales, her fingers tipped with black talons.

“I’m changing,” she said.

“What?” Josef asked, sheathing his sword.

“My face looked normal in the sword, but I’m covered with scales wherever I look!” Wylan brushed at her arms, but she didn’t feel a difference there.

“That must your wyvern soul,” Millie told her. “But to us, you look like a ghost.”

“What’s happening to me?” She asked. “I’m seeing ghosts you can’t see; I hear Baba Yaga coming for me, and now this?”

“Baba Yaga?” Millie said. “I thought she was dead.”

“She’s always been dead, Millie,” Josef scoffed. “I doubt a little blast from a wand is going to end her existence.” He shuddered.

“We don’t have time for this, talk while we walk,” Millie commanded.

They started walking, slowly at first because Wylan couldn’t get the hang of walking without being able to feel her feet. In time, it became easier for her, though she still hesitated, worried that she would fall flat on her face and Baba Yaga would catch up to her.

“What is Baba Yaga?” Wylan asked. “I’ve read so many different things.”

“She’s a hag,” Josef said. “She’s a more powerful being of the Dark Below. She’s able to control spirits, and she has a lot of influence over humans while she’s in the human realm. There are supposedly three of them, all sisters with the same name.”

“You sound like a text book,” Millie muttered.

“Did you just call me smart?” Josef asked. “Thanks!” The grin he shot at Millie nearly consumed his face, and his blue eyes danced with mirth.

“I don’t know if I could ever be accused of calling you smart.”

“Do you think she did this to me?” Wylan asked.

“I don’t know,” Millie said. “It’s like you’re here, yet at the same time not. Like a ghost.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Wylan asked. Her hands shook and she felt a strange uneasiness in her stomach. What if she was trapped like this forever? Somewhere between living and inside some dimension of the Dark Below where Baba Yaga could hunt her forever?

“Oh yea, this happens all the time,” Josef gestured grandiosely. “I bet even now there’s at least twenty people in Darubai all possessed by Baba Yaga. You could probably start a club or something when we get there. ‘Baba Yaga’s Monkeys’ sounds like a good name.”

“No,” Millie said.

“Well, I thought it was a good name, but you all can decide on one for yourselves.”

“No this isn’t common. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with something like this,” Millie said.

“I’m sure it has something to do with that wand,” Josef said. “It’s like it linked you in some way to the spirit realm.”

“Likely that conflict with Baba Yaga,” Millie said.

Josef nodded. “And if you were partially in the spirit realm, that would explain why you can see scales. When you look down you’re seeing your wyvern soul. When you look in the sword—something that’s physical and tied to the physical realm—you would see your human body.”

“And that leads me to the question of what kind of wand that is,” Millie said. “That’s very powerful for a wand.”

“And what’s it made of?” Josef wondered. “Most wands can’t release that kind of power, and if they’re forced to, they will be completely destroyed in the process. Your wand is still whole.”

There were more questions than answers, and Wylan barely had a mind for just walking. Her head spun with all the questions. She glanced behind her, wondering where Baba Yaga might be, but all she could see were the hundreds of spirits that slunk around the Dar Desert, lost in their own torment.

The dragons still converged on the ghost town, and now it was little more than a burning heap of rubble. It was the first time she’d gotten to see how some of the towns she’d foraged through with Cuthburt had come to be destroyed. She’d known dragons had done it, but knowing something and seeing it firsthand were completely different.

She wasn’t afraid of going after the dragons. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to take them out. She knew an attack like this was precisely what happened to her home in Dulasan before her parents found her. She’d seen one dragon make this kind of destruction at her home as well. Her hand itched to take hold of the wand and end that storm of dragons now. But what the others said was true. If she did that, there was no telling the consequences it would have. She was partially in the spirit realm now, that she believed. If she let out another blast from the wand, would she then be fully in the realm of the dead? Would it kill her, or would she walk the realm as some kind of creature that she didn’t have a name for? Would she be like the undead in the long desert?

For a moment, Wylan didn’t care. If it meant putting an end to the blue dragon who’d killed her family, then she would do it. But the words of the rainbow lady came back to her. Kira was going to help her, that had been the promise she’d made for Wylan coming to save her from the ghost town. She’d seen what Kira could do in her dreams; she’d felt some of that very power within her when the baby had soothed her wyvern soul and eased her from her shift.

Still, the power of the wand called to her like a lump of frozen stone in her pocket. The frosty power hummed against her leg, whispering commands for her to take up arms and drive those dragons into the Dark Below where they belonged. When her hand twitched toward the wand, she pulled it away, remembering how Baba Yaga had felt her more strongly when she’d gripped the wand.

What she was afraid of was Baba Yaga, and whatever was happening to herself at that precise moment. If she drew the wand again, she knew Baba Yaga would have a more concrete fix on her. She also knew touching the wand would draw the attention of the numerous ghosts that filled the spirit realm that overlay the long desert.

To kill that many dragons, she would have to use the wand, and that wasn’t something she wanted to do…at least not at the moment. And what if Josef and Millie were right? Would the dragons see her before she had the chance to strike? It was better for her to bide her time and plan a better attack. She didn’t care if she died in the process. But if she were to die, she wanted to take dragons out with her.

Even now she was worried the dragons might see them. They weren’t far enough from the dragons that the wyrms couldn’t see them. In fact, Wylan wondered why the dragons hadn’t spotted them, or come after them. Were they truly that focused on destroying the town? And what had drawn them to the town anyway? Was it the release of power from the wand? Had they also felt the call of the baby? Did they have similar visions that told them to come to the ghost town and protect the baby with their lives? If so, why were they torching the village?

Wylan was dizzy, and she didn’t want to think any more. The sounds of their feet shuffling through the sand sounded miles away to her. Josef’s arm, warm and protective, around her waist felt as though it came from a great distance—she could feel all of it, but almost as if it were a living dream. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep, but she couldn’t.

“I should attempt to get the Kira back to Darubai,” Millie said. “They will be expecting her there.”

“That’s a good idea,” Josef said. “But you might want to wait until the dragons clear out.”

Millie nodded. “Wylan looks like she could use a break.”

They stopped so that Wylan could rest. She didn’t know how long they’d stopped, or if she’d slept, but long before she was ready to head out again, Josef was pulling her to her feet and they were trudging on.

The day passed in a haze. Wylan slowly became more and more aware of the spirit world around her than she was of the physical world. Was she dying? Had the wand poisoned her with some kind of deathly sickness? Was Baba Yaga working her magic and pulling Wylan farther into the spirit world where she could polish her off and take the wand back?

She studied the ghosts, wondering what they were doing. Did they have a plan? The way it looked, there was no plan for them, they simply shuffled here and there, caught in some kind of dark dream only they could see. Many of the ghosts had been tethered to that plane for a long time, their features showing the signs of rot their bodies must have felt decades before. Were they all like her? Was this what she had to look forward to if Millie and Josef couldn’t figure out how to get her soul anchored to her body once more? Had these ghostly wanderers gone up against Baba Yaga and failed? Had they won a small victory, only to be cursed because of it?

“It was stupid to take the wand,” Wylan said. “Stupid. I should have given it back.”

“It would have been more stupid to give it back,” Millie told her. “You did a brave thing to save us. You saw the only option that could possibly help, and you latched on to it. You could never have known what would happen.”

“Yea, don’t be so hard on yourself. Millie will do that for you in time. At any rate, I’d rather be cursed to the Dark Below than deal with Millie for any length of questing. We will figure this out,” Josef said. There was a note in his voice that told Wylan he didn’t truly know if there was any way to fix what was happening to her.

“You sure about that?” Wylan asked.

Neither of them answered. She changed the subject.

“What brought the dragons?” Wylan asked.

Millie shrugged, her eyes drifting down to the baby in her arms. “It could have been a number of things. Maybe there were a few flying around and they saw us.”

Josef snorted. “It wouldn’t have taken that many dragons to do us in.”

“Maybe they were drawn to the power of the baby,” Millie suggested.

“Or the wand,” Wylan offered up.

“Or the wand,” Millie said. “We should be far enough away from them by the time the sun sets so that we aren’t worried about an attack.”

“Still, we shouldn’t light a fire,” Josef said.

However, when night came, Wylan could still hear the thunder of wings and the cry of dragons close by. Either they hadn’t made it as far as they wanted to that day, or the dragons were following their trail. Wylan wondered now if it wasn’t Kira the dragons looked for. She had definitely put out some kind of signal for the wyverns to feel, did the dragons feel it too? Wylan agreed with Millie, the baby belonged in Darubai. But the baby had promised her that she would help kill the dragons. When was she going to help? Was there something she needed in the imperial city first? Millie and Josef should just leave Wylan and get the baby to Darubai so she could do whatever she had in mind to kill the dragons.

I’m holding them back, Wylan thought. She shouldn’t have come with them in the first place. Maybe if she hadn’t come with them she would have avoided all of this with Baba Yaga, and she would have been able to hunt down the dragons once they’d left the city.

But she was too tired at that moment to keep her eyes open, let alone think of taking on dragons. How long had it been since she slept? She couldn’t really remember. The last night Cuthburt and she had been in the long desert before getting home…

Thinking of her father and mother wasn’t something she wanted to do in her current state, so Wylan curled up in the sand and drifted to sleep.

She was woken later, when true night had fallen, by Josef offering her a hunk of raw meat. She squirmed away from the meat, revolted at the thought of eating something that hadn’t been cooked. But the wyvern soul—Lissandra she’d called herself—had other thoughts about raw meat, and in a dizzying shift of perspective, the wyvern soul bubbled to the surface, pushed Wylan’s reluctance aside, and devoured the meat.

When the raw salamander was fully consumed, Wylan lay back down and fell fast asleep.

It felt like she’d slept for a full day, and when Wylan woke again, there was no trace of sand or a camp. She was alone, and her friends had left her.

Wylan was lost.

Even worse, Wylan wasn’t anywhere she’d ever heard of in the long desert. The land around her was hard and cracked. Puffs of smoke billowed up between the cracks in the land, and on occasion she could she light flickering from the depths of the bigger chasms. Here and there tangles of skeletal brush sprouted up from the ground, parched and looking as if one soft touch would crumble them to ash.

Wylan glanced around, wondering if she’d ever read of a place like this before, but she hadn’t. Had she finally lost herself to the spirit world? Was this what the ghosts ambling through the long desert saw? If it was, where were the other ghosts? Could they see one another while they ambled in torment? She certainly couldn’t see any of them now.

The more she looked around the barren wasteland the more she became certain that she was trapped in the wretched limbo those tormented souls had been.

Though she couldn’t feel heat or cold in this place. Wylan shivered at the thought that she was so far removed from her physical form to not feel discomfort. She wrapped her arms around herself, noting that they were her arms and not the scales of her wyvern soul. A stiff wind tugged at her shifting gray robed, and strewn tangles of her black hair from her face.

She could still feel the bone wand in a pocket, though she no longer wore what she’d worn in the physical world.

The moon hung high overhead painting the land an eerie blue. The land was so devoid of sound that Wylan could hear the thunder of her heart roaring in her ears and worried that it would attract unwanted attention.

But she didn’t know what attention it would attract. As far as she could tell, she was the only living creature within miles—if she still lived at all. Was there any other attention to draw? She thought so. She felt eyes on her, though there was no telling where they came from. There were no mountains of trees for creatures to hide in. She could see in every direction around her, and what she saw was nothing. Just land, parched brush, and blue luminescence.

Where were Millie and Josef? Where was the desert? More importantly, where was she? She needed to get back to them, but how? If she truly were one of those ghosts, she would have manifested in the same spot they made camp. She couldn’t see it though. She tried not to recall that the other ghosts in the long desert hadn’t seen her until she’d gripped the wand.

Was the wand the key? She reached for the pocket of her robed, and moments before she gripped the length of bone, a sound rose behind her.

“Give me the wand, and you can return to your friends,” the voice said.

Wylan spun around and there stood Baba Yaga. She didn’t look the same as she did in the living world. Here she was in all of her glory, in her own power. She was a giant of a woman, easily standing twice as tall as Wylan. She rested within a giant black cauldron, and in her hands was a broom she held as if using it as an ore to row herself over the parched land, or through the clouds above. Her hair was unbound, and hung around her waist in glowing white locks healthier and beautiful than Wylan would have guessed from seeing her in the physical world. Her eyes were lit with emerald fire. The hand she extended to Wylan, urging her to give the wand back, was wrinkled, knobby, and covered with warts. Her robe was as black as the lightning the wand had discharged, but it didn’t shine. If anything, her robes drank in the blue light of the moon.

Wylan took a step away from her, only then realizing she held the bone wand.

“What is this?” Wylan asked, her voice holding more courage than her quaking figure felt.

“It’s mine!” the hag snarled. Spittle bubbled between her lips as she gnashed her teeth.

“It’s made of bone,” Wylan said.

“And if you don’t give it to me, I will make another one from your bones. I would really love a fire wand.” Baba Yaga eyed Wylan critically. “But you’re a wyvern. I’ve never made one from wyvern bones. Probably much weaker than the dragon bones, but I would make a solid effort.”

“So it’s a dragon bone,” Wylan said in wonder. Her eyes drifted over the length of the bone wand. It was rounded at the wide end, and filed to a near point on the other end. If it could withstand the blast that sent Baba Yaga here, it certainly would hold up to a sword, or even able to skewer a person with…or maybe a dragon.

“That’s obvious,” Baba Yaga said. “Now give it to me. I tire of you and will have the wand back one way or another. If you’d like to live through this encounter, I suggest you do as I say.”

“And you used this wand to get into the physical realm?” Wylan wondered.

“No, I used one of the huge holes in the ether to enter. Dragons are back, young lady, and that has allowed for all kinds of things to happen that haven’t happened in years.” Baba Yaga cackled, a shrill sound among the fragile silence of the parched land. “I dare say that humans will find themselves on the losing side of living.”

“What kind of things?” Wylan wondered.

“Are you not in the slightest bit scared of me?” Baba Yaga asked.

“Oh, I’m terrified of you,” she confessed, “but I also realize you want this wand, so it must hold vast power for you. I saw what it could do, and I’m hesitant to give it back, but I may be persuaded if you tell me more about these holes in the ether.”

Wylan had called her bluff. As long as Wylan held the wand, she had the advantage. She’d already acted faster than the giantess had in the living world, and it was likely she could do it again if the need arose. Baba Yaga chewed her tongue, her cheeks puffing out as she chuffed in anger. If Wylan wasn’t nearly fainting in panic and terror, it would have been funny. She figured laughing at a giant hag was a bad idea, though.

“Fine!” Baba Yaga roared. She crossed her arms over her chest with a huff.

“What are these holes in the ether?” Wylan asked.

Baba Yaga glared at her as if she hated the thought of answering any of her questions. She glanced at the wand held at Wylan’s side and sighed again. Wylan was aware that the giantess was going through many motions she wouldn’t normally have just to secure the wand. For that reason, Wylan wanted to ensure that Baba Yaga didn’t get the wand back. If she wanted it bad enough to answer questions, Wylan could only imagine what Baba Yaga had in mind for it.

“The dragons weren’t supposed to come back,” Baba Yaga said. “They left the land ages ago, never to return.” In the distance, a howl rose in the dead air. Wylan glanced in the direction the howls came from, but she tried not to look concerned. “I will have that wand back one way or another. My hounds are coming.”

Wylan frowned, but tried to ignore the implications. “What do you mean, they weren’t supposed to come back?”

“They took an oath to the arch-mage Andraal, and he placed powerful magics around the Dar Desert, ensuring they would stay out. Many magics, many souls, and a lot of blood went into binding the dragons within the mountains.”

“I never read anything about this pact.” The howling came closer, impossibly close for the amount of time that had passed since they last sounded. There were many hounds coming. Wylan hoped she had her answers before they showed up. She wanted nothing more than to toss the wand at the hag and flee, but where was she going to go? If this really was the same place she’d been partially damned to before, then this was the precise place her sleeping body rested in the long desert. Fleeing would only take her farther from where she wanted to be—back in her body.

“And you wouldn’t have. This was secret. He didn’t want anyone to know about the spells that might be able to interfere. Once the spells were in place, they would hold forever, or so he thought. Certainly he made sure the wizards died out so no one could tamper with his magic. But, as with all things, time takes its toll, and the magics became weak.”

“Are you saying Andraal killed the other mages?” Wylan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How much of this was true? She couldn’t be sure. This was a powerful being in the Dark Below, could she honestly be trusted? It was completely possible that she was biding her time for the hounds to show up. In the distance, Wylan thought she saw dark shapes moving, and she hoped it was only her mind playing tricks on her.

Baba Yaga smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “But the dragons came back, brought here for a purpose.”

“And what’s that purpose?” Wylan asked.

“Do I look like a dragon?” Baba Yaga asked. “How am I to know? I do know that the dragons wouldn’t have come back to the Dar Desert without great reasons to do so.”

“And they came back through the weakening wards?”

Baba Yaga nodded. “They came through the weak wards and tore holes in the ether that keeps dimensions from leaking into one another. Mind you, they aren’t great, but I dare say many things that have long been thought dead will start arising once more.” She cackled again. “A most terrible time to be human.”

“You’re lying!” Wylan roared.

“Give me that wand!” Baba Yaga snarled, taking a step forward, her hand swinging out at Wylan.

The hounds were there in a flash. Great hulking beasts with blazing green eyes. They growled, surrounding the two of them, their nostrils sending out puffs of smoke every time they barked.

Wylan acted before she could stop herself. She raised the wand, a scream of terror on her lips. The black lightning of the wand blasted Baba Yaga in the chest and launched Wylan backwards. This time when she landed, it wasn’t ground she hit, but her body.

Her soul thundered into her physical form, and she gasped awake, sitting straight up.

Millie yelped and sat up beside her, Josef moaned and sat up rubbing sleepy eyes.

“What happened?” Millie asked.

“She’s going to kill me if she finds me again,” Wylan mumbled, her head dropping into her hands.

“Who is going to kill you?” Millie asked.

“If she kills you, will I be able to sleep?” Josef mumbled.

Wylan ignored them both because just then, staring around her, she noticed one thing was missing—the ghosts. She looked to her hands and didn’t see scales. She was fully back in her body. The voices of her companions didn’t sound as if they were coming from miles away, her head didn’t feel filled with fog, and she didn’t see ghosts surrounding her, waiting for her to grip the wand so they could converge.

“Who is going to kill you?” Millie asked again.

“You’re looking better,” Josef mumbled, and flopped back down.

“Baba Yaga,” Wylan said. She told them about what she’d been through, in the land of the dead, facing off with Baba Yaga. But more importantly, she told them what she’d learned about the wand and the dragons.

“I refuse to believe Andraal killed the other mages,” Millie frowned. “The stuff about the dragons I believe, but not that.”

“One guess why they came back,” Josef said.

“You mean the baby?” Wylan asked.

Josef nodded.

“I don’t believe that either,” Millie said.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Josef scoffed.

“For good reason,” Millie countered. “The baby was just born; they came back eighteen years ago.”

“But she was born from the ether,” Wylan told her. “Maybe they’d felt her power building for a while.”

Millie bobbed her head as if she didn’t believe it still, but she entertained the possibility. “Barring any other good reason, I guess that’s as good as any.”

“And wands made from dragon bones?” Josef whistled.

“That’s what’s interesting me,” Millie said. “We know that many parts of a dragon are magical. Their scales can entrance, they have power, their meat helps heal as well as strengthens the body, and their blood can be used for any number of potions. It’s surprising to me that we’ve never considered their bones.”

“And with all the colors, there’s a lot of things that can be done,” Josef agreed.

“So Josef can call water,” Wylan said, “I’m fire. Black wyverns are death magic. What can you do?” she asked Millie.

It was Josef who answered. “Millie is a green. Her power is poison.”

“And healing,” she interjected, almost as if she didn’t like associating with the poison side of her abilities. “Most powers have an opposite that we can control as well. I breath poison and illness, but I can also control those to a certain extent.”

“Nowhere near what a dragon can,” Josef said, looking down at the baby. She’d been asleep nearly since they left the ghost town.

Millie nodded. “Yes, dragons can control their powers much better than us. Size isn’t the only difference.”

“Okay, so what can the other colors do? If black can work with death, does that mean they can also stop death? Can they restore life?” Wylan was almost terrified of the answer. She wasn’t sure if she’d be more comfortable around someone that could grant life as well as death. What kind of responsibility would come with that?

“No,” Millie shook her head. “They can kill, yes, but they have to be very strong to do that. I’m sure there are black dragons that can snuff life out like that, but I don’t think even they can bring people to life.”

“Why can’t they bring life?” Wylan asked.

Millie seemed to be thinking of the best way to answer. “I think it has to do with calling energy back across the veil of death. There’s nothing I can adequately compare it to. Death is different, it changes everything about the person. The moment you die, the body starts to break down, and there’s no way to repair a dead body. Everything stops. If a black were to restore life, it would only be a fragment of life, it wouldn’t be a thinking creature, it would depend on the strength of the black wyrm and completely under its control.”

“Almost like the ruins of a town can’t ever be the same?” Wylan wondered.

Millie shook her head. “Not even that. A town can be repaired. Life can go on around it and eventually things will return to normal. There’s no returning to normal for a corpse.”

The thought chilled Wylan. She didn’t want to consider what that would be like. “Okay, what about the others?”

“Well,” Josef said, “there’s an entire list. You have yellow dragons who can divine the future and purple who can control storms. Then there are the rare ones like the ice dragons, the black dragons.”

Wylan was happy to hear the black dragons were rare. “Are there others?”

“Gray dragons, but I’ve never seen one of them,” Josef said. “Millie?”

Millie shook her head. “We haven’t seen any gray wyverns either.”

“And can you control your powers when you’re not in wyvern form?” She asked.

“Not as strongly, but yes,” Millie confirmed.

“We will teach you more about what wyverns can do tomorrow,” Josef said. “For now, can I just get back to sleep?”

Millie yawned and nodded her head as if she thought that was a good idea. She lay back, and Wylan lay down as well.

“But this information will help us?” Wylan asked.

Josef growled.

“Yes, Wylan, you did good. Now go to sleep.”

The day was too bright, the sand too warm, and Wylan’s companions too chipper. She wished the birds could sing a little quieter or that the water Josef summoned was a bit less refreshing. How could all of these things be so perfect when there was so much death all around? It was as if the entire world didn’t know what had happened a few miles away. Her parents were dead, and all Josef could talk about was how Sandy-what's-her-face used to smile so sweetly when he brought her lemon cakes early in the morning.

“I’m pretty sure that was a grimace,” Millie said.

“Not at all, she loved lemon cakes,” Josef argued.

“But not before the sun was up!”

“Wait…you and her are friends, right?” Josef asked, suddenly unsure of his previous assessment.

“Yes, and she said you were sweet, but she hated that you woke her up every morning, even if you were carrying lemon cakes!” Millie laughed at Josef’s anguished look. “Poor Josef, unable to conquer Sandy.”

“What about you, Wylan?” Josef asked, noticing she’d been rather sullen that morning. “Do you like lemon cakes?”

“Leave the poor girl alone,” Millie defended her.

“I’ve never had lemon cakes before,” she told him. “You know, with growing up on a farm, scraping by for everything we had in the wake of dragon fire.” It was a little snippier then she’d have liked, but she didn’t feel like sugarcoating anything.

“Well, you have to try them,” Josef said, slinging his arm over her and giving her a wink. No matter how sullen Wylan was, his clear blue eyes and his half-smile brought a smile to her own face.

“I swear to the Great Above, Josef, if you bring me lemon cakes as early as you brought them to Sandy, I will skin you alive,” Wylan warned him.

“That’s the wyvern soul talking, right?” Josef appraised her with a cocked eyebrow.

Wylan shrugged. “Do you honestly want to test that theory?”

Millie laughed.

Josef grumped something under his breath and went back to trading barbs with Millie about how she wouldn’t find someone to love unless they wound up on her operating table.

Wylan ignored them.

Even with as blinding as the sun was, the purple swirl of stars that marked the Great Above was easily visible in the sky. It was thought that’s where the spirits of the righteous went when they died. Wylan didn’t know who could be deemed righteous now, the gods had forsaken the long desert centuries ago. Who was to judge if someone was righteous? Still, she liked to think that’s where her mom and dad were now, together, happy, and among departed friends. The thought didn’t make her feel any better. As far as she knew, they hadn’t had any friends. Could they make some now that they were dead?

It was all foolish to consider. Wylan jammed the thought away because it seemed too much like a fairytale. Fantasy to make one feel better about death. Most likely there was nothing after life, why else would life be so hard down here? If there were gods and good spirits, wouldn’t they interfere a bit more with the everyday life and make things a little easier?

:You’ve had a run-in with ghosts and beings from the Dark Below, and you doubt there’s more happening under the surface of life?: Lissandra asked her.

:Is there?: Wylan asked her. :Do you know that there’s something more?:

The wyvern didn’t answer. Wylan grumbled at her.

But if there was an afterlife, wouldn’t her parents have come to her in a dream to let her know they were all right? They hadn’t, and Wylan wasn’t sure if she was angry at them for not showing themselves to her, or if she was angry with herself for hoping that there was such a thing as life after death.

She would avenge their deaths. Josef had offered her a means to that end.

A soldier, that’s what Josef had said. She wanted to fight dragons. She wanted to kill dragons and that’s the future she was being offered. A way to make a stand, a way to fight back the plague and make the Dar Desert safe again, or at least safer. It would provide her with a way to find the blue dragon and with the means to kill it. She wasn’t sure if dragons were sentient enough to know what they’d done, but she sure hoped it understood who she was when she killed it.

But when was that to happen? She had to learn control of her wyvern soul; she had to deal with weapons, and there was a hint that she possessed magic, if what Josef and Millie said was true. She’d seen Josef call water from deep beneath the sand that morning so they could freshen up before traveling. If he could do that in human form, couldn’t she deal with fire the same way?

When was she going to do all of this training? Millie and Josef said that she would start learning about the wyvern soul today, but so far they’d said nothing more about it. She growled inwardly at the wasted time. She wanted to be in Darubai, learning all of these things. Instead, they were out here…walking.

It wasn’t like they could fly, though, the dragons were still too close. Wylan had the unsettling feeling they were being followed, but for some reason, the occasional dragon that glided high above them seemed not to notice their passage through the endless sand.

Even earlier that morning there had been a rather large clutch of dragons that had swirled around, hovering above their location. They’d all thought they’d been found, but the dragons only hung in the sky a few moments before heading off.

Worst of all was the damned soul within her. It spoke to her, but not of what mattered, it wouldn’t help her shift, or even show her how to do it. In all honesty, Lissandra didn’t seem to do much but sleep. If she could evict the damned thing, she would. A lot of good it was doing her. Most times it just upset her stomach when she felt it roil about.

It made an already long trip seem that much longer. When would all of this traveling end, and she would finally learn what she had to learn?

Wylan was beginning to understand why it was called the long desert. They had been walking for what seemed like hours and hadn’t seen any signs of another ruined town. She’d at least been right when she told Cuthburt that they were running low on options. If only she’d thought of it sooner, she might have gotten them out in time…

But that still wouldn’t have saved them. They’d still have been taken by the plague. But maybe dad would have survived.

She had a sense of how big the desert was when she’d gone out with her father to scavenge for supplies. Walking, however, gave her a better sense of just how massive and unforgiving the land could be.

Three of the canteens carried milk, so water was in short supply. Pair the lack of water with the shifting sand and it didn’t take long for her shins to burn. She lagged behind the other two frequently, trying to ease the paralyzing throb in her legs. Wylan wanted to sit and massage her legs, but Millie wasn’t giving any ground. She wished her wyvern half could have granted her some kind of strength, but apparently that’s not how it worked. It was a stroke of pure luck that Josef was a blue wyvern and was able to call water from deep within the land. When it bubbled to the surface they drank. While they were able to drink it was nowhere near enough to sate her thirst and it was often riddled with sand. At least it was enough to keep them going.

It was during one such rest that her mind was put to ease about when training would start.

“Shifting isn’t all that hard,” Millie told her as Wylan lay back in the sand. “It will be harder for you because reds are often more temperamental and fiery—excuse the pun. But if you want to eat out here, you either need to learn to shift or you need to know how to hunt.”

Wylan didn’t know how to do either.

Josef interjected, “Or you need to be able to eat raw meat.”

It grossed Wylan out how her stomach churned in hunger at the thought of bloody meat gnashing between her teeth.

“Don’t like that idea?” Josef smirked. The revulsion must have shown on her face. “Just tear into the blood tissue with hands and teeth.” He made the motion and Wylan blanched. He laughed at her, patting her shoulder.

“I assume you can feel the wyvern soul inside of you,” Millie asked as if Josef hadn’t interrupted them. “It may have already given you a name.”

“Yes,” Wylan said, “Lissandra.” At the moment, though, all she could feel were her throbbing legs, and she willed them to stop, wished that Millie would do something to heal them…if that would even work. Could she heal sore muscles? Would that be like asking her to mend a scrape? Wylan was too embarrassed to ask.

Millie pressed on. “The main issue with the wyvern soul is that it is wild and largely untamed. It’s our duty to tame it so it answers us when we call to it.”

“Is that why is only seems to come out when I’m afraid or mad?”

“Yea,” Josef said. “High emotion appeals to the wyrm. Imagine having sex!”

Wylan shuddered.

“Good Spirits, Josef, shut up,” Mille threw a handful of sand at Josef who shielded the baby and laughed. Sand showered Wylan too, but she didn’t bother to brush it off, she was too focused on her legs. “The wyvern will always be called to high emotion. We have to learn how to suppress the beast when we experience intense emotion and we also have to learn to control it when we need it, but don’t have the emotion it likes to feed on.”

“What about magic?” Wylan asked. “You can heal in human form, and Josef can do watery things…what exactly can you do besides call water?”

“There’s lots of things!” Josef said.

“Name one,” Millie challenged.

“Well, I can also dehydrate things as well as hydrate…”

“Fascinating,” Wylan said.

Millie smiled but continued. “Magic will come in time. It’s easier to learn, but I’d like you to learn to shift first so we can fly!”

“Yes young salamander, learn to walk before you run…or something.”

“If the dragons ever stop dogging us,” Millie mumbled, looking up as a winged shape cast dancing shadows over their resting spot.

“Well let’s get to work,” Wylan said. The sooner she knew how to control the wyvern soul; the sooner she could go after the blue dragon. When she thought of the blue dragon, the wyvern soul shifted uncomfortably inside of her and indigestion swirled through her guts. She burped and fire bloomed out of her mouth like a thin wisp of smoke.

“Oooo, your wyvern likes that idea!” Josef said.

“Or she’s going to rebel,” Millie told him. “Reds are notorious for being stubborn.”

Millie walked her through relaxation exercises. Wylan was unsure what they had to do with the wyvern. If the wyvern reacted to high emotion, wouldn’t she want to be stressed or angry? It took longer than she’d expected to fully relax. All she kept thinking about was the wyvern soul and how much she wanted to use it to shift and get to Darubai where she could learn to fight dragons. Many times she had to repress the sensation as it made her tense along with the soul inside. Even excitement wouldn’t help; it was the opposite of relaxed.

When she finally felt the relaxation through her muscles, she told Millie.

“Alright, you feel the wyvern soul inside of you,” Millie said.

“Yes.”

“It is different than anything you’ve ever known. Wyvern react to high emotion. What emotion brings it out in you?”

Wylan didn’t have to think about what brought the wyvern soul to the surface, it was clear to her. “Anger.”

“Typical red,” Josef said.

“Good. The wyvern wants something from you, what is it? It’s likely to be associated with anger.”

“To kill the blue dragon,” Wylan said.

“No, that’s what you want. Sometimes it’s the same, but you have to be sure. What does the wyvern want?”

Josef’s voice intruded. “I doubt it’s something as singular as killing one dragon. If it wanted to kill all dragons, that might sound more like the wyvern soul, at least it would be a larger desire. To kill one dragon sounds like you.”

“He’s right,” Millie said. “What does the wyvern want?”

Wylan didn’t know. All she could think about was her anger and what she wanted most. What did the wyvern soul want? She tried to reach the Lissandra and feel what she might want, but the wyrm was balled up tight and wouldn’t open to her. Wylan sighed. She knew this was going to be tough, but why did it have to be impossible?

Something of her frustration must have shown on her face, because Millie stepped in on her practice. “Don’t worry if it doesn’t come to you right away. When you know what it wants, then you can come to an agreement.”

Josef interjected, “For instance, mine wants safety from the dragons. I joined the military and that allows me to protect.”

“Safety from dragons?” Wylan wondered, opening her eyes. “Why would a wyvern want safety from dragons?”

Millie cut in, “Wyverns are often hunted down by dragons. They see us as impure half breeds and seek to destroy us.”

“What does yours want?” Wylan asked Millie.

“Coincidentally, mine wants the same thing I want—to help those who’ve suffered from the plague and to raise a healthy generation of whelps. I vowed to the wyvern that, whenever possible, I would never leave another in need as I left the people of Dulasan the night the dragons returned.”

Dulasan. The night the dragons returned was the night Wylan was born. Millie had been there. If she hadn’t left, what would have happened to Wylan? I wouldn’t have met Kethill and Cuthburt, she thought and her adopted parents had meant everything to her.

When she thought about Dulasan, she felt revulsion. It was as though she could remember the night she was birthed. Dragon’s screaming outside and a women saying Wylan was a monster and to get rid of her.

Millie changed the subject. “What does the wyvern soul want?”

“I’m trying to listen, but all I can think about is how I want the blue dragon dead,” Wylan said.

“And the wyvern won’t answer you when it thinks you’re using it as a weapon,” Millie told her.

“What do I have to vow? How do I promise things to my wyvern?”

“You have to mean it,” Millie said. “You have to mean it, and you have to strive for it, and it has to be something the wyvern agrees with. Josef changed his path from minstrel to soldier, and I’ve dedicated my life to rearing the whelps and helping in the hospital.”

“So it’s like a life path?” Wylan asked. “And as soon as I learn that, I have complete control?”

“Well…” Josef said. “Not specifically. There are times when you will have to fight with the wyvern. Like in the ghost town when you attacked me, my wyvern wanted nothing more than to face that challenge and tear you apart.”

“What stopped you?” Wylan asked.

“Well, you’re much bigger as a wyvern than I am…of course, most people are. The other reason was the tight control I had on it.” Josef smiled. “And I couldn’t see tearing apart a woman as gorg—”

Millie cleared her throat to shut him up. “Control comes in time. First is to know what the wyvern wants. At any rate, rest now before we start out again. Stretching isn’t a bad idea.”

Thankfully Millie laid her hands on Wylan’s legs, and the pain melted away in a rush of soft green light. Then stretching was exactly what Wylan did. She liked stretching exercises before and she thought it would be a great way to ease her mind as well as her screaming muscles. She couldn’t be sure how long she stretched, but when she was done, she felt limber and ready to face the next trek. She settled back on the sand by Josef who had just cleaned the baby with water he’d brought to the surface of the sand and was trying to get her to take another bit of milk.

“Do you have children?” She asked.

Millie chuckled.

Josef rolled his eyes at her. “Sadly, no woman in my life to get child-like with.”

“Well, I think you’d make a good father.”

“Are you saying you wanna have my children?” Josef asked, mockingly hopeful.

“Oh, here we go…” Millie walked away from him.

“No…I mean…well I mean you’re not unattractive—”

“I think she likes me!” Josef winked at Wylan. “She says I’m pretty.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

Wylan blushed and turned away, a laugh bubbling from her lips.

Millie scoffed and returned. “What would Marcella say?”

“For the hundredth time, Marcella is not my girlfriend!”

“Who’s Marcella?” Wylan asked.

“A bitch,” Josef mumbled.

“And if she heard you calling her that?” Millie crossed her arms over her chest.

“What? It’s not exactly a surprise to her that she’s a bitch.”

Millie and Wylan laughed.

“All I’m saying is that Wylan is pretty and she thinks I’m pretty too!” Josef seemed rather proud of the fact.

“Oh come on, she’s half your age! She’s a child,” Millie said.

Wylan and Josef both argued with her then.

“She’s not half my age—”

“I’m not a child, I’m eighteen!”

“SEE,” Josef crowed triumphantly.

“You’re impossible,” Millie told him. “Wylan, be careful of that one, he goes through women like dragons go through towns.

“I’m just saying that she’s a pretty woman,” Josef said.

“You would chase after any woman who could walk and talk,” Millie said.

“Well, I wouldn’t really have to chase her if she couldn’t walk, right? And besides, there are many fine women who can’t walk.”

“Or talk,” Wylan pointed out.

“Exactly. See, she gets me,” Josef said. His eyebrows shot up. “It’s like we’re of one mind! This could be fate, you never know.”

Millie tossed her hands in the air. “Just finish feeding the baby so we can go.”

While Josef finished feeding the baby, Wylan argued with Millie about learning to control her magic.

“I’d rather you learn to commune with the wyvern soul every chance you get,” Millie said.

But Wylan knew something about Millie just talking to her. Millie wanted safety for the baby, that’s why she was so eager to get back to Darubai. It might not have been nice of her to do, but Wylan played on that.

“Well, if you teach me to use my magic, and Josef teaches me to use my sword, then we will have more protection if something happens. I’d be able to help protect the baby.”

Millie sighed and shook her head. “Fine. But you’re going to be tired and wish you’d taken the chance to rest.”

Already Wylan couldn’t wait for the next rest. She attacked the sandy dunes with more determination than she had before. She saw each shifting step as one step closer to facing the blue dragon and overcoming it. As they traveled, Millie put her through all kinds of mental exercises to the point that when they took breaks, Wylan found herself dozing off. More than once that day Millie had to wake her to continue their journey.

Millie figured a softer approach to the wyvern soul was to just feel it, as if Wylan were petting the wyvern with mental hands. Lissandra seemed to enjoy that often opening up more to her when she did. She could only imagine a napping dog rolling on to its side so she could scratch its stomach.

After that, the wyvern didn’t close up to her as much and she stopped feeling so negative about the beast that lived within her, refusing to help her. She told Millie of the progress.

“It’s because she feels you now,” Millie said. “She feels that you’re not using her, that you care about her.”

“Are all wyvern souls the same gender as their human?” Wylan asked.

Millie laughed. “Yes, they are. The wyvern soul can’t change your gender when you shift.”

“That would be awkward,” Josef said.

“Yours still talks to you?” Wylan asked Millie.

“Yes,” Millie told her. “She talks to me frequently. Sometimes I think I might be crazy because I have this other presence in my mind that I can communicate with and seek guidance.”

“Huh,” Wylan said. “At least I have that to look forward to. I was afraid that once it opened up to me that we would be kind of one mind.”

“Well, kind of. You might find that your disposition is a bit fierier than normal, but no, you will be two minds.” Millie looked at her. “Let’s try working with your fire. It’s not linked as heavily to the wyvern soul and it is a tool, so you can use it without placating it.”

“I don’t even know how to start with that,” Wylan said.

“Well, that’s where I come in. It’s surprisingly simple. You can still feel your wyvern soul, right?”

Wylan could feel the soul. It wasn’t as tight against her now. She hoped whatever they were going to try wouldn’t cause Lissandra to retreat behind her scaly mind. She nodded.

“Good, that’s all it takes. If you delve deeper, you can feel the fire it harbors. Try it.”

“Just plunge my mind into her?” Wylan asked.

“Yep,” Millie said. She tore a small swath of cloth from her trousers and sat it on the sand before Wylan. “You’re going to burn this.”

“That’s it?” she asked.

“That’s it, for now.”

While they had been traveling, Wylan had gotten used to reaching out to the beast without having to close her eyes or do any kind of mental exercises. She reached down with her mind, her eyes trained on the cloth, though not fully seeing it. She was seeing other things that existed deeper within her—darkness, scales, another pulse of thought and power.

She reached out to the wyvern soul, her intentions clear; it knew what she wanted, and it didn’t close up. If anything, Wylan felt the soul open more to her, spreading open its scaly arms and welcoming her in. She got the feeling that this was a test. The wyvern wanted to see how she would command the fire, how she would use it, and for what purposes. When the wyvern soul realized she was just training to use the fire, it seemed uninterested.

Lissandra existed in fire and anger. Wylan could feel the need to destroy within the flames, and it scared her even as it empowered her rage toward the blue dragon. She could feel the heat, she could almost see the flames that churned through its blood, fueled its mind. Heat surrounded her, and it wasn’t the heat of the day, it was fire forged in dragon power, in the wyvern’s soul.

“I—I think I have it,” Wylan said.

“Great!” Millie said. “Now, hold the fabric in your mind, direct the fire into it. The fire will build in your hands, and then it will jump to the fabric at your command.”

Wylan looked at her hands. “Will it hurt?”

“No.” Millie smiled.

Wylan held her hands before her, and willed fire to conjure there. The wyvern soul obeyed. Heat swarmed up her torso, around her breasts, and down her hands. Her fingers glowed, and moments later, flames wreathed her hands.

She gasped, afraid that her amazement at calling the fire would extinguish the magic, but it didn’t. She willed more power into her hands, and more fire came until her hands were consumed in crackling flames that danced fitfully in the air. Wylan focused her attention on the cloth a few feet away, took aim, and—with her mind—pushed the fire toward it.

The fire flared around her hands, thousands of licking, biting tongues of fire. Her hands blackened, and she screamed out in pain. The fire raged higher and crept farther up her arms. It was consuming her, burning her.

Before she had time to react to the mounting pain, Josef doused her flaming hands with a caress of his water magic. Millie came to her, placing her hands over Wylan’s and willed green, healing magic from her own hands and into Wylan’s.

Wylan watched as the green energy surrounded her hands and then melded with her charred flesh. Her skin itched mercilessly as the healing swept through the fissures and cracks and bound it as a whole. The flesh lightened from charred black to gray and then finally to whole skin once more. It took a little longer for her screaming skin to ease and for the pain to abate.

“You focused too long on your hands,” Millie said. “Let the power build, but focus on the cloth, not your hands.”

“I got carried away with my power when I first used it too,” Josef assured her. “But my power is water, so about the only thing it did to me was give me really dry skin.”

Wylan stared in shock at her hands. She didn’t want to try her magic again, but not using the magic meant that she was taking steps away from killing the blue dragon. “I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt.”

“It normally doesn’t. You got a little carried away,” Millie said.

Wylan shook her head, as if she didn’t believe her. While the pain was gone, it still lived in her mind, her nerves screamed as she thought about the crackling flame. She didn’t want to live through that pain again.

“Again,” Millie said.

“I…I don’t know if I want to,” Wylan confessed.

“Mistakes happen,” Josef assured her. “And if you go up in some towering inferno, always know I'm here to drench you in water, and Millie can heal all that charred skin.” He winked at her.

“That…doesn't really help,” Wylan said, trying to hide the blush that flushed her cheeks. She scolded her churning stomach, and from the depths of her mind a rumbling laughter answered her unease.

:Glad you’re finding this funny,: she scolded Lissandra.

“Just try,” Millie said. “Focus on the fire, and focus on the cloth. You can let the energy build, but you have to be aware that you’re giving it a direction other than your body or it will start to work on your hands. If it knows there’s another destination you’re going to let it consume, then it will not harm you, it will wait to destroy once you’ve given it lease to.”

Had that been what her mother had felt? The flames crackling over her skin, eating at her flesh, spilling her fluids onto the couch? She shook her head. Why did her power have to be fire, when so much of her life had ended in fire?

She opened her mouth to protest, but Millie covered her hands with her own. “I know it’s hard, but you have to learn to control this power. It could save lives. Your power won’t be used to destroy, but to protect.”

Wylan nodded and plunged into the wyvern soul once more. The fire came easier this time, and it wreathed her hands, orange and flickering. Wylan wasn’t sure how to give it direction, so she focused her eyes on the cloth, letting the brown cotton fill her mind as she pushed more fire into her hands. When she thought it was enough, she mentally cut off the flow of energy. All of the fire left her hand in a stream of flame, licking the cloth and searing it to ashes.

Wylan hooted in joy and this time the flame did vanish. It was the first time she’d felt proud of herself since her family died, and no amount of dragons flying around above them could vanquish that joy. It was puzzling to her that the very power that had destroyed her mother and her home could be the same thing that offered her a way to destroy the blue dragon.

“That’s amazing!” Wylan shouted, a thrill of excitement filling her chest.

Millie nodded, smiling. “Pain is a good motivator. Now, let’s try something else. See that boulder over there?” Millie pointed toward a boulder not far away. “This will take a bit more power, but I think you have the hang of it.”

“What am I doing to the boulder?” Wylan asked.

“Pushing it away,” Millie told her.

“With fire?”

Millie nodded. “The fire can blast as well as kindle. With enough force, you can push things, but most things will catch fire before they ever move.”

This time she didn’t have to think hard about the fire at all. She touched the wyvern soul and called for the fire, and it wreathed her hands. Once more Wylan focused on the boulder with the intent in her mind. The fire was sluggish in coming, like it knew she wanted to push the boulder away, and so it required more strength than merely kindling cloth.

When Wylan was certain she’d let the fire build enough, she cut off the flow of energy.

The fire flared, converged between her hands, and sped toward the boulder. It smashed into the rock with enough force to tumble it a few feet away. It rolled to a stop, charred and blackened from the dragon fire.

“What?!” Wylan shrieked. “How?” She laughed then, a smile spreading across her face. It was nearly impossible for her to believe that she had actually done that, controlled her power, used the fire of the wyvern soul. She was more tired than she thought was possible. It truly felt as if she’d pushed the rock physically, and that exertion drained her. Still, she was too overjoyed to let the tiredness overcome her.

“Yea, that was all you,” Millie said. Her smile widened and it was one of the prettiest smiles she’d ever seen.

“Why is it so easy to use the magic, but not merge with the soul and shift?”

“You call that easy?” Josef laughed. “You threw a freaking rock! You have to feel tired after that.”

“Well, yea,” Wylan said. “But I mean why is it so easy to call the power?”

“Because the wyvern knows you are going to use the fire. It’s different using a power you share and using the wyvern’s form as a weapon. They wyvern understands its fire is a weapon, but it doesn’t like being thought of as an object to its human half. When you fully understand what the wyvern wants, then it will be there any time you need help.”

“Any time?” Wylan asked.

Millie nodded. “Any time, unless you’re doing something it doesn’t agree with. We haven’t run into that issue much.”

“Can I do it again?” Wylan asked, eyes wide with shock. She pushed away the tiredness and focused again.

“Go for it!” Millie gestured toward the rock. “Try more power this time. See if you can push the rock over the next dune.”

“Don’t be surprised if you faint,” Josef said.

“Will it get easier, the energy play? Will I eventually be able to do these things without tiring?”

“Eventually,” Josef said. “It’s like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes and the less force you have to exert.”

The next dune wasn’t that far away, and it wasn’t that high. She felt another power from within her swell up, and her mind stirred awake. She didn’t need to explore to know that Lissandra was bolstering her, feeding her some of her power to strengthen her mind and limbs. The wyvern stayed with her for this small task, lending her strength where she had little.

“This will be a good lesson in control,” Millie said.

Wylan judged how much power she would need. She reached down to the soul, gathered the fire, felt it swirl up her body in a rush of near-blistering heat to gather around her hands. When the fire raged with what she thought would be enough power she let it loose in a series of fireballs.

The rock jettisoned over the next dune and as it spun Wylan could see that it was completely black from the force of her fire.

“It’s as easy as that?” Wylan asked.

“Easy as that.” Millie crossed her arms and appraised Wylan with joy in her eyes. “It feels amazing doesn’t it?”

“Yes!” Wylan laughed and stared at her hands, hardly believing the fire had come from her. She rubbed them together, expecting them to hurt or feel dry and cracked, but something had protected her from the blistering heat this time. She could only imagine it was the wyvern, as Josef said would happen.

:Thank you!: she said to the soul.

Lissandra seemed to purr and a rumble of acceptance shivered within her.

“But what I don’t understand is why it’s so easy,” Wylan said. “I thought magic would take a lot more to control.”

“You’re thinking of wizard magic, which does take a lot of training,” Millie told her. “Our magic is just another tool for us to use. It will tire you until you’re used to using it frequently, but it’s there for us to use.”

Wylan nodded. She figured that made sense. Still she was a little dismayed—even while she rejoiced in the ability to use her magic so well—that it wasn’t a little more esoteric.

“Do you want to rest?” Millie asked.

“Nope,” Wylan said. Lissandra was still offering her strength, and it was the most alive and awake she’d felt in days. “Am I going to work with the fire more?”

Millie chuckled. “We can do that later. For now, I think it would be best if we tried to get some distance in before we make camp.”

Wylan was too tired that night to learn anything about weapons use with Josef. After he’d hunted for her, and she ate her fill—once more, thanks to Lissandra’s love for fresh meat taking over, she didn’t have to think about eating—she lay back in the sand, and waited for dreams to find her.

Millie curled up to her left and Josef to her right. They had made a sandwich of her. The nights in the Dar Desert were cold, and she radiated a kind of heat from the wyvern soul that the others used to warm themselves. The first night it had seemed odd, but she felt how content the wyvern felt within her, almost as if it nested among family. Wylan soon got over any discomfort she had. That night, she hoped the nearness of friends would help ease her mind, but it didn’t.

The sleep she sought didn’t come. Instead, Wylan thought back on the day. Her muscles ached and her mind was tired, but she couldn’t fight back the nagging sense of how she almost seemed to act normal, as if she hadn’t been through the worst trauma of her entire life just a couple days before. Most of the day she hadn’t thought about her parent’s death, and it worried her, made her stomach surge and her mind reel that she could be so heartless that she didn’t think about them.

They’d died, and here she was, acting like it hadn’t happened. Acting like she was on a grand adventure with nothing behind her. No matter how she tried to shake the thought, she couldn’t. She knew that sleep would help clear her mind, but that wasn’t happening. She shimmied her way out from between Josef and Millie and stood some distance away from them. The bone wand was a heavy weight in her pocket, though it didn’t really seem to weigh anything. She’d strapped her sword to her side. It was dangerous in the desert with Baba Yaga hunting her and the dragons roaring not far away.

What was she even doing with these two? She was heading in the opposite direction of the dragons. She needed to head toward them, not away. She knew all of the arguments—if she went to Darubai and learned to fight dragons, she would stand a chance against them. She could be part of something bigger, keeping the lands safe from dragons. But at that moment she didn’t care about the long desert or the dragons, she only cared about the blue, and it was likely the blue was with the crowd of dragons not far behind them.

Crossing the long desert with Millie and Josef was taking forever, it seemed. Without being able to fly, she was holding Millie and Josef back from achieving their goal—getting Kira behind the safety of the city walls. More than that, she was wasting her own time traveling and training when all it would take was one lucky shot.

Mind made up, fueled by the need to kill the dragon and the burning sorrow of forgetting her parents for the day, Wylan picked her way around the camp, careful not to wake Josef and Millie.

The baby cooed at her, as if to say she was making a mistake and not to go. Wylan already knew if the baby truly wanted her not to go, she could force her to stay.

You were supposed to help me, she thought scathingly. Fat lot of help you’ve been.

The baby cooed again, but Wylan ignored her. She trudged through the sand, putting more and more distance between herself and the camp. She wondered what the other two would think when they woke and didn’t find her. Where would she be by then? Would she have already made it to the dragons? Did the dragons sleep at night? Was there a chance that she could sneak up on them and kill at least one before they woke?

The keening roars in the distance told her otherwise. If they were sleeping, there were at least some that were still awake. Maybe she could sneak past their lookout and take out the blue…if it was with the group at all.

She felt a twinge of regret that she was leaving Josef behind. The thought of him and how he seemed to lift her spirits—even if in a mildly annoying way—was enough to stop her in her steps. She turned toward camp, imagining that she could see his shadowy form watching her, but it was a figment of her imagination. That was a life she couldn’t live while the blue dragon drew breath. If things were different, she would gladly have pursued him, despite what Millie said about him being a scoundrel.

But she couldn’t think about what might have been. She turned her mind back to the task at hand, and to other times to help fuel her anger instead of her regret.

She thought of her mother’s librak pudding and how it clung to her tongue with sweetness. She thought of long nights by the fire reading her favorite adventure novels, knowing that in the morning she was going to be too exhausted to help her father on the farm. She remembered how Cuthburt would let her sleep in on those days, knowing that she’d been up late reading and he didn’t want to wake her.

She’d never have that again, and it was the dragon’s fault. Wylan was faced with a new life that she didn’t choose, no matter how much she’d wished for adventure. This wasn’t the life she wanted—running from dragons, stuck with strangers learning how to protect herself in a hostile world. She wanted more than anything to be back on the water farm dreaming about adventure. In all of those adventure stories, she’d never felt the pain of the characters. The books never talked about the sorrow that came with adventure. They made it seem beautiful by exploring strange cultures and lands and being part of something bigger. That’s what she wanted to feel, the sense of awe that she felt with her books, not the terror she felt with every leg of their journey.

Maybe she could have that with Josef. He seemed attracted to her, unless that was just him making fun of her. There was no doubt in her mind that she was attracted to him. She shook her head. Not that again. Stop thinking about him. It’s best to forget him completely.

A throaty chuckle to her left stopped Wylan dead in her tracks. Was it Baba Yaga? Had she somehow found her way out of the Dark Below to hunt her again? Now more than ever she was aware of the heavy weight of the bone wand in her pocket. While it weighed nothing, the power of it weighed on her mind much more. She should have left it behind so the hag couldn’t track her…but what would that have done to the others? What if she needed it again?

To her right several yips and barks answered the first call. The barks dissolved into high-pitched giggles. Wylan’s legs were glued to the sand. Her muscles tense. Her breathing ragged and sharp in her chest. Her hand jerked toward her sword. She hadn’t trained nearly enough to know how to use it.

How hard can it be? Stab with the pointy end, slash with the sharp edges, right?

Another yip and more giggles wafted out of the darkness toward her. She could see the glow of eyes surrounding her. All of her bravado faded. There was certainly more to using a sword than that. She was grossly outnumbered. Fear hammered in her chest. She was alone, and she was without weapons. She took a step back, her muscles fueled by the fear that raged through her veins.

Her other hand twitched toward the bone wand in her pocket, but she refused to use it—not after what happened last time. Resolutely she pulled her hand away from the wand and retreated another step, until a yip sounded behind her.

Wylan spun around. Everywhere she looked, eyes surrounded her. The dragons sounded off in the distance, and Wylan knew that she would never reach them—they’d never know that she’d been coming for them because she faced hyenas, and she was likely going to die in the encounter.

She drew her sword. It felt heavy and clumsy in her hand. She shifted it a few times, trying to decide how best to hold it to fight the hyenas off. The beasts sensed her unease, and began circling.

There was no use in trying to keep them all in sight at the same time, it was impossible and when she had her back turned, the hyenas advanced. The circle closed more and more on her.

Wylan reached for her fire, the one thing she’d been able to control that day. But the fire was sluggish in answering. Her mind was already tired, and the fire responded to her tiredness. It was like working with a muscle soar from too much strain. Her head throbbed, and the fire responded in fits and starts, working its way up from deep within her.

She felt the wyvern soul waken clumsily to her tired call for fire. The wyvern gave her enough strength to summon the fire before drifting back to sleep. Wake up! Wylan thought, her fear making the call shiver through her. The wyvern stirred, but didn’t waken. How in the long desert was she supposed to fight when her other form slept? Was that something she’d learn with control?

She pushed the thought from her mind, it wasn’t helping her now as it was.

She summoned fire to her hand, but it fizzled out, her fear vanquishing the fire before it could even get started. She tried to call it again, but the hyenas were too close, she had to act. She could see the steam rising from their nostrils and she lashed out with her sword. She’d put too much into the swing, and when she missed, it knocked her off balance. She fumbled to the side, and barely pulled to a halt before she crashed into the ring of hyenas.

One darted forward, gripped her arm in its teeth, but before it could do any harm, a blue wyvern head lanced out of the darkness, and snapped its spine in two.

The other hyenas scattered yipping and crying in fear as they fled.

Lissandra chose that moment to wake up and shrug her power through Wylan. She gasped feeling the rise of the dragon power, the unfurling scales that slipped beneath her skin. When Lissandra realized there was no longer any danger, she settled back into the depths of the human form.

Wylan jerked to her feet, her hands smoothing down the front of her tunic. She picked up her sword, and with shaky hands, sheathed it once more. She cleared her throat, trying not to look shaken. She tucked her hands under her arms and stared at Josef as if she hadn’t been trying to sneak away to kill dragons.

The wyvern let out something of a chuckle, and motioned back to camp with his head. He shifted back into his human form, and Wylan tried to ignore his incredibly naked body. Was it just her, or had the night just gotten really hot? Even as she fought the urge to look at him, she couldn’t help notice how firm his body was, and how his blue eyes caught the light of the Great Above. The purple light from the stars played over the sharp angles of his face and nose, making his full lips appear softer than they should have been.

She cleared her throat and tried to calm her roaring heart. The heat in her face refused to leave.

Despite the awkwardness of his complete lack of clothing—and her complete lack of will at ignoring it—Wylan felt safer and at ease. She even felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She hated the fact that he had to come to her rescue, but not so angry that she wasn’t thankful he’d saved her life.

“Get lost doing some late night walking?” he asked, winking at her, which only increased her discomfort.

“Yea,” Wylan said. “Had a lot on my mind.”

“I bet, good thing you woke me when you left.”

“Does Millie know?” Wylan asked.

“She woke when I left,” Josef told her.

Her stomach churned at the thought of facing Millie with such a feeble lie.

“Better get all the exploring out of your system before we get to Darubai,” Josef told her. “There’s not a lot of places to walk, unless you like climbing mountains.”

“Never tried it,” she said.

“Well, I love it. We could go sometime.”

Wylan nodded, but didn’t trust her voice to answer.

But all thoughts of Josef, his nakedness, his invitation to climb mountains, or all of his winking vanished when she returned to camp. Millie was waiting for them with a glare that could have frozen fire. It certainly chased the heat from her face and stilled her racing heart.

“Did you get lost?” Millie asked. Her voice told Wylan that she didn’t believe that for a moment.

“Yea,” she said.

“Amazing that you walked in a straight line and were able to get lost…”

“I hadn’t turned around yet,” she said. “I was just getting ready too when the—”

“You were running off to kill dragons.” Millie stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “You would have gotten yourself killed. Don’t lie to us, we aren’t dumb.”

“I’m not?” Josef asked with a smile. It melted as soon as Millie turned her frosty glare on him.

“If that’s the route you want to take, have at it, but don’t put us in danger when we have enough danger as it is. If you hadn’t noticed, we are carrying precious cargo that could turn the tide for all humanity in this struggle. If you want to act a child and focus on your stupid vendetta instead of helping everyone else, don’t burden us with your presence.” She turned her back on Wylan before she could respond, and hunkered back down to sleep.

Wylan, however, didn’t think she’d be sleeping much that night. She knew facing Millie was going to be rough. Even if the woman hadn’t been mean to her before, she’d always gotten the sense that Millie wasn’t someone she would want to cross. Her stomach churned, and anger thrummed through her veins. She struggled to defend herself, but she had been trying to sneak off, and anything she said at that point would only make issues worse.

Embarrassed, she lay down in the sand. Josef curled up close to her for heat, and rested his arm around her. Despite it feeling awkward to her human soul, the wyvern soul churned contentedly and settled back to sleep. She wasn’t sure what he did to her, but peace and calm flooded through her almost the instant he wrapped his arms around her, and soon she was drifting off to restful sleep.

Why didn’t she answer me? Wylan wondered.

:Because you aren’t trained yet,: Josef’s familiar voice sounded in her head. She stiffened at the intrusion.

:You can hear me?: Wylan thought.

:You’re nearly screaming your thoughts. Try focusing on me, and speak softer in your mind.:

:Like this?:

:Still kind of like trumpets,: he said. There was a sense of a wince that traveled down the thread that connected his mind to hers. :Just think like you’re talking to me. It’s like using your voice, but not so much like thinking.:

It took a few minutes of changing her way of thinking, but eventually she got the hang of it by picturing Josef in her mind and imagining that she was just talking to him.

:This better?: she asked.

:Perfect. I wasn’t sure if you had that particular ability or not. Some wyverns can speak mentally, but not all.:

:Can Millie?: Wylan wondered.

:Not often, it takes a lot for her to mind speak,: Josef said. :We would have found out with you once you reached Darubai and were tested.:

:I’m sorry,: Wylan said, putting all of her sincerity behind her thoughts.

:Don’t be. I can understand why you did it, but please don’t die on me. Let us train you so you might live through an encounter with a dragon.:

The weight behind his words, the unspoken plea to not die so maybe they would have a future together wasn’t lost on Wylan. Her mind churned worse than ever before wondering what in the long desert she was getting pulled into. This was the last thing she needed right now, no matter how much she wanted it.

During breaks the next day, Millie ignored Wylan and only answered direct questions, and even then her answers were short and to the point. There was no sense in Wylan continuing the lie that she’d simply gone off to clear her mind. Millie had seen straight through it.

Josef didn’t seem any different toward her. Through the day he communicated to her through the mental voice he’d taught her to use the night before. Wylan was grateful that he wasn’t speaking out loud—she wasn’t sure how Millie would react to their conversation. She got the feeling that Josef was as scared of Millie as Wylan was at that point. For a green wyvern, she was rather testy. Maybe if red wyverns had a fiery side, then greens had a toxic side? Millie was in good control of her wyvern soul, though, so wouldn’t she be able to control her anger as well?

Unless she truly doesn’t care how she affects me. Wylan understood Millie being angry, but she thought maybe she was going a bit too far with her reaction.

Wylan didn’t speak to Millie the rest of the day, until night came and she braved talking at camp.

“Wouldn’t it help to learn more about my wyvern?” Wylan asked

“Yes, it would, but I don’t think you’d find me very helpful tonight,” Millie said. “It would be best if Josef taught you to use that sword.”

She did, however, join them a few feet away to watch the progression Wylan made with the sword. Wylan’s thoughts were filled with how she’d nearly betrayed them the night before, and how she would give anything to have Millie back working with her again, have her trust and her care. Maybe it would come in time, but while Wylan felt bad for what she’d done, and wished Millie would talk to her again, she wouldn’t have changed what she’d done. Given the chance, with more training, she’d go after the dragon again.

Ultimately she needed to kill the blue dragon. Wylan wasn’t sure it was her job to make Millie understand that. Nor did she feel she needed to explain her actions. Millie and Josef had their own task, and that was getting Kira back to Darubai. She owed nothing to them, and hadn’t known them long enough to feel she needed to repay their care.

“Have you ever used a sword before?” Josef asked, pulling her from her own thoughts.

“No,” Wylan said. She hoped that meant he was going to take it easy on her.

Josef stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the ground a few feet away. Great, just what she needed, the distraction of his perfectly toned arms, the sweat trickling between the gutters of his abs, the…

Focus! She scolded herself. Once more Lissandra chuckled at her and she growled at the wyvern.

“Is that something I should do too?” She smirked. “Is strutting around shirtless part of the training process?”

“Oh, by all means!” Josef spread his arms wide, his lips splitting into a grin. “That would certainly make this more interesting.”

Wylan chuckled and made a rude gesture at him.

Josef laughed at her. “If you’re going to be a soldier, you’re going to have to know a thing or two about weapons. Have you used any before?”

Wylan shook her head. “I thought it’d be a lot easier to use…”

“Like you were using it last night with the hyenas?”

Wylan didn’t answer him.

Josef laughed. “Guess that’s answer enough.” He stopped and turned toward her. “If you were hoping I’d take it easy on you, you’re out of luck. I feel the best way to learn is by jumping in, both feet, and see how deep the water is from there.”

He launched at her with a flurry of attacks. Wylan barely had time to get her sword up and block his blows. Most of the time she managed to deflect his sword. The only concession he gave her was by attacking with the flat of his blade. Still, flat or not, her arms and legs throbbed from where he struck her.

She cried out when a blow took her in the shoulder, her arm tingling and numb from the attack.

“Maybe go easier on her?” Millie spoke for the first time, rocking the baby in her arms.

“No such luck,” Josef said, stepping back. “If you’re worried, you could make yourself useful and channel-heal her.”

Millie sighed and sat the baby in the sand so she could watch them as well. The baby had a huge smile on her face, and whenever Josef looked at her, she would giggle.

:Look, someone who agrees with you!: Lissandra said, and chuckled when Wylan blustered some kind of intelligible response.

Green energy bloomed to the surface of Millie’s skin, giving her a sickening look. The nimbus of light drifted from her hands, snaking across the ground to pool at their feet. Wylan could feel the warmth of her healing energy spreading up through her legs. Where it touched, the pain of Josef’s previous attacks vanished. In fact, if it was possible, her legs felt better than they had since starting the adventure with the two wyverns.

Soon Josef and she were surrounded in an aura of green energy.

“Why did you do me too?” Josef wondered.

“She’s a red wyvern. I bet before long she’s going to get pissed and cream you.”

“Hmmph,” was all Josef said before launching at Wylan again.

This time was harder for Wylan to keep up. Her arms were tired, despite the healing energy that surrounded her, and her feet fumbled over drifts of sand as she tried to get away from his attacks. But now when the flat of his blade struck her, it stung, but it didn’t throb. She could feel the healing energy rush over her skin to the sore spot and moments later, the stinging was gone.

She was panting and tired before Josef let up. She sagged to her knees, sweat sticking her shirt to her skin. Her black hair was soaked, and the ground seemed to dance in time with her racing heart.

“How are you going to fight dragons like this?” Josef taunted, dancing away from her. He was sweating as well, but he didn’t seem to be out of breath like she was. She dragged her gaze from him and eased to a crouch.

Wylan couldn’t stop—not now. She used her crouching position to launch at him, her blade swinging down when she reached the apex of her jump. Josef hadn’t been expecting it, his eyes went wide and he got his blade up in time to block her blow. There was strength behind it. She could feel the wyvern soul rising to the surface, drawn out of hiding by the prospect of a fight.

Josef’s sword rang with a dull thrum through the evening air. He gasped as the vibration reached his wrist, but he held firm. Now he was the one on the defensive. Wylan hammered at him with all she had, her sword crashing down time and again on his blocking sword. Josef merely moved away from her, he didn’t flash his sword around to parry attacks, because there was only one attack, her downward stroke.

When he had enough, he kicked her backwards with the sole of his foot. Wylan tumbled away from him, her ass planting firm in the sand.

Millie was laughing. “The red rears its ugly head.”

“No kidding!” Josef shook his sword hand and Wylan could see a concentration of green energy around that wrist. “She wasn’t even using the flat of her blade. Good thing she only knew one move.”

“Almost battered her way through your defenses though,” Millie noted.

“Yea.”

The green energy seeped from them then and Wylan could feel the exhaustion in her muscles, the throb of her bones from the constant collision of sword on sword. She was lightheaded, and the ground swirled around her. She barely made it to her side before she threw up her dinner.

“She’s really exhausted,” Millie said. “That’s enough for tonight.”

Wylan hoped that Millie’s care for her physical pain meant that she was starting to forgive her. And why shouldn’t she? Wylan thought. It was one mistake, I’m sure it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as she put on. It’s not like they were in any real danger.

:You betrayed her,: Lissandra said.

:You could have helped me,: Wylan shot back.

:I did help you. If I’d have taken out those hyenas, you likely would have made it to the dragons before Josef found you.:

:But that’s what I wanted!:

:Sorry, but I’d like to live through that encounter,: Lissandra snipped.

“I agree,” Josef said. “I thought you were healing her?”

“Channel-healing only sustains a person and heals their wounds, it doesn’t ward off fatigue or the worked muscles when they’re done.”

Wylan vomited until she didn’t think there was anything left to come up other than her guts. Still she heaved several times before her stomach calmed and her body realized she wasn’t, in fact, going to die.

“All right, let’s get you back to camp,” Josef said. He helped her to stand and they walked the several feet to where they’d left their bags. “Rest for a while, I will go get you another lizard to eat.”

The thought of eating was enough to make her want to throw up again, but when she started to protest, Josef ignored her, stripped the rest of the way, and changed into the small blue wyvern.

:You must be sick, you didn’t even check me out this time,: Josef taunted and took wing.

Lissandra roared with laughter.

Wylan groaned.

“I have to make amends with Josephine,” Millie told her. “I will take Kira, you rest here.”

Wylan only nodded. She was afraid if she spoke that she’d ruin whatever good mood Millie was showing her, so she kept silent.

She watched Millie vanish over the next dune and out into the gathering darkness.

When Wylan had thought of wyverns before, it was as a person cursed to change into a wyrm at will, or against their will. It was never as a person forming a bond with the dragon-like creature inside of them that thought, and felt, and could turn their back on you at a whim.

:So, what is it you’d like from me?: Wylan asked Lissandra.

:To live,: she said.

Wylan harrumphed at her. :Besides that. What can I do for you that will allow me to change?:

:You aren’t ready to hear what I want from you,: Lissandra told her.

:And why’s that?:

:Because you still harbor too much hate for the blue dragon.:

:Do you deny me my revenge?:

:Not at all, his kind need to die,: Lissandra rumbled.

:Then what can I do for you?:

Lissandra let out something akin to a sigh, but didn’t answer her.

Wylan growled.

Josef returned, and despite her reluctance to eat, Lissandra was famished and took over.

Once her hunger was sated, the wyvern crawled back into its hiding place deep within her. Full and exhausted, Wylan flopped back into the sand. She tried to put her arms behind her head, but her muscles screamed, so she folded them over her stomach.

Wylan’s eyes traveled to the nimbus of purple stars in the night sky. They were brighter than the moon that night, the purple glow of the clouds that surrounded the swirl of stars shone like a gossamer curtain hanging over the heavens.

Her muscles hurt from the rigorous training Josef had just put her through, and it felt good to lay back in the sand and stare at the Great Above, where the good spirits were said to reside. It hurt to think of Cuthburt and Kethill no longer among the living, no longer making their way in the long desert. They were miles from her now—if the Great Above was truly more than a star cluster—they were far beyond her reach. For a moment she wished that she were a yellow wyvern, maybe then she’d have some kind of hope in reaching them, talking to them one more time to see if they were okay.

Josef sat beside her, and then lay back, his eyes trained on the Great Above. “Legends say that the good spirits live in complete bliss and happiness.”

He was close enough to Wylan that she could feel his heat. It caused a strange sensation to stir in her belly that had nothing to do with the wyvern. She tried not to think about how Josef had looked earlier in the day, gleeful and happy to spar with her. His smell engulfed her, and it was enough to make her head dance. Her heart raced harder than when she’d seen him naked. This had nothing to do with lust and more to do with him, his essence.

“What do you think?” he turned his head to look at her.

She looked to him, but couldn’t look into his blue eyes or else she might not be able to fight off the feelings that told her to touch him, pull him into her arms and let him quench the fire roaring in her lower parts.

“I don’t know what I believe,” she said. Her voice was husky, and she hoped Josef didn’t notice it for what it was. If he did, he stayed silent…for once. “I grew up reading stories of myths and legends and thinking that’s all they were—just stories. Now so much of what I thought wasn’t real is turning out to be very real.”

“What does your gut say?” Josef wondered.

Her gut was saying a lot of things right then, none of which she wanted Josef to know. She lay there for several moments, feeling his warmth and smelling his drying sweat. “That it’s all a lie. There is no Great Above. The good spirits don’t exist. We tell ourselves that there’s something better after this life so we aren’t afraid of dying and so we can find some hope in life, knowing something better waits for us.”

“Wow,” Josef said. “Cynical for someone so young.”

“Do you believe it?” she wondered.

Josef shrugged. “I like to believe there’s something more, but I just don’t know. My fear tells me the same thing you think. There’s nothing there, only stars.”

Hearing him agree was frightening to her. It was one thing to think for herself that nothing was beyond the long desert, waiting for her after she died. It was completely different to hear someone agree with her. She had hoped he would tell her that he knew it existed, that he’d seen dead loved ones in some irrefutable way that proved to him that the Great Above wasn’t just a dream.

“But I don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot of strange things that exist. Those ghosts back in that town, they were real. If ghosts exist, doesn’t it mean there’s at least something waiting for us after death?”

“I suppose,” Wylan said. “I’ve heard a lot of people claim to have dreams of loved ones who’ve died. They think it’s their way of saying good-bye, letting them know they’re okay and not to worry about them.”

“Do you believe them?” Josef wondered.

“I want to,” she said.

“I sense there’s a but coming.”

“But if that’s the case, why haven’t my mom and dad visited me?”

Josef sighed. “Who knows how the spirit world might work?”

Wylan remained silent. Tears welled up in her eyes and she didn’t bother hiding them. She missed her parents so bad that, at times, it felt like there was a hole in her body that she couldn’t fill. It terrified her that she was so far away from home, and that she would never return. It was harrowing to think the last time she’d seen her mother healthy was the last time she’d ever see Kethill smile. She wouldn’t hear her sing while she made dinner again and she wouldn’t listen to her father’s cracks that her singing sounded like dragons mating.

“It will be okay,” Josef told her. He was looking at her again, but she didn’t care. She let the tears out anyway. Josef scooted closer and slid his arm under her head. She rolled into him and let the tears free. She sobbed as he wrapped his arms around her. While she cried he ran his hands over her back, and she felt that he truly cared, that he was there for her, and in his arms she never needed to fear. Sometime during her crying, she fell asleep.

She dreamed of her mother. It wasn’t like the dreams of the good spirits people claimed to have. It was a nightmare.

Wylan stood in the long desert, nothing about her but sand and the sun high above, but there was a noise. It was a noise she first mistook for wind, a kind of wail that howled around her home and moaned along the eaves. The shriek grew louder as the wind increased, and on the wind there was a smell like burning flesh. Wylan felt heat behind her, heat that was more than the sun, heat that felt of death and disease.

She turned to see a tower of fire behind her, coming closer. At the base of the flames she could see the hint of feet shambling across the sand—blackened, cracked, and seeping a red fluid into the shifting earth. She knew before she could see any of the features that this was Kethill. There was part of her mind that recognized the energy leaking from the flames as belonging to her mother.

She stepped back, shook her head, and moaned, “no.”

Don’t do this to me. Don’t let the only dream I have of my mother be one of her burning.

The figure plodded closer, an arm extending out of the flames to point at Wylan. The hand was aflame, cracked and charred as the feet. The hand sizzled, from the cracked flesh fat and blood oozed, flaming to fall to the ground where it smoldered in the sand.

“No!” Wylan cried out, coming awake.

Josef tightened his arm around her. Millie snored beside her.

“It’s okay,” Josef said. His lips were hot and wet on her forehead. “It will be all right.”

She tilted her head up to him and looked into his blue eyes. She felt unstable, as if the ground shifted beneath her. It was as if she were seeing his eyes for the first time, truly seeing who Josef was behind all of his joking and bravado.

She saw tenderness there, caring and the need to help. She also saw fear.

He leaned down, his mouth slanting over hers.

Her heart raced. She was terrified and excited all at once. Regions lower in her body flared with need, with want. She pushed higher against him, her mouth meeting his. His lips were soft like velvet against her mouth, his tongue was wet when it darted between her lips. He tasted of lust and freedom, if those things even had a taste.

His kiss was watery, refreshing as if she drank from a bottomless, untapped spring. She moaned into his mouth, and he pulled her closer to him. She could feel the need, the want, in his arms, in the rigid way he held her close to him.

He pulled away long before she wanted him to.

“Not here,” he said. “Not right now.”

She let out a pitiful moan and stared into his eyes.

Didn’t he want her? Wasn’t she good enough? He’d probably been with countless women; why would he want her?

Something of her fear must have shown in her eyes because Josef shook his head. “It’s not like that. Millie is right here, and the baby.”

“Oh,” Wylan said. She blushed. She knew Josef could damper the fire raging inside of her, she just hadn’t expected it to go out quite like that. The thought of Millie laying so close was enough to put the fire out completely and make her feel foolish for even wanting anything at that moment.

Josef chuckled and pulled her close to him and that’s where she slept the rest of the night.

“That’s enough,” Josef said, dropping his fighting stance. “You’re doing much better.” He smiled at her, his full lips sweeping up in a graceful arch. He mopped his forehead with his shirt before tucking it into the back of his trousers. Josef stepped toward her, and that’s all it took for all the blood to rush to her face and her to stop thinking rationally. “So, about last night?” Josef asked.

Wylan didn’t think it was possible to blush more than what she already was and she looked to her boots as if they held the answer to dispelling her attraction.

“Don’t be shy about it,” he said. “I just want to acknowledge what happened. I also wanted to tell you that being newly wyvern can do that to you as well.”

“Make me jump the closest hot guy?” Wylan asked.

Josef waggled his eyebrows at her. “You think I’m hot?”

Wylan punched him in the shoulder. “We’ve established that.”

“Well, technically you called me pretty. Hot is on an entirely different level. Hot is like radiant and powerful—” he flexed and scrunched up his mouth and neither action helped her racing heart. “Pretty is like a flower.”

“Oh, thanks for the clarification,” Wylan couldn’t help the laugh that colored her words. “So you think all last night was just our wyverns acting up?”

“Well, what do you think? I know it wasn’t just my wyvern.”

Wylan didn’t know what to think. She was attracted to Josef, but he was several years older than her. She didn’t necessarily have an issue with that, but it was a fact she couldn’t ignore. There was also the issue of how Millie acted toward Josef and the little jabs she threw his way about all the women he’d been through…and Marcella. She couldn’t deny how her body felt against him last night—the insatiable fire that had burned through her lower regions or the desire and need she felt for Josef. Had that all been her wyvern?

Josef’s face was suddenly serious. “Those jokes that Millie throws at me. I want you to know that I’m not really a scoundrel.”

Was she projecting her thoughts again, like she had before she learned to speak to him mentally?

“I may be just a lonely girl from a water farm, but I’m not dumb,” Wylan told him. “I know that actions speak louder than words.”

Josef just nodded. She didn’t mean it to come across as offensive. She wasn’t calling him a liar; it had just come out wrong. “So I have to prove it to you, huh?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s smart not to trust someone that you barely know,” he told her. His voice was sincere, even if his face lost its smile. “Don’t worry, I will prove it to you, if that’s what it takes.”

“It’s just…you’re right, we barely know one another. Shouldn’t we just enjoy our time together? Get to know one another?”

“Yea, you’re right.”

“No need to make this something it isn’t.”

“And what is it?”

“I don’t know.” Wylan shrugged. “Do we have to define it? Aren’t we friends?”

Josef nodded. He plastered a smile on his face. “Of course we are.” Wylan could see through the smile though, and it didn’t make her feel good. There was a hardness to his eyes now, a rigid set of his shoulders that wasn’t there before. It was as if he were waiting for a blow.

She reached for him as he passed, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t precisely brush her off, she hadn’t actually touched him, but he didn’t stop either. He made his way toward camp.

“Tell Millie I’m going to take a walk,” Wylan said.

“We’ve been walking all day, you crazy wyrm,” Josef shot over his shoulder. “There’s just miles and miles of sand!”

Wylan laughed. “Yea, I just want to stretch my legs.”

“Have it your way.” Josef waved over his shoulder. “As long as it’s not a walk like the other night where you don’t plan on coming back. I will have dinner waiting when you get back.”

The truth was, Wylan’s mind was too overloaded to go back to camp right then. She wasn’t sure what she expected. Was Josef just supposed to forget what had happened between them the night before? What had gotten into her? Why had she reacted that way? She’d had a lot of crushes on the characters in the books she read, but she’d never had thoughts that took over her control and made her act without thinking. Was that the difference between stories and real men, or was it the wyvern? Was the red soul within her apt to make her lustful? She knew that Lissandra could influence her anger, but was she influencing other things?

And what did Josef expect? She liked him—he was nice, he was attractive, and she couldn’t deny that she felt something. She just didn’t know what that something was. Not yet. For him to try to rush things made her heart race, and not in a good way. She didn’t want that, at least not yet. She barely knew the man, and he barely knew her. She’d read a few romance novels when she’d been able to get her hands on them, and she knew a lot about love at first sight, but she didn’t really believe it. It alarmed her that he was able to jump right into things just because being together felt good and their bodies had strange reactions to one another.

Deep down there was more to fear than just rushing into things with Josef. She had a strange life. Sure, there were a lot of people that could change into wyverns, but she was different—she knew that. She was born with dragon eyes the night dragons returned to the long desert. To deny that she had some connection with dragons was stupid.

She also intended on hunting down the blue dragon, and Wylan knew what kind of end that was likely to result in. Thoughts of her parents, burning and dismembered, swam to the forefront of her brain. She feared losing another person to dragons. More than that, she feared leaving someone as achingly alone because of dragons as she felt without her parents.

She sat on a dune and let out a long sigh. The Great Above was especially bright that evening, bathing the dunes and her in violet relief. The moon was nearly dark, so the only light that came to her was that of the stars and the purple nimbus of the afterlife high in the sky.

Was she destined to leave someone the same way her parents left her? Alone, sitting on some dune, staring up at the Great Above and wondering if she were there, waiting for them?

Her mind was made up. She couldn’t get involved with Josef—with anyone—until the blue dragon was dead.

Except for the constant trumpet of dragons that swarmed overhead and called from behind them, the following days passed in near silence. There were times the dragons would leave, but those moments were few and far between. Whenever Millie thought that maybe she could shift and take the baby ahead to Darubai, the dragons returned as if they knew her plan, but were unable to locate them.

Wylan began to wonder if the baby was cloaking them from the dragons’ sight.

Josef was silent with her, though not unkindly, he just didn’t speak to her mentally or otherwise, unless she initiated conversation first. It frustrated Wylan and made her slightly resentful of him. Because she’d denied his advances he was going to act like she didn’t exist?

There were times, when they sword practiced, that he joked with her, but Wylan wondered if that was just to ease the tension she felt building between them.

He’d started wearing his shirt during sword practice.

Millie had started to warm to her again, but she seemed lost to her own thoughts most of the time, watching the dragons glide overhead while she cradled Kira protectively to her chest.

Around midday, the dragons cleared from the sky, and with them went all the tension Wylan was feeling. She felt she could breathe for the first time all day without worrying that the dragons might spot them. She was growing more certain that Kira had a hand in keeping them hidden from the dragons. Wylan would have found the notion absurd, if she hadn’t felt the might of the baby in the ghost town.

“Wait,” Josef said, holding his hand out behind him to stop Wylan.

“What is it?” Millie asked.

Josef didn’t answer. Wylan listened harder to see if she could hear what Josef was hearing, but she didn’t have to wait long. The sand before them rippled and churned before exploding outward. A creature like she’d never seen shot up out of the ground, golden wings snapping open in the morning sun.

At first Wylan thought it was a dragon. Its body was covered with golden scales; its body was long and sinuous, more like a snake than a dragon. It had four clawed feet, feathered like a bird’s, and upon its shoulders rested the strangest head Wylan had ever seen. Feathered and white with a large red crest and a red beard. Its beak was as golden as the scales and Wylan knew that one bite from the beak could tear through flesh.

She stepped away from the beast, her heart hammering in her ears.

“Can we run?” Wylan asked.

“It would catch us,” Millie said, drawing her sword. “And I thought you were about facing dragons, this gives you pause?”

But if I die against this, how am I to face the dragon? She thought, but she said nothing as Millie sat Kira down some distance away.

Josef’s sword was already out, and he circled around the beast, slapping at it with his sword and making loud noises to draw its attention to him and away from the girls.

“I don’t know how to use my sword well!” Wylan said, drawing her weapon. It felt clumsy in her hand and all of her training seemed to evade her then.

“You have your fire,” Millie said. “Be creative.” Millie held her sword in her right hand; her left hand already glowing green and trailing whispers of putrid energy around her wrist.

“What is it?” Wylan asked.

“A cockatrice. Don’t look into its eyes!” Josef warned.

A cockatrice…every legend she’d ever read seemed to be coming to life around her. She knew better than to look into its eyes. The gaze of the cockatrice was said to kill any who met its eye.

Wylan followed their lead. She stepped back and reached for the wyvern soul like Millie had taught her and circled the cockatrice. Josef was holding its attention so Millie and she could attack the creature while he was keeping it focused on him.

Josef let out a yell and the cockatrice responded with a high-pitched screech of its own. It struck at him, its cruel beak glinting in the sun. Josef dodged out of the way moments before the cockatrice struck him. The beast lanced out to the side, toward Josef, its beak snapping at the man’s face. There was no way for Josef to dodge the attack. With a grunt he brought his sword up and caught the beast in the side of the head, breaking its momentum and knocking its head away from the attack.

Wylan felt the fire swim through her body and bloom in her hand. She didn’t have to look to know a large ball of flame coalesced in her palm. The cockatrice reared back, its wings snapping open, a talon coming startling close to Wylan’s face. She reacted, stabbing out at the wing before the beast could fully open them and take flight. Her sword cut through the membranous wing like she was slicing fabric. Blood sluiced down the leathery appendage. She’d expected there would be more blood, but there wasn’t.

The cockatrice screamed again, and it started turning toward her. She let loose a volley of fire at its face. It flapped its wings and stumbled away from the attack, its talons kicking up sand as it shuffled away. It jumped, tried to catch the air with its wings, but one was damaged. It gained some ground with the air, its scales glimmered as it rose higher before it listed to the side. The long cut Wylan had made wouldn’t allow the beast to fly. It fumbled to the side, landed hard, and nearly crushed Millie.

The healer jumped back, rolled away, and when she stood, she let her plague fly. The plague shot out of her like a noxious ball of bog water. It collided with the cockatrice and popped. Thick slime oozed from the ball and slipped over the beast’s beak. Wylan could only hope that some had made it down its throat.

She shot another stream of fire at the face, hoping that the slime would catch fire, but it didn’t. Noxious smoke billowed up from where the fire collided, drifting up into the sky.

The three of them backed away from the cloud. The poison wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from friend or foe, and Wylan didn’t want to take the chance that it would make her sick.

The cockatrice flailed on the ground. Attacking when the beast was disorientated was best, but its frantic movements made attacking dangerous. They backed up until they were out of reach of its grasping talons. The cockatrice ambled to its feet and before it could orientate itself, Josef charged back in. He stabbed at the creature’s underside, not bothering to jam his sword between scales and actually damage the beast, just trying to draw its attention from the other two. It worked. The cockatrice lanced its head down at him, nicking his shoulder before Josef could make it out of the way.

Josef cried out and stumbled to the side. Blood flowed down his arm, staining his dirty white tunic crimson. He fumbled out of the path of the beak, but the cockatrice was injured and angry. It stabbed at him again, and Josef managed to swing his sword out, deflect the blow.

Wylan charged in, fire flashing at the creature’s head. Flames ate at the feathers and the beast stretched out its long neck, its head on fire. It coughed, swung its head about, blinded by flames. Its talons blindly stomped in the sand, its wings flailing out to its sides. One of the wings struck Millie, knocking her off balance and over a dune where she tumbled out of sight.

Heartened that the feathers had caught fire so easily, Wylan aimed another fiery attack at its feet. The flames weren’t as powerful, even bolstered by Lissandra, she was losing strength. Still, the feet caught in a rush of fire and the cockatrice screamed out in rage and pain. The smell of burning feathers and roasting meat drifted in the air in a cloud of black smoke. The smell sickened Wylan, but the wyvern soul within her delighted in the smell, churned in hunger.

Wylan pushed it down in revulsion. She dodged in as she saw Millie crest the dune, sword in one hand, her other hand glowing with green power. Wylan couldn’t wait. The feet hadn’t stopped stomping, and she was worried that it would crush Josef to death.

The fire was already sizzling out on the beast’s head. The red beard was withered and blackened, the red crest nothing more than spikes of blackened feathers.

And then a great orb of water surrounded the cockatrice’s head.

The beast reared back, swinging its head to be free of the water, but the orb held fast like a child clinging to its mother in fright. Wylan could see through the orb. She could see the cockatrice gasping for air, but only breathing in water. Its eyes were charred from the fire and Wylan was happy for that. She didn’t think she could stand there and watch the beast drown if she could also see the fear in its eyes.

She allowed herself a moment to relax. The beast stumbled, crashed to the ground in a flurry of wings and a cloud of disturbed sand. Millie dodged flailing wings and clawing feet. She stepped up to the head, the green fog vanishing from her left hand. With her right, she stabbed through the orb of water. The orb popped, showering them with water as her sword broke through the beast’s eye, puncturing its brain.

The cockatrice fell still. All that Wylan could hear for a time was the whistling of the wind over the sand. Part of her mourned the loss of such a magnificent creature, but she was sure it was something she would have to get over. Some of the most dangerous creatures were lovely, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t kill her.

How will you ever kill dragons if you can’t bear to see this creature die? She wondered.

Millie rushed to Josef’s side. She crouched beside him and inspected the wound.

“It’s not deep,” she said. “But it’s still going to need healing. Wounds from a cockatrice heal slow. Something to do with their beaks that won’t let the wound scab.”

“It was a young one,” Josef said.

Millie’s hands glowed green once more and she placed her hands on the wounds. “That’s what I thought too.”

“How do you know?” Wylan asked.

“Cockatrice and basilisks are very hard to kill.” Josef said. “Fully grown they are near impossible. This one had the size, but not the age apparently.”

“So what can kill them?”

“The crow of a rooster and staring into their own reflection,” Josef told her.

“Too bad we didn’t have a reflective shield,” Wylan mused.

“Or a cock laying around.” Millie smirked.

“Is that a jab at my manhood?” Josef wondered.

Millie chuckled.

“We don’t see them often,” Josef said. “But where there’s one, there’s bound to be more.”

Millie sat back from her work and inspected Josef’s shoulder. There wasn’t a trace of the wound except for the blood that stained his shirt. “Yes, one that young likely means there’s a nest nearby. Are you ready?”

Wylan nodded.

Wylan couldn’t sleep. They’d been on the road for several more days, and the monotony of it all was getting to her. One day bled into the other, and there was seemingly no end to it all. Josef still wasn’t acting toward her the way he once had. Not only did his shirt stay on during practice, but he also didn’t seek out conversation with her. He still talked, but the joking had all but ended, and the only time they spent alone was when they sparred.

She was about to drift off to sleep when a shadowy figure glided overhead, close enough that Wylan could feel the wind of its passing.

In the silvery light of the waxing moon, a cascade of blue light danced over the dunes. Her eyes shot open, her mind racing from the edge of sleep. She located the dragon…it was blue. Was it the one she sought? Wylan couldn’t be sure, but she had to find out. She bolted up from her bed, thankful that Millie and Josef weren’t snug against her as they usually were, and grabbed her sword.

A flare of light shot into the sky from a couple dunes away, striking the dragon in the head. The blue dragon spiraled from the sky heading straight for the ground. In the light, Wylan thought she could see scales missing from the top of its tail, where Cuthburt had wounded the dragon moments before he’d been killed by it.

The dragon was close this time, and it was alone. She could do it. If the countless, eventless days had taught her anything, it was how to use a sword. And her magic was there, waiting for her call. If luck was with her and it was injured, she could sneak off, kill him, and be back before either of them woke. If she wasn’t lucky…well then she wouldn’t have to deal with Millie’s anger anyway.

She didn’t look at Josef as she slipped out from between her companions. She wouldn’t let herself think about him this time, or what might have been. There wasn’t time for that, and who knew if he even wanted anything now?

:Unity,: Lissandra rumbled sleepily :Family.:

:What are you going on about?: Wylan wondered, taking hesitant steps from the campsite, her eyes drifting back to Millie and Josef, who still appeared to be sleeping.

She felt a stir lower in her body.

:Good dragons,: Lissandra said.

:You’re not making any sense,: she told the wyvern soul, making her way slowly over the dunes, following the path to where she’d seen the blue strike ground. :If you’re going to distract me with chatter, you could at least tell me what you want so we can finally shift.:

But the wyvern soul was silent. Even if it wasn’t speaking any longer, Wylan wondered at her words. Unity. Good dragons. Was Lissandra out of her mind? There were no such things as good dragons. The only good dragon was a dead dragon.

:You want unity with dragons?: Wylan asked. Even as the wyvern soul stirred within her, opening as if it were accepting her words, or maybe even agreeing, Wylan knew she couldn’t deliver on uniting with dragons. Maybe after the blue was dead—if she lived through that—she could entertain the idea of finding some truce with dragons, if there really were any good ones. But she wasn’t about to make good with the blue dragon.

:Bad dragon,: Lissandra agreed. Wylan wondered if the wyvern soul had some issue with speaking in complete sentences tonight. She shrugged the thought off.

:Yes, the blue is a bad dragon, and it must be killed. Will you help me?:

The wyvern soul tightened against her.

“Didn’t think so,” she mumbled, and pushed the soul away, giving her space and rejecting her at the same time. Millie had told Wylan that she would have to learn to work with the wyvern soul if she ever wanted to shift, but she’d be damned if she would be making all the compromises. Lissandra would have to meet her halfway, and if she was worried about dying, then she should help so that didn’t happen.

Wylan slowed down as she approached what she thought was the last dune the dragon had crested. She crept to the top, and peered over the peak of the dune. The blue dragon wasn’t there, but she saw where it had landed. A great indentation rested in the ground where the dragon had made impact. Around the pit, Wylan could see blue scales glittering in the light of the full moon. He was wounded, at least. Missing scales meant there would be more places she could strike and not have to worry about the armor the scales provided.

She scanned the area, making sure there weren’t any surprises, and then she slid to the bottom of the other side of the dune. Wylan stood, dusting off her pants and knelt to pick up a scale nearby. It was weightless, like a feather. Worried that a stiff wind might blow it away, Wylan clutched it tighter. She could feel a thrum of power within the scale—a light that rested beneath the surface, as if every scale had a heart of its own, a heart of power. The scale was both cold and warm to the touch, and she wondered if the contradicting temperatures had anything to do with the dragon’s power.

She looked away from the scale, remembering what her father had told her about a similar scale that had hung on their wall. The scales, if given too much attention, if allowed to seep into a person’s mind, could enslave them. People like that were called scale wraiths, and they could never get enough of the power and euphoria the scales brought to them.

Her eyes followed the trail of dragon scales, until she could see the dark shape of the blue dragon, drifting against the sky. It was a trail that she could follow, and it was a trail she would follow. If luck was with her, she would be long gone from the camp before either Josef of Millie rose, and if luck wasn’t with her, she would be dead.

Not like there’s much to lose.

At least that was her plan. As she headed toward the next scale, picking her way across the sand and starting up the dune, cries yelled out from around her.

She barely had time to register a ragged, emaciated human launching themselves over the dune and toward her before something heavy crashed down on her skull, and Wylan knew only darkness.

Wylan woke to darkness. Her skin hurt and she could sense more than see cuts along her arms. The back of her head throbbed and bursts of light danced before her vision. It took her several agonizing moments before she heard the soft whimpering beside her.

“Millie?” she called.

“What?” Millie responded and Wylan nearly jumped with the anger she heard there.

It wasn’t Millie who was whimpering.

:She’s not happy with you,: Josef’s voice came to her.

:I’m sorry,: Wylan said.

:You’re not, and you’d do it again,: Josef said. He wasn’t angry with her, or at least he didn’t sound angry with her, but there was an accusation in his voice. :Maybe next time you could let us know that you were going to go wandering off so we wouldn’t go looking for you.:

“It wasn’t my choice to come to your aid,” Millie said. “If Josef hadn’t been focused on not leaving you behind, we wouldn’t be in this mess, and the baby would still be with us.”

:Who’s crying?: Wylan asked Josef. She ignored Millie as best as she could.

:I don’t know,: Josef said. :They were here when I woke.:

:Why do I feel like I’ve been cut up?:

:You must not have experience with scale wraiths…: Josef said. :They can feel what we are. They’re trying to get the wyvern soul to answer. It’s all I can do to fight down the beast.:

:Why fight it?: Wylan asked. :Just shift.:

:Then they would take our scales.:

:But it’s dragon scales they’re after.:

:Our scales hold a little of the same power they get high on.:

Wylan tried to remember what she knew about scale wraiths, but it wasn’t much. She remembered Cuthburt telling her many times not to stare too long at the scale on their wall or she would get bewitched by it and think of little else. The wraiths were those people who had stared too long, or had carried the scales longer than was wise.

:Do the power of the scales vanish?: she asked.

:Scale wraiths consume the scales,: Josef said. :They’ve found a way to smash them down and they sniff them, eat them, or rub the crystals into their skin until they merge with their blood.:

:So the scales I found must have belonged to them.:

:They’re likely running low,: he said.

Wylan heard Millie shifting in the darkness beside her.

Before her there was a sliver of light that came through under a doorway. As her eyes adjusted, Wylan was able to see more of the inside of the chamber.

:We need to get out of here,: Wylan said.

:I know.:

:What’s the plan?:

:Well, I’ve never been captured before, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you. We need to get out of these ropes though, if you could get your fire to work on them, that would be pretty grand.:

Wylan reached for the wyvern soul, and she felt her more than willingness to help. :I think I can shift.:

:I wouldn’t doubt it. We’re in very real danger and the wyvern knows it. Don’t shift unless I tell you to. Just work on those ropes.:

Wylan followed directions. The flame came even easier than before. This time she didn’t call the fire into her hands because her hands were bound behind her and she worried that she’d catch herself on fire. Instead, she directed the heat to build up around her wrists where the ropes were tied. It was a gamble, Millie hadn’t told her she could do this—and she didn’t want to ask her—but when the smell of smoke reached her nose and she felt any give in the ropes, Wylan knew she was successful. Soon, the ropes fell free, and she went to work on her ankles. The bindings were frayed and difficult to work with, but after several moments of struggling, she was free.

As she knelt beside Millie, she heard footsteps outside the door.

“If it’s a guard, kill them. Drag them inside, and close the door,” Millie told her. “It will buy us some time to get me out of these ropes.”

Wylan sidled up to the door as silently as she could and waited. The footsteps drew closer, and she was very aware that she’d never actually killed a person before. The wyvern soul was there with her, more than ready to take over, slay the person, and flee.

:No!: Wylan was strict with the beast. It didn’t want to listen. It uncoiled from the base of her spine, and she felt the energy spread through her like scales just beneath the surface of her skin, ready to take over. She closed her eyes and pushed the beast down. :Lissandra, you will get us killed.:

:FREE.: the wyvern said.

:The best way to be free of them is to stay where you’ve been for the last several days—down deep and ignoring me.:

The footsteps faltered at the door, but only for a moment. After an agonizing span of time, the feet shuffled past, and Wylan was able to breathe freely.

She crouched next to Millie again. After several moments, the healer was free.

Millie made her way to the sobbing person and Wylan could hear low whispers. She turned her attention back to the door, waiting for someone to appear. When she didn’t hear anyone coming, Wylan made quick work with Josef’s ropes.

“It’s a little boy,” Millie said. “We have to take him with us…he’s wyvern.”

The wyvern soul within Wylan bucked against her mind. She felt the need of the beast to go to the boy, to take him under wing and carry him to safety.

Millie bent low over the boy, speaking in tones that Wylan couldn’t hear.

:I know how you’re feeling,: Josef said. :My wyvern is reacting the same. Just think though, if you do this your wyvern soul will feel closer to you. It will more likely work better with you. The wyvern souls seem to respect their human counterparts better when they refuse to use them.:

Wylan didn’t answer because she felt just as strong a need to help the boy as the other soul did.

“His name is Geffrey Egan,” Millie said. “He’s learned to shift, but hasn’t learned to keep the wyvern at bay. They’ve already taken a lot of his scales. I will have a terrible time healing him.”

Just then the door opened, and a guard strode in. It surprised Wylan, she hadn’t heard anyone approach, but the wyvern soul was close to the surface, and she reacted by instinct. Wylan gripped him by the robe, his gaunt, waxy face showing his surprise. She pulled him in, slammed the door shut behind her, and before she knew it the wraith was wreathed in flames.

He died almost instantly. The smell of charred flesh and sizzling hair filled the chamber. Wylan crouched low to the floor, not because the smoke would kill her—she had a reassuring thought that the wyvern could live as well on smoke as on oxygen—but more to get away from the putrid smell of his burning body.

:Good. The door is unlocked,: Josef said.

Wylan didn’t need urging. She opened the door enough to peer out and was greeted by a long, dark corridor. There was barely enough light for her to see up and down the hallway. If she had to guess she would say they were inside a cave that had been tunneled farther into the mountains. To her right the light was brighter, but she also saw shadows passing across the opening, casting long shadows down the corridor. To her left, the tunnel turned sharp, and from around the bend she could see a hint of rainbow light, and the soft sound of music she’d equated with Kira the day in the ghost town.

It must go farther back, she thought.

“What do you see?” Josef asked, coming to her side. Wylan stepped back and let him have a look. Josef assessed the situation for several moments before ducking back into the chamber and closing the door.

“We are a little way from our camp. The mountains weren’t too close, but not so far away that we can’t get back to where we were.” Josef told Millie.

Wylan couldn’t see anything now that the door was closed and she was plunged into darkness again. She could feel the boy beside her though. She reached down and grasped his hand and he stepped closer to her, welcoming whatever protection she could give him.

“Are we really going to Darubai?” he asked. His voice was soft, innocent, and full of hope and wonder. It was almost as if his time with the wraiths meant little to him now that three grown wyverns were going to rescue him.

Even though it sounds like he’s better at shifting than I am.

“Yes,” Millie told him. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”

Wylan wasn’t sure how Millie could promise that when Wylan wasn’t even sure they were safe yet.

“Kira is at the other end,” Josef told Millie as she joined them.

Millie nodded. “You three go get her. I’m going to head up toward the light. There will be a lot of confusion, so whatever guards come running toward the entrance will be easily killed. It would be nice if you could find our weapons.”

Josef nodded.

“By the time you have Kira, the coast should be clear.”

Before Wylan could protest, Millie slipped out the door.

She peeked out the door and watched Millie. Her teacher stopped near the opening, just inside the shadows. Wylan could feel the gathering of magic and watched the nimbus of putrid green energy surround Millie. Moments later, the black woman stepped out into the light, and the cloud of green smoke oozed from her. There were unintelligible shouts.

Wylan looked to her left. She heard footsteps approach from the darkness there. She stepped out into the hallway, pushed Geffrey behind her, and reached for the fire burning within her. Three unlucky guards rounded the corner and each of them was met with a fireball before they could draw to a stop and prepare for a fight.

Over the crackling of their fallen bodies, she listened for more footsteps, but Wylan heard nothing.

She motioned to Josef, and he pushed through the door behind her. Silently, they made their way down the hallway, toward the rainbow light. Wylan worried that they would find more guards. She worried that Millie would meet a danger she couldn’t overcome in the entryway, despite the screams and cries for help issuing from that end. She worried still that they wouldn’t make it out of the cave.

She worried until she stepped into the pool of rainbow light, and then all of her worries vanished. She let the light call to her, put her wyvern soul to ease, and carry her to the end of the curved tunnel until she stood in a great domed chamber so high that shadows obscured the ceiling.

Josef rushed to the left, where Kira rested on the floor. The moment he touched her, the baby giggled, and the rainbow light wavered around them, infusing Wylan with joy, and with peace.

The joy was short-lived when Wylan saw what lay scattered about the chamber—great bones of dragons lay everywhere she looked. There was a corpse of a dragon at the back of the chamber. All of the scales were gone, and now that they were, the corpse was left to rot, to join the other bones littering the floor.

The table in the center of the room was large and covered with glittering dust in hues of red and purple. Wylan took a tentative step toward the table, already knowing that the dust was from scales. There was a thin cylinder of bone laying in the middle of a lump of sand, and slumped against the table was a waxy, emaciated woman with blond hair as brittle as hay. Around her nose red scale dust glittered where it clung to her skin. Her face was coated in sweat and a milky-white trail of vomit oozed from her mouth and over the edge of the table to pool on the floor about her feet.

Wylan grimaced, but she lifted a silvery-white pestle out of the mortar where it had been used to grind the scales.

“What do you think is hard enough to grind dragon scales?” Wylan asked, shooting a look over at Josef where Geffrey stood, staring down at Kira.

“I don’t know, and we don’t have time to deliberate. Is there anything worth taking?”

Wylan slipped the pestle in the pocket opposite the wand, and scouted around for any bones that might fit in her pockets to use as wands. Finding none small enough to carry, she located their weapons, sheathed her own sword, and nodded to Josef before leading them from the chamber. She took Kira long enough for Josef to belt his own weapon, and then she handed her back.

Green fog lay like a blanket across the stone floor of the cave’s entrance. Rudimentary furniture stood against the walls—stones that were worn in the shape of chairs; tables cut out of the rock face of the cave; smaller stones that looked to be used as low tables. Bodies were strewn on the floor, dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. In the center of the fog, Millie stood, staring out the opening to the light of day beyond.

“You killed them?” Wylan asked.

“It was them or us. We don’t have much time, there are others outside. Josef, get Kira to safety.” She waited until Josef had undressed, wrapped Kira in his clothes to make sure she wouldn’t slip loose and then shifted. He turned to Geffrey, and the dark-haired boy did the same. The boy looked strange without any scales, almost like a librak that had been scaled and ready for slaughter. His flesh was light orange, like sand, and speckled with sun spots.

Josef took hold of the baby, and was out of the entrance sooner than Wylan had wanted to be left alone with Millie.

“If you can keep up with us, then you can come with us. But hear me well when I tell you that I’m officially done with you. If you can’t shift and keep up, then you’re on your own to figure out a way to safety. I won’t keep jeopardizing our mission and the safety of friends I’ve left behind just so you can mistreat Josef.”

She nodded but refused to answer Millie. She’d already came to the conclusion that she didn’t need to defend her actions to Millie. Millie was doing what she had to do, just as Wylan was doing what she had to do. For the time being, however, Wylan would keep traveling with them. Every time she tried going after the blue dragon, it led her and them into danger, and Josef didn’t seem ready to let Wylan go yet, for whatever reason. It at least gave her hope there was something to salvage between the two of them.

It only took a moment of surveying her wyvern soul to know that the red beast was ready to shift…and ready to kill.

Wylan stripped her clothes off and tossed them out the opening of the cave. She called to her wyvern and as she stepped out the door, she felt the beast answer. As the sun bathed her, red scales blossomed to the surface of her skin. Her bones cracked and shifted beneath her skin, reforming to the bones of the wyvern. It happened so fast that the pain didn’t register until she was in her other form. She let out a roar and leapt into the air. Her wings snapped open, and as she glided down the mountain pass, wraiths stepped out before her, spears ready to take her down.

Now that she’d given in to the other form, the wyvern was harder to control. She’d heard before that the wyvern and the human were so well linked that in wyvern form you could still control it, but Wylan might as well have been a bystander in the body.

The wyvern struck, fire bloomed from its mouth taking out a line of wraiths before her. Men and women scattered, their thin-lipped mouths open in a terrible scream. Their thin bodies flailed, their wiry hair burned.

Most of them had scattered before the fire took them, and they were quick to retaliate. Spears glinted in the light of the sun, fly straight and true. Wylan listed to the side, but one still took her in the wing.

She roared again, fire blooming from her mouth. If she incinerated any that time it was by sheer luck. She saw a wraith standing high on a ledge, his spear ready to launch, but he froze when she turned toward him.

Powerful jaws latched around his head and blood flowed down his body, showering those below her. She tasted his blood, his fear, and it tasted wonderful. But she wouldn’t eat. Fire coursed down her mouth, out her open jaws and around the body. The man flailed in death throws, altering her course. She was large for a wyvern, but not so large that a full-grown man dangling from her teeth didn’t cause her some kind of awkward flying.

She let his weight carry her down, his body burning before her eyes. She dropped him to land amidst a group of wraiths waiting for her to circle back so they could bring her down. They were set for battle, and didn’t have time to move before the flaming, flailing body crashed into them. The fire was put out quickly, and they took aim, but by the time they did, Wylan was above the reach of their spears.

Her wing burned. She could feel the wind whistling through the opening the spear had created. She knew there was some serious damage there, but she fought through it. To not fight meant death.

She could see the green wyvern already flying away, the bald shape of Geffrey hanging close beside her. Wylan hadn’t had enough yet. She dove at another group, her talons gripping one wraith. She shook his body, the spear falling as his spine snapped. She dropped him to his friends below.

Spears flew at her, but this time when they connected, they rebounded off her scales and clattered uselessly to the ground.

Her wing hurt enough that the wyvern soul focused less on the need to kill, and more on Wylan’s reasoning to flee. She pushed her need to retreat into Lissandra’s mind, showing the beast that Millie and the boy were out of danger. The wyvern seemed happy enough with that, and let Wylan steer it away from the mob below.

:Keep flying,: Wylan told Josef. :Fly as long as the wyvern will let me.:

:Safe.: the wyvern said in her mind.

:For now,: she said to the other form. :Just help me get farther away from them, all right?:

It didn’t answer, but it also didn’t retreat.

Her wound wasn’t as bad in human form as she had anticipated.

“What were you thinking?” Millie crouched before her, her hands turning her arm this way and that, studying the small hole through the back. “Never mind. I don’t care.”

“I couldn’t think,” Wylan said anyway. “The wyvern took complete control.”

“Couldn’t think, or didn’t want to?” The healer murmured. “Hold still.”

:You will learn better control in time,: Josef spoke into her mind.

The green fog surrounded Millie again. Wylan wanted to draw back. She’d seen what that cloud had done to the wraiths, and she didn’t want it touching her. The only thing that kept her from pulling away from Millie was the thought that the black woman wouldn’t actually harm her…she wasn’t that mad at her, was she?

The green power flowed from Millie’s hand and wreathed Wylan’s upper arm. It was warm to the touch, and she could feel it seep into the wound, tingling as it went. The wound stung and tickled at the same time. She didn’t know if the hiss that escaped her lips was from trying not to laugh, or trying not to cry out.

Millie leaned back, taking her hands from Wylan and the green power faded.

“Good enough for you to try to run off again.”

It was more than good enough. There wasn’t a single trace of the wound left on her arm.

That night was less interesting than the night before. The dragons that had been present since the moment they’d started their journey were absent and Wylan wondered if they’d finally left them alone, or if they refused to fly this close to the wraiths. There could be something to learn from the wraiths if the dragons were keeping clear of them and they’d managed to take down so many of them and harvest their scales.

Geffrey took a long time to fall asleep, even pressed between their bodies to stay warm and safe. When he did sleep, he was plagued by nightmares that flowed from his mind and into her own. She didn’t want to see the images that came from him, to know how the wraiths had beat him, cut him, doused him in water while he slept just to get the wyvern to burst free.

Not that the wyvern could do much, he was a yellow, which meant his powers lay in the realm of the mind. Wylan was sure there’d be a lot he could do once he was trained, but being so young she wasn’t sure. In wyvern form, he was too small to do much damage, little bigger than a medium sized dog. None of that mattered when it came to scales—they were just as potent as a full-grown wyvern’s.

When most of his scales had been plucked, the wraiths turned to his blood for their fix.

:Shut your mind to him,: Josef said. :Touch the wyvern soul imagine the scales surrounding you, that will shield you.:

Wylan did as she was told, and while her shielding wasn’t as strong as she’d like, it blocked out most of his dreams.

There weren’t any wraiths or scales when she woke, but there was a dead salamander and a smiling Josef, his nose only inches from hers. She cried out and jumped, which only made him laugh.

Millie startled awake, and Geffrey bounded out from between the women. He stared at Josef, who was still laughing, but didn’t seem to want to run. After a moment of seeing where the uproar had come from, the boy giggled and relaxed.

“Millie, dear friend, I’m not carrying that one back to Darubai, just so you know.” He pointed at the boy.

But if they thought they’d be able to fly the rest of the way to Darubai, the dragons didn’t agree. Sometime in the night they’d started circling again. Tension flooded back into every muscle in her body. She wished the dragons would just attack and get it over with.

Wylan tore into her breakfast, sharing a portion with Geffrey. When they were done, Josef knelt to the ground to call the water forth so they could clean up. Wylan waited, salamander blood coating her hands and running down her chin. She was anxious to clean up, but Josef’s face scrunched up in concern, and his hand dug deeper into the ground.

“Maybe there isn’t any water close by?” Wylan asked when she realized he wasn’t able to call any.

Josef frowned. “Maybe. Normally I can feel it though, but I can’t right now.”

“What does that mean?” Wylan asked.

Geffrey touched the healing bruise on Josef’s head, and Josef flinched away. “It’s that,” the boy said. “Did you get hurt?”

“When we were looking for Wylan, but it was just a club from a weak wraith,” Josef shrugged it off.

“Didn’t Millie heal you?” Wylan asked.

Josef nodded. “It’s still healing.”

“But I can see it,” Geffrey said. “It did something to your mind. There’s strange colors where it should be a solid aura.”

Josef’s frown deepened. “I will have Millie look at it. For now, clean up as best you can with the sand.”

Wylan did as she was told, but there was a greater fear in her than how they would clean up. They’d ran out of water from their canteens days ago, and hadn’t bothered to fill them up because Josef was with them. Without Josef being able to use his powers…

Millie returned from hunting while Wylan was using the bathroom. When she returned, Millie was already dressed and bent over Josef, directing her healing energy into his mind. Geffrey knelt beside her, his own hands on Josef’s wound. There was a mix of his yellow energy and Millie’s green before it seeped into Josef’s skin.

Millie sat back on her heels and surveyed the job. “It will take time,” she groused. “We have to look for another source of water and we need to find it fast.”

“There’s caves not far away,” Wylan said, pointing toward the mountains a ways away from where they’d been held by the wraiths.

“How do we know that the wraiths aren’t there?” Millie wondered.

“There’s no way of knowing,” Josef said. “But we can be cautious.”

“Tell that one,” Millie said, glancing toward Wylan.

Wylan let it go.

“Wylan kicked butt with those wraiths!” Geffrey said. “I’m sure she could take care of whatever’s in that cave and get us water.”

Wylan blushed to the roots of her black hair.

“Oh, we had some fun with wraiths, huh?” Josef asked. Wylan had almost forgotten that he’d taken off before she’d done her job with the wraiths.

“Yea,” Geffrey said. “She kicked their butts!”

“There were butts you kicked, and I wasn’t around to see it?” Josef asked. “Jealous!”

“Well, less butt kicking and more chomping, tearing, and mayhem.”

“That’s the red spirit.” Josef cuffed her shoulder and smiled. “How did they taste?”

“Yuck,” Wylan said.

“That bad, huh?” Josef asked.

“Like unwashed feet,” Wylan said.

“You have much experience with feet?” Josef asked.

Wylan’s blush intensified.

They pressed on, and by the time the sun was rising high above the dunes, they neared the entrance of the cave.

“I don’t see any scales,” Josef said, surveying the ground outside the cave. “I don’t see any footprints either. If it’s been in use, it hasn’t been for a while now.”

“Just be careful,” Millie said, following close behind him.

Wylan brought up the rear, but when they entered the cave, they found it was, in fact, not empty.

The two women that stood before them could be nothing other than elves. They were tall, slender women with silken hair tucked behind pointed ears and dotted with flowers. Their eyes were large and alien in color, like something she’d see in the night sky rather than something she’d see in any human. With a chill, Wylan realized their eyes had no whites, and no pupils that could be seen. She hoped it was a trick of the low light in the dank cave.

Their clothes weren’t made of leaves, as she’d been told in books, but instead they wore free flowing trousers and tunics in soft, earthly brown colors. Their arms were adorned with chains of silver, twists of leather, and large bangles that looked like wood.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” the blond elf to the right said. Her eyes shown black in the darkness of the cave. That wasn’t what made them strange, however, but the purple swirl of color that seemed to glow from the blackness of her eyes reminded Wylan of the Great Above. She wondered, briefly, if this elf had some tie to the spirit world. “Humans, from Darubai, we welcome you?”

They both bowed, their arms outstretched. Despite all of their adornments, the elves made no sound.

“How’d you know?” Millie asked, her grip tightening around Kira.

“We’ve been watching you,” the dark-haired elf said. Her eyes were orange, mottled with flecks of blue. “We were told you’d come.”

“Who knew we were coming?” Millie asked.

“Yea, we didn’t even know we were coming,” Josef mumbled.

“You need water,” the blond said, motioning to the trickle of water that drizzled down the stone at the back of the cave to puddle in a large reservoir on the floor. “And we need your help.”

Elves were rumored to be magical creatures, gifted in earthen magic. Was this cave one of their own, where they gathered water? But that didn’t make sense. Elves lived in the mountains where it was green and full of life…and dragons. What need would they have of a water cave…unless.

“You did this to him,” Wylan accused, stepping forward. She felt Lissandra answer her anger with a burst of her own. Fire was ready to draw, but she didn’t channel it then. She did let her hand slip to the hilt of her sword, however. It was a motion the elves noted, but didn’t take action against the threat. “You’re the reason Josef is having issues with his water magic.”

Millie arched an eyebrow at Wylan and nodded. She turned back to the elves. “What is the meaning of this? We help you or we die of thirst?”

The elves folded their hands before them and only stared at Millie. They were still as stone.

:Beware,: Lissandra said. :I sense a trap.:

:Oh, we’ve moved into the realm of full sentences again?: Wylan asked. :What kind of trap?:

:This smells of dragon magic.:

:Noted.: Wylan turned her focus to Josef. :Lissa senses dragon magic about them.:

:Dalrin too,: Josef said. :I’m sure Millie senses it as well.:

Geffrey stirred beside Wylan.

“It was an extreme action, I agree.” The dark-haired elf said. “Not all of us were in agreement with ensnaring you as such, but the deed is done, and the only way to undo it is to agree to help us.”

“I am Alisar,” the blond said.

“And I’m Tensinar,” the dark-haired elf said.

“I really don’t care about your names,” Millie said. “What is the task you require of us?”

“You’re going to go through with it?” Wylan asked, incredulously.

“What choice do we have?” Millie shot back at her. “When an elf wants something, they get it.” She turned back to Alisar and Tensinar. “Am I right in assuming we either take the deal and get Josef healed, or we die here and now?”

The elves didn’t speak.

“Right,” Millie said. “What is it you require of us?”

“Follow,” Alisar said.

“Be careful,” Wylan whispered to Millie as the elves turned to the back wall and placed their hands in specific spots along the rough surface. Millie stiffened at Wylan’s words, but she nodded anyway.

The wall slid back and away with a rumble that Wylan could feel deep within the earth. When the wall had opened, she saw a winding tunnel that led up. Along the upward tunnel torches flickered to life.

The way was dull and boring. Stone twisted up in a spiral through the mountain path. The floor was smooth, whether from heavy use or if it had been formed that way, Wylan didn’t know. She wondered if elf magic could convince stone to smooth itself, or if they’d have to do it manually.

Elves were tricksters, Wylan knew that before meeting this pair, but she hadn’t considered that they would be dangerous tricksters. In the stories, they often played pranks on unsuspecting humans, but those pranks had never led to the hero’s demise.

Wylan kept a firm eye on Geffrey, who walked before her, his eyes glancing from wall to wall. It was halfway up before Wylan noticed what he was looking at—images and text scrawled over the walls, and though she couldn’t read the blocky text, Wylan got the sense from images that she was seeing the history of the elves.

Images of trees were prevalent along the walls, and if what Wylan was seeing was true, it showed the elves originating from the trees—not like they came from the forests, but as if they were birthed directly from trees themselves. It could explain their powers of nature, but Wylan found it hard to believe that a tree could give birth to a creature of flesh and blood.

Unless they’re not flesh and blood. Wylan had read in stories that the flesh of elves was hard as stone, and that their blood was thick and ran like amber from their wounds. Could they actually be extensions of the earth, or was that all part of the allure of stories?

Before she had time to contemplate, the tunnel opened wide, and the walls were speckled with green lichen. More surprising than the stories she saw on the walls, or the speculation of elven anatomy was the visage of green before her. She’d tried to picture forests when she read of them in stories, but seeing them was a kind of magic she could never have imagined.

More than the sight of all the green, the bright blooms of flowers, and the rough brown of bark was the smell that came with it.

Fresh, that’s all Wylan could think to describe the air. It was fresh and sweet and moist along her skin. The warmth was a different kind than she’d felt in the desert. It clung to her skin, penetrated her clothes, and stuck to her hair. She took a deep breath of the sweet air and for the first time smelled flowers like none she’d ever seen in the desert below.

Around her, her companions were taken in by the sight too. They turned and looked about them, their eyes wide with awe, their mouths open to taste the air. She felt the ground beneath her boots, and it was soft and firm in a way the desert could never be. She tugged her boots off, and sunk her blistered feet into the cool, velveteen grass. The aches of her travel seemed to ebb from her feet, easing cramps she hadn’t realized she had.

The wind stirred through the trees, and Wylan opened her arms wide to feel the breeze envelope her completely. The sound of the wind was like music. It didn’t howl as it normally did over the dunes, and she didn’t have to squint to keep sand from her eyes. No, the wind was accompanied by the rustling sound of leaves as they danced among tree branches. It was as if the trees were alive and communing with one another.

Alisar and Tensinar allowed them a moment to revel in the feel of the elven home before they broke the silence.

“Welcome to High Haven,” Alisar said.

“Home to one of the ten tribes of elves and dwarves,” Tensinar said.

“There are dwarves here too?” Geffrey asked, his mouth hanging open.

Alisar nodded, her hair shinning like honey in the golden light of the sun. As the locks of her hair shifted in the breeze, Wylan could see that thin vines held the violet flowers in place among the locks of hair.

“You live together?” Wylan asked, for a moment forgetting all of the warning she’d felt in the cave below.

“Humans often think we are at odds with one another,” Tensinar said. “That’s a lie. We have no strife with dwarves. We are brethren of the earth. The magic they work on steal and stone is of the physical kind, while ours isn’t.”

“Though it’s not likely you’ll see any while you’re here,” Alisar said. “They tend to stick to their mines and their forges, only coming out for special occasions or on solstice days.”

Millie allowed herself another few moments to stare at the wonder around her before she turned back to their captors. “What is the nature of your request?”

“One of our tribemates has fallen ill,” Alisar said. “An illness like one we’ve never faced.”

“Magic,” Tensinar said.

“But there’s magic all around you,” Wylan pointed out. “Aren’t you beings of magic?”

Alisar was shaking her head before Wylan could finish. “This is human magic. Elf magic is of nature, this is much more esoteric than that.”

“So someone used magic to make her sick?” Wylan asked.

Alisar shook her head. “This isn’t an illness caused from outside magic, but instead, a magic that she was born with and is just now coming to the surface.”

“And there’s no way for us to teach her,” Tensinar said. “We’ve placed her in a deep sleep for the time being, but she needs mental wards and she needs training.”

“A wizard,” Josef breathed. He turned to Wylan, “Guess what Baba Yaga told you is coming true. Strange powers, indeed.”

Wylan nodded, frowning at the elves.

Millie spoke up, “And if we heal her, you will release your restriction on Josef?”

Alisar shook her head. “No. You must ward her mind, and then take her to Darubai where she can learn.”

“You may recall that the last of the wizards died out long ago,” Millie said.

“Yes,” Tensinar said. “It was a sad day indeed.” She spoke as if she’d witnessed it. “But there are libraries in Darubai, and there are yellow wyverns who can channel the ghosts of long dead wizards, aren’t there?”

Millie frowned, but nodded.

“That is all she needs. A teacher, and books,” Alisar said. “We elves learn fast, and Leaghan Windstar was very good at teaching herself many complex things before she was taken by the magic.”

Millie sighed. There was no way out of this. Wylan knew if she declined to help, they would kill them on the spot. More than anything they needed to get Kira to Darubai and though this situation might stall them, or make their journey all the more difficult, there was little to be done. She handed Kira off to Josef and took Geffrey by the hand. “Show us,” she said.

Tensinar motioned for Millie and Geffrey to follow them. When Josef made to follow, Alisar held up her hand and shook her head. “For now, you may rest and enjoy the sights of High Haven. I will collect you when they’re done.” With that, she left them as well.

“Well, a few hours to ourselves,” Josef said. “What should we do?” He waggled his eyebrows, and Wylan rolled her eyes at him. She punched him in the shoulder.

“Come on,” she said.

Josef followed her away from the cave entrance. A mile or so ahead of them, Wylan could see smoke billowing high into the sky, though she couldn’t determine where it came from. It didn’t seem to bother anyone else, and so Wylan didn’t let it bother her. She figured it was the dwarves, and she wondered what their caves must be like, or their homes. The way the elves talked, the dwarves must live below-ground as well.

Their feet carried them to the foot of a great, arching bridge that spanned a river so clear that Wylan could see the white stones that made up the riverbed. Great red and golden fish swam through the water, their fins fanning out behind them like wings. She was hesitant about crossing the bridge because it didn’t look like it would hold any amount of weight. It seemed more for decoration than anything else, even though marks along the surface showed that horses and possibly carriages went over it on a regular basis. Josef must have been able to tell because he gripped her smaller hand in his warm grasp, and tugged her along. He didn’t drop her hand when she started walking, but he relaxed his grip.

Wylan felt a thrill go through her chest. For the last several days she thought Josef had lost interest, or that he was angry with her. His hand in hers chased the dark thoughts away, but it also worried her. She had vowed that she didn’t want anything until she’d killed the blue dragon, but she wanted this very much.

If she lived through the encounter, Wylan wanted something normal again…at least as normal as she could have, being a wyvern. And what was normal besides people around her, people to share her life with. Friends and family. To her family had never been about blood. Blood had forsaken her, but strangers that formed bonds tighter than any blood were true family. She wanted a family again.

With a sigh she broached the topic.

“Josef, I have to kill the blue. That complicates things here. I know what it’s like having someone you love taken from you. I don’t want that to happen to anyone because of me.”

“Who said anything about love? We are friends, right? Just two friends in High Haven, enjoying the company of elves.” Josef smiled at her.

“I can handle friends.”

Wylan didn’t pull away. She felt something strange then, as if her wyvern soul brushed against another soul just as alien and as powerful as she was. A glimpse of rain and of distant shores filled Wylan’s mind. From Josef’s hand she felt the stir of his wyvern soul, and Lissandra thrilled in its power.

“I’m sorry I got us into this,” she said.

“Are you, really?” There was no accusation this time.

“I’m sorry you got injured, but I’m not sorry that I need to kill the blue dragon. You understand that, right? That I have to kill the blue and that I might not live through the fight?”

“I understand you think you need to kill the blue.” Josef sighed. “I know that’s your mission, yes. I also know that taking on a dragon on your own isn’t wise, and you are right in thinking you won’t live through the battle.”

Wylan didn’t say anything. What could she say to that? He understood, even if he didn’t agree.

“Anyway, you didn’t do this to me. If what we’ve heard is right, the elves did this to me.”

Wylan nodded. “We will get you sorted out.” She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

Josef winked at her.

“So tell me about Darubai,” she said.

“Such cheerful conversation,” he joked.

Wylan laughed. “All right, what was it like before the plague?”

Josef sighed. “Well, I was homeless, so it wasn’t that grand for me, but the city was spectacular all the same. Streets bustling with people eager to hand out coins to a street musician.”

“I can’t imagine you as a minstrel,” Wylan said.

“Have you seen my incredible hands?” He let go of her hand and waggled his fingers before her face. They were incredible hands—graceful, long fingers that ended in calluses, and strong. She laughed and pushed his hand away. He took hold of her hand again and pulled her to a stop at the apex of the bridge. They leaned against the railing and looked down into the crystalline stream.

“Honestly, I wasn’t that old when the plague hit, but I was on my own. There was a nice lady who took in the younger street rats like myself, but we normally left during the day. I joined some of the older kids and learned to play. We would split the money and be on our way.” Josef shrugged. “There’s not much I remember of the time before the plague.”

Wylan nodded. “More than I remember.”

“Awe well, that was another life that we will probably never have again. How about we go get some elvish food to eat?”

“We don’t have any money,” Wylan argued.

“No, you don’t have any money,” Josef said. “I’ve got a lot of coin, and a baby I can probably trade too.” He made a silly face at Kira and she giggled. “And we could use more milk for her also.”

They’d managed to get enough milk to fill two canteens and enough water to fill the rest.

But before they were able to get any food for themselves, a great boom rattled the earth. The water danced in the river, sloshing onto the banks, upsetting the fish and showering passersby. The trees rippled, leaves rained down around them, and more than one tree split with the low of force.

Elves scurried into buildings and against rocks, cowering to the ground to shelter against the onslaught.

Wylan shouted and spun around, her eyes following to where all the elves were looking—the small building they’d seen Millie and Geffrey enter.

Before she could try to figure out what had happened, they were running for the bridge, the house their destination.

Houses nearby had barely been disturbed, which was a testament to how well the elves built their structures. The force of magic had toppled trees, splintered roots, and upset the water of the river, but the wood and stone houses nearby had hardly been damaged.

When they arrived on the scene, the house was in chaos. Glass and pottery lay shattered along shelves, their contents spilled over the floor in a river of seeds, dried beans, and nuts. Great rivulets had been torn from the wooden floor, the splinters and chips of wood sticking out from the walls like arrows that missed their mark. Ethereal flame, green with a tinge of white still smoldered near the top of the walls.

Millie stood near the door, her body sheltering Geffrey who cowered behind her, frightened by the noise. A great wind was just coming to a halt from within the house, stirring debris and paper around the floor and amidst Millie’s feet. Wood clung to her bushy hair.

“What was that?” Josef asked.

Millie didn’t answer. As she turned, her mouth fell open. Wylan felt her stomach plummet, and she knew even before she turned, that dragons had found them. The sound of wings thundered against the air, stirring up a breeze. She turned in time to see the first of what had to be hundreds of dragons crest the side of the mountain, and wing above High Haven.

It could have been her fear, but she thought there were more than she’d ever seen in one place. Colors that ranged the entire spectrum of dragon kind, except black. A giant white dragon led them.

A scream rose up from one throat, and that’s all it took to break the stillness on the ground. Moments before the dragons began their attack, the elves were running.

A great plume of fire resounded through High Haven. Trees ignited and blistered in fire and popped from the intense heat. Wood shuttled through the air. More than one fleeing elf was skewered by giant shards of what used to be a tree. They fell, their blood cascading over the ground in a macabre scene straight from nightmares. Wylan’s stomach churned as she watched the life wink out of more than one set of eyes.

Leathery wings blotted out the sun, casting High Haven in an ominous twilight. Scales shimmered their own malignant light down on the emerald land, casting it in harrowing rainbow hues. There were more dragons than Wylan could count. Their heads snaking down from the sky, chomping up elves as they fled.

Blood flowed across the ground in scarlet torrents, mingling with the once clear river.

Josef tightened his grip on Kira.

Another roar sounded from behind the house, and Wylan grabbed Josef, fleeing for the cave.

A roar of another kind came from behind the house. Wylan glanced over her shoulder in time to see trees in the distance buckling and swaying, as if they made way for a more powerful force.

“Water,” Josef breathed.

Houses exploded before the might of a huge wave that jettisoned over the river, swelling its banks and carrying houses away in a waterfall of debris, bodies, and fish over the edge of the mountain and to the sands below.

Wylan tugged Josef closer to the stone mountain face where the tunnel down to the desert resided. She pressed him against the wall, water sluicing around their feet, but they were on an incline and in no danger of getting swept up in the torrent of water.

Heart racing, fear thundering through every fiber of her being, Wylan glanced back to the house. Millie stood in the doorway, Geffrey held close to her side. They watched the water swirl around the stairs. Wylan hoped it didn’t climb higher. Already the house was rocking on its foundations. Any higher and it might sweep the entire building over the edge of the cliff, taking Millie and Geffrey with it.

The roar of water lessened, and then fell silent as the deluge rushed back toward the banks of the river. As the water abated, another form caught Wylan’s attention, climbing over the back of the wizard’s house to crouch on the roof, its head dangerously close to the doorway where Millie and Geffrey stood frozen in fear that the water might return.

There was no doubt in her mind that this was the blue she hunted. Its sapphire body was speckled with missing scales from the night the scale wraiths had taken it down, but failed in securing its body. She knew if she could see its tail, she’d see where her father had stabbed it. Until the night with the wraiths, she’d thought the only way to penetrate the protective armor of the blue was through the wound her father had inflicted on it. Now she was heartened that there were so many more targets.

Her heart thundered in her throat. This was the closest she’d been to the dragon since it killed her father and destroyed her old life. She couldn’t pass up the chance to slay the blue this time.

Millie fled, dragging Geffrey behind her. She stopped long enough to take Kira from Josef. She said something, but Wylan didn’t pay attention. Then the healer was pounding earth toward the cave.

Wylan released Josef’s arm as the dragon readied to strike Millie. She yanked her sword from its sheath and darted between the healer and the dragon. Flame wreathed her hand and as the dragon struck, she let loose a great plume of fire, taking the water dragon in the mouth. She rolled to the side, the dragon’s great maw missing her by mere inches, and came up swinging.

The dragon’s teeth were buried in the dirt and it was having a hard time tearing free from the ground. The dragon was close enough that she could feel the ripple of its power flow over her like a morning breeze. She could smell the musk of its scales, the snort of its breath as it tugged at the ground to free itself. Wylan struck at its eye, putting behind her stroke all the strength and all the weight she could muster. The dragon tore its head free moments before her stroke hit, and her sword glanced off its eye, cutting deep enough that the dragon recoiled, and took to the air.

Great wings slapped her aside, and Wylan stumbled away. She let loose a gout of fire, but the dragon was already too far for the fire to be effective.

She forced her heart to calm, her brain to think rather than act. Her eyes tracked him. Where was it going?

“Wylan!” Josef dove for her, taking her to the ground moments before the white dragon’s claws tore through the earth where she’d been standing. The back of the beast’s foot caught Josef, slamming him against the rock face, where he crumbled to the earth, motionless.

Wylan let out a shout and made to go to Josef when the blue crashed to ground yards away, pawing at its wounded eye.

The blue was so close, and it was wounded. She could dart in now and finish it. Her eyes traveled back to Josef. Blood oozed from his head and his chest barely lifted and fell with breath.

“Dammit!” she swore and sheathed her sword. :Lissa, give me strength.:

The wyvern soul answered without question, and Wylan’s body was filled with strength she’d never known before. She rushed to Josef, tossed his prone body over her shoulder, and darted after Millie and Geffrey.

Wylan’s hands shook as she laid Josef down before the basin in the cave. They’d left the cave door open in case elves needed safe passage. So far they were the only ones that had come to the cave.

“Can you heal him?” Wylan asked, turning to Millie. “Please tell me you can heal him.”

Millie gripped her shoulders and peace washed through her. “Calm, Wylan. That was brave of you back there. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving me and Geffrey.”

Wylan didn’t want to admit that part of what she had done had been selfish. Instead, she nodded. The blue dragon had been so close she could nearly taste its blood. She would have had him. She could have had it. But if she did, what would have happened to Josef?

“We will do our best,” Millie said. “We don’t need the elves to release him, the healing we worked on Josef the other day is still working. It will just take longer than if they’d released whatever they’d done to him. Fill what canteens you can while I get to work.”

Wylan nodded and focused more on her simple task than was necessary. There were canteens they hadn’t filled in High Haven, and she filled those with water while Millie and Geffrey worked.

The sounds of destruction and screaming sounded from the top of the mountain, issuing down the path like a nightmare.

Kira whimpered.

Wylan tried to ignore the sounds of screaming, of cries cut short, of wood burning. She wanted to wipe the memories from her mind of that beautiful place falling to such destruction. Tears stung her eyes and she violently dashed them away. If only she’d killed the blue, it would be one less dragon up there, one less dragon to terrorize the long desert.

Josef shifted behind her and groaned. Wylan dropped her canteen and fell to her knees beside him. He smiled up at her and brushed his fingers across her face.

“Don’t worry, I’m as good as new.”

“No, you’re not,” Millie said. “We need to rest here for the night. In the morning we head out.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Wylan asked.

“The blow to his head was severe. His skull is fractured. I can’t mend bones that easily, but the healing energy will keep working. By morning, he should be good enough to travel.”

“We are just going to sleep here?” Josef asked. “With the screams of High Haven to lull us into restful slumber?”

Millie frowned, but nodded.

The haunted screams of High Haven followed Wylan through the night, and when she woke in the morning, all was painfully silent at the top of the stone tunnel that lead to the elvish settlement.

If she thought what had happened at her home had been bad, it was only a taste of the destruction that dragons could leave in their wake. There was a burning desire in her to put an end to the dragon tyranny, more so than the need to kill one dragon. She was to train as a member of the dragon guard, and now she knew that she had to do that. More than anything, she wanted dragons gone. She didn’t know what life was like before the dragons, and she never would, but at least she could know peace and relative safety.

Millie had been right. Josef woke the following morning with glancing pain in his head, but good enough to walk. While he didn’t have complete control of his water yet, he was able to raise a trickle of water to the surface of the sand within the cave.

The sun was bright, again, and warm and full of promise. But Wylan didn’t want any of those promises of a beautiful day, unless it was the promise of her family returning; of venturing to Darubai with her parents where they could start a new life together. A new life that would still consist of her helping to sort beans for dinner, of reading by the fire, and of Cuthburt and Kethill watching as she grew into position in the guard.

Her wishes were cut short when the sun shimmered off a tall pillar, its point glittering in the morning sun. At first Wylan thought it was just a trick of the light, but when Millie tapped her shoulder and pointed to it, Wylan knew that it was real.

“What is that?” she asked the healer.

“An obelisk to the old gods. Unlike most obelisks you might see in Darubai, the obelisks to the old gods have three sides, one for each of the old gods—the Great Mediator, the Lady of Terrors, and the Lord of All.”

“What I could never understand was the Lord of All,” Wylan told her. “I understand the Great Mediator mediated between the Lord of All and the Lady of Terrors, but why did the Lord of All have an issue with the Lady of Terrors if he was Lord of All creation?”

Josef spoke up from behind them, “the Lord of All saw the balance that was needed to keep the world turning. The Lady of Terrors wanted only a land of nightmares. Because of that, the Lord of All wanted to kill her and create a new god in her place, but the Great Mediator rose from their strife and helped ease both sides.”

“Are we going to see the obelisk?” Wylan asked.

“You’ve never seen one before?” Josef asked. “I thought you traveled a lot.”

“Around the farm, but I’ve never seen an obelisk.”

“Strange,” Millie said, “they seem to be everywhere close to towns.”

In the end the obelisk wasn’t anything amazing. The most amazing thing about the structure was its towering height. Along the sides of the pillar were several engravings that had been weathered away by the wind and sand. Wylan could just make out figures bent low before upright bodies. She figured that the upright bodies were the gods.

She let her eyes wander up the incredible height of the obelisk until they reached the top, where something shimmered in the sun.

“What’s that at the top?” Wylan asked.

“A statue of a dragon holding some kind of stone,” Millie said.

“Some kind of stone? What kind of stone?” Wylan asked.

Millie shrugged. “None that people can identify.”

“That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” she wondered.

“Wanna take a better look?” Josef asked, mischief in his eye.

“Yea,” Wylan said as Josef started to strip. In moments he’d shifted into the blue wyvern and was kneeling for Wylan to get on his back. She looked at Millie questioningly.

“He should be strong enough to take you to the top,” she said with a nod. Millie cast an eye toward the sky. “I haven’t seen any dragons today; it should be okay. Just keep an eye out.”

Wylan didn’t bother using Josef’s clothes as a saddle, she wasn’t going to be on his back long enough to chafe. He leapt into the air before she was completely ready, and she let out a yelp, clutching tight to his neck as his wings slowly took them higher. Flying on the back of a wyvern was different than flying in her form. Her head shifted sickeningly, and more than once she thought she was going to pitch off Josef’s side and plummet to her death. Several times she had to close her eyes to stop her gorge from rising. Eventually she calmed enough to take in more of the obelisk.

If she thought the frescoes of figures and beasts on the obelisk would get clearer the higher they went, she was mistaken.

Josef swept around the obelisk in a dipping, swaying loop until they were at the top, where he hovered, swooping his wings powerfully so they remained in the air.

At the top of the obelisk was the statue of a dragon, its head raised to the heavens, its body stretched up as if about to take flight. Its wings were open and so was its mouth, though not in a cry of rage but a triumphant bay of reverence. In its front legs, clasped as if in a human hand, was an odd stone like Wylan had never seen before. It was round and many faceted, with smooth lines along the surface. It wasn’t a perfect orb, but close enough that Wylan doubted it could have come out of the earth that way. Deep within the stone shone with darkness, as if with another life, another essence that housed a consciousness, an intelligence. She reached out with her mind, wondering if she could feel thoughts within the stone, but whatever was inside churned and pushed her away, not wanting to give up its secrets. On the surface the afternoon sun shimmered in rainbow hues.

:What’s the purpose of this stone?: Wylan wondered.

:No one knows. Does it have to have a purpose?: Josef asked into her mind.

:No,: Wylan said. It was strange though.

:Do you see that over there?: Josef asked.

Wylan looked around for a moment, but she couldn’t see what Josef was talking about. :What?: she asked.

:I’m going to take a closer look. Do you want me to put you down first?:

:No.: Wylan checked the sword at her waist to be sure it was easy to draw if she needed it. They’d come up against a lot of nasty things so far in the long desert, and she didn’t want to consider being in a situation where she couldn’t easily draw her sword.

As Josef took them closer, Wylan could see what he was talking about. She couldn’t see a figure, but she could feel the energy of whatever was out there. It appeared to her in a haze of black mist rising on from the desert. She knew there was something, or someone, at the heart of the energy, but she couldn’t see them.

Whispers stole across her mind, not the kind she might feel from mind-speaking, but the kind that intruded on her thoughts without heed they were doing so. She knew the whispers, the perversions and twisted tongues of some ancient language came from the energy. She felt them snake across her mind, twisting her thoughts and filling her head with dark images of blood and flesh and worms that crawled somewhere between the two.

:We need to get away from that,: Wylan said to Josef. She didn’t want to speak aloud, worried that whatever was at the root of the convergence of power might hear her.

:I agree.:

:Do you know what it is?: Wylan asked. :Are you able to see anything more than I am?:

:A shape,: Josef said. :Hold on.:

Wylan gripped him tighter as he dipped into a loop and headed back toward Millie. Before they’d made it to the obelisk, however, there was a great concussion of air, and they were falling.

Geffrey stiffened beside Millie. She turned to the boy wondering what could be wrong when she noticed the far off stare that yellows got when they were seeing something that was beyond the normal range of the mind to see. Something between the worlds, the realm of visions that few minds could access.

“Old powers awaken, and one is near!” The boy’s face contorted to a mask of pain, as if he were feeling something inside his vision.

“Geffrey, what do you see?” Millie asked, kneeling before him. She knew better than to touch him, doing so might bring him out of the vision. She knew he could be in pain from what he was seeing, and Millie cursed herself for letting him stay in the vision. But fear trembled through her limbs. His words had mirrored so closely those of Grandmother Fire that she needed to know what he was seeing, and how close it was.

“Wizard,” Geffrey breathed. “Dark magic. It’s Leaghan from High Haven.”

It chilled Millie to think the wizard had found them. “How close?”

Geffrey’s shoulders trembled and a tear leaked from his eye. His vision returned to normal, and he looked up into Millie’s dark eyes, his blue one filled with fear. “She’s hurt Wylan and Josef.”

“Dammit,” Millie swore. She hoped that Josef would heal more in his wyvern form. His head injury might have been good enough to shift and fly, but to fight a wizard…? She pushed to her feet and stared off in the direction the two of them had flown. She hadn’t been paying attention to them, she knew at one moment they were in the air, and when she turned back moments later she didn’t see them. She could feel it now, the dark magic of the wizard. It rose before her like a blackened cloud of bees swarming closer, ready to take them over. There was little she could do. She had a sword, but what good was that? She had her poison, but she hated to use that on a person. Not all wizards were bad, most of them were good, but without training, this one had been taken over by the magic. Who knew how dangerous she was? They’d seen a bit of her power in High Haven, but Millie had the feeling that was just the tip.

“I’m going with you,” the boy said, shucking his clothes.

“No. I need you to stay with Kira.”

“They are hurt, I need to help!”

Millie sighed. It was too much, having children here and her companions out there in the long desert. She needed to move fast before the wizard was on them. Maybe they aren’t hurt that bad? She thought.

:Wylan?: she sent, envisioning the girl’s golden eyes in her mind, as if she were standing right before her. Her mind speech wasn’t strong, and she rarely used it. She wasn’t even sure it would work this time.

She felt a stirring on her mind; confusion and pain.

:Wylan, can you hear me?:

The confusion responded, but it was in a sickening swirl of uncertainty.

:Are you hurt?: she asked.

:I’m all right,: Wylan said, though the pain was evident in her voice. :We didn’t fall far. What happened?:

:Wizard, we are coming for you,: she told Wylan, and turned to Geffrey. “We need to keep the baby safe. If we hide her at the base of the obelisk, can you mentally shield her?”

Geffrey nodded, though uncertainty showed in his eyes. Millie found a spot at the base of the pillar where a dune rose up, blocking the view from people that came from the same direction they had. She lower Kira down, hoping the baby didn’t fuss. Kira only looked back at her, as if her blue eyes knew the weight of the situation. Geffrey stepped forward when Millie stepped back. There was a shimmer in the air, and moments later Millie could no longer see the baby.

“All right,” Millie said, undressing. “You stay behind me.”

“I can help.”

“You can’t fight this,” Millie told him.

“Neither can you guys,” he said. “I can protect them though.”

Millie stopped short of shifting, a smile spreading across her face. “Oh, you smart boy, you’re right.”

Wizard, Wylan thought. Was it the same one from High Haven, or was it yet another wizard? Her shoulders ached all the way up into her head. She shifted to the side, trying to look behind her, to get her face out of the sand, but moving hurt too much. She sobbed in pain. Her leg throbbed. She fell back to the sand, hearing the sound of beating wings coming to her aid and feeling the malignant power of the wizard gathering at her back.

What had it done to them? She’d heard of wizards in her stories, and in those stories they were all bad. She was sure not all wizards were bad, but she’d never given it much thought. As far as she knew wizards hadn’t existed since before the dragons left.

She groaned and tried to roll over as the wings settled and two forms thumped to the ground—one big and one small.

:Don’t try to move,: Millie’s voice came to her mind.

Easy for her to say when Wylan couldn’t breathe without sand tickling her nose and burning deeper parts of her head. She was surrounded in warmth and she could feel the healing energy of the green wyvern slipping through her body. The throbbing in her head abated as the warmth from the healing energy worked its way through her skull and slowly into her shoulders.

Soon she felt well enough to roll over, even if her leg throbbed dizzyingly. She lay on her back, trying to stop the sensation of the desert spinning underneath her.

The green energy worked lower, but she didn’t feel any more of the energy coming from Millie. She had stopped sending her energy into Wylan.

Wylan opened her eyes and saw before them a gaunt girl, no older than she was. Her blond hair hung in greasy threads around her head. Her brown tunic and dark trousers seemed too big on her. Her eyes were vacant, her mouth slack. She had the graceful gait, and the pointed ears of an elf. This was the one they’d been abducted to help.

Millie roared. Green energy billowed from her mouth. Wisps of her wyvern toxin enveloped the girl and she stumbled back. If the magic wraiths were anything like the scale wraiths, they were in for a fight. She could only imagine that the magic wraiths were someone lost to their own magic, much like the scale wraiths were lost to the power of the scales.

Geffrey, seeming small and insignificant, took guard before Wylan and Josef. There was a strange listing to her head and she saw the air shimmer around him, turn yellow, and soon he was surrounded by an orb of yellow that seemed textured, as if with scales. Wylan felt the air shimmer and saw the orb extend, washing over her body in a whisper of power as the healing energy dissipated in her leg. She could move without pain now, even if her leg was weaker than it had been before. She rotated her foot around jerkily and pushed up to her knees as the yellow orb finished surrounding her and Josef.

:It won’t hold long, but hopefully long enough,: Geffrey said, his voice strained. Wylan imagined one good magical blow would collapse the orb around them.

The elf stumbled out of the miasma of toxic green energy, a small gray orb around her. She set her sights on Geffrey, but the larger shape of Millie stepped before them, blocking out what Wylan could see.

But not for long.

A great cloud of blackness swarmed around Millie with the sound of hundreds of thundering wings. Within the black cloud, Wylan could see small shapes of birds, though they were indistinct, melting into the shadows and then reemerging from the cloud as if they were ghosts of their former selves.

Millie was lost from sight and the cloud hammered down on the tiny mental protections that Geffrey had put in place around them.

Fear rose in Wylan as she saw the yellow orb shiver and then splinter as if hundreds of tiny beaks were breaking through glass. The orb let out a psychic wail, and then collapsed. The cloud was on them.

Wylan called to her fire and it answered faster than ever before. She drew her sword, and then let her fire loose on the cloud. The toxic cloud shrink away from her. She stepped away from Geffrey and the immobile Josef, and the cloud turned toward her. She kept moving away, and the cloud followed.

She blasted out again, a ball of fire shooting into the black cloud, and then vanishing as if plunged into a large pool of water. The cloud shrank as if the fire were burning it away, dispersing the fog before the might of the sun.

And then the cloud was gone and the wizard screamed out. Wylan watched as a streak of lightning arched through the air between the wizard’s outstretched hand and Millie. Millie took to wing, barely avoiding the lightning before it hit her.

She batted at the wizard, keeping her attention focused on the wyvern rather than any other person there. It was enough for Wylan to slip up behind the wizard, grab her by the hair, and place her sword against her throat.

:Don’t kill her!: Millie commanded. :She’s not that far gone. I think I can reach her.:

Wylan considered it. The wizard was dangerous, she needed to be put down. They’d tried to reach her once before, at High Haven, and it hadn’t worked then. She was within Wylan’s reach and she was scared now.

Scared, Wylan thought. That wasn’t something she’d seen on the scale wraiths. She was scared and that was a very human emotion. Millie was right, there was something human inside her that had remained. Wylan grunted and brought the butt of her sword down hard on the girl’s head. She crumpled to the sand like a dead salamander.

“What do you intend to do with her?” Wylan wondered, staring down at the frail woman by the fire.

“Well, Geffrey needs to encase her mind. She will probably travel in a fog for a while, hopefully until we get back to Darubai. I will try healing her along the way,” Millie said.

“Can Geffrey keep her imprisoned that long?” she wondered.

“Let’s hope so.”

“What about Josef?” Wylan looked to the naked man beside her, his clothing draped over his modesty.

“He will be his annoying self in the morning,” Millie said. “But I’m sorry Wylan, I need to sleep now. Today has drained me.”

Josef dropped a dead lizard at her feet, but before the wyvern soul could take over, Wylan pushed Lissandra away and called her fire instead. She directed the flame toward the lizard, adjusting the heat so she didn’t burn it.

:What are you doing!?: Lissandra asked, outraged. :You’re ruining it!:

:I’m hungry, and I want to enjoy this!: Wylan said. :I will let you gorge on bloody lizard tonight.:

Lissandra harrumphed at her, and settled down. Wylan wondered if the wyvern soul was going to churn and slither around, upsetting her stomach, but she didn’t.

:Thank you,: Wylan said.

Lissandra ignored her.

It took her longer to eat the roasted meat than it would have if she’d just let Lissandra devour it, but afterward she felt sated in a way that she hadn’t in days.

A dull roar trumpeted from the distance, and Wylan shivered. The dragons had returned from their conquest of High Haven.

“They’re back,” Millie said, looking up. “I was hoping they’d stay clear so we could get Leaghan on our back and take her to Darubai faster.”

The continued on foot for a while, Leaghan shambling along behind them. At least she could walk, even if her violet eyes were distant. She didn’t see the desert before them. Whatever she was seeing made her pretty face scrunch up in horror from time to time, but whatever warding Millie and Geffrey had cast on her mind kept those nightmares inside her head at least.

As they walked, Wylan observed Leaghan, wondering if the wards might crack. Her eyes were violet with swirls of white through them, like moonlight. Her wavy blond hair hung to the middle of her back, but it wasn’t adorned with flowers or vines as the other elves’ had been. Her arms were free of adornments as well. She wore simple brown trousers and a faded yellow tunic with the same blocky text around the neckline and wrists that Wylan had seen in the tunnel.

Content that she wasn’t going to break free in the foreseeable future, Wylan let her mind wander to what her companions were talking about.

Geffrey rode piggyback on Josef, prattling on about a dream he’d had the night before about ruined towns and the ashes of the dead and how he found all kinds of pretty gems and stones among the ruin that shined like the sun.

Josef and Millie seemed to take a lot of interest in what he was saying, asking questions about if he knew where the town was, and how many stones he found. Wylan wasn’t sure if they were interested in the stones, or if they were interested in his dreams. She knew he was a yellow wyvern and that he had the ability to see things others didn’t. Maybe they were interested in his gift of prophecy? How could one tell if the child was just having a dream, or if it was prophetic? Did everything he dreamed come true? Wylan wasn’t sure and was too tired and too full of the cooked lizard to ask.

She plodded along in a haze until it was time to stop for the night. Millie took Geffrey aside. Through the darkness Wylan could see the green energy of Millie’s power wreathing Geffrey’s head. It was so easy for her to forget that he’d suffered so much at the hands of the scale wraiths that Millie would have to help mend his mind.

She turned her focus to Leaghan, who sat nearby, but was mentally so far away. She rocked back and forth on her knees, muttering something under her breath. Wylan turned away, seeing the elf in her mental torment reminded her too much of when she’d been trapped partially between the long desert, and part in the spirit world. She shivered.

Josef asked, “have you given any thought about what you’d like to do when you reach Darubai?”

Wylan shrugged. “When I lived with my parents I always wanted to go to the city and learn to fight dragons. But I’m not sure what Lissandra has in mind.”

“Most wyverns don’t argue with fighting dragons, they know it keeps us all safe,” Josef told her.

“I just don’t know what Lissandra wants at this moment to make a decision, but I’d really like to be part of the guard.”

“We are called dragon guard,” Josef told her. “Pretty catchy name if you ask me.”

“And what do you do?”

“There are tons of different options really. Some of us just guard the city and scout for potential threats. Not all threats come in the form of dragons. We deal with wraiths, tribes of drakes, all kinds of other threats. The dragons hit the hardest though. There are other divisions that scout the surrounding land looking for people to join the city and get out of the dangers of the long desert. Those divisions go on missions that can last up to a few months depending on how far out they’re told to go.”

“See, that’s what I’d like to do,” Wylan told him.

“They are a lot of fun. I’ve been on a few myself. We can’t always go to wing, we have regular soldiers that join us from time to time and since they can’t fly we often walk, that’s why the missions take so long.”

“I bet there’s a lot of danger out there,” Wylan said. The adventurer side of her that obsessed over books and heroes of old stirred at the thought.

“Haven’t you had enough danger out here?” Josef wondered.

“No!” Wylan said. “And I bet Lissandra and I can merge more often, that the adventures will be a lot more fun.”

Josef laughed at her. “An adventurer at heart. I’d rather stay in to be honest. Hearth and home is where the fun is at for me. Protecting Darubai is adventure enough.”

“You really deal with drakes?” Wylan wondered. “I thought they stayed away from populated areas.”

Josef shrugged. “They normally do, but I think they are after the magical books in the wizards keep to be honest.”

“So it’s true, they have magic?” Wylan asked.

“Of a sort. I don’t really know what their magic is based on, but I know it’s not the same kind the wizards used to use. Maybe they want to branch out.”

Wylan wondered at that. She tried to imagine a drake, a human-like creature covered with scales and webbed hands and feet. They were rumored to be largely magical in nature.

She also thought about the city and what life would be like for her there. It would be nice to have a home again, even if it wasn’t the home she’d thought it would be when she arrived at Darubai. She’d hoped that going to the city would have happened in the company of her parents.

“Do you have actual homes?” she wondered. “I had this vision of the city before. I don’t think that’s what the city will be like now.”

“Yea, we definitely have our own homes. The city is so empty that you can almost choose wherever you want to live.”

Wylan felt more excited than ever to go to the city now. She could have her own place. She’d never had that. The house she shared with Cuthburt and Kethill had been small enough that she had slept on the couch. She never had the chance to sleep in and she rarely got the chance to go to bed early. Most of her schedule reflected her parents who were late to bed and early to rise.

“But you’re eighteen, right?” Josef asked.

She nodded.

“If you make the guard then you will have your own place. Since you’re eighteen you won’t have to worry about housing with minors. Minors are often housed in apartments that are overseen by older people, unless they’re wyvern. You’re right on the cusp of being a minor in the eyes of the guard.”

“What does being in the guard have to do with?” Wylan wondered.

“Well, those people who join the guard often have a wyvern soul that is stricter with them and keeps them in check.”

Wylan thought of Lissandra. She was definitely strict in the sense that she wanted Wylan to do as she wanted, even if she didn’t tell her what she wanted. She could only imagine Lissandra punishing her by turning her back on Wylan if she got out of hand.

“I can understand that,” she said.

“I thought you would.”

“So what division are you in?” Wylan wondered.

“City guard,” he said. “I have the option to go out, but I rarely do. I keep the city safe, kind of like the constables used to before the dragons returned.”

“That could be fun too,” Wylan said. “It would make all the difference if Lissandra would just tell me what she wanted. All she’s said is ‘family’ and ‘unity’ and indicated that dragons are also family.”

Josef frowned. “So she wants you to protect dragons as well?”

Wylan shrugged. “That’s what’s so frustrating. She hasn’t come out and said that.”

“How strange,” Josef said. “Well, she can’t want all dragons to be safe. The wyvern soul is just as concerned with safety as any other living thing. They want to live, not die, and dragons want us to die.”

:Lies,: Lissandra grumbled so low that Wylan barely heard it. She didn’t tell Josef that her wyvern soul didn’t agree with him. It was hard to get a read on Lissandra. Wylan thought of asking her what she meant, but the wyvern seemed to be settling down for the night. Already the heat that came with Lissandra’s slumber was building in Wylan’s core.

“How much longer to Darubai?” Wylan asked. “We’ve been out here forever; I can’t imagine it’s far now.”

“It definitely seems to be taking longer than I’d hoped. I would say two, maybe three days.”

Millie chose that point to come back to the camp with Geffrey. “Four or five days,” she said. “Geffrey has dreamed of some ruins not far from here. He thinks there may be something there that we need.”

“Ah, gotta love prophecy,” Josef said. “It could be the greatest weapon to fight dragons, or it could be a chunk of meat.”

Geffrey giggled and sat beside Josef.

“How’s he doing?” Wylan asked. “You’re healing his mind?”

Millie nodded and sat down. “Healing the mind is a lot harder than healing the body. There are layers to the wounds there and you have to address each and every one, even if it doesn’t seem to be the cause of the current problem.”

“Better you than me,” Josef said.

Millie nodded. “I agree.”

Wylan laughed at the shocked look on Josef’s face.

“Anyway, we should get some sleep. The ruins will take the better part of a day to get to without flying.”

Through the morning and afternoon of their travel dragons patrolled the skies. Wylan knew Millie had hoped they could fly to the ruins, but with so many multi-colored beasts winging through the skies above, there was no chance of that.

Geffrey was able to give them enough warning when dragons were coming so they were able to find some way to hide themselves. Wylan would watch the giant beasts drifting on the currents of air above the clouds, casting cold shadows across the land as they passed. She wondered if a particular blue dragon might be the same blue that had killed her parents, but that was unlikely. At this point, Wylan figured she would never find that blue again, and she had no idea how to track it down.

Wylan had seen enough ruins in her time that these ruins looked little different. A lot of smashed buildings, a lot of burned foundations. The sand had claimed much of the settlement making it sometimes hard to tell if you were walking through streets or someone’s kitchen.

There was no telling why they were there, and Geffrey wasn’t able to elaborate either. He just knew that something was there that they could use. Wylan was of the same mind as Josef—this was likely a waste of time that would better be served making their way to Darubai.

When the town came into sight, they separated and Wylan made her way through the shifted sand, her eyes peeled like they were when she hunted through rubble with Cuthburt. The difference was, when she ventured with her father she knew what they were looking for. This time around she had no idea what to hunt for. For all she knew, whatever they sensed could lay beneath feet of sand.

She started out slow, looking for the typical things she would have looked for with Cuthburt. There weren’t many books to be had in the first house, and there was no trace of food that hadn’t been ransacked by rodents of other desert lizards. She sifted through tools on the tables, sure that they weren’t looking for a kitchen knife or chipped bowls.

She went to the next house, wondering what it could be they were looking for. It had to be something out of the ordinary, something they needed Geffrey had been certain about that.

It wasn’t until she was in her fifth house that she found something interesting, a book titled A History of Dragons. She sat on a rickety chair and flipped through the worn pages, careful not to rip any of them. There were pictures of dragons, potions that were said to help dragon slayers, and all kinds of tables and appendices that Wylan was sure would help. The light was fading, however, and she didn’t have the time to give it more than a cursory inspection.

She tucked the book under her arm and kept searching. It was in the same house that a shimmer of a blade attracted her attention. It rested in the corner of the room, in the near darkness of the foundation that hadn’t been completely destroyed when the dragons attacked. She made her way through the debris to the blade.

It lay in the sand, a fragment of a sword, the end broken off. The blade itself wasn’t more than a foot long. While she expected it to be tarnished, or dull with the elements, that wasn’t the case. The edge was still sharp, the metal still shown with a cold light. The pummel was artfully wrapped in leather.

The moment she touched it, she felt Lissandra’s attention pique. The wyvern was both drawn to the blade and afraid of it. Wylan could only picture Lissandra’s interest in the blade like the wraiths were drawn to scales. Lissandra moved beneath Wylan’s skin, her power reaching down the arm that held the sword. When the wyvern soul touched the pummel, it recoiled and purred.

The wyvern was afraid of the blade. It felt power within the forged steal.

“I will take that as a good sign,” Wylan said.

“I found something!” Josef called out.

Wylan jumped and turned toward the fallen wall of the house. She made her way out into the fading sunlight. She could make out the figure of Josef to her right, and she headed for him. As she neared, Millie and Geffrey both materialized out of the shadows of a nearby building.

“What is it?” Millie asked.

“Fire fruit.” Joseph held up a round, orange fruit. The skin on the outside looked tough, like hide.

“Fire fruit,” Millie breathed. She took the fruit from Josef and inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering closed. “I haven’t seen one of these since the dragons came.”

“We could try to grow some,” Josef said. “Hold on to that.”

“What did you find?” Geffrey asked Wylan.

“A book on dragons, and a sword.” She held up her treasures.

“Way to make mine look insignificant,” Josef grumped.

“You think they’re important?” Millie asked, handing the fruit back to Josef.

“Yes, Lissandra was both drawn to and afraid of the sword.”

“That’s a good sign,” Millie reached for the sword, and Wylan handed it to her. She grasped the sword and closed her eyes. Wylan could tell the moment she felt the power of the sword because Millie’s face contorted in glee and pain. She sighed a quick, ragged breath and her eyes fluttered open. “That’s a really good sign.”

She passed the sword to Josef and moments later his face split in a smile. “This might be useful to the guard.”

“Do you think it’s something that can be replicated?” Wylan wondered.

Josef nodded. “Probably. We have yellows that can try to figure out what magic made it, maybe they can channel an ancient wizard and fire up our forges for working a spell in it.”

“You’re collecting quite a few weapons,” Millie said. “Josef, why don’t you try to find her a belt to sheath the sword and that wand.”

Josef saluted and vanished into the shadows of a building.

“In the meantime, we should settle down for the night while we have such great shelter.”

While Millie and Geffrey hunted, Wylan scouted around for reeds in the rubble of buildings that might still burn. When Josef returned with a belt for her, Wylan had a nice little fire going.

He tossed the belt to her, and she caught it.

“Figured out how to work with your magic without blowing things up?” Josef asked.

Wylan nodded. She surveyed the belt, finding a place to sheath the sword and another place where she could slip the cold length of the wand, and it fit snuggly enough that she didn’t worry about losing it when traveling.

“It’s freeing in a way, knowing how to use your powers,” Josef affirmed. “It makes you feel less at the whim of the fates.”

“What was it like for you when you caught the plague?” Wylan asked.

Josef sighed and crouched by the fire. He placed his hands near the crackling flames, warming his fingers. “Well, not like yours and not like Millie’s. I lived in the city, I was one of the poor saps that caught the plague and made it through. There wasn’t any dragon fire, no destruction of family and home. I didn’t have a home.”

“Is homelessness much of an issue in Darubai?” Wylan asked, shocked.

“Yep, it happens more than you can imagine. Well, not as much now since there’s more buildings than people. The section where we keep those with damaged minds used to be my home. I had a nice spot on a roof that I had set up like home. It was pretty cozy. When I heard of people getting sick, I thought it might be best to get out of town.”

“But the sickness was everywhere,” Wylan said. “That wouldn’t have helped.”

“I didn’t know that. We didn’t know that it was anything outside of the city,” Josef said. “There were a lot of people catching this sickness, and I figured what chance would an urchin like myself have against a plague that people with money could by medicine for.”

“What stopped you from leaving?”

“When I realized there was an actual plague on our hands, I tried to run. When I made it to the city gates I was scared to leave. I stuck around for a few more days, and by the time I was about to leave I realized I already had the sickness.”

“And you didn’t think you’d survive in the long desert.”

Josef nodded. “If I couldn’t survive in a city with water and food, what made me think I would survive in the Dar Desert with none of those things? I headed to my home, but before I got there, dragons swarmed the city. Twice as many as High Haven. You can’t imagine what it was like, hundreds of dragons converging on the city. Some breathing the plague like green mist through the city streets, others sending buildings up in a blaze of fire. There was a great white dragon swarming through the streets, freezing people solid as they ran in fear.”

Wylan shuddered. “That’s awful.”

“It was terrible. Add to that some people were already starting to change. We had people bursting into flame of their own accord, we had others transforming into wyverns and taking to the sky, fighting back the dragons. Many of the early wyverns that tried protecting us died. They would fall to the city street, their shape shifting back to humans before they broke against the roads or against a building. Blood and gore was everywhere.”

“I’ve seen evidence of that in some ruins,” Wylan told him, remembering one town Cuthburt and her came to soon after a dragon attack with bodies strewn everywhere, torn apart, charred, and some impaled on remnants of houses.

“It happens everywhere,” Josef agreed. “Dragons have no care about the carnage they leave behind. It was absolute mayhem. After the dragons left I realized some of the attack hadn’t come from dragons, but from the plague within people. We had a new breed of humans walking among us—wyverns.

“Of course we didn’t know what to do with them, and I thought they should be put to death…until I changed. It didn’t take the emperor and empress long before they saw the benefit of shifters that could change into wyrms. They set up the dragon guard and the moment I heard news of it, I enlisted. I knew the dragons would be back, and I would do everything in my power to kill them.”

“Have you killed any?” Wylan asked.

“Two,” Josef said. He didn’t look away from the fire. “And lost several of my comrades in the battles against them. One was a white dragon, the other a purple dragon. You can imagine how tough those fights must have been. Ice, and lightning.”

“Together?”

“No, no. That would have been impossible. But the white dragons seem to be the leaders in most cases. That one had to be the toughest dragon there was around.”

“How did you manage it?” Wylan asked.

Josef smiled. “By accident. It nearly destroyed my entire group when it turned on me. It breathed in, and just before it let loose a wintery storm at me, I threw up my hands and called my water. The power surrounded me, encasing me in an orb of ice. The wyvern came to me, I shifted and stayed alive within the ice until the dragon turned to leave. It was a bloody battle, but I found the weak spot.”

“And where’s that?” Wylan asked, curious if it would help her fight the dragons.

“The roof of their mouth,” Josef said. “It’s not scaled, and it leads almost directly to their brain. It opened up to blast me again, and I drove my sword right up through its head.”

“Wow…”

“Yea. I needed a lot of healing after that. I was out for about a weak.”

“It’s a miracle that you made it,” Wylan said.

“We’ve lost a lot of good soldiers to the dragons,” Josef said. “But I hope this helps.” He placed his hand on the fractured sword she’d found. “The power it holds…I hope it works against the dragons the way my wyvern seems to think it does.”

“Your wyvern soul thinks it will work against dragons?”

“He hasn’t said as much, but given the way he recoils at the touch? Yea.”

Wylan stared at the sword for several moments.

“Well,” Josef said, standing, “I need to go eat before I fall asleep.”

By the time Wylan tore her eyes from the blade, Josef was gone.

Soon Millie and Geffrey returned. The yellow wyvern landed beside Wylan and deposited a librak that she was surprised Geffrey could kill. The librak was nearly the size of the small yellow wyvern. He stepped back and nosed the kill to her. His toothy maw was spread in the closest thing Wylan could equate to a smile.

She laughed and patted his nearly bald head. He chuffed a couple giggles and shifted back to his human shape. He was laughing at her.

“You should have seen him try to kill it,” Millie said, donning her clothes. There was a slight smile on her face. “I nearly had to intervene. It looked like they were playing.”

“Thank you, Geffrey,” Wylan said.

“You’re welcome,” he said, his pride clear in his voice.

She didn’t insist on roasting the librak and instead let Lissandra take over. When she came back to herself after the feast, Josef had returned.

After she finished eating and cleaned up, Millie sat down beside her with the orange fire fruit. Leaghan sat near the fire. She was no longer mumbling or rocking, and Wylan wondered if she was asleep…or gathering her powers for something. Maybe an onslaught that would crumble Geffrey’s wards?

“Geffrey, come here,” Millie said. Geffrey, who had previously been wrestling with Josef, scooted closer to Millie. Josef sat down across the fire from them. “Legend says that the fire fruit was able to harness some of the power of dragons. When a person ate it, the fruit gave them a little bit of the power the dragon infused it with.”

“Is that why it doesn’t exist any longer?” Wylan wondered.

“Well, that’s where things get a bit strange. See, the fruit tree is impervious to all dragon powers. A white can freeze it, and the fruit will absorb the power. A red can try to burn it, but it won’t burn and a person who eats from that tree is able to control fire to an extent.”

Josef spoke up, “what’s even stranger is that some people used to believe that the person who ate from the tree was also able to control the power a dragon tried to use on them.”

“No way!” Wylan said.

Millie nodded. “Old texts tell us there was a man who ate from a fire fruit tree and later came up against a purple dragon. The dragon took a great breath and expelled the might of its thunderous storm at the man.”

“But it didn’t work,” Josef said. “The man held up his arms in fright, as if that would stop the lightning. But this time it did. The man gathered the storm around him and directed it back at the purple dragon. The dragon was surrounded in a storm of its own making.”

“What happened to the dragon?” Geffrey asked.

“Well,” Millie said with a shrug, “the dragon didn’t do anything. It turned away and left the man alone.”

“That’s it?” Wylan asked. “That can’t be it.”

“There’s a lot of speculation,” Josef said. “Some people wrote that the dragon thought the man was a powerful wizard and left him alone, afraid that he was too great a match. Another report says the dragon was found dead days later.”

“Still, one more script says that when the man turned the dragon’s power back on it, the storm that followed snuffed out all of the dragon’s power.” Millie held the fruit as if she believed this report the most, as if the fruit was imbued with some dragon power that would allow them to completely erase the magic of a dragon.

“That’s the one,” Geffrey said. “That’s the right story.”

Millie raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that something you feel with your wyvern soul?”

“No,” the boy said, “that’s the best story!”

Millie chuckled at him and ruffled his dark hair.

“I would be surprised if you knew that to be true from your power,” Josef told him. “No yellow has been able to divine the truth of the story. Maybe all of them are true.”

It was too great a thought to be true. Wylan could only hope that the fruit was some special fruit that would help defend against the dragons.

“So why is it called fire fruit and not dragon fruit?” Wylan wondered.

“Well, because it grows at the urging of fire,” Millie said. She tore into the hide and peeled the fruit. Underneath the orange skin was a white substance, like a more fragile skin. She broke the fruit open and it glistened orange in the light of the fire. The smell that rose from the fruit was intoxicating. Millie worked away at the sections of the fruit, her fingers shimmering with juice. Wylan’s mouth watered as Millie pulled out white seeds and sat them on her leg.

She handed out sections of fruit to each of them, and Wylan tore into hers. Juice erupted into her mouth. It was sweet with a bit of an acidic bite. She couldn’t stop the moan of pleasure that escaped.

“Wow,” she said, licking her fingers clean of the juice. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

Millie nodded, her mouth full of her own section of fruit.

“But that’s all there is left in the long desert?” Geffrey asked.

“No,” Josef said.

“There will be more,” Millie motioned to the multitude of seeds on her leg. She gathered them up and handed them to Wylan. “Dry them.”

“What?” Wylan asked. “I can’t do that. What if I burn them? What if I destroy all there is left of the seeds?”

Millie shook her head. “You can’t destroy it with fire. It thrives on fire. If you don’t dry them with fire, the seeds will never take root.”

“Oh,” Wylan said. She gathered the sticky seeds in her palms, cupped her hands over them, and called to the fire. She felt it answer in a rush of heat up her spine and down her arms. As her hands warmed, the seeds seemed to dance in her palms, slipping and sliding over her skin like worms, or slugs. It was disgusting and she wanted nothing more than to drop them, but she persisted. Soon they stopped moving and lay still. When Wylan opened her hands again, they were shriveled and dry.

“I thought you said that wouldn’t destroy them.”

Millie smiled and took the seeds from her. “It won’t. Here, let’s split them up in case something happens to any of us.” She handed out a bunch of seeds to each of them. Wylan took hers and stared at the gray seeds for a moment before tucking them safely away in her pocket.

“They will grow in sand?” Geffrey asked.

Josef nodded. “Yep, they are resilient.”

“Then how did they die off?” Wylan wondered.

“No one knows for sure,” Millie told her. “I think it’s a really great thing that Geffrey led us here. But now it’s time to sleep.”

Wylan woke to an inhuman giggling laugh resounding through the camp. She’d heard this kind of laugh before, when she’d hunted the dragons…but this was different. There was a sound to the laughter, an edge that reminded her of tortured screams. It was faint, ebbing and flowing through the chortles, whispering away to nothing when the laughter trailed off to yips that echoed through the ruin of buildings.

More chuckles—more quiet, harrowed screams—followed from the other side, raising a shiver from her. She lay wedged between Josef and Geffrey, frozen as the ripple of laughter wavered around her.

“What is that?” Geffrey shivered next to her.

“Barghest,” Millie breathed.

“What do we do?” Wylan wondered.

“Lie still, they might pass by.”

“But they belong to Baba Yaya,” Wylan hissed. She’d found her. The giant hag had torn her way free from whatever level of the Dark Below the bone wand had sent her too. Wylan’s hands began to shake, and it wasn’t long before every nerve inside of her was dancing on a knife’s edge. She wanted to flee, to change then and there and take wing. She was sure Lissandra would grant her this change, but there were dragons nearby…

“It might not be anything,” Josef whispered.

“Right, it might just be that they’re roaming free now like so many other powers we’ve seen recently,” Millie agreed.

“Or they could be here seeking my flesh and redemption for their fallen mistress.”

No one replied and their lack of replying was more of an agreement than any argument they could have made to the contrary.

Wylan didn’t think the hounds were going to pass by. They had surrounded the town; they knew humans lurked within. The barghest were large dogs, black as night, with razor sharp teeth, and eyes that glowed with green power. Some thought they were evil, and Wylan had to agree laying there in the dark and listening to their yips and chortles rebounding around her. It hadn’t helped that she’d seen them with Baba Yaga. Now she knew their allegiance and knew what this could mean.

“We should have kept the fire going,” Millie said. “They’re scared of fire.”

“But are we more scared of them than we are dragons?” Wylan asked. It had been the decision that made them put out the fire. They hadn’t slept with a fire before, why draw attention from the skies to where they were now?

Millie’s silence chilled Wylan.

Green eyes glowed in the darkness around them as the barghest inched closer. Wylan was certain they were the target. She’d spent a lot of time eating meat that had been hunted down by her wyvern companions. She never considered that she could be hunted just as easily.

“Be ready for an attack,” Josef said. “They’re on to us.”

Wylan reached for the fire burning within her and felt its heat infuse her body.

A barghest bounded out of the darkness, its slobbering mouth opened wide, its eyes trained on the weakest of them—Geffrey.

The wyverns struck swift and sure. Green smoke streamed out of Millie’s hands just as a geyser of water shot up from the ground, launching the barghest straight into the air. Wylan felt the fire blaze out of her hand in a ball that lit the night. It struck the barghest in the face, flipping it end over end into the darkness. It plummeted to the sand, wet fur smoking, dry fur ablaze with her fury.

Leaghan began to mumble in her alien tongue. Though she couldn’t understand what the wizard was saying, she understood all too well the note of fear and panic in her voice.

It was a show of strength that the pack of barghest couldn’t ignore. The green eyes began to fade, but Wylan wanted to make sure they wouldn’t come back. She tore herself free of the tangle of bodies and streaked after the dogs. Fire came to her hands as easy as breathing. Ball after ball of flame shot through the night but most of them missed their marks.

Soon she was far enough away from camp that the sounds of her companions calling to her sounded more distant than what she’d thought possible. She stopped and looked around her, wondering where she’d gotten herself too when green eyes surrounded her.

Wylan’s breath was ragged from the run, and her nerves shivered down her spine in a rush of fear. She had been sure of herself when her companions were around to help her, but now she wasn’t sure she could watch in every direction she needed to.

The barghests circled, closer and closer.

“Fool,” a voice spoke from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Don’t be stupid, give them the bone wand and all will be safe.”

“Still going on about that wand,” Wylan breathed. “And still you’re not going to get it. Show yourself and be done with it already.”

But Baba Yaga didn’t show herself. Wylan wasn’t sure she could show herself. Why would she send the dogs of the Dark Below instead of coming herself? Why wouldn’t she have come and killed them all while they slept, as was in her power?

The only answer she could think of was that Baba Yaga couldn’t show herself.

“Or is your power so diminished that you can’t?” Had she sent her far enough into the Dark Below that the hag hadn’t been able to drag herself out yet? Had the damage, caused by the wand been more than she could repair? Wylan thought about what the wand had done to her, and wondered if it had worked the same way on Baba Yaga.

The hag didn’t respond, but the barghests circled closer.

Lissandra was awake now, urging her to shift. They were in danger, and the wyvern wanted to live. Wylan pushed her away. She didn’t think she could strip just then and not get attacked, and she didn’t have any other clothes to travel in. It was lucky they’d found a belt for her weapons, she was sure they wouldn’t find more clothes for her.

She called the fire and it answered in a stream of flames Wylan shot from her hands. Three of the barghest ignited and streaked off into the darkness, their bodies like bobbing torches until finally they fell dead, their bodies burned like bonfires in the distance.

The dogs turned and reversed their circling. They closed the gap and drew in on her. She was growing tired, and she honestly wasn’t sure how much longer she could fight. Another thing she hadn’t considered—the fire might have an end, or her reserves of energy might deplete.

She couldn’t let the dogs see she was weakening. She knew predators, and that’s what they were looking for. She attacked first, the fire flashed from her hands behind her, taking a barghest that came too close. The fire was strong and the dog blasted backwards, igniting two more of the beasts. She couldn’t count how many were left—their fur made them all but invisible in the night. All she could see by firelight were the shifting, stirring outlines glimpsed here and there, but it seemed like a sea of eyes greeted her wherever she turned.

Just as she thought she couldn’t hold it any longer, help arrived in the forms of a green and blue wyvern. Geffrey crouched low on Josef’s back, and within minutes the wyverns had the dogs yipping and fleeing.

Millie alighted on the sand before her, ignoring the smoldering body of a barghest beside her. She glared at Wylan and huffed. There was a buzz in Wylan’s mind, like Millie was trying to commune with her, but she was too worked up to send the thought properly. She seemed irritated.

“I wanted to show a strong front,” Wylan said.

Millie grumbled and looked to the bodies of the hounds.

“I know they’d already fled, but they would have been back when they thought we were too tired or when we were sleeping.”

Millie huffed again.

“Whatever, it’s done,” Wylan said.

But it wasn’t. No sooner had the words left her mouth than the ground trembled so violently that Wylan was knocked to the side and tumbled into the debris of what used to be a home. The sand vibrated around her, dancing in the air as if an invisible hand was lifting thousands of individual grains and holding them in midair to dance in the faint light of their campfire.

“What’s that?” Geffrey called, his voice thin with fear.

There was no need to answer. The ground buckled before Wylan, and then split apart. Sand spilled in a waterfall through the cracks in the ground, into a chasm unfathomably deep. Her eyes were level with the gash. Deep in the darkness, she saw hundreds of glowing green eyes staring back at her.

“I may be too weak to come to you, but I’m not too weak to bring you to me!”

Wylan back peddled away from the chasm, but the opening in the ground snaked toward her, splitting the sand like fingers of death reaching for her.

“Drop the wand inside the hole, and I will leave you in peace.”

Wylan reached into the pocket of her trousers. The bone wand was still there, cold, clawing toward her hand with a grave-like void of power. She could feel it whispering over her skin—the amount of energy the wand contained was impossible. To consider giving it back to Baba Yaga, where she could do anything with it, even claw her way out of the Dark Below and wreak devastation on the long desert, wasn’t something Wylan was prepared to do. She couldn’t give the wand back, but what other choice did she have?

“Wylan, what’s going on?” Geffrey asked.

She pointed to the chasm that yawned before her. “Don’t you hear her?” she wondered.

“Who?” he asked.

“Baba Yaga!” Wylan cried out, pulling the wand forth. The chasm seemed to draw in on itself, impossibly deep and waiting for her sacrifice. The ground dissolved further, reaching out seeking tendrils of smoke toward her, as if it might catch her ankle and pull her in just to get the wand.

She gripped the bone tighter, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt as though the entire void might open and swallow the world, plunging the long desert into the waking spirit realm that she’d walked before.

There was a concussion of air and a feeling as though hundreds of unseen eyes turned their focus on Wylan. Once spotted, she couldn’t be unseen.

There was a flash of light before her, and the chasm was gone, as if it had never existed. She couldn’t believe her eyes, there was nothing there. Wylan dropped to her knees, her hands slipping through the sand, combing for the chasm that had opened the ground before her only moments before.

“She’s gone?” Wylan asked.

“There wasn’t anything there,” Geffrey said.

Before Wylan could answer, the wind howled through the town gathering the shadows of the deep places of the ruins, and coalescing them into a towering form before her. The shadows screamed on the wind, a giant vortex of blackness shaping feet away, dragging debris and sand toward its epicenter.

“But that’s happening,” Geffrey breathed, gripping Wylan’s trousers in shivering hands. Wylan held the bone wand before her, pointing at the gathering shadows. With her other hand, she pushed Geffrey further behind her.

In a thundering of wings, Josef and Millie took to the air.

“She’s found me,” Wylan said. “It was just a ruse to get me to touch the wand so she could find me.”

“And you played your part wonderfully,” a wicked, crooked voice echoed from the depths of the shadows as they merged into the lumbering giant hag, Baba Yaga. She wore the shadows like a robe, her hooked nose peeking out from within the folds of her hood, her ghostly hair trailing across the shadows like moonlight in the early reaches of night.

Wylan cast her eyes to the sky, wondering if the dragons that had been following them all this time would unsuspectingly save them from the hag, but if there were any dragons nearby, they were staying well away from the hag and her malicious power.

“Give me the wand!” she thundered, her gnarled hand reaching down to Wylan.

“Give her the wand and she will go!” Geffrey tugged at Wylan’s trousers, urging her to action.

“No she won’t,” Wylan said. “Giving her this wand is worse than death. The things she’d be able to do with it…” Wylan shuddered.

A shiver ran through the air, and something popped with a resounding crunch of stone that made Geffrey cry out. He collapsed, clutching his head, whimpering with pain.

“Geffrey?” Wylan asked, flickering her eyes toward the prone boy on the ground beside her. There was power in the air that had nothing to do with Baba Yaga. It whispered along Wylan’s skin and chilled her to the bone. Somehow, she could hear the words over and over that Leaghan had been muttering as she rocked, and while it didn’t make sense, it spoke to her of darkness building…the same darkness she felt stirring in the magic that surrounded her.

“I will have it one way or another,” the hag said, ignoring the shiver on the air and the suctioning feeling of energy being drawn. Lifting her giant foot, she brought it down toward Wylan. Wylan dove out of the way, barely pulling Geffrey with her as the foot came down where they’d been moments before.

Leaghan stepped out of the shadows, her violet eyes full of menace, her blond hair streaming around her, radiating the power that raged through her. She lifted her hand and muttered a word in some spidery language.

A sliver of light lanced through the darkness, piercing through the hag’s head. Baba Yaga roared, and the shadows blew apart, scattering bits of the hag everywhere. They faded into the sand, the shadows skirting back to the darkest recesses of the ruins. In moments the hag was gone.

Whether she’d channeled too much energy, or if that was all the power she had in her, Leaghan collapsed to the sand, once more consumed by the nightmare of her mind and unable to actualize it in the physical world.

The night plunged into painful silence. Even the debris and sand that rained back to the ground in the absence of the hag’s power that had drawn it from its slumber made no sound as it landed. If it did make sound, Wylan couldn’t hear it over the ringing in her ears.

Geffrey fumbled, clawing at the sand, trying to get to the elf. Wylan placed a hand on him to keep him still. Something had happened to him, some kind of backlash of power when the elf had broken his wards. Was he hurt too bad to move? Shouldn’t he stay still?

“We have to put her ward in place again,” Geffrey mumbled, trying to stand. He fumbled and collapsed to the ground once more. “It keeps breaking.”

Millie landed beside them, merged with her human soul, and held out her hand to Geffrey. “Take it slow,” Millie said. “It’s like working a muscle. You’re not hurt beyond repair, but you’re right, we have to ward her. I will heal you as you work, that should give you more power.”

“Let’s get some sleep, they could be at it for a while,” Josef said, taking Wylan’s hand.

They trudged back to the camp and settled down in the sand, but she couldn’t find the restfulness of dreams again that night.

“Good dragons!” Geffrey stressed. “I didn’t say dragons came for me in my dream, but good dragons came for me and kept me safe.”

“Now that is a dream,” Josef said.

Millie laughed at him. Despite the upset of the night before, all of them seemed well rested except Wylan who’s stomach had been too upset to eat that morning, and who Lissandra seemed to be ignoring because she didn’t accept her help with the barghest.

During the night, they must have gotten the wards working on Leaghan again, because the elf followed in their wake in the same dreamy state that she had before.

“There will be some dreams you have that are just dreams,” Millie said.

“I know that,” Geffrey said, crossing his arms petulantly over his tiny chest. “But I know how the other dreams feel, and it felt like one of my other dreams.”

Millie frowned, but didn’t argue with the boy.

Wylan thought Josef was right. It sounded too good to be true. Good dragons that protected humans and wyvern? All the evidence Wylan had seen up to that point had pointed to dragons being nothing more than a menace that needed to be put down.

:Family,: Lissandra grumbled.

:Yea, yea, you say that a lot, but you don’t say what is family.:

Lissandra harrumphed and went back to ignoring her.

“And these good dragons, did they take you for a nice ride and feed you all kinds of delicacies they enjoy, like roasted human, or wyvern cutlets?” Josef poked Geffrey in the shoulder.

Geffrey scowled but wouldn’t answer him.

“Oh, come on, it was a joke!”

Millie intervened, “what else did you see in your dream.” She didn’t sound so sure of her previous assessment now that it had just been a dream.

Geffrey didn’t answer right away, but finally he sighed, uncrossed his arms and started his story. “It was a strange dream. I was in this city that had been blasted apart, but still stood. It felt like tons of battles had taken place there, but people still lived. I was on this path in the mountains. Behind me were lots of doorways that led into rooms within the mountain. These dragons were circling overhead, shooting lightning, and fire, and ice down on the city, but there were other dragons as well. There were good dragons!” He shot a cold look at Josef.

Millie’s face had lost all traces of a smile and she stared straight ahead as if seeing something none of the others could, like she was staring through the veil of waking and sleeping to see the dream Geffrey painted for them.

“And the good dragons were at the base of the mountains, in the city streets staring up at me, or at the mountain, and then they just took flight. There was a huge battle in the skies, and the good dragons chased away the bad dragons.”

He was silent for several moments. “Was that all?” Millie asked.

“All?!” he trumpeted. “You want more?”

Josef chuckled.

“That’s where the dream ended?” Millie asked.

Geffrey nodded.

“And you believe it was a foretelling?” Millie asked.

“Yep,” he answered.

“Interesting.”

There was little training for Wylan that day. She was beginning to think all of her training was done until Lissandra made it clear what here terms were for allowing Wylan to shift. The general mood of the company seemed to be contemplation, but Wylan was just trying to keep from falling asleep.

As the day wore on, dragons returned to the skies, but this time they were higher up. Even if Kira wasn’t shielding them, as she suspected, the dragons were likely too high up to see them. Wylan watched the sun shimmer off scales, casting rainbow light around the clouds. Their bodies moved so gracefully, their forms like ghosts among the clouds. Wylan allowed herself to get wrapped up in the fantasy Geffrey had woven for them.

What if there really were good dragons? What if there was more to the life they’d been living, and dragons weren’t all bad and bent on destroying humanity? It seemed a fantasy to be sure, one that she couldn’t hope would come true because if she hoped for it, she would likely be let down.

:Family,: Lissandra said.

Wylan ignored her this time.

As the day wound to a close, more dragons filled the sky above, all seemingly headed in the same direction as the group. There was a sense of foreboding seeing such an army of dragons headed the same way as they were. Wylan touched the hilt of her sword for reassurance, hoping that the sword would help them fight dragons.

She couldn’t allow herself that hope, but she did wonder if the blue dragon who destroyed her home was among the beasts winging through the skies above. The dragons were so dense that the stars were all but blocked from sight.

There wasn’t much in the way of dinner that night. Millie was unsure if the dragons could sense if they shifted, so she hadn’t wanted to risk it. In the end, Josef shifted without her permission and hunted for all of them. Wylan was so tired that she barely registered when Josef returned and she’d eaten her dinner.

She was lying down to sleep when the last of the dragons flew overhead and the stars winked down on her. The moon was full making the sand around them glow as if by a dim sun.

When sleep came, it was fast. She wasn’t even sure if they’d decided on a watch or not.

Wylan stood on a pathway cut out of the rock face of a mountain. She looked behind her, only to see doorways clogged with children and the elderly, held up by canes. Their eyes were turned up, their mouths open, looks of terror on their faces. More than one child clung to the adults, sobbing into their clothing.

Wylan looked up as well. High above was a storm of dragons. Wings flapped and the multitude of dragons blocked out the sun. An unnatural night fell over the city as the first bolt of purple lightning smashed into a tower. The brick and mortar exploded outwards, raining down on the city streets in heavy, deadly clumps.

People screamed out and fled.

A small hand took hers and she looked down to see Geffrey staring up at her.

“This is what I saw,” he told her. “All these dragons.”

The air stirred violently as wings beat down at the city. Dragons streaked out of the sky and hapless humans were plucked from towers, streets, and parapets to die, screaming as they fell, to the city below. Their bodies smashed like rotten fruit among the paths and buildings.

A thunder of power rippled out of the mountain behind her, and Wylan turned, sure that a dragon was laying the mountain to ruin. That wasn’t the case. Rainbow light shown through the openings of doorways. The humans didn’t seem to see it, but the people who were wyvern turned, just as Wylan did, and stared at the light entranced.

Hundreds of dragons fluttered to the ground, to the tops of buildings, and beside humans on the parapets. The humans fled from the wyrms, but the dragons paid them no mind—their attention was all for the rainbow light.

Kira, Wylan thought.

“It’s the dragon tamer,” Geffrey said.

Tamer, Wylan thought. She’d heard of tamers in stories of old. Just as so many things they thought were myth, so were tamers. Creatures, human or otherwise, with the ability to control certain creatures. It was said there used to be dragon tamers who could bend the will of a dragon to do their bidding. The mind of a tamer had to be strong enough to fight the will of the beast it influenced. To call so many dragons to them, the tamer had to be terrifyingly powerful.

Wings thundered powerfully, kicking up a gale. Wylan turned, terrified that the crouching dragons were about to strike, and they were, but their targets were not the humans or the city—their targets were the other dragons.

Wylan gasped awake.

“It’s real!” She said.

“What?” Millie groaned, rubbing her face where Wylan had knocked her with her elbow.

“Those dragons we’ve seen. Their attacking Darubai.”

“How do you know it’s Darubai?” Millie asked.

“Come on, Millie,” Josef cut in, “dragons have attacked us enough that it’s second nature now. What other populated city do you know?”

Millie didn’t answer.

“Pair that with all the dragons that have been flying over lately, I thought it was obvious it was Darubai,” Wylan told her.

“We need to shift, and we need to get there now,” Millie said. “Lissandra, it’s Millie speaking. You need to work with us. Wylan, talk to her.”

:Lissandra, this is important. Will you help us?:

:Unity.:

:Yes, we need to unite against the dragons.: Wylan waited a breathless moment while the wyvern soul unfurled and pulsed against her insides, as if she were seeking something, some answer to a question Wylan didn’t know.

“What about the dragons?” Josef asked, shucking his clothes.

Millie shook her head. “Likely storming the city. Even so, it’s a risk we will have to take.” She turned to Wylan. “Lissandra, help us.”

:Unity,: the wyvern grumbled and swam up to the surface of Wylan’s mind so fast it was all Wylan could do to keep her at bay long enough to get undressed. She shifted as soon as the last bit of trouser had left her foot.

The other’s shifted around her and she was dimly aware of hearing Millie speak to Geffrey. “When we get to the city, you need to get Leaghan into the infirmary as fast as you can. Tell them she needs a yellow to ward her. Make sure to give Kira to someone as well. Keep them safe.”

Wylan clasped her belongings in her talons and winged into the air. They flew at breakneck speed for Darubai, Leaghan on the back of Millie, Kira wrapped in clothes and clasped in Josef’s talons. Wylan figured it would take them several hours to reach the city. They’d said just a couple days ago that it would take four days from the ruins, one by wyvern.

It was several hours of sand passing underneath them as if nothing was happening in the city. Several hours of Wylan alone with her thoughts and her fears. Dragons weren’t far away, and she could barely hold her form at the best of times, what would happen when the fighting started? Sure, she was big for a wyvern, but dragons were easily four times her size. Was she heading into a slaughter?

She hoped that the dream was right, that the rainbow light was the power of a dragon tamer and they were about to get help from other dragons, but she couldn’t be sure. So much had gone wrong of late, and so many things were resurfacing that text said was long dead. It was beyond her hoping or wildest fantasy that they faced anything other than imminent death when they reached the imperial city.

When they finally arrived, Darubai was in shambles. A storm of dragons swarmed through the clouds above seemingly without order.

Fire spouted down from the sky, buildings kindled as if they weren’t brick and instead the driest tinder. A roof exploded and shrapnel flew in all directions cutting down blue wyverns that hovered low, their watery powers trying to quench the flames.

Purple lightning lanced out catching more wyverns and those guards that stood upon the parapets. Wylan saw one unlucky guard tumble from the wall to land, blackened and burning, on the sand below.

Snow as she’d never seen before hammered the city, white and pure, but with an icy bite that could burn the skin as surely as any fire. The bricks of attacked buildings groaned and popped with a resounding snap as the cold from a large white dragon sunk in. The buildings rumbled and crumbled as though they were nothing more than sand.

:Follow me,: Millie commanded.

Wylan joined the other three wyverns as they slunk low over the sand, only turning up when they approached the wall that was supposed to provide safety from attack. They glided over the wall and cut low through the streets.

Wylan’s mind wasn’t on the attack above any longer, it took all of her skill to navigate through the rising dust and through falling bricks and streaking lightning. When Millie landed, Wylan was more than happy to land beside her.

Millie sat Leaghan down on the walkway and shifted. She took Kira from Josef while Geffrey merged with his human soul. She pressed the baby into the boy’s hands as dragons cried out in the sky, lancing lightning down on buildings around them. A haze of rain misted over them as a giant orb of water burst against a nearby building, washing soldiers out of the upper reaches of a tower. They tumbled from their perches, their screams ending abruptly when they struck the cobbles of the street.

“Remember, get Kira to a nurse as soon as you can,” Millie instructed the boy. She nudged him toward an opening in the cave, and steered Leaghan in behind him. “And make sure the nurses know Leaghan needs heavy wardings. They will take it from there.”

Wylan hadn’t shifted back and neither had Josef. They stared around them at the destruction. She couldn’t believe the amount of dragons that swarmed the sky, or how many were landing on surrounding buildings, taking up a post as if they were waiting for the humans to make a strike at them.

Torrents of wyverns took to the sky, several of them taking on one dragon. There weren’t many wyverns compared to dragons, but by the time the dragons realized the wyverns were causing a stir, taking down a dragon or two wherever they swarmed the larger wyrms, they turned their focus to the wyverns.

Their size worked against them. Wyverns were able to zip around the dragon attacks much faster than the dragons were able to refocus their attempts at killing a wyvern. Several more dragons were taken down, plummeting to the city streets, laying waste to buildings as they crashed into them, sending up great plumes of debris into the air, making it hard to see.

As Wylan was getting ready to launch herself into the fray, a piercing cry resounded over the top of the mountain face. She cast her eyes up in time to see a great beast streak over the top of the mountains. It had the head of a giant cat, with the feathered body of a rapturous bird. It was larger than Josef in his wyvern shape, but not as large as she. The dragons nearby halted their attacks, and watched as the beast drew near.

Upon its back rode an elf in gray armor, her pointed ears bare to the sunlight, her black hair streaming out behind her. She wore roses in her hair. One hand gripped the reins of the beast, while the other held a giant spear.

:What’s happening?: Wylan asked.

:I’m unsure. The elves come with the gryphons,: he told her.

More followed over the top of the mountain. The gryphons didn’t all look the same. Some had the heads of giant birds, the bodies of a predator cat with great feathery wings sprouting from their back and a long, plumed tail. Others were all bird save for their feet that ended in great clawed paws.

:But—: Wylan didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence because on the heels of the elves and their gryphon mounts came another contingent.

Dwarves.

They rode on the backs of beasts Wylan had never heard of before. These creatures didn’t have wings, but their cloven hooves held their bearing wherever the beast placed paw, whether that be the side of the mountain, scaling a tall building, or standing on the ground like any other creature known to her. Like the gryphons they weren’t all the same. They were the size and build of a mountain ram, and while some had opalescent scales that shimmered the length of their bodies, other’s had fur in bright colors Wylan had never seen hair have.

Their mains drifted around their heads as if in a constant wind, upon their chins they had a long beard that mingled with the hair on top of their head, swirling around them. Upon their head were giant antlers, upon their backs sat stout dwarves with massive, cruel looking weapons.

:Qilin,: Josef whispered in awe. :I thought they were a myth.:

“For High Haven!” A dwarf roared before launching himself from the back of his qilin and onto the back of a smaller green dragon that flew by. The dragon screeched, twisted around, trying to dispatch the dwarf, but the dwarf held on for all he was worth, his axe hacking into the dragon’s maw when it turned to dispatch him. The lower jaw tore free and fell to the streets below with a wet plop. The dragon spiraled down, and the dwarf road him to the cobbles. He continued hacking at the dragon until it stopped moving.

His qilin jumped from the mountain face, landing gracefully beside him. It was less like the shimmering green-scaled beast had jumped, and more like he’d floated down. The dwarf jumped on his back, and the qilin was off, racing up a tower toward a cluster of other dragons.

The gryphons and elves joined the fray as well. The gryphons flew high, grappling with dragons, clutching them in a close embrace, tearing at them with talons, claws, teeth, or beaks, whatever they had available to tear with.

It took Wylan a moment of studying one battle to realize the gryphon was distracting the dragon and tearing away scales. When enough scales were torn away, the elf on the back of the giant bird struck true, the spear lancing deep into the dragon’s body. The yellow dragon stiffened, its wings going slack. And then it fell. The gryphon and elf disengaged from the dragon, and on they went to another wyrm.

“They must have come from High Haven,” Millie said. “How’d they know to come here?”

:Who cares?: Josef asked. :I think we’re lucky they came!:

Wylan agreed. The elves and dwarves were certainly turning the tide. The remaining wyverns took heart, and helped out the other races as well as one another. Soon the skies were filled with another sound—the pain filled shrieks of dragons. Wylan wondered if they’d flee, but the dragons seemed to be here for a reason, because they were staying.

A shout sounded from within the infirmary and moments later rainbow light oozed from the portals as if a fog pushed forward by a gentle, insistent wind. The light eddied and swirled about their feet, slipped over the edge of the path, and wound its way through the streets. It shimmered in ways Wylan hadn’t seen it shimmer before, but it was just as hypnotic as she remembered it being. This time there wasn’t a feeling of tranquility to it, but a call to attack, to protect the city. It filled her with fire. It bolstered the wyvern soul to do what she needed to do, to do what she was called to do and fight back the wyrms above.

The light didn’t stop with the streets, but climbed higher, twisting around buildings, snaking around towers, climbing higher and higher. It was like fog, or mist with a mind, with a goal. If there was one thing Wylan knew about that light, it was meant for the dragons. The light was nearly all she could focus on, but there was something else drawing her attention across the street.

A large blue dragon spiraled out of the sky to rest on the broken domed top of a tower close enough that Wylan knew she could have reached it with a gout of fire if she so desired.

The sapphire tail wrapped around the tower, as if to hold the dragon in place, and its face was turned away, surveying the battle that raged around it. There were scales missing along the length of its body, and Wylan hoped it was the blue she hunted. It would make this so much easier if it was. She could kill it quick, and then maybe lend her aid to the dragon guard.

:Now you think killing it will be quick, huh?: Lissandra asked, her talons closing tighter on her bundle of gear.

:It’s stopping the water wyverns,: Josef said. :The power of the dragons are much greater than ours, they can control it if they so desire.:

Wylan shivered in her scaly skin.

:We need to help,: Millie said. Wylan hadn’t even noticed she’d shifted until she spoke into her mind.

:You’re right, you help by getting into the hospital,: Josef commanded.

Wylan was of a different mind. Just then the dragon had shifted enough that she could see a scar low on its back near where the tail connected. Scales missing as if something had stabbed through the protective armor.

A spear, she thought. That was all the confirmation, and goading, she needed.

She jumped high in the air, her wings snapping open, but she didn’t fly up, she glided across the street to a jagged opening in the tower. She landed on the stairs, her claws scraping for purchase among the rubble.

She shifted back, forcing Lissandra’s spirit down. Wylan quickly dressed, tightening the weapon belt around her purple tunic. She drew the broken blade with one hand, and her sword with the other. She wound her way up the stairs, her feet unsure on the crumbling stairs. From outside she heard the chaos of screaming people, trumpeting dragons, and screeching wyverns. Something heavy slammed into the tower, and Wylan listed to the side, barely catching herself on the broken railing before her feet slipped over the worn edge of the stairs. She dangled for a moment, her hand gripping the railing awkwardly, as her sword slipped from her grip to tumble and clang down the length of the tower. With a groan of effort, she pulled herself back into place, and worked her way closer to the top, holding the railing wherever she could find it, so she didn’t slip again. She shifted the broken blade to her dominant hand, and kept going.

When she reached the top, Wylan wanted nothing more than to race out and attack the dragon, but the golden eye she hadn’t damaged was dangerously close to seeing her. She wanted the element of surprise, and she soon had it.

Another great weight slammed into the tower, making the building rock. Wylan had been worried about such an attack after nearly losing herself to the crumbled abyss over the edge of the stairs, so she’d been holding tight and barely moved when the tower groaned on its foundations.

When the great blue looked away, Wylan stepped out onto the floor. The dragon wasn’t close enough, she couldn’t reach it with the sword.

She called to her magic, reached out with her left hand, and launched a volley of fire at it. She knew it wouldn’t hurt the dragon, but it got the reaction she wanted. The blue dragon stumbled back, nearly losing its footing, and turned to look at her, its healthy eye squinted, the other was milky white, and lidded with the membrane of its two inner lids.

“Do you remember me, wyrm?” Wylan put as much disgust into the word as she could. “You destroyed my home”—another blast of fire, the blue didn’t shrink back this time—“you killed my father.”

The great blue snaked its head closer as rainbow mist crested the top of the tower, slithering nearer the combatants. The dragon sniffed at Wylan, then sneezed out a huff of water as the rainbow light tried to infiltrate its nostrils.

His water splattered Wylan’s cheek, but absorbed into her skin before she could dash it away.

:I remember you, plague bearer,: the blue rumbled in her mind.

She lashed out with another gout of fire and didn’t let up until it completely wreathed his head. The dragon chuffed out a spout of water, soaking Wylan to the bone. Her feet slipped on the grimy floor, but she caught herself with the sword, stabbing it down into the floor like a cane to keep her balance.

:Your father was tasty,: it taunted her.

Before she could launch another fiery attack, the dragon opened its mouth and water showered down on her. It was scalding, steaming at her skin, burning her. Lissandra rose to the surface, neutralizing the heat of the water with heat of her own. The water no longer burned. Wylan burned with an inner heat she knew she could tap into if she needed.

But thoughts of another attack fled from her mind as her grip on the sword failed, and she slipped through the water, sliding toward the edge of the broken tower. Her legs flailed, her arms reaching out for anything her hands might be able to clasp. There was more water than Wylan had ever seen in her entire life, and it carried her swiftly to the edge of the tower. In a rush of water, she shot from the tower and saw death waiting for her in the streets below.

But she didn’t fall. The water surrounded her, hardened into an orb, and she hovered above the streets. Her heart hammered in fear, her hands clawing at the water, as if she could swim through it, or tread water to keep herself and the orb from cascading to the streets below. Memories of people flung from the rooftops by dragons to shatter on the streets filled her mind. She didn’t want her blood added to theirs.

The orb moved through the air, carrying her up and to gaze into the eye of the wyrm. He surveyed her with a wondering eye.

:So you’re the one we’ve been hunting,: it said. :You’re the one who brought this plague to the Dar Desert.:

:No, dragons brought the plague the day they returned,: she threw her thoughts back at him.

The blue chuffed in laughter and pulled away from her as if she’d told the world’s best joke. Wylan was losing her control of breath. She needed to breathe, but she knew to do so would result in death. Her heart raged in her ears, and her chest burned.

:The draconian returned because we felt you born. We returned to stop the plague.:

Wylan shook her head, and she couldn’t control herself, she gasped for air and water flooded her lungs. She coughed, inhaled more water, and clutched at her throat, her legs kicking, trying to swim free of the orb.

Then something strange happened. The water didn’t drown her—in fact she found she could breathe it rather easily. Her skin seemed to open, drink in the water and in moments the orb rippled, shuddered, and then burst apart. Water rushed to the floor of the tower, and Wylan fell with it afraid she was going to slip over the edge once more with the sluicing water. She grabbed for the sword, managed to get hold of the hilt, and held on until the water had cleared.

She stood, and the dragon stared at her in amazement.

:How did you…?:

She yanked the sword free of the floor and pointed it at him. “Dragons brought this upon us.”

The blue dragon opened its mouth wide, coughed, but no water came. Fear dilated his pupils, and just then Wylan shot fire into the wyrms open mouth.

The dragon staggered back, its wings snapping open as he lost his footing. He glided around the tower and made to flee.

:Change, we can take him together!: Lissandra demanded.

:No,: Wylan said, pushing her away. She ran with all of her might, slipping on the floor, but as she reached the edge, her feet dug into the floor and she launched herself from the tower. The sword clutched in her hands, Wylan fell. When she landed, it was on the neck of the dragon, the sword jammed deep between his shoulders.

The great blue roared, snaked his head around and latched powerful teeth over her shoulder. He snapped Wylan from his back and she screamed out as her arm tore from her body. Then she was falling. She barely registered her severed arm tumbling from the blue’s mouth and the dragon slamming into a building before she crashed to the street and knew only darkness.

The rainbow fog drifted higher and higher like tendrils of smoke creeping toward the heavens. Then it struck out at random, like snakes defending their lair, skewering multitudes of dragons to pull them lower. The dragons circled around Darubai, and rushed through the streets, urged closer by the rainbow light.

:My children,: a sure, steady voice spoke into their minds. :I am your queen, and you will protect me!:

The dragons landed all around the mountain, clinging to the face, perching high above on the peaks of lower hills, and in the streets before the caverns. A reverent silence hung over the dragons as they bowed low. Their eyes closed, all three lids slipping shut one at a time.

There were so many colors that Josef was confused by the light that glittered from their scales to dazzle the eye. It seemed a representation of all the colors in the dragon spectrum, minus black, white, and gray.

:Go now, rid the imperial city of this threat. Protect your queen!:

The dragons bowed lower, their wings fluttering out around them, their arrow-shaped heads, touching the earth. And then they leapt, took wing, and aimed for the skies, for the other dragons who were already confused with dwarves and elves.

Josef broke his gaze away to the fight on the tower across the street and watched in horror as the dragon tore Wylan from its back and threw her to the hard ground. The blue smashed into a tower, debris raining down on the street and flailed several times before falling still.

Josef shifted before he realized what he was doing and sailed over the streets, coming to roost beside Wylan. He gathered her in his talons, and rushed her to the mountain side.

:Millie!: he cried out.

The healer rushed out of a portal moments later, surveyed the broken, bloody form of Wylan and scowled. She motioned to two men beside her, who gently gathered Wylan from Josef’s claws, and rushed her back inside.

:Can you fix her?:

“Maybe a green dragon could regrow her arm, but I’m a wyvern…I will try. Find her arm and bring it to me.”

Wylan stood on grass. It was soft beneath her feet, the blades tickled between her toes. The smell of earth was strong around her, and the ground was moist beneath her. She stretched out her feet, her toes digging deep into the earth to come away brown and wet.

She smiled, and the sound of rushing water made her look up. But it wasn’t water, it was a great forest that stretched out before her. Trees danced in a happy breeze. Leaves and needles in more shades of green than Wylan could ever have imagined dazzled her eye. The trees, though firm and unyielding, seemed to dance in the wind as if they were playing with it.

“So you’ve come to visit me,” a woman said beside her. She knew it was Lissandra, she’d heard the voice so many times before. She wasn’t ready for the vision, though.

Lissandra was magnificent, though decidedly human in shape and size. She was naked, but her body was covered in small, glimmering red scales. Her hands tipped with black fingernails, and her hair long, silky, and orange like the raging flames of a bonfire. The wind tossed her locks about, giving an unsettling image of fire.

“Where is here?” Wylan asked.

“Your imagination,” Lissandra said.

“But why am I here?”

“Don’t you remember the fight?” Lissandra asked, her golden eyes studying Wylan’s face.

Wylan nodded.

“You’re very hurt,” Lissandra told her.

Wylan was aware of a green mist that hung just at the edge of her vision, but when she turned to look, it was gone.

“Don’t try to catch the mist,” Lissandra told her. “It’s Millie’s healing.”

Healing, Wylan thought, and looked down to her arm. It was missing.

“Yes, you are missing your arm,” Lissandra said. “I’m afraid you and I won’t be able to work together much without it.”

“Why?” Wylan wondered.

“How are you supposed to shift and fly without one wing?”

No flying… The thought hit her like a blow to the stomach. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. All she’d wanted since knowing she could turn into a wyvern was to learn how to shift. Wylan looked to her feet, tried to count the blades of grass so she wouldn’t think about it.

“Are you here to tell me what you want?” Wylan asked her.

Lissandra nodded.

“Good, because I have no idea what you mean by unity or family and protection.”

“I want unity with dragons, wyverns, and humans,” she told her. “A family of races to protect and care for one another.”

“And I can manage that in the dragon guard?” Wylan wondered.

Lissandra nodded.

A mournful sound swept through the forest, like children crying. Dark clouds clung to the edges of the forest and the landscape darkened as if night were falling.

“What’s that?” Wylan asked.

Lissandra frowned. “Don’t worry about that.”

“So how am I to manage the other stuff? Family of races and unity?” Wylan asked.

“With patience and knowing that not all races will act as you want them to,” Lissandra told her. Though she’d told Wylan not to worry about the darkness encroaching on them, the wyvern soul certainly was.

“The blue called me the plague bearer,” Wylan said.

“That is something you have to explore on your own,” Lissandra told her.

“Why can’t you tell me?” Wylan asked.

“Because I don’t know,” Lissandra said. “But it feels like he’s right.”

It did.

“What do we do now?” Wylan asked.

“Enjoy the forest, and let Millie work.” Lissandra turned to her. “But first, let’s see if we can help Millie.” Lissandra placed her scaly hand on Wylan’s empty shoulder and heat filled the void.

Millie crouched beside Wylan and cleared her mind. What she was about to attempt was harder than anything she’d ever done, and that included leaving her home and friends to burn in Dulasan. Her energy was running low. There had been so much wrong with Wylan—cracked ribs, a broken leg, a fractured skull, and internal bleeding.

Now her arm, she thought. Her severed arm lay on the bed near the socket it had been torn from. Blood stained the sheets around Wylan; had soaked into the mattress.

Millie breathed out through her mouth in a rush and felt the healing energies come to her.

“Josef,” she said.

Josef jumped and came to her side.

“Take the arm in one hand, the shoulder in the other. I want you to control the flow of blood. Instead of allowing it to soak into the mattress, I want you to direct it to the arm.”

Josef paled, but nodded. He knelt beside Wylan, fixing her severed arm in a firm grip, and pushing it up toward the empty socket. He glanced at Millie to see if that was right. The healer stepped around behind him, shifting the arm slightly to align it properly. There were so many tendons and frayed muscles that had torn loose and were laying on the bed, but if she was right, they would soon bind together.

Once the arm was fixed properly, Josef closed his eyes, and Millie felt the draw of magic.

Millie waited until she saw the blood flow from Wylan’s arm, through the air, and to the arm. “Good, now hold them tight. I’m going to try something.”

Millie laid her hands over the wound. Green energy wreathed her black hands. She closed her eyes and pushed the energy into the wound. Her mind sunk into the tear, she felt the muscles slack and dying, the blood flowing hard and true, the bone splintered and not pairing right, as if some splinters had gone completely from the bone.

Her eyebrows creased, and she willed the bones together. She felt the bones yearn toward one another, but they wouldn’t connect, they wouldn’t rejoin with one another. Millie frowned and focused on the skin instead. She could mend damaged skin, but she’d never tried to mold skin together once it had been completely torn from the body.

She imagined the skin mending together, the frays of skin weaving together like a tapestry of one healthy arm, but the skin and muscles were dying, and they wouldn’t mend. Millie pushed more power into the wound, but she knew it was pointless, if the skin and muscle had already begun to die, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

A sharp pain lanced through her head, and Millie sagged back on her feet, a sigh bursting from her lips.

“What?” Josef asked. The blood was gone from the sheets, slipping up Wylan’s skin and to the wound.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Millie said.

“You have to try harder,” Josef said. “Without her arm, she won’t be able to fly.”

“I know th—” her eyes landed on Wylan’s weapon belt and she stopped talking.

A length of bone stuck through the belt.

“Baba Yaga,” Millie said.

“What?” Josef asked, confused.

“The wand. It’s from a black dragon,” Millie said.

“And you think that can help?”

“Death and creation,” she said. “The skin around her wound is dying.”

Millie shook her head, a smile playing over her face. She clasped the wand in hand and slipped it from the belt. It was cold, and the power that slipped from it whispered of death and things beyond the grave. She ignored the chill that slipped up her spine and pointed the wand at Wylan’s shoulder.

Healing energy was yanked out of Millie and through the wand. In a flash, the wand launched a beam of pure white light at the arm. The light grew brighter, hotter, blinding.

When it faded, the arm was whole once more…except it wasn’t Wylan’s arm. It was covered in small red scales, and the fingers were tipped with long, black nails.

For weeks Wylan was kept unconscious through Millie’s healing magic. In those three weeks, she was fed broth and her body mended, the healing of bone and flesh sped along by the rotation of healers that kept a constant vigil at her side.

She missed much, but Josef figured she wouldn’t have liked most of what she missed. Millie told him not everyone was as lazy as he was when it came to cleanup, but he insisted that Wylan wouldn’t have liked cleaning up the bodies of dragons, the debris of shattered buildings, and burning their dead.

Still there were other things that happened Wylan would certainly loved to have been part of, like the rehoming of the elves and the dwarves of High Haven. There had been no more room among the other clans for the refugees of the dragon attack on High Haven. Without home, the elves and dwarves had decided to hunt down the dragons. Other elves and other dwarves from different tribes had joined in the struggle, forsaking home and hearth to do battle with the pestilent dragons. They took to mount, and stormed Darubai…but now they needed a home.

It was still in negotiations, but there were several districts in Darubai that hadn’t been used since the outbreak of the plague. Josef was certain the dwarves and elves would be moving into their own districts soon, cleaning and rebuilding as they went.

The dragons had also stayed, and while they didn’t live directly in the city with the humans, they lived higher up in the mountains at the tallest peak that overlooked the city. It was now called Dragon Aerie and few wished to venture there to visit the dragons because of the fear that had been instilled in humans for ages unknown.

The thing Josef was certain she would have missed, and Millie was sad that Wylan hadn’t been part of, was the planting of the fire fruit trees on the mountain passes above. She had convinced the clutch commander to let her plant one of the many seeds in a pot to place beside Wylan as she healed. He hadn’t let the seed go easily, but figuring how much of a role she’d played in the rescue of Kira—who had almost singlehandedly saved Darubai—he let the seed go.

The other thing Josef was sure Wylan would have missed was when Marcella had reached back in time, through the realms of the dead, to call forth a powerful wizard to help her determine what spell had been used on the blade that helped kill dragons so easily. The ore was known as mithril, and according to the dwarves, it was easy for them to find. It had taken several days for the dwarves to mine enough of the ore to make several swords. Marcella had channeled the wizard on numerous occasions until there were nearly enough swords forged to outfit the entire dragon guard. Still production of dragon sabers continued.

The dragons that took their roost in Dragon Aerie didn’t like the forging of the swords, even if they knew they were only to be used against the draconian army. Josef had convinced Marcella to give him one sword for Wylan, which he would teach her to use as soon as Millie allowed.

Leaghan would train with Marcella who had agreed to channel souls of wizards to help teach the elf. They were now the only two living in the wizard keep at the base of the imperial palace, but Josef wondered if that would change in the coming years.

And then, one day, Wylan’s eyes fluttered open.

The first sight she saw was Josef sitting on the edge of her bed, cradling a small pot in his hands. The plant that grew there was one of the most beautiful things Wylan had ever seen. While it looked just like a tree she’d seen with Lissandra, there were stark difference as well. Its bark was white as snow, and its leaves as orange as a raging fire.

“What’s that?” Wylan yawned making Josef yelp.

“You’re awake,” he said. The smile that spread across his face was infectious. Wylan smiled back.

“I feel like a dragon landed on me,” she complained.

“Well, nearly,” he said.

“How long have I been out?” Wylan asked, trying to sit up, but Josef pushed her back down when she winced in pain, her leg flaring.

“A few weeks,” Josef said.

“What did I miss?” Wylan asked. She looked to her arm, covered in red scales. “Oh.”

“No, don’t be upset!” Josef said. “Look!” He drew a sword from his belt and brought it down with all his might on the arm.

Wylan screamed out in shock, but the sword bounced off the scales.

“See, now you have a shield permanently connected to your body.”

“How did you know that wasn’t going to sever my arm?!” Wylan pulled the arm to her chest as if it had been hurt, even though it hadn’t. To be honest, she hadn’t even felt the edge of the blade. She’d felt the connection, but it was little more than a sharp slap.

“Don’t worry, I’ve tried it a few times before you woke up.” He smiled encouragingly at her, but Wylan frowned back imagining Josef hacking away at her arm while she was comatose. She was sure Millie would have scoffed at him and tried to chase him away.

“Anyway, you missed loads!” And Josef began to recount how busy the city had been while she slept. As he told her the story, Wylan turned her head to gaze at the fire fruit tree on her stand. The tree filled her with joy because she knew it held something for the future.

It held hope.

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