Samgar

Not for the first time, Samgar wished he could light a fire. It wasn't necessarily that he was cold, although he was. Nor did he want to cook a hot meal for the first time in what felt like weeks, although he would sell his house to taste literally anything besides rations and jerky.

The trouble was the light. The flameless lanterns never flickered and stayed a pale, eerie blue that washed out shading and left everything flat and lifeless. As they huddled beneath a rocky outcropping in a cavernous hollow, the lantern made them both look distinctly inhuman. Jindi's carefully blank expression was all too artificial, her typical vivacity departing her entirely. In warm firelight, it would be easier to see the girl he had known.

"Here's what you have to understand," she began, and hesitated. The false equanimity shattered, reformed; the words caught in her mouth as Samgar watched her. "I have lost–"

Jindi stopped again. Samgar was tempted to prompt her, but some instinct kept him silent. She stared at the lantern placed between them. "I don't know how to explain. No, that's a lie. I know the correct words, but I don't know how to make you understand. I don't even know if you want to understand, Sam xiansheng. I wish I didn't."

She very distinctly wasn't looking at him. Samgar waited.

Jindi slowly inhaled, then exhaled. In for a count of seven, out for a count of five. Then: "Here's what you have to understand: we started every day just before dawn. That's when the wind would change. If the air hit the acolyte's quarters at just the right angle, it flowed through a series of pipes and would trill over an artificial flute. That was the signal to wake up, and heaven help you if you slept through it. Sunrise is an important time when the breath of the world shifts; in a place like home, those energies are too precious to waste."

Samgar's brow furrowed, but Jindi kept talking. Her eyes were fixed on the lantern. "Greet the dawn and share the breath of the world: I was very bad at that second part. It took me fifty years to get the hang of breathing correctly, even practicing for a bell every morning."

"You mean fifteen years?" Samgar interjected, unable to hold himself back. Jindi's eyes flickered up to him.

"No. I don't." Her gaze turned away from his. In the blue lantern light, she seemed more remote than the mountains of Samgar's hometown. "After the Dawn Greeting, we had drills for two bells: movements and acrobatics on a flat courtyard below the rest of the monastery. Once I learned the basics of circle-walking when I was around forty, that was my best area. Breakfast came after drills. Vegetarian meals only, of course–no one who shares the breath of the world has much of a taste for death. I ate with my friends or in the mirror pool garden when the weather allowed. More drills after that. Empty-hand forms. Weapon forms. This was to prepare us for noon meditations, the breath of the world brimming with power when the sun is at its peak. The elders said that youths could only fill themselves with the energy of the universe when they emptied themselves of their own energy. I think they just wanted acolytes who were too worn out to fidget."

The complaint was warm in a way that sapped most of its bite. Samgar watched her jaw tense, the words starting to come faster.

"Noontime meal was usually more filling than breakfast. We all ate together, the acolytes and elders. It wasn't as formal as dinners, so you could catch even the hoariest crone with a millennium under her belt snickering at some piece of gossip. Chores came after. I was absolute shit at gardening and somehow even worse at cleaning. My cooking was excellent, but not to the tastes of the auntie in charge of the kitchens, who is–was– a coward when it comes to seasoning. For the most part, I was sent into the woods at the base of the mountain to forage. Mushrooms, ginseng, herbs for medicine, and ingredients that didn't grow well in the kitchen gardens. I was good at that, good enough that I would finish early and have a bell or so to myself. Chase the monkeys. Catch fish with my hands and throw them back. Sneak up on deer and try to pet them before they spotted me and ran away."

Jindi was fiddling with the edge of her robe. There were unnatural blue highlights in her hair and eyes. "Sunset was meditation again. Breathing. Feeling the heartbeat of the world in the water and air. Sometimes we would chant mantras for focus. Sometimes we would just...breathe. And be. I thought it was the most boring time of day for the first hundred and fifty years. I never realized how hard it was to just breathe and be out here."

"That was my life for over two hundred years, Sam xiansheng."

Her voice carried throughout the cave, out to the edges where the flat lantern light left flatter blue shadows. Samgar watched her carefully. Jindi closed her eyes.

"I'm never going to hear the whistle of the wind on the flutes before dawn again. How could I? The acolyte's quarters have been burned down. The mirror pool garden, cultivated for five centuries to harness the flow of energy from wind and water and mountain and grass is gone forever. It wasn't even a target. Just a stray piece of burning tar that was meant to hit something–something that mattered. And it missed. And now I'll never eat congee there and be quietly sacrilegious. I tried scrubbing the bloodstains off the acrobatics platform, but they're never coming out again. They never made it up the mountain to defile the peak of noonday meditations, but what's the point when there's no one there? When you're all by yourself, and that's all you'll ever be?"

With a start, Samgar realized Jindi was crying. It was all the more terrible because her voice didn't waver, her expression always unchanging. Saltwater plit-platted on the dirty rock of the cavern floor.

"The forest where I foraged isn't all the way gone, but so much of it was hacked down to feed Nuhan war machines. The animals have fled. The waters taste of ash and blood. I'll never be able to meditate on the setting sun. No one will ever rap my knuckles again for talking out of turn at dinner. Two hundred years of my life are gone, Samgar. Gone because of your country and your barbarian king. I wake up at the second bell to the sound of shouting in a city with no quiet or peace. I can't greet the sun or bid it farewell. The animals in your country know better than to let a human near. Far from avoiding meat, I've killed with my own hands. I can't run in your cold forests or swim in your muddy rivers. I can't speak my own language without being marked as outsider. Enemy."

"We both know what it's like to be lost in the dark, all your waypoints gone, no one who understands you by your side. The difference is that you've been here a week. I'll be here for the rest of my life."

Jindi fell silent. She still wouldn't meet his eyes.

Samgar leaned back against the outcropping, mind whirling. After a full minute, he could only manage one word.

"Why?"

"Because they had something we wanted, little morsel."

Samgar and Jindi's hands went to their swords as one; he dove left, and she hurtled right. The voice was inhuman, the sound of it somehow both sibilant and grating like stone blocks rubbing against each other. Perched above the outcropping was an actual dragon, one so quiet it had managed to sneak up on them both in a cavern that was good for nothing but generating echoes. It looked approximately twenty feet long from nose to tail and built like a hairless cat, lean with purple and scarlet scaled muscle. The only rational part of Samgar's mind whispered good, either stunted or not fully grown before the rest of him shrieked that not fully grown is still plenty fucking grown. He and Jindi backed away from the dragon in different directions, doing their best to keep their eyes on the monster without stumbling on the rough cavern floor.

There was an awful noise like rocks falling. It took Samgar a moment to realize that the thing was laughing. It unfurled its wings with a sound like bones cracking.

"Running away from uncomfortable truths, little morsels? I suppose the wind-walker would know all about that. That's all our Southron cousins taught her, avoid and evade until you give up and die. Pathetic. But then, so are what passes for dragons in her land. Apologies. What passed for dragons in the south."

Jindi went unnaturally still. Samgar's mind raced–this creature wasn't a typical dragon, born of earth and fire. Its scales didn't have their crimson hue, and there was no glow of melted rock around the joints. Still, it was clearly related to them from the form, and it had the dreadful intellect of Nuhan's greatest enemy. This was the form of every nightmare in childhood stories, the breath that cooked men alive simply for the fun of it. But what was an actual fucking dragon of any sort doing beneath the capital of a country that hated it?

"Who are you?" Samgar called out, hoping the quaver in his voice was lost in the echoes of the cavern. The dragon laughed again, the sound reverberating through Samgar's metal armor.

"Isn't it obvious? An ally of Nuhan and her king against the Southron foe. When you have a mutual enemy, coordination is only sensible."

"Bullshit!" Samgar shot back. "The king might be a warmongering ass, but he's no dragon cultist. There's no way he's crazy enough to worship something like you."

The dragon's tail flicked, an annoyed, feline gesture. It looked at Samgar, mouth twisting unnaturally around the human words.

"On that point, you're correct. There's only one dragon cultist nearby, and that's your comrade here."

"Jindi's not a dragon cultist either!" Samgar shouted.

"You're not a dragon!" Jindi cried at the same time, just as indignant.

Samgar froze. That was not the answer he was expecting. How was it possible–

"Wouldn't you like that to be true, little wind-walker?" The dragon's attention was fixed upon Jindi. "It would be so very convenient if the dragons you knew were nothing like me. If they were holy and I was base; if they were divine and undying while I fell to pieces at your pleasure. It's a lie, but your kind are so good at lying to themselves. 'If we stay out of the war, we'll be safe. Our gods will protect us.' Your gods couldn't even protect themselves. They fell in an eyeblink when the men from Nuhan came with dragon magics, bought with the king's bargain."

"Shut up." Jindi's voice was unlike anything Samgar had ever heard from her. There was no humor, no annoyance, no grief. It was like a sentence roughly chiseled on frozen mud. Samgar could hardly breathe. The king of Nuhan had bargained with dragons? He had used them to hurt people, people who had no grudge against Nuhan, who just wanted to train and meditate and be left in peace?

"They weren't divine. There's no such thing. What they were was foolish, caring for their pet monkeys, daring to teach them the draconic ways of wind and water. They were stupid enough to come to your aid when your den was attacked. You made them weak, and they died for their weakness. This is the way of things. Now you've come into the heart of enemy territory, no aid save a warrior of Nuhan who has no reason to trust you. You are the perfection of their idiocy, and with your death the last of them will be wiped from the earth."

Jindi screamed. She disappeared and reappeared above the dragon, a blue-stained blur in the unchanging light of the lantern. Samgar didn't have time to think–his body moved on its own, and he lunged for the dragon, drawing the deathcoil-marked sword. Jindi's sword hand was an inhumanly fast whirl of silver jabbing for chinks in the dragon's scaled armor. The dragon, for its part, seemed amused by her audacity. The dreadful scales turned away her blows and sent Samgar's first attack skittering away as though he had struck stone.

This is why dragonslayers are legendary, Samgar thought with more than a little hysteria. Even surviving this kind of fight is beyond almost anyone.

Jindi changed tack and rebounded off the dragon's neck, aiming for the thin membranes of its wings. That got its attention; the monster's mirth melted like summertime snow. It twisted, one claw batting Jindi up in the air like a child's ball, its talons scoring a long gash up Jindi's leg. She didn't even seem to notice, her face still twisted with rage. Samgar ducked beneath a thrashing tail that could have knocked him ass-over-teakettle, thinking furiously.

This was getting nowhere. Dragon hide was notoriously resilient, and the dragon was too clever to bring its weak points anywhere near Samgar's blade. If this was how even a juvenile dragon fought, no wonder the king had wanted their aid in the war against the Southern Regents–

By the gods, what was he saying? What the hell was wrong with him to even think about dragon bargains and the slaughter of civilians as a tactic? When did he stop caring about how a warrior was meant to behave, both to comrades and to enemies?

Cultist or not, Zhang Jindi wasn't Samgar's enemy. Jindi was his daughter's friend, an occasional drinking buddy, and one hell of a partner in battle. If what she and the dragon said was true, the king of Nuhan had bargained with Nuhan's deadliest foe. He had betrayed his people, the people who suffered from dragon attacks every year, the people who trembled at the sound of beating wings. For what? To destroy a monastery that never raised a hand to him? To kill other dragons that the Southrons had no quarrel with? To gain control of a country that was rapidly becoming a desert? What was the point of it all?

It was senseless. Evil. No wonder Jindi called them barbarians.

Samgar's hand tightened on his blade. He didn't know much, but he knew what to do about evil. Fuck the king and fuck his bargains. There was dragon-slaying to do.

The dragon was mostly ignoring him, focusing instead on Jindi. It swatted and bit at her in the air; her sword deflected most of the blows, but anger couldn't sustain her forever. Soon, her energy would run out.

Samgar ran behind the dragon. In the shifting shadows, it was hard to find the perfect ground. He dropped to his knees, feeling for a good niche, a place to brace–there! The deathcoil-marked sword was positioned within. All he needed now was the nerve to keep it there.

"JINDI! DESPONDENT PALM!"

Jindi looked at him, mouth open in a battle cry, and her eyes widened in understanding. Pushed off her sword in midair, shooting like a rocket straight at the startled dragon. The blade disappeared into the gloom, and for a second that felt like an eternity, she hovered in front of the dragon's neck, arm pulled back, palm open.

Then, with a shout she struck, palm open, the same technique that had broken solid stone. The dragon's scales absorbed most of the force of the blow, but it was still potent enough to snap neck and head back. Jindi was blown into the shadow after her sword, but the dragon unbalanced, and toppled backward–right onto Samgar and the blade braced against the cavern floor. He kept the weapon steady as the dragon's own weight pressed the sword through its scales with the force of a machine, and Samgar was knocked prone beneath it. Vile, acidic blood spilled from the wound onto his hand, and he swore viciously as it started to eat through his gauntlet.

The deathcoil's venom was unmerciful, even to a beast as mighty as this. The dragon thrashed over Samgar as the sword melted and the venom entered its system, nearly crushing him and deforming his armor. As Samgar struggled to breathe and wriggle out from under the crushing weight, the thrashing became twitching, which finally became stillness. One final effort of muscle pried him out from under the carcass, and he immediately yanked off his melting gauntlet. The warped breastplate was the next to go: he undid the clasps and let it fall away, gulping in air as his safeguard of so many years clattered to the ground. Samgar felt curiously naked without it, his tunic blue and brown and exposed for the first time in days. His sword, buried in acid, would be unrecoverable.

Jindi slowly hobbled out of the darkness, clutching her arm. Her sword was back in its sheathe. Her eyes were fixed on the remains of the dragon.

"They weren't stupid, you barbarian snake," she told the carcass. "They were our gods. They were wise and honorable and good, and we loved them. And they're not all dead."

Samgar took a step toward her, but froze when she shouted at the carcass. "Do you hear me? They're not dead!"

Jindi fell to her knees and shuddered, breathing hard. She continued that way for a long while. Samgar did nothing but stand, ashamed to be a witness. Ashamed to have any part in this misery. But turning away would be a greater shame, so he stood, waiting as Jindi slowly regained her composure, breath falling into even, meditative patterns. Breathing. Being. The way of her fallen monastery, still alive deep underground and far from home.

After a time, Jindi stood up unsteadily. She looked up at Samgar, who looked back. There was wariness in her eyes; the same wariness that she had maintained ever since the first day she had met. Even now he could see the fear, the calculation–would Samgar turn on her, with her secret revealed? No wonder she was uneasy around him. His people had almost wiped her community out, and at any point in Nuhan she might be next.

Almost. But there was one left. And that meant there was still a chance.

Adrenaline still thrumming in his veins. Samgar mustered his courage and gave her a grin. It was a lie, but weren't all the best stories lies?

"So! You're a dragon cultist, Nuhan's army killed everyone you love in an unjust war to get at the dragons you worship, and you're more than six times my age. Did I get that right?"

Jindi stared at him, unanswering. Samgar nodded decisively. "I'll take that as a yes. Fortunately, you have one advantage down here as you try to do...whatever it is you're doing."

"...what?" Jindi asked.

The fire in Samgar's gut, banked for more than a decade of mundanity and everyday worries, thrummed in his veins, as intoxicating as when he was eighteen again.

"You're right. You're right to be angry, right to be hurt, right to want to do something about it. And because you're right, you aren't alone. I'm with you, Jin, now and to the end of this."

Her eyes went wide. "Your king–"

"Fuck the king. He lied to us, he killed innocent people, and he bargained with dragons to do it. I give exactly zero shits about the king. I'm on your side. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. We're fixing this."

Jindi shook her head. "Laoxiong, this isn't the kind of problem you can fix. It's not the kind of problem anyone can fix."

The certainty in her voice was horrible to hear. Suppressing his instincts, Samgar decided not to argue the point.

"Fine. But you have to have a reason for coming here. Helping the king of Nuhan clean house can't be your real motive. Tell me what your goal is, and I'll help you get it done."

"Just like that?" Jindi seemed at a loss for words.

"I don't need argument or time to see that you were screwed over and deserve my help. Why waste time and energy to get to the only possible conclusion?"

Jindi said absolutely nothing for a long while. Then, with a tiny smile–

"Fine. Presumptuous barbarian."

Samgar grinned, victorious for the moment. "Whatever you say, old bat," he answered with determined cheer. The smile was less a lie by the moment. "Let's get to work."

Mordecai Caddel

"I've never seen you in such casual clothes, Silas."

Mordecai thought it would be his first solo break at work, but his mentor slipped in, back pressed against the wall as he closed the door behind him. Unlike his usual suit, he wore faded jeans and a shirt too big. It was almost as odd as the surprise visit.

He didn't say anything, which wasn't shocking. Silas had a way of speaking a thousand words with only a slight shift in expression. The pursed lip and cautious stare were enough for Mordecai to read.

Despite knowing what was to come, he directed the conversation elsewhere. "Place is a bit more dusty than your office. Not by much though, honestly—

"Mordecai, why are you here?"

He left no room for pauses. Pauses meant thinking, and thinking led to dead ends he couldn't bare. "I'm working. Well, I'm on break. But working."

"Your boss said you could be done. I double-checked and he told me so. With the King's quest coming up he said you can take the time to complete last-minute training and prepare your meeting with the King, and—to rest."

How could I possibly rest? "I'm not tired."

He could try all he wanted to push the issue away, but he was transparent in his mentor's eyes. There was nothing he could say that would dwindle the flame of the purpose of Silas's visit. And there was nothing he could do to avoid the burn. Not ever again.

Silas meandered, slow steps to the side of the room where the small frame of the picture of the topsail rested on the ground, propped up against the wall. He bent down and grabbed it, eyes immediately searching for a nail or hole in the wall.

"Don't hang that up," he warned, but Silas moved past, angling the frame upward toward an open nail.

He jumped to his feet, a firm hand on Silas's arm that jarred the man, the frame slipping from his fingers. It shattered onto the floor, but Mordecai followed it, grasping at the picture. It needed to go back to where it was. It was an unspoken agreement he and Cain had to leave it in its place—to make the unfamiliar feel comfortable, maybe, or to hold onto the nostalgia of their first days working together.

"Hey, stop! The glass, Mordecai, you're bleeding."

Blood did trickle from his fingertips, and the glass dug into his knees, but the feeling was numbing. He swore under his breath as blood smeared the photo, his shaky hands trying to wipe it off, but small pieces of glass only glued itself into the blood. He was making it worse. It needed to go back in place. Now.

"Mordecai—you need to go home."

Oh, how the blood reminded him of fire. Dark red blood like the color of the fire against the brown wood of the ship. The way it spread and never ceased. The warm sting against the skin, a permanent smear. It felt all the same.

Hands grabbed under his arms, but Mordecai only yelled as he sunk into the glass, the broken frame tucked into his chest. He wanted to slip into the photo, where he and Cain rode the topsail like they talked about so many times. That was home. It was something he could never have. And it was all his fault, nonetheless.

"You need to breathe, please."

"I need—I need to fix this." he stared at the rippled, bloodied photo. Broken.

"We'll fix it, alright? But I need you to go home and get some rest."

All the blame he took for the accident, all the tears, cries, and aches he tortured himself with, could never outgrow the immense thought in his mind. It wasn't fair. His fault, his error, his sin he'd live with forever—but it wasn't fair. And maybe that was as close to forgiveness as he'd give himself.

"I, I see—" Silas leaned back into the wall to keep himself from falling, it seemed. He'd never been so distraught. "I see a future."

Out of all the sessions he had with his mentor, not once did he share a future vision. Mordecai always thought it odd; their meetings were all about talking about and practicing their power, but Silas kept it to himself. So as Mordecai looked up at him, he could see the millions of possibilities, of words unsaid that would finally flow freely.

"I see you in this room. And I—"

"What do you see, Silas."

It was not a question at that point. It was the open door to release whatever hell Silas saw. It was an invitation to reveal the worst parts of Mordecai's reality.

He sighed. "Pain. I see pain. Loss. These four walls caving in despite you still being in here. The walls, they—they don't yield."

He was right. The walls would close, and the picture and blood would rot. The world would move on without a mere pause. And to see the world move without Cain was not fair. It just wasn't.

"These visions are killing me, Silas."

"Well, what do you see?"

"Nothing." Mordecai watched through teary eyes as the red spots on the floor thickened. "I see nothing."

And it was true because all he was looking for was Cain. And with him gone, the visions were blocked. Any future he once saw, which were many far and wide—a life at sea, a future under one name, a love unscathed. He had slipped into those futures whenever he wanted, waiting for the day they would become present.

He saw nothing, now, and that was too much.

*

Rune's ratted clothes floated on the surface of the pond.

He never heard another noise from the beast below, not after the hours he spent sitting on the stage, through tears and rest and thoughtless stares. He didn't know how long he remained in the theatre-like room, but it was enough. There was no time to sit around, and there would never be enough time to mourn, so he gathered the newest scroll and cleaned off his knives for the next battle. A battle he likely wouldn't survive. A sacrifice for each monster was a common fate, and Mordecai had run out of others to spare. Maeve and Rune had taken the bite, and it'd only be a matter of time till he faced the same. There was no point in stalling.

He exited the room, leading the way on his own accord. Hours walking behind Rune became a familiarity he didn't know he preferred. It gave him time to settle and think while he trailed behind the leader. The luxury was not his anymore.

What traveling solo did do, though, was bring him a new insight to his surroundings. As he walked through the dungeon, down narrowed halls and dim doorways, he noticed a pattern to the trails. The walls were always curved, and his walk consistently catered toward the left. However long, the outer structure of the dungeon was circle-like. Doors and odd paths led outward, yet the base always returned to the circle. The center. The end.

The end. How many were left? How many beasts until the title would be claimed? And by the gods, could it be his? Was that what he truly wanted out of all this? A hero, Cain called him. Mind games, Rune had accused him of. With words from others dead and gone, what was he?

The thoughts never stopped, but they did cease as he entered through another door, peering into a dome-like room. Unlike the previous room with statues and paintings and benches, this one was empty, dull.

As his eyes scanned for any warnings, he took note of a small opening on the other end. Black was all he could see as he walked up to it, but he felt a warm, consistent wind. It flowed from the narrow hallway, a drastic feeling to the cold he felt walking alone a moment ago.

Warm. He could feel—life. A living, warm-blooded being.

As Mordecai side-stepped into the hallway, slight sounds echoed from the dark. They grew louder every second, and turned into a clear voice as he entered the small room, matching the noise to the person.

"I'm growin' real tired of you, you ugly fucker. You're doomed once I get out of your goddamn chokehold, you know that?"

A woman was trapped in the center of the dragon's spiked tail, vulnerable as arms were glued to her sides. The beast stood tall, dark red patterns trailing across its entire body, the colors darkening around the face. Eyes, unlike the other serpents, lacked any glowing hue. However, one thing that remained the same was the small space these monsters were living in. The dragon's head reached the ceiling, and if its tail wasn't wrapped around the woman, it would have to be curled anyway.

"I've faced beasts bigger than you—uglier too, and that's definitely not a compliment."

She should be dead by now, he thought, but the dragon only held her in place. Mordecai scanned for a chest as he took another step, but the emptied room caught his echo, gathering the attention of two pairs of eyes.

"Oh, hey." the woman twisted in the dragon's tail to face him, sharing a subtle nod. "Captain Odette. And you are?"

Captain? With the range of visitors he saw each day at the bay, her face wasn't recognizable. He could only assume she was a traveler of the sea. She was an orc—or half, at least, with fangs protruding from her bottom lips, but horns stood tall from her head. Dark hair outlined her sharp features, and matching colored eyes were warmer than what she portrayed herself. She spoke as if she still held the most control in the room, despite the death grip the dragon had as its tail double-wrapped around her waist, keeping her still.

"I'm Mordecai. Are—are you okay?"

"For fucks sake—" the woman, Odette, murmured more curses as she fought against the grip pressed around her. "Hey, can I call you Mordy? I'm sure that'll be just fine. I'm going to need some assistance, dear Mordy, if you can't fucking tell."

"Yeah, sure. Yes." Mordecai pulled out his knives as he took a step closer, getting a better eye of the monster. He couldn't imagine a beast being larger than the last two, but it was a common theme to be proved wrong in the dungeon. Black eyes stared as he took another step, trying to slip into his mind to see the visions, to ignore the horrific outcomes he saw until he met one that would work.

"I have the scroll," Odette said, "but once I got my hands on it hell broke loose. Fucking dragon was sleeping and the next thing I knew it was around me. Seems like this here scroll and I am a package deal. Enticing, no?"

"How long have you been trapped here?"

"Longer than I'd like to admit, Mordy."

"And it's just holding you there?"

Odette didn't bother hiding her curses anymore as she rolled her head back. "Gods help me. Yes, it is just holding me here, if you can't tell. Only now that you're here, its tail has a damn death grip on me."

Mordecai nodded, taking yet another step. The dragon's eyes had no intention of departing its gaze. "Alright, let me think. Just a second."

He could almost feel Odette's eyes roll, but she took a breath and kept to herself as he closed his eyes for a moment, welcoming the pictures that played in his mind, toying him with many futures. So many ended with a searing burn that was nowhere close to the feeling he had with Cain's fate. How could something hurt more than that?

"Just so you know, every step you take this fucker is tightening even more around my goddamn ribs, so I'm going to need you to take some real action here."

"The blade on you," he obeyed the images that guided him. "You'll stab its eye with it once you can. Its mouth would work, too. I don't know why yet but it's what will work."

"How'd you see my cutlass?" Odette glanced down at the beast's skin that covered her weapon before looking back up. "What are you?"

"Just trust me."

With how tight the dragon's tail around her was, her laugh was still hearty, coming from deep in her stomach. "Trust! Shit, Mordy, be careful throwing that word around. I might do just that."

This probably won't work, he thought to himself, but he charged at the dragon anyway.

While it was larger, it wasn't as quick as the other beasts he faced. As Mordecai ran to its side, the dragon's head turned with him before the body could, exposing the neck to his knife. The skin was thick but was pierced through, his weapon retracting with ease.

"Keep moving!" Odette shouted. "Maybe the tail will loosen a bit if you keep circling, alright?"

He listened, because Odette was the one who was vulnerable under the dragon's grasp, and he was the gateway to her freedom. Whatever orders she gave, he allowed that much trust to listen. He ran around again, puncturing the dragon's chest before it could catch up.

He gauged the dragon's reaction as he moved behind it, but its eyes trailed him, red seeping into the blackness as its mouth opened. Before any warning from Odette or any caution from his visions, fiery blood came pouring down.

A burn—familiar, but brought with a vicious sting that soaked through his armor and clothing until it sizzled onto his shoulder, running down his side. Screaming was all he could do as he swiped at the acidy burn, falling to his knees.

"Holy shit. Mordy, to your right!"

For once, he put trust in someone else's word over his power. He dove to his left as the dragon attacked again, but the blood only splattered the wall behind where he just was, releasing a consistent hiss as the acid bled through.

Fire. Blood. An intense burn that Mordecai had felt on the inside so intensely his memory never letting him forget. Now, it was physical. It was the beast of Cain and Rune's fate.

Despite it all, he could only muster a few thoughts into words. "How ironic."

"Ironic, what—have I lost you? Keep it moving, Mordy!"

With every step the burn only settled into his skin more. He clenched his jaw as he moved around the dragon, getting a few more sloppy stabs. While they didn't cause too much damage, he could see the focus garnered more toward him and less on Odette. He knew she could sense it too; her arms were able to move back and forth more, twisting as she attempted to grab her blade.

Soon, he thought, seeing images more clearly now. Just a few more stabs, more circles with quick moments...And then blood. Blood the feeling of fire.

The dragon spewed fire as it spun in a full circle, covering the walls with red. There was no way to avoid the hit as Mordecai rounded the beast, trying to jump over something he would land on anyway. Droplets of acid splattered on parts of his skin like poisonous rain. A blaze of deep red covered every surface except the dragon's own body. The blood had not reached Odette, but it would soon.

Through blurred, heavy eyes, Mordecai lunged forward, a last stab into the creature's tail, uncoiling the grip over Odette's body.

"Now, Captain!"

On queue, Odette raised her arms, blade in one hand and the scroll in the other. Without a moment of hesitation, she reached upward and stabbed the dragon's eyes, the tip of the blade slicing through both. A difficult target, but Odette perfected it.

Blood oozed from the dragon's eyes, a thicker kind of red as it overpowered black pupils. The dragon hissed and writhed in its misery, face turned away from the heroes. Odette made her move, yelling directions and giving Mordecai the order of the immediate game plan. Though her voice was jumbled through ringing ears, his eyes trailed her movements, and he followed her through the narrow entrance and into the open area he arrived in.

The dragon's shrieks were only an echo, but the sizzle of acid followed them. As Odette stopped and turned to face him, Mordecai could only stumble onto his knees and let the pain settle.

"If it wasn't for your armor we'd be seeing right to the bone," Odette's eyes trailed the wounds she could see before sitting down, palms resting on the ground behind her, taking deep breaths. It was only then did Mordecai take note of her stature. Her body was inevitably strong, with broadened shoulders and muscles that formed wherever muscles could. Still, he worried. Nobody was invincible. Not here.

"Are you hurt?"

"Fucker bruised a few ribs, I think."

"Did the acid hit you?"

Odette cocked her head toward him. "Why do you care so much, Mordy? Got some ulterior motive going on?"

"No, I—" I don't think I can handle seeing another person suffer. "I don't have a plan. I'm just—just wondering, I guess."

"Well, worry no more. Worse has happened down here."

She was far from wrong, too. He didn't want to know what Odette had seen in the dungeon, but he could sense it in her eyes as she spoke those words. She had seen hell, and then some. Whoever would make it out of here wouldn't be the same. Maybe they were more of a hero walking in than they'd be crawling out.

"I guess this quest was the final straw letting me run solo. You too?"

"No, I was—I was with others."

Odette raised an eyebrow. "Well, I better watch my back, seeing' there's only you left standing in that so-called group of yours."

It was almost a pity how she saw him. His cowardly ways were coated with strength, with a badge of pride that was sewn onto his skin.

"Pardon my curiosity, but are you some psychic or something'? Not that your...natural strength isn't enough to be summoned from the King, but you've got something else going on with you seeing right through to my blade and all. What's that about? You a magic user?"

"I can see the future—well, a variety of outcomes that I have to sort through. Sometimes I can see it clearly. Other times, I—I don't."

He wondered how many more people he would fail with his ability. How many more needed to suffer from his power, or to die over the avoidable mistake?

Odette would not be one of them. "Well, that seems like an agonizing prison of a mind, Mordy. Spare me the details of whatever the fuck you see. I thrive on a good surprise."

But the pictures were already flooding his mind, because as Odette reached out to lay the scroll in his hand, he was bombarded with both past and future.

When Rune handed the scroll to him, securing their alliance, he took it. Her motive was there, crawling into his mind and settling into the future.

He couldn't move forward this time knowing the outcome. He would not wait anymore. Cain and Rune suffered through time that he kept from them. Odette, though a stranger, did not deserve what he would do to her. End it now, and it'll hurt less later.

So he did not accept the scroll. As he stood, grabbing the knife from his boot, he mustered any lasting strength he had. It was dwindling, but it was there.

Odette mirrored him, standing as the scroll in her hand loosened and tumbled to the ground. With eyes like rising smoke dimming with each passing second, she watched as Mordecai raised his knife toward her.

And without a moment's hesitation, she raised her blade just the same.

Kenna Ashfyre

"Do you see the stars, my love?" Helios's hand caressed Kenna's arm–Hestia's arm.

Hestia's head lay across Helios's bare chest, listening to his steady pulse. The two lay tangled in a pile of blankets on a hilltop one warm summer evening. Sweat still clung to her skin from their earlier, pleasant activities. Luckily, this hill was far from any human development. A small, private spot in a world of endless lands.

Her eyes wandered the skies above, watching the twinkling lights glitter in worlds beyond the moon. It was said that every time a phoenix died, their light on earth snuffed out permanently, the gods formed another star, forever blazing as bright as a phoenix's wings. A thousand stars in the sky for a thousand of the ever-living myth.

"Do you think it's true? Do you think they look down on us?" Nearly 170 years had passed since their kin, their families, had been murdered by a conquering king.

"I have to believe it is," Helios answered, hand tangling with hers. "I have to believe their sacrifice was not forgotten. I have to believe they watch over us still. I have to believe because that's the only thing that makes this life bearable. That, and you."

Hestia nodded, her eyes filling with tears. It had been decades since she'd last cried. Years since the guilt of her survival crashed on her like a wave. Why she was crying now, of all times, was beyond her.

Helios moved, pulling Hestia up with him until they sat facing each other. His calloused thumbs brushed the tears from Hestia's soft cheeks before he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Helios didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't need to. They knew too well the scars each other bore, seen and unseen.

"I'm so tired, Helios," Hestia whispered, staring into his infinite amber eyes. "All this running and hiding. How long must we do this?"

"Until the gods call us to the heavens. They spared us for a reason. We must not let ourselves forget."

"Spared," Hestia spat, "but at what cost? Do we really live if we live in fear?"

A frown crossed Helios's perfect features. "We live because there is so much in life worth living for. Come here." Helios pulled Hestia into his powerful arms. Holding her as though his arms alone could fend off any hurt. Any pain.

And while he held her, Hestia sobbed. She cried for a life she'd lost. For her people wiped from the face of the earth. For a life torn from their grasp. For a life lived, but never fully.

Hestia didn't know how long they sat there, didn't realize when the breeze began to whisper against her bare arms. And she didn't hear the galloping hooves until it was too late.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" A voice, that voice, spoke from behind her.

Hestia grabbed a blanket, pulling it over her naked chest. Helios turned, throwing a hand out in front of her.

Fear clung to Hestia's skin as she met the gaze of the hunter–the man who chased them across time and continents. He sat atop a black steed, as though he were a wraith in the night. His hair and eyes were as dark as the land beyond, void of color and imagination. Behind him, three hooded figures sat on horseback, wicked swords glinting at their sides.

"Aedion," Helios said, his voice burning with hatred as his skin burned with flames. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"

"I told you there was no place you could hide. Not from me. Not from the king."

Hestia matched Helios's flames with her own. "And you know what you seek is an impossible task. No mortal chains can hold us."

Meeting Helios's eye, she nodded. And transformed.

Enormous wings exploded from her back before she twisted, her human body swirling and twisting until she became fire itself. Dragons were a sight to behold, but a phoenix, the true master of the skies, was astonishing.

In their true form, phoenixes were massive, their bodies the width of two horses. Their wings spanned twice as long as their bodies, and their tail, made more of fire than feathers, hung far below.

Helios transformed not two seconds after Hestia's, his form just as astonishing as her own.

Let's fly, my love. Helios sent Hestia the message mind to mind.

No, Hestia said, all her hurt and anger wrapped into that one word. Let's finish him now. Let's finish him so we don't have to run anymore.

The king will send someone else, Hestia argued, he always does.

Let's send him a message. With that, Hestia dove, twisting into a ball of fire before slamming into the ground in the middle of the group. Shouts of alarm rang up from the group as they moved out of the way. One was not so lucky. Their cloak caught fire, quickly engulfing them in flames.

Hestia screeched, her tail flicking behind her, pushing the group back. She turned her attention to Aedion, her amber eyes blazing with unbridled fury.

"Fire the arrow now!"

Hestia! Watch out!

But the warning came too late. The sharp pain of an arrow embedded itself in her shoulder. Hestia screeched, pulling out the arrow with her beak and waiting for her body to knit itself back together.

Helios slammed into the ground next to her, spitting a circle of fire around them. We need to leave.

Hestia hesitated. Something was wrong; her shoulder was not healing. She flapped a wing once, a stabbing pain tearing through her body. Hestia faltered and then collapsed.

Helios was there in an instant, fury as bright as his flames dancing in his eyes. What's wrong?

It was Aedion who answered for her. "Arrows dipped in the blood of the gods. That's how the mighty phoenix falls, is it not?"

Helios spat a flaming ball at the man in response. The man's cloak caught fire, flames covering his body before immediately winking out.

That didn't happen with the other cloaked figure? They had been consumed by the flames, hadn't they? Hestia turned her head, counting one... two... three... four. The other figure was still there. Some foul magic was at play here.

Fear clung to Hestia like a vise. If this was her end, she couldn't drag Helios down with her.

You have to leave, Helios. Leave me.

No. There was no room for question in his voice. I won't leave you.

Aedion raised a glowing purple hand as Helios lashed out, flames churning the ground in front of him.

"I had to trade some of my soul for this magic, but I'd do it over and over again to watch you fall." Aedion smiled as Helios screeched. And then he threw his hand forward.

Purple engulfed Helios and Hestia, swirling around them like a tornado of death. Between one blink and the next, the phoenixes transformed, and Hestia was heaving on the ground. Blood ran down her bare skin from her shoulder. Helios crouched next to her, his auburn hair almost black in the purple light.

"What sorcery is this?" he hissed.

One of the hooded figures stepped forward, spear in hand. Helios stood, fire licking up his arms once before spluttering out. He jumped forward, strong arms grabbing the spear and wrestling it from his grasp.

Suddenly, a blade was at Hestia's throat. Hestia tried to call on her flames, but pain coursed through her with every attempt.

"Unless you want to see your mate dead, I suggest you drop the spear." Aedion's voice came from behind her, a voice that held so much venom. So much hatred.

Helios whirled from where he had the spear at a man's throat to see the knife pressed to Hestia's. "Let her go."

"Why would I do that? You know how much the king has wanted to meet you. Isn't there a saying–absence makes the heart grow fonder?"

"You don't have to do this. You can let us go. We can disappear." Hestia sagged against the attacker's arms, her body too tired to do much other than protest. The poison was working through her fast. If she didn't get help, it would take her life, as it did all of her kind.

"You know all too well that can't happen."

Hestia let out a cry as the knife dug into her throat. With the blood of the gods in her veins, she was not invincible. Far from it.

Helios looked like he would burn the world to set her free, but with the magic stopping their powers, what could he do? Hestia knew he wouldn't do anything to hurt her, and he wouldn't leave her. But her heart still hurt when he dropped the sword.

"Good. Make sure he's secure. The king wants him alive." Aedion waited as the figures approached, golden ropes binding Helios's hands together.

"What about her?" one of the hooded figures asked.

Aedion ran a hand down Hestia's cheek. "She's beautiful, isn't she? Too bad she isn't long for this world. Not after I take half her heart."

"What? No!" It was Helios who shouted, elbowing the people at his side to get to Hestia.

"No!" Hestia let out a noise halfway between a sob and a scream. The heart of a phoenix holds its power. Take it away and it leaves them human.

She couldn't let him take her heart. She couldn't let him take Helios. She would die and soon, so would he. Hestia thrashed, even as the blade sliced a thin line across her neck.

"Calm down." Purple light burst around her, forcing her to the ground. "Don't worry, it'll be quick."

Aedion reached into her chest, black eyes blazing with triumph. Hestia screamed, hands grasping at his arms. She had felt pain before, but this was agony. She could feel his fingers as he tore her heart in two. Aedion pulled his hand out, the bloody, still beating half of her heart.

Hestia collapsed, tears falling down her face. Blood still poured from her shoulder. Though her chest was unmarred by some magical feat, she could feel the gaping hole where her heart should be.

Through her hazy vision, Hestia watched as someone tied Helios to a horse. Watched as Helios looked over his shoulder one last time. Heard him as he whispered into her mind one last time: I love you.

And so, she cried. Let all her pain and agony wash her away. She didn't move. Couldn't move. Couldn't see past her pain and her heartbreak as her mate was taken away.

"Kenna!" Someone was shaking her. "Kenna! You're screaming! You need to wake up."

Kenna's eyes flicked open, a hand around the throat of her attacker. She was not weak and would not be caught off guard again. And that's when she realized who it was.

Evelyn.

Cursing, Kenna released Evelyn, scrambling to her feet as the girl coughed, hands grasping at her neck.

Some tiny part of her wanted to ask if Evelyn was okay. It made her want to wretch. Was she soft now? She couldn't be soft, not until she did what she came here to do.

Kenna slammed a hand against the stone wall and pressed her head against the cool stone. She needed to find what she was looking for and leave. And hope the king would welcome her into his bed.

Evelyn looked up with red eyes. "Are you okay?"

"I almost strangled you, and you want to know if I'm okay?" Kenna eyed the girl warily. "There's something wrong with you."

"I just... never mind. You were screaming in your sleep. Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." Kenna snatched her sword and sheath from where they lay and belted them around her waist. "Did you get any sleep?"

Evelyn nodded. Since her earlier swim in the pond, she looked weaker, her skin pale. But the flames atop her head were as bright as ever.

"We should move."

Evelyn didn't argue.

The deeper into the dungeons they went, the darker the dungeon became. Shadows reached out their hands as though to stuff out the light. They searched room after room for anything of value but found nothing.

After a particularly disappointing room, filled only with furniture in varying states of distress, Kenna ran a hand over her face. It had to be down here. She'd searched everywhere else in the godforsaken kingdom. It had to be here.

"Do you hear that?" Evelyn asked from beside her.

"Hear what?" Kenna snapped.

"Someone's calling for help."

Kenna lifted her head, straining her ears against the infinite silence. "No..." But then, softly, a cry came from somewhere down the hall. "Yes."

"We have to help them." Evelyn grabbed Kenna's arm and dropped it as Kenna sent her a look.

"We have to do nothing of the sort."

"Please, we can't let them die." Evelyn's eyes pleaded with Kenna.

"Do you think they'd help you if you needed it?"

"You did."

Kenna looked away, then back at the girl. Those dang eyes. How could she say no to that? "Fine, but you stay out of the way. I can't look out for you and fight whatever hell beast lies in the dark."

Evelyn led the way down the hallways, listening intently until she stopped at a heavy metal door.

"Stay here," Kenna ordered, and threw open the door.

Inside, much to her dismay, but not entirely unexpected, was another snake. This beast, just as large as the deathcoil, curled in the middle of the room. Heat radiated off the beast's red scales. A fire dragon, perhaps?

Behind the beast, the fox boy cowered in a corner, arms clutching another score.

"Kenna, thank the fates. Help me, please."

"Ash, you bloody idiot." Kenna cursed under her breath. How did she become the one needed to save everyone?

"Hey!" Ash protested. And then sped away as the dragon shot forward.

Kenna unsheathed her sword, watching the dragon as it turned its burning eyes on her. The beast opened its mouth and fire burst forward. Kenna held her ground, not worried about the flames.

Until the bare skin of her arm bubbled beneath the flame, pain lancing through her. Hissing, Kenna dove out of the way, examining the oozing pustules on her arm. Acid? This was not a fire dragon, then. Something far worse.

"Maybe try to kill it faster?" Ash called, watching the dragon with weary eyes.

"Shut it." Kenna spat, raising her sword and stabbing it between the scales and into the flesh beneath. Flames burst from the wound and black acid trickled down the scales. "You could help, you know."

"You don't think I've tried getting away?"

"Not hard enough."

"I liked you better when you were flirting with me," Ash said, disappearing in a flash and reappearing beside Kenna.

"I liked you better when you were helping. Can you do anything other than that speedy little trick you have?"

Ash raised an arm, glowing runes appearing on his skin. "Yes."

"Great, you distract the beast."

"Distract? What–"

Kenna didn't wait for him to respond, pushing him towards the snake as she ran around behind it.

The inklings of an idea brushed her mind. She needed higher ground. She wouldn't risk revealing her wings to another person. A pile of rubble sat against the back wall. It didn't look to be the most stable, but it would do.

"Count to ten and then lead the snake to me," Kenna called.

"Yes, ma'am."

Kenna ran, dodging the snake's spiked tail as it wriggled in the confined space, counting in her head every step of the way. When she reached the rubble, she jumped, stepping on one rock, then another, before launching herself into the air.

Ash ran beneath her, the snake's head twisting after him.

Gripping her knife between both hands, Kenna let herself drop. And plunged her blade through the beast's neck.

The snake let out a blood-curdling screech, writhing beneath her. Kenna held fast, even as the flaming, acidic blood ran down her legs, sending jolts of pain through her. The smell of searing flesh roiled her stomach. It was a small comfort to know the acid wouldn't kill her, though the scars it left behind might take months to fade.

Finally, the snake slowed its movements and sank to the ground.

"That was badass," Ash called.

Sending him a gesture none too kind, Kenna grimaced and removed her sword from the beast's neck. She peeled her legs from its scales, see the bloody and raw skin through the holes in her pants.

"Give me your pants," Kenna demanded when she dropped in front of Ash.

"What?"

"Your pants. I saved your life. You can walk pantless through this dungeon."

Ash looked down at her legs, bloody and blistered, and then back at Kenna. "I don't know if you should put pants over that."

"Pants. Now. Or I feed you to the next snake." Kenna held out a hand expectantly.

Muttering some choice words under his breath, Ash tugged down the loose-fitting pants, leaving him in only his underclothes.

"And the scroll."

Ash looked down at the scroll, then back at Kenna before handing it over.

"Evelyn's outside the room. If you hurt her, I will not hesitate to kill you. Wait out there. I'm going to change."

Ash grumbled some more but complied, leaving her alone with the dead beast.

Kenna grasped a strip of leather and peeled it from her skin, sucking in her breath at the agony each movement brought. Strip by strip, Kenna removed her ruined pants.

As she did so, her thoughts drifted to her dream. To the last time she saw Helios. And the last time she answered to the name Hestia.

It was all her fault. Losing him. Losing herself.

It was her fault.

This dungeon was getting to her. Everything would be over soon. She'd get her revenge. She'd make it right.

Kenna tied on the borrowed pair of pants, using her belt to keep them in place. And then she stood, glancing over the fallen beast one last time.

It was there, just beyond the corpse, Kenna saw exactly what she was looking for.

The missing half of her heart.

Evelyn Ashe

Sputtering like a sickened child, Evelyn clung to the armor decorating Kenna's back. Warmth permeated beneath it radiating outwards and seeping into the genasi's hungry bones. As Kenna's steps echoed down the tunnel a series of whimpers forced their way through Evelyn's parched lips with each jostling movement.

"Easy, darling," Kenna sighed, adjusting her hold on Evelyn's small frame as they staggered onwards.

Time passed in elongated seconds each thrumming along to the faint beat of Evelyn's heart. It had been a long time since she'd been this sick. Sick enough that her lungs rattled in her chest and the sensation of breathing brought tears to her eyes.

"Pneumonia," Ash remarked, pausing to lean against a wall. With a grunt he slid down to the ground taking a moment to rest. "She's sick, Kenna."

"How can you tell?" Kenna frowned, settling against the wall across from Ash. Moving Evelyn into her lap, Kenna fussed over the ill girl like a mother would a child.

"The sound of her breathing," Ash explained, sliding off his boots to wiggle his pruned toes.

"My breathing is fine," Evelyn protested, her words labored as another breath rasped in her chest. Eyes struggling to focus on Ash's face, Evelyn settled her head on Kenna's shoulder. Weak. She felt impossibly weak.

"You can't fool us," Kenna whispered, uncharacteristically warm to the other girl. "Rest."

"And risk losing our lead?" Ash asked, arching a brow in surprise. "What was it you said? The others will kill us if they catch up?"

"We'll die anyways if we carry on like this," Kenna argued. "We're in no position to fight."

Vaguely aware of the discussion being had, Evelyn let herself fall into a half sleep. Every now and then she was racked by a violent coughing fit. Shoulders shaking and eyes watering, Evelyn felt a warm hand rub soothing circles into her back. It felt like her ribs would break should she cough anymore. The muscles in her chest, albeit small, seized as she doubled over. When the coughing finally ceased, and sweat coated her brow, Evelyn was guided back to her feet at Ash's behest.

"We can't risk anymore time here," he worried, eyes settling on the way they'd come. "Can you walk?"

"I'll manage," Evelyn nodded as Kenna nestled the flaming girl into her side. Hobbling along, the trio made their way deeper into the confines of the mountain. Aware of each agonizing breath and hitch in her stride, Evelyn knew she was slowing the others down. At this rate even a one legged grandmother could walk faster than her.

Gritting her teeth, the young genasi straightened to her full height (which wasn't much) and left Kenna'a side. Panting and nauseous, Evelyn ignored the twist in her stomach and surpassed Ash to take the lead. Driven by determination and stubbornness, Evelyn wandered aimlessly into a new chamber.

Vision blurry, she struggled to make out the floor. Each step caused the ground to shift in unpredictable ways sending the genasi tumbling head first into something rancid. The smell was nearly enough to clear her lungs and cure her sickness. Gagging, Evelyn recoiled as a set of calloused hands jerked her to her feet.

"Instead of walking like a drunkard you could let us help you," Kenna grumbled, shaking Evelyn by the shoulders. She desperately wanted to knock some sense into the younger girl but Evelyn was too delirious to notice much. "Gods you're burning up."

"That's good, right?" Ash asked, drawing level.

"Not when it's a fever," Kenna worried, planting a hand against Evelyn's forehead. "How is your breathing? Can you see straight?"

"Uh..." Evelyn blinked rapidly trying to adjust her vision. "I can guess which way is straight if that's what you mean."

"By the Gods," Kenna sighed, shaking her head in dismay. "Just stay close."

Taking Evelyn's hand in her own she guided the flaming girl as if she were a toddler. As they walked and Evelyn's heart rate managed to steady, her vision cleared.

She wished it hadn't.

With each small shuffle, the trio made their way deeper and deeper into a gaping chasm riddled with bones and decaying corpses. A slurry of blood, flesh, and shit frothed beneath their feet.

"We must be near the heart of the mountain," Ashe guessed, eyes scanning the ceiling. There was no end in sight, only darkness.

"I'll say," Kenna agreed, avoiding the bulging eyeball of a dead oversized rat. Lip curling in disgust, Kenna momentarily abandoned Evelyn to avoid the mess as if it would keep her mucked up shoes clean.

"I can't wait for a bath," Evelyn sighed, shaking her foot to dislodge a large intestine that cling to her heel.

"How does that work exactly?" Ash asked, genuine curiosity painting his features. His ears twitched in amusement as he waited for an answer. Stifling a pitiful laugh, Evelyn opened her mouth to reply when Kenna shushed them. Her eyes were wide and alert, flicking back and forth over the walls of the chasm.

"Do you hear that?" She asked, brow furrowing in concentration. Biting at his lower lip, Ash leaned forward attempting to identify Kenna's mystery noise. Waiting impatiently Evelyn noticed the moment realization settled on Ash's face. His eyes softened and his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"It can't be," he muttered, moving swiftly towards the tallest pile of bones. Scampering up the ever shifting hill, Ash stood atop the grotesque mountain looking paler than before. With an agitated sigh, Kenna pulled Evelyn through the pile of bones until the trio stood aloft looking like a cake topper.

What Evelyn expected to see was a never ending maze of carnage. What she got was an unbelievably massive dragon with thick red scales settled atop a throne of death. Curled around a slope of corpses, the mighty beast stared intently at a young looking boy who trembled from head to toe.

"Cass-" Ash began, voice cut off abruptly as Kenna slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" She hissed, eyeing the dragon wearily. "We need to be quiet."

"We need to get Cass out of here," Ash argued.

"And we can do that quietly," Kenna insisted, bright colored eyes staring intently at Ash. With an agitated sigh, Ash gave a confirmatory nod. Together, the trio made their way towards the dragon but the closer they got the more stifling the air became. It smelled of acrid heat, rotten meat, and gory entrails. The slurry at their feet only worsened as they approached.

Slinking around another mound of bones, Evelyn pressed her back against the hillside flattening out as much as possible. Her breathing came rapidly and with an audible wheeze. She was struggling. That much was apparent. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she peered over the lip of the bony mountain.

They were just beneath the dragon and it's captive. From here, Evelyn could see the boy more clearly. His hair was an elegant shade of brown, tumbling past his chin in a chestnut wave. A crown settled atop his head though the edges of it were melted. Feminine in feature, the boy struggled to retain his composure. In his hand was a blood stained scroll that flapped lazily with each tremble of the shoulders.

"He's got the scroll," Evelyn whispered, looking down at Ash who cursed silently at his lover's idiocy.

"Then we get the scroll," Kenna decided, hand settled on her sword.

"And Cass," Ash glowered.

"Fine, and Cass," Kenna sighed. "Now, what's the plan Team Captain?"

"I teleport in, get Cass, and we leave," Ash decided. "Easy as that."

"Then get going," Kenna encouraged, relaxing against the bones. Nodding, Ash closed his eyes and within seconds vanished from sight only to reappear with Cass in his arms several feet away.

"Time to run?" Evelyn asked.

"Time to run," Kenna nodded, grabbing Evelyn by the collar of her shirt and shoving her forward. By the time the mighty dragon realized it's captive was gone, the trio was halfway to the exit.

"What are you doing in here?" Ash demanded, glaring at his lover as Kenna drug Evelyn along.

"Long story," Cassian panted, looking worriedly over his shoulder as a roar permeated the air strong enough to make Evelyn's hair flutter. The dragon had come to its senses and whatever trance had held it snapped the moment Cassian vanished.

As Evelyn struggled to run, the sound of bones being ground to dust echoed in her ears. Each snap and crackle signaled the dragon's pursuit. Invigorated with adrenaline, Evelyn did her best to keep pace with the others but she was falling behind. A wave of heat arched over her head as a green blob of liquid spattered the ground. Skittering to a stop, Kenna, Ash, and Cassian watched in horror as the ground in front of them disintegrated with a slobbery hiss.

Flapping wings beat at the air until the dragon settled before the group of heroes. It's eyes blazed a vibrant red matching it's hearty exterior. Fangs dripping with acrid green liquid, another roar erupted from its gullet. Looking on in terror Evelyn was forced to realize just how big the creature was. There was a reason it lived in a chasm of such great size. This monster dwarfed anything they'd fought before.

"Evelyn!" Ash yelled, drawing her attention as she cowered before the mighty beast. "Watch Cassian. Kenna and I can handle this."

"Finally, a worthy opponent!" Kenna grinned, a set of fiery wings erupting from her back. Armor shimmering with a new wave of heat, the formidable hero took to the skies. Teleporting out of sight, Ash drew the attention of the dragon leaving Evelyn and Cassian alone.

Gulping down a painful breath of air, Evelyn scrambled to Cassian's side. The young prince was impossibly pale and stiff with shock. She couldn't blame him. What they'd come face to face with was something only legends talked about. Sticking to the perimeter, Evelyn watched her friends with a growing air of anxiety. The heat of their powers seemed to bounce off of the dragon's scales. Their fire wasn't working and frankly that was all they had.

"Why isn't it hurt?" Cassian worried, looking to Evelyn for answers she didn't have.

"I don't know," Evelyn admitted, hearing a cry of pain as acid melted the wrist guard of Kenna's armor. At this rate, her friends would tire too much to be of service. The dragon would gobble them up and they'd join the slurry of death.

Mind reeling, Evelyn desperately tried to come up with some sort of plan to thwart the beast.

It's scales were heat resistant and it's blood burned away the ground just as it's breathe did. It was practically impenetrable. Nothing they did could truly weaken the bull headed dragon. With a shuddering breath, Evelyn realized that this might be their undoing.

As Kenna recovered from her injury she launched another attack upon the dragon, fiery wings keeping her aloft. As a blast of white heat arched from her palms towards the beast's head, the dragon took it without so much as a flinch and retaliated with a blast of acid.

As Kenna continued to struggle, Ash attempted to cut the dragon but his blades bounced off with a set of sparks. Frustrated, he ignited them in search of blood and death. The fire did nothing but lick at the air mocking the fox boy's efforts. Snarling, Ash increased the speed and force of his attacks to no avail.

Watching both Kenna and Ash come up empty handed led Evelyn to a painful realization. They'd put all of their eggs in one basket: fire. Now the eggs were rotten.

Rotten.

How did eggs rot? How did people rot? From the inside out. All at once an idea so crazy it just might work came to life.

"Stay here," Evelyn ordered, a new resolve washing over her.

"Ash said you would-"

"Watch over you, I know," Evelyn nodded. "But I have an idea."

"I can help. Tell me what it is," Cassian frowned, torn between worry and curiosity. He listened intently both mortified and amused by the plan Evelyn had concocted.

"I need to get to Ash. Can you help me?" Evelyn asked. "I'm sick and I'm not nearly fast enough to make it in time."

"Lucky for you, I happen to have a special set of skills. Stay put." With a wink, Cassian passed the bloodied scroll over as a set of sharp fangs emerged from his gum line and his dark colored eyes shimmered intently. With a shudder passing through his spine, Cassian took off at a speed so fast Evelyn only felt his absence once it'd already happened.

Clutching the piece of paper to her chest, the genasi waited in anxious silence for what was to come. This had to work. It was their only option. Eyes scanning the air, Evelyn watched as Kenna elegantly flew in and out of range from the dragon's snapping jaws. She was playing a dangerous game. One that could end poorly in a matter of milliseconds.

Swallowing tightly, Evelyn counted down a series of seconds searching for signs that her plan was working. She needed Ash to pull through. She needed Ash to be fearless and brave. To be the hero he needed to be for Cassian. As worry settled in Evelyn's heart, a vibrant light shimmered through the dragon's scales. It started at the creature's belly spreading outwards slowly but surely.

A set of strange colored runes burned into the sides of the dragon colored in all shades of green, blue, and purple. Startled by the sudden shift, Kenna was swatted out of the sky landing harshly against a mountain of bones. She remained unmoving as the dragon's attention settled on its newest meal. In two large steps the beast was standing over Kenna with widened jaws. Slobber dripped from its open maw like a leaky water fountain.

"Come on Ash," Evelyn whispered, heart hammering painfully in her chest. "Now. You have to do it now."

As if he'd heard his small flaming friend, the runes erupted in color. Trembling for only a millisecond the dragon exploded. It's insides became outsides and it's stomach lay exposed on the ground. Front half still standing, the dragon swayed back and forth before collapsing beside Kenna, eyes glazed over and tongue lolling out. Acid blood decorated the landscape melting anything it touched and adding to the putrid smell of the chasm.

Ash stood in the center of the carnage covered in bits of meat and entrails. Two glowing daggers resided in his hands as the runes decorating his body began to fade. His pupils were narrowed into slits and his tails was a wash of fading color. As an aura like that of the northern lights wafted away in a non existent breeze, Ash returned to himself.

"Yes!" Evelyn cheered, jumping up and down before remembering Kenna. Sliding down the slick slope of bones, she traversed the acid ridden landscape before arriving at her friend's side. "Are you alright?"

"Never better," Kenna groaned, sitting upright with Evelyn's help. The flaming warrior cradled her acid burnt hand with care before taking note of the disembodied dragon. "What the hell happened?"

"A plan just so crazy it worked," Ash remarked, making his way towards the two with Cassian in tow. "When Cass said you wanted me to teleport inside the dragon I thought you were just trying to get me killed."

"You went inside of it?" Kenna gaped, surprise masking her face. Just as Kenna had for her, Evelyn gently closed the other girl's mouth.

"Not an experience I'd recommend," Ash chuckled, picking a piece of scaly flesh from his hair. "It was absolutely rancid in there. Not to mention I couldn't breathe."

Laughing like she never had before, Kenna covered her face with her good hand. Disbelief was clear in her features and soon enough they were all laughing. If the historians ever got ahold of this story it would be told as something more than a ridiculous happenstance. It would be legendary. As tears clung to the edges of Kenna's eyes, she wiped them away with a smile plastered to her face.

"I can't believe this is all because of him," Kenna laughed, pointing accusingly at Cassian. "It's too good. A joke I wish I'd come up with. A prince ends up in the dungeon saved only by his boyfriend who swims in the stomach acid of a dragon."

"It's not that funny," Cassian bristled, his cheeks going red from embarrassment.

"Of course it is. You shouldn't even be here. If it wasn't for your boyfriend I would have let you die," Kenna remarked, getting to her feet as Evelyn passed over the third scroll.

"And yet you want to get into my father's pants," Cassian countered, dark colored eyes shimmering dangerously. "Not a good thing to let his son die if you wish to be married."

"If you think I want marriage then you're a fool," Kenna replied, a cold look settling in her eyes that Evelyn had only seen once before.

"My father is a good man, I won't have you hurt him," Cassian replied, straightening to his full height as Ash tried to calm him.

"Good men don't send their sons to die in dungeons," Kenna winked, tucking the scroll into the waistband of her armor. "And good men don't kill good men."

Looking smug as Cassian fell silent, Kenna turned away from the group and pressed on towards the exit. Evelyn watched her go torn between worry and confusion. There was so much to the flaming warrior that she didn't understand. If only Kenna would tell her.

"I worry her intentions are dishonorable," Cassian warned, vaguely aware of Ash's hand settling in his.

"You never worried about your father's dishonorable intentions," Ash remarked, "why worry about hers? She has a point Cass. You shouldn't be here."

"It was my fault," Cassian insisted. "I worried about you. I wanted to help and so I stole the scroll from my father's chambers before it could make its way here. He found out not long after you left the brawl. It was a fit punishment."

"Death is never a just punishment," Ash frowned, voice soft. Looking defeated, Cassian refrained from arguing and instead matched Ash's stride as they pursued Kenna. Abandoned once more, Evelyn was forced to come to terms with the fact that the people she called friends were still mysteries. She didn't know them. Not really, and that thought alone bothered her.

Keeping to herself, she brought up the rear festering in her own sickness as Kenna festered in anger and Ash festered in death. Feeling alone for the first time since the brawl, Evelyn let her hands trail along the shadowed walls of the exit in search of comfort. As she staggered on, darkness walked beside her hands prepared to catch her should she fall.

His Little Ember was dying, and while her friends cared deeply for the small kindling they were selfish. Always. That was the way of it. Ignorant to the blood that bubbled in her lungs waiting to be spilled with the next body racking cough.

Like the dragon, Evelyn was rotting from the inside out and no one was the wiser.

Zhang Jindi

She's here.

Her feet are whisper-soft over stone, her boots long dry; she is burning under the weight of her own body and shivering in her skin. The torches in their sconces barely flicker awake as she slides past them, pulled almost against her will down into darkness. Jindi's hands are shaking.

She's here.

Samgar is behind her, saying something anxious in his flat, barbaric tongue; sound, breath and noise, nothing more.

She's here.

The air in the dungeons is dry, dust and earth without rain; the sparse torchlight sears through it with barren and artificial heat. Walking through it is like walking through the desert, a madness: like driving stubbornly and thoughtlessly toward destruction, like the mercy of forgetting in a wild flight through the wasteland. Like remembering the sands of the south shifting under her feet, like walking and walking and walking—even as the world around her stayed gold and blue and empty in an endless haze, even as she burned under the heat of the sun and shivered under the weight of her own body, compelled only by a call as unnatural and inexplicable and undeniable as gravity.

She's here, the world says. It moves through her, breath and noise; it pulls her forward, gravity. She's here, and she walks, and the gray and red of stone and fire blur around her, endless dungeon to endless desert, and she moves through it—it moves around her—it moves through her. She's here.

It is the promise of a landing place. The sound of it is the ground rushing up to meet her: soft landing, crashing finality. After so long walking, after a journey like falling—

She's here.

And then the goddamn blood drake nearly brains her in the face.

---

It's not the fire or the acid that snaps her out of it; it's Sam, grabbing her collar and jerking her away before she can run headlong into the roaring column of white-tongued flame. Tendrils of spit crackle noisily within the dazzling rush of heat, filling the air with the unmistakable chemical tang of burning acid as Sam yanks her out of her own stream of consciousness with a barking shout.

"What is wrong with you?!" He throws her back—Jindi, disoriented to begin with, struggles through the quagmire of heat and sulfur and burning, burning stone to make sense of her surroundings. A giant cavern—the last remnants of dark droplets sizzle like a burning skillet as they hit the stone, leaving behind that dizzying smell—something is thrashing with a wild snarl, a heaving mass of razor spikes and clanking scales writhing up to the ceiling, jaws and claws unhinging and snapping with a bellowing noise and an undulating howl more machine than beast. This is—

"What kind of dragon is this?!" Sam jumps back as the eldritch amalgamation of bloody edges abruptly coalesces into a roaring tower; the drake's eyes spin dizzily in their sockets before abruptly zeroing in on the two of them, one with each eye. That spike-laden maw rears—the cavern erupts with another screaming spout of chemical flame—the skin of Jindi's face feels thick under the heat as she flinches from the smell and scrambles to her feet.

The harsh blades of the monster's crest tear at the ceiling as it strains for them; boulders crash down and shatter in clouds of dust and sharded stone. Acid hangs heavy in the air, sour and metallic.

"GET THE FUCK OUT!" Sam is already halfway to the door, his heavy armor blazing under the firelight. The drake's barbed head quivers before it yowls around another mouthful of foul-smelling fire, drowning out Sam's voice in the ambient roar of coursing flame.

Jindi shakes her head as she breathes shallowly through the fog of boiling air, unwilling to open her mouth and let the foul smoke in: she can't. Her body and mind are both clumsy, heavy and slow as if laden with stone—and still the only thing that anchors her is the bag on her waist, and still it's telling her that she's here, here! Jindi turns back; through the smog of vaporized masonry and acid she can make out an open door behind the crouching drake, wide and yawning with gravity.

"Oh, you have got—"

Jindi jumps forward.

"—to be KIDDING ME!"

The drake twists upward to meet her, a whirling javelin of arcing plate metal that rams through the air with a cruel twist like a drill. Jindi knows immediately she's not going to slip past this one; she barely manages to swerve away as its maw splits to receive her. She hurtles past its open mouth—it screams, thwarted, and unleashes another pillar of stinking fire and acid. Too late and too muddled to land upright, Jindi crashes into the ground, skidding roughly across the floor into some far corner.

In the second it takes for Jindi to stand, the drake's head swings for her, eyes locking as it lunges—before it jerks back sharply, giving a furious shriek like scraping steel. Jindi frowns, squints: the drake strains toward her, jaws snapping as spittle sprays across the ground in sizzling sparks of vaporized dust. It's held back by...snaking metal chains, so old and gray they blend seamlessly into the stone ground. Four of them disappear into the heaving swell of the drake's mass—it throws out a savagely clawed arm, and Jindi realizes that each chain is coiled tightly around one limb. The drake screams more destruction at her, blaze and boil and billowing clouds of perfumed poison; Jindi kicks her feet wildly, jumping back. Despite catching its own outstretched limb in the lashing flames, the chain remains intact. Magic, then—still magic, always magic, the magic of Nuhan that only knows how to trap and imprison and command in metal and force to stay, something that the barbarian sorcerers have made to keep their pet monster in its dungeon.

Something that can't be burned or corroded away by its breath or broken by its brute force.

"Sam!" That single syllable peters out into a wheeze, wavering away in the suffocating atmosphere. Even so, Jindi can see the flash as Sam's armored head turns. She throws her arm out; her sword springs from its sheath so quickly it cuts the air with an authoritative crack, driving unerringly into the chain snaking from the drake's outstretched limb. The drake bays, jerking away, but it needn't have bothered; Jindi's sword ricochets off the chain without even denting it, repelled by whatever magic stops it from breaking under the drake's might, and sinks hilt-deep into the wall. "The chain!"

To his credit, Sam doesn't need to be told twice and doesn't waste a single second; the crash of his armor thunders like an avalanche as he bursts forward. The drake, distracted by Jindi's sword, doesn't even have time to twitch. Sam's greatsword cleaves into the drake's limb, carving around the chain—the drake rears, black blood frothing and steaming from the welling gash—that same oily sheen, that same slick chemical smell suddenly blooms tenfold, ripe and rotten like spoiling fruit and melting horse-glue—

"STOP!"

"JINDI, NOW IS NOT THE TIME!"

"I mean get back—its blood is the same; its blood also burns!" Jindi gestures expansively at the soot-streaked groove etched into the ground by its breath, where dark flecks of acid are boiling to ash and leaving pockmarked dents in the stone. Sam turns, tensing with recognition before he skids back, cursing. The drake snarls as it scrapes its chipped ivory claws on the floor and jerks its arm, flinging whirling arcs of blood up from its open wound. The acidic blood screams as it hits the air, a sharp sound like a boiling kettle.

"You can't hurt it anyway, so just—put your sword away, dammit!"

Sam barely dodges the thick sprays of blood, throwing himself behind a fallen chunk of the ceiling; the drake's blood spatters against it with a heavy splat, then an insidious hiss as it burns a deep scratch into the stone. "Then what, Jin?!"

She looks around desperately, mind stirring sluggishly as she fights both the thick miasma hanging in the air and the hypnotic pull of the open door that keeps screaming here, here. From her vantage point, she can see a blasted nest of splintered bones tucked beneath the drake, the half-melted remains of its victims and challengers. One body is in better condition than the others, its skull cracked open, waxy skin singed dark and frayed at the edges, eyes stretched in shock beneath its beaked hood—

The bag at her hip pulses, a reverberating note stretched taut as it pulses through the universe. There, it says, and Jindi's mind cracks open like a skull, an egg, like the jagged seam of an opening mouth, and the knowledge descends into that open space like a meteor, froths up like a well—that is—

"Distract it!" Jindi yells, then scampers away in a harsh press of burning grit as the drake's head whips toward her voice. Before it can really focus on her, Sam yells some insult, lost in the scream of dissolving stone, of roaring fire, of the monster's rage throbbing through the room. Even so, it's effective; the drake turns back with an indignant bellow as Jindi races up, bounding off stones, springing over the rich ruby-dark crest of its thrashing tail. She slides to a stop by the corpse with the beaked hood and thrusts her hand between the gaps of its exposed ribs without hesitation. Jindi pats blindly through the empty skeleton until she finds its clenched hand; its bones are calcified in the heat, grip sealed around the strap of its pack. She tears, wrenching it free, and sure enough—

"—a thief." The bag at her hip hums, vibrating confirmation, tucking the foreign information gently into the seams of her brain. Jindi slings the unmistakably-branded thieves' pack over her shoulder before she turns, springing upward in the same movement. She comes to a stop by one enormous shuffling leg as the drake's torso sways to follow Sam, tossing the stolen pack open in a swift motion. A bar of rations, a pocket bulging with gold, a grappling hook, a scroll with one of the barbarian king's stupid seals—and a row of delicate silver instruments strapped into the rolled pack. Lockpicks.

Jindi swipes the slim tools from their holsters as her eyes snap to the lock, clattering rhythmically against the ground where it dangles from a loose length of trailing chain. Like she'd suspected: the chains may be reinforced with enough magic to hold a drake's strength, but the mechanics of it seem straightforward (if well-crafted). It's a keyhole the likes of which she's never seen before, a looping opening in the shape of a coil, thin like a seam even as it runs the length of her hand. Slim enough that a drake—all brute force and strength—could never be delicate enough to break it.

Jindi has no metal-sense to guide her, has never had reason to pick a lock—but she slides her stolen tools into the divots with the steady precision of a surgeon, feeling the vibration of the cylinders as they shift under the tools. The pins lift slightly as the pick glides into the right places, then fall back closed like a curtain swaying shut as they slide past. She steers another tool into the lock, then another until eight are sticking upright in strategic places along the strange serpentine keyhole—and then she gives it a harsh jolt with her fist so it clanks against the stone and all eight pins are jarred simultaneously into place.

The lock falls away, bouncing harmlessly into the bones. Jindi doesn't think twice—she grabs the chain with both hands and whips it back—it clicks rhythmically against the ground as it whisks over stone, rapidly uncoiling from around the drake's leg as it runs over Jindi's hands.

Her fist smarts as it meets the shackle at the end of the chain with a painful thud—and like a shot, Jindi jumps once more for the door.

When the drake whirls to meet her this time, teeth forward and tongue lolling, she's ready; Jindi swerves out of the way once more and snaps the chain at it with all her might as she hurtles past its open mouth, aiming the weighted shackle over the drake's snout. The chain arcs over the drake's flaring nostrils, shining as it disappears into the smog—the rattling links surge upward, hoisted over the drake's nose—she spies the heavy shackle hurtling towards her as it swings under the drake's mouth like a pendulum and dives for it, catching it as it twists through the air. Sam takes the opportunity to whistle sharply, throwing Jindi's retrieved sword back toward her; Jindi leaps up, snatching it with her free hand. She slams the shackle closed around her sword hilt and leaps backward in a single motion, throwing both over the drake's mouth again. The sword carries the chain aloft as the drake follows its flashing trajectory, cross-eyed—the chain clicks as it pulls taut over the drake's maw again, closing in a tight loop. The sword sinks deep into the far flagstones as the drake's mouth clamps shut under the weight of the chain encircling its jaw, binding it closed.

The drake blinks as it rears back for a single startled moment.

The magically-reinforced metal chain, now looped around the drake's jaw twice in a makeshift muzzle, vibrates as the drake strains to open its mouth. Its eyes bulge terribly as its scales strain white under the force of its own determination. The plates under the iron chains concave and bend, but the chain holds—at least for the moment.

" What's—that?"

They're both panting heavily enough that Jindi almost misses Sam's words. He's pointing at her—no, at the thieves' pack still strapped on her shoulder, flapping open across her chest.

"I—oh. Belonged to some thief—bones still holding onto it." He's looking at the scroll, gimlet-eyed; Jindi tears it out with a clumsy fist and flings it to him before she leaps to her sword, pulling it from the wall. She wraps the chain around the nearest boulder before unclamping the shackle and speed-walking for the door. "Let's go."

For the second time that day, she's stopped by Sam's gauntlet on her collar. He's got that quasi-paternal frown again; Jindi bristles under it in a way that is half-instinct and half-revulsion, a familiar expression on the wrong face. "Not until you tell me where the fuck we're going."

Jindi turns away with the dismissive finality of a parent with a stubborn child. "You don't have to come if—"

"That's not what I said, is it?" Sam's fingers twitch with a metal-sharp sound as if ready to haul her back again. "I never said I wasn't coming with you, I said I want to know where we're going—same as I did in that tunnel, though you didn't hear me then, either. I'll stay with you and I'll fight these damn dragons with you—"

"They're not dragons."

"—but I need answers, Jin. You owe me them, after all this shit. What the hell are we doing here? Where the hell are we going? How the hell do you know where to go, when every damn tunnel looks the same and the scrolls all—"

"I owe you nothing," she says flatly. "And you're not here for me. You aren't even here for Addy, you're here for your precious king's pointless fetchqu—"

YOUR LEFT!

The voice sears through her mind, a starburst of lightning—Jindi feels the weight on her hip grab, a gravitational pull that twists her like a black hole—she hurtles abruptly to the right as the blood drake's bound head bashes crudely into the ground with the weight of a whale and a strangled shriek. Jindi is thrown, scraped rough and raw over the floor as the drake wails in desperation; its eyes bulge and acidic steam floods from its nostrils, leaking from its trapped mouth.

"RUN FOR IT!" Sam scruffs like her a misbehaving cat, hauling her along as he races for the exit; Jindi scrabbles away in the doorframe, turning desperately toward the blood drake. Light flashes under its thick scales like lightning in a cloud as it unleashes a muffled scream, fire and venom surging with nowhere to go; it shudders grotesquely, limbs distending as it brings its chained claws up to its swelling belly.

"NO!"

The drake sinks the cruel curve of its claws into itself, ripping itself open in a screaming torrent of boiling blood and heat that sweeps through the room like a supernova as it thrashes—the entire cavern trembles and explodes open, ripped apart by teeth and bone and savage skewers. The walls heave as they melt, disintegrating under the weight of all that fire and acid—and then the entire cavern shatters down around it with the crushing finality of stone, of blood and metal, of heat and dust and death in a desert at the end of the world.

---

In the gaping aftermath Sam approaches Jindi as she kneels by the gnarled rock where the door used to be. He puts his hand on her shoulder; she tenses when the metal sits heavy like a shackle on her skin.

"Look." He sounds exhausted. Conciliatory. "I'm sorry about the dragon—"

"Do not call it a dragon." Her voice is hollow, the empty pit of an open fruit. "It is—an insult, to call that a dragon."

There's a pause, an over-measured exhale through the nose. The hand on her shoulder is preternaturally still; Sam's voice comes like a stablehand trying to tame a screaming colt and it makes her abruptly feel feral, like a wild animal. "It was a mercy—"

"Not every time!" Jindi bucks his hand off, whipping around with a snarl. "Was it a mercy what they did on that platform, was it a mercy what you did to that snake," was it a mercy what they did to her people—

"No." Sam's answer is muted but firm; his stony face is metal reinforced in blood, unnatural magic. "It's not always the same. Sometimes it's a mercy. Sometimes it's a necessity. Sometimes it's none of those things. It doesn't matter." His gaze darts briefly to the collapsed doorway, the damning silence on the other end. "The point is: sometimes this happens, and when that time comes you have to be ready."

Jindi's eyes are dry as a desert as she stares up at him where she kneels at his feet. She is still shaking. She thinks she will never stop shaking.

"...C'mon, kid." The unyielding line of his shoulder bows as he shakes his head, bewildered, brow furrowing as he squints like he can't figure her out. His armored hand taps his bloody sword: the sound of war, still fresh to both of them. "You know this, don't you? You, of all people, should know."

He's right. And that is why he's wrong, the natural consequence, but how can Jindi explain—that she cannot believe that, that she has to think otherwise because he is right. That after so long watching things slip like desert sand through her fingers, the only way she can keep walking is to try to keep the things broken and buried and chained in blood and metal alive. That she is that thing, caught here in the trap of Nuhan magic and forced to be monstrous, trying desperately not to rend herself to pieces, trying to preserve the part of herself that is not yet a chained animal. That there are a million ways for a thing to go on living—surviving or thriving or changed beyond recognition and understanding—but there is only one way for a thing to be gone once it is gone. And that Jindi is so, so tired of everything being gone, of everything being destroyed and obliterated and disappearing around her one by one, that she has to believe—has to prove to herself—that there are still things to save. That there is still something to save, if she is very good and very lucky—and that it is still possible to save those things, and that it still means something to save those things even if the blood and metal has ruined them beyond understanding.

Because everything else is destroyed. And if she doesn't have that, she has nothing at all.

In the darkness, Jindi turns from Sam, hand moving to the bag at her hip. She unties it from her belt, the rawhide strips sliding through her hands—water, desert sand—and lifts it to eye level.

Inside, the inexorable gravity of a thousand voices say: she's here.

"I know she's here," Jindi says, exhausted and insistent all at once. She's tired—of this dungeon, of the weight at her hip, of the burden of blind faith on a lone road. She has nothing left: nothing at all. "Where?"

But all they can give is their plaintive cry of here, here, here. Here. And here, same as everywhere, Jindi is still—is always, now—alone.

Odette Rainmaker 

Here is how the bards will tell it: The ghosts haunt her still.

Here is how the pirate will tell it: A haunting cannot be halted, only prevented.

Here is how it happened:

Odette Rainmaker slept, slumped against a cold cavern wall in a room carefully quilted with cobwebs.

After years of working on half-rotten ships and getting kicked out of towns' only taverns, the pirate had become quite adept at falling asleep quickly in uncomfortable locations.

Still, such a place did not make for pleasant dreams.

The reptilian Facechanger's visage slithered into her mind. It held her old captain—Captain Rainmaker—below the surface of its narrow well. Furious fists pounded against the rippling edge as the serpent dragged her into the deep. As her old captain struggled, her hands—shaped into long, grotesque talons by the nightmare—latched onto Odette's wrists, bringing the dreamer with her into the dark unknown.

After years of running, Odette's ghosts had finally caught up to her.

She woke up gasping for air, as though she'd been drowning outside of the dream as well.

"Damn it," she muttered, rubbing sleep from her eyes. That damned water drake had done a number on her. It had been a while since she'd dreamt of her old captain—or her crew, for that matter. Yurie had remembered enough for the both of them. He'd often yammered on about how no tavern cook could measure up to Chef Stinkeye's oyster stew and how convinced he was that the real Captain would be coming back very soon. Odette hadn't taken too kindly to that, but he'd been the only reliable company she'd had, so she had tolerated his rambling reminiscence.

Voices skittered through the hallway outside of the room, shattering Odette's memories. One was high, one soft, one excitable. These, she was sure, did not belong to ghosts.

"Damn it," she said again, a new fervor in it as she jumped to her feet and patted herself down. All of her belongings seemed to be present—though she supposed she was more likely to be murdered than robbed in these dungeons. If someone had seen fit to take her sword, they may very well have slit her throat with it first.

Odette was so preoccupied with triple-checking her inventory, she didn't realize she was sinking until she bent down to inspect the dagger in her boot. Of all the missing possessions she might have discovered, she'd hardly expected the soles of her feet to be one of them. Yet there they went, sinking into the floor of the room, and suddenly Odette felt like she was dangling in midair.

And then her ankles were stolen from her, and her knees, and Odette uttered a long and frustrated string of curses as she scrabbled for a handhold on the cavern's floor. It was of no use. Of course it wasn't. The floor had inexplicably turned into some sort of quicksand, and she did not know whether the three voices floating outside had triggered it, or if the room itself had decided, "oh good, she's awake, let's kill her."

The temperature of whatever abyss lay beneath her seemed much warmer than the air above. Ordinarily, such a realization would be comforting--she'd spent the short time before her nap shivering in the shade--but something about not knowing the source of the heat was terribly unnerving. Odette had a brief, frantic thought that perhaps the Old Gods' hells were real, and she was being dragged into the Rainmaker's iteration of it, where mutineers drowned over and over again in boiling seawater until the skin melted off their bones.

And then her torso was sucked through the quicksand and Odette fell, arms pinwheeling up above her.

She landed hard. Again. Gods be good, how many times had she fallen throughout this quest?

She took a moment to feel sorry for herself (and to ensure that this floor wasn't sinking too) before rolling onto her side and shoving herself back onto her feet.

In this room, she was not alone, but her welcoming committee did not seem overly pleased to see her.

First, Odette registered the woman. Her skin was pale, though not as ghostly white as the corpse Odette had left in the second scroll's room. Her dark hair was pulled into a too-perfect bun behind her head, and her striking eyes were nearly the same shade of emerald as Odette's skin. Perhaps that was why she found them so beautiful. The woman wore snugly-fitted brown breeches and a travel tunic with decorative silver buttons, and though she had clearly tried to downplay her appearance, Odette had never taken clothes of that caliber off of anyone less than nobility.

The second member of Odette's welcoming committee was not quite so easy on the eye. Towering over both Odette and (what she could only presume to be) her fellow dungeoneer, the massive beast's skin glowed a deep ruby red. Each scale on its muscled back and narrow face shimmered like a thousand jewels coming together to create a giant fucking--

"Dragon," Odette groaned, hand reaching for her sword. "Why is it always a dragon?"

Odette was unfamiliar with the precise nature of the beast, but she could make a guess as to what sort of magic it wielded. Fire drakes rarely scoured the sea, preferring drier climates where they could create their flames without fear of extinguishment, but she'd certainly perused their ruins. Suddenly, Odette missed the deep well from the Facechanger's amphitheater. At least she'd felt a sense of familiarity within those waves, even if the familiarity's ripples bordered on traumatic.

Glancing between the dragon and the woman--who was standing, unmoving and unblinking in the center of the room--Odette finally drew her blade. The woman seemed to have a fencing saber tied neatly to her waist, but she made no move to use it.

"Look, lady, if you're dead, you might as well tell me now. It'll save me a hell of a lot of trouble, you know."

No response. Predictable, but annoying.

"And you," Odette said, turning to face the dragon, whose huge bodily mass was slowly, thoughtfully circling the room. "If you wanted to get my attention, you could've just bought me a drink. There's no need to play coy."

It hissed slightly, steam rising from its nostrils.

"Alright, I'll go first," Odette said. She was reluctant to turn her back on the woman in the middle of the dimly lit room, but it was necessary if she wished to keep her eyes on the more pressing threat. It was funny, how such a mountainous beast could so easily fade into shadow. "My name is Captain Odette Rainmaker. Most folks just call me 'Captain.'"

"Liar."

Before Odette could fully process the motion, the dragon had swung itself out of the shadow, unhinged its jaws, and sprayed something acrid and burning into the air. It smelled not of smoke, but of burning steel, of metal kept too near to the hearth. Odette's body reacted on instinct, registering the threat before her mind did. She dove to the floor, ducking into a roll that made her shoulder twinge painfully, before popping up beside the woman.

"Don't suppose you know what that was?" Odette asked her, speaking from the side of her mouth. Up close, she could see the woman's chest rise and fall, her eyes darting to and fro within her sockets. Despite their beauty, her eyes were bloodshot, the sclerae more red than white in places.

Odette's brow furrowed, and then the beast was lumbering forward again. There were no doors in this room, no archways, no means of escape. A part of her hoped the ground would collapse beneath her again, if only to help her to avoid whatever fiery death was now creeping toward her.

Except its breath hadn't been fiery. Not completely, anyway. It still sizzled against the sandy stone where it had barely missed her, but it seemed a type of liquid--molten lava, maybe? That hardly explained the smell. And it certainly didn't explain the way the spittle was burning through the floor so cleanly, taking grains of sand and stone with it as it sank.

Huh. Maybe there was a way to get this floor to collapse, after all.

"Okay, I think this thing's an acid dragon," Odette said to her newfound companion. The woman still didn't move, but that meant she wasn't trying to kill Odette, which Odette considered to be a net positive.

"Not...acid..." The woman spoke, and though she carried the accent of nobility, her speech was surprisingly slurred. Was she drunk? Odette could hardly blame her. Two scrolls out of six she'd attained, and already she had a burning desire to get absolutely wasted.

"Her Highness, Miss Smarty-Pants, deigns to speak," Odette said. She was still gripping her sword, still turning tight circles as she tracked their opponent. "Go on, then. What the hell is this thing?"

"Blood..." It seemed to take a great deal of effort to pinch out even a few words at a time, as though the woman's tongue was weighed down by a lead anchor. "Drrrmmgn."

"Repeat that?"

"Blood... dragon."

"Blood dragon?" Odette couldn't help the scoff in her voice. "There's no such thing."

"Liar." The beast lunged forward again and Odette managed to duck out of the way just before another fiery breath shot toward them.

The other woman, still frozen, was not so lucky. The breath ate through her skin, cauterizing quickly, and disappearing beneath pale bones. It was gone as quickly as it'd come, leaving no trace or burn behind.

For some reason, that shook Odette more than any scar.

"She's dead?" Odette's words were aimed toward the dragon now.

"Liar." Another breath shot her way.

"Do you actually know if I'm lying, or do you just like that word?"

The dragon snorted but gave no response.

The woman did. "Trap..."

"Yeah," Odette said. "I kind of got that."

"Tr...ppp..."

Odette turned in the noblewoman's direction again as the shadow of the beast rose behind her, wings unfurling and spanning across the far wall. The darkness created by the beast's wings was indeed great and terrible, and Odette's eyes followed it down to the maiden's hands, which were clutching not her professional-caliber saber but a lightly glowing scroll.

"Holy shit," Odette breathed, taking a step forward. "You found it. Where...?"

The beast flapped its wings once. A warning. Mine.

"Yeah, but I need that."

"Liar." Although the dragon's breath scorched the back of the maiden's head, not a single inky hair seemed to be harmed.

"I'm not lying," Odette insisted. "The King commands it."

She stepped forward again, heedless of the drake's warnings, and made a grab for the scroll.

She missed and watched in abject horror as the woman's arms suddenly moved up and forward as if of their own accord. One fist still tightly gripped the scroll while the other lurched to the hilt of her saber and drew it in a clumsily-practiced motion. Her eyes were still open, unblinking. Odette's heart began to race and the woman's feet shuffled toward her, and her arm swung wide, the cutting edge of the saber narrowly missing Odette's neck as the sailor took a startled step back.

"I have no quarrel with you, princess." Odette tried for fancy-talk. That was how the nobles liked it, wasn't it?

"Liar," the dragon hissed again, voice slithering across the stone as its breath slid just past Odette's cheek.

The woman, still lurching at her elbows and knees like she was unused to using them, swung her sword out again and Odette met it with her own, parrying and stepping away.

Again, the woman swung at her, and again Odette parried. The noble's motions were like a marionette, awkward but artful. Odette felt like a grand swordsman in comparison. Bending clumsily to strike out at Odette's knees, the woman's blade struck true and slashed through the fabric of the half-orc's breeches. It stung, but Odette could take it, especially when she landed a strike to the woman's shoulder moments later.

The human bled black, not red.

Odette had seconds to contemplate that before the saber was launching forward again, and Odette's sword raised to meet it. Metal clashed, the woman twisted, and Odette felt sweat gather at her brow. Gods, she was exhausted, and her shoulder still hurt from her fall, and her shin had been slashed open.

It felt like the sea. It felt like home.

She grinned as they danced, the woman blocking Odette's swipes and Odette parrying and pushing her back with the flat of her blade. The woman twisted again so that Odette's back was to the dragon, which she wasn't overly fond of, but she was able to goad the woman into turning again moments later.

"Trap," the woman said again, eyes strangely hollow. There was a sadness to them that hardly reflected Odette's barely contained glee, and Odette's gaze shifted from the woman--whose saber was locked with Odette's cutlass--to the dragon lurking in the corner. Its own gaze seemed intent, strangely focused.

Several jigsaw pieces fit together all at once in Odette's mind. The woman hadn't been saying trap. She'd been saying trapped. She was trapped by her own blood, puppeteered by muscles and bones that no longer belonged to her. But, with a glance at the blood-breathing beast, Odette could make a pretty solid guess as to who the puppetmaster was.

"Alright," Odette said, stepping away. "Let's dance."

If she could distract the dragon, she could grab the scroll from its zombified puppet and--

And what? Leap through the ceiling and back into the tunnels above?

"There's no way out," Odette groaned.

The dragon hesitated. Nearing reluctance, it muttered liar, and acidic flames shot in Odette's direction. Perfect.

"The ceiling is the only way out," Odette tried again. The woman had frozen when the dragon's breath was summoned. Maybe the beast was shit at multitasking.

"Liar."

Another breath, and this time, Odette lunged forward, toward the arm where she'd struck the woman before. The arm that held the scroll. She ripped it from the woman's grasp and swore her eyes read shock, before stumbling backward and letting the noble take the brunt of the flames.

"I'll be taking this."

"LIAR."

"You're quite optimistic, for a dragon," Odette said. She sheathed her sword, panting hard. Was it exertion from the battle that escalated her beating heart, or had the dragon's acid seeped into her bones? Would she too join its impromptu army of soldiers?

"Liar?" This one sounded more like a question, the flame weaker as it sputtered forward and out. Odette almost felt sorry for drawing her dagger and throwing it directly toward the thing's throat.

She missed.

The dagger sailed straight past her target and through the wall.

Through the wall. It was not only the ceiling that was built from shifting sands.

"You were a lousy dragon anyway." Odette had time enough to grin before turning and launching herself at the wall behind her, flames licking at her heels.

Acidic embers burned straight through one of her (apparently faux) dragon leather boots and into her skin. Odette yelped as she fell through the wall, onto her knees, the acid eating through her blood, her bones, her very being.

It took a second to right herself, but when Odette did she realized two very important truths: She was free. And she had the scroll.

She was free and she had the scroll.

Odette laughed incredulously at the thought. Gods, she nearly doubled over with the joy of it, her peals of laughter tasting half of awe and half of relief. Considering how poorly it could have gone, she felt quite pleased with her showing.

Yes, there was a pang of guilt for the woman she'd left behind. But this woman and her sad, stubborn eyes would be just another ghost to add to her collection. Odette had gathered quite a few of those now. Whatever happened to this one was not her fault—and, more importantly, not her problem.

Liar, the dragon's voice echoed in her mind. The word felt too close to the truth.

Hells help her, she was sick and tired of being haunted.

Odette spared a glance at the expanse of hallway stretching out before her. Then, muttering yet another curse, Odette took a deep breath and shoved her way back through the sandy wall, emerging with a cough on the other side.

"You want your scroll, you stupid beast?" Odette didn't know if she was talking to the dragon or the princess. Probably the former. Probably. "Come and get it."

She let herself fade through the wall again, her arms still outstretched into the dragon's lair.

Let the dragon make her follow me. Odette didn't know who she was praying to. Certainly not a god. Let the spell break when she steps beyond that wall.

Odette watched the zombie of a noblewoman lurch toward her, hands outstretched, grasping toward the scroll. When the marionette reached her, the pirate used her free hand to take hold of the woman's shirt and drag her determinedly with her to the other side of the wall, the dragon screaming its rage behind them.

Sputtering again, Odette separated herself from the woman as quickly as possible. Would she come rushing toward Odette, saber bared and bloody? Would the dragon follow them beyond the unsteady wall?

A second passed. Another.

The noblewoman blinked.

Then she coughed, as though attempting to rid herself of the last of the dragon's influence.

"You alright?" Odette tried when the great gasping sounds had partially faded.

"I didn't need saving," the noblewoman said primly. Now that she had control of her limbs again, she held herself with a certain practiced grace. Even the way she brushed the grains of sand from her tied-back hair reeked of elegance.

"Good," Odette said. "Because I didn't save you."

No dragon hissed liar, which seemed a promising start to their escape. The woman tripped slightly as she followed Odette down the hallway, evidently mildly annoyed.

"I'd like my scroll back, please."

"Mine now," Odette said, brandishing it in the air. She flashed a shit-eating grin as she walked backward to maintain eye contact with the noble, who was stumbling ever-so-slightly in her haste to catch up. "How'd you find it anyway?"

"It was hardly difficult," the woman insisted, rubbing at her sternum as though pained by it. "I will relay to you the story just as soon as you return--"

She never finished her sentence. One moment she was groggy, stumbling but speaking. In the next, she fell suddenly to the floor, as though some great anchor had caught beneath her and forced her to collapse.

"Come on." Odette rolled her eyes. "Did all that bloody swordwork really take it out of you?"

No response. She was facedown in the cold dirt. Lying still.

Nervousness slipped into Odette's veins, sweeping into her heart with every panicked thump. "Princess?"

Still nothing.

Odette fell to her knees and shook the noble a couple of times before frantically turning her over. Two fingers to her wrist, then her neck. No pulse.

"Damn it."

She'd been fine a second ago—literally one second ago. What in the twelve watery hells had happened?

Odette started compressions quickly, determinedly. She'd had no formal training at it, but she'd learned a thing or two while living on the sea. And anything she hadn't learned on the sea, she'd picked up after her crew had been taken by its depths.

"Come on." Odette wasn't sure how many times she repeated the words, desperation kicking in as she checked for a pulse, found nothing, and started compressions again. "Come on."

Later, of course, she would realize compressions weren't necessary. They wouldn't have helped. Odette had so little experience with poison and so much experience with drowning that compressions were her first resort, but the dragon's acidic breath had eaten into the younger woman's bloodstream and turned her into a possessed puppet. She'd been dead before she'd even left the room. The effects had been delayed by her own blood fighting back within her, but it had been a losing battle from the start.

Odette knew a thing or two about those.

Eventually, she fell back, limp and exhausted, as the reality of the situation came seeping in. There was no saving the woman now. Another ghost had joined her collection after all.

As she performed the land-death rituals she'd been taught long ago, Odette tried to tell herself that it didn't matter to her that the woman was dead. In fact, it was a good thing. It meant Odette was one step closer to becoming the Realm's Hero--one step closer to redemption, to protection, to enough money to buy herself freedom and happiness and a really big fucking ship. This loss was her gain.

But a voice strangely like the dragon's echoed in her mind as she made her attempt at self-persuasion: Liar.

Sade

"I've seen this man wield a sword. He could cut your legs from the rest, were he ever motivated to," the usher hushes to the king.

Samgar's expression does not change to suggest that he heard what was said, though he certainly saw that the two of them exchanged words. Never one to turn down praise, or think too hard about why it was coming his way, it is likely that the knight would wear the same smile either way.

When the king and the employ of his offer medicinals to ease the transition into the underground world, Samgar accepts it greedily. His moon is waning, and anything to stop the ache of age in his bones, his brain, his constitution. Anything to dream like he used to, even if now he must be asleep.

Samgar sidles into the elevator and pops the juniper under his tongue, nose twitching at the smell of childbirth. For a moment he feels weightless, and then mass fills every empty space in his body, weighing him tremendously down, and he falls and falls asleep.

CHAPTER IV

PLANARIAN

All enter Ekka the same.

There is a searing white light that blinds with images of everything and an incredible heat which burns away everything else, so even the oldest of aches is replaced by the sensation of intemerate energy. The tourist is a coil of copper wire coursing with electricity. And they are flying. Above the swarms of brow-beaten dullards below who shuffle impatiently forward in lines of people which lead nowhere, and above the beautiful and hideous dunes of dust which these same lines carve through with the strength of eon. It is utopia from up here.

It is important to give them this moment—something which they will never forget. Every once in a while one of the bodies below will turn and look at the evening sun looming above and be stricken by a memory so horridly pleasant that like Vesuvius, he explodes with grief. From their perch, the tourist cannot tell. The man may well have been laughing. Stupid sod! He had nothing to smile about. Ages from now that sorry man will take the place of another sorry man the tourist can see around the bend and at the precipice of the horizon, and when he got there, his life would have no more meaning and no more purpose than it did today. The tourist allowed themselves to giggle, which some would deem hypocritical but nay! Not for they! They are swaddled in bliss and have every right to find levity in their life and find humor in the scramblings of souls so less wise and so less thoughtful than themselves. The tourist never considers that perhaps the man is crying instead of laughing. Not even once. So do not condemn them! At least them alone. For as it was told: All enter Ekka the same.

The title of tourist is a misnomer. To be clear, they will stay.

One might guess that it always happens the same and that's true, it does. Maybe bliss is boring after a while, maybe they investigate the ground out of curiosity or fear. Eventually, some detail catches their eye and they flit down to get a closer look. And the details are where Sade lies in wait.

"Ashes, ashes, some of them rise sometimes, don't they?" Fretzel watches his cigarette smoke climb up the unctuous and fetid air to meet the more substantial flakes of ash which have flown down from the evening sun. A whirlwind is created as the two gusts of air meet and all the ashes are whisked away, neither rising nor falling. Fretzel jams his Lucky Strike back between his molar and takes another drag because he's cold now, and then, with cheeks full of tobacco smoke, he plucks the pipe from its trap and musses at his once mousy, now ashen, hair. It had been picked up and put back down by the breeze.

Sade can hardly hear him prattle on from the back of the caravan where he reclines, and she is still less inclined to listen. A different line of dialogue plays in her mind like a small strip of film around a spool. "I've only three eves here," is what she said. And then she told Sade that it was good to see her, which it never is, and looked around her surroundings, the trails of souls and the oasis née mirage, as if it were an exhibit at an aquarium. Who is she? As Sade scrabbles around her shop she realizes that she herself does not know. Being in Ekka is antithetical to everything Sade thought Jesh to be. As much as her sister's presence would perturb the work Sade has done in this place, it brought Sade unfathomable glee to hear that Mother had sent Jesh down here. How Jesh had always cupped her hands to their mother's love... now it spilled from the basin of her pruned palms as if nails had been driven through each of her hands. Sade had laughed and Jesh looked down at her own feet, lips pleasantly upturned and that's when she said it—the phrase which Sade cannot shake. "I've only three eves here." Perhaps Jesh is a comic now—a fool—for Sade has yet to hear of a soul to leave Ekka. How they laughed at that! Sade lashed on her reigns and the hollow howls of her company drowned out the galloping of their steeds as they rode away from Jesh and the bodies no longer thirsty. Nevermind, there would always be bodies in Ekka and the fire from above would always parch them. It would only be a matter of a new location. Location, location, location. Jesh had an uncommon understanding of that now! Oh! They roared at that. But as the crowd became a cloud of the dust that they kicked up as they left, and Jesh wasn't there to play to, first Black, then Sade, and finally Fretzel simmered into silence.

They knew all that gobbledygook Jesh had spoken was true.

Sade pulled off the road where they were heading to regroup with Baba-rishi to inform him of the change in plans, and, well, to change the plans because they hadn't thought so far ahead at that moment. The wagon nestled at the base of a large sweeping dune which crested like a wave at its precipice. The two black horses brayed and trotted twice in place each before settling in with a couple chuffs. A faint shadow was provided to them by the arc of the dune, creating a spot both cool and dim for this land. It was a quiet area too. Levity lost had turned to a weighty worry as it tends to. Joy spoils and grief propagates and on and on and on. Without a whisper, Sade started to rummage through the reserves of the caravan. Black swung about her already swinging cage and twittered about, too afraid to speak, and Fretzel got up to stretch his legs.

It is inaccurate to say that Sade, who was then dragging a toolbox free from a shelf lined with jars of floating ingredients in brine, had become obsessed with Jesh. She had simply been reminded of a prior obsession. The arrival of her sister demanded an answer to a puzzle Sade had yet to solve. What made the two of them so different? Why was Jesh everything and Sade everything else?

Sade slammed the tool chest on the counter, tipping the gas mask she faced Solipsio with over onto its face. She undid the rusted latches and flipped over the blue-chrome cover to reveal otherworldly miscellany. There was a transistor radio, a rectangle of sponge cake, a razorblade, a pistol, a pair of wired earbuds leading to nowhere, a half a pack of cigarettes, and three scrolls.

As if Fretzel could smell the tobacco, his fingers crept around the corner like chopsticks and pinched a cigarette. He smoked it through and then repeated his trick with another, and that's the roll he's smoking now.

Sade draws the razorblade from the chest, pushes forward on the lever with her thumb until a flash of metal the thickness of parchment extends beyond its plastic casing, and sets it back down beside the spot she has chosen to work at. Turning back to the inventory of the ambrosia shop, she handles a few jars before happening upon that which is the correct one. It sloshes as it is set down and then even as all momentum settles in the glass jar, movement still stirs at its contents. Sade rips off the metal lid of the glass with a twist of her wrist and sets it top-down beside the razorblade. She then dips a finger and a thumb into the brine and pulls out a planarian.

The worm wriggles in its hold, reaching out for all sources of warmth in the world. Sade sets it down, but does not relinquish her grip on it. Instead, she pins the salamander against the countertop and peers down at it. There are two black spots on the side of its head and a crease at the front of its body which could be construed a simple smile. Sade notices these things, and feels the way the creature squirms under her fingernails as if it could read her mind, and still reaches over with her other hand to brandish the razorblade.

Humans and devils alike have an uncanny ability to find themselves in unlike things; a compulsion, almost, to place a face in every centimeter of blank white space. Sade may as well have been looking down upon a roll of pennies. It is with this in mind that she allows herself a grin and decides what she will name her creation, her prototype: The mother to all mothers and the father to all fathers.

"I will call you Abraham," she tells the worm, speaking to it in the only language it knows: silence. "Not yet. For now you're but a worm. I wouldn't call you if I was stuck on the side of the street!" Sade taps the blunt edge of her blade twice to check that it is secure, which it is. "My creation, my destruction," she coos to the creature, almost a chant. "Eva is Ekka. To be cruel is to be kind. I am God." As she speaks the last line, she slices with the razor, drawing down the planarian between its eyes and halfway down the length of its body. There is a soft shrieking and both sides of the wound shrivel up in fear and the convolutions of pain. Sade has to dig her fingernails harder into the softwood counter, now wet with fluids, to keep the flatworm from wriggling free.

Black steps forward in her cage to look solemnly down at the remains. As if she wouldn't have it for dinner. Her breast bulges through the tines of her trap and she begins to softly cluck before watching entranced as each bisected side of the flatworm pulses forward with mass until the creature squirms on its operating table with two independent heads, one stemming from each neck which Sade had cut for it.

As soon as the creature comes to terms with its new existence, Sade presses down on its body and begins drawing wildly along its body with her blade. There is no measure or rhythm to her slashes, the only goal, it would seem, is to impart as much pain and destruction on the little creature as she possibly can. "Hand me your cigarette butt." Sade extends an open hand in Fretzel's direction and receives a shortened stick of embers. She then moves her hand so that it hovers over the flatworm before overturning it and using the heel of her palm to put out the contained flame in the fluids of Abraham. There is sizzling and bubbles of blood broil red outwards from the infection. This time, there are many different screams, but the pet is such a pulp now that none can be sourced.

It's not a scream, but one protest comes from Fretzel himself. "Now that is cruel."

"I beg your pardon?" Sade says. "It will mend."

WIth that, she scoops her ashtray up in two hands and launches it into the desert, further than the eye can follow. She then busies herself by unfurling one of the scrolls which were found in her pack. She looks over it, careful not to set it in the mess left upon her work station. A cursory skim of the materials tell her that all is as it should be, and she rises from her seat. Black conjures up the courage to speak for the first time since Jesh arrived, and begins asking Sade where she is going.

Sade does not answer. "Whatever happens, do not come to my aid."

The door to the caravan bursts open, causing the wooden halo decoration to swing once around Sade's head before she can walk away. Black attempts to follow her until her confines keep her from doing so. Fretzel fishes for a new cigarette.

Past the dunes which snake to nowhere is Abraham. It is still multiplying as Sade walks up to it, scroll held forth as an offering. At every incensed incision she made in its hide, the creature has grown another body, each one stitched to a mass in the middle which bubbles to tower over Sade. Its skin is almost gelatinous in quality, it oozes and then pops as it propagates, spitting scalding liquid onto the scene where it quickly boils away in the hot sand.

Sade stands in front of it as a creator would, just as Mother stood before she. Open palms, no weaponry. She is as still as a statue.

Billions of planarians skitter across their central body to form a fearsome face. Almost before they have reached their position, Abraham roars. A billow of smoke and the sting of vinegar accosts Sade. Her already raw and fragile skin stings with unbearable pain. As she suffers longer under the breath of the monster, she finds it blissful when what remains of her flesh melts off to reveal her skeleton. At least her bones do not broil.

Abraham lashes at her with a tail in the place where an arm should have been, and the coil of muscles unwind into her chest, imprinting an inescapable tightness into her lungs. Sade fumbles down her ribcage, playing it like a xylophone, to reach the affected area, and is struck by yet another blow of fleeting shock when she realizes nothing is there anymore. She falls first forward to her knees, and then backward into the pile of human ash which she had stood upon.

There her body rots, her left hand still wrapped around the scroll she brought.