If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you. -- G. K. Chesterton

Kitri had spent ages considering what she was going to say to Abi when she finally got her hands on her. There wouldn't be much said at first. That would wait until after Kitri had wrung Abi's scrawny neck. Then she would order Abi to undo whatever she'd done. Then she would place Abi under arrest and arrange a trial for necromancy.

There was a time and place for being loyal to an old friend. That time and place was not in the middle of a zombie apocalypse caused by the old friend.

The gentle hills gave way to flat meadows. A steadily-growing dot loomed in the distance. It resolved itself into the city of Gradoné. An ominous cloud of smoke rose from somewhere in the city centre.

Kitri watched the ground below. Roads criss-crossed beneath her. They were all deserted. Occasionally she passed over an abandoned carriage or wagon. When she reached the city's outskirts she saw no signs of life anywhere. The buildings' doors were closed. The streets were empty. The only thing moving was the smoke.

She reached the ghurmalath-úthernu station nearest to the smoke. She braked and turned off the engine. For a minute she sat still in the driver's chair. What now? Was it safe to get out?

A flash of light caught her eye. Kitri looked up.

She stared.

Oh gods no.

As if the monsters weren't bad enough, now the city had a dragon too!

It rose out of the smoke. The sunlight glinted off its blue scales and deer-like antlers. Even from this distance Kitri could tell it was much larger than the carriage. It reached the level of the highest building's roof. Then it slowly flew in a circle. Its head was pointed downwards. Was it scanning the city for something?

Kitri suddenly wondered what would happen if the monsters encountered the dragon.

A flash of blue light beneath the dragon caught her eye. For a dreadful moment Kitri thought that a dragon had made its nest in the city centre. No one had seen any dragons for over fifty thousand years, but stories still lingered about the destruction they caused. She would rather run a hundred miles in the other direction, straight through an army of monsters, than risk going near a dragon protecting its baby.

The blue light darted above the dragon. It hovered in mid-air. Kitri squinted. It wasn't a baby dragon. It was... a bird wreathed in flames?

A dragon and a phoenix together, in a country where neither had been seen for countless years? It could only mean Abi was involved.

What have you done this time? Kitri thought, trying to telepathically convey her displeasure to Abi in spite of the distance between them.

The two creatures stayed in the air for a few minutes more. Then the dragon glided slowly down. The buildings' roofs hid it from view. Seconds later the phoenix followed.

Kitri let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. She sank back in the chair. What now? Was it safe to wander around a city where she might at any moment find a horde of zombies, a fire-breathing dragon, or a bird that supposedly incinerated people by looking at them?

~~~~

Abi turned back into her immortal form as she landed. "No sign of the survivors coming out yet."

"Good," Lian said. "Let's get out of here before they come and ask questions."

"How are we going to get out?" Irímé asked, while simultaneously Abi said, "But we need to tell them it's safe!"

Lian looked from one to the other, and then to Shizuki coiled around Irímé like a living scarf. "Well, I was planning to go through the Void. We still have that other monster to deal with. But I wouldn't advise bringing a child—"

"Siarvin and Ilaran would murder both of us if you did," Abi muttered.

"—so Shizuki had better stay until the spaceships get up and running again. Irímé, you should stay with him. You can find the survivors and say... well, you can come up with any excuse you like. Abi and I will go back to Saoridhlém."

That was that. It wasn't a time for hanging around for a last minute chat. Who knew what Haliran was doing with that monster? It might have already bitten someone! Abi and Irímé shook hands awkwardly. Abi suddenly found she had nothing to say.

"Well, goodbye," she said.

Irímé looked at her oddly. Did he have the same feeling she did? The odd certainty that they wouldn't meet again?

She took a step towards Lian. Then she impulsively turned and hugged Irímé and Shizuki. Shizuki hissed something that might have been a goodbye or might have been a complaint that she was squeezing him.

Abi let go and backed away awkwardly. She gave her hand to Lian.

"We'll see you soon," Irímé called as the world began to blur.

Then they were in the Void. This time Abi knew to close her eyes.

~~~~

Ilaran had seen so many odd things in his life — and in the last few months especially — that he wasn't even surprised when Abihira appeared in the middle of his bedroom. Annoyed, yes, but not surprised. He was mildly surprised that she'd brought a stranger with her, though. That was the first clue that this time she was physically present instead of just a telepathic projection.

The second clue was that her friend tripped over a chair, staggered forward while waving his arms wildly, and hit Ilaran across the face.

"Oh dear," said Abihira.

Ilaran wanted to use a few stronger words. He rubbed his sore jaw. He'd have a bruise tomorrow. "I take it this is Prince Imrahil. And since you're here, I take it you either dealt with the monsters, or failed and ran for your lives."

Abihira frowned, visibly offended. "We wouldn't do that!"

Considering everything he knew about Imrahil's past, Ilaran had his doubts.

"We're here because... it'll be faster to show you."

A series of confused images ran through Ilaran's mind. A dragon circling overhead, rows of empty seats, zombies burning to ash. Then he saw something that turned his blood to ice.

"That's—"

"Haliran," Abihira agreed. "And she has a zombie."

Imrahil or Lian or whatever he was currently calling himself had regained his balance. During this conversation he did his best to fade into the background. He flinched when Ilaran turned his head to study him.

It was nothing short of a miracle that this man had been able to live in a foreign royal court without being recognised as a Sinistrah instantly. A miracle, or the Gengxin court was spectacularly unobservant. Or they might have noticed and thought it was rude to comment on it. Imrahil's eyes might be his most striking feature, but he also had his grandfather's facial structure, his mother's nose, his father's long and slightly curling eyelashes, and he shared his cousin Fiyanrin's slightly-too-prominent front teeth.

Fiyanrin was the current Saoridhin diplomat to Gengxin. Ilaran wondered how in the world Lian managed that. An image of Lian diving behind a hedge to avoid meeting his cousin came to mind. Ilaran smiled in spite of himself.

Abihira, damn her, heard his thoughts. She laughed too. "That's more or less what he did to avoid meeting Aunt Jiarlúr."

Lian looked at them both as if they were insane.

"Anyway," Abihira said, "we don't know where Haliran is or how to find her. So I thought that you might." She stopped. She had the grace to look ashamed. Slowly she continued, "You know. Because of the. Um. The parasite."

Her words brought back the horrible feeling of helplessness and the taste of the woman's blood. A wave of nausea struck Ilaran. He closed his eyes and thought of court records, grain invoices, and everything mundane and boring. It worked. The nausea receded.

His voice was harsher than he meant it to be when he asked, "And what makes you think I would be able to find her when you created the damn thing?"

Abihira blinked. "You mentioned something about scars? And being able to sense the other monsters?"

Ilaran had ignored that for so long that he'd finally managed to forget it. He did not like the thought of dragging it up again. On the other hand, he also didn't like the thought of leaving Abihira to figure it out on her own. Who knew how long it would take her? Or worse, what disastrous mistakes she might make along the way?

"Give me a minute," he said, again more harshly than he intended.

He closed his eyes and probed telepathically at the scars the parasite had left. They weren't really scars, he realised. They were more like telepathic channels that had been violently ripped open then hadn't healed properly. He'd never heard of anything like them before. Under other circumstances — say, for example, that this had happened in a battle with a living foe who used telepathy as a weapon — he would have been curious to learn more about them. Under these circumstances, they made his skin crawl.

He tried to send a telepathic message through each scar. All but one was silent and dead. They were already fading. Thank the gods, that must mean he wouldn't have them in his mind for much longer.

The last one was different.

Ilaran tried it, and got a response.

Most immortals weren't able to communicate whole sentences telepathically. Ilaran and Abihira were the exception. When Ilaran wanted to send a message to his general before a battle, for example, he didn't try to say anything as complicated as "move your men to the right". He would pick a landmark on the right, a tree or a bend in the river or even a large stone, and project an image of it to the general.

It was quicker than sending a messenger. But if, for another example, he wanted to send a more detailed message — "the enemy are on the plateau and think no one can get behind them, so pick the men best suited for the job to climb up the mountainside" — then telepathy was useless.

The message Ilaran was getting wasn't a sentence, an image, or a feeling. It wasn't any of the things telepathy usually conveyed. He didn't get an impression of another intelligent being on the other side of the message. It was just mindless anger.

Anger and hunger.

~~~~

Kitri waited and waited. Neither the dragon nor the phoenix reappeared. There wasn't a single monster to be seen.

The dragon must have killed them all, she thought.

Morning turned to afternoon. Afternoon crept towards evening. Finally Kitri gave up. She couldn't bear to wait any longer. It should be safe to walk to the city hall. A dragon wasn't the sort of thing you could stumble across unexpectedly. And if she found any survivors along the way, she could warn them about all three: dragon, phoenix and monsters.

She opened the carriage door. She stepped onto the platform. As her shoes landed on the metal with a faint thud, she held her breath and waited.

Nothing leapt out at her from the stairs. Nothing swooped down on her from above.

Feeling bolder now, she picked her steps carefully down the stairs to the street. The station very helpfully had a map on its outer wall. Kitri studied it. She was two neighbourhoods away from the city hall. The nearest spaceport was also two neighbourhoods away, but in the other direction.

Both places would have a radio. The spaceport might possibly have a working ship, and a pilot might just be hiding somewhere around. The city hall was the most likely place for the survivors to congregate. So where should she go?

Kitri took a coin out of her purse. She flipped it. Tails. The city hall it was.

There were few things more eerie than a deserted city. Walking through the countryside at night had been frightening, but she had been able to see what was around her. Here, anything could be lurking in the buildings.

She walked in the centre of the street. She wanted to run, but didn't dare. Something might chase her. Walk casually and it might just ignore her.

The city hall's tower loomed over the other buildings as she got closer to the centre. Kitri kept an eye on it, just in case the phoenix had landed in it, while also turning her head every few minutes to make sure nothing had crept up behind her.

Mentally she recited the name of each street she passed. There were dozens of them, ranging from narrow alleys meant for delivering goods to each of the shops, all the way up to wide roads exactly like the one she was on. Every time she approached a junction she expected something to lunge out at her.

After so long feeling like the only person in the city, she couldn't supress her shriek when a figure stepped out of the street just ahead of her.

The figure shrieked too. It staggered back in a most un-corpse-like way.

Kitri had instinctively flung her arms up to protect her face and throat. She lowered them. For the first time she got a good look at the figure. Far from a horribly-injured walking corpse, she saw a perfectly normal immortal.

Well, perfectly normal except for the snake curled around his chest.

More startling than that was the fact that she knew him.

"I know you!" she exclaimed. "You're... You're... Abi's fiancé." What was his name anyway? Ijehar? Imiyis? Irniyan?"You were there when she raised that mouse." Another thought struck her. "Is Abi here?"

Maybe-Ijehar blinked at her. "Oh! You're Abi's friend. No, she's not here any more."

"Any more?" Kitri repeated. She struggled to keep her growing fury out of her voice. Abi had visited but didn't have the decency to stay and face the consequences of her idiocy?

"Do you want the good news or bad news first?" Possibly-Imiyis asked.

The snake had moved slightly and was now resting its head on top of his. It watched Kitri through oddly intelligent eyes. She might have thought it was cute if it wasn't so very odd.

"There's good news?" she asked dubiously.

Might-be-Irniyan nodded. "All of the monsters are dead! The city is completely safe now."

Apparently he didn't know everything. "Except for the dragon. Where did it come from?"

He looked very sheepish. "Er... Well, you see... Well. That was me."

Finally she remembered his name. It was Irímé. And it was apparently very suitable[1].

Kitri looked at him, then at the snake. "Explain. Now."

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] Irímé means "dragon" in Saoridhin.