When they got back, Castle Albreton was under siege. King Allard and his knights faced not one bunyip, but twelve all vicious and snarling. Three knights had already fallen dead in their blood and Prince Albert and the others arrived at the Hall of Truth just in time to see the King be stricken down.

“Father!”

Prince Albert was jostled as Enkaiein kicked a bunyip into the wall by the entrance. It writhed and then died; that’s how hard it had been hit. But that one had already been injured, bleeding at its mouth and jugular. The others wouldn’t go down so easily.

“Father,” Prince Albert called, leaping right off of Enkaiein into the fray. Jasmine dismounted Kurventhor and followed him, managing just barely to duck below a bunyip’s sharp-edged flippers before they decapitated her. These things were slow, but they were strong, and she suspected getting hit even once would be a death sentence.

“Jasmine, Albert!” Salina yelled over the noise of battle, over the pinging of blades and the scrapes of armor against the walls as knights were pushed into them.

An arrow struck true through the neck of the bunyip that had stabbed its tusk through King Allard’s chest. It did not die but it did fall, stumbling back, shaking and choking. It screeched in pain, immobile for the moment. Then Kurventhor realized the red knight was no longer riding atop his back. Instead, he was following Jasmine and Albert towards the King, slipping over the spilled blood and regaining his momentum in a flurry, shooting in front and behind him to keep the bunyips from getting close enough to bash him away with their tusks.

Prince Albert dropped to his knees by his father. King Allard coughed, blinked up at his son through bleary eyes.

“Albert,” he rasped.

“Oh my god,” said Jasmine. Allard grabbed at Prince Albert’s tunic and Albert took his hand in his. Jasmine had never seen him so scared.

“I’m here dad,” he said. “Don’t speak, just breathe.”

“Albert,” said the King gruffly, “It is your duty… to rule the kingdom now.”

“I asked you not to speak, dad.” The prince was crying now, and his tears fell upon his father’s chest where the blood would not stop running.

“You will make,” said the King as he turned paler and paler, “A fine King, my son. You have a good heart. Use it.”

“Please, dad…”

“That is the only advice… I have for you…”

Jasmine realized she was crying herself only when her vision blurred ever so slightly. She felt the wetness run down her cheeks silently and cupped a hand over her mouth.

“Stop talking, father,” Albert latched onto King Allard and wept, forgetting the battle around him.

The King’s last words were, “Your mother would be proud.” Then his body went slack and the soul left his eyes, which remained opened as Albert held his body tight, as if he could keep his father’s spirit inside if only he held him strongly enough.

“Jasmine,” the red knight said frantically, snapping her attention back to the bunyips surrounding them. One was leaping towards her and Albert and the prince showed no intention of letting go of his father’s body, let alone moving out of the way. Jasmine got in front of him, spreading her arms out wide, very much intending to act as a human shield. The red knight hollered her name again just as Kurventhor’s tail smacked down in front of her, beating the bunyip who had been charging towards her and Albert all the way across the room. When it flew through the air, its protruding tusks nearly cleaved the red knight’s head off and he ducked, cursing under his breath before he stood up straight again.

“Watch it, Kur!”

“My apologies,” said Kurventhor, and the red knight got back to shooting. Bunyips littered the floor alongside his fellow knights now, some on top of each other and others stumbling before they collapsed. But in the end he was the only knight left standing.

“How’d they even get in here?” Jasmine asked, watching as Enkaiein swooped between Albert and two more bunyips that had regained their footing, ready to attack again. Salina hopped off of him, crouching near Albert as she answered Jasmine.

“The Veins,” she said, “See how they glow?” She pointed towards the very center of the room, where a cluster of Veins were indeed glowing, pulsating a different color with each throb of their luminescent energy. And then another bunyip emerged from between them, flippers dragging the rest of its body out until its full self could be seen, all the way from its tusks to its horse-like tail.

“But I thought the Veins were here to protect this place!”

“They have changed their allegiance,” said Kurventhor, smacking a bunyip to the side. It twisted back onto its belly and then brought its tusks up, catching Kur at the exact point in between his scales to draw blood. Kur let out a dragon’s scream, loud and shrill enough to pop Jasmine’s ears while simultaneously deep enough to induce a minor headache and then echo even after he stopped.

And over the Icy Mountains where she flew, Ellindris heard the cry.

“Kur!” Jasmine and Salina both were on their feet, pulling on the bunyip as hard as they could, knotting up the hair on its tail with how tightly they had their fingers clamped onto it.

“Stand back,” said Kur and they did. Salina inched back to Albert while Jasmine watched Kurventhor stand on his hind legs, pluck the bunyip out of his scales and then throw it violently back at the Veins as they danced and wafted in the center of the room. The Veins caught the bunyip between them and converged, swallowing it. It vanished without as much as a yelp, gone without a trace. Kurventhor glowed blue then, and another scale, one made entirely of ice, grew over the puncture wound. The room turned frigid. Jasmine shivered. She was glad he was on their side.

The red knight grunted, forced onto his back beneath a bunyip that snuck past Enkaiein. He was going to be crushed. Jasmine and Salina both pulled out their fastitocalon scales, remembering they had magic to aide everyone.

But it was unnecessary because Ellindris crashed through the ceiling, landing right on top of the bunyip’s back, allowing the red knight to shimmy out from under it. He scrambled to his feet, breathing fast; patting himself down to make sure he was still in one piece. He nearly got crushed all over again by a portion of the ceiling that came careening down. Sunlight poured through the hole in the roof onto the Veins and Ellindris took a breath, scales rising like red-hot porcupine pins. With a blast of fire she incinerated the remaining bunyips all at once. Then she scoffed; a puff of smoke extruded from her nostrils when she was finished.

“Ellindris,” said Kur, happily but surprised.

Ellindris tackled him to the ground, rubbing her neck all over his, purring and weeping in joy. And Jasmine almost felt happy for the dragons until she turned around to see Albert still clutching his father’s body, stiff as a statue and just as emotionless.

Salina reached out, touched Albert’s shoulder sadly. He didn’t budge. Enkaiein trod over to the nest of Veins. They twitched away from the sunlight and towards him, stretching, waggling. He turned around, watching Ellindris and Kur and then Salina and Albert. Jasmine stood between both scenes, a bridge about to crumble because she didn’t know how to reconcile the opposing feelings. And in that moment, Enkaiein felt for her more than anyone.

It would appear the red knight felt similarly, because he approached her instead of the others, standing tall to assess the damage.

The corpses of his comrades were either half-eaten or incinerated, while the bunyips lay broken, twisted or slashed, some bleeding at every orifice. And the Veins themselves were splattered in crimson, tinting their hues red under the sun. Albert was done weeping now, and Ellindris and Kur turned serious instead of how love-struck they had been before. The blue knight stared up at the red knight with filmed-over eyes, pale and unmoving as if to ask him why.

With the danger gone, the red knight busied himself unstringing his bow. He dropped his quiver to the ground and in the silence that had fallen, it sounded like a drum.

“Thank you for returning Kurventhor,” Ellindris said, bowing down to Jasmine, “We dragons are in your debt.”

Jasmine couldn’t think of what to say to that. And so, Kurventhor and Ellindris departed, flying up through the hole in the ceiling, to give the humans time to grieve. But they did not return to their own kingdom just yet. No, they circled the castle in formation, guarding it from anything else that came too near.

“You are King now,” Salina was saying, one hand on Albert’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to be.”

“You have responsibilities.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.” Salina leaned over, picked up the crown that had rolled off the late King’s head when he was killed. And she walked to the Veins, and she glared at them. They shrunk away from her, from the malice in her eyes.

“Salina,” said Enkaiein, getting in her way.

Nothing was said after that and neither moved for a long time. It was Jasmine who closed King Allard’s eyelids.

The funeral seemed to take longer than all the trials they had been through so far. Jasmine watched as Ellindris lit the fires and the whole kingdom gathered in solemn contemplation, some praying, some weeping, others staring seriously at the licking flames. And it was then that King Allard became the only King in Albreton history to receive a dragon’s sendoff.

Jasmine was done crying by then, but Albert had only begun. Salina stood properly with a sober face, grave under the weight of her coming responsibilities, the fire reflected in her eyes. It disturbed Jasmine to see her like this, so focused on the timber turning to ash that she only blinked when necessary, eyes sunken, dull and bloodshot. Jasmine breathed in the fumes and coughed, trying not to be noisy about it.

The red knight had taken it upon himself to direct the smaller fires, each torch representing a knight who had fallen, passing them around the crowd so that in the end the King was surrounded by the light of his subjects. And for a moment, Jasmine saw a tear slip down the red knight’s cheek, which he quickly wiped away. From afar he looked regal, even passive, but up close enough to see his face Jasmine saw him trembling, fists tight at his sides, stiff like metal rods.

The dragons howled like wolves at the night and Kurventhor’s aura extinguished the flames.

When it was done, Jasmine spoke to Enkaiein alone, staring out at the albino grass from the white room, watching the moon reflect on the Icy Mountains. The quiet emanated until she cleared her throat, finally deciding on something to say.

“I think I’m going to go home,” she said, and there was a pause, long and thoughtful.

“Is that what you really want?” Enkaiein asked her. He too stared out at the Icy Mountains, the both of them stark silhouettes against the horizon, a stain on the clear windows from which they watched the moon rising higher. It was full, which to Jasmine seemed not fitting at all.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” she said in a sigh.

Enkaiein said no more until she spoke up again.

“It’s just when I saw Albert there with King Allard in his arms, I thought what if something bad happened to my mom while I was away too? What if, what if I was here when she needed help?”

“If that is true, then you will find out when you return.”

A tiny choking noise escaped Jasmine’s throat. She clamped her mouth shut.

“I did not mean to sound harsh.”

“It’s fine. Everything sounds harsh right now.”

“I cannot say I disagree.”

“You ever think life is kind of pointless? Like,” Jasmine tried to come up with the best way of putting it, “Like whatever you do, no matter how hard you try, it’s just all stuff you did in the end.”

“I do not think that at all, Jasmine.” Enkaiein half-opened his wings, shading her face as they blocked out the light. The glare of the moonlight from the albino grass became easier on her eyes.

Jasmine looked up at him, “You don’t?”

“If I thought like that, then it would be impossible for me to appreciate the beauty in the world.” He continued, “I would become unable to see the good in any world. And there is good here. It hides in crevices behind shame and sadness, but it is here, and that is why I visit so often.”

“You talk like a monk,” said Jasmine, articulately.

“And you, Jasmine, speak like a human girl who despite everything she has seen can remember nothing but the hardships.”

Jasmine fell silent for a time. And then she said, “Anyone ever tell you you’re like that kooky grandparent that’s always right?”

Enkaiein chuckled. “I must say Jasmine, nobody has ever told me that, but I do not object to such a comparison.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“You have made your decision, then.”

“Yes,” said Jasmine, “I have.”