“The tribes have a unique relationship with what we call ‘the spirit of the river’. It is a beast of a kind, but one that defies comprehension. Sentient, strikingly intelligent, perhaps even ageless…few in the agency know of it as more than a rumor, but those who do ensure that we all pay it the respect it deserves.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Dawn broke early. Rain pattered against the gray windows of the MASO, softly at first, and then steadily harder, as Silver forced herself to wash up and dress. By the time she was ready to make her way down to meet Ryan, it had turned to a torrential downpour.

She peered out her bedroom window, tired in a way she could never explain. Whatever worries she might have had before bed, she had slept remarkably well. Better, possibly, than any day since her arrival at the MASO. But her legs felt like lead. There was little she wanted more than to lay back down and go back to sleep, and testing out Cynthia’s meditation exercises was not on top of her list.

Yet she found herself in the gym with Ryan hovering nearby, a shallow bowl of tepid water just close enough that she could rest her hand on it with her arm relaxed. They were both on the floor cross-legged, breathing just a little more heavily than usual after their warmup routine.

“Just try it. No pressure, Silver. We’ll try this for a few days, about two hours at a time. I’m going to join you. Ready?” Silver glanced at Ryan, who looked totally comfortable settling in for two hours of sitting in absolute silence. His grin was infectious.

Straightening her back a bit, she closed her eyes, breathing with her belly as he had instructed. Long moments passed in silence, filled only with the sound of their breathing. Almost immediately, she could feel that the atmosphere in the room had changed, but it took her some time to work out how. When she finally did, she snuck a peek at Ryan. He was still, absolutely silent.

But she could sense him.

It was the feeling of someone standing just a little too close, raising the hairs along her arms. A faint discomfort. It had to be his magic. But there was no answering echo, only a shiver that traveled from the tips of her fingers to the base of her spine.

The minutes ticked by. Her mind wandered, but even when it was still, she felt no hint of her power. Eventually, she drew back to her conversation with Bek the night before. Remembering what he had said, she tried to imagine herself calm, the still waters of a lake that never moved, its surface like glass beneath a breathless sky. A day with no hint of chill. No breeze. Silence beyond the deepest silence she had ever known.

Gradually, the lake faded. The stillness faded. There was warmth now, and an absolute darkness that stretched as far as her sense could penetrate. Absolute, encompassing darkness.

Her heart stuttered. She knew this darkness, this warmth. The blackness flickered behind her, drawing her eyes back to the onyx fire of the Zara. It was only a spark at first, but when she saw the eyes of the demon amidst those sparks, the space around her erupted into flame. Not only magical, all-consuming fire, but real flames as well, dancing with uncanny cheer in the gloom that filled her mind.

Silver stood frozen in the center of everything, casting around for some escape and knowing there was none. Not in her mind. Not here. She was back in the living room, locked in a moment that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She shrank back as the night pressed in through the gaping hole that had once been the bay windows. A chill came with them, pushing back the flames.

Finally, she broke and turned, running and hoping there was nothing between her and the back door. As it turned out, there was nothing at all to stop her in her nightmares. The flames faded behind her, and trees rose up in their stead. Mud squelched around her boots, sucking at her heels as she ran. The world reeled around her.

Suddenly, the sky was overhead, dark and spattered with stars. There was ice on the trees, the leavings of snow still cradled in the crooks of the branches. Shadows hung everywhere, thick as cobwebs, and when she looked at any one of them too long, it seemed to come to life. The shadows spurred her onward. But it did not feel like she was fleeing, anymore. Without a doubt she ran, without a doubt her heart thundered in her chest, but she had the uncanny sense that she knew where she was running towards. Even as the sky faded once more. Even as the faint light of night faded around her, and she hurried on blindly, groping through the blackness and stubbing her toes against stone. Certainly, she knew when she found it; a warmth that was not quite tangible, a light that was not quite visible, but that cast a dull pall across the features of her imagined world.

Exploding suddenly from the trees, she crashed to her knees, halting before a sphere of light so vast it lit up everything around her. An encompassing darkness was all that was behind her now, stretching far back into the nothingness of her mind. But there were no Zara in that darkness. Bek had been right about one thing; she knew this place instinctively. It was the central apex of her being, her heart, her soul, her magic. And there was something blocking her off from it, something that contained it here.

Silver reached forward.

As soon as her palm touched the light, it vanished. In its place, there stood a silvery gate. It was gone too quickly for her to catch more than a glimpse before the burn of liquid fire filled her veins and roused her from whatever calm she had managed to find. When her eyes snapped open, there was a brief second where she met Ryan’s gaze. Understanding passed between them, too quickly for either of them to do more than react. He leapt up, but his eyes traveled down. Water.

She had almost forgotten the bowl in front of her.

Silver turned all of her focus towards the bowl, knowing with eerie certainty what was to follow. Violent bubbles erupted on the surface of the water, and within a heartbeat, the bowl shattered. Steaming liquid fanned out in front of her, hitting the gym mats and immediately bursting into flame. Angry flames. She had not seen fire eat through anything so quickly.

Overhead, the sprinklers turned on at the same time that a very non-magical fire alarm began wailing in the background. Unable to do anything but stare numbly at the shattered bowl, she was surprised when Ryan yanked her to her feet and dragged her from the room. Sodden and confused, she trailed after him into the main gym, and the door swung shut behind them.

Outside the training room, nothing was out of the ordinary. Some sort of techno music played over a speaker somewhere. There was no fire alarm, and no sprinklers. A few people just cast them curious glances and then went back to their workouts.

“You okay?” Ryan asked, releasing her and absently wringing out his soaked T-shirt. Apparently, he did not use magic to dry himself the way Bek did. When Silver still did not say anything, he stopped peering at the training room through the windows in the gym doors and looked at her.

“This happens, don’t worry about it. I’ll just call some repairs in to facilities, and it’ll all be good as new in a few hours. I thought you had nodded off there for a minute, so you surprised me.”

Silver wondered who in their right mind would not worry about what had just happened. There was no time in her life when she had felt so out of control of her own body. She looked down at her shaking hands, dripping on the gym floor. No burns, at least.

“Are you okay?” he repeated.

“I’m fine,” she managed aloud. Ryan patted her on one shoulder, though she noticed he was peering into the other room again. Before she could peer around him to see as well, the lights throughout the gym cut out. For a few seconds, the world resembled that in her head, lit only with the dull pallor of the gray outdoors. Then the lights snapped back on. Ryan, she noticed, was looking at the nearest set of overhead lights with his brows furrowed.

“Give me some time to fix this up. I’d suggest you rest now. This will wear you out more than you expect,” he said, noticing her stare. Giving her a curt nod and his business smile, he headed towards a desk at the other end of the gym. Silver stared after him, still numb, now shaking and chilly as well. Her soaked gym clothes were plastered to her body, and she was sure the MASO ran AC in the gym.

Somehow, she found herself headed towards the stairs and her bedroom apartment. It was like walking on air. Around her, the world was a muddled mix of color and sound. Exhilaration or bone-deep weariness – she could not decide which one she felt. Or what it meant. Not until she stopped at the edge of the stairs, shivering like someone had just poured ice water down her spine. It was not her imagination. There was a thin frost on the stairs, melting slowly.

Silver looked sharply upward. An ordinary stairwell, there was nowhere for anything to lay in wait. But she knew this sensation.

Casting a glance behind her, she noticed several members of the security force had gathered near the front door. One of them tipped his head in such a way that she knew he must be listening to someone talking into his ear. Seconds passed. Even from a distance, she could see the tension among them.

What was said, Silver had no idea, but they all turned abruptly and ran for the elevator. Before they reached it, Silver was nearly thrown off her feet by a tremor that passed through the entire building. Something crashed in the main entryway, but she never looked back as she suddenly charged up the stairs. Slipping and sliding on the wet steps, she made her way to the top and turned the corner.

For at least a hundred feet, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Then, abruptly, everything changed. Every light, everything electrical, had stopped functioning. The hallways were pitch black, the drum of the rain on the outside-facing windows as loud as her footsteps as she turned another corner and kept running. There were voices behind her now, the security guards from before. She was probably only a few minutes ahead of them.

Silver came to an abrupt halt when she reached the lab. There was terror welling in her gut, flirting with primal panic. The door had been smashed off of its hinges, not from the outside, as she might have expected, but from the inside. Claw marks sizzled across the twisted metal, surrounded by an ugly haze. There was blood as well, and she knew what it was, however hard she tried to look passed it.

I should run for my life right now, Silver found herself thinking dispassionately. Instead, she leapt over the wreckage of the door, sticking close to one wall of the room. At least she had a rough idea of where everything was. This time, too, she knew what the Zara was after, because there was only one thing that made sense; the dragon eggs. When she had stepped through the light of that fountain, the moment she had seen Bek’s face, she had known she did something that should not have been possible. Maybe the Zara had tried to kill her because it knew what she could do. For all she knew, it had chosen not to kill her for the same reason, because it had seen her magic the night she swerved off the road.

Already, she was halfway to the massive glass window overlooking the nest. The terror was receding a bit, replaced by a much more practical fear. She was still shivering, still freezing, and now her heart felt ready to burst as well. But she saw no sign of the Zara. It looked like most of the people in the room had fled, though Silver was relatively certain that the shape on the floor to the other side of the room was a body, and her bravery did not extend to seeing whose. Swallowing the bile in the back of her throat, she crept to the glass, and peered downwards.

As she had expected, even in the faint glow from the glass ceiling, she could see that the eggs were gone. Glancing back momentarily as footsteps filled the hallway outside the lab, she determined to go take a look for herself. Down the twisting stairwell to the lower floor she pelted, pausing at the bottom only because there was something in the room she had not expected. Not eggs. Not Zara. But the head of a serpent whose jaws alone were nearly the size of her entire body. It was still in the way only snakes could be still, watching her with unblinking sapphire eyes.

“Oh my—”

The beast’s forked tongue flicked against her knees and she fell suddenly and invariably silent. Two more seconds, they regarded each other in silence. Then, ever so slightly, the snake turned its head, looking, she thought, towards the glass observation window. Still, she dared not move. Not even when motion up above told her the guards might be seeing exactly what she was seeing.

Finally, the serpent fixed her again with its stare. Silver waited for it to strike. She was certain she would be dead long before the guards could save her. But the snake seemed to have other ideas, because instead it flicked its tongue out once more and asked, “I could not stop the shadows. Will you come with me, human?”

Silver felt her mouth drop open, and apparently the snake took it for her deliberating over an answer.

“Dragons were once the srinn of all beasts. Though these two are yet to be born, they will be kings one day. Bide your time at your own risk, human. I will pursue the Zara.”

The snake tilted its great head upward, coiling as if to strike, but instead, unhinged its great jaws and let loose a jet of water. Silver covered her head as a mixture of glass, concrete, and water rained down from overhead. The sound was deafening, a roar so loud it nearly drowned out the sound of the people on the stairs behind her.

This was her only chance.

And Silver took it. Half-running, half-crawling, she leapt onto the snake’s shifting coils and grabbed tight. Whether it noticed or not, she was not sure. All she knew was that the beast lurched suddenly upward, and she went with it. Rock, glass, and steel flashed past. Rain slammed against her, an invisible but solid wall of water that caught them as the snake shot skyward. Even the noise of their ascent was deafening, and the dust that rose around them choked her as she leaned in still closer to the snake’s coils. It seemed a long time before she had the courage to open her eyes again and turn her gaze up to the now unimpeded, steely skies, but it must only have been seconds. She only knew because if it had been longer, they would not still be close enough that she could feel the heat of the building escaping from below them to frame that sky in a shimmering haze, or see the glistening golden glow of the indoors reflecting off of what she now saw to be scales beneath her hands; scales so close knit as to be barely visible.

For half a second, they hovered there, looking out at the trees running up to the mountains in the distance – far closer than she had imagined – and the forest that formed dark shadows against the horizon. It might have been an image out of a storybook, but it would have been a frightening story indeed. This land painted in shades of black and white, where both earth and sky were a void and the mountains beyond the jagged crown of a wild realm fraught with peril and superstition, could come only from nightmare.

It stole her breath away.

Then they were plummeting down into the forest. The ground was moving closer to them at an alarming speed.

“Wait!” Silver yelled in panic. Her words were whipped away by the wind and lost in the sky. The creature beneath her hit the earth with barely a sound, only the barest hiss of scales against ice. There was no jarring impact. They simply continued on through the trees, moving at a speed she hardly thought possible. “What will you do when we find the-the shadow?” Silver shouted to be heard. “How are you following the Zara?”

She half-expected that the snake would not respond, and that she had just thrown herself to the mercy of a creature that would rather eat her than speak to her. But the serpent did respond, in a voice that vibrated through the steely muscles of its spine. “Where the dead tread, the earth grows cold. The path of shadows is clear.”

That did not tell her what the serpent planned for when they finally caught up to the demon, but she was already reaching her limit holding onto the snake’s slick scales, so she bowed her head and prayed she would make it till their destination. It was not long before she felt the snake’s body suddenly jerk sideways, and was nearly flung into the trees.

“Human, can you swim?” the snake rumbled. Silver looked up just in time to see what looked like the banks of a great river, but the water had dried up. Churned mud traced narrow trails through it now, and the trees leaned in greedily.

“Yes!” she called anyway. The serpent made no further answer. It merely reared its massive skull and dove towards the dry riverbed. Silver was certain the beast planned to crack open the earth, but was shocked instead to see its scales turn to foam. Beneath her fingers, she felt the instant that they liquified, turning to water as warm as the beast had been beneath her. Then the water closed up over her head, and she thrashed skyward, tumbling once head over heels before she found the trees.

As her head broke the surface, she sucked in a great breath of air, staring frantically around her. She was in the very middle of the river, being towed at an incredible pace through the forest. Every fiber of her being screamed with the wild certainty that she was about to die, but she was powerless against the tides.

The serpent was gone. Silver swam for all she was worth, and when the waters finally hurled her unceremoniously onto solid ground, she slipped and slid through the mud, legs trembling and chest heaving. Her mouth tasted like dirt and weeds. Her nose and eyes burned. But she could see the reason she had stopped. Just ahead of her, the shadows had congealed into something shapeless and evil. As if the fact that she had seen the Zara drew its attention, the specter turned suddenly to her. Silver felt herself pale.

“It begins,” the serpent’s hiss, the hiss of the river flowing through the trees, sounded directly beside her. Silver turned her head, still in shock, staring into the crystalline eyes of the great serpent. It was still liquid. Tiny fish darted through its liquid skull.

And it had no time for her.

As she watched, it shot forward, hurling itself at the Zara. Shadows rose up against it. Ahead of her, the two met, and the snake exploded in a gush of river water. Undeterred, the creature came again from behind her, a serpent once more.

It was incredible, and inexplicably terrifying. Almost too much so for her to believe. It took Silver far too long to force herself up, eyes darting around the trees and the mud as if she could find some weapon there. All the time, she was aware that the snake could not go on as it was forever. With each strike, its fury undiminished, the Zara seemed only to grow stronger. Around them, the shadows deepened, creeping up the trees and through the muddy tracks left by the serpent’s movement. It occurred to her that the snake must have spirited her away for a reason, but what that reason might be eluded her. Faced with such an onslaught, the only thing she realized was how incredibly powerless she was.

Forcing her weary body into motion, Silver pushed herself a little farther up the banks of the river, reaching sharply for the largest rocks she could easily throw. With a shout, she chucked a few at the Zara. If the onslaught was more than a minor irritation for the demon, it did not show, but the movement did allow her to catch a glimpse of something pearly in the hazy space between what might have been the creature’s legs. She knew where the eggs were. Now all she needed was a way to move the terrifying beast in front of her far enough away from them that she did not end up like the door to the lab. And then keep it at bay while she ran…where, exactly? She had no idea.

Preoccupied, Silver almost did not see in time when the Zara suddenly materialized directly in front of her, its hide so opaque that she could barely make out the raised curve of its paw against the backdrop of its bulk. She gasped, an instinctual reaction that got her a mouth full of ice-cold water when the serpent somehow deflected the Zara’s strike. Chips of ice peppered her skin, and when she finally forced her eyes open again, it was to a mass of opalescent scales.

But a smaller mass than before.

Water dribbled from the dozens of claw marks that crisscrossed the serpent’s shimmering flesh. It did not speak now, but she did not need it to for her to understand. Water pooled all around them. This was the serpent’s body. It was spread all around them. The snake was the river, somehow. And it had protected her.

There was no time for more than comprehension. Somehow, the Zara moved in the space between breaths, emerging seemingly from the shadows themselves. There was no place where they were safe. Silver felt the serpent muster itself to defend against another strike. They both knew it was coming, but she hoped she was the only one of the three of them to know her own plans.

“Grab the eggs!” Silver shouted, diving around the snake. She felt it move, the burst of air accompanying its passage pushing her sideways and knocking her out of the way of the Zara’s snapping jaws as it lunged for the dragon eggs. The shadow beast turned its gaze on her with a fury she had not expected. The fear was paralyzing. Silver felt it like a living thing blossoming in her chest and rooting her to the earth. In that moment, she could see in the specter’s soulless eyes the same glint that she had seen weeks ago. Fire leapt from its jaws a fraction of a second later, too fast for her to have done anything, and yet do something she had.

The magic exploded out of her, just as it had in the MASO. Fire that lit up the heavens, eating up the earth between them with such speed that Silver lost sight of the Zara instantly.

Cold breath on her back was the only thing that showed her the error of her ways.

Fire casts shadows.

People cast shadows.

And the Zara moved with the shadows, looming over her from behind. She only had time to turn her head halfway. That should have been the end of her.

What happened next happened so fast that, for an instant, Silver thought it was the snake that had saved her. Something massive filled her vision, something incredibly cold, incredibly large, incredibly fast. She heard a scream, not the roar she had expected from the demon, but the cry of a raptor. Before she could be knocked away by the blast of wind that resulted, a wave of icy water slammed into her other side. There was no chance for her to struggle. Her mind simply reeled in the sudden flickering maelstrom of dark and light. All the air was wrung from her lungs in an instant. And before she had a chance to be afraid, she succumbed to nothingness.