“Before our arrival in Alti, I had read that it was home to people of all races and cultures, likely the children of shipwrecked travelers who never found their way home. Whatever the case, race does not seem to be a factor of any kind in Alti. Prejudice comes instead in the guise of the magic ranking system, regional peculiarities, and particularly the existence of vampires and shifters.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

It was night by the time Bek was able to go in search of Silver. As soon as she was done with him, Sara had sent him to find Illian – according to her, the man would have work for him, since he could not engage in training for the time being – and so he had. Illian had not asked what Bek’s condition was, but had immediately set him to studying maps of the region and rosters of the king’s army. Bek understood Illian’s plan well enough. If he could get a feel for the current state of the world, he might be able to bring some of his knowledge of future strategies and technologies to their present circumstances. And, of course, this was an excellent way to test his skillset and determine where he would be most useful.

Afterward, Bek forced himself to eat, quickly, and then returned to the house where they were expected to sleep. It was more, frankly, than he could possibly have expected in the era they had come to. The Altians, it seemed, had already done away with straw bedding, if they had ever used it, and had some sense of hygiene. He had yet to see fleas or other insects in close association with anyone around them.

But Silver was not there. Cevora stared disdainfully when he asked her where Silver might have gone, and no one else seemed to have any idea. Hiyein said she had joined them for dinner and then disappeared.

Typical.

There were things he wanted to discuss with her, not the least being what on earth had happened when Holtson tested their ranks. Her rank kept climbing. It was hard to believe Ryan had once set her at a solid rank one.

Bek set out into the night, searching the rooftops until finally something heavy caught him from behind. Bek would have been startled if he had not heard Skourett’s warning chirp seconds before the beast coiled over his shoulders.

“You’re getting too large for that,” he muttered, looking around for Seijelar.

“Perhaps you are growing smaller instead,” Skourett hissed in his ear. Bek reached for the beast’s head, scratching just behind the curling spines at the base of its skull.

“Where is she?”

“My sister says she is at the edge of the stacked stones.”

“Stones?”

“The strange circuit erected by these humans to guard their domain,” Skourett clarified. “Come, I will show you.”

Pushing off of him heavily, the beast launched itself just above his head, and sailed ahead of him for several feet before landing on the dusty earth. Neither of the dragons were skilled at flying yet. They were, however, quick on the ground, arcing like lizards as they sped over the earth.

Skourett took him around the dark training grounds, continuing until they had nearly reached the edge of the outpost. Bek realized now what the dragons meant by the stacked stones – the wall at the edge of the buildings. It was a bit longer before he saw something raise its head in the shadow of a large tree; the wolf. Skourett paused, looking back at him. Cat-like, the dragon’s eyes glowed faintly bronze in the night.

“Like us, she seeks the sky,” the little dragon crooned, moving aside so Bek could approach. “Seijelar has tried to call to her.”

“Elorian,” Bek greeted the wolf, “where is she?”

The silvery beast could not speak to him, but certainly understood. As it raised its head to peer upward into the sprawling branches of a great oak, Bek raised his head as well. It was too dark to make out much above him. As it turned out, he did not have to say anything. The wolf barked once, short and sharp. Overhead, the leaves of the tree rustled.

He had expected that Silver would climb down, but that, of course, would have made too much sense. Instead, he jumped back as she hit the ground about two feet in front of him, landing in a crouch.

“Who is it, wolf…ah,” she said, straightening slowly and apparently stifling a yawn; it was difficult to see in the dark. “Seijelar told me.”

“Are you seriously using magic after what happened today?” Bek asked, narrowing his eyes and sharpening his vision as much as he could in the dark. It was just enough to see her blink sleepily at him.

“What are you talking about? I fell asleep. Unless you mean talking to the wolf. I can’t just turn that magic off.”

“I’m not…” he gestured her after him as he turned, saying, “Come on, we need to get back. You could have fallen out of that tree. You would do something that stupid.” Silver did not respond, and he glanced back once to see the wolf trailing them as they made their way back towards the house. Silver was uncharacteristically silent, and he wondered if she was just that tired, or if he had managed to upset her. Skourett seemed to read his thoughts.

“The wolf claims that she smells of weakness. My sister demands that we force her to rest.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bek muttered, pushing open the door of the house. Ren was on the other side, clearly about to leave.

“You two, come with me,” he said, pushing past Bek on his way out the door, “Cevora called us out.”

“Of course she did,” Bek said, turning to Silver now that there was a little bit of light to see by. She looked more awake than before, at least.

“Well,” Silver prompted, “Cevora wouldn’t want us to keep her waiting.”

“She’s got the right idea,” Ren called over his shoulder. He could refuse whatever Cevora had planned for them, but Bek knew better than that. Silver would just have to stay on her feet a bit longer. He was surprised when she matched her step to his, staring at him thoughtfully.

“What did Sara say? Cara said you had to go to her for treatment. Your wounds—”

“You shouldn’t be worrying about me. I’m not going around falling asleep in trees,” Bek observed, meeting her gaze. Silver sighed.

“I didn’t mean to. It’s been a long day. I just wanted some time alone.”

“I don’t really think this is the kind of place where you should be wandering around alone,” Bek chastised.

Silver eyed him sideways, and after a moment, shrugged. “You’re probably right,” she admitted.

He had the sense she might have said more if they had not arrived at the arch at the edge of the outpost. Ren had paused for them at the edge of the barrier, and now headed wordlessly into the trees. Bek followed, ignoring the buzz of magic passing overhead as the night swallowed them up. They were exposed beyond the outpost, and he felt it acutely. Judging by the change in his posture, so did Ren.

None of them spoke. The eerie night chatter and hushed whispers of the forest pressed in from all sides. Things they had passed in the daylight hours took on a much more sinister air, becoming dark, marauding shapes that dipped and slid away from eyes unaccustomed to the night. As Bek had expected, however, they were not going far, and their arrival was forecasted by the dull murmur of voices.

It would have been an event-less trek through the woods if Silver had not suddenly gasped in surprise, causing both him and Ren to whirl around, prepared for some disastrous meeting with one of the beasts of the Issurak. Instead, Bek watched her hiss something and swat at Seijelar reflexively. The crimson hatchling had dug its nails into the bark of one of the great trees in their path, and hung upside down directly in front of Silver. It recoiled from her sharp reaction, but left an oily trail of black smoke in its wake that made it look somehow smug.

When Silver was done glaring reproachfully at her dragon, she gestured them forward, apparently disgusted by her own reaction. Bek shook his head at the two of them, turning back to a tense circle of people huddled in the night-darkened forest. As promised, the princess seemed to be the center of attention. She had gathered an impressive array of people, however. Hiyein and Illian, for one, and Sori, whose midnight black hair had been let free to cascade down her back. The remaining four, Bek did not know.

“Here they are,” Cevora said softly, fluttering her fingers at a strange creature that darted suddenly from the trees, swooping to her outstretched palm, “I thank you all for coming. We may now begin.”

Bek was surprised to see her unfold the now lifeless figure in her palm. He had seen its like before – a creamy fragment of parchment, folded to the rough shape and proportions of a butterfly. Even in their modern day, origami messengers were one of the first, and often only, animation magics that school-age children learned. Cevora read whatever was on the paper, and then tucked it away in her short coat. She then turned to shrugging a black bag from her shoulder, settling it delicately in the leaf litter. Bek realized, then, that he knew what was coming. Everyone else but Illian looked on in bewilderment as she rolled down the hem of the bag, slowly withdrawing a pale, opalescent sphere that shone in the faint light of the moon.

“Dragon eggs?” Sori said aloud, dark eyes wide. “Cevora…”

“This,” Cevora said, looking directly at the other woman, “is a token of the dragon srinn’s hope that the beasts of the Issurak and the people of Alti can learn to live together once more. You are to be ambassadors, caretakers of the living symbols of her hope…and of mine.”

No one else dared say anything as Cevora set down the egg, and then withdrew seven more from her bag. When she was done, they lay, arrayed like shimmering pearls, before those who would take them and polish them into the fiercest and most powerful beasts in the world. The princess knelt before the eggs then, as if wary that the world might lean in and spirit her charges away. Bek could see in her face that she knew the time had already passed when the dragon eggs had been her secret to guard and protect.

“It’s time,” she said.

Jorik had researched dragons for decades. There were people who said he had dedicated his life to Project Biogenes, lived and breathed it for so many years that there was no single man in the world who knew more about dragons than him. At least, no man who knew more about the legend of dragons, the theory of their magic and physiology. In the forty-one research papers he had authored on the topic, Jorik had not once suggested the effect that a hatching would have on atmospheric magic levels.

Bek’s gaze was dark as he felt the tiny hairs along his arms rise. He sensed the heightened energy in the surrounding trees. The expectant sigh of the woody plants as they dipped their limbs became the breath of the world, held and released with each pulse of its earthen heart. Magic stirred, bringing with it a hushed and silent stillness, soundless, lifeless. There was not one day in his life that he had gone without magic…and Bek had never felt anything like this.

Like the magic itself was alive.

It was a spine-tingling sensation, a thousand times stronger than what he had felt in the nightwing caverns hardly a week before. He could see his sentiments echoed in the expressions of some of the other people around them, nearly everyone except Silver. There was something in her gaze he had not expected. Not just the moonlit glow that made the wolf’s eyes gleam emerald, but the shadow of something colder. Noticing his glance, she blinked, meeting his gaze. It was not the first time he questioned what he saw in her eyes, but it was the first time he saw it and felt the ache of the wound the Zara had inflicted on him deep in his ribs.

Why had the Zara hunted her down? Why…

He must have been the only one among them thinking of the Zara when the first crack echoed through the trees. He turned to the eggs, narrowing his eyes against the sudden glow that illuminated a fine tracery of labyrinthine cracks in one of their shells. The cracks spread, webbing outward until finally the eggshells shattered, one by one, like glass. Bek watched in silence as the hatchlings stumbled forth, pausing, chirping, turning their golden gazes to the trees in confusion. Their cat-like eyes reflected the light of the night, pupils dilating and adjusting to the darkness. Their tiny, ivory horns caught the moonlight that pooled against their foreheads.

These beasts would not find sanctuary in the Issurak, he realized. In his and Silver’s era, the world had seemed to draw protectively around the new lives of the dragons. In Alti, it observed with a thinly veiled hostility. Life was an extravagance here, bright and fleeting before its inevitable end. That might have been the real reason that the srinn of dragons had given her eggs to the Cevora; to keep them alive in a doomed world.

“How do you choose?” he asked of the ebony and crimson dragon that coiled protectively around his knees. Skourett hissed at one of the hatchlings who came too close before looking at him.

“We sense magic. We hear thoughts. Because our srinn wishes it so, we choose a human for our keeping. Whoever suits us and our magic…we seek them out.”

“And if there is no one?” Bek asked.

Silver looked between him and the dragon, and he knew she could hear their conversation as well. Bek had not yet learned how Skourett broadcasted some words, but kept others private. It most likely had to do with what the dragon had said about sensing thoughts.

“Then we may choose no one, or choose someone less suitable.” The hatchling lashed its tail, cocking its head at him. “There is a term you humans use, is there not? Soulmates. There might be one. There might be many. They may be born, or they may be molded. Regardless, if we do not wish for loneliness, we will reach forever for such a thing.”

“You never question it?” Bek asked.

Silver made a sound of agreement when the wolf grumbled, and he looked at her for an explanation.

“She says, you humans seek the light of day throughout your lives. Do you question the desire to live a life without blindness?”

“So it is,” Skourett chirped appreciatively.

For a moment, the five of them, wolf, human, and dragon, turned their eyes back on the scene before them. Then Bek heard the snap of wood behind them and turned sharply, feeling his eyes widen despite everything. He had not sensed anything, and yet a beast more massive than anything he had ever encountered loomed over him now.

“Princess,” it spoke in the Altian tongue, a perfect, lyrical representation of the words he was coming to know so well.

The beast was a dragon, and one the likes of which no hatchling could ever have prepared him for. Its scales sparkled an opalescent mixture of silver and white in the moonlight, glassy and pure. Its eyes were a deep amber, flickering like fire as it took them all in at once. Bek was certain that it eyed him and Silver longer than the rest, but only for a moment. Then it looked beyond them, to the circle and the hatchlings, and to Cevora, who was silently cradling a tiny, silver heap of scale and wing and ivory horns in her arms.

“Illian,” the dragon rumbled softly, predatory eyes growing shadowed, “Fourteen years past you asked what fate befell your queen. All the Issurak bore witness to the truth I shared with you – one of the dragon kin brought death upon her. Yet it was not the dragons’ will. When you came to me again, with words of friendship and concern, I granted you the opportunity to gather your kind here in safety. Know now that the beasts have cursed the dragon kin for our oversight. We who rule by the might of our fangs and the heat of our flames are not as human kings, and beasts seek neither allegiance nor safety. Though the dragons will not harm you, I can promise you no greater sanctuary than that you earn by your own power.”

“As you say,” Illian agreed without hesitation, bowing his head, “we owe you a debt that cannot be repaid.”

“There is no debt, human. I have cursed you by giving you sanctity. Your kin will not have you. The beasts will not have you. The Issurak is as it is written, our sanctuary, and here dark forces whisper in our trees and kill the men that trespass.” The great dragon’s eyes flashed, but it drew no closer, preferring to remain half obscured, it seemed, by the dark shade of the trees. “I have given you the means to make the peace you seek. Follow your kuirsrinn, and cherish my children. This land is gripped by shadows, yet there is light in darkness. That is dragon lore. Hold it to heart. Each night, lead the hatchlings here, and I will give them milk. The wanderers as well.”

The dragon lashed its tail against one of the many trees at their back with a thunderous crack, and then was gone amid the resultant rain of bark and moss. Bek called up a weak shield, protecting them as he turned back to the circle.

“You had spoken to the dragon srinn, and yet you left me in the castle,” Cevora was accusing the man at her side.

“By the queen’s wishes, Cevora kuirsrinn,” Illian said slowly. “My plan was for you to become the new queen of Alti should I triumph. Coming here, you have made that quite difficult.”

She was still glaring up at him when the silver hatchling clutched in her arms clucked softly and leapt to the earth, its head swiveled in the direction that the dragon srinn had taken. The other dragons were following suit. No one tried to stop them. Seijelar and Skourett chirped softly and went on their way as well.

In the silence that followed, Illian turned his gaze upon each of them, failing to meet only Bek’s, Silver’s, and Cevora’s eyes.

“Dirk and I leave come morning. I’ll return in a week,” he said. Then he looked down at Cevora, who was still standing motionless, glaring at him. “Goodbye.”