“From the beginning, I’ve had my suspicions that Elorian is much more than an ordinary wolf. That night at the burial ground, those suspicions deepened. It’s no coincidence the beast came to Alurian, and no coincidence it carries an Altian name.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Cevora called an end to the ceremony abruptly, eliciting a murmur of confused whispers from amidst the crowd gathered at the edge of the magilace trees.

“This is unheard of,” Vespar said, answering Silver’s unasked question as the wolf came to rejoin her on the cold ground. Silver hugged the silvery beast close, suddenly certain that something terrible was about to happen. The expressions of everyone around her were grim.

So was the expression of their srinn.

The woman Silver had known was gone. The one who stood before them now was truly a queen, straight-backed and certain. Golden clasps reflected the moonlight at her breast, fastening the folds of her emerald-green gown. Her deep brown hair was let loose to coil down the back of her neck, lifted gently by the breeze. Unmoving, Cevora waited until the new king of dragons appeared in a flurry of luminous pollen at the center of the burial ground.

As with the previous srinn, the beast before them was striking. Its scales shone with every shade of green, rippling in the moonlight as it turned in the night. Ivory spines curved from the back of the dragon’s skull, tapering into tiny corkscrews, and they glittered as it fixed eyes like jet on the queen. Then the dragon smiled slightly; it was an expression as much terrifying as it was gratifying to behold. Cevora smiled back, undaunted, and with good reason – her own dragon had a startling propensity for yawning whenever their conversations went awry.

“Lelorias srinn,” the queen said, bowing in a fashion that Silver recognized.

“Cevora srinn,” the dragon growled softly.

The queen straightened from her bow, turning back to all of them. “I have come to you with dire news tonight. The Ruveris Plague continues to spread. It takes the young, the old, even the strongest among us. There seems to be no running from it. Worse, the earthquakes that began shortly after my father was killed are becoming more frequent. It’s as if the land of Alti itself is trying to be rid of us. I have asked the dragon srinn if we can really do nothing but weather the destruction. Lelorias srinn, please tell them what you told me.”

There was a pause in which the dragon leaned its great head back, raking them all with its dark eyes.

“Our land is poisoned, just as is the land of Atlantis – poisoned by the power of the four Stones. Magic saturates the air, the land, the water…and the earth trembles with the weight of that great power. If we remain here, the people and beasts of this kingdom will continue to fall ill, and the island itself will crumble. It will not be long now until Alti is swallowed up by the sea, her fields and forests devoid of life.”

A startled murmur was rising from the surrounding trees, and it was a moment before the crowd settled again.

“There remains something that can be done,” the dragon continued, “a great magic that will allow us to abandon this land and shield ourselves from the cursed power emanating from our sister isle. We can build a sanctuary where those with magic live in peace, far from the struggles of the mainland and the avarice of the Atlantians. But as with all great magics, it has a cost. Once it is done, this land will be isolated, a continent teetering at the edge of this world. Trade with the empires you know will come to an abrupt end. Will you come with us, or leave Alti altogether? Every one of you must make this decision, and make it now. Tonight, the conditions are right for this spell. We may not have until the next turn of the moon to wait.”

“The entirety of the royal fleet waits in our harbors,” Cevora declared, “They are our gift to those who will go out into this world rather than risk the dragons’ magic. If you wish to leave us, the dragons will take you to the harbor now. Everyone who remains in Alti when the moon reaches its zenith will be caught in the dragons’ spell. I apologize that you all are the last to learn of this news.”

This must have been, Silver realized, the reason Cevora had been traveling for the past few weeks. How long had she been spreading this news?

Unaware of Silver’s wonderings, Cevora paused, catching them all in her gaze.

“When I was a child, my mother told me tales of how we came to Alti. The first of our people lost their homes, lost everything they had ever known. They found themselves in a hostile and frightening land, and yet, they carved an existence for themselves here, befriending the beasts and building a great kingdom. I warn you, the mainland will not be kind to magic users. I have heard tales of people being hunted and burned, imprisoned without cause, of vampires slain in their beds, shape-shifters hunted by great schools of assassins. But there are also positions to be filled in the high courts, calls for our skills in the libraries of the Turks and the temples of Egypt. Many Europeans have never heard of our land, and are suspicious of magic, yet their streets are filled with dazzling displays of gifts like ours. In the east, there are great schools dedicated to the spirits, armies that march at the word of oracles and fortune tellers. You will have my blessing wherever you go. We are losing are homes, but will never lose who we are. That tenacity that allowed our ancestors to rebuild their lives here – every one of you will take that with you, whatever decision you make.”

A greater, stunned silence followed this statement. Cevora inclined her head slightly in that silence, masking her troubled expression beneath the same hardened stare that she had always worn when commanding them in the outpost. She turned to the dragon srinn.

“I place my full trust in you, Lelorias srinn.”

The dragon also inclined its great head, spiraled horns glinting in the night. “You will not be disappointed.”

And there was the box again, the ebony box that housed the four Stones, resting like a ticking bomb at the queen’s feet. Cevora knelt and picked it up.

“Make your preparations, srinn of men,” the dragon breathed.

“Is everything as Etrion srinn asked?”

The dragon bowed its head once more in agreement. Then the great beast was gone, vanished by the dragon’s magic, and Cevora was meeting with Olrier and the single captain who had remained in Libertia. The crowds around the burial ground broke suddenly when she finished speaking, people rushing back towards the city. Silver waited where she stood, Bek at her side, as people jostled and pushed around them, collecting along the path back to Libertia.

They finally faced the end of Alti. It was different than Silver had imagined, somehow. In her head, Alti had vanished without warning. There had never been a chance for its people to flee.

“What will you do?” Vespar asked, touching her shoulder from behind. Silver turned to blink at him, not sure she had any good answer.

“We remain in Alti,” Bek said for her. Silver looked hard at him for a moment, sure that he was thinking the same thing she was. So far, they had not found any method in Alti to return them to their own time…but that did not mean it was not there. If they were wrong, they could be trapped forever on the island, never able to search the wider world for the power to take them home.

“Then we wish you a unicorn’s luck,” Vespar said seriously, bowing slightly. “Urias and I will be traveling to the mainland. Even in Libertia, we’ve never fit in. This is our chance to try something new…but it may mean we never meet again.”

“I’ll miss both of you,” Silver blurted, looking between him and Urias. “Take care of yourselves.”

“Watch your backs out there,” Bek agreed. Both vampires nodded, turning back towards the city.

Only Cara remained with them Bek and Silver then. Silver looked for Sori in the crowd for a moment, before Cara said, “She went with Hiyein and Ren. They’ve taken the dragons to the city gates to take passengers to the harbor.”

“Sori’s planning to leave?”

“No, no,” Cara smiled brilliantly, “Hiyein said something about the council rounding up most of the dragonriders—”

“Bek, Silver.” They all turned sharply at Cevora’s commanding tone. “We’re returning to the castle now. Cara, I need you as well. Ride with me.”

“Really?” Cara’s smile somehow grew brighter. “Cevora Srinn, thank you so much!”

“What is—?” Silver began, but the queen cut her off.

“You have Izathral?”

“No—"

“Retrieve it now. Meet me with your dragons when you are done.” Cevora’s tone brooked no argument as she turned towards her opal-scaled hatchling.

“We don’t gain anything by making an enemy of her now,” Bek murmured, grabbing Silver by the arm and pulling her in the direction of Libertia before she could respond. “The queen of Alti says she needs us. Let’s not hesitate.” Silver could not argue with his logic, as much as she wanted to argue with Cevora at the moment.

It took them longer than it should have to push through the crowded streets of the sacred city to retrieve their things, and Silver was in no hurry to pick up her sword for a second time. She snatched it up only when the wolf snarled at her to get moving. By the time they were back outside, Seijelar and Skourett had managed to land half in the cobbled streets, ready to take them into the heavens. Silver was still out of breath when the dragons leapt skyward, her clutching Elorian to her chest as the wolf calmly watched the earth drop away.

“Kestria will meet us in the air,” Seijelar hissed. Silver was too distracted by the weight of her sword and Cara’s rope on her hip, giving her the sense that they were flying into battle once more, to respond. After a moment, Seijelar looked back at her, emerald eyes gleaming in the night.

“I am told you will help to build the pillars of the dragons’ spell. You were chosen for your magical prowess.”

The dragon sounded smug now, and Silver exhaled sharply, trying to keep her teeth from chattering as she barked, “Tell her I understand, Seijelar.” After a moment she added. “Thank you.” Sparks shot from the crimson beast’s nostrils, the dragon’s only acknowledgment.

After that moment, Silver’s thoughts were lost in the great, milky expanse of the trees, whose leaves and needles were coated in moonlight. Although it had felt short on the eve of her first and only battle in the war, the flight towards the castle took a little over three hours, and it felt excruciatingly long that night. Straight ahead of them, over the treetops, loomed the Castle of Divides, or rather, the Grand Castle of Altiannia. It seemed not to move, drawing neither farther away nor closer, as they sped through the night. Its twisted spires raked at the dark sky, and its windows twinkled against the night, far too small for Silver to make out anything more than pinpricks of light against the dark.

They reached the port city in the early hours of dawn.

Seconds stretched into hours as they hung as if suspended over the breaking land. Drenched in night shadow, it could almost have been as they first saw it – whole and untouched by war. If she peered closer, however, Silver could see where moonlight cast shadows from the shattered walls of buildings, or the remains of weapons and splintered trees, or where fires lit the grounds for people who had no home to return to. The rest was inky blackness. Where the land bled into the ocean, the world seemed to go on forever. There was no end, not even in the seamless black sky.

But the ocean churned. Silver could see glimpses of it in the moonlight, glimmers of waves twice her height slapping against the edges of the harbor. She shivered as Seijelar banked, beginning their descent. Within moments, they were plummeting earthward, and she watched the Grand Castle rise up to meet them. Battlements and iron grating as black as the sky, domed windows and steepled wooden roofs that seemed out of place against the stone of the castle, spiked walls and towers riddled with arrow slits; all of this she took in a single glimpse. She simply clutched Elorian in place and tried to ignore Seijelar’s complaints that the wolf’s claws were digging into her scales. Then they were touching down on the dusty earth of some sort of vast central courtyard, much of which was obscured by gardens and carefully kept trees.

Elorian was on the ground almost before they landed, and Silver followed suit. Cevora gestured for Bek to help Cara down as she looked between them all. The princess was still holding the box with the four Stones of Alti inside.

“Because the Stones were made for mankind to use, we will be helping the dragons with this spell,” the queen stated, as if there could be no more adequate explanation of their role.

As Cara finished dismounting, Cevora pulled a wooden flask from her cloak, handing it to the girl.

“Powdered silver and cyearn dust. Sara assured me you know the spell circle used to create the Kurnsfral. We are using it now. Its architects are repairing the damage we did in our attack on the city as we speak. I could not spare even one of them today, so the task falls to you, Cara, to replicate that circle here, around us. Once the casting begins, you must not step outside of that circle until it is complete. All of you understand?”

Silver was too busy staring skyward to answer right away. There were tens of dragons overhead, spiraling slowly closer to the castle to settle on its battlements. One by one they landed, the click of their scales against the stone, the scrape of their talons, and their rumbling voices filling the air. She had never seen so many in one place. Cevora followed her gaze up briefly.

“Good,” the queen said then, “they’ve come. Cara, we don’t have much time.” Cara was already taking the flask from Cevora and stepping back, clearly framing the circle she was about to lay down in her mind.

“While she completes the circle…each of us will take one of the Stones.” Cevora lodged her fingers beneath the lip of the black box, pulling it open. As the lid swung wide, her eyes gleamed in the light from the four Stones. Silver shivered when she felt the spill of power that issued from the box into the night. “Silver, the Dusk, west,” Cevora said, staring at Silver until she stepped forward and took the deep crimson stone from the box, averting her gaze from its too-close-to-blood glow. “Bek, the Dawn, east. Cara?”

Cevora looked towards the girl. She was counting off the paces around her work, mumbling softly to herself. There was a very elaborate series of concentric circles around them now. Lines connected them, the twisted spokes of a great wheel. She had demarcated each of the cardinal directions to which they were now being assigned.

“Done,” Cara said after a moment. It was the first time Silver had ever seen such a solemn expression on Cara’s face. The girl came nervously to exchange the flask for one of the Stones. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed and sweaty.

“You live up to your reputation, Cara,” Cevora said, taking the final Stone and setting the box between them. “Take south.”

Each of them took up their positions. The wolf, Seijelar, Kestria, and Skourett looked on from outside the circle, eyes narrowed expectantly.

“We can’t fidget, Cara,” Cevora said sternly.

“I know,” Cara said breathlessly.

“It’s time. Kestria, tell them we’re ready,” the princess said more softly.

All around them, the courtyard filled with the sound of the dragons’ thrum, a deep, rumbling hum that stirred the magic in Silver’s blood. Her bones vibrated with it. The castle shook with it. In Silver’s hand, the Stone began to warm, light bubbling to its surface, brighter than before. And then, abruptly, threads of light shot from it to each of the other Stones, connecting the four of them together. Silver sucked in a sharp breath of surprise, eyes widening. It was all she could do not to drop the Stone.

“Steady,” Seijelar whispered into her mind, “the backlash from this spell could kill us all.”

Seconds passed as the hum of the dragons changed, some of them hissing and snarling into the night. Cevora began to fumble at her throat, pulling out a golden chain that Silver recognized instantly. Zeharial’s necklace. An exact duplicate – the necklace, perhaps, from this era. Silver looked at Bek, but he did not appear surprised. Either he knew Cevora had it, or he had expected as much, and somehow understood how it related to the dragons’ spell.

Cevora dangled the necklace out over the center of their fiery square. The beams of light simultaneously formed anew, leaping from the Stones to the necklace, lifting it skyward to form a perfect pyramid of light with a center as transparent and solid as colored glass. Immediately, the earth began to shake and a nearby fountain groaned, shedding tiny bits of stone as it cracked. In the distance, Silver could hear a penetrating roar, like a train coming into station far out to sea. Through it all, the pyramid was expanding upward, straining up towards the moon.

The Stone in her hand also vibrated more and more violently, growing hotter and hotter. Startled, Silver winced when a blinding scarlet light exploded from it. Shards of hot rock blew into the air around her, dissipating into dust before they even hit the ground. Overhead, the great pyramid faltered, one edge gone.

“The sword, human!” Seijelar hissed, pacing the edge of Cara’s circle, tail lashing and fangs bared. “The dragons say to pull out the sword!”

There was no time for questions. Silver whipped Izathral from her side, eyeing it warily and gripping the hilt as tight as she could. As soon as she began to extend it, the magic from the other Stones poured into the blood-red gemstone embedded in its hilt. Perhaps, she thought, the sword had never been cursed at all. Maybe it was the magic of the gemstone that had turned generations of Altian kings and queens into vampires, and killed who knew how many would-be thieves. Maybe she was either immune because she had carried the Dawn around for months on end, or just had not succumbed to its lethal magic yet.

Either way, the pyramid was growing again. The earth beneath them buckled and heaved. Water cascaded to the dirt around them with a roar, spraying from the crumbling fountain. Cracks formed in the great wall of the Grand Castle of Altiannia. Silver turned her head, and her hazel green eyes widened as they lit on the sea. Not the sea far out to shore as it should be, lost behind the spires of the castle and the gates of Altiannia, but the sea rising far over their heads, a roaring whirlwind of rain and debris. Foam and dark water coated the skies.

She heard Bek curse from her other side, but her eyes were riveted to the city that was now rising up in the water’s stead, curling like paper. Her ears pounded with the sound of the sea and the earth. She was deaf to everything else.

“What about all the people?” she cried. “What’s happening!?”

“We’re the only ones left,” Seijelar’s voice came to her over the wind and the roar of earth, “We stand at the heart of the spell, and so we see what has become of the land left behind but…Alti is not here anymore. It has been locked away in another dimension.”

Silver stumbled back, arms reeling until Seijelar’s broad skull pushed her upright. Cara’s magic circle had been wiped away by the water.

But their work was done.

Somehow…

And they were left to witness the end of their world. Buildings roared into oblivion beneath the relentless crush of the ocean. Nersifral, or what had remained of it, was decimated in seconds beneath water that roiled with mud and with broken trees that it flung like toothpicks over the land. The sky was cleaved again and again by lightning, until the air smelled of ozone and burning things. Fires roared into existence where the sea had yet to lay claim. Then they, too, were swallowed by the ocean. Beneath Silver’s feet, the earth continued to crack and shatter, and the water pouring from the broken fountain burst into the night with more violence than ever before. In the Grand Castle of Altiannia, magical lights flickered, flared, and died beneath the night sky, until the night was awash with a darkness like none that Alti had ever known.

The castle that had seen a nation born from nothing now watched it return to nothing, and its presence became dead and haunting in the crumbling land.

Rain pelted Silver’s face as she stared up into the sky, refusing to let the water that stung her eyes and nose keep her from watching the end. The great pyramid was now mirrored in the roiling clouds by another, equally as large, inverted like an hourglass. Alti hung above them. Perfect. Untouched. Like staring into a mirror. Dragons soared through its skies, forever out of reach.

Then the wings of a great, green dragon blocked out her vision. Lelorias landed beside them all, jaws snapping and eyes fiery.

“Come, srinn of men. I will guide you to your new kingdom.”

“Alti’s gone,” Cara sobbed softly as they all rushed to the green dragon. Silence, broken by the crash of the metal gate of Altiannia slamming inward, followed her words. When Silver reached the srinn of dragons, however, the great beast lowered its head, breath a hot breeze that dried her instantly.

“Not you, Wanderer. Etrion srinn left me a task I had never expected. The lost ones, it seems, are to be returned home.”

Water sloshed against an invisible barrier that had formed around them, sucking at the soaked earth greedily. All of them, even their hatchlings, were locked away in the great dragon’s sphere of magic. It even muted the roar of the storm around them.

“What?” Silver heard herself stammer. The wolf pressed against her leg, hooded ears flared.

“You do us a great honor in this task, dragon,” the wolf growled. Lelorias srinn huffed.

“I do what must be done. There is a balance to be maintained. Now,” the dragon began to hum again, but now it was the low hum of words. “This room has become, for me, a very strange place. Governed by a door and a window…so long as both are closed, the door may open to any exit my heart desires, the window to any view. So long as I cannot see beyond either door or window, this room exists without care to time or place, and it can be, for me, both sanctuary and…home. Here, dreams live freely. And yet, here is there is a mirror that seems to reflect my heart. It was once so pure and clear that in it, I saw only myself. But it became clouded when there came a time that no matter how hard I strived, I could not bring myself to look unto its surface. Now, I see within it myself, but I see myself changed, and I fear the one that stares back from my reflection. When the mirror fogs, I feel that they are upon me. I have no escape. Here, nightmares live freely.”

The great beast paused, looking not at any of them, but beyond. Silver turned to look past Bek, past the hatchlings, to the sodden, empty earth behind them. And there she froze, rendered motionless by the sudden, overwhelming force of alien magic that washed over them. It was not human, not beast. Not dragon or vampire. It was not the grand castle, nor the pyramid that stood over their heads.

“You speak of the heart of magic.”

It seemed to take Silver’s eyes a moment to adjust, like the thing she was looking at was too bright to stare at. It was hazy at first. She had the vague impression of feathers and fur – fur white-tinted pink or lavender or light blue, depending on how the light hit. There was a beast of some kind there, she gradually realized. It was as large as the dragons. At first, she even thought it was a dragon, but with spines the color of dried blood and feathers where the dragons had scales. As her vision cleared, she saw ears, paws, eyes that she sensed she could not look at for more than a second if she wanted to keep her sanity.

“Alti slips between dimensions. You time things well, srinn of dragons.” Like the mur, the beast’s voice was in Silver’s head as well as her ears.

Lelorias’s tail lashed the open air. “I thank you for answering my summons, Icthuria.”

Icthuria? The Wanderer. Not just a title, but a name? She wondered now if this creature had brought them to Alti.

“So it must be,” Icthuria rumbled, turning eyes bright like sapphires on the five of them.

“You brought us here, didn’t you?” Silver asked sharply, eyeing the creature. It blinked once.

“Things must be as they are,” Icthuria replied, “and today, I have been called on your behalf. I will ferry you back to your origin. Come.”

Silver hesitated as Bek and the dragons shifted closer to the strange, time-wandering beast. She had never said goodbye to Sori, Hiyein, Ren, even Sara…she glanced in Cevora and Cara’s direction. The queen of Alti watched her impassively, one hand on Cara’s shoulder.

“Take the sword, Silver. It no longer belongs in our kingdom. The pillars of this spell…the Stones, the sword, and the necklace…all now exist in duplicate, a set on either side of the dragons’ spell, inextricably linked until, perhaps, one day they become one again. We will find caretakers for each of them. You might be the only one who could serve such a role for Izathral. At least, in the end, I understand why I never trusted you. I knew there was something Illian was desperate to hide from me,” Cevora said grimly.

Silver opened her mouth to say something, and Cevora turned away, setting her hand on the scales of the green dragon. Kestria pressed close to her and Cara. “I will pass your farewells on to the others.”

Silver remained where she was. She would never see these people again, she knew. Never was, as she had told the wolf long ago, such an impossibly black void stretching before them, an eternal and frightening prospect that had taken first her family, and now her friends.

“Thank you, Cevora,” she said carefully, feeling like she was trapped in a nightmare.

Bek was gesturing for her to hurry up. Maybe he was worried about the tumult just beyond Lelorias’s barrier. A tree skidded through the courtyard, just feet from where they stood. Silver knew they were safe in the dragon’s barrier.

“Face only the dangers before you. It is not impossible to meet again,” the wolf rumbled from beside Silver, shoulder brushing against her thigh in a gesture that clearly said it was time to go. She nodded understanding.

“Silver,” Cevora said as Silver finally started towards Icthuria. She looked back, half expecting that the woman would ask for the sword back after all. “You will always be welcome in Alti.”

Silver felt her eyes widen. There was no smile on the queen’s face. No kindness, really, but a glimmer of something. Maybe sorrow. Maybe the sense that there had been something between them after all. Despite everything, Silver smiled as she went to Icthuria after that, touching her fingers to the alien beast’s velvety coat. Leaning down, she hugged the wolf tight to her body, terrified, somehow, that they would be separated in time. At the last possible moment, she heard Cara shout.

“Wait!” The redhead was splashing towards them across the broken earth and fallen rock of the fountain. “I’m coming with you,” she said, stumbling to a stop with her hand on Icthuria’s massive rib cage.

“No, you aren’t,” Bek said.

“Sara told me I should,” Cara argued, “if that was what I believed was right. Please.”

Silver stared at the girl in front of them, and was startled to hear the Wanderer’s voice echo in their minds. “You may come, but I cannot know to where in time you will be drawn.”

Cara looked up at the great beast seriously, not a hint of fear in her face. Her shoulders were squared, jaw set in anticipation of a fight. But Silver knew it was a fight Cara would win, because now she was certain they would meet again in the future. She was sure, from the look on Bek’s face, that he was, too. It was no wonder Cara had helped her to defeat the Zara in their modern age. It was no wonder she had looked at Silver like she was seeing a ghost.

“That’s fine, Icthuria. I know I’m doing the right thing,” Cara declared.

Silence. That was consent enough.

They all looked in Cevora’s direction as Lelorias srinn vanished with her and Kestria. Then the world around them began to drop away. The ground was gone first, or maybe gravity was. They were floating. Silver felt the warmth of Icthuria’s velvet fur beneath one hand, the wolf’s fur beneath the other. If it had not been that way, then as the world faded and she watched the sky mingling with the sea, she would have been afraid. Instead, she relaxed into the nothingness. Her senses became mute, her eyes saw nothing. She could feel those things that touched her and nothing else. There was no air, no breeze, no wind. Still, there was a stranger’s voice there, whispering in the empty nothingness.

“I have a secret. One that only you will understand. Hearing it shall be your payment.”

In the nothingness, Silver could not refuse. All she could do was reach with her mind to hold tight to the dragon and the wolf. All she could do was feel her magic and recoil; it was as great and terrible and powerful as ever. It seared at her skin and it boiled in her blood. It coursed through the sword that weighed at her hip and the Stone she still carried with her, after all those months in Alti.

Soon, that power would swallow her. Silver had no escape. She knew that now, better than anyone. In this world of magic, if her dreams lived freely, then truly so, too, did her nightmares.

Just as Lelorias srinn had said.