'You cannot honestly be pining like a chit of a girl for the brooding soldier. You're far too old to be acting as if your bed warmer was worth more than the skin on him.'

Tallah had to restrain herself from laughing at Anna's poor attempt at rattling her nerves. The ghost had a bet running with Christina about whether or not Tallah would be affected by Caragill not showing up to at least say goodbye.

Christina cheated and had whispered about the whole deal. She needn't have worried.

Tallah sat atop one of the higher rocks and watched the column of refugees head to their deaths. It was their choice to face alone whatever came next, and she wasn't about to spare any sentiment on the matter. Liosse knew what she was getting into, and so did Kor and Vilfor.

As for Caragill, in spite of what Anna tried to pry out of her, Tallah had no real feelings about him. She'd said all she had to say to him, made her apologies, explained her actions best she could. And they'd both scratched each other's itch, so that was that. Far as she was concerned, if he did show up now, she would kick him back down the hill to go help Liosse handle the upcoming mess.

The last thing she needed or wanted was more distractions. Pity knew, she'd had plenty of them and they'd not led her anywhere good.

Vergil could have his. The elendine was harmless far as Tallah could tell. All three thieves would likely make themselves scarce the moment they were out of danger and Vergil's education would gain a new, valuable lesson about loyalties. If he was good, Tallah might even let him hunt them down when they'd inevitably turn tail to run.

'Don't pretend you're ignore me,' Anna hissed in her ear.

"But it's so easy to do it without pretending," Tallah answered, taking an unfair amount of satisfaction in Anna's indignant huff. "I'm perfectly fine, thank you. You needn't worry yourself over my comfort."

The last of the refugees disappeared from sight among the rocks. Some appeared to look back, but she wasn't wearing her glasses so she couldn't tell who those were. Oh well.

She climbed down and went to where Sil and the others waited, huddled together out of sight of the dragon. The thieves were still trembling to be this near to the beast, but the initial shock was dispersing. And, anyway, they were being ridiculous. The beast had practically saved their lives.

"I'm going to try and get the dragon to carry us out of here," she said. "If that doesn't work, I'll range ahead and we'll use the shards to make jumps."

"Any reason we don't just do that?" Sil asked.

Tallah shrugged. "Because it's cold up here and it's only going to get colder as we head inland. I've had enough of the cold in the Crags, very honestly."

Plus, she really wanted to climb the dragon.

"Is that really a good idea, lady Cinder?" the elendine piped up, voice just one shade of a squeak.

"My name's Tallah, not Cinder. And you're welcome to volunteer your own ideas if mine don't meet your approval."

That got the girl to shut up, colour draining from her face. For as easily as that one teased Vergil and put up with Sil's glares, she hadn't the spine to stand up to her. The men looked more exasperated than anything, the bald one at least meeting her eye. She'd seen his face before, but couldn't really place him aside from Valen. But that was little to go on. Valen's pubs and markets had no shortage of gruff, bald men.

It'd come to her eventually. For now, she turned and walked up to the dragon basking in the sun. Vergil, to her surprise, joined her.

"Have you tried some older languages?" he asked, almost sheepishly. "Want me to ask Horvath?"

"I wouldn't know where to start. It's an animal. I don't know how to approach the subject."

Vergil rubbed his chest over his armour. "An animal that knows runes to mess with a god's enchantment?"

"There is that, yes," Tallah had to concede. "Aside from that surprising affinity, we just don't have a common frame of reference with the thing. And we definitely don't know enough about dragons to establish any pattern for communication."

"So why are you trying to have it give us a ride?"

Tallah gave him a long, dead-eyed look. He couldn't possibly be this daft. She remembered his excitement in Grefe, when he'd first learned that dragons even existed.

"Because it's a dragon." She spoke slowly, as if the boy had just become simple. "And it's peaceful. It might be amenable to the idea."

It was Vergil's turn to look at her as if she'd sprouted a second head. "We're wasting time just because you want to get on its back?"

"Wasting time from what, precisely? Are you in a hurry to head into more unknown danger? Do you figure we've done so well for ourselves so far by diving headfirst into everything?" Tallah laughed. "My plans lie in shambles. I don't even know what's happened to Mertle and dread the moment Sil brings it up." She glanced back but the healer was busy glaring at the new elendine. "And the only reward I can take for all my efforts at the Rock is that I have a chance to ride a bloody dragon. Either help me get this, or go and blush at your friend."

'He's gaping,' Anna noticed. 'Do you think it's hard for him to understand we're all still human in here? Especially Tallah.'

'I think it's hard for him to understand that Tallah is a fickle, simple creature at heart,' Bianca said. 'You'd think he'd have figured it out by now.'

Tallah found herself glaring and Vergil seemed to think it was meant for him.

"I… sorry, Tallah. I just want to help," he stammered. "And yeah, I don't really understand why you're so set on this."

"Because it's a bloody dragon, Vergil. Do I need more reason than this?"

Granted, the plan was to cut across those saw-toothed mountains as easily and as quickly as possible, towards the Mourning Sea and the wilderness there. No cities. Few villages. And, if Sil's flares of insight were right, in that region also lay the road towards the School of Healing.

Flying would get them to the shores of the sea in days at most. Walking would take them up to summer, and she wasn't willing to waste that much time.

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The dragon raised its head and watched them approach. In the full light of day, the creature was awe-inspiring. Tallah felt her heart flutter as the yellow gaze settled on her. Was there curiosity in those golden eyes? Anger? Worry? Did the beast even feel such things?

Were she not who she was in the empire's eye, her record of just this moment would set the academic world on fire. That slime Lucian would pay her the dragon's weight in gems to be the first to get his hands on all she could observe even at a single glance. Dragons could be peaceful. They could show something resembling gratitude and loyalty. For the biggest walking disasters on Edana to be proven even a hair's breadth closer to humans was priceless information in itself.

She could be legend for simply having stood atop the dragon's paw above the Cauldron. To be allowed and ride the creature's back was to step into mythology.

It had a nice ring to it. And it was just the kind of thing she needed to get her mind off of her many painful failures.

Vergil raised his hand to wave. She caught it and held it firmly back down.

"A drackir will consider a wave of the right hand a personal insult. In their culture, it means to fling excrement," she whisper-shouted at him. "A bastil will think you're courting them. Are you willing to stake your life on what a wave may mean to this thing?"

The boy visibly blanched.

"Yes, precisely," Tallah hissed. "Now you understand the issue at hand. What means what to this?" She caught herself before gesturing in the dragon's direction.

The one thing the great lizard didn't lack for was patience. It had stood vigil all through the night when Ort's horrid army passed by, and had even put up with her trying to gesture of herself climbing up its wing. Now it regarded the two of them, completely unblinking, with just the slightest tremor in the slit of its iris.

There was intelligence there, but she had no idea how to approach it.

It had all seemed so easy in the Cauldron. Point, throw a fireball, and watch the great beast rain fire onto the daemons. It had wanted to do that. It fed.

Now, how to go beyond?

"Maybe if you get on my shoulders?" Vergil suggested. "So it understands what you want?"

Anna laughed, high and shrill. Bianca did too, just a lot less exuberant.

'I agree with the boy,' Anna said between bursts of chuckles. 'Let's give the dragon the idea of stepping on him. Should be an entertaining result.'

Tallah didn't deign either of them with an answer. Instead, she prodded Bianca for power and allowed herself to rise into the air. She was about to do something unspeakably stupid and didn't need the others talking her down.

She climbed until she was level with the dragon's muzzle. Remembering the beast scooping up goatmen by the dozens in that maw dampened her courage somewhat, but not enough to turn back, in spite of Bianca's sudden spike of terror. If the dragon had wanted to eat them, it could've done so at any time prior to now.

So, with heart beating in her throat, she drifted until the tips of her feet almost touched the dragon's snout. She made sure not to.

Its nostrils were wet and blackened by soot. Thin lines of smoke puffed out whenever it exhaled, its breath sounding like the bellows of a forge. She'd expected a different smell, more animal and raw, but was met by the scent of overheated rock, of magma boiling out of the earth. It sent her eyes watering with the hints of volcanic sulphur.

"Tallah?" Vergil, to his ever-surprising credit, had walked up right to the dragon's paw. It would take no effort at all for the beast to flatten him. "What are we doing?" he called out.

"Figuring it out."

'Are we?' Bianca squeaked. By how intertwined the ghost's illum felt with Anna's, Tallah could imagine the two holding on to one another just then.

It's not a beast. It doesn't have the mind of a beast, nor the bearing of one. It is more. But how?

Indeed, in the moment, silent and attentive, the dragon looked a king. It wings were spread out, draped over the cliffs in all their majesty, warming in the sun. It settled better on the rocks and crossed its front limbs, claws casually rendering boulders to dust. Vergil scurried out of the way of a small avalanche.

Panacea had demanded obeisance. Ryder too.

The dragon demanded nothing. It didn't need to.

When Tallah had helped it, it hadn't run once the danger was passed. It had turned and fought viciously against the dreg in spite of understanding better than she what that creature wanted to do.

At the end, it hadn't come into the forest because the Cauldron was lost. If it had only wanted to run, it would've simply flown off from the first moment. There was no reason for it to land in the forest and no reason for it to utterly destroy the daemon host there. Without it, Tallah and her refugees may not have escaped at all.

Tallah floated backwards until she could take in the whole of the dragon's majesty. Neptas shone on its black scales now, turning an already beautiful creature radiant.

"Kneel," she called down to Vergil. "And bow your head." She turned to the others. "All of you, kneel."

Tallah would never kneel to anyone ever again. She would not kneel to Catharina, to Panacea, to Ort, or to Ryder, no matter their power. And she wouldn't kneel in front of the dragon.

But she would bow her head. When all the others were on their knees, she bowed her head because some gestures were near to universal. She prayed this one was too.

Several heartbeats later, the dragon stirred. Its answer was a rumble coming from deep within its throat. The sound rolled, rising and falling in intensity, like an avalanche, like the crumbling of mountains.

It spoke.

'Tallah—'

Anna's voice was lost in the explosion that detonated inside Tallah's skull. Her mind caught fire. Alien symbols, unspeakable words, a medley of overlapping, lighting-quick images. She would've screamed if she remembered how her body worked.

Something pushed itself against her psyche, shouldering aside both herself and her ghosts, pouring into her like a flood into a tea kettle.

The dragon's name.

It couldn't be spoken in any language, not even his. It was a him and he was as old as Edana, as alien as Vergil, and as powerful as any creature in all of creation.

His name was music. It contained all he'd ever done, every battle he'd ever fought, and every world he'd ever visited. It couldn't be spoken for it was him. To know his name was to know the history of creation, to live lives without number, to die a million deaths and be reborn a million times. It wasn't meant for mortal minds.

Tallah tried to grab hold of the knowledge, to keep it and remember it, but it seeped between her fingers like sand. It was mercy that she wasn't allowed it. It would've ruined her. The warning sent her reeling.

He was here for he had a mission. He'd waited aeons. Slept through ages. But was now awake and angry and hurt in his pride.

That much she could understand. It resonated deep within her, and he knew it. She stank of it, of raw ambition thwarted, of a raw soul peeled apart layer by layer, of loss and the deep hunger for revenge.

And the dragon knew revenge. It hungered for it. He'd lost something… someone. He hadn't been hunting at the Bloody Hand, but mourning a long lost friend.

Contact broke as suddenly as it had come and Tallah was released. Blood gushed out her nose, out her gums, out her tear ducts. She fell from the sky, all her ghosts reduced to incoherent mumbling. Strong arms caught her before she hit the ground.

Vergil. He hadn't seen what she'd seen. Else he wouldn't have been standing. None of them would. Only she'd been shown.

Tallah coughed out a glob of bloody phlegm and tried to shake free of Vergil. The boy set her down to her feet and she fell. Would've crumpled if not for his hands holding her.

She tried to speak but couldn't. She tried to remember all the dragon had shown her but it had drained out of her, like sand through a sieve.

He loomed over her, head held high, a halo of sunshine on his spikes.

It spoke a single word.

"Adamar."

Adamar, of the First, of the Few, of the Only. She knew it for a name that wasn't enough to be a name, but enough for her to know the creature in front of her. Enough to recognise his offer of alliance.

She had to force air through her lungs, swallow down the bloody bile, and push her voice beyond a whisper.

"Tallah."

The dragon puffed out a thick plume of smoke. The pact was sealed. He would help her further in return for help in his own revenge. He expected Ryder's blood on his claws and Mol'Ach's head in his mouth.

Tallah would love nothing more than to give him exactly what he wanted.

Sil ran up to her just as Adamar folded his wings and rose from his lazy perch.

"What happened?" the healer demanded. She was already digging in her rend.

"Anna's on it," Tallah croaked out. She wouldn't waste healing resources just then. She forced her lips into a weary smile. "Any of you fancy a flight?"

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