For the second time that thaw, Sil stared at an impossible mount. The dragon had come down from its perch and lowered a wing their way. She stared at it with the same kind of wonder and apprehension she'd felt for the spiders taking them through the maze.

This couldn't be real.

Tallah was barely back on her feet, leaning against a rock for support. She'd pushed Vergil away since the boy was clearly fascinated by the big lizard. By the look of misery on the sorceress's face, all her ghost were screaming at her.

That much blood coming out of every hole in the sorceress's face shouldn't have been a survivable experience… and yet, there the bloody creature still stood. Sil would have to compare notes with Anna someday. Both she and Tallah had undergone some transformations and Sil had a suspicion about them. Without proper equipment it was impossible to be sure.

But, for now, that line of thinking was just to distract herself from the more immediate concern: they were about to climb up a dragon's back, and the very idea sent her knees wobbling. The thing—Adamar, given the sound he'd made—could swallow all of them whole and not even burp.

Vergil had already gone ahead and scampered up the wing all the way up to the beast's thorny back. He had his helmet off and the wind rustled his hair as he climbed even higher, weaving between the spikes until he was just behind Adamar's massive head. The boy's hair had grown long and his jaw had filled up somewhat. Gone was the wretch from Valen. The first strong lines of the man he was becoming already defined his face.

The tableau, of him astride the greatest predator on Vas, and probably on Edana, was worthy of a painting. Or, at the very least, of a bad tavern ballad.

They'd gone into Grefe. And then they'd fought daemons. And now the bloody Other sat atop a dragon's back.

Sil felt her life had, at some point, slipped into the pages of a faer story. None of it felt real, and yet she wasn't waking no matter how much she raged against the nightmare. It was enough to drive a woman to questions of sanity.

Licia and her cronies hesitated just the way she did, still staring wide-eyed and gap-mouthed at the scene. That, more than her own curiosity and sense of wonder, spurred Sil forward. There was no way she would allow that elendine bitch the glory of this moment before she allowed it to herself.

Adamar laid a lazy yellow eye on her as she approached his wing. Sil bowed her head and felt the weight of that gaze slide over her, as if permission had been granted and a promise given not to eat her.

He was warm to the touch. Not hot, but pleasantly warm. Like a stone that had been in sunlight. And like that stone, the texture of his skin was rough and grainy, the membrane of the wing as hard as tanned leather. She tested first with a foot, then with her entire weight. If Adamar minded her clumsy climb up to his back, he didn't show it.

The spikes weren't as smooth as she'd expected. From afar, all of Adamar looked glossy and fine. Up close, the dragon's scales and his horns were thorny and prickly, like burrs. She felt her clothes snag on each spike growing out of his spine. If she ran her fingers down one of them, she expected the ridges would cut her skin with the ease of an obsidian knife.

"I hope I'm not dreaming all this," Vergil said as he made his way back to her and offered his hand.

She took it gratefully. He had gloves on and didn't seem all that bothered by the thicket of bony thorns.

"If we're dreaming this, then I hope I wake in Mertle's arms so I can tell her all about it." Sil had meant it lightly, but Vergil stiffened at the mention of her lover. Come to think of it, Tallah also winced every time Sil looked her way or seemed to take a conversation towards their missing friends.

Which was sweet on part of the two knuckleheads, but also unnecessary. Sil had stopped blaming them for their circumstances. She saved her spite for Panacea and the games the machine spirit seemed to enjoy. If they could convince Adamar to take them up to the gates of the School of Healing, Sil would give her arm to see the look on the false goddess's face.

"I'm sorry," Vergil mumbled, stumbling over his words. "I know I—"

Sil tapped his forehead with the back of her knuckles. "Can it, bucket head. You've nothing to apologise for." He'd carried her across the Rock, bleeding like a stuck pig, as useless in his arms as her flayed arm had been. He'd earned leniency from her displeasure.

The elendine down there hadn't.

"Get a move on, you three," Sil called down. "I ain't sparing medicine or allotment for bowels turned to water. Either get up here or run after the others."

Vergil chuckled. Licia seemed to want to throw Sil an indecent gesture, then stared at where Tallah leaned against her rock and thought better of it. Sil watched as the three gathered their courage and approached the wing, speaking in low voices. Nobody would ever believe this story.

Tallah joined them after the thieves nestled themselves between the spikes. Bianca floated her up and dropped her right behind Adamar's head. Dried blood still crusted on the sorceress's face, where she hadn't wiped properly. Sil spat on her sleeve, reached out, and cleaned it off, to the sorceress's wide-eyed chagrin.

"We're going to the Sea of Mourning," Tallah said. "We're headed as far as we can from this catastrophe."

The unspoken part that Sil heard was that they had no plan yet aside from following Panacea's instruction. The location of the School of Healing glowed in her mind's eye, affixed to the centre of any map of Vas she imagined. It was possible to pass into inner Vas from the Sea of Mourning, so they would be headed the right way regardless.

Adamar rose to his full height and his wings stretched out to their full, impressive size. Scars marked their surface, glinting in sunlight as the dragon readied himself. Sil felt a tether embracing and connecting her to her companions and to the closest spikes.

"Can you speak to him now?" Sil asked. Her words were lost swallowed in the rush of wind.

Adamar flapped his mighty wings once and sent rubble flying down the hill. A second flap launched them in the air, the wind howling by their ears. Sil screamed, though even she couldn't tell if it was in terror or excitement.

Vergil whooped.

Licia and hers cringed on the dragon's back, holding on for dear life. Tallah had likely leashed them too, but they were too terrified to notice.

Then Sil saw Vas like nobody had likely ever seen it before, aside only the empress maybe. They climbed high into the sky, riding the currents in an ever-widening spiral, Edana left far beneath them.

Cold bit into her and she hugged herself, too awestruck to tear her eyes away from the tableau. Vas. Her home like she'd never imagined it.

A blanket of black and white peaks spread out as far as the eye could see. Neptas's light flowed over them like the foamy rapids of a river, snow clouds blown by the wind bringing the simile alive in Sil's imagination.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She turned and stared out towards the Cauldron, her curiosity turned morbid. There, the sky bled and smoke rose in thick plumes. The ground and the monstrous forest were diseased shade of green and brown, like a festered wound carved into the world.

But, she realised, she couldn't see the horrors of the Cauldron. Not from up there. And she couldn't see all of Vas even, just this small part of it that surrounded them as the dragon angled his flight and made for the horizon.

The Cauldron disappeared from view, a small pocket of violence among so many steep peaks and mountain ranges, more a crater than a valley.

Nothing more than a speck in the eye of the world. Sil shivered in wonder. They'd fought and they'd bled and they'd barely scraped by, and in some grand cosmic joke it all meant nothing. Because the world was crushingly big.

All of a sudden she couldn't breathe and it wasn't the dragon's speed or the thin air at that height.

It was the weight of everything smashing into her. She'd always known Vas was large, on a purely intellectual level. She'd travelled its roads for long enough, been swallowed by its unknown wildernesses and its dark corners. She and Tallah were more well-travelled than most, and yet even theirs was little more than an ant's understanding of the world.

Beneath, among the mountain peaks, valleys yawned, fragrant green, filled with life. Hidden vales. Untouched sanctuaries. Sil marvelled at how she'd never even imagined these places, never read of them, never heard tales.

Smoke rose from some of these secret wrinkles and folds in Edana. People lived there. They thrived maybe. And maybe they knew nothing of the world beyond their hills and their peaks.

This was how a dragon saw the world. Because no bird could soar as high as a dragon, and even Bianca's range paled by comparison to the dizzying height at which Adamar climbed. Sil envied the creature with every fibre of her being, and was equally terrified of always being aware of the scale of everything.

She had to tear her eyes away, even if for just a moment. It was too much to take in. It was too much to understand.

Vergil's head swivelled from side to side, like an excited child, the look on his face maybe even more awe-struck than hers. He'd told her once of seeing a view like this from his SPRAWL, but he'd described as too distant to mean anything. A green and blue marble floating in a black void, too far removed to be anything more than a dream.

And now he was flying across a world. His wonder sat plain on his face and, if she knew him at all by now, he wanted to see all those places up close and personal. Wonder wiped his defeatist streak clear off his face. Maybe now he'd be less prone to offering to take a boat out onto the ocean so he could explode without hurting anyone.

Even Tallah looked moved by the sight. She caught Sil's eye and gave her a wink and a smirk. Of course she'd be proud of herself, the git. She had every reason to be.

As Tallah described it, Adamar had offered her an allegiance. His goals aligned with Tallah's up to a point, and he demanded nothing in return but help in achieving his revenge. What would a dragon want revenge for? And how long the grudge? Maybe they'd never know, and it maybe didn't matter.

Adamar tilted forward and went into a sharp dive, his wings brought closer to his body. Somewhere behind them, Sil heard Licia scream. She didn't spare the elendine a glance and wouldn't have been terribly bothered if the bitch was blown off. Her luck rarely acted in tandem with her desires.

Vergil wrapped an arm around her middle, grinned at her, raised his other fist and whooped as the wind roared by their ears, icy daggers stabbed into every bit of exposed flesh, and their hair felt as if it would be ripped off their skulls.

Sil couldn't help but laugh. She leaned into him, mirrored his grip, and screamed in ecstasy and awe. For that terrifying moment of the dive, she allowed her burdens to drop and feel like a girl for the first time in ages.

Adamar reached the bottom of his dive, spread wide his wings, and climbed again. Sil's stomach remained behind, or at least felt as if it had, but she was now in the spirit of things. She laughed and matched Vergil scream for scream. Tallah laughed with them, but she still cringed with the movement, pain crossing her face every now and again.

The exalted feeling couldn't last.

Somewhere out there, Mertle was in the company of the most dangerous man on Vas. Well, one of the most dangerous, as the list had grown recently. Sil couldn't help but think of her lover as the flight settled again into a soft, smooth glide. Mertle would never believe this. Once she did, she would pout for not experiencing it with Sil. And pout doubly for every time Sil had refused her offer to join their party.

That made a knot in her stomach that sucked down some of the joys of the moment. Mertle had been willing to drop everything she'd built in Valen and come along on Tallah's mission of vengeance. For all Sil had refused her, fate had taken her lover in far more dangerous waters.

Mountain passed beneath them in a slow, inexorable roll of scenery. It would've taken them all the way into summer to cross that wide expanse even with Tallah's shards. Now, it would probably be done by the fall of night, and Adamar barely seemed to strain.

To her shock, Licia fought her way to them. Sil became aware of movement towards Adamar's back and turned her head to see Licia moving forward, step by careful step, approaching with grim determination on her face.

Well, Sil had to give it to the elendine. She had a spine after all.

Vergil offered her his hand and helped her stand.

Licia screamed something but the roar and rush of wind were too loud. She screamed again and Sil leaned into it, at least curious.

"How—" Adamar flapped his wings and words got swallowed in the noise. "—take a piss?"

Licia grinned. Sil found it hard not to join in. It was a legitimate question, she had to admit.

She drew a step aside and stood closer to Tallah, closer to warmth. It would probably be some time before they reached the sea as it seemed to her that the dragon wasn't flying in a straight line.

Time flowed by. The wonder didn't abate.

In the north—or what Sil thought of as the north—storm clouds gathered. A storm looked frightening from the ground. From the air it was like a fist that rolled inexorably over the mountains, swallowing everything in its darkness. Lightning coiled around tall columns of dark clouds. At least that seemed to be headed away from them, towards the Cauldron.

She moved closer to Tallah and wrapped an arm around her friend's midriff. The sorceress leaned into her, grateful for the aid. Anna was clearly having trouble repairing whatever they'd suffered. It would probably resolve itself—

A tendril of blood stung her in the hand and Sil heard Anna's voice right in her ear.

"Healer, we need to talk."

Sil jumped but Tallah held on to her. Her friend's silver eyes met hers and a slow nod of her head confirmed Anna was acting on her wishes.

"What do you need?" Sil spoke, unsure if the ghost could hear her. "Are you all right?"

"We will survive this, yes. There will be scarring." Anna let out a slow rumble of displeasure. "Christina believes that this is precisely why dragons do not communicate with the rest of us. For anyone normal, I don't expect much would remain of the corpse. It took nearly all I had to keep Tallah in one piece."

Normal? Was the ghost referring to their own binds to Tallah? Or something more?

"How can I help?" she asked instead, unsure if this was something to worry herself over.

"Have you felt a change in yourself? I've found scents in your blood, but they're also in Tallah's. And the boy makes for an especially poor control sample."

Sil looked back to the two thieves huddled together way farther down the dragon's body. "What about them?"

"I have collected samples yet, and their history would be unknown to me. You and Tallah both exhibit oddities. I suspect a connection."

"The water from Grefe," Sil said, airing out a thought she'd had for some time.

"You've a suspicion?"

Sil looked to the scars on her left arm, the tangle of welts and unevenly regrown skin, healing applied in the heat of a daemon invasion. "I shouldn't have survived the first time I channelled Panacea's power, much less all the times after."

"Is it not a normal ability for a healer?" Anna seemed surprised. But, then again, the School was known to be spectacularly secretive.

"No."

"Did the boy ever drink the water?"

"Not that I know. He drank water from the spiders, but I don't believe it was this kind."

"Curious. You do not present mutation. Tallah doesn't either. Physically, I don't find anything wrong with either of you, aside from your atrocious diets and the extensive scarring."

Sil had gotten used to the invasive ways in which Anna quenched her curiosity. It barely even registered as a violation of her privacy anymore.

"We will need to investigate this further."

But Sil wasn't listening anymore. Tallah's grip on her tightened. They stared together to the far horizon. A line of glittering gold burned where the sky met the ground, dazzling in its beauty.

The Sea of Mourning. They would not reach it before nighttime, but even from afar it was a wondrous sight that took Sil's breath away.

"Children. I swear," Anna huffed. Then she retreated and left Sil alone with her own thoughts.

Would the awe last, she wondered. From up high it was easy to forget of what waited below. Daemons and monsters, armies of enemies, petulant gods and their minions, the walking, hollow-eyed dead. Vas was grand, but it also felt oddly brittle.

Grefe had been wondrous too before the spiders fell on them. It had taken less than a day for it to happen too.

Her heart echoed the far distant thunders of the storm, as the dragon flew on.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.