Dae knew that holding a blade to her mother’s throat wasn’t going to produce the stable, calm environment necessary for the delicate negotiations between the Queen’s Guards and the Paxmer Resistance. She also knew that no one in the room, even including Mayleena or the glamor caster were going to be fast enough to stop her from claiming a vengeance that had been due for twenty years.

“Lady Estella sur Korkin, you are charged with betrayal, treason and murder,” Dae said, marveling at how even her voice sounded.

Alari had claimed their plan needed Lady sur Korkin’s support, and that was before anyone in Gallagrin knew that Dae’s mother was also the leader of the Windsmer cell of the Paxmer Resistance. Politically and strategically Lady Estella’s worth was incalculable. Dae knew that the lives she held in balance against that worth, the long lost life of her father, and her own near-forfeit existence didn’t amount to enough to sway the balance into the negative and condemn the Paxmer woman’s life. That didn’t change the fact that a reckoning was owed and that, as the last of the Korli family, it fell to Dae to collect what was due.

The rest of the people in the chamber, for quite understandable reasons, did not share Dae’s particular view on the matter.

To their credit, Jyl and Mayleena both turned and placed their backs to Dae’s. At the same moment, the remaining glamors fell away, revealing that the small and empty cavern they’d been escorted to was neither small nor empty.

What had looked to be natural stone when they arrived was revealed to be a worked chamber with walls that were heavily decorated with enchanted glyphs and sigils.

Beyond the illusory wall stood roughly a dozen armed resistance fighters. Half of them had bows drawn but had been taken by surprise by Dae’s lightning quick advance on their leader. Poor form for guards waiting in ambush, but no one from Paxmer had access to the sort of personal enhancement magics that Dae and the other Pact Knights did.

Part of Dae’s mind wanted to spare a glance at the forces arrayed against them. Whatever sort of battle occurred, it wouldn’t be a pretty affair, and the aftermath would be worse. With proper leadership, the Queen’s Guard could limit the number and severity of the casualties they would need to inflict to escape the Resistance’s hidden chamber. Without it, there might not be anything left of the Windsmer Resistance by the time the next day dawned.

That sort of rational thought was able to gain little ground against the overwhelming thunder that rose from Dae’s long buried memories though.

Before anyone (other than Dae) had the opportunity to do anything foolish though, Estella raised her hand in a gesture of command, bidding her troops to hold where they were.

“So far this has gone better than I imagined it would if this meeting were ever to occur,” Estella said. “Shall I answer your charges, or did you present them so that I would carry the words with me to the grave?”

“This isn’t a trial,” Dae said. “I already know that you’re guilty, but you can answer them if you wish. Fair warning though, if you begin to lie you won’t finish the first word before you head is parted from your shoulders.”

Dae didn’t touch her blade to her mother’s throat. It was too sharp and too hungry for that sort of display. From a hair’s breadth away though, Dae knew that Lady Estella could feel the animosity the weapon carried and since there was no doubt in Dae’s mind that she would follow through on her words she was sure Estella could see the sincerity in her eyes too.

“You lay betrayal, treason and murder before me,” Estella said. There was a softness in her voice that Dae couldn’t place or understand. “In each of those there is truth, and in each of those there is a lie.”

“Where is the lie?” Dae asked. “I know you betrayed Duke Phob Korkin. You conspired against the crown of Gallagrin and, when you fled, he bore your guilt to the gallows. Your hand was hundreds of miles distant but it was the one which left him dangling from the hangman’s noose, gasping for a breath that would never come.”

“That is the truth,” Estella said. “I fled and your father died, and I have carried the weight of that for two decades.”

“You’ve carried nothing,” Dae said. “You weren’t there. You weren’t forced to watch him dance at the end of a rope. You didn’t see how long it took. How much he suffered. You weren’t there!”

Dae didn’t mean to draw blood, not yet, but a thin scarlet line marred Lady Estella’s otherwise beautiful light brown skin. Dae pulled back, struggling to keep control of herself, but Lady Estella didn’t flinch.

“I wasn’t,” Lady Estella said. “Maybe in the end that’s the only truth that matters, but there is more to the story than I believe you know.”

“There’s always more to every story,” Dae said. “But that doesn’t necessarily change anything.”

“Yes, not necessarily,” Estella said. “But you should still hear the full tale.”

“Go on then,” Dae said. She didn’t want to listen but she knew she had to. It was too easy for let herself believe that her mother had some saintly reason for what she did, it was what the eight year old Dae had wished for more than anything. With the benefit of two decades worth of experience, Dae had learned the value of cynicism but whether she believed her mother’s words or not she knew she still needed to hear them.

“I was a traitor to Gallagrin,” Estella said. “As was your father. And not just Gallagrin, but Paxmer as well.”

Dae nodded, not yet believing the claim but acknowledging that she’d heard Estella’s words. There was at least a kernel of truth in what her mother said, Dae had to acknowledge. Estella being a traitor to both kingdoms had the support of the situation they found themselves in since one didn’t just stumble into becoming the leader of a resistance faction against a group of nobles who controlled a horde of dragons.

“Our marriage was an arranged one,” Estella said. “At the time King Sathe was looking to forge alliances with his neighbors and was encouraging his lesser nobles to seek out marriage contracts with the sons and daughters of Paxmer, Senkin and Inchesso. I was an expendable younger daughter, so Phob and I were deemed a suitable match. On my eighteenth birthday I was packed off and sent to the mountains of Gallagrin, never to be heard from again I suspected at the time.”

“What happened?” Dae asked. Her early memories of her mother were spoiled by the later ones, but she remembered some moments of laughter before all the tears.

“What often happens with two young people who are placed close together,” Estella said. “It wasn’t love at first, but the Korli estates were more appealing than I imagined they’d be, and Phob was surprisingly gentle and warm. And, attractive in his own manner, once I grew to appreciate Gallagrin features.”

“So you loved him once?” Dae asked, not seeing how either answer would change things.

“I love him still,” Estella said. “He was, in my eyes, the best of Gallagrin.”

“And yet you left him,” Dae said. It had never made sense to her, the wordless abandoning of family and country. That there’d been no final goodbye, no parting gesture.

“I left Gallagrin,” Estella said. “Which given the state of the country at the time I think I can be forgiven for. And I left you, which may be unforgivable.”

“Why,” Dae asked. “Why did you leave?”

“Your father and I were part of an organization which sought the downfall of both kingdoms,” Estella said. “When the Gods entered their eternal slumber they took more than their power with them. They took their guidance and their voice away. Centuries ago, the kings and queens of the land ruled by virtue of the wisdom the Gods bestowed on them. Their descendants do not wield those insights and so we are left with monsters like the Butcher King or Haldri Paxmer.”

“So you took the fight to Paxmer while he stayed behind in Gallagrin?” Dae asked. Another question burned on her lips but she couldn’t find the will or courage to ask it.

“No! Gods no!” Estella said. “I had no position in Paxmer to work from and we were a team, your father and I. I left because I was discovered. By Sathe’s minions. They found me in a meeting with Duchess Bonli who had already been declared a traitor to the realm. I fled from them and ran to the one place I knew Sathe’s long arm couldn’t reach.”

“Your home in Paxmer,” Dae said. She didn’t want to believe her mother’s words. They were like the echo of a dream and while they touched the eight year old who woke to find herself without a mother one day, they did nothing to sop up the pain that had followed.

“By that time, Sathe’s policy on inter-kingdom relations had changed drastically,” Estella said. “It wasn’t difficult to convince my remaining family that the Butcher King was going to slaughter me.”

“Did you even think to warn my father about what had happened?” Dae asked. “Or did you just settle in here and try to forget him.”

“I couldn’t communicate with him,” Estella said. “His only hope was to denounce me as a traitor and an unfaithful wife. If he’d laid the blame on me, Sathe might have spared him.”

“No, the Butcher was too far gone by then,” Dae said. “He spared no one who might be a threat.”

“So I learned,” Estella said. She was silent for a moment before adding. “They told me of Phob’s death, but no one knew what became of you. I prayed that you swung beside him.”

One of the Paxmer resistance fighters drew in a sharp breath at that, but Dae understood her mother’s words better than anyone else in the room.

“I should thank you for those prayers,” Dae said. “The fate Sathe gave to the children of traitors was far crueler than death.”

Handless, footless and eyeless, Sathe had sentenced the young of families he deemed guilty of treason to life in the mud, begging along the roadways to the capital. He called them the “worms of judgment” and believed they were the sort of incentive that would inspire other families to stay loyal. In that belief he had been proven very wrong.

“I learned that you lived, but only many years later,” Estella said. “When you were presented to the court after your Pact bonding, you wore the name Akorli. I couldn’t understand how you came by it.”

“The Queen, or princess at the time, gave me that name,” Dae said. “Her father had long since forgotten us, there was a mountain of corpses piled on top of Phob Korli by then and the Dukedom had been transferred to another family entirely. You could have returned and no one would have known your were a criminal.”

“After a decade?” Estella said. “After I left you behind? I dreamed of seeing you again every night after I learned you were still alive, but none of those dreams were as kind as this encounter.”

“So you were afraid?” Dae asked. “Afraid to face what you’d done?”

“Yes! I could think of no reason you would wish to see me again, and no manner in which I could improve your life,” Estella said. “Seeing you would have been a balm to my heart, but could have destroyed your life, the same as it destroyed Phob’s.”

“And after the Butcher King was put down?” Dae asked. She couldn’t imagine encountering her mother in the dark days that followed the Reunification of Gallagrin. Dae had been in so much pain then, she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t have simply slain anyone who claimed to be her mother before they could get two additional words out of their mouth.

“By then it seemed too late,” Estella said. “I knew that Gallagrin’s intelligence network was aware of my public life, and the villa where I spent most of my time. I reasoned that if you wanted to seek me out, you would be capable of finding me.”

“And why did you think I would seek you out?” Dae asked.

“I hoped for so many things, but in the end I assumed the most likely reason would be for revenge,” Estella said. She was still and silent after that, as though she accepted the inevitability of the judgment against her.

Dae weighed her mother’s words. Lady sur Korkin’s words hung together and painted a compelling picture. Reason suggested they might be believable. Reason also suggested however that with twenty years to plan her story, a woman who had left her husband and daughter to die would probably come up with a story exactly that appealing.

Looking to her heart, Dae found a similar divide. Estella’s performance matched her words perfectly, but even so, the long ago betrayal whispered to Dae, asking her if she could trust someone who was proven to be a master of deception.

WIth neither her mind, nor her heart to follow, Dae turned to her faith. Not her faith in the Sleeping Gods, and not her faith in the woman standing before her. With nowhere else to turn, Dae looked for guidance in the faith Alari had shown her.

“Revenge won’t bring my father back,” Dae said and lowered her blade.

“No, it won’t,” Estella agreed, relief passing through her like a wave. Around the cavern, everyone else relaxed as well. “But there is someone you should meet.”

“Who?” Dae asked.

“She probably means me,” a young girl said, stepping forward from the ranks of the Paxmer resistance fighters. “Sister.”

Dae watched the Windsmer town guards leave and through a vast effort of will managed to avoid fainting into her drink. The stuff was terrible but spilling it would still have been a crime against nature.

“What did you just do?” Mayleena asked. She hadn’t reached forward to offer Dae any support but she was looking at Dae with the sort of cocked twist to her head that spoke of puzzlement and curiosity among most of the Mindful Races and many of the Blessed Realms animal species as well.

“Took a page from your book,” Dae said, fighting off a wave of vertigo that threatened to send her plummeting to the floor.

“We have never done whatever it was you just did,” Mayleena said, pulling back and tipping her head in the other direction.

“Let’s say you inspired me then,” Dae said. She pushed herself up to a position that disguised how close she was to collapsing and forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly. The patrons of the bar had more important matters to consider than one hooded woman who wasn’t an obvious threat, and so as far as Dae could see none of them were paying any attention to her or Mayleena. The city guard and the dragon that was nearby held the entirety of their interest.

“We do not know if we wish to inspire that kind of behavior,” Mayleena said. “It seemed unpleasant for you and for your prey.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Dae said. “But it was effective, and tonight that’s what counts.”

“We suspect we’re glad you did not warn or consult us before frightening the guards like that,” Mayleena said. “You were close to truly losing control weren’t you?”

“That’s sort of my natural state,” Dae said. “Hasn’t happened yet though.”

A momentary vision of what the tavern would look like if a berserker was let loose inside it sent a chill rippling through Dae. She’d risked the gambit of emulating Mayleena’s disquieting aura knowing that it was dangerous but in hindsight she found herself questioning her own sanity. She knew Kirios well, they were a fantastic team, but even so he could overwhelm her if she ignored the limits of their pact bond. It wouldn’t be an act of malice on the spirit’s part either, no more than a river flooding was malicious if a dam on it was broken.

“How did you know the guards would respond as they did?” Mayleena asked. “Wasn’t it more likely that they would call their dragon for support?”

“If they hauled you outside, they were definitely going to call their dragon,” Dae said. “If they were smart they’d call all of the dragons in fact. So that risk was worth it, I think. In hindsight, I was gambling on their authority response being fear derived though.”

“Because they work with dragons?” Mayleena asked.

“Yeah,” Dae said. “They’re not subject to dragon fear, but fear is an inherent tool for dragons, and even if they can’t magically compel it in the guards, their sheer size and power means they can use the more natural forms of it to keep the people they work with in check. The guards are powerful too, you can see how nobody here actually opposed them, so some part of me figured out that the only thing they have to be afraid of are their bosses. Reverse that on them and their brains will accept anything they’re afraid of as their boss, so they complied.”

“And how long is that compliance likely to last?” Mayleena asked.

“Somewhere between ‘not very’ and ‘they’re already heading back here’, I’d guess,” Dae said. Across the room, she caught sight of Jyl standing and chatting with an unfamiliar dwarf. Jyl looked as though she wanted to follow the dwarf into the kitchen so Dae tapped Mayleena on the shoulder and the two of them pushed their way through the crowds to join their companion.

The dwarf lead them through the crowd that was alternately milling about trying to finish their last drinks or pushing to exit the tavern. Their path lead them in the opposite direction the crowd was moving, until they eventually reached the swinging door to the tavern’s kitchen area.

The tavern’s cooking space was smaller than Dae would have guessed it to be. Nothing more than a narrow hallways with a pair of large stoves built into the walls. There was a sink beyond the stoves which was piled high with the day’s unwashed dishes where a lone dishwasher struggled to make a dent on the tremendous tide. The cooks though were oddly absent.

In fact the whole kitchen was subtly wrong. The dishwasher had his hands in the water but he was spending too much time on a single dish as the dwarf lead them down the narrow area.

“This is a nice trap, how many people are behind the walls?” Dae asked.

“Fewer than I’d like,” the dwarf said. “But more than I should be risking, so let’s keep moving.”

“We are walking into a trap?” Mayleena asked.

“Yes, but apparently it’s not meant for us,” Dae said.

She didn’t voice her belief that there were multiple layers of trap in play and that the one the dwarf had in mind for them was simply more subtle and less violent than the one waiting in the “kitchen” for any interlopers who tried to follow them.

“I’ve got some presents for you,” Jyl said.

Dae studied the travel papers the young elf handed to her.

“What does Ducal Protection give us?” Dae asked, seeing the addendum and signet at the bottom of the small writ.

“I’m not sure,” Jyl said. “I only had a small stack of them to use for reference, and it looked like the pricy ones had that.”

“It means you’ve been fleeced by the Duke’s tax collectors already and bribed them well enough that the Duke wants to see you bring your business here more often,” Zana, the dwarf, said. “It’s not worth much, but it’d probably be enough to convince a dragon to ransom you rather than eat you if you got caught doing something stupid.”

At the far end of the kitchen, Zana opened a closet door, and rapped three times on the back wall. A moment later the slid away to reveal a ladder leading down into misty darkness.

“It’s a good thing we’d never do anything stupid then,” Dae said and followed Zana and Jyl down into the mists.

She’d expected to descend no more than a single level. They were close to the harbor so digging a basement that was too deep was likely to produce severe flooding problems. That didn’t seem to be a problem for the taverns architects though. They were a good three stories down before they reached their destination and the cavern they arrived in was as dry as it was empty.

“So let’s get the obvious things out in the open, shall we?” Zana said. “You’re spies. From Gallagrin.”

“And you’re working against the Paxmer Queen,” Dae said.

“Mostly correct,” Zana said. “It would be more accurate to say that we’re working against the existing Paxmer royalty, with the queen as our more direct opponent.”

“Fair enough,” Dae said. “Then in the interest of honest disclosure, it would be more accurate to say that we’re special operatives from Gallagrin, more than spies.”

“And what makes a special operative different from a spy?” Zana asked.

“You send a spy into a country to collect information,” Dae said. “Operatives have other mission objectives.”

“Other objectives like assassination?” Zana asked.

“If the opportunity arose, I wouldn’t be inclined to pass it by,” Dae said. “But this is more of a retrieval mission.”

“We’ve had contact with a few other…operatives, from Gallagrin,” Zana said. “Can you prove your words?”

“I can,” Dae said. “After you prove that you are a part of the Paxmer resistance.”
Zana slid her sleeve back and called a bright silver tattoo of a haloed dragon to appear on her forearm.

“We didn’t think you were still in Windsmer,” Dae said. “It looks like we should have sent a few more spies here in preparation for this mission.”

“We survive largely by being difficult to track down,” Zana said. “Now if you’ll be so kind?”

Dae nodded and transformed into her Pact Regalia. From her collar, she took the royal seal of office that she was able to incorporate into her armor following her promotion to Queen’s Knight.

“This isn’t the mark of a common operative,” Zana said.

“No. It’s not,” Dae said.

“I studied the heraldry of the realms when I was a little sprog,” Zana said. “Had a fascination with secret languages. Probably what led me to where I am today. Is this symbol what I think it is?”

“It carries a unique distinction,” Dae said.

Zana whistled.

“I thought we were in luck when I caught sight of the elf,” Zana said. “Is it true that your sword still drips royal blood?”

Dae pulled the sword that was conjured with her armor partially out of its sheath. The blade was coated in a thick, red liquid covering.

“One of the costs of slaying royalty, even treacherous, unworthy ones,” Dae said.

“Hard to move about unnoticed with that,” Zana said.

“If I draw this sword, I’m well past caring whether anyone will notice me,” Dae said.

“What happens if you kill another royal with it?” Zana asked.

“I don’t know,” Dae said. “There’s not much precedent for someone slaying multiple sitting kings or queens.”

“Royal blood burns with divine will,” Mayleena said. “Wet the sword with too much of it, and your blade will blaze with an unbearable light.”

“How do you know that?” Zana asked.

“Observation, I suspect,” Dae said, releasing her transformation. “As I said though, our mission is concerned less with slaughter and more with the retrieval of a particular item.”

“It would have to be an artifact of some significance to bring the Queen’s Knight of Gallagrin across the border into Paxmer?” Zana said.

“If Haldri Paxmer could lay her hands on an item like the one our queen spoke to us of, it would do more than change the balance of power between our nations, she could sweep through the Blessed Realms like an avalanche,” Dae said. “So, yes, our queen sent us to make sure that wasn’t allowed to happen.”

“That sounds well above what my people are equipped to deal with,” Zana said.

“Can you get us out of the city at least?” Jyl said. “Those dragons might be willing to ransom us if we’re caught, but I’d rather not be caught in the first place.”

“We would rather slay the dragons,” Mayleena said. “Though that would not be likely to end well for us.”

“Dragon fighting isn’t something for people outside this country to do,” Zana said. “The dragons are our curse and our responsibility.”

“If you can get us outside the city, we’ll be happy to let you handle the dragon here however you’d like,” Dae said. “We need to make for a contact who’s deeper inland.”

“Smuggling people out of the city is more difficult these days,” Zana said. “And before we do that, I think you need to speak to my commander. She needs to know of this, and I’m sure she’ll have information you can use.”

“Is she hiding down here?” Dae asked.

“Not hiding,” a woman said as she stepped through the solid wall at the far end the cavern. “Observing.”

“You know, I thought there was a glamor here, but I couldn’t find the seem,” Dae said.

“You are the Queen’s Knight?” the woman asked. “What is your given name?”

Dae looked at the woman and caught the ripple of a further glamor.

Glamors were Sunlost magic, and while it wasn’t in the least surprising to find Sunlost casters working to undermine Paxmer’s royalty, it was surprising to find so talented a glamor caster by happenstance.

“You were born to mixed parentage, weren’t you?” Dae asked.

“I am Paxmer born,” the woman said.

“No one from Paxmer could ever cast glamors that well, and no one from Sunlost could cast the glamor you’re wearing in a foreign land,” Dae said.

“You know much of Sunlost’s magic,” the woman said. The glamour covering her faded under Dae’s scrutiny until only a simple white mask obscured the woman’s true features.

“I had an eclectic education,” Dae said.

“Did you grow up in the castle at Highcrest?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Dae said. “From when I was eight. From the day my father was executed as a traitor.”

“You are Duke Phob Korli’s child?” the woman’s voice caught a strange hitch in the middle of her question.

“I am Daelynne Akorli, daughter of Duke Phob Korli.” Her father’s name felt strange on Dae’s tongue after so many years. “How do you know me?”

The glamor cracked and faded away, revealing a woman in her late forties. Though the years hadn’t been gentle, Dae recognized Estella sur Korkin’s face the moment she saw it.

“Mother,” she said, her bloody blade materializing in her hand.

Jyl managed to find her fellow members of the Queen’s Guard through a process of clever deduction. Her thought process went something like this; They need somewhere to go, it’s late, they’re foreigners, and I have their travel papers. Clearly, they’re at a tavern. Where else could people posing as sailors new in port blend in? It hasn’t been that long either, so the tavern’s probably still intact.

It wasn’t that Jyl knew Dae or Mayleena to be trouble makers, or likely to burn buildings down in their wake, but after the sinking of the Fearless and running into a trio of giant sea serpents, Jyl felt comfortable in assuming that their mission was under some kind of curse and that nothing was likely to go according to any of their original plans.

Armed with the guess that they’d be at a tavern, Jyl then followed a process of elimination that started and ended with “I’ll check the closest one” and ended with “Oh look, there they are!”

Instinct, more than deduction or cleverness, caused Jyl to pause before joining them. The crowd was loud and boisterous, a good celebratory revel for those who’d survived another voyage on the merciless seas. As Jyl listened though, the tenor of the celebration changed. Boasts and uproarious laughter quieted and were replaced by snarls and taunts.

With the skill of someone who’d practiced being unnoticed since childhood, Jyl shrank back, disappearing into the crowd around the bar. The servers were busy filling orders, but there was a hitch in their steps, as though they’d sense something was off with the world too.

“The Talons’ll be here soon,” a woman in the canvas overalls of dockworker said.

Jyl didn’t respond. There was no sense drawing attention to herself yet.

“You’ll want to vanish if you can little elf,” the woman said. “Even if they’re not here for you, the Talons won’t like finding a Gallagrin spy here.”

That caught Jyl’s full and undivided attention.

“They’re not going to care whether I am a spy or not I take it?” she asked, looking at the woman and searching for a sign of how much the woman knew of what was going on.

The dockworker was a dwarven woman, which complicated Jyl’s appraisal of her.  In Gallagrin, dwarves were a reasonable portion of the population, just not anywhere that Jyl had lived for long. By Jyl’s best guess, the dwarf was likely in her mid fifties, so just barely middle aged by dwarven standards, but the guess could have been twenty to thirty years short and Jyl would have easily believed it too.

The dwarf stood slightly taller than Jyl, in part because Jyl’s family naturally ran on the small side of elvish heights and because Jyl was short even by her family’s standards. Jyl always countered claims that her height was a disadvantage by pointing out that she packed more muscle per pound than anyone else in her family, including her brute of a sister. In that department she also came up short compared to the dwarven woman, whose light grey skin and thick solid muscles made her look like she’d been carved directly out of steel, rather than born to any earthly mother.

“Better safe than sensible, that’s the Talon’s philosophy,” the woman said, and shifted away from the bar to let someone else crowd in and get the server’s attention. In the process she also hid Jyl even better from the line of sight of the people entering the tavern.

Jyl peeked out as conversation slowed and quieted throughout the bar. In her gut, she felt a creeping terror take root and start to grow with alarming speed.

“Did they bring a dragon here?” Jyl said, forcing the words out through teeth that were starting to chatter together.

“There’ll be a rider overhead,” the dockworker said. “You can feel it already though? That’s impressive.”

“It’d be more impressive if I could stab the damn thing,” Jyl said.

“You’re not the first one to want to do that,” the dockworker said. “Or the only. My name’s not Zana. Who aren’t you?”

Jyl took a second to process that through the edge of dragon fear that was crowding into her thoughts. Whoever “not Zana” was, she at least recognized that Jyl wasn’t in a position under the best of circumstance to reveal information about herself. Names were still useful though.

“My name isn’t Jaan,” she said. Which was true, and had the advantage of being a name she was likely to react to and remember easily since people had been mistaking Jyl for her twin since they were born.

“We’re close enough to the kitchen, would you like to go visit my friend who cooks here?” Zana asked.

Jyl felt herself being split in half. Escape, at this point, was of utmost importance. She had the forged travel papers for the three Queen’s Guard. If she was caught with them and the papers were scrutinized too closely, Jyl was certain that the forgery would be spotted. She was an expert at slipping into places undetected, which had made breaking into the Harbor Master’s office blindingly easy. She was less practiced at forging perfect copies of someone’s handwriting, in the dark (since she couldn’t light a candle without risking being seen), in a foreign language (since the travel papers were all written in Old Paxmerese, rather than modern Realms Common) and under a time restriction (since she had minutes, not days to pull off the whole caper).

From the samples she’d had to work from it hadn’t appeared that there was anything special about the text of the papers and that the official seal that was pressed into the bottom was the most important identifying mark. Just because she didn’t know of anything important in the text though didn’t mean she was willing to gamble their lives on that assumption.

So she had to escape.

But she couldn’t leave Dae and Mayleena behind.

Zana, apparently being a frighteningly perceptive sort, noticed Jyl’s flinch of hesitation and the glance that she cast towards the table where Dae and Mayleena sat.

“Looks like we’re going to have a scene here after all,” Zana said. “It’s a shame, I liked this bar.”

“Will the dragon land if a fight starts?” Jyl asked. In her mind that was the worst case scenario since it meant paralysis and the elimination of any options for dealing with whatever was to come.

“They usually stay in the air,” Zana said. “The Talons are tough enough to take care of themselves. They didn’t need the dragons until a few months back.”

“Last fall?” Jyl asked.

“Around then,” Zana said.

Which would place their arrival shortly after the decapitation of the Consort-King. Jyl doubted it was a coincidence, but she had more immediate problems to resolve.

The Talons wore blood red armor adorned with worked pieces of bone in the shape of fangs, and claws and full skulls. There were an even half dozen of them who walked silently in through the door and as they passed through the crowd, silence descended.

“Thanks for the offer to see your friend the chef,” Jyl said. “If this goes poorly, I’ll forget it entirely.”

Jyl felt safe in making that promise as, if things went as poorly as they imagined they might, she was likely to be ashes blowing on the wind. Despite the paralysis that she felt creeping down into her fingers and toes though, Jyl was fairly certain she could wrestle a better fate for herself than that. The dragon fear was distant and if it approached she could hide. There was no ocean trapping her here after all, and while she didn’t want to abandon her companions, she for damn sure wasn’t going to throw her own life away when she could live and avenge them instead. It was what she would demand they do for her if their situation were reversed.

“If it goes well, I’ll remember that,” Zana said, and tugged her sleeve back to reveal a bare forearm. Or it appeared bare at first. As Jyl watched a silver tattoo rippled into existence and then vanished just the same. The tattoo had been the image of a dragon in flight but in place of horns on its head, there had been a halo.

Zana nodded to Jyl and pulled her sleeve back down.

Jyl, for her part, was bewildered. She’d never heard of magical tattoos in Gallagrin, and unlike Dae, she was unversed in the traditions of the other kingdoms.

Or at least mostly unversed. From what Jyl knew, the dragons of Paxmer were the partners of the Paxmer nobility (not property, even as an “ignorant Gallagrin savage”, Jyl knew the tales of people who’d mistaken dragons for property or pets, and those never ended well). What connection a dockhand might have with a dragon, or dragon cult, was something Jyl couldn’t begin to form a guess about.

She desperately wanted to turn the matter over to Dae, both to dump it on her superior officer and because Dae was the only one Jyl knew who might be able to make sense of what was going on.

Unfortunately Dae had problems of her own. Though she and Mayleena sat at one of the side bars and were heads down in their drinks, they still drew the Talons attention. That was likely Mayleena’s fault Jyl guessed. The daughter of the Telli clan had an aura that was arresting and unmistakable. Her veil did nothing to help her hide or distract attention from her. At best it insulated people from the worst edge of the disquiet she emanated if you didn’t know her well enough to see the woman underneath the magical aberration she’d become.

Jyl watched one of the two Talons reach out to grab Mayleena’s arm. The other Talons were harassing other patrons but Jyl saw how that was no more than a handful of seconds away from changing drastically. The destruction of the Fearless jumped into her mind with vivid clarity and Jyll paused a second to consider whether she was in the path of destruction that Mayleena was sure to unleash.

Surprisingly though, it wasn’t Mayleena who responded to the Talon.

Jyl was too far away to hear what was said, but she was close enough to see Dae’s features when the Queen’s Knight looked up from her drink and spoke to the Talons.

It wasn’t a woman speaking to the guards. It was an unrestrained Pact Spirit. Metal and fury twisted Dae’s features and the Queen’s Knight seemed to swell in both size and power. She spoke again and the Talon’s turned away, visibly shaken and confused.

Elsewhere in the tavern, the Talons rounded up a pair of the patrons and growled the rest out of their path as they led their quarry out of the tavern in conjured chains.

“Well, that was intriguing,” Zana said. “And unexpected. I didn’t know someone could do that.”

Turn into a Berserker at will? Jyl thought. Yes, we don’t tend to do that because now we’re all going to die.

Except when she looked back, Dae was not long an uncontrolled Pact Spirit. She was a normal, if very tired looking, woman.

What in the Sleeping Gods Hells did she just do? Jyl wondered.

“I would very much like you to come meet my friend the cook,” Zana said. “I believe we have concerns that are closely related.”

“That sounds like an invitation I may not be allowed to pass up?” Jyl asked, wondering if there was an implied threat lurking under Zana’s words.

“If this is a bad time, then we can arrange for some other appointment,” Zana said.

Dae finally looked over and saw Jyl speaking with an unfamiliar dwarf. She tilted her head as an open ended question for Jyl. Jyl replied by shifting her gaze to the kitchen door and then shrugging, asking wordlessly if it was ok to follow the lead Zana offered. Dae nodded and tapped Mayleena on the shoulder, who rose from her seat in response to the prompt.

“I think now will do just fine,” Jyl said. “But I may need to invite some guests.”

“The more, the deadlier,” Zana said. “And in this case, that’s a good thing.”

Alari sat in her Sunrise Garden and watched the early blooming flowers stubbornly refusing the call of the impending spring. They’d been planted with an exact plan in mind for when the petals would unfold so that each day would see a new color added to the garden as the day began. With the sun full over the horizon however there was still nothing more to see in the garden than the brown branches of the bushes and the black loam they’d been planted in.

During her father’s reign, a similar mistake on the gardener’s part would have resulted in the garden being decorated in a festive shade of blood red. Which by afternoon would have faded to a dried blood brown and then at night into the reds and yellows of purging flames.

Alari was not her father however. In her mind, the thought of a plan running to its initial course was laughably unlikely, no matter how small or grand the plan was. She enjoyed the Sunrise garden on the years when it bloomed properly, but she enjoyed more the conversations with the gardeners as they explained their ideas to her.

In the garden she got to see one vision realized, but in her conversations the staff who tended to the arrangement of the bushes and flowers she was gifted with hundreds of variations.

Of all of her staff, Alari thought she was probably fondest of the gardeners. Well, fondest after her Knight, but it had been a long time since she’d told herself that she was merely “fond” of her Adae.

For the thousandth time, Alari questioned the wisdom of sending Dae off on a quest to recruit Estella sur Korkin to their cause. It was an insanely dangerous and difficult mission, adding the complications of family and betrayal on top of it made for a duty that no one could hold up under.

Nobody except for Alari’s Knight. Alari knew her plan was going to go wrong. She knew that the pieces she’d carefully put into place were going to fall apart at some point. She also knew that Dae would find a way to put them back together. Or at least she believed.

Like a gardener, Alari could know only what had happened in the past. She could cut and prune away some possibilities and work to add in others, but she couldn’t know that her design would come to fruition.

Like a perennial though, Dae had come through for her time and again, when she most needed it, and so, in a real sense, Alari had planted the garden of her plans around the impossible task she set before her beloved Knight.

No matter how long she mulled that over, no matter how much she looked for contingencies and options that would put her Guard at less risk, Alari ultimately couldn’t find a stronger solution to the problem that vexed her. The problem that had vexed Gallagrin for centuries. Paxmer.

Originally the two countries has been the best of neighbors. Under the care and tutelage of the Sleeping Gods before slumber claimed them, Gallagrin and Paxmer had once been steadfast partners in developing the peninsula they inhabited. Gallagrin possessed abundant hard resources like metals and gems and wood while Paxmer possessed numerous trading ports and an abundance of soft resources like food and textiles. Trade between the two countries had been to the benefit of both for centuries.

As the world grew and the realms became free to interact with each other though, the relationship between the two neighbors changed. Gallagrin found cheaper sources of imported food and clothing and Paxmer watched the money from their northern neighbor flow elsewhere.

If there is one thing dragons are not forgiving of, it is anything that removes treasure from their grasp, even if that treasure is in the form of future earnings.

That made the problem of Paxmer, the problem of Dragons. With the souring of Paxmer and Gallagrin’s relationship, and the absence of the gods removing their ability to enforce good behavior, war had followed quickly along. An invasion of Paxmer was impractical given the power of its guardians. Paxmer’s invasions of Gallagrin hadn’t been able to draw on their power, but in the attacks on the ships at sea, Alari caught glimpses of a future catastrophe that awaited Gallagrin.

If dragons could be sent to fight on the waves, then it was only a matter of time before Paxmer would work out a method to deploy them on the land as well.

Like the buds that had not yet bloomed though, there was still time, Alari thought, to nip that problem while it was manageable and not leave it as a pending nightmare for some future queen to deal with.

“Your Majesty, am I intruding?” General Karlin Limli asked as he entered the garden  He came carrying an armful of scrolls and other documents, a sign that left Alari to suppress an involuntary sigh.

The best part about a garden that hadn’t bloomed was that few people visited it. That along turned the gardener’s design failure into a stellar success in Alari’s eyes. The rolls of scrolls in General Limli’s arms suggested that Alari’s idle time was at an end though, so she turned to face the Senior Commander of the Gallagrin Southern Royal Army.

“Not at all General,” Alari said. “What news do you bring?”

“A number of reports that I am to invite you to look over, but will most likely summarize so that you can discard them at your leisure,” Limli said. “Or not, they may possibly have bearing on a deeper matter.”

“What matter would that be?” Alari asked.

“Paxmer seems to be redeploying its draconic forces,” Limli said.

“That’s not uncommon with the change of seasons,” Alari said. “But we gather this is not their usual sort of springtime migration?”

“You are correct Your Majesty,” Limli said. “The reports that we’ve received indicate that this is a far more extensive mobilization of the big land dragons than we’ve seen in previous years. From what we can tell, virtually all of them are in motion.”

“And we will hazard a guess that they are heading towards the northwestern corner of Paxmer?” Alari asked.

“I am not sure whether to be astonished or concerned that you could guess their destination so accurately,” Limli said. “Has someone preceded me in bringing you this news?”

“No General, you are the first to confirm the dragon’s movements for us,” Alari said. “Other reports had hinted that such a migration might occur but with the confirmation of it, we can proceed with our own agenda at last.”

“I am cheered to find you in an active mood Your Majesty,” Limli said. “I had been concerned you might without forces from supplementing the Royal Army divisions in the region.”

“We are not uncaring of our border regions,” Alari said. “They bear a terrible burden, and we will not see their service go unrewarded.”

“In that case, perhaps you will be receptive to some of the strategies the Southern Army’s tacticians have developed for this eventuality?” Limli asked.

“We have reviewed the plans which were developed last year in haste following the Consort King’s demise,” Alari said. “We have even kept in contact with the architects of those plans, so there is likely little to discuss.”

“I know that an invasion of Paxmer is a drastic step, and presents untold risks to our forces, but we believe we can overcome their dragons with the proper tactics,” Limli said.

Alari had seen those tactics worked out in countless variations on a similar central theme. Dragons were immense creatures and were only vulnerable to extremely powerful weapons. Their weakness, as much as they had a common weakness, was that their size made them easy targets for siege weaponry. A standard bow and arrow couldn’t pierce dragon scales but a five foot long, enchanted ballista bolt was another matter.

The challenge with using siege weaponry on dragons lay in keeping the dragons from charging the siege engines and fearing then slaying all of the operators. To counter this the best laid plans called for a number of approaches, from traps and trenches to take advantage of natural terrain. None of that was enough to stop a dragon on its own though, which was where the Pact Knight’s came in.

Dae and other Pact Knights had proven that it was possible to stand before a dragon and delay them briefly. Any delay in battle was an opening for fatal attacks to exploit. Unfortunately that worked in both directions. While the Southern Army could possibly succeed in killing dragons with their tactics, it would come at the cost of several Pact Knights for each of the beasts they had to take down.

“We will not be authorizing an invasion of Paxmer,” Alari said.

“But that’s our best chance for defending the people we’re trying to defend,” Limli said.

“No,” Alari said. “The only sure method to preserve their lives is to ensure they are not in the dragons’ path. You will have your extra troops General, but your orders will be to evacuate the people from border towns once the order to leave is given, or as soon as Paxmer begins to march on our border.”

“Your Majesty! You can’t mean that!” Limli said.

“We are in complete earnest as to our intentions,” Alari said.

“But you can’t just give them Gallagrin! Our people have fought and died for that land!” Limli said.

“We are supposed to say that they fought valiantly and that their lives are a beacon to those who survive them to carry the battle forward,” Alari said. “The truth is harsher however. In the past, Gallagrin spent the lives of its sons and daughters poorly. Our predecessors wrestled with saving inches and bought that space with blood and sorrow. We will not make their mistake.”

Limli shrank back, his eyes wide as he regarded his queen.

“What doctrine of defense will you pursue then Your Majesty?” Limli asked.

Alari was able to translate that easily to its proper meaning of ‘what flavor of insanity has gripped you, my queen?’

“Several,” Alari said. “Some of which are already in motion, others we may begin to enact now that Paxmer has started to thaw and is committing itself to our destruction.”

“Evacuating the border is going to be difficult Your Majesty,” Limli said. “We may not, no, will not, be able to get all to leave their homes behind.”

“That too is part of our plan,” Alari said. Given the hard headed idiocy of her subjects, and the mindful races in general, it didn’t take a tactical genius to account for the certainty that some number of them would remain entrenched on the border even in the face of a draconic invasion. Alari was determined that those people, foolish as they were, would not be sacrificed to Paxmer. None of her subjects would be, but that didn’t mean their stubbornness couldn’t be make to serve her interests.

“My apologies then Your Majesty,” Limli said. “I do not see how this will not be a debacle. If that  means I must resign commission then I shall and will retire as quietly as you desire.”

“General, we cannot accept your apology,” Alari said. “We are not our father. We will not hold your opinion or your council against you.”

“Truly?” Limli asked.

“Truly,” Alari said. “We are well aware of the scope of the task we are engaged in. We are also aware of the need for security around the sensitive elements of it. This is why you have not been fully briefed, and why we cannot discuss the entirety of the machinations which are in motion. Despite that however, we would still have your council. We retained you as one of our Senior Commanders because we trust your judgement.”

“I don’t believe those are words your father ever uttered,” Limli said.

“You are likely correct,” Alari said. “The amusing thing is, if our schemes succeed, history may judge us to be a far worse calamity than our father ever was.”

Haldri Paxmer hated waiting. It was beneath the dignity of a Queen to wait on the appearance of a lesser being, and in the end everyone else beside Haldraxan was a lesser being when compared to the Queen of Paxmer.

“Oh good, you’re still here,” Merrin Quick said as she was escorted through the door that led to the queen’s Tactical Reception room.

“You are tardy,” Haldri said. “I do not know that I have business to do with a shipping clerk who delivers herself late to a scheduled meeting.”

“I would take offense at that, but I actually did start as a shipping clerk,” Merrin said. “You should try it. It’s very enlightening to see how an organization can run smoothly or poorly based on how well the management understands what they’re asking their workforce to accomplish.”

“I need no lessons in governance,” Haldri said. “What delayed you?”

“Late delivery of news on some sourcing opportunities,” Merrin said. “I thought you’d appreciate having the most up to date information for how much of your speciality materials we’ll be able to deliver.”

“I will appreciate the news only if its good,” Haldri said.

Merrin smiled and shook her head, either in disbelief or mockery. Haldri was tempted to forget the strategic value the Gallagrin guildmaster represented. Feeding Merrin to Haldraxan wouldn’t support Haldri’s plan at all, but it would make the queen feel marvelously better, or so she imagined.

“It’s not good news,” Merrin said. “It’s fantastic news. House Scor had its outstanding tax liens called in by the Gallagrin crown.”

“And why should we be concerned over something so trivial as Gallagrin coins moving from one noble house to another?” Haldri asked.

“It’s complicated,” Merrin said. “Are you sure you want the explanation?”

“You seemed to feel it was important enough to delay this meeting for,” Haldri said.

“I wanted to walk in here with the proper information,” Merrin said. “I don’t promise things I can’t deliver, and being aware of the current state of the market is a big part of that.”

“Then tell me why this affects your market,” Haldri said.

“House Scor was a supporter of King Sathe during the civil war a few years back. They backed him up till the end but when Queen Alari won the throne, they claimed they’d only backed Sathe because he held their heir and his two younger brothers as hostages against the house’s good behavior,” Merrin said.

“If they backed the Butcher King, why do they still exist?” Haldri asked.

“A lot of nobles backed Sathe,” Merrin said. “When the Queen ascended to the throne, her court was one quarter allies, one quarter enemies and the remaining half were people who were somewhere in the middle.”

“In Paxmer we have a solution to problems like that,” Haldri said.

“The Queen doesn’t have dragons to call on,” Merrin said.

“Of course you don’t,” Haldri said. “Just those foolish little spirit bonded warriors.”

“Yeah, and the Pact Knights are scattered among all of the nobles, so the Queen had to be careful with how she reconstructed the kingdom,” Merrin said. “One of the areas that’s produced a lot of friction is who pays for all the rebuilding. Even seven years out from the fighting there are still bridges that haven’t been rebuilt and fields that need to be recovered.”

“You make it sound as though the kingdom is in such poor shape that someone could simply walk in and conquer it by saying they did,” Haldri said.

“Probably looks tempting but I wouldn’t recommend it,” Merrin said. “Rebuilding the nation’s defenses has been a top priority. The Queen has invested a lot the country’s wealth in restoring both its economic and military viability.”

“And House Scor factors into this tale how?” Haldri asked. Because she was a queen, people seemed to uniformly consume as much of her time as they possibly could. Haldri was certain that Merrin would fall into that trap as well and explain the minutiae of Gallagrin politics and its economic conditions for as long as the queen allowed her to speak. It was better, Haldri decided, to keep the conversation on track lest she give in to the royal urge to throttle the inane prattling out of Merrin before another word could be uttered.

“House Scor was the recipient of a sizeable chunk of gold which went towards the production of just the sort of weapons and armor that you’re looking for.” Merrin said.

“And how does that do us any good?” Haldri asked. “We don’t need the Paxmer queen better armed. It’s a shame our brother left her with any arms at all.”

“House Scor was given the gold for prototypes,” Merrin said. “Which they produced using a new smelting method. They claimed the weapons and armor would be lighter, stronger and easier to maintain, and the initial testing of the prototypes proved that out.”

“How joyful,” Haldri said. “So Gallagrin has superior mundane weapons.”

“Gallagrin has the prototypes of superior mundane weapons,” Merrin said. “That’s all that the crown paid for. House Scor went on and began producing a sizeable quantity of their gear on their own in anticipation of heavy demand once the results of the prototype testing were released. That’s what put them in the poor position they’re in today.”

“The results were never released?” Haldri asked, finding herself delighted that someone had been double crossed. She could work with that sort of information.

“The results were contested,” Merrin said. “Poor testing methodology was the official reason given. At the same time, the crown decided it was time to call in the back taxes which House Scor owed since rebuilding a country is a costly endeavor.”

“Did they hope to seize the weapons as part of the tax payment?” Haldri asked. As much as she hated Alari Gallagrin, Haldri couldn’t help but smile at the properly draconic display of royal privilege.

“No,” Merrin said. “As weapons built from an untested material there’s no simple method of setting a price on them aside from an open auction.”

“And you intend to bid as a proxy for our interests at that auction?” Haldri asked.

“Of course not,” Merrin said. “With the news of the tests results having leaked out, that gear will go for a very high bid. Everyone will want to be able to say that their troops are equipped with the most fearsome weapons and the most durable armor the world has ever scene.”

“If you are not going to bid on them, then why does any of this matter to us?” Haldri asked.

“For two reasons,” Merrin said. “First because this represents an additional source of weapons and armor that wasn’t in play up until now, and second because I don’t need to bid on them to deliver them to you.”

“You plan to steal them?” Haldri asked.

“Bidding on them would require charging you a rate above and beyond the already high bids the weapons are likely to draw in. When you do business with me, I look out for your bottom line,” Merrin said. “Some guilds want to squeeze you dry on the spot. That’s good for them in the short term but not so much for a long term partnership.”

“And what does looking out for our bottom line get you?” Haldri asked. Despite her draconic heritage, Haldri was familiar with the concept of cooperative business arrangements. Because of her draconic heritage though she knew that cooperation was often a most effective veil at hiding someone’s true ambitions.

Merrin Quick seemed so delightfully uncomplicated on the surface. A pure streak of mercenary greed ran through her from top to bottom and side to side. She was the perfect tool for Haldri’s arsenal and that raised the Queen of Paxmer’s suspicions more than anything else. No one was as singularly focused on wealth acquisition as Merrin Quick seemed to be, and Haldri was used to judging that impulse against the standard of the dragons she knew.

Despite Haldri’s misgivings though, Merrin offered no resistance to any of the tests Haldri put before her. Merrin’s only criteria were that her workers were paid whatever she considered a fair rate for the requested task, and that the payment be made directly in gold.

“We’ll need to expand to fulfill the order you wish to place,” Merrin said. “I want to make sure that once this contract is complete, we’ve fulfilled it to the most exacting letter possible. If we can prove that no one else can offer service as good, or as cheap, as we do then you’ll be that much more likely to contract with us again, and having a royal client on our resume is a victory all on its own.”

“So how are you going to steal these weapons for us?” Haldri asked.

“Well, I’m not going to tell you that,” Merrin said. “Our methods of procurement rely on a high level of discretion, so I can’t give you the exact details. What I can tell you though is how we are not going to obtain them, and how, hypothetically, one might go about liberating the materials from the possession of House Scor.”

“We are more interested in how much you plan to charge us for these enhanced weapons and armor?” Haldri asked. Her own gold reserves were far deeper than Alari Gallagrin’s were, but Haldri had to fight the draconic compulsion against ever spending even a single coin she owned.

“These are items that are above and beyond the quantities which we agreed on the last time we spoke,” Merrin said. “They also carry an unusually high risk. I spoke with my ledger keepers and their suggestion was to charge double for these. I told them we needed to do better than that though. One does not try to profiteer off the Queen of Paxmer. According to the correspondence they sent today, with a ten percent surcharge we can cover the added risk for the weapons and still see a slight return on our time and investment.”

“And if we do not agree to pay the surcharge you speak of?” Haldri asked. She calculated what an extra ten percent charge on the weapons would do to her personal accounts and found that the sum was trivial. Irritating but trivial.

“That’s entirely up to you,” Merrin said. “We’ll be happy to supply the arms you requested at the original rates we agreed upon, without these additional items. All we need is a commitment from you and the down payment of gold as we’d talked about. If I can leave here with that today then we can get the delivery process started.”

“And if we delay the initial payment?” Haldri asked.

“Then you’re delaying reception of the goods, and incurring the risk that the inventory will be unavailable when you request it,” Merrin said.

“These blades will be used to spill the blood of your countrymen. That truly doesn’t trouble you though does it?” Haldri asked.

Merrin shrugged.

“No, why should it?” she asked. “A sword is created to cut and stab. I don’t see the point in caring about whose hand holds it. If it’s Paxmer troops killing Gallagrin soldiers or Gallagrin citizens killing each other with the blades you still wind up with a pile of corpses at the end of the day.”

“Then speaking of that, perhaps there is something else your guild can provide for us,” Haldri said.

“If the price is reasonable, we can get you just about anything you can imagine,” Merrin said.

“Excellent,” Haldri said. “And what would the price be on the pile of corpses that you mentioned? A large one.”

“That all depends on how many you need, who they need to be, and how freshly dead you want them at the time of delivery,” Merrin said. “Don’t worry though, we have a variety of options to offer in that regards. In fact we even have a price sheet made up for it.”

“You do?” Haldri asked.

“It’s primarily used by schools for chirurgeons,” Merrin said. “But we’re willing to be flexible.”

Standing outside, on the streets of Windsmer, Dae closed her eyes for a moment and struggled to put away the one thought that she couldn’t get out of her mind.

I don’t want to be here. She couldn’t voice that impulse no matter how terribly she wanted to. She had to be strong and sure. A leader that Maelynne Telli and Jyl Lafli could follow. They needed her to be brave despite the insanity of creeping through a city where a dozen adult dragons stood guard.

“We feel their shadows,” May said. “Even from this distance, their malice lies over us like a cloak.”
A single dragon would be hard pressed to cover a city the size of Windsmer in dragon fear, but twelve of them together were another matter.

“This is the passive miasma they spread,” Dae said. “They must have been on watch for a while now for it to have spread so far.”

“How do the townspeople stand it?” Mayleena asked. Her voice was calm, even disinterested, but Dae saw a shiver run through her teammate.

“It doesn’t affect them,” Dae said. “It’s part of the compact that forms the dragons. They can’t harm anyone who’s a citizen of Paxmer. Not directly anyways.”

“And indirectly?” May asked. She was still wearing her veil, so Dae had to imagine the strained expression under it. That wasn’t hard to picture given the subject matter.

The duo had emerged from the underground grotto to find themselves in a guard tower located on one side of Windsmer’s harbor. It was inhabited but so long as they weren’t discovered Dae and Mayleena were free to use their Pact Knight abilities to evade being spotted. They had a few close calls but, with the city under the protection of the dragons, the human and dwarven guards in residence weren’t paying particularly careful attention, especially for an attack via a route that was guarded by giant sea monsters.

“Indirectly, the dragons serve as a deterrent to internal strife by just being present,” Dae said. “All it takes is for someone with sufficient authority to revoke a person or groups citizenship and the dragons are free to roast or eat them alive. Paxmer’s throne has defended its position with that tactic more than once.”

“Windsmer is a trade city, is it not?” May asked.

“It is,” Dae said. “And normally strongly allied with the Paxmer crown. Which makes the dragons a strange sight.”

“Paxmer fears an attack from Sunlost?” May asked.

“Maybe,” Dae said. She turned them down a side street that wasn’t as brightly lit as the main thoroughfares.

“Can Sunlost glamour hold against dragonfire?” May asked.

“It didn’t on the Fearless,” Dae said. “Which is the problem.”

Dae motioned to May for silence and waited, unmoving for a pair of minutes. No one followed them down the alley, and from what Dae knew, Paxmer didn’t have any native magics that enhanced their ability to hide. It seemed like a safe bet that they weren’t being followed, so Dae resumed their trek away from the guard house.

“If Sunlost glamours cannot hold against dragonfires would that not be a good thing from Paxmer’s perspective?” May asked.

“Yes, it would,” Dae said. “Which opens the question of why they think they need twelve dragons to defend a single town when one dragon would probably be enough?”

“Perhaps they are not meant to defend the town?” May asked.

“Perhaps not,” Dae said. “Let’s find someplace to get a drink. I want to hear what the locales are complaining about.”

The dockside tavern they settled on was a lively establishment on the harbor side of a small park where musicians and performers were raising a boisterous ruckus.

“Got your papers?” the bartender asked as Dae slid onto a seat at the bar.

“Just got in, supposed to pick them up tomorrow,” she said.

“Supposed to stay in your ship until you get your papers,” the bartender said.

“There’s an excise tax if we don’t right?” Dae asked. International taxes were complex and, largely arbitrary, but direct personal bribes under a plausible cover had the ability to cut through all that.

“Yeah, there is,” the bartender said and dropped two glasses down in front of Dae and Mayleena. Dae fished out some of the Sunlost coins she was carrying and dropped a few in the bartender’s hand to cover the drinks. He motioned for more, and Dae doubled the number of coins, to cover the “excise tax”. She considered adding a few more as a “tip” but refrained. A sailor looking to get a jump on their drinking would certainly pay a bribe when required but they wouldn’t throw money away.

“What do you think we will find here?” May asked, raising her veil to sip from the drink the bartender offered.

Dae looked around the tavern and sipped her own drink before answering. The liquor burned as it went down, and Dae grimaced. She’d made a career out of imbibing terrible booze but Paxmer drinks were still beyond her ability to enjoy. Mixing hot pepper oil into a beverage meant to numb the senses was an insanity she swore she would never understand.

“I don’t know,” Dae said. “I guess I just want to hear what people aren’t talking about. What are the common folk here afraid of?”

“Will our companion be able to find us?” Mayleena asked.

“She should be able to. So long as we don’t need to go into hiding,” Dae said. “There’s only a few places we can go at this hour and an even smaller number of those that will serve foreigners without papers.”

“And what if she is delayed?” Mayleena asked.

“She’s resourceful,” Dae said. “If she can’t get away I’m sure it’ll be obvious where we need to go to meet her.”

Dae had faith in Jyl, but Mayleena’s words still dug in and hit some sensitive nerves. There were plenty of things that could go wrong with stealing papers for the three of them. If Jyl ran into any trouble, she was on her own in dealing with it.

The irksome part was that Jyl’s actions were the right move tactically speaking. By venturing off on her own, Jyl ensured that there was the lowest chance of someone noticing the burglary and, if she was caught no suspicion would fall on Dae or Mayleena.

It also meant that Dae was powerless to help which was a situation she hated being placed in.

“Should we be here?” Mayleena asked, putting down her drink after a second sip.

“No,” Dae said. “We should be out there, ready to back our friend up when she needs us.”

“Apologies,” Mayleena said. “I meant should I be here?”

Dae blinked and looked at her companion for a long moment.

Of them all, Mayleena had seemed like the one who’d handled the dragon fear, and the entirety of the trip, the best so far. She’d sat out the fight with the Harbor Wyrms but she’d been rational enough to understand her own limitations and sensible enough to make allowances for them. That was a pair of traits that Dae wished she possessed in greater abundance.

Watching Mayleena carefully though, Dae’s image of her shifted. Mayleena wasn’t an abomination of magic. Dae had put that notion behind her before they left Gallagrin. In its place, the image of Mayleena as an immensely powerful warrior had emerged. The veil that Mayleena wore stood as armor in Dae’s mind, not to protect Mayleena but to protect the world from the terrible power that she wielded. That image was flawed as well though.

Mayleena was a tremendously powerful individual as a result of her miscast pact bond, but she was also a woman who was younger than Dae and who’d grown up in a house ruled by the former Duke of Tel. Because of her pact bond, she affected an air of composure and calm, but in the metallic eyes that lay behind Mayleena’s veil there were storms raging.

Dae wanted to reach out and comfort Mayleena with soothing words, but she knew those would fall flat. May’s doubts were real and well founded, and they deserved to be treated as such.

“It’s dangerous,” Dae said. “This realm isn’t friendly to any of us and you’re more at risk than either Jyl or I are.”

“Should we go?” Mayleena asked. “It’s not too late to catch one of the departing ships.”

Dae watched her take another sip of the throat scorching liquid.

“Are you asking my opinion or my permission?” Dae said.

“Either, or, maybe, both?” Mayleena said. “Should I even need to ask this question? We should know what we want. Shouldn’t we? Like you do?”

Dae stifled a laugh before she spewed her drink across the bar.

She considered her response as she regained her composure and measured how open she could be with her speech. With the musicians in full swing it was possible to pick up on a few of the conversations around them but only because the drunken sailors in attendance didn’t seem to understand that they could speak any softer than screaming at the top of their lungs. For close conversation like Mayleena and Dae were having the odds of anyone eavesdropping on them were just short of impossible. One of the Sleeping Gods could manage it but Dae was reasonably certain none of them were in attendance.

“It’s a fine question to ask,” Dae said, recovering her composure. “I’m not the right one to ask though.”

“Your commands are ours to follow,” Mayleena said.

“My command, the one I was given, was to accomplish the mission and bring all of us home safely,” Dae said. “I would be a poor executor of that command if I insisted that you push yourself unrecoverably far past your limits.”

“You couldn’t know that though,” Mayleena said. “We don’t know what our limits are yet.”

“That’s why it has to be your decision to carry on or not,” Dae said. “I know this isn’t easy. I know the encounter we had at sea wasn’t one we weren’t ready for. This entire mission is probably one we’re not ready for.”

“Then should we all go?” Mayleena asked.

“Honestly?” Dae said. “Part of me wants nothing more. I don’t want to face those dragons. I don’t want to meet the person we’ve been sent to meet. I don’t want to be here.”

Dae breathed out a long sigh.

“I don’t want to be here, but it’s where I have to be,” she said.

“We met when I was young,” Mayleena said. “Or, we saw you at least.”

“When was this?” Dae asked.

“During the Butcher King’s reign,” Mayleena said. “You were a wise and powerful courtier of thirteen we guess?”

“I was far from either wise or powerful at thirteen,” Dae said.

“That’s not what we saw,” Mayleena said. “We saw you moving through the court as though none of it frightened you. The most powerful lords and ladies of the land had convened for an official function, and you walked through their ranks as though not a single one of them mattered.”

“Sleeping gods, I must have looked insufferable,” Dae said. “I was probably tagging along after Alari. I doubt I even noticed anyone else was in the room.”

“You loved her then?” Mayleena asked.

Dae paused.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It took me a long time to understand what my princess meant to me. Somedays it’s still a work in progress. I suspect the answer is yes, but whether I had any clue of that at the time I can’t say.”

“You let none of that show,” Mayleena said. “From afar all I could see was a girl I wanted to be just like.”

“I’m not sure that showing the world a false face is a skill I should feel particularly proud of,” Dae said.

“Perhaps it was not as false as you believe,” Mayleena said. “You have become the woman you were pretending to be then have you not?”

Dae smiled and sighed.

“Let’s say that some days, most days to be strictly accurate, I’m a work in progress too,” Dae said.

“And yet you carry on,” Mayleena said.

“I have to,” Dae said. “Alari is right. I have to face the dragons. I have to face my mother. Whether it’s to kill them or come to terms with them, I don’t know, but until I do one or the other a part of me is going to be stuck gnawing away at those memories. I need to know that I can be better than that.”

“Thank you,” Mayleena said. “We think you’ve given us the answer I needed. We too need to face this. We’re not ready, but we will never be ready. If my life is a testament to anything it is that things happen which we can never imagine or predict and that one must move on in their wake.”

“Here’s to pressing onwards then,” Dae said offering her glass up as a toast. “The road won’t be easy and we’re sure to have regrets, but they’ll never be able to say we let good sense hold us back.”

The wyrms returned the following evening and, to Dae’s relief, they returned alone.

The second meeting on the ocean’s floor between the Gallagrin Queen’s Guard and the Windsmer Habor Wyrms was similar to their first encounter with the exceptions that no blows were thrown and the chest of gold offered to the three wyrms was larger than its predecessor.

The wyrms once again waited a safe distance away from Dae’s team, clearly reluctant to step into any trap the three Pact Warriors might have devised.

“Tomorrow, same time, here again,” Dae said and lead her team away.

They trudged through the deep waters for a few miles until they were able to make landfall in the isolated cove that served as their temporary camp.

“Did that go well or poorly?” Jyl asked as they emerged from the surf. “I can’t tell.”

“That went very well,” Dae said. “I was pretty sure they were going to come back, but since it was only them and not a dragon rider or a battalion of Paxmer guards I think they got our message.”

“And what were we communicating to them?” May asked.

“Last night we told them that we’re not something they could risk using force on,” Dae said. “We closed that door, but we opened another one with the treasure.”

“The struck us as an odd gambit,” May said.

“It was a bit of a guess, and a bit of an observation,” Dae said. “I guessed they were probably close cousins to dragons, and there’s nothing that defines a dragon more than their greed.”

“And the observation?” Jyl asked.

“There are twelves dragons here guarding the city,” Dae said. “How much respect does that show to the Harbor Wyrms? Nobody likes to be upstaged.”

“So the gold was both a bribe and an offering of respect?” May asked.

“It says ‘you are important enough that I want to deal with your directly’,” Dae said. “If they’d brought their masters then the response would have been ‘our honor isn’t for sale so cheaply’. Instead they came alone which says ‘we are intrigued by your offer and wish to hear more’.”

“So why did we leave them alone?” Jyl asked.

“They’re not ready yet,” Dae said. “They’re still trying to trying to figure out what we’re after.”

“And what are we after?” May asked. “Aside from a method of entry to the city.”

The three had talked about their overall plan during the day they spent in hiding in the hidden cove, but this was the first time Dae was willing to share the details with them.

“A relationship with them,” Dae said. “Even if they’re ill treated, they’ll still have some loyalty that’s been whipped into them for Paxmer. I don’t want to simply enter the city, I want to start cracking open its defenses. Our queen will need to send others into Paxmer too and these Wyrms could become very useful allies if we invest the right time and interest in them now.”

“That seems like a risky play,” May said.

“It is, but Paxmer’s defenses are thicker than dragonhide and we’re only going to achieve our objectives if we can weaken those defenses everywhere they’re fragile or vulnerable.”

“I thought our objective was to regain a lost magic crown?” Jyl asked.

“I’m thinking a bit longer term than that,” Dae said. “Paxmer has been a malady that Gallagrin has suffered for too long. I think in assaulting Queen Alari through the Halrek’s actions, Paxmer made its final mistake.”

“Do you think they know that?” Jyl asked.

“No, I don’t think they do,” Dae said. “Haldri had a chance to make amends. She could have disavowed her brother and condemned his actions. If she didn’t like what he did, she could have stripped him of his name and heritage and issued a formal apology for Paxmer’s role in the affair. Simple things for a queen to do and we could have had decades of peace between the two countries. Instead she’s reaching out trying to grab everything she can.”

“Is that what’s happening with Windsmer?” May asked.

“And with the flotilla that was sunk?” Jyl asked.

“Yes,” Dae said. “Paxmer has a new power to deploy. The adult dragons that can sail. Any time a nation gets something like that they can’t help but use it.”

“They sank a Sunlost ship,” May said. “That ups the ante quite a bit, doesn’t it?”

“They’ve been planning for that,” Dae said. “The raids on ships heading to Sunlost was going to provoke an official response at some point. They want someone to launch an attack against them, so that they can justify taking even more aggressive action.”

“I didn’t think their navy was a match for the Sunlost Fleet though?” Jyl said.

“It’s not,” Dae said. “Or it wasn’t. With the dragons in play it’s hard to say what the balance of power looks like. That’s probably why Paxmer is pushing so hard now.”

“They wish to strike before their foes understand how powerful they’ve become?” May said.

“It’s more than that though, isn’t it?” Jyl asked. “The dragons rule first through fear. If they can strike hard enough to instill fear in the other nations, people will flee or submit rather than fighting back.”

“You do a good job of thinking like a dragon Lady Lafli,” Dae said. “Of course there are those Paxmer has wronged sufficiently that they’ll never flee or submit.”

“Like our queen?” May asked.

“They’re going to try to kill her again aren’t they?” Jyl asked.

“They’ll have to,” Dae said. “And soon.”

“Shouldn’t we be protecting her then?” Jyl asked.

“We are,” Dae said.

The next night, the wyrms returned again. This time they were ready to speak.

“Why have you invaded our shores?” the largest of the three asked. It spoke in a mixture of voices, male and female, all overlapping each other and slightly out of synch. It was an eerie and alien thing to hear, but Dae didn’t let it bother her. She’d taken the Harbor Wyrm’s measure in battle, so she knew where she stood with them.

“We have a quarrel with the tyrants of the land beyond these shores,” Dae said.

“And why have you brought us tribute?” the largest asked.

“Because our quarrel is not with you or anything in the domain you rule,” Dae said.

“You have assaulted us in this domain,” the largest said.

“Against your might, the blows exchanged were the most trifling of disagreements,” Dae said. The wyrm which Jyl had beaten to a pulp bore an expression which disagreed with that assessment. Dae counted on the creature’s pride and ego to keep it from debating the point though.

“You bring more treasure,” the largest said, indicating the new chest that waited at Dae’s feet. “Why?”

“It’s proper to give gifts to a region’s sovereign before proposing an alliance or arrangement,” Dae said. The wyrms couldn’t claim true sovereignty over the harbor. They were obviously beholden to not only the Paxmer crown but to whoever summoned or constructed them. Despite that though, it wasn’t something a treasure hungry, draconic creature was likely to deny, and the broad reality of the situation was that the Harbor Wyrms did rule the area under the waves in the vicinity of Windsmer.

“And what arrangement is it that you seek?” the largest wyrm asked.

“We wish to gain the friendship of your realm,” Dae said.

“They wish to plunder!” the smallest of them said. “They give the gold because they intend to steal it back!”

“It would be well if you did not besmirch our honor,” Dae said is a calm, even voice.

The smallest Harbor Wyrm drifted back behind the cover of it’s larger companions.

“To what end do you seek our friendship then?” the largest asked.

“We seek to pass through your domain in peace,” Dae said. “And we request your aid in entering the landed city beyond your boundaries.”

“You wish to invade?” the largest asked.

“Yes,” Dae said, with no attempt to embellish or excuse their actions.

“We are sworn to defend the waves and repel all the enemies who would invade our realm,” the third wyrm said.

“It’s not your realm that we wish to invade,” Dae said. “Your realm we wish to travel through peacefully, and at your sufferance as the ships which make dock in the harbor do.”

“And your plans beyond that?” the largest wyrm asked.

“Will do no harm to the waves you protect,” Dae said.

“And you would trade the gold you have given and the gold before you for this privilege?” the largest wyrm asked.

“No,” Dae said. “The gold given and the gold you see is offered as befits your station. For the privilege of your aid, there is another chest, larger than this one, whose location we shall reveal once we have been transported within the city.”

“What guarantee do we have that you will reveal the location once we have fulfilled our end of the bargain?” the largest wyrm asked.

“Our presence in the city on the shore must remain a secret,” Dae said. “If we fail to disclose the gold’s whereabouts, or if the gold is not where we say it will be, you can easily raise a hue and cry that we slipped past you in the night.”

“And why would you trust us not to do so?” the third wyrm asked.

“The benefits of our alliance need not end this night,” Dae said. “We must eventually leave Paxmer’s shores, and there are others we know who will be looking to form similar alliances and would be willing to offer similar or greater tribute for the privilege.”

“The city is not easily entered,” the largest wyrm said. “Even if we chose not to bar your path, there are wards which defend the entrances from the sea.”

“Can they be bypassed?” Dae asked.

“No,” the largest wyrm said.

“Not easily,” the smallest wyrm said. “But it can be done.”

“But you will not accept it,” the largest wyrm said.

“What is it?” Dae asked. “How can we get into the city?”

“By riding within someone the barriers will accept,” the third wyrm said.

“They need to eat us?” Jyl asked, a knife blade of panic edging into her voice.

“It would be a test of…commitment,” the smallest wyrm said.

It would also be a test where the three Queen’s Guards could end up dead, digested or worse. Dae looked over at Jyl, who gave an uncertain shrug, and at May who nodded in support of either Dae or the idea itself.

“We’ll do it,” Dae said.

Five minutes later she was reasonably sure the Harbor Wyrms were not going to swallow them, and also reasonably sure that she never wanted to try this form of transportation again.

“That was interesting,” May said ten minutes later when, true to their words, the Harbor Wyrms deposited them inside a stone grotto that lay beneath Windsmer. Neither Dae nor Jyl would have used anything like polite language to describe the experience, but they let May’s words stand, in deference to the wyrms.

“You’ll find the chest we spoke of three of your body lengths west of the sunken mermaid statue that is a half mile north of where we met,” Dae said. “When next we plan to be in your domain, we will send an initial tribute first and will meet where we did this time again.”

“You are surprisingly civilized, Knight,”  the largest wyrm said. “Bountiful waters for your invasion.”

“May your horde’s luster ever increase,” Dae said, as the two groups departed from each other and the grotto.

“Do you think we added significantly to their wealth?” Jyl asked.

“I think our gold may be the first they’ve been given for themselves,” Dae said. “And that, more than anything, may be what changes their world.”

“So now it’s time for us to steal some traveling papers right?” Jyl asked.

“Exactly,” Dae said.

“Leave that to me,” the young elf said, and with a hop, skip and a jump, she vanished.

Jyl didn’t have to wonder if her boss had gone insane. That was a given. The Lady Daelynne Akorli was renowned for many things but the general consensus did not view her as a particularly calm and stable entity. Most of the nobles Jyl encountered had nice things to say about the Queen’s Knight for example, but they preferred to say them from as far away from the slayer of nobles and royalty as they could get. Jyl knew this when she signed up for the Queen’s Guard and had envied the respect Lady Akorli had garnered through deeds rather than position. It wasn’t Dae’s sanity that Jyl questioned as she heard the plan for taking on the incoming sea dragons therefor.

It was her own.

“We’re going to do what?” she asked, hoping that her ears had filled with seawater and she’d misheard her captain.

“We’re going to subvert the Harbor Wyrms to our cause,” Dae said.

“They no more than a few minutes away,” May said. “How will we convince them to aid us in that time?”

“Before they get here? We won’t,” Dae said. “We’re going to have to befriend them the hard way.”

“And that would involve what?” Jyl asked.

Floating in a dark ocean under a cloud dimmed sky, Jyl felt like she’d fallen into another world, and she wasn’t sure it was one that she liked.

“To be begin with, showing them that we make for a very disagreeable snack,” Dae said.

“The Harbor Wyrms are not small,” May said. “And they are not without power and perils of their own. I do not know that we can fight them in their own domain so easily.”

“We don’t get stuck with doing the easy things,” Dae said. “I don’t blame you for being nervous either. I think we can do this, but that’s based on a lot of guesswork.”

Jyl was more than nervous. In a moment of honest self-reflection, she felt the tremors that still ran along her spine. The long walk at the bottom of the ocean had given her enough time and distance from the dragon flight that she wasn’t paralyzed with fear, but it felt like pieces of those memories were embedded in her nerves like shards of glass.

“I don’t know if I can,” Jyl said. “Just getting here used up all the power I had available. I was almost losing it before we got to the shallows. I don’t think I have enough left to transform again.”

“I can not fight either,” May said. Her voice was soft but it carried over the lap of the waves.  “We are too close to our power. We drew too deeply on it and now we teeter at its brink. If we call on any more I will lose the part of us which is Mayleena. Maybe for a time, or maybe forever.”

“How many Harbor Wyrms are coming?” Dae asked. Her expression was unreadable to Jyl, which was in its own strange way comforting. If Dae had shown panic and fear, Jyl would have understood how alike they were. If Dae had shown anger or glee, Jyl would have appreciated that her boss was a monster, but one who was on their side. Instead Dae appeared neither calm nor panicked, neither angry, nor desperate. There was an intensity to the Queen’s Knight, a focused but relaxed energy that Jyl was familiar with from the best of her combat practice sessions. Jyl didn’t feel protected by that intensity, but rather inspired by it.

“Three,” May said. “They are no more than a minute away from us now. I am sorry, it is too late to lead them astray.”

“Don’t worry,” Dae said. “I’m not sacrificing either of you. We didn’t come here to die for Gallagrin. Now making other things die for Paxmer? That’s a different story.”

“Can you defeat all three of the wyrms alone?” May asked.

“Probably not,” Dae said. “I’ll need help with at least one of them, if my guesses are right.”

“We should have brought more troops,” Jyl said.

“You’re plenty,” Dae said. “The both of you are. Never, ever think otherwise.”

“I can’t transform though!” Jyl said.

“Maybe you can,” Dae said. “All you need is some extra magic to work with.”

“But if I call for any I’m going to lose control,” Jyl said.

“Then we just need to get you some magic without you having to call on your pact for it,” Dae said.

“That’s not possible,” Jyl said. “Is it?”

“May, you’re almost drowning in magic at the moment aren’t you?” Dae asked.

“We drew on too much, and if we use any of it, more rushes in to fill it’s place,” May said.

“What if you didn’t use it,” Dae said. “What if you passed it off to Jyl?”

“We could burn her to cinders if I passed too much,” May said.

“Wait, how would you give me magic?” Jyl asked. “I thought our magic came from our pact bonds?”

“That’s how we draw magic into this world,” Dae said. “But the pact bonds aren’t Gallagrin’s native magical gift. At its most fundamental level, our gift is the ability to shape and manipulate magic to change ourselves. The pact bonds safeguard us from changing the elements that define who we are or that we need to continuing existing, but as May has demonstrated its possible to live outside the limits of those safeguards.”

“Possible, but dangerous.” May said.

Jyl felt more tremors in her spine. Being terror-stricken by the dragons hurt enough that she wasn’t sure she wanted to risk anything like that ever again. If she accepted May’s help, she’d be plunged right back into the madness that had led to being helpless on the deck of the Fearless.

“Let’s try it,” she said, stomping on her thoughts and gritting her teeth. Jyl hated being afraid, she hated being weak, but most of all she hated giving up. Every time she gave up the same thing happened. Her sister won. In every race, in every test, in every competition, when Jyl faltered and gave up, her sister was right there, ready to take the prize from her.

Jyl knew it was her own personal brand of crazy that drove her since her sister was in no position to take anything away from her and there was no prize to be won beside survival, but she didn’t care. If life had taught her anything, it was that making your own personal brand of craziness work for you was often the only way to get what you wanted.

“Give me your hands,” Dae said and reached out to the other two women. “I’ll act as the buffer for Jyl.”

“We could burn you to cinders too then,” May said.

“You won’t,” Dae said. “I have a larger reservoir to hold your magic with, and I’ve spent more time doing stupid things with magic than either of you. I can handle this.”

Jyl’s elvish ears were just sharp enough to hear the “probably” that Dae whispered. Choosing to ignore that, Jyl took Dae’s left hand in her right and May’s right hand in her left.

For a moment nothing happened and Jyl was left to wonder how long they had before the Habor Wyrms showed up.

Then the magic started pouring into her.

When Jyl drew on her pact spirit’s magic, she had the image of drinking from a deep running stream. There was more power in her pact spirit than she could ever consume, and if she tried to take too much she’d easily drown. In walking across the ocean floor, she’d slowly drank the stream down to a point where to take more she’d have to lean out so far to drink from it that she’d tumble off the bank and be swept away by its current.

Taking in the power that Dae was funneling to her from Mayleena called for a different image though. Jyl was no longer drinking from a stream. Instead the ocean around her was trying to cram itself into her bones through every pore in her body.

Jyl had no idea what to do with that much power but fortunately her pact spirit did. Jyl had never worn Full Noble Regalia before, but she’d imagined it and her pact spirit drew on that to form a new set of armor around her.

She was soaring above the clouds before she came to her senses and felt the excess absorbed power burn off to the point where she could think clearly again. As it turned out, her heightened vantage point proved useful though.

From high in the sky, Jyl watched as the three incoming Harbor Wyrms caught sight of their quarry. They were magnificent creatures from a distance. Blue and green waves of light rippled down their enormous serpentine bodies, the faint glow illuminating the water around them and making the giant creatures stand out against the dark waves.

Jyl threw herself into a dive in order to join the impending fray, but checked her flight when she saw one of the three Wyrms turn tail and begin swimming at speed back to the docks.

“It saw May,” she whispered to herself, trying to work out the creature’s reasoning. “It’s going to warn the city.”

An alerted Windsmer meant a dozen dragons would be aware of their presence, and that wasn’t something Jyl couldn’t allow to happen so she sped after the fleeing Wyrm and prayed that Dae could handle the two other foes.

The fleeing Wyrm was easy to follow since it preferred to leap above the waves to make better speed than it seemed to be capable of while swimming through the water. With a body that seemed to be nothing but fluid muscle, it was almost able to outdistance Jyl as well.

Almost, but not quite.

When she hit the creature, Jyl fell on it like she’d been launched from a siege engine. Her force carried the wyrm to the floor of the ocean where she felt the beast twist around, seeking to grasp and crush the life from her.

They’d drawn close to Windsmer before Jyl was able to intercept the Harbor Wyrm and from the moment she hit her foe, Jyl’s mind was on the importance of not rousing the attention of the city watch, or more importantly the guardian dragons that were in place around the city. If the city was alerted then dragon fear would follow, and even the thought of that made her limbs tremble.

Dragon fear was not the primary danger she faced though. While Dae’s guess that the Harbor Wyrms were not the equals of the true Paxmer dragons was correct, the Wyrms were still formidable foes in their own right.

More formidable than Jyl found she could easily deal with in fact.

Each blow she threw hit for some effect, but not as much as she need them to if she was going to win the battle. She knew she was crippling herself with the fear of the dragons which lurked in the city above the waves, but even as the wyrm overwhelmed her defenses she couldn’t manage to push that fear aside.

“I can’t die here,” she said, reaching for anything that would get her past the sick feeling that was stealing her strength away. The power she’d borrowed from May rose inside her carrying with it the answer she sought. For an agonizing moment, Jyl wasn’t sure if she should accept the scalding flood of power that surged up, but looking into the electrified fangs of the Harbor Wyrm, she saw that she had no choice.

The next series of events were a blur to her. She felt anger sweep over her and directed it outwards. She was mad at her own weakness, but she was enraged by the creatures that had exploited it. The Harbor Wyrm was a lesser stand-in for a Paxmer dragon but as far as the madness was concerned it was an entirely acceptable target.

By the time Jyl was finished the Wyrm was a shattered wreck of its former self. The giant creature lay on ocean floor struggling to breathe and wimpering in pain. It was healing quickly, as magical creatures tended to do, but it still flinched away when Jyl advanced on it.

Exhausted, she nonetheless carried the great serpent back with her to where Dae and May were waiting for her.

The other two Harbor Wyrms were there as well, looking damaged though in better shape than the one Jyl had tangled with. With a glance at Dae for confirmation, Jyl allowed her former foe to drift over to its companions while she rejoined hers.

As Jyl settled into place beside her compatriots, Dae withdrew one of the chests of gold, a small one, from the backpack her Pact Knight armor had been conjured with.

Dae walked closer to the three wary Harbor Wyrms and placed the chest, lid open, before them.

The Harbor Wyrms weren’t dragons, but they’d been drawn from a similar template and had a similar appetite for treasure. The three exchanged glances among themselves and then spoke in tongues that sounded impossible and alien to Jyl’s ears.

After a short discussion, they reached some sort of agreement and held their position. Not retreating, not attacking, and not yet taking the proffered treasure.

Dae didn’t appear to be surprised by this. Instead she pointed to a nearby rock formation and said “Here, tomorrow, same time”. Her words were garbled by the water but the wyrms seemed to understand them well enough.

Without further discussion the three Queen’s Guards marched away, and allowed the Harbor Wyrms to decide if they were interested in obtaining more treasure. The bait had been placed, and in Jyl’s mind the only question was which side would be walking into the trap the next time they met.

Dae rested at the bottom of the ocean. Darkness and cold had swallowed her whole. The crushing pressure of the water was somehow less of a burden than the weight of her failed responsibilities though.

Joining the pursuit of the Paxmer ships had been foolish. They could have joined any of the other merchant ships to and snuck into Windsmer without attracting attention. Boarding the Fearless had been an act of pure ego. She’d known, or at least hoped, that there’d be a fight with the Paxmer ships. She’d known that the enemy was using dragons and she’d be excited by the prospect of facing one again. Terrified too, but for a brief moment she’d allowed herself to hope once more.

In the back of her mind, Dae questioned whether her failure at Star’s Watch was a fluke. The dragon there could have been unusually powerful. There could have been other spells in play. She could have been weaker at the time from her lack of experience.

Facing dragons on the sea had seemed like the perfect test, and in a sense it was. If there was anywhere that Dae was going to be able to beat Paxmer’s monsters, it was on the sea. They were far from their source of power and even their powerful flames could not overcome the vastness of the water around them. Dae was sure it was her best chance to prove that she could beat one of the beasts.

The ruin of the Fearless, and her own inability to act at all, proved that she couldn’t though. To Dae, the results of the battle showed clearly that she wasn’t strong enough to overcome the mortal terror the creatures could instill. It didn’t help that she’d never heard of anyone else being able to overcome dragon fear either, only that she’d failed to do so under even the most optimal of conditions.

Alari had given her a simply mission and once again, Dae lay amidst the wreckage of her insufficient strength. Kirios’ power was enough to shield her from the ravages of the deep waters, but even his best magic couldn’t protect Dae from the thoughts that tore away at her.

She’d been helpless. Again. If May wasn’t something inhuman, she would have died and Dae couldn’t have done a thing to stop that from happening.

She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t uniquely feeble. Despite the optimal conditions, none of the other crew members were able to throw off the effects of the dragon fear either. Not even the ones who were in mortal peril. Rational thoughts like that didn’t quiet the fear that echoed in her heart though.

Around her, the heavy wreckage of the Fearless lay strewn about the ocean floor. What little light still radiated from the glyphs and stray bits of glamour that clung to the ship gave the ocean floor the appearance of an empty afterlife filled with ghostly objects but no ghosts to be seen.

Dae tried to imagine what just giving up would feel like. Her spirit could linger forever in the quiet graveyard around her. Her failure would be buried beneath the waves and no one would ever need to know of it.

No one except her.

The idea of spending an eternity with the shame of her weakness weighing on her was an unbearable one. She’d failed. Facing up to that was difficult, but she’d done it before. On the Fearless, she hadn’t been able to move her limbs, but the waves had broken the ensorcellment the dragons laid on her.

So she stood up.

As a Pact Knight she had plenty of physical strength for the task but it was still one of the hardest actions Dae felt that she’d ever done.

Looking around, she saw that she wasn’t quite as alone as she thought. Curled into a tight ball and lying on her side, Jyl had survived by transforming into her armored form as well. Unlike Dae though, the young elf, hadn’t managed to get herself back on her feet.

Dae walked over to her companion and touched the motionless girl gently on the shoulder. Jyl didn’t stir and with her armor on it was difficult to tell if she was conscious at all. Dae stepped back and considered what her options were. They’d survived the Fearless sinking but they couldn’t spend an indefinite period of time beneath the waves. Eventually the magic of their transformation would wear out and need to be refreshed and eventually they wouldn’t be able to manage that without becoming berserkers.

Dae wasn’t sure if she could carry the weight of her own problems, but carrying someone else was another matter entirely. Gently, she lifted Jyl up onto her back and began to trudge to the east, towards Paxmer, and towards another chance. She’d failed to fight the dragons, but she hadn’t failed the mission yet.

A strange green wisp joined them, as Dae carried Jyl forward, one plodding step after the other. It wasn’t a comforting sight at first but since it seemed to be heading in their direction and offered them no opposition, Dae decided to consider it as at least ‘non-hostile’ and leave it out of her long list of worries.

About halfway to the enemy shore, Jyl finally began to stir. At first it was the quaking shivers of a residual dragon nightmare, but those eventually gave way to more deliberate movements and Dae let her stand on her own.

Under the waves, conversation was difficult so the two continued forward in silence and in the company of the green wisp.

Dae tried to imagine how Jyl was coping with the after-effects of the dragon fear, and what impact the battle might have had on May. In the latter case, Dae had a guess that she suspected would be confirmed as soon as they left the ocean. In Jyl’s case though, Dae could see too many possibilities to predict what state the dragon attack might have left the elf in.

There were more practical matters to worry about though, which helped pass the time they spent walking.

With the sinking of the Fearless, they’d lost an official means of entering Paxmer. That meant no dockmaster to grant them leave to enter the country and no travel papers which, as foreigners, they would be expected to produce anywhere they tried to do business.

They still had money, Paxmer coins even, which would help smooth their passage, but if they threw around enough gold to buy off a dockmaster they would inevitably attract a great deal of the wrong sort of attention.

That left them with only a few options that Dae could see. They could pretend to be escaped criminals from Gallagrin come to Paxmer to swear themselves to the foreign crown. That story plus their gold would buy them suspicion but the Paxmer nobility would see value in having agents with both a hatred and knowledge of the Gallagrin military structure.

The web of lies they would need to spin to make that option work would have been daunting for someone far more socially adept than Dae knew herself to be though, so she thought a simpler approach was required.

Pact warriors aren’t inherently stealthy by nature, but anyone can pass unnoticed through an area if they can hide well enough and chose to move only when no one else is around.

That would mean moving at night primarily, through terrain they were unfamiliar with and in search of a location they’d never been to. Dae kept looking for better approaches to the problem since there were probably tens of thousands of things that could wrong with the stealth option but throughout the long trek on the ocean bottom she wasn’t able to come up with a plan that seemed more likely to work out for them.

The most difficult part of the plan, that Dae could foresee, would be getting their initial bearing. They’d been sailing towards Windsmer, which was the largest trading city in Paxmer thanks to its relatively short distance from the Sunlost Isles. Dae estimated that they would make landfall somewhere near the city but whether they were to the north or the south of it could make a significant difference in the route they followed inland.

By the time they finally reached water that was shallow enough to risk rising to the surface, night had fallen. Escaping onto dry land promised to be easy thanks to the darkness but locating where they were at was likely to be impossible Dae imagined. Both her imagination and the promise of the dark proved to be false though.

When Dae poked her head above the waves, she saw they had arrived exactly at Windsmer. The town’s lights were ablaze and lighting up the night as though the sun had never set. While it was comforting to know where they were, it also meant that they were going to need to make a long detour underwater if they wished to emerge at a spot that was unnoticed by the city watch.

Neither of those facts captured Dae’s immediate interest though. She was more concerned about the dragons which were perched over the city.

She and Jyl were far enough away to be outside the aura of dragon fear the creatures radiated, but even so, seeing twelve of the giant lizards looming over the edges of the city was enough to set Dae’s hands trembling.

“Why are there so many of them here?” Jyl asked releasing her transformation at last as they quietly broke the surface of the ocean.

“I don’t know,” Dae said, feeling a wave of weariness pass through her as she released her transformation as well. “This can’t be normal though. They’d never be able to dock foreign ships here with those things in place.”

“Maybe they pull them farther back when ships are cleared to dock,” Jyl said.

“Possibly, but coordinating that many dragons is supposed to be extraordinarily difficult,” Dae said. “In the land battles, they never use more than one of the big ones at a time.”

“Do they ever need more than one of the big ones?” Jyl asked.

“It depends what they’re fighting,” Dae said. “The fear aura only goes so far. From outside it those things look like very nice targets for siege weapons.”

“Twelve in one place seems like an exceptional commitment,” May said. As Dae had guessed, the green wisp they’d traveled with had been May walking beside them through the spirit world analog of the ocean floor.

“I don’t really want to get anywhere near those things,” Jyl said. “What happened on the Fearless was not fun.”

“Agreed,” May said. “We did not control ourself well there.”

“You were able to move,” Dae said. “That’s all that counts.”

“It is more accurate to say we were unable to not move,” May said. “We did not mean to break the sword, or kill the man, or sink the ship, and we do not wish to lose our sense of self like that again.”

“We’ll be careful about that,” Dae said. “This isn’t how we planned to get here, but we can make it work.”

“We’ll sneak to your mother’s place?” Jyl asked.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” May said. “The harbor wyrms have noticed me.”

“Harbor wyrms?” Dae asked, looking at the dragons that ringed Windsmer. None of them had moved.

“Not the dragons on the land,” May said. “The ones that await trespassers who arrive by sea.”

“There’re dragons in the water?” Jyl asked.

“Yes, and they’re coming for me now,” May said. “I’ll draw them off and buy you time to complete the mission.”

By which Dae knew that she meant she would sacrifice herself as dragon food since they seemed to be able to detect her farther away than they could people with more stable pact bonds.

“Wait,” Dae said. “Are these harbor wyrms like the other dragons? They can’t be, can they?”

“They are…” May squinted her eyes and concentrated before saying, “…not the same.”

“What’s different about them?” Jyl asked.

“If they’re in the harbor, they can’t be true dragons,” Dae said. “They’re half breeds or magical constructs but they can’t be as potent since they don’t have the dragon’s link to Paxmer. And they can’t have that damn fear aura or no ships would be able to dock!”

“So we’re going to fight them?” Jyl asked.

“No,” Dae said. “We’re going to befriend them!”

Dae wondered if it could be accurately be called sailing if the ship in question was born above the waves on the hands of powerful air spirits.

“Do even sky carriages fly this fast?” Jyl asked over the roar of the rushing wind.

“No,” May said, her veil hanging still and untroubled by the gale. “Sky carriage teams walk on the winds. They can’t outrun them.”

“First time on a Sunlost ship is it?” Noderick, the Sergeant-at-Arms, asked.

“First time on one that wanted to get somewhere in this much a hurry,” Dae said. Kirios noted the situation with delight. It was the first time the spirit had seen a naval vessel under such circumstances and new experiences were every pact spirit’s intoxicant of choice.

The Sergeant-at-Arms laughed a hearty bellow that fit his barrel-like frame.

“Count yourself lucky then,” he said. “We wouldn’t be going to these extremes if the damn Pax’ers hadn’t made such a nuisance of themselves.”

“Those weren’t the first ships they sunk were they?” Dae asked, keeping an eye on the Paxmer boats they were trailing.

“Don’t know if this lot here is to blame, but this is the third time we’ve scrambled to catch a fight and found only ash and char by the time we got there,” Noderick said. He was drawing a complex, interlocking pattern on the wide blade of his cutlass. His stylus was a black feather but it left a briefly glowing gold line on the blade as he traced it over the metal.

“Did you know anyone on the ships that sank?” Jyl asked. Dae envied the young elf’s natural balance. Jyl rode the turbulence of the Fearless’ wild ride above the wavetops with an unconscious ease. May was similarly untroubled though in her case, the stillness she displayed was oddly absolute, as though she was out of phase with the randomly bumps and waverings that passed through the deck.

“Knew some by name, some by sight,” Noderick said. “Not any I’d call friends, but the sea’s a dangerous place to name too many as friends. If it’s not the storms, it’s the beasts of the deep and if it’s not them it’s a careless accident, but whichever path she takes, the sea will pluck away all the souls from your life over time.”

“Why stay out here then?” May asked.

“For everything the sea takes, she gives back so much more,” Noderick said. “That and I’m not overly fond of people.”

“That why you’re the ship’s weapon master?” Jyl asked.

“And is that why you’re putting us on the ropes?” Dae asked.

“Yes and yes,” Noderick said. “Don’t take it personal, it’s just if anyone is going to get skewered or blown to flinders I’d prefer it be the newcomers who are as likely to be spies as they are to be interested in fighting for us.”

“That’s fair,” Dae said. “How many usually survive their first day on the ropes?”

“The one’s who know what they’re doing?” Noderick asked. “More than not. The others though? The one’s that can’t fight as good as they think they can? Well let’s just say they don’t suffer long before the sharks make fish food out of them.”

A thrill of fear tingled out to the ends of Dae’s fingers. For the battle, none of the three Queen’s Guards could afford to reveal their position as Pact Warriors, which meant no transformations. With Kirios’ overt aid, Dae was going to be much more vulnerable than she’d been in any battle she’d fought since she first formed her bond with him.

Jyl and May were in the same position, but in the former’s case Dae felt like Jyl’s natural aptitudes would be enough to see her through, and in May’s case, the former Duchess of Tel didn’t need to transform to draw on her pact spirit’s power. The difficult thing for May would be holding back enough to appear as nothing more than a normal, unenhanced fight.

“How far away is Windsmer?” Jyl asked.

“Not far enough,” Noderick said. “They’ve run faster than they should have.”

“Maybe they’re not eager to engage with us after their battle outside Brights Harbor?” Dae asked.

“That may be, but they don’t know we’re coming now do they?” Noderick said.

“They can’t see us?” Jyl asked.

“The wind spirits, the one’s that are moving the ships, they’re anchor posts for a glamour too aren’t they?” Dae asked.

“You’re a clever one,” Noderick said. “Don’t meet many from Gallagrin that understand how Sunlost magic works.”

“I had an erratic education,” Dae said.

“Didn’t know they taught Sunlost spell casting in Gallagrin?” Noderick said.

“It wasn’t a formal education,” Dae said. “I just read a whole lot of books I wasn’t supposed to.”

“Let’s hope those books told you how to fight,” Noderick said. “Cause how I see it, we’re not going to make berth in Windsmer before the Pax’ers get there.

“Why would we want to?” Jyl asked.

“To file a formal complaint,” Dae said. “Before the Paxmer ships get to unload any of their stolen cargo.”

“Would they honor a complaint like that?” Jill asked.

“They would if they want to stay on our good side,” Noderick said.

“They burned your ships,” Jyl said. “That doesn’t sound like they’re all that interested in your good opinion of them.”

“Oh they didn’t burn our ships,” Noderick said. “If they did that we’d raze Windsmer and collect our due from as many coastal town as we felt was proper.”

“The ships that burned were from Gallagrin weren’t they?” Dae asked.

“Yep,” Noderick said. “Bound for Brights Harbor to buy our good, so we’re out the coins they carried, but Paxmer hasn’t inflicted a direct insult on us yet.”

“But three indirect insults gets a little annoying doesn’t it?” Dae asked.

“A little privateering is all well and good,” Noderick said. “Keeps the crew’s morale up, and their pockets lined. The Pax’ers are getting out of line though, and getting as greedy as their blasted dragons. That’s ok though. We’ll put them back in their place and Gallagrin can send us some extra gold for the supplies they need.”

“If they have dragons on their ships, will not an assault on them go poorly?” May asked. She was looking forward, but Dae was fairly sure she wasn’t focusing on the same thing the rest of them were.

“They only bring the little ones with them,” Noderick said. “Tiny whelps are as big as your arm, but they can do a lot of damage with that breath of theirs.”

Dae frowned. If Noderick was right then the naval use of dragons was diametrically at odds with their land-based use. On land, only the big, adult dragons were employed in battle. Those dragons were roughly the size of a building and couldn’t possibly have fit on the Paxmer ships that were coming closer every minute.

From what Dae knew, the smaller dragons lacked many of their fully grown counterparts abilities, most especially the aura of fear which the adults could emanate. Having faced that power once, Dae was in no hurry to repeat the experience. Even years later, she could still feel the fracture lines in her mind from where she’d broken the last time she’d tried to stand against the supernatural malevolence of Paxmer’s primary defenders.

“They look bigger from here,” May said.

“She one of those Seers?” Noderick asked, addressing Dae.

“Something like that,” Dae said. “How soon until we’re alongside them?”

“I’d make it another hour,” Noderick said. “Might want to make sure those blades of yours are safe, and if you think your Sleeping God will wake for a spell, send a prayer or two their way.”

Dae didn’t pray. If Gallagrin’s Sleeping God ever woke, Dae figured that her list of sins would far outweigh any virtues that might earn her marks of Divine Favor. Trusting in her steel, her friends and years of repressed rage against the Paxmer military, Dae weathered the beginning of the battle as best she could.

The Fearless closed on the last ship in the Paxmer flotilla with a final burst of speed that made standing on the deck unsecured an impossibility (except for May). The glamour that cloaked the Fearless was torn to shreds by the maneuver, revealing the attack only a fraction of a second before the archers on the Fearless loosed their first volley.

The initial casualties on the trailing Paxmer ship were significant from what Dae could see. The sailors on deck were mowed down like tall grass under the scything rain of arrows that swept over them. The flaming arrows that were launched started small fires at various points on the ship, though none hit vulnerable areas.

In response to the attack a signal went up among the Paxmer ships and the course of the battle swung into the hands of the ship’s crews.

The Sunlost fleet outnumbered the Paxmer ships seven to three.  Of them, the Fearless was the only one in striking range for the first barrage, but each of the Paxmer ships had to contend with the prospect of facing the rest of the Sunlost fleet within minutes of engaging unless they continued to flee towards the safe haven of a Paxmer harbor.

Dae wasn’t surprised though when the Paxmer ships turned to engage the Sunlost fleet. Flight was only an option when you could outpace your attacker. She reasoned that the Paxmer ships intended to cripple or at least slow the Sunlost ships somehow before resuming their flight to Windsmer. It didn’t seem like a winning strategy, Sunlost had the best ships and crews on the sea, but sometimes a losing strategy that let you lose a little less than your opponent wanted to take from you was the only one that was available.

Being on the ropes still wasn’t a wonderful spot even with the Sunlost fleet’s numerical superiority but since crippling three Paxmer dragon ships was a win for Gallagrin, Dae was glad to be in a position to strike a meaningful blow in the fight.

She looked for Noderick after taking shelter from the Paxmer return volley and located him across the deck just in time to see fire bath the deck. Neither Noderick or any of the other sailors near him had time to scream as the gout of flame burned through the top of the deck and punched a hole clear through the bottom hull.

“The dragons are here,” May said, pointing upwards as two of the beasts flew over them.

Dae noticed two things, dimly and through a wave of disorientation. First, the dragons were larger than her arm. Second, they were large enough to have riders and passengers.

She tried to rise from her hiding spot as the dragon riders leapt to the deck of the Fearless, but her limbs were frozen.

Dragon fear gripped her heart and refused to let it beat.

She reached out to Kirios’ power and felt it far too distant to call on.  Jyl was in the same state, her eyes as wide as the moon and her breath caught in her throat. Even May was still, unhidden and unmoving.

Dae watched, screaming on the inside, as the three riders who dropped onto the Fearless prowled towards May with their swords drawn. No one else was moving on the ship, which made it easy for the dragon riders to dispatch sailor after sailor with quick thrusts of their blades. Men and women died as they curled into fetal positions or cringed frozen in terror.

Dae managed to force a breath out as the first of the dragon riders reached May. She knew she had to move. She’d faced dragon fear before. She’d withstood it’s power for a precious second and these dragons were nowhere near the terrors the one she’d seen at Star’s Watch had been. Even with that though, even knowing that one of her two charges was about to die, she couldn’t force her limbs to move.

She watched the sword blow descend towards May in slow motion, helpless to alter its course.

May however, wasn’t helpless.

Without drawing a weapon, the daughter of Tel slashed her hand downwards and the descending sword shattered into fragments.

So did the man who was wielding it.

And so did the half of the Fearless that May was facing.

As the real cold of the ocean surged around Dae, and the deeps reached out to claim her, the false chill of the dragon fear shattered, leaving her free but at the ocean’s non-existent mercy.