For the first time all morning, Declan felt something like a laugh tug at him, the humor—as forced as it was—a small step towards reminding him that it was the Ryn he knew, standing before him.

  “Yes, other than those,” he answered with the least-strained grin he could manage.

  To his relief, the dragon smiled back, albeit tautly. We’re capable of a good many things. Alteration of our physiology, for one, as you well know. We can take a form at will, using it to our advantage as needed.

  “Any form?” It was Ester who asked, sounding eager to keep the conversation now that some of the tension had passed. “That seems a potent talent…”

  Ryn scoffed wistfully. If only. Our magic has limits, as our bodies do. We have to learn the anatomy of whatever it is we wish to take on intimately, practicing and developing our ability to shift into that particular appearance. How long that takes depends on the form, and the one learning it. Even then, there are almost always imperfections. He lifted a flawed foot in example, letting the blunt claws swing pointedly. Still, there are those who persevere. There’s a story, among my kind, of an old primordial who took most of two centuries to learn the shape of a sea serpent, all so she could explore the oceans as readily as the skies. It isn’t easy, to say the least. Many don’t ever bother with it at all.

  “So, there are more of you?” Declan followed up with.

  Ryn gave him an exasperated look. Of course. We weren’t completely destroyed by the war, as Dia would have had you believe, and it’s been seven-hundred years. Even dragons don't reproduce that slowly.

  “But why, then?” Ester asked, clearly having trouble wrapping her head around the reasoning. “Why wouldn’t they try to learn how to use their power?”

  Too much of a burden, Ryn answered with a shrug, stepping around Declan and starting to amble north, clearly expecting them to follow. It takes time and energy in amounts a lot aren’t willing to sacrifice, particularly among those who have little interest in exploring the outside world. Even among those that do, most learn a single additional form, maybe two.

  Declan was surprised at that, joining Ester to walk on either side of the dragon. “And you know three?”

  On his right, Ryn chuckled. Four, he reminded them proudly.

  Then his body began to shrink.

  In the opposite transition they’d witnessed earlier, Ryn’s horse-like legs retracted, his neck shrunk, and his head pulled into itself. His tail thickened and extended, and Declan watched in amazement as the dragon smoothly counter-balanced himself into a standing position, not even missing a step while he completed the transformation and reached his full height. In a matter of seconds, the twisted stallion had been replaced by the lithe, towering humanoid who had been waiting for him as he’d left his room that morning.

  In our language, this is my ‘rh’eem’, Ryn said before Declan could ask, the name garbled and guttural. You could translate it to ‘form of lesser’, in Virisian, but Herst always found that pompous, and not without reason seeing as it's a body modeled after that of men and elves. He called it a ‘dragonling’. It was a common-enough form in his time, when the races mingled much more openly.

  Declan stared, finding his words gone for the moment. With some odd measure of relief, he noted that the muscular, lissome body of the dragonling appeared the same now as it had earlier, Ryn moving along on the balls of his clawed feet between he and Ester. It helped Declan register that the dragon hadn't been hiding everything from him with his ‘weave’, at least…

  “Four forms?” Ester asked from his other side, sounding surprised as she echoed Declan’s early curiosity. “Even though most others only know one or two?”

  Ryn shook his head. Not unlike Declan, I have my own gifts. He led them in a slow, ambling circle around the glen as he spoke, clearly keeping no apparent destination in mind. I was raised as an ambassador, of a sort. Dragons are capable of more than a few things the average human would consider impossible or unnatural, even hundreds of years ago. Transformation, flight, magics of mind and body. We can communicate across an extensive distance, and we can produce dragonfire so hot, it can turn bone to ash and melt steel. Ryn gave a pained huff of a laugh. All that was well known, though, and my kind required their representative in the courts of the other races to be able to demonstrate something more, something that would make them truly question any action against the Reaches or its surrounding lands. He waved a clawed hand down at his scaled form. Given that… I was chosen, young as I was. To be fair, I’d only learned how to take on this shape, in addition to my natural form, then. A hatchling of less than a hundred years learning any foreign transformation—even a rh’eem—was a rarity.

  “‘Hatchling’,” Declan quoted under his breath, again mesmerized by the distinct separation in their sense of time.

  “Is that when you met my father?” Ester asked brightly, clearly excited to hear an old tale from another perspective.

  It is. Ryn looked from her to Declan. And Herst as well.

  Declan blinked at that. “At court?” he asked, perplexed by this revelation. “How did that happen?”

  A roguish gleam suddenly shined in Ryn’s eye, and he looked skyward, taking in the cloudless day as he gazed back in time with obvious fondness. That’s a story I hope I enjoy telling you one day. Unfortunately, for now—he looked back over his shoulder at the house—I believe Bonner’s just finished with his adjustments.

  Declan followed his gaze. Sure enough, even as he glanced towards the house, he saw the simple front door open and the old man poke his head out, peering about. Catching sight of them, he began jogging in their direction, waving in clear confirmation even as he approached.

  “You’re leaving, then?” he asked quietly of the dragon, not looking away from Bonner’s home.

  Not for long, the dragon assured him. He, too, was watching the old mage approach. I’ll have to take my time searching, but I’ll move faster on my own.

  Declan caught a shift of motion in the corner of his eye, but didn’t look around even when the old weight settled on his shoulder, the wicked claws of Ryn’s hawk’s form digging into his tunic.

  We have a moment more, though, the dragon said, and for some reason Declan had the impression this time the words were for him, and him alone to hear. There’s one question I’m surprised you haven’t asked, yet…

  Declan didn’t respond for several seconds, his eyes still on Bonner yr’Essel, watching the man cut a path through the wind-blown grasses. Nearby, Ester still stood eyeing he and Ryn, clearly sensing that some exchange was happening between them that was not for her to interrupt.

  “…Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  It came unbidden to his tongue. The inquiry whose answer he needed most. With it finally out in the open, he turned to face the dragon.

  Ryn’s hawk’s form was—to Declan’s relief—not so far different in its true state than it had been beneath the illusions of magic. His body was much the same, though his talons were thicker and even sharper than before. His black beak was unchanged, but above his eyes a narrow pair of what might have been horns curved delicately back, beyond the end of his skull. Of the entirety of the transformation, only his wings were truly distinct now, dark feathers hardly scattered in patches over leathery membrane stretched between narrow lines of bone ending in clawed tips.

  The dragon shifted his weight on Declan’s shoulder, adjusting as his lighter body was caught in the hard breeze. Only when Bonner wasn’t more than a dozen yards away did the dragon answer, his voice almost regretful but firm all the same.

  How much easier do you think you slept, ignorant of dead things walking in the dark? How much brighter were these woods—he extended a warped wing to indicate the nearby tree line—before you stepped into that clearing, two nights ago? The dragon’s eyes lifted skyward again, taking in the blue-white brilliance of what might have been the season’s last glorious morning, drinking in the warmth and the sun with an expression across his hawkish features that took some time for Declan to place.

  Heartbreak, he realized abruptly.

  To drag you into this world before you had to be, if you ever had to be at all… the dragon said with agony in his voice. I see now it wasn’t impossible this day would eventually arrive. But just the same—he looked down then, meeting Declan’s gaze with cold, grim stillness—in the weeks to come, I’ve an unfortunate feeling you and I both will come to miss the time where our greatest concerns were hunting for our evening supper and what split in the road to take.

  And then, with that, Ryn spread his wings, leapt from his perch and took flight, circling once high above Declan, Ester, and Bonner’s heads before streaking off west, back in the direction they’d come from the previous day.

  Back, before fate had seen fit to turn their futures upside down.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “There is power in the unknown. One could argue—given the vastness of our own world and the endlessness of the heavens above—that there is more power in the unknown than the known. What sort of secrets lie in the mysteries of this ever-infinite universe? What hidden fonts of potential linger beyond the mere dregs of our understanding? Man has largely mastered himself and the material, the physical laws of our world. But beyond that, what have we managed to harness? What have we managed to control? Perhaps one day the stories we tell our children of magics and wonders will be our reality. Perhaps one day we will hold the reins to mystery, having mastered everything from the inconsequential details of the mundane to the secrets of our very dreams and nightmares…”

  -A Study of Modern Advancement, Terean Bord, 992p.f.

  Rehna Toyte shivered as she watched her breath mist in the air, framed against the empty grey and white shades of the mountains before her. Clutching at the winding layers of scarves and shirts she’d swathed her small frame in that morning, she took in the ranges with detached distaste, frowning up at their peaks. By all rights it was really only nearing fall in Viridian, but this far north, sidling up against the Mother’s Tears in the foothills Rehna had spent all of her life in, the brief warmth of spring only ever lingered a few weeks in the course of a short summer. After that, the weather gave way—with depressing predictability—to the cold winds falling from the cliffs above, spilling down on Estwyn in a frigid deluge.

  Hardly for the first time in her life, Rehna cursed the King or Queen whose name she did not know, whatever ancient monarch it was that had deemed it necessary to build a town at the very foot of the treacherous ranges, all to protect a pass into the untamed, unknown lands of Eserysh, beyond the mountains.

  A pass that’s been blocked off and useless for as long as anyone can remember, Rehna thought bitterly, grey eyes trailing the pale outline of the monstrous corridor before her, a sharp, winding break through the mountains that looked like some god had dragged their sword along the face of the earth to cleave a rugged path through the unforgiving heights.

  “Rehna? What are you doing?”

  Rehna blinked and brought her eyes up from her observation of the canyon. Her mother was some thirty feet away, looking down on her in concern from the incline of the hills, having climbed up a bit farther in search of the thistle and thornweed they were there to reap.

  “Is everything alright? You haven’t caught cold, have you?”

  Rehna quickly shook her head. Like her daughter, Lara Toyte wore layers of grey and brown wool, and her head, nose, and mouth were wrapped in a heavy shawl to stave away the bite of the harsh wind. Her hands were gloved, partially to safeguard from the stinging herbs, but more so to ward off the chill that would numb her fingers in minutes, even this many weeks before true winter loomed. Looped in the crook of her elbow, the woman had a gathering pannier, and Rehna flushed when she saw that the basket was already brimming with narrow, rooted stalks.

  Glancing down at her own nearly-nonexistent yield, her embarrassment redoubled.

  “I’ll look by the stream!” she called back over the distance, catching sight of a generous patch of thistle twisting about by the narrow creek not far west of them, one of many bare flows that trickled down from the Tears as the snows slowly melted higher up.

  If her mother responded, it was lost to the distance and the breeze that rushed over Rehna’s own garb, whistling through her ears as she hurried towards her prize. For a time she was able to focus on her task, moving and plucking, careful not to slip on the loose shale and sink a boot into the icy stream while she separated the plants she found into two piles. Her father had studied medicine in Aletha, in his youth. The herbs were for him, for the poultices and potions he concocted to ease the aches and pains of the elderly that descended with the approaching frosts. He was a good man, one who had returned from the comforts and warmth of the south some twenty-odd years prior to aid Estwyn after the town had been nearly razed to the ground by the wereyn they only saw occasionally now. Rehna loved her father, and had been thrilled when her mother had decided she was of an age to assist her in gathering for his practice.

  All the same, she cursed him too, sometimes, for not having had the sense to take them all back to the southern lands, after her birth.

  Rehna sighed, reaching out to rip yet another thornweed from the tough ground, meticulously claiming it roots and all. Placing it in her basket, she couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder, southward, taking in the town of Estwyn from high enough now to see over the great, gated wall that blocked off the wide mouth of the eastern pass.

  For as long as she had remembered—which she was smart enough to grant wasn’t any great span of time, given her twelve years of age—the town had been a cold, hard place, made only slightly warmer and softer by the people who called it home. Estwyn was a stronghold, a garrison for nearly a thousand of the Vigil’s soldiers, which Rehna had heard the older girls at school say was more than ten times the number it had once been. A high, wooden palisade that had been erected two decades prior encircled its borders, ringing the maze of houses, shops, and other such structures whose tile and slate roofs she could make out from where she stood. It was an impressive defense for any mountain town, but the north wall—the one Rehna was peering over now—was even more imposing. While the timber ramparts of its original build could still be seen when one took it in from within, from the exterior it was nothing more than a flat monolith of somber, plain stone. She’d commented on this once to her father, saying she would have much preferred the simple wall of wood, like the rest of the palisade, but that had only earned a nervous sort of chuckle from her parent. He’d told her that the town defenses had had to be fortified, that the wall and gate had been strengthened with granite carted up from quarries to the east on the orders of the previous King, Malythus al’Dyor, who’d feared further assaults that never came.

  Rehna remembered telling her father that the old King must have been a fool, which had gotten her a more honest laugh.

  Of all the things Rehna hated about Estwyn, that wall was easily the crowning jewel of her list. Running almost perfectly east to west in parallel with the mountains, the great blundering contraption didn’t even have the decency of providing any shade in which to bask in summer. During the winter months, Vigil soldiers were often either kicking piled snow down on the heads of passersby below, or not uncommonly toppling down themselves as the overly-smooth stone grew slick with slush and ice. Its greatest crime by far, however—in Rehna’s budding opinion as a young lady—was that the thing was ugly, a colossal eyesore easily spotted from any part of the town when not blocked by a wall or roof, making it a central fixture in Estwyn.

  Rehna sighed, her breath once more gusting out into a wash of mist as she took in the unadorned stone, lingering on the massive double-gates and heavy portcullis that formed the only entrance or exit from the town northward. The way was ajar, now, as it had always been for as long as she could remember, deliberately kept open to allow the easy flow of individuals with special permission—like Rehna and her mother—though more commonly for the sake of the miners coming to and fro from their day’s work in the excavations higher up the crags. Across its parapet, from some hundred yards away she could distinctly make out the shape of the King’s men and women in their red-and-black uniforms, some standing watch at staggered intervals behind the crenellations, while others moved in pairs up and down the walls, completing their pointless, cyclical rounds. It all made her feel constricted, even as far away from the gate as she was, and for the hundredth time that year alone Rehna swore to herself that she would leave Estwyn the moment she was of an age to—leave it, and never look back.

  She couldn’t help but wonder, on the other hand, if she would be able to convince her mother and father to join her when that happy day finally came…

  At the thought of her parents, Rehna started as she realized she’d allowed herself to be distracted again. Looking around, she exhaled in quick relief when she didn’t catch sight of her mother, her fear of being scolded abating. She wasn’t surprised, of course. Lara Toyte was as diligent a worker as any woman in Estwyn. More often than not she ended up climbing high enough up the mountain so as to make the first outcroppings of jutting boulders and cliffs, amongst which there were ample obstructions behind which one could inadvertently slip from the eyes of others. Still, Rehna’s basket was getting full, her arm was starting to tire, and the cold was finally clawing through the worn soles of her boots. Deliberately putting her back to the great wall of Estwyn in the hopes of forgetting about it and its obtrusive unsightliness for a little while, she began to scale the incline, making for the spot she had seen her mother last.

  The ascent took her longer than it should have, after a particularly brutal gust blew the top layer of herbs from her basket and sent Rehna scurrying after the scattering plants. After recovering most of them, she’d taken a stone and placed it atop the pickings, making her load even heavier, but at least ensuring she wouldn’t lose half her yield to the wind again. After that, she took her time, distracting herself from the cold and barren land around her by allowing her mind to drift to a future in which she persuaded her family to move south, to set up her father’s practice in one of Viridian’s bustling inner cities, bright and warm and cheerful under a handsome sun that blazed year-round.