The distance between the ruined fort and Aegis was too far to reasonably cover on foot, and Hilde's plan was to walk to the nearest settlement big enough to feature a guard station, which happened to be a medium sized elven town called Willow's Crown, and use our status as Dragons to requisition horses for the rest of the journey. It would take about a week to get from the fort to a major road, and two more days on the road to get to Willow's Crown. From there, it would be a two week ride to Aegis.

Unlike our previous trek through the forest, I had nothing to do except walk. This led to a lot of time to think about what one could expect when walking through a fantasy wood. I started to expect to be jumped at any moment by anything from hungry wild beasts, through marauding bandits and up to savage fairy folk angry that we were trespassing on their sacred woods.

I voiced my worries to my companions, and was very firmly reassured that wild animals know to stay away from armed warriors, fairy folk were highly civilized and unlikely to accost random travelers, and bandits were much more likely to be found nearer to where they could actually find someone to rob, and even if they were around, even the most suicidal of bandits would think twice before trying to rob a dwarven Valkyrie.

We finished the first day of travel without encountering anything more dangerous than a swarm of gnats, and as we were sitting in camp after eating a stew made from a small animal Melissa caught, we found ourselves discussing our lives and families.

Melissa, it turns out, was the fourth daughter of a minor baron. Her parents were married for political reasons, and spent most of their time cordially detesting each other. As the fourth daughter, Melissa's inheritance was more or less nonexistent, but being even a minor noble gave her access to a decent magical academy, where she spent most of her teenaged years getting past her apprenticeship, and was now an adventuring journeywoman, with at least five more years before she would be considered for a mastery.

Hilde's father, on the other hand, was a master blacksmith, and her mother was a skald, or warrior poet, a title as hard to achieve and as prestigious as that of Valkyrie. They met when Hilde's father was a journeyman, traveling with a dwarven expeditionary force into the Forsaken Lands. Hilde's mother saved her father from a pack of werewolves, her father gave his masterpiece, a suit of articulated plate armor to her mother, and the rest is history.

"Literally history," said Melissa after Hilde finished her story. "The bards wrote four ballads and a play about them."

"We do not talk about Sigmund and Ingrid!" I could see Hilde's face reddening behind her mead mug.

"No, Hilde. you don't talk about it. I talk about it every chance I get." Melissa stood up, and placed her left hand dramatically on her forehead, and recited, in her best attempt at a bass voice. "Oh, hammer of my grandfather! Strike swiftly, with the strength of the mountain, that my gift be worthy of my love!"

That was about as far as she could go with a straight face, and she collapsed giggling back on her bedroll.

"Enough about me!" Hilde exclaimed to renewed giggling from Melissa. "Tell us about yourself, Antoine."

I talked a bit about my parents, a librarian and a car mechanic, and about growing up in a poor but decent neighborhood. My parents loved each other, and they loved me and my sister. When I got to the part where, in order to pay for college, I joined the army as a mechanic, Melissa chortled with joy.

"Well, Hilde. You know what they say about girls falling for guys who remind them of their fathers, right?"

To which a now thoroughly embarrassed Hilde responded by splashing Melissa with the contents of her mug, only to realize that she just spilled the last of her mead, and would have to wait until we got to a "proper dwarven brewery" before she could get any more.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

At which point she turned to me with an exaggeratedly lecherous expression. "I guess that means I'll have to find another source for the Liquid of Life, Antoine…"

And the last coherent sentence uttered that night was Melissa's groan of "get a room, you two!"

***

The next day of travel was once again uneventful, and that evening I asked Hilde and Melissa a question that has been bothering me since I read the Necromancer's books.

"Melissa, the day we met you told me the story of how the three Curses of Death were created, but the books mention that there are a total of seven Curses. What's the story with the other four?"

"The Four Curses of the Moon," Melissa answered, "that story is not quite as exciting as the other one. It's not that much of a story, really.

"The Four Curses of the Moon are far older than the Curses of Death. Nobody knows quite how old, since stories of the Mooncursed are as old as our oldest records. As far as anyone can tell, they are as old as the fairy races themselves.

"The Four Curses are the Curse of the Wolf, the Curse of the Shark, the Curse of the Hawk and the Curse of the Salamander, named after the creatures the Cursed turn into. The change is accompanied by uncontrollable bloodlust, similar to that caused by rabies, and any sentient that survives being bitten by one of the Cursed will turn into the same type of Mooncursed on the next full moon.

"For most of our history, the Mooncursed were few and far between. The bloodlust made them easy to find, and whenever found they were hunted and destroyed. A very small number of Mooncursed would learn to suppress the bloodlust enough to stay hidden, and they learned to be very careful about infecting others, since an out of control Mooncursed would set of a hunt, and even the most careful of the Cursed might find themselves caught when dedicated hunters were around.

"This all changed, however, when the Necromancers started to appear. We don't know when, precisely, but one of the Necromancers learned to dominate the Mooncursed, and before long every Necromancer had to have a pack of werewolves or hawkmen at their beck and call. Nobody has ever seen Mooncursed cooperating with each other or with anyone else before that, and many warriors, mages and even Dragons fell before them. The Curses of the Moon, which nobody knew how to remove, created Forsaken Drakes, former dragons who fell to a new curse, in formerly unimaginable numbers, and the Necromancers ran over large parts of the Alliance. For a time, the Alliance forbade Dragons from fighting the Necromancers, because even a Necromancer rampaging freely was better than a Forsaken Drake. The rout went on for years before a group of gnomish and elven scholars discovered that the Curses of the Moon followed similar patterns to the Curses of Death, and modified the Subversion rituals to work on them.

"The Curses of the Moon, when Subverted, gave new abilities to the Dragons. The Curse of the Wolf gave the ability to change your fingers into claws that could shred metal. The Curse of the Shark gave the ability to grow scales that would protect you from most bladed weapons. The Curse of the Hawk gave you wings, and the ability to fly. And the Curse of the Salamander gave you the fiery breath of the half elemental lizards. With these new abilities, the Dragons were able to push the Necromancers back, and the Alliance was once again secure."

I lay awake for hours that night, trying to wrap my mind around everything Melissa told me, and eventually into a fitful sleep, dreaming of evil wizards and shape shifting monsters.