Deep in the Mapless Sea, the Sea of Dragons, on the scarce-remembered Isle of the Dead, a Queen heard whispers on the wind. Whispers of conquest.

“Your Faithful have prepared a way back for you, my Jade,” he murmured in her ear. “A silent, swift vessel, to take you back to the greener lands.”

“You have done well, Scythe,” replied the Jade Dragon to the Reaper. “But I am not going back to the central isles. Not yet.”

The mad grim reaper cocked his head, his all-black eyes widening.

“Why not?” he breathed. “Have the Faithful been faithless, that they do not deserve you? Have they been false?” His voice rose as he spoke, and anger began to twist his features. “Have they deceived me, my dragon?! Does need be that I go and tear those miserable souls from the corpses they call bodies?”

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Jade chuckled, laying her hand on the Reaper's arm. Her hand looked tiny compared to the huge, imposing figure of the Reaper, but her touch instantly stilled him.

“Put away your hatred for another time, Windward Scythe. You were not deceived, nor have any of mine broken troth. I will return to those islands not as an outcast crawling back like a bedraggled rat, but as a conqueror. Thus, I need to raise an army before I set my sails towards home.”

“An army? Where would we find the numbers of dead required for an army worth the combined forces of the Isles?”

Jade's smile was dark, knowing. “Anywhere, my love. Anywhere.”