“It smells like wine and tastes like blood.”

That was what Dahlia’s mother had told her once, when she asked her what using her powers felt like. She didn’t understand what she meant by that, at the time. Now that she had felt it for herself, it was frightening how well that one sentence could describe the last week of her life.

She only faintly remembered how exhilarating that power felt. Life and death in her fingertips, the gentle beating of her heart as it overflowed with light, the impossible colors that swirled around her as she painted the world as she pleased.

Nothing remained of those blissful moments now, except for the “taste of blood” her mother once talked about. Her every moment was a nightmare. At least the nauseousness and the feeling of her bones itching, had gone away after the first three days. What aftereffects that remained were limited to her soul.

Her sleep was riddled with nightmares of unknown creatures, thousands of faces dying. They were faces of real people; Dahlia was sure of it. There were sharp faces, angular faces, faces with beards and smiles and tears in their eyes. They all were different. They all looked right into her eyes as they died. As shaken as she was, Dahlia couldn’t help but wonder what their stories were like; where they had lived and who they had loved. Those faces had a strange pull to them. She had this strange feeling, like if she used her power a little more, she could just about learn more about them.

It wasn’t any better when she was awake either. It was as if the whole world had lost its color, and the only way to experience anything other than a strange feeling of anxiety was to use her blood, even if it was just a little. She felt like there was something creeping just beyond her vision. She jumped at every little sound, which was a problem as there was never complete silence aboard the creaky cloudship.

She did the only thing she could, and that was what her sister had taught her to do when she was a little girl who struggled with constant bouts of migraines. She threw herself to physical work. She trained all day, trying to make her body remember how to fight. She knew swords, although the weight of steel was strange and unwieldy. She learned the basics of wielding a spear, as Syllan wasn’t half bad at being an instructor.

The other recruits gave her a wide berth. She felt no hostility from any of them, aside from her cousin of course. It was more like each of the kids were dealing with their own struggles and understood she needed to draw into herself for a while.

Dahlia hated herself for it. She was sure Lilia needed help too, a Spire kid who was afraid of heights, on a ship that was traveling however many miles above ground. At least it looked like Lilia had the giantkin boy looking out for her. They looked so weird juxtaposed to each other. Small, fae blooded Lilia, who would be at most 5 feet after she was done growing up; and the boy that stood at least 7 feet already with his huge frame. Besides, as troubled as she was, Dahlia was sure she would be more of a danger than help to the little girl.

“We need to talk.” Helen’s voice came from the doorway that separated their room from the communal area. Dahlia quickly glanced from where she was sitting on her bunk, at the large room behind Helen. “The others are still on the deck. The only one on this level is the scholar, and he doesn’t care about us one bit,” Helen said.

It was the first time that the blue haired girl initiated conversation with Dahlia. She had an annoyed expression, like someone who was about to rip off a band-aid.

“This should be interesting.” Dahlia sat up a little straighter and nodded to an empty chair nearby.

Helen took a seat on her own bed instead. “They’re gonna split us apart,” she said matter of factly.

“What do you mean? I didn’t realize we were together,” Dahlia said trying to push her headache down with a deep breath. They had maybe spoken five times this past week and those had been short and to the point, passing remarks while sparring.

“Here’s the thing,” Helen said. Dahlia noticed a pause in her speech, as if she had wanted to call her “cursed one” like she usually did. “I am responsible for you not to lose your shit and destroy the only spire in the skies that matter. Because I got caught up in the moment and volunteered to be the one to keep you in check. But seeing as you are a confirmed blood witch, they are going to send you off to train with another one. So I need to know you will be alright, or I will kill you now.”

Dahlia listened with a raised eyebrow. In the silence that followed, she mutely nodded as she processed the information. She made her best effort to ignore the unmistakably sinister glint of obsidian coming from her cousin’s hand.

“And how did you come by this information, if I may ask?” she asked finally after about a minute of silence.

“The boy that… humiliated me like a child on our first day, the dark haired one,” Helen said. “He came to talk to the scholar, he was concerned about you being on the Dragon Spire apparently.”

That came as a surprise to Dahlia. She didn’t know that soldier, but she had recognized a strange look on his face when he first saw her. She felt a shiver as she imagined him and the creepy rider who her cousin curtly called “scholar”, talking about her fate while she was absent. She swallowed hard, knowing a wrong move in this conversation would end with an obsidian dagger piercing her heart. She glanced at the door one more time to make sure they were alone.

“And you are sure you don’t want to come with me on this special training, cousin?” she said as quietly as she could.

A wave of complex emotions passed through the blue haired girl’s face. Being a “blood witch’”was a complicated matter, even for those whose bloodline were not cursed. Dahlia only knew about her cousin’s situation because her mother had told her. If Helen didn’t want it out, no matter how much she disliked her, it wasn’t for Dahlia to tell others. Helen’s face finally settled somewhere between quiet rage and indifference.

“I don’t need it,” she said sharply. “I just need to know that you will not bring a swarm of starbeasts to murder every recruit and civilian on the Dragon Spire.”

Dahlia nodded thoughtfully. She felt the pull of blood getting stronger every passing moment, the sweetest smell of wine urging her to indulge in just a tiny bit of magic. She remembered her mother; she said those words over and over again, cutting herself in places that her beautiful ebony skin disappeared among dark red lines of half recovered scars. She treated every wounded animal that came too close to their hovel, while depending on her daughters to deal with the starbeast that manifested after she had disappeared into the blissful colorscape.

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Dahlia remembered the summer before Cartha left, a night the summer moon was as bright as it was large, when two sisters found their mother looming over the bleeding body of the only man they could call father. James von Richten III laid on the ground right in the middle of the sisters’ garden. His neck was cut from ear to ear into a smile, as cold as it was somber. Their mother held a stone blade that dripped red even in the yellow summer night, twitching with anticipation of sickening joy. Cartha turned Dahlia away then.

Behind her was an orchestra of chaos. Mother chanted the words hungrily as the smell of wolfbane and nightshade slowly flowed like an avalanche. The joy in Mother’s voice was unnerving. She sang in bliss, as a newborn starbeast’s screech filled the air.

Dahlia tried to turn around, to help her sister deal with it. Her body refused to obey. A scream rose inside her own heart and overtook the entirety of her being. Tears started flowing from her eyes. Her mouth had twisted open, locked in a silent scream. The image of her father bleeding out on the floor was burned into her eyes. Any sense of control or rationality seemed out of the world.

As sudden as it started, it ended. Silence filled the garden, broken only by Mother’s hysterical laughter.

“I will be fine,” she whispered; tears welling in her eyes. Raising her head to look Helen in the eyes, she noticed tears in her eyes too. She was sure her cousin’s doubt was stronger than the minimal amount of trust that she had in Dahlia. She prepared herself for the blissful release that would come at the tip of that onyx blade.

Helen’s wrist twitched after a second’s hesitation and the glint of onyx disappeared. “You better be,” she said. She got up to leave the room and paused briefly before reaching the arch. “Don’t make me regret it, cousin,” she said and stormed out.

Silent sobs overtook Dahlia as she fell back into the bed.

Her body clunkily flowed through the formations of the sword practice Syllan drilled into them for hours every morning. She fared better at it compared to all the other hatchlings, save for Helen. Every once in a while, she felt a bittersweet gratitude toward her sister for fleeting moments, before remembering her crime.

She cut through the air with a level stab.

Dahlia had trouble understanding Cartha. The older girl was always more bitter. She had to shoulder the bulk of the weight they shared due to being outcasts on the very spire they were forced to live on. There was only one way to leave the spire one was born on, and that was aboard a cloudship. You either had to go on a political mission sanctioned by the ruling body of the Spire, or get recruited into either the Army or the Dragon Riders.

As a child, both girls were jealous of people who were fortunate enough to be born on the Fifth Spire. They were the ones who crewed the cloudships, as they were the only ones with knowledge and facilities to construct one.

Dahlia listened to the loud humming coming from below where the engine was. That level was probably littered with engineers right now, blessed with the knowledge and magic to make travel between spires possible. She pulled her sword back and took a step forward. She exhaled and swiped up to shoulder height, before she paused for a second and pulled it again with an inhale.

However unfair she felt that the only magic she learned on their spire -apart from the forbidden blood magic that is- was to shape and modify properties of stone, Cartha always had much stronger feelings on the topic. That, and coupled with the fact that she had to shoulder the weight of taking care of their mother, scarred Cartha every day. Dahlia spent her life watching her sister decay little by little, day by day. The pain of watching the two strongest women in her life melt in front of her eyes, built up into a giant ball of guilt in her chest.

She stepped into her blade and struck the emptiness again, before turning around into a high guard against a potential second attacker.

When Cartha started training her to fight, it was a sign for her that her sister was done shouldering the weight on her own. Since they started training with sticks of stone when Dahlia was only eight years old, working out was always inseparable from the ball of guilt beating near her heart.

She exhaled and struck down, taking another step into a low guard.

She stopped training gradually, a week after Cartha left. Not that she needed much of it anymore. She didn’t hear mother say the words after Cartha left either. She often wondered why. Maybe Mother thought that without Cartha there, using her powers would be too dangerous, that Dahlia alone couldn’t deal with the aftermath. She resented Cartha for taking away what little joy was left in Mother. She resented herself for not being strong enough so Mother could depend on her as well.

She threw herself into a two-handed horizontal swipe. Still the unfamiliar weight of steel in her hands made her stagger as the blade came to a stop.

Why had Cartha done it? How could Cartha have done it? Was her hatred for the Seventh Spire so big that she stopped caring about the innocent lives?

She sped up in her flow, cursing under her breath for getting too used to the formations. Her muscles didn’t scream loud enough to silence her thoughts, nor her aching bones.

Images kept flashing.

Cartha’s face on the day she left Seventh.

Her mother on her deathbed smiling at her.

Cartha’s calm demeanor on the day of the choosing ceremony.

Mother, begging Dahlia not to use her blood to save her life.

The bleeding body of Dahlia’s pet owl.

The strange mix of hurt and rage that appear in Helen’s eyes every time she sees Dahlia.

Mother as she… Wait, what was mother’s name again?

Her blade came to an abrupt stop. She was breathing heavily, both hands on the hilt of her sword. The blade was sunk a good two inches into a piece of wood that the giant blooded recruit was holding. He had a wary look in his eyes, as if he were approaching a wild animal. His own sword rested on the floor next to her.

“How did I get this far?” Dahlia asked breathless. She was a good twenty steps farther then where she was practicing, almost at the opposite side of the deck.

“Are you okay, Dahlia?” he asked without a shred of malice in his kind dark eyes that looked out of place on his gigantic body. He was slumped with his knees bent, so as to come to her eye level. “You kept speeding up and you didn’t respond when I tried talking to you. Are you calmer now?” He slowly let go of the piece of wood that he must have broken off from somewhere.

Dahlia was clearly far from calm. Her chest kept heaving with effort.

“Dahlia?” he asked again as he sat down on one knee. “I kept trying to tell you to stop for minutes. I’m sorry I used the wood to stop you. Are you angry at me?” he sounded confused more than anything. It was heartbreaking.

“No, no,” Dahlia said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to try and calm herself. “Thank you for stopping me, Doppan was it?” She let go of her sword as she opened her eyes again. It fell to the floor with a loud clanking sound.

The boy’s eyes brightened at the sound of his name, he nodded thankfully. “We are almost there.” He nodded towards the front of the ship.

Dahlia followed the boy’s gaze. Beyond the bow of the ship, the Dragon Spire was getting bigger by the second. It was the weirdest sight Dahlia had ever seen. It was wider than it was high, covered in green trees and blue waterfalls straight out of storybooks. More than a dozen peaks encircled a flat land wider than any surface Dahlia thought existed. Each peak was as big as the citadel, with fortresses and castles littered across them. Something felt wrong with the way they were constructed. Dahlia kept staring silently, Doppan doing the same beside her.

The Dragon Spire kept growing larger and larger. Every second increased the eerie feeling inside her. What looked like specks of dust gathering around flame at first, became winged serpents. So many dragons, maybe hundreds of them swirled around the peaks.

Dahlia’s breath caught as she realized why the structures felt weird to her. Nothing on the Dragon Spire was constructed with land access in mind. There was no way in or out of most castles other than flying on a dragon.

“Looks amazing.” Ollie’s voice came from behind her.

She looked around, frantically wondering how much time had passed. Dragon Spire loomed over them now. The other recruits were all gathered around her. Even Lilia, who never went up to the deck unless she had to, was there. She was looking at the terrifying and wonderous spire with her mouth half open.

“They are looking at us,” Helen whispered. She sounded more careful than in awe. “There are eyes on us in all the windows.”

“That’s right,” Syllan said slowly climbing the stairs. “That’s the entire Dragon Riders corps checking out the fresh meat.” He chuckled slightly. “Hatchlings, welcome to the Dragon Spire.”