Toril was numb with shock. He hadn’t seen Sheilah since she was an infant, but he was certain that the girl that had been just below his study window had been her. He sat in his chair because his legs were numb and rubbery and powerless; he’d just watched someone fall to their death, a girl, clinging to the wall with wiry strength, suddenly losing her grip and plummeting without so much as a scream.

He hadn’t been able to save her. He’d reached for her hand, but hadn’t been fast enough.

Sooner or later a report would come to him of a dead girl found splattered all over the gardens, so far below. Or maybe it wouldn’t make it to him.

He’d have Magdalene look in on Sheilah at breakfast, and maybe his heart would stop hammering in his chest.

He needed to do something. Anything.

His heart thundered in his ears, pulsed in his eyes, he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

He pawed at his desk, but it felt a thousand miles away.

What if it had been Sheilah?

What was he supposed to say to Magdalene?

His head hit the desk and all went dark.

As Sheilah fell, she scrabbled at the wall to catch herself, but all that she got for her efforts was a faceful of dust and flashes of sparks as her nails scraped and scratched at the stone.

The blur of receding stone rushed rapidly across her vision; her heart seemed to seize in her chest and her body seemed to relax and go slack in the face of the inevitable.

Suddenly and without warning, the part of her that was dragon seemed to come forward, a burning heat swelled in her chest and a blast of fire escaped her mouth as her hands slammed into the wall with a strength that terrified her. She couldn’t see through the flames but she could feel the stomach-dropping lurch as she jolted to a stop, could feel her shoulders scream as they strained at the abrupt halt.

Her vision cleared and she could see her hands had dug into the fitted stone blocks of the castle. Streaks in the stone told the tale of her fingers digging in; sear-marks of black marked where her flame had scorched it.

She struggled to catch her breath and slow her pounding heart. This had been the very first time she’d ever slipped and fallen like this. She couldn’t ever remember a time when she’d fallen. Dragons were very good at climbing. It was a part of them.

She tugged her hand free of the stone and could see the bloody lacerations sealing themselves, pushing little chips of stone and dirt out of the wounds.

She took a breath, and then another, and found her feet. Once her feet were set, she picked her grip, pulled her other hand out of the gouge she’d made, waited for it to heal, and glanced around herself for a place to rest.

Long, sooty streaks of black marred the walls of the castle; was that from her breath? She tested her hand-and-footholds and began pulling herself up. Her climb would be a long one, and she was unimaginably hungry and tired, but she’d do it. She hurt in places she didn’t realize could hurt, but she’d do it.

Magdalene was busy. She had so much on her plate. She needed to find servants, cooks, and an instructor she could work with to educate Sheilah in time for her social debut. She needed some way to find out where the Dark Elves were and keep tabs on them so that there weren’t any unexpected interruptions.

Damiel liked to wander the palace and poke his nose into everything, getting underfoot and in the way. He had no respect for personal boundaries or privacy, either. Artrus apparently cruised around in the common areas of the city, and Eatha... Nobody had actually seen her since they’d arrived. Damiel was the biggest threat and concern, for the moment.

Magdalene was positive that Sheilah would certainly do something to him the moment he poked his nose into her apartments; she was certain that Fialla would eviscerate him. As thrilling as the idea was to simply kill them and be done with it, Stormheim could ill-afford a war with the elves.

That made her priority to keep them apart for as long as possible.

Sheilah climbed into the open window and eyed the older man with his head down on his desk.

He’d called her by name. Drawing the logical points together and reaching the conclusion, this was Magdalene’s husband- her father.

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He was tall, about as tall as Davian, but he was pale, and his hair was a dirty yellow, similar to Magdalene’s. While Davian seemed to only get harder and tougher with age, this man seemed to be wan and pale, weak and sickly looking.

She fingered a lock of her own hair, it was glossy black. It, like her nails, was like all the members of the Dragon Clan.

The old man stirred, and let out a deep breath.

Was he like Davian, strong and fearless? Was he like Adlan, wise and thoughtful? What sort of man was he, her mysterious father that had stretched out his hand to catch her when she fell?

The Dragon was awake and restless within her; the long fall had awakened it in a way that demanded some way of placating it. She needed to eat; whatever it had done to catch her as she fell demanded a full and robust meal.

Someone was coming. She glanced around, and considered ducking back out the window. The Dragon denied it. It would not hide. It would be acknowledged, appeased to.

She glanced up. The answer was always up.

The ceiling was studded with linked crossbeams. A chandelier dangled from one such set of crossbeams.

She leaped up, catching the wood in her hands, digging her nails in. She swung her weight up, locked her legs around the beam, pulled herself up, and then strode across the beams as a Dark Elf opened the door to the study and strolled in with an energetic “Gooood Morning, King!” that was laced with false cheer.

*****

“Gooood Morning, King!” Damiel greeted as he strode into the King’s study. Toril raised his head from his desk.

“And look at you, hard at work. Your wife would be pleased, were she here.” He added. “Where has she run off to?”

Toril grunted. “Still haven’t mastered the simple civility of knocking, have you?” He complained.

Damiel rolled his eyes theatrically. “You don’t knock when entering a barn filled with livestock, do you? Do you need a horse’s permission to enter the corral?”

“You’re going to die, you know that, don’t you?” Toril replied.

“I can do whatever I want. I have diplomatic immunity, after all. You kill me, and your precious kingdom goes up in ash and flames.” Damiel replied.

A shadow dropped down silently behind Damiel. Toril saw it, but couldn’t understand it.

“What do you want, elf? I have things to do, and you’re keeping me from them. Like breakfast.”

“As if I didn’t see you napping at your desk when I came in.” the Dark Elf replied in dolorous, mocking tones.

“Leave, elf!” Toril demanded, pointing towards the door.

Damiel shrugged, turned to leave but immediately stumbled backwards, towards Toril’s desk.

Sheilah dropped down behind the elf silently and watched him with the predatory hunger of the Dragon. She had no idea what to expect with a ‘dark elf’, but she was wholly unsurprised that, besides the color of their skin, they looked no different from the Wild Elves in the Redstone.

Here was one that would acknowledge her dominion.

He turned and she locked eyes with him, stepping forward.

He stumbled back from her, his terror baking off of him in waves; she could smell the sour scent of terrified sweat and the squirt of urine in his trousers as he soiled himself. In a way, though, it was like he wasn’t even looking at her at all.

Damiel turned to leave, and suddenly there was a girl right behind him, a girl with eyes of brilliant fury. All he could see was her eyes. She took a step forward and there was a soundless predatory roar that pulsed out of her and drove the breath from his chest, freezing his heart in his chest, driving the sweat from his pores. The cool air was suddenly hot on his skin, as if he stood in a furnace.

There was a sense that he wasn’t looking at a human girl, but instead, a dreadful, terrifying monster, and then for a moment, he wasn’t even in Toril’s office anymore.

Magma boiled in some ancient caldera, and some gigantic monster, some demon, some dread dark nightmare opened its eyes in the hellish pit and saw him through her.

I see you.

An alien voice thundered in his skull, and suddenly he saw his home city, a peaceful, serene, beautiful place- until a dread dark shade draped over it, dressing it in furiously boiling flame.

Countless elves whirled like dying matchsticks in the inferno, their screams stripped from them in endless, purgatorial immolation.

The atavistic leviathan of flame presided over this holocaust, its massive feet crushing the towers and spires of his city like a child kicking over its toys, its massive tail sweeping the ground, trailing flame, erasing the territories of the Dark elves from the land.

Their country would burn.

Their land would burn.

There would be nothing to remember them, not even ashes to pick through.

He stumbled backwards from that horrific prophecy, a scream strangling his throat and his legs drenching themselves in piss as he struggled away from that nightmare.

“I see you.” Sheilah repeated, and that’s when he dashed past her and fled the room.