“What is this ‘monster?’”
“Perhaps, young drake, you could initiate our conversation — our first conversation with something a bit more social.”
Adwyn rolled his glowering head. Rude, he knew, but hard to resist, knowing she wouldn’t see. Though he half couldn’t see either; he didn’t trust the shattered lamp to safely carry a flame anymore, and now it rested bottom of his bag. The moltling seemed to have no trouble finding their way without it, and Adwyn wasn’t wholly worse off; the strange glowing mushrooms kept him oriented, and the mites sometimes flashed greater light. You even got light from deep in the vitriol pools, but Adwyn didn’t trust its reflections.
None of that in here, though. Mushrooms were scraped off the walls, mites kept away by asceptic scents, and vitriolic pools sat bubblingly clear.
The blind wiver lived in caves where the rocky ground became soft, fertile silt, and near the warm pools odd greenless plants sprouted up. Around them were big fireclay tables, and on them sat detritus of life: a half eaten gliderscorpion; a clay tablet almost filled with unreadable tactile engravings; distorted clay figures, like dragons constructed from touch alone. The figures had the look of a hatchling’s drawing seen to life. (It was no mystery; Adwyn knew one’s first drawings were informed more by the feel of things than how they actually looked.)
They sat in glazed clay chairs, too. Or rather Adwyn did. The blind wiver was at a rocky surface, chopping up gliderscorpion and another of the fat fleshy rodents. The molting was around here somewhere, playing the inscrutable hiding games of dragonlings.
“Well, who are you? My name is Adwyn, adviser to faer Mlaen-sofran.”
For a beat, she continued chopping at the meat. He worried momentarily, and almost spoke up to help; but he knew how perversely proud and protective lesser dragons would get of what little ability they’d scraped out. He’d rather not have offered help be spurned.
“I would tell you my name, but you shall not need to remember it. Suffice it to call me the blind wiver. Everyone does.”
“I would think you wouldn’t want to be... reminded —”
“Nonsense. I’m not a hatch who’d cry at the wrong words.”
As he expected. So Adwyn glanced to his claws, begin to scrape accumulated dirt from them. “Tell me, does your blindness bear any connection to the — sick dragons which tend these caves?”
“Clever drake. Stop thinking about it.”
Frustrating wiver. He said, “As you wish.”
The moltling dodged out of a tiny opening in the wall, and crept along the shadows like a little Black Fang. His stabbing claws found an overlarge spider.
The orange drake gripped hard the table as the hatch carried the twitching hairy legful creature to the wiver. She popped her tongue and said, “Too poisonous. Throw it in the vitriol.”
The silken robed dragon trailed away slowly, head down. They glanced at the Adwyn, and threw the spider. The drake quick snapped his foreleg up, and knocked it back. It smacked the kid in the face, and they hissed at him, but walked on.
“I take it you care for this little problem?”
“Someone must. You wouldn’t trust the other dragons down here to do it, would you?”
Adwyn peered closer, eyeing the startlingly dark green scales, which looked healthy enough.
“It’s just — don’t suppose you are the hatch’s mother, no? Who is?”
The wiver laughed. “I wonder why the hatch brought down such a questioning drake as you. What’d you say your name was, Adwyn? Not Hinte? Not Chwithach? Interesting.”
A sigh, a muttered, “Dyfns deliver me from mysterious dragons.”
“Sorry to say, but your little canyon spirit doesn’t shine here.” A pause. “Not anywhere, to be true, but especially not here.”
Godless squirrels. At least the traitor had been cut from a different cloth.
“Listen, miss. I am on an important mission for Mlaen-sofran. I must descend the pits and examine the door down here. Tell me if you aren’t going to help.”
“She’s not my faer. This isn’t Gwymr/Frina.” A sigh. “But if the little one thinks you’re worth helping, there must be something.”
“Thank you for doing your duty to the land of glass and secrets.”
“Oh shut up. I have long, long ago done my duty to Dwylla and this lacuna-damned land of secrets. Whom I serve now is my business.”
“Still, the help is appreciated.”
“This is not me helping you. This is me allowing you to proceed.” She reached into her silken robes, retrieved an irregular length of metal. “You shall need this key to enter the labs, and only through there shall you reach the hallowed chamber.”
The chopping had stopped a while ago, replaced by subtler sounds like the dance of spices, cold sizzling, or the faint smacks of meat being shaken in a bowl.
The wiver brought Adwyn a bowl of meat and sat the key down beside it. She didn’t take her foot off the key, however.
“Thank you, miss.”
“I have a few conditions. First, I assured you everything down in the pits is owned. You purportedly have a mission. Focus on that, and ignore any shiny thing you think might not be missed. It will.”
“Of course. What is a canyon drake, if not honorable?” Nothing. He was nothing.
“Second, mind my sister. You shall face her sooner or later, and I don’t think she’ll take kindly to you. Don’t hold it against her.”
“I don’t think anything in these pits has taken kindly to me.” Or worse, they hadn’t taken him serious.
“Third, take care of the little one, who shall be coming with you.” The moltling sulked out from the shadows.
Adwyn glared at the hatch, and stopped himself. Had his hold on himself slipped that much?
“And finally, stop calling him the monster. It’s bad enough the little one started doing that. Know he’s lucky his mind survived the process lucid for so long. His body isn’t even the worse case we’ve seen.”
“What do I call him, then? What is his name?”
The wiver only smiled.
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Adwyn was fledging immensely tired after an evening of dragons smugly denying him answers. Once, twice was chance, thrice and he started paying attention. Why would a dragon deny him answers? Not seeing a reason to give them to him? And why not that? Because Adwyn wasn’t on their side, he wasn’t their friend, they wouldn’t open up to him.
The one spot of cooperation, of wholesale sharing of information, had been with the red wiver. She was his ally, of course. And yet, the others: Ysais and Wedd were with capitol, and had acted his assitants; the murderer needed him in his plans, needed his clout and openness; the blind wiver trusted him with the moltling and the key to this ‘hallowed chamber’.
They were all his allies. And yet, in some capacity, there was a hesitation, some axis along which they did not fully align with him.
For perhaps once, Adwyn briefly considered the notion that other dragons may not like him.
It was something new and unexplored enough to snare his thoughts for several moments.
Around him, the pits were really starting to limn the influence of the fiery lake Berwem. The dustone and limestone showed veins of fire clay, and even the crizzling glass that had wormed its melting way down.
At intervals one passed a vein that was not yet vitrified, and would shine warmly. The cool glow of the mushrooms danced with the dim light of the dying glass, and Adwyn, lampless and squizzing, smiled for it. They offered heat, as well, and gave the mites confidence they didn’t need, but seemed to scare off the gliderscorpions, and Adwyn’s stomach was not happy for that change.
“I hate going this way. Too hot!”
The moltling punched a dark bit of glass, watched it sag or shatter as a result.
“Does it get hotter than this?” He’d helped the high guard deal with troublemakers on the sifter teams. He could — just — bear standing near the lake. Now he was under it.
“Changes with the tide. You should have asked the wiver.” They punched the wall again. “I hope today is not a really hot day.”
The orange drake sighed and fell back into his thoughts, cloudy eyes roaming the glowing veins and swooping mites.
He asked the moltling, “Do I seem like a nice drake?”
“No.” He tail flicked, smacked Adwyn in the snout. “Nice drakes do not make it this deep into the pits.”
“Why not?”
“The blind wiver says they do not belong.”
The orange drake had worn and punctured frills that cast thoughtful shapes on his neck. He watched the walls change and not change as they walked on. At first the inexplicably glowing mushrooms had perplexed him, but as he looked closer he could see at intervals the bugs which at times resembled moths would come by and light on the luminescent beds. Their tongues like little pipes would sink down into the mushroom and after awhile they would fly away on their business.
Without the sun, the pits were without flowers, and the mushrooms had seen an oppurtunity.
One would suppose today was in fact a hot day; the heat pressed harder and gamelier onto Adwyn. His canteen became emtpy.
“How much longer until we reach this hallowed chamber?”
The moltling didn’t answer, and he asked again.
“I don’t know! I don’t go this way. But you can’t fit through my way, so we go the hot way. It is longer.”
The murderer did not complain again. At length the ground flattened itself as if finally entertaining a request, and the plants and metal sponges poking out of vitriol pools were shooed away. The hot veins of seeping glass were not so kind, and if anything grew fatter.
The tunnel tended wider, too, but it felt more like it loomed than it opened up. After the ground was flat, one began to spot big cyclopean bricks of granite half consumed by the dustone.
It wasn’t just the dustone; fire clay and crizzling glass covered the fledgling bricks, as well as the dirty stuff that remains after mushrooms and worms have had their way with dead things. Even now, the vitriol pools lingered, and Adwyn increasingly was tempted to wash his feet utterly clean. He had trudged through worse, he knew. Few things could truly disgust a drake who felt what remains of a true spider’s uppity slave.
At last what had seemed to be a lost floor made a final push to emerge from the encrouching pits, and succeeded. The cyclopean bricks now spread out unhindred, and Adwyn saw between them melty iron like grout.
Cursed. These pits were cursed in about every aspect.
“Why do you play in a place like this?”
“We’re waiting till the time is right.”
“For?”
A grin looking back, sharp white teeth. “A new faer.”
Adwyn opened his mouth for more questions, but didn’t like how dry his mouth became when the hot cave air rushed in. He saved them for when they found water. He feared that would take a while in the pits — why hadn’t he asked the blind wiver for drink?
They walked past a wall honeycombed with deep indentations. Sidling closer, Adwyn saw that each cubbyhole had a name printed above it — and it was neither y Draig nor the Pteryxian-looking one. Adwyn could tell Drachenzunge, but could not read it.
The orange drake stopped, and breathed still for a few cycles. He flew alone in a storm of questions; the secrets of the pits roared and flashed in sudden hints, and all around him was a rain occluded and secretive. He flew alone, but toward a beacon: the unflappable faer Mlaen and her mind which could rival the scarlet snake himself.
Together, they would unravel the secrets of Gwymr/Frina. Until then, he would survive the pits, and witness what lay at the depth of it all.
Before he left he tended a space closer to the cubbies, peered and glimpsed what lay inside them. Faded pages lost to time, the skeletons of snakes long dead, scurrying bugs who’d reclaimed the holes, wands and rings that still hummed with some magic. Adwyn didn’t touch those.
He made a note of the wall, and started toward the moltling waiting near (but not very near) a shining vein. The tunnel now had opened up so suddenly and widely that you could call this a room. There were two pillars on either side which upheld a roof sagging and dipping with glass.
There was a wide, inviting opening at the center of it all and the moltling was tended toward it. Adwyn followed, ready for more unintelligible hints.
They came into an atrium like a dragon with wings outstretched or a tree with leaves of short crumbling pews. From here a spine or trunk marched down centerly, till it reached a final platform where it suddenly lifted like a proud head. Many limbs unfurled from the center, and unfurled again, till there were many boughs of seating on either wing of the room.
They were not alone. There were serveral bloated shapes lit dimly from above, one of which moved.
The molting said, “I forgot which side it is on. Look for a lever. This room has lights.”
Adwyn glanced around the shadowed rooms. The walls were occluded, and the forms sticked off them could be collapsed rocks, fungal growths, or the lever. The shape moved again, and the murderer focused on it, wing at his baton.
“I found it.” Next came a kind of snap, and then the now familiar crackling of magical electricity. It coursed and pulsed through the iron grout of the walls and blue knots of shock danced at intersections.
Then orbs bulging out from the walls breathed cool light.
The atrium had lost a battle with the lake from above. Columns of glass leisurely flowed down and consumed the pews at length. Chunks and sections of the ceiling had been punted down to crater the floor. The atrium had lost the battle, but uninformed stranglers still fought: final pillars upheld lucky sections, and a few groups of pews hadn’t been lost to disarray. But even the floor had given in its own way: tilted from high left to low right like one falling bit of ceiling had hit too hard. At the far right a colorless misty liquid pooled, he flicked his tongue, it was vitriol.
Farther from the center, the lights mounted on poles took longer to light as if the conductive iron grout had sustained damange, but when it was finished they saw many of the bloated shapes were infected dragons dead or close enough not to matter.
The one moving shape fled to the cowardly shadows at the ends.
As gaze moved from fringe to center, Adwyn’s breath fled him. On that platform there stood a weltering mass on — one hopes — four legs.
The blind wiver had asked Adwyn not to call him a monster, but it was not a promise he could keep.
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His claws scored the granite where he stood. In truth, those feet resembled more sea stars or gnarled knotted roots, and every foot a different species. One leg upheld like a pillar, another bent like a tentacle or whip, one like a foreleg, and another couldn’t be seen but at this angle ought to have been. There were too many tails — three? Seven? Five and a half? Irregardless, Adwyn had seen the wriggling of an agitated archon spider. The wings weren’t wings, and Adwyn didn’t like to look too long at the trunk. Was it too long or too short? The scales — if they were scales — of the things didn’t like the light. Adwyn glimpsed perhaps they wanted to be white, but they bubbled and stretched, and blood or pus always seemed to be a possibility away on every scute. Adwyn forgot the tails, and decided there were six limbs. He wished it would stay that way, but the tendency of the flesh seemed to be exploring every possibility. A scale became a tendril became a horn became a decaying thing falling off; elsewhere the line of thought was picked up, turning to roots or grasping bony things or things that flapped. Never in places that made sense. The neck emerged after several false starts and it wasn’t properly long. You could call what was on the end a head — you had to. It didn’t have the only eyes, the only mouths, the only flaring nostrils or curling horns, but it was a convention. The eyes there were there, crowned uncontested the face, and they were the right shape, yet clouded. The mouth sat closed rather than groaning or screaming like other infected, and Adwyn wondered if coherrent speech rested there. When the cracked, twitching lips parted, many tongues flicked out in rhythmless cacophony. There were exactly nine frills, evenly distributed on each side. Overall, one supposed it fit many definitions of a draconid. One’s mind refused to squint when faced with such an ontological threat — but if one did, one could see the resemblance. And yet, the entirety of the creature was flickering unintelligibly in Adwyn’s mind just as much the dithering sections of skin — was it once a wraith? An ugly outgrowth of the vitriolic pools? Two infected dragons who’d lain too close together? Was it a dragon at all, at all? Had it once been a dragon? Adwyn stared long, and in all his study at the universities and monasteries and libraries of two nations, he couldn’t weave together the proper words to render such a creature in entirety — and it was for the best, for no dragon truly wanted that.
Adwyn backstepped.
He did not scream. He knew control. He knew breathing. Adwyn clouded his eyes, and saw not.
Still, even behind clouded brilles, Adwyn could in recollection see the weltering mess. The spiderly tail. The legs of different species. The scales that crawled.
Adwyn knew utter terror, and no exercise of the mind erased it.
Brilles cleared.
The molting was regarding the monster with a smile or sneer. He had a wing lifted, and that meant something. It almost pointed, at that was enough to drag his gaze back toward the monster.
Its brilles, too, had unclouded, and in that moment, Adwyn recognized. He’d seen the portraits. He’d heard the legends.
He glanced at the molting. Details were blending in his head. But with the expanding fearcloud, no triumph nor revelation could shine through. Far away on the platform at the head of the room, the monster took a single step forward, toward them. Adwyn did not scream. He set his gaze on a ceiling hole yawning above, and crouched. He prayed Dyfns that the twisting image would leave him as he left the room.
Crouched, Adwyn leapt.
Beneath him, the floor crumbled under the weight, and he never rose.
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In a place called the pits, one expected to fall for longer. The orange drake landed sharp on his back, hard rocks poking into him. Beneath the atrium and its granite blocks, the fire clay had washed away and left a cavern. The glowing mushrooms reclaimed it, while the shining flows of glass were sated above. Down here things were slimier and full of insectiod chittering, and an explanation at once gleamed when Adwyn turned his head right.
The was a churning lake of vitriol deep underground. The leeches teemed and wormed, the metal sponges dotted like bushes. He saw stranger things floating along and did not look long.
As if spurned along by a occulted thought, Adwyn curled to a stand and limped to the edge of the lake.
He could take another step.
A final bath.
The land would be rid of the black ascendant, at last, and he could know peace.
As in ritual, the counterarguments surfaced. It was a cowardly act. But he had proven himself one to flee many times down in the pits. He was honorbound to serve Gwymr/Frina. But what was Gwymr/Frina? The true nature of the capitol of the land of glass and secrets forever seemed to swirl and shift under him. Increasingly he could not separate the conspiritorial rot that writhed here from the beauty worth preserving. He owed it to Mlaen, his only friend. Was he truly serving her best by remaining here? Did she need him? There was already the treasurer, the high guard, and that ridges’ adviser. Did the Frinan administration truly need another murderer?
Long did he stare into his shadowy reflection on the liquid’s surface. In the end, the impetus did not come as some revelation or insight; his thoughts still tended silence or vague circling along the same flightpaths. No, the answer ultimately could not come from inside him.
A ghostly form drifted in that vitriol lake, and swam gently toward him.
At his backing away, the form slowly climbed ashore on flippers unused to walking. It had a head, body, and six swimming limbs. A distant cousin of this species must have resembled a salamander at one point, and resemblance lingered in the bulbous head and large halfblind eyes. It nosed on the ground, round tongue finding scents in the air.
Salamanders didn’t quite have scales, and the round hard plates that clung to this one limned the impression of something separate, loosely attached, with how it swung and wrinkled.
Gingerly, stupidly, did it approach the drake. The nonsalamander opened a gaping mouth and burped.
He clicked a laugh, though it eased away when the breath touched him and his scales seemed to sting and grow very dry.
The orange drake backed away further, and fell to laughing again at the absurdity of it — a survival instict after what he was considering!
He rubbed the flaky scales where the creature’s breath hit him as he stepped away and watched it snuffle along the ground. The contents of his bag had spilled out with the fall, and littered the ground. The canteen; the sword; the smashed lamp; the timepiece of Brice.
The timepiece had snapped open at its impact, and the paper fluttered so subtly in cavern air. The creature neared it, eyeing the paper, and feeling — something well up from his glands, he lunged forward.
The thing startled at the movement. Adwyn took anohter step toward it. It backed up, then waded back into the vitriol, disappeared into its depths.
He glanced at the little piece of paper, the last memory of Brice and Elde.
The venom welling up had been bitter.
Adwyn let himself be immersed in the odd protectiveness he felt for that timepiece and paper, and let himself walk away from the pool of vitriol.
He lit another flame with venom and Cynfe’s gift. The flames were wild now without the glass restraining. He let the fire consume Brice’s last sketch. It flared brighter.
Adwyn stared long into the flames. Even in the darkness of the pits, in his own darkness, there was light and there was something worth protecting.
And for now, he would.
----------------------------------------
Striding forward, orange feet made quick work out of the cavern below the atrium. The tunnels sought out like tendrils, in many directions, but going left and climbing, he returned to corridors with cyclopean blocks and unfaltering pillars. He was sure he’d walked past the length of the atrium, so wherever he was, it lay behind the atrium.
But as the environs turned from cavern to ruins, it grew harder to navigate. Rooms split off from the corridors, and Adwyn had not the time or energy to explore their contents. It wore on his tired, abused body enough to simply be moiling forth. But he did, for he must.
”Deep, deep down in the pits, there’s a supposedly sealed door. You can find it by going the other way whenever any one way seems right. If it feels like you shouldn’t be there, keep going. After it feel like you right died, you’re close. If you go deep like that, you’ll find that sealed door.”
Like that, Adwyn went on. His mouth had known only dryness for what felt like rings. He swished his canteen, and didn’t let himself regret how it turned out. His initial desire to tend close to the vitriol lake had completed itself, and left him with a canteen full of the stuff. He just had to remember not to drink it. So he kept it in one wing, swished it.
Adwyn knew many things, but he did not know how to sleep and walk. All the same, his thoughts and memory warped and entire corridors or rooms seemed to pass without his remembering crossing them.
He came to what passed as full awareness when his head bonked against a cursed iron door. Two of them. With a keyhole in the metal.
The door to the labs? The blind wiver had given him the key. It worked, and carefully, feet kept from the iron with the sleeve of his armor, Adwyn opened the gate.
Inside, he could believe the rumors of some awful alchemist holing up down here. Every color of liquid sat in an oddly shaped glass somewhere, smelling assortedly of vitriol, saltpeter, lards and oils, glazeward and respira, and every manner of dried plant one could find in the cliffs. He knew also, from the master high alchemist who dwelt in the Geunantic palace, the smell of aqua regia, alkahest and aver.
Besides ingredients, there was a palpable dissonance of five or six foot-sized crysts blaring or shrieking throughout the room. The mites weren’t here, and one would almost think it worsened the sound.
On tables all around you saw wraiths or olms or rotting dragons drawn, quartered, and vivesected. Organs were on plates and scales, sealed up in containers or soaking in strange liquids. One could not tell which parts were dragon and which parts were not.
The room was organized without being labelled, and there was not an overarching order. It had one’s eyes wandering listlessly around, seeing without finding the meaning that would tie it all together.
It left it easy to miss the most curious sight in the room: the row of dragons stock still along a wall, eyes very dark, and scales black like the blind wiver.
Among them was a gap, like one was missing.
Tightness entered Adwyn walk toward the other door of the room. He unholstered his baton in wing. His frills flexed, straining to hear, and heard death mumble something. Adwyn’s agitation traveled down his spine and lashed his tail. By the time he made it to the center of the room and the tables tended thicker, that lashing tail smacked a glass, spilt something to the ground. His foot found the glass and near tripped him, but he already had caution enough.
Already still, Adwyn half turned to glance behind — that out of place black dragon was right there, standing still as the others, but by the opposite wall.
Adwyn wished he’d given it a good look earlier — had it been there all along?
He measured steps forward. Instinct turned his head again — and saw the black dragon hadn’t moved, standing as still as the others.
The murderer breathed, and pushed himself forward. He checked the other black dragons, they hadn’t moved. The contents of the lab remained unchanging, save liquids which bubbled or meat which dissolved in certain baths.
Adwyn slowly stepped on. He looked up, at the ceiling, where cracks implied it may be collapsing soon — but not for dances, at least. Unless the lake grew too violent.
He didn’t worry, and looked for other tells. In a corner there lingered a thick spiderweb. He stared at it awhile.
When instict flared again, he almost didn’t turn. But he did, and saw across the table beside him, paces behind him, black dragon, standing as still as the others.
It had lusterless black scales, wings without membranes, and unlike the others, clear brilles that revealed still gray eyes.
He turned away for a breath before instict jerked it back —
The black dragon stood two steps behind him, standing as still as the others.
He whirled around in full, frowned at the dragon. Grip tighted on the baton but —
They had a sword. He’d seen the sheath, but it wasn’t in the sheath. It was already in their feet, already rushing at him, already sliding into his breast on the wrong side for his heart.
Breathe, one, two.
Adwyn had suffered worse.
And he had a mission.
His baton wing was already swinging around, and striking against the snout. He gripped the sword to keep it from being pulled out. His tail was fishing the sword from his bag. He was bringing a foreleg up to punch.
The dragon caught the punch, and it just stopped. It rolled away from the snout strike and raked him with a wing. The sword was not let go of.
The murderer had ceased pulling his punches, ceased observing his vow, stopped letting himself be leashed or restrained.
This had been a chasm of a night, and it would not end here.
The dragon was wrenching at the sword, the other foreleg coming to grip his neck, and behind them the membraneless wings flaring.
Then Adwyn did a few things at once —
His tail passed his sword to a foreleg. He stabbed upward with it.
His other wing popped the canteen’s top with an alula, and threw.
He snaked his head forward and bit the snout.
His last foreleg gripped a shoulder.
Adwyn knew it would be the end of one of them.
His sword stabbed forward, and the murderer knew where the heart was.
The vitriol fell, and his aim or calculation was off; droplets splashed upon him and they burned.
He tightened his bite, even as the strangling foreleg tightened too.
And like instict, Adwyn twisted the blade.
It didn’t happen all at once, their dying. He felt the tug on the sword die away, the strangling die away, and lastly they fell to the floor.
Adwyn stepped away.
They had turned away in time for the vitriol eat at their frills and neck. Their legs had curled in something hatchly.
Adwyn did not regret, and did not mourn. He had a task, and he would see it through to the end. Nothing would stop or sway him.
He felt the searing vitriol eating holes in his face. From this night he would be scarred. Unless Ushra saw mercy.
He felt the chestwound which he perhaps just had the materials to survive. He would be scarred, if he lived to be scarred.
He turned, and he began walking deeper into the pits. The high guard had been wrong. He didn’t feel like he’d died.
He felt like death.
Before he’d left the lab, he glanced back out of habit or instict. The black dragon was gone. It didn’t feel like weight falling off him; he didn’t regret, he didn’t mourn, he didn’t care.
The murderer turned one last time, and walked on to the hallowed chamber.
He would witness the mystery of Gwymr/Frina.
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At longest last, Adwyn had reached the door in the depths of the pits. Ahead, a iron portal (the archaic word felt appropriate) filled the corridor. Its frame panted with endless geometrics and that gleaming Pteryxian script.
And that doorway lingered open.
Adwyn tended closer.
In it stood the silkenrobed moltling, lying as if resting. His mat could have been a throne, decorated with electrum and diamonds. Around him were silk dolls or wooden toys, or elaborate constructions of metal. The cowl of his robes was down, and the cool magic lights must lay inside, for you could see the face, utterly clear.
One saw he had had purewhite, leucistic scales, a beatific smile on the face, and (Adwyn felt his suspicions harden to fact) silk, spidersilk robes.
Adwyn looked, and saw finally that the molting had those two heterochromatic eyes, one black and one white.
We’re waiting till the time is right.
For a new faer.
Several thoughts were in Adwyn’s head, and then they were in his wings reaching for his blade, and then they were in his legs lunging him forward, and then they were in the thrust, and then they were in the horrible, innocent screams exploding out, and those screams never left him.
No else had heard. They had nowhere else to go.
For a very long time, no thoughts came. No adumbrations of purpose or mission, assertions of regretless, mournless action. Only the silence of death, and the breathing of her practitioner. Then, at length, there was a single thought, not in his voice.
You fucked up, Adwyn.
* * *