"Are we really not going to talk about this?" shouted Oliver, the frigid wind whipping by stealing the words from his lips. It was cold up here.

"Talk about what?" shouted a red-nosed Tiro from where he was seated just behind him, strapped into the same leather harness that Oliver was.

"The fact that, I don't know, we're riding a dragon?"

Far below them the ground moved by deceptively slowly, the patchwork of fields, rivers and lakes having long since given way to the same forests he'd spent far too much time in. It was winter now, and many of the trees had lost their leaves, leaving only grim skeletons behind interspersed with the occasional stand of evergreens.

"It's only a juvenile," Tiro said with a wild grin.

True, it was much, much smaller than the ones he'd seen attacking the army base he'd first been brought to, maybe thirty or forty feet long from head to tail, but with a much greater wingspan. And yet… "Yeah, but where were you, like, keeping it? Did you have a secret basement in your base that I didn't know about?"

"We have a lot going on that you don't know about. And it seems like leadership's ready to risk a lot on this mission," Tiro said, although it took Oliver a moment to piece his words together through the wind by reading his lips.

They were seated on the back of a flying T-Rex. At least, that's what his mind had parsed the enormous reptilian creature as, as they'd climbed aboard on the custom-designed leather harness running down the length of its spine, between the ridiculously huge wings and the rock-hard muscles that powered them. It had smelled like a cross between a dairy farm and a meat processing factory, was covered in scales the side of his palm.

It was him, Gideon, Tallahassee, Grace, Tiro, Sindra, and Galen. Further ahead of them were seated four other people that made up the majority of a third cell, the ones who'd brought the dragon. Their leader sat at the base of the dragon's skull with his hands on reins leading to its mouth and feet in the stirrups of the thing. They were to a one clothed in riding leathers and masked and goggled, gear for which Oliver would have been very grateful had it been offered.

Oliver hadn't really tried to make smalltalk with them, as they'd seemed entirely content to keep to themselves, but they'd exchanged words with Sindra and Gideon, and apparently they were known to each other.

"Makes sense," said Oliver after dredging himself out of the pondering he'd fallen into. "But like, how does it even keep itself in the air? Magic?"

Tiro shrugged. "They're creatures of a mortal magic, my ma always told me. But I've no idea. I'm not a walking bestiary."

For themselves, the Earthlings were dressed in what Oliver thought of as their combat gear, which was really just their normal day-to-day outfits plus masks (though there wasn't much good the masks would do; it was just sort of, well, traditional) and warm cloaks, the only things keeping them from freezing their butts off up here.

He was feeling jittery, the mana buzzing in his veins like a caffeine high as it leaked from every orifice and his very skin. He glowed brightly to his own mana sight, much as he had since they'd left the mana caravan earlier, though the glow had faded slightly.

Below them, the land passed by as they flew into the night. They'd planned the attack to occur in the early hours of the morning just before dawn, the time when the night watch would be at their sleepiest and the day crew just about to wake up.

They'd be reaching the facility soon, and then the mission would begin in earnest.

—

"Dragon? What dragon?" asked Oliver, taking a sip of his own tea. In the cabin's fireplace, the fire continued to crackle away merrily as Galen stoked it. Outside, dark had fallen and still the planning was continuing. Grace and Tallahassee would be arriving soon.

Gideon glanced over at him, then back to Sindra. "If we can't get within a thousand feet of the place, how do you think we'll accurately throw the ring carrying all of our best soldiers? I don't know anybody with an arm that good."

"But surely—one person flying in under cover of night, with everybody else stored safely in the ring—" Sindra said uncertainly.

"There's a catch," said Gideon.

"There's always a catch," grumbled Tiro.

"There's a limited supply of air inside the ring. We can recycle it, create more oxygen—fresh air, that is—but our mana will only last so long."

"And?"

"And if we're all inside the ring, who's going to get us out?"

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There was a moment of silence as everybody present digested this.

"Our man on the inside?" guessed Tiro.

"You're sure this is the only way to get past the wards?" asked Galen in tones of disbelief a moment later. "You leave much to fate."

"Unless you know of a way to sneak a magical item through security tighter than Fort Knox—er, a government's treasury—or shut down an archmage's wards, then yes, I'm sure."

"So where does the dragon come into this?"

"Transport," guessed Sindra. "We'll get you all to above the base, then you'll, what, all get into the ring with the exception of a single person to make sure it gets to its intended target, without crossing the wards?"

"That's right," said Gideon. "In order to minimize the amount of time we spend inside the ring, we'll all pile inside at the last second, and only when we're sure it'll be found and picked up by our contact."

"And we trust this guy?" asked Tiro. "I mean, he'll have to pull us out before we all suffocate. That's kind of a tall order."

"If he's not trustworthy, this whole mission is already doomed to failure," said Oliver. "And anyway, we have a pretty wide safety buffer. The spell isn't that expensive. We just need to make sure the ring isn't lost for good."

"Err, good point," acknowledged Tiro with a nod in his direction.

"Right then," said Gideon. "Extraction will be the reverse order of going in with the ring. Our friend will simply walk out wearing us on his finger, and when he gets past the wards he'll take us out of the ring and go on from there."

"He'll just be able to walk out with the spell and everything?"

"He assures us security is a lot more lax going out than going in," said Gideon.

"And if it's not?" rumbled Galen.

"Then we'll have to rely on the backup plan."

"Which is?"

"The dragon."

—

Just as the sky began to lighten, the barest hint of red touching the rim of the horizon, they began to descend. They had passed the last vestiges of forest a little while ago and were now flying above the tree line of a series of mountain peaks that put the Rockies to shame. The Range Perilous, he was told; it split the Shadowveil in two, running through it roughly from east to west.

Leaning to the side of the dragon, Oliver found that he could just barely make out what looked like a barnacle clinging to the side of a ship—the Crucible, perched on the slope of a mountainside. It was built of a dark stone and held a certain menace even at this distance, somehow conjuring the nameless dread of an abandoned asylum or long-forgotten cemetery. A chill that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature ran its fingers down Oliver's spine.

Gideon's voice sounded in Oliver's eardrum, the long-distance communication spell they'd developed capturing and magnifying his words for Oliver's benefit. "Standby for ring deployment."

His attention snapped back to the back of the dragon as up ahead he saw Galen's dark cloak disappear, leaving Gideon with hand outstretched in his place.

Next in line was Tallahassee, who disappeared a moment later after holding out her hand to reach Gideon. Gideon crawled down the back of the dragon, a line fastened to his belt that permitted him free traversal of the dragon's back without being completely disconnected from the harness.

Powerful wings pumped on either side of them as the dragon adjusted itself in the air, throwing them off a little. Gideon crouched down, grabbing a line running down the dragon's side for balance. Oliver glanced down, couldn't help himself. Despite their headlong descent, the ground was still far, far below them.

Moments later, the dragon stabilized and Gideon stood again, moving in a low crouch as he half-crawled down the next couple of seats to reach Oliver.

Upon reaching him, he caught Oliver's eye, then did a countdown with his gloved fingers. On one, he reached out and touched Oliver, who vanished into the ring.

Being drawn into the ring was a peculiar experience; between eye blinks, between heartbeats, he vanished from the back of the dragon into the silent space linked to by the ring.

There was no gravity in this place, a pocket dimension Sung, had called it; they were free-floating in a small dark void, spaced out equidistant from one another. Though no walls were visible, he nonetheless had the impression of a small, closed space. It was an eerie sensation, something his brain just knew, without him being able to trace that knowledge to a particular sense input.

The rush of wind had disappeared from his ears to be replaced with a near-silence filled only by the sounds of breathing, rustling of clothes and a couple of quiet conversations.

If he hadn't already experienced it once before during their rehearsal, he probably would have freaked out a little. It was simply that strange of an experience, the closet thing to actual teleportation he'd experienced.

About half the force were already waiting for him. Tallahassee was powering a mana stone to shed light over all of them in the space, and Graves was in the process of casting the spell that would transform spent carbon dioxide back into oxygen. The air in here was already the perfect concentration, they'd made sure of that before they left, and now she just needed to keep it in stasis.

A moment later, Tiro appeared beside them and immediately exclaimed as he realized that gravity had no hold on him. "Look, I'm flying!" he called.

Oliver glanced over at him, as did a couple of the others, and he waved sheepishly. "Sorry, just haven't been in one of these before."

"Did you miss the demonstration?" asked Oliver.

"I was, ah, sick," he called back shamelessly.

"Sick, sure," said Oliver. "What was it you were spiking the tea with again?"

There was a brief, muted chuckle, the gallows humor relieving the tension only slightly. Oliver looked around, as he hung weightlessly in place. Each person seemed to have their own ritual or habit that they were engaged with prior to the start of the mission, each man or woman praying to his or her gods, fiddling with a keepsake or whatever good luck routine they'd developed.

Soon, the ring would hit the ground, passing through the wards harmlessly and without setting off any alarms, and their man on the inside would bring them to a safe space before withdrawing them one by one.

Oliver's own thoughts flashed back to the home he'd left behind six months prior. He thought of his wife and unborn child. His wife would be giving birth any day now.

It was time to get back home. Long past time.

And then his thoughts were interrupted by a rush of wind and whirling disorientation, the peace of the pocket dimension shattered by a sudden rush of sensory input. Flashes of the ground, the sky, the mountain range—he was tumbling through the air limply, spinning around in uncontrolled free-fall in the sky far above the Crucible.