“Cowards,” she says with laughter, until eventually her parched throat could laugh no more. “Cowards hiding like infants in a treehouse.”

The anger of the Glenmaidens washes over her, pure and deep. She breaths it in like an elixir of life. Their scorn never did bother her.

In truth, it is the calmness of the dragon – the utter condescension in its voice – that she’s always hated the most.

Palka the blue, Palka the pure, the radiant, the perfect. So sure that she’s right.

“You sorry fool,” Palka says. “You never could be grateful for the peace I offered.”

She looks at them all in turn – sisters she’d sheltered on the roads of the humans as they ran from bandits, brigands, ‘holy’ knights on crusades or merchants of the flesh. She looks into the eyes of those whom she’d sworn to protect all her life, and sees hatred there.

Only in young Myrathellon’s eyes is there doubt.

It’s that doubt that steels her resolve.

“What I have done is only the beginning,” she says. “I have broken the humans in their pathetic valley single-handedly. Who knows what I could do if you stood by my side?”

The Elven warriors shift in their armor, peering sheepishly at their feet. They say nothing.

“Senecalthis,” the dragon sighs. “You have done an irredeemable thing.”

“I have secured our border!” she shouts, her fist clenching subconsciously. “I have slain the humans who dared stray into our forest to the man! And now, on the eve of our greatest victory, you would dare to tell me I have done us wrong!”

She throws her arms wide to her Sisters.

“Glenmaidens!” she cries. “Is it not our duty to protect our home and guard our people?”

“Your ‘protection’ is conquest, Senecalthis,” Palka replies with calm authority. “It is the way of humans. Not of our kind.”

“They would slaughter us if we so much as stepped into their towns!” she rails. “Have you forgotten, Sisters? Have you forgotten what our lot was before Palka came among us? Have you forgotten how to fight for your lives? Have you forgotten how the humans look upon us as less than animals – good only to be used and abused as they see fit? Maybe you have. You have grown complacent and lazy under this wyrm’s ‘protection’. But I have not. I know what must be done to cleanse this disgusting world! I know that to endure we must make this world our own!”

“Enough,” Palka says. “You bring shame upon us all.”

That word cuts through her like a red-hot iron.

“Shame?” she whispers, looking at little Myrathellon as she mouths the word. “Shame!? You would have us cower here, afraid to set foot outside this forest for all eternity – and you accuse me of bringing shame upon us?”

She steps forward, sword raised, and meets the drawn blades of her five sisters. All of them but Myrathellon step between her and Palka, ready to defend their Mistress to the death.

“Your prejudice blinds you, Senecalthis,” the dragon groans sadly. “It has left you with madness. Look within your heart and ask yourself: is this truly the fate you desire? To die here, by the hands of your Sisters whom you love?”

Her hand tightens on her sword’s hilt as she stares at each one of them – every one a woman whom she would die for.

“A warrior’s heart beats in none of your breasts,” she spits. “I could cut through the five of you like carving through a tree!”

Her eyes light again on Myrathellon’s terrified face, and only then does her sword-arm waver.

She steps back, throws off her gauntlets, and tosses her sword on the ground.

“Here, dragon,” she says. “Stick it somewhere where the sun never shines.”

She marches off from the chamber, throwing off other pieces of her armor as she goes.

“Let her be,” she hears Palka tell the others. “This is the path she has chosen.”

Only when the pitter-patter of tiny steps behind her grew louder did Seneca turn to see the only person that had disobeyed the orders of the Mistress.

She bends down to look into the tear-filled, angry eyes of Myrathellon.

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“Myra,” she says. “You could come with me, you know. We could teach these humans a thing or two, couldn’t we? If we worked together. If – if you wanted to, maybe we coul-“

What happens next happens so quickly that she isn’t able to process it.

Myra reels up and spits in her face, then runs away crying right back to the den of the dragon.

She brings a shaky hand to feel the spittle running down her nose and stares off into the distance.

She stays like that until they come for her and strip the rest of her armor away.

…

She wakes to the wind-buffeted trappings of her tent, and recalls with a weary grown where she is, and what she is.

Outside, the Forest of Haven looms in the distance, and as she stretches out her silven arms and inspects her new claws, she meanders out into the war-camp to take in the air. The scent of bark mixed with smoke are thick and heavy, and around her come the prattling servants of the lady – minuscule once-humans who groan at her and bow, their backs splintering and breaking as they show their supplication.

She smiles and presses her foot down on one of them who groans in delight – if these slaves could even feel such emotions any more.

“Lower,” she tells the bark-skinned being. “You should be kissing the ground Mother Seneca walks on.”

“’Mother’ is it?” a voice says from another tent. “I suppose you Elves must wonder at such paternal instincts.”

She scowls, releasing the pathetic creature as it and the rest of them toddle off to make their final preparations. She knows that voice all too well, and when she turns to look upon Thorn’s grizzled old face, she suppresses the desire to slit his old throat right here and now.

“You’ve always thought yourself my better, haven’t you? Even though you still cling to your humanity for – what? Nostalgia?”

He stands beside her and they both take in the sight of the camp and the forest that lies beyond it, teeming with hidden life.

“I would have thought you of all people would understand how important nostalgia can be.”

She follows his gaze towards the dense treeline in the distance, and the mushroom tower that glimmers above it all.

“I think the Lady left some of my memories to test my faith,” she says, more to herself than to him. “When she found me, I was broken. She offered me strength.”

Thorn barely reacts.

“That is, I suppose, your most admirable quality.”

She grunts and makes to move away. But his voice catches her.

“Are you prepared?” he asks. “Truly?”

She doesn’t even turn back.

“I’ve been prepared for this my entire life. For the day when my existence might matter on this earth.”

“I wonder,” the crafty old General replies. “Will slaying your former Sisters really fill the void in your heart?”

Her claws itch to tear out his throat, but it’s her words that she uses to face him. His tone, his demeanor, the sickening authority granted to him – all of them reminded her of that coward dragon nesting with her little Elven protectors.

“What is it you want, Thorn?” she asks, rounding on him.

He stares back at her with old, tired eyes.

“What every sane being does: the end.”

“On that, we can agree,” she replies. “First: an end to my kind. Then an end to yours.”

He smiles dryly. “We both know neither of us could truly be called mortal anymore. I divorced myself from the shackles of my doomed species long ago. Those who remember me call me a traitor. They call me turncoat. But can one truly betray a cause they never agreed to follow? Can one truly abide by the terms of a contract they were never asked to sign?”

“More philosophy,” she groans. “Just get to the point, would you?”

His strange smile doesn’t leave his face.

“We both dared to see further,” he says. “We both believed in a cause greater than life, greater than the selfish egos of all mortal beings. For we who bare the title of traitor, history shall call us visionaries.”

She spits. “I don’t care what history calls me.”

“Really? Because they shall call you nothing if you cannot best the dog.”

She tenses up, trying to see what is behind this façade of conversation. No use, as usual. She sees nothing in him.

“I will kill him,” she says.

“Are you certain of that?”

“He only beat me before because he had his friends, and his inane little tricks,” she replies, recalling with horror the heat of the dog’s fire when it gnawed through her flesh. “I can kill him. I will kill him. I have to.”

“For Lady Gyko or for your Sisters?” he asks with a knowing stare. Almost like he was challenging her. But she looks passed him. She doesn’t care. He is a tool – that was all he ever was. Once vengeance is hers, she’ll gut him, too.

“They wanted me weak,” she says, surprising herself with the calmness of her admission. “Lady Gyko knows me better. She knows I’m strong. Stronger than all of them. And when I’ve burned that place to the ground, and stuck a stake through that bastard dog’s heart, I’ll know that I did what I was born to do. The historians can write whatever they like. They can call me an Elf. They can call me a Glenmaiden. They can call me the Great Betrayer of Glenheim if it pleases them. I’ll die knowing who I was.”

She looks down at her gnarled claws and closes them sharply, expecting pain, feeling nothing, and remembering the bleeding face of the dog.

She turns to go again and almost doesn’t register Thorn’s hand grip her arm. Expecting combat she eyes him with fury, only to find he’s fixing her with an expression so serious, so somber, that she finds her claws simply can’t function.

He drops two small acorns into her hand and she watches as the crackling green lightning of Lady Gyko's power flicker across their surface.

“A little something to sweeten your vengeance," Thorn says. "Not that you need the help. They shall remember you as you are, not as you once were, Seneca. Of that, you have my word.”

She breaks his hold but doesn’t move away. Instead, she stands beside him, looking with him into the forest beyond as the sun began to die in the trees, sinking beneath the mushroom spire of her former home.

“We are on the eve of a new dawn,” Thorn continues. “Tomorrow, we proceed with our initial bombardment. Then, well, the rest is up to your dear old Mistress Palka.”

He marches on, ever moving forwards, giving commands to all his little troops as he goes. Most of them are former humans whom he now holds complete dominion over.

She stretches out her lithe, twisted arm, and spreads the new talons of her claws over the tip of her old home.

Usually, she dreamed of fire. She dreamed of how they’d cry out in pain when she returned home. She dreamed of their faces as they burned, engulfed by the terror of their own ignorance. But recently, she’d had new dreams. Dreams of different pairs of eyes looking upon her with scorn. Myrathellon’s….and the dog’s.

Eyes she would close shut forever.

“Sleep well, Lightborn,” she whispers as her claw closes over the spire. “I’m coming for you.”