The biggest problem with peasants was when they realized that their superior numbers made them powerful. Even a lord with armor, who was skilled with magic and weapons, if rushed by enough of his riffraff, nothing would ultimately save him.

So, why had Kaylar passed a law that branded humans, claimed publicly or otherwise by a dragon, were not to mix with the living property contained inside a dragon’s domain? Because there were many more humans than dragons, and if dragons wanted to be able to enjoy the best that the world had to offer, it was smarter to keep secrets that would inspire rebellion.

Dragons prospered in Myraduil, fattened on the humans they kept in secret estates and vast lengths of the countryside with sometimes three or even four prosperous towns. Generally, treaties and contracts kept humans happy and kept dragons free to do whatever they pleased.

There was, however, a limit to the number of dragons that could inherit their parent’s domains, and there was increasing reluctance to assign what portions of Myraduil remained to new generations.

Rubis did not get along with her parents, and so, she had been among the first to make their way into Dyran.

Rubis was also among the first of the dragons to find out that mystics could kill dragons. There were other pockets of “forest gods” all through this country that would kill dragons.

I am just lucky the land my mother chose had a settlement on it, and that the Moryshin is old. I do not know how their process for replacing them goes, but there has been a lot of freedom here. As long as I can escape where the mystics are to somewhere they do not go, I can work in peace.

Her mother had also uncovered dark magic that no one else could do. She had learned how to change the bodies of others. Doing it to a mystic that she could tell was special had been what got her killed.

So Carnelian’s experiments were different, and she deposited her recently captured wolf in a cage formed of her terra magic and closed him in. This was fortuitous, she wanted to see if she could isolate what had caused him to grow wings, and see if she could bring that trait into her future creations. The last one she had accepted as tribute had not lasted as long as she had hoped.

Carnelian knew that she had been lucky so far. Somehow that dragon-branded had not called in her dragon to interfere. She seemed to be ironically a prisoner of the mystics, trapped consistently with the wolves, but it made her worry constantly about suddenly finding a half-dozen dragon purists from Myraduil executing her for deviating from the rules. Not that I ever belonged to Myraduil any more than my mother did, she thought. However, in the past, they had been absolute, even outside the country’s boundaries. After all, rumors from Dyran would be enough to potentially unsettle the people of Myraduil.

She checked on her most recent batch of eggs. They were moving. There was life in most of them. Half a dozen little creations of the magic she had learned from her mother. Half a dozen new creatures in this world. If she could just keep them hidden for long enough and get enough fuel to make them.

She felt the perimeter of her dragon’s domain spell warn her of creatures crossing it. First, it was one, and not one of her humans. Then it was several all at once. Coldness swept through her. It could only be one of two things: mystics crossing out of their Moryshin’s territory and into hers, her own unmarked humans had come here for what definitely could not be good reasons since she had told no one where this was.

She looked at the wolf laying on his side in his cage, and she wrinkled her nose. It is likely mystics. I thought they were trying to catch us. If they were willing to leave the territory of their master, then there was nothing to stop them now from bringing a small army and destroying everything she had tried to accomplish.

She mulled it over, nosing over the tiny eggs with her nose. I either stand my ground and make sure I kill or capture all the creatures crossing over to me, or I take my work and go.

Anxiety mounted. This is how my mother died, she thought to herself again. Am I my mother?

***

Raisa had been completely unchanged by leaving the reach of the Moryshin. The line was obvious to Rosalea’s eyes. On one side? Plants were thick, robust, and oddly colored. They were brambly here at the very edge, like a wall, and the flowers that dotted the spiky vines somehow resembled fangs.

On the other side? Thin grasses and small trees that looked out of place to Rosalea’s eyes with how drab and normal they appeared. Rosalea reached out with a hand, practicing with the dark magic she could call, dissolving a gap in the wall with liquid darkness that made an arch of dead plants.

Raisa had held her breath but then turned back, breathing out. “I am fine.”

Amalia followed, she had left the forest before also, and it felt no different this time than it did the last time. “It is safe,” she said, and one by one, everyone followed. Taigan laid against Honor, since he would have been too tall otherwise. “What is the plan? Most of us are fairly beat up or have been up all night?” he asked, adjusting Sasha against him.

“I am in favor of just walking up to her and hitting her with everything we have,” Raisa said.

Rosalea nodded. “It is too hard to plan for what we cannot know or see. Can you all still feel your magic?”

Miri floated a stone from the ground into the air, “I feel exactly the same.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Nekana frowned, “I feel weaker, and I feel… exposed. This is not where we belong, but… I would like my son back.”

Rosalea nodded. That settled it. I feel… I feel oddly confident I can take this dragon on my own. There is so much of this dark magic in me.

They walked in silence much like they had up to the border. The sun was nearing the noonday position in the sky over them before they saw a big hole in the side of a foothill ahead of them. Rosalea worked on meditating. She could not reach her inner river or pool. She could not feel them in a traditional sense. Yet, she could feel that she had an abundance of this dark magic… this death magic. Kaylar taught me nothing about magic like this. If I did not have experience with the Ieshan Death Knife, I do not think I would even know what to do with it at first.

She focused on it, called it, dismissed it. It felt a bit like the magic she was used to. As she called it, she started to realize that she was becoming aware, similar to how she knew where animals were when she had normal access to her magic, and then finally, she found she did have a magical vision of sorts. She could sense life, the strength of it, in everything she looked at. Plants? A small glimmer, just like it had been when she focused on her plant-vitae magic. The wolves around her? Nauru’s life was bright, but Sasha and Taj’s were dim.

As they neared the mouth of the cave, she was getting the sense also that this was something similar to what Kaylar had taught her about magic. It had a “unified” form that did not follow the different elements directly. I once had every magic a human could have, she thought, but as she tried to sense them, she felt like she was trying to use them while she was shape-shifted into a wolf. They were not reachable, but she felt awareness within herself.

“Nauru, can you guard Sasha and Honor?” she asked softly as Taigan handed Sasha down to her. They were close enough that it was time to approach as quietly as possible.

Nauru looked up at her with big eyes. “I do not want to be without you. You keep leaving me behind.”

Rosalea missed Lio. “Yes, when you are older, maybe you will be able to come into dangerous places. You still have not learned magic, and Sasha is not strong enough to be…

She stopped, there was a searingly bright life coming at them from the cave. She spun on her heels, grabbed onto her new magic like the weapon it was, and prepared to defend her family.

But the dragon leaped from the mouth of her cave into the air. She is fleeing? The beast had a bundle of something dangling from her mouth, and she did not stop even as she looked down and saw them.

How dare you? Rosalea thought, wrath tightening her chest and rushing blood to her head. She ran after it, ignoring the wolves that called for her. If the magic can be a knife, then it can be a bow? She had doubts. The Ieshan Death Knife was a mental attack to cut away the connection to magic. It required you to be close enough to touch. She tried it anyway. She imagined the liquid darkness in her hands as a bow. She drew it back, but nothing happened. Imagine the arrow as a long string of my magic, connected like a rope, up to the dragon. She drew back the bow again and fired, a string of her magic hurtled through the air and struck the dragon in the rear foot.

She screamed with pain, magic flared from her, and Rosalea’s connection melted… but so did part of the dragon’s foot. Rosalea ran, but the dragon flew like death was after her, turning her body to shield the bundle she was carrying.

Thunder boomed over head as Raisa tried to call lightning, and Rosalea fired again, and again, but the dragon got away.

“Stop it!” Nekana and Amalia were both yelling. Rosalea thought it was at Raisa who probably should not be trying to use so much magic. When Nekana literally grabbed the back of her shirt and scooped her off her feet, Rosalea realized it was at both of them. She let go of her dangerous magic immediately. Nekana carried her back in a disgruntled fashion.

“She is getting away. Who knows what she will do? What if she goes to Miron and goes all out on everything left?”

“Then the mystics will have to defend the forest. We came here for Nakai. We can deal with her if she is foolish enough to still be there when we get back.”

Rosalea struggled and then huffed. This was the most… most just… dissatisfied she could ever remember feeling. The dragon just ran away? After everything? Rosalea had spent the last hours of the walk bracing herself… for something. For any damn thing. But running from them? No.

Nekana put her down near the others. Raisa was on the ground, shivering, gasping for air and sparking dark flames. Bazil and Amalia were both soothing her, and Rosalea’s unfulfilled lust for dragon’s blood faded as she worried Raisa might die as Mere had died in the night. Miri was letting Taigan comfort her, she was so rattled to see it again so soon. Mere probably put her into that tree where she could not reach her niece with the last of the sanity she had.

Raisa grew calm. The flickers of dark magic faded. She found her feet in a wobbly fashion. “Please… we should try to find Nakai.”

Nekana looked at her battered family. “Rosalea, you come. Everyone else, stay here unless I call.” She crouched down. Rosalea climbed up. Even if this magic is the darkest kind I could use, I am grateful to feel powerful again.

***

My children are leaving me? First one aura left the reach of his magic, and then another… and another. It was enough for one of the smaller clans to have left him. The Moryshin raised his head. He flailed feebly with his magic, he wanted to know who was abandoning him, leaving him behind in his time of need. In a time when the forest was full of smoke and so many were dead. Who would abandon him?

But he could not stretch his magic that far. He was too weak.

The corruption called out to him again, and this time… there was no one to call out to him to stop him. At last, he found his way to his feet. His joints wobbled. His emaciated, weak, old body wanted to give up.

He wanted to let it, but that would do no good. He began to slowly walk in his blind fashion toward the place of death, to the place the magic had twisted. He would take it in. If the Myajacs were going to leave him to try to live forever, then he was going to do just that. He would bend life and death together and make himself anew.

Then, I will change the way all of this works, he told himself. No more injustices. No more chaos. No more pain. I will end it all.

None of his children stopped him. They were too busy fighting the humans and each other. They were too busy fighting fire.

It took him a long time and taxed his strength severely, but he came to the place with the bridge over the water to where the rabbits had once lived before they were attacked and one of them became a spreading plague… luckily for the rabbits, killed by the same humans that had made them.

But he could still feel their essences here, their souls crying out to him about the injustice, about how they had twisted and burned, and he could see the way the tree oozed a cursed energy. This was not just darkness. This was not just death. It is a living death. Life beyond the confines of the body. He pressed his horn to the oozing tree, and the darkness crept along it, slowly swallowing him alive. Life beyond the confines of Gods, he told himself as pain flooded him. This is my forest. These are my children. I will help myself.

It burned his flesh… away. It settled onto his bones, wreathing them in dark energy as he took in the curse… and a new way of living came to him one painful inch at a time.