It took three days of flying to reach the Sorrow River. Verdant green farmlands stretched out below, occupying every available inch of the great floodplain. The fertile soil in the lowlands was sufficient to produce food for most of Quaria, and the air just above the farmland was speckled with hundreds of airships. The rugged hills above the floodplain were used as well, almost exclusively for wine grapes. To the north the floodplains abruptly ended in a long red strip, gleaming in the sun.

"You see something, what is it?" Astrid asked. Shane must have been amplifying her voice with wind magic.

It is the Great Crystal Dam, Felix thought. The threshold to the city of Flood's End.

"Descend servant!" Astrid shouted. "I wish to see this dam from the ground!"

Felix configured his wings for gliding, and the descent was slow enough that it took nearly the entire distance to reach the dam before he touched down along the banks of the Sorrow River. The gleaming red strip had grown to fill almost the entire horizon. The Great Crystal Dam, made from packed, hexagonal pillars of draconic crystal, was nearly a thousand feet tall and at least a mile wide. Shane whistled.

"A worthy structure," Brigid said.

"It is said that the Red Dragon created the dam as a gift to her children," Felix said. "Before, the Sorrow River tended to flood often. After the Red Dragon constructed the dam, she founded the city of Flood's End on the banks of the lake up above."

"Fascinating," Astrid said. "I wonder why she would be so amenable to her children's needs?"

The Purple Dragon often made such comments. Felix put it out of his mind. "Shall we proceed to the city?"

"Yes, servant. Let us be off."

The lake at the top of the dam was vast, stretching out to the north for a hundred miles at least. The city of Flood's End was built at the top of stilt-like red crystal "mushrooms" jutting up from the lake floor, linked together with high-quality steel. The entire city then appeared to be levitating a few dozen feet above the lake. Felix had many fond memories and leaping naked from the edge of the city into the lake. It was a common sport among the young men, to challenge each other to perform various maneuvers before hitting the water.

A massive structure, resembling a tree trunk and also made from red crystal, loomed over the city where it skirted the lake's shore. Felix had been close to that great crystal stump one time, but he had never been inside. Dozens of red drakes circled the structure, guarding the opening at the top from intruders. They were the Red Dragon's own honor guard, tasked with protecting the basin below the stump. The Red Dragon's Lair.

Felix began his approach that carried him over the city toward the lair and the Government District. The crystal mushrooms that supported the weight of the city were all of varying height, so the ornate buildings were situated at different levels, with staircases connecting them. Many wealthy estates occupied the tops of entire mushrooms, and were isolated from the rest of the city with stone walls and watchtowers. The water for the grass lawns and for the fountains was all drawn from the lake using steel pipes from Black River.

Arriving at a landing yard with Astrid had become routine for Felix. He made very little note of his familiar surroundings as he made his way to the Red Dragon's Lair. The soldiers and guards in the courtyard below paid no mind to Felix as he marched through with his companions. Artisanal shops and expensive restaurants lined the courtyard, and many high-ranking government workers strolled along the streets, each with at least two bodyguards. Felix was surprised to see a handful of well-dressed Rilnese people as well, and even some foreigners from distant lands, people with green hair or gold hair and onyx skin.

From below, the red crystal stump dominated the skyline. In the center of the nearest face, there was a door scaled to the size of a fully-transformed Red Dragon, perhaps twenty stories tall. Leading up to the base of this door was an enormous staircase for her mortal servants, and at the base of the staircase was the Capitol building, all arches and domes made from gleaming crystal. Felix led the party to the foot of this building and was confronted by the guards at the gate.

"Diplomats from Riln are not permitted beyond this point," one young man said. Felix did not recognize either guard.

"Hold up there son," the older of the two guards said. "This one here is a real Purple Dragon. We cannot send her away." After that Felix was allowed through the gate.

The floor of the lobby inside the Capitol was polished to a mirror-like shine. Fine red banners hung from the crystal arches above, and light filtered in through glass domes. The staff were all dressed in the finest, most expensive clothing available on the continent: solid black suits, flattering dresses, wide-brimmed hats. A Draconic Paladin approached Felix through the lobby and held out his hand to stop them. Felix recognized him as a Paladin named Roi, and he wore a black and red uniform that was ornate enough for the Lord Paladin himself. He carried a two-handed greatsword on his back.

"Hello Felix," Roi said. He glanced uneasily at the Purple Dragon and then at Shane. "What business do you have in the Capitol?"

"I have orders from the Lord Paladin," Felix said. He offered the signed orders to Roi.

The man winced. "The Red Dragon's Lair is closed. They will not let you inside."

"I am oath-sworn, it is my right to see the Red Dragon. Take me to the Prime Minister. If he turns me away, then I shall leave."

"Follow me, I can escort you."

Roi led the party through the Capitol to a conservatory on the highest floor, built into a balcony overlooking the bottom of the great staircase. Half a dozen old men sat around a table in the center of the conservatory, surrounded by exotic flowers from distant lands, snacking on cheese wine. The air was damp and smelled like springtime.

"Prime Minister Sylvester," Roi said with a bow. "A visitor is here from Black River, with orders from the Lord Paladin."

Sylvester looked up from his plate and adjusted his monocle. His deeply-lined face reeled back in shock. "A Dragon! Here, in the seat of our power. How dare you Felix. Be gone, turn away now!"

"I have orders from the Lord Paladin himself," Felix said. "Orders to speak with the Red Dragon."

Roi offered the orders to the Prime Minister, but the old man simply tore the paper to shreds, muttering to himself. "We have developed ways of killing your kind, you know!" Sylvester cried, pointing to Astrid. "I am not afraid of you. Get out of my sight! All of you!"

"How rude!" Astrid said. "You would do well to learn to dismiss your betters with more tact, young man."

The Prime Minister waved his hand away, dismissing them. Roi reached out and took Felix by the arm. "I warned you," Roi whispered.

As desperately as Felix wanted to protest, to scream and demand to be allowed to pass through the doors to the lair, a voice in his mind stopped him. The voice of the Lord Paladin, saying: Be very careful. Felix turned away and they left.

When they reached the bottom floor of the Capitol building, Astrid stopped and said: "You know, this building is beautiful. I think this would make a fine place to put a new spire. Don't you think, dear Felix?"

"I concur," Shane said. "I am certain this building has a nice library. Plenty of books to keep me occupied on our travels."

Felix did not protest, and by the time Shane had finished speaking the flash of purple light had already dazed everyone in sight. A small crystal floated down from Astrid's chest and began to bury itself in the floor of the Capitol building. Then, the whole structure began to violently shake. Shane only lifted Felix and Astrid off the ground. Roi was frozen in astonishment, up until the moment he was knocked down by the shaking. If Brigid was nearby, she would need to deal with the shaking on her own.

A new purple crystal spire began to grow, right in the center of the lobby. It ripped up through the many red arches up above, then shattered the domes and grew even beyond the roof of the Capitol. The government workers were screaming, frantically trying to escape the building as detritus from the shattered arches fell upon their heads. Felix felt no strong emotion as he watched the seat of his government's power being ripped apart. He had his orders from the Lord Paladin, and he was going to speak to the Red Dragon.

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Shane finally set them down, and by then Roi had vanished. Astrid calmly stepped into the foyer of the new spire and opened a new portal. In a flash, Princess Elvira appeared in the center of the spire. The portal vanished, then Elvira reached out and embraced Astrid.

"Dearest, dearest, most beloved sister," Elvira said. "I am so sorry that happened to you. Such an insult! To be turned away by that ruffian. What can I do? How can I help?"

"There is a door to the Red Dragon's Lair," Astrid said, "However it is closed and sealed. Also it is much too large to be opened in this form, even with magic. Now, one of us could bother to transform and open the door, but that would be unfashionable. I propose that we travel to the other side with our servants, and enter the lair through stealth."

"The other side?" Shane said excitedly. Then, he clamped his mouth shut. He had not been invited to speak.

"Sister," Elvira said. "Your logic is without flaw. Come, let us travel to the other side."

With a rainbow shimmer Brigid appeared at Astrid's side. "To open a portal for our servants would be below your station," Brigid said. "I shall open the portal and invite them to join us."

Astrid nodded. With a wave of Brigid's hand, the portal reappeared. Magenta around the edge, long strings of lights that swirled playfully, all surrounding an inky blackness. Shane looked genuinely excited. Brigid reached out and touched the portal, and then Felix lost all vision.

It only lasted a moment, and then he was back in the foyer of the crystal spire, within the Capitol building. Except, the colors were wrong. Everything was much darker, as if desaturated and tinged with a dull gold hue. Shane glanced around in wonder.

"Is this a Realm?" Shane asked.

Astrid giggled. "No silly. This is another Plane. But let us not dwell on such details. Come, Felix. Carry all of us upon your back once again. We shall fly over the rim. There will be no drakes to protect her lair on his side."

"There is not enough room in the saddle for Elvira," Brigid said. "I shall follow Felix myself."

When they reached the courtyard, Felix was surprised to find a completely alien world. The sunless sky was a grayish magenta color, and all around the world seemed to be shrouded in a dark haze. Also, there was not a single trace of any civilization. The courtyard was not constructed of cobblestones, and no steel connected the tops of the mushrooms. In every direction, there was only nature, and the draconic crystal structures, including the mushrooms. Felix assumed the Great Crystal Dam was also present in this strange place, because the lake was still full of water.

But perhaps the most eerie feature of this strange place was the disembodied souls roaming around. Ghostly images of well-dressed people gathering to see the commotion, the scandal of a purple spire appearing in the middle of the capitol building. Suddenly everything fell into place for Felix.

This is what Elvira sees. Astrid truly is blind, and she relies on Elvira's description of this landscape. That explains why she was so surprised to see that I was a "whelp" the first time she saw me, because before that moment she had only seen my ghost. My soul.

Felix turned to Shane, and the man nodded knowingly.

Brigid trotted ahead, and then she veered into a purple drake. This surprised Felix, and even Shane looked shocked, however the two Purple Dragons did not seem to think this was of any consequence. Felix himself veered into his drake form, and waited for the rest of the party to strap themselves in. In all his years of service to the Red Dragon, he had never once been inside her lair. He swore his oaths with the Prime Minister and the Lord Paladin as witness, in the Capitol building. But he had never set eyes on the Red Dragon herself.

It was with some anticipation that he crested the rim of the crystal stump and began to descend, following Brigid, into the darkness. At the deepest depths of the lair was a flat, circular arena, large enough for a Red Dragon to rest, and filled with white flowers. All around the edge of the arena was a circular concourse raised above the floor of the lair. Felix glanced around the concourse from his position on the floor of the lair. There was no enormous Red Dragon ghost or soul in the chamber. The only souls were those of some observers up on the concourse, spaced apart periodically with almost geometric precision.

Land on the rim, Astrid commanded in his mind. Brigid is worried that there might be enemies waiting in ambush up there.

Felix followed Brigid up to the rim, to one side of the circular concourse between two of the ghostly observers. Then he sembled back into his human form. As if to give voice to his own concerns, Shane said: "There should be a huge soul in the center, shouldn't there? Is the Red Dragon away?"

Elvira approached Felix. Her curvy purple hair tumbled down her shoulders, framing a face filled with concern. Then she reached out and grasped something in the air, the leathery hilt of some unseen blade. With a yank she seemed to pull a massive greatsword out of thin air. Crafted from the finest steel, it was reinforced along the center with purple crystals, coated with a rainbow sheen. She offered it to Felix.

"Brigid should be enough," Astrid said.

"It is not for our protection," Elvira said.

Felix grabbed the greatsword. It felt natural to hold in his hand. He practiced a few swings while Brigid opened the portal.

In a flash they were on the other side. The room was filled with an ugly green light, illuminating the dark corners of the Red Dragon's Lair. five men in dark robes stood at the corners of a massive green pentagram, channeling corrupted sorcery at the center of the room. And there, at the bottom of the pit, surrounded by an ocean of white flowers, was the massive, rotting corpse of the Red Dragon. Her bones were ripping through gaps in her pitted scales and her wings were ravaged with long gashes. The chamber smelled like a crypt.

"Necromancers!" Shane hissed.

The closest necromancer turned and gasped. Felix stalked forward, blade in hand. The necromancer's pale, mustached face suddenly became calmer, more composed. His red eyes seemed somewhat sinister.

"Now hold on Felix," the man said calmly. He faced Felix now, but his hand was still pointed out over the edge of the concourse channeling green energy at the Red Dragon's corpse. "Be reasonable, Friend Paladin. Think this through. If you kill us, what little is left of the Red Dragon's power will be lost forever. You will lose your power, you will never fly again."

"This must be why my father broke his oath," Felix said. The man nodded. "I am not an oathbreaker."

Then he slashed down with his greatsword, crushing the man's skull in an explosion of gore that rained down on his fine black robes. The green beams of energy suddenly vanished all across the arena. A blast of solid black lightning arced across the room in an instant, but it was deflected by some kind of powerful barrier. Bright blue lightning flashed out from Shane's hands in response, scoring a hit on a necromancer across the chamber. The twang of Brigid's bow took off the head of another necromancer.

However, two necromancers still remained, and they had a few moments to realize what was happening. One of them sprinted across the room concourse to try and flee, but one leg was quickly pinned to the ground by Brigid's arrow. The last necromancer cast some foul sorcery, and the ground ripped open in front of his feet, shattering tiles and sending pieces of the concourse railing tottering over the edge into the pit. A huge skeleton, nearly ten feet tall, ripped up from the ground in a hail of soil and stone, clambering out with its arms. It was vaguely humanoid, but with some draconic features, especially in the face bones.

The huge creature shrieked, in spite of the fact that it lacked a throat, and then rushed forward, swinging its arms wildly. Empowered by Astrid's blessing, Felix leapt straight up with an overhead swing, bringing his greatsword down through the skeleton's skull and spine, shattering it like it was made from glass. A bolt of lightning ripped out across the room, nearly incinerating the unfortunate man who had been pinned to the ground by Brigid's arrow.

The last necromancer's face turned from satisfaction to horror. He was an older man, the oldest of the necromancers, and likely the leader. He wore a draconic red crystal on a chain on his chest, glowing faintly with greenish red light. "Impossible," the man said.

"HOW LONG?" Felix bellowed, looming over the little old man, covering his face in spittle. "HOW LONG?"

"Uh, about thirty years, Felix. Please, you need to understand, we have been doing what we can." The necromancer seemed to have voided his bowels, given the stench.

"WHY?"

"Why? Oh! Oh yes. You see, the industrialists needed workers for their factories, and the Red Dragon forbid it. We..."

His voice abruptly ended when his head left his shoulders.

Felix returned to where Astrid and Elvira were standing. They had not participated in the brief fight.

Astrid clapped her hands three times and then said: "Dear Shane, please lower me down into the pit."

"What are you going to do?" Felix asked.

Her full lips turned into a smile. "I said I was going to speak to the Red Dragon. And that is exactly what I am going to do!"

Shane used his storm sorcery to lower the party down into the pit. Astrid and Elvira glided among the white flowers, not touching the ground, however Shane allowed Felix to settle onto the ground completely. Under that blanket of flowers, the soil was muddy. Standing in front of the Red Dragon, Felix fell to one knee.

"I swore an oath of service," Felix said. "And now shall I swear an oath of vengeance. I will slaughter every single person in the government who did this to you."

"She cannot hear your oaths," Astrid said. "Let us speak to her first, before you decide how to swear such an oath. Is that agreeable?"

Green light blasted out from Astrid's palm, much more foul energy than the necromancers could have ever managed. The entire pit was bathed in the sickly light, and even Shane nearly collapsed from the corrupted magic. The waves of green light bombarded the Red Dragon, and her body began to twitch. Her great eyes opened, shining like green suns, and necrotic mist poured out of her mouth, out of the holes in her wings, out of the pocks in her face.

"How did you die?" Astrid asked.

For the first time in his life, Felix heard the true voice of the Red Dragon. A powerful, old feminine voice poured forth from the beast's mouth. "The mortals are clever. I do not know how they killed me. I did not even have knowledge of my own doom. It may have been an Elemental. Maybe even a High Daughter."

Astrid nodded. "Why are you here on this island?"

"I came to this island with a Blue Dragon, my best friend. We created two civilizations on this continent. We taught our children to hate each other, to fear genocide and to seek it in the other. We entertained ourselves with their endless wars. With the bloodshed, the slaughter, the tragedies. It pleases our god."

"Who do you worship?" Astrid asked.

"Ashe," the beast replied. "Queen of Perfect Darkness."

Elvira turned away suddenly, covering her ears. Astrid seemed deeply disturbed. Felix felt a shiver. The green light vanished and the Red Dragon fell limp, lifeless into the muddy floor of her lair.

"Ashe worshippers, in our Plane?" Astrid asked. Then she hissed.

"This could be an isolated incident," Elvira said.

Astrid nodded. "We don't panic. Felix, you are welcome to kill the Prime Minister if that is your wish, but I forbid you from swearing an oath of vengeance. We shall speak of your next oath when we return to Black River."