Mira spent her life on the backs of animals and thought she knew what it took to be in the driver’s seat.

She’d driven horses before at her father’s behest and learned to be well acquainted with what made them move, what could startle them or what could make them so terrified that they froze. She’d gotten used to the goats Alaric had leant her and Magic and grown to accept Jeralt’s stubborn attitude, working with him instead of against him.

Working with animals, Mira thought she had it figured out.

No one had ever told her that she’d be sitting on a dragon, let alone that they were real and that she would be commanding one with a sentience that rivaled human beings.

The curved appendages protruding from Soma’s shoulders made for apt reins, molding to fit against the palm of her hand. It was as though they were meant to fit a set of hands, adapting and changing on the spot, far more natural than the bridle and straps Jax was using to steer his own dragon.

Which charged at them the moment Mira pulled back on Soma’s handles, forcing her on two legs. The dragon hissed, nearly toppling over and Magic yelped. Panic seized Mira’s limbs as Soma stepped back and away.

Magic leaned forward to grab onto her shoulders in an effort to keep himself stable.

“What are you doing?!” he shouted over the dragon’s roar.

“You try steering this thing!” Mira screamed as Soma fell to all fours, crouching in an effort to keep herself stable. The dragon huffed and made a noise that Mira could only place as a snarl, as though she were offended. She assumed it would be easy. Kick to go and all they’d have to do was charge until they were in a position to land a killing blow.

That’s what fighting with your fists was like. Wear the opponent out.

Fighting with a dragon, it turned out, was not the same as riding a horse and was definitely not the same as a fistfight.

“Do be advised,” snarled Soma, “that we are linked. Not physically, but mentally as well.” The drake feinted to the side, avoiding a shadow tendril that erupted from the floor. Soma shot a spark at it from the orb hovering between her horns, disintegrating it. “What you feel transfers to me. Calm is key at a time like this.”

Easy for you to say, Mira thought bitterly as the kirin lunged, ink black teeth coated in void-like saliva. He snapped his jaws around Soma’s muzzle. Their dragon made a high pitched squeal from behind her mouth, head thrashing from side to side. Mira pulled on the fleshy cartilage in her hands and Soma took a few steps back. Locht went with them and Jax reared up on his saddle, firing a shot at Soma’s head.

It didn’t connect; Mira felt something shift behind her only to find the hilt of a handle protruding from Jax’s shoulder, his arm with the gun down at his side. Soma kept one of her legs closer to her chest and Mira realized that the bullet must have grazed her arm instead.

Magic launched another knife, aimed at Locht’s throat. It didn’t strike true, but it did hit the kirin in the side enough for him to let go. Soma pivoted, kicking up water from the moat as she retreated at Mira’s order.

“You steer,” Magic said, smoothing his jacket as he slid another small knife from his belt. He rose up into something that was half crouching, half standing and aimed the weapon out, blade pointed directly at Jax. “I’ll throw.”

It was a good enough plan for her. She kicked Soma into a canter, parading around the moat in the direction where Vallian was laying on the floor. Each step the dragon took brought life back to the earth, blades reviving under her massive talons.

Locht mirrored her, trotting to match Soma step for step.

“Ches va?” sneered the kirin. “Pershia viz’ukiza?”

Soma froze, air crackling like sparks around them. Magic shifted around uncomfortably and Mira fidgeted with the reins. She’d never learned the ancient tongue, yet either from the vial that gave her Sight or her current connection with Soma, she understood the words with glaring clarity.

What’s wrong? Lost your touch?

It was enough to throw Soma off guard, but it was all the opening Jax needed. He brandished the pistol as Locht charged through the moat, firing off rapid shots. Mira ducked, gripping tight to the reins as she heard Magic mutter a curse or two under his breath. “You okay?!”

“I’ll live,” he hissed, his voice brimming with restrained pain. “Right!”

Mira yanked on Soma’s reins, pulling the dragon off to the side. Too little, too late; Locht rammed into the drake’s shoulder, forcing both her and Magic off to the dragon’s back in the aftermath. Her brother hit the ground with a scream and sharp pain shot up Mira’s right arm as she hit the cold hard floor.

“I didn’t expect pawns to be such an issue,” Jax mused, leaping off the kirin’s back. He lazily aimed the gun, pointing it between her and her brother. “Insolent bastards. Time we fix that.”

His posture screamed overconfidence in a way Mira knew well. After all, the most confident fighters showed off what they were good at. Maneuvered themselves with a grace that screamed experience and pride.

But that meant they were expecting it to be easy.

And Mira would be damned if she went down like a helpless fawn on a butcher’s block.

She rolled, biting into her tongue to brace the pain of her injured arm as the bullet lodged itself into the ground. Somewhere to her left, more shots fired, but they weren’t coming from Jax.

Vallian, staggering to his feet from his spot on the floor, shot rapid fire attempts at Jax’s life. He was aiming to kill and the Scarlet King knew it, so Jax drew up his jacket, pulling it closed over his face as the bullets struck the material enforcing the coat and lay still.

It gave Mira the opening she needed and she rounded on Jax, knocking into his face with the cipher infused brass knuckles she swapped over to her left hand with as much unbridled force she could muster.

The man took a step back and before Vallian could shove a bullet in the man’s body, Locht placed himself in front of the man and took one of those hits himself. The roar echoed along the dead trees and the mist, which was getting deeper with each passing minute. It felt wrong, grimy on her skin and unsettling. Mira didn’t want to know what would happen if it consumed them all.

She was so lost in her own panic that she didn’t see the tendril coming towards her until a blue blur skidded to a stop in front of her and snarled with the pain.

Mira winced. She didn’t think the dragon would take a hit for her.

Vallian loaded another round of bullets into his gun, shutting it closed and spinning it around his fingers. She didn’t notice it before, but he was bleeding from several places, the scarlet of his life tainted with a void black. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to mind.

“Get your brother and get going,” he huffed, walking in front of Soma and pointing his firearm. He fired two rounds at Locht’s face, one ricocheting off of the demon’s horns, the other biting into skin. The tendril wavered and receded as Soma erected a pale blue wall of light. “I’ll keep him busy with Soma’s protection.”

Another tendril erupted from the ground, tearing away earth. It shot towards them like a dart, rebounding off the shield.

Magic was struggling to his feet as Mira approached. She didn’t think, only grabbed her brother by the arm and hoisted him up.

“You okay?” she asked as he broke free of her and shook himself off.

He snagged a small blade from his belt, eyes wild and distracted. “Managing.”

“That makes two of us.” Mira managed a small smile, clapping him lightly on the back.

Soma was ready for them when they approached. Once they were back up, the shield went down and Val rolled into the ditch of a nearby trench.

Jax flung himself onto the kirin’s back, a feral growl in his throat. His shoulders heaved with rage; Mira could see it on his face. What a shame, being so used to having what you want and watching it stand up and fight, she thought.

The Scarlet King brandished his pistol. He didn’t shoot, but Locht did and sent a wild stream of shadowy tendrils. Mira ducked, Magic right behind, pulling and pushing on the drake’s handlebar appendages. Soma bobbed and weaved, dancing around the assault of spikes, countering with ones of her own, getting closer to the moat with each step.

“Vos’il vizsav’vi!” snarled the drake, the words sending a chill down Mira’s spine.

I will gut you.

“Sa,” hissed the kirin, spitting the word like a curse. “Vo’ilo aremor vedeza vi tentatir.”

I would love to see you try.

Soma roared; something that felt like a giddy buzz in her limbs rushed through her veins, an adrenaline high that made her hands buzz. Knives flew past Mira with a woosh, metal singing through the air as they jammed into the bark of the Maidenwood tree. Magic was getting clumsy and she realized that whatever energy coursing through her was also affecting her brother.

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“Focus, Mags!” Mira hissed, pulling Soma left.

The dragon leapt away from an incoming shard of energy.

“Trying!” Magic shouted, launching another knife.

The one struck, nailing Locht in the leg.

With a vicious howl that carried the vibrato of a neigh, Locht retreated but not without sending another strike, aimed directly for Magic. She felt him drop, pushing her forward into the drake’s neck and Soma, in the frenzy of fear, twisted around.

Something shattered and the dragon staggered back, screaming in pain.

Mira lifted her head off the drake’s neck, watching shards of sapphire drop into the moat. Plink. Pinkplink. Plink.

Blue smoke wavered from the top of Soma’s head. The buzzing adrenaline that Mira felt before made her heart race, her lungs crave air. Her grip tightened on the handlebars as the jewel fragments lit the moat a bright cyan, stardust wavering off its top.

The sight of it made her angry.

She should have been paying attention.

Rage consumed her, matching the enraged dragon she was seated upon.

Sure enough, Soma bucked up on her hind legs and, unprepared and out of sync, Mira tumbled off, her brother following not long after. The creature bolted through the water in a frenzy, taking a massive hand to smack the kirin’s face, stunning him enough to toss Jax off from the back of the beast.

Soma bowled the other dragon over, but Locht was already there and ready to counter as though he were waiting eagerly for this. He clamped his massive jaws around the drake’s neck, applying pressure until Soma let him go.

The minute Soma backed away, Locht had her pinned, biting her mouth closed, tendrils wrapped around the creature’s neck, chest, and tail. Some cinched around the creature’s horns and Soma screamed, firing off weak shots of electricity from the orb between her horns, which had started to fade.

Jax brought himself to his knees, one propped up and shaking as he stood over the writhing drake, pinned by his steed. “Drake of Life,” he hissed, “I will have you kneel.”

Somewhere in the distance, Jovie let out a horrid shriek that made Mira’s blood freeze over. She and her brother may have been linked with the former jackalope, but the vial didn’t surpass her original bond with the Scepter.

Off to her right, Vallian was muttering curses under his breath, gaping wounds in his legs and arms leaking blood. He didn’t seem to have considered that, either.

“Surrender,” continued the Scarlet King as the Beast cinched the tendrils tighter around the dragon’s body. Soma squirmed, back arching against the tightness of the shadow ropes pinning her down. “Or your Vessel will suffer the consequences.”

Then the demon paused, the restraints slacking a little, and Mira saw something she didn’t think the Beast would do,

Locht lifted his head, looking Jax dead in the eyes. “Ches va?” hissed the demon and, for the first time all fight, Jax backed away from his steed. “That was not the deal.”

“Remember your place, demon,” hissed the Scarlet King, but the Beast was already approaching, already releasing Soma in favor of the traitor in his midst.

“I know my place. And it is not beneath you, akugalti.”

Locht had Jax on the ground before the man could do anything to fight back; the demon moved like a shadow in the night, quick and vicious. For the first time, Mira watched Jax flounder and squirm; she looked over at Val, who had his pistol aimed directly at Jax’s head. He considered the sight for a while, then, as the kirin opened his massive jaws and tore the man apart, lowered his arms.

It was a gruesome sight filled with limbs and gore, but Mira couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. Apparently, neither could Val; he watched with the intensity of someone eagerly waiting for a meal. His eyes never left the mangled corpse of the Scarlet King, even as the kirin’s shadow tendrils grew in size and branched off each other.

Magic took a few staggered steps back and Mira could hear him retching behind her.

Free from his master, Locht took a few lazy steps towards them, dragging the body and tossing it into the moat. “Your true place, mortals,” he snarled, to the body in the river and the humans beyond it, “is beneath me.”

Mira took a few steps back, panic rising like a well in her chest as, around the kirin’s body were circular shadows that bubbled like boiling water. Oil black roots clawed out from the void, slicing through the river and clambering over towards her, her brother, and Val. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Soma rising shakily to all fours, trembling from the weight of her own body. Yet, when she made eye contact with the dragon, something silent seemed to pass between them, spark to unlit flame.

The sense of prevailing calm washed over her again, a wave crashing against the ocean.

She held out her palm and dared to close her eyes.

They’re very fickle things, stars. But, learn to speak their language and you may find that they’re more helpful than you think.

Her jaw clenched.

I refuse to die here, she thought. I will protect them, whatever the cost.

Then the calm roared into a wave, rising up like a tide and Mira felt a heat spark against her fingers, a flicker at first, until at last it kindled into a flame, spreading out like a film through the mist. She opened her eyes as it sliced through the shroud enough to guard her, Val, and Magic, who was staring at her as though she’d performed a party trick.

Locht made a rabid sound as the roots rebounded off the cipher shield, arcing backwards towards him as though repelled by the energy.

Mira caught Soma’s eye and could have sworn she’d seen a hint of approval, feeling a swell of pride in her chest—whether it was from the dragon or her own emotions, she didn’t know. Nonetheless, when she held out her other hand and conjured a small dart to shoot forward beyond the shield, she was excited to find that the stars rose to meet her.

It didn’t connect, but the confusion it caused Locht was all the distraction Soma needed to barrel the kirin into the ground, shoving his face into the water.

Mira took down the wall, rushing to her brother’s aid as Soma snarled into the kirin’s face, ink-like sap leaking from the spot where Soma’s sapphire jewel had been shattered. Its reflective surfaces were tainted a deep, unsettling purple, and much of the life that had sprouted in response to Soma’s transformation was starting to dull, fueling the energy popping off her spikes like a flare.

She knelt beside her brother, helping him up as Soma’s shouts filled the air. And, though the drake spoke in Celitaz, Mira understood every word.

Vi machia de massera cursar!” roared the dragon, forcing the demon underwater despite Locht’s efforts to free himself. “Machia di bisa!”

You soil the very earth you trot upon! Stain it with your being!

Locht raised a limb and Soma slashed at his shoulder, readjusting her weight against the other creature’s body. “Non permissa vi shaztatar met grassia!”

I will not allow you to tarnish it further.

Val raised a hand, tentatively pointing somewhere above them. “Holy fuck,” he whispered. “The Maidenwood Tree…”

Mira and Magic looked up to follow Vallian’s gaze to find that the tree, which had always been paused in eternal fall, was starting to wilt. Its golden leaves were curling into themselves, though they did not fall off the branches. The only signifier of the tree’s lack of health was in the bluish tinge to the bark and its greenery, as though it were a body that couldn’t breathe.

Energy hummed in the air, crackling on an invisible force. The cipher she felt coursing through her caught it like a fire inside of her skin and Mira longed for something to do, as though a wheel had been turned in her limbs with the urge to fight on.

It was then Mira realized that the Maidenwood Tree wasn’t losing its life energy.

Soma was borrowing it.

Like a rope pulled taut, Mira felt the overwhelming presence of power as it manifested in the orb between Soma’s horns, which she shoved into Locht’s shoulders. The moment the kirin opened his mouth, he thrashed at the realization of his mistake.

Soma had the orb aimed directly at his mouth.

“Morkia,” she growled, “nest de vizscera galazzia los’vi ailoa!”

Rot in the bowels of the universe as you were meant to.

With that, Soma fired a massive beam of energy into the Omnecron’s mouth, separating the jaw from its mouth. Locht fell back into the river, still and silent as the breeze.

Soma stood there, heaving and panting over the unmoving body of the demon as life began to flood back into the roots of the Maidenwood Tree, its leaves unfurling and sprawling back into their golden prime as the drake trudged through the water to meet them.

Mira stood there, breathless and shocked.

They did it.

She turned to say something to her brother, some kind of question to affirm her delusions until she realized that Magic wasn’t standing beside her.

He was on the floor, curled like a ball and trembling.

“Mags?!” Mira dropped to the ground, holding onto her brother’s face. His right eye, which had turned white through the use of the serum, was fading back to green and he was shaking as though he’d been sick with fever.

“Side effect,” said Vallian, who limped over to stand behind her. “I knew it wasn’t going to be exactly without consequence.”

“So then why hasn’t it happened to me?!” Mira hissed, panic sinking its claws into her shoulders. The look on Val’s face, a mixture of shock and knowledge, only made her heart pound.

“Allow me,” whispered the dragon as she laid down beside them. The orb between her scythe-like horns had gone, but her trademark blue tendrils poked out from them, wrapping around both of Magic’s wrists. His tremors began to calm and his eyes fluttered closed as though Soma had put him to sleep.

Mira slapped his face only to be scolded by a goddess.

“Do not add more to the injuries,” Soma hissed.

Resisting the urge to do it even more, Mira grudgingly placed her hands in her lap as the tendrils receded and Magic’s eyes began to open.

“Mags,” she said, crouching into his line of sight. “Magic. You okay?”

Magic blinked, his focus returning with each motion. His eyes, that familiar earthy hazel and mint green, settled on her, but not in the way she was expecting them to. He looked at her as though she were a puzzle, like there was something he was seeing that he couldn’t quite grasp and every fear in Mira’s heart banged louder and louder against the truth.

Slowly, his jaw dropped and all he managed as he sat up on his heels was a soft whisper. “Your eyes.”

“What about my eyes?” Mira asked, gripping onto her jeans with such force that her knuckles whitened.

“They’re…they’re different.”

Her grip tightened, limbs locked, jaw clenched. “Answer me without circles, Magic,” she said, failing to keep the waver from it. When she asked her question again, she emphasized each and every word. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“The gray one,” he whispered. She didn’t miss the bitterness in his tone. “It’s still white.”

No.

No, that wasn’t possible.

She wasn’t this. Couldn’t be this.

But if that had been the case, then why did it feel so natural, so calming to reach for the cipher and why had it given her such a thrill to feel it course through her veins?

No, she had known. Mira just hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself.

She scooted herself back, ignoring the confused head tilt from Soma, but the dragon stood up and used her tendrils to wrap around Mira’s wrist and Val’s arm. The creature hissed at the effort, then stopped before Mira could feel her wounds close.

“Ches va, Soma?” Val asked.

“It appears,” said the dragon, bowing her head, “that the Omnecron…has left me a gift. One I do not wish to keep.”

“And how do we fix that?” Mira asked.

Soma shook out her pelt, approaching the trench where her Vessel was stationed. Moments later, the drake appeared, dangling both Jovie and Delilah, who was kicking and screaming to be put down, above the ground from her teeth. She placed the two on the floor by the rest of the group, Jovie pale as a sheet presumably from the shared pain far beyond human capacity, and Delilah scrambling to hide behind Magic, sobbing.

“There’s one place we can go,” Val murmured, “though I doubt Jovie will be pleased.”

“That being?” asked Magic, and Mira winced at how flat his tone was, so unchanged from the norm, yet layered with barbs.

Soma flicked her tail, silent for a while until Mira heard the faint stampede of approaching animals. Their own trusty steeds were answering their master’s call.

“My eldest brother,” said the drake. “If anyone will have answered, it will be him and his Vessel. We have no time to waste.”

Mira nodded and reached an arm out to help her brother to his feet. He ignored her offer completely, shuffling about to accommodate Delilah who had taken to hiding beneath his coat again as the goats came charging through. She tried to ignore the pain lancing through her chest.

As they packed up on the goats, Mira cast a small look over at Val, who stared back, but didn’t say a word. Yet she knew at that moment that he understood and, spurring Jeralt into motion, they followed the dragon to shore.