Thibalt surveyed the ruin spread across the silent theater floor.

Blackened earth, above which bits of ash and debris wafted on the breeze.

The carcass of the serpent, giant wings spread wide, limp and stripped of immortal luster.

An entire third of the surrounding seating was blackened from the sudden explosion of fire from the dragon's mouth.

Burned corpses were strewn about, including what Thibalt believed to include the mayor himself. Most of the audience had been men and women of the township.

Those closest to the exists had escaped not long before. But following a frenzied evacuation, Thibalt's soldiers searched the wreckage, searching for signs of life, if not merely the identities of victims.

Thibalt's next in command sidled up beside him. "There's money in dragon armor. I think we can salvage much of the hide."

Thibalt grunted. "Skin and butcher it. Give the meat to the village widows and orphans, but the hide is the king's!"

"The king is dead."

"Oy!" came a cry from the bottom of the theater. "Send a medic!"

***

Felderon groaned as his eye lids flickered into hellish consciousness. His vision was a blur, but the smell! His stomach turned and heaved acid. His legs were pinned and he could not move. And Serge! Had he managed to kill the dragon? He blinked and strained his neck, catching sight of the black sheen of horse hide laying still. Blood seeped from his haunches where the dragon's barbed tail had penetrated. A lump rose up in his throat. Dead.

A commotion rose up on the still arena floor as a group of soldiers gathered and began heaving the dragon's weight. Ten men could barely hoist the thickest part of the haunches. Fifteen men assembled. Twenty.

Suddenly, something lifted and blood flowed. Waves of relief coursed through Felderon's blood starved limbs. His head spun, and he nearly passed out, but from the corner of his vision he saw something jolted the air from his lungs.

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The dark mirror! He reached out his arm and somehow, and somehow he managed to pull himself to it, snapping it up in his hand and thrusting it inside of his vest. Stay awake. Stay awake.

Felderon forced his eyes open. "Can you feel that Your Majesty?"

"Aaaaaaaargh!" Felderon screamed.

"Amazing. The spine's in tact!"

"All right, careful there. We're going to lift you on three! One, two! Three!" Pain lanced through his feet and lower limbs as four soldiers hauled him out of the arena and into the medical tent.

Felderon bit through his tongue while a surgeon set the bones in his legs.

Somehow, he remained conscious, knuckles of his left hand white on the black polished basalt of the dark mirror.

***

For hours, the old king lay prone, in a rumpled heap upon the cold dungeon floor. Cylene believed him dead, which was just as well. But at last, he stirred, and she suppressed a shudder as he raised his face to meet hers.

"Forgive me, I beg you!"

Cylene blinked. What?

"Sweet Angel, release me from this pit of this fiendish deep! I beg you!"

He was mad. "You're pleas are premature, old king. You've not died yet."

His eyes rolled back in his head and rose up on his knees and bowed at her feet.

Cylene pushed him away. "Get off!"

"Forgive me, I beg you!"

What had come over him? "What happened to you?"

The old king's voice hitched. "I peered into the depths of a black mirror. Saw the pit of hell."

Cylene's head spun. The Black Mirror! The king had been staring her straight in the face. Had he seen it through her eyes? How was that possible? She did not know, but she understood the desperation in the old king's voice. She understood the helplessness in the king's voice.

"Let me serve you. Let me repair--"

"You cannot," Cylene said, voice clipped. "You cannot repair what you've already done to me. Your horror is your own. I'm not sorry you've seen it."

The king groaned and coiled in a fetal position on the floor of the cell.

Cylene stared at the man-worm at her feet. And wished he would die, but then, that was better than he deserved.

He turned his blood-shot eyes toward her. They seemed to be begging for just this sort of compassion. She ground her teeth in her jaw. "You've hurt me more can possibly know--not for what you did just now--though that's bad enough. You took my mother from me! My mother!"

The king dry heaved upon the floor of the cell.

"Stop it! Stop it!"

The king went mute.

Cylene balled her fists, till her knuckles glowed. "Listen to me Olanda and do exactly as I say!"