Winter, 2064 CE, Japan

  THE TUNNEL LEADING to the lair complex was considerably longer than Dauria remembered.

  Cursed human legs, she thought sourly.

  “How far is it?” Kaito asked.

  “Your guess is likely as good as mine. I was a rather large dragon the last time I was here.”

  “Did he do the excavation by hand?” Kaito asked. Softer, he added, “It’s brilliant work, either way.”

  “He always claimed this was a natural cave that he only slightly modified, aside from the smoothing of surfaces, of course. And he did claim to have done that by hand. The ‘old-fashioned way,’ as he called it.”

  “As if arcane power were a thing developed during his lifetime,” Kaito said through a slight chuckle.

  “Who knows,” Dauria said, forcing a soft laugh. “Maybe it was.”

  “You don’t seriously believe that.”

  “No. But who are we to say? My sire lived more than two-thousand years before I hatched. Who can guess at the marvels he witnessed in that time?”

  “The creation of the arcane itself?” Kaito scoffed.

  “Not the creation,” Dauria said pointedly. “The arcane power of our souls is such an intrinsic piece of dragon physiology, I have to believe we could not exist without it. But who are we to say that the ability to consciously control the arcane could not have developed within the last few thousand years before the Long Sleep began?”

  “Do you ever lose an argument?”

  Dauria grinned. “Rarely.”

  Kaito sighed. “Do you sense anything like the power you talked about harnessing?”

  Dauria frowned. “I don’t feel anything here. Not the slightest tingle. My Apex is as dark as ever.”

  Kaito’s eyes widened.

  It had long been a taboo to openly discuss the quality of one’s Apex. Even more so to speak of another’s.

  Dauria, however, was beyond propriety. The sensibilities of dragons had stopped concerning her the moment she’d been trapped in her human form. What mattered now was getting back what she’d lost.

  Kaito’s expression calmed abruptly, as though he forced it, and he swallowed loudly. “It seems the first plan is a bust then? I sense great power here. Strange power, but great. But that does you no good if you cannot even sense it, much less harness it.”

  Dauria kicked at the smooth floor as she walked. “And you cannot harness it?”

  “I dare not. As I said, this power feels volatile and contradictory. I fear what it would do to me if I tried.”

  She nodded. “No less than I expected,” she muttered.

  “Do you have any ideas as to what we’re going to be looking for, since that isn’t going to work?”

  “Few. The truth is that I’ll know it when I see it, but beyond that, there’s not much I can tell you. I don’t know of anything in particular that will help, but I believe in my heart that there is something here that will. We just have to find it”

  “And if this turns out to be another case of you can’t see it because you’re not really a dragon anymore?”

  She scowled.

  Kaito shrugged and arched a brow.

  “If that ends up being the case, then may my ancestors help me.”

  “That’s not very encouraging.”

  Dauria turned to face him and stopped walking. He stopped and turned to face her as well.

  “Kaito,” she said, expression serious. “Why are you helping me? You easily could have abandoned me. By the tails of my ancestors, you could have killed me. Yet here you are, trying to help me get back what I’ve lost. Why?”

  Kaito blinked and turned away. His cheek seemed faintly reddish in the dim light of the tunnel.

  “Kaito?” she asked as her hand slid gently around his. Quite of its own accord, she felt certain.

  He turned back to face her, a faint glimmer of moisture shining in one eye. “I…” he stopped and swallowed before continuing. “I believe in what you’re doing, Amaya. Or whatever your real name is. This business with the Elders is important. Not just to you and the others, but to every living creature on Earth. It’s vital that you get to them and make your voice heard.”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand in his. “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that happens. You have my vow on it.”

  “It’s Kwallindauria,” she said. “And thank you, Kaito. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

  He nodded.

  Without quite realizing how, she found his lips brushing her cheek lightly. With an impish grin, he turned and strode down the tunnel.

  Dauria’s cheeks burned. She reached up to stroke the spot he’d kissed with tingling fingertips. What is happening to me?

  * * * * *

  Dauria had lost track of how long they’d been in the tunnel some time ago. Daylight was little more than a memory and even her enhanced eyesight was beginning to fail.

  “Is this it?” Kaito asked, glancing up.

  The tunnel branched in four directions.

  “Yes,” Dauria said. “The far left was my chamber, next to that my brother’s. The right was my dam’s and the far right my sire’s.”

  “Which do we think is most likely to be where we need to be?”

  “Far right, almost definitely.”

  Kaito nodded and moved down the far right fork.

  “How’s your vision, Kaito?”

  “Dragonsight is perfect, or course. The human eyes are pretty much useless down here, though.”

  Dauria nodded. He wasn’t looking at her, but she felt certain he was aware of the motion anyway.

  Before long, the tunnel opened into the wide chamber she remembered. There would be three connecting chambers, one straight back and one to either side. Baalhalllu used to keep his most personal things in the far back, his artwork to the left and his arcane-infused trinkets to the right, while the bulk of his wealth was relegated to the main chamber.

  Which is more likely to house what we need? she wondered. Right, or straight back?

  Logic suggested the arcane was the way, but her instincts told her his personal room would be more likely to contain the volatile sort of power she needed.

  Dauria made her way through a maze of pathways in the huge main chamber with mountainous piles of coins and jewels on either side, Kaito trailing after her.

  It took what felt like an hour, or possibly more, to reach the rear of the cavern and the short tunnel leading back into Baalhalllu’s personal chamber.

  Although this chamber was smaller than the last, it still seemed massive to her human senses. Everywhere she looked revealed only shadows over deep shadows over deeper shadows, all detail obscured from her view.

  “Kaito, can you get us some light?”

  “Oh,” he said in surprise, “of course. My apologies.”

  After a moment, a large globe of pale yellow light appeared above his head.

  The chamber walls, now clearly illuminated, were lined with bookcases, the shelves blanketed by books of every size, shape, and description imaginable. In the center of the room, a massive tome— even by dragon standards —stood open upon a pedestal.

  “Much too obvious,” she whispered.

  Kaito gave a soft chuckle. “The books, perhaps?”

  “Seems unlikely,” Dauria said. “But we should at least look. Do you want to go look in the chamber to the left of this one? That’s where he keeps his arcane trinkets. Perhaps something in there has a chance of being useful to us.”

  Kaito nodded, though his dark grimace made him look somewhat less than pleased about it. “I’ll leave you the light.”

  Dauria nodded in appreciation and flashed the best smile she could muster.

  Kaito’s grimace became a true smile as he turned to stride from the chamber, his footfalls echoing from the passageway.

  Dauria stifled a chuckle at the odd behavior. What is that human phrase? she wondered. ‘As shy as school children’? Or was it ‘as giddy as school children’? But more importantly, why am I trying to apply human adages to our actions? Neither of us is human. Not really.

  Dauria pushed the thoughts away and moved to her left to scan the spines of the books on the shelves. She was not at all certain of what she was looking for, but still felt certain she’d know it when she saw it.

  * * * * *

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  Title after pointless title, most seemed to be personal treatises on history and philosophy. Nothing jumped out at her as useful or important.

  With each shelf she searched, her frustration mounted. Perhaps the whole venture had been pointless. What if there was nothing here that could help her? What if she was stuck in this human body for the rest of her life?

  For that matter, how long was the rest of her life likely to be in this body?

  Kaito is still around, she thought. And by all appearances, has been so for a great many years. Perhaps the human form does not affect our lifespans?

  She couldn’t convince herself that it mattered much, if at all. There was simply no chance, even if she could manage to find the Council and get to them, they would listen to her in her present form.

  And Kaito’s experience isn’t likely to be the same as mine, anyway. He still has access to his Apex, which could make all the difference.

  “These might help.”

  Dauria jumped at the sound of Kaito’s voice. She had almost forgotten he was there in the lair with her.

  “What are they?” she asked, turning to him. He carried an armload of seemingly random items, from earrings and amulets to over-sized armbands, thin, wooden wands to circlets, knife sheaths, and more. “I don’t sense anything from them,” she said in consternation.

  Kaito frowned. “I was afraid of that.” After a pause, he continued, “Each does something a bit different. From enhancing natural draconic abilities to arcane enhancements to shapeshifting. They all seemed as though they could be helpful to you.”

  “Thanks, Kaito. I don’t imagine a shapeshifting trinket will be of much use to me, though. Not in my present condition.”

  “Considering that you can’t even sense the magic in them, I expect you are correct. But if extra power is needed, they may be useful.”

  “That’s true. Want to help me search the books?”

  He gave a silent nod and went to the bookcase at the opposite side of the entrance. He gently sat the trinkets on a table to the side of the bookcase and set to work.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  “Anything to do with the arcane. But particularly rituals, shapeshifting, locking a dragon in human— or other —form, or manipulation of one’s connection to their Apex.”

  “Got it.”

  Time passed slowly. Kaito worked in silence and Dauria struggled to keep her temper reined in while she scanned through shelf after shelf after shelf of pointless volumes.

  “Have you checked the tome in the center?” Kaito asked.

  Dauria scoffed.

  “I realize it’s unlikely,” he said in mollifying tones. “But did you check to be sure? Maybe this is where they learned how to do it.”

  “Calling that unlikely is quite the understatement,” she said as she looked at the cover of the next book on the shelf. A History of the Tengu. She sighed and put the book back, moving on to the next.

  “So you didn’t check.” It was not a question.

  “Nope.”

  Kaito’s boots scraped the floor of the chamber as he stepped toward the center. A light thump behind her brought Dauria’s head whipping around. Kaito stood atop the pedestal looking down at the open pages of the immense tome. The book was taller than he was.

  Dauria shrugged and turned back around to continue skimming titles. Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, all the Great Wise Men of the ancient past seemed to be represented here.

  She skimmed titles and occasionally Kaito turned one of the massive parchment pages.

  Is he using arcane power to turn them? she wondered. She shrugged again, intent on her own task.

  She passed volumes by Dante, Homer, and scores of others ranging from pseudohistory to blatant fiction.

  Kaito gasped aloud behind her. “By the gods, Dauria, I think I’ve found it!”

  “What?”

  “I’m almost certain this is it!”

  In spite of herself, her heart raced with excitement. She looked up at Kaito with wide eyes. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re not going to… oh, dear.” He stopped speaking abruptly.

  Dauria narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him. “What is it?”

  He didn’t answer. The color drained from his face as his eyes raced across the pages.

  “What is it, Kaito?”

  His pale lips whispered something, but she couldn’t make it out.

  “Kaito!”

  “It’s Kaiyutaulliaund,” he said softly.

  Her jaw dropped, hanging open. Kai… Kaiyu… how is that…?

  In her shock, it took her a minute to form words again.

  “The lost one?” she whispered in a rasp. “But Kaiyutaulliaund disappeared more than a millennium before The Sleep. Presumed dead. If he is you…” Her voice strengthened as she finished, “Where have you been?”

  “I am sorry, Kwallindauria. I would love to bore you with the details, but this is more important. You need to find Graayyyavalllia and address the situation with the Elders. I fear your time is running short. Let this act prove my devotion to you. Let it prove my worth and my love.”

  “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” Dauria said. “Wait, did you say–“

  She was cut off by a whirlwind of power, a tempest of arcane energy. The pile of trinkets flew through the air. A few landed on Dauria’s human form— an armband clasped to her bicep, a pair of earrings stabbed into her lobes, and a ring slid onto her finger —and the rest struck the gold dragon, embedding themselves into his scales.

  Wait, scales?

  Inexplicably, he was back in the full majesty of his dragon shape. Yet not. He was indeed the majestic golden serpent with a fin running the length of his spine, but he was of vastly greater size than she had seen previously. In fact, he was larger than any dragon she had ever seen, dwarfing even the immense size of her sire before the Long Sleep.

  Kaiyu raised his wings and sucked in a deep breath. Air and warmth drained from the chamber over the seconds it took the gold dragon to pull in his enormous breath.

  He held his breath, body poised, and seemed ready to leap. He held the pose for several moments while Dauria stared, dumbfounded.

  A tornado of force tore through the chamber, spinning arcane power and gale-strength winds throughout the chamber. Kaiyu deflated and all his inner mass seemed to disintegrate. The storm amplified in size and strength as it ripped through the chamber, taking up the books, quills, ink, tables, a few loose coins which had tumbled in from the main chamber, a few loose pages from the massive tome, and even the bookcases themselves and flung them about the room, as though they were so much detritus.

  The winds pulled at her, threatening to draw her up from the floor. Curling into a ball, she flung herself back to the floor, determined not to join the arcane whirlwind.

  She leaped back as a huge tome sailed toward her face, only narrowly avoiding being struck by it.

  Following the book was a never ending stream of trinkets, books, quills, and other oddments, each coming nearer and nearer to striking her.

  What was going on?

  It seemed almost as though this whirlwind was an attack on her rather than something meant to help.

  A hail of coins, gems, and a long staff like those used to carry banners into war came flying toward her.

  In desperation, she flung herself forward to avoid them and was sucked up into the twister. Her body twirled this way and that until she lost all sense of direction. Everything around her was a blur of motion.

  Something small struck her forehead and liquid dripped down into her eyes. Something larger struck her hand with a crunch and flames raged through the appendage. Something even larger struck her full in the back and she cried out in agony as she dropped out of the maelstrom and fell to the floor.

  Nothing more struck her, but she was again lifted from the floor and flung about the chamber by the wind as though she weighed nothing, as though she were a child’s toy.

  She tossed and turned, the world spun end over end.

  Distantly, she marveled that she didn’t strike walls, ceiling, or floor.

  After several minutes of terror, the wind died and Dauria dropped from the air. A moment before she struck the floor, a massive gust of torrential arcane power slammed into her, thrusting her into the wall and pinning her there.

  Kaiyutaulliaund shrieked in agony, the sound piercing Dauria’s auditory receptors as though she had been stabbed with razor-sharp claws.

  Her heart ached with the sound.

  Without warning, his shriek ended and incredible warmth suffused Dauria’s body. After another moment, the power released her and she slumped to the floor, the world fading into darkness.

  A bright, silver flash consumed her vision for an instant, then all went black.

  * * * * *

  The moment Kwallindauria opened her eyes, she knew the world had changed.

  Dust motes floated through the air in beams of sunlight no human could see, the creaks and groans of the Earth were so near, she almost thought she had moved to within a wingspan of the inner side of the Earth’s crust. The scents of iron and gold came to her on a tiny breath of air from the surface.

  Arching her long, sinuous neck to look down at herself, she noted without surprise that she was a dragon again. But so much more than she had been. She felt infinitely more attuned to her senses than ever before. It was almost as though she had opened her eyes, and other senses, for the first time in her life.

  Had she been seeing the world through closed lids all her life? Smelling it with her face plunged into a deep lake? Tasting it through a claw-width coating of dust on her tongue?

  The sensation, with her new definition of the word, couldn’t have been more wondrous.

  “Kaiyu,” she called, suddenly remembering his pain-filled shriek. “Where are you? It worked!”

  Rolling to the side, she rose to her claws and glanced about the chamber for the dragon who had made this all possible.

  She stepped over to the tome, or rather, what was left of it. Which wasn’t much. Looking beyond it, she spotted what was left of the golden dragon. Metallic gold moisture obscured her vision.

  The words came back to her then, in Kaiyu’s voice. But you’re not going to…

  I’m not going to allow it, she completed the thought as she realized the truth.

  “He sacrificed himself,” she whispered hoarsely. “For me. To bring me back to myself. He knew what the cost would be before he did it.”

  With golden tears streaming down her serpentine snout, Dauria couldn’t help wondering what could have possessed the ancient wyrm to sacrifice himself for her. Who was she? She was no one. An insignificant wyrmling compared to his majesty. He was a wyrm who had seen millennia come and go before the Long Sleep had ever been contemplated.

  Just what in the name of Infernalis do I have to offer that he would be willing to do this?

  Raising her snout to the ceiling, she shrieked, “Why would he do this?!”

  She allowed herself only another minute of tearful questioning before she forcibly dried the golden tears from her eyes. With a soft growl of annoyance at herself, she brought her attention back to the here and now. This was not the time for lamentation.

  All that remained of the majestic creature was a small, sinuous stone of deep green— like a jasper —flecked with gold. She reached down and picked up the stone. It was still shaped much like the serpent-bodied dragon.

  “Thank you, my friend,” she said, looking deep into the stone statue’s bronze eyes. “I will always remember your sacrifice.”

  Reaching to her chest, she raised a patch of her gleaming platinum scales over her heart and lodged the statue beneath them. Summoning a tendril of power from her Apex— it had become a glorious beacon once more —she fused the stone to her hide on one side and her scales on the other.

  By the gods, she thought. Her Apex had been bright when she’d awoken. Nearly as bright as any she had seen. But that blaze was a small thing to the raging inferno she now saw within herself.

  Had she gained all of Kaiyutaulliaund’s power? She couldn’t imagine how that could be possible, yet it seemed so. What other explanation was there?

  “You were right to think I wouldn’t allow you to do this if I’d had the choice,” she said sadly. “But now we shall never be parted, my friend.”

  After a time, her golden tears dried and she turned to leave the chamber. “Perhaps in time, there could have been more than friendship between us.”

  She snuffled. “Now we’ll never know.”

  * * * * *

  Dauria waited for darkness before leaving the lair. She set out westward for the Mare Gallicum where she would find Graayyyavalllia. The constant wind of flight kept her eyes dry of tears as she flew.

  Now free of the trap, her thoughts wandered once more to who may have been responsible. Whoever was behind it, they had to be powerful. And far too clever for their own good.

  It was a brilliant move, I can’t deny that.

  But who could have been behind it? She had several thoughts, mostly among those who argued against The Sleep in preference for war. But was she blinding herself to a more dangerous possibility? Could the answer be closer to home?

  With a frustrated growl, she pushed the thoughts away. In the absence of enough information to determine who was responsible, her circular thoughts only built her own impotent rage.

  During her flight, she paid particular attention to the landscape of the Earth and found it much changed, though not unrecognizable.

  Most of the mountains were the same, if more worn down. The landmasses were in slightly different places, though still easily navigable. Seas and lakes were, for all practical purposes, unchanged.

  The rivers, though. What radical changes! The Iteru was much the same, and the Istros and the Reinos. Perhaps the Hiddekel and Euphrates as well. But the smaller ones? Most of those she knew were gone, dried up and vanished. Similarly, most of those now present had not existed when she last flew above the Earth.

  What are the names of those rivers now? she wondered.

  Across the entire flight, she cast her telepathic net far and wide, seeking to learn all she could of the sorts of men and women who were in power in the human nations of this age.

  The anger, the fear, the violence, and the apathy of the majority left her immensely disheartened as to the possible future of the human race.

  Could The Watchers be right? she wondered.

  It was true that much of the damage to the Earth would have happened without Humankind, but what about the rest?

  What about all the atrocities of Man?

  Was there any excuse for the mass destruction directly— and directed —by his hand?

  What about the chemical warfare which destroyed not only massive swaths of human life, but also infected and mutated huge amounts of flora and fauna?

  And this haze of dark fog, Smog— the word came to her from the mind of an asthmatic teenager who hacked for breath on a deserted city street —that seemed to cover at least half the planet.

  Was it their place to say Humanity had its chance and failed? Did they have the right to take Mother Earth away from Man?

  She wasn’t convinced of either argument and couldn’t decide which was the correct answer.

  Let the Elders decide, she thought at last. It is in no way my decision to make anyway. That’s why we developed the Council of Elders in the first place. I will share with them my findings and my opinions, however.