The log split neatly as Val slammed her axe one handed into the flat. The silver wolf at her feet barked once, and bounced in place. Giving him a small smile, she propped her axe against the stump she worked at and cracked one of the smaller branches off a nearby log. The wolf jumped excitedly as she pulled her shoulder back, and with a sideways toss sent it spinning across the clearing. Like a flash of quicksilver, the wolf streaked off after it in pursuit. Fenris sat crossed legged on her growing wood pile, and held his hand to shade his eyes as he watched the branch disappear into the distance.

  “Oh! That was a good one!” he called.

  Val nodded a thanks, and picked up the next log, prodding it into place it with her foot as she picked her axe up again and continued chopping.

  “You’re willing to die for this hume?” he asked suddenly, watching her with yellow eyes. There was a note of something dark in his voice, a feeling like smoke on the horizon and red sunsets.

  “I’ve almost died for humans before,” replied Val as she worked, sweat gleaming on her forearms and forehead.

  “Even the good ones, the sniff of power turns them. Their blood runs hot with millennia of predation and ambition, sooner or later, they succumb to their nature,” said Fenris grimly, leaning to watch his silver wolf stream across the clearing still after his quarry.

  “You were not kidding when you said they were all dragons?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  Val hummed, and thumped her axe down on another log, it split clean and she kicked the pieces off the stump with her foot, “I cannot say I am fond of humans. But I am fond of specific ones.”

  Fenris bared his teeth, the expression was not a grin, “I have lived too long. The ones I was fond of are long dead.”

  Val paused, and stood straighter, “Why help us then?”

  The darkness slipped, and Fenris pouted and crossed his arms, “Why not?”

  “Bored then?”

  “Something like that. And I go years without hearing my own voice!”

  Loud barking attracted Val’s attention, and she raised her head to watch the second wolf come galloping from the tree line, and spotting his twin returning with the branch she had thrown, he changed direction to give chase. Their reunion quickly turned into growls and yelps as a fight broke out over the prize.

  Behind them, the winged horses came into view, gliding shallow over the trees. White and blue, both came to a landing with chests heaving. Val stacked some of her growing chopped wood pile under her bad arm, and trudged towards them where her growing mound of branches and logs in the clearing waited.

  The blue roan mare approached, neck extended, and sniffed the wood. She then flapped her wings to shake loose a feather and refolded them along her back.

  Tonight? She asked while lifting a hind-hoof to scratch under her wing.

  Val gave a nod, and selected places to stack her additions to the pile. As the wolves bought their stick close again, she fished it off them and gave it another toss across the clearing, much to their joint excitement.

  Where is the prince? Asked the stallion.

  Val shrugged back towards the trees, she’d left Dorius to his thoughts. For once in her life, her priority had been her own calm before battle.

  “Shitting his pants,” laughed Fenris, he slapped his thigh and flashed a toothy grin.

  —

  Val stripped her armor, fumbling with her straps one-handed, and stacked the leathers one by one - they would be useless to her. Over her thin Laon clothing, the fabric she now recognized by feel as woven goat hair, she strapped only her harness and axe. Ruefully, she unbound her hair. It had been coming loose, and with the limited mobility in her second hand she could not re-plait and bind it around her horns as she usually did. Somehow, she felt it liberating to go to her potential death unburdened and she let it hang down her back, black and sleek. She tied the cord she normally used to secure it around one chin horn instead, and steadying her breath, turned back towards the clearing.

  Dorius waited, his face heavy and breaths shallow, hands tucked in his sleeves and wrapped around his sides as if he was holding in sickness. She patted him with one hand on his shoulder and stepped past him towards her waiting bait.

  The sunset cast bright crimson and gentle amber across the sky. The stalwart peaks around them were dark blue where shadow was cast on snow. Evening light stretched and twisted across the landscape, like fingers reaching down to them.

  Val basked in the quiet red light and breathed deeply, feeling a sense of tranquility wash over her. Whatever the outcome of this night, she was at peace. She felt tall and still, and listened to the deep drone of the mountain. She would pass into it, subsume to the gentle hum and be both one and nothing before its reassuring infinite song.

  At the treeline, a giant black wolf sat, yellow eyes gleaming like gold in the fading daylight.

  She imagined fire - a spark igniting, feeding to fuel its hungry growth, then swelling into an all-consuming inferno. She felt its crackling, roaring energy, the tug of the air as the temperature shifted, and imagined its destructive power. In the place where it resided within her, she completely opened and felt it unfurl. It wasn't a gentle, controlled flame that she sought, but a raging wildfire. An immense, primal energy surged through her, unconscious and unfeeling.

  The energy surrounding her began to shift, and the vibrations of her magic pulsed outward from her body like a rhythmic drumbeat. As she extended her open palm toward the wood pile, it exploded into flames.

  Fragments of wood erupted into the air, raining splinters and sparks through the clearing. The outwards force of the blast lifted Val’s hair into fluttering, black ribbons, and she raised one forearm to shield her eyes from the rush of heat and ejected shrapnel. Unleashed, and given fuel, it did not need her to feed it but still she threw her energy at it and it seared white hot, the shadowed silhouettes of the woodpile dissolving as it was consumed. In barely moments Val felt it devour her entire day's work, and begin the familiar tug on her own mind as it searched greedily for its next meal.

  She did not have to wait long for her challenge to be heard, and a tremor carried through the ground. As one, the harmonics shifted, swelling into joyful refrains in counterpoint to the blood curdling roar that tore through the air in response. Val snapped her head immediately in the direction of the noise, and a dark shape launched itself from a peak in a plume of white snow to plummet into the sunset. Midair, great ribbed wings snapped open, and it righted itself and began winging towards them with frightening speed.

  “Dorius! It’s coming!” she yelled. Her words were eaten by the rushing air around her inferno.

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  Far too quickly, it closed it on them. The shape of its swan-like neck and long lupine face were now apparent against the crimson sky. As it drew close, it lowered its hind legs and splayed taloned feet in preparation to dive them. Its size became clear, and Val felt her calm begin to falter, she would be no larger in its feet as a knife handle in her own hand, the talons as thick as her thigh and longer than her leg. When it opened its mouth, pink tongue twisting in the wind, and bugled, her steadiness shattered.

  Terror and grief overwhelmed her, her knees buckled and her tenuous control on her magic splintered and it greedily began to draw her into the fire. The dragon hovered over the clearing, wings blacking out her view of the sky, golden horns and dark scales gleaming red reflections from the bonfire. With each beat of its wings the fire surged and retreated, sending sparks through the air. Val raised her hand, and screamed as she spilled her fire from her palm at the creature. The creature bellowed and unleashed its own harmonics, and as they spread and met Val’s - they canceled.

  Bright fire, so overwhelming Val was sure it could not be stopped, was extinguished. Chaotic, discordant sound came to deafening silence. As if life itself had suddenly been snuffed, suffocated, frozen in crystalline stillness. The residual heat that rose from the ground created an upwards breeze, and ash began to dance on the rising air, filling the space between her and the hovering nightmare with floating white motes. With great wing beats, the dragon looked down at them, golden eyes gleaming.

  Val dropped her hands to her sides, exhausted.

  “Dragon god!” cried a voice.

  Dorius stood at the edge of the trees, his hands raised, silver hair tousled by the wind and heat. His hands trembled.

  “Hear me!” he cried, “Hear me and cease your anger!”

  The dragon arched its head, turning from Val to the tiny human. Her four golden horns shone with regal elegance. There seemed a moment of quiet, and Val felt her heart in her throat with hope that this would be all that was needed. Then its muscles shifted, and the creature roared again and dived feet first for Dorius.

  Val scrambled to her feet, and sprinted across the clearing towards Dorius. Dorius turned tail, and bolted into the trees. Fenris leapt to his feet, and with a great bound met the dragon mid-air, teeth grabbing it around the collar and forepaws wrapped around its chest, barely a third of its size. The dragon screeched and kicked with its hind talons, tearing great gashes in Fenris pelt and sending black fur flying. They both went tumbling into the ground, twisting together in a writhing, furious mass of scale and fur. Val vaulted a sweep of the dragons tail and closed in on the two of them, hefting her axe clumsily overhead and bringing it down to tear the membrane of one flailing wing open.

  The dragon kicked Fenris free and bellowed. With a ripple of skin, the wings were furled into the large final spine of each wing and snapped tight at the dragon’s wrist. On all four legs it righted itself and released a hiss of air like a giant snake. Fenris leapt at its head again, his claws uselessly pawing at its armored skin and feet kicking its neck, and the dragon raised its head to toss him. Somehow, the wolf hung on, flailing around its neck wildly, and it tossed its head to catch his body in its teeth. The snap of jaws was almost as loud as the piercing yelp Fenris gave as teeth closed on his body.

  Val braced, and as if preparing to chop a tree trunk, swung her axe into a nearby ankle. The axe blade split flesh and scale, and dug as deep as her hand stopping against the bone. It was like cutting meat, no blood spurted from the wound. The dragon kicked, breaking the axe free from Val’s grip and tossing it through the air. Fenris was thrown free again and as the Dragon scrambled, it flailed its whole body to shake off its assailants.

  The black wolf landed on all four paws, hackles raised and growling, his wounds would have been mortal except for the fact they were bloodless. The air shifted and shimmered where they were already beginning to close.

  Abrigale! You are a fucking child!

  The dragon howled in rage, and stamped its feet, sending Val diving free in case she was spiked on a talon or trampled.

  Everyone I love is dead!

  The voice screamed between tears in Val’s mind, the howl of a woman on her knees in anguish.

  What are you going to do? You cannot join them!

  The dragon whipped its tail out, tripping Fenris and sending the wolf toppling to his side. Val took the moment of distraction to throw herself at the creature, and grabbed onto a back leg, wrapping both arms around the width of its ankle and anchoring herself with her hip blade.

  “No!”

  Something slammed into Val’s back, swatting her like a fly. The force of the blow crashed her head against the creature's scaled hide, embedding her horns like thorns in its thigh and knocking black blood out of her mouth and nose. When she tried to draw her next breath - only pain filled her chest. She fell limp, but remained embedded by her horns. She tried to lift her arms, to lever herself off the creature, but her body only responded with pain, her movements too weak to do little more than push and kick meekly.

  I will try!

  The dragon unfurled its wings again and kicked into the sky. With what strength she had, Val held on, and in her limited periphery saw the world spin and disappear below her. Her breaths came shallower as she desperately gasped for air in the rushing wind and her lungs felt like they would not fill, desperation growing. Below her a voice cried out.

  “Come back!”

  —

  Val clung to the beast, delirious with pain and knowing only one thought which was to not fall. She was aware she rose and fell in rhythm with its wingbeats, she was aware her ribs were shattered and her chest cavity was filling with blood. Each breath she drew offered no relief, and each came faster and shorter than the last as panic washed through her mind.

  She so desperately did not want to die. She thought she could be calm, that there would be some relief so close to the end, but instead there was only panic.

  There were people that needed her. She had to live.

  She groaned and beat the dragon one handed, kicking her foot into the wound her axe had opened. The rush of the wind did not relent, and it carried her tears from her eyes and the blood dripping from her nose away with it.

  A clawed foot scraped at her, one talon sticking her in the shoulder and she moaned with pain. She shook in the air as the dragon rocked in flight, trying to scramble at its ankle with its other hind limb. A talon jolted her in the head, and with a sickening snap, one of her horns broke, and her body suddenly swung free suspended by only one horn now. A second kick dislodged her, and she plummeted backwards through the air for one terrifying moment, before landing on her back in the snow.

  The jolt of landing shook every broken bone in her body, but she had no air in her lungs to scream. Instead each painful breath meekly rattled, and she stared upwards at the darkening sky too weak and broken to move. Tiny stars began to emerge.

  She had only the barest awareness that the dragon landed nearby, kicking and rolling in the snow.

  There was no way she could live, her body had to be shattered, waiting for her blood and air to run dry and fail. But, she so desperately did not want to die.

  Her eyelids felt too weak to even close. Numbing cold began to chase away the pain.

  She had things to do, people to take care of. And only regrets, for letting uncertainty rule so many of her decisions. Only regrets, for letting human prejudice guide her path. And for not caring enough back for those who loved her. She had made Dorius promise to care for himself first, but now so close to death, she hoped… just maybe…

  Please, she would do anything not to die.

  The great dragon's head appeared over her vision, looking down at her along its narrow snout with a single golden eye set in purple so dark it might as well have been black. The pupil was a thin black line, notched in multiple places. Glittering gold and darkest bronze spiraled through the sinews of its huge iris as it regarded her body, black blood seeping into the snow. A thin, clear membrane blinked once.

  She wondered if it would eat her. Or maybe kill her to ease her pain. She opened her mouth to speak, but only blood came out.

  “Mother of my blood! Hear me!”

  The dragon lifted its head, and Val saw a winged shape. Feathered pinions wide and spread like fingers, white and black wings glowing with edges of fire red in the very last beams of daylight, the blue roan mare wheeled into sight and fluttered rearing before the dragon. On her bare back, Dorius clung desperately to her mane. He held one hand out and repeated his plea, his voice empty and tiny against the vast mountain sky.

  “Mother of my blood! Spare her, please.”

  Val felt consciousness slip away, and descended into the black, cold void.