There was a strange calm as Dorius held his hands before him. He could see the gold eyes of the dragon watching him between his trembling outstretched fingers.

  It lifted its lip into a snarl, but did not attack.

  How is it you call me mother? My son was dead.

  Dorius lowered his hands. Son? When the dragon breathed out, he felt a hot breath around him, a surprising contrast to the crisp cold of the snowy peak. The moisture in its breath froze to snowflakes in the cold and eddied around him.

  “I… I don’t know. I was told I am your blood by the Vigil. My family has worn your crest for generations, we trace our old blood through our mothers to the Monarchy. You were the last Monarch?” He felt his voice faltering with every word that came from his mouth.

  The stillness around them was as sharp as blades. When the dragon did not move, it seemed a statue rather than a living being.

  I inherited the throne, yes. But I was not noble. They had diminished, no longer able to take our ancestral form; they could no longer prove their right with the natural crown. I was born instead as an outsider and threw our system into chaos. The Watcher set us to war and ruin!

  The pause of Dorius' shock pronouncement seemed to be fading now from the Dragon, and a familiar mournful warble returned to the woman’s voice as she remembered whatever had tormented her so much to sleep for centuries. But the dragon did not move still.

  “I was told I was…” Dorius shook his head, discarding his uncertainty. Val needed him. “Please, please you must save my friend!”

  Why? Why should your loved ones live when mine do not?!

  The dragon raised its head, straightened its neck and roared into the sky. So close Dorius huddled into the snow, his hands pressed against his ears to try and block out the terrible cry. When it was done, he gathered his strength and rose again, fists bundled at his side.

  “Because I am here and they are not! I am your descendent! I am alive!”

  The roan mare came behind him and nudged Val’s form with her nose, shifting her black hair with her lips and snorting at the thick smell of blood.

  Her thread is fraying. She warned.

  Desperate Dorius continued his pleas to the dragon, “Please. Help her…”

  No. You will suffer as I have. You will learn to hate as I do. Doomed to watch the world around me diminish and rot, why do you deserve the relief that I will never have?

  Dorius felt a swelling rage, Fenris was right, these were the words of a child!

  “What are you?” he screamed, “Are you not a Queen? Are you not a God? Are you not better than your fate? Will you doom others to suffer as you do, or will you challenge it?! Challenge the Watcher?!”

  The dragon snarled, clear membrane blinking across its eyes once. It dropped to all fours and surged at him, it's nose coming to a stop just shy of his chest. The front of its nose was so huge, Dorius could not see around it to the eyes as he stood strong. If it wanted to kill him, there was nothing he could do.

  Who are you to speak of challenge?

  “I challenge my fate every day!” declared Dorius, “My challenges are not mighty like yours, but I have led my house from poverty and ruin, and I will continue to overcome them. You mourn the diminishing, but I say so what?! I am not diminished! We do not need magic, we do not need Monarchs, we have proven that we can build ourselves up without it!” He pointed out beyond the mountain, “I challenge you to go and see them! See the cities we build, the people thriving! They laugh and love and grow and do not feel themselves diminished. You are the only one who sees that. We do not want you pity! So I challenge you, to defy your fate, or are you coward?”

  The dragon raised its head as he spoke, twisting it to watch him with one eye down its muzzle. Emboldened by the fact he was not yet dead, Dorius continued. “I am the Cinereal Dragon Prince, I have no sisters and I have no mother! I have built back from what is lost and I will do so again! I am better than my family, I will not be them! And I do it knowing I will never leave a legacy behind me. What will you be?”

  With a cold calm, the dragon spoke. You know nothing of what we have lost. To be so proud of a life in the mud…

  The dragon raised one clawed forefoot, a knobby appendage formed of two toes from a rounded palm, and the strange hollow spine that other digits and the membrane of the wings were furled into. One toe was extended, talon tip stretched and extended towards him. Dorius felt his stomach drop. This was it, he was dead. He turned and hunched over Val’s body, not caring for the black blood that got on his hands and clothing as he hugged her twisted and broken form. Her chest did not move beneath him and he tucked his head into her, shut his eyes, and waited for the dragon to kill them.

  The tip of the talon touched him at the center of his back, and he flinched expecting it to pierce through him.

  Val took a huge breath beneath him. Dorius was too terrified to sit up, he could feel the point of the talon still on his back. But as he tilted his head and looked up Val’s chest towards her face, he saw the strange shimmer in the air around her flesh. He gripped her tightly and waited with his heart in his throat. Val’s breaths came jerky and ragged at first, but they slowed and steadied as the magic worked, and soon were as gentle as if she slept. Dorius felt the talon removed from his back, and he dared to look over his shoulder at the dragon.

  Her voice was calm and mournful, as if spoken between tears. My husband was like you. He was but a pawn in the weaving of another pattern, cursed to believe in purpose and destiny, then have it torn away from him. He was filled with such defiance, till the very end when we finally realized what was being wrought. I believe that you are my blood, I sense myself in you, which means my son lived.

  Dorius pulled his robes tight, looking up at the dragon that was beginning to disappear into the darkness as it rose its head again into the night. Only the glint of scales catching the moonlight and the absence of the white snowy backdrop traced its outline. He suddenly felt cold, exhausted, unsure what would come next.

  You cannot know how much relief that knowledge brings me.

  “It is not over,” tried Dorius, feeling now a tremble beginning to grow as his adrenaline ebbed away. He clenched his jaw so the chattering of his teeth would not creep into his words, “I can’t lift her. We may both die of exposure.”

  The dragon turned and reared up onto her hind legs, unfurling her wings with a noise like rustling leather. Great muscles clenched and relaxed taloned feet at the end of thick and powerful legs. As she stood, Dorius lost all detail of her features into the dark night, her silhouette formed by the black void between the light of stars she blocked with her spread wings.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  There is a place I rested.

  Dorius scrambled backwards as he was buffeted by the wind from one wing beat. A taloned foot came down next to him as the dragon hopped sideways. He reached out, nervous, but the foot tucked its toes delicately around Val’s body and caged her in the talons. Then, just before he laid his curious fingers on the dragon’s flesh, with another wing beat she lifted off into the sky and took Val with her.

  “Driftbane! Can we follow?!” he cried, gathering up his robes and taking big steps over the deep snow to come to the winged horse’s side. She gave no reply, and only lowered her wing again as a step for him to climb onto her back and hold on. He shut his eyes and she leapt after the dragon.

  —

  Val woke up.

  That was probably the most surprising thing about it, the fact that she woke up.

  Her breath was calm and steady. Her body was not wracked with the all consuming pain of broken bones, but the dull throb of exhausted muscles. She stared instead at a stone ceiling, crevices glowing incandescent blue where the moisture seeped from the rock and gathered, and felt very much alive.

  She sat up suddenly, feeling her body with her hands. She was wearing only her undergarments, and her flesh was smooth with only the faint pale lines of new scars as evidence of her battle. Even her hand was healed, small pin-pricks of white remaining where each tooth hole had been.

  Surely she was dead.

  The chill wind that blew through the cavern pricked her skin to gooseflesh, and she wrapped the blanket that had covered her tight. Then, remembering her last moments she lifted one hand to her horns. One was whole, but the second was broken.

  She traced the edge of it with her finger tips, feeling where the layers of keratin had splintered roughly, and where some were still curled and deformed. It felt so short, even the weight of her head felt off balance. It would take maybe a year to grow back, so much had been broken off. She hung her hands thoughtfully from her chin horns, and looked about her surroundings.

  She was sleeping on one of their rolled travel mats, and beside her was her pack, although most of the supplies had been rifled through. Her bloodied clothes and her harness lay nearby, reeking of old blood. They were completely covered, stiff and black, soaked through.

  There was light and voices somewhere, so with a groan she got to her feet. Her muscles ached from exertion and burned as she moved them - it was honestly the first feeling that convinced her she might be alive. She wrapped her blanket around her, and silently made her way out of the cavern chamber she had been left in. She emerged to a strange set of figures talking over a fire.

  Fenris was there, in his human form, half dressed in the black clothing the Laons made him with his waist lightly belted and his robes loose around his chest exposing his swarthy skin. His wolves lounged by the fire, both deep asleep just within reach of Fenris who tangled his hand in their fur. Dorius was also there, leaning back on his hands and brows knit together as he debated. Val scanned him for any signs of injuries and he seemed relaxed, if not slightly frustrated by his discussion. The blue roan winged horse stood nearby, sheltering in the warmth of the cavern and flickering fire light. She seemed to be preening her feathered wings with her lips, separating each of her long pinions one by one and drawing her wing back to run each one through her dexterous lips.

  The third figure she did not recognize. She was human, a little older than Dorius and weary, with long, rich-brown hair streaked with grey that seemed early for her age. She was wearing Dorius’ spare clothing, although she seemed uncomfortable in them, having tied the waist belt oddly and letting one shoulder slip in a disheveled manner. Her eyes had heavy bags beneath them and were touched red as if she had been crying. Her voice was stern and calm as she replied to Dorius in their debate.

  “Of course it is absurd to think magic was only inherited through the mother? Have you not seen how many children are born looking like their fathers? Why would magic be any different?”

  “But the nobles, we have always carried our dynasty through the women?” asked Dorius.

  “As you should! The mother is a guarantee of blood relation, the father is not so certain. But that does not mean they are not related, that they pass nothing to the child? The father’s dowry remains important for breeding - his skills and connections, and once his affinity for magic too.”

  Dorius looked visibly rocked, and with a shaky breath asked, “What happened to your son and husband?”

  The woman was still, and she prodded at the fire quietly for so long it seemed she would not answer.

  “The Monarchy was in decline for many generations before it actually happened. They had trouble breeding heirs, weak children who did not survive in the womb, or when birthed quickly died of sickness. Those that survived were thin and pale, their dragon forms - if they could take them at all - anemic and weak, and their natural crowns no longer proud. The High Council had grown thin as well, down to only nine members - four factions representing the strongest members of fire, air, water and earth magic, and their apprentices, and my not-yet husband, who was the last of the truly powerful healers. When a new generation of the monarch's family failed to thrive, and none could take a dragon form to display the next natural crown marking the rightful successor, it seemed that the way we had done things for all of living memory had come to an end.”

  Val shuffled forward and Dorius started, interrupting the tale to rise to his feet.

  “You’re awake!” he exclaimed.

  Val grunted, and came to the warmth of the fire sitting at his side. “How?” was the only word she croaked, her voice felt distant and her throat dry.

  “Abrigardius healed you,” Dorius explained, gesturing across the fire to the women. Val paused and watched her wearily for a moment, making the connection now that this must be the dragon. Like Fenris, it appeared she too had a human form.

  “You got swatted!” said Fenris cheerily, “Splattered and mangled.”

  Val groaned at the memory of the pain. Dorius sprinkled herbal tea from their supplies into his cup, and ladled out water from their small cooking pot at a boil on a trivet in the fire, passing it to her. She settled next to him and took it, hunching her shoulders and aching. It did feel good to feel pain.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Dorius quietly.

  “Like I was splattered,” replied Val. Fenris chuckled with approval.

  The woman watched her back red eyed, but did not offer explanation or apologies and instead continued her story. “The council was initially going to take over rule from the Monarchy, keep one of their line as a figurehead of sorts, till myself and one other emerged who bore natural crowns and sparked civil war as factions formed and dissolved around each of us. I won in combat at the end, but the damage had been done and most of the noble families with any power collapsed into warring independent states. None of it made sense - the Monarchy had been upheld by the Watcher and the Weave for generations, each time a new natural crown emerged one after another - so why none now? Why two at once outside the family? Even when I won in combat many still supported the other faction and called my own victory a sham, or the natural crown not the right that it had always been if there was no Monarch blood as well. What was intended, what was meant to be, none of it made any sense. Chaos was the point, chaos to form a new era and act as a turning point for the progression of the diminishing. We were betrayed by the High Council in the end who had tasted the scent of power before the civil war, and who set out to win their own place as rulers in the rebirth. I lost everything when they turned on us, and flew to the mountains to die in my grief, only to be reborn a god. When I realized I was no longer mortal, I chose to sleep instead.”

  Dorius was quiet and under his breath spoke a realization, “The Pentarchy is the High Council? They achieved their goal and ruled in your absence?”

  Abrigardius shifted, twisting her nose in disgust, “Most likely. Four families, and the diminished remnants of the Monarchy as the fifth.”

  “So I’m a descendent of both the Monarchy and you? By a quirk of chance my Mother split from her family and married a commoner who happened to be your own blood, who had carried on secretly outside the noble families…” Dorius rubbed his forehead, dragging his fingers over his eyes with exhaustion.

  Fenris sniffed, a growl in the back of his words, “Maybe chance, maybe pattern.”

  Abrigardius sighed, and looked away from the fire, “When you stood before me and I felt myself in you, it cut through my madness and grief. Their deaths are still raw to me, and now I will live with the regret that I will never know the man my son became because I ran believing them dead.” She tucked her face into her hands and sobbed.

  Dorius spoke gently, “The Vigilants have records. They asked me to bring you to them when they set me on this quest. We can study their libraries, find out how it was that your child survived. They must have had allies, who sheltered them and hid them among commoners. We can find out what life they lived?”

  Abrigardius wiped her eyes one handed, and set her mouth. “No. I have dwelt too long in my memories. One day, I may seek it out, when I can handle the knowledge. For now, it is as you said… What will I be?”