As Indomitable leaped into the air he roared back to Sandstorm, who’d halted some hundred feet off the ground. Whatever he’d said, she didn’t like it. There was a short argument before he continued climbing, and she landed beside me, tense and sullen.

  She took one look at me like she was about to blame me for whatever had just passed between them. Then she started, eyes widening, and with something approaching sympathy she said, “Rain and hail, little one, what has been done to you?”

  “What’s happening?” I replied, a much more urgent question than her curiosity,

  “That big red female is on her way here, and coming fast. Grandfather is going to ask about her intentions and would not let me come. He wants me to watch over you.” She said that last part with her eyes narrowed to slits, showing as much displeasure as she possibly could without actually threatening me. “Now tell me what happened to you!”

  “She happened. The big red female.” I looked around, and she followed my gaze, taking in the ruined palace and the destroyed swath of forest around it. “She did all of this. She tried to kill me.”

  “Oh,” she replied. “I wondered about the destruction when I saw it earlier. I thought perhaps your mother had been hunting, but it did not look quite right for fire. Where is she? Why did she not protect you? I came to see what all the noise yesterday was about, and I worried that I could not see her anywhere.”

  “She is away,” I replied shortly. I wished she’d go away. It was entirely unfair to Sandstorm, but I think few could have blamed me for resenting her presence after what I’d been forced to agree to. And I wasn’t doing so great in general. My granduncle may have just asked me to conquer all of humanity for the sake of the survival of our kind, which had me a bit off balance; my aches and pains were still there, as distracting and tiring as ever; and now Behold Her was returning. I couldn’t imagine fleeing from her again, never mind trying to fight her.

  I looked anxiously toward the forest, then back to Sandstorm. “How strong is your grandfather?”

  “Strong,” she replied with borrowed pride. “He easily drove off the pair that killed my father… though he did not kill them, and he said that we would have to return for my hoard. I think he was tired from his journey. But do not worry. After having rested in this place, I do not think there is any dragon who could hope to defeat him.”

  She’d barely finished speaking when the sound of a lightning strike rolled across the ruined city, despite the bright sun and a nearly cloudless sky. Her head snapped up, looking in the direction of the thunderous noise. “That is him,” she said. “It is a shame you cannot see him. He is very impressive.”

  A shrieking roar, of rage, not pain, pierced my ears and made my knees weak. I’d only heard Behold Her’s scream a few times before, but it was enough to make my wounds pulse with pain. Just hearing her was enough to make me want to do as my granduncle had said and hide. It made me want to run; to grab Herald and slink back below the earth, where, if we were lucky, that sadistic monster couldn’t find us.

  The impulse sickened and infuriated me. So she’d hurt me. If I were to cower from everything that ever hurt me, I’d never leave my hoard. Humans, trolls, bears, even a damn gremlin; they’d all hurt me as badly as Behold Her had, if not in the same way. And I’d won in the end, in every damn case. I hadn’t given up then, and I wasn’t going to give up now.

  But even though I didn’t run, it was still hard to make my legs move. Then Behold Her’s roar was answered by another, deeper one, and more lightning. This went on for some time. From the sound of it something very impressive indeed was going on, and there I was, on the ground and unable to see a damn thing.

  “To hell with this,” I grumbled. With great effort and biting back a litany of curses against the pain, I began to climb the piled ruin of the palace.

  “What are you doing?” Sandstorm asked, looking doubtfully at the unstable masonry.

  “I want to see what’s going on,” I told her. “I’ve never seen two dragons fight.”

  “Grandfather wanted us to hide,” she said without much conviction.

  “So he did,” I agreed, swallowing a groan as I heaved myself up several feet onto a particularly high point.

  As I did, I caught my first glimpse of Indomitable in action. Sandstorm had been right; he was impressive.

  In the sky above the ruins of Malyon, Indomitable and Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End circled and twisted, manoeuvring and jockeying for position according to some arcane principle utterly beyond me. They didn’t joust, the way I’d imagined two dragons might, flying at each other and unleashing their breath weapons and slashing at each other’s wings when they came into range. It was more akin to a no-contact wrestling match. Barely out of range of each other’s teeth and claws, they were a whirlwind of ruby red and honey gold. At first the action was nigh-on impossible to follow, but soon I began to see what was happening. They were indeed going for each other’s wings, as well as throats, with teeth, claws, and even tails.

  But that wasn’t all. Every so often a streamer of red mist would shoot out, not directly at Indomitable but in his path. Indomitable nimbly dodged every time, using his wings with such expertise that he seemed to slide over or under the deadly mist without ever losing momentum or altitude. Indomitable himself retaliated by opening his mouth and, in complete defiance of every law of physics known to modern man unleashing arcing goddamn lightning from his mouth. I’d seen a lot of mind-boggling things in this place. People carrying logs by themselves, being able to count the hairs on a fly’s arse from five hundred yards, or making flesh mend with only their will and a healthy dose of golden light. I could melt into shadow and commandeer the dreams of others. And yet, seeing Indomitable twist in the air and unleash the wrath of the heavens from his gullet was one of the few things to actually make me stop, stare, and whisper, “What the fuck?”

  It didn’t help that Behold Her could somehow redirect that lightning. Time and time again, my granduncle split the sky with a bolt of thunder that could have cracked an airliner. And each time Behold Her predicted it, twisting and sweeping her wings in its path, and the black-and-purple trail that was left in my vision traced a jagged line between them then arced down into the ground.

  Neither was hitting the other with their most devastating attacks. It looked like a stalemate in the making, or something that would drag on until one or the other slipped up. But then I saw more clearly. Indomitable’s lightning wasn’t hitting, true, but it was blindingly bright even at the fair distance between me and the battling pair. And if that wasn’t enough, each time that he unleashed it Behold Her was forced to put her wings between him and herself. And each time that she did, he lashed out with his tail. Sometimes it missed. Sometimes it slapped Behold Her’s scales. But sometimes it cracked across the sensitive membranes of her wings like a bullwhip, and it wasn’t long until I saw an unmistakable tear.

  Indomitable was smaller than Embers. He might even be smaller than Behold Her, though from a distance they looked about even. But where Behold Her was using straightforward and brutal—if agile—attacks, the old man was fighting smart. And he was winning.

  Unfortunately—or perhaps not—Behold Her wasn’t enough of a brute to stick it out until her wings were shredded and she plummeted to the ground. After a particularly savage whip of Indomitable's tail she suddenly threw herself away from him, unleashing a massive cloud of withering mist between them, then spun in the air and set off for her tree. And Indomitable was not in any mood to chase her. He let her go.

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  But not without a parting gift. As Behold Her retreated, Indomitable let off one more blast of lightning.

  The thunderbolt crossed the widening distance in a literal flash. It struck the tip of her trailing tail, then reappeared from her hand, the lowest point of her body, from which it grounded itself. Behold Her’s entire body spasmed for a heartbeat, an undignified jerk that sent her tumbling for dozens, maybe even a hundred feet before she recovered and continued her flight, a mite less steady.

  My granduncle, satisfied with his work in correcting this murderous young upstart, flipped in the air with impossible agility and returned to the ruins of the palace with unhurried beats of his wings, as though he was just enjoying the fresh air.

  “Did he win yet?” Sandstorm asked from where she waited on the ground. There was no hint in her voice that she seriously considered the possibility that he might not win. It wasn’t quite the same level of blind faith as Instinct placed in our mother, but it wasn’t far off.

  “He did, yeah,” I replied, making my way down off the rubble just as slowly and painfully as I’d gotten up. “He should be here— oh, there he is.”

  Indomitable glided in low over the tops of the remaining trees, landing smoothly in the clearing. He shook his wings before folding them, and I saw that he hadn’t gotten away unscathed; he was bleeding from numerous scratches, and a patch near the tip of his left wing looked like it might have gotten caught in Behold Her’s red mist. He was in much better shape than the ruby dragon had been when she fled, though, and didn’t acknowledge his scrapes as he approached.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “It was good to see her humbled.”

  He snorted, narrowing his eyes at me. “If you had heard what she said as she left, you would not think her so. Did I not tell you to hide?”

  “You did,” I agreed. “And if it had been necessary, I would have.”

  “Why did you not hide immediately, as I told you? I sent your cousin to help you and keep you safe. By remaining in the open you may have endangered her as well.”

  I looked at Sandstorm, who was supremely unbothered. She even wiggled her head at me in the dragon version of a shrug. The idea that she may have been in danger didn’t even occur to her.

  I thought about how to answer him, and went with the truth. “I did not really consider that she might be in danger. I apologize for that.”

  Sandstorm blinked her second eye-lids, the dragon version of rolling her eyes, then gave me another head-wiggle.

  “As for why I did not hide,” I continued, “I wanted to. I heard Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End, and I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. And it filled me with disgust for myself.”

  “So instead you made yourself as visible as you possibly could?”

  I gave him a sullen head-wiggle.

  “Ah, well. It is your own fault if you perish, I suppose, and your mother’s for leaving you,” he said, with a disturbing and almost insulting lack of concern. “Where were we before that belligerent young lady interrupted us?”

  “I wished to ask you a favor,” I said. We had been talking about me possibly producing a new ruling class of mind-controlling dragons to establish draconic hegemony over the human world, but I’d rather forget that whole line of conversation.

  “Another favor, besides keeping you alive?” he asked, tilting his head as his eyes crinkled with amused interest. “And what might that be?”

  Letting his attitude bother me would get me nowhere. He was a dragon, I told myself, and older than even my mother. Being a patronizing old bastard was completely natural for him. “My humans are buried beneath this ruin,” I told him. “Two of those humans are powerful healers, but I cannot move the rubble. Not with my injury.”

  His amusement only grew. “Oh! Ironic, I believe the humans would call this. You cannot have your injury healed for you, because you cannot rescue your healers, because you are injured.” Then his expression became a little more serious as he asked, “You are sure that they can heal you? I have heard of human healers attempting such things, but that it is either tremendously taxing or impossible.”

  “They can. They have healed me of severe wounds, and they healed The Sun Need Not Rise In His Presence with some success. At least they took his pain away, which would be more than enough for now.”

  “Does it hurt much?” Sandstorm asked, leaning in close to sniff at the flaking scales along my side. I leaned away, fearing she might bump the wound with her snout.

  “Much, and constantly,” I confirmed.

  Indomitable snorted, long and from deep in his chest. “Very well. I did say that I would keep you alive. I do not know that any healer but time can restore your wing, but being able to move without pain should help. Where were these humans, did you say?”

  “Under these ruins,” I replied, nodding to the mountain of masonry. “The lower levels are extensive, but the passage down is buried under the rubble.”

  “What about the one among the trees?” Sandstorm asked. My head jerked her way then followed her gaze toward where Herald waited. “Is that one of yours?”

  “Is there one in the trees?” Indomitable turned to look where we did. “I do not see it.”

  “I can smell it,” Sandstorm insisted, then turned back to me. “Well? Is it yours?”

  I looked between them, not sure what to say. Embers had promised not to touch my humans, but she’d still been a doting mother invested in my happiness at that point. These two? I wanted very badly to trust them, Indomitable being all that stood between me and Behold Her, but I didn't know that I could. If either of them took offense to Herald watching us, or to something she said or how she said it, or just to her general existence for some reason, there was very little I could do to stop them hurting her. And while Sandstorm had detected Herald, or thought that she had, I couldn’t actually see her. I doubted that Sandstorm could either. Maybe it wasn't too late to claim that I didn't know what she was talking about, and try to prevaricate long enough for Herald to hide. And so I hesitated, and they waited.

  Before the silence could become awkward or suspicious, Herald decided for me by stepping out from the trees and slowly approaching.

  “See!” Sandstorm drew herself up proudly. “I said that there was a human there!”

  “So you did, and so there was,” Indomitable rumbled. “Fine nose, granddaughter.”

  Sandstorm preened.

  “And she is one of mine!” I quickly confirmed, silently praying that they’d leave her alone out of consideration for me if nothing else in case either of them got any ideas. “Herald, introduce yourself to my mother’s uncle and my cousin.”

  Herald approached until she was no more than twenty feet away from us, her face neutral. There she stopped, put her hand to her chest, and bowed low, first to me, then to Indomitable, and finally to Sandstorm. “Great ones,” she said, her voice steady and solemn. “I am Herald of the house Drakonum, faithful servant and companion to the great lady Draka. I am honored to meet the relatives of my mistress.”

  Indomitable barely acknowledged her. Sandstorm, on the other hand, padded forward curiously. I rushed after her. I didn’t expect that she’d do anything, but I was worried enough that I couldn’t just stay still.

  “It is very polite,” she observed as she circled Herald, sniffing her every so often. “And it is barely afraid! How is that? Is it one of the ones you keep as friends?”

  “She is my friend, yes, and very precious to me,” I said, putting myself right next to Herald and curling my tail around her. I didn’t quite put myself between her and Sandstorm, but it wasn’t far from it. “And she has spent a lot of time with my mother. She is used to being treated kindly by dragons.”

  “Oh. The humans I have met have all been skittish little things, eager to be away once they paid their respect. I never saw the point in learning one’s name, or learning to tell them apart. But I like this one! Are your other humans like her?”

  “Some,” I said, trying not to appear nervous. I wasn’t at all sure that Sandstorm taking a liking to Herald was a good thing. “Some are more… skittish, as you put it.”

  Behind us, Indomitable rose. “Speaking of the other humans, I believe I said that I would excavate your healers, little Draka. Can you both keep yourselves entertained with this human in the meantime?”

  “I am sure we can, grandfather,” Sandstorm said, still sniffing at a Herald who’d grown steadily more stiff and still beside me.

  “Very good,” my granduncle said, turning toward the heaped masses of rubble. “Do not go far. This should not take long.”

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