As I looked for where My People were at, I became mildly annoyed. Through my connection with Cassia, I could feel that the group was outside of the city and across the lake. They must have been using magic to move faster.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine why they chose to vacate the city, however. As I flew by it, far overhead, the entire city was engulfed in flames. Even with the rain which still poured down from overhead, the dragon fire which had erupted out of the ruptured pocket-realm continued to burn.

  Most of the people I saw moving around still seemed far more concerned with fighting each other rather than putting out the fires. I grimly contemplated how much damage would be done to a city built using magic, when it was threatened by dragon flames which used magic as their preferred fuel source. It took only a few moments of thought to decide that I needed to do… something.

  Too many ‘innocent’ people, for lack of a better term, would have their lives destroyed before someone did anything. While I’d honestly thought about burning down Osteriath, I had little desire to do so now that I’d retrieved Magnus.

  Pulling my flames back towards me was difficult. They had run rampant and consumed a great deal of magic while my attention lay elsewhere. It took some concerted effort to drag them away from whatever they happened to be burning at the moment. At first sluggishly, then with continual reluctance, the flames detached from what they were burning and trailed up into the sky.

  Trails of fire looped up from the city, streaming together and forming rivers. Those rivers then spiraled together up towards me. As they approached, each river woven together into a braid which coiled around towards my mouth. When I breathed inwards, the flames were sucked back inside of my body. For a little while, it looked like a cyclone of flame rose from the ground and into my gullet.

  An unpleasantly full feeling settled in my gut when I’d consumed the last of the flames. I could feel the remnants of what had been burned churning around inside of me. When Sixth rose up in my consciousness irritably, I mentally spoke to cut her off. ‘I know I just shortened how much time I have. I’m heading home to sleep right now.’

  Sixth snapped testily in my mind and went quiet again. In response, I flapped my wings harder to catch up with Cassia and the others.

  When I finally caught up to the group, they were waiting for me in a secluded field that was bordered by high hedgerows. The field lay fallow with ankle deep mud from the rain. Cassia and Visk were supporting Magnus between them. A quick inspection of his condition made me growl.

  The boy was completely spent. Some of his life force had been stolen by the Vampyr before I was able to sever the bond of magic between them. I couldn’t tell exactly how much he’d lost, but it was enough that he looked just as sickly as the day I’d first seen him. He was alive… but Edith would be more than a little furious.

  Veda and Sir Kenneth stood away from the others, looking at me nervously as I landed. My weight drove me deep into the soggy earth, but it wasn’t able to restrain me.

  “Spit it out, whatever it is that’s got you squirming,” I growled at the pair. “I have little time and little patience left.”

  “We- I-,” Sir Kenneth sputtered before taking a deep breath. “By your leave, Sanguine… I would like to accompany Witch Hunter Veda. Now that we have rescued Magnus, my oath to you is fulfilled. That said… I would like to help Veda fulfill their oath to you, to deliver the murderer known as Howard Avery to justice.”

  I stared at the knight for a minute in silence as the rain pattered down from overhead. Quite frankly, I’d put ‘Captain’ Avery out of my mind. After everything that had happened, worrying about one man just wasn’t important to me anymore. That said, letting the bastard live had come back to haunt me once. I’d made Veda swear on their life to ensure that it wouldn’t happen a second time.

  Veda had done everything I could have asked of them since then. Their squad mates had laid down their lives to help rescue Magnus. Mamaet had their soul consumed in the process.

  I had many questions for Veda, such as: Why did they seem to know about dragons? What was an elf doing serving the human ‘Empire’? Why did Mamaet share Veda’s exact appearance beneath their mask?

  Most importantly, what did Veda want from me?

  I wasn’t going to get answers to any of those questions right now.

  “Go, Sir Kenneth of Reimse,” I rumbled. “Do as your honor demands. Your oath to me is fulfilled. …As for you Veda-” I turned my amber eyes to stare down at the Elf. They looked up at me with a somber expression clouding their shining blue orbs.

  “I will be unavailable for some time after this.” My eyes narrowed, saying silently for them to not question that. “When you finish your own oath… seek me out in the Barony of Reimse. Bring the knight safely back with you. I will be displeased if he somehow manages to get himself killed, after what we just went through.”

  Veda bowed at the waist to me, slightly unsteady on their feet. Sir Kenneth reached over to help steady them, which caused Cassia to raise her eyebrow from nearby.

  “As you want, Lord D-Draconis,” Veda replied stiffly. The profound exhaustion inside the elf’s body had robbed them of their usual eloquence and grace. “May the sun always shine upon your boughs and the wind bring you gentle relief.”

  With that out of the way, I turned my eyes on both Cassia and Visk. The pair flinched under my gaze, when I looked their way. It took me a couple of moments to understand why.

  Something fundamental had shifted inside of me, when I let loose all the rage which had been building inside of me. I was feeling significantly less… ‘soft’, on the inside. Perhaps that simply meant that I was going to be less tolerant and merciful in the future. I’d certainly had my patience tested to the limit. The many promises I’d made weighed down on me heavily. A strong urge to ‘clear the deck’ sat like a dark cloud in the back of my mind.

  Speaking of oaths…

  “Visk,” I said as softly as I could manage. It still came out sounding like a box of gravel was being ground up in my throat. “Do you still have the satchel with the healing potions?”

  My elf desperately patted themselves down, rushing to search their person for what I’d asked for. They dumped Magnus into Cassia’s arms in the process. After several panicked seconds, Visk managed to locate the correct pouch and opened it up.

  Inside of the pouch were four shattered potion vials. Only one remained intact. Visk froze up, staring down at the contents in dismay. Slowly, they turned their moonlit eyes up at me. For the first time in a long while, I saw my elf looking at me with fear in their eyes.

  A deep sigh rolled through my body. Reaching over, I delicately extended a claw and took the pouch from Visk’s trembling hands. With an equal amount of care, I held it out at Veda.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “There is another dragon beneath Osteriath,” I told Veda grimly. “She is a gifted mental manipulator. Not as ‘nice’ as I am. I owe her the contents of this pouch. I want you to get it to her. You can probably find her through some of the common thugs which work for her, though she may have gone to ground with everything that’s happened.”

  I’d not heard a peep out of Second since we’d parted ways. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I had zero intention of leaving ‘unfinished business’ behind me for her to hold over my head. “Do not place yourselves in unnecessary danger. All I ask is that you attempt to get the bag to her. If you fail, I will not hold it against you. If she doesn’t like the contents of the bag… too bad.”

  “Understood, Lord Draconis,” Veda said wearily. “... And thank you for the warning. I will be extremely careful. For Osteriath to be haunted by not one, but two beings wielding mental magic is a dire situation indeed.”

  After some weary farewells, Veda and Sir Kenneth began to trudge out of the muddy field. I watched as they went. Perhaps when the two came to visit me next, it would be under happier circumstances.

  That, hopefully, was another item off of my checklist. I waited until I was alone with My Companions before I spoke again.

  “Cassia, Visk,” I addressed to my companions. “I need you to listen carefully to me. I know you have concerns. For that, I am sorry. We have all been through a lot just now. I am not presently the comforting presence that you likely want and need.”

  I stretched my wings. The power lingering inside of my body made me feel like I was about to ‘pop’, with how full I was. “There will be conversations about this, what we went through together, but they cannot happen right now. I grow by eating magic. To process that magic, I need to sleep. With the amount I just consumed… I will likely be asleep for a long time. Months, most likely.”

  “... I want to be clear: I am not abandoning you two. Or Magnus, or Edith. But I do not have a choice in this. If I do not process this growth, horrible things will happen. I need to head back to my Den as soon as possible, to avoid the effects.”

  Both of my Companions stared at me as I gave them a brutally short and to the point summary of what was about to happen. After everything the pair had been through lately, I knew that this would be some especially difficult news to hear. They had both sacrificed much to help me rescue Magnus. Now, I was going to disappear for months with little warning.

  “Is… is there really nothing you can do?” Cassia asked me softly, her eyes full of hurt. She was barely standing upright. The injury she’d suffered, which had driven me into a rage, still clearly pained her in spite of the magic which had been used to stabilize her.

  “If there was, beloved Hunter-Princess, I would do it,” I replied, trying to send her what feelings of affection I could muster. “But I have been warned that if I try and resist it this time… it is likely we will all suffer.”

  “So how are we going to get back fast enough Boss?” Visk asked me with a sigh. “We don’t have a harness for us to ride like we did on the trip out here.”

  “... I assume you still have that ‘magic mirror’ you stole off of Mortimer?” I asked after a few moment’s thought. “Let me take a look at it. It may prove to be useful…”

  I studied the magic mirror that Visk presented to me for several long minutes. Unlike the free flowing lines of aether running through living beings and the natural world, the mirror was constructed of tightly interwoven patterns. Careful work had gone into shaping the aether lines into an intricate woven mesh. In spite of that, I could see that the pattern was flawed. There were obvious gaping holes in its structure, when I viewed it through my Aether vision.

  “I think I can see why Veda considered something like this ‘banned’,” I mused out loud. While I did not have an interest in producing enchanted items such as this, it was informative to see how other creatures practiced magic. The mirror was a microcosm of an entirely different way of approaching magic than what I used.

  To put it simply, my magic was based wholly in my intentions. Moving my body, mental images, and even words were simply different means of expressing and honing that intent towards a particular purpose. I had been told that this was akin to what Sorcerers practiced. Unlike Sorcerers, I did not seem to be limited to a pool of magic assigned at birth.

  Enchanting seemed to be the practice of creating an artificial ‘intent’ in a solid object, by shaping materials that were naturally rich in Aether into a shape conducive to the goal it was made to accomplish. A Wizard’s staff was made to focus energy and project it outward as an offensive or defensive spell, for example. The best way that I could describe the Mirror was that it was made to ‘reflect’.

  ‘Reflect’ could have multiple meanings. A series of arcane runes engraved into the Mirror’s silver handle and frame refined that purpose into something closer to ‘Reflect Upon Where You’ve Been’. I couldn’t read the runes themselves, but the lines of aether that were threaded together through the runes seemed similar to what I’d seen when dealing with mental magic. That combined with what I’d already seen the Mirror accomplish, made its function apparent.

  “It transports you to somewhere you’ve been before, by drawing on your memory of that place,” I said finally. I’d been staring at the Mirror for several minutes in complete silence while Visk held up the Mirror for my inspection. By the end, their arms were shaking a little bit and they sighed in relief when I pulled my head back. “But it’s dangerous. It’s cracked and broken in a couple of places, which causes a backlash in the place the user leaves behind.”

  “So can we use it to get home?” Cassia asked me. She’d laid Magnus down on her tattered cloak to keep him out of the mud, even as the rain continued to drizzle down onto us. “If we’re in a hurry… is a little more danger a problem?”

  That was a fair question. After everything we’d been through lately, using a broken magic artifact would be one of the least dangerous things we did. I didn’t think that anything would ever ‘top’ assaulting a Tower full of deadly Wizards corrupted by an Elder Vampyr.

  I was wrong of course, but I didn’t know that yet.

  “I won’t use the mirror directly… but it does give me a framework that I can base my own magic upon,” I responded after coming to a decision. “I feel a strong connection with my Den as it is, so that gives me a solid foundation to start from.”

  I settled down on my haunches in the mud. “This will likely take some trial and error. Stay close to me and be ready for when I complete the process.”

  Beyond that, there wasn’t much else to do other than sit and wait. After all the excitement, danger, and trauma… it was probably uncomfortable to just sit down and bide one’s time. Visk seemed to do their best, but Cassia was still full of nerves. She paced back and forth across the field, while staying within a dozen meters of me. The sucking sounds of her boots sloshing through the mud undercut the sound of the rain.

  Slowly and carefully, I started to form my intent. This would easily be the most complex piece of magic that I’d ever performed. After some false starts, I prodded Sixth inside of my mind. She rose to the surface irritably.

  ‘What? I just settled down. Why aren’t you heading home?’ she demanded.

  ‘I need your help with a spell,’ I responded calmly. ‘You can sense what I sense right? Can you see the pattern I’m trying to form?’

  ‘... You’re trying to go back to your Den, by transporting yourself using your memories?’ Sixth said after she focused on the thoughts floating through my head. ‘That’s… only a little bit insane. You already have a connection to it through your Dream Den. That is ‘half real’, effectively. If you’re trying to bridge the gap… Yes, I think we can do something with this, if you’re willing to trade me some of your power in exchange.’

  ‘You know you can just ask for some right?’ I asked as I rolled my eyes internally. ‘Even if it wasn’t yours to begin with, you have helped me so much lately that it would be selfish to not give you anything I’ve gained.’

  Sixth went silent for a little bit after that. I could feel her focusing on the spell that I had been trying to construct rather than protest.

  With both of us working together on the spell, it came together more easily. Sixth had spent a great deal of time lately contemplating mental magic while looking for a way to counter our sister Second. She had also spent a lot of time in my Dream Den, so she was more familiar with its boundaries than I was. It felt a little strange to know that someone else probably knew what was going on inside my mind better than I did, but that was the price I’d paid for always being on the go.

  If I had anything to say about it, I’d be spending a lot of time in the near future staying still and figuring out how things worked. My ignorance, while not entirely my fault, had caused me considerable headaches in the recent past. As I became more aware of the broader world, the more it became apparent that my lack of knowledge could very well get me killed.

  Other dragons weren’t the only threat I needed to worry about. Plenty of other deadly and powerful creatures existed in the world. While I might have been able to overpower the Elder Vampyr in the end, it was entirely possible that the creature could have captured and devoured me under other circumstances

  Hopefully I would have time to learn some of what I was missing during the month’s long ‘power nap’ I was about to be forced into.