Recourse

The night is waning by the time Osthryn reaches the grassy knolls she and Silovar landed at all those weeks before. The grey gloom painting the landscape now stands in stark contrast to the bright sunslight reflections of the lake the first time she saw it. The landscape fades to favour the stones, wrapped in the glow of the rippling spider's web that pulses its beckoning light into the sole focus of Osthryn's vision.

If the circumstances were different, she would be overjoyed at seeing what Silovar tried to show her.

But circumstances are not different.

She lands in the midst of the stones, the web enveloping her with its characteristic silence. The echoes of her talons touching the ground and the rustle of Silovar's garments as she lays him down gently over the pristine stone floor resound eerily strongly against the backdrop of nothingness.

She falls back down to her human form, kneeling beside Silovar. The wound through his chest, now opened by her removal of the silver bolt, bleeds slowly out from under him. The blood hisses as it hits the stone, and the symbols carved into the henge surrounding them come to life in response.

Osthryn stares, stunned by the hypnotic quality of the light pulsating through the slowly illuminating symbols. The pulses are frenetic, without pattern, until they slowly meld with the wax and wane of the web surrounding the Henge.

The stars still in the black-grey sky of pre dawn fade in the brilliance of the Standing Stones. Osthryn looks from the display to Silovar, hope inching into her consciousness as his body slowly lifts from the ground, his limbs falling limply to his sides.

Osthryn feels a warning, a shudder echo through her being. She rushes out of the Henge, just in time for her transformation on Silovar's body to be undone. The lights flicker, smoke fills the Henge, and clears to reveal the Silver Dragon lying prone in the centre of it.

The cold of the night air bites against her skin, the blades of grass beneath her hands where she sits are damp with dew. Her hair hangs in strings escaped from her braid that cling to her face. A thin haze of fog, almost living, floats aimlessly in the Henge, repelled from and contained by the web.

Osthryn watches it, her heart still as her breath. Slowly the fog is guided back into the body of the Dragon, filtering through the still nostrils, a small pulse of blue light emerging from the Dragon's chest.

Then it fades.

The web, the symbols, the little life that could have been.

They all fade.

She does not know how long she sat kneeling on the grass, watching. Watching for any sign of life from the Standing Stones.

The thin pink lines heralding the rising suns begin to paint the sky. The skirt of her kirtle is soaked through to her knees from the damp grass beneath her. She ignores the cold, as if ignoring it can keep the iciness at bay. The web still pulsates, but it is a thin, anemic light.

"It was too long since I have last been here."

Osthryn's body reacts before she can. She twists around, the world growing smaller around her, her wings spread out wide. Instinct screams at her to shield Silovar from view. A hiss, foreign to her ears, escapes her.

Geolu stands impassively, yellow eyes meeting hers without fear, his white-gold hair just grazing the tops of his shoulders as it gently blows in the wind. He raises his hands slowly.

"I am glad some instincts have returned to you, child, but you will waste your time and join my wayward son in his death if you continue in this way."

Osthryn holds her shape for a few moments longer, then eventually acquiesces, shrinking back down to eye level with Geolu.

"So, the vermin took what they could," Geolu mutters, moving past Osthryn to the Henge, his eyes fixed on Silovar. Osthryn steps backward, blocking his path, her fists clenched.

Geolu cocks his head, a wry smile forming on his lips, "Mistrustful little beastie, aren't you? What a picture you paint. Defeated, exhausted, your weakness fully on display with your hair stuck to the tears that streak your face."

Geolu's expression hardens.

"His blood is drying on your clothes," he spits. "Yet you still think you can save him. You think yourself able to stand between him and death, and yet you failed. He ran headlong into it, and now his pet stays behind."

"I am starting to truly understand why he was so hesitant to come see you," Osthryn says evenly, her voice steadier than she feels.

"It is a shame, that so far all elders only seek our pain."

"Seek your pain?" Geolu laughs, "No, we seek your survival. Those in the North did it wrong. They turned you into nothing more than a scurrying mouse. I tried to make a Dragon out of Silovar, truly, I did." Geolu shakes his head, "That damned Saegyth."

"Saegyth?" Osthryn asks, slowly letting her fists relax.

"Oh, you don't know?" Geolu smiles, like a cat baring his fangs, "Perhaps you were not so important to him after all."

Osthryn watches him, keenly aware of the anger now bubbling up in her chest. She steels herself, she will not fall into whatever scheme this strange elder dragon is playing at. She needs to get Silovar back, and if anyone knows how, it must be Geolu.

She shrugs, "Then it must not have been important for him to tell me."

Geolu laughs, crossing his arms, "I give you credit, whelp. She was the first of many... pets. Long before your time. His first. I don't think he ever forgot her for all these four hundred years. I should have let her grow old -- it would have been a better lesson in the fickleness of human lifespans. Hindsight. Drowning her probably imprinted her on his mind even deeper than she would have been otherwise."

Osthryn's blood runs cold. This was Silovar's cliff. Where she was thrown to the ground again and again to still her instinct for flight, he was made to watch the humans he got attached to die to keep him from caring for them.

"How... how many?" Osthryn whispers, resisting the urge to tap her cheek.

"How many lovers he took, or how many of them I killed? He took many, many lovers, but I killed only Saegyth. I didn't really need to kill any others after that one. Humans get themselves into trouble easily enough. Not that Silovar ever believed that I was never involved," Geolu shrugs, he appears nonchalant, but his tone is flat.

Osthryn looks to Silovar's body behind the pulsing web surrounding the Standing Stones. Lying still, motionless.

Dead.

"Silovar still cared enough for you to bring you back all those years ago, despite your cruelty."

"Ha," Geolu spits, "care is weakness in a Dragon. He should have left me as dead as he made me."

Osthryn's eyebrows rise, her eyes widen, "He killed you?"

Geolu chuckles ruefully, "He didn't mean to, disappointingly enough. I never thought the loss of a human being could inspire rage like that, I underestimated him. Bringing me back was adding insult to injury."

"An insult you benefit from," Osthryn says testily, hugging her arms tightly against her chest. She stares at Silovar's body again, the shimmering web around the Standing Stones mocking her with its inaction.

Geolu walks closer to Osthryn, his presence making her shrink into herself a little.

"You won't be able to bring him back, not completely."

Osthryn frowns, "Why not? Dragons are immortal, aren't they? Why fear the Necromancers bringing him back if even the Resurrection Henge cannot?"

"We are immortal. But we are as tied to the suns as any other living being. You and Silovar were hatched in privileged times, before the suns began to fade. He will not have the strength to bring himself back, even if we helped him. A Necromancer would merely siphon off the little energy that he has ad infinitum in this state, keeping him too weak to revive, yet not so weak as to be unaware."

Osthryn's voice falters, barely above a whisper, "But you came back."

"Four hundred years ago. When the suns still willed it."

She turns to Geolu, his eyes fixed on Silovar's body. "How long? How long can he be here? How long until the suns come back?"

Geolu turns to face her, "I don't need to tell you that, Osthryn."

Two thousand years. That is how long the Great Darkening of her ancestors stretched.

"Two thousand years." She whispers under her breath.

"Make your choice. You can always flee, if you refuse to fight." Geolu says, turning and stalking down the hill.

"Geolu." Osthryn calls after him. He stops, but he does not face her. "If care is weakness in a Dragon, then you are weak indeed."

A soft chuckle reaches her ears, "Not nearly as weak as you are, whelp."

With that, the Gold Dragon soars away from the rising suns, leaving Osthryn to stare at the shrinking sun that mocks her, her kirtle barely moving in the lazy wind.