"Remember me and what I have done"

By the Dragons' blood, guard your eyes

Lest you be tempted to an early demise

By the Dragons' blood, watch the skies

Lest you be caught in your lies

By the Dragons' blood, treasure your ties

Lest you be the bane of all that is wise


The light of the suns steal over the horizon. The waterfowl begin their busy day of chatter and foraging in the lake below her. The breeze bends the conifers dappling the valley, and gently brushes the flyaways of her hair against her face. Her kirtle, the green wool stained with dark, drying blood, falls to just below her ankles.

 A thin, jagged stone is held in her hands, watching as the pieces chip off. Slowly, steadily, at her command the lines of light that openly form in obedience to her will dissolve the stone into a honed edge. So, too, dissolves hope for the flicker of life to emerge from the Dragon that lies dead in front of her.

Osthryn clenches her teeth in frustration. Even a stone obeys her. Even this rock reacts to her will, her desire, and still Silovar lies dead. Like a stone.

Osthryn grips her braid in her hand, pulling it tight at the nape of her neck. She brings her newly honed blade to the edge of it. Then, staring blankly forward, she cuts through it.

The hair pulls taught in resistance to the blade, the strands jumping up as they break loose one by one. Like the widows in Bettramon, she rids herself of her natural crown. The braid comes away in her hands. She stares at it, like an object foreign to her. The hair on her head falls in a jagged edge to her shoulders. Oddly cool as the ends caress her. She doubts it looks even.

 That is not the point.

Resolutely she walks to the smoldering embers of the fire she lit herself during the night. She pinches the charred coals between her thumb and forefinger, satisfied at the deep black smudge it leaves behind. She watches with deadened resolution as the ash she holds in her hands spins itself into a deep black thread.

The black thread plunges into the bronze flowers that line her kirtle, weaving black thorns and leaves between them. She is marked, like the widows of Grosberg.

It is not a professional job. A seamstress would balk at it. Martina would swoon at the damage the woolen fabric has taken with the filth it has absorbed.

That is not the point.

She looks to the suns rising in the horizon. The second, receding star reeking of deep betrayal.

Two thousand years.

Geolu could have lied. He could have taken Silovar's final greeting as a challenge and purposefully misled her. Her hand twitches, she would not put it past him. The one that boasted of killing Silovar's first love could be capable of driving away his latest inferior "pet" too.

Osthryn's heart twists at what else he could have done to Silovar to "make a Dragon of him". The Dragon boils with rage, itching to follow Geolu West. To rip him to pieces as he heals himself over and over again and leave him drowned in a river to leech his blood into the sea.

Osthryn clenches her teeth against it, shaking the Dragon's desires from her mind. That is a fight she will not win.

Two thousand years.

If the Necromancers were allowed to continue, Silovar would not remain unscathed for that long. She would likely join his fate. It is a matter of time before they start hunting westward -- that is the direction she flew, and even under the cover of darkness, she did not fly high enough to escape notice.

Two thousand years. How did her people hold out? She will not flee. She cannot flee. Osthryn cannot abandon Silovar here, not while Necromancy and the need for magic continues to evolve as the second sun remains darkened.

Burn them. Burn them all.

Osthryn taps her cheek three times, marginally successful in pushing the boiling rage that possesses her to the back of her mind.

Magic is only as demanded as it is because the people are used to it. They know how it was supposed to work, what it was supposed to do, and so what it can do now feels like a failing. As long as they know what magic could have been, the temptation for Necromancy shall remain.

It might not stem the tide, it might not be enough, but it is a start. It will have to be under the cover of darkness, though she knows not what good that will do. Wherever this knowledge started can never truly be rooted out, since the tales of the bards lived on for thousands of years in the North.

She will try nonetheless.

She will scour the south and exterminate it. Eliminate it.

Perhaps that was the weakness Geolu spoke of -- that the spread in the North was not nipped in the bud at the start.

Oh, it is a bitter, bitter feeling that rises in her throat at the possibility that this creature could have been right about something. Her chest warms like a fire burning beneath her heart. By blood, she hates him. She hates him dearly.

Another pulse of the web around the Standing Stones raptly commands her attention. Her eyes are bloodshot, wide, fixed on the subject within for any sign of movement.

Nothing. Still nothing.

Silovar underestimated them. Humans are small beings, with short lives, who cannot kill something that cannot die. He was so convinced of that.

Osthryn clenches her teeth in frustration at his overconfidences. How dare he disregard her experience like this? Dares he to tell her how her fear makes her small and unbecoming while he himself lay weak and practically paralysed mere hours before from what these 'small' and 'helpless' humans did to him.

Damn that he so needed to draw the Necromancers out - he could have told her more. He could have told Oswald more. Is he so great, so intelligent, that he can solve all problems himself like a god?

Perhaps the prayers and the adoration when he so arrogantly sweeps over Mountainkeep made him into a creature he is not.

He wanted her to trust him with her life, her identity, her risk. Yet he did not trust her life, identity, or risk to inform his own.

"I won't die."

"You won't fall."

"I will catch you."

"Oh, shut up! SHUT UP! You break all your promises!" Osthryn shrieks, her fists curled into her loose hair.

"I cannot believe a word you say. You think you know so much, that you know so much better than those who came before us. You knew so well that the silver powder would not harm you as much as it did, and yet you nearly died! And you knew, just knew that we would out-fly them, but you did not know. You did not know anything. You are naive, foolhardy ... arrogant..." Osthryn shakes as she catches her breath, Silovar's body lying still and dead behind the web shimmering around the Standing Stones.

"You are gone," she whispers, her voice cracking as unbidden tears fall once again down her cheeks.

Scavengers, scavengers, scavengers, the Dragon hisses within her. She does not bother dismissing it. She lets it whisper. Lets it stoke the flames that fill her chest.

"No matter how far I am from Bettramon," Osthryn mutters, walking to the slope behind the standing stones.

 "No matter how far South I wander," Osthryn chokes as she ascends it.

"The Winds of Home follow me." She turns, looking at the Henge below her. Open to the sky, open to view across the lake, the sparse conifers joining it in the valley doing little to obscure it from view.

Osthryn looks to the east, surveying the mountain slopes that separate her and her love from Mountainkeep's looming danger.

Silovar underestimates them, but Osthryn holds humans in proper esteem. If she were to walk, it would take a week to get to the city. Too long. The Necromancers would have their hold firmly by that point, if not already. If she flies, it will be half a day, but she will be seen before she can do anything meaningful. If she runs...

She watches the suns as they slowly rise over the mountaintops. Before dawn tomorrow. She does not know how, it does not make sense, but the Dragon just knows.