I clap a palm over that useless eye, waving her concern off with my other hand. “I’m fine.”
After a moment of pressing hard against my old injury while taking several deep breaths, the traumatic memories subside. I’m steady again, unflinching even as I lift my head and look in the direction the roar came from.
I hate dragons so viciously it makes me sick to my stomach.
But it’s still hard not to stare when I catch a glimpse of one—or a glimpse oftwo, in this case.
A pair of massive black dragons are diving and swooping among the turbulent clouds, their movements graceful even as they clash together hard enough to make the world rumble. Locked in a battle, or a courtship dance—I can’t say which, and this is typical; all of the many, many stories our world tells of these horrid beasts paint them with equal strokes of violence and beauty, their magic capable of both chaos and creation. Watching these two tangle together fills me with a similarly conflicted response, my disgust twisting around something uncomfortably close to awe.
Garnet prances nervously and tosses her head, reminding me we can’t linger out in the open like this.
I don’t need a second prompting. Without another skyward glance, Briar and I decide on our path and then set off again, moving even faster than before.
We don’t make it far before something else catches Briar’s attention. She veers from the road, guiding her horse to a narrower, more overgrown path that provides some cover inthe form of the twisting blackthorns lining it—one of the few kinds of trees that manage to thrive in the battered soil of the Ashlands.
When I catch up, turning my head to find whatever’s taken her gaze, I only see the tips of a few banners at first. But soon an entire company of soldiers appears, climbing a steep section of a road that runs parallel to us.
They’re far off. Heading in the opposite direction. But the sheer number of them makes my breath catch, as does the color of those banners they carry—deep crimson and gold.
“…Mouren soldiers?”
“And suddenly the heightened dragon presence makes sense,” Briar mutters.
Mouren is the only kingdom still truly flourishing in the once illustrious Empire of Kaldra—in no small part because they’re the only kingdom with some semblance of control over the beasts that rule its skies.
Once upon a time, there were four kingdoms of equal might in this empire, each one chosen, protected, and blessed by a powerful, divine-sent dragon, as well as the lesser dragons that eventually followed those divine ones. In the beginning, Mouren wasn’t even a true kingdom; it was a relatively small, neutral territory, a domain in the center where the four kingdoms could meet for purposes of politics and trade, and even the occasional celebration of unity and peace.
It’s been nearly a century and a half since Mouren grew tired of merely hosting others and decided to seize power for themselves. Several generations since they rose up, somehow taking control of the dragons from each kingdom and using them to ignite a war that they ultimately won.
No one truly knowswhythe dragons—and presumablythe gods who created them—chose to pull their power from the four kingdoms and grant it to Mouren instead. The royal family of that dark kingdom claims divine providence. That all the blessings they now enjoy are merely rewards for dutifully serving as the humble, magic-less centerpiece of the empire for so long.
All we know is that they’ve used their power to make the rest of the empire bow to them.
And those that don’t bow?
They burn.
The area we now callThe Ashlandsis a scorched region that encompasses parts of all four kingdoms, a dead ring radiating out from the oasis of Mouren. Most of the surviving cities of those four true kingdoms, including Lastlight and my own city of Halvgate, lie along the outskirts of the empire—as close to the seas and as far away from Mouren as they can get.
I don’t have to look at Briar to know she’s contemplating ways to make these traveling Mouren soldiers as miserable as the rest of the empire. Or, at the very least, she’s calculating how much money we could make if we robbed them.
It would be a stupid risk.
Not thestupidestone we’d ever taken—not by a long shot. But still.
“Let’s just keep moving,” I say, pointedly. “Not much farther to Lastlight, now.”
Reluctantly, she agrees.
We ride on without any more detours, until the city of Lastlight finally appears on the horizon. The foreboding Barrow Hills roll just beyond it like a dark, endless ocean, which is how the city earned its name; because it’s the lastspot of hope before the landscape gives way to something truly uninhabitable.
Like most of the surviving cities in and around the Ashlands, a great wall surrounds Lastlight, made of stone bricks coated in a special alchemical resinthat makes it resistant to dragon fire. Resistant. Not impervious.
The same sort of barrier once surrounded my city, too.
Sentries pace along the top of the wide wall, their movements slow and weary. Too far and few between, and too poorly equipped, to inspire any real confidence in their ability to stop a true threat. But even with the crumbling watchtowers and desperate atmosphere, the area feels like a sanctuary compared to what we’ve been traveling through. The air is clearer, if nothing else, so I slide the cloth covering my mouth down and inhale a few deep breaths.
I lead Garnet to a small stream trickling nearby, letting her partake only after testing the level of contamination in the water and finding it relatively safe. While she drinks, I paw through a supply bag in search of my leather eye patch. Watching my reflection in a puddle, I strap it on, arranging it so it sits comfortably against my thick, purplish-grey hair.
