Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Dragons,” Willow explained, as if they were having a light conversation and not fleeing an overwhelming hole in the sky, “are why nobody likes wizards anymore.”

Airk twisted the reigns of the cart, sending everyone in the back jostling against each other and their weapons. Next to him in the driver’s seat, Willow was unphased. “You see—”

“Does anybody have a bow?!” Kit shouted from the roof, frantically poking a glowing spot just under their collarbone. 

“I thought you did!” Boorman hollered behind the ballista. 

“—that thing,” Willow motioned casually to the monstrous flotilla of spiked scales gliding ever-closer, “used to be a cute little fire salamander, like Kenneth II here. But then some wizards got it into their heads to mix magic with selective breeding—” 

The dragon started to suck in air with all the power of a vortex. The wind rushed around them, pulling in thin tree branches and stirring up anything in the cart that wasn’t tied down — including Elora. 

“Oop!”

“I dropped mine earlier because it was useless!” Kit admitted, slapping their chest harder. “Turn on, you stupid thing!” 

“Then what makes you think a bow would be useful now?!” 

“—and so today you’ve got the reptilian equivalent of a target-seeking apocalypse,” Willow concluded conversationally. The dragon blotted out the sun, as if to emphasize his point.

“Here!” Jade threw Kit a bow and quiver, sending the princess scrambling to set up a shot. 

“Willow,” Airk struggled to keep a hold on Kenneth II as the volcanic land salamander bucked and skid around the rocky mountain terrain, “this is great and all, but how do we kill it?” 

Elora optimistically flung a spell out the side window only for it to fizzle right out. Willow watched her with a shrug. “Oh, you can’t. It’s impervious to most magic—”

Jade and Boorman fired the ballista, Kit loosed an arrow. Both bounced off.  

“—any conventional weapons, and all forms of logical reasoning.”

A crackling popping sound started to echo through the air. “Oh, Crone’s tits,” Willow cursed.

“What?!” The others spun on him, but Willow was staring up at the halo gathering around the dragon’s mouth.  

“Elora! Barrier, NOW!” Green and yellow panels fizzled all around as Elora and Willow lept into action, wrapping the whole cart in defensive magic— “Everyone, shut your eyes!” —only for it to be immediately whited out by searing unfiltered light, as if the sun had spat on them. A half-second later the sonic boom rattled through every bone in their bodies and jellified whatever was left in their bladders.

“Holy hell, I think I just pissed myself,” Kit said. They blinked spots out of their vision. “Are we dead?”

The landscape around was a hundred yards of flat, blasted-out crater, where it used to be a vibrant forest clinging to the side of a mountain. The direction formerly known as “up” had been scooped out and replaced by a sheer arching cliffside. Inside this new concavity the earth had burned so hot it crystallized into a bowl of colorful glass.

Only a small circle of dirt and moss was left untouched, in which Kenneth II trembled miserably with the cart. The lizard’s pupils were pinpricks. 

“Yeah, I think this is hell,” Jade said. 

“Not dead yet,” Willow wheezed, doubling over in pain. “Barely. I’m getting too old for this.” 

Elora sagged against the cart-wall, panting. “Me too.” The shield spell fizzled out.

The dragon swooped around for another pass. It flew terrifyingly silently for a thing of its size, the tells for its trajectory almost entirely in the way it sucked out light from the afternoon sky. 

“You know, I always wanted to fight a dragon,” Boorman observed. “But I figured I’d actually be able to fight it, not just sit around and wait to be flambéd.” The dragon dipped down.  

“Dove,” Airk craned his neck to stare behind him and patting Elora frantically on the arm. He futilely flicked the reins with his other hand. “Dove!” 

“I told you to stop calling me that—” Elora looked up and locked eyes with the dragon staring directly at her through the open back door. “Oh, Bavmorda’s balls.”

“This is why we put up the Barrier,” Willow nodded. “Because once a dragon has your scent, it never stops.” He whapped his staff a few times, but the crystal stayed dead. “Blast!”

“Go, Kenneth II!” Airk pleaded. “You can do this, buddy!” Kenneth II didn’t twitch. 

“That’s what the Barrier is for?!” Jade demanded, pointing over the railing at the encroaching maw. The air started to rush as the dragon inhaled. 

“Well, there was more than one at the time,” Willow agreed. “Elora, shield!”

Elora flicked her wrists out. Only sparks flew. “I don’t have enough juice!”

“Elora!” Kit hollered, hanging halfway upside down and shoving an arrow in her face. “Magic my arrow! Now!” 

Click-click-pop! The sounds of impending ignition echoed all around them. Magic sputtered weakly around Elora’s hands. “With what?!”

“I don’t know! Anything!” 

“Uh… eksplodador!” A churning flickering green light coiled around the arrow. 

“Sick.” Kit swung back onto the roof as they lined up the shot. They dropped into a crouch bouncing on their toes. “Okay, okay, I’ve got this.” Burning particles started to gather around the dragon’s mouth. It was still a hundred feet above them, but close enough for the whole team to count its teeth. 

“Really?” Boorman shouted. “Because it sounds like you don’t—”

Kit released the arrow. It flew true through the air, directly into the dragon’s ghostly eye. The monster blinked.

Nothing happened. “F—”

Half the dragon’s face exploded. The shockwave knocked Kit flat on top of the cart, rocking the whole apparatus on its wheels.

The dragon screamed, the sound tearing through the air and shattering the glass around them into deadly flying spikes. 

Airk and Elora lunged to fling the cart-doors shut. Everyone had the sense to duck inside – except Kit, who’d been stunned senseless. Jade leapt up and grabbed them by the collar, bodily throwing them back into the cart as razor sharp shards of glass slammed into the wooden walls all around. THUNK THUNK THUNK — an unending rain of knives into a target post.  

A long shard pierced through and nearly sheared off Elora’s nose. Several ricocheted off of Boorman’s cleaver as he tried to block one of the windows. The bombarge through any open airways would’ve ended anyone stupid enough to sit in their trajectory, which could’ve been Kit except for an artful roll by Jade. No one was left unscathed. Silence fell, broken only by the sounds of their panicked breathing. 

The dragon wailed again. Boorman peered out to see the beast writhing in the air, clutching at its head. “Well, I’ll be damned. I spoke too soon.” 

Kit whooped, wriggling out from under Jade and pumping their splinter-riddled fist in the air.

“Did you see that?!” they crowed. “Bam! Right in the honeyfuggling eye!”

“Good shot,” Jade murmured, vaguely shell-shocked.

Elora and Kit high-fived. 

“To cover,” Willow ordered. “Now.”

They huddled in a glass cave the dragon had blasted into the new cliffside. The wall glaze was spiderwebbed with fresh cracks. Every so often, shards tinkled to the floor. At the entrance shimmered a blockade of layered shield spells, casting everything in eerie green and gold. 

Just outside, the dragon paced in the low evening sun, its massive tail whipping back and forth. Its claws scraped against the glass lump where the cart used to be. Every time it turned, it revealed the bloody pit that was once its eye socket. 

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Kit groaned, sheet white with their eyes squeezed shut. They clenched the melted ledge they were sitting on with both hands.

“You did this to yourself,” Jade said, picking the last of the glass shards out their back. 

“You did this to all of us,” Boorman corrected them. He dug a fingernail into his own legion of splinters.

“I hate splinters so much,” Kit moaned. “I’d rather be dead.”

“That can be arranged.” Elora grimly taped up the scrapes on her hands, eying the entrance next to her. She’d managed to escape with Graydon’s flute in her pocket but that was about it. 

Jade flicked the last glass shard over her shoulder. “Done. Stop whining.” Kit was up like a shot and sprinting to the back for bandages. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“I still can’t believe it ate Kenneth II.” Airk dropped bloody glass shards into the crack in the floor between him and Boorman. “That was so wrong.”

“He had a good run,” Jade sighed. “Lasted a whole three seconds.” They all stared at the massive beast stalking them outside the cave. 

“I say we wait the dragon out,” Willow proposed. 

“With what food?” Boorman demanded. “Do you see any food around here? Because all I see is glass and rocks.”

“We didn’t take any from the cart?” Willow scolded. “Abhass turmach!” The shards flew out of his skin and plinked down into the pile next to Elora.

“Did you bring it? Because I didn’t have time to grab it. I was too concerned with saving you snacks instead,” Boorman snapped. 

“Anything can be food if you try hard enough,” Elora muttered murderously. “Particularly whiny know-it-alls who won’t shut up.”

Kit trotted back to Jade’s side with a stack of clean wraps. “I think we should kill it,” Kit declared, wiping down the cuts on Jade’s arms. “It’s already wounded. Because, you know, I got it — the dragon — right in the eye.”

“We heard you the first five times,” Jade grumbled. But she let them tape up a small slice on her cheek.

“You’re just jealous because you haven’t hit it yet,” Kit smirked.

Jade went through a journey of a thousand faces, landing on extreme indignation. “No! What? No! I’m not insane. I’m offended you would even imply that I would—”

“Stop lying, Jade,” Kit sang. They kissed the bandage on her cheek. 

“I’m not—” Jade scowled at them. A sudden unnatural wind rustled through the cave, stirring the glass shards into sparkly mist. Even beneath their makeshift headband, Kit’s new haircut — exactly the same as Airk’s — blew back in a very attractive way. Jade relented at the full force of their mile-wide grin.

“Fine, yeah. I really want to fight that thing,” she admitted, rolling her wrist and palming her sword hilt. 

“I get it now,” Willow shook his head, ponytail whipping wildly. “You’re not actually the reasonable one. You two are perfect for each other.”

“They’ve been like this for years,” Airk sighed. 

“I thought you and Dad killed a dragon during the war?” Kit pressed Willow. “It can’t be that hard.” 

“That was an Eborsisk,” Willow refuted. “Shockingly easy to make with enough corruptive magic. Almost a natural default, like crabs. I grew that one by accident. Nothing like dragons. Nature abhors a dragon.” 

“So much for age and wisdom,” Boorman muttered. 

Clicking and popping echoed through the cavern.

“Elora,” Kit put on their this-is-extremely-tactically-sound voice. “We just need you to do whatever you did to my arrow to all of our swords.”

Elora chewed her lip. “I honestly don’t remember.”

“That would be turning your sword into a missile,” Willow told them. “You’ll blow yourselves up.”

“Hell yeah,” Boorman said. “It’ll be sick.” Jade nodded, swinging her arms and getting pumped. Airk adjusted his headband — exactly the same as Kit’s — and resigned himself to death.

“Okay…” Elora conceded. ”But are you sure that’s a good—”

“Eyes!” Jade called. Everyone pulled up their scarves.

THOOM. The dragon unleashed another blast on the cave entrance, whiting out the world. The whole bedrock shuddered with the force of it, shattered glass raining down from the ceiling. When the light dissipated enough to see, the barrier flickered but held. 

“Do you have a better idea?” Boorman demanded. He tugged his scarf down to beg Elora. “Because honestly I would love one, I really don’t want to get incinerated today.” 

Elora lowered her hands and blinked myopically. There was a new large crack halfway up one wall. “Nope, let’s do it. Even if the shield holds, the mountain won’t last much longer.” She went straight for Boorman’s cleaver and started chanting.  

“You know, Kit,” Boorman said. He blew stray hairs from his bun out of his nose. “This would be a really great time for your magic armor.”

“Tuatha baumm,” Elora tried. Green light flared then fizzled. “No, no, that wasn’t it…”

“I can’t figure out how to turn it on,” Kit muttered. 

“What was that?” Boorman grinned like they’d handed him the world’s best birthday present. 

“I can’t figure out how to turn it on, okay?!” Kit dragged the low collar of their shirt over to show off the glowing arcane nonsense disk that had embedded itself into their chest that day in the Immemorial City. The whole suit of armor had folded into a medallion the size of a coin once Jade figured out how to turn it off. Under, as far as everyone else was concerned, extremely mysterious circumstances. “It’s just, like, a freaky night-light.”

“Have you tried pushing the button?” Willow pointed to the flashing white dot in the middle of the metal melded into Kit’s skin, keeping time to their pulse.

“What— yes, I’ve tried pushing the button,” Kit spat. “I’ve pushed that button like a million times already!” 

“Stop doing that, then,” Willow said. “You’ll probably break it.” Kit seethed.

“Eksplodador,” Elora chanted. Green light flashed, spinning around the cleaver in a deadly sawing churn. “Yes! Still got it!” 

Boorman stroked his new toy with barely contained lust. “Oh yes,” he purred. Glowing magic played off the glass cave around him. “Let’s do this every time.”

Elora moved onto Jade’s arsenal. Jade’s sword was laid out on the ledge, along with a massive pile of throwing stars, knives, miscellaneous sharp things, and one spectacular spiked chain with a blade on the end. Elora stared at it all in dread. “So is it, like, just the sword or…”

Jade shook her head. “All of it. Going to need all of it.” 

Elora let out a puff of air and rubbed her hands together. “Okay then. All of it. That’ll only take a billion years…”

Next to them, Kit was still sniping back and forth about the cuirass. “I’m not going to break it, Willow. I’m not a toddler.”

“You sure?” Willow charged his staff. “You're basically a baby compared to that artifact.”

“Yeah, Kit!” Boorman did another squat with the upgraded cleaver. “That’s a priceless historical treasure right there. Which is wasted on you, by the way.” 

“I’m aware,” Kit ground out. 

“It’s cool, Kit,” Airk chimed in, limbering up his arms by compulsively twirling and tossing his sword perilously close to Boorman’s head. “It’s all good. You’ve got time to figure it out after we kill the dragon.” 

“Thanks, guys, great talk.” Kit turned their back on everyone except Jade. 

Kit sidled up to Jade and knocked their arm against hers. “Hey.” Next to Jade, Elora dubiously studied an unidentifiable metal object, then went on enchanting it anyway. 

Jade looked up from her very serious stretching routine and smiled, but it was weak. “Hello.”

“You’re gonna kill it out there,” Kit gushed. They bumped their shoulder into Jade’s again, earning a genuine grin. “But not literally. Because I’m gonna be the one to kill the dragon.”

“Yeah, right,” Jade scoffed and turned so the two stood eye to eye, meaning she could look down the inches she had on them. “You’re all chat and no follow through.” 

“I’m the only one who’s hit it so far.” Kit sidled closer, lifting their chin. 

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Jade replied, eyes locked on their lips. 

“OKAY!” Elora clapped her hands together and stood up. “Finished! Who’s next?” She walked away as quickly as possible to avoid the impending makeout session. 

“Me!” Airk raised his hand. 

“Anyone else?” Elora looked around, but Kit and Jade had disappeared around the only dark corner in the entire cave. 

Willow shrugged, holding up his staff. “Liable enough to blow up as is,” he apologized. Elora tightened her coiled braid and reluctantly walked over to the other Tanthalos twin. 

“Hey, Elora,” Airk leaned casually against the wall so his full chest was on display as she started working on his sword. “Long time no see. Do you want to talk—”

“No.” Elora’s magic flared brighter. 

Airk chewed his lip. “I think we both have some processing left to do about—”

“Oh, would you look at that? I’m done!” She shoved the bespelled blade at him so hard he stumbled. “Kit! You’re up!” Elora speed-walked to the flashing white dot in the back of the cave. 

Kit stumbled out from behind the shadowy crevice, hair mussed and shirt askew. “Uh, what?” 

Elora held out her hands for their weapons and made a grabby motion. Kit, still slow on the uptake, reached for their sword and realized they were missing their belt. 

Boorman snickered. “Searching for a way to reactivate the cuirass?”

Kit looked around warily. “Er…”

Jade popped up behind them, equally disheveled, and handed Elora Kit’s sword plus another two knives. “Yup,” Jade said, and did not elaborate. 

“It’s a valid way to warm up,” Airk argued. “I used to do it before sparring matches all the time. You were the most special one, of course, Elora.” 

“Airk, please stop talking,” Kit begged him. Jade busily tidied her tight braids and adjusted her armor, then started squirreling her newly explosive weaponry away into various pockets. 

Boorman winked at Airk. “If you ever need a new warm-up buddy, let me know.” Airk bit his lip, considering. 

“No!” Willow snapped, jumping up from the floor where he’d been resting. “We are in a glass cave! The walls are reflective! There will be no more canoodling in corners, or I’m going to drop down that barrier and let the dragon fry us myself. ”

“Damn, dude,” Airk said. “Harsh.” 

Kit turned as red as Elora’s hair. Jade shamelessly slung her arm around Kit’s waist. 

“It was worth a shot. We might die today,” Jade told Kit, which was not at all an apology to anyone else. Kit buried their face in their hands.

“She’s right,” Boorman said, suddenly standing up straighter. “Jade, my old offer still stands. Airk, you’re welcome too. Kit, not you. You are clearly a virgin and also not my type.”

“What offer?” Kit squinted at him through their fingers. “Jade, what offer?” 

“Here,” Elora handed Kit their magicked sword. Kit brightened up immediately, dropping the topic. Over their head, Jade locked eyes with Boorman and mimed a particularly graphic threat. Elora moved on to the quiver. 

“Airk, check this out!” Kit elaborately twirled their sword, weaving a fancy green contrail. “Sweet light-show.” 

“Woah, sick.” Not to be outdone, Airk tossed his in the air for a triple spin before catching it again. Kit slung theirs behind their back and threw it up and over their shoulder, narrowly missing their own ear. 

“Wish we still had the crossbow,” Boorman sighed. 

“You could’ve brought it,” Jade grumbled. She deftly caught Kit’s sword before they decapitated themself and kept it out of their reach. Kit scowled. 

“I was in a hurry and forgot, okay,” Boorman complained. “Excuse me for being a bit distracted by the dragon.”

Elora finished the quiver. Kit slung it over their shoulder with the bow. “Can I have my sword back now?”

“Are you done playing with it?” Jade snapped. “It’s literally a bomb.” 

“I’m not going to drop it!”

“Alright everyone!” Elora clapped her hands at the front of the cave. “We’re good to go!” 

Jade gave up and handed Kit back the sword. “You can stitch your ear back on yourself next time.”

The dragon roared again. It whipped around on the layered daggers of glass shards outside, stalking like a rabid cat. They turned to face it. 

The group lined up just inside the fading magic shield at the mouth of the cave. Swords out and faces steeled, weapons pulsing with magic. They looked every bit the ragtag dragon dinner they were about to become. At the center of the line, Elora’s eyes glinted wetly. 

“Don’t you dare die,” she ordered them, blowing her nose on her sleeve.

“Pssh!” Kit bounced on their toes between her and Jade. They readied their stance, flipping their sword around like a toy. “We’re, like, way too stupid to die.”

“Don’t lump the rest of us in with you,” Jade said, sliding another knife up her sleeve.

“You’re following my plan, aren’t you?”

“What plan?” Elora demanded tearfully. “Hit it with swords as hard as you can is not a plan!”

“It’s basically the plan we had when we defeated Bavmorda,” Willow admitted beside Elora. He patted her on the arm.

“No, they’re right,” Airk whirled his sword like a juggler. Jade was surrounded on all sides by idiots with spinning bombs. “It’s a plan. It’s just a really, really bad one.”

“It’s true,” Boorman agreed. He saddled his cleaver up on his shoulder at the far end of the line. “This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, and that’s a high bar! Slaying a dragon. Damn. Never thought I’d see the day.” He wiped away a tear. 

“Always wanted to kill a dragon,” Jade mused. 

“Good luck doing that some day, because today it’s going to be me,” Kit insisted. 

“I’m going to die,” Elora murmured, rubbing her eyes and staring into the abyss. “I thought it’d be sooner, honestly. See you on the flipside, Graydon.”

Kit glanced at her, “What?”

“What?” Elora parroted, forcibly chipper. 

“Okay, children, listen up!” Boorman bellowed and stomped his cleaver. “Elora’s right, we don’t have a plan, so I’m imposing one now. Elora, Willow, you’re on defense. Elora, you’ll move with me, Jade, and Airk to keep us shielded. Kit, you hang back with Willow for a ranged offensive up at that outcropping there.” He pointed to a jag in the glass cliff face.

“What?!” Kit squawked. “Why am I on ranged?!”

“Because as you pointed out forty times today, you got it with an arrow already,” Boorman said. 

“I agree with Boorman,” Jade said. “I don’t want you out there until you get the cuirass up.” 

“Oh, but it’s okay if the rest of us get blasted to bits,” Airk muttered in the corner. “I see how it is.”

“You just want to kill the dragon first,” Kit called Jade’s bluff. 

“Maybe,” Jade admitted. “But I also want you to be safe.”

“And what about you? You don’t have magic armor!” Kit eyes were wide with worry.

“We’ll have Elora,” Jade put her hand on their cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

“Really feeling the love here, guys,” Elora said behind them, wringing her hands. 

“It’s a good plan,” Willow said. “We’ll lay down covering fire to distract it while you try to get close enough to hit it. Honestly, Kit, if you get it with an exploding arrow again it’ll probably try to take us out first.”

This more than anything seemed to convince Kit, although Jade looked like she was having second thoughts. “Maybe we should swap,” she offered.

“No, no,” Kit patted her cheek. “Like Boorman said, I’m the best with a bow.” Jade scowled viciously. 

“Yeah, right. You never actually beat me at anything–”

“If you two are done with the self-sacrificial stalling,” Boorman called over, “I’d like to get out there and kill that thing before I chicken out completely.” 

“Yes,” Willow agreed, tightening his grip on his staff. “I’m as recharged as I’m going to get. Just remember, you have to cut out its heart and its head at the same time. Otherwise it’ll grow back two of each.” 

Everyone stared at Willow. “What the hell?!” Kit exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say so earlier!”

“That’s not common knowledge? ‘More than one head and you’re forking dead,’” Willow recited the old adage to a chorus of blank gazes. “I mean, we’re lucky no one tried and failed to kill it already. Sometimes the second heart is really hard to find.” 

“Boorman, we’re tag-teaming,” Jade said. “I’ll take the head, and you and Airk take the heart.”

“How’re we supposed to get to it?” Boorman lamented. “Nothing can penetrate those scales. Not even me.”

“We’ve got this, bro!” Airk mimed a fist bump from the other side of the line-up. “Together, we can penetrate any hide.”

Kit reached across Jade and fist-bumped him on Boorman’s behalf. “Heck yeah we can!” Elora and Jade locked eyes and lamented their choice in partners past and present. 

“You two know what the word penetration means, right?” Boorman asked the Tanthalos twins. “Just want to confirm.”

“No,” Jade whispered. Forlorn. Elora caught it and visibly took a moment to process. 

“Besides,” Airk continued, oblivious. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll stab itself. I think I read that in a romantic farce once.”

“You read?” Kit scoffed. 

“You don’t?!” Elora gasped. 

“The dragon is impervious to its own fire and claws,” Willow explained. So much for that dream. “The old wizards really thought of everything except a failsafe.” His ponytail started to kick up in the oncoming vortex.

They all stared at the monstrous bioweapon blocking the entrance. Its mouth was open, revealing a massive gullet and rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. Air streamed into the back of its throat and disappeared. The wet crackling sound resumed. A halo gathered around the dragon’s mouth. 

The whole group automatically covered their eyes, waiting out the ensuing burning spray of energy. A huge sheet of glass sheared off from the cave wall behind them.

“So,” Boorman said, blinking hard, “how’re we going to get out of here without being vaporized?”

“Well…” Willow proposed. “I have one trick that worked for us back in the war…”

The trick was anxiously waiting another half hour for night to fall, and then using a complex series of makeshift mirrors, stink bombs, and some birds – along with a little newfangled illusion magic, courtesy of Elora – to distract the dragon long enough for them all to bolt for new cover. It involved at least three cleverly placed fake barrier spells to throw the dragon off the scent.

It almost worked too. Team Full Frontal Assault got about halfway to their target crevice before the air started to fly out from under their feet.

They skidded to a stop behind a ridge of massive jagged glass shards. Elora reinforced the shield and rained holy thunder and lightning down upon the dragon, to almost no effect. Click-click-pop — the monster roared and spun on them, blanketing the landscape with a stream of superheated explosion. 

Jade, Boorman, Airk, and Elora huddled down, just barely scooting inside the barrier as the blast zone washed over them. It was the exact sensation of standing inside a closet as a volcanic eruption disintegrates your entire city.

“I think that went well,” Boorman shouted over the mind-numbing roar. He shook off the ashes of what used to be his boot off his foot, exposing his toes to the world. Tragically, no one could see them in the blinding blaze. People always told him he had nice feet. “Everyone got all their limbs?”

“Mostly,” Airk hollered. The light started to die down. The shadow of Jade’s silhouette grimly shook her head. Finally, the overwhelming fire fizzled out. The shield miraculously did not.

“Okay,” Elora yelled, catching her breath and clapping her hands. She rubbed Graydon’s flute like a good luck charm. “Ready for round one. Let’s go!”

Fifty yards away and twenty feet up, Kit and Willow watched the others scurry across the battlefield from their station atop a lonely outcropping in the otherwise mostly sheer cliff-side. The climb up had been a real test of will. 

“Bav’s beard, I hate this so much,” Kit groaned, still picking glass splinters from their fingers.

Willow shook his wrists loosely, assessing their magic shield. “Alright, Kit. This thing can take about three hits before we’re done for. Make it count.” 

Kit gave up and held their hands out, eyes squeezed shut. “Please,” they begged.

Willow rolled his eyes. “Abhass turmach!” The splinters flew out of Kit’s skin. 

“Oh, thank stars,” Kit gasped.

“That was a waste of magic,” Willow chided them. The hypocrisy. “Get ready. You’ll only have one or two shots at this. If it gets airborne and you can’t take out its wings, we’re all dead.”

“Cool,” Kit nocked up an enchanted arrow. “Cool, cool, cool. Totally. Will do.”

Below them, a star exploded. The whole mountain shook. Part of the glass ledge they were leaning against cracked in two. Jade. Kit panicked and peeked over the cliff, frantically searching for the others.

Kit found them inside a bump in the plasma stream so bright it singed their retinas. “Ow, crap, my eyes!”

They rubbed the bridge of their nose hard, blinking rapidly to clear the light streaks. Willow shook their arm. “Come on, Kit, we don’t have much time!” 

Kit got the bow up again, lining up the shot through the widest part of the crack and crouching low to keep under their – extremely transparent – cover.

“Little to the left. Aim for the wing-joints where they meet the shoulder,” Willow instructed over Kit’s shoulder. “No, two ticks up from there, see the wind?”

“Could you stop backseat sniping?!” Sweat ran down Kit’s brow. They drew back the bowstring as far as it would go.

“We can’t afford to miss!”

“I know! Which is why I need you to stop hovering—” Kit released the arrow early. It flew high and about three feet too wide, landing on a mountain of cracked glass and – BOOM – creating a shrapnel cloud. The dragon roared. “Crap.”

“The wind, Kit!”

“Do you want to try?!” The dragon started to flap its wings, further agitating a tornado of glass in the crater and lifting off the ground. The glass ridge the strike team was behind would be easily within its range. 

Kit drew back the bow again and released without thinking.

BANG. The dragon screamed as its wing joint buckled under the force of the explosion. It fell to the ground, writhing and shrieking, spinning out like a pinned bug. 

“Nice one!” Willow slapped Kit on the back. They nearly dropped the bow over the cliffside.

Kit sagged in relief, then went rigid again as they spotted Jade running out from behind cover, sword at the ready. “Don’t you dare die,” they prayed, nocking another arrow.

Jade watched the dragon’s shadow stalk them through the thick glass of the ridge. It wound around slowly, recouping after attempting to blitz them with the full fiery power of a thousand suns. It either couldn’t see them or didn’t have the energy to leap right after a shot like that. 

It wouldn’t be long until it did. Even with the decoy lights Willow and Elora had placed around, they were easy to spot. Especially out in the open like this.

“I was timing it in the cave, we’ve got about ten minutes until it can blow its top again.” She clicked the scabbard into place at the end of her sword, bringing it to full extension as a modified glave. “We need to go now.”

“Wait for Kit,” Elora pleaded, trying to control her breathing.

BOOM! A cloud of shattered glass rammed into their shield. The dragon roared.

“Damnit, Kit,” Boorman said. “Knew we shouldn’t have trusted them with that bow.”

Jade lamented. “They missed?!” Booming wing beats sent the air around them into a terrifying windstorm. It was filtered some by the shield spell, but glass still stirred around their feet.

“Maybe don’t wait for Kit,” Airk shouted over the wind. “They’ve always been a crap shot, I think that first one was probably just a fluke–” 

BANG! The dragon screeched in furious pain, hitting the ground hard enough to crack it. The glass beneath them bucked. The dragon writhed on the ground, fracturing new ridges into the crater as it tried to beat its way out of a severed limb. 

“Okay, Kit, go off,” Boorman said. 

The shield flickered. The shield dropped.

“Now!” Jade shouted, sprinting out of cover. The others fell into step behind her, screaming bloody murder. 

Jade reached the dragon first, leaping high and bringing her sword-glave down in a furious arc. The blade slammed into the burnt wing wound between the peeling scales. She was, therefore, the first to learn what would happen when you tried to hit something while still holding onto your enchanted bomb sword. 

“Oh, balls—!” Magic blurred out from the impact zone. Jade shut her eyes tight and held on for dear life. Green-light and dragon-blood blasted out all around her. Her shoulders shuddered, her grip slipped. The force of it blew her backwards over the dragon. 

“Holy hell,” she wheezed, stumbling into the landing and nearly gutting herself on the ridge behind her. The dragon’s wing clung to its body by a thread of scaly skin and half an exposed tendon. Jade felt the same way about her arms right now. Whose hands were holding her sword?

Boorman grabbed her and yanked her back, away from a frenzied tail lash. 

“Maybe don’t do that again!” He blocking another sweep of the scaled spike-whip with the flat of his blade. BOOM.

The tail rebounded off in a minor explosion, nearly knocking the cleaver clean out of his hands. Boorman staggered, fumbling to keep his hold. “Why didn’t anyone say bespelling our weapons was a bad idea?!”

“Willow did,” Elora muttered, peppering blasts at the dragon’s feet to stop it from rushing closer. Mostly this was just creating rougher terrain for the lot of them, but at least the beast slipped on the glass shards the same as anyone else. “But he’s such a putz about everything, I just tune him out.”

The dragon roared, skidding sideways into another mountainous glass ridge and pulverizing it like so much sand dust. Airk considered his sword. “I think I’m gonna throw it.” He wound up.

“Don’t throw it,” Jade begged him, finally catching her balance again. She tried to wipe blood off her face to clear her vision, but nothing on her person was clean. She was completely hosed in gore. 

The dragon whipped around and geared up for a jump. Airk nodded decisively. “I’m gonna throw it.”

The dragon lept, a massive arching wall of flesh bearing down on them. Jade half-blindly brought her blade up, Boorman raised his cleaver in futile desperation, Elora tried to bring the flickering shield back to life.

“Airk, do not–” 

Airk whipped his blade in a spinning arc, like a giant throwing knife. It sailed through the air and slammed right into the dragon’s open mouth. KABOOM. 

The dragon was blasted backwards in a massive spray of red and shattered teeth. So, of course, was everyone else, since they were less than six feet from the epicenter. 

The dragon hit the ground ten yards away with a crack massive enough to form new hill-sized ridges. It did not move. 

“Wow,” Boorman grunted, sitting up in a pile of glass and considering a forearm-sized fractured canine impaling the ground by his head. He shook the shards out of his beard hair. “A man after my own heart. You say you’re recently single?” 

Airk just groaned miserably, courtesy of the large piece of broken glass now jabbing out of his gut. 

A stone’s throw away, Jade and Elora dragged themself to their knees just in time to see Boorman scoop Airk up and run for cover. 

“That was so stupid,” Elora cursed breathlessly at her own bloodied reflection in the glass. “I can’t believe we used to be engaged.” Behind her, the dragon stirred. Jade scrambled to her feet.

“Up! Up!” Jade shouted, heaving Elora so hard the wizard’s toes left the ground. Boorman and Airk disappeared into a crack in the crater wall, Jade and Elora sprinting after. 

“I told you, enchanting the swords was a bad idea,” Willow grumbled, watching Jade nearly blow her arms off with one massive strike. At least it actually did blow off the dragon’s wing.

“Okay well,” Kit said, anxiously waiting for their girlfriend to recover. “In my defense, you think all my ideas are bad.”

“All your ideas are bad.” In the distance, Boorman helped Jade up. The dragon was gaining on them.

Kit tried to line up the shot, but Jade and Boorman were still in the blast-zone. Elora put on a real light-show — it was impossible to aim.

The dragon lunged for the tiny group. Kit stopped breathing. The dragon slid out into a huge pile of glass, like a bear slipping on ice while trying to chase mice. Kit drew back the bow again.

“Wait,” Willow put his hand on their arm. “They’re still too close.”

Kit growled in frustration but held the shot. The dragon lept. Something – Airk?! – happened, and the dragon was suddenly flung back thirty feet in an explosion that knocked everyone else down. Kit and Willow’s hair ruffled at the force of it.

“Did Airk just throw his sword?!” Kit asked, bewildered. “What a total idiot–”

“Kit, now!” The dragon was on its feet again, climbing out of the glass crater and rapidly closing on Jade and Elora. Jade tried to limp back to cover faster. 

“Crap! Crap in a mince pie, crap on a stick,” Kit chanted, desperately trying to account for the dragon’s trajectory. “Crap in a canister, crap in a cloud–” The dragon leaped, they shot. “-- NOT my girlfriend, you lousy overgrown lizard!”

The arrow slammed into the dragon’s other eye. BANG. The dragon flew sideways as blood exploded out from its head, leaving behind a blasted crater where its eye had been. Jade and Elora scuttled into the cliffside crevice.

“YES!” Kit shouted. “GO JADE, GO!”

“You blinded it. You actually managed to blind it. Incredible. Too bad dragons operate by smell.”

“What?!” Kit rounded on him. “Why did we bother with visual decoys?!”

Willow shrugged. “I forgot. Explains why it didn’t see us earlier?” 

The dragon staggered to its feet, shaking its head like a dog. One of its wings dragged limply behind it. Viscous blood poured like a waterfall from its massive mouth. Its battered tongue flickered out into the air, its gigantic horned head swung back and forth sniffing the ground. It looked up, staring directly at the outcropping with both blown out eye sockets. 

It opened its maw. Wind flooded into its throat, forming a small bloody waterspout. 

“That is so gross,” Kit wailed. “What the f—” Willow’s hair blew into their mouth. Kit spat it back out. 

The air crackled. Light ringed the dragon’s jaws. Click-click-pop!

“Ah, hells,” Willow muttered. “Brace yourself.” He gripped his staff with both hands and flared the golden shield.

“You said this thing could take three hits, right?” Kit asked nervously, ducking low behind the ledge and tucking their knees tightly against their chest.

Willow winced. “In my younger days, definitely. Now? That might’ve been a tad optimistic.”

“Willow, I swear–”

THOOM. The world was so overwhelmingly loud and bright, it was impossible to think about anything but the sheer force of sensory overload. The shield shook tremendously. The glass outcropping behind them began to disintegrate. Kit’s exposed skin started to boil. 

As quickly as it started, it was over. The shield flickered out once, twice. It held on as a ghost of itself.

Kit sat there for a second, waiting for their ears to stop ringing. It didn’t happen. They slowly, achingly turned to Willow. He too was looking sun-burned and shell-shocked. 

“Three hits,” Kit said flatly.

“Let’s go with one,” Willow amended. “I wouldn’t want to test that again.” 

“Yeah, no sh–” They were cut off by the complete cessation of light, except for the shield’s pale yellow glow. “Oh, what the–”

The dragon completed its leap with an ear-splitting crack, landing directly on top of them. The barrier creaked like a ship in a storm. Up close, the full force of the ruination the dragon was designed for and the destruction they had wrought on it slapped them both in the face. It wasn’t a living creature, it was a weapon made of flesh and gently coated in impenetrable armored-plates that absorbed the moonlight like a pit. It was so large that trying to target their tiny squishy bodies took it actively more effort than simply stepping on them and moving on.

“Willow,” Kit threatened amicably, watching the dragon gnaw on the thin bubble of magic keeping them alive right now. That was a lot of gnashing teeth. “If I die here with you, I am going to hunt you down in the afterlife and feed you to the Wyrm myself.”

“That’s alright, I’ll help you,” Willow agreed. He charged up his staff. It pulsed pitifully. The shield flickered every time the dragon bit down.

Kit desperately clicked the button under their collarbone. “Now would be a really great time for you to actually work for once!” Nothing happened, continuously.

Willow grimaced. “So much for invincibility.” The shield flickered again. One more bite and it would give out entirely, leaving them both so much bloody schmear on the floor. The dragon didn’t even need to do anything, it could just crush them with its body-weight.

Kit tossed the mostly-empty quiver aside. They nocked one last arrow and drew back the bow, lining up a point blank shot. “This is going to suck.”

“Yep,” Willow agreed. Kit took the shot. Everything went red.

From the ground team’s brief respite inside the rocky crater wall crevice, Jade had a prime view when her lover tried to blow themself up. 

When the dragon blasted Kit and Willow, Jade had just barely gotten Elora and herself into cover. Elora was throwing up another shield spell. Willow’s, thankfully, seemed to hold as well. When the dragon leapt a crazy distance all the way up to the top of the outcropping, Jade was too far away to do anything useful.

“Holy hell,” Boorman said. “Did it just land on them? Why does it even have wings–”

“It’ll hold,” Elora prayed. Jade found herself mouthing along. “It’ll hold, it’s Willow, it’ll hold.”

“It has to,” Jade whispered, barely breathing. 

And something must’ve listened, because the golden light glowing from the outcropping miraculously still did not go out. The run was too far. They had no one with sufficient range. There was effectively nothing they could do but watch as the entire cliffside suddenly exploded. The glass holding it all up sheered directly off the wall as it and the dragon fell to the bottom of the crater in one slow, horrible earth-shattering crunch.

“KIT!” Jade screamed, lunging out of cover, only for Boorman to grab her by the shoulders and roughly drag her back. “No, get off me, no! No, no no, Kit–”

“Willow…?” Elora gasped, sounding very small. Her hand spasmed around the flute in her pocket.  

“What?” Airk groaned from the back of the crevice, straining against his field-dressing. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Boorman reassured him, struggling to pin Jade long enough to keep her from leaping directly into the jaws of death. “Stop that!” He bent sideways to avoid an attempted stabbing.

“We have to go to them,” Elora sounded like she was almost sleep-talking. “We have to–”

The jagged rubble of what used to be the outcropping shifted, pushing in and out like a monstrous lung. The massive dragon’s head, now more shattered bone than flesh and missing half its jaw, slowly shifted up out of the heap of glass.

“Are you freaking kidding me, right now?!” Boorman screeched. “It’s still not down?! How is it still not down–” Jade tore herself from his slack grasp and darted forward, heaving up her sword with aching arms. “Jade! ” Jade ignored him, running towards the dragon with single-minded purpose. 

Boorman grabbed his cleaver in one hand and a prayer in the other. “Realms above, I am going to regret this!” He sprinting out of the crevice after her. 

Elora watched them make the suicide run across the across the shattered glass sea, then looked back at Airk. He was pale, bloody, halfway-unconscious, and beautiful as ever. Most importantly if she left him alone he was likely to live.

“Stay here,” Elora ordered. She cast another flickering shield spell over the crevice entrance. Her face was waxy and clammy, like she was wringing the last dregs of life out of herself. “And don’t move.” Sweat dripped down her trembling arms. 

She stood up, waiting a minute to clear the dizziness, and took off after the others.

Chapter Text

Jade ran for the dragon with one wholly consuming thought. She was going to kill it, and she was going to make it hurt. She raced over shards of glass, up and over ramp-like ridges with edges that could shear her in two, and across thin cracks so deep they might as well be canyons. There wasn’t any sound but the crunching pounding of her boots and her blood roaring in her ears.

At the other edge of the crater, the monster swayed beneath its blanket of massive glass knives, still only partially off the ground. Jade was almost on it now. She forced herself to go even faster.

The dragon trilled softly in pained confusion. Jade pulled back her sword-glave and got ready to leap. Behind her, she could hear Boorman’s booming footsteps gaining ground. 

The dragon lifted its broken head and stared right at her, with the pits that used to be its eyes and the hole that used to be its mouth. A chunk was missing in its neck where something had blown through. There.

Jade jumped. In one massive strike, she spun her sword up and around, directly into the wound on its neck. 

KATHOOM. The blast from the resulting explosion blew out around her like a geyser, completely severing the tenuous connection between the dragon’s head and body. The remains of its skull flew high up into the air, spine trailing out behind it in a spinning bloody arc. 

Jade, too, was flung away, but landed smoothly in an easy flip – her bootheels sliding back on the glass shards as she dug the blunt end of her staff into the ground to slow herself down. 

The dragon shuddered and collapsed before the head even hit the ground. 

Boorman bounded up onto the remains, hacking away at the chest with his cleaver and shakily riding out the resulting small explosions. BANG! “Where’s the heart?” BANG! “Where’s the heart?” He sang between strikes, chipping away at the scales. BANG! BANG! “Where’s the damned heart?!” 

Jade was up and running at the beast again. Boorman’s footing slipped as coils of flesh rolled beneath his boots. “Oh Crone’s kidney-stones, already?!” Boorman gave up trying to bash at it and started prying the scales up with the flat end of his cleaver.

The neck of the corpse writhed like giant snakes were crawling beneath it. Tumorous growths bubbled up on the stump. With the kind of unholy sound raw meat makes when it’s ripped apart, the flesh of the neck cracked and split in two.

“JADE!” Boorman hollered, trying to keep his hold as the dragon torso convulsed, bucking and bending beneath him. He’d barely broken through its hide. “YOU’D BETTER KNOW WHERE ITS HORRID LITTLE HEART IS!”

Airk jolted awake. He was once again alone in a dark rocky hole with no idea how he got there. His breathing picked up. He dragged himself towards the glowing mouth of the crevice, expecting to see the sun squatting high above the corpse of an evil city. Glittery dust got on his hands — was that sand?!  He wanted to vomit. It had all been a trick, he was still inside the Wyrm’s dreamworld—

He reached the craggy exit and was treated to the sight of about a thousand gorey green explosions going off in the distant night sky. 

Ah, right, the dragon. 

“Thanks for not leaving me behind, guys,” he mumbled, listening to the reptilian screams. 

He should go help. He had to get up and help. He tried to sit up, and was thwarted by the glass shard still through his side. “Bav’s balls…” He dropped back on the ground and stared up at the craggy crevice ceiling. “Okay, Airk. Come on, bro. You’ve got this. Just one more rep.”

He rolled over and pushed himself up. His arms were shaking so badly he nearly collapsed right onto the knife in his gut. He got his knees under him. “One more, push through,” he ground out, shoving himself to his feet. “For Kit, and Jade, and Dove, and that tall hottie, and the silver fox. You can do this. You survived the Crone. You can survive anything. You… eat burpees for breakfast.” 

Despite all odds, he was on his feet. 

He staggered over to where Jade had dropped a stack of enchanted throwing knives before apparently running out to beat the dragon without him. He bent to pick one up and nearly fell again. He barely managed to keep hold of it in one blood-slicked hand. 

He wouldn’t be of any use to Elora, Jade, and Boorman right now, but he could still help Kit and Willow up on the outcropping. “Alright, Kit, don’t worry. Big brother Airk is coming to getcha.”

Elora knew she was out of juice. She could barely stay upright without blacking out, let alone fire off another spell. So really, she wasn’t expecting much from sprinting after Jade and Boorman. She didn’t even have a plan beyond not being left behind again.

Her vision flickered. She was so close to the line between waking and sleeping that a ghostly apparition of Graydon hovered in the corner of her eye, as if this was one of their illicit dream-tutoring sessions. Evil maybe-hallucination-Graydon looked exactly like normal Graydon from before the Immemorial City, except the goatee was back in full force and he only showed up as a racing reflection in the glass. He kept pace with her as she ran, without apparently moving at all. 

“Oh, hey Elora!” He sounded equally surprised to see her. “I know my realm is like eternal fiery night, but isn’t this a weird time of day for you?” 

“Can’t talk,” she panted. “Dragon.”

“Dragon?” Graydon followed her gaze to the moving mountain on the horizon. “Holy crap. That’s almost as big as the ones in here. Are you okay?!”

Elora shook her head, wheezing. 

The dragon tail whipped around, kicking up another storm of glass. Elora dived down behind a mid-sized jagged chunk that had lodged up off the ground, ducking and covering to shield her face.  

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” ghost-Graydon awkwardly apologized, not really having a way to interface with this physical realm. 

“A-actually.” Elora poked her head up from her huddle, grasping for an idea. “Do you remember that potion you were showing me before? The dragon one.” 

“Dragon’s Bloody Boosters?” Reliable as always even while being corrupted by the Wyrm. “Sure thing. It’s, like, literally made entirely of dragon, so completely impossible to get ingredients for.”

“Lots of dragon here,” Elora nodded to some of the gory chunks on the battlefield. “Not sure which bits I need.”

“Oh! Got it.” Graydon rattled off a recipe that sounded more like an anatomy textbook entry on dragons. 

“Yeah, there’s no way I can get all that. I’m just gonna grab whatever I can find.” Elora uncurled and brushed herself off. 

“Is everyone okay?” Graydon frowned in concern. “I haven’t seen any of them around here, but this realm is pretty huge and I’m not sure I’m actually dead.” 

“They’ll probably be fine. So long as I can finish this potion.” She swayed a little on her feet and Graydon managed to catch her. Bad sign. 

“I’m glad I got to see you,” she admitted, leaning into him. He wrapped his arms around her. He felt deceptively solid like this. “I miss you. I didn’t want to die before we got to talk again.” 

“Aww, Elora, you were thinking about me? That’s cute.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.” She pulled away and started to jog towards the nearest fleshy lump. “I’ll see you tonight, okay? Don’t you dare die again before then.”

“Honestly, of the two of us, I think you’re more at-risk.” Graydon kept up easily because the vision of him kind of just… moved along with her. “But I’ll do my best to make sure we both stick around. After all, how can you join me in holy sacrament worshiping the Wyrm if you get yourself dusted by a dragon?”

Elora sighed heavily. “Once I drag you out of there, I’m going to deworm you so hard you’ll be seeing stars for days.”

“Looking forward to watching you try,” Graydon winked.

Kit and Willow lay in a jagged crater of shattered glass, barely spared from impalement by the massive fragment of the outcropping lying on top of them. Against all odds, it had hit another pile at an raised angle, sheltering them rather than crushing directly though their spines. Blood of unidentifiable origin was smeared all around. 

“Ugh,” Kit groaned, rolling over with the amount of effort it would normally take them to, say, lift an entire horse, or pummel a cave into a mountain with their bare hands. “Why aren’t I dead?”

“G-got another shield up,” Willow coughed, covered in glass-dust and blood. He was splayed out on his back and did not bother trying to move. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” Kit wheezed. “Sounds about right.” They pried themself off the ground. Their ears were ringing. Their head was ringing. The ground kept trying to slide out from under them. They had no idea where the dragon was and couldn’t bring themself to care. 

“Alright,” they grunted, more to themself than to Willow. They stood up, swaying gently in the breeze. “Up and at ‘em.” They grabbed Willow under the arms and heaved him out of the glass shards. “Morning bird,” they grunted, slinging Willow up onto their back and staggering under the added weight, “gets the Wyrm–!”

They started drunkenly stumbling towards what they thought might be a ridge. Or maybe it was a trick of the light. There were a lot of flashing lights in their vision right now. “Don’t drop me,” Willow grumbled directly into their ear.

“Don’t tempt me,” Kit slurred back. “Why’re you so freaking heavy?” They staggered sideways a bit before self-correcting. Things kept exploding in their eardrums.

Something huge and hard hit the ground right in front of them with a wet slap, breaking the ground up. Kit nearly ate it. Mostly this massive object registered as a reason they couldn’t keep going in what they hoped was a straight line. 

“What is that?” they asked, trying to make it make sense.

“I think that’s the dragon’s head.” Willow sounded as confused as they were.

“Huh,” Kit agreed, with way more syllables than it usually took. They sat down heavily behind it, letting Willow slip off their shoulders. 

“Why’re you stopping?”

“It was damn near indestructible the first time,” Kit leaned their head back against the disgusting soggy eye socket and waited futilely for things to stop spinning. “Probably not any easier to blow up now.”

“Hm.” Willow made himself comfortable next to them. “You have a point.” He poked them. “Stay awake.”

“I’m awake." Kit wasn't sure if it was true.

“If you pass out, I’ll sew the collars of all your shirts together so they’re turtle necks,” he threatened.

“I hate you,” Kit growled, glaring at him. But they pried their eyes open to do it. 

A shadow fell over the pair. Willow’s staff stayed dead despite his best efforts. Kit didn’t even bother going for their sword. They weren’t actually sure they still had it. 

“Whatever it is, just eat me already,” Kit groaned. Willow sighed in agreement.

“Hey, guys,” Airk chirped, peering over the edge of the skull. “Can I join you?”

“Airk?” Kit squinted at him. “Are we dead?”

“Nope,” Airk walked over and gingerly sat down beside them. He nudged his shoulder against Kit’s in lieu of a hug, which was impossible at the moment. “Close though. You two look like something chewed you up and spit you back out. Why’re you on the ground?”

“You guessed it in one,” Willow told him. “Why’s there a head here?”

“Dunno,” Airk said. “Jade, Boorman and Elora left without me. I think they’re killing the dragon? Or they might just be making it worse, I can’t tell.”

“How many heads are we at now?” Willow asked. It was the tone of a man who really didn’t want to know.

Airk poked his head up out of cover and squinted. “Three."

“They didn’t find the heart?!” Willow groaned. “Those fools! Now it’ll be impossible to kill.”

“Took out two heads though. Your girlfriend’s terrifying, Kit,” Airk reported, still watching the fight from afar.

“She’s so perfect,” Kit mumbled. “I love her so much.” 

“Someone should probably tell her Kit isn’t dead,” Willow remarked. 

“Oh, yeah,” Airk said. “Totally. Not me, though, I can’t move.”

Kit tried to sit up straighter, glaring at him. “What’s wrong with you?” Airk lifted his hand to show off the gnarly glass shard in his side. Kit went pale. “Oh, gross.” Kit squeezed their eyes shut.

“All this, and you still can’t deal with splinters,” Airk complained. “I’m literally dying over here.”

Pounding, stuttering footsteps made their way towards them, barely audible over the battlefield bass track. Elora plopped down by the skull on the other side of the mouth-ish area, visible through its broken teeth. She reached in and tried to wiggle one loose with her bare hands.

Elora was sweaty, completely drained, and absolutely oblivious to the group hiding behind the head she was plundering as she recited under her breath, “Dragon teeth, dragon blood, bone marrow, eyejuice–”

“Hey, girl!” Airk waved lazily at her through the dragon’s open mouth. “What’s up? That all sounds disgusting.”

“Airk?!” Elora yelped, almost falling over and spilling the contents of her bag. “I told you not to move!”

“Sorry,” Airk shrugged. “I went to help Kit. But turns out they’re on the ground too! So now we’re all here.”

Kit attempted a wave, ending up with more of a wrist flop by the dragon’s throat. “Yo.”

“Kit?!” Elora practically dove around the dragon skull, laying eyes on the half-dead but miraculously-not-entirely-dead trio. They were all three covered in glass, dragon-guts, and what was probably their own blood. But among them was of course, “Willow!” She wrapped him up in a hug.

“Ouch,” Willow wheezed. “Elora, please watch the… all of it. Everything. It’s all broken.” Elora immediately released him, gently setting him back against the mutilated skull.

“Shoot, okay, all of you hold on,” she instructed. “I’ve got this. I just need to make, like, six dozen healing potions on the battlefield. Good thing is, we’ve got all the ingredients right here.” She patted the severed head for emphasis.

“You’re making Dragon’s Bloody Boosters?” Willow squawked. “Where did you learn that? That’s forbidden ancient magic, discovered through horrible wartime medical experimentation–”

“Anyway,” Elora continued, louder, setting her bag down and pulling out a tiny pot and some creatively shaped knives. “I’ll be done in a jiff. Don’t even need to cook it.”

“Why don’t you just try a healing spell?” Willow asked. 

“Oh, I’m like, so far past out of juice I might pass out if I sneeze too hard,” Elora told him chipperly. “Don’t worry about it. Potions are easy.”

“Relatable,” Kit groaned, letting their head loll onto Airk’s shoulder. 

“Wait,” Elora was struck with a different thought. “Has anyone told Jade that Kit’s alive? She totally lost it after you fell.”

“Nope,” Willow coughed. “We were hoping you could do it.”

“I’ll tell her myself,” Kit retorted. “As soon as I can get enough blood back in my body.”

“Dagnabit,” Elora swore. “Okay, one second.” She stood up and yelled as loudly as she could across the battlefield, which was pretty loud given her time in the kitchens. “JADE! KIT’S FINE!” Her voice echoed off the crater walls. “GET YOUR CUTE-PATOOT OVER HERE!”

The crescendo of constant explosions and reptilian screaming that had been the backtrack to this whole rendezvous suddenly paused. Kit hadn’t even fully realized the sounds were there until the world went seven decibels quieter. The pounding in their head eased a little.

“Fine seems generous,” they muttered, closing their eyes to enjoy the relative quiet.

Jade and Boorman had made pretty decent progress carving their way into the dragon’s chest. The overarching issue was that the heart – now hearts – didn’t seem to be anywhere obvious in its chest cavity. 

They didn’t have a shield spell any longer either, which meant they had to compensate creatively. Primarily this was a problem for not getting blasted directly in the face with a volcanic solar flare. So they kept hacking off the budding heads at the root before any could grow mature enough to fire, which was only exponentially increasing everyone’s future problems.

Jade was a whirlwind of blades and explosions, slicing this way and that as she beat the thousand ton beast into submission. She’d gotten brutally clever at using the kickback from the magic blasts to launch herself higher and harder into the next hit. Now her strikes were a chained series of leaps and blows, working her way up and down the dragon’s torso in a rhythmically methodical dissection.

Boorman was mostly hanging back to make sure someone was paying attention to defense. Because Jade wasn’t, at all. His sharp eye on the dragon’s talons was the only thing keeping her from completely getting shredded right now.

“Have you considered,” Boorman grunted, swinging his cleaver in a full circle to – BOOM – blast another one of the dragon’s claw strikes away, “valuing your life, even a little bit. ”

Jade didn’t respond. It wasn’t clear she could right now. The level of single-minded purpose with which she moved was frankly disturbing. 

“I mean, I know you literally jumped off a cliff for your princess,” Boorman grumbled, whirling on another claw. BANG. “But getting yourself blown up by a dragon just because they did seems like a bit of an overreaction.”

Jade slammed her sword against the dragon’s tail as it whipped around, rocketing herself back at its ribcage where she was gradually tunneling her way through. She unleashed a spray of throwing stars at it mid-air, each blowing another minor blast hole into the dragon’s side. Then she flipped over, landing feet-first on the dragon’s hide. She ran across it like it was solid ground cover, dragging her sword through its scales as she went, magic and bloody bits blasting all the way out in a massive trail behind her.

“Freaking impossible, man…” Boorman spun his cleaver around to block simultaneous strikes from the tail and one of the freshly sprouting heads. BOOM. CRACK. “How can one person be that cool and that crazy?” He slashed up, managing to sever the tip off the tail as it passed. BANG. “Worse than Scorpia. ”

Someone screamed across the battlefield, barely audible over the explosions and the dragon’s constant tortured shrieking. “JADE!” Boorman glanced over and saw Elora jumping and frantically waving her hands in the distance. Behind… one of the severed heads? Huh, not a bad idea. “KIT’S FINE! GET YOUR CUTE-PATOOT OVER HERE!”

Boorman looked up at Jade to see if she’d heard. She was frozen, mid-strike, still on top of the dragon. 

“Aw, balls,” he swore, and tackled her out of the way of the dragon’s freshly regrown jaws. 

They hit the ground rolling. Jade didn’t even seem to notice. “Kit’s alive?” she whispered.

“Oh my gods, yes,” Boorman dragged her to her feet and shoved her forward as they both sprinted away from the dragon. “Your beloved himbo’s fine. Go say hello to them. Please, I am begging you, this is so unhealthy.”

Jade took off so fast, she kicked up glass-dust in her wake. Boorman spun around to face the monster. Someone still had to keep it occupied, so it didn’t immolate the heartfelt reunion. 

“I am so vastly underappreciated on this team,” he muttered, twirling the cleaver around in his hand. Time to solo the dragon.

Jade ran faster than she’d ever run before. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. Elora’s words kept ringing in her ears, or maybe those were the explosions, it was hard to tell at this point. They pounded in her head in time to her footsteps and her heart. 

Kit’s Fine. Kit’s Fine. 

After Ballantine and the Wildwood, everything in her life felt unmoored. The only solid thing, the only thing that never changed, was Kit. Maybe it wasn’t healthy, but it was true. Losing them would be one blow too many on top of a series of soul-crushing strikes.

They’re fine. They’re fine. We’re going to be fine–

She was so focused on reaching them, that she almost didn’t realize it when she did. She cleared the dragon head in one smooth motion, and nearly landed right on top of Airk.

“Holy crap,” Airk gasped, “Jade?! What in the everloving hell, you look–”

Jade laid eyes on Kit. They were covered in blood and burns, and more than a little bit crispy. They squinted at her with blurry eyes, as if they weren’t quite sure if she was real. Her mouth moved but there were no words. She threw herself at them bodily, wrapping her arms around them and burying her face in their shoulder.

“-crazed,” Airk finished. “Yup. Okay.” 

“You’re alive,” Jade breathed. Kit wheezed pathetically. 

“Hey, babe, good to see you too,” they coughed, burbling a little. They brought a shaky hand up to rub her back. “Glad we’re not dead.”

“Hey, Jade, can I have that?” Elora pointed to a large chunk of gut-meat stuck to Jade’s armor. “I’m pretty sure that’s liver, and I really need liver for this.” She plucked the gore off of Jade’s shoulder plate and dropped it into her bubbling pot. One popped, releasing truly noxious gas. It wasn’t boiling. 

“I thought it ate you,” Jade whispered. She squeezed them tighter. Kit’s abused bones creaked, but for once Kit didn’t complain. “I was going to carve you out of its stomach.”

“That’s so hot,” Kit slurred, kissing the least gore-covered bit of her forehead.

“Oh my gods,” Airk looked sick. “You two are the worst. Holy hells.”

“You’re not allowed to die,” Jade swore. She pulled back and stared Kit dead in the eyes. Unidentifiable meat-chunks were smeared down both their fronts. “We’re going to survive this. Understand?”

“Ha! Of course. You doubted me?” Kit chuckled, which turned into a coughing fit. They stroked her cheek, smearing ash and blood around. “I’m still going to be the one to kill that dragon.”

“They couldn’t even get the damn armor to work,” Willow muttered. “Do you know how useful the Kymerian Cuirass would be right now?” 

“You’re so stupid,” Jade told Kit, eyes shining. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Kit sighed happily, too concussed to be embarrassed about it. They let their gaze rest blearily on hers. “Can’t believe you cut off a dragon’s head. So freaking cool. Would kiss you if I could feel my mouth.”

“Why let that stop you?” Jade teased, leaning her forehead into theirs. “You never have before.”

“Mm,” Kit agreed. “Good point.” 

Jade kissed Kit as gently as she could, given the general state of both their everything. It was soft and a little bit sloppy. The light on Kit’s chest glowed softly green. The couple’s hair blew out in the sweeping breeze. Kit shivered.

“GUYS!” Boorman shouted in the distance, barely audible over the roaring wind. 

Kit deepened the kiss. Jade’s hand crept up to their chest. Twinkling glass dust swirled up all around the two.

“GUYS!” Boorman hollered, even louder, much closer than before. He sounded panicked. Elora glanced up from her pot. Her eyes widened. The air started to click and pop, crackling with energy.

“Oh, holy heck,” she whispered. “Willow.” She patted him desperately on the shoulder. “Willow.”

“Yeah, I see it,” Willow assured her. “I’ve got nothing.” He pointed to his staff, which couldn't even fizzle pathetically. The crystal inside was just dead.

“Nice knowing you all,” Airk agreed, staring at the matching halos of white light slowly forming around the three identical gaping dragon jaws. 

Oblivious to their impending death or maybe just ignoring it, Jade pressed down on Kit’s shoulder where they were slumped against the severed dragon skull. Kit nipped at her bottom lip. Jade’s hand slipped, accidentally catching on the button beneath Kit’s collarbone. Suddenly, a click and a flash of light. 

The Kymerian Cuirass spooled out from Kit’s shoulder, a blaze of metal and energy rippling across them in a shining series of interlocking plates. Kit gasped like they’d just had seven pots of magic caffeine pumped directly into their veins. Their eyes cleared, the air around them flared with power. 

Kit sat up straight from their slump against the skull, instantly revitalized. Jade jumped back, still half in their lap and slightly dazed.

Everyone stared at Kit’s chest, including Kit. Kit used every swear they knew, “Are you freaking kidding me right now, you magical metal piece of shit—”

Boorman jumped over the dragon skull mid-stride, and ducked down to join the crowd. “Hey, lads,” he said, flipping his hair. “Lasted as long as I could. Figured we might as well die together.”

“I love you guys,” Airk wept.

“I love you too,” Elora sobbed, addressing the air over her shoulder. “There’s no one I’d rather die with.”

“Die? What–” Kit followed her gaze to the growing ball of white light over the horizon. It looked like dawn, if dawn wiped out every bit of life on the planet each sunrise. “Oh, Crone’s birthcanal.” Jade’s eyes went wide, watching the horizon. 

Kit wasted a breath they didn’t have trying to memorize the way her face glowed, even in the light of their impending death. Then Kit shot to their feet, magic metal armor shimmering with every motion. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” they boasted with a wink. They sprinted towards the light.

“Kit!” They were just barely too fast for Jade to catch them as they scrambled over the severed dragon skull. “ Kit! You complete cumwad, you just promised me–”

“Sorry!” Kit yelled, racing towards the impending blast. They skidded to a stop what they judged as probably far enough away, dropping into a crouch setting their feet as firmly as they could. They flicked out the wrist sword and stabbed it into a deep crack in the glass, ducking their exposed head behind their other arm. “Why doesn’t this damn thing have a—”

THOOM. The combined three-heads of dragon plasma washed over the landscape in a blast of unending fire. Nothing could survive. It was the sort of explosion that would leave the area an irradiated deadzone, a crater in the planet where life used to be.

In the middle of it stood Kit, acting as a sort of wedge in the river. The superheated plasma washed over them in a magic death-defying arc, wave arching up and over the severed dragon head behind them and just missing their family. 

The fire roared all around Kit. It was so hot the air scorched their lungs. The torrent of sound had stopped registering as noise and just became pain. The force of it all threatened to fling them out of the crater entirely, exposing their loved ones to the blaze. They dug in their heels, grit their teeth, and held on. 

The blaze blinded even them through their closed eyelids. The force of the fire shook through their bones and baked their guts. Their blood started to boil in their veins. Just as they thought they were literally about to rattle apart at the seams, the assault stopped. 

Without the force of the constant concussive blow to lean against, Kit fell forward flat on their face. They just lay there for a minute, not feeling quite real. The world started to come back into vague shapes, instead of just a blank white expanse. 

“—!” A small shadow launched themself toward Kit. “—!” Kit’s vision was too spotty to make the figure out. They couldn’t hear if the person was saying anything. But deep down, they knew it was Jade. Whole and unscathed. Kit sagged with relief. 

“I’m good!” Kit croaked. They flashed her a shaky thumbs-up from the ground and coughed a little. Their throat felt scorched, so their voice probably sounded whack, but they couldn’t hear that either. Or, well, anything.

Shadow-Jade started doing something with her arms, still running towards them. Trying to track the motion was giving Kit a headache. They had the vague sense she was probably yelling at them, which they deserved.

Then a massive moving wall came out of nowhere and slammed Kit so hard they flew all the way into the opposite end of the crater. 

Jade sprinted down the freshly fired smooth glass channel towards Kit. They were lying on the ground, flat on their face, unmoving. 

“KIT!” she screamed. “ KIT!” Kit twitched. They moved their head to look at her but couldn’t seem to focus. She saw the dragon raise its tail behind them. 

Kit waved a hand in what might’ve been thumbs up and gurgled, “I’m good!” They sounded like they’d swallowed some of the glass they were laying on. 

She was still too far away. “KIT, MOVE!” She waved her arms. 

Kit lay there, still holding the trembling thumbs up and looking extremely dazed, as the dragon swiped them with one giant tail-swing and flung them a mile across the freshly expanded crater. 

For a second Jade stood in stunned silence, resisting the urge to scream at the sky. She’d just had her hands on them. Now they were too far away for her to even see them land. 

Jade drew her sword and started running over the freshly glass-glazed plain towards the dragon again. They wouldn’t have long before the heads recharged.

“Don’t worry, they’re probably fine,” Boorman shouted, coming up behind her with his cleaver at the ready. “Kit’s bouncy. If they can survive that blast, they can survive literally anything. I mean it. How did any of us survive that? I think my brain melted inside my skull.”

“Me too,” Airk yelled. Everyone talking a little too loudly to be heard over the ringing in their ears. He took a swig of what looked like a bottled meat smoothie. “Anyone have an extra sword? Elora finished her potion during the explosion.” 

“How?!” Boormand demanded. Jade tossed Airk a cluster of knives and a length of spiked chain with a blade on the end.

“If you throw this, you’re buying me a new one,” she instructed. Airk caught them gratefully and squirreled away the knives. 

“Elora’s, like, the single most competent and productive person I know, other than Jade,” Airk explained, winding the chain around his wrist. “I would believe anything she said without question.”

“You need higher standards,” Boorman informed him. “Both those women are complete headcases.”

“We’re lucky they fired all at once,” Jade observed, racing over a melted lump of melted glass on the ground. “If the dragon was smart enough to stagger it, the heads could rotate and have one blasting us constantly while the others reloaded.”

“What a comforting thought,” Boorman said.

Jade leapt across a craggy glass outcrop with missing a beat. “Does the potion work for Elora and Willow?” 

“Uh, I dunno–” A massive jag of lightning striking down on the dragon’s eyes cut Airk off. “Apparently yes.” The green shield flickered back to life around them, glowing much stronger than before.

Jade tried to shore up what was left of her adrenaline rush. Airk shoved the potion at her. “Here, take some. I will warn you, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. And I’ve put a lot of stuff in my mouth. I’m kind of a mouth guy.”

“Man after my own heart,” Boorman opined. 

Jade ignored them and took a quick pull of it. Then immediately gagged so hard she nearly vomited. Oh hells. It was chunky, crunchy, raw, and gelatinous all at once. She would be trying to scrape the iron taste off the back of her tongue for days. It was so thick she could feel it roll down her throat and drop into her stomach. Some of it got stuck in her teeth. She coughed and felt it all the way up her nose, “That’s vile…!”

“Yup.” Airk took the potion from her and passed it to Boorman. Boorman took a swig and promptly tripped over his own feet, hacking and gagging. 

“What the hell is in this?!” He doubled over on the ground, trying to stand up without actually retching.

“I think it’s dragon,” Airk said dubiously. “Like, all the bits.”

As disgusting as it was, it worked. The rush was instantaneous. Jade felt more energized than she could remember being all day. Since this quest started, really. Even her lingering minor aches and pains were gone. The deep tears in her back she’d been pretty sure she’d bleed out from soon felt like freshly fused scar tissue instead of impending doom. 

“Elora says it wears off pretty quick and the hangover is horrific,” Airk warned them. “Worse than troll booze. But it’ll permanently stopper up most wounds and replenish blood loss so long as you don’t do anything crazy. Also it cures some kind of poison called radiation. So that’s good?”

“Great,” Boorman eyed Jade warily as the trio picked up the pace. 

“What?” she snapped. They were almost on the dragon now. 

“You’re not going to lose it, are you?” he asked, swinging his cleaver around. “Because if I have to drag you off that thing again, I’m going to start charging you hazard pay.”

“I’ll be fine.” Jade hefted her sword-staff up and charged for the hole she’d been pounding in the dragon’s chest cavity before. 

“Fine, she says,” Boorman complained, batting one of the heads back with his cleaver. The resulting magic kickback blasts were becoming blasé at this point. “And the other one threw themself in front of a exploding sun. Bonkers. They’re both completely bonkers.”

Airk sprinted past him, jumping and swinging the chain up and around one of the dragon’s necks. It locked over itself in a loop like a necklace, Airk the charm hanging from it. He heaved down as he fell, hauling on the slip knot with the added help of his whole body weight and tightening it into a choke chain. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM . The explosion rebounded against itself inside the loop. Flesh flew everywhere. 

Airk swung away and deftly jumped to the ground, blade trailing lazily as he rolled. The dragon’s head was hanging on by a thread behind him, a circular crevice of blasted out flesh cutting nearly halfway through the neck. 

“Holy hell that’s hot,” Boorman exclaimed.

“I know right,” Elora grumbled, running up to spray the dragon’s eyes with huge levitating glass shards. “It’s so annoying.” In the distance behind her, Willow popped up from behind the skull and pounded his staff on the ground. The glass shattered and a wave of magic roiled out, sending the whole bedrock shaking so hard the dragon almost lost its balance. A new glass ridge cracked up into the sky, next to the dragon’s swaying head. 

Boorman barely kept his own footing. “Hey, watch it!” A massive claw blew past his face, cutting into his beard hair. 

The dragon roared. Jade sprinted up the newly-formed ramp into a giant flying leap. Elora threw a wave of pure force at the dragon’s skull to knock it down closer. Jade swung her glade-sword up and over her head and — BOOM — sheared off the dragon’s jaw. Holy hell. 

Boorman was so distracted he barely caught the claw with his cleaver on the back pass. He grabbed Elora and rolled out of the way to avoid being crushed by the falling half-a-skull Jade had just brought down on them. CRUNCH. Glass shards burst up all around them. 

Elora flipped over onto her knees, facing up directly under the dragon’s missing chin, and blasted it again. The head knocked up and away, crashing into its only remaining whole sibling before the jaws could close in on Jade, sprinting forward for another run. 

Airk seized the distraction and whipped the end of his chain around to hook the stunned but otherwise unscathed head through one of its eyes. He swung and flung himself up into the air. Boorman ran for the back. 

Jade reached the top of the ridge again. Airk hung at the apex of his looping arc above the head as Jade came leaping at it from below—

—The dragon’s tail lashed behind them both, aiming to knock them out of midair. Boorman crashed down on it with his cleaver—

—Above him, Airk pulled down, Jade swung up.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Head and tail chunks spun out everywhere. The resulting explosions rocked the crater, sending glass and bodies flying. Elora and Willow scrambled to catch everyone before they hit the ground. 

Jade and Boorman landed next to each other in a green cloud of magic, nearly on top of Elora. The impact was hard enough to bruise but softer than it should’ve been. Elora made a sound like she was being crushed to death.

Boorman clapped them both on the back. “One down, two to go!” 

Elora threw up a shield to stop a claw from crushing them all into a pulp. She asked through gritted teeth, “Anyone seen Kit yet?” 

“They’ll be here,” Jade declared, tossing throwing stars at the dragon’s chest wounds repeatedly. This made little headway through its ribcage but cleared the last of the chest-wall. 

Boorman ran past her, jumping and shattering one of its ribs with his cleaver. The dragon screamed. Boorman tried to pry the bone fragments back with his hands, digging into the dragon’s guts. “Where’s its damn hearts, Jade?” 

The dragon scrabbled with its claws,  desperate to tear Boorman out of its chest. Elora held them off with a flickering shield spell, flinching under each blow. Jade batted the claws back further, keeping her sword in constant motion. “Dunno.”

Elora stared at her, appalled, “You two don’t know where its hearts are?!” 

“Nope,” Boorman shoved his cleaver through the gap in the dragon’s ribs, stabbing it repeatedly. Jade whirled to keep a wild glancing blow from crashing through their shield. 

“Then why are we still cutting off its heads!” Elora screamed. The severed neck stump started to boil ominously.

Boorman handed the chest cavity off to Jade and raced over to the stump. He chopped off the budding bits of new-head-tumor. They quickly grew back. He did it again. He’d found that this sort of repetitive pruning worked decently as a delay tactic for head regrowth. “We’re bad at planning,” Boorman admitted.

Jade started stuffing explosive knives into the dragon’s chest with her hands. “Stand back, shield up around the hole,” she told Elora. She palmed a throwing star. 

“Why? What’re you doing?” Elora squeaked. Jade ignored her, stepping behind the new bubble shield between them and the chest cavity and lining up the shot. 

“That’s a horrible idea!” Boorman shouted, still hacking away at the stump. “You won’t even get through the sternum!” 

Jade shrugged. “It’ll work!” She threw one of her stars at the tightly packed knives. 

The whole thing, of course, massively blew up in their faces. Elora watched shell-shocked as knives, bone fragments, and bloody dragon bits splattered inside her shield, barely containing the shrapnel bomb Jade had created. It was a good thirty seconds before things stopped rebounding in there and Elora could drop it. 

The bomb did not break through the sternum but it did take another bloody chunk out of the ribs. “Damn,” Jade said. 

“Knives weren’t deep enough!” Boorman explained. 

“Oh my stars,” Elora panted, completely out of breath. “You’re as bad as Kit. What the hell.” In the distance, a massive shimmering cloud of dust grew large in the horizon. Closer, a golden streak shot by. 

Airk flew past, riding a wave of energy from Willow with a glass shard as a surfboard. “Hey guys!” he shouted, twirling his chain. “Gals! Non-binary pals!” He arced up towards the remaining dragon faces, narrowly dodging swipes from the claws. 

“Glad you finally chose to join us!” Boorman hollered, cutting the stump back further. Elora took a stab at blasting the chest cavity with magic while Jade darted around keeping the claws from eviscerating them both. 

“Kit’s not here yet. They’re over there,” Jade shouted at Airk. He was circling around the jawless head now, scraping its eyes and nose off with every pass.  

“What?! Over where?” Boorman demanded, his cleaver blurring into a whirlwind as even more new baby-head tumors popped up. 

“Hey, do you see that…?” Elora trailed off staring at the impending massive storm of dust and glass. 

“That’s Kit,” Jade smiled. The wind started to swirl around them, sucking the air out of their lungs. 

Boorman looked up. “Oh, balls.” The dragon head with the nearly severed neck had its jaw open and was sucking in air. “Jade, we gotta go!”

“Not without Kit!” 

“Are you sure that’s Kit…?” Elora squinted. She could just make out a shining dot at the center of the cloud, barreling towards them at speeds no person should be capable of. “Oh no.”

“Kit!” Boorman roared, waving his cleaver. “Hsu-Gala! HSU-GALA!” Kit either couldn’t hear him or didn’t realize he wanted them to stop, because they kept coming on like a herd of superpowered horses. 

Clicking and popping filled the air. This close they could smell the ozone and see the first particles start to shake far down the dragon’s throat. Airk abandoned the jawless, newly eyeless, head, flying towards that one as fast as Willow could funnel him.

“The heads!” Elora screamed, throwing up barriers as fast as she could. “Jade— the heads! Now!” 

Boorman stared at her like she was insane. “We have to go! Kit will be fine!” 

“This is our only shot to get it all at once!” Jade yelled, already running for the ridge. 

“It’s going to get us all at once!” Boorman bellowed, but he went back to chopping up the stump anyway. 

The horrible halo started to take shape around the dragon’s remaining mouth. The air around them got hotter. 

Airk swung his chain around its neck from behind and heaved, Elora slammed it under its chin with as much force as she could muster. The head jerked up, pointing at the sky. Jade leaped from the ridge and swung—

THOOM. 

For a second, it was daytime again. The dragonfire blast went off in a wild arc through the clouds as the head flew into the air, completely severed from the body. Then the explosion died, along with the dragon’s detached brain. 

“Holy hell,” Boorman chanted, swinging his cleaver down with more force than before. “Realms above.” Ash and blood rained down from the sky. “Crone’s! Shriveled! Bunghole!”

Airk whooped, flicking the chain out as he circled around for another pass. Elora ran for the falling headless-neck, tracking its trajectory to the ground. She picked up a massive glass shard with magic mid-step and dropped it down on the stump to sheer off the end. Then she did it again, mirroring Boorman. 

The dragon roared in fury as much as it was able to without a mouth, the resulting sound wet and thick. Kit was almost visible as a person-shape now instead of just a shiny speck. Soon they were close enough for the others to see that the dust cloud was the glass ground vaporizing beneath Kit’s feet. 

The dragon reared back and raised its claws. 

Airk jumped from the flying glass shard, sailing between the twin strikes just as one of the paws sheared through his ride. Jade reached the top of the far ridge and leaped, throwing star in one hand and sword in the other. Airk lodged his chain into the head’s eye socket and swung up around its neck. 

The claws swiped down. Jade wasn’t high enough. She was going to miss the head and get spiked straight into the ground. She threw the throwing star down between her feet.

“JADE!” something roared. 

She twisted in mid-air, slamming the throwing star with her sword. She went rocketing off the shockwave, just clearing the swipe from the claws, flying up into the air in an arc almost as high as Airk’s. 

Airk came down around the neck, Jade sliced out with her sword, slitting the throat nearly in two as she passed. 

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The head went flying. So did Jade and Airk.

Which is around the time Kit arrived and punched through the dragon’s chest like a meteorite.

Chapter Text

At this point, Kit couldn’t stop even if they’d wanted to. 

Getting thrown across the crater hurt, even in magic armor. Their head just barely didn’t end up splattered all over the dirt. The decade and a half they spent flying through the air after the dragon punted them fortunately gave them enough time to figure out how to hit the cliffside feet-first. 

This thing really needed a helmet. 

They lay in their deep hole in the crevice wall like a splinter under skin. It was really freaking hard to move. Literal tons of mountain were squeezing down on them from all sizes, and Kit only had the exact amount of space as their body made when it came in. There was barely enough room to breathe so long as they only did it shallowly. They’d never been claustrophobic before, but they certainly were now. 

They tried wiggling, nothing. 

They tried screaming at the cuirass, nothing. 

They tried ejecting knives from anywhere they could think of. Finally that did something. It turned out they had toe knives. This seemed initially almost as useless as where Jade had found the off-switch. Kit was not super hot on the cuirass designers these days. 

But then, inch by inch, they were able to shove their feet far enough up from their initial stopping point to make use of the slight amount of space that was the width difference between their hips and their ankles. They twisted their toes out, ejected the knives, and straightened their ankles to squeeze their whole body forward up the tube. Then they did it again.

This was by far the worst thing they’d ever had to do, physically speaking. 

The cuirass kept it from hurting as much as it should’ve, which is to say it kept their tendons mostly attached to their bones. By the time Kit could see light at the end of the tunnel, they were pretty sure their feet had fallen off and the cuirass was just moving on its own with Kit’s remains inside. 

Finally, finally, their head broke out into open air. They wiggled their shoulders until they could painstakingly claw their way out of the Kit-shaped hole in the crater wall. They fell to the ground sobbing in relief and laid there for an indeterminate amount of time. It was good to see the stars. 

They got to their knees, still not trusting their ankles to hold and peered inside their personal hell. The hole was only like, maybe ten feet deep. 

“You,” Kit pointed shakily at the mountainside, “cannot kill me. I’m unkillable. I’m immortal. I made a promise to Jade Claymore and I’m gonna keep it.”

They tried to stand up. “Oh holy hells that hurts—!” It felt like standing on exposed bone. “Crone’s cum I am not okay.”

They started to walk. They nearly lost their lunch. They kept going. Jade needed them. 

The crater was even bigger now. They were at least a mile away from any of the others. The dragon was just a mountain of darkness and colorful flashing lights against the night sky. 

Kit slowly started to run. 

The cuirass boosted their steps as they moved, gradually picking up force and speed until the glass ground started cracking beneath their feet. The pain was so blindingly bad they sort of just stopped feeling their body at all. 

The cuirass kept charging up, glowing even brighter. 

The ground started to vaporize beneath their feet. Kit wasn’t entirely sure they were touching it anymore. It was at this point that it occurred to them that maybe they should slow down. But inertia is a powerful force, and Kit was still gaining momentum as they went. They had to get back to the others. 

The world around them flickered out of sync with their vision. They didn’t know if it was the lingering effects of the explosion, or they were just moving too fast for their eyes to keep up. The force of their own speed started to screw with their head, a horrible ache building and pulsing in their sinuses. Kit screamed just to release the pressure. 

They pointed themself at the biggest vague shadowy spot on the horizon. Light so bright it hurt to look at started to gather around its peak. 

“Oh, hell no,” Kit choked out. “ JADE! AIRK! ELORA! Ugh— BOORMAN, WILLOW!”

THOOM. The beam of light shot out into the sky instead of at the ground. It lit up the battlefield, revealing flying figures around the dragon’s head. The whole world went white, Kit couldn’t see anything anymore. 

“JADE!” they screamed. 

There was a wall in front of them. Kit couldn’t tell what it was. They prayed it was the dragon and they hadn’t been running the wrong direction this whole time. 

They put their arms up to shield their head and jumped forward. 

Tucked up into a little cannonball of armor, Kit couldn’t really see much as they slammed into the pit Jade had dug in the dragon’s chest. Which was good, because that much blood would’ve made them even more nauseous.

Kit was a missile. The chest cavity exploded around them, unable to take the force of the intrusion. Bones crunched, organs popped, the smells were rancid. Something thick and heavy rebounded off of Kit’s arms, splattering their face with wet stickiness. A little bit got in their mouth. It tasted rotten. 

And then they were out the other side, hanging for a brief glorious second in the open sky. 

The world dipped. Kit hit the ground so hard they carved a canyon into the stone beneath the glass and rolled another half-mile further. 

Kit lay there, spread eagled on the ground and staring up at the stars spinning all around them. The cuirass button glowed green in approval. Magic wove a net around them, slowly dissipating. 

Kit rolled over and threw up. 

“Well,” Elora looked at the splattered remains of what used to be the dragon’s torso, “I guess it doesn’t matter where the hearts were.”

“The real hearts were the friends we made along the way,” Airk echoed, covered in gore and a little stunned. He was still floating a few feet off the ground in Willow’s magical safety net. 

On the opposite side of the dragon puddle, Jade crawled out of hers and flopped to the ground. She landed in a flesh pile and didn’t attempt to get up. 

Elora’s shield had kept the worst of the bone fragments from beheading them, but they were all absolutely coated in dragon viscera. It was impossible not to be. The air was dragon gut mist. They were standing on it, stewing in it, and breathing it in with every ragged gag. 

Boorman kicked what remained of the fleshy rib cage open, checking to make sure there wasn’t anything still inside. 

“This thing is puréed,” he reported. He stepped on one of the only squishy lumps that still had shape, popping it with his boot. “I think we’re good.” 

“Holy hell,” Jade breathed from the ground. She wasn’t sure if she was even fully inside her body, or just hanging out somewhere nearby. “We just killed a dragon.”

“A three-headed dragon,” Willow agreed, walking up to join them. “I don’t think that’s ever been done before. I feel like if it had, I’d have heard about it.” 

He tapped his staff and let Airk drop to the glass like a potato sack. He landed on his tailbone and sat there for a bit, deep breathing and looking a little green.  

Boorman strolled over to Elora, sword in hand and grinning. His smile was the only bit of his face not covered in gore. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I can die happy now.” 

Jade high-fived him from the ground as he passed. She grinned viciously. “I want to do it again.”

“You two are insane,” Elora swore. She looked around at the desolate, gore coated crater. “I wish I never met you. I wish I was never born . You should’ve left me with the Crone in Immemorial City.”

“That could be arranged,” Ghost-Graydon offered, making bedroom eyes at Elora through a reflection in the blood puddles. 

“That was pretty sick,” Airk said, heedless of Graydon because only Elora could see him. “But I also think I might be sick.” He clamped a hand over his mouth. 

Elora kicked the puddle. “Shut up!”

“Crone’s tits, Elora, he’s just nauseous,” Boorman exclaimed. He pointed at Airk. “Let the poor boy yak in peace!” 

“Sorry, Airk,” Elora sulked. 

“It’s cool,” Airk waved her off, wiping vomit off his face. “We just really need to have that talk.”

“Destroy him,” Ghost-Graydon hissed, taking shape in the bloody mist all around. “He was never good enough for you.”

“Can it wait?” Elora hedged. “We just killed a dragon.”

“I killed a dragon!” Jade exclaimed as it finally clicked home. She sat up, practically glowing, then regretted it immediately as every one of her bones screamed at her. She stood, staggered sideways, and barely kept her feet by leaning on her staff. “I am so hyped right now!” 

“Okay, maybe we should all calm down,” Elora grabbed her by the shoulders to keep her upright. “Where did the Dragon’s Blood potions go?”

“Here.” Willow handed her a dripping bloody sack with a certain element of fatherly pride. “Those were the craziest stunts I’ve ever seen. And I used to kick it with Madmartigan. I’ve seen some crazy things.”

“I always did want to live up to dear old dad’s legacy,” Airk mused. “Except without all the cheating. You know what they say about outgrowing your father...” He quickly added, “Don’t tell Kit.”

“We should probably go get Kit,” Jade gagged and handed Elora back the empty bottle.   

They all stared at the wicked channel carved into the ground in the wake of Kit’s landing. That was going to be a bit of a walk. 

“Could we go collect Kit… later?” Boorman proposed. “My boot doesn’t have a sole and I’ve been walking around on shattered glass all day. I think my foot might fall off.” 

“I’m old and tired,” Willow chimed in. 

“I’m young and tired,” Elora added. 

“I just don’t want to go,” Airk admitted.

“You can stay here if you want,” Jade sheathed her sword and started limping off down Kit’s trail. If she didn’t go now she wouldn’t be able to move later. “We’ll meet you back at the dragon soup.”

The others looked at the puddle of flesh around them. It was already starting to smell pretty ripe. “On second thought, I’ll come too,” Willow said. 

By the time the group reached them, Kit was laying slightly off to the left of their original vomit puddle and right next to a fresh one. They were on their back, staring blankly at the moon, limbs starfished out around them. They were so completely coated in blood and guts they looked like just another miscellaneous dragon bit. 

“Hello, Kit,” Jade gloated, plopping down next to their head. Kit rolled their eyes to take her in, then immediately squeezed them shut in regret. They sucked in air through their teeth, trying to quell the vertigo.  

“Hey…”

“I killed a dragon,” Jade bragged.

“Sorry, can’t really hear you,” Kit gurgled. “I think my brain’s leaking out through my ears.”

“Yeah, you look like the dragon nearly pulped you,” Jade told them. Kit, of course, didn’t react. “I, on the other hand, decimated that dragon. ”

“I never want to do this again,” Kit moaned. Jade patted their head. 

“Don’t worry. If there’s another one, you don’t have to help,” she assured them. “I’ll kill it myself. I know how now.”

“She means it,” Boorman said, leaning over Kit so they could see him. “And I believe her.”

“Me too,” Willow agreed, slumping down near Kit’s feet with a sigh. 

Airk crouched down beside them and grabbed their limp wrist in one hand, high fiving them with the other. “Great tag-team, bro.” 

“Please stop talking, you’re making my ears ring,” Kit pleaded. 

Elora frowned at them. She knelt beside Jade and produced another gory bottle from her bag. “Drink this.” She poured some of her heinous brew into Kit’s open mouth. Kit gagged, spluttering. 

Elora put a hand over their mouth and nose to force them to swallow. Kit, just barely, choked it down without aspirating on their own vomit. 

“What the hell, man!” they coughed, trying to scrape off their own tongue with their teeth. “Did you just make me drink raw meat?!”

“Pretty much,” Airk confirmed. 

“If you can talk, you can drink more of it.” Elora shoved the bottle in Kit’s mouth. 

“Stop!” they begged, snorting and gagging. Jade rubbed their back, propping them upright. “Oh gods, that’s so disgusting.”

“It really is the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth,” Jade agreed. 

“See! I told you!” Airk yelled. 

“Quit whining,” Elora chided. “We all had to do it.”

“I’m going vegetarian after this, personally,” Boorman dropped down to join them. 

“Me too,” Willow agreed. 

“I don’t know,” Airk muttered. “The taste is kind of growing on me…”

“It’ll keep you alive,” Jade informed Kit, letting them sag against her. “Mostly. Which you desperately need right now, because you’re doing a crap job at it yourself.” 

“Are you talking to me?” Kit groaned, their voice thick and way too loud. They were basically shouting in Jade’s ear. “I still can’t hear. Everything is ringing.” 

Jade looked at Elora. “That’ll probably come back,” Elora assured her. 

“Kit, you’re an annoying little snit and half the time I can barely tolerate you. Your taste in clothes is bad and you don’t deserve your girlfriend, she’s too good for you,” Boorman declared. Airk glared.

Kit just stared at Boorman in blank confusion. “What?”

Boorman clapped joyously. Kit flinched. “Wow, would you look at that? They really can’t hear!”

“Don’t be mean to my twin,” Airk crossed his arms. “They blew themself up twice today.”

“Sounds like their own damn fault,” Willow grumbled. “Blew me up too. Exploding swords was a horrible idea.”

“You didn’t die, did you?” Elora snapped. “I think we can all stand to let that one go.” 

“We killed the dragon,” Airk shouted at Kit, heavily enunciating every word in case they’d missed it in the chaos. Kit winced in pain.

“ I killed the dragon,” Jade corrected him. 

Boorman looked miffed. “Hey now, we all killed the dragon—”

“We what?!” Kit yelled at Airk, confused. 

“Killed the dragon!” Airk mimed cutting off the dragon’s heads and blowing it up, complete with sound effects. 

Kit took a minute to parse and then lit up. “We killed the dragon!” Kit twisted to face Jade with a blinding grin. “Jade! I killed the dragon!” They hugged her, it was completely disgusting — like being hugged by someone who didn’t have skin with all their organs hanging out. 

Jade scowled, “I killed the dragon. You just plowed through its corpse.” 

“You helped too!” Kit continued shouting simultaneously, not hearing her. “We killed a dragon, Jade! That’s so freaking awesome! You’re the coolest person on the planet!” Jade sighed. Close enough. She hugged them back, sticky as they were. Her heart rate finally settled back into normal living range.

“It was a team effort,” she agreed with absolutely no humility, making it sound like a lie. She was only admitting it because she knew Kit couldn’t hear her. She’d goad them endlessly about who actually killed the dragon in private later, when she could really rile them up. 

“Thanks Jade, that’s very generous of you,” Boorman said. 

“But I cut off the most heads,” Jade added. She rearranged Kit against her. “I got like four out of five heads myself.”

Boorman scowled. “No one appreciates what I do around here.”

“Me either,” Elora sighed, handing out another round of potions.

Willow assessed Kit, who still seemed like they’d broken every bone in their body, but maybe less fatally now. “Do you think we can move them? We should get to shelter, we’re too exposed here.”

“I mean, if you want them to die, then sure,” Ghost-Graydon told Elora with a shrug. He peered over from his gore-streaked glass shard at the edge of the crevice, forbidden arcane medical textbook open up on his lap. It was really nice to have someone who could cheat and check an evil library full of banned tomes while you were out killing things. “The cuirass has a healing factor, but it’s not that good.”

“No, we can’t move them yet,” Elora forced another potion into Kit’s hands. “Drink.”

“How many of these can you take in a day?” Airk asked, staring into his forlornly. 

Ghost-Graydon flipped pages, “Probably like four before you start to hit blood toxicity.”

Elora snatched the potion out of Airk’s hands. “Nevermind! Nobody drink anything but Kit!” Jade spat hers back out, right into Kit’s face. 

“Sorry! Sorry!” Jade tried to wipe it off with her equally disgusting shirt sleeve. Kit groaned but didn’t move, none of it really made any difference in the amount of gore on them. 

“Hm,” Boorman observed. “As much as I don’t fancy staying by a bloody dragon corpse all night for scavengers to prey on… I also don’t want to leave a trail of viscera behind to wherever we hole up. Willow?”

Willow shrugged. “I’m tapped out. Elora?”

Elora wracked her brains. “Uh, one second, I don’t know any people-safe cleaning spells off the top of my head.” She looked meaningfully at the glass ridge at the edge of the channel. “Okay, got it.” She turned back to the group. “Vantage skrubbiyo!” She shouted, waving the her hands over all of them, including herself. 

The whole group was suddenly blasted over the head by a pressurized waterfall. It was so powerful, Jade could feel her top layer of skin peel off along with the blood flakes. One of her braids came out, tomorrow it was all going to frizz to high heaven. The stream cut off and they were all left sitting there, dripping wet, flesh and clothes awry. Kit, who’d had no warning, looked particularly like a shiny drowned cat. 

“P-people-safe?!” Boorman spluttered, spitting out water. It dripped from his beard in pink rivulets. “That’s people-safe?!”

“I may have overdone it a little, I’m still hopped up on dragon juice,” Elora at least had the civility to look sheepish. She pushed her sopping wet hair back out of her eyes. 

“These hangovers are gonna suck ,” Airk moaned. His silk shirt was now completely sheer and clinging to his chest. 

“Everyone stay still,” Elora ordered, assessing the porcupine levels of glittering splinters sticking out of their skin and clothes. “Abhass turmach!”

Glass shards went flying out of everyone except Kit into a disturbingly large bloody pile by their feet. “Gnarly,” Boorman gagged. 

Kit looked at it. Looked at their sopping wet, still splinter-riddled hands. Looked like they might cry. “Can’t get through the armor,” Elora apologized. 

“Do you think we should look around for supplies first?” Willow wrung bloody water out of his ponytail. “There used to be a village nearby. I mean, probably not anymore given the dragon— but maybe some of the ruins will be useable. We could all stay there for the night.”

“No,” Airk said. “Nope. No. We are not camping in abandoned ruins.”

“It would be a roof…” Jade mused. “They might even have beds.”

“Nope!” Airk yelled. “Not doing it!”

“There’s no harm in checking to see if they have supplies. And a cart. Maybe clean clothes,” Elora offered. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Don’t say that!” Boorman snapped. He jumped to his feet. “Now you’ve jinxed us! I cannot fight another dragon today, I’m done. Go save explore the creepy ruins your damn selves, I’ll be over there—” He pointed down the mountain and out of the crater. “—finding us a place to sleep.” He stormed off into the crater. 

Airk got to his feet, every joint in his body creaking. “I’m with Boorman.” He staggered away. “Catch you later.” 

Jade looked between the two groups. On the one hand, the promise of a real bed. Possibly with Kit, if they recovered enough to move. On the other, Boorman was right — Elora had jinxed it. They’d definitely have to fight something if they went into that village.

“When’s it safe to move them?” she asked, Kit still curled up pathetically against her chest.

“Uh… give it another hour,” Willow advised. “Maybe a week.”

Jade looked at Kit. “Can you walk?” she yelled, miming a little walking person with her fingers. 

Kit shook their head. “I think my feet fell off and are just stuck inside the cuirass with me,” they shouted. 

Elora sighed. “I’ll go ask Boorman to come back.”

Chapter Text

“I’m dying,” Kit moaned, laid out on a patch of moss inside a giant rotting log the size of a house. Their head was on Jade’s shoulder and their feet on Airk’s lap. At least their hearing was mostly back. 

“You’re not dying,” Jade gently shouted at them. She was going to feel really bad later if it wasn’t true. She still had a bit of the out-of-body shakes herself, but the physical pressure of her loved ones helped keep her grounded. 

“You don’t know I’m not dying,” Kit grumbled, futilely picking at a splinter in their ear. A good sign. They’d been nearly silent the whole walk through the forest deadzone surrounding the crater. 

“I do, because you still have the energy to complain.” Classic Ballantine but also true. In her experience, Kit was the sort of person who would whine endlessly about a minor scrape but go completely silent about a fatal gut wound. It made them practically impossible to keep alive. 

Airk finished inspecting Kit’s armored foot. “Well, I can’t see inside, but nothing’s leaking out of it.” He slapped them on the shin. Kit jerked like they’d been shot. “Probably still attached.”

“Boorman said the cuirass would fix it,” Jade assured Kit. “You just have to wait.”

“Lucky.” Airk eyed the slowly scabbing gouges in his arms. 

“How does Boorman know? He’s not wearing the damn thing,” Kit snapped. Patience had never been their strong suit.

“I’m insulted,” Boorman declared, walking into the log and dropping a load of firewood. “I spent my whole life studying the legends. I know the Kymerian Cuirass better than anyone. I know it better than my own mother!”

“Oh yeah?” Kit goaded him. Jade shut her eyes and prayed for mercy.

“Yeah!” Boorman sat down in front of them and reached for the raised ring in their chest plate where the Lux Arcana had disappeared when it first activated. “If I may?”

“Have at it,” Kit said, not bothering to move. Boorman started clicking and turning the dial like a combination lock. “What the hell are you doing?”

Boorman ignored them. Arcane symbols began to glow and float around the edge of the medallion. The Lux Arcana popped about a quarter of the way out of Kit’s chest with a hiss. Kit eyed it like a particularly horrible bug had just crawled out of their skin. “What the f—”

Boorman slammed his hand down on the magic rod, shoving it back into Kit’s chest. Light burst out around them, splinters shed away, and they shot up from Jade’s lap like they’d been electrocuted. Then Kit rolled over and fell off the moss patch, scratching at their legs furiously. “HELLS THAT ITCHES!”

“What did you just do?” Jade asked, hand creeping towards her sword. 

“Hard reset,” Boorman explained. “Speeds up the process. Didn’t want to listen to them whine for a week.”

“Woah! Where’d you hear about that?” Airk asked. “Does Kit have any other buttons we could use?”

“Hey!” Kit squawked from the grass below, trying to tug off their welded-on boot. 

“Actually, it’s a really interesting story—” Boorman started. 

Kit staggered to their feet, pointing wildly. “No! Do not tell him anything!” 

“Kit! You’re standing!” Airk clapped. 

“Good job, love,” Jade patted the log next to her. The sudden absence ached more than her joints. “Come sit.”

Kit started pacing furiously, still limping. They looked like they were buzzing out of their own skin. They shook their head violently. “Can’t. Have to move.”

Jade and Airk sighed. Kit jumped and tapped the top of the log on their next pass. This was why they weren’t allowed to have coffee. “How long?” Jade asked Boorman, anxiety already spiking again.

“Maybe send them on a run around the mountain. They can go get dinner,” he suggested. He stole Kit’s old spot leaning against Jade with his feet up on Airk. Jade relaxed. 

Upon leaving the crater, the swordfighter squad had found the forest for miles surrounding it dead or dying. Towards the edges, it looked less like a blast zone and more like it’d been scorched by a decade-long drought. Ash and mutilated animal corpses with too many heads littered the ground. Apparently dragonfire could burn things even if it didn’t actually touch them. 

The giant log was the first shelter they’d seen after they hit the living treeline, but local wildlife was still nowhere to be seen. It was disturbingly silent, there weren’t even birds. 

“I could kill another dragon,” Kit exclaimed, fists shaking at their sides as they paced. They were hopping a little now. “Where is one? Point me at it!”

“You didn’t even kill the first one,” Jade corrected them. 

“What? Yeah I did. I totally pulverized it in one punch.” Kit double-tapped the air for emphasis.

“No,” Jade retorted, trying to stifle her grin. Finally. “It was already dying when you ran it over. You just took out the headless corpse.”

“That’s where the hearts are!” Kit insisted. 

“I had those handled,” Jade waved them off.

“Oh, totally,” Boorman muttered. He tried again to scrape the dried dragon viscera off his de-magicked cleaver. “No issues there.”

“I think Jade killed it,” Airk admitted.

“What?!” Kit rounded on him. “Are you serious!”

Airk shrugged. “She took out the most heads. You showed up late to the party, Kit.”

“I shot out its eyes!” Kit complained, still circling like a shark. “And its wing!”

“Dumb luck,” Jade declared. “It clearly didn’t even need those. Besides, you blew yourself up doing it, so it doesn’t count.”

“You all would literally be ashes if it weren’t for me!”

“For which we are very grateful,” Boorman assured Kit. Jade didn’t look like she agreed. 

Kit raised their chin, “Thank you, Boorman.” They glared at Jade and Airk. 

“How did you know that would work?” Airk asked, afraid of the answer. 

Kit shrugged. “Didn’t.” 

“You didn’t think it would work?!” Jade snapped. Boorman flopped across her lap to keep her seated. 

“Pssh– it’s the Kymerian Cuirass!” Boorman exclaimed, as if that explained everything. “Of course it worked. It’s built to withstand anything. Using it to run fast is so disgustingly under-utilizing it, I could puke.”

“Thank you, Boorman!” Kit exclaimed. They started adding little skips and twirls to their loops. “See? The expert agrees with me!”

“We’re going to have a long talk about that last bit later,” Jade promised. Kit’s mouth clicked shut. 

“Actually, how did you finally get it to work?” Boorman asked. “While entertaining, I was pretty sure your crushing performance anxiety was going to kill us all.” 

Kit turned bright red. Jade smirked and crossed her arms. 

“Turns out Kit’s on-switch is also the cuirass on-switch,” Airk explained.

“Not quite,” Jade mused. “I think that’s close, but it’s something else. We already tried–”

“It’s Jade!” Kit shouted before Jade could elaborate. “It only works when she pushes the button.”

Boorman plucked a twig from the log and put it in his mouth. “Interesting… I’ll have to revise my theory.”

“You know, since the cuirass wouldn’t have even come out if it wasn’t for me,” Jade boasted, leaning forward to hold eye contact with Kit. “I think we can all agree that I killed the dragon.” 

Kit turned even redder. They tried to argue, but there were no words. 

“What was it you said?” Jade continued, tapping her chin. “There’s skill and then there’s talent? Well, there’s also chat and then there’s follow through. And I always follow through, Kit.”

All the blood in Kit’s body visibly rushed to their face. Jade was a little worried they might pop. Their expression was caught somewhere between boiling lust and agonized jealousy. Perfect. Jade very deliberately studied her nails, flicking the blood out from under them. She smirked, “Don’t worry, if there’s another dragon you won’t have to fight it. I’ll kill it for you myself.”  

“That’s hot,” Boorman said. Kit looked like they could not possibly agree more. 

“She’s killing it for me, not you.” Kit absently put their hand up to their lips. 

“Please do this somewhere else,” Airk groaned. “Anywhere else. I’m begging you.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jade asked Kit, forcing them to meet her gaze. “Maybe if you’re very good, I’ll even bring you back its skull.”

“Um,” Kit squeaked. They swallowed hard. 

“Nah, you should give it to Scorpia,” Boorman chewed on his stick. “She’d appreciate it more.”

“Please,” Airk moaned, covering his eyes.

“Why don’t you go get dinner?” Jade proposed to Kit. She looked down to clean her sword in clear dismissal. Kit didn’t move fast enough. She glanced up through her lashes and pouted a little. “Please, Kit. For me?”

Kit was out of that log like a rocket. 

“Wow,” Boorman said.

“I can’t believe you made me watch that,” Airk groaned. 

“Like Kit and I didn’t trip over you enough times while you were rolling around in open fields with your dick out.”

“Impressive show,” Boorman declared. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.” 

Jade sketched a bow without getting up. Everything hurt. She wasn’t sure she could stand yet. 

“We really killed a dragon,” Airk murmured, shocked. “I was sure we were gonna get eaten.”

“Well, Jade killed the dragon,” Boorman amended. “We just helped.”

“It was a group effort,” Jade admitted, meaning it this time. Boorman preened. “You’re good with that chain, Airk.”

“Thanks, Mom showed me some things back at the castle.” 

Jade chewed on this for a second. “Huh.” She eyed the chain warily. “It’s yours, then.”

“What does everyone want to do when we’re back in Tir Asleen?” Airk asked while they were on the subject. “Once we beat off Galladoorn and send King Hastur packing.”

Boorman looked at Jade. She rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably and studied the giant whorls of bark across from them. Deep down, she knew the answer. But admitting it to herself meant acknowledging everything in her life that would change, and everything that had already changed. There was so much loss. So much still to be lost. And it was worse, now that she had things she wanted to keep. 

“I, for one, am not going back,” Boorman jumped in, deft with the deflection as always. Jade shot him a grateful look. “If I set foot in Tir Asleen, I’ll be arrested. I’m going home to my mother.”

“I thought you saw her back in Cashmere?” Jade asked. 

“That was just her vacation house. She’s really into timeshares, I think she’s got a condo in Galladoorn too.”

Airk raised his eyebrows. “Can I get in on that? I could really use a vacation somewhere with a bed that isn’t sandy.”

Jade nodded. “Same here.” Except not Galladoorn. She rubbed the hilt of her sword. She couldn’t bring herself to replace it, even if the gift was a reminder. Ballantine’s belief and his betrayals. His blood on the blade. Would he have ever told her? 

“Sure, the condo’s always free,” Boorman offered. “If you’re willing to help her sell cosmetic powders. She’s got this whole thing going, where you have to buy them to sell them. I can get you the starter pack, but after that you’re on your own.”

“Maybe not Galladoorn,” Airk mused. “I think if we go there King Hastur would have us arrested.”

They all went silent. Airk hadn’t known Graydon for more than a night, but Boorman and Jade both considered him a close friend. There was no surviving what the Crone did to him. The way things had ended hung heavy in all their hearts, especially Elora’s. 

“I think he would’ve been proud,”

Jade said. “To see us kill a dragon.”

“He would’ve shat his pants,” Boorman corrected. “And then blasted the thing in the head.”

They laughed, but it was hollow. The three fell into awkward companionable silence. Boorman polished his weapons, Airk nursed his bruises. 

Jade rubbed her sword hilt again. The wood was smooth beneath her palm. Kit’s ribbon from Cashmere was missing. She must’ve lost it in the fight — no, she vaguely remembered pulling it off in the cave because it was impractical. She dug around in her chest pocket beneath her armor. 

Kit’s letter came out a pulped wad, but the ribbon had survived. It was threadbare and stained now, warm with her body heat. She looped it between her fingers until it hugged them firmly.

“Do you want to start a fire…?” Airk gestured to the pile of unused firewood.

“Nope,” Boorman said. “Thought about it for more than a minute and that was a bad idea.”

“No more fire,” Jade agreed.

Airk shrugged. “All the game should be cooked already anyway.”

The sun rose in the distance — the real sun, not the dragon’s fire. They’d made it to dawn. Jade didn’t know if she quite believed it. 

“What’s taking Kit so long?” Boorman complained. “I want to sleep. We’ve been awake for two days and killed a dragon. Princess Magic Armor Pants can keep watch all day, the rest of us have earned a nap.”

Jade tightened a compression bandage on her throbbing elbow. “They probably got lost. If they’re not here by nightfall, I’ll go find them.” 

“At least they’ll be easy to spot in that thing,” Airk muttered. 

They returned to wrapping their still-healing wounds. The Dragon’s Bloody Whatever was miraculous, but it couldn’t fix everything immediately. Airk took off his shirt to make more bandages. Jade and Boorman started a rousing game of I Spy. 

“Tree,” Jade guessed for the third time in a row. 

“Damn!” Boorman swore. “You’re too good.” 

Jade idly played with the ribbon, trying it into increasingly complex knots. “I spy… something green and blue.”

“That leaf with a hole in it,” Airk declared, chilling in his natural state of shirtlessness, tits out, abs and barely healed stab wound on full display. “You two suck at this.”

Pounding in the distance. 

“I spy with my little eye…” Boorman pondered, “…an idiot.”

Kit ingloriously slammed back into the log, barely skidding to a stop. The ground was smoking beneath their feet. 

“What kept you?” Airk demanded. 

“Got lost, same as your shirt,” Kit snapped, panting. Boorman handed Jade two silver pieces. “Couldn’t find anything. Whole mountain’s toasted or empty.”

“Why didn’t you grab some of the cooked stuff?” Airk asked.

“Yeah, Kit,” Boorman jumped in. “Why didn’t you?”

Kit threw up their hands. “I don’t know! It seemed burnt?” A chorus of dead-eyed stares. 

“If it’s burnt it means it’s cooked,” Airk explained, like he was talking to a toddler. 

“Oh,” Kit muttered. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Well, why don’t you go get it?” Jade suggested. “Mark the trees this time so you don’t get lost.”

Kit raised a finger as if to argue, but stopped, having nothing to say in their own defense. “Fine,” they huffed and jogged off again. 

“Useless,” Boorman sighed, chewing on a fresh stick. “Not a thought in that pretty little head.”

Jade sighed. “Hate to see them leave, love to watch them go.” Especially in that armor. 

“Stop,” Airk begged them both.

“The Kymerian Cuirass is wasted on them,” Boorman complained. “Totally unique, capable of untold destruction, and they’re just running around like an idiot. I can’t even watch.”

Kit rushed back into the log, sending everyone’s hair streaming in the sudden breeze. Kit dropped a massive pile of dead animals onto the ground. “Here,” they wheezed. 

Airk studied Kit’s haul. It was hard to tell what kind of creatures they had been, deer maybe? They were all a little deformed, one of them had seven legs. “Why do they look like that?” 

“It’s all meat,” Kit snapped.

Jade pursed her lips. “I’m not sure I like meat anymore, to be honest.”

“Great work, Kit,” Boorman said. “But we only need, like, two. Maybe put the rest back so we don’t attract three-headed wolves.” 

Kit scowled. They crossed their arms. “Why don’t you do it your damn self?”

Jade just looked at them. Kit glared back. Jade raised an eyebrow. Kit growled but stormed out, taking most of the corpses with them. 

Boorman put his hand on Jade’s shoulder. “You have an ungodly amount of patience.”

Jade grinned. “I like riling them up. It’ll be a lot of fun later.”

Airk shook his head. “You two deserve each other.”

Kit staggered back into the log and doubled over, hands on their knees. “Okay. Done. Anything else, your highness?” they gasped. 

“Nope, I’m good,” Boorman took the twig out of his mouth and twirled it. 

“Good job, Kit,” Jade patted the moss patch on her free side. Kit glared but sat down heavily. Jade knocked her shoulder into theirs. Kit scooted away. 

“When do you think Elora and Willow will be back?” Airk asked. 

“Don’t know, but I’m about ready to turn in,” Boorman yawned.

“What about dinner?” Kit demanded.

“It’s breakfast now,” Airk grumbled.

Boorman shrugged. “Not hungry. All the dragon viscera really killed my appetite.” He took off his jacket, bunched it up as a pillow, and rolled off Jade and Airk’s laps to stretch out in the grass at the bottom of the log. “Wake me up when Willow and Elora get here.”

Kit nearly kicked him into the corpse pile. Jade gave their knee a rub. “Feeling calmer?” she asked. 

Kit leaned back against the bark wall. “Still not about sleep, but not going to explode either.”

“Maybe we should take the cuirass off…” Jade muttered. 

Kit looked up with sudden interest. “Like, take the cuirass off? Or…” They cleared their throat. “Take the cuirass off?”

“Take the cuirass off,” Jade said very clearly only meaning the armor. “I can’t even feel my arms Kit, I’m way too tired for any of that.” 

Kit hid their disappointment well. They slid their hand around her back, pulling her into their side. Their pauldron made for a horrible pillow. It was still exactly where she wanted to be. 

“Partner with an off-switch must be convenient,” Boorman considered, clearly not asleep. Kit glared at him but his eyes were closed. “But no. I already had to carry them down the mountain, I don’t want to haul them back up. I say we leave it on.” 

“The longer it’s on, the longer you’ll have to carry them once they crash,” Jade argued, yawning. She tied the ribbon back to her sword hilt.

“That’s a future-Boorman problem,” Boorman flipped over and actually went to sleep.

“It’s fine,” Kit sighed. They put down a nearby remnant of Airk’s shirt over their lap, so Jade could rest her head in it without getting her hair caught in their chainmail skirt. “You two should get some rest. I’ll take watch.”

“You sure?” Jade asked, but she was yawning so hard it was barely intelligible. Kit nodded, shifting her into a more comfortable position across their lap. She wrapped a cleanish silk scrap around her curls. Kit ran a hand over it, soothing. Reassuring them both they were here and safe. 

Airk watched them, leaning against the wall with his eyes half-closed. When Jade’s breathing had evened out and Boorman was softly snoring, he whispered to Kit, “You good?”

“What?” they deflected, not meeting his eyes. Neither of them had to be very quiet on account of all the lingering hearing loss. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure? You look a little off.”

Kit flashed him a smile. “It’s just been a long day. I’m fine, Airk. Go to sleep.”

Airk eyed them skeptically, but his eyelids dropped. He blinked them open again. “Airk, seriously, don’t worry. I’m okay.”

Airk sighed, already mostly asleep. “If you’re secretly dying, I’m gonna kill you.”

“I promise you I’m not,” Kit told him. His eyes closed and his breathing deepened. Kit leaned back against the wall. 

They listened to the sound of their family sleeping. Alive. Safe. Mostly whole. 

Their chest felt so full it ached. But it had also just been aching since the crater. They rubbed it uselessly through the chest plate. 

Kit coughed, as quietly as they could inside the log. Their breath caught in their throat. They grabbed another scrap of Airk’s shirt to muffle the sound and coughed harder, trying to stay still enough not to disturb Jade. 

When they took the rag away, there was fresh blood on it. Again. 

They wiped their mouth and leaned back against the wall, resting their clean hand in Jade’s hair. It was fine. It would be fine.

A little bit of blood dribbled down from their nose for the umpteenth time since they started running around the mountain. They wiped it away with the rag. Then they stuffed the evidence into a crack in the wall where no one would find it. 

It was nearly dawn by the time Elora and Willow reached the village. It was predictably empty, but only half in ruins. The other half looked like someone had made a vague attempt at rebuilding out of the glass shards left behind when their brethren got fried. The buildings were a patchwork of glass and scorched wood, sagging at the seams like they’d been this way for years. 

Village was probably now a generous term for what had once been a bustling Nelwyn farming community. He doubted that any of the original occupants had stuck around past whenever the other half of the town got cratered. It was probably all squatters living in the ruins now. He hoped he wouldn’t find the same thing when he made it back to Mims.

The current locals had abandoned their houses in a hurry, probably as soon as the bombs started going off on the other side of the mountain. Some of the shack’s makeshift chimneys were still smoking, but a quick glance through the open doors showed no one was home. 

Elora shamelessly walked inside one, heading straight for the steaming pot on the fire. “As true empress of all the realms, last blood of whatever, yadayadayada, I’m requisitioning this,” she declared. She grabbed the ladle out of the pot and gulped it down. She made a face. “Needs salt.”

Willow took in the single room, with its smelly hay bed and crusty dirt floor. He subtly toed one of the harder brown dirt lumps away from him. Whoever was living here clearly hadn’t found time to clean in a while. 

“Not sure you should eat that,” he said, as Elora took her second spoonful. He sat down on a rock that had clearly once served as a chair. “Don’t know what’s in it.” 

“It’s rabbit, I think,” Elora swished it around a bit in her mouth. “Maybe some… rat? It’s hard to tell, they weren’t a very good cook.” She started rummaging around in a rickety wooden box near the fire. “Do you think they have any spices around here?” She gulped down another mouthful.

“Maybe stop. It’s probably all poison,” Graydon advised, popping his head in from the boiling pot. Elora spat her spoonful back out, splattering his reflection. 

“That bad, huh?” Willow sympathized. “I might still have some spicebird jerky on me, let me check.” He started rifling through his pockets. 

“Like, poison poison?!” Elora hissed into the soup. She frantically checked her pulse. 

“Magical radiation,” Graydon explained, reforming but a little warped by bubbles. “From the dragon fire. Super nasty – causes infertility, tumors, super weird local wildlife, death…” Elora looked at him like he’d just told her she’d grown a second head. Which he kind of had. 

“Willow…” she called, setting the spoon back in the pot like it might bite her. “Have you heard of uh, radification poison?”

“What?” Willow took his boots off to shake the rocks out. The smell couldn’t make the room any worse. 

Graydon repeated himself, nodding encouragingly. Elora corrected herself along with him, “Magical… radiation poisoning.”

“Oh,” Willow froze. Pebbles clattered to the floor in the sudden silence. 

“Oh?!” Elora panicked. 

“It’s probably fine,” Willow assured her. He pulled his boot back on. “Dragons are radiation resistant, so Dragon’s Bloody Boosters are one of the only cures out there. We drank so much of them, it’d take a full-power blast directly to the face to do any of us in.”

Elora looked to Graydon for confirmation. “I’ll go look it up,” he agreed.

“Should we avoid drinking more, uh, radiation poisoned things?” Elora asked them both. Graydon pulled some books down from the shelf behind him.

“You can’t, really. It’s excess magical energy radiating out from the dragonfire itself,” Willow explained. “Silent, deadly, gets into absolutely everything. Impossible to clean up. Kills anything in the surrounding area, like that deadzone from before.” Graydon skimmed a page and nodded in confirmation.

“You didn’t think to mention this before?!” Elora squawked.

“Usually the people fighting the dragon don’t live long enough for it to become an issue.” Willow tapped his nose. “Good thinking on those potions Elora, otherwise we’d all be very dead.”

Elora mouthed thank you into the soup pot. Graydon smiled and flashed her a thumbs up. “We should warn the others,” Elora said. “Before they eat any radiation.” 

“Too late now,” Willow declared. “It’ll be fine so long as we keep drinking those potions.” He shuddered. “For the rest of our lives.” 

“I think we’re going to need a lot more dragon for that,” Elora muttered, looking a little green. 

“We’ll grab some on the way back.” Willow stood up. “Come on, let’s go find a cart.”

They picked their way through the abandoned village, scrounging up some cleaner clothes and a couple discarded runnysacks. “...Last Blood of Kymeria,” Willow dictated, as Elora scratched out an IOU note into the dirt floor of the shack they were ransacking.

“Are you sure you should sign that?” Graydon asked from the glass wall. Elora shrugged. 

“This way they’ll know who to bill.” She paused. “Actually, I’m broke, one second.” She scratched the signature line out with her foot and scribbled, Kit Tanthalos, Heir to Tir Asleen. 

“Good call,” Willow agreed. “At least it’s not half as bad as Cashmere.”

“Maybe we should stay away from populated areas…” Elora considered. Graydon sighed in defeat and went back to scouting ahead for supplies.

They made it through the village by sunrise, entirely unscathed – which was honestly more suspicious than the alternative. By the time they reached the outskirts, Elora was sweating buckets and checking every corner. “Are you sure there’s no monsters here?” she asked Willow.

“There’s that one,” he said, pointing. “Found a cart.” 

And there it was. A pristine abandoned cart, sitting right on the edge of the forest, packed to the brim with supplies and then forgotten in a panic. Hitched to it was what might’ve once been a salamander, but had since devolved into a pile of fleshy lumps.

“Is… is it alive?” Elora whispered. The lizard’s fifteen eyes spun lazily, seeing nothing. The four on its back tracked a passing cloud. 

“I think so,” Willow said. 

“Why does it look like that?” All six of its legs wavered as it swayed gently in the wind. 

“Radiation poisoning,” Graydon shouted from the cart window. 

“Oh my stars,” Elora gulped. “Are we going to look like that?” She frantically patted her arms down for signs of new limb growth.

“No, that takes years of exposure,” Willow said. “We’re lucky we didn’t run into any local wildlife on the way over. The whole forest is probably like this.”

“Gross,” Elora chanted, thinking of her recent meal. “Gross, so gross, can’t believe I ate that–”

“Let’s take the cart,” Willow decided. He strolled over. Elora grabbed for him, but he was too quick.

“Willow!” Elora hissed. He was already practically on top of the melting salamander, ducking around to grab its reins before it could bite him. The creature didn’t even twitch.

“Hop on, Elora!” Willow scrambled into the driver’s seat.

Elora cautiously crept over to him, scooting around the salamander like it was on fire. It flicked out its tongue and hissed at her, but it was more the sound of air escaping from an overgrown swamp than it was a threat. Elora shrieked and launched herself into the cart behind Willow. 

“It won’t bite you Elora,” Willow flicked the reins. The lizard just sat there. “I don’t think it even has teeth.”

“Aw, he’s cute,” Graydon cooed over the salamander. It drooled a little.

“That’s the possession talking,” Elora grunted at him.

“I love you, Kenneth III,” Graydon called, as if the beast could hear him. Its tail twitched. 

“Giddyup,” Willow ordered. He flicked the reins again. “Yeehaw. Go. Move.” Kenneth III settled in for a nap. Elora leaned against the supply sacks and considered doing the same. Willow got out and started pushing at the salamander, trying to make it react. Nothing. “This might take a while.” Willow climbed back up on his seat and started undulating the reins again, trying commands in every language he knew.

“Maybe there are treats back here?” Graydon suggested. “Kenneth the First loved treats.” 

“What were you even feeding him, sand?” Elora huffed. She rummaged through a barrel. Something crawled across her hand. She went rigid. “What is that?” 

Graydon tried to peer over her shoulder but the angle was all wrong. “Can’t see.” The thing moved again. It was large and slimy, and had lots of scratchy little legs. She tried shaking it off. The mucous membrane stuck to her palm. Scraping it on the barrelside only made it cling harder. Slowly, reluctantly, Elora dragged her hand out of the barrel, barely daring to look. 

It was some sort of cross between a giant cockroach and a worm. Elora screamed and flung it out of the cart and halfway across the clearing. Kenneth III took off like a shot. 

“Woah!” Willow shouted, toppling back into the cart. Kenneth III writhed over and gobbled up the grub. He bounded over the rocks, sniffing for more snacks. The cart bounced on its wheels, nearly sending Elora into the ceiling. Willow struggled to regain control he’d never had.

“We’ll find them eventually,” he assured Elora, yanking on the reins. “The mountain is round.”

Elora sighed and leaned her head back against the sack that was rattling the least. “Why don’t you take a nap?” Graydon suggested. “It’s been a long day.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“Elora,” Graydon worried. “The fact that I’m even here means you’re not.”

Elora looked away. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m scared it’ll be like before. I’ll wake up, and you’ll be gone. Sure I’m so tired I think I might actually already be asleep right now, but at least that means I get to have you here with me.”

Graydon’s eyes went soft. “Elora, I’ll always be with you. Even if you can’t see me. I’ll be there, watching.”

“Okay, stop, now it’s creepy.” Elora put her face in her hands.

“The Wyrm sees all,” Graydon intoned.

“Yep, got it the first time,” Elora shushed him. She sighed and closed her eyes. “See you in a minute, Graydon.” 

Graydon grinned. “I redecorated! Can’t wait to show you. Fun stuff, lots of fire.”

“Perfect,” Elora grumbled, already asleep. Which is right when Willow ran the cart straight into a nest of overgrown flesh-eating spiders.

Chapter Text

Jade woke up with her head pounding worse than that time she’d tried to beat Kit and Airk in a drinking contest. If she didn’t know any better, she’d assume someone was trying to drill their way into her brain with a dull screwdriver. At least her arms felt mostly attached again even if she couldn’t move them. The moss pressed gently into her back. Kit's armor pressed less gently into her cheek.

She peeled her eyelids back. Kit beamed down at her, sunlight filtering in through the top of the log and glaring off the cuirass. Good stars that stung like needles in her eyes. Kit held out one of the pureed poison potions. “Morning! Thought you might need this.”

Jade buried her head in their lap and tried to drop dead. Next to her, Airk rolled over and face-planted in the dirt. 

“What I need is a mercy killing,” Boorman moaned from the ground, holding his skull in place.

“If I even smell that stuff again, I’m going to puke,” Airk agreed beside him.

“More for me,” Kit chirped, chugging. Jade’s stomach flipped over more aggressively than Airk had on that chain.

“You’re disgusting,” Boorman hissed. 

“Are you feeling okay?” Kit asked Jade. “I could see you limping earlier.” They anxiously brushed a curl off her forehead. It was nice to be fussed over, but it would’ve been nicer if they were both less rancid smelling and covered in lingering dragon.

“I’m fine,” Jade assured them. The potion was a miracle and a curse. “Except that I think my brains are trying to beat their way out of my ears.”

“Mine already did,” Airk groaned.

“Is the dragon still dead?” Boorman threw an arm over his eyes. “It didn’t come back in the night with twelve heads, right?”

“Of course it’s dead,” Kit scoffed. “Jade killed it.” Jade didn’t even have the energy to be flattered.

“We all killed it,” Boorman grumbled. “Some of us more than others.” He uncovered one eye and glared directly at Kit. 

“I came through at the end, didn’t I?”

“Literally,” Jade muttered. “That was horrific.” And hot. She wasn’t sure what that said about her, certainly nothing good.

“Related,” Kit said, “We should all go wash off. Elora and Willow aren’t back yet, but I went poking around on patrol and found a small stream nearby last night.” How unusually industrious of them. Kit tossed full water skins down at Boorman and Airk, beaming Airk right in the nose. Then Kit gently handed one to Jade, already uncorked.

“What’s taking Willow and Elora so long?” Airk asked, water dribbling down his front. Didn’t matter what liquid, he really was the messiest sort of drinker. 

“Elora jinxed it,” Boorman complained. “They’re probably fighting like a million monsters by now. Or maybe they got kidnapped by another cult.”

“There’s only so many times we can be expected to stop them from becoming blood sacrifices,” Jade muttered. 

“We’ll go get them after we’ve got the gore out of our hair,” Airk decided. Jade groaned. The oil Scorpia gave her had been in the cart. 

“Great! So!” Kit clapped their hands together. Everyone flinched. “Stream?”

“Aren’t you going to take that thing off?” Boorman grumbled from the water, scrubbing blood out of his chest hair with a pinecone. It was a beautiful day, the stream ran crisp and clear. But the utter silence of the forest beyond the gurgling water remained unnerving. “This was your idea and you smell the worst of any of us.” 

Kit continued sitting on the bank in their full armor, back to the stream, leaning on a nearby rock. They listed a little to the side, whatever unnatural adrenaline rush they’d been running on completely spent by now. They’d been awake for almost two days, magic armor or no magic armor. “I already rinsed off last night.”

“Fat lot of good that did,” Airk muttered next to Boorman, scratching the viscera off his scalp for the millionth time. 

“I can’t exactly wash inside the cuirass,” Kit snapped. 

“Then take it off!” 

Kit huffed. They flopped over on their rock, soaking up the afternoon sun. “Can’t. Jade’s busy.”

“Not that busy,” Jade offered. She rinsed dried viscera off her legs behind them in the knee deep water. “It’ll only take a minute.”

Kit sighed and rolled their cheek into the hot stone so they couldn’t be expected to talk. “I’ll wait.”

“Because it’s not appropriate for polite company?” Boorman suggested. “Don’t worry, Airk and I aren’t polite company.” 

“You can turn around, you know,” Airk agreed. “We all went swimming literally two days ago. We used to bathe together all the time!”

Kit sniffed and rubbed their nose again. “We were five.” A flush crawled up the back of their neck. “It feels disrespectful.”

“Disrespectful?” Boorman scoffed, barely catching their mumble. “It’s disrespectful not to look at all this. Do you know how lucky you lot are?” He splashed water at Kit’s back. 

“Hey!” Kit yelped but didn’t turn. “That’s freezing!”

“Get used to it,” Boorman said. “If you don’t stop stinking soon, I’m gonna dunk you.”

“You do smell like dying dragon,” Jade agreed. She waded up the bank and nudged them with her icy foot. “Come on.”

Kit didn’t budge. “No.”

Jade watched the back of their neck and the tips of their ears turn even redder. She grinned, wildly amused. “Kit. We’re courting.”

“I know that!” They stared dutifully at the ground, shoulders creeping up to their bloodred ears. They wondered how else to scream ‘don’t look at me!’ without using their mouth.  

“So you can stop digging a hole in the dirt with your eyes,” Jade nudged them again. “This is nothing new.”

“It’s improper to look at a lady while she’s bathing,” Kit recited. They sniffed and wiped their nose on their hand again. “Especially if you might ask for her hand someday.”

“Virgin!” Boorman hooted. Airk high-fived him. Catching Jade’s unimpressed expression, Boorman added, “I don’t care if it’s true, it’s virgin energy either way.”

Airk guffawed. “Come off it, Kit — you were the one who slept through etiquette classes!”

“At least I wasn’t sleeping through them with half the castle!” Kit snapped from beside their rock. They sniffed again and coughed haughtily. 

“Wait, what was that about hands?” Jade was still stuck on that little admission. 

“Nothing!” Kit stood up, back still to the water. Their voice sounded more choked than before. “I’m going to go look for Elora and Willow.”

“We’re just teasing,” Airk apologized, splashing out of the stream and up the bank behind Jade. “Lay down, Kit. You look like you need a nap. Why don’t you at least take off the cuirass?” 

“Can’t.” Kit limped quickly into the brush by the shore without glancing back. “I’ll just pass out for a week. Can’t afford it.” 

“I’m revitalized,” Boorman claimed from the water. Dew sparkled in his beard and across his skin. “I bravely volunteer to haul your deadweight around for the foreseeable future.”

Not the answer they were hoping for. Kit got an extremely squirrely shift to their shoulders. “Maybe later.”

Jade caught that immediately. Alarm bells went off. “Why? Turning it off is no bother. I think you could even do it yourself if you wanted.” 

“What if there’s another dragon?” Kit proposed hoarsely to the treetops. They cleared their throat. “It was hard enough to get it on the first time, I don’t want to deal with that again.”

“If there’s another dragon, I’m giving up and letting it eat me,” Boorman followed the others up the bank. 

“Kit,” Jade reminded them, slowly approaching from behind. “If there’s another dragon, I’ll just kill it for you.” Hard to argue with that logic. 

“I don’t want to!” Kit choked out, trapped against the treeline by the force of everyone’s attention. Exactly what they’d been trying to avoid. They very deliberately did not turn.

“Bro, it looks good on you but not that good.” Airk was almost on them now. 

“Don’t talk to me about style when you shredded your only shirt,” Kit snapped, then coughed. They brought their breathing back under control with significant effort and sped up. 

Airk jogged after them. “Seriously, Kit, let us help—” He put his hand on their shoulder. 

Kit whirled around, shouting now, “Would you all lay off— ” They froze at the look on his face. “Crone’s tits.”

Airk stared. No one had gotten a good look at them in the last hour, Kit had made sure of it. Kit was unnaturally pale, except for two high spots of color on their cheeks and the fresh blood was streaked under their nose. Their eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. Clammy sweat clung to their forehead. 

“I swear it’s not as bad as it—” Kit couldn’t even finish. The coughing fit they’d been choking back climbed violently up their throat. They doubled over with the force of it, hacking up pink mucus. 

“Kit?” Airk’s voice sounded very small. Everyone was staring now. 

“I’m fine,” they croaked, wiping their mouth. 

“That’s blood,” Airk said distantly. 

Jade and Boorman ran up the stream bank. Crap. This was just about as bad as it could’ve gone. “I’m fine.” They tried for instigation. “Boorman looks worse than me on a good day—”

Boorman took the bait, “At least I don’t smell like week-old boiled turkey breast—”

“We’re taking off the cuirass,” Jade ordered, running up to the twins. Her tone left no room for deflection. “Now.”

Kit cringed, caught out. They shook their head. “It’s not the cuirass.”

“Then what is it?” Jade grabbed their shoulders and searched for signs of injury. 

“Nothing!” A sure tell it was something very bad indeed. 

Beside her, Airk blinked back tears. “Kit, please.” 

Jade and Airk both looked like the ground had been blown out from under them. Behind them, even Boorman seemed distraught. Exactly what Kit hadn’t wanted. Mostly this translated into impotent anger at themself and everyone else. Kit blew their top. “Stop worrying! It’s giving me a headache.”

“You have a headache?” Jade checked their eyes for other signs of a concussion. 

“No! I’m fine!” Kit wriggled away. 

“Then take the cuirass off and let us see!” Airk demanded. 

“I can’t!” Kit shouted. They fell into another coughing fit. Jade barely caught them before their knees buckled. “Shit—” It was a lot of sudden deadweight in the armor, Airk grabbed Jade by the shoulders as she staggered. 

Kit coughed harder, not able to hold themself up under the force of it. Airk helped Jade shakily lower them both down the ground. Her gaze locked onto the pulsing light on Kit’s chest. Their heart rate seemed fast but mostly steady. Hers certainly wasn’t. 

“Kit,” she croaked. “What’s going on?” Kit turned away. They cleared their throat wetly. Jade clutched them tighter. Kit sagged. 

“I don’t know,” Kit surrendered. “But we have to keep cuirass on. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen when I take it off.” They tucked their chin into their chest and refused to look at Jade or Airk, afraid of what they’d see. “I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing keeping me upright.” 

“You think you’re a toasted meat-stick under there, or bloody pulp in a pudding cup?” Boorman asked. Delicate as always. 

“Uh… both. Neither, I don’t know.” Kit swiped at some of the blood caught on their lips. 

“Kit…” Jade was on the verge of furious tears. “Don’t you dare try to hide this from me.”

Kit studied their blood-stained hand. “It’s bad,” they admitted. 

“And you were planning to just lie to our faces until you dropped dead?” Jade forced out. She stiffly unwound her arms from their chest. 

“I didn’t lie! I just didn’t bring it up, because I’m okay!” they insisted, reaching for her. She jerked away. “So long as I don’t take it off, I’m great.”

“You have to take it off eventually,” Airk said. He sounded hollow. 

“I had it on for like three days the first time,” Kit retorted, wiping a dribble of blood from their nose. “Pretty sure I can go for longer.”

“Ignore your problems indefinitely, sounds healthy,” Boorman snarked at the back.

“As long as I keep the cuirass out and mainline Elora’s meatshakes, I’ll be fine,” Kit declared. “It’s worked so far.”

“Clearly it hasn’t, Kit!” Jade argued. She got to her feet, leg jiggling raggedly. “This is not a solution.”

Kit threw up their hands, not able to follow her up off the ground. “Well, do you see a physician around here? Because I think this is what we’ve got!” Their words bounced across the burbling stream. “I didn’t want you all to freak out when there’s nothing we can do!”

Because ultimately, they all knew it was true. Kit could be dying under there, and unless Elora or Willow came back with a miracle solution, there was not a thing anyone could do about it until they got back to Tir Asleen. And maybe not even then. 

“I’m going to go find Elora.” Jade grabbed her clothes, her sword, and stormed off into the silent trees. She hunched her shoulders, hiding her face, but Kit could see her shaking. 

Kit put their head in their hands and shouted in frustration. Airk glared down at them. “I’m so worried about you right now I could strangle you,” he hissed. 

“Then do it,” they groaned. “It’ll be faster.”

“Stop joking, Kit!” Airk snapped. “It isn’t cute and it isn’t funny!”

“What do you want me to do, Airk?!” Kit pulled on their hair. “Tell me how I’m supposed to handle this! Because clearly I’m doing a bang up job so far.” 

“You have to let people care about you!” Airk yelled. “You’re always running and hiding, or pushing me away when I try to help you! And now you’re going to make us watch you die because you were too much of a coward to say anything?! Screw you, Kit!” He dropped to his knees and shoved them, sobbing wretchedly now. “You promised me! You don’t get to leave!”

“Me?! You’re the one who always disappears in a crisis. I’m not trying to—”

“Shut up!” Airk roared. “Stop bullshitting, Kit! You’re acting just like Dad!” 

The silence rung out across the clearing.

“Kit,” Airk croaked. “Kit, I’m sorry—”

“Screw you, Airk,” Kit staggered to their feet, seething. “Dad was a hero.”

“Oh, grow up, Kit!” Airk slammed the dirt in front of them with his fist. “Dad was a coward. He was looking for an excuse not to stay.”

Kit’s eyes went hard. “You’re right, Airk. I'm just like him, I run from all my problems…” They stalked backward, holding his gaze. “…And right now, I want to get the hell away from you.”

“Okay, you two,” Boorman cut in verbally and physically, “maybe we should all take a breath—”

“It’s fine, they don’t mean that,” Airk muttered. He glared around Boorman at his twin. “Kit’s just being a dick because they’re scared.” 

“You’re the expert on empty words,” Kit ranted. “You haven’t meant a damn thing in your life! Just look at your ‘engagement.’”

Airk went pale. “Take that back.”

“Let’s not say anything we might regret when one of us may die before they can apologize—” Boorman tried. 

“How does it feel, Airk? To be so afraid of being alone you’d propose to a girl you hardly knew just so she wouldn’t leave you,” Kit spat. “I’m sorry, but clearly I won’t be around to take care of your useless simp self forever.” They regretted it as soon as the words left their lips. 

Airk curled into a ball, crying. 

“Holy hell, Kit,” Boorman gaped.

Kit’s chest burned. They clenched their fists. They didn’t know how to go to him. There wasn’t anything to say. They turned their back on Airk’s awful wracking tears. 

“This is not how I wanted it to go,” Kit mumbled.

“How did you envision this going?” Boorman asked behind them, genuinely curious. “I can see literally no good way to break that news. Although I agree, you handled it worse than I thought possible.”

Kit jerkily shook their head. “Airk.” He held his breath. “I’m sorry.” They limped off after Jade. “But mourn me when I’m actually dead.”

Boorman stood in the horrible silence, broken only by the burbling stream and the sound of Airk weeping on the ground behind him. 

“Screw me,” Boorman groaned, and swept Airk up into a hug. “When did I become the emotionally intelligent one?” 

So that’s how Elora and Willow found Airk and Boorman twenty minutes later, when they rolled up with the new cart. 

“At last! I knew following the water would work!” Willow called as they drove into view. The wheels rumbled along the stream bank. “Elora, wake up!”

Elora jerked up inside the cart, wiping drool off her face. “Oh, hey boys. Where’re Kit and Jade?”

Airk and Boorman sat silently on the river bank, Airk still half in Boorman’s lap. Willow continued pulling up the cart and showing off. There looked to be about half a dragon strapped to the back, bones, heads, and all. There was another corpse hitched to the front, but this one was breathing. 

“Meet Kenneth III!” Willow announced, motioning to the most disturbing creature Boorman had laid eyes on. It looked like it might’ve once been a swamp salamander. “Had to fight off some nasty spiders for him, but it was all okay in the end—” He stopped, taking in the scene before him. “What’s happening?”

“Kit’s dying,” Airk sobbed on top of Boorman. 

“Kit’s dying?!” Elora fell out of the cart face first but managed to land on her feet. “I left you three alone for a day. ”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Boorman patted Airk’s back. “Kit’s only maybe dying. Sure, they could be slowly decaying inside their armor as we speak, but they could also be fine.”

“Oof,” Willow winced in the driver’s seat. “Isn’t that how the first cuirass guy went?”

“Is it?” Boorman suddenly reconsidered his life-long desire to use the damn thing. 

“It’s freaking radiation poisoning!” Elora stormed around the back of the cart. “I knew it. I knew we wouldn’t be lucky enough to dodge anything with the word poison in it.”

“I guess they did take a blast directly to the face,” Willow mused. “Didn’t think about that.”

“Alright,” Elora gathered up bottles and potions from the crates inside. “Which way did Kit go? I’m off to shake some life into them.” She muttered something that sounded an awful lot like, “Thank stars Graydon looked this up just in case.” Willow couldn’t think why the heir to Galladoorn would’ve been looking up dragonfire battlefield triage on the way to Immemorial City. 

Boorman pointed vaguely in a treeward direction. “After Jade, probably that way. They’re pretty shiny in that armor, hard to miss.” He dropped his hand. “Fair warning, they’re being a massive prick about it.”

Elora marched off into the trees. “Of course they are. I’m gonna wring their scrawny little neck…” She disappeared inside the forest. 

“Should we go after her?” Willow jumped off the cart. 

“In a minute,” Boorman agreed, petting Airk’s hair while the prince got snot all over his shirt. “I think we need a second first.” 

By the time Kit found Jade, twilight was breaking and so was Kit’s will to live. Everything burned, their lungs and head especially. They couldn’t shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong. Occasionally, the cuirass light would flash red in warning. Kit did their best to ignore that. 

The limping search had at least given them some time to think and cool down. They had an idea of what not to say now, in lieu of an actual plan. 

Jade had settled near a bend where the stream turned into a much deeper river. Seeking out large bodies of water, as she often did when she was upset. Which sucked for Kit because they weren’t the biggest fan of deep water anymore. Maybe that was the point.

Jade knelt silently on the bank, repeatedly scrubbing her hands to get the blood out from under her nails. She drifted like a ghost. She’d clearly been crying. 

“Hey there, Dragonslayer.” Kit leaned against a tree and attempted to appear casual instead of like they might keel over otherwise. “Can I get an autograph?”

Jade whirled on them. Definitely the wrong opener. Jade stalked over. Kit backtracked, “Or, uh, you know, don’t worry about it, I don’t have any parchment anyway—”

“Kit,” she said in broken desperation. “Please, for the love of life, shut up.” She grabbed the high collar of their cuirass and buried her face in their chest plate. Kit tried not to collapse under the added weight. The tree took the brunt of it for both of them. 

“Uh.” Kit reached up and tentatively rubbed between Jade’s shoulder blades. “Does this mean we’re good?”

“No,” Jade choked out, shaking her head against their pauldron. “Absolutely not. I’m so mad at you I could puke.”

“Cool,” Kit agreed. “Right on. Sounds correct.” They tucked their chin into the crook of her collarbone. There were still flakes of blood mixing with the freckles on her skin, where she’d missed places in the stream. Kit took the length of what would’ve been a deep breath had their lungs supported one just to memorize the way she felt against them. Solid and safe. The tree pressed hard and cold into their back and Jade warm and soft against their front.

“I’m sorry,” they said. “You deserve the truth. You always did.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jade croaked. “You’re—” She couldn’t even say it. 

Kit took a shaky breath. “That maybe I could shield you, if I didn’t say anything. Or I guess if no one saw, then it wasn’t really real.” They hid a cough behind a sigh. “But, you know, I am getting the sense that wasn’t my call to make. I’m sorry, Jade.”

Jade sniffled. Kit felt their chest seize a little and tried to breathe through it. “Truth?” she begged.  

“Plum,” Kit promised, coughing a little. “But I don’t need magic fruit to be honest with you.”

Jade trembled. “Enough people have lied to me, Kit.” 

“I know. I swear that was the last time.” One way or another, they supposed. 

Jade couldn’t stop the shaking. Kit tried to raise a hand to comfort her but their whole arm was firing with waves of pain. Jade stiffened, catching the red light flashing on their chest plate. 

“Why’s your button red?” she asked, studying it closer. 

“I don’t know.” Probably bad. They turned their face into her neck and closed their eyes. Smelled like fresh water, dragon goop, and sweaty Jade. 

“Answer me, Kit.” She gripped the back of their head. “You owe me better than that.”

They sighed into her skin. “I really don’t know. I think I might… kind of sort of maybe be dying. I can’t really tell. Taking a supernova to the face was a bad idea. It’s probably fine, though.” 

“That was the least reassuring way you could’ve put that.” Jade’s hand clenched a little in their hair. “But I appreciate the effort.” 

“We’ll be okay, Jade.” Kit held her as close as they could manage. “Seriously.”

“I don’t believe you.” Jade shook her head harder. Kit felt her pulse jump against their cheek. “Even if you believe it, I can’t… I can’t do this again. Not after Ballantine, and the Wildwood—”

“I’m still here,” Kit promised her. “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t be like him.” Ballantine or Madmartigan.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Jade pleaded. Kit could feel tears dripping down their collar but couldn’t tell whose. “I want to go home together to Scorpia and my family, and learn to be happy. And I want to keep you with me. I know I can’t have both. But now I feel like I can’t have either.”

“You can. Didn’t I tell you before? I’d follow you anywhere. There are no adventures without you.”

“Yeah? Well what about me?” she sobbed into their shoulder. “What am I supposed to do if you’re dead?” 

“Keep going,” Kit said, trying to will it to be true. “Make the life you want. You were always the smarter one. I’m a dumbass, you don’t need me for that — you already know how.”

“Not without you!” Jade cried. “I— I would jump off a cliff to follow you, Kit! I already did! I carved up a dragon because I thought you were inside it! Do you really think I’m the stable one between us?!”

Kit chewed on this for a second. Put that way, neither of them sounded like the stable one. “Maybe we need a second opinion.”

The shadows stretched through the trees around them both. Jade laughed wetly. “I hate you so much right now. And I don’t want to hate you right now! Screw you, Kit.” 

Kit shrugged weakly. “You’re allowed to mourn me, you know, but only if I actually die. And then I expect, like, the works. Big funeral, everybody lying and saying nice things, pretending we got legally married while we were out here to mess up the line of inheritance and piss off my mother—”

Jade raised her head. The cold rushed in where her face had been, Kit shivered. She pulled back and stared them dead in the eyes. “Do you want to?”

Kit lazily counted the freckles across her nose. “Want to what? Screw with Sorsha? Always, yeah.”

“No.” Jade’s gaze was deadly serious. She was just about as intense as they’d ever seen her, which was a really high bar to clear. “Get married.” 

Her proposal echoed through the silent forest. Kit’s heart skipped a beat. The cuirass light beeped red. Kit stopped breathing long enough to panic Jade. “Kit?!”

“Yup,” they said distantly, “still here.” They looked paler than before, somehow. Jade made up her mind. The decision was suddenly easy. When the world cleared away, it all came back to this.  

Jade got down on one knee. The grass was soft, the setting sun glanced across Kit’s armor. She took their clammy hand in hers. “Kit.” She plucked a shard of lingering dragon tooth from her pants and wrapped it in the tie from her hair to make a ring. Her topknot unraveled slowly. “Will you marry me?” 

Kit stared at her for a long time. The sunset filtered through the trees and danced on her skin and hair like a halo. Jade’s eyes were ringed pink and swollen from tears. But her grip was firm and her voice was steady. There was no mistaking her for anything but wholly serious. It was everything Kit had ever wanted, and yet nothing they wanted at all. 

“No,” Kit slid their shaking hand away. “I’m not gonna let you pity-propose to me just because I’m dying.” They clenched their fist. “That’s gross. Also, I’m not dying!”

Jade jerked to her feet, expression cracking. The degree of wreckage shone through again, but there was a fresh layer of irritation to go with it. “If you’re not dying, then why did you say no?!”

“If I’m not dying, why did you propose!” Kit demanded, poking a finger into her shoulder. “We’ve only been together-together for like a month! That’s too fast, Jade!” 

Jade buried her hands in her curls. The makeshift ring cut into her palm. “You were going to marry Graydon, and you’d never even met him!”

“That wasn’t voluntary! I want to do it right if it’s with you!” Kit shoved back against the tree, as if it could help shore up their point. 

“Realms above, you are the most infuriating person in the world sometimes!” Jade was inches from tearing her hair out.  

“You want a small wedding with all your friends and two really nice matching suits,” Kit ranted, ticking it off on their fingers. She had to understand this. It was obvious, why couldn’t she see it? “You’d like to ride off into the sunset on a horse, because you still have a thing about horses. Ballantine was going to walk you down the aisle, but now it’s definitely Scorpia — if she doesn’t get herself uninvited for threatening the other guests. Then it’s probably Boorman, which, ew by the way. And for the honeymoon you wanted to go swordfight a dragon, but we’ve already done that so it’s kind of moot.”

Jade stared at them in frozen shock. “How do you know that?” she said, almost too quiet to hear. 

“You told me one night back when we were kids,” Kit declared, in the tone of someone who had been planning to make it happen ever since. 

Jade burst into tears. “Cronedammit. Damn it, Kit!” Ah, shit. They’d done it again. Kit’s hands hovered uselessly nearby, as they usually did when Jade was crying. Their chest felt tight. The light blinked red. 

“Jade, I’m sorry. Look—”

“Hey,” Elora stepped out from behind a bush, arms full of potion ingredients, “Sorry to interrupt, but I heard yelling? Oh, hi, Jade.”

In front of her, Jade sniffled and nodded in acknowledgment. She rubbed her eyes and schooled her face. Kit glared over Jade’s shoulder at Elora but was too tired to start shouting again. Or move. They definitely couldn’t move.

“Jade, actually, could I cut in for a second, I just need to talk to Kit for a minute…” Elora asked politely, inching up behind her. Jade stepped back and held up her hands in the universal gesture for have at it. 

“Elora,” Kit ground out through clenched teeth as Elora stalked towards them. But their shaky breath control betrayed them. “Could you maybe pick a better time—”

Elora hauled them up by the shoulder greaves and slammed them against the tree. “ARE YOU REALLY THIS DAMNABLY STUPID?!” she roared directly in their face.  

“—holy hell,” Kit squeaked. “Ow. Oh my gods, that’s loud. My ears.”

“You and Graydon,” Elora shouted, “don’t get to do this to me. And Hubert! And Anne! And everybody freaking else! You don’t get to keep pulling self-sacrificial rotten baloney—” Jade retreated, both terrified and impressed. Kit glared after her, mouthing traitor, “—and getting yourselves killed during some pointlessly futile quest we are only on because of me!” 

She spun around and pointed at Jade, still holding Kit up by the collar. “That goes for you too, Jade!” Jade nodded rapidly. Coward. Elora rounded back on Kit. “But you! Running off into the woods to hide and die like a sick housecat! Have you even considered how this makes the others feel?! Airk feel?! You just left him there crying on Boorman!”

This got Jade’s attention too. “Kit, what the hell?!” 

“To be fair, Airk cries about a lot of things—”

“Oh, don’t even start,” Elora spat. She dropped them so suddenly Kit’s knees nearly buckled. They barely kept themself upright against the trunk. “I’m so mad at you I could explode! We are never going to be done talking about this!” 

Elora took a leaf from her pouch and stuck it in Kit’s shock-slackened mouth. “Chew on that.” Kit started chewing. Bitter, but they’d had to drink raw liquified dragon guts today so this was nothing in comparison. 

“So it’s just Yell At Kit Day, huh?” they muttered, tongue feeling kind of numb. “Next time, someone bring me earplugs. Or just let me die, that’d be kinder.”

“You are not allowed to die,” Elora emptied her sack into the dirt by their feet. “If you die, then I can’t kill you first. Spit it back out, don’t swallow.”

Kit did, wiping their tongue on their hand. “What’s the leaf for?” Jade asked from a safe few paces away. 

“Revenge,” Kit gagged, pins and needles lining their throat. 

“The leaf,” Elora crouched and lined up an apothecary’s worth of different ingredients on the ground around them. She scratched some arcane symbols into the soil around Kit’s feet with a stick, “is to slow down your heart rate so when we take that armor off you don’t instantly go into cardiac arrest. Drink this.” 

She shoved a blue potion up at Kit. They slowly took a swig, it was hard to move any faster with their blood starting to feel like ice water. “Whole thing,” Elora ordered. “Jade, get over here. Willow will be joining us in a second.”

Jade cautiously sidled up to Kit and took the empty bottle. “And this one?” She eyed Kit warily, they were barely keeping it down. 

“You really gotta work on your flavor profiles,” Kit groaned, slumped against the tree. “Tastes like a rat died in a sugarcube.” 

“That one’s to knock them out, so they don’t move while we’re treating their magic radiation poisoning and internal bleeding,” Elora lectured beneath them. She charged up a rune circle around the roots. 

“Wait,” Kit slurred, listing to the side, “what’s radiation poisoning? Aren’t you a baker?”

“I’ve been taking some supplemental night classes,” Elora snapped. “Jade, you’re up.” Kit dropped like a bag of rocks, Jade already standing there to catch them. It was still a near thing. Jade was very overwhelmed. 

“Put them here,” Elora gestured at a pile of bones at the circle center in front of her. Jade dragged Kit over with some difficulty. For all the cuirass looked light on the wearer, they were still heavy in the armor. The panic attack building in her chest wasn’t making it any easier. 

“You are not my physician,” Kit groaned, head lolling. “You’re not even a physician.” Jade set them down atop the strange bone statue careful not to disturb the etchings. “You would make a hot physician though, Jade.” They tried to wink and it turned into more of a two-stage blink. They barely pried their eyes back open. “Not you, Elora, you suck.” 

“Um,” Jade wavered, arranging Kit’s arms to make sure they were comfortable. Kit was extremely unhelpful during the entire process. “Hate to agree with Kit, but, what’s going on?”

Elora caught the terror in Jade’s eyes. “I know, sorry we have to do this so fast. I was planning to check everyone over and explain it all first, but someone is a big dumb idiot—” Elora cut her hand and dribbled some blood into the glowing red button on Kit’s chest. Jade cringed beside her. Magic was so gross, “—who didn’t tell anyone they were having palpitations and bleeding out their eyeballs. We would’ve caught it already if there’d been hair-loss back in the crater—”

“I’m going bald?” Kit mumbled weakly, eyelids fluttering. Elora scooped a lump of unidentifiable paste into Kit’s mouth while it was already open. They tried to bite her. 

“No, let me die.” 

Jade grabbed their hand and squeezed until they settled down again. “You’re not allowed to, remember? You promised.” Kit grumbled but went back to sleep. Their pulse felt sluggish against her palm, but maybe it was just her own heart racing like a rabbit. 

“I’m going to shave their head just because I can,” Elora muttered next to her, sifting through her bag. 

“What’s, um, magic radiation poisoning?” Jade subtly checked her own hair to make sure it wasn’t falling out. Her hold on Kit’s hand tightened. 

“Dragonfire,” Elora explained, quickly whisking some oils, herbs, eggs, and fresh blood in a bowl, “isn’t actually fire. It’s pure energy, superheated light and air in a concussive wave that can burn things like fire, and start fires, but it’s not fire.” She stuck a rag up Kit’s nose to collect their latest nosebleed. 

They woke up with a jerk. “Augh, gods, what are you doing—” Elora tipped another vial of blue potion in their mouth. They spluttered.

“Jade, make sure they drink all of that. I’m tired of being interrupted,” Elora glared directly at Kit who was staring back in bleary confusion while they swallowed the potion, “and underappreciated.” She pulled the bloody rag out of their nose and dumped it into the bowl with the other oily liquids. “Where were we?”

“Dragonfire,” Jade said, thinking of the obscene amount of it she’d been exposed to yesterday. She reached up automatically to keep Kit from dumping the potion down their front. 

“Right, so, dragonfire can burn you the same as any other fire. But because the energy in it is more tightly coiled or whatever — I don’t know, Graydon called it wavelengths?” Jade tried to remember Graydon and Elora discussing this during the trip to the Immemorial City and came up blank. But they had disappeared together a lot during the Shattered Sea, and Kit and Jade had also been pretty distracted. Jade took the empty vial out of Kit’s lax mouth. They looked peaceful, or outrageously high.  

“Anyway, the energy waves or whatever, they can get inside your body and toast your organy bits even if they don’t burn your skin.” Elora dropped the rag of gross scrambled eggs over Kit’s forehead. They tried to get a good look at it without moving, went kind of cross-eyed, and then gave up and fell asleep. “And then it sets off this process where you look mostly fine, but you’re actually falling apart internally. I think. I didn’t totally get it, but I’m not sure anyone does.”

“That sounds bad,” Jade murmured. Elora — and by extension, Jade — didn’t look like all her organs were failing, but then again neither did Kit. They’d mostly just seemed pale and clammy since last night, maybe a little feverish. Except for the coughing up blood, which was recent. 

“Oh, yeah, we’re all going to have so many tumors in ten years,” Elora lathered up her hands with soapy water. “The Dragon’s Bloody Boosters will help, so I made a lot of them. Look forward to drinking those for the rest of your life.” Jade shuddered. Elora opened a big jar of harsh smelling paste. “But yeah, that’s why it’s called magical radiation poisoning, because it radiates out from a hyper-concentrated magical energy source and acts just like poison.”

“Of course,” Jade clutched Kit’s limp hand. Their skin felt colder now. “I should’ve guessed.”

Elora scooped paste out from the jar and coated her palms. “Okay, Jade, get ready.” She looked towards the trees. “OY, WILLOW! HURRY UP!”

Willow came huffing and puffing out of the trees across from them, dragging his own bag of gear. Behind him, Boorman and Airk were carrying an even bigger sack between them. The trees spun dizzily around Jade. It all suddenly seemed very real. 

Boorman and Airk dumped the sack. Out rolled one of the dragon’s yellowing eyeballs. “Only organ-ish thing we could find that was mostly intact,” Boorman explained. “Good job, Kit. You nearly screwed yourself.”

Kit, high as a kite and mostly napping inside the magic circle, didn’t really manage to flip him off but the intent was there. Jade and Airk watched them anxiously. Kit’s breathing was getting more labored, coming in slow tremulous sighs. 

Willow dropped crystal-like glass shards at the cardinal directions around the arcane circle. “Nice work with the runes, Elora,” he remarked. He lathered his own hands in paste from the jar. “Ready everyone?”

The trees hung low and lavender around them. The moon was just poking over the horizon, at that juncture of twilight when the sun and the stars both hung in the sky. There would never be a better moment, magically speaking. Elora nodded to Jade. “Okay, Jade, take the cuirass off.”

Jade froze. “In front of everyone?” she squeaked.

“It’s just the button right?” Elora waved towards the glowing red circle on Kit’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure you have to be the one to operate it.”

“No, well,” Jade stuttered. “Maybe. But not that button. There’s another button.” She was kicking herself for not thinking of this in advance. 

Boorman stared at her across the circle, fascinated. “Where is it? I gotta know. Please, I’m begging you.” Jade felt her face heat up and prayed it wasn’t noticeable in the dusky light. 

It was definitely noticeable. Willow turned up to maximal dad energy. “If we don’t know, we can’t help.”

“It’s. Kind of around… the femoral. Artery,” Jade mumbled to the dirt.

“I KNEW IT!” Boorman crowed. “I KNEW IT ALL ALONG! Oh, Jade, you freaky little hero, you truly are Scorpia’s sister!”

“Congratulations, Kit.” Next to him, Airk sneered at their comatose body. “At least you didn’t die a virgin.” But there was a gleam of pride in his eyes.

Elora stared at them blankly for a second, then blushed all the way down her neck. “Oh… oh. Ew, wait, didn’t you say the first guy’s mom made that? Why did she put it there?!” 

“OKAY!” Jade covered her flaming face with her hands. “We get it! Can everyone please give us some privacy?!”

The boys all scattered off into the treeline, backs turned. Jade breathed a sigh of relief. Then she noticed Elora hadn’t moved an inch. 

“I have to stay,” Elora apologized. “In case Kit, you know, stops breathing. But I’ll keep my eyes closed until you say!”

Great. Jade squeezed her own eyes shut. “Can you wake them up for a minute?” she begged Elora. 

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Elora dug around in Willow’s bag. “My bad. One sec.” She produced a wad of smelling salts and stuck it directly under Kit’s nose. 

Kit heaved and retched like they were dying. Their eyes sprang open. “Oh stars, that is rank—” Elora shoved the wad into their hand. 

“Keep that under your nose,” she instructed. Kit’s eyes started to water but they clumsily held it in place. “And talk to Jade.” 

Kit suddenly recognized Jade. “Jade! Hey, Jade!” They tried to prop themself up on their elbows, failed, flopped over and looked at her like she hung the moon. 

Elora grabbed them by the shoulders. “Stop moving! You’re going to mess it all up!”

“Hey, Kit,” Jade reached out to stroke their cheek. “How’re you feeling?”

“Oh, you know,” Kit leaned into her palm. “High as a kite. Are you an angel? Because I fell from a great height and I think I might actually be dead.” 

“Hurry it up,” Elora hissed. “Not sure how long we have.”

Jade cleared her throat. “We have to take off the cuirass,” she told Kit. “Do you think you can do it yourself?”

Kit frowned. “Yeah, maybe. Is that gonna work? The other button doesn’t really do anything unless you touch it.”

Elora shut her eyes, stuck her fingers in her ears, and started singing loudly. “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you—”

“I’m hoping it’ll work because I’m asking you to,” Jade admitted, tracing their jaw with her thumb. “If it is true that the controls are keyed to me. You have my permission. You’re safe now. Take it off, Kit.” 

Elora groaned in guttural despair.  

“We gotta do this again sometime,” Kit clumsily fiddled around to find the small button on the inside of their thigh. “Like, when I’m not dying.” They flicked the switch, mostly by accident, and the cuirass turned off. 

“Oof, ouch.” The magic shimmer of the armor snuffed out, leaving only dead metal behind. “Crone’s ear canal, don’t love that,” Kit grunted. Jade pressed harder into their cheek, trying to sooth their jumping jaw. The metal plates started to retract, grinding against each other. It sounded slightly broken, like a metal door that had been rammed one too many times and slipped off its hinges. 

“Is that supposed to happen?” Jade asked Elora. Kit’s breath picked up against her hand. The cuirass slowly crawled across their chest. Each part that disappeared into the medallion made a slight squealing sound as it went. Beneath it, Kit’s clothes were bloodsoaked and their skin was red and peeling. 

“You were the only one who was there last time!” Elora spluttered. “I was hoping you would know!”

“Really inspiring confidence here, guys,” Kit slurred below them. Elora snatched the smelling salts away. Kit sneezed three times in a row and passed out. They went limp and cold in Jade’s hold. She drew her hand back from their face, her own breathing slide into hitching gasps. She tightened her grip on their icy hand.

“Boorman!” Elora hollered. “Get over here!”

Boorman sprinted back through the trees. “What—” he stared down at the dilapidated cuirass, slowly tucking itself away. “No. Stars above. They actually—”

“Broke it?!” Willow bellowed behind him. “Are you serious?! I knew they were irresponsible, but—”

“How’s that even possible?” Boorman wailed, falling to his knees at the circle edge. “I don’t understand…”

“Okay, let’s focus,” Airk begged, skidding to a stop beside them. “Before my sibling actually dies, please.” 

“It doesn’t matter.” Elora checked the lines of the arcane circle for any errors. “We’re just using the cuirass as a power source. Boorman?”

Boorman leaned over across from her and started screwing with the disk in Kit’s chest. “Unbelievable.” The medallion began to glow weakly. “That little animal. How could they?” The Lux Arcana popped about a quarter of the way out again with an awful wheeze. “Death is too kind for them. Spent my whole adult life searching for this thing and they broke it in less than a month?” The cuirass light flickered green, ready to reset. 

Elora kept one hand on Kit’s wrist, timing their pulse. Jade laced their fingers together so tightly her joints creaked. “Okay,” Elora reported, “we’re steady so far—” 

Kit’s heart seized. They stopped breathing. Jade stopped too. Elora slammed her hand down on the Lux Arcana. Light burst out from their chest and they convulsed, back bucking as they heaved in air. Jade barely kept her grip on them. 

“—It’s fine, it’s fine,” Elora reassured everyone as Kit started twitching a little inside the circle. “We were prepared for this, this is normal.”

“Is it?!” Airk demanded. “Because it looks a lot like they’re dying to me!” Jade sat there in silent shock, ashen gray and barely breathing. Kit’s fingers spasmed between hers. 

“It’s normal for reviving someone from near death,” Willow explained. “It’s a finicky process. Doesn’t always work.”

“Don’t say that,” Boorman begged. “Please, for once in your adult life, stay positive.”

Kit coughed and jerked, some blood bubbled up between their lips. Jade felt herself disconnect from reality. 

“The eye!” Elora ordered, pointing towards their chest. Airk jumped over and set it down so it was sitting on Kit’s stomach, staring up at their face. The eyeball goop spilled out across their shirt. Thank stars they weren’t awake for this. 

Elora started chanting furiously, hands glowing green. “Tuatha authrock mora hoatha…”

“Wait,” Jade murmured, not totally tuned into the present timeline. “Isn’t that the eckleberry jam spell?”

“Jam and tumors,” Willow checked the crystals across from her as they started to shine with unearthly light. “It’s more of a biological new growth spell. Or regrowth in this case.”

Boorman spluttered beside him. “There’s a spell to give someone cancer?!”

“There’s a spell for everything,” Willow disdained. 

“…Tuatha authrock mora hoatha…”

“But you taught her the cancer spell first,” Boorman confirmed. 

“You two better shut up before I cut out your tongues,” Airk threatened from his other side. And in that instant everyone remembered that he’d fought all of them off single-handedly while possessed by the Crone. “If you distract Elora and Kit dies, I will hunt you to the edges of this world.” Jade raised her free hand in absent agreement. 

“…Tuatha authrock mora hoatha…” The eyeball started to float, its cold dead iris glowing a ghostly blue. It recentered so that it was always looking at Kit. 

“If we’re growing Kit a new stomach,” Boorman whispered to Willow, “then what’s the eyeball for?”

“So they don’t immediately get new stomach cancer,” Willow tossed a couple herbs onto Kit’s chest. The eyeball started to beam light down at Kit like a laser. It was a little too close to the dragonfire for comfort. 

“Okay, I’m up!” Willow cracked his knuckles and grabbed his staff. “Locktwarr danelora, Luatha danu…” he chanted, handing off with Elora from the opposite side of the circle. She moved closer to Kit’s chest, pressing her paste-covered hands over their heart. 

“…Tuatha authrock mora hoatha…”

The eyeball glowed brighter. Kit started to float a little off the ground too. Jade let her hand ride up with them. 

“…tuatha tuatha, chnox danu…”

The eyeball vibrated, pupil dilating and shrinking wildly. 

In unison, “…Tuatha Locktwarr stira restoorah! ” 

Kit went rigid. The eyeball popped, splattering them all with viscous goop. They dropped beneath Elora’s hands and hit the ground with a wet thump. Jade’s shoulder jerked in its socket as their intertwined hands slapped the dirt. 

“Seriously?!” Boorman shouted, eyeball juice dripping from his beard. “Again?”

“I hate magic so much,” Airk moaned. “Why is all of it so gross? Magic shouldn’t get in my hair.” Jade could not agree more. But right now she was preoccupied, her attention locked on Kit. They didn’t look any different, still pale and corpse-like, but they were breathing at least. 

“Did it work?” she whispered, clutching Elora’s arm and clinging to Kit’s limp hand.   

“Um,” Elora said. “I think?” She chewed her lip. “One second. Willow can I have that?” She reached across the circle for his staff. He frowned skeptically, but handed it over. 

Elora raised it high and rammed Kit in the shin. Kit shot upright, howling and clutching their leg. “HOLY HELL! WHY?! WHAT THE FLYING FILLICKERS—” they blinked heavily, curses starting to slur together. “Philandering fossils that hurts, why did you do that…” Kit swayed and and fell back over inside the circle with a thump. 

“Yeah it worked,” Elora told Jade. For the first time all evening, Jade took a full breath. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Willow scolded. “They’re fragile. You need to be gentle with them for a bit.”

“After all the crap they just put me through,” Elora swore, “they’ll be lucky if I’m gentle with them ever again.”

Chapter Text

“…and that’s when Kit hacked up a bunch of little dragon eyeballs. But other than that, I think it’s going okay,” Elora recapped for Graydon in their shared dream-realm. She grinned over the rim of her steaming porcelain cat mug. 

“That’s great, Elora. More tea?” He leaned across the ornate oak table and offered her the delicate pot. 

“Sure!” Elora happily let him pour for her. The stream was clear brown, so this time it was actually tea and not secretly Wyrm juice. Graydon filled her cup all the way up to the brim. 

“I’m glad it all worked out,” He slouched back in his wingback leather armchair. “I gotta admit, I was kind of winging it. Not a lot of cases of people surviving the dragon long enough to get poisoned.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Graydon,” Elora assured him, lounging criss-cross-applesauce in her own fuzzy plush papasan chair. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Graydon blushed. “You’d be okay. I know you would.”

Elora looked around his new study in the Wyrm’s hell dimension. Three sides were lined with creaking bookshelves full of ancient arcane tomes. The fourth was a giant wall of fire, with flames shooting up into the arches of the high ceiling. Outside the stained glass windows, the sky was just a storm of ash and embers. The room should’ve been sweltering, but instead it just felt pleasantly warm. 

“I do like what you did with the place,” she admitted. “Sorry I forgot to tell you before.”

Graydon hummed happily, sipping his own tea. “It’s okay, we were kind of in a rush.”

Elora picked at the fur lining by her ankles. “Is the Wyrm treating you alright so far? No trouble with flesh rotting, reasonable work hours, good benefits?” 

“She’s great. I’m fine Elora,” Graydon glowed with pride. “I’m better than fine. I finally feel enlightened.”

“Well, at least that makes one of us,” Elora muttered into her teacup. “I’m kind of jealous. I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know how I’m supposed to fix this.” 

“Then don’t,” Graydon suggested, setting his tea down. “Join us instead.” He reached across the table to cup her cheek. His touch was soft and soothing. He felt so alive like this. 

She laid her hand over his to hold him closer and turned her head into his warm palm. She pressed a kiss into his skin, holding him close.  

“You’re not him, you know.” She drew their hands down miserably, fingers still loosely intertwined. “You’re so close I forget sometimes. But you’re not him. You’re just wearing his face and stealing his memories.” She let their fingers rest by her ankles, holding him in her barely there grip. 

“You’ve got it all wrong, Elora,” Graydon insisted, leaning halfway out of his salamander-skin throne. He cradled her hand like a jewel. “I'm still here. The Wyrm didn’t replace me. I'm just me, but also more. Just like you would be.” 

Elora tugged her hand away. Graydon sighed at the loss. He leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the leather armrest. Elora stared into the fire. The table was suddenly an insurmountable distance between them. Or maybe that was the interdimensional hell gate. 

“Do you know why it has to be me?” Elora asked the all-consuming flames. “Willow doesn’t know. Or if he does, he won’t tell me. But you’re always honest, even when you lie.”

“Because a lifetime ago you made this place,” the Wyrm said. “You’ve just forgotten why.”

Jade dangled her legs off the edge of the new cart, watching the mountain rush by between her feet. They’d taken a day in the log to hose everything down and properly wash up after all the excitement — it turned out Boorman’s hair care routine was almost as long as Jade’s — but now it was off to the roads once more. 

She checked over her shoulder once more to confirm everyone was still breathing. Boorman tossed berries back and forth with Airk, trying to shoot them into each other’s mouths. Past them, Willow was driving by default rather than any particular skill at it. Next to Airk, Kit and Elora were still sleeping fitfully in a pile of blankets. All was as well as it could be. 

By this morning, Jade had felt mostly present in her body again, but not really up for conversation. Her world had almost crumbled for the third time in so many weeks. She needed… distance, maybe. But she couldn’t bear to be too far to reach back and touch them. So she took it from herself instead. 

Kit hadn’t woken up yet, even when Elora hosed them down with her magic power wash by the stream. But there was a little more color to their cheeks, and their breathing wasn’t wretchedly awful to listen to anymore. They snuffled a little, burrowing deeper into their blanket swaddle atop some of the softer supply sacks. It turned into a wet snort, then a jerking cough. 

Airk reached around Elora and thumped Kit’s back. Another tiny dragon eyeball popped out of Kit’s mouth, he deftly caught it with his other hand. “Another one for the jar,” Airk declared, dropping the eyeball into the brimming glass jug with all its fellows. 

“What’re we at now?” Boorman asked across from him, munching on a berry. “Whoever guesses closest gets the whole jar. I’m thinking… twenty-two.”

Airk considered the massive pile of eyes in his hands. “Ten,” he said, deliberately. 

“Forty-seven,” Willow answered over his shoulder. “I've been counting.”

“Jade?” Boorman prompted behind her. 

“Why in the world would I want to look at it that closely?”

“Jar goes to Willow,” Boorman announced, taking it from Airk and dropping it on Willow’s lap. 

Jade turned back to watching the mountain pass by. She looked at the moon, twiddled the carving knife in her hand. She turned the necklace Scorpia had given her between her fingers.

There were so many more stars here than there’d ever been inside the barrier. The light simply couldn’t shine through. 

Behind her Kit snored gently. She reached out and tucked the blanket in tighter around their shoulders. Kit wriggled unconsciously until they were curled up with their back against hers. She could feel the rise and fall of their chest, the ridges of their spine. 

She was torn between aching relief and equally strong guilt and resentment. Every time she looked at them, she saw them floating above that circle, spitting up blood and jerking in her grip. She needed them in her sight. But she didn’t want to talk to them either. At least for now she didn’t have to.

She went back to the shard of dragon bone in her lap, a fracture of the juncture where the front teeth had met the top of its jaw. Fitted properly, it would hang over her shoulder and half-way down her upper arm. 

She ran her thumb over the remaining tooth. Sharp enough to draw blood. She kept carving.