FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

STEEL, GOLD, VELVET

Each day, the road grew longer. Each day, more men died to build it.

The dead were interred in the trench, holding their tools. The road was laid overtop them, sand and clay and cement covering their remains. Each mile-marker in their steady wake was decorated with antlers taken from the fallen; the cost of northward progress, ticking up in even numbers.

Two more would hang, this morning.

Casmund watched the funeral from the mouth of the medical tent, ignoring the nurses' suggestions of rest. The dead man was being buried with axe and groma plumb in hand, marking him as a surveyor. A safe duty, in civilized lands.

A death sentence, here.

“Where's his partner?" Casmund asked, not certain he wanted the answer. Surveyors always travelled in pairs. “They should have found two bodies."

“It's only him," the nurse said, quietly.

Which could have meant anything.

“Where was he found?" Casmund held up an arm to allow the nurse to peel back the bandages on his side. The movement was automatic; a sign he'd been too long in this tent.

The nurse paused in her ministrations. Even with his attention on the burial, Casmund could sense the old doe's hesitance to answer. “He was a few miles out of camp," she admitted, after a pause. “Some of the men are blaming the Dracaeli."

“Don't give life to that," Casmund warned, darkly. They'd all lived the war. No one, including the dragons in their camps across the ridge, would be so keen to reopen old wounds. “We both know what killed him—and it wasn't a sword."

The nurse applied her alchemies in silence. Casmund watched the body of the dead stag disappear into the trench in front of the road. An Aketji priest stood on the blacktop, holding his bundled antlers and swinging a censer that trailed blueish smoke. A small assembly of workers leaned on picks and pitons, talking softly amongst themselves. Some of them cast dark glances at the medical tent—at Casmund, whose duty it was to protect them.

“A few miles out, you said?"

“I heard."

Casmund looked out, towards the treeline. A wall of darkness. Trunks packed together like teeth in a dark mouth, crooked and ancient.

“You should spend another day abed," the nurse said, securing the bandage in place. “It will do none of us good for our mageling to die."

Casmund nodded, absently. Then, he picked up his gambeson and pulled it on, wincing at the movement. “Is the antidote ready?" he asked, buckling the front closed.

“Yes, but-"

“Give it here."

The nurse lent him a sad look, but did as she was bid.

“If the beast stings you, remove the quills immediately," the old doe instructed, handing him a small glass ampoule. “You will bleed—but manticore venom will kill you before the blood loss will." She motioned to the brass cap at the ampoule's base. “There's a needle, here. Put it in your leg. Hold it there, until it's empty."

Casmund wrapped the ampoule in a cloth, and tucked it away within easy reach. Before he could falter, he shouldered his pack and ducked out of the tent, careful not to catch his velveting antlers on the low awning. Late Spring, now. His velvet would need to be shed, sooner rather than later.

The stag passed by the funeral on his way out of the camp. As he did, some of the workers turned to watch him go, hands tightening on their tools.

“That's two today!" one called as he passed.

Another one winced, toeing his boot. “Don't say that. We don't know if Grahn's dead."

“Yeah," muttered the first. “We do. What do we pay you for, Arkling? Kill the beast, or pick up a shovel!"

Casmund didn't slow. Most of these men had been soldiers, not so long ago. They were fortunate, to have survived the war—and unfortunate, to have come here, in its aftermath.

He could not blame them their fear.

The stag had been laid up for days now, preparing. He was supplied for a week of hard tracking. His component pouch was full. His spellbook was dog-eared. The second surveyor was out there, in the woods; and somewhere, the manticore licked blood from its fangs.

The beast had caught him off-guard, before. No doubt it had taken the surveyors much the same.

He would not give it another chance.

***

The road was a massive undertaking; the largest, longest of its kind. Thousands of workmen, hundreds of miles, uncountable tonnes of earth.

All evidence of it disappeared as soon as Casmund stepped into the treeline.

Within a few hundred yards, camp sounds could still be heard, echoing off the trees. Past that, the forest closed. The pines, lush with needles, ate sound and blocked sight, growing so close in some places that their branches intertwined. After a mile, it was difficult to tell that men had ever tread here at all.

Casmund came to rest at the top of a rise, breathing hard. From his vantage point, the forest stretched out in all directions, thick as a carpet. Back the way he'd come, the blacktop of the road stretched a hundred miles south to the city of Ilkepr, a winding, sunken scar across the landscape. A pillar of signal smoke rose into the sky from the camp, marking the oncoming roadhead for all to see.

Miles away to the East, on the other side of the ridge, a second pillar of smoke marked the Dracaeli camp, keeping pace in their parallel. It was closer than he'd last seen it, creeping towards them like an omen.

Casmund hoped dearly that the Kings' Peace would hold if the two camps met; that neither side recalled that their axes and pitons and shovels had been beaten from swords.

***

That first length of his trek was hard going.

The stag had only been abed for a week, at most—but atrophy clung to him like pitch. His antlers, grown to their full springtime majesty and itching under their velvet, caught low hanging branches more than once, causing him to stumble and curse and free himself from the tangle. He made meager progress, forced constantly to drop his pack and check his bandages beneath his knitted armour. Slow going.

When he came across the stream, he knew he was close. A moment's search revealed proof of his internal compass.

The evidence of his brush with the manticore had yet to fade from this place: a patch of blackened trees where he'd set fire to the beast. Broken branches where the manticore had descended on him through the trees.

Rust-dark stains on the ground, where he'd fallen.

The manticore had won the encounter—though not soundly. He'd struck it with a Rending: a crude spell for violent work. The only kind of spell he used, of late.

He was tracing the path upstream when a rustle sounded behind him.

Casmund spun, fingers rippling with heat. The shallow stream vaporized in an instant, and the branches nearest him curled and blackened. The spell, unfocussed and half-cast in his panic, bit a chunk from the treeline and reduced it to burning shrapnel—and caught some poor, wild animal in its pace, immolating it in an instant.

It might have been a rabbit.

It certainly wasn't a manticore.

Casmund staggered on his hooves, breathing fresh steam and cradling his casting hand in his lap. His joints creaked, rictus-stiff. The tips of his fingers darkened to a blotchy, mealy purple. Blinking spots from his eyes, he approached the unfortunate creature that had startled him. There wasn't enough left of it to salvage.

The fingers of his casting hand prickled as blood returned to them. His leys, drained from his fight with the manticore and stunted by his recovery, were bone dry. Without reserves, magic ate at his blood, muscles and nerves in lieu of cleaner fuel. He was not healed. The nurse's warning came back to him—but the idea of slinking back to the camp under the stares of the workmen made his skin crawl. He had too many bodies in his wake to fail now.

The smell of his fear dogged him, even as he left the scene behind.

Dark smoke.

Charred meat.

He fell heavily against a tree, sucking in air.

There was something wrong with his chest. A pang, shooting with each breath, leaving him light in the head. Casmund loosened his gambeson and checked his bandages with his good hand. He picked a stone by the side of the creek and sank down onto it, clenching and unclenching his fist, listening to the trickling water refilling the creekbed. When focus alone could not soothe his nerves, he put his shaking hands to work, peeling back the bandages and testing the wound with his fingers. No blood, anymore—just three pink, risen scars, tracing down from shoulder to navel. The nurse's alchemies had done their job. He was alive, because of them. Hale. Healthy. Not even bleeding, anymore.

So why did he feel he was dying?

He held his head in his hands and sucked in thin gasps of air until his breaths came steady.

It took some time.

***

Casmund followed the creek until evening, wielding adrenaline against fatigue.

Eventually, he could go no further. He set his camp—but not before whispering gently to a silver bell from his pouch, setting it afloat in midair by the treeline. Even tapped as he was, this sort of spell asked little of him in return; it was an old favourite, well-learned by young mages seeking late-night solitude in the communal baths of the University. A spell for better times.

It seemed almost crass to use it here.

Casmund washed himself in the creek as the light of day began to filter away. The stream was fed by a little fall that wended out from a shelf of slate higher up the embankment. Not a tap—but near enough to one as he was like to find.

The water was so cold that his body's instinct was to flee from it. He stripped to his breeches and stepped beneath the little fall, forced himself to stay under for just a moment longer than necessary. Then a moment more.

He surfaced from it, gasping and shivering, to hear the ringing of his silver bell.

No time for his gambeson; Casmund dove for the shore –for the flaying knife in its leather case– ripping it free and turning, still ankle-deep in the stream.

Two figures exited the treeline, stopping cold at the sight of bared steel. They were Dracaeli, both: dragons, scaled and horned and foreign. The shorter of the two was a dark, vivid red, wearing a hooded cloak and bent beneath a heavy, jangling pack. The other was taller, broader, cobalt blue—and only half-dressed despite the cool evening. His lower body and tail were clad in polished steel: boots and greaves and tassets, with a belt of colorful beads tied around his bare midriff. Unlike his hooded companion, he carried nothing but a blade: a sword as long as Casmund was tall, worn sheathed at his armoured hip.

The two dragons jangled to a halt, a few paces from the stream.

Casmund held his little knife as threateningly as he could, forcing the tremor from his hand. He did not call upon his magic, nor did he turn to flee, though both instincts rose shrill and frightened in his throat. He held his ground, eyes flicking between the two draconic intruders –from blue to red to blue again– as he shivered and fought to breathe evenly.

The little fall burbled quietly behind him. No one spoke for a long moment.

“P-peace," Casmund stuttered, in the only word of their language he knew. He waved his knife. “Peace."

The blue dragon, the bare-chested swordsman who'd been in the lead of them, cocked his head and regarded Casmund with interest, his slitted eyes pale as chipped ice. It occurred to Casmund that he'd never been this close to a dragon before; that he'd only ever seen them from atop Ilkepr's battlements.

His flaying knife felt suddenly flimsy in his hand.

“Peace," he tried, again.

I'll kill you, he meant. If I have to.

The red dragon, draped in his dark cloak, stepped forward, glowering from inside the shadow of his hood. He made a guttural chirring sound, then spat into the roots of a nearby tree.

“I speak your low tongue, Kepr," the red dragon said, in rasping, accented Ilkepri. His laden pack jangled as he adjusted it on his shoulders. “Do not make us suffer your butchery of ours."

Casmund's grip tightened on the knife. “Turn back," he called, probing his reserves of magic and finding them gaunt. “Return to your side of the ridge. Now."

The red dragon tilted his head beneath his hood. Like his armoured companion, his eyes were pale and slitted—but these the coals of a furnace fire, closer to white than orange. “No sides of anything here, Kepr," he said, darkly. “Where neither road has reached, neither King may rule." His eyes flicked down a moment, and his scarlet snout split into a sneer. “Much less a lone and wounded animal… whose knife is terribly dull."

Casmund swallowed. Hugged one arm unconsciously across his scarred torso. If they came on, he'd fight... and die, whatever the outcome. He'd seen mages, overeager or over-desperate, draw too much from empty leys. Seen them wither. Crumble. Turn at once from stalwart friends to screaming pyres, lit from within.

The dragons stared at him with their pale, slitted eyes. Hungry points of light in the growing dark.

“I m-mean to warn you," he said, hating the waver in his voice. “Not to threaten."

The hooded dragon considered Casmund, and the single sharpened edge that he held between them. “Fortunate for you," he said, softly. “Go back to your camp, Kepr. Dark woods are a place for venery."

With a sneer and a clipped word to his armed companion, the hooded dragon turned to go.

But the blue one, who had yet to speak (or so much as blink) shook his horned head from side to side, like he were surfacing from a dream. “Ilmaya Vayar…" the swordsman murmured. It sounded like a prayer. “Vaes jai novur brovenai yisuni?"

The red dragon jerked his head around, as though he'd been slapped. The swordsman blinked at Casmund slowly, then raised a hand from his sword to rest it on his bare stomach, just above the beaded belt.

“Akiya," he continued, reaching out to tug his hooded companion by the sleeve. “Braiva, Akiya?"

There was a pause.

“My…" the red dragon said, turning slowly and narrowing his eyes. “My bondsliege asks what gave you your injury, Kepr."

A second pause. Longer than the first. Casmund lowered his horns uneasily. Covered his stomach with one arm, as much as he was able.

“Manticore," Casmund said, guardedly. “Our road incurs through its territory. I mean to kill it."

A cold wind brushed through the trees around them, before the red dragon relayed Casmund's answer, rasping their foreign words. The blue one's eyes widened even further. Then, with a snik of oiled metal, he drew his sword a bare inch from its scabbard and spoke, shortly and sharply.

The red dragon shuffled in place, his pack jangling. He opened his mouth as if to argue—then seemed to deflate. He rubbed his scaled temple beneath his hood and sighed. “My bondsliege points out that you are wounded, Kepr. He… offers to slay the beast, on your behalf."

Casmund's guard faltered. “What?" the stag blurted, raising the knife back into place. His ankles were growing numb in the stream. “What are you talking about?"

The red dragon made an angry, chirring sound and spat again. He turned to the swordsman and strung a jab of a sentence together, seeming to ignore Casmund's question entirely.

“Brovenai," the swordsman murmured, dropping his blade back to rest in its scabbard. Then, almost imploringly, he reached out to tug at the hem of his companion's cloak. “Vaes siq… vaes 'brovenai', Akiya?"

After a brief, whispered exchange, the swordsman stepped forward and cleared his throat.

“Beoodeefol," he said, sounding each syllable with clear effort. “Ilmaya Aesha, vor vozsi."

Casmund stared at them both, a lick of confusion softening his fear. The hooded dragon turned away and tugged at his cloak, muttering darkly.

“My bondsliege expresses… admiration, Kepr," he said, spitting the demonym as if to wash the rest of the sentence from his mouth. The swordsman batted at his companion's shoulder excitedly, receiving a blazing glare in return. “Your… your antlers, he says, are most striking."

Casmund shuffled in the stream, wondering if he wasn't, after all of this, abed in the doctor's tent, afflicted by some fever dream. It seemed the more likely scenario. The blue dragon beamed, bowing slightly at the waist. His hooded companion muttered something dark and inaudible to the roots at his feet.

“I… I see," Casmund lied, shifting uncomfortably. “Would… tell your friend-"

“Bondsliege," the red dragon corrected, coldly. “You are addressing an Honourand of House Qirrin."

“Ah," Casmund said, blankly, shuffling through his memory for the term. “Tell your… just tell him that I-"

Casmund paused. That he… what, exactly?

Refused?

He took quick stock of himself, aside the inexplicability of the moment: dry leys. Dark woods. A knife he wielded against fruit and kindling more often than monsters. A sparse bag of components and a week's worth of pemmican and hard tack.

A growing pile of bodies beneath the blacktop.

Even if he found the manticore… would he be able to avenge them, as he was?

Casmund's gaze locked on the gleaming plate cladding the blue dragon's legs. The jagged scales of his chest and arms, bared brazenly to the wilds.

What madman wore half of a set of armour?

And then he froze.

The answer came to him in the voice of his old commanding officer, striking for the fact it was the one time he'd ever heard fear in the man's voice:

Draknikt!

Even from memory, the title chilled him.

The blue dragon was a bloody knight. A mad servant of Dracaeli Gods. The red dragon beneath his hood, older, Casmund thought, and embittered, was his… what? Proctor? That wasn't right. Chaperone? Chronicler?

Squire?

Casmund swallowed. His mind flit, unwillingly, to the war, his time spent in stone towers, bringing death to fields full of men; how dragons in metal armour were targets comparable only to siege engines. Draknikt were fanatics, froths of blood and silver on the field of battle. Their armour was redundant, it was said. Symbols of their victories, earned piece by bloody piece.

And this one, decorated to his waist.

A part of him quailed at the thought.

But… his better sense considered.

“Tell your master," Casmund said, “that I am… flattered to accept his offer."

The hooded squire fixed him with a stare of such open hate that Casmund felt accursed by it. Still, the red dragon relayed. Spat his message to the side, like a bad taste. His master's face lit up like a candle, and the knight spoke excitedly, gesturing from Casmund to the trees and back again.

“My bondsliege says we will set camp for the night, nearby. We will convene in the morning, kill your beast, and be on our way." The red dragon listened further. Scowled. “He says also that… rather, he reiterates his… admiration. Of your horns."

The red dragon turned suddenly on heel without another word and stalked off into the trees, leaving his companion behind. The knight watched his squire go, then fixated on Casmund for a long moment. Like he was savouring the twilit scene.

“Beioudeeful," he said again, struggling clumsily through the word. “Ilmaya Vayar, ru vaya brovenai yisunia."

And then, with a full and courtly bow, he turned, and followed his irate companion through the trees.

Casmund stood there for a time, rooted in place like a witless faun. Eventually, he stepped from the creek, ears swiveling nervously, flinching at each unknown sound from the darkening woods. He could hear the two dragons setting their camp, some ways distant. Smell the beginnings of a cookfire, and the smoky scent of oil. Heard the clipped words of a brief argument, and the rattling of metal.

Then the woods were silent.

Casmund did not sleep. Instead he paced for a time, churning with nerves. He developed a plan. Argued it to nothing. Concocted another, and dismantled that one, too. He lost himself into a fantasy: of slipping quietly through the woods, to cut the Dracaelis' scaled throats in their sleep.

That last thought forced him to settle. Sober into reality.

The manticore was dangerous.

But a Draknikt? And Casmund, with barely enough magic to enchant a bell…

No.

Whatever odd course of fate this was, he would accept it. Use it. Pit his dangers against themselves until he was strong enough to strike.

It was then that Casmund let his mind, for the first time in years, to truly dwell upon the war. The fear. Wide-eyed. Pale-faced. Five years of his youth that never ended. The stink of it. Prisoners of war, marched naked and beaten through Ilkepr's streets. The dreadful part he'd played in battle, from atop the ramparts. A privileged distance. The fact of his gifts, his magic, having saved him from the shoulder-to-shoulder press of infantry. Arcane artillerist. Mass murderer. Arkuchet. He did not know how many he had killed in those days, had lost count in the instant he first bore fire down upon those distant, charging men. Ilkepri and Dracaeli alike, by the end. A field of men reduced to burning meat.

It was a cold irony, that the only corpses he'd seen up close were the withered shells of his fellows as they overextended themselves, creaking and crumbling apart like rotted wood. Turning to dust on the hot wind. Becoming ash in his eyes and nose and mouth.

Casmund had been spared the front-line—and so he had not understood the fear in his commander's voice when he'd spoken of the enemy. No matter how many times he'd heard the stories, no matter how many times he'd seen the telltale ripple of a silver sword, carving a wake through a sea of the doomed, the dead, and the dying. First into the fray, were zealots. And always the last to die, even as their gleaming armour ran like wax into the scorched earth at their feet.

Draknikt were madmen.

And he, no longer at a distance.

***

He did not allow himself to sleep.

He approached the two dragons in their camp as the sun rose, intruded on their space, as they had his the night previous. The display was important, he thought. That he show no fear.

“The beast fled north," Casmund called, from a safe distance. He'd come upon them preparing: the knight affixing his swordbelt, the squire standing a hooded vigil. Their camp smelt faintly of oil.

“No traps, Kepr." The red dragon glowered from beneath his hood. There were deep bags beneath his eyes, every bit the match of Casmund's own. “No tricks. Let this be done with."

As the dragons packed, Casmund thumbed the sliver bell he'd stowed back into a pocket of his tunic. Neither dragon had taken notice of its warning him last night, no doubt over the noise of their own rattling gear.

Small mercies. If they marked him for a mage, this uneasy truce of theirs would no doubt end violently. The war was a closing wound, true—but it had been magic that started the war, and magic which had ended it. Grudges ran deep between them, tended only by treaty and a handful of prosperous years in the interim. Some wounds did not heal so quickly as his.

If ever they would.

They travelled loosely—Casmund, yards afront the other two, weaving northward through the trees. The blue dragon kept inching closer over the course of the morning, coming nearly into his heels at times—but the squire, it seemed, had a hold over his master, and took to reaffirming their distance with snapping remarks in their foreign tongue. They seemed to assume, without him having told them, that Casmund had some destination in mind.

He did not correct them.

Manticores denned in high places—which was the extent of Casmund's knowledge on the subject. He led by virtue of rising terrain, keeping wide of clearings and denser foliage that might serve as cover for a beast of its size. This turned their trek serpentine, meandering uphill, rising into the northward cleft of the valley proper.

Where both roads, eventually, would meet.

They camped apart once more when they made to rest that evening—though to call it rest would be untruthful. The following morning, Casmund trudged sleepless and bleary into the dragons' camp, muscles aching from exertion and the hard ground. The knight was stretching idly in a sunbeam at the edge of the clearing, hands threading above his head, languid as a cat. His squire knelt at an ashy fire, stirring a pot of something dark and fragrant.

The squire glanced up as Casmund blundered into their clearing.

Both of them froze.

The red dragon's hood was drawn back, pooled around his shoulders. Without it, the squire looked… smaller, somehow. Shrinking into the volume of his cloak. It only took Casmund a moment to discern why.

Where the red dragon's horns should be, only two jagged stumps remained. It was ragged work, sawn closely to the root, ugly, and uneven. Like the stumps of trees, cut away in the path of the road.

The dragon's eyes went wide with surprise. Then anger. The dark bags beneath them had deepened, his shoulders turned inward, such that he looked, though only for a moment, afraid.

Casmund saw the impulse to hide his ruined horns. The raising of his hands towards his hood—before the dragon's expression resolved into one of sullen resignation.

“What do you want, Kepr?"

The sound of the squire's voice caught the blue dragon's attention. The knight gave one more cat-like stretch, then ambled over to them, smiling as though nothing at all were amiss.

Casmund cleared his throat.

“I've been amiss," he said, the practised words sounding stiff in his mouth. “I mean to offer introduction."

The red dragon narrowed his eyes. The knight made a curious chirring noise and nudged his companion, his smile wavering somewhat.

Casmund breathed out. “I've been too long away from home, and too far inside my own head." He breathed in. “My manners have suffered for it."

He stepped forward and extended a hand.

If it shook, it was only slight.

“I am Casmund, of Ilkepr."

The knight let out a delighted rumbling noise and took Casmund's hand in his, shaking it firmly. Then, with surprising gentleness, raised it to within an inch of his mouth and kissed the air around his knuckles.

“Caszmoond," he said, solemnly.

His breath was very warm.

Casmund retrieved his hand, stepped backward, and cleared his throat. “Thank you. For your assistance."

The swordsman placed one hand over his heart, and the other on the haft of his sword. After a moment, when nothing of note happened, he glanced sidelong at his squire and made a small sound in the back of his throat.

The squire sighed, and stood from the pot he'd been tending.

“You are served by Tyvir," he said, “Honorand of the house Qirrin. He bears the silver, and thus the patronage, of Her Eminence, Veles Virqa, proctoress of the Faiths of Ilmaya."

The knight inclined his head and rumbled a long, prosaic sentence. After a moment, his squire flatly translated.

“His victories number fifteen. The beast who has marred you shall number sixteen. He hopes that the armour awarded to him upon this victory one day stops a blow that would otherwise kill him. He levies a compliment. He levies another compliment. He…"

The knight went on, his tone turning somewhat grandiose. After a moment, he seemed to realize his interpreter was no longer interpreting, and stopped. He nudged his companion gently with an elbow.

The red dragon was silent for a moment. Then, he scratched his mangled horns and turned back to the bubbling pot.

“He would be most pleased if you addressed him as 'Tyvir'," he told the cookstove, sullenly.

Casmund tried the name aloud, though with the sense that he had somehow fumbled both syllables. The red dragon scoffed quietly—but the knight, Tyvir, closed his eyes and smiled serenely, as though he were back beneath a sunbeam.

The red dragon poured the contents of the pot into a little clay cup, and handed it up to the knight—who promptly and expectantly held it out to Casmund.

The squire pinched his snout and muttered to himself… though not, Casmund noticed, without a small softening of his eyes.

Casmund sniffed the cup. Then, when the knight mimed drinking, took a tiny, tentative sip. Whatever the drink was, it was far too hot. Somehow both too watery, and too pungent. Ungodly bitter.

He handed it back, immediately. “What-" he cleared his throat. “What is that?"

“It is a dreadful poison, Kepr," the squire intoned, dryly. “No more than a drop is lethal." The knight took the cup, raised it like he were toasting a goblet, and drank deeply.

“Ah," Casmund said. After a moment, when neither one of them keeled over dead, he ventured a small, uncertain, “Right. Well. It's very… it was… good."

The squire let out a choppy, hacking noise that might have been laughter. He took the cup in turn. Swallowed a mouthful and handed it back to Tyvir, who took it eagerly and drank the rest.

“You may call me 'Akiya'," the red dragon offered, holding up a hand to stop Casmund's attempt. “Spare me the effort. Your tongue is… ill-shaped for its intricacies."

The red dragon's tone was curt—but Casmund did not miss the slight raising of his chin during the greeting, as opposed to a more universal nod; a gesture in keeping with Ilkepri manners instead of Dracaeli. A clear and specific show of non-aggression, moving one's horns away from another.

Interesting.

Doubly so, considering the man had no horns, and therefore could hardly have threatened Casmund by nodding. Triply, that this Akiya knew, and apparently appreciated, the gesture.

It stuck with him as they began the day's trek, a question floating unresolved in the back of his mind.

He knew little enough of the Dracaeli, despite having warred with them—but he knew that dragons, like stags, regarded their horns as symbols of power, status, and virility. Some men, back in Ilkepr, would take to wearing ornate headdresses when their antlers shed in the Winter, for fear of being seen uncrowned. A stag's antlers might be given to another as a symbol of commitment, or taken as penance, or else kept in attics by mawkish parents. Bloodied in a street fight. Carved once shed into charms and heirlooms and other items of sentiment.

Hung on mile-markers, at the end of one's road.

In Ilkepr, antlers were the perennial symbol of a man's worth. His dignity. His personhood. His pride.

To say nothing of what was meant by their absence.

Casmund held back a shudder, and did his best to put Akiya's lack of horns from his mind. The particular word for it eluded him, just there on the tip of his tongue. He did not chase it far. It tasted too foul. Like ash.

Like war.

He quietly resolved not to intrude on their camp again.

***

They ate sparsely as they travelled; Casmund, from his dwindling rationcloths, the dragons from sealed clay jars from Akiya's rattle-y pack. Once, Casmund turned in time to catch a strange scene: the dragons had been eating the same piece of round-tack for almost an hour, passing it between themselves, cracking it in half, then passing it again. When the slice became too small to halve, an argument broke out, each dragon pushing the crumbs back and forth between themselves until, begrudgingly, the squire grumbled darkly and ate what remained. The knight, Tyvir, beamed down at him. Akiya shook the napkin clean and tucked it into a sleeve, and they carried on as if nothing had happened. Casmund looked on, befuddled.

“We go in circles," Akiya called, seeing him stopped there, staring.

“I know the way," Casmund replied, and continued as though he did.

That he was, in fact, stalling, was calculated on his part. Each day, his reserves of magic filled a little more. Each day, his wounds healed, and the itch of his velvet worsened.

Each day, they prowled in loud circles through the Manticore's territory. A clattering, obvious procession.

Casmund, in truth, had always been a poor tracker.

So, the manticore would need find them.

By the third day, it became clear that Casmund was not the only one wearied by paranoia. Akiya's flame-pale eyes seemed dulled by constant vigilance; a turn soon evidenced by his lack of protest at their steadily closing ranks.

That morning, Casmund and the two dragons walked nearly abreast each other through a copse of thin, white-boughed trees. They were higher, now, skirting the edge of the valley basin. Where the trunks thinned on the ridgeline, they could make out both roadheads in the distance, marked by their blacktop scars and twin trails of smoke. The ridgeline, impassable, between them.

The Draknikt seemed the only one of them immune to travail. He talked animatedly at his companion, broke sticks off trees, whistled back to the birds flitting through the canopy. One afternoon, he presented Casmund with a bundle of wildflowers, tied together with a beaded string taken from his own belt. The previous evening, he had appeared without warning in Casmund's camp with a handful of inked wood shavings, and had not left until Casmund had allowed him to scatter them into his cookfire and recite what seemed like a prayer.

Baffling behavior.

There came a point that afternoon (after the knight had taken him gently by the wrist and pressed a single candied plum into his hand) that Casmund thought he'd been duped, somehow. This smiling, curious man, generous with supplies and immune to the wary moods of his company, could hardly have been further from the Draknikt of wartime reckoning; from the crazed bezerkers Casmund had glimpsed so distantly through the fog of war.

Yet for all that… there were signs.

Casmund began taking note, each time the shadow of a Draknikt passed across the man he knew as Tyvir. The blue dragon drew, it seemed, from an endless well of energy, abuzz with constant, restless motion. Tyvir fidgeted, or cracked his joints, or paced in wide loping circles whenever he and Akiya caught their breaths on a steep slope. During one such rest, Casmund had watched the armoured dragon halt mid-stride, cocking his head as though listening for something. Then, he'd dropped into a crouch, and dug a small hole in front of him with his bare hands, a look of utter concentration on his face.

To Casmund's utter bafflement, he had then watched the knight produce, from the dirt, a buried piece of metal. A round, golden coin. The knight washed it clean with his waterflask, pressed it gently to his lips, then held it out to Casmund in both hands. Like an offering. Casmund had stared at the coin, agog: a time-worn relic of impossible antiquity, pulled casually from a patch of untouched wilderness and presented with no more import than a candied plum.

“Take it, Kepr," Akiya spat, eventually.

Casmund did. The knight smiled at him beatifically, as though it were him who'd been given a gift.

“Novur," Tyvir intoned, softly. “Vaes voszivat Ilmayarir."

“I…" The coin sat there in his palm, no less baffling than it had been a moment ago. “I don't understand."

Akiya scoffed, glaring towards his charge with tired eyes.

“Clearly not," he muttered, and did not elaborate further.

***

Casmund stared at the coin that night, sequestered in a nearby clearing. Though the symbol on its face had been worn by time, lettering was visible around its edge—not that that fact did him any good. He could not understand these foreign symbols any more than he understood the foreign tongue of his companions.

And that, he decided, needed remedy.

He probed his reserves of magic, and found them present, if shallow. Eating rations and sleeping on the ground made for poor recovery of one's leys—to say nothing of the nerves and stresses of their travel, equally overwary of his companions and the rustling woods.

Still. Nothing else to be done.

He had to know.

The spell devoured what little magic he'd been able to recover—but once cast, it leapt to him like a static shock. Magic, he was discovering, bent itself eagerly to such spells as these, preferring to nudge the world instead of bend it. For every Rending or bolt of crude fire bought by pounds of his own flesh, magic could offer a thousand small and smokeless wonders. Casmund could enchant a lock to open by touch, restore the ink of an aging map, retrue a basket of steel bearings…

He could even, given focus, and time, comprehend a foreign tongue.

What the spell did not cost in raw magic, it cost in effort. By morning, Casmund's head was pounding, his camp littered with the detritus of his efforts; crumpled parchment, ink-blotched fingers, ruts paced into the dirt. His fingertips were black, his mouth dry, his eyes heavy.

But he had it.

Casmund rubbed his eyes and held the coin up into a pink sliver of morning sun. He looked at the words embossed upon the gold, and understood them. It was a strange sensation: less reading each symbol than comprehending their meaning_._

A drop of My Blood, it said.

And on the back: Given Gladly.

The effort of his achievement cost him, that day. The going was no harder than the days before—but now, it seemed every step was dragged through lead. His companions noticed the change. The knight seemed agitated by it, dogging his steps closer than usual. The squire, for his part, seemed to share his exhaustion, and kept himself to bitter silence.

It had not been an hour before Tyvir called out from behind him. Casmund turned, breathing hard, to see the knight prodding his squire gently over to a set of large, mossy stones huddled on the slope. The two dragons argued for a moment, before Akiya sighed, dropped his jangling pack, and sank down onto one of the boulders.

Casmund ambled over to investigate.

Akiya raised his mangled horns as he approached. The knight fussed around his squire, prodding a little pouch of nuts against his shoulder. Akiya pushed the pouch away and snapped his teeth.

“Kepr," he said, when Casmund came beside them. The knight said something in their tongue and his squire sighed. “My bondsliege calls for a rest."

Casmund leaned against a tree, idly scratching his velvet on the rough bark. “We've hardly gone a mile."

“I know." Akiya glared at the knight. Tyvir beamed at him, then turned to Casmund and adopted a solemn expression. He bowed lightly, speaking to the forest floor. “He…" Akiya squinted. “He says his feet hurt."

Casmund raised an eyebrow. Tyvir straightened, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking rather proud of himself. Entirely unweary.

“…very well," Casmund said. Gratitude rose warmly in his chest. “We'll stop a moment."

They each took a boulder and sat, Akiya and Casmund on opposite sides of the cluster. Tyvir, even for his claim, seemed incapable of stillness. The knight sat. Played his fingers rhythmically against his armoured thighs. Stood. Bothered his squire for the water flask they shared. When it appeared to be empty, he made a pleased noise in the back of his throat and asked Casmund a question.

Akiya translated, picking at the carpet of moss on his boulder.

“My bondsliege hears running water," Akiya said. Casmund turned an ear, though he heard nothing of the sort. Only the wind in the boughs. “He asks for your water flask, so he may refill it for you."

If the knight was aware of his contradicting himself, he showed no sign of caring. Casmund looked to Akiya, who returned him a loaded glare. Then, with a tired shrug, Casmund retrieved his own empty flask, and the knight took it, bowing at the waist.

The knight turned on heel and loped off through the trees with a spring in his step.

The two of them watched him go, bemusedly.

It was warm today. The breeze was light, and pine-scented. Casmund itched at his velvet. Akiya picked at the moss.

“Very chivalrous of him," Casmund said, when the silence became unbearable. “Knightly, I suppose."

Akiya picked a strip of moss and dropped it between his boots. “My bondsliege is a credit to his caste."

“Mm."

“You disagree?"

There was a challenge in Akiya's voice. Casmund didn't rise to it.

“I haven't known any other knights," he admitted.

His casting hand ached.

It wasn't quite a lie.

A bird whipped through the canopy above them, thrumming between the branches. They both looked up to watch it pass.

“How much armour will slaying the manticore earn him?" Casmund asked.

Akiya muttered to himself. Then turned about on his boulder to fully face him. “If the beast is as formidable as you say?" The red dragon thought for a moment, fingering the clasps of his pack. “A gauntlet. A pauldron, perhaps."

Casmund leaned his elbows on his knees, interested despite himself. “Who decides what his victories are worth?"

“I do, Kepr." At Casmund's hum, he bristled. “You think me incapable?"

“I'd… thought you a squire."

Akiya blinked at him. Then, he hacked out a single, disbelieving laugh. “Your ignorance is astounding."

“What are you, then?"

The red dragon turned away, rubbing his eyes and muttering. Sensing his opening, Casmund triggered the spell he'd spent the night moulding into shape. Its effect was… unextraordinary. Nothing more than a twitch of his muscles, and the emptying of the reservoir inside him. At first, he wasn't even sure it had worked.

And then the red dragon spoke a single word in Dracaelic.

“Servityr."

Through the spell, the word occurred to him; something he must have always known, for how easily its meaning came. It was squire, in a way—but moreso than that, it was… steward. One's own hand, or else some valued tool in it.

Casmund rubbed his temple. The effect of knowing strained him, somewhat. Pulled his mind in directions unknown, like flexing an atrophied muscle. Akiya continued, thankfully, in Ilkepri.

“I keep him on task, Kepr. Chronicle his achievements. Bestow his rewards. Tend to his aches." The dragon scuffed a boot heel against the base of the boulder. “Bury him, if he should die. Return his armour home to Summayad."

“I see."

“That is doubtful."

Casmund frowned at the jab—yet was surprised to see a little twitch at the corner of Akiya's mouth. “Caste, you said. Were you born into it?"

“No."

“So, what were you, before you were a-" Casmund faltered. Which version of the word was he supposed to have heard? “-before you came into his service?"

Akiya fingered at the hood doffed around his shoulders—though he seemed unaware of his doing so. Retreating, somewhat, into himself.

“Less than nothing," the dragon answered, very quietly.

“I-"

“No more talking, Kepr."

Casmund bit his tongue.

Tyvir returned a few minutes later, water flasks in tow. Casmund thanked him, and dropped a tablet of waterchalk into the lip of his flask. He shook the flask, thought for a moment, then offered a tablet to the dragons, too.

Akiya put a hand on the knight's elbow. “Don't just take it, Tyvir, it could be-" Tyvir copied Casmund, popping the tablet into their flask and shaking it up and down, curiously. Akiya sighed. “…poison."

Casmund held back a smile, even as his head began to ache. The spell worked. Inefficiently, perhaps—but he could feel its eagerness to work. The world, bending beneath his touch.

The knight made to drink from their flask, but Akiya grabbed his wrist. “What is that, Kepr?" Akiya said, suspiciously.

Casmund tucked the rest of his waterchalk away. “It's a dreadful poison," he intoned. Then, he lifted the flask and drank.

“It tastes like mint, Akiya!" Tyvir said. His words were smooth and articulate. Like the poets that performed in the artizan plazas in Ilkepr. He smacked his tongue and handed the flask down to his squire. “Try some. It's very good."

The red dragon put his palms over his eyes.

More birds thrummed through the canopy as they continued their trek. As they walked, Casmund tuned the spell, this way and that. It was like the time his mother had taught him glassworking: of shaping something with his own hands, feeding it to a kiln, and holding it afterward. Staring at it. Turning this thing over in his hands, this object that had not existed and now did—albeit, a little lumpily.

Behind him, the dragons were speaking amongst themselves in clandestine tones. The wind had gone, and their trek was quiet, save for the crunch of their boots, and their overlapping voices.

Casmund turned an ear, ever so slightly, listening.

“-ask me not to marvel in Ilmaya's makings," the knight was saying. His voice came as a mirage, words and their meanings mixing, one over the other. Casmund's head ached at the sound. There was a vertigo to it; an fragility of the ground he ventured into.

Akiya's voice came next, rasping and agitated, like two snakes in a death-tangle. “Of course not—so long as you marvel from a distance."

The knight clapped his hands.

“Then it's decided! Simply tell him that so graceful a creature should not be subject to burdens."

There was a long silence.

“Akiya?"

“I'm not saying that."

“But- I cannot tell him in a way he will understand. And he must be told—look at him and tell me he does not demand compliment!" When no response came of that, the knight's voice dropped somewhat. “Please, Akiya."

“Kepr!" the red dragon barked. Casmund flinched. “My bondsliege wishes to carry your pack."

Casmund turned to face the two dragons, feeling deeply absurd. “He… what?"

The knight poked his companion's shoulder, eyeing Casmund nervously. “Gentler, Akiya, speak gentler. Tell him that he is too lovely to be burdened, and that we worry for his delicate hooves."

For that, the knight received an exhausted, withering look from his companion. Casmund rubbed at the side of his head, caught between flushing in embarrassment and laughing aloud.

Delicate-

What?

“He says our pace is too slow," Akiya relayed, flatly. “He believes it would be expedient to lighten your load."

The flush cooled from Casmund's face. His pack contained everything he owned. His rations. His meager savings, and roughing tools.

His spell book, pages freshly inked with runes.

Shit.

“I'd…" he faltered, trying to navigate two conversations at once. The spell seemed suddenly a terrible idea—if anything, he was more confused now than he'd been the days prior. “No. No, I don't think so."

The knight looked between them, hopefully. His squire regarded Casmund with narrowed eyes. There was something like vindication in him, some scab picked open by his refusal.

“The stag is suspicious of your intentions, Ser."

“Ah! Of course—this is wise of him," the knight said, admiringly. “Though, he has nothing to fear from us."

A moment passed in tense silence. A leaf drifted gently into the middle ground between them. The knight leaned down and prodded his squire on the shoulder.

“Tell him he has nothing to fear from us, Akiya."

The squire rolled his jaw. Casmund watched thoughts churn darkly behind the dragon's tired eyes. He met them with his own, his pulse quickening.

“My bondsliege is insulted by your refusal," Akiya lied. Then, before Casmund could respond, “He wonders why you seem so on edge, Kepr."

Casmund took a half step back. Deceit, then. How often had Akiya bent his translations like this? He let his antlers lower slightly towards them—not enough to threaten. But enough that he was sure Akiya would notice.

“Because I have reason to be."

Akiya's smile was a savage, satisfied thing. “But of course, Kepr. Hunting a beast in the company of your enemies. Alone, in a deep wood, with only your dull little knife to keep you. I do not blame your hands for shaking."

Whatever levity had been was gone. Casmund lowered his horns further.

“For a low tongue," he said, “Ilkepri comes well to you."

“As well it should, Kepr."

The knight, who'd been watching the conversation with growing concern, made to step forward between them. Akiya put out an arm, and stopped the big man in his tracks. He did not take his eyes off Casmund.

“I spent four years among your people," the red dragon said, softly. “I learned so many things, in the gracious hospitality of your King."

That took Casmund aback. He furrowed his brow. “The King? What does-" He stopped short.

Oh.

With slow purpose, the dragon inclined his hornless head. There was coldness etched in every line of the dragon's face, the tilt of his features bringing the mangled stumps of his horns into stark relief. A memory flashed, unbidden: a parade of naked, beaten men, whipped through Ilkepr's streets in chains. The heralds that had preceded it, shouting through their tin cones, and the rumors that followed after, in those darkest years of the war. He'd turned a blind eye, in his room in the towers of the university—but there was no ignoring it now.

The word Casmund had shied from earlier solidified like a blow to his stomach.

Mutilation.

The dragon had been mutilated.

“You'll find I am fluent in both your languages, Kepr," Akiya said, softly. “Cruelty, I learned first. Ilkepri came after."

Casmund felt his gorge rise. He became very aware, then, of the weight of his own horns. He looked away, suddenly unable to meet the dragon's eyes.

“You've upset him, Akiya," the knight murmured, nervously. “What does he say?"

The red dragon's stare was as dead as deep winter. He spoke slowly, and deliberately, each syllable dripping with venom. “He says he can carry his own pack."

Tyvir jerked back, stricken. “Blessed Ilmaya, what truth! Beg of him forgiveness, Akiya, I meant no offense. Tell him that he must be strong as he is magnificent."

The red dragon showed no sign that he had heard his master. His gaze had dropped, instead, to Casmund's casting hand. Curling into form at his side.

“My bondsliege is twice insulted," Akiya rasped, without twitch or tell. “Perhaps we will all sleep easier, having gone our separate ways."

Casmund bit his tongue.

The truth of his haste struck him in the chest. He had ventured unprepared, carried forth by fear—and in doing so, he had ensured his failure. Vengeance was beyond him. Tapped as he was. Alone.

How many more bodies would there be, if he failed?

With deliberate slowness, Casmund pulled his pack from his shoulders. Without taking his eyes from Akiya, he held it out in the direction of the knight. Tyvir's eyes widened, and he ambled around his squire to take the pack gently, holding it like a precious gift.

“I have offended," Casmund whispered. “I am only cautious, and meant no insult. To either of you."

Akiya was a statue. Tyvir swung the pack up onto his broad shoulders and looked between the two of them with a small, hopeful smile. The wind made soft music of the trees.

For a moment, it seemed that it would make no difference—and then the knight lay a gentle hand on his squire's shoulder, and something went out of him, carried on a long, shaky breath.

“The stag is flattered by your galantry, Ser," Akiya muttered.

“It is my privilege," the knight said, brightly. “It is no weight on me at all, to see him relieved of it. Tell him this, Akiya."

Casmund waited to be told.

Instead, Akiya smiled. It was a grim and hollow thing.

“You must hate your beast, Kepr, for having bested you." The dragon's voice had gone low. “That is good. Grudges steady the hand."

“You need not hate a thing to kill it," Casmund returned, softly. “Fear is enough."

They stared at one another. Wary. Tired. Some odd flicker of shame passed over Akiya's face. His scaled brow tightened.

Then, Casmund tilted his chin up in Akiya's direction. Pulled back his horns. Bared his throat, ever so slightly.

Akiya donned his hood and set his dead eyes elsewhere.

That much needed no translation.

***

When they made their camps, Casmund could stand his velvet no longer. He picked a clear spot of dirt with good sightlines. Wet a stone and dragged his knife along it to clear it of burs.

He began to shed his velvet.

It wouldn't shed naturally for a week or more—but he could wait no longer. He set a flask of water, a cloth, and a little mirror in his lap, then raised his knife above his head, and began to pare the soft fuzz away from his antlers.

The effect was twofold: first, he bled. Badly. If the manticore was not stalking them already, he hoped the scent of blood would tempt it closer. Second, the velvet itself. Valuable material, for a mage.

Whose flesh was a potent fuel.

He swore himself to vigilance while he worked—but he'd rather forgotten the inconvenience of shedding oneself. He cursed. Slipped his blade more than once off the unfamiliar tines of this year's growth. His head began to swim before he was half through the first antler. He earned a cramped neck in the course of his gory work—and did not notice his company until they called out from the treeline.

“Kepr."

Casmund rose and spun, shucking the mirror into the dirt and letting a long strip of bloody velvet slap down across his snout. At the treeline, the knight and his squire stood, staring incredulously at him. The former wore an expression of horror; the latter, one of mild disgust.

A trickle of blood wept along his brow. He closed one eye against it, and brandished the knife towards them.

“What?" he snapped, tilting in place from a sudden wave of dizziness. “What do you want?"

“My bondsliege thought it time we make camp together," the red dragon said. That he did not agree was written in a scowl on his face.

Casmund wiped his brow with the inside of his wrist. His fingers were a patterned red, blood drying in his fur, down the side of his face. The knight stepped forward into the clearing, and Casmund's heart seized in his chest.

Tyvir's longsword was drawn, the blade naked and ready in his hand.

“Peace, Kepr," called the squire, darkly amused. “He thinks you've been attacked."

“Well-" Casmund peeled a long string of bloody velvet off of his snout, grimacing. “Tell him I haven't."

The red dragon snorted, and spoke a short, clipped word to his master. Without the spell, his words were opaque. Tyvir stilled. Then, his pale eyes widened and he surged forward, so quickly and carelessly that Casmund almost cut himself trying to position the knife between them.

The knight raised a hand, dropped it, then turned to his squire and let out a wounded chirring noise.

Akiya sighed. “Now he thinks you've harmed yourself."

Casmund stared at the knight, trying to ignore the feeling of blood crusting into his fur. The blue dragon's eyes were wide and glassy.

It looked as though he were about to cry.

Over the knight's shoulder, Akiya rubbed the bridge of his snout. “Tyvir," he called, and the knight retreated, reluctantly.

The dragons convened at the edge of the clearing, talking in hushed, agitated tones. Casmund retrieved his mirror from the dirt with shaking hands and took back to his work, hunching awkwardly by the dying fire, sawing hurriedly. Embarrassment, of all things to be feeling. Honestly. It didn't belong, here in the wild—it was too unserious a feeling. And yet, he felt caught-out. As if they'd walked in on him changing.

He shot a glare towards the two dragons—just in time to watch the knight reach out towards the lumps in Akiya's hood, and for Akiya to slap his hand roughly away.

“I've informed him how you flay yourselves," the red dragon called, louder than was necessary. He approached, dropped his pack next to Casmund's dim fire and began pulling items angrily from within. “That, no matter how savage a practice, it is accepted by your kind."

Casmund grit his teeth. The embarrassment was ebbing, turning quickly to irritation. Truce did not mean welcome. The knight, rubbing his stung knuckles and bearing a wounded sort of expression, slid his sword back into its scabbard started towards him again.

This time, Casmund did not back away.

“What does he want, then?"

The red dragon glanced up for the briefest of moments, before spitting his answer at the dirt.

“He wants to help you, Kepr."

The knight hesitated. His gaze roamed over the bloody mess of Casmund's half-flayed antler, lingering on the rusty streaks drying in his fur. The blue dragon spoke softly under his breath, as one does to a wild animal. He met Casmund's eyes and opened both palms towards him, placating.

Akiya translated without looking up, striking his flint so hard that it lit the clearing white.

“He swears on his silver that you will come to no harm." Another strike, then a bloom of heat. “He invokes his Patron, Veles Virqa, and his Goddess, Ilmaya."

Casmund searched Akiya for evidence of a lie. With the hood barring his features and the spell inactive, he couldn't be sure. A wave of tiredness slipped over him. How long had it been since he'd been sure of anything?

And then Akiya looked up at him. Pale yellow eyes blazing beneath his hood.

“He can give no truer promise than that, Kepr."

Casmund closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, rubbing the cramp in his neck.

Fool, he told himself bitterly, grip loosening on the knife.

What are you doing?

With a sigh, and a prayer to his father's absent gods, Casmund turned the knife and placed it into Tyvir's hand.

The knight took the little blade. Stared dolefully at the red-smeared steel in his hand. Then, he licked a thumb and reached out to stop a trickle of blood welling down the crook of Casmund's brow.

Casmund averted his eyes. There, again, was the embarrassment. The pad of Tyvir's thumb was rough.

His touch, less so.

“The fire," Casmund croaked, gesturing limply. “You'll need the light."

Akiya didn't translate—but the knight seemed to understand.

Against every instinct he had, Casmund sat down across from Akiya. He settled there, cross-legged, gripping his hands together in his lap so hard his knuckles creaked. Tyvir knelt down beside him, holding the blade awkwardly in his large hands. The squire poured a thimble of water into a small black pan and set it on a stand above the growing fire.

“What are you doing?" Casmund asked.

Akiya retrieved a fistful of cloth from his pack and dropped it in the warming pan. “You look butchered," he said, stirring the cloth with a finger. “It's upsetting him." He wrung the cloth, then passed it to Tyvir, who exchanged it, wordlessly for Casmund's knife.

“Now, what are you-"

Akiya snapped his jaws and pointed the knife in his direction. “I said peace, Kepr," he grit out. “If I were to kill you, it would not be with…" he looked down at the blade and shook his head. “With this."

“Then-"

“It's dull." Akiya turned the knife and looked down its edge. “And crooked. What kind of ranger are you?"

Something warm pressed into Casmund's temple and he jerked back—Tyvir, holding the wetted cloth, made a soothing noise and reached out again, dabbing at the blood crusted into his fur.

“That's not necessary," Casmund said. “Tell him-"

“Be quiet, Kepr." Akiya spoke to his lap. He had produced a whetstone and a jar of dark oil, and was testing the knife's blade against the side of his thumb. “Spare us all the headache."

The warm cloth returned, carding gently at the side of his head, where blood had tracked down past his jaw. Casmund eased his grip on his wrists. Across the fire, Akiya began to sharpen the knife, whispering it over the oiled whetstone. The oil was fragrant—the same smell he'd noticed upon first entering their camp those days ago.

While Akiya sharpened, Tyvir cleaned the blood from Casmund's fur. The fire popped, once, then twice. Each time it did, Casmund flinched. Tyvir nudged at Casmund's chin, turning him fully to face, working with a look of utter concentration. Akiya looked up briefly, then sighed and dropped another cloth into the pan.

Eventually, Akiya looked down the edge of the knife and made a small, approving noise. He said something in Dracaelic and offered the knife to his charge, hilt first. Tyvir seemed not to notice, dragging gentle lines across Casmund's cheek—though by now he was surely clean.

“Tyvir," Akiya snapped, and the knight seemed to wake with a start.

Casmund watched the knife change hands. The knight lent him a small smile, then shuffled behind him, moving with deliberate slowness.

If he was to die, it would be now. A quick pull across his throat. Casmund looked to Akiya for a sign of intent—but the red dragon had retreated back into his hood, digging for something else in his jangling pack.

Tyvir shuffled close behind him, and laid a hand on the crown of Casmund's head, fingers circling the burr of his half-flayed antler.

Casmund stiffened.

The press of the knife was soothing in a way it had no right to be. Tyvir drew a tentative stroke downward, from the crook of his first point, and Casmund let out a breath. The knight paused. After a moment, when Casmund made no further sign or sound, he continued, more carefully than before.

Too carefully, in truth.

It took a long while for the first strip of velvet to come free. When it did, Casmund held a hand to one side, expectantly. It shook. Tyvir held the strip of bloody flesh between two fingers for a moment, as though just now realizing what it was. Then, he placed it in Casmund's palm and returned to his task.

Across the fire, Akiya had procured a rolled mat from the side of his pack, woven ornately in purple and silver. He unfurled it with a practiced flick and knelt on one side, placing the oil jar and a short, coarse-haired brush on each of the far corners. For a moment, Casmund thought he was about to pray.

Instead, the red dragon began to pull a series of steel plates from the pack, arraying each piece before him on the mat. Curved discs, fastener pins, dozens of interlocking lames: pieces of a set of armour. Tyvir's missing plate, Casmund realized.

He watched, a little mesmerized, as the hooded dragon began to tend to the armour. Unhurried. With the acuity of a seamstress. Each piece, from the filigreed plackart to the smallest of pins, given care and time and attention.

It occurred to Casmund that it might well have been a prayer, of sorts.

Casmund winced as Tyvir scraped the blade against bone. He determined to be grateful for the discomfort—it was preferable to the witless lull he'd sunken into.

He searched for his opening: a window where the knight was focused, and the squire inattentive. It was easier than he thought. Behind him, the knight had taken to murmuring the same sentence over and over, a distracted sort of hymn. Akiya, who had for all these days watched Casmund like a hawk, was now pointedly looking elsewhere. He worked with his head down, glowing eyes hidden from view by the edge of his hood. The lumps of his mangled horns were invisible, like this.

Yet somehow, no less apparent.

Casmund faltered, feeling his opportunity slipping away. Was this a trick? Surely it was, that he be left so openly to act, even with a blade to his throat. The knight did not hold him so tightly that he could not escape—but the sheer vulnerability ate at his nerves. Eventually, and after several false starts, he took his chance.

Whatever the reason for the opening, he wouldn't waste it.

He re-cast his spell by memory. One of the strips of bloody velvet curled in his hand, brittled, then slipped between his fingers as ash. Neither dragon noticed, occupied by their respective tasks.

Tyvir's hymn doubled for a moment in his ears, then resolved. The meanings of each foreign word came clear to him like a switch, as though he'd known them all along.

“Ilmaya steady me," the knight was muttering. The knife slid shakily downward with each uttering, far too lightly, and in the wrong patterns for a proper shed. The occasional slip of it, paired with the newest drain from his reserves was starting to give him a headache.

“He has to press harder," Casmund croaked, holding very still and listening intently. His own voice was doubled too, his words feeding back into the spell. Sloppy work. Distracted casting. “Tell him."

Eyes still averted, Akiya made a chirring noise that, through the spell, resolved into a disdainful echo. “Push harder, Tyvir. His horns are made of bone, not glass."

The knight's unsteady breaths tickled the back of Casmund's ear. “How can one be sure?" he said, sounding almost frightened. “I've seen church windows less beautifully made than-" The knife slipped, just an inch, and the knight took a little breath through his teeth. “Oh, Goddess, mind my hands."

“Too late for that," the squire muttered. Without looking up, Akiya draped another cloth into the pan, then flicked it at his charge who caught it without looking, viper-fast from the air. “Fool—take this. Wrap it around the base. Tighter, you oaf, or he'll get bloody again."

Tyvir did as he was bid. Against himself, the warm pressure of the cloth appeased Casmund's headache, somewhat. The last of that antler's velvet came free, lifting away with a cool, satisfying ache. He released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Tyvir placed the knife at his side and used the warm cloth to wipe the blood from his bared antler, just as gently as he had the rest of him.

But instead of picking the knife back up and continuing onto the second antler, the knight's hands wandered there without it, rubbing Casmund's points between thumb and palm. Gently mapping the velveted prongs by touch.

Casmund stared silently at the fire.

Which he sat far too close to, all of a sudden.

“Are you sure of this, Akiya?" Tyvir asked, distractedly. “It seems… oh, but it must be wrong. To remove something so soft-"

“What's wrong is your molestation," Akiya bit out. “Stop fondling him."

“Oh, but… you don't suppose it hurts him, Akiya? He can't feel it, surely."

“No," Akiya said, in a longsuffering tone. Then, he paused, glancing up from the pauldron he was polishing in his lap. He did not quite meet Casmund's eyes. “Do… can you feel any of this, Kepr?"

Casmund started. “Y-yes," he squeaked.

The fire popped again. Akiya was staring at him, openly, now—but then, that was wrong. Not at him.

At his antlers. At Tyvir's wandering hand, trailing up between each velveted point, then back down again, until his fingers came to rest in the crook of its lowest tine.

“Should I stop?" the knight said, distractedly. “Can you ask him, Akiya? He's become very tense."

The question hung, unanswered. Akiya had gone very still, eyes focused several inches above Casmund's head. His mouth opened several times before he seemed able to speak.

“He fears he's hurting you, Kepr."

“N-no," Casmund croaked. He cleared his throat. “No, no, I… it's just… the velvet is-" he cast around for an excuse, faltering as the red dragon's eyes finally lit on his. “…sensitive."

The fire chose that moment to cough sparks. Beneath his hood, Akiya's eyes flicked upwards once more. The cloud of embers rose and died, one by one. It left the fire low.

Tyvir shifted behind him. “Akiya?"

“I…" Akiya swallowed. The pauldron sat forgotten in his hands. “He can... he says his horns are sensitive."

“Oh." Tyvir's hand lifted from the antler immediately. “Is he-"

“No," the red dragon interrupted, a little vacantly, rubbing his fingers across the steel in his lap. He had not blinked in almost a minute. “You should… he says you should continue."

“Oh," said Tyvir. Then, after a moment, Casmund felt two pale eyes bore into the back of his head. “Oh."

Tyvir shuffled closer, not quite flush with Casmund's back—but close enough that scales brushed against his shoulders each time they breathed in tandem. Casmund clamped his mouth shut, not knowing quite what he was to do just then except perhaps die of embarrassment.

Instead, he found himself timing his breaths.

“I didn't know," Tyvir said, from directly above him. One of his fingers played on the point of a tine. “Is it only the soft parts, Akiya? Or-"

He raised his other hand to the bone of Casmund's bare antler and played his fingers at the burr. Casmund couldn't feel it, in fact—but that didn't stop a shiver rushing down his spine.

With Tyvir's hands tangling in his antlers, Casmund found himself moved gently, this way and that, as the man's explorations gained a sort of intent. Akiya watched, as if in a daze, his pale eyes fixated on Tyvir's fingers.

Casmund's balance slid just a little too far backwards, and he wheeled his hands out behind him to steady himself. One palm landed flat on the dirt. The other came to rest on Tyvir's armoured thigh.

“Oh!" Tyvir said, and loosened his grip. “I'm sorry. Akiya, tell him-"

“Kepr. Are you-"

“No! No. I just…"

Tyvir's hands hovered uncertainly. “Akiya?"

“Go on." Akiya was gripping his oilcloth so hard that oil seeped from between his fingers, onto the pauldron in his lap. “Go on, Tyvir."

Tyvir went on. After another moment, he seemed to realize that the naked antler prompted fewer responses, and so doubled his attentions on the remaining one and its velvet. One of his hands closed firmly about the base. Testing it lightly. Casmund shivered.

“Do you remember that tailor, Akiya?" Tyvir murmured, happily. “The one in Astalyn?"

Akiya licked at the corner of his mouth. “…really, Tyvir," he rasped. “Now?"

“It is ever an immaculate moment."

“There is a Kepr in your lap."

“I know." One of Tyvir's hands disappeared, then reappeared under Casmund's arm, slipping around his front. Dragging at the clasps down the front of his gambeson. “Isn't he magnificent?"

“I… you're frightening him."

Tyvir laid his chin on the top of Casmund's head and inhaled, deeply. “He doesn't smell frightened to me."

“That's-" Akiya swallowed. “That's…"

“Captivating, Akiya." Tyvir inhaled again. “Like apricot. Like Orchéz in late June." The knight's chin slid forward. Casmund found himself suddenly enfolded, scales at his back, arm around his waist, a hand still testing playfully at his velvet. When he spoke, Casmund felt as much as heard the man speak. “Like you."

“Do… does he have to be here?" Akiya protested, weakly.

“Tell him to leave."

One of Casmund's clasps came undone.

“Um…"

“Hush, Kepr."

Casmund hushed.

After a moment, Tyvir grinned. Fenced in by the man, Casmund couldn't see it, as such—but he could hear the way it turned the knight's voice playful, rumbling against his spine.

“Look here… how his horns have formed. Rough, this way… but smooth, this way." Tyvir's fingers threaded around his burr—and then he closed his fist with deliberate slowness. “How it grows wider, at the base."

A thrill shot through Casmund's stomach. He looked to Akiya –for support maybe, or for assurance, or for any help at all– but the red dragon seemed to have forgotten he was there. Utterly entranced. Breathing heavily, oilcloth seeping into the dirt in front of him. Eyes wide. Mouth held slightly open as he watched Tyvir's explorations through his antlers.

“I sometimes imagine your horns, Akiya," Tyvir said, quietly. “Gods, but they must have been perfect."

Akiya's mouth snapped closed with a sharp click. A flicker of pain, of blindsided hurt fell over him like a shadow. Casmund's heart sank. Tyvir kept talking.

“The world was robbed that day. I sometimes wonder-"

“Tyvir."

“-if I had come sooner-"

“Tyvir!"

Akiya stood, dumping the pauldron into the dirt.

“But-"

The crumpled oilcloth hit the coals and burst into flame, bright, hot, sudden. Akiya stood above the blaze, shaking. “No. Don't. Not you."

Too late, Tyvir seemed to realize his error. “I only meant-"

“Flay him if you wish, Tyvir," the squire spat out, “or else do us all a mercy and cut his fucking throat."

The fire flickered brightly, then went low once more, its fuel quickly spent. The red dragon closed his eyes, and sank heavily back down to the mat. After a moment, he lifted the pauldron from the dirt and set it back into his lap, brushing dirt from its edge.

“Akiya?" the knight said, softly.

“Either way, have done with it," the squire said, tiredly. “Your hands are a mess."

Tyvir untangled himself from Casmund. He left the knife, circled the fire, and knelt down next to his squire. Akiya tugged his hood more firmly over the ruin of his horns. The motion seemed to steady him. Tyvir reached out for the hood. Paused.

“Akiya… I didn't mean-"

“I know."

“May I-"

“No."

Tyvir let out a morose chirr, then leaned forward and bumped his forehead against Akiya's temple. After a moment, Akiya laid the pauldron back down and picked up Tyvir's hands in his, examining them in his lap. Blood from Casmund's velvet was caked in the seams of Tyvir's scales.

“Fool that I am," Tyvir said, dolefully. “Oh, but my damned fool tongue. Forgive me, my-"

Casmund killed the spell, and Tyvir's voice fell once again into foreign sounds. He sounded no less remorseful for it. He watched as, with the hem of his own cloak and their waterflask, Akiya began cleaning the blood from Tyvir's fingers.

Casmund turned away, an intruder in his own camp. He went quietly to his gear, and began setting his tent on the far side of the clearing, trying to make sense of the world that had asserted itself so suddenly beneath him.

Across the fire, the two dragons had folded into each other, blue over red. Past the folds of his tent, Casmund watched the knight press his muzzle to the uneven lumps hidden beneath his squire's hood. Akiya's focus seemed elsewhere, eyes vacant as he cleaned Casmund's blood from his master's hands.

***

Casmund slept hard that night, and dreamt of Ilkepr.

In his dream, the city was a marvel. It did not smell, as it did in unkind reality, of sewage and mouldering iron. He walked its ramparts, looking out over the towers and pithies and mage-forges. Ilkepr was a dark city on a dark coast, the sun seeming hesitant to touch it.

At some point, the dream changed from wandering to warring. He was still on the ramparts—though turned outwards now, in formation with the rest of his Arkuchet coven. Far below, on the fields that stretched into the sea, were hundreds of little silver men. On command, Casmund pulled fire from his veins and threw it down on top of them. He was too far away to hear the screams.

But the smell reached them. Drifting up on the smoke.

Hot metal.

Burning meat.

He woke retching, and the smell pervaded.

He shot upright, tangling himself for a moment in the tent stays, adrenaline coursing him upwards.

He'd burned a handprint into his pillow. It took him a moment to remember where he was.

When he had calmed, he emerged from the tent to see Tyvir crouched over the campfire, smoke billowing from a pot set above the flames.

Akiya lay nearby on a padded sleeping mat, hands threaded over his chest, staring at the morning gradient through the tree canopy above them.

Their eyes met, and stayed for a moment before they both turned away. Casmund became suddenly aware of his lopsided antlers. Half shed. His remaining velvet itched.

Tyvir greeted him with a small smile, and a bowl of something ladled from the smoking pot. Another bowl, he set down next to Akiya, murmuring softly to him. They only had two bowls, it appeared. Tyvir took the pot from its stand and set it in front of himself. Akiya closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed and pushed himself upright, taking the bowl into his lap.

“My bondsliege wishes to apologize for last night," Akiya said to the bowl. “He assures you that his vow still stands." His face pinched as Tyvir continued. “He… regrets if his advances were unwelcome."

Casmund scratched at his velvet, anxiously. Akiya watched him. He lowered his hand, self-consciously.

Had it been? He asked himself, finding no answer there that suited him. Unwelcome?

“Unexpected," Casmund decided—though that answer was no closer to satisfying. He sat down, grunting at the stiffness in his legs. “He should keep his apology. I've no need of it."

Akiya regarded him. Then lifted his chin, translating.

Tyvir listened. Beamed, brightly. Then began eating out of the pot with fervor.

Casmund stared down at the bowl in his lap. He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “More, uh… poison, is it?"

Akiya's mouth twitched. He poked a spoon into the bowl and popped it into his mouth. His expression went carefully neutral.

“Can't quite be sure, Kepr." He looked at Tyvir, who grinned back—albeit, a little anxiously. Akiya took another spoonful, schooling his expression. “The slow kind, perhaps."

Casmund huffed in amusement. The sound seemed to startle all three of them, and he rummaged for his own spoon instead of focusing overmuch on their attention.

It was horrid. Far worse than the drink Akiya had made days prior. There were chunks of something in the broth, but he found he could not determine if they were tuber, or meat, or something else entirely. He forced it down. Across from him, Akiya had finished his own bowl, and was guzzling from a waterskin with a pinched sort of expression.

“Thank you," Casmund managed, handing the bowl to Tyvir.

The knight beamed.

And Casmund, to his surprise, managed a small smile in return.

They broke camp. As Casmund passed to the lead of them, Akiya caught him by the arm. His grip was strong. He'd taken down his hood, baring his ruined horns.

“We find your beast today, Kepr." There was a warning in his voice. Less angry than exhausted. “Or else not at all."

***

They did not find the manticore that day.

Instead, they found the surveyor.

They trekked through the morning, moving from dense, rooted woodland to a winding field of small, white stones: a riverbank, stretching almost a mile abreast to where the woods continued on the far side. A river cut the field in two, bright blue and fast-moving, no deeper than his waist. Large white fish whipped past them in the water, swimming downstream as their party walked up, ascending the stony banks toward a sharp eastward bend some ways uphill.

From the corner of his eyes, Casmund kept catching glimpses of Akiya, watching him. Staring, unsubtly, at his antlers. The attention was guarded, and disappeared if Casmund turned to meet it—but it lacked the sullen suspicion that had defined the squire these past days. Whatever had replaced it was opaque to him, and made Casmund more aware by the minute of the lopsidedness of his shed; one antler bare, one still velveted. Itching near to madness.

Sometime around noon, he could stand it no longer. He chose a low boulder, dropped his pack beside it, and sat down in a huff. He drew his knife from the sheath at his side, nearly nicking himself as he did so. The blade was sharp—sharper than it had ever been in his care.

Tyvir approached, looking a little hopeful, but stopped when Casmund shook his head. The memory of the previous night was too fresh in his mind. Too close on the heels of embarrassment—or else too tempting of a proposition.

What he needed now, was focus.

Some ways past the riverbend, a flock of waterbirds startled, rising over the trees in a flowing, honking panic.

None of them paid it any mind.

The dragons spoke to one another, and exchange of few words. Tyvir shrugged, undid his swordbelt and laid his weapon on the stones some yards away. Then, the knight began wading into the river, arms out to balance on the loose stones rolling under his boots.

Akiya made to call after him, then sighed and shook his head.

“This is a waste of daylight, Kepr."

“It's affecting my balance," Casmund said, crossly. And your staring isn't helping matters.

Akiya huffed, then stalked a ways off down the riverbank, muttering under his breath. Casmund bent his head and got to work. Before the knife had finished its first run, Akiya's footfalls returned, his boots grinding to a halt next to him.

“Give me that."

Casmund glanced up. Akiya stood, holding out a hand, expectantly.

“I have no Gods to swear to, Kepr," he said, clocking Casmund's hesitation. “Nor have I interest in wasting time."

Casmund chewed at his cheek—then, slowly held the knife out for Akiya to take.

“Sit there, Kepr," Akiya said, pulling his cloak over his head and dropping it in a puddle of heavy fabric at the base of the boulder. Beneath the cloak, the red dragon wore a thin, sleeveless tunic, quilted similarly to Casmund's own gambeson. Akiya's arms were wiry and lean, pockmarked with old wounds. Patches of his red scales were uneven and discoloured. In some places, they were missing entirely, revealing ragged lines the same scarred pink as the wounds on Casmund's stomach.

Casmund found himself hoping they were battle scars.

He sat on the cloak, with his back resting against the boulder. The red dragon slid in behind him, settling down on the edge of the stone. Positioning the stag's head at waist-level.

Akiya drew a short cord from a pocket of his tunic and cinched it around the base of Casmund's antler, just above the burr. After a moment, the itch in his velvet lessened, replaced by a tingle like a sleeping limb.

“You should have twined it before," Akiya muttered, distractedly. “It wouldn't bleed as much."

“I know," Casmund said, and had to bite his tongue to keep from asking how Akiya knew. He filed the information away in the same pocket of his mind that kept returning to the dragon's other Ilkepri mannerisms. “I usually do it properly, it's just…"

“Poor conditions," Akiya muttered. The blade touched at the tip of his antler, and tracked smoothly downward through its first crook. Paused for a moment. Continued. “None of us are at our best, Kepr."

Far from Tyvir's slow, cautions explorations, Akiya moved with the same acuity he'd applied to polishing the armour. Precise movements. Deliberate. He braced a palm opposite the knife and drew a warm, wet line down the full curve of the antler.

Casmund minded his curiosity, and gestured instead to Tyvir. “He seems to be doing fine."

They both looked askance at the knight, standing knee-deep in the river. The blue dragon tensed, then shot a hand down into the water so fast that Casmund only clocked the splash. One moment, the dragon stood, empty-handed; the next, he held a long, pearlescent fish. He bashed it dead against an armoured thigh, saw the two of them looking, and waved.

“Is he always like this?"

“Yes," Akiya sighed—though not without fondness. “As long as I've known him." He laid a strip of velvet beside them. Casmund hadn't even noticed its removal. “I…" he paused again, knife resting lightly against his antler. “Some advice, Kepr."

“Alright."

The knife slid downward. “Don't take my bondsliege's affections to heart," Akiya murmured. “He is a fool. Easily besotted."

“I noticed."

“I'm sure," Akiya said, with a tinge of something bitter. “In Summayad, he would write sonnets for the palace groundskeeper. Deliver them with fruit and cake on bended knee in the gardens, like some Astani poet. Once, we passed a fishmonger on our way to Elmarad, and he turned us back around the way we came just so he could guard the man's wagon. He all but begged apprenticeship to a slum-tailor in Astalyn, simply so he might hold the man's tools while he worked. Last winter, we spent three weeks as hostages of an Elmaradi highwayman. Tyvir was inconsolable when our ransom was paid."

Akiya's voice softened as the stories fell out of him. The knife lifted velvet with each steady stroke. When next he spoke, his words were barely audible. As though not intending to be heard.

“He once escorted a dishonored warrior home from a foreign kingdom. Insisted on remaining in his company, despite the warrior's disgrace. His disfigurement. Tyvir lent him kindness and softness, and purpose, when even the man's own family couldn't bear to look at him."

Casmund felt a lump settle in his throat.

What was he to say, to that?

“For all that," Casmund ventured, “he seems less a fool than a good man."

“The world is no place for good men." Akiya hadn't stopped working—but now, his strokes took an angrier bent. “It is no accident that we have been sent here, so far from the courts of Summayad. He is too shameless to be respected; too useful to be discarded. His prospects amount to violence done in service to lesser men, and a House that mocks him behind his back."

Akiya seemed to catch himself then, and fell to silence. Aways off, in the river, Tyvir had started back towards them, bringing with him a handful of wriggling fish.

“At least…" Casmund said, weighing his words as he spoke them, “…he can be said to travel in good company."

Akiya laid the last piece of bloody velvet aside and slid out from behind Casmund. The red dragon walked to the river's edge and cleaned the blade between his thumb and forefinger. Then, he returned and held it out, hilt-first.

Casmund took it. Raised his chin. “Thank you."

Akiya looked pointedly away. “Daylight, Kepr."

He washed his antler clean. The dragons reconvened at the shore and Akiya hung the fish from thin hooks mounted on his pack. A little guiltily, Casmund activated his spell once more, if only for the distraction it offered as they continued their journey towards the bend in the river.

“Why is it called velvet, Akiya?"

“Mm. Because it's soft, I suppose."

“What will he do with it?"

“Eat it, mayhaps," Akiya muttered. “Kepr are known to be cannibals."

“Oh. That's… a strange custom."

The stones crunched under their passing.

Then, in a small mutter, “That was untrue."

“And untoward," said Tyvir, good-naturedly. “You might apologize."

“Wh- he doesn't even know what I said." Their boots crunched down the bank. Akiya let out a sigh. “Kepr."

“What?"

“My bondsliege asks what you plan to do with your velvet."

Casmund stopped. He'd been twining the washed strips as he walked. He considered the bundle, then held back a smile.

“Some of it, I'll dry, to use as patchings." He paused for effect. “The rest, I think I'll eat."

Akiya's head snapped up. “What?"

“Well… not raw, of course. But you can put it in all sorts of things. Teas. Soups. Jerky." He let the grin work its way onto his face. When Akiya did nothing but stare at him, he cleared his throat. Shuffled his hooves awkwardly. “…jests, sometimes."

Akiya's face contorted into several expressions, ending with what Casmund could only describe as pinched concentration. Then, seemingly against his will, he burst out laughing.

“Akiya?" Tyvir startled, coming astride them to lay a hand on his companion's elbow. “Are you alright? What's funny?"

“I just-" Akiya said, hacking. “For a moment, I thought- oh, nevermind."

He swatted himself free from the knight's hovering and walked on ahead of them, wheezing lightly. He laughed like a cracked bellows, seeming rather unused to the noise.

Tyvir watched him go with a baffled, soft-eyed expression. Then, he turned to Casmund.

“Oh, but I've missed that sound."

The knight reached down, scooped up Casmund's hand in both his own, and bent at the waist to press a gentle kiss to his knuckles. Then, he turned and hurried after his companion, calling his name.

Standing in their wake, Casmund found himself, of all things, oddly contented. It was a strange thing to be, just then—but not an unwelcome one. He stowed the bundle of velvet and followed after, picking his way carefully along the loose stones. He rounded the riverbend to see the dragons standing side by side, staring silently down a steep embankment into the water. He came aside them, following their gazes down.

There was a body, face-down in the river.

The dead stag bobbed in the current, half in, half out of the water. His legs lay in an awkward tangle on the shore, dragging against the stones, preventing the current from taking him downstream. The water flowed pink around him.

He wore a makeshift splint on one leg; made from two tines of a broken groma, lashed on either side of his ankle.

Casmund was down the bank in a slide of stones before he could think better. He splashed out into the river, grabbed the stag by his bloody tunic and dragged him out of the current's grasp. He knew the man was dead before he turned him over; a half-dozen needle-thin quills had sunk to the haft in the stag's back, neck and arms. Casmund recalled the sensation; the thrumming noise of the stingers embedding themselves into the padding of his gambeson. A volley of venomed spines, launched from the manticore's insectile tail, peppering the woods like scattershot.

Tyvir was beside him then, though Casmund hadn't noticed when he'd followed him down the bank. The knight loosened Casmund's hands from the fabric of the dead man's coat, speaking to him gingerly. When Casmund did not respond, Tyvir picked the dead man up by the armpits and dragged him fully ashore. He let him down slowly, setting his antlered head gently onto the stones of the riverbank. The surveyor stared upwards, with a look of mild surprise fixed on his sodden face.

They looked about the same age.

“Kepr," Akiya barked, harshly. Casmund looked up to see the red dragon swiveling his head back and forth, scanning the woods to either side. “Get up. Now."

“W-what-"

“He's still bleeding, you fool," Akiya shot, reaching down to hoist Casmund under his arm. “This was recently done. We need to go. Tyvir, leave him."

“Ease, Akiya." The knight said, patting the body gently. “He's not been eaten at all."

“So?"

“So," Tyvir led, considering them both, “the beast may not be hungry. Help me, will you?"

Tyvir hoisted the dead man up by one arm, seeming not to need their help at all. Akiya stared at him. Then, after a beat, he let go of Casmund and took up the dead man's other arm.

“Why else would it kill him?" Akiya muttered.

They dragged the waterlogged body up the embankment. A skittering of loose stones fell downwards, clattering to a stop at Casmund's hooves. Some of them were smeared red.

It was hard to breathe.

When? When had this happened? Not long ago. Recently, Akiya had said. They might have saved him. How close had they been?

How close had they come to it, without even knowing-

Suddenly, Tyvir was in front of him, laying a gentle hand on his cheek. “Come," he said, prodding him up the slope. “Up here. Come on. Carefully."

At the top of the slope, Casmund doubled over, hands on his knees. Akiya was crouched over the body, rolling one of the little venomed spines between two fingers.

“Keep going, Caszmoond," Tyvir said, tugging at his elbow. When Casmund didn't respond, he made a keening noise. “Akiya, help. What's wrong with him?"

Akiya looked up briefly, testing the spine against one palm. “Are you going to be sick, Kepr?"

“N-no," Casmund stammered. He squeezed his eyes shut. “No. I'm fine."

“He's going to be sick."

“Oh." Tyvir patted his back. “I see."

“I'm fine." Casmund spat salt from his mouth, staggering upright. “Let's go. Let's get him… somewhere."

“We'd do better leaving him."

Casmund shook his head. “Please."

Akiya sighed. Dropped the spine and wiped his hands on his cloak. “Help us, then. Get his legs."

Together, they carried the sodden body off the hard stones and into the loamy shade of the treeline. The task, grim as it was, served to steady him. Though he avoided looking at the man's lolling head. When they placed him down, Casmund sank down next to him, hands hovering uncertainly.

“We should find a good place to be ambushed," Tyvir intoned overhead. “Back a ways, maybe."

“Somewhere open."

“Not the stones, Akiya. I want steady footing."

Akiya nudged him with his boot. “We can't bring him all the way back to your camp."

“I know." He closed his eyes. “I know."

Casmund took in a shaky breath. He knew what needed doing; all that remained was to do it. He placed one hand at the base of the dead man's antler, bracing the other on his temple.

“Caszmoond?"

“Kepr? What are you-"

The antler came free with a horrible crack. Akiya leapt back, tangling his boots in a briar, stumbling hard against a nearby tree. Beside him, Tyvir made a shocked sound.

“Sorry," Casmund mumbled. He wasn't sure who to.

He broke the other antler free, bundled them in one hand and stood. Tyvir was staring at him in horror. Akiya stood, back pressed against the tree. His eyes were wide. He shook, slightly, one hand tangling white-knuckled at the hem of his hood.

“Sorry," Casmund repeated. “I didn't… I'm sorry."

“Akiya?"

“I'm fine." Akiya released his grip on the hood, flexing his fingers. “I'm fine."

Tyvir relaxed his hand where it rested on the sword. Casmund hadn't even noticed its landing there. “Why did he do that, Akiya?"

Akiya fixed him with an angry stare. “What is the matter with you?"

Casmund looked down at the dead man, and considered that.

At the peace talks, it was said that the King had his generals break off their horns in symbolic disarmament—or, as some bruised nationalists reckoned, submission. Humiliation.

Defeat.

More and more, he found himself souring of that interpretation.

So he offered another, instead.

“Shedding antlers is always… funerary," he said. “Rebirth, I think. They grow back a little differently every year, so-" an old and buried memory flashed to the fore. Casmund nearly choked on it. “It's… you're keeping a piece of someone as they were, and… giving them a chance to grow something new in its place. To be something different, come the spring." His father had sneered, even in his casket. He'd lost count of the antlers on the mile-markers. And here, he held two more. Casmund shook his head. “Something better, maybe."

Akiya blinked at him, slowly. He stared down at the antlers in Casmund's hand, then at the body they'd come from. “Only," the dragon said, quietly, “they're not growing back, Kepr. They're just gone."

“I know."

Akiya closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Do you bury your dead?"

Casmund shook his head. “We don't have a shovel."

They left the surveyor there, on a patch of shaded earth. Hands folded over his chest. Eyes closed to the world. Antlers gripped tightly in Casmund's fist.

He drew his vial of antivenom and studied his reflection in the smoky glass.

Somewhere, the beast drew close.

His hands, at last, were steady.

***

They decided on a meadow, some ways upriver.

The ground was level. Free of roots. Dotted with short, purple-headed clover. The trees around them were thin-limbed and sparse. Casmund built a fire. Akiya laid Tyvir's sword across his lap and took to it with a whetstone—though Casmund could see its edge was already sharp. Tyvir paced in slow circles around them, treading down the clover in a gradual spiral until the meadow was flat and dewy.

The shadows grew.

It rained, then. Just a drizzle, enough to dampen the air and draw a green, ozone stench from the woods around them. Casmund did not set his tent, even as the woods darkened.

They would not be sleeping, tonight.

“When it happens," Akiya said, breaking the muggy silence, “It's going to happen quickly."

The red dragon had doffed his cloak once more, draping it protectively over his pack from the rain. By the firelight, the scars on his wiry arms rippled as he drew the whetstone. There was a steadiness in the motion. An energy, carefully restrained.

Casmund rubbed his chest through his gambeson. He had at last relieved himself of his bandages. Better mobility. His knife rested in its sheath in his lap—though the little blade was only for show.

When the beast came, Casmund would not be using it.

“We need a plan," he said. His voice was cracked. The surveyor's face clung to the insides of his eyelids. “What are we going to do when it shows?"

Akiya lifted his eyes from the sword to watch Tyvir's slow, ambling progress. The knight hadn't spoken a word to either of them in hours. Just gone around them in circles, pacing at the edge of the firelight.

“Stay out of the way," Akiya whispered.

“I can help."

There was no response, but for the rasping of the whetstone and the rattle of Tyvir's armour. Something in Akiya's bearing wound tight. His thoughts ran loudly despite his utter lack of expression.

“I'm not a fool, Casmund."

Casmund blinked. It was the first time Akiya had used his name. Its softness on the dragon's tongue surprised him. Still, the dismissal rankled.

“I can-"

“No." Akiya's tone was flat. “You don't know how to sharpen a blade. You haven't hunted for game or scavenged while we travelled. You are unprepared, utterly, to hunt a creature with which you should not have survived your first encounter."

Casmund opened his mouth to argue—but stopped when Akiya's eyes settled on him. Glowing embers in the dark.

“And yet," Akiya rasped, “you did survive."

The whetstone scraped along the steel.

“And then you hunted it."

The fire flickered.

“Alone. Without weapons."

Casmund felt his pulse quicken. Like the night before, he became very aware of his position between the two dragons. Hyperaware of his skin, relative to theirs.

Akiya went on, unblinking. “I had thought you suicidal, you know. Or else a madman. Or a fool."

The stone came to a stop at the sword's hilt. It was quiet for a moment.

“I'd prefer it were so, Casmund," Akiya asked, softly.

Casmund gripped his wrist hard enough to hurt.

A drop of rain hit the stones around the fire and sizzled. Akiya was still, then, as a snake hiding in grass.

“For if you are not these things," the dragon said, finally, “then you are something else, entirely."

Casmund stared back at him. The magic within him roiled, fed by fear, hungry for his flesh. He held his wrist tightly, and did not speak.

Akiya's eyes searched him.

“Stay out of the way," he repeated. “Mark me: it will happen quickly. If Tyvir should fall… then, and only then, will you unleash yourself on the beast. Not sooner. Do you understand me?"

Casmund nodded. After a moment, Akiya placed the whetstone down and plucked an oilcloth from a pouch at his hip.

“How long have you known?" Casmund asked, softly. He felt bare, somehow. Colder, without his secret to hold.

Relieved at its absence.

Akiya's mouth twitched. “I suspected." He swallowed. “Only now do I know for certain."

“Does Tyvir know?"

“No."

The word was ardent—and worried.

“He… it may not make a difference to him," Akiya said, slowly. His eyes flicked up, over Casmund's shoulder. “But I can't be sure."

Behind him, at the edge of the firelight, the Draknikt circled.

Casmund felt a chill pass over him. Akiya stared, intently. His own words came to him then, spoken days earlier. Ankle-deep in a creek and withholding his fear.

I mean to warn you.

“Do you take my meaning, Kepr?"

Not to threaten.

Casmund lifted his chin. “I do."

It was silent, then. A ringing silence, without even Tyvir's rattling steps to fill it.

Akiya's brow furrowed.

Casmund turned.

Tyvir had stopped in his tracks, stock still. Horned head canted lightly to one side. At the edge of the firelight, his armour gleamed orange, the rest of him only dimly visible.

Akiya got to his feet, hauling the sword up with him. “Tyvir?"

Tyvir twitched. Held up a hand.

“Shh," he said.

The knight took a single step into the dark treeline, and disappeared from sight. Casmund rose too, heart thundering in his ears, fingers tingling. Was it now? Was this when it happened?

After a moment, Tyvir reappeared, hurrying back to the fire, cradling something in his muddied hand.

“Twice blessed," the knight cooed, happily. “Ilmaya says 'victory', I think."

He held out another golden coin, pressed between muddy fingers.

Akiya let out a shaky huff and sank back down to his mat. “You odd fuck," he spat. “You scared me half to death!"

Tyvir made a consoling sort of noise. Then, he turned to Casmund and held out the coin in his palm.

“For you," he said, warmly. “Perhaps a third, before we're done."

Casmund shook feeling back into his digits. “Don't do that again," he croaked. Tyvir's smile was uncomprehending.

Casmund sighed, and took the coin.

“What does he say, Akiya? Does he like it?"

Akiya rubbed little circles into his temples. “He says it's very nice."

Tyvir made a pleased chirring sound, and folded Casmund's fingers over the coin. “Marvelous," he said. “How right he is."

The minutes stretched to hours after that. They ate quickly, and in turns. Nothing cooked; only dry provisions. Tyvir's pacing, it was decided, may be scaring the beast off. And so the three of them sat, each watching the woods behind the other's shoulders.

“The inscription," Casmund said, unable to contain himself. A drop of My Blood. He thumbed the coin. “What does it mean?"

Akiya paused. He chewed on his tongue a moment before speaking.

“What do you know of Mogodûn?"

Tyvir's head snapped around at the word. “Ah?"

“He's asking about the coin."

“Ah!" Tyvir leaned forward slightly, placing his hands in his lap. Bright-eyed like a fawn waiting for a story. Akiya rolled his eyes.

“Well, Kepr?"

“Has he heard of-"

“Hush, Tyvir."

Casmund looked between the two of them, thumbing the gold in his palm. He knew the word: Mogodûn. It appeared sometimes in penny dreadfuls. Or else, around late-night campfires. He ventured a wan smile. “I'm… a bit on edge for ghost stories, at the moment."

Akiya glared at him. “It is a place, Kepr. A ruin of our ancestors. The Mogodìn worshipped Ilmaya as Mother and Creator. When she died, they say her blood ran down into cracks in the earth, and settled there as gold. They believed it was their purpose in this world to reclaim it. Every drop." His eyes fell to the coin. “Gold was a dangerous thing, in those days. The Mogodìn would burn cities for sums of it no larger than that coin you hold. It's said that they gathered a great hoard—cast it into coinage and buried it all in a mountain at the center of their island."

“Tell him of the Thieves," Tyvir said, inching forward excitedly. “Tell him of the Dooms, Akiya."

“I'm getting there," Akiya muttered. He made to continue, then seemed to falter, chewing on his tongue.

There were a great many questions which burned at Casmund, then. What did a coin have to do with the Dooms? How had it come to be here?

What emerged instead was, rather belatedly: “Your goddess… is dead?"

“Tyvir's." Akiya rubbed at the scarred scales of his bicep. “Ilmaya answers no prayers of mine. And I'm not fool enough to believe men need more reasons to kill for gold."

They were quiet for a time. Akiya lay the sword down next to him and stuffed a piece of flatbread into his mouth, clearly unsettled with their twinned attention.

“You tell it so beautifully, Akiya."

“Oh please," Akiya said, around his mouthful. “You didn't understand a word of that."

“I don't need to. Your voice cannot help but be poetry to me."

“Ugh."

“Hang on," Casmund interrupted, trying to keep pace with his thoughts, “you mean to tell me that this coin," here, he dug in his pocket and produced the other, “and this one, too, belong to the Hoard of Mogodûn. Golden Mogodûn."

“Yes."

“The island, Mogodûn."

“Yes."

“We're a thousand miles from the sea."

“What an astute observation."

“Wh-" Casmund let out a snort. “Fine, then. How does he know where to find them?"

Akiya paused. He broke another piece off the bread and handed the rest to Tyvir. “The Kepr asks about your Calling." Tyvir took the bread, sat up straight and opened his mouth. Before he could speak, Akiya cleared his throat. “Succinctly, Tyvir."

The knight's face pinched, a little petulantly. He turned the bread in his hands, thinking hard. When he looked up, his gaze fell on Casmund—though in truth, his attention seemed elsewhere.

“Tell him this, Akiya: I am… a compass. Pulled by Ilmaya's treasures, wheresoever she has seen fit to place them. Compelled, in the shameful corners of my heart, to covet." The knight's eyes focused, fixing intently on Casmund. “Helplessly so, at times."

There was desire in his voice. Something approaching lust. He licked his teeth. Casmund shivered.

“Mogodûn coveted Ilmaya. Laid claim to her makings. But this was sin, Caszmoond. For what is possessed, is reduced. What is divine, is debased. One cannot love a hoard."

Casmund found his voice hoarse. “What does he say?"

“He says gold calls to him," Akiya offered simply, content to leave the rest unsaid. “Not an uncommon trait, amongst our people."

“Does he have a hoard?" Casmund blurted.

Akiya blinked. Then laughed, in his hacking way. Tyvir lit up at the noise, looking between them.

“No, Kepr. Nor does he breathe fire. And our wings moult off when we are young."

“Do you have a hoard?"

Akiya rolled his eyes—then paused. He looked down at his cloak, draped protectively over the pack. He nudged it with a boot. The armour rattled inside.

“It's no mountain," he said, softly.

There was a longing in that, Casmund thought. Though he couldn't quite see it.

“We ought to sleep, I think," Tyvir put in brightly, apropos of nothing.

Casmund blinked, trying his best not to look aghast at what he shouldn't have heard. Akiya had no such compunction.

“You what?"

“I think we should rest," Tyvir repeated, casually. “Tired men make easy prey."

“I think not," Akiya said, crossly. “Absolutely not."

“We'd go in turns, Akiya. First you, then Caszmoond, then me."

Akiya shook his head and scoffed. “Wh- and if the beast comes while I sleep? What then?"

Tyvir reached over and took Akiya's hand in his. “Then I will kill it softly," he said, “so as not to disturb you."

Casmund cleared his throat. “What's going on?"

“Tyvir thinks we should rest."

He spat the word out, as though angry he should have to give it credence. Yet as he did so, Casmund marked the weariness in him. The days of hard ground and paranoia, weighing down his shoulders. Gathering darkly beneath his eyes.

“I think he's right," Casmund admitted.

Akiya glared at him.

“Are you mad?"

Casmund threaded his fingers together in his lap. “It's hours more to morning," he said, thinking aloud. “I'd prefer not to die bleary. We can go in shifts."

Akiya hacked out a disbelieving laugh. “You first, Kepr."

“Alright."

The stare he got was one of utter bafflement. Akiya's brow furrowed. His face pinched. Beside him, Tyvir made a curious noise.

“You're not serious, Kepr."

Casmund thought for a moment. He wondered if, perhaps, there was a limit to how much fear one man could hold before he went numb to it. He might have found that limit, some time in these last days. It was the only way to explain his steadiness, there in that moment.

The alternative, of course, was that he felt some safety in the dragons' company.

Either way, he was surely mad.

Casmund lay down, one arm behind his head, the other holding his knife atop his chest. “Don't let it kill me in my sleep."

He closed his eyes.

“Unbelievable," Akiya muttered.

“He needs it," Tyvir whispered. There was a rustle of scales against scales. “As do you."

He tried to pay attention to the conversation that followed—but the next moment, Tyvir was shaking him gently by the shoulder, and their fire was lower than it had been.

“Deepest apologies," Tyvir whispered. His eyes were sad. “You were shaking, terribly."

Casmund sat up, rubbing his eyes. His dream had fled him—but the smell of charred meat remained.

He wiped his mouth and sat up.

Across the fire, Akiya lay on his side in the grass. He had curled into himself. Shoulders hunched, tail wound tightly between his legs. Asleep, and without his cloak, the red dragon was rendered small. Or else, in his sleep, he had made himself so.

“You should have woken me earlier," Casmund said, keeping his voice low. “How long has it been?"

Tyvir smiled. “Alas," the knight said, “but I lack Akiya's grasp of your beautiful tongue. Therefore, I must assume you say 'good morning'."

Casmund let out a huff. Akiya stirred in his sleep, and the two of them turned their attention to him. When he did not wake, they settled back down to their respective places. Casmund rubbed his dream from behind his eyelids. Tyvir moved silently to Akiya's side, reaching out a tentative hand—then pulling himself away with a heartbroken look.

“He is wounded, my Akiya," the knight whispered. “The world has been unkind to him."

Casmund bit back a response. He chewed on his cheek, watching Tyvir for signs he expected something in return. But the knight, it seemed, spoke half to himself.

“When I found him, he had been unmade," Tyvir murmured. He reached out again, and this time brushed his knuckles against Akiya's furrowed brow. “Yet… he was so bright that it blinded me."

The knight's fingers ghosted up his companion's temple, lifting away before the ragged stumps of Akiya's horns. The gesture was restrained—but only just. It set an ache in Casmund's chest. The fire had gone to embers. Just bright enough to catch the wetness of Tyvir's eyes. He went on, quiet and pensive.

“The world… unmakes us all, at times. That is, in part, its purpose." Tyvir raised his teary eyes to Casmund, smiling. “In scripture, we call it 'Crucible'. Men are metal, Caszmoond. We take as many shapes."

Casmund looked away. A piece of his dream returned to him; a field of melting men. Silver armour bending between his fingers like putty. For an instant, the soft reverence in Tyvir's voice disgusted him.

How could he speak so fondly to him?

Would he still, if he knew?

“I was going to kill you," Casmund choked out. “I may still have to."

Tyvir shuffled towards him and settled down on his haunches, armour creaking under his weight.

“I know you cannot understand my words," the knight said, taking Casmund's face in his palms. “So take instead my meaning."

The knight regarded him softly.

“Ilmaya shows me more than gold."

Against himself, Casmund leaned into the dragon's palms. Closed his eyes.

“I am a mage," he whispered. “I am a murderer."

Tyvir's thumbs carded beneath his eyes.

“It seems," Tyvir offered, “that the world has unmade you, too."

Across the fire, Akiya let out a strangled, half-made noise and shot upright, clawing at his throat. In an instant, Tyvir was gone, moving to his servityr's side. Casmund thought he might take him up in his hands, the way he had Casmund—but instead, the knight took firm hold of Akiya's wrists, pulling them away from his own neck.

Akiya struggled. Then sagged. “'m sorry," he said, words slurred with sleep. It took Casmund a moment to realize he'd spoken in Ilkepri.

“Akiya-"

“N-no-"

“Akiya."

Akiya stilled. He seemed to wake fully then, all at once in a blink. “Let go," he said.

Tyvir did. Akiya reached immediately for the whetstone at his side, gripping it like a talisman. Wordlessly, Tyvir handed him the sword. He took it, shaking terribly, laying the bare blade across his legs. He breathed shallowly, like a man unused to air.

Casmund watched him pull the stone down the blade, each stroke steadier than the last. Tyvir retrieved their waterflask. Akiya took a mouthful, then returned to his work, keeping his eyes downcast. Tyvir hovered, worriedly. Then, disengaged and busied himself adding a few sticks to the fire.

After a moment, Akiya sighed shakily, and glanced up. His eyes were dull. His bags, deeper than ever. “You talk in your sleep, Kepr," he said.

Casmund nodded.

“Where were you, just now?" he ventured.

Akiya's hands didn't slow. “Ilkepr," he said, dully and exhausted.

Casmund pulled his knees against his chest.

“Me too," he said.

Tyvir extended him the waterflask. Casmund took it. He drank, and tried his utmost to banish the city from his mind.

“The body, today," Akiya said, snapping him from reverie. Casmund made a noise of acknowledgement. “The dead man. Did you know him?"

“No," Casmund replied. Then, “His name was Grahn, I think."

Akiya nodded. “I…" he shook himself. “I wouldn't have thought you affected."

“What? Why not?"

Akiya raised a ridged brow. Casmund recognized the accusation in it.

“It's not the same," he said, bitterly. Tyvir looked between them, curiously. The knight's attention was a heavy thing, just then. Casmund dropped his gaze to the fire pit. To the heat, rippling from its blackening fuel.

Akiya regarded him, fingering the edge of the blade in his lap. “What does it feel like?" he asked, voice tinged with woeful curiosity. “That kind of power. I used to imagine it intoxicating."

Casmund watched the flames. “It's…" he suppressed a shiver. “It's like there's this… heat in you. So hot, that the world bends when you touch it. And sometimes, if you're not careful… things break." He swallowed. “You spend your childhood breaking things. Sometimes, things you didn't even know could be broken."

The dragons bore their full attention on him now. Akiya, with dark interest; Tyvir, a little blankly. Both, waiting for him to continue. Casmund swallowed.

“And then, one day, a man appears at your door," Casmund said to the fire. “He tells you that you have a gift. And he says that there are men coming who will take it from you. They'll kill your family and cut off your hands. They'll murder you and desecrate your corpse and laugh like animals, because they are the enemy. He says you can stop them. He shows you how."

“What does he say, Akiya?" Tyvir said in a small, sad voice. “Why does he cry?"

Casmund wiped at his eyes, hurriedly. “I don't think it wants to be used like that."

It was the first time he'd said it aloud.

It felt a truer thing, for it.

“How, then?" Akiya asked. An edge had appeared in his voice.

“I don't know." He thought for a moment, of glasswork. “I don't know. But I can do so much else with it."

Akiya was staring at him now. “Like what, Kepr?"

Casmund put his face in his hands.

“Caszmoond?" Tyvir asked, concerned. “Is he well, Akiya?"

“He asks you-"

“No," Casmund blurted. “I'm not well."

Akiya stared at him, first with confusion, then with dawning comprehension. His expression flickered, warped through the rippling flames.

“You…" Akiya stood, drawing the knight's sword with him. “This whole time?" he said in Dracaeli, with such bitter shock that Casmund felt it as a slap.

“No-"

“How long, Kepr?"

“Akiya-"

“Don't speak my name." Akiya raised the sword at him, its point shaking. “How long?"

Casmund opened his mouth to answer.

But Akiya was right.

It happened quickly.

The fire rippled. There was a soft thrumming, thp-thp-thp, and the ground around the campfire spat a dozen little puffs of dirt. Akiya staggered, dropping the sword, clutching at a needle-like spine protruding from his throat.

In the same moment, something struck Casmund in the side, bowling him into the dirt. His breath left him in a rush, and then he was face down with a great pressure on his chest. There came a thundering yowl, loud and deep enough to rattle his skull. Teeth clamped around the back of his neck, sharp and tearing and horribly familiar.

No, Casmund thought. Not like this.

And then the weight was gone from him.

Casmund rolled, gasping for air, possessed by a prey instinct that urged him to move. His ribs felt wrong. He tasted metal. He scurried back on his elbows, past the fire, made ungainly by his panic.

He saw the manticore, maned and terrible, baring red fangs; then came Tyvir, stamping through the fire, scattering sparks to the wind and wheeling his sword down in a stroke of flame-lit silver.

The manticore's snout split down the middle with a sucking pop, spattering Casmund in a spray of warm blood. The beast reared backward, screaming—and Tyvir's sword, a glittering, red-tipped arc, came around a second time so fast that it shed its gore in a great disk overhead.

The manticore seemed to fold apart. Like a doll. One moment, it stood on hind legs, screaming and bloody; the next, its maned head spun towards the dirt, and left the rest of it behind, crumpling into the grass like a guideless puppet.

Its severed head landed with a wet thud at Casmund's hooves.

Casmund stared at the beast's slack mouth, wiping his face with a shaking hand. There was blood in his eyes. Blood in his mouth. He spat, the movement shooting fire through his chest. He spat again, spattering his gambeson red.

The Draknikt, still holding his sword in both hands, toed the manticore's headless corpse, as if expecting it to rise. When it did not, Tyvir turned, bare chest covered in a great fan of gore. He grinned at Casmund, sharp white teeth in a red-smeared face—then froze.

“Akiya?"

Casmund followed his stunned gaze. The red dragon lay on his back, convulsing violently. He had dropped the sword when the quills took him—but the whetstone was still clutched, white-knuckled in his fist.

Casmund moved quickly.

Tyvir was faster.

In a rush of wind, the knight was kneeling at Akiya's head, hands hovering in a panic. Whatever revelry he'd earned from killing the beast had gone as quickly as it had come.

“Akiya," he said, almost confusedly. He pulled his servityr into his lap, then made a pained noise. The red dragon fumbled blindly, pawing for the barb in his throat, eyes wide.

Casmund slid to his knees beside them, then leapt back as Akiya swung the whetstone at him, still clutched in his fist.

Akiya spat a mouthful of foam, “Kepr," he choked. It was a curse. “Kepr."

He made for the fallen sword. Tyvir made a lowing sound and pulled his companion further into his lap, even as Akiya struggled.

“Don't fucking touch me," Akiya hissed. His words were garbled and wet. “Liar. Kepr-"

Casmund darted towards the barb and ripped it free from Akiya's throat. The sound the dragon made was guttural, hate and shock and pain mingling in his frothing mouth.

“He knows just what to do, Akiya," the knight said, in relieved tones, watching the stag fumble around in his vest for the ampoule. “Look how he acts—so decisive! Such nimble hands."

“Ilmaya made you… without sense," Akiya gurgled, trying to pull himself free. “Mooning, cunt-struck fool-"

Casmund jabbed the ampoule down needle-first into the meat of Akiya's thigh. The dragon made another strangled sound, lurching in Tyvir's lap.

“Fucker!" He foamed, throwing the whetstone at him, hard. It went wide, skittering into the grass. “Lying little-"

“My Akiya is so brave," the knight cooed, brightly. “Look, Caszmoond, how he rages even against death. Tell him how you rage, Akiya."

“Tell him yourself," Akiya hissed. “He understands."

The knight's eyes widened. Casmund froze, fingers gripping the ampoule tightly enough to ache.

“Is…" Tyvir's voice was small. “Is it true?"

Casmund found he couldn't speak. He removed the ampoule and stumbled to his hooves, backing a pace away. He could run, he thought. But he wouldn't make it far.

His casting hand curled-

“Oh, remarkable," the knight said, softly. “Oh, how lovely and clever a thing. How I've ached to tell you so."

Casmund, who'd been preparing to torch them both, stuttered in place, blinking rapidly. Akiya stared up at his charge in disbelief, then went limp in his companion's lap. For a terrible moment, Casmund thought he had died.

Then his eyes re-opened, just enough to fix the stag with a baleful stare.

“You're bleeding, Kepr," he rasped.

Casmund swallowed. “So are you."

“What-" Akiya turned his head and hacked foam into the dirt. “What did you just give me?"

Casmund stared down at the ampoule in his hand.

“Poison?" he ventured.

Akiya stared at him a moment. Then closed his eyes with a sigh.

“Oh," Tyvir said, beaming. “But this is wonderful news! Alas, you must find your own words to compliment him now, Akiya. How very excellent! What does he-"

Akiya reached up and placed his hands on either side of Tyvir's face. “He begs you to stop talking."

The knight smiled, kissing Akiya's palm where it rested against his jaw. “Oh, but I couldn't," he said. “Silence is for bashful men—all the world should know of my fortune."

With shaking hands, Casmund dug a roll of gauze out from his pack and handed it to Tyvir. The knight kissed it, giddily, and began to dress Akiya's neck, humming to himself.

Akiya, for his part, stared bleakly at the manticore, lying dead aside the fire. He sighed, heavily.

“It's done, then."

Casmund rolled the head onto its side with his boot. “It is."

There in the east, came morning.

***

The three of them limped towards the sound of flowing water, Akiya supported between them.

The squire protested, at first—but his hand, where it rested around Casmund's shoulder, gripped his gambeson tightly. His grumblings were half-hearted. “I can walk, Kepr," and, “Let go, you oaf. You're getting blood on me."

They found the river once more. Here, the earth was flat; a plateau between the rising mountains to their north and the valley, falling south. The water lay wide, fed by two fast-flowing streams which both settled into a deep, silty-sided pool.

The sun was rising. The light came in long peach-coloured fingers through the trees behind them, scattering off the face of the pool. Ahead of them were dark, moody clouds, and a mist that clung between the trees like gossamer. The woods seemed, in that moment, aflame. It smelled like lightning after a rain.

They deposited Akiya at the shore. Casmund broke from the dragons then, moving off aways. Offering space. He pulled off his gambeson and knelt in the water, pulling up handfuls of the pool to wash his face clean. The knees of his breeches soaked through—but he welcomed the chill.

There.

It was done.

The beast was dead.

On his knees in the pool, Casmund sat back on his hooves and closed his eyes.

He could hear the dragons washing themselves, just there, to his left. Bickering quietly. The ripples from their movements reached him where he knelt, water lapping up his thigh. He raised his head, following the ripples back.

Akiya crouched before Tyvir in the water, unclasping the buckles of his tasset. His face was upturned, held in the knight's hands. Akiya worked blindly, familiarly, enduring Tyvir's affections without slowing his work. The tasset came loose, and was set aside. Then the cuisses. Poleyn. Greave.

“Did it wound you?" Akiya murmured.

Tyvir lowered a hand to brush against the bandage on his servityr's throat. “Most grievously," he said.

“Fool."

“Yes?"

Akiya sighed.

Casmund turned away, brushing his fingers over the scars on his chest. He let out a breath, catching just the end of Tyvir's sentence. He turned his head to watch.

“This cruel world you speak of would not have blessed me with such noble company."

Akiya had gone ashore, carrying an armful of his knight's plate. “Spare me your sentiment."

“No," Tyvir said, fondly, following him out of the water. “Akiya, strongest of my steel. Stern and beautiful as the moon." Akiya looked away from him, but Tyvir caught his chin. “Share this moment with me."

For a moment, it seemed as though he might. But then the red dragon's gaze slid from his knight and lit on Casmund's antlers, and his expression twisted.

“Your plate needs tending," Akiya said, pulling out of the knight's grasp. “And clean your face, Tyvir. You look frightful."

Steadier on his feet than he had been, Akiya tottered to his pack and sank down beside it.

Tyvir's gaze followed him, sadly. Then turned to Casmund, as he rose to his hooves and approached.

The knight's gaze felt different than it had when it had first landed on him—though Casmund knew it was not the knight who had changed. Far from fear, or embarrassment, Casmund felt oddly… guilty. Hiding, somehow, despite being nearly bared in front of him.

Still, there felt a distance.

“Thank you," Casmund said, quietly. He picked at the damp fabric of his breeches. “It was well struck."

Tyvir smiled. He moved quietly without his armour, padding across the silt. He lifted Casmund's hand and kissed it, gently. “Your language is so lovely," he said, smiling into his knuckles. “Were that I could hear it as Akiya does."

They both looked to Akiya, kneeling on the edge of his purple mat some meters distant. The red dragon noticed their pause. Looked up, scowling.

“He commends your performance," Akiya muttered.

Tyvir sighed happily. “It is gracious of him to say so." His smile grew chagrined. “Sloppy work, in truth—that it should take two strokes."

Out of habit, Casmund turned to Akiya, waiting for the knight's words to be translated. The red dragon lowered his head and scoffed. He dragged a cloth over the greave in his lap, clearing away the manticore's blood.

Casmund bit his cheek. “I would be dead, now," he said. He tried to say more, but other words seemed lacking.

“Akiya, tell him-"

“Oh, tell him yourself," Akiya said, scrubbing the metal furiously. “You've no need of me."

“Untrue," Tyvir said, softly.

Akiya's motions slowed.

“The stag accepts your service," Akiya rasped. “He offers thanks."

“I need none," Tyvir said. His eyes crinkled at the edges. “Tell him so, Akiya."

Casmund raised an eyebrow. Akiya placed down the steel and laid him a flat look.

“He says he's glad to have done with it, Kepr."

Casmund rubbed his fingertips together. Tyvir had let down his hand, but he could still feel the knight's breath crossing his knuckles. He swallowed. Stepped forward, leaned up, and pressed a kiss to Tyvir's cheek.

The knight beamed.

When he retreated, Tyvir leaned down towards him, hands floating hopefully. A wordless question. Casmund kissed him again, this time on the mouth, and Tyvir took his face in both hands.

That much needed no translation.

Tyvir was chaste, at first. Then, when Casmund reciprocated, he lowered both hands to his waist, thumbs carding through the fur of his stomach, just above his breeches. They stood there for a moment, breathing into each other's mouths.

It was something of an awkward affair. Casmund was no stranger to this, but the dragon's muzzle made the arrangement unfamiliar. He learned. Eagerly, with a lightness in his chest that should have seemed out of place.

Tyvir pulled away, and Casmund opened his eyes to protest—but the knight tucked his head beneath Casmund's chin and began licking at his throat and any complaint left him.

Tyvir's attentions turned urgent. Casmund grabbed the hem of the dragon's breeches with both hands, turning his head to grant him better access. Akiya sat, some ways distant, watching them. Cleaning the spotless greave.

Before he could voice a question, Casmund found himself being borne downward, Tyvir's hands on his hips, his tongue pressing at the crook of his jaw. Casmund let himself be lain back, giddily, as the dragon settled his waist between his legs, lying atop him like some scaled, weighty blanket. Tyvir nuzzled at his neck, seeming utterly content.

“I adore fur," said Tyvir, happily. “And yours is most excellent, Caszmoond. Lush as sin. Spotted, like a meadow."

Tyvir pushed himself up on his hands, coming away from Casmund's throat with a bawdy grin. It fell, slightly. The dragon lifted a hand and dragged his knuckles over the scars; from his shoulder, down his ribs, to the rise and fall of his stomach.

“You wear them well, it must be said," the dragon whispered. He ran his fingers back up the length of them with a sad look. “Would that I had met you, before the beast."

If you had, Casmund thought, with a sudden chill, I'd likely have killed you.

Casmund tried to sit up, to chase that glum thought away with Tyvir's tongue—but the dragon put a hand flat on his chest.

“The folly of my ancestors breaks my heart," Tyvir rumbled. “That Mogodì instinct to possess… to hold and to hoard that which is beautiful." The pressure of his palm grew. The knight licked at the edge of his mouth. “Let it not be said I am immune to it."

Casmund breathed evenly, heart fluttering. Some flavour of that fear came back—though tinged with something rather more welcoming. It stood his fur on end.

“You are magnetic," Tyvir said.

He leaned down and kissed Casmund deeply. Then, returned his attentions below Casmund's chin, more eagerly than before.

Breathing hard, Casmund found his gaze flicking to Akiya, still sitting away from them. The red dragon had turned his focus to the armour—though there was a tightness in his jaw that read, to Casmund, of distraction.

“Akiya," Casmund called, breathlessly. The red dragon did not look up from his work. “Tell him- oh."

Tyvir's teeth had grazed just shy of his jugular. Casmund stiffened.

“Look, how my Akiya works," Tyvir rumbled into the crook of Casmund's neck. “The care of his hands, so diligent. He intends to make us jealous of the steel."

Akiya's brow furrowed in renewed concentration. If dragons could flush, Casmund thought, he would have.

“If he knew your softness," Tyvir continued, playfully, “he would not reamain so distant, I think."

“Perhaps he's just afraid," Casmund said. The knight rumbled happily under his chin.

“Speak more, Caszmoond," he said, licking the crook of his jaw.

“He t-thinks his distance will save him," Casmund said, breath hitching as Tyvir's teeth scraped along the side of his throat. “Or else, he just prefers watching."

At last, Akiya glanced up. “Perhaps I prefer silence, Kepr."

Casmund met his gaze with a crooked grin. Then, he plucked Tyvir's face out from the crook of his neck and kissed the knight fully.

Tyvir purred.

From the corner of his eyes, Akiya's efforts took on a hurried bent. The pile of steel became less ordered, each piece placed more hastily than the last. Tyvir's tongue pushed into his mouth. Casmund's breaths turned shaky.

Just as he thought Akiya was determined to ignore them entirely, the red dragon chucked the last piece of steel into the pile and shot to his feet, fumbling with his vested tunic. He stalked towards them, shucking his vest off behind him, stepping out of his breeches in such a hurry that he nearly tripped.

Casmund grinned.

Akiya seemed to run aground just shy of them, hands half-lifted, unsure of his place in the tangle. The rest of him was as scarred as his arms; red scales cracked or broken or missing across the length of his torso. He was a ruin, teeth bared, breathing hard, eyes wide like a man on a cliff.

Casmund reached up, took him by the wrist, and pulled the dragon's hand to his antlers.

At once, Akiya went stock-still. Tyvir paused too, glancing up from the stag's navel. Akiya blinked, once. Then, slow as glacier thaw, he closed his fingers around the base of Casmund's antler. His other hand found the second antler on its own.

There was some shuffling, then; three bodies finding space to fit around each other. Casmund sat up. Akiya slid in behind him. Tyvir stood, only long enough to pull Casmund's breeches into a pile beside them, adding his own a moment later.

Once more, Casmund found himself between them.

His hardness, emerging from his sheath, betrayed his newfound excitement at the prospect.

Tyvir, too. Though, instead of a sheath, the knight's member peeked out from a slit tucked between his legs. Tyvir shuffled in close, catching his tongue, settling his thighs outside Casmund's own, laying their lengths against each other in their joined laps.

Akiya, for all his bluster, seemed hesitant. Or perhaps, Casmund realized, he was content for the moment to feel his way up the tines of his antlers. Testing their anchor on his head. Breathing wetly across the back Casmund's neck.

Casmund groaned into Tyvir's mouth. It was a more desperate sound than he knew himself capable, half-made and wanton. He pulled his hand back, fumbling blindly behind him for Akiya, slipping his hand into the crease of the red dragon's thighs.

A warmth met him there. Rising to meet his palm.

Akiya made a high, keening sound. Like a kettle. At once, Casmund was filled with the urge to hear it again.

Before he could, Akiya tugged him backwards by the antlers, baring Casmund's throat. Tyvir didn't waste a beat, leaning in to nibble gently at this renewed vulnerability, grinding their hips together and laughing.

“Gentler, Akiya," he scolded. “Be gentler."

Akiya's chest folded against his back, his head tucking in the opposite shoulder as Tyvir.

“He thinks I should be gentler," Akiya said, hoarsely.

Casmund swallowed. “A-and-" he groaned as Tyvir pushed their laps together. “Do you?"

Akiya's grip tightened. His hands went high into the tines of his antlers, bending them downward to either side. Akiya's snout pushed into the back of his neck, muttering down his back, nipping at his skin.

“Tell me to stop, Kepr."

Pressure mounted at the base of his antlers. Casmund wire his jaw shut to hold the noise that threatened to bubble up from him. One of Tyvir's hands dropped into their laps, and enclosed their lengths together in his palm. Casmund's own hand rubbed along Akiya's hardness, pinched between the dragon's groin and Casmund's own flicking tail.

“T-tell me," Akiya said. “Go on." Casmund gripped him blindly near the base, where he emerged from his slit, and Akiya cut off with a shudder. Akiya bit him on the nape. Not hard. Not gentle, either. His hand slipped suddenly from the tines of his antler, but returned with fervor, lower, near the root. Gripping it with a heady desperation.

Tyvir raised his head concernedly, but Casmund raised his free hand and stuck two fingers on his tongue before he could speak. Tyvir made a curious noise and licked at him, grinding their lengths together in his palm.

Casmund's fingers were wet in Akiya's lap. He played them blindly around the edge of the dragon's slit, and felt his cock leap upward—though it may have had more to do with the insensate way Akiya was now handling his antlers.

The red dragon breathed in heavy gasps, rocking his hips into Casmund's touch. At the same time, his grip on the antlers grew so tight that Casmund felt a straining at their burrs.

“Tell me to stop," Akiya repeated. His voice sounded not his own; his words, even less so. “Beg me."

“W-what?"

Something creaked. “Beg me to-"

There was a sudden, jarring crack.

Casmund's head snapped around with the force of it. He'd have fallen right out between them, if not for Akiya's iron grip on his antlers.

Antler.

Akiya held the other in his hand, staring down at it with a look of utter shock.

Tyvir took Casmund's fingers out of his mouth, gasping in shock. “Akiya!"

But Casmund hadn't missed the leap of Akiya's cock against his hand at the moment of its breaking. His tapered length twitched in time to his heartbeat, smearing warmth into Casmund's tail.

Akiya swallowed, heavily. He looked to Casmund, somewhat dimly—then made that kettle noise again when the stag rubbed at his length.

“Go on," Casmund whispered. “Take the other."

Tyvir made a sound of dismay, but Casmund cut him off with a kiss. It lasted only as long as it took for Akiya to wrench him back against his chest, pulling Casmund's head to the side by his remaining antler. Akiya's muzzle buried itself in his exposed collarbone, licking and nipping, panting hot breaths down his front. They were flush together, now, scale and fur. Casmund worked his fingers quicker around the dragon's length, now pinned upwards between them. It had gone wet in his palm, the sound of his efforts turning slick as the pressure grew at the burr of his remaining antler.

Tyvir made another worried sound, chasing him back into Akiya's chest. The knight had stopped his rutting. His eyes had gone wide, tracking something warm sliding down Casmund's temple.

It's not glass, he thought, delirious.

Akiya lurched behind him, snapping his teeth. Something warm spattered up the small of Casmund's back, messing his tail. Akiya made a keening noise like a kettle, tensing. He wrapped an arm around Casmund's throat, bracing his head, and pulled down on his antler.

The antler broke free.

Casmund hissed in pain, his head snapping sidelong into the side of Akiya's snout. They lurched in place, balance skewed—but Tyvir's hands, still holding Casmund's hips, steadied them.

“K-kepr-"

“Caszmoond?"

Casmund laughed, breathlessly. There was a lightness in his head. Dizziness, shot through with adrenaline. He fell forward into Tyvir, mashing their muzzles together. He heard the sound of his antler being dropped into the sand, and then Akiya pressed fully into his back, circling him with his arms, rutting forward into the mess of Casmund's tail.

Tyvir swallowed, heavily. Casmund let his mouth fall open and rocked his length against the knight's. He could feel Akiya's half-hardness pressing intently below his tail, chasing him with each rut forward and resisting his moving back.

He pulled his sticky hand out from where it had become trapped against Akiya's stomach and dropped it into their joined laps. Tyvir's length was warm against his, growing slicker with each half-thrust their closeness allowed.

He finished first, dropping his forehead against Tyvir's chest and watching his cum puddle in the crease of the knight's thighs. He shuddered, Akiya's claws digging ruts through the fur of his stomach, Tyvir's panting breaths coming hot against his ear. The knight's hands left his hips and joined his in their laps, smearing them both. Above Casmund's head, he heard a growl become a sonorous hum as the dragons joined their muzzles together above him.

“Back, Akiya," the knight said, like muffled thunder. “L-lie back."

Akiya did, immediately, and without question. Casmund felt his absence as a coolness on his back—and then Tyvir was lifting his face, licking down into his mouth.

“Are you alright?"

“Y-yes."

“He says-"

“I know, Akiya." Tyvir backed up, leaving a trail of spit to break between them. “Oh, but I know. Clever, and magnificent, and gracious, Caszmoond. And now, resilient! Oh, the facets of you."

There was blood on his brow, again. Tyvir thumbed it away and kissed him, with such a heady need that Casmund felt his breath go out.

“It almost pains me to look away from you," the knight said. It was almost a question.

Casmund pushed off the knight's chest and scrambled onto his elbows. The motion brought his face between Akiya's trembling legs. The red dragon was lying back on his palms, looking down at him with wide eyes.

Tyvir's knees came inside his own. The knight's hands landed on his shoulders, travelling with intent down the curve of his back. He started talking again, some grandiose compliment so genuine that Casmund knew he could not deny it.

He killed the spell, and let the knight's words fall to foreign sounds behind him.

“What's he saying?" Casmund asked, breathlessly.

“He-" Akiya bit his cheek. He reached down, thumbs passing over the stumps where Casmund's antlers had been, and he trailed off. Equal parts horrified and transfixed.

“Akiya."

“W-what?"

Casmund crawled into his lap and licked at the edge of the dragon's sheath. The scales there were soft and pliable, wet with a mess of his own making. “Is my tongue still ill-shaped, Akiya?"

Akiya blinked at him, then shivered as Casmund's tongue entered his slit. He chased the taste of salt, retreating only when the dragon's length re-emerged, hardening in his mouth. Behind him, Tyvir let out a satisfied coo, lifting Casmund's tail with his thumb and pressing his hardness beneath it.

“H-he says-" Akiya stammered, shuddering. His eyes flicked madly between Casmund's busy mouth, and his deracking. Casmund swallowed around his growing length. “H-he…"

Casmund groaned as Tyvir sunk into him. The noise shook Akiya's focus, and he bucked upwards into Casmund's mouth. The knight's hips came flush with his, and Casmund choked for a moment, overwhelmed by the sensation.

“Y-you're fucking mad," Akiya stammered, biting on his own knuckle to stifle a groan. “You're both-"

Tyvir tensed, suddenly, folding over Casmund's back and pressing kisses between his shoulders. The knight's hips juddered, once, then were still. His hands thudded heavily at Casmund's sides, barring him in place while a lovely warmth settled deep in his gut.

Akiya came a second time, stuffing his knuckles in his mouth and shaking like a leaf. Casmund swallowed what he could, then retreated, panting, pressing back into Tyvir's hips with a groan. It took them a moment to come down from the high of it—but none of them minded the waiting, nor begrudged the others their gasping.

They fell apart, then, back into their constituent pieces.

Casmund flopped onto his back. Stared up at the clouds overhead.

For a madman, he felt rather content.

***

They washed themselves again.

It was a close and trembling affair. The three of them, hip deep in the pool, taking their turns at each other. Freed from whatever spell he'd been under, Akiya seemed unable to look at Casmund properly. Some envy in him, replaced with an equal amount of guilt.

Tyvir, on the other hand, had no such compunction.

The knight brushed the sweat from Casmund's stomach in the shallow water of the pool, wide-eyed and giddy. His only pause was in carding the blood from Casmund's temples, where his deracking had left rusty tracks down his fur. Both dragons seemed to shy at the results of their fervor.

But Casmund only felt lighter for it.

Afterward, they sat naked on the shore as the sun climbed above the treeline. Apart, as much as their newfound closeness would allow.

As before, he hadn't meant to fall asleep.

Tyvir woke him, gently. Casmund hadn't even noticed drifting off—yet there he was, hands folded on his stomach, fur drying in the sun. The knight lowered himself to a crouch. He held Casmund's antlers in front of him, like a penitent.

Casmund sat up and considered them, tines interwoven in the knight's hands. He was unsure of himself, then. A part of him quailed at their loss, at the prospect of a year spent waiting for their return. The stares it would bring. The shame he felt already, at their absence.

A hundred small humiliations waited for him upon his return.

But then, come spring.

Akiya watched him, slowing in his repacking of his knight's armour. Their eyes met. Fell away from each other. Casmund took the antlers. Tyvir bowed his head.

He left his antlers hanging on a low branch, tied together with the beaded string Tyvir had bundled wildflowers with, all those days ago. It felt right. That he should leave some part of himself here. They trekked downhill in comfortable silence, back to the meadow, weaving easily between the trees.

The manticore looked smaller in the daylight. In death. It's head sat where it had fallen, muzzle torn, eyes glassy. Tyvir lashed it with twine, drained it as best he could, pressed salt into its wounds. When he was finished, the knight knelt in front of Casmund and placed the head at his hooves.

“Your beast," he murmured. “Slain, for the crime of defacing you. Let it haunt you no more. Let it not hunger."

Casmund brushed his fingers over Tyvir's brow.

“Thank you."

The knight took Casmund's hand and kissed it, smiling.

***

They made good time.

Without their baseless wandering, the trek back into the valley took little time at all. They camped only twice—and the second time, to prolong each other's company.

They ate around the fire, and drank fresh water purified with waterchalk. Tyvir presented him a poem. Akiya translated, in his dry way. It was difficult to tell which version he preferred. There was a melancholy to that final evening, and it persisted when they woke, tangled up again in each other.

Here again, came the fear. Though now, from a different source.

Already, they were close enough to smell the signalfires.

“Will you stay?" he asked, letting the warmth of the clay bowl warm his hands. It was cool this morning. The light was watery blue. “Somewhere close by, I mean."

Akiya didn't answer right away. He licked a bit of broth from his thumb. Looked to Tyvir, who had foregone breakfast and busied himself picking small white stones from the edge of their camp.

“There's a tournament," Akiya said. “Held outside Summayad every Autumn. He'll want to compete. It's tradition."

Casmund picked a vegetable from the bowl. “That's months away."

Akiya smiled, wanly. “Tyvir turns a few weeks of travel into months. We rarely go in straight lines, Kepr."

They sat in silence for a moment. Tyvir picked up another pebble, studied it, then added it to the growing pile in his hand.

“Would you come with us?"

Casmund winced at the question. Akiya set his bowl aside and studied the stag intently. “If we promised safe passage. Hospitality."

Casmund set down his own bowl. Something in Akiya's smile didn't reach his eyes. His chest ached at the sincerity of the offer—though they both knew its answer before he spoke it aloud.

“I've a duty, here," Casmund said, quietly. “And deaths enough on my conscience. These people need protection."

Akiya nodded. His smile flagged, then fell entirely. They sat with his meaning between them like a wall. Strangers, again, despite everything.

“It's held every year, Kepr," Akiya said, eventually. “On the equinox."

Casmund considered the dragon in front of him. Memorizing the arrays of red scales along his jaw. The flame-pale colour of his eyes. “I should think your country beautiful, in Autumn," he replied.

Tyvir, for all his affections, made no such offers. When he returned to them, it was only to press his handful of pebbles into Casmund's hand with a smile. His newest armour, a gleaming pauldron, was lashed to his shoulder with a complex assembly of filigreed leather. It pleased Casmund, to see it there. It pleased Tyvir, when he stood and set a kiss on the broad curve of the pauldron's face.

They travelled as far as the stream where they'd met. The water trickled quietly, filling the silence for them. Further off, the sounds of the road and its workers echoed in muted clangor. The camp had made good progress. Not long now, to the cleft of the valley—and whatever event awaited the two roads' meeting.

Once again, Tyvir set the manticore's head down at Casmund's hooves. There was a wordless understanding that he would take the grim thing from here. Present it as his own taking, and let the woods keep their secrets.

The distance between them was short, now. For a moment, Casmund meant to cross it. Kiss the knight again, and fully—or else light himself afire and lay bare the last piece of himself left unknown.

“Go safely," he whispered, instead. A coward's words. Joined by a coward's silence from Akiya.

Tyvir smiled all the same.

The knight bowed at the waist. His servityr pulled his pack more tightly on his shoulders and nodded.

And then they turned, and were gone.

It seemed wrong, that these things should be done so quickly—and yet, there stood Casmund at the treeline, alone but for his grim cargo and the gentle noise of the stream.

He breathed a sigh. Took the dead surveyor's bundled antlers in one hand, and the manticore's mane in the other. Waited a moment, to catch the last trace of rattling armour carrying through the woods.

Then, he raised his antlerless head, and bore his burdens towards the camp.

And thought, as the road went on, of Summayad, in Autumn.