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The sequel to Drifters: Chrysanthemums. Reading the first instance is strongly encouraged, as you won't understand some bits of plot and references if you don't read that work first.

This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. You can do whatever you want with it as long as it is noncommercial and you give credit.

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Drifters: Malumbra

The image and shape of the Malumbra summoned by the alchemist emerged before me, a figure dressed in a shadow cloak, wrapped in chains, her face unseen under the hood. She moved but did not walk, she flew but had no wings. Soon another came, and then one more, two, three. They surrounded us from all sides. I could not see their eyes but knew they were looking at us, and all at once raised their arms and reached with their hands to touch us.

A.Sibian, ‘Life and dead of the greatest magicians of our time’, 1938 p.S.

***

The first time her parents left her alone at home Jenna was seven and scared out of her mind. She had begged them to stay but they had this ball they said was very important for her mother’s career and they could not afford to lose it. She spent the night under her favorite blanket, the one with the stars and the moon drawn over it, and poked her head out only to breathe. Every sound in the house was the screech of a horrible creature and every shadow in the room was a monster ready to swallow her whole. When morning came she crawled out of the bedroom and found her parents breaking fast and when they asked her why her eyes were so red and why she looked so tired she said she hadn’t slept well. She told them nothing of the noises and the shadows because she knew they’d tell her she was imagining things and that she should grow up. That’s what his mother said when something scared her. But she knew she was not imagining things and she knew it was not the fear of a child that motivated that belief, but if you’d asked her how she knew it she wouldn’t have known how to explain it.

The second time they left her alone Jenna was ten. Her parents had left for a night with their friends and she was almost glad about it. At midnight she slipped her feet in her slippers and grabbed a torch and a frying pan to protect herself – she knew frying pans make great weapons – and went exploring. Their parents had a big house, a manor like in the fairy tales, so she knew it would have taken all night to make sure there were no monsters hiding somewhere in the building. She started from her room and worked her way through the corridor and the stairs and then the bathroom and the kitchen until she arrived at the great hall and at the great all she stopped. If there was a place in the house where there were monsters, that had to be the great hall. Two big windows illuminated the place, one on her left and one on her right, and in front of her stood a fireplace so big she could have thrown herself in it while carrying an entire pig. At the center of it was a table and chairs and pieces of furniture with piles of books and flowerpots occupying what few spaces her mother and father’s medals and badges of honors had left them. Jenna’s mother and father were soldiers. She did not know how to feel about that.

She sat down at the big table and put the torch and the frying pan over the fine mahogany desk. She heard many noises and saw many shadows but they only belonged to pieces of furniture and the trees outside as they shook in the wind. Jenna turned off the flashlight and grabbed the frying pan with both hands. There was enough light there so that if someone tried to attack her, she could still see it. She stood there for a long time and when she realized no one was coming she got angry. She didn’t even know why.

“Well?” she said, her voice loud. “I’m a girl and I’m alone. Is nobody going to kill me?”

No answer.

“Really,” she went on. “If somebody is there, please show up.” She paused again. “I’ll make you tea if you want. Then we can talk about the whole killing thing.”

No answer still. She stayed there all night, at least what remained of it, and when her parents came back and found her still sitting at the table they asked her why she was there. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I didn’t want to be alone.”

Many nights like that followed. Many hours spent sitting in the dark alone and afraid except by the time she was fourteen she did not know what she was afraid of. Year after year the monsters of her past became the ghosts of her memory and when she became an adult there was no more time for them and the fear of her parents getting old and her remaining herself, unchanged, alone, unable to find a job or a husband or any way to spend her long days in any productive way replaced her fear of the monsters. Only at night was she herself. Only in the darkness did she feel free.

When her parents died she felt nothing. They’d been dead to her a long time by then, killed by her own mind in one of the many long nights of her childhood she spent alone. At the funeral there were many people she barely knew and many people she did not know at all and all of them offered her condolences and all of them told her that if she needed something she only had to ask but she didn’t need to ask for anything. Her parents had left her everything they had – the money and the house and the forest behind it and the stable for her horses – everything but their love. The servitude presented their resignation letters and left the very same day. She didn’t care. She didn’t want them anyway. When it came her time to make the Eulogy she stayed where she was and after fire minutes of waiting the priest cleared his throat and went on with the sermon.

Everybody left because they hated her. She did not care and they hated her even more for it.

Day went and night came and she found herself truly alone for the first time. Her parents had left and they would not return. She sat at the big table in the living room with her flashlight and the frying pan and looked in the dark. “Well?” she told the dark. “Now what?”

“Now nothing,” said the dark. “Now you’re ours.”

/

When Kyril woke up he had a small-to-average hole in his belly and half his tail missing and all around him lay a bunch of troll corpses he did not know nor recognize. There had to be at least two dozen of them and every single one was torn to pieces. Some of them were so devastated not even their mother would have recognized them.

He stood up and saw he was covered in blood too and though some of the blood was his most of it was theirs. The air was full of the scents of blood and shit and piss but there was a trace of gin and that awoke enough of his memory to be sure that when he’d killed these bastards he had to have been drunk as a fish. It took him all of five seconds to get over the thought he might have murdered twenty and some innocent souls – trolls were hardly ever innocent, and the few innocent ones did not get into scraps with dragons - and once he was over it he realized he was so thirsty he could have killed them all over again for a sip of water. Behind him was a pond full of blood and guts and he drunk from it and once he was sated he went back to the bodies and ate the fatter ones. They tasted like shit but he was hungry and it was a shame to waste all that meat. Once he finished he stood up and started walking forward. He did not know where he was going. Anywhere was better than that.

He walked and walked and soon the path he walked on became a road. He arrived at the village at dusk: he did not know its name nor where it was and its inhabitants were probably not familiar with dragons because the moment they saw him they all started screaming and ran away. They locked themselves inside their houses and for a second Kyril was tempted to throw one or two down just for the fun of it, just to show them how safe they were in their little boxes of wood and stone.

He didn’t.

The town hall was a big building in the middle of the village, bigger than the one in Ribia by far. The doors were locked and the windows shut. He knocked on the main door and received no answer.

“Whoever is in there better open this door,” he said. “I can smell you, you cowardly bastards. Either you come out or I come in.”

For a moment there was silence. Soon someone started messing with the lock and the door opened to reveal a tall lanky man with brown eyes and white skin. He was pallid and seemed a bit malnourished. Then again most human did.

“Who are you?” Kyril asked.

“I’m Favron,” he said. Favron stuttered the name out like ‘Ff-favvr-ron’ and for a second Kyril thought he was having an aneurysm.

“Are you the mayor?”

“No, sir,” he said, still stuttering. “The mayor is my mother.”

“The old bitch doesn’t have the balls to face me down so she sends his son?”

Favron lowered his head shily. “She says it builds character.”

“Whatever,” Kyril said. “I need a place to sleep.”

The young man seemed mystified. “You’re a dragon. You sleep in the woods and caves."

“Usually, yes. Tired of it though. I want to sleep under a roof. I’m willing to pay for it.”

Favron stood silent for a moment. “There’s nobody here who will let you sleep in their homes,” he said. “The inns don’t have rooms big enough for you and wouldn’t accept your payment anyway.”

“Why not? I can pay well.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“It isn’t human blood, if you’re wondering.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You need to leave. Please. We’re good people, we don’t want any problems. We’ll give you gold, we’ll give you meat, but please leave.”

“You’re willing to feed me but not give me shelter for the night?”

“Please, sir- please, we want no trouble here. Please just leave.”

“Oh, just fucking tell him about the old mansion,” came a female voice inside the hall, “that shithole may suit him well enough.”

Kyril pushed Favron to the side and lowered his head so he could peek inside the building. An old woman with white air and wrinkles sat at a small table eating porridge. When he looked at her she glanced at him and kept eating her porridge.

“What,” she said, between a spoonful and another. “First time you see a hag, you big lizard?”

“Sorry,” Kyril said. “Did you say something about a mansion?”

“Course I did. Are you deaf?” She put the bowl of porridge down and pointed somewhere behind her. “A big old mansion on a hill. Old as rocks and with more spider webs than a nun’s cunt, but nobody will trouble you down there.”

“Why not?”

“Place’s supposed to be haunted.”

“Is it true?”

“Dunno,” said the woman. “Don’t give two shits if it is, we stay away from it either way. But I figure that for a dragon it wouldn’t be a problem even if it were, so there’s that.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “You gonna leave us now?”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said the woman. “Make me a favor and never come back again.”

“I won’t,” he said, and left.

/

The first thing Kyril realized when he saw the place was that the mansion was not a mansion but a manor. It had once had lands that were now nothing but an expanse of weeds and woods that looked like they’d been taken straight out of a horror novel. The stone path that accompanied travelers to the main entrance had faded into nothing and the main gate had rusted and fallen away. The building itself had been built with good wood and so still stood great and tall but the windows were broken and the garden in front of it had decayed into a jungle. Ivy and other climbing plants infested the outer walls and crawled through the windows inside the house. The roof had collapsed in one place, on the left, but he did not care nor did he feel it impacted him in any way. Kyril gave it one last look and then walked through the gates and opened the main doors and once he crossed threshold he closed them behind himself.

The main hall was nothing special. A corridor and a tattered red carpet to cover the corridor that conduced to a once great main hall. The room was occupied by a table surrounded by twenty-two chairs, ten for each side and one opposite to one another. Pushed against the wall there was furniture and on the furniture were the remains of books and pictures now unrecognizable. Everything was covered in dust and falling apart but the fireplace seemed to be in good condition. Next to it was a pile of logs. He took a couple and threw them into the fireplace and then spat a globe of fire on them. The wood was ablaze in an instant and Kyril stood in front of it, his great shadow standing over the hall. A thunder broke the silence of the manor, the signal that soon rain would come, and in the light of the flame he’d awoken he took comfort in the illusion of taking comfort from the fire that burnt in front of him.

“We were not waiting for guests tonight.”

Kyril turned to his left. There were stairs that ran to the floor above and on the stairs was a woman. She was tall, and so pallid and so beautiful he felt his cock stir before he realized it. She whore a simple white dress that was no more than a veil and barely managed to hide her slender forms to his eyes. Her voice was like the singing of a bird. She was otherworldly in her beauty and Kyril would have believed her a goddess or an entity of similar kind if it wasn’t for the fact she had no expression on her face whatsoever. It wasn’t a simple lack of emotion: it was as if someone had stolen away any feeling she ever had or would ever have had and left her that beauty as payment. Kyril wondered if she would even have felt something had he fucked her, and his thickening cock receded inside his sheath.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” Kyril said. “I thought the place was abandoned.”

“It is.”

“You don’t live here?”

“I do,” she said. “It is abandoned anyway.” She walked down the stars and came to stand near the fireplace. “Can I do something for you?”

“I seek shelter,” he said. “This mansion is good enough for me. Let me sleep in it and I’ll pay you well.”

“Money doesn’t interest me,” she said. “And I’m afraid I don’t have a guest room that is big enough for you.”

“I can sleep in front of the fireplace.”

“I see,” she said. She lowered her gaze on the glowing flame. “I’ll have to talk with them.”

“Who’s them?”

“Mother and Father,” she said. “You’re our guest for dinner tonight. Stay here and relax. I’ll be back soon.”

Kyril did as he was told. He stayed there, and he relaxed, but the woman did not come back soon. In fact she was away for so long the dusk turned into night and she still had not come back. He was about to curl himself in front of the fireplace and sleep when a door opened somewhere above his head and the woman reappeared on the stairs.

“I’m sorry for the wait,” she said. “We’re ready for dinner now.”

Kyril’s eyebrows furrowed. Behind the woman was a huge hunched figure cloaked in black, its veil covering it from head to toe. The hood made it impossible for him to see face or eyes and in the back of his mind he wondered if it even had them at all. His left eye hurt. The pain came and went since his fight with Father Duncan but the moment the figure came into his view it started burning as if someone had stuck a molten rod in it, and it did not stop as the figure put the large tray it was carrying on the table and then sat at its head. The pallid woman took her place at her left, while Kyril pulled away a chair and stood by its left.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“Mother,” she said.

“Your Mother?”

She said nothing. He waited for her to answer but the answer did not come. He shook his head.

“Alright. What is your name?”

“That doesn’t matter either.”

“Am I going to stay the night?

“I think Mother will allow you to.”

“Then I need a way to call you that is not ‘woman’ or ‘you there’,” he said. “If it is a problem of etiquette, my name is Kyril and I come from the south. I have no clan and no true name that I know, and I promise not to shed blood in this house unless someone tries to shed mine first.” He raised an eyebrow. “So?”

The woman remained silent for a moment. She leaned toward Mother and the two started to talk in a tongue made of whispers and hisses. He understood nothing but one thing: Mother was in charge, whoever she was, and she did not like him.

Once they were done confabulating the woman sat back straight and looked at him. “Mother says you may call me Jenna,” she said. “I come from nowhere, and my family is dead. You will dine with us tonight, and you will sleep in our great hall, and then tomorrow morning you will be gone. Is that a favorable deal for you?”

“It doesn’t seem a deal since I’m not paying for anything, but I suppose it is.”

“Good,” she said. “Mother is pleased to hear that.”

With that said she uncovered the tray. A big roasted mutton sat in it, already cut in portions, its scent strong and inviting. Jenna took the smallest portion available and started eating it taking small bites that barely filled her mouth. Kyril grabbed a leg of mutton, ripped it off and swallowed it whole. The meat was still settling in his stomach when he turned toward Mother.

“Why isn’t your mother eating?”

“She’s not my mother,” Jenna said.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s not my mother,” she repeated. “She’s just Mother.”

Kyril showed a hint of teeth. “Why isn’t Mother eating?”

“Mother is not angry in the evening. She only eats at lunch.”

“Curious,” he said. “What does she eat?”

Silence. Jenna stood frozen as if someone had pressed a button and switched her off. Mother waved a hand toward her and the two started confabulating once again. Once they were done Jenna relaxed and sat back straight. “Mother eats rice,” she said. “Rice and wine. Nothing else.”

“What about water?”

Another pause. “No,” she said. “She does not drink water, I think.”

“An equilibrated diet, to be sure,” he said. “I bet this is how she maintains her youthful appearance.”

There was neither laughter nor snorts of annoyance. Jenna kept eating and Mother kept staring at nothing under her black veil. Kyril made sure to eat the mutton in the most annoying and disgraceful way he could manage, but neither of them complained. Once lunch was finished Jenna stood up. Mother did the same and though hunched she was a foot taller than her. Kyril looked first at her and then at mother and then back at her. “So this is it?” he said. “We go to sleep now?”

“Is there something else you wish to do?”

“No. Just trying to understand how things work here.”

“I thought I already told you what would happen,” Jenna said. “If you wish for me to explain it again – “

“No,” Kyril said. “No, thank you. Everything’s clear as water. You and Mother can go to sleep if you want. I’ll stay here.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning."

Then she climbed up the stairs, Mother following immediately behind them. The two of them disappeared in the floor above like ghosts, and for a second before they started to eat Kyril had almost wished they were ghosts, but they were not. For a moment he was tempted to turn his back and get the hell out of that mansion but curiosity flourished in him like flowers from a corpse and he decided to stay, the same something that had pushed him to help Mikalea even though he had nothing to gain. And yet he didn’t feel curiosity was the right name for it.

Had he not known himself better, he’d have thought it was worry.

/

Kyril had no plans to sleep that night and in fact wanted to wait to make sure everyone in the manor was asleep before starting to explore it, but without even knowing how his eyes closed and when they opened again the dark outside was absolute and the clock had already stuck midnight. The rain fell hard and heavy against the dirt and the trees and the wood and the broken windows of the house, while he lay curled up around the fireplace as tired as a dead body. He was still half asleep when he heard a voice trilling into his ears.

“Kyril,” said the voice. “Kyril, wake up for fuck’s sake. You’re in a sea of shit.”

Kyril yawned and raised his head. A blue wisp floated above his head in circles, the way wisps did when they were angry or annoyed or scared. When he saw Kyril was awake he floated toward him and planted himself into its face.

“Fisk,” Kyril said. “What are you doing here? Did Mikalea forgive me or something?”

“Forget Mikalea. Lorrain said she doesn’t want anyone with even a drop of magic blood in its veins aside from the big cow herself, so I started searching you to see if you wanted – hells, it doesn’t matter now. You need to get out of here.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t get it. There is a presence here, something evil, and it hates you. Hates your guts like the dog hates the cat. You are in terrible danger.”

“Yes, I figured,” he said, and stood. “For example, what would you say if I told you the lunch I had with the merry inhabitants of this place was filled with some sort of soporific drug? Maybe even something supposed to kill me?”

“I’d say it’s fucked up and you need to get your ass out of the door.”

“I won’t,” he said. “Because it means whatever entity wants me dead here doesn’t think they’d be able to defeat me in fair combat. Which means we have an advantage.”

“We?” Fisk said. “What do you mean, we? I have nothing to do with this. I want nothing to do with this. If you think – “

“If you help me on this matter, I’m going to let you establish a connection with my consciousness,” Kyril said. “You will have a new master, one that won’t be ashamed of hanging around with you. You’ll be free to come and go as you please of course, but I’d be glad to have you if you decided to stay with me.”

Fisk said nothing. For a long time the only thing he did was float like a half-decompressed balloon, then a vamp of bright purple light lightened the room. “You just had to go there, don’t you?”

“Is that a yes or no?”

“You know already what it is,” Fisk said. “What is the plan?”

“I have no plan yet,” he said. “First, we need to explore the house. You should – “

Before he could end the sentence the room of the hall sprang open and slammed against the walls with such strength the stone shook. A cold wind blew inside the room and killed the flame in the fireplace.

“What the hell was that?” Fisk said.

“I reckon our hosts found out we’re planning to violate the laws of hospitality,” Kyril said. “That must have been their way to say ‘get the hell out of here’.”

“But we won’t,” Fisk said. “I got that much. What is the next step?”

Kyril spat another globe of fire in the fireplace and the flame took but only for a moment before the wind killed it again. “The wind keeps turning my fire off, but it doesn’t keep me from producing it. Means their ability to manipulate aether is limited.” He looked at Fisk. “What do you feel? How are the vibes around here?”

“Sick,” he said. “I mean it literally. There’s a sickness in the air, like something rotting grew mold and fungi and yet remained alive.”

“How is it still alive?”

“I don’t know. I guess something is forcing it to.”

“So it’s like a parasite?”

“Parasites,” he said. “If I’m not wrong, there is more than one.”

“Splendid.” Kyril said, and snorted. “On to the second floor, my brave one.”

/

They climbed the stairs and found themselves at the end of a long corridor that brought to another set of stairs. Kyril looked around and saw a line of doors decorated with wood carvings on each side, and halfway through the corridor split into two smaller ones; one went left and the other went right. The doors were in better shape on this floor and the branches of the trees scraped against the old glass windows like nails on a blackboard. Thunders and lightning came and went and while the thunders were all fine and good he could tell there was something wrong with the lightning. Every time the light struck the place would be illuminated, but either he was going insane or there was a second of delay between the light and the disappearance of the darkness that surrounded them. It was as if the shadows were alive but only had a bare idea of how shadows acted.

“Fisk,” he said. “Can you make yourself more luminous?”

“Sure. How much?”

“As much as you can. Lighten the whole corridor if you’re able to.”

“I could, but that’d hurt a fucksight.“

“I only need you to do it for a few seconds. If the pain is too much you can absorb some of my aether to quell it. The most important thing is that you do it gradually.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Fisk didn’t reply. The globe of purple fire that made up his body started pulsing at the rhythm of Kyril’s heart, and at every pulse it grew a few inches. Kyril knew it was sapping some of his energy but it was neither painful nor tiresome so he let him do it. After a minute, Fisk was luminous enough to illuminate the part of the corridor they were in. After three, his light was so bright it almost made the night seem daylight.

“Stop,” Kyril said. “This is good enough.”

Fisk stopped growing and stabilized his aether to stop himself from feeding on Kyril’s. The whole corridor was as bright as possible now, from one set of stair to another, to the point that Kyril’s eyes hurt and he had to keep them squinted like the good nocturnal predator he was not to go completely blind. Not that one needed a perfect vision to see what was wrong now.

“You see what I’m saying?” Kyril asked.

“Yes, I do,” Fisk replied. “And I kind of wish I didn’t.”

The darkness on the floor was gone. Not in the sense that the room was simply bright now but in the sense that no object in the corridor projected a shadow as it should have. Paintings, doors, furniture, chandeliers, all of them had no shadow and in the place where the shadow should have been there was a void Kyril could feel in his bones.

“So,” Kyril said. “I think we found our parasite.”

“Parasite? Or parasites?”

“You tell me. Do you think it’s only one entity or a hive of them?”

“I’m not sure,” Fisk said. “I think the second, but if that were true, where is the queen?”

They started inspecting the rooms on the floor one by one. Every time they opened a door the darkness inside them disappeared and brought away with it the shadows of every piece of furniture inside the room. The entire floor was a dormitory: there were four bedrooms for the guests, two bedrooms with queen-sized beds and one with a king-sized one – Kyril supposed one could get bored sleeping in the same one all the time.

The last room they inspected was the last on the left side of the left corridor. When they came in the darkness reacted as usual, but slower this time, as if the shadows were stronger. It was a small room with a small bed on the right and a night table on the left. On the night table was a flowerpot and though its flowers had died a long time ago there was still a faint scent of lavender he could not explain. He looked at Fisk for answer and found him staring back at him.

“A reminiscence of the past,” he said. “This place is full of memories.”

Kyril squeezed himself through the door and went to the nightstand. It was a nice nightstand and he liked it so when he opened it he did his best not to break it. Inside the nightstand was a lot of pens and ink bottles and pieces of paper with monster drawings on them, but most importantly there was a diary. It was an old-style diary, one that must have costed a fortune in its days, with an hardcover binding and a golden bookmark hidden between the pages. He grabbed it and opened it at a random page. It was written in classic tregurian and though the calligraphy was terrible he had no problem understanding what was written. He turned toward Fisk and started to read aloud.

***

Eight day of Phiniscences, 1983 p.S.

Dear diary,

Mom and dad had to leave again tonight. Mom said they had an important meeting with dad’s boss and they couldn’t miss it for nothing in the world. I was angry because they promised we would go to the theater tonight but it was like they had totally forgotten about it. They said they would bring me a gift but I said no, I don’t want your stupid gift I wanna go to the theather, then dad got angry and told mom to keep me quiet and got out. Mom just said they would come back soon and I could play with the servitude but the servitude didn’t work that night, and even if they did what was I supposed to go? Go back to them and wake them up so they could play with me? I may not be able to sleep but they sleep for sure, that wouldn’t be right.

It's kinda scary when I’m alone. I hope my parents come back soon.

***

“Should give them an award for best parents of the year,” Fisk said.

“Shut up.” Kyril flipped through the place and started to read again.

***

Nineteenth day of Gulpe, 1984 p.S.

Dear diary,

I did that thing again, the one with the frying pan and the flashlight. I told you how scary it was at first right? I don’t think it is anymore. I mean I’m still scared, but it’s not the scariest thing ever. I think it feels nice, actually. Not all the time, only a bit. Then it feels scary again and then nice again and then scary. My parents have found out about it and they do not give a shit they don’t care about said I should stop because sleeping is important and you shouldn’t go around walking at night instead of sleeping, but I can’t sleep. Really I can’t. I can only sleep during the day. I don’t think they know and even if they did they would because they spend all day outside. My father says he works but the war is over, so I don’t know what his work is, and mom just goes to his friends. She says ‘Why don’t you come too, Jenna’ and I say why the hell would I want to spend time with you, you, you I say I’m not interested because they talk about girly stuff and they always talk about girly stuff and she said no we do not, but I know they do, they always do, they always talk about anything but me.

I prefer the dark. It’s better safer nicer its

It’s

Leave me alone.

***

“Kyril,” Fisk said. His fire trembled and shook.

“Kyril, I think you need to stop reading.”

Kyril shook his head. “I think we’re on the right track. We need to keep going.”

“But – “

“Just one more page,” he said. “One more page and then we’ll be done, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer Kyril flipped to the end of the diary and started to read.

***

My parents died yesterday. I don’t feel anything. I have no friends to comfort me and I don’t need them anyway. Uncles and aunts and friends of my parents came to offer their condolences but I didn’t know any of them. I shook their hands but did not feel their skin. I hugged them but felt no warmth. They said something, but I did not want could not listen. I waited for them to leave me alone leave the house and then I want to the great all. I brought my frying pan and the flashlight with me and I don’t even know why, the flashlight was dead and the frying pan would not protect me I never understood why I brought it anyway.

I waited for so long I think I fell asleep at some point. When I woke up it was dark, and I was alone but I was not alone and I spoke in the dark and the dark spoke with me and I wondered why, why, why, why

Oh gods

Oh gods above

I think I let something

Oh gods, please no

Please, forgive me, forgive me

FORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFORGIVEMEFO

***

“Kyril!”

A gust of wind as strong as a hurricane almost threw him on the floor. The diary fell from his hands and when it touched the ground it shattered like old cracked glass. Kyril threw himself out of the room while the wind did everything it could to keep him in and as it fell back the darkness advanced from the corners of the room like oil stains on the pavement. The shadows fought the light and reclaimed the bed walls and the floor and the nightstand but left a small blank spot on the bed, and from that spot the sheets and the blankets rose and contorted into impossible shapes, changed colors and texture and length until he looked up and saw Mother sitting at the edge of the bed with her head leaned forward and her hands joined below the long sleeves of her tunic.

“You’re too curious, son of Suleya,” said a feminine voice. “Sometimes curiosity is not rewarded the way one would like.”

Kyril took a step back. “You don’t know how right you are,” he said. “What did you do to the girl?”

“She was alone,” Mother said. “We offered her guidance and company. She took them joyfully, and joyfully she made us the masters of her life.”

“I don’t know if you read that fucking diary or not, but you and I must have two very different definitions of the world ‘joy’,” Kyril said. “You took a lonely, mentally ill girl and turned her into a walking corpse. You’re feeding on her – that’s how you manipulate the shadows in this place. You’re parasites.”

“Everybody is a parasite to somebody else,” Mother said. “I infest human beings, but your kind infests the world.”

“What in the nine hells are you talking about?”

Mother let out a sibilant whisper that might have been a laugh. “I know of you, son of Suleya,” she whispered. “I know of the help you tried to give to the town or Ribia while ending up being its downfall. You judge me for using a lone person, but your hands are stained with the bloods of hundreds.” She hissed again. “You’re a murderer and a hypocrite, all because you couldn’t help but get your cock wet.”

Kyril didn’t answer. He turned toward Fisk and saw his flame shaking as if in the middle of a blizzard. “What’s wrong, Fisk?”

“It’s her,” Fisk said. “She’s one head of the hive. She’s calling the shadows – I won’t be able to keep them away this time.”

Kyril turned back to Mother. “Where is Jenna?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’ll be dead before you reach her.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“You cannot fight a shadow, you fool,” she said.

“We offered you a way out, and you refused. Now you’ll choke on our darkness and will make your shadow our own.”

“No, you will not.”

“How so?”

“You stupid bitch,” Kyril said. “I’m going to burn this fucking house to the ground.”

Mother had no time to say anything before Kyril widened his jaws and blew a column of fire at her. The flames took ahold of her veil and she screamed as if her flesh itself were burning, and though Kyril expected her to disappear or fight back or run away she did not. She just raised her hands to the sky and screeched.

“You bastard snake!” she screeched. “You sniveling worm! We’ll kill you all!”

“There’s only two of us, and you won’t be able to kill one,” he said, and spat a second flame on her.

The fire spread like sickness in a war camp. Soon the whole room was engulfed in it, then the corridor, then the floor and the ceiling above their heads. Fisk reduced himself to the size of a pebble. “Too much light, you bastard!” he yelled. “Your tricks will dissolve me!”

“Get the hell out of here then,” he said. “Just go. I’ll handle myself.”

“But the shadows - “

“Don’t worry about the shadows, I’ll keep them in check. Now go!”

Fisk exploded into a globe of prisms and he was alone now. Mother was still burning and so was the floor but through the fire and the flame he saw dark shapes detaching themselves from the burning walls and jumping through the air toward him, their mouths full of teeth and their hands full of claws. He barged through them, his head and chest and shoulders tearing through their smoky flesh as if through true bone and muscle. A scream rose from the third floor, a female voice so clear it cut the air like a sword, and he followed it up the stairs and through another corridor. There were other doors and other shadows on his way and they tried to rip and bite and tear as he could, but they were amateurs while he was an expert and he killed them one after another. At the end of the corridor he found the stairs and up those stairs he found the attic. The door was closed and shadows guarded it. He tore them asunder and brought the door down and there in the middle of the room was Jenna. She sat at the edge of the bed with a confused expression on her face, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself.

“What have you done?” she said. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her expression was as flat as a board. “What have you done, you fool?”

“Mother is dead,” he said. “You don’t need to obey her anymore. I’ll get you out of here, and then – “

“You fool,” she said. “You mindless moron. You’ve killed us all.’

“What are you talking about?”

“There is not One without the Other. One face of the coin cannot exist without the other.“ She said. “You killed Mother, but Father is still here.”

A terrible tremor shook the house. The aether flame spread in unnatural ways, but it was not its fault when the house started to crumble, nor was its fault when the ceiling started falling on their heads. Strong and fierce an energy of a source he could not recognize started to pulse below their feet and Kyril barely had the time to grab Jenna by the waist and hug her close to his chest before whatever power had been building up exploded all at once. The entire floor manor blew up in a chaotic mess of black and yellow, flames and shadows, and Kyril could do nothing but make sure his body was completely wrapped around Jenna’s as the explosion sent them flying into the air. They landed seventy feet away and Kyril’s back crushed hard against the stone and though that did not hurt the whiplash sent his stomach into a frenzy. He let go of Jenna and rolled to the side and threw up troll flesh and mutton flesh and enough blood to fill a pint glass. Once he was done he turned toward Jenna and saw her hugging her legs with her head leaned down between her knees, cold rain pouring over her.

“It’s alright,” he said. “It’s alright now. Nobody can hurt you now.”

“Father can,” she said. “Father will kill us all.”

“Who’s Father?”

“Kyril!”

Kyril stood up and looked at Fisk. He was almost back to his normal size but his light was still tenue as a thaumathurgic lantern. “Fisk,” he said. “Are you alright?”

“I am, but not for long if we don’t move.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something’s coming,” Fisk said. “A second presence, somewhere in the depths of the house. I felt it before, but I thought it weaker than mother – but now it’s growing, fucking hells – it feels like it might swallow the whole damn forest. We need to go, now!”

“Go where?”

“Anywhere!” Fisk said. “Get that chick in the air and fly until the sun comes up – whatever this thing is, I don’t think it can travel under the light of the sun.”

“Neither can you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Fisk said. “It’s not me that it wants. Go, gods be damned, go! I’ll meet you, wherever you end up, and then - ”

He barely finished talking before what was left of the house crumbled on itself like a house of cards, and from the splintered wood and the broken stone a shadow arose and spread through the air like a poisonous gas. It covered the forest and the land and then it rose and covered the stars and the moon and everything between them.

“It’s Father,” Jenna said. “Father has come. We are doomed.”

“Nobody is doomed here until I say so,” Kyril said. He turned toward the raising shadow and spat fire at it, and inferno he kept up for minutes: it did not kill it but it shrunk it enough to press it back against the ground. There they wrestled together, fire and dark locked into an even match, and Kyril turned back toward Jenna. He reached toward her with his claws.

“Take ahold of me.”

“I can’t – “

“Yes you can! Grab onto me, now!”

Jenna launched herself at him and grasped his wrist with her tiny and. Kyril wrapped his arm and wings around her yet again and launched himself into the air. He flew as fast as Jenna could tolerate, and though he felt the Shadow hot on his heels he could tell it was not fast enough or strong enough to catch them. If Father wanted to fight, he’d have to wait for another night.

***

Let me start by saying that there is a laughable, yet weirdly widespread idea among the masses that every living thing, to some extent, fears the dark. This is obviously untrue. A vast number of animals have adapted quite splendidly to the darkness. Take the meta-wolf, for example: beautiful creature, for sure, and yet an extremely dangerous predator. Would you imagine such a beast to be afraid of the dark? Obviously not, as it not only hunts at night but also plays, mates and practically lives all his existence during nighttime. And speaking of other species, why only speak of dumb beasts? What about the wulking and the feleos? What about the phoenix, the gryphon, the dragon? All creatures who speak and think and live like us, and yet feel as comfortable in the dark as in the light. Our ideas in the merit are therefore simple projections, a way to anthropomorphize feara we have probably no right to even speak about in this book. In our modern-day times, many activities humans once did only in daytime are now also done during nighttime, so we could even include ourselves among those species. Yet, an instinctive aversion for the dark and the night survives in us, especially in isolated places where civilization is scarce and the wild owns all. We do not feat the dark, nor do we fear it in the basis of whether there is something in it or not. Fundamentally speaking, we fear the dark because it reminds us, subconsciously, that we are, and always will be, prey.

E. B. Aggard, ‘Of Soul And Its Fundamentals.’

***

“We’re all going to die,” Jenna said, and that was it.

Kyril pulled the head out of the small water stream and sighed. They’d been hiding in that cave since dawn and he’d been unable to make her say something unrelated to their apparently impending deaths by Father’s hand. She was so sure of it she seemed to have given up already. She sat in a corner of the cave, her back leaned against the wall and her knees pressed against her chest. She stared at nothing and nothing stared back.

“I told you, we’re not going to die,” Kyril said. “I killed Mother, didn’t I? I’ll kill Father too.”

“I wish I had never met you.”

He shook his head. “Listen, I understand you’re afraid, but – “

“I’m afraid because of you,” she said, her voice empty of any emotion. “You think you might have saved me, but you’re wrong. Before you came, I could live my life in comfort. Mother and Father took care of me. I could read and walk and eat and sleep whenever I wanted, and if I wanted for something else then Mother would find a way for me to have it. All I had to do was stay in the manor.” She lowered her head. “It’s all gone now. Mother is death, Father will kill all of us for it, and it’s all your fault.”

A shard of metal burrowed into Kyril’s heart. It was not the first time he had been spoken those words and if his luck kept going that way it would not be the last. Anger rose in his chest and for a moment was tempted to fly away and see if maybe Father would be content to kill only her and leave the rest of them alone, but he suppressed it. He could have been that kind of dragon once, and he refused to return to those days.

“Listen to me,” Kyril said. “I understand you are angry because I destroyed your…your world, but Mother and Father were not your friends. They used you, get it? They feed on you and your emotions to grow strong. Those gifts they brought you, all the things they gave including the peace and quiet, those things they could give only because of the energy they took from you. Living alone in the ruin of a house, not being able to put a foot beyond the door, that is not the way to live. You were a prisoner. I freed you.”

“And now we’re all going to die.”

“You will not die,” he said. “Maybe I will. Hells, maybe it would be better if I died. But I won’t let you die with me. I swear to you, I’ll keep you alive no matter what.”

Jenna didn’t answer. He glared at him in silence, her expression as flat as always but with a new light in her eyes he could not understand. More than once he thought she was about to tell him something and he would have accepted anything she had to say, even insults, just to hear her beautiful voice again, but when she finally seemed to have found the courage her eyes drifted somewhere behind him. “Your friend is back,” she said, and fell back into silence.

Kyril turned his head and saw Fisk floating toward him. His light burnt weak and tenue in the dark of the cave and he looked somehow diminished. “Are you all right?” Kyril asked.

“I’m fine,” Fisk said. “The bastard tried to get me too, but I made him regret it. The only thing faster than a wisp is a wisp flying for his life. What about you?”

“We’re fine, too,” he said. “Though Jenna doesn’t seem to share my momentary optimism.”

“We’re all going to die.”

“Such a rain of sunshine, this girl,” Fisk said. “I can’t totally disagree with her though. We’re fine for now, but the moment the sun goes down we’ll be dead meat.”

“We won’t,” he said. He looked around himself.

“Fisk, you have the map of Treguria memorized. Do you know where we are?”

“Sure. We’re somewhere in the woods of Sedorra, close to the lake of Culpitan.”

“Sedorra?” Kyril said. “You mean Sedorra the city sorcerers and aether manipulators go to train?”

“Yes, that one. Do you think they might help us?”

“They might, if we had the money to pay. Sadly I think I might skin myself alive and all my scales still wouldn’t be enough to pay for the services we need,” Kyril said. “We might be in luck though.”

“You wanna tell me why?”

“Zereya. She’s a friend of mine that lives near the city,” Kyril said. “Well, I say friend of mine, but she was more a friend of Feiras. She came to see us in the temple occasionally, at least until Feiras found out she was a bit of a freak and threw her out.”

“Freak? Freak how?”

“She drugged me and tried to have sex with me while I was asleep.”

“Fucking hells.”

“Yeah, I know. But freak or not, she’s the only one I know who might help us right now. She lives in a tower near a small lake. It’s weird I didn’t see it while we were flying though. It’s a big place.”

“Is she a sorceress?”

“Yes. The best I’ve ever met.”

“Then she may have hidden herself with an invisibility spell.” Fisk’s flame shook a little. “You may not be able to see it, but I might.”

“You can lead the way then,” Kyril said. He turned toward Jenna. “Come on, princess. It’s time to go.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. “By tomorrow morning, we shall all be corpses.”

“You sure as hells shall be if you don’t get a move,” Kyril said. “Listen, I don’t give a shit what do you think of Father or how powerful he is. A battle is not over until you’re dead. We’re going to get help, we’re going to plan how to face this fucking thing and then you’ll be free of it forever. You’ll be able to go where you want, do whatever you want to do. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“No,” Jenna said. “I want to go home.”

Kyril glared at her with his teeth bared. He was about to tell her to grow a spine and do what she was told to do but before he could say anything Fisk floated next to his head and shook a little to attract his attention. “What?” he said.

“Listen, Kyril,” Fisk said. “You’re basically my unofficially my master now, so I will do what you tell me to do, but I have to know –why do you want to help the girl?”

Kyril snorted. “What kind of question is that? She’s a girl. She’s victim of forces she has no control over - forces that are feeding on her like ravens feeding on a carcass. Are you suggesting we just leave her to her fate and just get the fuck out of here by ourselves?”

“Why not?” Fisk said. “You’re the one who killed Mother. If you leave her to Father, maybe he will leave us alone. He might renounce his revenge entirely. In fact, why did you have to get involved in the first place? When I came to you the very first thing I said was that you were in danger, and that you needed to get out of that manor. Why didn’t you do that? Why did you decide you had to be the one to fix this?”

“What the hell are you trying to say? Are you saying this is my fault?”

“Who else would it be?” Fisk said. “True, the girl was in a shitty situation, but she was living. Sure, it must have not been a good living– I don’t think being used as a source of nourishment is a pleasant thing, no matter the way to absorb the nourishment in question – but still, she was whole and unhurt, living a static but safe existence. That is a better life than that of half the beggars you’ll find on Soltaria, or any other city for that matter.” He made a pause, his purple flame getting darker. “Why do you have to help her, then? What gives you the right to play hero?”

Kyril didn’t answer. He would have done so if he’d been able but he wasn’t. He’d have to tell him about Mika and Lorrain and the town of Ribia falling into a bottomless hole and maybe even what came after, the thing he didn’t understand himself, the need to be with somebody aside Feiras and himself and that void in his heart that could not be filled. And maybe he’d have to tell about Feiras herself, and the journal, and what the journal meant. It was too much. He had no idea where to begin, he didn’t even think there was a beginning, so he just closed his eyes and shook his head.

“The sun is up. It must be late morning by now.” He raised his head and looked upward. The tree branches shook under the gentle wind, the sunshine playing games of shadow and light through the leaves. “If you really can find the Zereya’s tower, you need to start working on it now.”

“But – “

Kyril raised his hand to stop him. “I know what you want to say,” he said. “Let’s get this over with as quick as possible, and then we’ll talk more. I swear it on my honor.”

Fisk let out a sound that Kyril supposed had to be a sigh. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll do as you ask. But from now on, we’re officially master and wisp. Got it?”

“Got it.” He turned toward Jenna. “Sorry, princess, but I’m tired of fighting with you on this whole thing. Either you follow me on your feet or you do it tied on my back. The choice is yours.”

“I want to go home,” she said.

“We’ll get you back home,” Kyril said. “Once this whole thing is done I’m going to personally bring you home – whatever that home may be. I promise you.”

Jenna stared at him. She stared for a long time and for a moment Kyril though he had to go and grab her but before he could move a muscle she stood up and walked up beside him. “You’re a fool,” she said. “But you do not lie. If I shall die, I’ll at least do it with someone who means what he says.”

“That’s the nicest thing anybody has said to me in the last year,” Kyril said. He turned toward Fisk.

“Your turn now, mate. Do your thing.”

Fisk’s flame shook as if hit by a gust of air, then disappeared. Kyril’s head started to ache and he had to withstand the pain in silence for a few second before he felt something settle in his mind, as if a button had just switched inside his brain.

“Kyril?” Fisk said. “Do you hear me?”

“Seems like it. What the hell are you doing inside my head?”

“That’s how wisps travel during daylight. They use their master’s mind as a host. Don’t worry, my presence does not impact your cognitive abilities in any way. Just imagine me as a passenger.”

“Don’t think I have any other choice. How’s this thing going to work?”

“I’m trying to track down the most powerful aether source in these woods. If this Zereya is as strong as you say it is, I should be able to find her with ease. Just walk where I say to walk and turn when I say to turn. It might take a while, but we’ll get there.”

“Alright. Remember we’re on a schedule.”

“Wisps are always on a schedule,” he said. “Now shut up and go left. I have a signal.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Kyril looked at Jenna and. “Get on my back,” he said, and lowered a wing. She climbed on it and sat down before the point his back grew into his shoulder blades, right between his wings.

“All right there?” Kyril asked.

“It is comfortable,” she said.

“Good.”

To the left they went.

/

Fisk was a good navigator and It took them less than a couple of hours to find Zereya’s tower. It stood in the middle of a valley surrounded by trees and behind it was a lake of not small proportions. Kyril could smell the scent of fish from where he was, but he was not hungry. His mind was focused on other things, for example the fact that the tower itself was not visible and they were all just staring at a big empty space.

“Fisk, are you sure you didn’t get a wrong turn or something?”

“Of course I am sure. You told me the tower was nestled in a valley with a lake in it, this is a valley with a lake in it. You said it yourself, your freak must have put an invisibility spell on her place. But it’s without a doubt somewhere around here.”

“So what do we do now?”

“No idea,” he said. “Maybe yell ‘hello’ or something? Is there any kind of etiquette you must follow when greeting a sorceress of high power?”

Kyril made Jenna dismount and sat down to look around himself. The sun shone over them and made his eyes hurt and the birds sung their song to the morning while hunting for their breakfast. The wind blew strong, first to his left and then to his right. The sun was east of him. He looked at the ground and he saw that a few dozen feet away from him a circle of dirt was different than the rest around it. It was flat and deprived of plants or bushes or stones and it stood right at the edge of the lake. He walked up to it and sat down to stare at if for a few second, then looked up.

“Ehy, Zereya!” he yelled. “It’s Kyril down here. You owe me a big fucking favor. Get your ass out of your magic tower or I swear to the gods I’m going to bring this thing down and get you out myself.”

For a few moments only silence was his answer. Then a blade of light appeared out of a hole in the air about ten feet above his head, and it kept expanding and expanding until the light became weak enough to see it was generated from a thaumaturgical lantern. The hole opened as if it were a window and then an ipotane head poked out of it. It was feminine, with a long slim muzzle and long eyelashes. She looked down at them, eyebrows furrowed, but when she saw who was yelling below her window her expression softened and her eyes widened.

“Bloody Hells!” she said. “Kyril, it is really you! By the gods, you look like a behemoth!”

“Yes, I made sure to eat all my green growing up. Listen, me and my friends are in trouble and we really need some help. Think you can do that?”

“Give me a minute,” she said, and the window closed. There was sound of walking and rumbling and the clicking and clanking of something metallic, then something snapped as if it had been unlocked. A big door opened right in front of them and a half-naked ipotane greeted them with her hands on her naked waist and her hips tilted to the left. She was about eight feet tall, a bit taller than Mikalea. She wore a blue and gold top that barely managed to contain a pair of breast the size of her head and a red loincloth so thin Kyril could see through it like a piece of wet paper. He’d expected nothing less from her.

“Well, well,” she said, a big smirk on her face. “I must admit, when I fantasized about you giving me a visit in my humble abode I did not imagine you bringing another girl with you. Is she only going to watch, or are we to share her?”

“Neither of them,” Kyril said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to keep it in your pants for a while. We’re in trouble.”

“Oh, I love trouble. I know all funny kind of ways to make it go away.”

An uncomfortable sensation of warmth filled Kyril’s ears, and before he knew it Fisk was floating next to his head, hidden in the shadow of Kyril’s wing, his purple flame smoldering.

“Listen here,” he said. “My name’s Fisk. I’m sure you recognize me as the wisp who has spent the last hour and a half trying to track you down, correct?”

Zereya glared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose so. I felt a little light searched for me and decided to let it try if it wanted.”

“Bullshit. I’ve been the wisp of another aether manipulator and I can recognize magic user when they want to fuck with you. You tried to lead me away from this place and failed to do it every time. Kyril told me you’re the strongest sorceress he knows, but if this is all you can do I think he must be wrong. Am I right?”

Zereya’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you, you little – “

“That’s enough,” Kyril said. “Zereya, listen to me. Whatever reason you think I had to come here, you’re mistaken. There is an entity stalking us, and the only reason he’s not breathing on our necks right now is because it can only show up during nighttime. We have no information on it and no plan to face it. Can you help us?”

Zereya looked at him, her eyes still narrowed.

“Sounds dangerous,” she said. “I want nothing to do with it. Why should I help you?”

“You drugged me and tried to rape me while I was asleep,” Kyril said. “My honor was offended. As I’ve told you before, you owe me a debt for that. Help us out of this and I’ll consider us even.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And what if I say no?”

“I’m going to burn your tower down with you in it,” he said. “And if you’re thinking of getting out of this with magic, I’ll let you know I’ve been fucked over by an aether user not long ago and I’m itching to get a rematch.”

Zereya huffed. “As far as deals go, that’s a hard sell.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting,” Kyril said. “So, yes or no? We don’t have much time, so we’d like an answer now.”

“You already know what I’m going to say,” she replied. She went back in and motioned them to follow. “Look out for the steps,” she said. “They bite if you walk on them too hard.”

They entered the tower. The inside was much bigger than the outside so Kyril immediately understood there was magic at work in that building that went beyond invisibility alone. the first floor was just a room filled with chests and boxes of alembics and other alchemical objects he could not recognize, while pushed against the wall was a big desk made from walnut wood covered in books and pieces of paper. To its left a big spiral staircase brought to the higher levels of the tower. He went to give a look at the desk and found out none of them was written in a language he knew or recognized.

“I see you’re keeping yourself busy,” he said.

“Such is the life of a sorceress,” Zereya replied. “Most of my work right now is in the library, but it disappeared a couple weeks ago. I’m sure it will reappear soon, but in the meanwhile, I have to do with this.” Once everybody was in she closed the door and crossed her arms below her chest. “So, what’s this entity you spoke about? I hope for you somebody’s dying at very least, because if you just threatened me with death because an im is playing pranks on your I’m going to cut your cock off.”

“My cock is fine where it is, thank you very much,” Kyril said. He turned back and pushed Jenna forward with his snout. “If we have to talk about this, though, I’d rather we do it in a more comfortable place.”

“What? You want me to offer you tea and cookies?”

“To me? I don’t like either of them. But maybe Jenna could eat something.” He looked at her.

“Are you hungry?”

“A bit,” she said.

Kyril glared at Zereya. The sorceress sighed.

“Alright, the girl will get something to eat. Follow me.”

Zereya guided them up the spiral staircase. Every few steps there was a new door or an gate. Some doors appeared new as if made yesterday and some so old they seemed about ready to crumble. Some had holes in them and through the holes Kyril could see hints of long black corridors or dancing lights of strange colors. He kept checking the doors until he got too close to one and it a large crack spread on it as if warning him to stay away. After that he walked in the middle of the staircase and kept for himself. He was already dealing with an angry supernatural entity, he didn’t fancy dealing with another.

They finally arrived at the last door. Zereya waved her hand and the door opened. The room behind was circular, just like the one at the base, and pushed against the walls were desks and wardrobes and other kind of furniture filled with all kinds of objects and trinkets and tomes of various sizes and colors. Dozens of shelves, each one with a fair number of books on them, hang from the walls. A big window opened in front of them, its view giving away to the lake and the forest it bordered. Instead of thaumaturgical lanterns or chandeliers the only thing illuminating the room was a white light right below the ceiling.

“That is not an infernal flame, is it?”

“Sure is,” Zereya said. “Why, you have a problem with demonic magic?”

Kyril growled. “Bring Jenna some food,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”

He sat down and stared out at the pavement until the food arrived, brought in by a couple of humanoid constructs made of wood and metal. Kyril had never liked constructs – they were a pale imitation of life, and he imagined the way he shunned them had to be similar to the way people shunned him. Other than tea and cookies they brought Jenna bread and cheese and even some sour cream to put on it. He glared at Zereya suspiciously.

“What?” she said. “A girl can’t be generous to a fellow girl?”

“Whatever. The food and shelter is comprised in our deal.”

“Of course it is,” she said, a smirk on her face. She sat on the bed and crossed her arms again.

“So, you want to tell me what got you people into such a tizzy?”

“Went to a manor yesterday,” Kyril said. “Found this girl. Jenna’s her name. Fisk and I decided to investigate the place, found out it was infested with some sort of parasitic shadows – like a hive, or a colony. They were surviving by siphoning feelings and strength by Jenna herself. We killed one of the heads – Jenna called it ‘Mother’ – but there’s another one – “

“Father,” Jenna said, a piece of bread in her mouth.

“- yeah, father. He’s running after us, and he’s even more powerful than Mother.”

Zereya raised an eyebrow. “That’s a hell of a story you got there.”

“If you think I’m lying – “

“I do not. I’m just considering how true the saying about dragons being bringers of misfortune is.” She shook her head. “Anyway, it seems you’ve come across a colony of Malumbra. They are emotional parasite who feed on the feeling of their victims until there is nothing left but an empty shell. Nasty business. Luckily for you, they are usually easy to deal with. All you need to do is trick them to assume a physical form, or even something approaching it, and then tear them apart as quickly as possible, before they even have time to realize what is happening. You’re a dragon – you have the option of simply roasting them alive. It would take no more than a few seconds.”

“Sorry, we already did that with Mother. The moment I was sure she was solid enough I blasted her with fire, brought down the entire house with her. I doubt Father will fall for the same trick.”

Zereya sighed. “I suppose this complicates things. I could simply trap it somewhere, but that wouldn’t break the control he has on the girl, only weaken it. I could summon an entity to fight it on the same level, but we all know how those things usually go.” She paused to think for a second, then her eyes widened and her left hand shot up.

“Hold on a second,” she said. “You said it is a he, right? At least that’s what he identifies himself as, right?”

“Father refers to himself as a male,” Jenna said.

“Just like Mother referred to herself as a female.”

Zereya laughed and snapped her fingers. “I got it then.”

“Good. You want to tell us too?”

“Think about it. There must be a reason why Father chose to call himself like that, just like there was a reason ‘Mother’ chose to be called mother. They were not truly gendered entities, but they identifies as such. And if they identified with familiar names and genders, maybe they identified as a couple.”

Kyril’s eyebrows furrowed. “You’re telling me they were a mated pair?”

“Maybe. Maybe they just thought that was the role they had to play to keep Jenna under their power. In any case, if Mother was one part of the pair, Father won’t just want revenge for his mate, he will want satisfaction.” She smirked. “Get what I mean?”

Kyril sighed. “Yes, I think I do.”

“I don’t,” Fisk said. “What are we talking about?”

“If Mother and Father were a mated pair, it means that by killing her I committed what supernatural creatures calls a Violation of Being,” Kyril said. “There are rules to how these matters are resolved, and the way violations concerning love or its equivalent are resolved is usually – “

“A duel to the death,” Zereya concluded. “Without mercy or possibility of surrender. Except that you cannot kill him while he’s in his shadow form, and he can’t do any real damage to you unless he’s in a physical form.” She chuckled. “As usual, the outcome of the day depends on whose cock is bigger.”

“Hold on,” Fisk said. “If this whole thing can be solved with a duel to the death, why did it ran after us last night? Why not challenge Kyril right there and then?”

“I suppose the death of Mother had him shook,” Zereya said, an ecstatic expression on her face.

“Or maybe he still thought he’d be able to get the girl back. In any case, we can’t wait for the bastard to get here by himself. The only way to get out of this now is to get in contact with him, summon him in a controlled environment and issue a formal challenge.”

“You seem awfully happy about it,” Kyril said.

“Of course I am, are you kidding me?” she laughed. “I’m about to assist to a battle to the death between a dragon and a Malumbra. It’s like my birthday came early this year.”

“Glad you’re having fun,” Kyril said. “When can we get started on how to contact him?”

“Right now, if you want,” Zereya said. “I’ll have to give a look at the girl, see if I can establish a connection toward her. I’ll tell Father you challenged him to a duel as established by the old laws, and then we choose the place to summon him and delimit it with aether bounders so that the fight remains contained in one specific place. After that, it’s just a matter of waiting.”

“And what are we supposed to do in the meanwhile?”

Zereya shrugged. “This place if full of books and magic objects. I’m sure a learned dragon such as yourself will find some kind of amusement. Just don’t go around my tower opening doors you shouldn’t, or a Malumbra in search of revenge will be the last of your problems.” She stood up. “Now, if you excuse us, Jenna and I need to have a long girl to girl talk.”

Kyril and Fisk stared at each other.

“That means you have to get out, you morons.”

“What’s this, some kind of joke? We’re not leaving you alone with – “

“It’s fine,” Jenna said. “I want to talk to her.”

Kyril looked at her, his eyes widening in surprise, while Zereya raised her hands above her head as if to say ‘see? She agrees’. In the end Kyril turned back and left the room and closing the door behind.

“Well,” he said. “Seems like it’s just you and me now, Fisk.”

“Suppose so,” Fisk said. “I got to tell you though, acquiring a wisp and then ending up in a situation with a non-insignificant possibility of you dying on me in the span of eighteen hours is not how a good wisp-master relationship is supposed to work.”

He sighed. “How’s the wisp-master relationship supposed to work then?”

“Oh, there is a long list of behaviors and rules you and I should both follow, but you have already a lot on your mind so I’ll give you the short version: basically, you keep me alive so I can help facing magic and aether related threats, and we both keep yourself alive so I can feed on your life essence and continue to exist on this plane of reality. Does that sound fair to you?”

“You know,” he said, as they climbed down the stairs. “when you put things this way, wisps don’t really sound much different from malumbra.“ A flash of purple light blinded him, and he almost tripped on his own feet. “Bloody hells! What the hell was that for?”

“Don’t you ever compare me again to those fucking things,” Fisk said, his voice low. “We may be both parasites, but I aid my host. Those bastards just suck the life out of theirs.”

“Oh, so you do admit living with those things on your back is a bad thing now. You seemed very much of the ‘they’re not so bad’ opinion this morning.”

Fisk’s flame shook a little. “Alright, fair enough. You have a point. The girl needed help and you gave it to her. I remain of the opinion you could have done it without ending up having to fight to the dead against an eldritch abomination.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

They reached the bottom of the tower. Fisk flew in the darkest corner of the room while Kyril simply lay down on the floor. They stayed in silence for a while, then Fisk coughed a little.

Kyril looked at him.

“I have to ask,” he said. “Let’s suppose you win the fight with the Malumbra and our, uh, collaboration continues after that. Do I have to expect more of this?”

“What’s this?”

“This,” he said, and flew in circle around the room. “You know. The whole ‘playing the hero’ thing. Will it happen again?”

Kyril didn’t answer.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Fisk said. “You’re thinking about what Mother said, how there’s the blood of Ribia’s habitants on your hands – that horrible shit of you refusing to save them to get your cock wet – “

“She was right.”

“About some of it, yes,” he continued. “Not about everything though. Could you have done something more to help the town? Of course. Was it egotistical of you to shag the demonic bitch instead of just ripping her head off? Maybe. We don’t really know how she might have acted during a real fight to the death, do we? My point is, you saved a lot of lives that day. Your action condemned a lot of people to death, but if you had done nothing, every single one of those you saved would be dead with them.”

“There were hundreds of people in Ribia that day,” Kyril said. “I barely saved a few dozens.”

“Still more than would have been left had the Lady of Chalices had her way with the town. I’m not saying you don’t own a debt to the gods, to the afterlife or some other metaphysical concept of the like, but trying to kill yourself to make up for it will not help anybody. I can guarantee that.”

Kyril lowered his head to the floor. “I’m not trying to kill myself.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I’m serious. I have a score to settle and a debt to pay. I’m not dying until I do both.” He opened his bag and pulled out the journal. “Plus, I need to finish this.”

“What’s that?”

“Feiras’ diary,” he said. “From the time she was a fledgling to…well, I’m not sure how far it goes, but considering how big it is it must cover at least a big part of her life. If there’s a book I want to read, it’s this one.”

“Have you started it yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Feiras was very good at hiding it, but in her own way, she was as insane as I am,” he said. He opened the book and showed it to Fisk. “See this writing here? It seems ancient phoenian, but it is not. It’s a mixture of phoenian, proto-phoenian and what looks like the roots of the current tregurian language, plus some symbols whose meaning I ignore completely.”

“Oh, Damn,” Fisk said. “Little Feiras got her own book, so she made up her own language to write in it. Must be quite a scholar.”

“She’s a genius,” Kyril said. “If you’d asked me a couple decades ago, I’d have told you there’s nothing she doesn’t know. I’m still not sure there is. Literature, science, math, history, language – she knows everything one could think of and more.” He paused. “I wish I had listened more to what she had to say.”

“Why?” Fisk asked. “Did you fall out of grace with her?”

Kyril shook his head. “She left,” he said. “When I returned to the temple after the mess in Ribia, she just wasn’t there. All she left me was a letter and this book. I have no idea where she is now. For all I know, she could be dead.”

“Dead? A phoenix like her?” Fisk huffed. “Unless she decided to try and take the Stillborn one on one, I very much doubt it. I’m sure she just thought you were ready to go out in the world by yourself, do you own things. Every bird flies out of the nest in the end – so the saying goes. I’m sure you’ll meet her again one day.”

Kyril lowered his head, the book still in his hands.

“I hope so,” he said.

They didn’t speak much after that.

/

It was late evening when Zereya walked in. Fisk was asleep, a little ball of fire turning on itself in his corner near the stove, while Kyril was lost in his thoughts. She closed the door behind her and pointed at him. “You,” she said. “We need to get to work.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Me and your Malumbra have spoken through the girl. He agreed to a loyal duel, but I don’t trust the bastard any more that I can throw him, so we’re going to play a little trick.” She kneeled on a box and opened it. She pulled out a bunch of poles with a sphere on to and shook them at him. “Do you know what these are?”

“I know you’re about to tell me.”

“Aether Bounders,” she said. “The very simple kind, obviously, but good enough to resize the ego of any supernatural entity of average power. We will plant these poles a hundred feet from one another to form a square half a mile long and half a mile wide, and then set the summoning circle in the middle of it. It’ll keep him confined in the square, and more importantly it will force him to keep a physical form.”

“He’ll understand what is going on the moment he’s summoned.”

“So what? He’s trapped inside, and you’re going to battle to the dead anyway. The only drawback is that you won’t be able to use your fire either, because dragonfire is like, ninety nine percent aether.” She said. “Still. The odds are on our side.”

He nodded. “How many poles we need?”

“Shit, can’t you do math?”

“I don’t feel like it."

She sighed. “Around a hundred. And you’re going to carry the box.

“Fair enough.” He looked outside. “The sun it’s still high. We should start as soon as possible.”

“We’re starting now, stud,” she said, pushing the box toward him. “Let’s go.”

They went outside and walked through the valley. They reached the forest and once they were in deep enough they saw a big oak that stood taller than any other tree in those woods. “This is going to be the summoning place,” Zereya said. “The tree is old, full of old earth energy. It’ll be a good conductor for the malumbra when we call it. You don’t need to worry about that though, that’s my job.” She pointed her thumb behind them. “You know what to do. Time to get your ass up and get to work.”

So Kyril did. He left her kneeled at the roots of the tree as she chanted in a language he did not know while he went back and started planting poles in the ground a hundred feet from each other. Zereya had said they had to be planted perfectly straight and the heads of the poles had to remain clean or the trick wouldn’t work. He didn’t know how long it took to finish the quadrate but by the end it was late afternoon and the sun was on its way to fall below the horizon. It was a good view and it was too bad he couldn’t enjoy it.

“You done, stud?”

Kyril turned toward Zereya. She was covered in dirt and fragments of tree bark. She leaned against a thin fig tree and smiled at him like she knew something he didn’t, her arms crossed under her chest.

“My work is done,” he said. “What about you?”

“I’m done, too,” she said. “Want to see the tree?”

He nodded and she guided him to it. It was the same tree he had left to plant the poles except now the lower parts of it were covered in runes, some familiar to him and some not, while a great circle was drawn at its roots. “That’s it?” he asked. “Some runes and a single summoning circle without any symbols to strengthen it?”

“True magic is simpler than you would imagine,” she said. “And we’d only want to put the symbols if we wanted to stop the thing from coming, not if we wanted to summon it. Anyway, the work is done and all that is left to do is to wait here.” She turned toward him. “Unless of course you have some ideas to pass the time.”

He tilted his head. “You sure got guts. After the shit you pulled on me last time we met, I’m surprised you even imply anything related to fucking.”

“Oh, come on. I was in heat, I needed cock. You were the only decent male in miles. It happened over twenty years ago, and that phoenix of yours gave me an ass-beating I won’t forget as long as I live. Can’t we just let go of all that and start anew?”

“And by starting anew you mean having sex in the very place where I’m going to risk my life a few hours from now on?”

“Hot, am I right?” She smiled. “I only need a yes or no from you, honey. You can either say yes and let me fuck some stress out of you or tell me to buzz off and stay here to brood. The choice is yours.”

Kyril sighed. “Sit down.”

“That’s not – “

“I’ll fuck you,” he said. “I just want to sit down for a while first.”

The two sat against the oak tree. Kyril had wanted to talk with her at first, but now he realized he had no idea what to say, or how to say. He looked at her and found her looking back at him. She was thinking the same thing.

“So,” he said. “What have you been up to in the last twenty years?”

“Not much,” she said. “Read a lot, summoned a few demons, drunk alchemical potions of dubious origins. Usual sorcerer things.”

“No great achievements or big battles to impress me with?”

“Hells, no. I try to avoid fighting as much as I can. I may have chosen a dangerous career to make a living, but I’m still planning to stay alive as long as I can.”

Kyril grinned. “Coward.”

“Call me whatever you want. I want to have foals one day, and I want to see them grow up. You mind your own damn business however you want, and we’ll all be fine.”

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

Silence fell over them again, as heavy as a wet blanket. A bird chirped over their heads and both looked up at the sky to see if they could catch it in the act. No bird was found.

“What about you?” Zereya said. “What have you been doing lately?”

“Not much,” he said. “Just…hanging around, I guess.”

“Any plans to become king of some far away state? Start a hoard? Maybe form a clan?”

“No.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So…you’re taking the drifter’s path.”

“I suppose so.”

“I don’t need to tell you how unbelievably dangerous it is for a young dragon such as yourself to become a drifter without any kind of connections or friends in high places, right?” she said. “Because I’m too young to play the part of mother hen.”

The corners of Kyril’s mouth curved a little. “You don’t need to play any part. I know what I’m putting myself in.”

“You sure of that?” she said. “I don’t know if you ever met another drifter, but they’re not exactly the happiest dragons around. Once you become a drifter, you’re basically alone against the world. Every god, entity, cult, order or warrior of any kind can come to you and cut your head off without anybody doing anything to stop or punish them. And you can be sure nobody will help you.”

“You’re helping me right now,” he said. “And Fisk said he’ll be my wisp from now in. As far as beginnings go, I think I’m doing good.”

Zereya huffed. “Alright, so you’ve been lucky until now. Tell me this, though: a few months ago, I heard a terrible disturbance in the aether – an incredible power which had been unleashed onto a town in the north – I think Ribia was the name. Everything was destroyed, hundreds of lives were snuffed out. Were you involved in any way?”

Kyril stiffened. “Yes, I was,” he said. “But I tried to stop it. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”

“I bet it is,” she said. She passed a hand over her face. “In any case, you can expect more of that in the future.” She paused. “What does Feiras think of this?”

“Of what?”

“You going the drifter path. What does she think of that?”

“I don’t know. When I returned from Ribia she’d already left. I don’t know where she’s gone. She left me a letter who basically said to do whatever I wanted, and I’m going to do just that.” He turned toward her. “I challenge you to tell me it’s a mistake.”

“There’s no such thing as mistakes in life,” Zereya said. “Just like in alchemy or physics, there’s only actions and reactions. Right now, you are acting. Only time will tell what reactions your action will result in.”

“You want to play philosopher now?”

“The only thing I want is your cock between my legs,” she said. “But apparently I have to go through an entire therapy session before I can get it.”

Kyril huffed. He stood up and rolled on his back so that his thick sheath and his gargantuan balls were exposed to her eyes in all their glory, their scent so strong it could have knocked unconscious an entire brothel by itself.

“There,” he said. “You can stay on top.”

Zereya’s eyes widened. “Gods be damned,” she said. “You should warn a girl before exposing her to all that. She might pass out.” She stood up and took her shirt top off, her soft breasts flopping out of her restrains and bouncing against her chest. “So generous of you to offer me to ride, by the way.”

“Generosity has nothing to do with it,” he said. “I know for certain you never had sex with a dragon – I’d smell it on you. If I were to mount you, you’d die at the first thrust.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”

The thing about dragons – the thing they were famous for aside from kidnapping maidens and setting villages on fire – is that dragons were inherently sexual beings. Polygamy was all but the norm in dragon society as only one male hatched for every three or four females, and as a female dragoness wants nothing more from her partner than strength and the ability to sexually please them, evolution had favored only the males who were bigger, stronger and more well equipped than others. That had also made them more aggressive and destructive, but dragonesses could care less about that.

Nero’s balls were each the size of Zereya’s head, if not a bit bigger. His scrotum was thick and wrinkled, covered in skin instead of hard scales like the rest of his body, and always coated in a layer of sweat. It was the only body part of a male dragon that sweated. Most times the musk of a dragon was barely perceptible – a human, for example, would have to have an incredibly fine nose to smell – but when in a state of arousal, it became so intense it was easy for a non-dragon partner to start to choke or cry the first few times they smelled it. Zereya had no problem with it, a life spent smelling the musk of stallions – both bipedal and non – having her well trained to withstand it. She saw Nero’s sweaty balls offered to her and she rolled on four legs and crawled up to them, then buried her face between them and simply breathed in. She let the scent of acrid, musky dragon arousal penetrate her nose and fill her whole body, let it numb her brain and senses until she could only focus on that. The ball sweat glued to her face and snout, her hands covered in the viscous fluid as they kneaded his testicles as she licked and tasted and swallowed sweat as if it were water from a mountain spring. Her body trembled as she worked and her chest raised up and down, and in a matter of seconds she found herself salivating like a hungry dog while her crotch grew so wet juices ran down her thick thighs and formed a small pool between her legs. When she pulled away the ball sweat clang to her face like a second skin, her snout, neck and chest dripping with it.

“Gods,” she said. “You smell so fucking good.”

“Do I? I dunno. I think I should start washing myself better – clean up all that filth that accumulates behind the sack.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she said. “We should put this shit in a bottle and sell it. We’d all be rich in a week.”

“Not gonna happen. The balls are mine and I decide what to do with them.”

Zereya chuckled. “You bastard,” she said. She slurped another mouthful of sweat and swallowed it down noisily. “Don’t make me laugh while I tongue your balls.”

“I don’t feel much tonguing right now,” he replied.

“Just a lot of sniffing and talking.”

“Maybe I just like to make you wait for it.”

“Maybe I should grab your muzzle and force you to do it?”

“Sorry, am I supposed to be against that?”

Kyril grunted. He reached for her head with one of his huge hands and grabbed it, then pushed it with force against his scrotum. Zereya groaned, and she kept groaning still as she pulled his long tongue out and started lapping at his balls once again. Long, heavy laps, each one of them collecting as much sweat as possible so she could fill her mouth before swallowing it in one go. She did first to his left ball, and when Kyril thought she’d cleaned it well enough he moved her to the right one. Zereya kept licking, again and again, one hand working her cunt under that loincloth while the other kept hold of his sheath to ensure her balance. She went at it for a while, with the sometimes gentle, sometimes forceful encouragement of Kyril, one ball to another until both his testicles were clean of sweat and instead leaking with her saliva. Only then she let her go, and it was with a bit of disappointment and a needy moan that she pulled her face away, her hands still working on her pussy.

“How was the appetizer?” Kyril asked.

“Not bad,” she said. “L-let me finish my thing here, and I’ll take care of the first course.”

Kyril snorted. He reached forward and grabbed her by the hips. “Ehy, what the fuck are you doing?” she said, but the moment he pulled away her pants with a claw and hold her right over his long snout her eyes widened. “Whoa, hold on a second…”

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t want this?”

“Of course I want this, but what the hell. That tongue of yours is like, two feet long. You’re gonna knock me out before the real fun begins.”

“No I won’t. I’ll make sure to leave you with enough energy to get to the main event.”

Zereya grunted. “I hope so,” she said, her body trembling with anxious excitement. “I won’t be the one being left horny as shit all evening if you get too excited with that thing.”

Kyril fixed his hold on her hips and then closed his jaws on her crotch and ass, front and back completely trapped between his maws. His long tongue teased her slit for a second, pushed against her entrance, even played around her clit, but he held back – even as wet as she was, if he’d went right for it right now he’d have surely hurt her. Instead he gently ran the flat of the appendage around her crotch and over her labia, cleaning it from her juices, playing them on his tongue before gulping them down, warm and sticky, sweet like honey. She moaned and groaned, twisting and bending into his grasp, but she had no hope to escape nor did she want to. When she was wet enough he pushed his tongue in, teasing her clitoris at the same time, and her body twitched and her leg gave out little kicks to his belly. He went at it for a while until she looked up at her and found her eyes pressed close as if she were about to cry.

“Gods-damn you bastard, just stop teasing me and go for it.”

Kyril stopped tonguing her altogether. “I don’t know. Maybe I just like to make you wait for it.”

She groaned. “Fuck off and get to work!

“As you wish,” he said, and then slid his entire tongue inside her. Zereya let out a shriek and only after remembered they were supposed to do it quietly and shut her snout with her hand. Meanwhile he kept pushing in and out and in and out of her, all the while stroking her clit with the top of the tongue. Her juices now ran out of her freely, and while she had yet to come he could feel she was getting there. Her hips and basin were spasming and pushing forward like crazy, her legs trembled and kicked wildly. At the end, all it took to make her come was press his teeth a little against her flesh, and there she went: her body went still, her twitches turned into spasms, the eyes fluttering and losing focus as her cunt clenched and a cascade of fluid that defied her already sizeable stature spurted down his throat again and again. He swallowed it all, didn’t let one drop go lost, and once he was done he pulled his snout away from her and leaned her above his chest and belly so she could let the last waves of the climax die out by themselves, her head safely nested safely next to his half-hard cock. He let her breathe for a while in the darkness of the night, then moved his clawed hand over her and started caressing her lower belly. She trembled under his touch like a leaf in the wind, still overexcited, but quickly calmed down.

“Are you alright?” he said.

“Fuck,” she said. “I think so. Just give me a minute. Maybe two.”

“That good?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Always love to be told I’m good at oral by my would be-rapists.”

Zereya grunted. “I thought we were over that.”

“One night I’ll sneak on you while you sleep and pretend to fuck you in the ass. Then I’ll be over it.”

Another few minutes passed, then Zereya turned on her belly and crawled toward his face, her breasts pressed against his chest. She took his face in her hands and gave a tiny lick at the top of his snout. “Kiss me?” she asked.

He snorted. “I don’t like that human stuff.”

“Come on, It’s been months since I tasted my pussy on someone’s tongue,” she laughed.

“What, you want me to beg for it?”

“Maybe. Why are you so into it?”

“I don’t know. It’s just hot.” She licked him again.

“Isn’t it hot for you?”

He didn’t answer. He pushed his snout against her and let his tongue invade her mouth. Zereya didn’t put on any kind of resistance: her tongue was so small compared to his she couldn’t have done it if she’d tried. The appendage was big and wild and Kyril was not afraid to push it to its limit. Thank the gods ipotanes didn’t have gag reflex. The kiss lingered for minutes, saliva falling from their open jaws and dripping on his chest, until he decided to relent and let her tongue explore his mouth for a change. It was much smaller than his, much slimmer too, but she was good with it and could still reach some funny places she seemed to like and still managed to taste some her fluids that still clung to his tongue and palate. The wild exchange of tongue soon fell into a quiet kissing, their lips simply pushed against one another. Zeleya pulled away first and then started peppering his face with luscious kisses, then descended on his neck and chest to do the same. Meanwhile, her naked feet moved to caress and tease his almost fully hard cock jutting from his sheath, a monster more than two feet long and not even having reached full erection yet. She didn’t seem worried about having it inside her at all. Kyros had heard male ipotanes were usually well-endowed: perhaps huge cocks were the norm for her.

“You still want to go all the way?” he asked.

“Did you have any doubts?”

“For a moment I thought my tongue was enough.”

“Hells, no,” she said, almost offended. “It’s been a long and shitty day and I’m gonna get this monster cock inside my cunt, whether you want it or not.”

Nero huffed. “Far from me to get between a mare and her dick.”

“Very fucking funny,” she said. She stood up on his chest and backed up with care until the tip of his cock hit her lower back, right above the curve of her ass. Kyril’s cock was a red, pulsing beast, wider than her forearm and long enough to be classified as a broadsword, the shaft covered in ribs and small knots that made it look even more menacing. A thin ling of pre already leaked from the pointed thip, and more came out by the second. Zereya smirked. “Alright,” she said, “I can deal with this, but we’ll have to go nice and slow, okay?”

“I thought you were just about to go wild on it.”

“I thought so too,” she said. “Turns out I’m not crazy enough for that.”

She grabbed the red mast below her and started playing with it a little, something petting its ribs and sometimes moving it up and down, right to left, as if to test how flexible it was. The answer was: not very, as usual. For a while she just jerked him off, then once her hands were covered in seed she brought them to her snout and licked them clean, all the while letting out little moans of pleasure.

“How’s it taste like?” he asked.

“Salty,” he said. “You eat too much meat. Some fruit would do you good.”

“Don’t like fruits.”

Zereya spread her legs as wide as possible and sat on his cock, the tip perfectly stuck between her cunt and her asshole. “Shit” she said. “One wrong movement and I’m bound to get impaled here.”

“Your words, not mine.”

Slowly, steadily, she positioned her slit over the top of his shaft. Zereya was a big girl, over height feet in height and of sturdy build, but she was still much smaller and more delicate than him. She started moving her hips forward and backward, forward and backward to let the tip of the beast between her legs slip in by itself: the attempt failed, and in the end she resigned herself to grab the base of the huge glans and lowers herself on them. Neither of them was prepared for when her feet slipped over Kyril’s wet scales and twelve inches of hard flesh slipped inside her, almost a third of his length jammed right into her cunt. Kyril grunted and snarled like a wild animal as he felt Zereya’s warm, soaking wet cunt wrapped around him like a glove too tight, his hands again shooting for her waist, while Zereya’s eyes rolled in the back of her head as every ounce of oxygen in her chest was pushed out by the intrusion of the alien organ. She did not scream, but only because she couldn’t – she didn’t have any voice left. When it returned the first thing she did was cough hard, her scales pale and her eyes wet.

“Holy fuck,” she said. “Holy goddess, I thought I was about to pass the fuck out – “

“Are you alright?”

“Hell yes,” she said. She flexed her hips a little and a groaned escaped her lips. “Fuck, hell yeah I am, but gods. I think you tore something up.”

“We both know we’d be seeing blood if I did.” He snorted and pushed his crotch forward, which made Zereya whinny and pushed her cunt to clench so hard it instantly spurted a generous dose of feminine liquids onto his chest. “Are you going to start moving?”

“Yes, yes, by gods. Just give me a second.” She spread her legs again and clenched her teeth. “It has been a while, damn it…”

Kyril was about to say he didn’t much believe it but before he could even open his jaws Zereya closed her eyes and lowered herself further down his shaft, her eyes running in the back of her head for an instant every time she hit a particularly big rib or knob. His cock was already soaked in her juices after a few seconds of movement, and by the time a rhythm had been he was almost as wet as she was. His cock now slid inside her with relative ease thanks to the lubrication, but she still went slow and steady, and Kyril didn’t mind. The females he’d had sex with lately had all been wild and animalistic no matter how long it lasted, so mating with someone who wanted to enjoy the moment as much as he did was a nice break. Suddenly Zereya grunted and started to shake, her pussy clenching around his meat. Another influx of fluids hit his crotch.

“Shit,” she said, breathless. “I think I just came a little…”

“I think that was the intent, yes.”

She swatted him with her tail, and then went back to riding him.

They went at it like that for a whiles still. Zereya liked to play the fragile for some reason even though it was obvious she could keep up with him now. She was good at teasing him, leaning her hips left and right and moving them in circle as she rode him, while Kyril responded by matching her slow pumping with his own and sometimes feeding her a few inches more than usual. At that point they both were salivating, and when Kyril raised his head from their joined sexes to look at her he found her looking back.

“Want to go faster?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied.

Nothing more needed to be said. Kyril’s hands descended on her hips to have a better grip on her while she started to pump up and down a bit faster, a bit harder, her body trembling with a mix of pleasure and nervous energy. He started moving faster too, his thrusts a bit rougher and harsher to match hers, and when they finally found the right timing Nero’s engines started getting fired up too. His churning balls pulsed and contracted with every shove, his cock pulsing at the rhythm of his heart as he pumped a good half of his shaft in and out of her. Before he knew what was happening Zereya threw her head back and came again, her hands running to her clit to keep the orgasm going as long as possible. He did not stop through, nor did he slow down. He kept fucking her through the orgasm, and thanks to both their ministrations she’d barely finished riding the last of it that another started to rise in her loins. When she came again she screamed and the spray of her fluids almost reached his snout.

By this time Zereya was too tired to contribute to anything more than moving her crotch in circles, so it was Kyril’s turn to lead. He would have gladly kept going all night long, and even the day after for that matter, but the hour grew late and they had a job to do. His thrusts when from rough but controlled to wild and untamed, the dragon burying his shaft as deep as he could into her cunt before pulling back, only leaving the tip inside, and then thrusting in once again. He felt Zereya’s cunt clench to his every movement now but it didn’t matter anymore, all that mattered now was for him to finally came. He decided that position did not work for him, so he let go of her hips and instead wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body against his chest, while he anchored his lower feet to the ground and raised his knees so he could fuck into her from a better angle. He didn’t exactly know why, but that position changed everything. Suddenly he felt a rush of blood on his cock and his balls started to pull up against his crotch in preparation of the orgasm to come. He grit his teeth and tried to squeeze a few more orgasms out of the ipotane girl by hammering into her with the strength of a behemoth, but it was too late. His balls clenched hard against his crotch and his hips shot upward as a gargantuan jet of semen spurted out of him, and the two of them both found themselves throwing their heads back and doing their best not to yell their pleasure. Zereya’s belly was filled instantly, her ripped abs disappearing as her stretchy skin was filled to the brim with semen to the point she could have passed for a gravid woman. Only when there was no more space in her and her belly was stretched to the maximum did his semen spew out of the sides of her cunt in thick white jets, and they kept doing so for minutes and minutes. A dragon did not pull out of his mate until his balls were empty, and by the time he reached that limit they were laying in a pool of cum so large a human could have taken a bath in it. Zereya did her best to contribute, but her squirting, as wild as it was, could do nothing but lose itself in the sea of white that Kyril had produced. If you wanted to match a dragon in the production of sexual fluids, the only one you could call was a dragoness.

Sated, happy, his balls finally empty, Kyril relented his grasp on Zereya and let her rest on his chest in peace. His cock was still inside her, half-hard and ready to go again if he so wished, but one good look at the horse girl’s half-lidded eyes and unfocused gaze was enough to tell him she’d had enough for the evening. Still, the air was cold and her cunt was tight and warm, and so he left his erection inside her until it subsided. Only when the last drop of semen had been spilled did he pull out. Then he raised his hand and poked Zereya’s face with a claw. “Zereya?” he said. “Zereya, are you alright?”

Zereya mumbled something he didn’t understand and rolled on her left side, her head tucked under his chin and arms folded across his chest. She was asleep and he couldn’t blame her. By that point he was about ready to turn in too. He hugged Zereya to his chest once again, this time only to keep her warm.

He fell asleep.

/

“Kyril, wake up! Gods be damned, you are one hard bastard to wake!”

Kyril woke up. He blinked away the sleep until things recovered their shapes and color and looked at Fisk. “Fisk, what the hell – what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? It’s almost midnight you moron, that’s what’s wrong. You want the shadowy bastard to get here and find you in post-sex cuddling position?”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” came Zereya’s voice, her face still pressed against his chest. She raised her head toward the flying wisp and yawned. “Is it really almost midnight?”

“You can bet your tits on it. Less than half an hour left. Whatever thing you have left to do for the ritual, you better do it now.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Zereya said. She stood and dressed herself as best as she could. She tried to pretend everything was fine but he could see her legs trembling and shaking and he was sure it took all her concentration not to collapse on her knees. “Everything’s ready. All that’s left for you and me is to go back to the tower and lock ourselves in.”

“What about me?” Kyril said.

“You stay here and wait. I don’t know what dragons do before a duel to the death, but just do that until the Malumbra show up and then rip whatever he has in place of a spine out of his ass. Can you do that?”

“Seems I have to.”

“Good.” She pointed at Fisk. “Come with me, sparkly boy. We don’t want to be anywhere around here when the fight starts.”

The two left the quadrate. From a distance Kyril saw them enter the tower and lock the door behind themselves. He could see the building in its entirety now – Zereya must have decided he was not a threat. He turned to the oak tree. Its branches swayed in the cold of the night and its leaves shadowed him from the light of the moon, but there were so many stars in the sky it was impossible to call what he was in darkness, especially for a dragon. He lowered his head and stared at the summoning circle. “Why am I doing this?” he whispered.

Kyril waited. For how long he didn’t know, but if midnight had been close when Fisk had come to wake him up then his conception of time must be as fucked up as his. Or maybe the Father had thought very well about what had happened to Mother and decided he wouldn’t show up after all. He was about to turn his tail and go tell Zereya to try again tomorrow night when a thin line of darkness rose from the center of the summoning circle like black smoke.

“Are you there, Father?” he said. “Come to avenge your girl, haven’t you?”

The thin line suddenly expanded in all direction. A wall of blackness hit him straight in the face and knocked him back twenty feet. He twisted mid-air and fell on the ground on his feet. A few drops of blood fell from his nose.

“Guess that’s as good of an answer than any,” he said.

The darkness receded. It twisted and contorted into a circular shape and then started to expand again. A tall humanoid form emerged from the shadows. A shadow cloak covered it head to toe and a set of chains as shiny as obsidian fell from his neck to his feet – if he had any. He felt power emanate from him like heat from a bed of charcoal.

“Why?” he said. His voice was deep and echoing, as if it came out of the depths of the earth.

“Why what?” Kyril said.

“You took the girl,” Father said. “You killed my mate. We weren’t hurting anybody.”

“The girl did not know what you two were doing,” Kyril said. “She didn’t know momma and daddy had a whole colony of cute little shadow parasites sucking the life out of her. The only reason you took care of her was because keeping her alive meant keeping you alive.”

“And was it wrong?”

“What?”

“Was it wrong, to keep her alive and happy to keep alive ourselves?”

“Yes, it fucking was,” he growled. “And she sure as all hells is not happy. If you creepy bastards want to feed on mortals, you do like all the other supernatural creatures and ask for consent first, and more than anything else you give something in exchange that goes beyond food and shelter. That’s how this whole thing is supposed to work.”

“I disagree.”

“You disagree,” Kyril echoed as a lone chuckle escaped his mouth. “So what? You want to have a moral confrontation about the coexistence of mortal and supernatural creatures? I must warn you, I studied a lot of rhetorics back in the day. You go first.”

Father did not answer. The chains around his shook and their ends rattled against the leaf-covered ground.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nothing matters. You took my mate, I’ll take another. You took the girl, I’ll take her back. But first, I must kill you.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

A chain flashed toward him, so fast he almost didn’t see it coming. He tilted his head to the left and dodged it by an hair-length. Kyril threw himself at Father, but the moment he jumped the malumbra floated to the right and Kyril almost crashed against the tree. Other chains came, but he grabbed mid-air and pulled them toward him. Father tried to resist but he was stronger than he was and before he knew it they were face to face. Kyril grabbed him by the shoulders and headbutted whatever was under his hood. There was no doubt it was a head, but it was weird and squishy and when he hit it Father screeched like a banshee. A black smokey hand punched Kyril’s throat and made him lose his breath along with the hold he had on Father. Several chains wrapped around his neck and smashed him against the oak tree repeatedly, and when it was clear it was not having any effect on Kyril Father anchored him to the ground. The chains wrapped tighter around Kyril’s throat but although they were harder than steel they would not be able to break his neck or even choke him to death and they both knew it.

“Such a pitiful creature you are,” Father said. “You pretend to be a dragon when you are but an hatchling. You pretend to be a warrior when you’re barely even a survivor. If you can’t even survive me, how do you plan to survive what is to come?”

Kyril grunted. “What are you talking about?”

“No matter,” Father said. “No matter. You won’t be alive to see it anyway.”

Kyril rolled onto his back and jumped in the air. Father followed him, the chains still connecting them as if they were one being. Kyril made a full circle around the woods and then when he’d reached the maximum speed he could reach in such a small space he grabbed the chains below him and twisted in the air. Father flashed upward, his smokey body propelling in the sky before falling back on earth. The impact cratered the ground and dirt and stone flew around as if a bomb had exploded. Before the malumbra could recover Kyril stopped in his tracks and plunged headfirst onto him and hit him where the stomach would have been in a human being. Purple liquid sprouted from out Father’s hood and from the hem of his cloak and Kyril knew at once that it was blood. The chains around Kyril’s neck fell away, but he had no time to take a full breath before the thin hands of the malubra balled into fists and crushed against his chest. Kyril flew backward and fell on the ground. The air was once again kicked out of his lungs and blood spilled from his mouth, but aside from that no great damage had been done. He rolled on his feet and jumped back and recovered his breath just in time to see Father getting back on his feet. He ran at him like charging behemoth, but father planted his feet against the ground blocked him by the horns. The two warriors stood there, one pushing against the other, the earth breaking under them.

“You have strength,” Father said. “I’ll give that to you. But you do not know how to use it.”

“I’ll show you how I use it,” he said, then grabbed Father by the sides and slammed both of them into the ground. Father tried to slip out of his hold, but he couldn’t. Kyril rolled above him and punched him straight in the chest: more blood spurted out of the hood and his skeletal hands let go of his horns. Kyril hit him again and again, and with each blow more purple blood spurted out of Father cloak until both were drenched in it. Kyril was ready to give him what he was sure to be the final blow but whatever was under the cloak exploded into a solid wall of darkness and pushed him away. Kyril fell on his feet once again, and when he raised his head he finally saw the malumbra without the damn cloak on.

Father’s physical body was completely purple and covered in tentacles. In the place of its head was a bulbous globe that pulsed like a rotten, grotesque heart, and two arms like dried branches ran down his sides. It had no feet he could see and he just appeared to levitate a few inches off the ground. His hands were as sharp as claws and balled into fists.

“I’m going to eat your heart,” Father said.

“Please do,” Kyril said. “It would still be a better experience than looking at you.”

Father launched all his tentacles to him at once, but by now Kyril had a read on his movements and none of them hit the target. He jumped straight over them, and when the malumbra tried with his chains he swirled to the right and avoided them to. Before he could retract them and attack again Kyril jumped on him and landed a bite on the malubra’s neck – right below his bulbous head. A copious spurt of blood jetted out of the window and Father screeched again. He trashed and twitched and spasmed and contracted, but Kyril did not let go no matter what. Blood spurted and splattered all over him and inside his mouth but he kept ahold of his prey regardless, and as time went on father’s movements started losing their strength. After a few seconds he couldn’t fight back anymore, and after a few minutes he had stopped breathing. Only then did Kyril let go. The body fell, splattered in its own blood, and there it remained.

Kyril fell back on his ass and breathed in the cold air of the night, the first deep breath he’d taken since the beginning of the fight. His heart still beat hard, his breathing refused to go back to normal. For a while he stood there and tried to enjoy the cold breeze of the night running through his scales, then lowered his head on what was left of Father. It was nothing but a small, pitiful thing now, and he almost felt sorry for him. But what was done was done and it couldn’t be undone. It was over.

A screeching scream filled the cold night air. Kyril turned toward the town and saw the lights at the top of the building flash and flicker. He ran to the building, his heart once again beating madly into his chest, threw the door down and climbed up the stairs to Zereya’s study. He opened the door and his eyes widened.

Jenna stood on Zereya’s bed. Her skin was pale, paler than he had ever seen, and around his eyes and mouth there were deep shapes of blue he had only seen on bodies of people who had died of hypothermia. Her gaze was empty, her mouth wide open. She was still as a statue. He blinked and looked at her again and only then did he realize she was dead.

“I’m sorry,” Zereya said. He turned his head toward her and found her sitting against a pile of books, her eyes narrowed and her arms wrapped around her knees. Fisk floated next to her, his flame almost cold. “I’m sorry, Kyril. I truly am.”

“What happened?”

“The connection between her and Father was too deep,” Fisk said. “It was a full-on symbiotic relationship. When Father’s hearth stopped, so did hers.”

Kyril glared back at Jenna. She looked so beautiful, even in death. He sat on the cold floor, his eyes always on her. He was about to ask if she had suffered, but then he remembered the scream and decided that answered his question well enough.

They stood there in silence, all three of them. They did not know what to do. This is not how it was supposed to go, Kyril thought. She was supposed to live, live and realize how unhappy she’d been under the control of the malumbras and how happy she was now that she was free. She was supposed to hug them and thank them and maybe stay there with them. Yes, stay there for a while, all four of them, laughing and joking and just being comfortable while she healed from years and years of mental subjugation. And eventually Fisk and him would leave, yes, and she could come with her, or maybe stay with Zereya and learn how to be a witch, and gods what a good witch would she have been, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she?

/

Kyril buried her in the woods, at the feet of the giant oak tree. He did it alone - said it was his duty to do it. He did it like humans did, buried a hole six feet deep and then delicately placed her into it. She had no pretty dress to slip her in but the one she wore was good enough. He didn’t have a coffin either, but that was for the better. The tree would absorb her body’s nutrients with ease and grow even bigger, Zereya said. He covered the grave with dirt and tool a step back. Now all three of them stood in front of the grave in silence. Nobody dared to say anything, because the only thing they had in mind was whose fault it was that the girl was death, and all three of them were afraid Kyril would not be able to handle it if it were said aloud.

In the end, it was Zereya who spoke first. She went to Kyril and ran a hand over the side of his face. “I’m sorry, stud,” she said, and paused. “You can stay here and rest for the morning. But I want you out of my woods by noon.” She took a deep breath. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t come back for a while.”

“I understand,” he said.

She nodded and gave him her back and after a long time the sound of her steps stopped. She opened the door of her tower and then disappeared into it. Fisk flame shook a little at his side.

“Well,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “This is not how I figured things would go.”

“And how did you figure they would go?” Kyril said.

“The same way you did, I think. The girl free of her malevolent masters. The four of us just sleeping the autumn away and then leaving, maybe with her now part of our little group.”

“Happily ever after,” Kyril said.

“Yeah,” Fisk replied. “Yeah. Happily ever after.”

They stood there in silence for a while, then Kyril looked at him.

“Fisk,” he said.

“Yes?"

“Do you think I killed her?”

Fisk seemed to think about it. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe she was dead a long time ago. What do you think?”

Kyril paused. “I think it’s time to go.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere far away. Somewhere that is not here.”

“You’re the boss, Kyril,” he said. “I’m just the wisp, remember? You make the choices.”

And with that he disappeared from the air and reappeared in his mind, burrowed somewhere inside his brain.

“Let’s go,” Fisk said.

“Yeah,” Kyril said. “Yeah, let’s go.”

He spread his wings to fly away, but he realized he did not feel like it. He turned toward the depths of the woods, the only direction that took him outside of the valley and into nothingness. He sighed and then started walking.