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** Our King, Our King, why do you hate the wing?**

** The envoys of the The Pierced, do you listen to them sing? **

** Are you so desperate in this silent war to quiet the dragon's roar? **

** Our King, Our King, do you help them settle the score?**

_ -- Epitaph of Kenarion, the recalcitrant red_

******

Sarthinas stumbled through the gaping mouth of the castle archway, entering into an open circular courtyard. In a scaled hand, he clutched a longsword and dragged it over the slate ground, sparks flashing at its tip on his every step, accompanied by a metallic screech that rebounded off the high walls.

At the centre of the bowl like courtyard, the sunlight glinted off the translucent armour of a figure looming by the head of a fallen dragon. Spatters of bright blood around the draconic form were a stark contrast to the blue hue of its scales. Its wings were sprawled out, each spread membrane pinned to the slate brickwork by an elongated silver spear wreathed in tendrils of undulating violet.

Sarthinas gritted his teeth and straightened, a flare of rage reinvigorating his stamina. He hefted the long sword to his side, and marched on the glittering figure.

"Cease, Sarthinas." The figure turned. A white tiger, strobes of light flashing off the uneven surface of his armour.

Sarthinas continued his approach. The tiger rolled his shoulders and moved in to intercept, his gaze impassive.

"Once more. Cease."

"It did not take you long to regress to your "sport", did it, Vangyr? I see you have adorned yourself too." The copper dragon said.

"I stand by my King and his generosity."

"Indeed, you stand by a sickened rule, and shield yourself in its corruption. So radiant you are. At least, when this kingdom falls, and it shall, it will shatter in a shower of brilliance."

Sarthinas squeezed his hand around the leather longsword grip as they came to a halt, their standoff marked by five paces of distance between them. He looked past the tiger knight to the dragon, its eyes wide a contracted slits slashing through its green irises, its nostrils flaring in irregular laboured breaths.

"Now I give you a chance to step aside, Vangyr."

The white tiger scrunched his muzzle in a snarl and unsheathed the thick spire of a spear from its resting place above his tail. He twisted the black steel staff in his paw, spinning the blood dappled bladed fins that formed a savage pyramid at the tip. That the weapon was designed to resemble a ballista bolt, the ideal method to clip wings, was not lost on Sarthinas.

"I am a wingshear, I compel dragons to yield, and you are a dragon. A treasonous, Tiered dragon, but a dragon none the less."

"As of this morning, I have become the bane of knights, and you are a knight. This sword," Sarthinas held his long sword up and rotated it in his grip, spinning the ornate dragonwing crossguard, mocking the tiger's earlier display. "Is now entitled Sovereign Spite. Your thoughts?"

Vangyr scoffed and settled into a stance Sarthinas was unfamiliar with; the white tiger placed the spear behind his back, in mimicry of its sheathed state, with his arm hooked around the butt of the staff while his left rested at the neck.

"The King made a dire mistake letting you so close."

Sarthinas leaned back on a foot, his light armour shifting with a quiet clatter, and brought his sword up by his helmless head, the steel a finger from one of his horns, with the point angled at the tiger knight's throat.

"The mistake was all mine." Sarthinas replied.

Vangyr sauntered forward, toying with the ballista spear behind his back as he did. Sarthinas took a step back. The white's stance was lavish, arrogant, and no doubt tailored as a testament to the quality of the radiant, crystal like, armour. Yet, there was no reason to discredit the skill housed within; Vangyr was after all one of the five dominant knights of the King's most loyal, The Regal Talons.

_ Whatever the outcome of this clash of claws, one of the King's nails break off._

With another respectful step back, Sarthinas shifted his focus over the tiger's shoulder to the pinned dragon. It gazed at him still, its slit pupils steady but its eyelids drooping. Then he looked to each spear pierced through its wings, and the wisps of purple energy entwining around them. He drew in a readying breath, then threw his weight into a lunge, primed for Vangyr's midsection. The white tiger responded with a full bodied spinning swing, the only real move he could make from such a bizarre stance. Sarthinas's steel grazed the clear armour at the midsection, and gave himself to the momentum of his heavy lunge, allowing the force to pull him to the ground, shy of Vangyr's attack. He rolled to complete the dodge. The tiger pivoted and drove his spear into the slate ground, exploding a pair of blocks with a puff of grey dust and a shower of stone. If Sarthinas had had wings, that strike would have nailed them instead of missing in the wake of his roll. He regained to his feet and sprinted toward the fallen dragon, whose wings had not been so lucky. He was there in moments, while behind him, Vangyr struggled to dislodge his spear.

"I'm sorry."

Sarthinas spoke as he put his bare footpaws on the blue's delicate wing membrane, and jogged to grab the closest pinning spear. The blue uttered a stifled grunt as Sarthinas wrapped his hands around the cold silver of the spear staff and pulled, anchoring his weight on the dragon's wing as leverage. The arcane wisps caressed at his face scales and eyes, cloying his vision liked dyed smoke. He growled with effort, his abdominal and bicep muscles tensing behind his scales, pumping and pushing against his light plated armour.

Vangyr closed in, having freed his spear. Sarthinas saw the approach in the periphery of his vision, the white tiger's spear held at his side and poised forward like a lance. Sarthinas roared as he hefted the tainted spear free from the blue's wing. Vangyr had adopted a sprint, aiming his charge at the blue's drooped head. The weakened dragon would be unable to defend itself. At least, that dragon was unable. Draconic blood dripped from the spear tip as Sarthinas positioned it like a javelin, and with a rumbling growl, threw it like one, trailing misty whips of energy in its wake.

Vangyr was a moment too late to react. Between the speed of his charge and the velocity of the tossed spear, it seemed a blur to him. The translucent armour liquefied, flowing upward, layering his skull with additional protection, anticipating the assault. However, it did nothing to discharge the kinetic clout; the spear struck the armour at the forehead like a lightning bolt, driving the tiger's head back with such neck snapping force that the back of his skull hit between his shoulder blades. From the angle at which Sarthinas and the blue witnessed the strike, it seemed a beheading.

Another layer of the slick armour slithered down the tiger's legs and congealed at his feet, weighting the dead body to remain standing, like a grotesque statue. An upper segment began to ripple in liquid movement at the broken neck, then bones started to crunch as the head was drawn back upwards. Sarthinas twisted his muzzle in disgust.

"Please, release my other wing." The blue said.

"Of course. Apologies once again for this."

Sarthinas hopped over the blue's spine with a careful vault, ensuring he cleared the delicate folded frill, and made a soft landing. Already experienced with the level of heft required to loosen these spears, he dislodged it much faster. He backed off the dragon's wing as the blue shifted and stirred.

The feral dragon snorted as it pulled itself up, forelegs and hinds quivering with the strain, fighting off the arcane entropy. Sarthinas watched with an empathetic frown, stopping himself from assisting. The blue straightened its knees and stood at Sarthinas's head height, the full feral form around twofold that of a horse. Unhindered, it was able to stretch its wings to their unrestrained capacity, blotting the sun and throwing Sarthinas in temporary shade. To him, the wings were a grand beauty to rival a war caravel's sails, even with the tears of use at the hem of the membrane and the blood caked puncture wounds.

"I cannot thank you enough." The blue said and angled it head so their eyes met.

"Get as far away from this realm as you can, anywhere past the mountains."

"And you?"

Sarthinas smirked and pointed his sword toward the tiger's body and the swirl of the fluid-like armour.

"It seems Vangyr is not ready to die yet."

"Duck." The blue announced.

Sarthinas blinked, and when the blue started to turn, he did duck. The tail whipped through the air over his horns and collided with Vangyr, catapulting his body and the animated armour across the courtyard, where it slammed into the wall with a wet crunch and laid still with a series of distant_clinks_.

"Well, I guess that can do for now." Sarthinas said.

"Do you plan to stay here?" The blue asked.

"I suppose not, the King will see that all in this castle are to get such 'gifts' as that armour, which I cannot combat yet. At least I was able to release the dragons confined here,' Sarthinas swallowed. 'As many as I could get to first."

They shared in a few silent moments.

_ My awareness was impaired by my emotion. I should have known. I should have acted._

'What is to be done next?'

"I must find Centreya, my sister in arms," Sarthinas patted the blue's flank. "This is your opportunity to escape."

The blue shifted its eyes back and forth between his, then ducked his head.

"May I come with you? I know it is wrong of a Primordial to ask such a thing of a Tiered dragon, but I can be useful."

Sarthinas frowned and loosened the straps of the light gauntlet around his right paw, letting it slip off. He rested his bare paw on the side of the blue's muzzle, scales embracing scales.

"You and I are dragons, this is no dichotomy between us. What has been instilled in you and your siblings from the egg is as insidious as it is false. We are kin."

"Allow me to serve--"

"None of that allow and serve tripe. Do you not want to be rid of these lands with how you have been treated here? You can be free of subtle servitude, and you can soar away from the influence of the King's insane pact."

"I want to go with you."

"What I seek to do ensures the mark of potential death will dog us relentlessly, from near every conceivable angle."

"I understand, and I seek to go with you still."

Sarthinas showed a gentle sad smile.

"If that is what you want, then I won't say no to your company, as long as you consent. What is your name?"

"Tetsomos, the transport vessel."

"That's no good. From now on, you are Tetsomos the unhindered."

A soft roll of rumbles emanated from Tetsomos's chest. Sarthinas couldn't help a smile of delight from stretching the corners of his muzzle.

"I consent, Sarthinas."

"Then, we head to the Isolated Temple."

Tetsomos bent at the knees, front and rear, lowering his body.

Sarthinas sighed.

"I told you, no serving, no hierarchy--"

"I_want_ to be your wings."

"That won't work every time."

"We shall see." Tetsomos said.

Stifling a grimace of acceptance, Sarthinas sheathed Sovereign Spite, reequipped his light gauntlet, and took a careful grip on one of the blue's shoulder scales. Unlike his own fine hide, Tetsomos's scales protruded ever so slightly, like overlapping slate cut to the shape of flat diamond. They were plated in a blue that he could see now waxed and waned in pigment, depending on the angle of light and where one stood. White streaks like petrified lightning veined through every individual scale, and Sarthinas traced a fingertip along one such line.

"I think it wise we leave." Tetsomos interrupted. "The white tiger arises.

Sarthinas turned to look. Vangyr form jerked with violent shudders against the wall he had landed up against, the armour congealed in shifts of changing mass.

_ A hideous gift._

Without further delay, Sarthinas gave a short hop and climbed on Tetsomos, nestling his legs behind the blue's fores and straightening his tail beside the frill. He winced while settling into a secure position, paws clutched at the shoulder scales.

"Are you sure this is not uncomfortable for you? I'm crushing your frill and--"

He swore he saw Tetsomos roll his eyes in his great skull before he brought them aloft with mighty lashes of his wings. Sarthinas leaned forward, lowering his body and clinging tight as the castle grounds pushed away in steady thrusts, leaving Vangyr's animated armour to compel his former comrade to stand and twist his broken neck toward the sky to watch them go.

***

Tetsomos ensured they soared. He drove his vein webbed wings at the sky in heavy, rhythmic beats. Sarthinas clung on at his back.

"I am not too heavy, right?" Sarthinas bellowed to Tetsomos over the harsh wind whistling through the blue's new wing punctures.

"I am finding this a challenge, though a welcome one after my grounding."

They slid into a gentle descending glide before Tetsomos lashed his great wings and returned them to a greater altitude. Sarthinas squinted through the onslaught of rushing air. The expanse of forest was a blur of dark green featureless canopy underneath them, while behind them, the visage of the grey castle they had left loomed.

_ Castle Xilnardric._

It monopolized the center of the eastern horizon, its composition of tall outer walls, cylindrical turrets, and rounded courtyards were an outgrowth of the mammoth central presence of the keep overseeing it all. The keep seemed to stretch from the snow haloed mountain like it was a natural extension of it, an effect from how it was carved from the rock face four hundred years ago. Smaller auxiliary buildings flanked it, but what truly made Castle Xilnardric memorable were the beautiful dual odes to dragonkind which stood on each side of the keep. Titanic statue ferals, their rock wings at rest and their stone gaze almost maternal, looking down at their cupped paws holding pools of glacier fed water from the hidden mountain spring behind them. Sheets of overflow slipped from their grasp and fell in curtains to join a semicircle river that formed a moat around the castle.

Sarthinas swallowed down the threat of grief. In the height of summer, he and a lover had slipped out of the keep, strolled through an adjoining library building, and had climbed the vertigo inducing walkways to reach one of those statues. For any visitor, the walkway that ended at the draconic statues shoulder would provide a marvellous view of the Castle grounds and the expanse of ice blue rivers, moss green woods and the chain of snow crowned mountains that exemplified this realm. Sarthinas and his lover however, had found something else. They had edged around the side of the statue into a hollow of the mountain, a cave that lead them to the hidden spring. Light pricked through cracks and crevasses in the rock, playing on the water and dappling the cave in shimmering waves of whites and blues, while the trickle filled their ears and the raw natural moisture drew up their noses. He had taken his lover up against the slick cave walls on that first time, and how many times they made love there he couldn't say.

_ Balenu._

As he watched the place he had lived in, grown, trained, defended, laughed and loved in shrink as they flew on, the grief swelled. His parents had lived and died there, his sire the right hand of the previous King and his mother the left, they were his personal guard, his confidants, and his friends. Sarthinas had been dedicated to following their devotions likewise to his King until one day he would be laid to rest beside them.

_ Would you have done the same, my sire? Would you have renounced your King if he had bent himself to sate our enemy? Would you, my mother? If your King agreed to a pact of genocide?_

_ Balenu, my Balenu._

Hot tears lingered at the corner of his eyes, he had to look away.

"Sarthinas, should I keep going this way?"

"Just getting my bearings," He said, blinking away the moisture in his eyes, helped by the battering of air in his face. 'Have you never travelled to the Isolated Temple before?'

"I have not, the south west region is unfamiliar to me."

"So the envoys avoided the Isolated Temple. Interesting,' Plains broke the green expanse on the western horizon ahead of them. 'Turn us left-wing and keep parallel with the plains, we are on the lookout for a certain mountain.'

"Understood, adjusting heading."

Tetsomos shifted his course with a gentle left yaw.

"If you need to take rest, don't hesitate to speak up."

"Thank you, but I am confident I shall be fine."

Sarthinas patted the side of the blue's neck, and in response a rumble rippled through Tetsomos and translated into vibrations up his lower half. A warm pressure coursed through his groin.

_ You want the closeness and comfort of intimacy. This misery will pass. In the meantime, let it fuel your action._

He readjusted himself, stifling the temptation to elicit further vibrations, but did echo the blue's rumble with one of his own.

"You are doing wonderful, we should be there on the cusp on sunset." Sarthinas said through his own rumbling.

***

Sometime just before the sun sank behind the distant jut of mountains, Sarthinas spotted the Isolated Temple. Whereas the Castle of Xilnardric was crafted from the flesh of a mountain, the Isolated Temple was enclosed within the gut of one, like a malformed foetus. It resembled a gothic cathedral more than a temple; its architecture was composed of a grand pointed arch as its entrance, overseen by an enormous circular window coloured in a kaleidoscope of stained glass, complete with depiction of a humanoid figure wielding a tome and curved blade.

Tetsomos narrowed his eyes at the ornate stairway that lead to the temple, and followed it down to the encroaching forest at the foot. Honing his focus further, he spotted a scatter of flames peppered throughout a cluster of wooden structures.

"A village?"

"Yeah, a pleasant place. They deal in timber, and interestingly, see the patch of forest dividing the village from the Isolated Temple? It's untouched by the population."

"Why so?"

"It's a barrier between them and the faction that reside within, the Confounders. Versed occultists who utilize the arcane to negate the arcane."

"Are they the reason I never transported anyone this way?"

"I'd imagine so."

"You do not fear them."

Sarthinas chuckled.

"Oh, I do. Even the rapport I have forged with Centreya--"

Sarthinas frowned ahead. From the Isolated Temple came something that guttered the torches in the village, and bent the tree tops of the canopy toward them in a fan of invisible force. As it barrelled over them, a scream of excruciating volume and stomach twisting high frequency assaulted their ears. Sarthinas had to let go of Tetsomos's shoulder scales to cover his ears, roaring all the while. It bounced around in his skull like a madman in a cell, rising and falling in reverberating peals. His scales felt as if they would curl and peel off, and his blood would never again simply be cold instead of frozen.

Tetsomos pitched and yawed in spastic directions, his wings thrashing out of synch. The blue maintained enough control to angle their approach near the outskirts of the village. Together they roared against the horrific soundwave, and together they careened down.

Sarthinas was thrown from Tetsomos's back as they hurtled into the ground, flipping onto a dirt path. He tumbled and rolled into a patch of brush, coming to a stop beside a severed tree trunk. Cracks and snaps of breaking timber broke through the ringing in his ears, telling him Tetsomos had been made as much momentums bitch as he had. He lay there, panting and willing the residual insectile squeals in his ears to stop.

"Sarthinas?" Tetsomos called.

"Over here."

The vibration of firm, lumbering footsteps shuddered through the soil under him as Tetsomos came close, and then poked his head over the brush, frill to full attention between his horns and down his back.

"You are okay?"

Sarthinas hoisted himself up.

"Okay enough, though my head would disagree. How about you?"

The blue nodded.

"That knell, I've never heard something so appalling."

A flicker of a memory came to the forefront of his mind, a hazy recollection of hearing such a sickening howl when he had made camp in a watchtower many years ago with a handful of young soldiers. It had been nothing compared to this, but the intrinsic chill of it was on par.

"I may have, a long time ago."

Sarthinas rubbed at his ears and stepped out from the brush to find himself standing on a tracked dirt lane. One direction lead into the depths of the forest, the crimson beams of sunset pushing through the densely packed trees, while the other wound to the first few wooden houses of the village, a connecting walkway between the structures. A cart was left abandoned off the side, in front of a mound shape he couldn't identify.

"Unfortunately, we are going to find out what exactly voiced that scream. Good news is, we landed right close to the village."

"Should I expect a poor welcome?"

"After_that_, they will probably remain in their homes. We take the central lane, and go straight on through the dividing woods."

With that, they took the cart road onwards, Sarthinas leading and Tetsomos a feral step behind. A sudden metallic tinge rushed in his nostrils on an inhale.

_ Blood._

And strengthened the closer they got to the abandoned cart. Not the cart so much as the mound, which as they drew close, he identified with a held breath and grimace.

A mangled congealment of dead bodies. Carcasses of two humans, two wolves, a bull, three deer and a bipedal dragon were entwined together in a haphazard pile, shabby rags specked with blood and soil hung loose on their still forms, a generous pool of dark blood spread beneath.

"This does not bode well." Sarthinas said.

"These poor souls." Tetsomos circled around the cart.

Sarthinas crouched and examined the bodies, the humans in particular as their light skin revealed the type of wounds easier than fur or scales. Wide gashes and punctures, and as he was closer now he detected the acrid scent of burned fur.

"What fresh nightmare awaits us, I wonder." Sarthinas looked toward the village and put a paw to his sheathed long sword.