“We don’t have words to properly describe how the gods perceive reality. Our languages and brains simply lack the capacity to come close to comprehending their viewpoint. Yet that does not stop us from trying. According to our current models, the gods have some ability to experience the totality of their domain. As in, they can feel every instance of everything that connects to them, across the entire span of space and time. The exact minutiae and mechanics of this ability are still being studied to the best of our limited abilities, but so far, it seems this unique form of perspective and cognition is in part how the gods seemingly manipulate probability and causality on both a micro and macro scale.” - excerpt from the controlled text “Counting Past Infinite: A thesis on measuring the divine.” (Author cannot currently be known.)

  Mina Vrock had never been one to get queasy, a valuable trait for any servant of Master Time, but especially to those like her who dealt with the undead and their victims. So the fact that she was currently trying damn hard not to spill her guts spoke to the severity of her current situation. Because, as it turned out, being inured to death, gore, and filth did nothing to help manage motion sickness. Which was a pretty jagging big problem considering Mina was currently clinging to the back of a wereleopard who was literally springing from tree to tree.

  In the two days and nights since undergoing the rite that transformed her from werefolk to a full werebeast, Alia Cat-eyes had been subject to a grueling gauntlet of tests and training at the claws of Grettir of Jokulstead. A gauntlet, which the werewolf mercenary gruffly admitted, she’d passed with flying colors. Allowing the strange group of a priestess, a Seraphilim, a werewolf, and a newly created wereleopard to continue their hunt for a way into Harmas.

  Even after losing so much time, the quartet’s best option remained the small herd of hippogryphs they’d been tracking before being attacked by the pack of vampire-enslaved werewolves who facilitated Alia’s transformation. Spared the corpse-tide by their ability to fly, the feral magical steeds had been wandering the lands near the western bank of the Alidonar River, leaving enough traces for an expert tracker, like either of the group’s werebeasts, to follow. But good fieldcraft wouldn’t be enough to let them chase down a herd of flying beasts; they’d need to be moving much faster than either Mina or Sera Deborah could manage. Which was why Alia proposed the mad idea of her and Grettir just carrying their slower comrades.

  So for the past hour or maybe a dozen, she couldn’t tell at this point, Mina had been hanging onto her girlfriend’s spotted pelt and the contents of her own stomach with all her strength. Having transformed into an oversized hybrid of human and feline features, Alia was pushing her acrobatic skills to literal new heights. She leaped between branch and bough, never stopping as she soared through the dense canopy.

  As the city warden took another innard’s twisting jump, Mina wondered how Deborah was faring with Grettr as he pelted along the forest floor, perhaps two dozen meters below them. But she didn’t let her mind dwell long on how high up she was, as vertigo seemed a poor malady to add to her current suffering. So instead, she looked up, hoping to catch some hint of giant avian wings somewhere beyond the tree tops. The odds were beyond slim, but Alia had said they were close, judging by the fresh horse shit she’d spotted splattered across the canopy.

  Suddenly, a series of pulses rippled through the Aether, pressing against Mina’s arcane senses in a clear pattern. It was a signal from Deborah; Grettir had found something. The priestess conveyed this to the wereleopard with a tug on her fur, and Alia promptly started running vertically down an old pine’s trunk in a maneuver that put Mina’s entire digestive track into her throat. The only way the priestess avoided screaming was by nearly biting a hole in her cheek.

  Once they were back on the ground, Mina quickly scrambled free and glowered at Alia’s unabashed feline smirk. Gently smacking her girlfriend’s side, the priestess hissed. “That wasn’t funny!”

  “Was…to… me,” replied Alia, her voice a bubbling rumble.

  A few moments later, Grettr’s hulking form padded out from the brush, with a frazzled Deborah half-hanging, half-tied onto his back. After taking three great sniffs, the werewolf nodded and gestured to the northwest. “Smell fresh… one kilo-meter.”

  Turning his great lupine head to Mina, he added. “Your…turn.”

  The priestess nodded and got to work casting one of her new spells. When Deborah announced she intended to tutor Mina, she had initially expected to be taught complex workings that would test her soul’s limit of channeling divine power. But instead, the Seraphilim’s lessons predominantly focused on expanding Mina’s repertoire in new directions. Since, according to Deborah, the priestess’s fundamentals were strong, only her use of magic was too limited in its scope.

  Having trained to be a battlefield rest-bringer from an early age, Mina’s focus had been on spells of healing, preservation, consecration, illumination, and similar. She’d never done much with entire aspects of magic available to her as both a Priestess of Master Time and a servant of the Light. One such aspect was now at the root of the working she now crafted, an aspect she’d purposely avoided during her entire training due to it resembling some of necromancy’s more vicious uses.

  Spinning her mace above her head, Mina whispered a prayer as she sculpted her spell in the Aether. “Everything dies, everything decays, all becomes dust beneath the march of our Master. Yet do not despair, for the path towards inevitability is filled with countless possibilities. Focus on what is instead of grieving for what won’t be.”

  Power, pure, cold, radiant power, flowed down from the Beyond, through her soul, and into the spell. A sound that wasn’t a sound echoed in Mina’s ears as she cloaked the group in one of entropy’s children. Magical decay swirled around them, not the decay of flesh or foliage, but the decay of sound and smell. To test her working, Mina snapped her fingers together, and instead of the telltale crack, they made a muted whoosh. The noise of her snap had been corroded to near-nothingness by the spell. She glanced over at Grettir, who sniffed the air and nodded. The magic was functioning properly; it would mask their approach without hampering their own senses.

  With that settled, the group continued onwards, moving through the underbrush, towards the hippogryphs. After the first few minutes of travel, Mina slowly noticed more of the spring forest’s wildlife. Squirrels freshly roused from hibernation scampered between branches, while the calls of recently migrated birds echoed through the old growth. If these most skittish of creatures fell for her spell, then hopefully so would their quarry.

  The stink of fresh blood soon reached Mina’s nose, and she looked to Alia in concern, but the wereleopard just shook her head and rasped. “Deer… not… hippa”

  In an unexpected, but certainly appreciated boon, Alia’s sense of smell had been mostly restored by her transformation. While her nose, or perhaps snout, was still apparently shoddy by werebeast standards, it was still head and shoulders above any humans.

  Not long after Mina first noticed the blood, they reached the edge of a small meadow surrounding a natural spring. Warm sunlight shone down on the glade and was eagerly drunk down by patches of freshly bloomed flowers. Standing amidst this scene of natural beauty were half a dozen impossible beasts. Each the size of a large pony, with wings to match, the hippogryphs were majestic creatures. Their plumage and beaked faces were all the austere colors of a goshawk, while their hindquarters sported a variety of shades and patterns. Together, all of this should have been picturesque. But the dead deer the hippogryph herd was currently eating diminished the effect.

  Six, that was just about the number they’d expected, and good thing too, as Mina didn’t know if she could cast her next spell on any more than that. Crouched behind the underbrush, Alia and Grettir got to work unpacking the set of throwing snares they’d prepared. The plan was for Mina to stun the hippogryphs long enough for the werebeasts to catch the herd. It would be tricky, but if the priestess could pull off her part, she was confident the others would follow through.

  Once Alia and Grettir were ready, Mina started casting. This new working was something of her own creation and was inspired by what she’d seen both friends and foes manage. A faint nimbus of glowing mist began to congeal around the priestess, its swirling tendrils sluggish and murky. Being able to magically lessen another’s pain was one of the first skills a priest of the Pantheon learned, and those spells formed the bedrock of this new creation. Any living tissue exposed to her mist would go numb and unresponsive, and a creature could even be lulled into a stupor with a high enough dosage.

  Slowly, Mina coaxed the soporific mist away from her and into the clearing. Spread out and slithering through the tall grass, the fog steadily approached the hippogryphs unnoticed. With every meter it traveled, controlling the spell became harder, but Mina was up to the challenge. The mist finally reached the hippogryphs, forming into a hazy half circle that first covered their hoofs, then their knees. It would take a little time for the spell's effects to set in, which made it poor for combat, but right now that wasn’t proving to be a problem, as the beasts were well and truly distracted by their meal.

  As the hippogryphs continued glutting themselves on venison, unaware of the fog slowly slithering up their legs, Mina gave her colleagues a nod, and they started to creep forward. No sooner were they three meters from the forest edge than the wind suddenly shifted. Both werebeasts froze, clearly expecting the worst, but by virtue of Mina’s earlier spell, divine favor, or just dumb luck, they still went unnoticed. Moving a little quicker now, Alia circled left, while Grettir went right, both preparing to use their snares.

  A cloud passed in front of the sun, and the wind grew more intense; keeping the fog in place became much harder. Mina silently muttered a focusing mantra while praying that the werebeasts would strike.

  Then, just as Alia started to push off her forward paw, Deborah, who sat silently behind Mina, bolted to her feet and screamed. “RUN!”

  Grettir reacted instantly, dropping his snares and bolting back for the treeline. Alia, by contrast, whirled towards them, confusion and annoyance clear even on feline features. The hippogryphs, for their part, tried to turn from their meal but started stumbling, both avian and equine limbs struggling to work.

  As the wind turned to a howling gale, Deborah grabbed onto Mina, pushed her behind her, and crafted a shield of dappled sunlight. This sight got Alia moving, and she pelted towards them on all fours. No sooner had she started to flee than another noise split through the air, one louder than even the wind. It was a roar, a gigantic, thunderous roar that shook the earth, rattled the trees, and made every muscle in Mina’s body tense up. Spurred on by this, Alia sprang towards the tree closest to the clearing’s edge and hurtled up its trunk as fast as her transformed body could manage.

  If she’d been even a second slower, she would have died.

  A column of fire poured down from the sky into the meadow’s center, engulfing the hippogryphs utterly. Mina shut her eyes on instinct, but could still see the blazing orange and red right through her lids. Even with Deborah’s shield in place, a wave of searing heat washed over the priestess, singeing her skin and filling her nose with smoke. After reinforcing herself with a measure of divine power, she opened her eyes and stared at what had once been an idyllic meadow.

  Everything was ablaze, and the hiss of bubbling water joined with the crackle of hungry flames as the glade’s spring boiled. A massive cloud of fresh ash and scorched debris swirled about the forest clearing’s center, disturbed by the monumental shape hiding within it. Too stunned even to blink, no matter how much the air stung her eyes, Mina just stared at the shape slowly emerging from the fading cloud.

  Two great leathery wings, each large and wide as a schooner’s main mast, spread out across the clearing and, with three mild flaps, roused a hurricane that blew away the ash and dust, while smothering the firestorm. Mina was nearly knocked over by this gale, and several of the surrounding trees groaned ominously.

  No longer obscured by the cloud of its own creation, the full form and scope of the new arrival bore down on the priestess’s senses like an avalanche. Its long, serpentine tail led to a four-legged body covered in bronze scales accented by patches of coppery feathers. Each of its trunk-like legs ended in a seven-digit-bearing appendage that combined the best of a cat’s paw, an eagle's talons, and a lizard's claws. A line of angled spikes ran along its spine, their sharp gold-dipped tips glistening in the returned sunlight. The largest of these spikes joined with a crown of back-sweeping horns that sat atop an angular reptilian face.

  Nictitating membranes licked over that face’s great, slit-pupiled eyes, wiping away the last of the ash. In its partially opened mouth, saber-like teeth clutched onto one of the hippogryph’s hindlimbs, like a cat might a snatched chicken leg. With a deep rumbling exhale, the monster, for Mina dared not even think its true name, sent tongues of flame licking out from between its teeth. Then, casually, it finished biting down on the roasted hippogryph, swallowing most of its prize in a single gulp.

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  In a voice far smaller and frailer than Mina would ever think a Seraphilim capable of, Deborah spoke the name of what had come hurtling out of the sky, and ruining their best laid plans.

  “Dragon.”

  After dropping what remained of the hippogryph’s back leg, the dragon slowly swiveled its serpentine neck until it faced where Mina and Deborah hid. Sparks billowed from its nostrils, as scaled lips peeled open to reveal a bloody smile. With a voice that rumbled and resonated like the mightiest of war horns, the dragon spoke. “Come forth, you naked apes, come forth and look upon my glory.”

  Terror filled the priestess, as did confusion; despite everything, she’d kept the obscuring spell in place. How in the hells had it spotted them so easily?

  As if to answer her question, the mighty wyrm said. “I can taste your petty spell. Know, for its kind to ever hope to work on one such as me, it would need to work on more senses than you can count on your grubby hands. Now, do not test my patience, or I will test my breath upon your tender flesh.”

  Deborah and Mina exchanged a look. Seeing no other option, they came out from the undergrowth and stepped into the clearing. With speed, nothing so large should possess, the dragon brought its head down, so it merely loomed over them. “What do we have here?”

  The Seraphilim bowed so low her perfect golden hair became smeared with ash. “Oh great and mighty dragon, I-”

  The wyrm cut her off with a growl that Mina could feel in her chest. “No, you will not speak for your band, nor shall this parlay start without all of you.” Looking up the tree Alia had climbed, the dragon growled. “Come down, little cat, before I snap your hiding spot in two.” Then it glanced over in the direction Grettir had fled. “That goes for you as well, little wolf. I’d rather not cause a forest fire flushing you out.”

  With the skittish energy of any predator realizing they’d stumbled across the apex of their domain, the two werebeasts joined Mina and Deborah. The dragon’s smile widened at this surrender, and it licked burnt blood from its fangs with a long forked tongue. “Good, good, now let us begin this properly.”

  Rearing up its full height, the dragon proclaimed in a near-deafening voice. “I am Jazamat the Burnished! Ruler of Barrel Mountain! The protector of Quadiburg and Osil! Owner of a hoard that shines greater than mine own scales! And sire to a full clutch laid by Azali the Stormsinger!”

  Once this list of titles finished ringing in the group’s ears, they carefully answered.

  “I am Deborah, soul-child of Anthelioi Nanal, and Seraph-Blooded servant of Sister Sun.”

  “Grettr…of Jokulstead… Mercenary, monster hunter.”

  “Mina Vrock of Vindabon. Priestess of Master Time, ordained rest-bringer and sworn witness to the dead’s final secrets.”

  “Alia…city war…warden.”

  Accepting this with a nod, Jazamat then raised a clawed hand and pointed his middle digit at Mina. “God-speaker, you are used to communing with your betters and are unblemished by birth defects. Speak for your band, and answer my questions truthfully.”

  Despite herself, Mina sputtered out. “Birth defects?”

  Jazamat sniffed dismissively at this comment. “Your fellows are disfigured both physically and spiritually by the shallow Beyond. They cannot be trusted or burdened with speaking for themselves, meaning that task falls to you, despite your own contamination.”

  Bringing his head down and blowing out a cloud of smoke, the dragon then asked. “Now tell me, what are you four doing?”

  Mina stared into Jazamat’s eyes and fought against the instinctual terror that was rapidly building within her. We… we were hunting the hippogryphs.”

  “Ah, good,” he rumbled. “They were not your property, but your quarry, and I claimed them before you by merit of being a greater predator. Meaning no compensation is owed.”

  The dragon spat the word compensation like it tasted bad, and Mina started to get the notion their odds of survival had just gone up dramatically, thanks to them not being owed any.

  Clearly pleased by this turn of events, Jazamat next asked. “But for what reason did you seek them? I did not think you apes thought them the delicacy they are.”

  “No, great Jazamat, we sought them as steeds,” Mina answered, her training for dealing with the most arrogant of nobility kicking in.

  But even as her brain struggled to pull up those dusty lessons and keep a leash on the pure animal panic, a dragon’s presence caused; part of her could focus on an abnormality she’d noticed in the wyrm’s list of titles. He’d claimed to be the protector of Quadiburg and Osil. She’d heard of Quadiburg; it was a reasonably large town on the southern border of the Eastern Marches, near the Dragontail Mountains. In other words, it was a pretty long way from their current location, even for something that could fly. If the dragon really did protect or protect the town, then it would be close to his territory, and folk wisdom always said a wyrm never left their lands unless they had a good reason.

  So, Mina took a gamble and prayed she wasn’t about to get them all turned to cinders. “Great Jazamat, I have heard of Quadiburg, and its riches, despite its great distance from these humble lands. May I be so bold as to ask why one such as you would travel to war-torn Alidonar?”

  A growl that combined the most fearsome aspects of thunder and a blazing furnace escaped the dragon. But before Mina could change her prayers to ones with more… finality, Jazamat answered. “I chase a thief! One who has taken what belongs to me!”

  Jazamat flared his wings, sending a buffeting gust through the clearing. “For a mere five seasons I slept, but that span was enough for some vermin to forget my brazen fury! As when I awoke, the peaks and valleys I call home were barren of my inheritance! Wyverns! Well-bred and blood-smithed gifts from my mother, given to me before she ascended to be True Fire!”

  Wait… wyverns? Mina glanced towards Alia, and they exchanged a glance. The screaming plague had first arrived in Vindabon through a pack of wyverns. This couldn’t possibly be connected, right?

  Looking back at the dragon, an act that some ancient, rodent-like part of her brain recoiled from, she took another gamble. “Dare I ask, how many wyverns were stolen from you?”

  “Twenty-four. All scions of the original stock my mother bequeathed to me,” Rumbled Jazamat as his slitted pupils narrowed. “What do you know, little god-speaker?”

  “Several weeks ago, there was an attack on Vindabon by twenty mountain wyverns. They were slain by the city’s defenders and-”

  “VINDABON?! They dare touch what is mine?!!” The dragon bellowed so loudly that Mina feared for her eardrums. Jazamat’s tail started thrashing back and forth behind him, stirring up a cloud of ash and dust. “They will pay for this insult! I will…”

  Jazamat’s words trailed off into a calderic growl. “The city of the Lych. He is one of the few apes that understand the truth of power. Claiming what I am owed from his domain would cost more than I can spend. But I cannot let this willful destruction of my mother’s last boon go unanswered!”

  The wyrm lowered its head and sniffed Mina. “A priestess of the city, in my clutches.” Serpentine eyes flicked to Deborah. “As are you, child of a delusion’s dream. I imagine your cult’s leadership will pay whatever ransom I name. Such an offering will not assuage my grief, but it will quench my wrath!”

  Alia literally bristled at this, but Mina put a hand on her flank, offering and getting support in equal measure. Being taken hostage by a jagging dragon would spell a spectacular end to all their efforts, and Pantheon alone knew how the wyrm might react to discovering the Sage’s Stone they carried. Mina needed to change this negotiation’s direction immediately, and thankfully, Jazamat had given her a very big clue on how to.

  For all the fire and fury the dragon had shown, his words carried hints of something any true servant of Master Time could spot. Beneath the avarice and the arrogance was genuine loss. When he said the wyverns were a memento of his mother, he meant it. Strange as it was to think of huge, multi-ton flying reptiles like favored heirlooms, it allowed Mina to conceptualize a way forward.

  One of the lesser-known duties of the Tenth Temple was helping to mediate inheritance disputes, a process Morri had made her sit in on more than once. As a young acolyte, she’d been genuinely shocked by how vicious such squabbles could become. With some particularly spiteful family members going so far as to destroy what they’d been denied rather than let another have it. But that ugliness wasn’t what she thought of right now; the bone-deep outrage and grief of those who’d lost a tangible piece of a loved one’s memory was.

  “Great Jazamat, your anger is more than justified, and I can only apologize for the death of your wyverns. But Vindabon did not steal and desecrate your inheritance.”

  A snarl that bubbled as an open volcano might, flowed out of the dragon’s mouth. “What?!”

  “Your wyverns did not somehow stray across the span of entire nations to attack Vindabon by accident. Their minds had been broken by someone’s efforts to bend them to their will, and they’d been infected with a potent pestilence, one they were forced to spread in both life and death. This was a crime committed against my home, but even more against you!”

  “How do you know this? Who is responsible? Tell me!” The wyrm bellowed.

  Once Jazamat’s words stopped echoing in Mina’s ears, she said. “The four of us are part of the group dispatched by the gods and lords of humankind to deal with this pestilence. A duty that includes tracking down and killing the vampire responsible for the disease.”

  The dragon’s serpentine eyes narrowed. “A vampire… I see your game, little god-speaker. You intend to drag me into this petty war between warm-blooded and cold-blooded apes. Do not dare to think you can manipulate one such as I!”

  A wave of unnatural fear smashed into Mina’s mind, and her legs buckled. She clutched at her chest, trying to stop her heart from bursting from her chest, while simultaneously trying to start breathing again. Death had come for her, death in the form of a predator, one so fucking far beyond her she doubted it would even bother to eat her. No, she’d be rendered ash in a flash, becoming nothing but a forgotten failure who couldn’t play the role a god entrusted to her.

  Something warm and soft touched Mina’s shoulder, bringing with it relief from the icy terror. Looking up, she found Deborah at her side, the Seraphilim’s jaw set in focus, outrage bright in her gaze.

  “Dragon Jazamat!” She snapped, her tone turning a name into a slap. “I respected your right to pick who you speak with, but I will not tolerate this brutishness.”

  Jaw slack, Mina could only watch as an angel’s scion met the wyrm’s glare. The golden-eyed Seraphilim silently clashed wills against the bronze-scaled dragon, and the Aether boiled around them. No spells or words were exchanged; this was a duel fought with the pure magic those lesser mediums simply conveyed. At the edges of the priestess’s spiritual awareness, flickers of this clash could be witnessed. Or at least, the interpretation her mind could grapple with, could be.

  Jazamat was a storm that swept away cities, an eruption that blacked out the skies; he was an all-consuming flame! But fearsome as flame given form was, even the greatest storms and the worst mountain-cracking blasts paled before the sun’s brilliance. For even an entire world consumed by fire was naught but an ember compared to Deborah’s patron goddess. The sun was the source of all life, and just as easily an agent of all-death. Yet that unbridled majesty was not the Seraphilim’s to wield. She carried in her mortal soul a silver of a sliver of divinity. So the question remained: would such an infinitesimal piece of infinity be enough to stop a dragon?

  As it turned out, the group wouldn’t need to learn learn if Deborah was up to the challenge. Jazamat relented after a few seconds with a puff of smoke from his nostrils. “You’ve made your point, light-spawn. Unleashing my wroth upon you was… extreme.”

  The wyrm’s wroth, Mina had heard of that strange ability of dragons, but never expected to ever experience it. Just as they could breathe flame and fly, dragons could project an aura of emotional intensity. Fear became terror and terror became cataonia. Whereas awe became adoration and adoration became worship. The old stories said this was how dragons broke their enemies and controlled their slaves.

  That Mina had been utterly helpless before it was more than harrowing; it was abhorrent. She would not have her mind twisted by yet another arrogant jagging monster. Powered more by spite than she’d admit to herself, the priestess got back to her feet and jabbed a finger at the scaly bastard.

  “We’re not trying to drag you into this jagging war! You’re already involved! The leeches made sure of that when they used your stolen property to kill hundreds! Now, do you want retribution or not?”

  Silence stretched through the scorched glade, and as Mina’s pique faded, she realized how badly she might have messed up. Putting a hand to her brow, the priestess muttered. “Oh gods, I just did a Natalie.”

  The dragon’s chest rumbled, and hissing words passed by his fanged teeth. “You walk a thin line between amusing and insulting, ape. Tread carefully.”

  Realizing how lucky she was to receive this one and only warning, Mina swallowed her pride and took a very deep bow. “I deeply and humbly apologize for my outburst, great Jazamat.”

  The wyrm accepted this with a distinctly regal tilt of his horned head. Taking this as her sign to continue, Mina tried to salvage the negotiations and get things back on the path that might save Pantheon knows how many lives. “The vampire responsible for the plague that drove your wyverns insane is inside Harmas. We sought the hippogryphs as a means to bypass the rogue spirit of the Alidonar River and enter the city safely. I believe with your assistance, great Jazamat, we can carry out this plan in a way that benefits both of us greatly.”

  “I am not a steed to be ridden, god-speaker.” The dragon snarled.

  “I never thought you were anything close,” Mina replied hurriedly. “I had merely hoped you’d help us fulfill our duty, and in the process not only get your revenge but acquire appropriate… restitution.”

  Oh, fixed-stars, she did not have the authority to make this offer, but if it meant getting the Sage’s Stone in place and helping her friends, then hopefully the Pantheon would forgive her. “Before being consumed by the plague, Harmas was a wealthy city, and now much of that wealth is without owner or heir. So…so I imagine the contents of an Elector-Prince’s treasure vault, or similar, would be compensation enough for your stolen wyverns?”

  A noise, almost like a purr, except loud enough that Mina could feel it in her bones, escaped the dragon. “Yes… I imagine it would be.”

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