OF SCALE AND TEETH

STEEL DRAGON™ BOOK FIFTEEN

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

MICHAEL ANDERLE

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

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Version 1.00, May 2022

Previously Published as part of the megabook Steel Dragon 5

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-633-7

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THE OF SCALE AND TEETH TEAM

Thanks to the JIT Readers

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If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

Editor

The Skyhunter Editing Team

CHAPTER ONE

The castle looked like it had been built of boulders hewn roughly into squares bigger than any beast. It stood on an island with towering wind-battered cliffs and within, the Global Dragon Council held what might prove to be the very last meeting of its kind.

Lord Boneclaw sat in his human form on a chair too heavy to be lifted by human hands. This was one of the few places in the world that were built by dragons, not humans. He had carved this chair well over a thousand years before and had known when he’d shaped it that one day, he would sit in it and preside over the entire council. When that day came, he would use his power to give dragon kind complete control over the earth. His plan had finally come to fruition.

One of the most satisfying advantages was that he no longer had to pretend to be something he wasn’t. The world knew of his shadow powers. They knew he was the Masked One and they didn’t care. Even now, he wore the mask of human bone he had hidden for so long. This was his true face. The face of Lord Boneclaw, scarred and worn as it was, was the mask. This skull, freshly harvested as they all were, was what made him feel like himself.

He looked out through the eye sockets of one of the Steel Bitch’s dead human servants at the five faces around him. Four of them had worked for him for centuries and owed their position on the Council to him. The other was not even worthy of being called an obstacle. Decimus Aurelius would be stripped of his power as soon as he had secured his position.

“Can you please remove that?” Aurelius complained. “It is grotesquely macabre and quite unsightly.” His gaze had not left Lord Boneclaw since he’d arrived.

“You would let humans use the bones of our dead to arm the guns that kill our kind—that almost killed me—and yet you find it offensive for a dragon to wear one of their skulls?”

“I want those bullets destroyed as much as the next dragon,” Aurelius said—which was a lie, he knew. The Council member didn’t care about dragons but only about ingratiating himself to the Steel Bitch. “But walking around wearing one of their dead is not how we accomplish this.”

“I call this session to order,” Ironclaw interrupted. He was a particularly easy to manipulate dragon whom Boneclaw had placated with false power decades before.

Aurelius frowned at the shadow dragon but remained silent. He would follow the rules of this session exactly like he had every other one. All the councilors were slaves to tradition. The Masked One would set them all free and give them a true visionary and a true ruler—him.

“Lord Boneclaw, why did you ask us to convene this session?” Ironclaw asked with stiff formality.

“To elect a new Council leader, of course,” he all but purred. He knew who the leader would be. He’d made certain of the outcome. Shimmerclaw had already lost her sway, even before her death. The Council had voted to go to war because they already knew on some level that he was right. The humans had wasted enough time pretending to be in control of their future.

With her dead, no one would be able to so much as argue against him. He already knew how this would end. Five to one for Lord Boneclaw. Aurelius would then make a fool of himself and he would strip him of his rank. With him out of the way, he’d appoint two new Councilors to make up the full seven. A vote would be held giving him—how did the humans put it when they tried to empower their tyrants? Ah yes—executive privileges. He would go to war and finally, the world could be remade. It was almost poetic.

“Well then, perhaps we should move directly to the vote,” a dragon by the name of Skywing said. She was a strong fighter and loyal because Boneclaw had saved her from an assassination attempt conducted by mages a few centuries before—he had set the attempt up, of course—but she was a common. There was something about common dragons that he detested. She would be replaced in good time as well and maybe used for breeding to see if something more useful might arise from her bloodline. If not, more bullets could always be made.

“We have an even more pressing matter,” Aurelius said.

Boneclaw clenched his jaw. Every Council member had the right to set the agenda for the meeting. Dragons had persisted with unnecessary rituals for millennia. He couldn’t wait to do away with them.

“And this is?” Ironclaw asked from beneath his bushy grey mustache.

“An immediate investigation into Lady Shimmerclaw’s death,” Aurelius stated in an official tone and his regality made him look like an overstuffed imbecile of a bird.

“Oh, come now. Not this again,” Lord Boneclaw said dismissively.

“You insult this Council, sir!” the other dragon continued undeterred like a rat chasing cheese. “Kristen Hall, the Steel Dragon, has accused Lord Boneclaw of killing Shimmerclaw. Furthermore, Lord Boneclaw revealed shadow powers the likes of which dragon kind has never seen. He is the Masked One and has manipulated us for years. His assassination of Shimmerclaw is simply the culmination of his plan. We cannot allow this.”

“Listen to yourself, sir!” Ironclaw snapped in Boneclaw’s defense. “Naming hatchling tales at a Dragon Council meeting.”

“His powers are no myth. Ask him yourself.” Aurelius fumed and made no effort to hide it.

“Who among us does not have some trait they wish to hide?” Lord Boneclaw said and raised his bony hands at the assembled dragons. Aurelius held his gaze, but the other four looked away. He kept them under his claw because he knew each of them had a secret they never wanted to be shared.

“He killed Lumos, a brave warrior.”

“Who intervened in a duel between myself and the Steel Bi—Dragon.” He corrected himself with a smirk. “Come now, old friend. You were there. You saw the Steel Dragon and I duel. Lumos interfered. When he did, his life was forfeit.”

“And what of Shimmerclaw’s murder?” Aurelius seemed determined to not back down.

“What are we supposed to believe? The Steel Dragon herself has admitted that she did not see the death of Shimmerclaw take place. She said she saw a cryptic message that could be interpreted thousands of ways. Will you take the word of a rookie investigator over the word of the Council member who mentored so many of you?”

Aurelius looked around. Finally, understanding dawned his face. He had thought there were open minds there he might convince but of course, everyone’s was already made up. Lord Boneclaw almost felt bad for him. It was sad to watch him finally realize this. Maybe he would have one of the other Councilors vote with him to take away some of the sting. The thought drew an inner chuckle because he knew he would do no such thing.

“I don’t think anyone here thinks Lady Shimmerclaw’s murder should not be investigated,” Skywing interjected hastily. She was mousy for a dragon, an extremely unattractive trait, he thought. “But we need leadership in place when we discover exactly what happened there.”

“You mean once we determine who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed her,” Ironclaw cut in. “Because every party has agreed on that much. She was shot. By a gun!”

Boneclaw rolled his eyes. Ironclaw was loyal as a dragon could be but he was dense. How else could she be shot if not by a gun?

“That’s a human weapon loaded with bullets designed by mages,” the dragon added and puffed his mustache out. “I don’t think the Steel Dragon would have done the killing, of course, but would she have looked the other way?”

“She would not have!” Aurelius snapped.

“Of course she wouldn’t. We know what kind of dragon she is,” Skywing said. “But still, she vowed that the dragons who went there would be safe. She broke that vow. There is no good reason to take her at her word.”

“Other than the truth,” Aurelius insisted, but he had finally read the room and saw where this was going.

“I want to know the truth as much as anyone,” Skywing said. “But right now, it’s far more important to get leadership in place. With the peace talks delayed by the attack of that dragon and mage, it’s clear there are still major threats to dragons. We need to be prepared for war to break out at any moment.”

Boneclaw let his eyes smile beneath the skull mask. Skywing was so wonderfully naïve. War wouldn’t break out until he made it happen. Which would be shortly after this damn vote was completed.

“The motion to vote for our new council leader has been seconded,” Ironclaw intoned solemnly, his expression stern. He was a dragon who knew his place well.

The shadow dragon’s ears twitched. He had heard a distant boom as if a great battering ram had pounded against the impregnable stone walls of this dragon fortress. But that was impossible, of course. Most likely, a boulder had simply shifted its position after a few hundred years. It didn’t matter. Nothing would matter once the votes were cast.

One of the Councilors—a particularly bloodthirsty female by the name of Bloodblaze who he had come closest to telling the truth about the Masked One—brought the urn forward and put it on the table in the center of them all.

Once in position, the ceramic urn blazed with green flame. Bloodblaze waited for the flames to subside, then reached inside. She retrieved six chits, each of them shaped like the scale of a dragon. The urn was enchanted with a variety of complex spells. It had taken the mages who had built it at the bequest of the dragons quite some time to create them. Nothing like it would ever be produced again because once the mages had finished, he had held a vote to have them and their secrets silenced once and for all.

The green fire prevented anyone but a dragon Councilor from reaching into the urn. How it knew who was on the Dragon Council was one of its most impressive features. It displayed its strange powers even further when it only produced six chits instead of seven since the Dragon Council was currently down a member. The scales it had given to Bloodblaze were unusual too, of course. A dragon simply had to exude confidence in their vote using their aura powers and place the chit inside the urn. It would turn to a simulacrum of the scales of the dragon for whom the vote had been cast.

This particular feature had prevented Boneclaw from trying to be the head of the Council for years. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know that his true scales faded from the color of old bone to the inky dark of shadow. The last time there had been a vote cast for him, none of the current members had even been on the Council. Only Shimmerclaw had seen the true nature of his powers and she was now dead. These dragons were all about to see his shadow powers, but they already knew about them anyway. Boneclaw could not believe how fortunate he had been. He had expected to seize power but not with the entire council knowing all he could do. Oh, his victory would be sweet indeed.

One by one, the dragons cast their votes. They could only vote for a member of the Council, which meant only the six dragons in the room. If a majority wasn’t reached, the two highest votes—or more if there were ties—would then be the only options granted by the urn. This would repeat until there was a victor.

However, Boneclaw knew full well that there would not be any need for this. He would emerge the victor and the only question was whether Decimus would vote for himself or if he was foolish enough to think he had any allies left on the Dragon Council.

He was placing his vote—the final one—into the urn when he heard another of those curious booms from outside the castle. Although this one didn’t sound like it came from outside, nor did it particularly sound like the shifting of a boulder. To him, a dragon who had spent some time learning about human weapons and explosives so he could ensure the mages properly weaponized the dragon scales, it sounded uncomfortably familiar.

The other dragons heard it too. Six pairs of sharp eyes turned to look at the heavy wood doors and the steel hinges that supported them.

“Count the votes,” he hissed.

“Of course, sir,” Lord Ironclaw replied and went to upend the urn.

Before the scales settled on the table, another boom came. This one was so close and so loud that it shook even the massively heavy chairs the dragons were all seated in.

“Go and see whatever this is while we count the votes,” Boneclaw ordered the two dragon guards in the room with them.

The guardians went to the massive doors exiting the hall, but as they were about to open them, another explosion rang out. This one was so loud and powerful that it blew the doors off their hinges and hurled the guards back. One of them managed to deflect the door to the side and stay on his feet but the other human-form dragon was trapped beneath his. One of his legs was crushed instantly but the dragon didn’t so much as cry out. He simply took a deep breath, grunted with exertion, and lifted the door away.

Boneclaw only noticed this in his peripheral vision, though. His attention was riveted on one thing. The Steel Dragon seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room as she strode in through the stinking smoke of explosives.

CHAPTER TWO

Kristen allowed herself a moment to scan the scene. And oh, what a sweet moment it was. The doors Hernandez had blown off their hinges knocked the guards back and put an expression on each of their faces that a human might wear if they were asked to fight a grizzly bear.

Better still were the expressions on the faces of the Dragon Council. She didn’t know four of them, but all wore similar expressions. They each seemed caught between disbelief at the impertinence of being interrupted and carefully controlled fury in the face of a dangerous foe. The only two who looked different were the dragons she knew.

Decimus Aurelius grinned broadly and he looked almost devilish with his silver hair and eyes that positively twinkled.

Lord Boneclaw’s vicious scowl was visible below the skull he wore on his face. She knew whose skull that was, and she would take it from him before this meeting was over.

All the dragons were in their human forms and sat in massive, ornate chairs that looked like they might have been made for dragon bodies. She was certain that the effect was supposed to look intimidating, but to her—someone far more accustomed to people sitting in regular fricking chairs—they looked like a group of children having a tea party at their parents’ table.

“Oh, did someone spill the kettle?” Kristen asked and gestured toward the overturned urn and pile of stones or some kind of chits in front of it. She had learned from Shimmerclaw that the urn was only used to vote members onto the Council or to promote them. It meant she’d made it barely in time to stop the vote from happening. She strode forward and sat in the seventh chair at the table—Shimmerclaw’s chair, she knew. “Sorry I’m late.”

Boneclaw bolted to his feet like he had sat on a tack. “You insolent little slug! What makes you think you can simply blast into a sacred place and interrupt a meeting you have no right to attend? This is outrageous behavior. Who let you through?”

“I have every right to be here. You took something from me and I want it back,” she told him icy tones.

Before he could wipe the look of shock off his face from being ordered around, the smoke behind her was sucked out of the room in a swirling vortex that also did a great job of messing up the dragons’ perfectly coifed hair. She would have to congratulate Amy on the effect later.

“Let?” Hernandez laughed and marched into the meeting hall with Amy one step behind her on one side and Heartsbane on the other. “No one let us through! Oh, a couple of those guards tried to tell us we weren’t welcome here, but I guess they found Jesus or something because they seem to have seen the error of their ways.”

“You will have your titles stripped for interrupting a Council meeting!” Ironclaw bellowed at Kristen and Heartsbane. He ignored the human and mage as per typical arrogant dragon behavior.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” Hernandez grinned even more triumphantly. Kristen did too. She doubted a human had ever stood up to a group of dragons as powerful as the six in this room. “Lady Heartsbane didn’t do a thing. All those booms and bangs you heard? Those were merely variations on the Hernandez special.”

“You disgusting worm, you pathetic crawling vermin, you—”

Before Boneclaw could unleash his tirade in full, a few dragon guards raced into the room. Their clothes were torn and scorched. The one in front’s face was a bloody, blackened mess. As he spoke, it began to heal from the bomb blast the dragon must have suffered at extremely close range. “We apologize, Council. The explosives were wrapped in baskets of food. We didn’t think—”

“Morons, each and every one of you. Morons!” Boneclaw fumed.

“They probably wouldn’t have fallen for it if you let them have a break now and then,” Kristen said. She thought chiding him about worker’s rights might further infuriate him and it seemed she was right.

“You interrupt a meeting and dare talk to me about snacks!” Boneclaw demanded.

“Indeed.” She smiled sweetly and took his statement as a question. “I’m confused because you have something of mine and yet you seem to be having this tea party and forgot to invite me.”

“This is not a tea party!” Ironclaw roared and pounded the table so hard it cracked.

“We are voting for a new leader.” Decimus Aurelius’ wide smile made it quite plain how happy he was to see Kristen.

“Oh, so you’ve already investigated and punished Shimmerclaw’s murderer, then?” she replied. She turned her steely glare to Boneclaw. “But that can’t be the case, because her murderer is standing right there.”

“That is quite enough,” he roared. “Guards, seize them! They have invaded a meeting of the Dragon Council. They must be cuffed.”

The two guards who had failed to hold the door and the four guards who had failed to steer clear of Hernandez’s explosives all moved to remove her forcibly from her seat.

Unfortunately for the six of them, they chose the wrong target.

As soon as any of them came within arm’s reach of her, Amy simply plucked them up as effortlessly as a gardener removing snails from a garden. She threw the first four into the hallway before any of them had even realized what was happening. The other two—the dragon with the injured face and one of those who had already faced this squad of four extremely tough women—hesitated.

In the hallway, one of the guards displayed his lack of combat tactics by transforming into a dragon, thus blocking the path for the other three.

Heartsbane turned into a dragon as well—there was far more room inside the meeting room than in the hallway leading to it—and blocked the door. But even that turned out to be unnecessary, given the extent of Amy’s powers. The young mage simply lifted the two doors Hernandez had so violently removed and thrust them into the doorframe with such force that they jammed in snugly.

“This is barbarism!” Boneclaw hissed. “Your authority as an investigator in North America comes from the authority of the Dragon Council. We gave it to you and we can strip it away.”

“I motion for a vote to remove the rank of investigator from Kristen Steel,” a Councilor with eyes the color of blood hissed.

“I second,” an old man with a bushy mustache who she recognized as Ironclaw piped in.

“All in favor?” Boneclaw asked.

Five hands went up.

“All opposed?”

Decimus Aurelius raised his hand begrudgingly in the air.

“Five to one. The motion carries,” Ironclaw intoned officiously. “Investigator Steel is an investigator for the council no longer.”

“You pathetic little worm. As head of this Council, I will end you,” Boneclaw said.

“But you haven’t voted yet,” Kristen said. “Those chits are still on the table.”

“The vote is done and cast, girl,” he snapped. “Look at the scales and tell me what you see.”

“I see four that look like pathetic, worn bone that’s been dipped in tar and two that look like Decimus Aurelius.”

“Four?” Boneclaw raged and looked around the room. One of his little peons had disobeyed him. Still, four to two was the same as five to one—a clear majority. “Yes.” He calmed. “So you see, I have won.”

“Is this true, Aurelius?” Kristen asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Aurelius said, although he smiled at her as if he wanted her to understand something. Like he had a message he wanted to convey, something he needed her to understand.

“Which means I will ostracize you from dragon society. You will be an outcast. An outlaw. The next time a dragon dies, we know who will be behind it and we will send the full force of the dragons to end you. You’re no longer an investigator, which means you’re no longer welcome here. Now get out!” Boneclaw roared.

She listened to his little tirade and realized he was being truthful. The vote had been cast and she was too late. Still, she couldn’t help herself and burst into laughter.

CHAPTER THREE

Before, the room had felt like a pressure cooker. It seemed as if there was so much heat, humidity, and pressure in the air that any misstep might have caused the whole castle to explode far more violently than any of Hernandez’s explosions.

Kristen’s laughter had the opposite effect. It completely drained the room of energy until it felt like they were in a meat locker.

All six pairs of eyes were fixed on her, even Aurelius, who seemed slightly less angry but as shocked as the others.

She only laughed harder as she unpinned the seven-pointed badge from her shirt and tossed it on the table. Although it was only a small piece of metal, its impact seemed to shake the dragons so much that it might as well have been an anchor thrown on the stone slab.

“You’re the leader of the Dragon Council now, and the best you can do is take my job away?” She snorted a laugh. “Have the badge. I’m sure you cheap-ass dragons wouldn’t want to spring for the cost to make another one anyway.”

“The title is also gone,” Boneclaw growled.

Her laughter intensified, so much so that hard it hurt. “No…shit…the title…is gone!” After a few deep breaths in the frigid awkwardness of the room, she could at least talk again. “What we’re doing has nothing to do with titles. It has nothing to do with a salary or whatever dragons seem to think honor means. We are standing up for justice. We are righting wrongs that dragons and anyone else commit. We are trying to bring the world back into some kind of balance before you assholes all blow it up.”

Boneclaw graced her with a little golf clap. “Very nice. Very inspirational. We could all use a good revolution. But to clarify, who is helping you? A tiny band of humans? Some cowardly mages who have spent their lives in hiding? A paltry handful of dragons.”

“We’ve stopped you before, Boneclaw.”

“You have stopped the will of the Council, yes. That is true. But only because the humans came to your aid. No human can help you here. This fortress has stood for a thousand years, and no human weapon, no bomb, no nuclear warhead—nothing can break its walls.”

“Except me, right?” Hernandez interrupted. “You mean that nothing broke its walls until Hernandez gave it a try.”

“Imbecilic fool” he retorted. “All we have to do is make sure none of you ever leave this place and your little rebellion is finished.”

Amy, Heartsbane, and Hernandez all took a step closer to Kristen’s chair. “Try us,” they said as one.

She smiled. They had practiced the move. She found it amusing and even cute but Boneclaw flinched at what she was sure he would call their impertinence.

“Thank you, ladies, but I’ve got this. Lord Boneclaw—the Masked One—your list of crimes is extensive and horrendous. It was you who began to clone dragons and who taught the technomages how to use their bodies to make weapons.”

A female Councilor gasped at this.

Kristen continued. “You did this again and again, created and enslaved dozens of dragons, and spread them around the world so their living bodies could be harvested.”

“You have no proof besides the word of the mage who doesn’t wish to be executed for her crimes,” Boneclaw protested.

“Not a denial, I might point out,” Heartsbane said.

“Furthermore,” Kristen said. “You have set dragons to the task of destroying the world order. Sebastian Shadowstorm and his mother Obscura—remember them? They were your pawns whom you sent to try to destroy Detroit. You could have challenged me to a duel yourself but you didn’t. You hid behind catspaws like the coward you are.”

“All conjecture!” He pounded a clawed hand on the table.

“What about when you ambushed me in Mammoth Cavern? No other dragon has the shadow powers you possess. None. And then there are the dragons who died because of your schemes. All the blood shed by the technomages is ultimately on your hands. The dragons who were killed by the assassin Death belong to you as well. You killed Lumos when you were engaged in a duel with me. You are a monster and a coward, and I will take what is mine from you.”

“And what proof do you have? Do you have one shred of solid evidence that dragons might believe?” Boneclaw asked.

“We have proof you killed Lumos, you sick old bastard,” Amy said.

“Watch your mouth, human,” he growled warningly.

“Or what?” the young mage asked as she stepped forward and her hair whipped in a magic wind. “Will you fight me? I’ll take payback for Lumos’ death any time you’re ready. So you want to know how many dragons had to find out the hard way that my magic is tougher than their scales?”

“This is outrageous!” Ironclaw exclaimed. “For a mage to speak this way—”

“Quiet, Ironclaw,” Boneclaw ordered. “Lady Steel was muzzling her little pet.”

“I can take him,” Amy said. “I know I can.”

Kristen shook her head and sent her a glance. Not now.

“I demand justice for his crimes,” she said to the rest of the Council. “I’ve learned enough to know that I can’t challenge him to a duel for these atrocities. I have a case, I’ll present it, and the council will judge.”

“I motion for us to do exactly that!” Aurelius said.

No one else followed his lead. Not the female councilor who had seemed upset at the accusations, not the one with blood-red eyes, and not Ironclaw. It seemed every one of them was in Boneclaw’s pocket. She would get no succor from them.

“Fine,” she said and addressed Boneclaw instead of the other four dragons who avoided her eyes. “Then let’s have at it, you old coward. You and me to settle Lumos’ score.”

He chuckled at her. “You naïve, young, ignorant fool. Dragons do not settle scores. There are rules we follow. I will not accept a duel for a reason without honor. Now, it is time you left. No one is interested in investigating these reckless conspiracies, and I will not accept a childish human schoolyard brawl. Your time here is over. You are no longer an investigator so you are no longer welcome. Now, be gone!”

“Right, of course. Sorry,” Kristen pushed her chair out with an extremely loud and uncomfortable screech from the wood on the floor. “Give me that skull and I’ll leave.”

Boneclaw laughed. “I will do no such thing.”

“Fine. Then I challenge you to a duel for it.”

“You truly do not understand how this works, do you?”

“But it’s mine.” She thumped her chest. “It belonged to one of my humans. A sweet, wonderful man by the name of Jim Washington who was so much better than you’ll ever be. I asked for it to be returned and you refused, so I’ll duel you for it.”

“This is—”

“Completely legal!” Aurelius interjected. “I knew that human. If that is indeed his skull, she can duel you for it. There are many precedents for exactly this.”

“Is it this Washington’s skull?” Ironclaw asked.

“It… That’s irrelevant!” Boneclaw roared. “He’s dead. It’s no longer his.”

“The rules are clear, my lord,” the blood-eyed dragon said in a raspy voice. “But do not worry. You are the leader of the Council now. You were challenged so you may set the terms of this…slaughter.” She smiled quite viciously.

“Fine, fine. If the Steel Dragon wants the skull—”

“I want the asshole who took it to be dead, thanks. I asked for it, you refused, and I challenged you to a duel. Now fight me. Coward,” Kristen said coldly.

He drew a deep breath. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally, he uttered a fake laugh. “I accept your challenge, of course. It will be pleasant to finally end your insulting insurrection personally. When shall we do it? Oh, that’s right. I am the challenged, so the choice is mine. Shall we say three days hence so you have time to get your affairs in order?”

“How about right now, outside the castle?” she countered.

Boneclaw shook his head. “You have challenged a member of a Dragon Council to a duel. There are certain rules about such things and some time is required for preparation. We will not battle in a field like a couple of commons.” He spat the last word.

Kristen glanced at Decimus Aurelius who nodded to confirm it.

“Fine,” she agreed. “Three days from now. That’s seventy-two hours. Which means our fight will take place in broad daylight.”

He raised a lip at that but nodded. “That is accurate, of course. I will send you information about the location in half that time.”

“You can’t expect me to agree to—”

Aurelius cleared his throat. “Those are the rules, Lady Steel. You challenged him, so he chooses the time and place. He cannot make it an unfair arena that grants either of you an advantage.”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” Boneclaw said. “I would tell you the location now but we must find somewhere private. I will not have the winner of this duel—whoever it may be—mobbed by human paparazzi and dragons wishing to earn the favor of their Councilor. Now that it is settled, let us get back to the meeting. As my first act as leader of the Council, I call for a vote to give me executive power to stop any organizations that are working against the will of Dragon Council.”

Decimus Aurelius cleared his throat again.

“What is it now?” Boneclaw snapped.

“You can call for a vote of course, but you cannot be granted any kind of executive power.”

“Of course I can. I’m the leader.”

“Not yet, you’re not,” Aurelius said politely. “As you said, challenges have certain rules about them. One is that no dragon can assume a new post while a challenge is pending. This includes the head of the Council, of course, for obvious reasons. So, unfortunately for any executive privileges, the challenge will have to take place before you can be sworn in and granted such rights.”

“That rule is hardly essential—”

“That rule,” Aurelius said firmly, “has stood for centuries. It has prevented dragon Councilors who were not fit to rule because of their past grievances from taking power. To throw it out would be akin to throwing out one of our most honorable traditions. If you do that, we might as well sit with the Steel Dragon, dwarves, the mages, and the pixies to rewrite the rules that govern us all.”

“No one wishes to do that,” the blood-eyed dragon said. “The rules are clear. Boneclaw. You must defeat the Steel Dragon in combat in three days before you can be sworn in.”

“If you don’t, dragons the world over will revolt. These rules govern every Dragon Council. We can’t simply ignore them as we please,” Ironclaw insisted.

“Fine,” Boneclaw said. “The trash heap this planet has become can wait another three days before it is cleaned. In fact, perhaps this is better. This way, I can wear the Steel Dragon’s skull as I rise to become the head of all dragons on Earth. Do me a favor and die in your human form so that your skull may serve as a symbol of unity.”

“Do me a favor and choke to death,” Kristen replied before she strode out of the council chamber.

CHAPTER FOUR

The surface of the island was beautiful. Long grasses whipped in a strong wind that blew so continuously, no trees could grow here. The only thing that broke the rolling vista of hills and rippling grass was the castle, which—despite its enormous size—looked like it had been made of eleven massive stones. There was a simplicity to the landscape that Kristen appreciated. Perhaps it was because her life had grown so complicated.

“Too bad it didn’t work,” Hernandez said as she gathered all the flashbangs she had buried in the grassy hillside.

“I thought for sure the asshole would tell you he’d fight at dusk,” Amy said.

“I should have known he wouldn’t be so easy to trick,” Heartsbane said. “Still, Kristen, forcing him to fight in broad daylight was a masterful stroke.”

“Yeah, I wish I felt better about it. With Lumos gone, I don’t know how I’ll be able to defeat him. I’d be willing to bet that the venue he names will be watched twenty-four hours a day.”

“I might not be able to give him any Hernandez surprises, but you’ll think of something. You always do,” the explosives expert said.

“Everyone always thinks of something until they don’t. Then they’re dead,” she said. She hadn’t meant it to so sound so morose but that was how she felt.

“There’s nothing to be done now but train,” Heartsbane said. “I think Stonequest and I can do a decent job of attacking you simultaneously so it feels like the Masked One’s strikes. If you’re blindfolded as well—”

“It won’t make an iota of difference.”

Kristen turned to see who had interrupted Heartsbane. Decimus Aurelius strode from the castle, studied the broken doors, and shook his head with a little smirk and continued to approach.

“Aurelius. Thank you for your support.” She bowed formally.

“We have no time for pleasantries,” he replied. “I know time is short so will make this brief. If I may speak to you in private for a moment?” He glanced at the other three women who stood near her.

They simply stared implacably in response.

“No harm will come to her,” he said with a forced smile.

“We know it won’t,” Hernandez said.

“Because if you try shit, all it will take is a twitch of her aura for me to know,” Heartsbane said.

“And then I’ll crush you.” Amy smiled.

“But of course. If I do anything to this planet’s last hope for equality, crush away. Now, Kristen, if you please.”

She considered telling the old dragon there was nothing he could say to her that he couldn’t say in front of three of her most trusted friends, but she decided he might argue and it would merely waste more time. It wasn’t like he would be able to kill her in the time it would take for them to come to her aid. Plus, she trusted him.

They walked up a rolling hill and the grass beat at their waists and thighs. With the constant roar of the wind, it didn’t take long until they were well out of earshot. Aurelius was clever. He had walked with the wind instead of against it so their words would be carried out to sea, away from her friends and away from any ears that might have listened from inside the castle.

“I think we’re alone,” Kristen said.

He looked at her allies once more and nodded his agreement, then turned to her with a stern look on his face. “That was a damn foolish thing you did in there.”

“Wait, what?” She was more than a little surprised. “Aren’t you glad I stood up to Boneclaw? If I hadn’t, he’d be the leader right now. Well…no, I guess you could have stood up to him. Why didn’t you?”

“The fact that I had not challenged him should have told you something,” he replied.

She sucked a breath of air in through her teeth. “Go on.”

“You must remember that I am more than a thousand years older than you. I have seen Boneclaw do horrible things, and this was before him allegedly being the Masked One.”

“There’s nothing alleged—”

“No, of course not. It all makes sense, it truly does. He has never been outright malicious but he’s always sided with those who were. Sometimes, he won’t do it until the last moment but in the end, he always has. I’ve long detested him and his methods.”

“I know you don’t like him or what he’s done, so why not take a stand? Letting him get away with his conspiracies for hundreds of years is… Well, I respect you sir, but it’s cowardly.”

Decimus hung his head and focused his gaze on his feet lost in the windswept grass instead of looking her in the eye. “That is a fair accusation. And, unfortunately, accurate.” He took a deep breath. “I have not fought Lord Boneclaw because I know I cannot beat him. Even before you revealed him to be the Masked One and having power over shadow, I could not beat him.”

“But Lumos told me stories about you. You’re supposed to be a legend!”

“No, no, no.” He shook his head. “I am stronger and more powerful than most dragons and I know my way around a duel, but Boneclaw is the legend. He has survived scores of challenges over the centuries. He rose to become a member of the European Council and never lost a challenge to his power there, which is saying something because he was there for a long time, and European dragons like war as much as European humans do. Later, he challenged a North American Councilor and took his place. He eventually rose to the Global Council and never lost a duel there either. It’s not from a lack of challenges either. Many have tried to take his title because he looks weak. But I assure you, he is not. He is strong and he is vicious.”

“I’ve fought him before.”

“And it’s a miracle you’re still alive. It’s a first, to be honest.”

“What does that mean?” Her mouth was suddenly dry.

“It means that Boneclaw has killed every single dragon he has faced in single combat except you.”

“Excuse me?” Kristen frowned. “I thought duels were fought to mercy. Surely Boneclaw couldn’t have lasted this long if every duel he fought was to the death.”

“They weren’t to the death. That’s exactly the problem,” Aurelius said. “Duels at this level are almost always decided when one dragon admits defeat. To even attempt to become a Councilor, a dragon needs a considerable amount of wealth. That can’t be gathered overnight. Because of this, the dragons who challenge others to become Councilors want certain assurances that the centuries they worked accumulating wealth and clout won’t simply be erased if they ever try for more. Death is a possibility in any duel. All dragons accept that, but it’s rare.”

“Because if dragons couldn’t challenge each other for rank without fear of dying every time, the members of the Council would never change,” she guessed.

“Exactly. Even the original Dragon Council understood the dangers of other dragons being afraid to challenge for fear of death. Unfortunately, Boneclaw’s duels always end up in death anyway.”

“But how is that possible if the rules say the duel stops when someone asks for mercy?” Kristen asked. She tried to tell herself this was what she wanted anyway. Without a doubt, Boneclaw had to die. As long as he lived, he would continue to work to bring about a war that would burn the earth to ashes so he could stand atop the smoldering remains.

“Boneclaw always seems to find an excuse to kill them before ending the duel. Always. As in every. Single. Time. Sometimes, it was simply that their wounds were already so grievous that when they asked for the duel to end, they were already dying. That happens in dragon duels often enough—well, not often, but it’s certainly not unusual. Other duels with Boneclaw were worse, though. He’s ripped a dragon’s tongue out so they couldn’t ask for mercy. He’s crushed windpipes.

“I’ve seen him trigger an avalanche the moment the other dragon asked for the duel to be over. Boneclaw walked away as a mountain crushed his opponent. I’ve even seen him simply kill them even after they asked for mercy. He hasn’t done that in a long time as the blowback was serious, even for him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he risked the repercussions to murder you. Eventually, word got around and dragons stopped challenging him as much because everyone knew it was tantamount to suicide.”

She said nothing and her mouth had formed an “O” shape.

Decimus nodded at her understanding. Her aura made what she was feeling clear to him.

He turned to look at her friends who stood near the edge of the cliff with the wind blowing in their faces. “I hope you understand why I didn’t want to have this discussion in front of your friends.”

“You think I’ll die.”

“Unfortunately, I do. You are in quite deep now. I understand you are very powerful—extremely powerful for such a young dragon—but I simply do not see how it is possible for you to contend with Boneclaw’s strength and experience. And that was before it was made clear that he possessed shadow powers. I have never heard of him using those in a duel. Now that he can openly use them in his arsenal…well, the odds are stacked against you even further.”

“But…I trained with Lumos. I’ve practiced so much. I’m a much better warrior than when I first discovered my powers.”

“How much did Lumos’ training aid you in your last fight with Boneclaw? From the account I’ve heard, he had knocked you unconscious before Lumos interfered. For that matter,” he continued and bulldozed over the old dragon’s memory, “how much did all that knowledge help Lumos?”

“I… He had been in another battle. If it hadn’t been nighttime…”

Aurelius shook his head sadly. “Like I said, he’s never used his shadow powers before, although I’m sure he will choose a location where he had access to them. Kristen, I believe in you. I truly do. But I have to face the reality that you will die. It is the most likely possibility. Is there some way I can help with your team? If I allied with them, how long do you think they could last?”

“No—no, no, no. I can beat him. I must!”

“I want you to. I honestly do. If there’s something you can think of, any way I can help, please let me know. I don’t want you to fail. If you do, no one will be left to oppose him. I’ll try to protect your team, but he’s already labeled you as a traitor and a heretic. All the people under your protection will suffer the same fate you do.”

“Can’t you help me defeat him?” Kristen pleaded.

Aurelius’ aura pulsed with shame. “I know my powers and limitations far better than you do, Kristen. I am…I am helpless in this case. But I also understand my place. I cannot beat Boneclaw even without the powers of the Masked One. You must think of some way to defeat him because he will not hold back. I promise you that. If you lose this duel, you lose your life. And yet, as badly outmatched as you are, you are our best hope right now.”

“Je-sus,” she muttered. “Is there anything else I should know? Any comets heading for Earth? Any global pandemics about to break out soon?”

“Merely that I fully support you, Lady Hall, Steel Dragon.” He dug in his pocket and retrieved her investigator's badge. She’d recognize it anywhere as one of the seven points was slightly dented.

“How did you…”

“I palmed it when you threw it on the Council table. That was fantastic, by the way. The looks on their faces.” Aurelius grinned. “I hope you can win. I will miss you otherwise. Anyway, you should keep the badge. Windlock gave it to you and even if Boneclaw revoked your position, you should have something of his to remember him by. Maybe, if everything goes bad, it can be left to Larry. I know Windlock always loved that mage like a son.”

“Your vote of confidence is inspiring,” Kristen wanted to say, but she held her tongue as she pushed through the windswept grass to her friends. By the time she reached them, she had a smile on her face and her feelings hidden from all except the prying powers of Heartsbane.

Melissa Heartsbane looked at her with cold blue eyes and smiled. “That bad, huh?”

CHAPTER FIVE

The trip to Detroit was a somber one. Fortunately, it wasn’t particularly long. Once they left the island, Amy called Constance and together, the two mages opened a portal that blazed to life in front of Kristen and Heartsbane’s dragon forms and took them home to the Motor City.

They left the frigid air of the North Atlantic and reappeared over the familiar Detroit skyline. Thankfully, it was familiar. Timeflash had worked tirelessly with the mages to restore the city to its former glory since the fire tornado had ripped through it. She had done so much already. Most apartment blocks and swathes of public housing had already received her expert attention. Progress had also been made with the private homes as well as some of the more culturally significant parts of the city. Kristen pointed out that her favorite pizza place had stood for decades and that it was a rallying point in the community, so it was early on the list.

One thing that hadn’t been fixed was her base. To repair a building of that size required a huge amount of energy, power better spent on housing. It was a simple choice because there was little point in fixing the base without also replacing the gear and tech that had been lost. An apartment block was different. If Timeflash and her mages could restore the walls, roofs, electrical systems, and plumbing, people could resume their lives and refill their homes with new beds, books, and furniture.

Plus, some of the main base was gone. As the sphere the pixies created to protect them shrank, some of the building had been sliced away. Timeflash could put things back to the way they were, but she couldn’t recreate matter that had been lost in another dimension.

As a result, they didn’t return to the main building but the two smaller ones. One of these had been converted to housing and practically overflowed with occupants. Given the state of the world, everyone wanted to stay close in case World War Three—or would it be Four at this point?—broke out.

Kristen entered her new base of operations to find it crammed with people. Humans, mages, and dragons went about their business with determination. Some were cleaning while others worked on plans to reconstruct the old base. Dragons and mages were airborne and worked on synchronizing their attacks in preparation for another battle. Humans, mages, and dragons crowded into a gun range outside the base. The sound of their weapons served as an appropriate background noise for how everyone felt.

She called for her leaders and oldest friends. Together, they squeezed into a meeting room that didn’t even come close to comfortably fitting them all.

Drew, Keith, Butters, and Beanpole were present from her old SWAT team. Jim was gone, which hurt them all. She could see the pain of that recent loss in their eyes. The dragons had fared even worse. Stonequest was present, as was Timeflash—who looked exhausted—but Lumos and Emerald were both gone. In their place stood Katrina, the Iron Dragon, who looked uncomfortable. Larry and Constance—two mages with histories as different as could be—were the only two magic wielders until Amy arrived to join them.

Heartsbane, Hernandez, and Kristen followed the girl into the tight room. They were about to begin when her brother pushed in.

“How’d it go, Krissy?” Brian asked with a grin. He looked at her face and—being her brother—was able to read it far better than anyone could, including the dragons with their aura powers. “That bad, huh?”

Everyone groaned and began to complain and he threw his hands up in protest. “Don’t blame me.”

“Please at least tell us there is some good news,” Timeflash begged.

“There is good news and bad,” Kristen said, still standing, and motioned with her arms for everyone to sit and be quiet. “I guess it would make more sense if we start with the good. We were right. Boneclaw was attempting to become the head of the Global Dragon Council.”

“Well, of course a pig eats slop!” Butters crowed.

“Did you stop him?” Keith asked and sounded like a little kid asking about the ending for a comic book he had yet to read.

“We did…in a fashion,” she said.

Everyone cheered so loudly the cheap light fixtures on the ceiling rattled.

“Now for the bad—” She wasn’t quite sure how to say it, so it was both annoying and a relief when Hernandez interjected.

“She had to challenge Boneclaw to a duel to make that shit happen. It goes down in three days, and if our Steel Dragon doesn’t stop him, he becomes the dragons’ fearless leader.”

It was a total bummer to see so many faces filled with joy and excitement fade to disappointment and dread so quickly.

Stonequest cut through the general roar of disapproval. “I told you not to do that. Trying to surprise him with flash bombs was bad enough but giving him time to prepare for a proper duel…” He shook his head. “You’ve survived against him this far because you haven’t fought on his terms. When you did in the caves, you were almost killed.”

“So the flashbangs didn’t work, huh?” Keith asked Hernandez.

“They would have,” the woman complained. “The old pussy was too scared to leave his castle. You should have seen his face when we burst into the room. It seems I was the first person to ever bust in their old-ass base.”

“Maybe this is unfair, but is it possible to lay a trap for him?” Beanpole asked in a rare moment of verbal communication.

“It won’t be possible,” Stonequest said. “He’ll need to announce the location in—you said the duel was in three days?”

Kristen nodded. “Seventy-two hours. It’ll be at about noon.”

“Then he’ll have to give you thirty-six hours warning. But by that point, the area will be under surveillance. There is no way we’ll be able to interfere,” he said.

“I’m surprised you’d even consider such a thing, Stone,” Heartsbane said. “Traps aren’t particularly honorable.”

“Nothing about fighting the Masked One will be honorable,” he pointed out.

“Forgive me, but are you supposed to fight him one-on-one?” Constance asked. “We fought him together, and although my powers were limited at the time, he still showed a formidable amount of power. I do not see how good can come of this.”

“What about the arena?” Timeflash asked. “When Heartsbane, Emerald, and I fought him in the caves, we barely got out of there alive, but that was in the dark. You said this fight will be at noon, right?”

“Aurelius said the arena can’t give either of them an unfair advantage based on their powers. Is that true, Stone?” Heartsbane asked.

“It is. That means he can’t put in electrical transformers since you don’t do well with electricity, Kristen.” Stonequest said ponderously.

“So it can’t be in the dark?” Amy asked.

“Probably not, no,” he conceded. “But it seems foolish to think you’ll fight somewhere without shadow.”

“When they announce the location, can we appeal to make that happen?” Larry asked. He was somewhat familiar with dragon rituals. “Can we make it clear the shadows give him an unfair advantage?”

“It’s worth a try,” Stonequest said.

“Look, I know none of this is ideal,” Kristen conceded. “I had hoped the fight would be done and over with already, but we didn’t exactly have many options at the time. I did the only thing I could.”

“There’s no point in complaining about it now,” Drew said. “The question is what you will do to prepare for this fight in three days.” He was always the practical one. “From what I’ve seen, you can already outfight every dragon on our force. How are you supposed to get any better?”

“I can’t outfight every dragon,” she said and looked at Stonequest, Heartsbane, and Timeflash in turn. She expected the stone dragon to agree with her. He was the best in combat, after all, but he nodded grimly.

“Drew’s right about that. I’ve noticed the way you move after you trained with Lumos. You’re a natural warrior, Kristen, there’s no doubt about that. I wouldn’t want to fight you in earnest, not anymore.”

“I’m no fighter,” Timeflash said. “I have yet to finish fixing the city and I’m already exhausted.”

Kristen turned to Heartsbane. “Honestly, Steel? If you tried to fight me, I’d try to use my aura to convince you otherwise. There is not a dragon alive who wants to fight the Steel Dragon. Hell, Boneclaw didn’t want to fight you either. He would have given that skull to you and backed out the fight if you’d let him.”

“You didn’t get it back, then?” Drew asked.

She shook her head. “It was the only thing that achieved the duel. Plus—and I’m sorry if this is the dragon in me coming through—getting Jim’s skull back wouldn’t have changed much. Boneclaw still butchered him. He still defiled his body and he must still be punished.”

Her human team leader nodded, his face grim. “I’ll call his mother when we’re done here and let her know. It’s…tough, but you’re right. There is no way the Wonderkid will have an open casket.”

His words were followed by a moment of silence pregnant with grief.

Hernandez was the one who broke it. “But…if all these dragons and Boneclaw himself were scared, maybe Kristen has a chance.”

All three dragons shook their heads.

“I’m sorry, but beating one of us is nothing like fighting Boneclaw to the death. He’s been in hundreds of duels over the centuries,” Stonequest explained. “We’re cops. We stop unruly dragons but we’re not the level of fighter you need to be to sit on the Council. It’s a pity about Shimmerclaw. I bet she could have beat him.”

“Thanks for all your confidence, guys,” Kristen said and the sarcasm burned through her words.

“You misunderstand me, Kristen,” he said and held his hands up in surrender. “You have to defeat him. You must. We simply know that you cannot if you attempt to fight him in a duel of his devising.”

“They’re saying we need to change the game somehow,” Brian said. “You have to level up a new technique and try some different tactics. Try a different controller. That kind of thing.”

“Your wisdom never ceases to amaze,” she said as the shadow of a dragon passed over their base. “Or maybe we won’t have to wait after all.”

“That’s Amythist,” Heartsbane said. She was gifted with aura powers which meant she could identify other dragons more quickly and easily than the others.

“Look, I’ll go stretch my legs and say hi,” she said. “If anyone has anything—and I mean anything—let me know. No idea is too small and no notion too bizarre.”

CHAPTER SIX

Kristen left the base to see Amythist, but the old dragon was having none of it. She took her by the arm—leaning on her like she needed support and wasn’t an extremely powerful dragon—and told her to take her inside.

In silence, she led her to the conference room. Most of the group had left but Stonequest, Drew, and Larry were still milling about.

She pulled out a chair for their visitor and the old dragon settled in. Timeflash reappeared a moment later with a fresh pot of tea.

“Lemon balm? Oh, darling, you are too sweet,” Amythist said by way of thanks and Timeflash excused herself.

“It’s nice to see you, Lady Amythist,” Kristen said.

“You too, young lady. You too.” When she smiled, the wrinkles on her cheeks multiplied. “Although I do wish the circumstances were better. You have landed yourself in a God-awful mess this time.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, certain that Amythist was talking about the duel but also shocked that she could know about it. The challenge had been made less than an hour before. She had thought that with Amy’s portal, there was no way the news could have outraced them.

“Oh, don’t look so flummoxed, child. I know about the duel. Everyone knows about the duel—absolutely everyone. We dragons do have telephones, you know, and it's not like the news of late hasn’t been worth paying attention to.”

“That’s true, Lady Amythist,” Larry said. “But sometimes, it seems like you always seem to know about everything before most folks around you do. Whatever asshole invented social media must have modeled his algorithm after whatever you do to stay in the loop.”

“Well, of course I know about things before most do. When you grow to be as old as I am, the only thing worth anything anymore is information. In fact, my knowing so much is a result of me being old and the reason I managed to live this long. All you little whippers could learn a thing or two from me if you wish to last more than a few centuries.”

“Gee, thanks,” Larry said and rolled his eyes at dragon longevity.

“Maybe your experience could be the thing I need,” Kristen said. “Aurelius said that unless I can find some kind of edge against Boneclaw in this duel, I’m toast.”

“That is a fair assessment,” the old dragon said. “Tell me, what kind of edge do you think you can acquire in three days?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure,” she admitted. “My plan was to spend the next three days fighting as much as I can. I thought maybe Katrina might be able to give me the edge I need.”

“Your twin? The Iron Dragon?” Stonequest asked.

“She’s not my twin,” she said. “But Katrina has as much raw power as I do and she’s a damn good fighter. Maybe she can push me to my next level.”

“Even if she is better than you, it won’t make a difference,” Amythist scolded. “Learning another way to use your weight in a brawl won’t help an iota. And, despite your steel skin, I know you’re not dense enough to think it would.”

Kristen nodded. She knew their visitor was right. Katrina might be able to make her slightly faster or be able to use her powers to gain a little leverage, but that was the problem. Any edge she gave her would be negligible. She was facing a master duelist and a beast of shadow. To defeat him, she would need more than that.

“But what else can I do?” she implored.

“Why, come with me for a cup of tea, of course. I’ve almost finished this lemon balm and I have a lovely harvest of dried jasmine at home that is ready for tea.”

“I don’t think the tea will give me an edge that the Iron Dragon won’t.”

“Not the tea, no, but the…idea I’d like to share with you might.”

Hope bloomed in her chest. “I always forget they called you the Mage Eater. You have a fighting technique you’ve been sitting on this whole time?”

“No, not exactly. There is, however, something we can try although it will not be easy.”

“Nothing about being a dragon has been easy,” Kristen said. “I’ve been blown up, shot, stabbed, and sliced a hundred different ways. I’ve lost friends. I can take whatever it is.”

“That is the very problem, my dear. This will be especially difficult for a headstrong young dragon like yourself. But come along. I would love to have tea while the day is still light.”

“And we’ll spar tonight?” She tried to make sure. Without a doubt, she admired the old dragon—the work she had done to rehabilitate the captured dragons was nothing short of miraculous—but still, what could Amythist teach her that Lumos couldn’t? He had at least looked like a fighter. She looked like a little old woman who was too obsessed with tea.

“I would not use that word, but perhaps it’s as accurate as any other,” the old dragon said. “Do come along. I’ve finished my tea and all this talk has made me all the more thirsty. Will you come with me? The choice is yours, of course.”

“I…sure, I mean, yes. I’ll come. But how long do you think this will take? I have three days and I intend to use them as best as I can.”

“Well, that all depends on you, doesn’t it?” Amythist replied. “It only took me a few centuries to learn what I hope to show you in a few days. I hope your optimism is warranted and that you end up with some time for sparring, but I would not hold my breath.”

“A few centuries?” Kristen asked. She had heard similar proclamations from Lumos about his methods, but they had at least had weeks, not hours.

“I hope you will be a quicker study than I because of course, if you are not, we are quite…what’s the human word? Ah yes. Fucked.”

She nodded at the dire assessment. That much was true. Still, to put off training with Katrina for the promise of tea seemed irresponsible to say the least.

“Stonequest, what do you think?” she asked.

“If she can offer you some kind of edge, take it,” he told her. “Even if she is being cryptic about it.”

“Some things cannot be explained but must be shown,” Amythist said.

“Larry?”

“We would never have rescued you from that sphere if not for Amythist’s help and the pixies,” Larry said. “I’d trust the old dragon—no offense, Lady Amythist—with my life, and I’ve already trusted her with yours. I say go for it.”

“All right then. That’s good enough for me. Drew?”

“Ma’am, you know I know little and less about any of this. I’d respect these two opinions.”

“I’m not asking your opinion. I’m leaving you in charge,” Kristen said.

He saluted. “Yes, ma’am! I will do everything I can to keep the peace intact while you go and work on whatever this is but please, don’t be too long.”

“She’ll be back in less than three days.” Amythist winked. “I can promise you that. Whether that will be enough time is another question, but the duel is set. Is it not?”

No one answered. They didn’t need to.

She followed the old dragon outside and the two took to the air. While she tried to enjoy the short flight to the estate outside Detroit, she’d be lying to herself if she said she did.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The flight was blessedly quick. They arrived in Amythist’s overgrown garden of an estate and the old dragon led Kristen inside her cottage, shushing young dragons out of the way and shooing pixies off as she did so.

Once inside, she was once again astonished by how much Amythist had crammed into the tiny home. Some of it was typical dragon treasure—a few jeweled goblets, a chest with iron hinges and finely wrought gold detail, silver platters, paintings that belonged in museums, and similar items. But bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, glass jars were crammed full of seeds, and piles of root vegetables rested between collections of insect wings and feathers. Her home was like something out of a fairytale, and the pixies trying to peek through the kitchen window only added to the effect.

“Now,” Amythist said, cleared two piles of books, and made two chairs appear out of the mess. “Let me get that jasmine tea.”

“Wait, you’re serious?” Kristen asked.

“Oh yes,” her hostess said from the kitchen. “The jasmine is from my garden and it is divine. I know we dragons are prone to exaggeration, but this is the best harvest I have had in years. It would be a shame to not taste some.”

“Well, sure then,” she agreed. “And after that, we’ll get started?”

“Patience, young one, patience. Tea cannot be rushed, nor can it last longer than the warmth in a cup.”

“Er…right,” she said and sat.

Amythist poured them each a cup of tea, then sat in the chair next to her. Kristen did not fail to notice that the small table on which the old dragon had poured the beverage was not at all cluttered. It seemed she truly did prioritize her tea.

Her hostess lifted her cup to her lips, took a sip, and smiled. “If you’ll give me a moment to gather my thoughts,” she said, leaned back, and sipped her tea again. Her smile somehow became even wider.

Kristen sipped hers. It was good and tasted like jasmine, which was pleasant, she supposed. She looked at Amythist. The old dragon still had her eyes closed and wore a smile that eased every wrinkle on her face.

A little out of her depth, she sipped her tea again and tried to enjoy the delicate flavor and relax and…clear her mind? It was an odd situation for the Steel Dragon and she didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to do. How could she sit there wasting time with everything that was racing through her mind?

Had it been dumb to challenge Boneclaw as she had? In the moment, she had thought it was her only choice. She had hoped that by outlining his crimes, his hold over the Council would crack. After all, Shimmerclaw had managed some semblance of control for a long time. How had he so fully stolen all her allies?

She had known that outlining his crimes would end in conflict but had hoped that others on the Council would lead that battle and they would all then deal with Boneclaw together. But there were so many problems with that. As soon as she had discovered that he had already been elected head of the Council, she should have aborted the plan.

Boneclaw still would have taken power, but her force would not be faced with the murder of their leader in three days. Maybe she could have continued to challenge his power or she could work to change minds. But now, she had three days and her enemy had an easy way out. The duel only had to go the same way every other duel he had ever participated in had.

Of course, the idea that he could only kill her in a duel was a complete fallacy. He could move through shadow the way a bird moved through the air. As far as she could tell, he could kill her anytime he wanted. Nowhere was safe from the dark. Even if she took to sleeping in a tanning bed, it wasn’t like light hurt the Masked One. It only made him solid. And—as Aurelius had pointed out so firmly—he was quite an adept fighter.

That was the worst part about this entire situation—the threat of Boneclaw being able to kill her anytime he wanted. She hated that. Feeling vulnerable twenty-four hours a day sucked.

But challenging him to a duel didn’t change that. He could attack her there if he wanted to. She doubted the old woman and her tea would be able to stop him, no matter how complex the bouquet.

Kristen looked at the old dragon. She still sat with her eyes closed and a smile plastered on her face. Had she fallen asleep? Was this a trick? She wanted to say something but she thought of Lumos. Her old mentor would have told her to exercise patience.

Oh, Lumos. Why did you have to die? And on top of it, The Masked One had taken Jim’s life too. Their deaths—more than anything—were the impetus for her to try to stop Boneclaw so soon. She missed them both terribly. Jim had truly been the Wonderkid. He was always smiling and always perfect, whether in a shootout or a press conference.

And Lumos…she couldn’t believe how much losing the old dragon hurt. He had been gone for only a few days, yet she had felt the ache of losing him grow rather than diminish. If she hadn’t lost him, she might have been able to control herself when confronted with Boneclaw wearing Jim’s skull like a fucking mask.

Kristen spared another glance at Amythist. This time, the dragon took a sip of tea while she watched, so at least she hadn’t fallen asleep. Again, she wanted to clear her throat but thought about her life since she had become a police officer for the Detroit Police Department.

How simple everything had seemed then. She would be a police officer and would assist people who called for help. After a few years of learning how the system worked, she would try to tackle the corruption and racism she knew ran through almost all police departments.

She chuckled quietly. Had her life turned out so different from what she had planned? She had always thought she could be a cop who would make a difference, who would help police the police themselves. Now, she was a dragon who policed dragons. Instead of fighting for people only, she was fighting for all beings everywhere.

Seeing it in those terms made her feel like she at least wasn’t completely off base. She still attempted to tackle an institution that was far bigger and older than herself. When all was said and done, she was still merely one person trying to make a difference in a world that could feel indifferent or, at worst, cruel.

Although when she’d been a cop she’d never been asked to sit and sip tea while a serial killer was on the loose.

Finally, she cleared her throat.

Amythist only smiled more widely. Kristen hadn’t thought that possible. “This tea will work wonders for your cough,” the old dragon said.

“Yep, I think it has,” she said and swallowed the rest of it in one gulp. “In fact, I feel rested and recharged and ready to go. Are we ready to start training?”

“Not yet my dear. We still have an entire pot to drink. Wait until you taste your second cup.” Amythist winked mysteriously.

“We can’t simply sit here, Lady Amythist. We need to do something. I have three days—less now. Less than seventy hours to get ready. Every minute counts.”

Amythist sighed, opened her eyes, and looked at a cuckoo clock ticking on the wall.

“My dear, it has been five minutes. You are not in such dire straits that five minutes will make a difference.”

“Really? Because every dragon I’ve talked to has made it very clear that my straits are extremely dire.”

“Perhaps I misspoke. You are indeed in trouble, but if you cannot master even a little patience, you will not be able to master anything I show you. If five minutes was too long for you, learning this technique will be extremely difficult.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously indeed. Patience is key to what I show you. It is key to everything. If you are to succeed, you will need every ounce of patience you can muster.”

“Okay, fine. If I need to be patient, I’ll be patient. Can you at least tell me what kind of technique I’ll use so I can focus on that during my”—Kristen sighed—“second cup of tea?”

“Demanding answers is no way to improve your patience, young one, but perhaps you are right. I feel refreshed and ready to show you what I know.”

“And that is?” she asked after a pause so long that she thought Amythist might have fallen asleep with her eyes open.

“How to use your magical powers, my dear.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Amythist, I already know how to use my powers. Stonequest says I have more control than most dragons, in fact.” She turned a single fingertip to steel and showed it to her companion, then made the steel extend down the finger and from there to the others. Once her entire hand was metal, she shifted it into its dragon form so her wrist turned into a steel claw instead of a steel hand.

“That is most impressive,” Amythist agreed. “You have far more control over your shifting than most dragons. More than me, certainly. Your control over all your dragon powers is quite impressive.”

Kristen ground her teeth. “Then why am I here?”

“You are here precisely because of this control. Your ability to manipulate your steel form and your shifting ability are what give me hope that you can learn more.”

“There’s more?” she asked.

“Oh yes, child, much more.” The old dragon put her teacup down and leaned back in her chair. She extended one old withered hand and turned it palm up and held it there for a moment, breathing in and out as if waiting for something to happen.

And then she summoned a huge ball of light in the palm of her hand.

“Child, there is much more to dragon magic than almost any dragon is aware of.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kristen almost tumbled out of her chair at the display of power. She most certainly spilled her tea all over herself and soaked the front of her black uniform with fragrant jasmine liquid.

“How did you do that?” she asked, her voice filled with wonder like a child who’d seen something miraculous. “I didn’t realize you had light powers like Lumos did. But…how can that help me? This duel is supposed to be one-on-one.”

Amythist chuckled. “Oh, child, I would never, ever enter in any kind confrontation with Boneclaw. His reputation has preceded him for centuries. I eliminated a few mages in my day, but I’m no duelist.”

She swallowed hard. Despite the tea she had been drinking, her throat felt dry. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. Dragon powers are innate. It’s interesting that you have light powers and have kept them hidden, but what am I supposed to do with them? I was born with steel powers. I’ll have to use them against the Masked One.”

“Is that right?” the old dragon asked. She pointed to her teapot and it lifted off the table and filled her cup. A spoon then elevated and began to stir honey into the beverage. With her other hand, she reached under the teacup. Blue flames ignited in her palm and warmed the delicate china.

“How can you have so many powers?” Kristen asked, trying to understand. “Were you born with all these gifts?”

“No child, that’s not the case at all,” Amythist said after a sip of her tea.

“Then how?”

“Dragons are magical creatures,” the old dragon explained. “We are like pixies, in a way, or dwarves or even mages. Magic is in our bodies. It powers every cell. It suffuses us and we are inseparable from it. But you know this, of course. Should dragon powers be possible by the laws of your human physics?”

“Well, I’m no scientist, but no. Merely the fact that we can fly and also crash through brick walls doesn’t hold up. If we had hollow bones like birds, we wouldn’t be strong enough to do what we do, but we can still fly.”

“Precisely,” Amythist agreed. “Our fire is the same. We are not snakes. There is no gland that we must replenish. Well, there is a body part of sorts, but like our entire dragon form, it’s steeped in magic and is only possible because of magic. Auras, again, should not strictly be possible by the laws of this world, and yet I can read your confusion as clearly as a book.”

“Okay. Fair enough, I guess I knew some of that, but it doesn’t explain how you can use these other powers.”

“Magic tends to come out in various forms of expression. Some dragons only have the ability to transform to and from human form and breathe fire. In fact, those two powers and some ability to read the emotional auras of others seem to be almost universal among dragons. But of course, these are not the only dragon powers. You have quite an unusual one.”

“My ability to turn to steel.”

“It should be utterly impossible. I am a gardener and a caretaker of living things. I tend to a few young dragons now and enjoy the pixies in my garden, but over my centuries of life, I have cared for many creatures. Humans, horses, dogs, a seal—briefly, but that’s a long story.

“Skin is an organ with many purposes. It regulates heat, protects us from infection, and tells us about our environment. It is a complex, many purposed organ. Replacing it with steel should not be possible, nor should it allow you to still function. You should die simply from having your body heat trapped inside you every time you transform. And then there’s the fact that your skin can block bullets and yet you can still move when wearing it. No steel on earth can do this—not steel that’s not suffused with magic, that is. Your skin is more like dwarf skin than it is metal. And dwarves, of course, are magic.”

“Do all the unusual powers work like this?” Kristen asked.

“But of course. Many dragons have managed to gain enough connection to their innate magic that they can do other things with it. Lumos’s light was one such gift. Timeflash’s time-warping power is another rather unusual one. Stonequest’s rocky exterior, too. These powers are the result of innate magic meshing with the personality of the dragon in question. Only dragons who already have a deep connection with their inner magical self have these abilities.”

“That’s why some dragons don’t gain those powers? They don’t…connect with their magical self?”

“Indeed. In truth, the lack of many dragons developing special powers depresses me. Although of course, if every dragon did develop these powers, the last ten thousand years would have been even more complicated than they were.”

“But why don’t they?”

Amythist shrugged and levitated the tea set into the kitchen. “Quite frankly, I believe it’s a lack of imagination. Your friend Emerald—rest his soul—was driven to be as powerful as possible because he was nothing but a common dragon.”

“He was as strong a fighter as I’ve ever seen,” she said in defense of her deceased friend. “He beat Diamontus in battle. Not many could have done that.”

The old dragon nodded. “Perhaps he wasn’t a common after all, then. I know the boy loved to train. He built his physique in both his forms. Perhaps that’s how his magic manifested itself. Think about it. Does the amount of weight you lift in your dragon form have much to do with your human body?”

She wanted to say it did and point out that she had trained hard in her human body and that had made her a faster and stronger dragon. But that didn’t seem quite right either. “Boneclaw doesn’t exactly look like he goes to the gym.”

“An unfortunately accurate example.” Amythist began to pace. Her eyes twinkled with excitement. Kristen wondered if this was the first time she had ever told anyone about these theories. “Boneclaw has tapped into this power. He may not know it the same way I do, but he understands that the will of a sentient being goes a long way. Emerald had convinced himself that he could train to make himself stronger, and the magic supported that because he believed it so deeply. I don’t know how Boneclaw fuels his abilities, but I know they are as strong as any dragon’s. This has to do with his confidence.”

“Wait, so are you saying Boneclaw might have willed his shadow powers into existence?”

The old dragon smiled and clapped her hands excitedly. “You are such a quick study. It took me twenty-two years and thousands of cups of tea to understand what the pixies were trying to tell me. You got it much quicker.”

“But then why don’t all dragons gain these powers if it's as simple as wanting them?”

“Oh, there’s much more to it than simple desire, my dear.” Amythist tutted. “Our powers express themselves from our subconscious. In the early days of dragons, there were only commons. No one knows who the first dragon was with special abilities, but I believe it was their discovery that allowed the rest of us to have the gift. Once one dragon discovered they could do more than breathe fire and change shape, others understood that they could too. From there, powers manifested based on subconscious desires. Boneclaw’s powers likely manifested from him not wanting to be seen. Lumos was the opposite. He wanted to be a shining light of virtue.”

“I first turned to steel to stop a rocket from blowing a friend up,” Kristen said thoughtfully. “Do you think if something different had happened—like say one of my friends was thrown into a lake—my powers could have manifested differently?”

“I do!” Her companion’s excitement was appealing.

“And you’re saying I can gain more powers now? Like you have? Simply by willing them into existence?”

“No, my dear. We are not mages. We do not learn our powers from teachers but grow them from our subconscious. Any dragon could gain additional powers if they were instructed properly, but the same instruction won’t work for all dragons. Some are simply too attached to their physical forms or the powers they already control to learn more.

“Take Diamontus, for example. He was an extremely powerful, extremely arrogant dragon. Most powers came into existence for dragons in times of great need or great duress. I do not think a trial could exist that would have been able to push that dragon to realize more powers, because he knew—subconsciously—that he was the strongest there was. This is the case for most of them. That’s why duels end in death or defeat instead of the loser gaining a new ability.”

“You said dragons are like the other magical creatures. Does that mean dwarves could learn magic too?” Kristen asked.

“It’s an interesting hypothesis and one we might be able to test if all species truly valued each other. I hope that if you can defeat the Masked One, we can begin to ask those questions as a society. What other questions do you have?”

“Only two.” She took a deep breath. This one would be a doozy. “Amythist, you said you were there in the beginning, that you remember when all dragons were commons. Does that mean you’re one of the oldest dragons alive?”

“It does, child. I am one of the only ones still surviving. I’m older than Boneclaw, you know, and older than that poor boy Lumos too. But that wasn’t your question, was it?”

“No, ma’am. My question is—since you were there from the start—do you know where dragons come from? They’re not in the fossil record. There are no drawings of them in caves. Sometimes, I don’t see how people could have even evolved with dragons flying about. Dinosaurs prevented any mammal bigger than a rat from evolving, so why did dragons let people come into being?”

“Your last question is the more interesting one, although it's flawed. I don’t believe dragons let humans come into being at all. I believe it was the opposite.”

“Wait, what?”

“I believe that dragons were created by a mage.”

“That’s impossible—isn’t it?”

“It is the only thing that makes sense to me. I don’t remember my childhood, exactly like humans. No dragon remembers our earliest years. I don’t remember a mother and indeed, there are no dragons older than me. And yet, when I was a girl, there were mages. Humans’ gift has always been the power of will. You are the only creatures insane enough to divert a river or build a city.”

“Beavers and ants do that,” Kristen said, feeling like her brother.

“You’re also the only creature who would argue with an unfathomably old dragon who is trying to help you unlock the powers you will need to survive in three days.”

“Right, sorry.”

“As I was saying,” Amythist continued. “It’s my belief that exactly like pixies and dwarves, dragons were created. I can not guess at the intention but it is all that makes sense to me. Think of the dragon. All of us have a human form. Even the poor souls who were trapped in their dragon bodies by the technomages for their entire lives have a human form. Furthermore, we have always lived with people. There is no continent of dragons. We need people like dwarves and pixies do because we are people.”

She wished she had another cup of tea to give herself time to let that sink in. It couldn’t be possible…it simply couldn’t. Dragons had ruled people since history began. There were stories of them in every human culture because they had always been there. But had they? What if they weren’t any older than the earliest parts of human history? What if they were part and parcel of the human story? What if mages had made them—to protect themselves, to inspire awe, to try to become immortal—and the world had lived with the results of that fateful experiment ever since?

For her, it made sense in a way nothing about dragons ever had before. Because where else could they have come from? Mages had proven that they could create new life. They had done it twice in history. Maybe they had done it a third time, even earlier. Perhaps it had also been a war but not one fought between dragons and mages but between mages and the same enemy Boneclaw himself now wished to decimate—the masses of humanity.

And if dragons had come from mages, was it so insane to think that their powers were developed in a process similar to a mage like Amy or Constance gaining new control over their magic? That brought her to her next question.

“But how do you have such a wide variety of powers?” she asked.

Amythist smiled. “I was once a dragon with no powers at all. As I said, we all were, in those early days. A common, as some say today, although I prefer the term vanilla. I could fly, transform, breathe fire, sense other’s auras, and that was it. More of these new dragons began to emerge. They had abilities so beautiful it made my heart ache. Some of them could swim to the very bottom of the ocean and see things I could only dream of. Others could tap into the very forces of the earth. There were dragons who could shake the ground beneath our feet or make the wind blow or the rain fall. For centuries—no, millennia—I tried to discover some path to one of these powers—any of these powers—and came up with nothing.”

“What changed?”

“I made a breakthrough a few centuries ago. It was after the Second Mage War. I was able to touch my inner magic and gradually learned how to use it for a variety of purposes. I can do more than these parlor tricks, but I am still learning and always trying to find new ways to use that power.”

“So you brought me here to teach me…parlor tricks?”

“Oh no, dear child. If all goes as I plan, the next three days will be the hardest of your entire life and you will learn things no dragon has ever mastered. That is if you survive.”

CHAPTER NINE

Amy climbed the stairs to the roof of the base and looked out over the skyline of Detroit. Never, not in a thousand years, had she imagined she might one day stand where she was now and do the things she had done. She grew up in rural Maine in a town with nothing more exciting than a yarn store. After college, she had spent time in big cities but nothing worked out for her. She had been happy to move home and ready to live the life a small town required.

Until she became a mage and Kristen appeared.

She would forever be in the Steel Dragon’s debt. She knew that and was content with it. In fact, being in her debt was positive. It meant she had someone to be loyal to and someone to care for and fight alongside.

What had been even more amazing about meeting her was that she wasn’t the only new person who came into her life. The young mage found a new family in the Steel Dragon’s team. She discovered a group where she belonged and where she mattered. And then Lumos had died and it was all her fault.

Her mind constantly told her that she should have been able to defeat the Masked One. She was the strongest mage in centuries, maybe ever. And yet, when Lumos had gone to fight for Kristen, she had been too tired to do anything about it. Maybe if she had trained harder, or used her powers more carefully, or done something better, Lumos wouldn’t be dead.

Amy missed the old gold dragon. She missed how his advice always seemed hopelessly out of date and also perfect for the moment. She missed the way they’d race across the sky and she missed his mustache.

But his death was not the worst thing that could happen. As painful as it was, his death was in the past. Far worse was what might happen in the future. Losing him hurt far more than she had expected it to. If the Masked One killed Kristen too, she didn’t know how she would live with herself.

Losing Lumos was painful, but at least she could tell herself that the dragon had led a long life. Millennia, in fact. He’d known what he was getting into and had always wanted to face the Masked One. It was something he’d told her on numerous occasions.

Kristen wasn’t like that. She was a regular girl like Amy who had somehow stumbled onto godlike powers. Her whole life lay ahead of her and she wasn’t ready to die—how could she be? She had never agreed to have a rival who was thousands of years old and could fight from the very shadows under someone’s feet. If the Masked One killed her, Amy knew the pain would be even worse than when Lumos had died.

She could not allow that to come to pass.

As she looked at the twinkling lights of the city and the scant stars in the sky—how different it was from northern Maine, where there were hardly any lights and an uncountable amount of stars—she wrestled constantly with the problem.

History didn’t do much to encourage her. Kristen had already fought the Masked One—more than once too. She had fought him in Mammoth Cavern where, if not for the quick action of the other dragons, she would have been defeated. And she had fought him inside the sphere of void space as well. Amy had only seen the aftermath of that battle—her friend’s unconscious body being hurled through the roof—but it was more than enough to know the battle hadn’t gone well.

Lumos had fought Boneclaw as well and lost. From what she had seen, it hadn’t even been that close. The Masked One took a few hits early in the fight, but as soon as the environment changed to suit his abilities, he was able to annihilate the golden dragon despite his formidable fighting prowess. She didn’t harbor any illusions that he would play fair in this fight. It meant the odds against Kristen were not good, to put it mildly.

But what could she do? She knew she couldn’t intervene in the duel itself. There would be dragons and possibly mages present. Her control of magic was not subtle enough for her to even pretend she could help without anyone noticing. But she had to help her. She couldn’t lose her at the hands of Boneclaw, not like she had lost Lumos.

Oh, Lumos, Amy lamented. She looked at the wreckage of the old main building of the base. It was still a messy cairn for a wonderful dragon.

She used her magic to pick herself up by the collar of her shirt—feeling appropriately like a sad puppy—and levitated to the wreckage.

Contractors were supposed to arrive in the morning to begin hauling the debris away so reconstruction could begin. Given that Kristen was supposed to fight the Masked One in three days—two and a half, now—it seemed it might have made more sense for them to delay the construction. Although maybe that would be worse. As it was now, the building was still an artifact of Lumos’ and the Masked One’s battle. The walls they had thrown each other into were still crushed in the same shapes. The pieces of concrete they’d hurled at each other had been left where they’d fallen.

It was mostly the same, anyway. The old dragon’s body had been removed. The space where he had been buried was clear and the rubble was piled neatly alongside. It was, she thought sadly, like a cairn for one of the greatest dragons who ever lived.

Amy moved to the cleared space and knelt on the shattered concrete. Unable to help herself, she began to cry. They’d unburied Lumos’s body to find it bruised and broken. In the morning, when the sun had found it, the old dragon simply evaporated like morning dew. She had tried hard to keep something of him—a keepsake or memento—but she’d come up with nothing. All she had was memories, which were not nearly enough right now.

“Goddammit, why did you have to die?” she asked between the tears. It was so fucking unfair that he had to die. He had been good. He had fought for what was right and he’d still lost. Was the universe so cold? To her, it felt like they were in the void space Kristen had described—a dark, desolate universe devoid of hope and light.

She pushed to her feet, knowing that if she didn’t, she would simply cry and cry and cry until there were no tears left. Although she needed the release, she didn’t have time for that. Kristen didn’t have time for that.

The young mage walked closer to where Lumos’ body had been and stared at the empty space amongst all the rubble. It almost glowed in the harsh glare of the floodlights that Kristen had ordered set up in an attempt to keep the Masked One—he was merely a stupid dragon named Boneclaw she told herself fiercely—at bay. It almost hurt her eyes, seeing how bright it was up close compared to the night sky. The base was awash with light except for one place.

Near the edge of the cleared area, there was a stone that did not reflect any light at all. She narrowed her eyes and realized that was not quite true. One side of it seemed to be as black as coal or ink, but the tip of the other side was the off-white of bone.

Amy picked it up. It was not a stone at all but a dragon scale. She held it to the light and tried to match it to one of the dragons on the team with no success. It wasn’t any of Kristen’s closest allies and try as she might, she couldn’t match it to any of the other dragons who worked for them either. None of them were black or bone colored.

In a sudden wash of clarity, she realized there was only one dragon it could have come from. Boneclaw must have lost the scale during his fight with Lumos.

How bizarre it was to hold this token of her best friend’s foe and her other best friend’s killer in her hand. To think that she had proof of his mortality. He could be injured. Lumos had done so.

The evil dragon had always been so careful to remain in shadow form most of the time and not allow any parts of his body to fall free and be captured. But the battle with Lumos was intense enough that at least this one scale broke away. Another dragon might feel that this proved Boneclaw’s mortality. A dwarf might see it as a chink in his armor. A human might see it as a totem of bad luck.

But Amy was a mage.

She held it in her hand and let her magic flow into it to taste it and feel it. The scale still resonated with his aura and she smiled. She could use it to track him. Of course, she would have to be careful. If she got too close and he was in shadow, she knew how the fight would end. But if she could surprise him and flood him with light the way Lumos had, then…drop a mountain or a skyscraper or something on him, that might do it. Even dragons couldn’t withstand everything.

Encouraged by the possibilities, she pushed a little more magic into the scale. She could feel that it wanted to return to its body and pumped magic into the idea to strengthen the desire to be part of the whole that made it. It took patience as she fed these intentions into the scale but finally, she had him.

She could tell where he was.

Her gaze drifted to the North, across Detroit, and beyond the suburbs. Was he in Michigan? Hiding out in the upper peninsula perhaps? Amy didn’t want to push the tracking ability too far on the off chance that Boneclaw might be able to sense her coming, but she had what she needed. She could use the scale like a compass to take her to him. With it, she would be able to surprise him enough to overpower him and he would die.

The young mage considered telling someone. Maybe Larry could help her hide her power? Perhaps Stonequest could help her in a fight? But no. She didn’t know enough about the rules of the duel to risk anything but the most secret of operations. For all she knew, Kristen’s team attacking Boneclaw might nullify the entire duel.

It would be far better if she could catch up to him, kill him, and return undetected. Kristen would go to the duel as planned, Boneclaw wouldn’t arrive, and they would have to declare her the victor. It was possible another dragon might fight in his place, but surely none would pose as a big a threat as the shadow dragon.

Amy summoned her skateboard from her room in the base. She felt it roll through a hallway, grind a rail in a stairway, and do a triple kickflip out the window before it glided to her side.

She had to do this, and she had to do it alone.

No more of her friends would die from this monster. Not if the most powerful mage in the world could help it.

Her mind made up, she climbed atop her skateboard, pushed off, and ollied into the sky, following where the scale pointed her. She didn’t say goodbye because she would be back in the morning and the world would be a safer place because of it.

CHAPTER TEN

“Are you saying I could do what Lumos could?” Kristen asked Amythist.

“I am saying that if you can master the technique of learning magic, you can do far more than he ever could,” the old dragon responded from the kitchen. She had it in her mind to serve cookies and seemed to be tearing the entire kitchen apart trying to locate them.

“I…uh, yeah? That sounds great. I can see how doing more than changing shape and armoring up could give me an edge in the battle against Boneclaw. But are you sure it’s possible? He has far more powers than I do and his are incredibly deadly.”

“It will be impossible if you cannot let yourself believe, child,” Amythist said and returned empty-handed. “A key component—no, the key component—will be removing the mental blocks you have in your mind.”

“I’ve already come to terms with being a dragon,” she quipped. “Learning how to throw light doesn’t sound that insane comparatively.”

“A very good point, my dear. A very good point. You grew up thinking you were a regular human. Learning that you were a dragon and could turn to metal must have been quite a shock to your definition of what was possible. I hope that will be enough.”

“Enough?” she asked. “I’m ready. I’m totally on board with learning whatever you can teach me.”

“Good. That’s very good, but you see even now, your subconscious betrays you. You must learn these techniques. Period. It doesn’t matter what I can teach you. It matters what you learn. For this to work, the subconscious blocks you have must be shattered so you can walk through them into new realms of possibility. This is not easily done.”

“You said it would be difficult. I accept that. If it’s pain, I can take it. Nothing would be more painful than watching the Masked One’s destruction sweep across the globe. Please, let me try.”

Amythist smiled warmly. “I think you will succeed in this, Kristen, I truly do. But you must understand that it took me centuries to learn everything I have. You don’t have that, which means teaching you will necessarily be more difficult.”

“I’m ready for anything.”

“There are two options. The…easier choice is simply to let me do my best to teach you what I know. I am sure I could teach you some…parlor tricks, as you called them.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but we both know I’m going to need as much power as possible.”

The old dragon nodded and looked out her window to her front garden. “I know, my dear, I know. That is the problem. I do not know how much you will learn before the three days are up. I’ll do my best, of course, but there are limits to what we can do in this realm.” She cast a wary glance at her.

At that moment, Kristen understood that this offer was more than she had realized. Amythist wasn’t only giving her the opportunity to learn a few new abilities but a chance to see into the very threads of existence that held the universe together.

“Are you talking about other…dimensions or whatever? Because if you are, I’m not afraid. I already went to one, a horrible place of nothing but inky darkness. If…if returning there will somehow…will somehow help, I can do it.” Tears came to her eyes as she offered to go back to the place that had taken Jim from her and precipitated the death of Lumos. She didn’t want to return to that nothingness, never again and not ever. But she would. She would face the void if that meant stopping Boneclaw from realizing his sick fantasy.

“I do not know if you will be asked to return to the in-between place, but it would be wise to assume you will face things that seem far more malicious than the empty maw of nothingness.”

“I don’t understand. If not there, then where?”

“Come outside with me. You said you are willing, which means that as it is, we are wasting time we both know is in short supply.”

“And you’ll train me in the garden?” she asked as they walked down the front steps and out into the overgrown garden.

“No, my dear. Our second option is to ask for help. You see, I did not learn about these secrets entirely on my own. I had help from the pixies.” Amythist winked and looked at the garden. “Which I guess gives the little cretins the right to steal my cookies!”

The tinkling laughter of the creatures—so reminiscent of bells—came from a particularly overgrown rose bush. A moment later, a cookie launched from somewhere in the thick, thorny stems, and exploded into crumbs on Kristen’s face.

“She can’t even catch a cookie! What makes you think she can catch on to anything we have to say?” a tiny voice shouted before falling back into laughter.

“Wait, was that a test? I can catch a cookie. Throw another cookie,” she demanded, which merely earned more tinkles of laughter from the pixies.

“You cannot demand things of the pixies,” Amythist said with an amused shake of her head.

“Then why did they teach you?”

“A very long time ago, I saved a few of them. In return, they helped me learn more about magic. Also, they know I keep my pantry well-stocked with sweets, which always helps.”

Kristen clenched her teeth. This was already frustrating. How many hours had passed since Boneclaw first issued his challenge? Now, she was supposed to somehow win the trust of creatures whose idea of being a good person was having a pantry to pilfer? “Are you sure it has to be the pixies? The last time I worked with them, I found their methods to be…less than direct.”

The old dragon chuckled. “Pixies are beings made almost entirely from pure magic. They tend to have a deeper understanding of magic in general than either human mages or dragons. We are both physical forms imbued with magic. They are more akin to magic imbued with a physical form. They can teach you things not because they will make them easy to understand but because they will make truths of the universe clear at a fundamental level.”

“If the pixies will help, of course I choose them. If they can speed up the process of me learning these new abilities, I might have a chance when I face Boneclaw,” she said and tried to pitch the words to the pixie hiding in the rose bush.

“I thought you would say that, my dear, which is wonderful, but you must understand the risks inherent in working with the pixies,” Amythist warned her.

“Well…do I have a choice? In less than three days, I have to face one of, if not the most powerful dragon in the world. If my only chance to defeat him is the pixies…well, let’s do it.”

“Very well. But understand that they will test you and push you. There were times during my trials when I very nearly died. Fighting the Masked One will be a challenge, but it is a challenge you understand fully. He will try to kill you. Period. If the pixies agree to help they will not try to kill you, but they do not quite understand the way our bodies work either. To be successful in the timeframe, I am sure the training will be quite extreme.”

“Are you saying the pixies might kill me by accident?”

“I suppose that is the nature of their help, yes. Often, when I felt that I was being pushed the most, they would do nothing but laugh about it. Then, at other times, they would apologize or shower me with treats when I could not understand what I did wrong.”

“I understand, but I still don’t see what choice I have. It’s either try with the pixies and succeed, accidentally get killed by pixies and the world burns, or face Boneclaw without the skills I need, get killed, and the world burns anyway. I have to do this. I’ll simply have to hope that your insight is enough.”

“Very well, child, let us see if they will help you at all.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Junebug,” Amythist called to the pixie hiding in the rose bush. “I know very well that you were listening to everything that was said here. Can you please fetch a few of your kin to assist us?”

“What’s in it for Junebug?” the tiny voice piped from the rose bush.

“Those cookies you stole, for starters.”

“Those were good cookies. You need to get more!” the creature replied and emerged like a bottle-rocket. The tiny human form with the wings of a beetle rose on a fountain of sparks until he vanished into the sky above with a pop of light.

“How long until they respond to your summons?” Kristen asked.

“No, my dear. That was not a summons. It was a request. Pixies are never servants,” the older dragon explained. “They were created from pure magic by mages during the Second Mage War as a tool to fight dragons. They are very capable of accomplishing that task, something that more dragons should remember.”

“Are you saying a pixie could kill me?”

“Perhaps not one, but a band of pixies could certainly kill a dragon if they put their minds to it. Not only that, but they would also be able to eliminate quite a few dragons. The mages could not control the pixies but they managed to trick a few of them. They told them that hunting dragons was a kind of game, and that provided the motivation they needed to slaughter them, even if they did not understand the repercussions of their magic.”

“Their magic is that strong?”

“Oh yes. I don’t think we’ve ever seen the full force of their power. When the Second Mage War broke out, we had a taste of what they could do, but once they lost interest in being used as crusaders, they stopped using their magic to its full extent. They are capricious by nature, as wild as the wind. As dangerous as a hurricane when angered, but usually as unnoticed as a gentle breeze.”

“Some came to the peace talks,” she admitted. “They didn’t seem to even understand how to make demands.”

Amythist chuckled. “That hardly surprises me. They’re more interested in listening to the babble of a brook or chasing a sparrow than they are at planning anything. The flighty little beings are not given to working together on much of anything. They failed as a weapon because they simply weren’t interested in fighting dragons, so they didn’t. As powerful as they were, the mages who made them couldn’t control them, so the whole war fell apart.”

Kristen knew the old dragon had a role in the war ‘falling apart’ as she said, but she didn’t press it. If she didn’t want to talk much about her actions in darker times, she could respect that.

“Do you think dragons could kill the pixies?” she asked. “Do you think that’s why they came to the peace talks—to protect themselves?”

“Dragons can kill them. A concentrated blast of fire proved to be fairly effective, especially if the pixie could be stunned or distracted first. But they were almost impossible to catch so their mortalities were rare. I don’t know how many there are worldwide, but I know dragons and humans vastly outnumber them. Still, the main reason that dragons have not bothered to hunt the little beings is because few dragons think of them as a threat.”

“But you’re telling me they are.”

“Indeed. Generally, they are pleasant little creatures who know their way around a garden, but they are not to be trifled with. One time, I pulled a patch of yarrow out that they were particularly fond of and they almost ripped my bones from my body.”

“That’s gruesome!”

“In their mind, that was the closest thing they could do to an animal that would be like having a plant torn out by the roots. Never mind that the yarrow had already bloomed and I had harvested thousands of seeds. They wanted vengeance for that plant.”

“How did you stop them?”

“Honestly? I begged for mercy,” Amythist said with a shrug. “I reminded them that I saved two of their number and that I wouldn’t ever rip a plant out without planning to sow some of its seeds the next season.”

Kristen took a deep breath and tried to process all this while she watched the sky and waited for the pixie to return. “How did you save them?”

“There was a mage—this was centuries ago—although he called himself a wizard. He had captured them in some type of jar and I’d hate to guess about how it was made. Although, knowing what we do about the powers of dragon bone, I wouldn’t be surprised to find this particular wizard was ahead of his time. Anyway, he called himself a king. First, he took over a village, then the surrounding countryside, and soon, a major city. I went to stop him on account of this country being decidedly anti-king and found that he had magic that far surpassed what a normal mage was capable of. Truly, he had earned the name wizard as his power almost defied logic.”

She wondered if she should start calling Amy a wizard, as the young woman seemed to have powers of the logic-defying category.

The old dragon continued. “This jar—or urn, or whatever you wish to call it—he had trapped the pixies inside also worked as a kind of siphon. He used it to trap them and also draw their magic into himself. Their powers became his powers. If he had truly discovered how to use them to their full potential—if this setup had allowed that at all—he might have gone on to rule the world. Honestly, he might rule it still had he succeeded.”

“What happened to him?” she asked, knowing full well that her companion had earned the name Mage-Eater long before.

“I didn’t eat him if that’s what you were thinking.” Amythist chuckled. “I attacked his tower—men and their phallic symbols will never cease to amaze me. Can you imagine if women were as obsessed with caves as men are with tall skinny things?—and in my assault, managed to strike it hard enough to knock the urn to the floor. It shattered, the pixies were freed, and they had their vengeance.”

“What did they do?”

“I…” She hesitated. “It’s fairly grotesque.”

Kristen looked at the sky again and saw no sign of the pixies. “I think it would be better if I knew what they were capable of.”

The old dragon’s face puckered, but she nodded. “Well…they said he had been stealing their energy, so they would steal his. They impaled him with an acorn and made it grow through him. Its roots found his veins and traveled along them before they burst from his fingers and toes and anchored him to the ground, while the trunk of a tree grew from his mouth.”

“Oh, dear God.”

“Oh, there was no god there that day. The wizard didn’t die either. He lived that way for quite some time—as long as the pixies were held in captivity as far as I could tell. Any magic he attempted to cast was diverted into the tree. His spells became a new branch, a fresh spray of leaves, or more acorns.”

“I guess there’s a type of…justice to that,” Kristen said. “But it seems cruel.”

“Undoubtedly, but the pixies don’t understand the world as we do.”

She nodded, scanned the sky, and found nothing. “But Amythist, you saved their lives. I haven’t done that for any pixies. The only ones I met I couldn’t protect. They had to protect me, and one of them still died.”

“Let us hope they see things differently,” Amythist said. She did not do a good job of hiding the concern in her aura.

They were distracted when flashes of light appeared in the sky. One…two…three, then five…eight…a dozen pixies buzzed around the two dragons’ heads and showered them in sparks, their laughter tinkling like bells.

One of them broke off from the rest and came to hover in front of Kristen’s face.

She recognized the pixie immediately. The creature was beautiful in an androgynous sort of way, with a slender body and great big dragonfly wings sprouting from her back. “Lady Dragonfly?” She didn’t know if her being there was good or bad.

But still, she couldn’t help but laugh as the other pixies danced about, collided with one another, and made great splashes of sparks. When she laughed, they took this for encouragement and increased the absurdity of their antics.

“Lady Krissy!” Lady Dragonfly said after she dodged the careening flight of a pixie with the wings of a beetle. “You did us a great service and we neglected to say thank you. So, thank you!”

“A great service?” she asked.

“Indeed! You let us into the meeting, a very kind and honorable thing, even if the snacks were less than delicious. Plus, you protected us when we fell unconscious.”

“But one of your group was lost,” she said.

“It was not your fault! The Void place is a bad place. Its energy is not good for us. Not at all. We are lucky your friends called our friends and got us all out of there.”

“It is very good that you came, Lady Dragonfly. Lady Krissy”—Amythist smirked at the nickname—“is in need of your help.”

“Oh! Oh yes.” The pixie twittered with delight. “This is what humans and dragons do for each other, yes? The scratching of the other’s back,” she said sagely.

The old dragon wasted no time in explaining the situation. Lady Dragonfly listened intently while the other pixies buzzed about and pilfered stolen cookies from Junebug who had returned to his place in the rose bush.

When she was finished, the pixie spoke. “We know who Boneclaw is. We saw the shadow form he became. None of us pixies like him. He cares little for flowers, insects, or worms. If you must stop him, we would love to help.”

“And can you help me acquire these skills in three days?” Kristen asked.

The diminutive creature frowned. “Three times the sun may set and rise, then you must be done?”

“Actually, only twice. On the day of the third sunrise, I need to face Boneclaw at noon when the sun is directly overhead.”

“Can you—what is the human word?—reschedule? Three days is not enough time.”

Kristen tried to stay standing as she felt her strength leach from her. “I’m sorry. I cannot. So there’s no hope, then?”

“There is always hope,” Lady Dragonfly said. “If you cannot do rescheduling, then there are things we can do to accelerate your training. But it is—what’s the human word?—lethally dangerous.”

The other pixies laughed like that was a joke. Maybe they were merely impressed by their comrade’s vocabulary.

“If there’s any chance at all, I have to take it. If Boneclaw wins, he will set up a new world order even more oppressive than the current one. I know you pixies have never been given the respect you deserve, but if he comes to power fully, you never will.”

“That is not true about receiving respect,” Lady Dragonfly said and bowed deeply “You have shown us much respect, which is why we will do this, even though it may end your existence.”

“I understand,” Kristen said.

“No.” The pixie flew into her face so her big, oversized eyes and dragonfly wings filled almost all of her vision. “No, you truly do not. You cannot. No human or dragon can understand the risks you will face. Neither can we as we never need to face them to achieve our powers.”

“If I die doing this, the world is no better off than if I refuse and live. I have to beat Boneclaw. I have to do so for my parents, for my friends, and for the mages I protect. I have to defeat him because if I don’t, he will never stop killing. Right now, he wears the skull of one of my friends as a totem of his power. No one will even dare to tell him to remove it. He has killed dragons I loved and has tried to burn my home too many times to count. This dragon is a monster, and I will do anything I can to stop him, even if that means ending my existence.”

Lady Dragonfly smiled and wiped a tear from her eye. “Let us hope it does not come to that.” She turned to the other pixies who cavorted about Amythist’s garden. “Pixies, come. We will take her to the Well!”

The color of their sparks all changed from golds and silvers to purples and reds. They began to swirl counterclockwise in a circle in front of Kristen. Their speed increased until their trails of sparks blended and they were indistinguishable from each other and from their magic.

Then, in the middle of the circle, a cloud began to form. It was white at first but began to darken around the edges while the center began to glow. A gust of wind scattered it, and she looked into a place of mist and purple shadows. She couldn’t see much at all but felt a sense of power and dread coming from it.

“If you step through here, your training will begin,” Lady Dragonfly said. “This realm is the only place you can go if you wish to make it back before noon on the third day. We very much hope you survive.”

Kristen thanked the pixies and Amythist alike for the opportunity.

“Farewell, Kristen Hall, Steel Dragon,” Amythist said. “May you become what you must.”

She nodded and stepped through the portal while the pixies flew around her. It closed behind her and the way to the old dragon’s garden vanished, hopefully not permanently.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was a time when Amy’s favorite thing to do with her powers was skateboard. She learned how to telekinetically push and pull on both her shoes and her board and could accomplish breathtaking stunts. While she used to scoff at skateboarding videogames for being able to do physics-defying tricks, she now regularly accomplished those and more.

But she wasn’t in the mood for any of that right now. She merely wanted to enjoy the peace.

She flew close to a kilometer up and immediately above a cluster of low clouds that might decide to drop rain on the ground below at some point later in the night. It was quiet, so much more silent than anywhere on the surface of the Earth could be. Once she had filtered out the wind rushing past her ears, there was little to hear. Occasionally, a wolf howled from far below. Sometimes, the sound of a train horn would make it through the clouds.

There was no light either, save for the gentle glow of stars above. The clouds blocked out the light from cities and towns, the gas stations with their fluorescent lights and tall signs proclaiming that they had the cheapest gas and the most filling snacks, and the farmhouses whose lights glared into the dark in an attempt to keep foxes from henhouses.

The young mage was thankful to have a moment like this before the fight that was to come. Part of her regretted not telling anyone she was going, but she knew this had to be the way. Kristen was busy, so she hadn’t tried to check in on her. Despite not telling anyone, she had still brought her cellphone, albeit on silent. While she knew facing the Masked One would be hard, she had to do it. She could make light as Constance had shown her, and she could move mountains with her magic if she wished. Together, those powers would be enough to defeat the dragon intent on murdering her best friend. They had to be.

In her hand, she still held the enemy’s scale. Boneclaw, she tried to remind herself. She would simply face an old asshole of a dragon. Calling him the Masked One was bullshit. He was an old, cruel bastard, not a boogeyman. His scale gave her a steady ping of his location. She knew she was getting closer but still wasn’t quite sure of the distance that remained.

Amy knew how powerful he was, and although she didn’t want to let him grow to some mythic figure in her subconscious, she also wanted to make sure she didn’t become complacent. She had fought dragons before and won, but she saw how easily this one destroyed his targets. That knowledge reminded her that she needed to be careful. Even then, being careful wouldn’t be enough. She needed to be flawless.

Which meant she had to keep her bearings. Thus far, the scale had led her north. She had already crossed the state of Michigan and was out over the Great Lake of the same name. As she flew northward and the upper Michigan peninsula came into view, she tried to estimate how far she still had to go. The sense of Boneclaw’s energy coming from the scale had increased, but it hadn’t jumped like she had expected it to. That meant she still had a way to go and that he wasn’t in the upper peninsula of the state. Based on her perception of the scale, it seemed like he would be found in Canada.

That was somewhat surprising. Most dragons tended to avoid that nation. Amy had fled there when the dragons hunted her and had witnessed dwarves and dragons fight for the first time in a small Canadian town. She’d seen how resilient dwarves were against the powers of most dragons. They were tough, strong, and had skin so flame-retardant that even dragon fire didn’t bother them. She also knew that dragon magic often didn’t affect them.

Dwarves were a pain for dragons to deal with, but they kept mostly to themselves. As a result, most dragons simply left the whole country alone. But Boneclaw was holed up somewhere in dwarf country. Or, at the very least, he was doing something there. But what? She considered this as she crossed the upper peninsula and flew out across Lake Superior, the largest and coldest of the great lakes.

The young mage pushed through the clouds and estimated that she had a little time before she made landfall again. She rose above the water and into the cool moistness that surrounded her as she moved through a cloud. Her telekinesis kept the water droplets from soaking her clothes and hair, but she still couldn’t resist stretching a hand into the cloud and let the droplets condense until they formed a tiny pool in the palm of her hand.

Amy sipped it, relishing the fresh taste of cloud water as she burst through the top and almost missed the dragon who flew through the thick cumulus not far from her.

She might have missed it completely if she had not used her powers to affect the clouds as she passed through them. But something was in there. She felt its wings beating at the droplets to create swirls and vortexes in the mist.

Her heart began to pound, but she forced herself to calm. It couldn’t be the Masked One—Boneclaw. It couldn’t be him. His scale told her his location was still a long way off. This hidden dragon was almost on top of her so it couldn’t be him.

Could it be one of his henchmen? A loyalist? A traitor from Kristen’s group?

Her mind raced with the unanswered questions and she swallowed hard and calmed herself. She would have to find out.

Grim but determined, she increased her speed and dove into the nebulous mass using her powers to clear the mist from in front of her.

The clouds separated and she saw the dark, almost black form of a dragon ahead before it barrel-rolled to the right to stay in the cloud bank.

Amy proceeded as if she hadn’t noticed. She accelerated and tried to draw herself parallel to where the dragon had been given its current speed. That it hadn’t attacked was a good sign. Surely Boneclaw wouldn’t waste time pretending to hide in a cloud, but one of his minions might.

There was nothing to be done but find out who it was. If it turned out to be a powerful enemy, she would simply have to take time to rest before she fought Boneclaw. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, but neither was the idea of reaching the enemy’s location only to be ambushed from behind.

So, when she felt another vortex travel through the cloud as the dragon pumped its wings to change direction, she blasted a great gust of wind toward the source. It scattered the cloud into nothing but drizzle that fell onto Lake Superior below.

The dragon within—as dark as wrought iron—dropped earthward with the rain droplets.

She smiled. A fight was one thing, but a chase? She would beat anyone in a chase. The young mage grasped the nose of her board and pointed it toward the dragon. She rocketed forward with a telekinetic push of magic until she had caught up with the dark shape.

In the light of the stars, the scales had a metallic sheen and suddenly, she knew where she had seen the dragon before. She decided to grind the dragon’s tail.

With a broad grin, she hopped off her board, spun it in an impossible twirl, and landed in a boardslide on the iron scales.

“Get off me!” the dragon roared and twisted in the air to shake the person now doing tricks on its tail.

But gravity and momentum meant little and less to a powerful, well-rested mage like Amy. She continued to grind the dragon’s tail as the world spun around her.

“What are you doing here, Katrina?” she demanded of the Iron Dragon.

“I could ask you the same thing!” Katrina retorted and plunged them both into Lake Superior.

The coldness was so frightfully strong and immediate that it took Amy’s breath away. For a moment, she simply tried not to breathe as the cold clutched at her chest and forced the warmth from her limbs.

But she was from Maine. Swimming in cold water was considered a fun pastime in the most northern state according to Mainers. She launched out of the water and used her powers to shake every drop of water from her. In a moment, she was dry once more.

She glanced to her right to where Katrina—in her Iron Dragon form, of course—coasted above the choppy waves of the Great Lake. Amy always found it impressive that these bodies of water could mimic the look of the Northern Atlantic, but this hardly seemed the time to comment on the vastness of this particular source of freshwater.

“Why did you follow me?” she asked.

“Where are you going?” Katrina snapped in response.

“That’s my business. How did you follow me without me sensing you?”

“I’ve worked with mages for my entire life. I know how to hide from you, especially when you’re distracted. You leaving endangers the team, so it’s my business too. Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going?”

“Because it’s dangerous and I can’t risk other people getting hurt,” she said and forced herself to go faster. She caught a wave with her board and exploded off the top of it with a splash of water and went into a backflip.

“You found Boneclaw,” the dragon said as she caught up to her. She didn’t comment on the impressive trick the girl had accomplished.

Amy sighed. “How did you know?”

“Because you know as well as I do that Kristen doesn’t stand a chance against that asshole. The only reason you would ditch your precious dragon buddy is if there was a chance you could help her, and the only thing you could do to help right now is to defeat Boneclaw before she has to.”

“Lucky guess,” she replied.

“Not really,” Katrina responded, although her voice was less hostile. “I wouldn’t want to leave Constance unless it meant protecting her life. When I saw you slip away, I knew what you were thinking. I decided you could use backup.”

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“If I’d said something too soon, you would have simply told me to stay home.”

“You wouldn’t have listened.”

The Iron Dragon didn’t reply immediately. It was a reminder that she had been raised by mages and was not one to underestimate a mage. She fully understood that Amy could obliterate her in battle, even with her iron skin.

“The other reason,” she said after a moment, “is because you need my help. I was able to mask my presence from you. That’s not good. Boneclaw will be at least as good as I am at using his aura. Probably way better, honestly. If he can sense you and drops off your radar—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fucked,” she agreed.

“That’s putting it mildly.” Katrina snickered.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the mage asked. “Look, if shit goes bad and I have the chance to kill him, I will, no matter the cost.”

“I won’t go home and I won’t try to spare your life either. We’re both meaningless in this war. If Kristen loses to him, all the progress Constance made, the cause I have been fighting for since I was a child, is finished. I won’t let that happen, even if it means a skateboarder gets crushed.”

“Fine, we’re in agreement then,” she replied.

“Two dead bitches flying,” the dragon replied. They were silent for a moment before she spoke. “Come land on my back. You shouldn’t waste your powers. You’ll need them.”

Amy didn’t say anything to that. She simply did another flip off a wave, caught the board in one hand, and landed on the dragon’s broad back.

The two flew on.

The duo followed Boneclaw’s trail to a low mountain somewhere in the western part of Ontario. They approached the landscape at dawn. Rivers and lakes were everywhere and pine trees stood in clusters where there wasn’t water. It was remote with not much in the way of houses or other buildings nearby. A few old roads were probably only ever used to harvest timber, and perhaps one or two hiking trails were tucked below. On the whole, it felt quite out of the way.

“Do you sense anything?” Amy asked.

“I don’t,” the dragon said. “But part of suppressing my aura means I can’t sense others as easily. Do you think we’re close?”

“I do. Close enough to walk. Do you see that cabin halfway up the mountain?”

“You mean hill?” the dragon clarified.

“Sure, whatever. Do you see it?”

“Yes.”

“The scale is drawing me to it. Not precisely to that cabin but somewhere near there. I want to land at the bottom of that hill and approach through the forest. Boneclaw is probably watching the sky.”

“Which means we might have already been seen and should attack now.” Katrina didn’t look even slightly concerned about the prospect of facing a legendary dragon of nightmare.

“No. Not yet. There’s no activity and nothing to tell me he has sensed us. We play this cool as long as we can.”

“Fine.” Katrina snorted, tucked her wings, and landed in a grove of pine trees. Amy dismounted and her companion took her human form.

They moved through the pine woods as silently as possible. The young mage liked the night, or at least she had. Now, with Boneclaw being able to move through shadow, it felt like a dangerous and alien place. Her teammate didn’t look any more comfortable despite being part of an organization of assassins that must have utilized the cover of darkness for years.

The going was easy but slow. The forest was thick with pine needles, which made the ground slick as the needles would move underfoot. Katrina led the way, her dragon vision better able to pierce the shadows.

“Constance made it sound like you guys worked for the Masked One. Did you ever meet him?” Amy asked, not sure how her companion would react.

“Fuck no. If I had, you can be sure I would have seen through his bullshit deceptions. The asshole never cared about mage equality.”

Obviously, she thought but saw the wisdom in not saying anything. Instead, she whispered a question. “Do you truly believe in mage equality even though you’re a dragon?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you’re a dragon and not merely any dragon but an iron one. That makes you something special. If the dragons do start this war and decimate the human population or whatever, joining their side might make more sense for you.”

“As if. I was raised by mages. Constance was practically a mom to me. I’ve seen the crap they have to deal with and the way dragons walk all over them and humans treat them like pariahs. There will be no equality until we all have equality. That’s a central tenet of basic civil rights. I believe in mages with all my heart. Although I do wish you could do something about the crackle of these pine needles.”

“Crackle?” she asked. She hadn’t heard much of anything.

“It might not sound like much to you but to a dragon, this is as loud as walking through a forest of leaves in the fall.”

“Oh, right. I guess I could scatter the needles from our path,” she said.

“That won’t be enough. You know he’ll be able to sense us. Don’t play dumb with me. I know you had more of a plan than this.” Katrina’s smile gleamed in the darkness.

Amy knew she should trust her. The dragon had signed the same contractual magic she had. If she tried to hurt her for any reason other than one that protected innocents, she would be immolated. It was as simple as that.

And yet, she didn’t trust her, not with her heart of hearts, anyway. But what choice did she have? She knew Katrina might give her the edge she needed against Boneclaw. They had the same goals, even if the methods they had used to achieve those were different.

“I have been working on something,” she said as she wreathed herself in magic.

In theory, this was similar to making one of the shields that stopped bullets. She had to surround herself with a force that stopped things from moving through it. The difference was that she didn’t want her power to leak out, so the shield had to work both ways. She also wanted to go unseen. While she hadn’t known how to do this at first, she had been inspired by—of all people—Boneclaw.

Her body vanished into the shadow of a tree and her powers wove around her like a cocoon. They protected her, concealed her, and made her invisible as long as she remained in the dark. If she wished to move to another patch of darkness, she simply created a tunnel of the magic cocoon and moved through that. It wasn’t quite as elegant as Boneclaw being able to completely vanish into shadow itself—she still had a body—but as long as she was in the dark, she could move about unseen and unheard.

“That’s better,” Katrina said with a smile. “Much better. Now can you do it to me too?”

The mage knew she had to try. “Step into the darkness at this tree.”

The dragon obeyed or tried to, at least.

“Not that one, this one,” Amy said and stepped from the shadow to show her where she was.

“Very impressive.” The dragon’s praise seemed genuine. “Can you move?”

“Yeah, and we need to get a move on, so hurry.”

Katrina stepped beside her. The mage wrapped them both in her cocoon of darkness and they continued. They moved through the woods almost without walking. Rather than stepping on the needles, she lifted them with her powers and moved them through the protected tunnels her magic created.

When they passed through light, she could tell the illusion of their invisibility wasn’t as strong. But there in the faintly gray light of early dawn, it was strong enough to conceal them even from creeping nocturnal creatures.

They proceeded quickly through the forest to the cabin near the top of the mountain—or hill, or whatever. She conceded that it was closer to a big hill than a mountain, but the fact that it was covered in boulders left by glaciers long receded made it feel like a mountain to her.

They reached the lodge and waited at the edge of the forest in the shadow of a particularly old pine that completely eclipsed them from the light. For five long minutes they waited, but nothing stirred inside. There was no light, no sounds, and nothing that indicated anyone moving within.

“It must be empty. If there was a person in there, I’d sense their aura or hear their breathing,” Katrina said.

“Do you sense any auras at all?” Amy asked.

Katrina shook her head. “No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean much. We’re in dwarf country. There could be an entire village a mile from here and a hundred feet underground and I wouldn’t be able to sense a thing.”

“Does stone block all auras?” Amy asked.

“I don’t know. I was never particularly gifted with my aura, and mages don’t have them so I was never able to practice how it worked all that much. It is one of the things mages hated the most about dragons—being able to be manipulated emotionally can be devastating when an ally turns against you for no reason—so I never used it. I’m getting nothing, though, so we should be good.”

Or, the girl thought, Boneclaw is sensing our approach and laughing about it.

But there was nothing to be done if that was the case. The homestead seemed empty, and they were wrapped in the most protective magic she could manage. They had to go in. Cautiously, they moved to a pile of rocks near the back of the cabin, then slipped along the boulder-strewn hill until they were up against the building. The back wall was shorter than the front as if a lazy lumberjack turned architect thought he could save himself timber and labor by using the hill itself for a wall. Amy wondered constantly if the boulders they had moved past were booby-trapped.

Worse still for her impending sense of doom, Katrina refused to enter the cabin in the cover of darkness. “We stay awake until dawn, then enter in the daytime. If shit goes bad and we are below ground, we need to know the sun is waiting on the surface for us.”

She didn’t have anything to counter that logic, so they settled for some sleep outside the cabin, although she didn’t know if she slept at all between the bouts of worry.

As it transpired, any concerns about it were misplaced. The daylight revealed that the interior was empty. There was no one inside, no dog, and nothing to indicate any danger. It was spartan—one room with a sink under a window on one side, a pantry built out into the room, a bed, a table, and no other signs of amenities. A bear pelt that looked like it had seen better days hung on the back wall.

“Do you notice there’s no dust on the table?” Katrina asked before she moved toward a sink. “And look, water is pooling in here. Someone was here recently.”

“Couldn’t that simply be a leak?”

“Not with everything else that’s here,” the dragon said as she poked around in the kitchen and raided the tiny pantry. “Half a loaf of bread and a plate in the drying rack. People were here until recently. Today, I’d bet.”

Amy was quite thankful in that moment to have Katrina with her. “But if people were here earlier, where are they now?”

“That’s what we need to find out.”

She nodded, not upset that the dragon was taking the lead so much as that she’d barely given the Iron Dragon the time of day before. She was cleverer than she had given her credit for. “Boneclaw’s scale feels like we need to move to the other side of the hill,” she said and hoped that was helpful.

“Does it feel like we need to go to the other side or go inside?” Katrina asked.

“How would we go insi—” she started to ask before she stopped herself. “Dwarf country, right.”

Her companion continued to move about the room as if it were a cage instead of a single-room cabin built against a mountain. “Tell me, did Constance teach you much about wind magic?”

“A little. Why do you ask?”

“There was something she did if she needed an escape. She would blow wind away from her and feel where there was the least resistance. That place would be an exit because the air could flow. Did she ever teach you how to do that?”

“No,” Amy said and closed her eyes to try.

“Don’t worry about it then. It took her years and I know you’re not exactly experienced—holy shit.”

She opened her eyes to see the old raggedy bear pelt rustling. “There’s a door behind there or something.”

“Constance said that was one of the hardest tricks.” Katrina’s jaw had practically hit the floor.

“Yeah well, let’s hope that’s as hard as it gets.” The mage used her powers to lift the bear pelt carefully off and lower it to the floor. The back wall was hideous. Someone had thought it needed to be covered by planks of wood even though the rest of the cabin looked great being made from rough-hewn logs.

But as she examined the misshapen, crooked boards that had been haphazardly hammered to the back wall in more detail, she saw that this was no lazy effort. A door was hidden there. It was almost impossible to see among the mismatched boards, but now that she had found a seam across the top, she traced it with her wind. Whoever had built it was clever. They hadn’t left the edges straight, so it wasn’t a rectangle but something approximately in the shape of one.

“If there are magic traps, you should be able to sense them,” Katrina said.

She reached out and traded her breeze for tiny tendrils of telekinetic force. Using these, she felt around the cracks of the door and tested for anything out of the ordinary but found nothing besides the latch.

“I think it’s clean,” she said to her companion. “I’m going to open it.”

“Wait a minute.” The dragon put herself between Amy and the door and turned her skin to iron. “All right. Let’s hope you’re right but if you’re not, I’m less squishy.”

The young mage pulled the door open with her telekinesis. It swung silently into the cabin and its uneven edges slid cleanly against the matching uneven edge of its frame. Nothing exploded and no electricity or ice erupted. Beyond it was a smooth tunnel cut into the stone and earth of the hill. It didn’t look like it had been dug, or not by any human machine anyway. Instead, it appeared that it had simply come into existence or perhaps a part of the hill had slithered away and left this cavity behind. Amy had never seen a hole that was so pretty.

“Dwarves made this,” Katrina said and examined the exquisitely made door that was fashioned to look like the world’s least exquisitely made wall.

“What would Boneclaw want with dwarves?” the mage asked. But she knew he had something to do with this. As soon as they’d opened the door, she had felt a tiny surge of energy from the scale. Whatever else might be waiting for them down there, he was there too.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Katrina said and dropped her iron skin so she could move silently down the hall.

“Can’t you keep your iron on but leave your feet normal?” Amy asked. “That would be safer.”

A rueful scowl told her that this particular skill eluded the Iron Dragon. “That is a talent my…sister is particularly adept at. I can make iron claws but if I leave my feet regular, the weight will snap my ankles like toothpicks.”

“Let’s not do that, then,” she said. “You’ll probably need your ankles.” For when this all goes to shit and we have to run like hell, she thought but yet again, she kept this particular little nugget of pessimism to herself.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kristen walked through the portal and into a place without direction. There was no up or down, no left or right, and only an impenetrable purple fog. She continued to move forward, not walking exactly but pushing on as best she could until the mist began to clear.

The first thing she saw was a massive tree. It towered over her, its roots each as thick as the trunk of the tree in her parents’ front yard. The trunk was easily as wide as a dump truck. It rose scores of feet before it divided into hundreds of branches, each heavy with vines, ferns, orchids, and dozens of other plants she could only guess at that were all in different stages of bloom.

Sunlight shone through the branches and as she watched, the sun rose until she could see more of the strange surroundings—was it even a place?— she’d stepped into.

She stood in a clearing in a lush, tropical jungle. Her feet sank into lush grass and she was tempted to remove her shoes, so she did. The feeling of the thick, dewy grass on her bare soles was pleasurable and she looked around to get her bearings. The clearing she was in was surrounded by more of the beautiful trees. It must have been maintained by someone as it was filled with calm pools and gently tinkling streams that ran from one to the other before they emptied into the jungle at the low side of the clearing. Wherever she looked, clumps of gorgeous flowers bloomed in every color she could imagine.

It was overwhelmingly beautiful, especially as the sun seemed to lock into its position behind the first tree she had seen and filled the air with dappled sunlight. Birds and insects called out to each other. In the shadow of the trees and clusters of flowers, animals moved furtively or simply watched her, although she would be hard-pressed to say what any of them were. One halfway up a tree looked much like a monkey, but it had a third eye in the middle of its forehead and darted a tongue longer than any chameleon’s out to snatch a ripe piece of fruit off the tree from which it hung.

“What is this place?” she asked and wiped tears from her eyes. She had not realized that she had been crying. It was simply so beautiful there.

“This is our home,” Lady Dragonfly said. Kristen had almost forgotten that the pixies she met at Amythist’s had come through the portal with her.

“But I thought…” Before she could finish asking her question, all the pixies darted out into the clearing.

They sang and laughed as they flew and the tinkling sound of laughter added itself to the sounds of birds and insects. She decided that the pixie laughter fit perfectly in this place.

From the bushes and trees and even the ponds, other pixies emerged, far more than the twelve she had come with. Another dozen embraced those that had come with her as perhaps a hundred more flitted about the clearing. They cheered in celebration, picked flowers and gave them to the new arrivals, and darted in front of her face to get a good look at her before they vanished in a tinkle of laughter. It was a truly joyous reunion, and she was both honored and flattered to have been allowed to witness it.

Once the twelve pixies she had come with finished making their rounds and greeting all the others, Lady Dragonfly drew herself away from them and flitted closer to Kristen. Truly, she would not have been able to recognize her in the group, but when she spoke, her big brown eyes and shimmering dragonfly wings were immediately familiar.

“Welcome!” the pixie said.

“This is a truly beautiful place,” she told her. “Thank you for bringing me to your home.”

“I’m very glad to hear that!” Lady Dragonfly beamed. “You are not the first human or dragon to come here, nor are you the first to compliment this world we have cultivated, but it is very good that you—an intersection of dragons and humans—can recognize pixie beauty. We have considerable hope vested in you, Kristen Hall. Your appreciation of this place is a good sign that we have not misplaced our trust.”

That was a fairly challenging exchange of information. Kristen wanted to know more about how a world could be so wild and still look cultivated, but the pixies’ trust seemed a more pressing matter. She had so many questions. Why her? What did they know about her? Why was she there? Who else had been there? “Trust? I mean, thank you, but what have I done to deserve it? I only met you a few days ago and I didn’t exactly keep you safe.”

“I hope it is enough to know for now that we trust you. We do not have time to answer all your questions. The day is already moving.”

“But the sun—” As she spoke, the sun shifted from its position to directly overhead. It had lingered behind the tree but now, in the span of a few seconds, it appeared to move a distance in the sky that would have taken the sun on earth hours to traverse. “What is this place?”

Lady Dragonfly shook her head. “One day, all will be clear but now, we must hurry. We cannot tarry, not if we are to get you back before you face Boneclaw.”

At the mention of the Masked One’s true identity, the creatures all around them buzzed angrily. She equated the effect to throwing a rock at a hornet’s nest.

But her guide was already moving through the clearing toward one of the pools. She hurried after her. The grass felt wonderful under her bare feet.

The pool they stopped at was breathtakingly beautiful. The bed was lined with stones that all appeared to be worn smooth by the water. It was ringed with alternating clusters of pink and purple flowers. At one end, water trickled off the spout of a stone into the pool and splashed pleasantly. A mass of rocks at the other blocked most of the water but let some pass through and out into a stream to another pool.

“You must get in the water, please,” Lady Dragonfly said with a little bow.

“I thought we were on a time crunch?” Kristen said.

“The water is essential to the work that must be done. Please hurry. It is good that you took your shoes off. Your uniform should go too.”

“You want me to get naked?” A few of the little creatures fluttered about and she wasn’t exactly keen to strip down in front of all of them.

“If you are most comfortable in your skin, that would be best, but you can leave clothes on that are truly yours. The uniform is not, though. It is a symbol of what you and your people are to your world. Keeping it on would make things difficult.”

“What things?”

“Please!” Lady Dragonfly said and glanced at the sun overhead. It was still directly above them at the zenith, but Kristen began to realize that this place would not behave the way the regular world did. It seemed like the sun would stay at the noonday position until it no longer wished to do so. Maybe her guide didn’t want it to jump too far ahead when it did move.

She nodded and relented in the face of the pixie’s imploring tone.

Quickly, she removed the long-sleeved black uniform shirt with its silver trim and her pants. She was left in a pair of panties and a tie-dyed tank top she had made with her mom years before. There was no doubt in her mind that these were indeed her clothes.

Kristen thought she might have been uncomfortable, but she realized that the opposite was true. The warm, steamy air of the tropical garden felt appealing on her freckled skin. A blush of sweat rose all over and made her feel slightly slick. There were times she might have hated the sensation but right now, it felt perfect, like the sheen of sweat after a particularly invigorating workout.

She still had no idea what getting into a pool of water had to do with defeating Boneclaw, but she knew time was of the essence and she resolved to do what the pixies requested of her as quickly as she could.

When she stepped into the pool, she expected—or hoped—it would be cool and refreshing but instead, found it rather warm. It was barely at body temperature, or maybe half a degree warmer, and it was like being in a pool of water that had been left in the sun all day.

Focused on the pool rather than the pixies, she lowered herself into the water past her waist and her breasts and up to her neck. Normally, she didn’t like to get her red hair wet, but something beckoned her to let her hair down and she did so now so the curly red locks floated on the surface all around her. An added bonus of her thick red hair was that it floated on the surface of the pool and helped to block the view of her breasts which her wet tank top did absolutely nothing to conceal.

For a moment, she forgot about all that. She simply let the water envelop her. It felt marvelous—like a massage, a trip to the jacuzzi, and a good night’s sleep all rolled into one.

When she opened her eyes a moment later, a group of pixies was braiding her hair into an elaborate version of French braids, plaited tightly to her head. She also realized that she didn’t care in the least that Lady Dragonfly hovered directly in front of her, able to see her body.

“You have probably guessed that we are no longer on earth,” the pixie began.

“I had a feeling,” Kristen replied. “Is this somewhere like where the base ended up when you all cast the spell?”

Lady Dragonfly shivered despite the warmth of the air. “This is not a place at all like that. That was a no-place, a Void, a zone between places where nothing exists. We had pooled our magic to try to bring the building and everyone in it to safety. Unfortunately, we only made it partway across the Void before our magic was spent and we were trapped there. The pixie who died gave the last of his life-magic trying to hold our little bubble of reality in the Void. We only came home because the efforts of the mass of pixies on Earth managed to bring us back.”

“So where we are…it’s not in the Void?” she asked.

“All places are in the Void. This place, the Earth, all places. They are all like bubbles floating in the Void. This one is a bubble with far more magic than Earth. That is why we come here to refresh and restore ourselves.”

“So you made this as a kind of refuge?” Kristen asked.

Lady Dragonfly laughed. “No, no, no, we did not make this place. Even we pixies do not have the magic needed to create permanent bubbles in the Void. We tried to move your base through the Void, but once we were stuck, it took all our strength to simply hold the nothingness at bay. We found this place after we were created on earth. In those days, it was nothing but the purple clouds you first saw. We brought seeds and eggs, convinced the magic to form dirt and water, and spent centuries of earth time growing what you see all around you.”

“You’ve done a spectacular job.” She smiled.

“Thank you, Kristen Hall! We are quite pleased with it. In its earliest form, this realm could still heal our wounds, replenish our strength, and erase any aging our bodies underwent on Earth. Now, though, it is so beautiful that many like to come here simply for fun!”

Kristen nodded and didn’t fail to notice that the pixies were effectively immortal. Or, at least, they didn’t die due to aging because they could come to this sanctuary and rejuvenate themselves whenever they needed to.

“Is this pool doing that to me? It feels wonderful.”

“Indeed!” Lady Dragonfly beamed. “This pool will heal any wounds, replenish your strength, and clear your mind for the trial that is to come. This realm has much more magic than Earth, which will make what you must do far easier.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “Amythist made it sound like it would be quite the challenge.”

“Oh, it will be, Kristen Hall. The energy of this pool will make it easier, but that does not mean it will be easy. Maybe I should have said the energy of this pool and the water here will make it possible.”

“You are not to tell her of the water!” another pixie snapped, fluttered overhead, and vanished into a clump of flowers.

“What about the water?” she asked.

“There is no time,” Lady Dragonfly said and looked at the sun.

Kristen looked too and noticed that it was no longer overhead. It had slipped down so it now touched the tops of the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

“We have already wasted too much time,” the pixie said as the sky shifted from blue to the rich reds, purples, and violets of sunset.

“But how does time work here?”

“It gives us what it thinks we need,” her guide said hurriedly, “and not a moment more. Time marches on here as it does on Earth, although to a tempo that will be harder for you to hear. You must push yourself if you want to succeed. Magic will not allow it any other way. You are the Steel Dragon, and thus you must be hardened to steel. This realm never fails to notice such things. We will have to push you too, harder even than we have pushed others…” She trailed off as if remembering some horror she had worked hard to push out of her mind.

“Others like who?”

“It matters not,” Lady Dragonfly said. “There will be serious risks, I must remind you of that. You could lose your life, your mind, or even your powers if you are not what the magic thinks you are. Are you sure you want to try this?”

“Yes. I have to do this. I must. Too many people from all Earth’s races are relying on me to end the war and bring peace and balance. I have to find a way to do that. I don’t want to lose my life or my powers, but if that’s the cost I have to pay to keep my loved ones safe, I’ll pay it.”

“Very well,” the pixie said, took a deep breath, and nodded. “We thank you very much for your service. Please finish your bath. The sun should wait for that at least. When you feel completely refreshed, follow the stream from the pool downhill, away from this grove, and into the jungle. You must keep going until you are asked to stop or forced to stop. Do you understand?”

“Don’t take in the sights. Got it,” Kristen said, pulled herself from the pool, and reached for her clothes.

“You won’t need those,” Lady Dragonfly told her and gestured to the uniform.

“You said it will be dangerous, right? I’d rather have something between me and whatever’s out there.”

“As you wish,” her companion said before she vanished on a jet of sparks.

Kristen watched her go, then got dressed. She felt more relaxed and energized than she had in ages—like she had been given a major recharge. Could it all be an effect of the pool or was she already unlocking some of her magic powers? She could not be sure.

With no time to waste, she set off, shirking her boots as she kept her feet in the warm stream. She turned back when she reached the edge of the clearing. “Thank you, pixies! I hope I can complete this and we can all feel more welcome on the Earth when this is over.”

“Farewell, Kristen!” Lady Dragonfly called in response. “We will watch over your trials. Good luck and follow the stream. Do not tarry and you will win success this day.”

She waved farewell and proceeded downstream.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As Kristen proceeded into the jungle, it seemed that perhaps the advice to follow the stream was literal. Beyond the now obviously groomed clearing, the jungle was as thick as any she had seen. The only place where plants didn’t fight each other for space was the trickling stream she now followed.

In all honesty, she felt far from certain about how any of this was supposed to help. She reached a log that had fallen into the stream and created a little pool. Undeterred, she swam across it—drenching her uniform as she did so—and climbed over the impediment. Past the tree, the stream widened somewhat. The growth of the jungle was now far enough apart that she could extend her arms and not touch any plants on either side.

Was the log she passed supposed to be an obstacle? Surely not. Was she supposed to be lured into the jungle by the bizarre assortment of plants proliferating on the jungle floor? If that was the test, she felt like she was acing it. Odd fruits hung in the jungle—apples the size of watermelons and things that looked like peaches but were the rich purple of eggplants. None of it seemed particularly alluring to her. If there had been a pizza bush, she might have been tempted, but the jungle—despite its strangeness—grew only fruit.

She kept moving as the stream widened more. It was extremely shallow, so even her bare ankles didn’t get wet as she walked along its rocky bed. The gap in the canopy overhead caused by the stream had finally widened enough that she could see the sky. The rich reds, purples, and oranges of sunset emblazoned the broad expanse above her. The sun had been setting for what felt like hours. How did the pixies keep track of anything there when time itself behaved so strangely?

Kristen blinked, and instead of all the colors of an impressionistic painting of a sunset overheard, she saw only the stars. Or what looked like stars at first glance. In the Earth’s sky, most stars appeared white to her, with some tinged faintly red or blue.

There, they came in every color of the rainbow. Twinkling dots of purple, orange, green, and yellow added themselves to the regular colors of red and blue. Some of the points of light spun like a cartoon version of a star, while others had tiny rings around them that made them look like ringed planets. It was almost like the pixies had painted the sky to look like that because they hadn’t quite understood what stars were.

Kristen shook the oddness of the scene aside as she looked at the path in front of her. It was much harder to see now. The stars emitted light that illuminated the middle of the stream but made no attempt to pierce the darkness of the jungle on either side.

That seemed to follow the logic of the stream being significant but she paused a few moments later. Up ahead and in the shadows of the trees, a star seemed to hover above the water.

She sensed that something was different about it. As she looked at it, she had a strong awareness that she could feel it. It was like something about the little mote of light tugged at her gut.

Cautiously, she moved toward it and her feet splashed in the shallow water. As she walked, the star didn’t seem to get any closer. It behaved like those in the sky and no matter how many steps she took, it refused to grow larger.

Prompted by some inner instinct, Kristen began to run. She ran in the dark and tried to watch her footing and the light at the same time. Her pace accelerated as far as her human muscles would allow, and when the light didn’t seem to grow any larger, she called on her dragon powers and increased her speed to the superhuman level.

Her body strained to the limit as she raced forward. She no longer watched the stream bed, entirely focused on the mote of light in front of her. For whatever reason, she knew she had to catch it. That it was not a star seemed obvious, and her reason suggested something with an aura. Some kind of a creature or a pixie, perhaps.

Kristen’s foot landed on nothing but air and she began to fall. In her haste, she had run over the edge of a waterfall. Her arms spun in circles and she tucked her legs up as she plunged past the light. She was close enough that she might have been able to touch it if she wasn’t plummeting toward the water below. Fortunately, the drop wasn’t as high as it could have been and she splashed into a pool of water that was much colder than the warm bath she’d enjoyed when she started the journey.

She swam to the surface, broke through the water, and sucked in a breath of air.

To her amazement, the ball of light now floated at the edge of the pool. She trod water and wondered if chasing it had been a mistake when it split in half. Now, instead of one light, there were two. Each of those divided to make four and these separated into eight.

They were now all around her and equally spaced so she could only see four of them at any given time as she spun one way or the other in the water.

Kristen decided to keep moving and swam to the edge of the pool, following the current. The water grew shallow again as she approached a mess of rocks and boulders which served as a kind of a dam to hold the water inside the pool. She climbed onto the rocks and noted that the shape of this pool—a round body of water with rocks blocking the water’s egress—was identical to the bath she had started in. That had even had a waterfall, exactly like the pool here did.

Did that mean this wasn’t a place at all but some type of magical effect based on the pool where she had begun?

Before she had time to ponder that particular question any further, the balls of light began to approach her. They had moved with her so four of them now floated above the pool behind her while the other four were already above the stream that drained the pool. As they grew closer, she could see that they weren’t balls of light at all but some kind of creature.

“Pixies?” she asked cautiously, although they didn’t seem quite like pixies.

They had bodies that could vanish into sparks but they still had bodies. Lady Dragonfly always looked the same. These were different. They looked more like rough sketches of a body made of white light—like reflections, almost.

“Are you will-o-wisps?” Kristen asked them.

They tinkled in response and sounded like bells. Was that them asking her to stop? She didn’t know.

Still, this was the first thing that had happened to her since she’d started moving down the stream. The realm was still in night mode, so she decided to wait the little beings out.

They moved closer still. Now, Kristen could see them even better. They were like little humans made of pure light, both adorable and absolutely beautiful. The circle around her grew tighter until the will-o-wisps were barely an arm’s length away.

Unsure of what to do but intrigued by the beings’ beauty as well as the gentle pull of something she felt emanating from them, she reached out to touch one of them.

The will-o-wisp snarled at her and jolted her outstretched hand with a burst of energy.

She yelped and yanked her hand back. “Pardon me.” She tried to apologize, but one of the will-o-wisps jolted her from behind.

Kristen whirled and realized that those behind her had moved quite close. They buzzed about now and darted closer as if they dared each other to see who could attack this big, clumsy intruder.

Her reflex was to turn to steel but she stopped herself. The power felt like electricity, which was never a good combination with her steel skin. Plus, there was the directive to follow the water. If there was another pool ahead, being in her steel mode and unable to swim would not be a good thing.

Instead, she ran.

She swung out at the will-o-wisps that stood in front of the stream. They dodged and she used the opening to race past them. Unfortunately, they did not let her go that easily. They gave chase, flew after her, and launched little jolts of energy at her as she tried to outpace them.

Even with her dragon speed, she couldn’t outrun the little bastards. They kept pace and darted in front of her and around her as she tried to evade them. As they moved, they released their blast of energy and giggled every time she cried out in pain.

Not sure what else to do, Kristen transformed into her dragon form. She bounded into the air and spread her wings to fly but was immediately reminded that the canopy was still thick there. She couldn’t get above the treetops. There simply was not enough space for her to spread her wings.

She bounded forward and proceeded down the stream with great big leaps. Even with the stride of a dragon, the will-o-wisps easily kept pace.

Finally, she tried something else.

Without warning, she turned on them and unleashed a great blast of fire. The heat was so intense that the trees on either side of the stream ignited. All the water that had been in the area of the blast evaporated instantly. About thirty yards upstream, the water began to trickle through the heated rocks to resume its journey downhill.

The will-o-wisps were unharmed when they emerged from the depths of the jungle. Instead of white light, however, they now glowed red.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Kristen said as she transformed into her human form, turned her back on the little bastards, and ran like hell.

She reasoned that she was supposed to keep going until something asked her to stop or made her. These little beings tricking her could not count as either one of those options. As she ran, the will-o-wisps pursued and easily kept pace as they jolted her with their bolts.

“I guess the pixies did say there would be risks,” she muttered. She tried to increase her dragon speed further but the creatures simply mirrored her.

Although she tried to dodge as best as she could, with eight of the balls of light, it was impossible to avoid them all. They were ever-present like the drone of traffic in Detroit or the smell of pizza at Buddy’s. She could practically feel them.

A sudden realization almost made her fall into the rocky stream when she acknowledged that she truly could feel them.

When she had her back to them, she still knew where they were, and when they moved, she knew it. They were magic, of course. If anything, the will-o-wisps seemed to have even more raw magic than the pixies did. But how could she feel that? Could she use it somehow?

She continued to sprint downstream, but the next time one of the balls of light darted forward to zap her—it didn’t take long, only a couple of seconds—she tried to feel its approach. To her surprise, she could. She felt the will-o-wisp grow closer, felt it charge its odd little jolting power, and felt it strike.

This time, she didn’t feel the impact. She dodged at the last moment and the will-o-wisp careened past her.

“Yes!” Kristen couldn’t help pumping her fist in celebration, which of course left her open to be zapped by two of the other balls of lights.

Still, she had felt them coming, and even though she hadn’t dodged those particular attacks, she had begun to get the hang of it. Finally, it started to make sense why the pixies sent her down this path.

She kept moving down the stream and focused on the magic energy coming from the lights. It was difficult to balance her mind so she could sense all eight of the creatures, but as she concentrated on them, she found she was able to dodge more of their attacks.

Soon, instead of being jolted by every single one whenever they wanted to zap her, she was able to dodge them about half the time. A few minutes later—did minutes exist there?—she was able to dodge almost all their attacks.

Kristen’s confidence had increased somewhat when she noticed more lights in the woods.

At first, it was only a couple, but then they doubled, multiplied again, and repeated this at least twice more. As if all operating with the same consciousness, the lights began to converge on her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Did you see that light?” Amy whispered into the darkness she had enveloped them in. They had walked through tunnels for what felt like hours. She had no idea how much time had passed and if she had to guess, she’d go with “too much.”

“I noticed it about a minute ago, yes,” Katrina whispered in response.

“Do you think that’s the end of the tunnel?” she asked.

“Is that where Boneclaw’s scale is pointing you?”

She nodded.

“Then yes.”

They continued cautiously down the strange, almost organic-like tunnel. The darkness was thick there so her magic worked well to shield them from view. As they moved deeper into the hillside, they passed a few passages connected to the one they followed. None of them had light coming from them and none seemed to draw the scale toward them more than the path they were taking, so they pressed on.

A short while later, the young mage heard footsteps.

“Are those in our tunnel?” she asked. It was hard to judge with the rock walls. Everything—even her whispers—seemed to echo.

“I don’t know. Will your magic keep us hidden?” Katrina asked.

“Not if they walk right over us,” she replied.

“Let’s step in there then,” the dragon said and Amy moved them through shadow into one of the branching passages.

They waited in the dark for almost a minute, breathing shallowly and trying not to move past the cocoon of magic she had spun to conceal them before they saw who was approaching.

She peered out from the darkness and was shocked to see that the people making the footsteps weren’t people at all, but two dwarves.

They hurried past, tramping in heavy boots and making no effort at all to mask their passage. One look was enough to confirm that they didn’t look like the dwarves she knew. They still had the big beards but lacked the bright colors the dwarves she had met always wore. Piercings were still prevalent, but they looked more jagged and savage somehow as if they were meant to intimidate rather than beautify their wearer. They vanished down the tunnel the duo had been following, but neither the mage nor the dragon said anything for another minute.

Finally, Amy broke the silence with the softest whisper she could utter. “I can’t believe they’re dwarves!”

Katrina’s scowl was such that even in the darkness, she felt stupid for saying anything. “We’re in a dwarf tunnel.”

“But I thought it must have been made a long time ago and that Boneclaw was merely using it. Why would dwarves want to work with him?”

“Not all dwarves have the same loyalties. Exactly like dragons have different allegiances and mages have different levels of acquiescence to dragon rule, dwarves come in a variety of political stripes too.”

“But to work with Boneclaw?”

“We can’t know they were doing that,” Katrina said. “For all we know, they’re here to kill him like we are.”

“Do you think we should follow them?” she asked.

The Iron Dragon stared down the passage for a moment before she shook her head. “No, I don’t. Can you determine if any of these side passages will take us closer to Boneclaw? If this is anything like other dwarf mines I’ve been in, some of these tunnels will go to the same place.”

“I’ll try,” Amy said and attempted to use the scale like a divining rod. Thankfully, it worked. A little way down the big passage, the energy from the scale seemed stronger. “This way.”

They proceeded down the new route and walked in silence for a long time. While they walked, the mage’s mind raced. What were dwarves doing there?

“Do you think those dwarves might have been here to stop Boneclaw?” Amy asked.

“It’s possible. After everything that happened in Detroit, it’s not exactly a secret that he’s an asshole. It’s only… Dwarves aren’t particularly stealthy. If they were trying to attack Boneclaw, I don’t see how they could get the drop on him.”

Katrina paused in the darkness and her gaze stared ahead down the tunnel.

The girl could almost see her ears twitch. “What is it?” she asked.

“I hear voices.”

They proceeded with caution. The dragon led the way while Amy tried to ensure that every part of her magic cocoon was intact. They were getting close and she could feel Boneclaw’s growing presence much stronger through the scale. But would they be able to get close enough to surprise him?

They went around a slight bend in the passage and she was able to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Stick to the walls,” Katrina said.

Amy nodded and pressed forward. Neither of the two women even considered stopping now. They had come this far and they had to know what Boneclaw was doing there and how the dwarves were involved. As they crept along the wall and remained far quieter than the voice booming from the end of the hallway in front of them, her mind filled with images of dwarf weapons of war. Would they be able to craft weapons that could hurt dragons? What about the Steel Dragon? If they could, she did not doubt that Boneclaw would ingratiate himself with them to gain the advantage.

As they neared the end of the tunnel, they began to hear not only one voice but many. It sounded like someone was addressing a group, and the listeners were more than willing to express their agreement with raucous shouts and applause.

With extreme care, they crept forward. No one was in the tunnel they were in, not yet anyway. Amy half-expected someone to jump out in front of them, but whatever was happening at the end of the tunnel seemed to demand the attention of everyone present.

Finally, they reached the end, and the long passage opened into a huge cavern lit with torches spaced around the walls. Their route ended in a little alcove set into the wall high above. They were about fifteen feet above the floor and stared into a circular chamber about fifty feet in diameter.

A large crowd of dwarves had gathered, all seated on the stone floor. The flickering light of the torches made their faces unreadable. All Amy could see was heavily furrowed brows and thick beards. She knew she was still wreathed in shadow, but it also seemed like she might not need that particular protection right now. Every single face stared at a central figure who had his back to the two infiltrators—Boneclaw.

He had come to stand in front of the crowd. The applause and cheers they had heard had been for a dwarf who now gestured at the old dragon and called for even more applause.

After a moment, the dwarf stopped working the crowd and went to sit.

Boneclaw raised his arms to motion for silence.

“This is gonna be good,” Katrina said, pushed herself against the opposite wall from her teammate, and kept her body in shadow so she could listen.

Amy knew this was not the time to attack Boneclaw, not in front of all these dwarves who seemed friendly toward him. She decided there was nothing to do but listen.

“Is this everyone?” the dragon demanded. “I expected more than fifty.”

“Yes, sir,” the dwarf who had introduced him replied with pride. “This is every member of our clan, plus a few members of the seven other closest clans. What you say here today will spread through our communities and soon, more will come to your call.”

“Well, I suppose that’s something to look forward to then.” Boneclaw sneered. “Forgive me, but I had expected more of you.” His voice now boomed and echoed off the walls of the chamber. As his words reverberated through the space, the flames from the torches seemed to grow dimmer.

“I had expected that more than fifty dwarves would be tired of living in this cold, hard, northern swamp.”

The crowd booed loudly at that. They didn’t seem angry at Boneclaw, however, but rather at the situation.

“Who here tires of being frozen six months of the year while the humans and dragons lay claim to the lush tropical lands?” he demanded.

A cheer loud enough to echo down the hallway was the answer.

“Who here tires of not being taken seriously?”

Another loud cheer erupted.

“Who here wishes to have a full place at the global table of negotiations instead of being tossed its frozen scraps?”

Cheers erupted, so loud that a few rocks and flurries of dust fell from the earthen ceiling of the hill.

“You are a strong people, stronger than humans and resistant to magic and dragon powers alike, and yet you have been left to gather ice in the back of the freezer. This time must come to an end. With your help, we will realize this vision. We will remake the world into a place of true equality, a place where dwarves don’t have to cede any of their territory to human settlements. A place where leaders can hold intruders and foreigners to the laws of the land.”

The cheers were so loud that an actual boulder dislodged from the ceiling. One of the dwarves darted forward and punched it and it shattered before it could do real damage.

“I thought dwarves were content with holding Canada?” Amy whispered to Katrina.

“As far as I knew, they were. I guess some wanted something else, but I wonder what the hell Boneclaw has done to convince them. God, I hope it’s not more of this decimation of the human population bullshit.”

But they would never have their answers as a yell issued from the passage behind them.

“What the hell is a leg doing here?” a dwarf hollered into the tunnel. He held a rifle comfortably and had it aimed down the tunnel with the casual efficiency of someone who knew exactly how to use their weapon.

Katrina yanked her leg back into shadow, but it was too late.

The dwarf, seeing that the leg was not disembodied but was connected to a body and presumably another leg, fired his weapon.

Amy threw a shield up before the bullet could hit the dragon. She then tried to throw another blast of magic at the dwarf to knock him on his ass—after the gunshot, the sound of a dwarf falling wouldn’t exactly alert anyone who hadn’t already heard what was going on—but she couldn’t. Rather than send their attacker sprawling with the tidal wave of magic she threw at him, he only scooted back. It was as if he was playing in the surf and a particularly strong wave had come, but he’d known what to do about it.

This must have been what Constance had been talking about when she said dwarves were resistant to magic.

The dwarf aimed, this time at the mage.

“Pull him toward us!” Katrina shouted.

“Are you crazy?”

“Just do it!”

She yanked him toward them. He shouted in surprise and stumbled forward. Obviously, he was not prepared to be pulled toward the people he was trying to attack. Still, even unbalancing him wasn’t enough to knock him down.

Before the dwarven guard could regain his stability, the dragon turned to iron and spun to strike him in the head with a roundhouse kick.

That was enough to thrust him stumbling down the passage, past the two women, and out into the chamber below. He fell the fifteen feet and landed with an impressively loud thud.

Completely unharmed, he pushed to his feet.

“There’s a mage in that hallway! And the Steel Dragon!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

With too many of the bobbing lights, Kristen could do little else but run. Her only hope was that if she stuck to the stream, she might get past them and survive. Even that didn’t prove to be easy, unfortunately.

The will-o-wisps emerged from the woods, converged on her, and circled her as she moved. Those that were in front of her didn’t get out of her way but used the opportunity to launch their tiny bolts. She was not able to dodge all of them, but she could sense those that had the most magical energy and avoided them. It wasn’t much of an edge but it was all she had and she was grateful for it.

She ducked under a group directly ahead, then made the mistake of glancing behind her to see hundreds of the creatures—beings? Manifestations? Evil cousins of the pixies?—and decided that her strategy to run as fast as she could was indeed the right choice.

The way in front of her was mostly clear and while a few of them continued to harry her, she could see them as well as feel them. She evaded those that tried to zap her and decided that her skill was improving. As she raced on and dodged their attacks, she sensed the magic as easily as if it were her own. Was this what the pixies meant when they said this was a realm of magic? Was all magic like this? Connected and running through even opposing forces?

A blast of particularly strong magic struck her in the small of her back and she splashed forward into the stream bed. She hadn’t sensed the attack so she still had something to learn about how this magic worked. That point was driven home when two more of the little glowing bastards shocked her while she was down. She turned instinctively to steel, only to draw the ire of a few more of the will-o-wisps. A couple of them shocked her—and yes, it hurt as badly as when she was not steel—so she turned to her regular skin again and stumbled forward.

Again, she moved past the main horde and felt like she was improving in her ability to sense their magic, but she couldn’t do anything to them. She tried to kick one but it darted clear easily as if it could not only sense her future motions but could also see how they would play out in slow motion. She punched at another and turned her hand to its dragon claw form to swipe at a third, but they evaded her strikes far more effortlessly than she had any of theirs.

It seemed there was nothing she could do to kill them, disable them, or even to slow them. She couldn’t even touch them so she gave up her futile attempts and continued to run.

Within moments, however, this also seemed to be a foolhardy plan. Up ahead, more light glowed directly in her path. Was it another wave of the will-o-wisps? If it was, she didn’t see how she could hope to survive. She barely managed to avoid the attacks by those already in pursuit. The thought of facing a hundred more…or a thousand? Hell, even ten more might be too much.

But with no other option, Kristen ran on. The will-o-wisps pursuing her did not slow their chase. They did not whisper encouragement or that her trial was almost over. They merely harried and pursued her in a seemingly endless stream of attacks. It was damn annoying, but she grimaced and pushed on.

As she drew closer to the light, it seemed to grow in size and elevate from the water until it hung in the sky like a glowing basketball.

“The sun,” she thought, shocked that she hadn’t recognized it for what it was when she first saw it. As soon as she had the thought, she realized she could no longer sense the will-o-wisps. Well, that wasn’t quite right. She could feel them, but for the first time since she’d tried to touch one of them, they weren’t pursuing her.

Kristen looked at her surroundings in shock. Without realizing it, she’d left the jungle. She still stood in the bed of the stream, but rather than meandering through the closely packed trees, it now snaked through a plain. She had left the jungle and it seemed she’d also passed the test as the will-o-wisps had abandoned their pursuit.

“Stop and catch your breath before you go on.”

She spun to where a pixie sat on a large stone in the middle of the stream a short distance ahead. It had a mustache so appeared more masculine than most pixies, and carried a long stick with a string dangling from it connected to a cork floating in the stream.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The creature twitched its mustache—an expression she decided to take as a smile. “I’m the fisherman.”

“Well, Fisherman, I’m Kristen Hall.”

“I know who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“Oh. Well, can you tell me about those glowing lights that tried to zap the shit out of me?”

“Nope.”

“Well, what can you tell me?” she asked and tried not to let her frustration show. She reminded herself that the pixies were trying to help her, even if the form of that help was more than a little strange.

The tiny little fisherman looked over his bushy mustache at her for a long moment, his eyes twinkling with some unspoken secret. He glanced over his shoulder at the sun before he turned back to her. “I reckon you can catch your breath before you go on. The sun will rise higher soon enough, but you go ahead and rest now.”

Something pulled at his fishing pole and diverted his attention away from her.

Rest could wait. Feeling the pressure of her looming deadline increase with the rising sun, Kristen set her shoulders and set off down the stream again. It was colder on the plains than it had been in the jungle but no less beautiful. Now, instead of tall, towering trees growing along both banks to block out the sky, rolling fields were filled with waist-high grasses and flowers that swayed in the wind.

The riverbed continued through a field covered by grass that was heavy with seed. In the next moment, her surroundings transitioned into a hill of nothing but sunflowers before it reverted to grassland a short distance later. It was like taking a trip across the Midwest if Americans could live off blades of grass and pollen instead of corn and wheat.

Nothing disturbed the landscape except the occasional boulder. Here and there, one of these giant stones protruded from the grass as if—millennia before—a group of giants had played a game of dice with the stones and left them there to be weathered into their lumpen shapes.

As she walked down the stream—it was deeper there, up to her knees—she thought about what it had taken to reach this place. The will-o-wisps and their magical jolts of energy were the first things that came to mind, of course. But as she walked past the beautiful prairie habitat, she found herself thinking back to her earliest days on the force.

Kristen recalled the first time she’d started to notice that something was different about her. She had been playing airsoft with Drew, the gang, and ol’ Jonesy, God rest his soul. They had attacked her and she had been able to use her reflexes to deflect their airsoft pellets with her weapon. It wasn’t an easy trick, apparently, but she had been able to do it effortlessly.

From there, her powers had only grown. She had been faster and stronger than her teammates, with keener vision and better reflexes. Was that all a manifestation of magic as Amythist claimed? She had spent a long time wondering why she hadn’t recognized that she was a dragon sooner, but perhaps she wasn’t asking the right question.

Perhaps she should have wondered how her powers could manifest at all. She had turned to steel to stop a rocket from blowing Jonesy up, although she had failed to save his life. After that incident, she had been told she was a dragon. Would her story have been different if she had been told she was something more? Who was to say? Even with the dragon inside her, fueling her speed and strength and granting her steel skin, it had taken her what felt like forever to transform into her dragon body.

Was that something anyone could realize? Was magic merely another skill that most humans did not bother with? Like playing the piano or training their memories?

Who was to say?

Kristen turned a finger to steel, then her hand, and marveled over how easy that now was. When she had first learned her powers, simply changing to a dragon had been difficult, but with a bevy of brilliant teachers, she had mastered her powers. Although some of those teachers had been less than brilliant.

She had learned from Sebastian Shadowstorm too. At the time, she had not known that he was trying to burn her city to the ground, only that he was willing to take a chance on teaching an outsider. Were his powers derived from the same place as hers? He couldn’t turn into shadow like the Masked One could, but he could move through them. Did that mean he had visited there? Or had he simply tapped into that power as well as his ability to control the weather?

These were questions she couldn’t answer and never would. Shadowstorm was dead and she’d killed him. At the time, it had seemed necessary but now, faced with the Masked One, she almost longed for the simpler time facing a simpler foe.

Of course, he hadn’t been her last. She had also faced Death, an assassin and dragon more proficient with dragon bullets than any of the technomages had been. Against that enemy, she had learned that her powers weren’t always that useful. Depending on the threat, different responses were needed.

She had mastered so much. What started with her ability to become steel had spread, changed, and grown. At first, she hadn’t known how to do that on command and now, she could feel it when only a fingertip changed to steel.

Wait.

That was new.

Kristen turned another fingertip to steel.

She frowned when she realized she could feel each and every part of her flesh change to metal.

While she had always been able to feel something when she transformed, it was mostly the change of sensation. Skin and steel experienced the world quite differently. What she experienced now was entirely different.

It took a moment before she understood that she could feel the magic powering the transformation. She had never been able to do that before. When she changed her hand to steel, she felt the same kind of tingle. It was odd, but it reminded her of the will-o-wisps in the jungle. This brought the same anticipatory jolt, but while the power that had come from the beings had been painful, the energy that came from her was pleasant, like a cool breeze that didn’t quite raise goosebumps.

On impulse, she transformed her entire body to steel and felt the magic flow through her. What had seemed like an inner stream before now felt like a raging river as her body coursed with magic.

But it wasn’t only through her. It was around her too. Exactly like she had been able to sense the will-o-wisps, she could sense magic there as well. It was present in the stream as it swirled around her feet and drew her onward. She could see it in the way the grass bent and moved in the wind and heard it beneath the sounds and songs of crickets. It was everywhere in this place. More accurately, it was this place. But it was more than that too.

Magic wasn’t merely something that came from this realm, she realized. It had to be a fundamental force of the universe. Like gravity or the electromagnetic spectrum but much weirder. It gave her power, but it also gave humans the power to use magic to create the pixies, the dwarves, and even—if Amythist was correct—the dragons. But it did more than that. Magic let a woman imagine what her great-grandchild might look like. It let a man think about a mistake he had made when he was still a boy. Magic let people imagine structures that would take lifetimes to build. It allowed people to transform something as simple as words or sounds into stories and music.

Magic was everywhere but ran closer to the surface there. It was in the grass, the river, and the jagged boulder that broke the flow of the water and created rapids in the formerly placid flowing stream.

Kristen opened her eyes to look at the world around her instead of simply sensing the magic. The terrain had changed. The verdant fields of grass and flowers had given way to dried grasses and flowers that had already gone to seed and withered to nothing at all.

The boulders in the field—once so smooth they were almost friendly—now looked jagged like a giant window of stone had been shattered and the shards left to fall where they wished.

Even the boulders in the river no longer looked smoothed by the water that flowed around them. They were aggressive, blocked her path, and forced her to contend with not only their physical presence but with the turbulent vortexes of water that formed in their path. The water itself—crystal-clear until this point—now had debris from the places where it swirled around the rocks.

In the stream ahead of her, Kristen saw many more of them. The stream—it was now wide enough to call a river—pooled once more at a bank of these jagged, threatening boulders before it cascaded down a series of rapids.

What am I headed toward? she wondered before she proceeded, a little more cautious now. When she passed the bank of jagged rocks, she felt the sun on her neck. It had risen higher in the sky, which meant she was running out of time when she needed it most.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Amy, you have to run,” Katrina said.

“I fucking know we have to run, so come on!” Amy tugged at the Iron Dragon with her magic, but she was too heavy and too stubborn.

Already, the dwarves below—armed with the most effective of all weapons, the gun—were taking shots at the two women.

“You heard that dwarf. Boneclaw now thinks I’m the Steel Dragon. He won’t let us out of here.”

“Let has nothing to do with it. Let’s go!”

“No, Amy, think about it. If he thinks Kristen was here, he’ll call for the duel to be declared void. I don’t know much about dragon politics, but I know enough to know that he can do that. It can’t happen. I have to fight him.”

“No, you don’t. He’ll kill you.”

“He’ll kill Kristen if you don’t warn her about the dwarves.” Amy did not fail to notice that her teammate didn’t deny that Boneclaw would indeed try to kill her.

But compared to what she did next, that detail seemed trivial.

“Amy, go,” Katrina said as she vaulted out of the alcove and landed in front of Boneclaw.

“Ah, Kristen. The Steel Bitch herself,” the old dragon mused as the dwarves rushed forward to seize her.

“I don’t have time to wait for this duel, Boneclaw. We do this here and now before you can stack the table against me.” It was amazing how much Katrina and Kristen looked alike. In their metal forms, they were almost indistinguishable, and in the low light, the iron could not be distinguished from steel. She only had to pitch her voice up a few notes and she even sounded like Kristen.

“You don’t wish the odds to be stacked against you, so you choose to fight me here?” he demanded.

“Fight me, you coward.” She spat in his face.

Boneclaw smiled from beneath the skull he wore as a mask. “Careful. You might get your dead slave’s skull dirty.” To the dwarves, he said, “Release her.”

The dwarves complied and Katrina wasted no time. She lunged forward with her iron fist cocked and loaded but fell through empty space.

Laughter came from all around the room as her adversary turned to shadow and moved from torch to torch and extinguished them all except for one a dwarf held near her.

His laughter grew louder as she began to scream. At first, her shouts were those of a warrior engaged in deadly combat. She punched and kicked with blows strong enough to hurl any dwarf unfortunate enough to get in her way across the room. But the Masked One wasn’t an enemy made of matter. Except for when he wanted to lash out at her, he’d taken his shadow form and her punches couldn’t strike him. Worse, her iron skin could not rebuff him.

He fought like he had been training for it. His strikes were aimed at her armpits, the backs of her knees, and her throat, places that by necessity couldn’t be as thickly armored. Katrina took these blows as well as she could, but the sheer force of his attacks was wearing her down. Plus, she still tried to fight a shadow. Every punch she threw was with her full strength and every kick was meant to be the last.

But she couldn’t land a single blow, not in this place of darkness beneath the earth.

In the next moment, he had her. He sliced the tendons at the back of her legs—already weakened from a flurry of strikes—and she fell to her knees. Boneclaw then forced her mouth open and stabbed down her throat.

Red blood burbled out as she fell face-down on the floor of the chamber. Her body landed with the heavy clank of iron.

She was dead and Amy had watched her die. It was over too quickly for her to do more than raise a little magic to her hands. The mage felt worse than useless, knowing she’d been unable to do a thing to save her ally.

“The Steel Bitch is done for but don’t let her mage get away!” Boneclaw bellowed and the dwarves hastened to obey. They vanished into a dozen tunnels with terrifying quickness. She didn’t have to wait long to hear their boots tramping through the tunnels as they searched for her.

With no other choices, she fled.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

If Kristen had known that the dead grass and raggedy brush of the spent flowers were the last trace of life she would encounter on her path, she might have tried to appreciate them more. From her vantage point atop a boulder in the river, she could see nothing but the grays and browns of a lifeless, barren landscape. Wasteland might be a fairer description, honestly.

There was nothing except the river—the stream had indisputably widened to a river now—and bare stone, dusty, dead earth, and windswept boulders. The water was almost ice-cold, despite the sun beating on it. That was the only connection it had to its former self. The temperature had dropped consistently as the world became more desolate. She didn’t want to think about what the world around her might look like if the stream froze.

To be fair to the stream, though, that might be an improvement. The water had never cleared after its descent down the rapids. Even now, despite the river being almost stagnant in most places, it was muddy and filthy with a slight sheen to its surface. She still followed it but she used her dragon powers to leap from boulder to boulder or to take a few steps on one of its craggy banks. The water looked like what her father had described Lake Erie as looking like decades before—toxic.

Not for the first time, she looked longingly over her shoulder. She could still barely see the jungle she had come from in the distance. Even from miles away, its trees towered and cast shade on all the other organisms and possibly creatures that lived on the jungle floor. She missed it, strangely enough, even though the will-o-wisps had ruined the ambiance.

It felt like days since she’d been there. She felt like she had walked through the forest all night, the plains all day, and this barren wasteland for a week, but the sun had yet to set. Did that mean she still had two more days? She had no idea. It was probably foolish to think the sun in this realm had anything to do with the sun at home. She hoped she still had enough time but she began to worry that she didn’t.

What frustrated her most was that she hadn’t learned anything yet. Okay, so she had learned how to sense magic, but how would that help her? It might let her sense Boneclaw before he attacked, but it wouldn’t empower her ability to strike him in his shadow form.

Kristen was beginning to worry that the pixies didn’t understand her situation or worse, that Amythist hadn’t been honest about her intentions. She paused and tried to shake the dark thoughts from her head. Amythist and the pixies could be trusted and she had to take them at their word but still, how much longer would the sun sit overhead?

As if in response, it shifted so the bottom of it touched a craggy mountain on the horizon. The dust and dirt in the air ignited in reds, oranges, and yellows. It would be beautiful if she wasn’t worried it would last for hours and hours.

She sighed and cupped her hands in the dirty water. While she had drunk a fair amount in the jungle and the fields of flowers, nothing had happened. It seemed riskier to drink there, but she remembered how the water had invigorated her and hoped it would continue to do so. She hadn’t hungered at all on this trip—was that because all this had taken less than an hour?—but she now began to despair of ever seeing an end to this journey.

The most pressing thing about her situation was the time crunch. She had to master abilities that could give her an edge over Boneclaw before their duel. If she didn’t do so in time and faced him anyway, she’d be dead. If she failed to master them and didn’t arrive, she had no doubt that he would declare some kind of attack on her, and that wouldn’t go well. She had to be there on time and with the skills she would need and yet, in this realm, time seemed to be nonexistent.

That made her wonder if she would ever get out of there. She felt so alone and had become quite used to working with others. Yes, she was the Steel Dragon, but she was also someone who had learned that you couldn’t succeed in much of anything alone. Why did she try to do so now? It was confusing, to say the least.

Plus, there was the implication that she would have to face Boneclaw alone. Well, more than an implication. She knew she would face him alone, but how well could that go? She had already lost to him multiple times, despite having people helping her every time she had faced him. How could she face him alone and hope to win?

The sunset faded into twilight and her despair deepened. She continued to plod forward, so why did nothing happen? A part of her almost wanted something to come from the shadows that stretched from the boulders she walked between because then, at least, she could face something besides her self-doubt.

If the sun sank any lower, she would be in darkness again. So far, every time the sun had shifted on this journey, something had happened. What was different now? Why was it vanishing when the wasteland all around her remained stubbornly the same?

Could this be a trap? Kristen wondered as she hopped onto another boulder and looked back up the stream. The jungle was completely gone now, vanished into the gloom of twilight and the haze that seemed to fill the air. If it was a trap, she didn’t think Amythist had set it. She wouldn’t aid Boneclaw, not with the way she had helped the captive dragons.

The pixies, then?

The fact that Amythist trusted them made her want to trust them as well. But maybe this was merely beyond their ability to understand. If they spent time in this realm, perhaps their sense of time was completely disassociated from what it meant on Earth.

Most people didn’t associate with pixies because they were capricious to a fault. She had heard stories of their pranks gone wrong. Hell, the story about what the creatures had done to the wizard who had captured two of them was positively gruesome, but at least they had a reason for that particular incident.

That said, she had heard stories of them doing bizarre things for no reason at all. Sometimes, they thought they were being funny but most of the time, they were simply inscrutable. They were simply more…alien than any of the other races on Earth, probably because they were beings of pure magic. Their outlook on the world was bound to be different. She had hoped that difference in perspective would give her the edge she needed. Now, she was scared it might very well doom her.

Resolute, she pressed onward. There was no choice and despite her doubts, she wouldn’t simply sit and quit.

The sun—challenging her willpower, perhaps—set completely. The same bizarre stars came out and began to twinkle as she waded on without slowing.

The stream was now barely more than a muddy trickle dribbling between pools. Had she missed some branch of it somewhere along the way? How had a once mighty river changed into this disgusting swamp?

Kristen considered taking her dragon form to travel faster, but something held her back from doing so. It didn’t feel right. She had no idea why, but she trusted her intuition. This form—her human form—was her true form. While she might have been a dragon from birth, her parents had raised her as a human baby. This was the body she slept in and the one she laughed and cried in. It seemed like the body to make this spiritual journey of magical awakening in.

The sky had to be taunting her as a dust cloud moved in to obscure the stars and plunge the muddy path into complete and total darkness. Her dragon-powered eyesight was usually more than sufficient, even in low light, but the darkness was so thick that she couldn’t see her feet. She had walked along the bank of the stream for a short distance. It wasn’t like there were plants to deal with, so it had seemed the most sensible choice, but she now wondered if she would be able to stay near the stream in this darkness. It might make more sense for her to resume wading in the muddy water. At least that way, she would be sure she didn’t accidentally lose her way in the dark.

She stepped down the slope of the bank and into the water, but failed to see a rock and struck it with her shin hard enough that she fell.

Instinctively, she turned her body to steel to protect herself. It worked, of course. No matter how jagged the rocks, they were never a match for the Steel Dragon wrapped in metal fueled by healing power.

As she pushed to her feet and tried to wipe the water from her before she turned to her regular skin, she realized she could feel the power flow through her for the steel transformation more clearly than ever. She felt the typical enhanced strength and imperviousness of steel skin, but she now felt so much more. It felt like every part of her was alive with magic and every square inch of skin and every follicle radiated it.

And it was her, she realized.

Magic was simply an extension of herself. It was like her spirit, as her mom would say, or her soul, as her dad would say, or maybe her inner self—Brian’s favorite euphemism. That was how she changed herself into steel. She—and indeed all people—had an essence to them—a life force, something that made them special and unique from all others. To transform, she simply had to direct the flow into the parts she wanted to change. In fact, she already had that skill tuned so well that she could change only a finger if she wanted.

She could control magic and had done so for a long time. Only now, she knew what it meant.

“Are all dragon powers like this?” Kristen asked the darkness.

As she trudged through the muddy water, she decided to experiment. She was used to drawing the magic of her inner self to power her steel skin, her strength, and her speed, but what about the other dragon powers?

Fire breath and the capability to fly were not abilities in the normal sense of the word. They were only possible because of magic. A dragon would never be able to fly without it, nor would one be able to breathe fire. Maybe she didn’t need to be in her dragon form to use those powers.

It occurred to her that she merely thought she did.

Perhaps Amythist was right and dragons didn’t truly exist and were merely manifestations of what people thought was possible. Once someone had transformed into one, other people thought they were capable of the same thing. If that was true, there was no reason to think the powers could only be used when she was in her dragon form.

Kristen paused and planted her feet in the mud and slime at the bottom of the river. She thought about her dragon breath, that most powerful of dragon attacks, and how it worked in her dragon body. There was no sack of poison that needed to be replenished and no potions that needed to be consumed. One simply had to take a deep breath and think of fire.

She took a deep breath.

Her thoughts focused on the power building in her chest and visualized that the heat would brook no argument and the flames would end any attack against her. She thought about the magic flowing through her and from her. Then, she exhaled.

Disappointingly, nothing happened.

With a heavy sigh, she reminded herself that she did not give up. Nothing like this ever worked on the first attempt. She tried again with no response. At her third attempt, she felt heat in her stomach and as she exhaled, she belched.

Kristen screamed in frustration and punched the surface of the muddy water. Why couldn’t this be easier?

She looked at the dark sky and then at the water around her legs. In the dark, they were almost indistinguishable. Nothing was visible to lend some kind of assurance that she was even on the right track. She frowned and narrowed her eyes into the darkness in search of something that provided a clue of what to do next.

Furtive movements seemed to eddy across the face of the darkness.

“What the hell are those?”

When she peered into the blackness, she realized that her scream of frustration might have been a serious mistake. Something moved toward her and she caught glimpses of sharp teeth. Whatever they were, they looked dark and dangerous, and worst of all, they looked hungry.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Amy ripped her gaze away from Katrina’s corpse and stumbled up the tunnel they—she—was hiding in. Her teammate was dead. The Iron Dragon, a powerful thorn in Kristen’s side for so long before she became one of her strongest allies, was dead. Boneclaw had killed her effortlessly as if fighting her had been a game. This was a woman who could go toe to toe with the Steel Dragon herself.

All this raced through her mind as she half-staggered through the passage. She tried to make herself move faster but found it difficult with the tears that blurred her vision. She had to escape and tell Kristen to not go through with this duel. There was no way she would be able to defeat Boneclaw. He was too powerful and too skilled with his powers. She had to get back to warn her or her friend would die.

A dwarf lurched into her path, raised a rifle, and fired. She barely had the common sense to block the shot with her magic and realized belatedly that she had let her shield drop when she saw Katrina die. As she tried to bring it up again, the dwarf took aim and prepared to fire again and she knew she didn’t have time.

She hurled a blast of force at him, but the magic rolled off like a wave against a boulder.

“You magic bitch,” he cursed as he fired again.

Amy blocked that one too.

The dwarf cursed and turned to the hallway. “I found her! I found the mage!”

It was her turn to swear when she heard boots thudding down the passages toward her. She should have silenced the dwarf and been cleverer in her escape. Worse, she should have saved Katrina.

The dwarf aimed for the third time.

The young mage ripped the gun out of his hands with her magic, bent it in half, and clubbed him across the face with it. He reeled from the blow, but she hadn’t even drawn blood. It was a reminder that dwarves were much stronger than humans were.

But they still wore clothes, fortunately.

She lifted him by the back of his shirt and threw him behind her. He landed with a thunk but was not knocked unconscious and simply found his feet and charged toward her.

By now, he was no longer the most important threat she faced. Three more dwarves had entered the tunnel to block her path.

Amy had her head together enough now to block all their shots. She’d practiced that a hundred times. Her powers weren’t able to work on her attackers directly, so she ripped a boulder from the wall of the tunnel and hurled it at them. They deflected it as easily as she had deflected their bullets.

As she considered her next strike, she heard a roar from the cavern below. Boneclaw sounded pissed and she knew she had to get out of there without delay. She used her telekinesis to boost herself past the three dwarves, only to find another five racing down the tunnel toward her.

It seemed she wouldn’t be able to fight, and running looked more and more difficult. What choice did she still have?

Her thoughts reminded her that her skateboard was still in the tiny shack at the top of the shaft. She tucked into another tunnel to avoid the five—now eight—dwarves who were now ranged against her and called for her skateboard.

Unfortunately, it was too late. She had chosen a tunnel that ended in a dead-end. The dwarves, now nine in total, moved toward her with their guns raised. That they were not shooting was not a good thing. They understood that their bullets wouldn’t penetrate her shields, which meant they most likely planned to switch to fists. And those, she thought gloomily, deflected her magic like drizzle off an umbrella.

They mumbled to each other in a language of low tones and falling boulders. Then, as one, they attacked. She faced them with her back against the stone wall and tried to keep them at bay by using her telekinesis to block their paths with boulders. They merely punched through them. They were strong—far stronger than she had thought possible. It seemed all the more frustrating because she hadn’t anticipated dwarves being there with Boneclaw.

One of them landed a punch across her face that might have rattled her had she not managed to absorb some of the blow with her magic. But she could tell by the dwarf’s expression that he knew he would merely have to hit her more directly on the next strike.

“No, please,” she said and held her hands up. “Just… I’d rather you shoot me than beat me to death.”

He responded with a grin with more teeth made of stone than bone. “Back up fellas. We gonna fill this mage with holes. Aren’t we, my lady?”

“I thought you would offer to take me captive, honestly,” Amy replied.

“Why would we do that when Lord Boneclaw killed the Steel Dragon herself? You’ve already lost this fight and you’ve already lost the war.”

“Actually, you’ve already lost this fight.”

The dwarf didn’t even have enough time to say, “Huh?” before her skateboard rocketed between his legs and came to rest at her feet. She stepped on the end and popped it into her arm.

“Shoot her!” he shouted when he realized something was amiss.

The dwarves obeyed without hesitation.

It wasn’t enough.

Amy tossed her skateboard up and spun it with magic while enveloping it with a shield. That power—combined with the Kevlar grip tape and the titanium trucks she had installed on the custom board—were more than enough to deflect the bullets.

“Get her!” the stone-toothed dwarf shouted. The others rushed forward to pummel her again but it was much too late.

The young mage had already hopped on her board and pushed off. There was no way even the most legendary of skateboarders could have gained much momentum with a single push, but she was not merely any skateboarder. She was a skateboarding mage who had played way too many videogames.

Her push sent her up the wall of the round, organically-shaped tunnel, over the heads of the dwarves, and down the other side of the tunnel to skid to a stop behind them.

“What the hell?” one of her attackers asked as the others fell over each other to turn in the tight tunnel and pursue her.

There was no way they would catch her. With magic to propel her forward and glue her shoes to her board, she was unstoppable. A dwarf jumped into her path and she did a kickflip over his head. Another darted out and she ollied over him too and put her board down on the top of his helmet with enough force to knock him off his feet. A group of three tried to block her so she did the loop-the-loop maneuver again.

“I can’t believe I don’t have a headcam on right now,” she mumbled. “This ride will be fucking legend. Katrina? If you’re watching, this is for you.”

She reached the main tunnel and rocketed up faster than gravity could have pulled her down in the other direction. The dwarves, quite aware of the grade of their tunnel, sent an avalanche of boulders tumbling down the shaft at her.

Amy had played her fair share of videogames and ollied up, then jumped from one boulder to the next without touching the ground until she was past the avalanche. “Mario taught me that one, bitches!” she shouted.

More shots fired from behind her. She ollied again and threw her board into a three-sixty kickflip to divert the bullets before she landed on the board and continued her meteoritic ascent to the surface.

She could see light now. Not much, only the outline of the fancy door she and Katrina had entered through. Nothing appeared to be in her way either, except something weird sparked on the side of the passage.

A massive explosion catapulted her from her board and into empty space. She snatched her board as she fell and managed to get it under her feet before she landed. When she looked up, fifteen dwarves stood near the door of the house. They had used dynamite to collapse the tunnel beneath her feet.

They fired at her now, which forced her to throw her shields up and reassess how to escape. She had decided to simply rip the house out of the side of the hill behind them when she saw Boneclaw’s shadow-dragon head appear in the broken end of the tunnel where she had been.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

Amy didn’t wait for the dwarves to give him detailed directions to the mage who was right below his nose. Instead, she turned her board and pushed off down a passage.

Gunshots echoed behind her, followed by the mighty roar of a pissed-off dragon, which suggested that Old Boney had indeed learned where she had been. She willed herself to greater speed. Truthfully, it wasn’t that difficult to go at amazing speeds down there as the tunnels were beautifully made with incredibly smooth floors and rounded walls. No gravel flurried from her board to her feet, and any time there was a sharp turn, she could simply ride onto it like an Olympian doing the luge.

She glided up one wall, then another, and didn’t slow even when the grade of the tunnel grew even steeper. Her tic-tack progress settled into a smooth, comfortable rhythm that enabled her to accelerate.

But still, she heard Boneclaw behind her. He was gaining. While she rolled as quickly as she could, he could simply turn to shadow and travel through the darkness. The only reason she was still alive was because he had to take his solid form to attack her, and that cost him precious seconds.

It certainly wasn’t a big advantage for her, nor would it last. Amy knew enough of the dragon to know he was no fool. She prepared a ball of light in each fist. If she could force him to become solid, that might give her the edge she needed.

Focused on the dragon behind her, the young mage hadn’t paid attention when she reached the end of the tunnel. She burst out of the relatively narrow tunnel into a much larger area. It was as wide as the room she had seen Boneclaw and all the dwarves in earlier but much longer. In the middle was a metal train track with a mining cart on it. All around that were dwarves running for their guns.

Amy—completely and unabashedly unable to help herself—did the biggest backflip melon grab she possibly could, landed in a backslide on the rail, and pushed down the tunnel.

Dwarves gave chase on either side, firing shots at her that she blocked by doing kick tricks of one variety or another that deflected the bullets into the walls. She reached a switch in the track and hopped onto the rail that entered a passage that led up instead of down and pushed herself ever faster.

She thought she had finally lost the dwarves when the track came to an end. Relieved, she ollied off the track, did a triple kickflip for good measure, and landed in what must have been some type of concrete drainage pipe. Unfortunately, the dwarves had a better understanding of the geography of their mine than she did and they entered the pipe from both ends.

The young mage careened up one side of the concrete tube, planted her hand on the lip, and lifted the board over her head. The dwarves converged on her at the bottom of the pipe and fired a relentless barrage while she used her free hand and feet to direct her board to block their shots. Finally, when they were all gathered in one big old beautiful group, she dropped the handplant, got her feet back on her board, and bulldozed through the middle of them.

They didn’t scatter like she had imagined they would—they were too damn tough—but she knocked enough of them on their butts to be able to swoop down the rest of the concrete drainage tube unmolested.

The ground turned into earth and stone as Amy continued her ascent toward a hole that showed a sky rich with the reds, oranges, and yellows of sunset.

She burst out into the cool evening sky to see she was perhaps a quarter of the way around the hill from the cabin she’d entered through and much closer to the bottom.

A deep breath helped to ease her thudding heart. Happy to have the last rays of the sun shining to protect her, she took her board to the air and started toward home.

Her relief was short-lived, however, as she did not make it far.

Below her, the cabin seemed to become a horrible twisted nightmare of Alice in Wonderland. A huge dragon arm drove through the window and another burst through the front door. After a blast of fire that knocked a hole in the roof, Boneclaw stuck his horrible dragon head out.

He truly was a fearsome-looking beast. His scales were the color of ink but the spikes that jutted from his spine, elbows, shoulder blades, and face were the color of bone. They weren’t uniform and were jagged and sharp—like each had been broken in some fight in the past and regrown into a more wicked version of itself.

With a roar of utter rage, he spread his wings and demolished the cabin.

“Oh, fuck this.” Amy instinctively rose higher as quickly as she could.

She made it perhaps fifty feet before a claw came out of nowhere and drove into her face.

Without a doubt, she would have been dead if she had let her bulletproof shield drop. As it was, the force of the blow was far stronger than she could endure. It hurled her from the air and she plummeted into the forest below. Her shield—a sphere all around her—impacted the trunk of a tree with enough force to crack it in half, and for a moment her head spun so badly she couldn’t use her magic at all.

Boneclaw was strong. Far stronger than any dragon she had faced before.

The young mage wiped her face and shook her head as she tried to orient herself. That moment saved her life as in her confusion, she saw some of the shadows of the trees moving. Boneclaw was there in the darkness of the forest. She stood, stepped onto her board, and rocketed it toward the sky and the sunlight.

“You coward!” the old dragon roared. He followed her as a billowing form of shadow but as soon as he broke through the treetops and into the warm glow of the evening sun, he coalesced into his dragon form.

It was only a small improvement, in her estimation.

Her instincts pushed her to greater height and Boneclaw followed.

Once they were well above the forest, she turned to him and lobbed a sphere of force. The dragon batted it aside.

“You may think your powers are strong enough to beat me, but I have faced your kind before. Many, many times.” He laughed.

“There’s never been anyone like me ever before. And there never will be again,” she said. As if to prove her point, she ripped one of the trees out of the forest and launched it from Earth like a spear to puncture Boneclaw’s wings.

The dragon roared in pain and fell from the sky, but as soon as he reached the darkness of the forest, he healed and resumed his pursuit.

Amy—never one to avoid using a trick that worked—ripped up tree after tree and hurled them one after the other at her enemy.

The dragon dodged repeatedly and avoided as many as he could.

“Child, you will never defeat me!” Boneclaw sneered before she caught him in the teeth with a tree.

He recovered and exhaled fire at her, which she blocked.

“You will tire, little girl, while I have all the time in the world.”

She looked at the sun. It was already halfway below the horizon. He was right, and she knew she had to act now.

With that in mind, she continued to fling more trees.

Boneclaw laughed at this effort and dodged them as they rocketed toward him. He couldn’t avoid all of them, though, as she was simply able to throw too many. She had grown up in the forests of Maine and knew how trees worked, how their roots dug in, and where their trunks bent and where they didn’t. When she had first manifested her powers, this was how she had done it. She had taken an entire forest and used it to demolish two dragons.

Now, she did the same thing but with a hundred times more control.

The old dragon did an admirable job evading the projectiles. Less than one in twenty trees hit him. But when she threw over a hundred trees, it was enough to beat him senseless.

He plummeted earthward and landed with a thud that flurried pine needles and leaves high into the sky.

Amy raced closer to pick up every tree, rock, stone, or boulder she could and throw them all onto the place where he had crashed.

Unfortunately, her efforts were too late.

Boneclaw laughed from the darkness all around her. She looked at the sky to see that the sun had set.

“Oh, you poor little arrogant mage. Did you honestly think a couple of twigs would hurt me?” he asked from the darkness.

“You were beaten!”

“Your attack was very showy. Very impressive. Maybe instead of harvesting your skull, I’ll simply break your mind and use your power.”

“Fuck you!” the girl screamed. “I had you beat.”

The old dragon laughed even more loudly. “Would you have stayed in the fight if you had been losing? No, I know you needed to be delayed, so I let you knock me around a little. You did well. Some of those strikes hurt—or they did until I healed them.”

A claw materialized inches from her shield and delivered a blow that catapulted her away like a hamster inside a plastic bubble. Before she could roll to a stop, he was behind her. This time, he struck her with a whip of his tail so swift that it snapped audibly. She heard the sound seconds before she heard her sphere cracking another tree in half.

“You cannot beat me anymore. You understand this, yes?” Boneclaw teased. “Drop your little shield, kiss my claws, and perhaps I will let you live. Like I said, you are entertaining. I like to be entertained.”

Amy picked up stones and branches and hurled them at the darkness. Boneclaw simply wicked away into nothingness. He didn’t have to become corporeal anymore, not if he didn’t want to. She threw more stones, more of the trees she had already hurled at him, and anything and everything she could.

Her efforts proved futile because nothing could reach him. She couldn’t hit shadow.

She wiped the sweat from her face and saw that her nose was bleeding. It was a sure sign that she would run out of power. She had spent far too much on her reckless attacks and it was time to run.

The young mage crouched on her skateboard and rocketed above the trees. Boneclaw’s laughter followed and easily kept pace with her, and she began to panic. She could outrace dragons. In the past, she had outraced Kristen many times and even Lumos—God rest his soul—used to complain about how fast she was on her skateboard.

Her enemy was faster and the problem was obvious. He didn’t need wings to fly and simply moved through the shadows at the speed of the dark. No matter how fast she pushed herself, it wasn’t enough.

In desperation, she picked up trees and boulders and flung them behind her, hoping to land a lucky blow on the dragon and failing repeatedly.

Amy could feel herself running out of magic. She couldn’t keep attacking, especially since her strikes only hurt her by draining her energy.

In the next moment, it was time to play defense when Boneclaw materialized a claw and tried to pound her in the face with it.

Her shield caught the blow like it had before and she hurtled back. She was about to reverse direction but he anticipated this. He caught her ball of protection with a claw.

“Let me go!” she said and flung stones at the claw that held her bubble. The dragon laughed and dropped her but he caught her again after she fell much farther than a dragon’s body should have been able to stretch.

“I did as you asked,” he all but purred from outside her protected space. He turned his head briefly and his long sinuous neck became solid. Amy attacked but he simply laughed and became invisible again. The effort of throwing more rocks at him was taking its toll. She could feel a headache of unbelievable proportions growing. “Now, kiss my claws.”

He squeezed the ball of force and she felt it like a vice-grip on her entire body. While he couldn’t touch her, not inside her shields, the extra force he applied compelled her to counter, which drained every cell in her body.

Once again, she threw rocks at him, headache and nosebleed be damned. Some of the rocks struck her target this time, but not with enough force to do anything but annoy him.

He thrust the largest one away with a flick of his tail.

“You truly are a fascinating creature. Like an ant that can lift ten times its weight, your strength defies common logic.”

“And your weakness is a flashlight so we’re both weird,” Amy said and flashed a light from her fists.

Boneclaw squinted but he wasn’t otherwise injured. “Ah, to say light is my weakness is a failure of your ability to understand my power. It is more like darkness is my strength. I can teach you how I use it to empower me.”

“I’d rather die.”

“And yet you keep this little bubble around you, so you must wish to live for some reason. Is it because you wish to see what you can truly do with your raw power? I have never seen such an innate gift in your kind before. Not once in all my centuries. You lack finesse, of course, but if you had survived a few more decades, you might have become something truly special.”

The old dragon squeezed her then as if he tried to wring all the water out of a sponge.

Amy screamed with the effort it took to keep her shield intact, but she did not yield. She would not.

“Even now, you refuse the release of death. Why?”

“Because I want to live to see you beaten senseless like you deserve.”

That pissed the ancient dragon off. He took the ball she was in and hurled it toward the ground. She struck with enough force to make a crater in the earth, but she kept herself anchored in the center of the sphere and refused to let it break.

But Boneclaw was not yet done. He swooped at her, flying insanely fast—impossibly fast for a dragon—and whipped her ball with his tail to launch her skyward. At the peak of her ascent, he appeared from the darkness and smacked her upward again.

The young mage had thought she had traveled miles from the hill where Boneclaw had been recruiting the dwarves, but in two blows, he had knocked her back to where she started.

That was when she felt despair. He was simply so fast and so strong. It took everything she had to simply keep herself from being crushed. How could anyone stand against this monster? Was there even any point in fighting him?

“You are a persistent little insect, I’ll give you that,” he said, scooped her ball up, and peered inside at her bloody nose and sweat-streaked brow.

Amy suddenly understood why she had to fight. She had to stick it to this asshole, even if it cost her life. People had to stand up to tyrants and especially when the odds were against them and it seemed impossible.

Spurred on by her renewed determination, she made a tiny hole in her shield and hocked a ball of snot, sweat, and blood into Boneclaw’s face.

He screeched with disgust. “You impudent little cretin!” he shouted and blasted her sphere with fire. Flames enveloped her and threatened to bake her inside her bubble, although she managed to stop the fire itself from touching her.

When the flames subsided, her enemy was there once more.

“I do not have the time to waste on you right now. I don’t know if I would need another ten minutes or a few hours, but I know I could break you.”

“You fucking wish.”

“You fucking know,” he growled.

Amy swallowed hard. He was right, of course. She had to fight the urge to fall unconscious, yet he seemed to have not even broken a sweat.

“But as I said, I do not have the time.” With that, Boneclaw entered through the remains of the lodge and descended into the tunnels in the mountain. He moved quickly and with certainty until they reached the chamber where she had first seen him with the dwarves. It was empty now, devoid of people and full of nothing but the darkness.

He dropped her in the middle of the floor and vanished into shadow.

“If you think I’ll drop my shield simply because I can’t see you, you’re dumber than you are ugly.”

Boneclaw chuckled. “Ah, you humans do have a gift with your languages. Dumber than ugly. Very clever. But no, I am certain you won’t drop that shield of yours. So instead, I’ll drop the mountain on you.”

“You can’t.”

“I don’t boast,” he said as if he had been insulted at a dinner party. “I promise.”

With that daunting assurance, he vanished. It was hard for her to tell in the darkness—the only light came from her hands—but it looked as if rather than taking a tunnel, the shadow dragon had slipped into the cracks and crevices of the roof of the cave itself. It looked like water running up through fissures in the earth instead of down.

But that was impossible. To think that Boneclaw could move through cracks like that would mean he could do almost anything. The earth itself could be his refuge. Surely she had imagined it.

But if she had, then she also imagined the sound of cracking stone that rang out through the mountain. She realized that her eyes had told her the truth. He’d slipped away into those cracks, and she had no idea what he intended. As she tried to think how he might accomplish the promise he’d made, a powerful roar echoed in the cavern and the entire mountain collapsed upon her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kristen did not know what the little creatures were that surrounded her, but she didn’t like them.

In the darkness, she couldn’t see much beyond a glimpse of a mouth filled with a hundred needle-like teeth here or an open eye—staring and vacant—over there. Sometimes, she saw flashes of tails that looked like something between eel and alligator. She couldn’t begin to guess the numbers that darted around her but knew there were too damned many of them. They were either perfectly blended with the darkness or they could move through shadow like Boneclaw had.

She knew she was there to learn how to fight the dragon, but being surrounded by savage little versions of him was not how she expected her training to go. Maybe she had watched too many movie training montages.

The creatures seemed as curious about her as she was about them, although less fearful as they moved closer with each darted exploration. Finally, one of them—overcome with either curiosity or rage—came in close enough to touch her. She tried to dodge but it didn’t move like a land creature. It was more like a fish and thus was not bound by the rules of gravity the way she was. It streaked past her leg and slashed her with a spine.

The wound stung like hell. She was used to scratches, but this was on another level. Her logic said that whatever it had barbed her with contained poison.

At least now she knew they were dangerous.

As if they had smelled the blood, the others moved in. They didn’t behave like the will-o-wisps had and move together. Instead, these little bastards surged in one at a time, like they were wary of her. Unfortunately, they were still fast enough to inflict injury.

They sliced her arms and legs with their fins, tails, or teeth. In moments, her uniform—already singed by the will-o-wisps and muddy from the stream—was shredded. Slashes of red blood framed in white flesh appeared in the dark, which seemed to only further enrage or excite the shadow eels. Piranhas? Alligators? She wished she could see one of the little bastards so she could at least know how to kill one.

The only good thing about all these tiny slashes was that her dragon healing powers were able to mend the small wounds quickly. The creatures didn’t seem particularly upset that their prey was healing, however. They maintained their assault without pause, opened new wounds, and ripped her uniform to tatters.

Kristen punched and kicked at them, but she couldn’t connect. She could feel her healing powers start to slow. There were simply too many of them and she would die from a thousand cuts.

She considered running back upstream toward the jungle and the glowing will-o-wisps. They seemed like they might be the natural enemy of these damn shadow eels. Maybe the reason she hadn’t seen these creatures of shadow before was because they were enemies with the will-o-wisps.

But the instructions of the pixies had been clear. She had to move forward unless told to stop or forced to. To succeed, she needed to go downstream, which meant she had to get past these little monsters.

She didn’t seem to be able to fight them, but fighting the will-o-wisps hadn’t been particularly effective either. Maybe she could flee like she had before?

One of the eels stung her on the back of her neck and she decided it was worth a shot. She jumped from one boulder to the next, splashed into the muddy shallows of the river, and stumbled forward through the water.

Her movement seemed to excite the creatures. They intensified their slicing attacks but also increased the frequency of their stings and the potency of their venom. They attacked her legs with enthusiasm and seemed determined to tear apart the things that enabled her to move.

Perhaps that was the point of this test. Maybe sometimes, it was best to stay in her human form and at other times, it was better to face challenges in her dragon body.

Kristen chose the latter now and lost her human form in a shower of silver shards as she dissolved and reformed into her dragon body. She pumped her wings and took to the air, and the gusts from her passage sent the eels scattering and rolling. All she could see of them was their teeth and eyes twisting in search of her, but hey. They didn’t exactly look comfortable, so she counted that as a victory.

She soared higher and kept her gaze on the faint glimmer of the muddy river below her. After coming so far, she didn’t want to lose track of her path. Then she realized she might not have to worry. Up ahead, she saw a glowing point of light. It seemed to lie in the same direction in which the stream was flowing. Could that be her final destination? Was it the sun, ready to bring in the dawn of the next day? She didn’t know, but she liked the look of it much more than what she’d left behind, so she pumped her wings and headed toward it.

Her faint glimmer of hope faded when she realized she wasn’t alone. The shadow eels—maybe they were more like bats—surrounded her. They seemed as comfortable up there as they had been below, never a good sign. They closed around her like a school of fish around the bloated corpse of a whale. It didn’t matter that she flew as fast as Lumos had taught her. They kept pace effortlessly as if she was still stumbling through the muddy water below.

Kristen was now heartily sick of this place.

The shadow bats swarmed as she flew and she realized how profound a mistake taking to the air had been. Below, she hadn’t known how many of the creatures there were, but she had estimated their number at something less than a hundred. In other words, she could conceivably count them.

In the sky, they were able to approach her from all sides and there were far more than a hundred. Before, they had surrounded her human frame but she had been able to keep most of them away although a few slipped through. Up there, despite being in her dragon form, they attacked more often. The swarm was as dense as it had before, except she was much larger. Up there, she seemed to be in their domain.

She pushed on toward the light on the horizon, wishing and praying that it would grow bigger despite it steadfastly refusing to do so. The shadow bats pushed closer and closer, nipping and slashing at her belly, flank, her hard scales, and anywhere they could reach. When their spines didn’t penetrate, they didn’t get dismayed and wander off like a monkey unable to crack a nut. They merely repeated their onslaught as if certain that their persistence would pay off. When some seemed to grow bored and swoop away, more of the creatures took their places.

Soon—as if they had some kind of hive intelligence and attacked as a single entity rather than individuals—they moved on from the hardest, best-protected areas of her body. No longer did she feel them slash at her steel horns or brush against her claws or her tail. Slowly, as the message spread, they focused on the soft areas, the places behind her knees, her neck, and the gaps between her talons.

Kristen began to panic. She couldn’t see her attackers at all. Eyes and teeth flickered in front of her, but she could not see the thousand sources of pain that attempted to kill her. This was exactly like when she had fought the Masked One in the depths beneath the Mammoth Cave. Her opponent was too fast and too nimble. She had tried to retaliate, but he’d seen her coming. If she couldn’t defend herself against these little bats, how could she defeat a beast a thousand times their size and a thousand times more intelligent?

The Masked One would move as these monsters did. He would flap his dark wings like a bat and slither his long tail like an eel, and she would fail in her fight against him. She would be torn to pieces and would fall.

But no, she could not fail.

She didn’t believe that, not now and maybe not ever, but she told herself it was true.

There was something she hadn’t tried, she realized. She inhaled a breath of air—and almost choked as she sucked one of the shadow beasts in—and exhaled a great breath of fire in front of her and down her belly.

The blast must have caught a hundred of them. In the light of her flames, she could see that they were neither bat nor eel but some kind of ghastly demonic tadpole with wings. They had two stump legs with ragged claws that poked from webbed feet—the fins she had thought belonged to the eels. Their front arms were folded above them in a horribly unnatural configuration that allowed them to work as wings.

Instead of the soft leathery membrane of bats or the feathered sheen of a bird, these wings had the gelatinous membrane of an amphibian. From behind these sprouted a long and sinuous tail that was ridged like a salamander. Their face was wide and broad like a toad’s, but with far too many teeth that were far too sharp.

They burned and crisped in her blast of flame, but this did not calm her as she had hoped. Even though she had incinerated a hundred of their number, that didn’t account for even a tenth of them, nor a twentieth. The demonic frogs seemed to number in the tens of thousands. Her flame reflected off their eyes like stars. It reflected off their teeth and seemed to fill the sky with needles. They swarmed and moved together like starlings or a school of piranha.

Kristen inhaled and readied herself for another blast of fire but they struck her before she could. A hundred pounded into her face in the first second and a hundred more in the tenth of a second after that. She was pushed back by the sheer mass of the creatures from hell.

She had inhaled for a breath of fire so she exhaled now, but there were too many of the creatures and their hive intelligence was too efficient. Perhaps twenty of them were caught in the blast of flames and fell from their swarm like lifeless slime. Her attackers pushed on her top and bottom jaw, however, so rather than her fire blasting from the end of her mouth as an inferno, it squirted and sputtered between her teeth. More of the creatures burned—there were now so many that anything she did managed to knock a couple from the air—but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

As if to confirm that thought, they found her wings.

The creatures sliced and tore at the delicate membranes while she struggled to right herself. It was as if they were jealous that her wings were smooth and chrome while theirs were slimy and mottled. They savaged them with abandon and as Kristen flapped, trying to regain forward momentum, she tore her wings to shreds. Soon all that was left was the bone and muscle frame, as useful in flight as a chicken wing was once it was battered, deep-fried, and served with bleu cheese.

The inevitable result was unavoidable, and she twisted her body so she now pointed to the ground. She knew she would crash, but she could at least direct how she did it. Most importantly, she could not hit her head. She had no doubt that if she was knocked unconscious for a second, the frogs would pack so close onto her body that she would never rise again.

Instead of maintaining her direct plunge toward the earth, she twisted and aimed at one of the largest mud puddles that made up the river below.

Seconds later, she splashed into the pool of water. It was deeper than she had expected but not deep enough that her dragon body failed to pound into the cloying mud at the bottom of the pool. Still, the water probably saved her life and she wasn’t knocked out, only rendered senseless for a moment.

She thrashed her tail in pain as the monsters of the night continued to savage her wings. Desperate to escape them, she rolled over, slid the stumps of her wings into the muddy pool, and felt blessed relief, although the monsters now diverted their attack to her belly.

Despite the little demons looking like frogs, they didn’t go underwater. She could use that. Hell, she had to use that. She hadn’t been able to do shit against them.

The pool was not deep enough to submerge her entire dragon body, so she yet again shirked the form so many in the world saw as the most powerful in existence and became a regular human with regular flesh.

As she stumbled through the muddy pool, the creatures attacked her shoulders and the back of her neck. Some of the fuckers even ripped out locks of her curly red hair.

A moment later, she was in water up to her neck. She dove under the surface, her eyes open wide despite the mud and filth her crash landing had kicked up.

Kristen suddenly recalled the last time she’d had to hide underwater to protect herself against a vastly more powerful killer.

The Masked One had done this to her. Beneath Mammoth cave, in paths that no tourist would ever walk and places so deep that the sightless creatures who called the place home would never know the kiss of the sun or the taste of fresh air, he had forced her to hide underwater. Now, exactly like then, she held her breath while the surface of the water calmed. Her enemy, on the surface side of this fragile defense, waited for her to emerge for air.

Inevitably, she had to take a breath. She stuck her face out of the water and sucked in air while the stinging claws of the monsters sliced at her. One of them cut her nose particularly deeply, and as she plunged under the water, she could feel the murky liquid sting in the wound that was too large to heal quickly.

Had the Masked One been there? Was that how he knew how to fight like this? Did he somehow trick the pixies into letting him go on this very same walk? Had he survived the will-o-wisps only to make allies of these horrible monsters?

Kristen wished she had some of the will-o-wisps now. Light was the only thing that could nullify the Masked One’s powers. If the will-o-wisps were there, she might have their help to drive these beasts of shadow back.

Her time was up. She had to breathe. When she had been pinned beneath the surface of that subterranean lake where she had fought the Masked One, she had been able to clear a path by using a blast of fire to illuminate the space. Could she do that now even though she wasn’t in her dragon form? Was that what was being asked of her?

Rather than dwell on the questions, she tried to focus on making fire, but the primary part of the process was taking a breath. And every time she tried to do that, the fucking frogs lacerated her face.

She burst to the surface, sucked in air and failed to produce a flame, and suffered the consequences when one of the frogs managed to dig a talon into her eyeball.

The pain was excruciating as if it had injected venom not only into her eye but into the nerves that connected it to her brain. Her mind seemed to burn as the poison coursed through her. She sucked in a lungful of water, to which her body rebelled and instinctively surfaced so it would continue to live despite the mistakes of its master.

The creatures’ attack was immediate. They slashed at her head and neck and stung her arms and hands when they broke the surface of the water. She thrashed with dragon speed and managed to strike one of them before it stung her.

It splattered like a frog beneath the tire of a loaded dump truck.

Kristen, half-blind, out of breath, and unable to swim any longer, moved toward shallower water. As she did so, the creatures extended their attacks lower down her body. They targeted her shoulders now, her upper back, her chest, the small of her back, and her abdomen. Those that struck her had to turn solid to do so, and she met them with strikes powered only by her fury and the muscle memory from long training days with Lumos.

It wasn’t exactly a weakness, but they were like Boneclaw in that regard. To do physical harm, they had to become physical. She managed to take a deep breath—her body thanked her for this—and focused on some of the techniques Lumos had shown her. She knew she could not attack these little bastards. They were too fast and too numerous, but perhaps she could defend herself.

She started to move through a series of martial arts maneuvers that the old dragon had explained were based on the movements of a dragon. Her legs splashed through the muddy water as she kicked, stepped forward, punched, punched again, jumped back, and kicked again. Her movements were fast enough to keep the surging monsters around her at bay as they tried to find the best place to nip her and continue their meal.

“Come on, you floating lanterns! A little help here!” Kristen shouted desperately.

There was no increased glow on the horizon and no twinkling light. Instead, the cloud of shadow beings around her began to press closer. They were learning the routine she was moving through and in moments, they would begin to probe her for weaknesses again. What had taken the Masked One many hours of her being trapped in a cave to learn, these creatures would learn in moments. Exactly like him, they would study her, dissect her, and defeat her.

Why won’t the will-o-wisps help? Kristen thought desperately. She was not a leader above asking for help and thought that working together was the only way forward in almost all aspects of life. The frustrating thing was she could still feel the will-o-wisps. She could sense the way their magic shifted from a calming cool light to a sharp jolt and how they were able to multiply and grow.

But that didn’t make any sense.

There were none of them around.

Kristen realized that what she sensed wasn’t the will-o-wisps but rather the memory of the feel and flavor of their magic. Did she sense them at all, or did she simply sense the same energy flowing through her body?

She thought back to Amythist’s cottage as she moved even faster through her routine. Almost instinctively, she alternated moves and added extra punches or jumps when she could, anything to stop the stinging attacks of these monsters of the dark for a moment longer. The old dragon had first shown her a ball of light. Was there a reason for that? She had tried to make fire in her human form, but maybe there was a reason one had to become a dragon to make fire. There were mages who could use fire—Havington had worked with a dragon to make a fire tornado, after all—but they were rare. Meanwhile, it seemed like almost every mage could make light.

Could she manage to shift her inner dragon magic to something other than steel and speed and strength? Was it possible for her to shift it into the same radiant energy the will-o-wisps had produced?

As she moved through her martial arts maneuvers, she tried. She focused on how she normally made her body turn to steel. During her training, she had practiced keeping her body wrapped in normal skin until right before the impact of a blow. At that point, she would change her knuckles or the tip of her foot to steel and thus increase the devastation of the strike.

It seemed logical to try that now. She attacked, turned to steel, and hoped to splatter the frog demons to gore their allies either ignored or lapped up. As she moved, she tried to center herself on the radiant energy of the will-o-wisps. She attempted to let that same energy flow out from her heart to fill her chest, and from her chest down her veins and nerves to blossom at the points of skin to which she directed it.

All the while, the swarm of monsters attempting to consume her became better at their task. When she threw a punch, they attacked her ribs beneath the striking arm. When she tried a kick, they were ready to attack her thighs with their teeth.

But Kristen had known pain before so she focused on the sensation of light. She breathed and moved while she maintained her focus and then, in the palm of her hand, light flickered.

She smiled and uttered a whoop of joy when she saw it, even though it only illuminated the hundreds of creatures directly in front of her and failed to drive them back.

Her reaction broke her rhythm, though, and the creatures—already intensely keyed into the rhythm of her movements—coalesced into a massive blob of aggression that pounded into her chest and knocked the air from her lungs. She splashed into the muddy water and sank into the filth at the bottom of the pool, unable to breathe.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kristen thrashed in the water. Her lungs screamed at her to take a breath and also to not take another fucking breath of water for the love of God, what was wrong with her?

She both ignored her lungs and heeded their demands, pushed up from the water—it wasn’t deep there—and took a breath. The shadow creatures were more than ready. They attacked from all sides and bit every patch of skin she exposed. At this point in the fight, that was essentially all of her skin.

Even though she was now above the water, she could hardly breathe. The slashes and stings were relentless, and her body felt like it was filling with fire. Not in the dragon about to incinerate an enemy way but the “holy crap I’m going to die from a fucking jellyfish” way.

Panicked, she tried to focus on the radiant, glowing energy of warmth and light she had so briefly created in her palm. It was incredibly hard with the relentless onslaught of these thousands of creatures that refused to stop or even pause for a heartbeat. She would die there. Having come all this way, she would die. It was truly a miracle that she wasn’t dead already. The pain was so intense that she thought she should have had a heart attack—or even better, a brain aneurysm. At least that would kill her quickly and with less pain. She hoped anyway.

But she wasn’t dead, not yet. She was still alive and still fighting against overwhelming odds. Was she alive because part of her still knew she had a chance to survive? She had made a glimmer of light happen and could do it again—had to do it again.

The thought helped her to cease her efforts to retaliate or brush away the attacks of the flying fucking monsters. She focused on her breath and the sensation of glowing light that had come from the will-o-wisps. The fucking flying frogs didn’t increase the viciousness of their onslaught because they couldn’t. They were already attacking at maximum intensity.

Kristen steadfastly ignored their razor cuts. None of the creatures tried to pierce her organs or tear her head from her neck. They were creatures of venom and poison and hadn’t changed tactics yet.

As her breathing settled into a slow rhythm, she tried to find her center—her source of magic. She reached deep inside and located the fount of energy she called on when she needed to become steel or a dragon. In rhythmic succession, she let her body change to steel with her breath and back again. Being made of metal did nothing to slow the strikes or lessen the pain from these creatures so she let the changes come and go with her breath to repeat a process with which she was familiar.

When she felt grounded and confident in what she knew, she thought of the will-o-wisps’ energy. She tried to bring the sense of calm and wonder they had inspired when she had first seen them into her heart. Then, she tried to channel that energy into the jolting power they had used to prod her down the river.

At first, nothing happened. The shadow creatures, emboldened by no longer being knocked aside, did increase their attacks. Instead of merely slashing and stinging, one of them latched onto her shoulder and sank its teeth in while it shook its head to drive hundreds of needle-sharp teeth deep into her flesh.

Kristen focused all her energy on her palms as she ripped the being from her shoulder. A flicker of light from her palms was enough to burn her handprint on the frog’s rubbery, mottled skin and it released her, hissing and screaming.

But its allies seemed to sense that their prey was attempting to be something other than their next meal. More of them began to bite her. They moved their teeth to saw at her flesh, trying to consume her body while she struggled only partially to fend them off.

Still, she continued trying to ignite the light she knew she needed to survive this.

Her palms flickered and glowed with the dim light of a reading lamp. It wasn’t much but was nevertheless bright enough to force the creatures that had buried their teeth in her to let go.

As soon as they did, relief flooded her ragged wounds and her glowing hands flickered and faded to nothing. In the ensuing darkness, a thousand shadow creatures brushed past her. They moved with increasing speed as if whatever controlled the swarm took a great big breath in preparation to blow out the candle’s worth of light she had managed to produce.

Reflexively, her magic tried to heal her wounds. She could feel it working through her body, struggling to make sense of the mess of meat and skin the creatures had left in their wake. The healing magic soothed her, both as a relief from her pain and by the energy it had. It possessed a particular essence like her steel skin or dragon magic did. But unlike her dragon magic, this was a form that wanted to go to only one place. Her steel skin was like that too. Yes, she could make only a hand or a fingertip turn to metal, but the easiest application of her ability to steel was to go full steel. It had taken practice to control a hand or a fingertip.

Had she looked at the light magic the wrong way? She had thought the simplest thing to do would be to make the palm of her hand glow. But why had she made that assumption? Turning her entire body to steel was no more difficult than turning a single hand to steel. In fact, it was easier as it took far less concentration and she hadn’t needed to master turning her entire body to metal. She had simply done it.

Could she do that now with light?

Kristen took a deep breath as she felt the mass of shadow monsters surge to pound into her and finally end their duel. Instead of trying to make only her palms glow, she tried to make whatever damn part of her that wanted to glow have as much energy as it wanted.

Seconds before the creatures collided and knocked her into the mud for the final time, her chest ignited with light.

More specifically, her heart, but it glowed with such brilliance that her ribcage was dark as her heart shone through her skin and flesh and beat with a strength that had never left her.

The creatures that made impact with her chest screeched and shrieked in pain. Those that touched her burst into sparks and disintegrated into nothing but ash.

She took a breath and tried to send the energy outward. It listened and her veins filled with light. Her arms and legs glowed as light flowed from her heart, down her limbs, through the veins in the back of her hands, and out her fingertips. She screamed when the power of it forced her to open her mouth and a great pillar of light—larger and brighter and more powerful than a spotlight for any show in all of Detroit’s musical history—burst from her throat and blazed into the night sky.

The creatures that were caught in this blast of blinding energy burst into ash like the others that had touched her. Those closest to her were the first to go, but the process was far from instantaneous. As more creatures erupted higher up in the column, others saw this and fled into the darkness.

Those that had come close to hurling her into the water now slashed at each other and tried to fight their way through their brethren to safety.

In a moment, the entire swarm was gone. Kristen was left standing on a dark, barren plain surrounded by darkness. She closed her mouth and the pillar above her ceased to exist, but her body still glowed brightly, a beacon of brilliant white light.

But that was okay, she told herself. Those monsters had made her stop but now, she had worked past them. Every limb hurt but somehow, she made herself take a step forward, then another. She continued to follow the river toward the light she had seen in the sky when she had become a dragon and taken to the air.

She continued to glow, which surprised her a little, and because of the light, the barren and desolate place didn’t seem so bad.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Amy came to slowly as if clawing from a particularly long and dark dream, one in which time seemed to be worth more in the dream world, and rather than having one night of nightmares, it felt like an eternity.

She had fought and she had lost. Then she had tried to escape but she had failed. A friend had died—no, not quite a friend but an ally. In some ways, that was worse.

Disoriented, she blinked and tried to focus on her surroundings but saw nothing. She was awake and could feel her head pounding and dried blood from her nose all over her mouth, but she couldn’t see anything. When she sat, she thunked her head on something hard—a rock. It was a rock, she realized, because she was buried beneath a mountain.

How did she get there? She tried to turn to look for a path and only succeeded in whacking her head against another boulder. This time, in addition to the sharp crack of rock on bone, the roar of a thousand stones trying to shift a little deeper and settle more fully was the result. Her movement had alerted the mountain that there was a place to fill. The fleshy little lump and the air she breathed was not even an inconvenience to something like a mountain trying to settle into the bedrock. It would crush her whether she wanted it to or not.

Except the mountain hadn’t counted on her being a mage of vast power.

Her first step was to extend a bubble around herself, strengthen it, and reinforce it while the mountain pressed down on her. She was tired and her head hurt, and the effort made her nose start to bleed more despite the already copious amount of dried blood crusted to her face. Still, her bubble held.

“You were always more of a hill, anyway,” she muttered to the inanimate stone.

As if in response to this tiny little human foolish enough to goad it, the mountain shifted again but she felt a decrease in pressure, not an increase. Her bubble of magic still held up more than enough stone to crush her if she so much as sneezed, but at least the pressure wasn’t such that holding it back would cause a blood vessel in her brain to burst like an overcooked sausage.

It did not fail to cross her mind, however, that she was trapped in more ways than one. On one hand, the mountain of stone above had her thoroughly trapped there. On the other, her mental space was restricted too and she couldn’t let her shield’s strength slacken at all. She couldn’t test other magic without risking the entire mountain shifting and crushing her with less effort than it took a human to crunch a bug.

It wasn’t the most relaxing place, she conceded irritably.

She tried to make a gate but simply didn’t have the energy. Even if she could drop her shield for the minute it would take to open one, she didn’t think she’d be able to manage it. The prospect of opening a gate while holding the mountain back was a futile train of thought.

To make it all worse, Amy already felt short of breath. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. It was short enough for the mountain to pause before it finished settling—geologically speaking that could be decades, though, so not the best indicator—but certainly long enough to put a sizable dent in the available oxygen.

That settled it. She couldn’t stay there. There simply wasn’t air available for that to be any kind of decision. But what to do? She couldn’t use any magic except her shield, not if she wanted to be sure to keep herself alive.

After a moment’s thought, she decided she had to use the shield.

The young mage felt the ceiling above her. Her shield magic made this possible because it didn’t have any real substance. It was thinner than paper, a slender veil of energy and nothing more, so she could easily feel the contours of the ceiling inches above her face even if she could not see it.

She felt around with her hand until she found an area of soil. Carefully and with painfully, tediously, and obnoxiously slow effort, she formed part of her shield into a wedge shape. It pushed into the dirt, then split and expanded so some of the soil fell from the ceiling and into the cavity where she was trapped. She was quite used to stopping bullets while letting air penetrate her shield, so holding the mountain but allowing a little dirt wasn’t exactly difficult, although it required more of a deft touch than she had hoped.

Still, she kept at it. She kept pushing up—not straight up but at what she reasoned was something like a forty-five-degree angle. She had no doubt that Boneclaw had left her in the dead center of the mountain to ensure that he killed her. If she took a slanting path, it would probably mean she should be able to climb through the tunnel and it would be a shorter distance.

Amy tried to repeat these two ideas to herself as she pushed her magic farther through the dirt. Before too long, she struck a boulder. Her head was already starting to ache from lack of air and from having to maintain her shield while she inched up the tunnel, but discovering the boulder almost broke her.

Still, it was only a rock. She had lifted rocks, broken rocks, and turned boulders into gravel. This was nothing to her, least of all an impediment. Not to her.

She took a deep breath, focused as much of her energy as she could into a tiny pinprick of her shield, and thrust it forward to drive it through the stone and shear it in half. Quickly, she twisted the shield magic, spun it, and gave it teeth as it bored a hole through the boulder.

As she turned and twisted her magic and wielded her magic like a drill, gravel and dust fell onto her. She tried to push herself against one side of the tunnel she had carved so it would fall past her. When she sneezed once from the gravel, it seemed to almost completely deplete what oxygen was left in the cavity in the stone as she wasn’t able to catch her breath properly after that.

Still, she soldiered on and climbed up through the boulder by jamming her hands and knees against the opposite side of the tunnel to her back. She moved in fits and starts and each tiny motion robbed her body of more energy and deprived the space of more oxygen.

Finally, she made it through the boulder and faced nothing but more dirt.

Amy fought the overwhelming sense that she wouldn’t be able to do this. She would run out of air and would die down there. Worst of all, she didn’t even know what day it was. For all she knew, Kristen might have already battled Boneclaw and lost and this was all in vain.

But no—no it couldn’t be. She was hungry but not famished so couldn’t have been down there for more than a few hours. Not that it made much difference. Hungry or not, she would still die.

She rested her head against the stone—rest being a kind word for someone who couldn’t relax their body for fear of sliding down a tunnel into a grave deep beneath a mountain or relax their mind for fear of a mountain crushing them—but she tried anyway.

As soon as she put her head against the stone, she jerked it up again.

As impossible as it seemed, she had heard something in the stone.

Her senses alert, she placed her head against the rock and heard the sound again. It seemed to be tapping of some kind, regular at first, then a pause followed by taps with longer gaps between them. Another pause ensued before it seemed to start again.

Was there a pattern to it?

Amy tried to hear precisely where it came from, but she couldn’t tell. She could only hear it coming through the rock, which didn’t mean much. Sound could travel a long way through solid substances, but she didn’t know how to use that information to ascertain which way to go.

But did she want to follow the sound?

What if the tapping was Boneclaw’s dwarves digging for her? Maybe they had thought she was dead until they heard her labored effort to escape through the stones. Perhaps they were digging a tunnel to finish the job. If she remained quiet, maybe they would think she was dead and leave.

But if she tried to wait them out, she would die of asphyxiation. Waiting them out was simply not an option. Although neither was fighting them, not in her condition. Plus, would Boneclaw make the dwarves spend the time needed to dig her out only to kill her?

He had a duel in less than two days. The dwarves were part of his plan but she was not. And, she remembered bitterly, he had defeated Katrina with consummate ease and no doubt believed he could kill Kristen as easily. He wouldn’t miss this duel, not for anything. It would be his victory lap, his proof that only he could carry dragons forward with the respect for customs they all seemed so obsessed with honoring.

Amy decided to trust that whoever made these tapping sounds was either oblivious to what had happened or attempted to mount some kind of rescue.

She waited for it to resume and this time, when she heard it, she repeated the pattern in response by hitting the boulder she was now inside with a hand-sized rock.

Immediately, the tapping stopped.

While she couldn’t be sure, she thought she heard muffled shouts before the tapping repeated. It was the same pattern but faster now. It repeated twice, then paused. She tapped a reply.

This time, instead of another attempt to communicate, she heard what sounded like power tools.

The young mage was about to begin using her shield to dig in that direction when the earth around her shifted. It had tolerated her burrowing a little mole hole through its stone and dirt, but a team of people using power tools was too much. The lack of oxygen worsened and it took everything she had simply to hold onto consciousness.

Desperately, she tried to keep her breathing shallow and even and her shield firm as the sound of a drill grew louder.

But they were too late. She had already subsisted on too little oxygen for too long. As the sound of drill drew closer, her vision started to fade around the edges. Even in the darkness, the vertigo and sense of loss of control that came with tunnel vision were still present. She tried to stay conscious but she couldn’t. Not even when she saw the head of a drill break into the tunnel ahead of her and felt the moist, cool oxygen-rich air of a properly ventilated tunnel spill over her.

When Amy came to, she lay in a bed with rough white sheets on a mattress that felt like it had been stuffed with the world’s prickliest straw. The ceiling was low and what little light there was came from a small candle. Even its gentle glow was enough to hurt her eyes after so much time in the dark.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, only that her hunger had gone from mildly demanding to fully pissed off.

“Oh, you’re up,” a low voice said.

When she turned to see her savior, she froze as her gaze settled on a dwarf. Instinctively, she screamed. She had been wrong—Boneclaw’s dwarves had come back for her. They had rescued her only to turn her into a magical slave, a servant for his entertainment.

The dwarf screamed in return, his voice rich with terror.

“Why are you screaming?” she shouted.

He simply replied, “Ahhhhh!” and ran out of the room.

Utterly bewildered, she tried to push up in bed and earned herself a legendary headache.

With a grimace, she fought to focus and looked around the spartan room carved into the earth itself. She had barely time to take in her surroundings—the uncomfortable bed, an equally uncomfortable looking overstuffed chair that seemed as if it had been stuffed with gravel, a table that was only a boulder with a flat surface cut and polished onto its top—when someone entered.

“Ah, you’re up then,” the dwarf said. He or she—Amy didn’t know how dwarf gender worked—had a kind and gentle voice.

The young mage forced herself to shove aside her rising panic and instead, to study the newcomer carefully. She knew that not all dwarves were bad. In fact, in her experience, most were quite helpful. This one appeared to be one of those. His beard was braided, and brightly colored beads and cut gems sparkled from where they had been tied into it. He wore a knit hat on his head that had more color than any feature of the room they were currently in. His smile was mostly normal with only a single gold tooth to add a charming imperfection to it. Without a doubt, it was much nicer to look at than the jagged stone teeth of the last dwarves she had seen.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Oh, sure, sure. A fair question, a fair question.” He chuckled. “You’re in the town of Ruby. Well, the mines under it, more accurately. I’m Trop. A pleasure.”

Trop extended a callused, dirty hand and she shook it gratefully.

“Trop, a pleasure. I’m Amy. Can you tell me how I got here?”

“Of course I can. We saw the massive rockslide destroy that house and thought there might be survivors in there. Although we didn’t see any, when we heard your tapping, we came down to find you. I don’t know how you managed to get so far beneath the hill! You were almost as deep as some of our old abandoned mines.”

“Abandoned? But I saw a group of dwarves in there.”

His face darkened. “They’re abandoned all the same. A group of murdering, clanless dwarves is the exact reason why ye sometimes have to abandon a mine. It’s a crying shame, a crying shame. The truth is, we thought it might have been one of them we heard tapping away, so it was a surprise when we found a girl of yer…uh, that is we noticed that you, uh…”

“You know I’m a mage?” Amy asked and felt like she could implicitly trust this Trop.

“You were practically unconscious and you still threw rocks into the chests of two of our miners. Regular folk don’t exactly show their thanks in that way. You…uh, you don’t happen to be friends with any of them dwarves, do you? The ones you saw?”

“God no. They were all working for a dragon who has tried to start a world war.”

“Boneclaw, eh?” he asked.

“You’ve heard of him?” She was aghast.

“The whole damn world has, at this point. It’s all supposed to be hush-hush, mind you, as hush-hush as anything, but the thing about secrets is that they’re more fun to spread than what’s widely known and put on the calendar. That Boneclaw will fight the Steel Dragon at noon tomorrow. Or he was. And I had hoped she would beat him good.”

“Well, we have to help!” Amy said, tried to get out of bed, and crumpled to the floor instead. Her legs screamed in pain. She looked at them to see they were both wrapped in casts. “What have you done to me?”

“Saved your damn legs, you fool girl! We got you out of there as fast as we could but not fast enough. Both your legs are broken. I set them myself, so they’ll heal fine—or they would have before you went and put some weight on them like a damn fool.”

“But…but Kristen…I have to help.”

“There’s another rumor that’s been going around too, child. You might not like to hear this one, though.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“The Steel Dragon is dead. A dragon named Bloodblaze claims to have killed her.”

“That’s a filthy lie!” Her thoughts raced. Was that the story Boneclaw had spread? Did he still think he’d killed Kristen instead of Katrina?

“I’d like to think so, I honestly would, but no one has seen the Steel Dragon. If she is alive out there somewhere, she’s taking her sweet time putting the lie to those rumors.”

“I have to—”

“What you need to do is rest. We have a stone soup cooking for you that’ll heal those legs nicely, but that’s only if you didn’t mess up the job I had done on them. Rest now, girl. We’ll wake you when it’s time.”

Amy didn’t want to rest, not at all, but when Trop helped her back into bed and checked her legs, clucking in approval, she decided the straw was much less pokey and the sheet was far more comfortable.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kristen had been walking down the stream for what felt like ages. Or, more appropriately, an age—the age of her defeat. She knew that was what it would be after being there for so long. It felt as if she had walked for days and probably weeks. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been there, but it must have been too long already. Her duel with Boneclaw had to have come and gone. She would probably emerge—that is if she ever found an escape from this place—into a world that had been ruled by Boneclaw for years. It was not a pleasant thought.

Still, she pushed on. The glowing light ahead of her hadn’t grown bigger for a long time now. Nothing had stopped her from advancing, either.

Not that the hideous frog monsters hadn’t tried. A group of them made another attempt even now. They flew in a kind of formation and swooped through the darkness.

She held her glowing palms up and dispatched them with a few deft movements. Those she struck burst to ash and any she missed flew away to regroup and try another strategy. There was no more joy or challenge in fighting them, only exhaustion. At least she had mastered how to more carefully control the light power. In truth, she’d had so much practice it had become almost effortless. She thought her improved skill might have caused the landscape to change so it could teach her a new skill, but that proved to be wishful thinking.

She never tired or, more accurately, never grew sleepy. Sleep and food seemed to be two things her body simply did not need there. When she hungered or felt as if she could not take another step, she drank from the muddy water and was given enough strength to continue for another fifty or five hundred or five thousand paces.

But while she didn’t crave sleep, she did crave rest. She was beyond exhausted, utterly wiped out in a way she had not thought possible. It wasn’t only that her body ached—and oh, did it ache—it was that she was never able to sleep and rest her mind or stop moving to rest her feet. She had blisters that bled, scabbed, and became calluses, all while she was conscious of them going through the process. Her muscle cramps lasted for what felt like days—not literal days, obviously, as the sun had yet to rise in this confounded place. But it sure felt like it had been that long.

Kristen told herself she had to keep going. The pixies had said to not stop unless she was asked to or forced to. Her exhaustion did neither, so on she went. It was a shame that they had also said to hurry, as she felt like that probably meant she was supposed to do this in less than the months she felt it had taken. Unfortunately, one could never please all the people all the time. Even if they were pixies—especially if they were pixies.

After all that had happened, she wasn’t sure if she liked them anymore. Had they taught Boneclaw to become the Masked One? If they hadn’t, how else could one explain the striking similarities between him and the needle-teethed creatures? Perhaps the world didn’t need explanations. Maybe it was merely a big, long, unending and always unfolding puzzle with no real beginning and no real end.

Then again, maybe it had no point and the only thing that ever mattered to anyone was what someone did with it. She had hoped to make her little corner of the world a better place but instead, was now stuck on this damn mythological pixie journey treadmill. Meanwhile, Boneclaw had sought only to expand his power and must have been successful already.

It was almost enough to make a girl want to stop.

She paused and looked up, her attention drawn by an odd change. The glowing light on the horizon was no longer in the distance but much closer to her.

Sure it was her imagination, she rubbed the grime and exhaustion from her eyes. When she looked again, the light remained where she’d seen it about fifty feet in front of her. It was on the other side of a wide body of water that looked deep enough to let all the mud and scum settle to the bottom. This was the first blue water she had seen in what felt like forever. It was the first color of any kind she had seen in what felt like forever.

Kristen frowned as the glowing light separated into more motes. Great, another test, she thought with a sigh. What was annoying was that these tests didn’t kill her. They merely tortured her endlessly for no apparent reason.

Still, she would fight. What other choice did she have?

“Congratulations!” one of the motes of light hollered as it flew past her head.

It wasn’t light at all but a pixie with the wings of a moth and the androgynous features common to most of its species.

Exhausted, delirious, and as dirty as hell, she stumbled down the stream and jumped over a small waterfall to splash into the huge pool of water.

As she swam across—staying above the surface was more of a challenge than it should have been—pixies buzzed around her head to congratulate her, shower her in sparks, and blow her kisses. All of them laughed and the sound of tinkling bells echoed off the barren stone around them.

Except it wasn’t barren. Kristen had failed to notice when she had entered the pool that it rested deep inside a giant basin. The walls were high and made of nothing but stone, but trees and vines grew atop them. Rich greens and sprays of pink and blue flowers here and there warmed her heart in a way such blossoms never had before.

She swam slowly and as she moved, her aches and pains began to melt away. It was if the current of the pool drew all the dirt and weight of the world to the bottom so she could simply float across its top.

“You did it, Lady Steel. You did it!” Lady Dragonfly bobbed and wove in front of her, guiding her across the pool until her feet found stone under the water. Kristen stepped onto it and walked into shallower water. She marveled that yet again, she was in a pool of water contained by stone that was fed by a waterfall. Had the pixies built this entire brutal landscape?

“We all wish to congratulate you on your success.” Lady Dragonfly beamed.

“Success?” she asked as she dropped to her knees and let the water lap against her. “How can you call that success? I almost died and…I didn’t even face it bravely. I couldn’t stop thinking about fighting Boneclaw in that cave. Those monsters…what were they?”

“They were your fears incarnate,” the pixies explained. “And you survived! That is what you had to do—survive. And you did.” Lady Dragonfly led the creatures around Kristen’s head in a merry show of colorful sparks.

“I barely survived, though. If the fight with Boneclaw is like that—”

“Oh, it will be. It will be. He has always been very strong, even when he—” A dozen pixies buzzed in the face of the one that had started to speak.

“You won, Lady Steel. You did it,” Lady Dragonfly said. “You learned to direct the magic within you during the first trial, and you learned to direct it to what you think you will need to fight Boneclaw in the second.”

“I…I guess I did… But I took too long, didn’t I? It feels like it’s been weeks.”

The diminutive creature shook her head smugly. “You still have more than enough time. Well, not as much as you’d like, I’m sure, since you had three days to begin with. But you will still be able to return home and rest.”

“How is that possible?”

“You followed our instructions. You did not stop except when confronted or asked to. That means the time felt like what you thought it should be but only passed as needed in your home realm.”

“I honestly don’t see how I could do it. I’m so tired. How am I supposed to face Boneclaw at all? Can I still use those powers?”

“You’re using them right now.” Lady Dragonfly smiled.

Kristen looked down and saw that her hands were glowing with an inner light. She snorted a laugh. To think she had spent so much time learning to turn this ability on and off and now, she had made her hands glow without even meaning to.

“Does this mean I’ll be able to use these powers in my home dimension too?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” the pixie said. “Your dimension is not a place devoid of magic. Your Earth is huge and vast, filled with many wonderful creatures that power this energy in all of us. It may not feel like it, but there is more magic there than there is here.”

“But why did I have to face those…those things?”

“We apologize for the brutal nature of the trial,” Lady Dragonfly looked genuinely ashamed. “If we had years instead of days, we could have been there with you for each trial. You could have faced small pieces of your fears instead of the entire thing at once. We did not wish this, but it is as you said, we had no choice. Not with your battle against Boneclaw looming so close. We will not lose you to him, we cannot. He has already caused us so much shame—”

“And what exactly does that mean?” she asked. “Amythist said that magic comes from human willpower. Does that mean Boneclaw’s abilities exist because he wants them to? And if that’s the case, how did he learn them? Those frog-eel-bat fuckers seemed very much like him. Did he face them too? For that matter, did Lumos face the will-o-wisps?”

“You are not…the first person to come here,” Lady Dragonfly said. “When we first came into existence, we were no wiser than the young of any other race. We were not born with the fount of knowledge we now possess,” she stated a little imperiously.

Meanwhile, a pixie behind her had a finger shoved so far up its nose Kristen was worried about it getting brain damage.

“We made mistakes and trusted those we should not have. But we were also not the first to come to this place.”

“Boneclaw was,” she said.

“We cannot say.” The pixie leader looked upriver as if she too feared the creatures of the dark that had so brutally assaulted her. “There are rules here, even for us. But know that we are rooting for you, Kristen Hall, Steel Dragon. We wish you to be victorious so maybe our wrongs may be righted, along with many others. We apologize for how hard this was. We wish we had met you sooner and perhaps this could have gone better.”

“It’s all right,” she said and dismissed their concerns. “I’m grateful, honestly. You might have saved my life.” She made the light in her hands wink out. Hope flared with the certainty that she could use this. Yes, she could definitely use this.

“It is time, Kristen Hall,” Lady Dragonfly said warmly.

She nodded and felt the current pulling at her legs to drag her gently toward the glowing portal. It was time. She stepped through the gateway and into Amythist’s garden. The old dragon was there, waiting for her with a fresh pot of tea.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Amythist’s garden was as Kristen had left it—overgrown, untidy, and absolutely beautiful. It was immensely relaxing to be in a place that didn’t actively try to kill her and where insects flew between the flowers instead of magical beings. She didn’t see any pixies and for the moment, she was more than all right with that.

“Tea, my child?” the old dragon asked and offered her a steaming cup that smelled of fragrant jasmine.

“Yes, please,” she said. “And food, lots of food.” She hadn’t hungered at all in the other dimension but now that she was back, her hunger returned with a vengeance.

“I’ll place an order for some Chinese delivery—and holy shit, Kristen, put some clothes on!” Brian slapped his hands over his eyes and turned away from here. “Oh, gross. Sister boobs. Not cool, Kristen, not cool!”

She looked down and realized that she was indeed practically naked. The shadow creatures had been vicious in their attacks and had turned her clothes to tatters. She had healed with her dragon powers, so instead of looking like she had survived a bloody ordeal, it looked like she was trying to embody a particularly racy music video.

“Here we are, Lady Steel,” Stonequest said, took a step forward, and removed the jacket of his uniform for her. She noticed that his eyes were not nearly so averse to seeing her in this state of undress as Brian’s were.

Kristen took the jacket, went ahead and stripped out of the last tatters of clothing she wore, and put it on. Her ass still hung out, but honestly, she simply didn’t give a shit. She had been clothed more in mud and blood than clothes for her entire ordeal and didn’t feel at all uncomfortable with some booty hanging out. At least nothing was trying to stab her with venom.

“How long have you guys been waiting here?” she asked.

“The entire two days,” Drew said. His eyes also drifted to the patch of skin between her breasts that was exposed by Stonequest’s open jacket. She gave less than zero shits. “Well, Brian has been here more than anyone else.”

“And you repay me with gross freckled boobs? Seriously?” her brother shouted. “No, no I don’t want to order that. Wait, why would you think freckled boob is a dish? No! No, I don’t want that!” he yelled into his phone.

“But we’ve all taken shifts,” Drew said.

“Heartsbane will be pissed she wasn’t here,” Stonequest said.

The human team leader rolled his eyes. “Hernandez too. Maybe you should open that portal and step through it again when they’re both here.”

“Yeah, they’re both gonna have to deal,” she said. “I will not go back there.”

“Where was there exactly?” Stonequest asked.

“Was it bad? You look exhausted,” Drew added.

“It was more difficult than I thought it would be.”

“I told you so,” Amythist said as she led them all inside to sink into chairs. She gave Kristen puffy pants that looked like they might have been in style in Morocco a hundred years before. Once she took a seat, the old dragon pushed the cup of tea into her hands and she sipped it gratefully.

“So, what was it like?”

“The pixies sent me somewhere strange. It was like another dimension or something.”

“Quantum physics says that all the dimensions are wrapped up so we can’t visit a different one because we’re already—”

“Universe then,” she said and cut Brian off. He had finished ordering the food and looked much calmer now that she wore pants although he still eyed her warily.

“How do you know it was a different universe and not merely a different part of our planet?” Drew asked.

“Oh, I’m very damn sure there’s nowhere on earth like this,” Kristen said and chuckled at the idea that such impossibilities existed in what she thought of as the real world. Doing anything else would send her into nightmares. “It was a place of much more raw magic. Or…well, the pixies said our realm has more magic, but this place didn’t have much of anything else. I guess it was like a garden they had grown.”

“They’ve been working on it since they were brought into existence,” Amythist said with a nod.

“They tried to show me how to use different dragon powers. Or more like tried to activate them through life-threatening tests.”

“But that’s not possible,” Stonequest said.

“That’s what I thought too, but it seems it is. In fact, I think there might not even be a difference between dragon powers and mage powers.”

The dragon didn’t scoff audibly but the look was plain on his face.

“You’re all right though?” Drew asked. “You look tired as hell and I can’t imagine you did that to your clothes on purpose, but you’re okay?”

“I am now. My dragon healing powers—sorry, healing powers—took care of most of the damage. It was a nightmare of the stuff I fear most, but I survived, and the pixies said that was enough to be able to use those powers here.”

“Wait, so you managed to harness new dragon powers?” Stonequest asked. He leaned forward in his chair and quietly spilled his tea onto the floor.

“I’m sure she did, and if she can manage to master new abilities, you can manage to not spill tea all over that rug. It’s older than most governments, for goodness sake!” Amythist tutted, lifted a rag telekinetically, and used it dab up the spill.

The stone dragon looked at it as if a rock had asked him how to bake a lasagna. “I…you… Pixies are doing that. They must be.”

“It’s true. I learned how to make light, exactly like a mage,” Kristen said. “Here, let me…” She raised her hand and tried to send the magic through her body but it didn’t work. “Sorry, let me…” She tried again and this time, attempted to make her entire body glow instead of only her hand. That had been much easier at first, so maybe she needed to start with something like that in this universe as well. But no, she couldn’t. The only thing she managed to do was make her stomach grumble.

“I call bullshit,” Brian said and pointed at her gut. “You already had that ability. Burping too. Don’t pretend the pixies taught you how to burp.”

The doorbell rang and he stood to fetch dinner. While he and Amythist went about emptying all the rice and sauce-covered meats and vegetables onto plates so it felt like something more than cheap take out, Kristen tried to activate her powers with no success. She was simply too tired and all she was able to do was give herself a headache.

Stonequest frowned and turned away. She knew the look on his face all too well. It was the look a police officer wore when they knew a murderer would go free because a cop had made a dumb mistake like ruining evidence or entering a home without a warrant. It was a look of defeat.

“Come on, Kristen,” Drew said and patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s eat.”

They sat around a table in Amythist’s kitchen that Kristen had not known existed when she had been there in the past. Her friends had cleaned it against the old dragon’s protests. For a blessed moment, all was quiet as they passed plates and piled them high with rice, sesame chicken, beef and broccoli, and more eggrolls than were strictly necessary for five people. Or it might have been more than enough if she wasn’t there. She ate so fast that she couldn’t tell the difference between the different dishes and held her plate in one hand and shoveled food with chopsticks with the other. It was more efficient that way.

“Jesus, Kristen, you look like Dad at an all you can eat buffet ten minutes before it closes,” Brian said but he looked impressed. Leave it to a brother to be grossed out by a girl’s body but impressed that she could eat more than him.

Finally satiated, she scooted back from the table and stretched for more tea.

Unsurprisingly, everyone else was still eating. While they munched and talked shop about how the reconstruction of the base was coming, she merely leaned back and tried to enjoy the moment. As she listened, she tried to think about what she’d learned, about the sensation of magic, and how each type had its individual variety.

Exactly like she could in the pixie realm, she could feel magic around her. It was no weaker than it had been there but it was much more muffled. There was so much stuff in this realm. There was Amythist’s ticking clock, the sounds of birds singing at the setting sun, and wind shaking the rafters. Smells of strongly seasoned Chinese food, of delicate jasmine tea, and the slightly off funk her brother got when he was stressed mingled. All the knickknacks in Amythist’s house, taken from the world over and different centuries, crowded her senses.

But beneath it all was the same sensation that had been present in the pixie world—one of power and of a warm glow waiting to be harnessed. If she could direct it through herself, she knew she could activate it. After all, she had magic too. All living things did. She had learned that in the pixie realm. If she could use new powers there, she could do it here.

Kristen blinked and looked at the table. Everyone was frozen, their eyes wide and the food either forgotten on their plates or midway to their mouths.

“Uh…you guys?”

“Kristen…you’re glowing,” Brian said.

“Oh, whatever. Mom used to say that about Dad too when he ate too much. I might be full now but I have a dragon’s metabolism.”

“No, Kristen, you’re glowing,” Stonequest said, his mouth agape.

“I am?” She looked at her hands. “I am!”

“But…but this changes everything!” he said and pushed from the table with such force that he knocked his chair over. He began to pace, seemingly oblivious of the upended chair and the half-plate of Chinese food still steaming where he had been seated.

“This changes everything about dragons. Everything! It means that commons don’t have to be that way?”

“You don’t have to stay vanilla, no,” Amythist said. She used her powers to pick up the chair he had knocked over and scooted it to the table. “Much like human ice cream, there are mix-ins available.”

“Thank you for putting this in language I can understand,” Drew said, smiling.

“Does this mean that dragons like me can add more abilities?” Stonequest continued to pace. “I know dragons can improve their powers. Emerald—God rest his soul—did that with his fighting abilities to a level I hadn’t previously thought possible, but learning new powers changes everything.”

“We know,” Kristen and Amythist said in unison.

“I had always assumed that Boneclaw’s shadows abilities were inherent to him. Like he was born like Shadowstorm or Obscura, and that he improved them. But that’s not necessarily the case.”

“I don’t think anyone is born with specific powers,” Kristen said. “Not after what I saw there. I think some people have an easier time tapping into their magic potential, and those are the people who are able to do the most different things.”

“Well, sure…uh, that’s how mages work from my understanding, but this is dragons we’re talking about.”

She was about to explain that no, this was everyone and that she believed dragons were merely particularly advanced mages when Amythist darted her a look and pulsed her aura to make her feel that no, this was not the time for that.

“I learned from the pixie realm that magic is a form of energy. Like water or electricity, it flows and there are different varieties or flavors.”

“Sticking with the ice cream metaphor. I love it,” Brian said.

“Making myself glow is much like turning into steel.” She raised her hand and turned her fingers to metal one by one. “It’s a matter of focusing that energy in a different way.”

“And you learned how to do all this there in what? Pixie class?” her brother asked.

Kristen shook her head. “It was more like I was given an example of what was possible. I saw these glowing light beings—like will-o-wisps or whatever. But simply seeing them wasn’t enough. The pixies put me through a life or death situation so I could break down the barriers in my subconscious.”

“And we’re all very glad you survived,” Amythist said. “It took me a long time to break my mental barriers. I had feared that with the time crunch, the difficulty would be such that you might very well perish.”

“Well, it felt like I was there a long time, but you guys said it was only what, like two days? It felt like much longer than that.” Kristen chuckled before her mouth went completely dry. She felt her glowing skin fade as she realized what she had said. “Wait, it’s been two days.”

Everyone nodded.

“But that means that the duel is tomorrow!”

Again, everyone nodded.

“Well, shit. It means I need to train! In the pixie realm, I was able to punch and kick with light blasts. If I can’t do that here, there’s no way I’ll defeat Boneclaw.”

“What you need to do is rest,” Amythist said.

“There’s no time!” She pushed to her feet and almost swooned before she clutched the edge of the table.

“Child, there is no choice but to rest. You said yourself that you felt like you were there for weeks. I know better than most that you did not sleep there, nor did you eat. You must have your strength for tomorrow and in this realm, that means going to bed with a full tummy.”

“No, I…” Before she could finish, a massive yawn overcame her. “Well, at least tell me about the duel…” Another yawn followed, not as big but as powerful as the first.

“It can wait until the morning,” Drew said, stood quickly, and put a hand on her shoulder to lead her to bed. “Amythist has beds for all of us. We’ll sleep here tonight and fly to the location in the morning and declare that the duel is still on.”

“Still on?” Kristen asked and stifled yet another yawn. “Why wouldn’t it be on? It’s only been two days.”

He looked at her with heavy eyes. “Kristen… We’ll talk about this more in the morning but…well… The whole world thinks you’re dead.”

She would have asked more but at that point, he had lowered her to a bed and holy shit, did it feel soft after days of walking on stone and through mud.

Wearily, she removed the jacket and wrapped herself in the covers. She was asleep before she had time to piece together how anyone could think she was dead when there was no body.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

She woke the next morning to the sounds of bird calls and the whistle of a tea kettle. Kristen squinted at the sunlight streaming past the vines that covered the window in the tiny, overstuffed room she was in. For a minute, she could not remember where she was but she didn’t care. She was in a room in a house, and in a bed. Compared to the unending walk she had endured for what felt like a small eternity, that was enough.

Then she remembered she was there because in a few hours, she would have to fight a dragon who plagued her nightmares, and she thrust out of bed into an ungainly heap.

Before she could find her feet, the door to her room opened. Brian, Stonequest, and Drew were all there.

“Is everything all right?” Drew asked.

“Why do you still not have a shirt on?” her brother yelled and ran from the room.

“Yeah, sorry. I remembered that I have to battle the dragon who killed Lumos and Shimmerclaw in like six hours.”

“Four hours,” he said.

Stonequest tossed her uniform to her and winked.

“Four hours?” she asked as she tugged her clothing on. Clean clothes felt amazing. “What time is it?”

“Eight in the morning,” Drew told her.

“Why didn’t anyone wake me?” she demanded.

“Amythist said she would use her mage powers on us if we didn’t let you sleep,” Stonequest said. Then, more quietly as if he did not quite want to admit it, he added, “She said she’d turn me into a toad.”

“And you believed her?”

“I didn’t think dragons could use any magic beyond whatever power they inherently have,” the stone dragon protested. “You turned yourself into a flashlight last night. What’s so crazy about her turning me into a toad?”

“She can’t simply…that magic doesn’t… Okay, never mind,” she said and hurried to the kitchen.

Amythist was stirring a giant pot of oatmeal, but despite Kristen claiming she liked it runny, the old dragon refused to serve her until it thickened. “Besides,” she said with a wink, “it should be done by the time you finish a shower.”

“I could stop for takeout on the way to the duel.”

“If you think you can face Boneclaw with artificial cheese and cheap, processed meat in your stomach, you are in for a rude awakening,” Amythist snapped with as much ferocity as her mother.

She acquiesced and took a shower. As soon as the hot water touched her skin, she appreciated the old dragon’s insistence on the ritual. She was grimy with dirt not only from a river but from another dimension. It felt wonderful to wash it all off.

When she emerged from the shower, Heartsbane had joined Stonequest, Drew, and Brian in the kitchen.

“Heartsbane? It’s nice to see you,” she said, genuinely confused as she sat to eat her oatmeal.

“You can’t fight Boneclaw with your hair like that,” the new arrival grouched. “If you take your human form, he’ll grab you by your scalp.”

“Oh. My. God. Melissa Heartsbane, are you here to do my hair?” Kristen almost squealed with excitement, although she wasn’t one to overly obsess over her hair. She was a cop, which meant most of the time, her long, curly red locks were in a tight, professional bun. There was something deliciously hilarious about Heartsbane, the biggest hardass she knew, arriving early to give her a makeover.

“Shut up and eat your porridge,” the dragon snapped. “I’ll put your hair in five cornrows. It’s gonna hurt like hell.”

“I’m a dragon, Heartsbane. I’m sure I can stand you braiding my hair.”

It turned out that she could, but not without a fair amount of profanity.

Her meal finished, her hair tightly braided to her skull—even with her dragon healing powers, the braids still felt tight and the skin between them stretched—it was finally time to head to the duel.

“Are you ready, my child?” Amythist asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. Do we have time to stop at the base before we go to the place?” Kristen asked.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Stonequest replied as they moved to the front door.

“I had hoped to see—oh.” Her mouth fell open as she stepped out of Amythist’s front door and saw that all her friends were already there.

Her old team was present. Butters and Beanpole smiled at her from the back. Keith had his phone out and snapped photos while Hernandez stood nearby and rolled her eyes at the Rookie. Timeflash smiled from the lawn, the only dragon in her close core of friends who hadn’t already been inside the house. Larry grinned and babbled at Constance, who shushed him when Kristen stepped out onto Amythist’s front steps.

“There’s a tradition—dragons use it but humans do as well. It’s called an honor guard.” Stonequest raised an arm to gesture at the assembled group of people. “We’re here to make sure nothing happens on the way there.”

“We’re here because we hope something does happen,” Hernandez said and everyone laughed.

“Thank you all so much for coming. I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I still don’t know if I can beat Boneclaw, but I think I might have a chance now.”

“A chance? We all dragged our butts out of bed before brunch time for a chance? You’d better defeat this dragon. I was promised celebratory pizza.” Butters grinned.

She laughed and looked around but didn’t see the young mage. “Amy wasn’t able to make it?” Kristen asked.

The team all cast furtive glances at each other. It was Larry who stepped forward with a frown on his face. “We haven’t seen Amy or Katrina in two days. They left the night you left and no one has seen or heard from them since. We had… Well, to be honest, we had hoped they were the ace up your sleeve. We hoped you had sent them on some kind of secret mission.”

She could tell she’d done a poor job of hiding her surprise at their absence as the faces of all her friends fell.

“No, I didn’t send them to do anything. No one has any idea where they went?” she asked. “It’s not like Amy to run off.”

“Well…” Keith had put his phone away and now wrung his hands. “See, there’s been this rumor. A dragon called Bloodblaze claims to have killed the Steel Dragon.”

“Obviously, she’s lying,” she said.

“Right, yeah, except…well, what if she thought she was telling the truth?” he said. “The only other dragon with powers anything like yours is Katrina. If Bloodblaze came across her in her dragon form and they battled… But hey, it’s only a rumor.”

A pit began to form in her stomach. “And what’s the rumor about Amy?”

“There isn’t one,” he said quickly. “But she vanished at around the same time as Katrina, at least as far as we can tell. I think…well, if Katrina was killed, then Amy…”

“We don’t know. That’s the problem,” Constance said as he trailed off and wiped his eyes.

“But this all sounds like nonsense. We need to find Amy. I’m sure that wherever she is, there’s a reason she hasn’t contacted us.”

“There’s no time, my child. No time at all,” Amythist said. “With this rumor going around, Boneclaw only needs you to be a minute late to declare himself the victor. Any later than that and he’ll call you an imposter. You have to focus on your duel.”

Kristen clenched her teeth. She didn’t like her decisions being taken away from her but liked members of her team being taken away from her even less.

“I won’t simply give up on Amy and Katrina. Larry, Timeflash, and Keith, I want you to try to find them. If there’s anywhere Boneclaw might have as a hideout or lair, I’ll bet they’re there.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They all saluted crisply. Timeflash took her dragon form, Larry and Keith climbed on her back, and the three launched skyward.

“We’ll find them!” Larry shouted from the dragon’s back. “No matter what it takes, we’ll find them. No matter where in the world they might be, we’ll track them. If Amy is in trouble, we’ll get her out, and if they’re not in trouble, we’ll let them know that they will be once they get back.”

“Thank you, Larry. Just bring them home,” Kristen responded.

She watched them go and felt horribly guilty and responsible for both the young women. Amy could have gone off and led a quiet life somewhere in rural Canada but she had brought her into this world. Katrina was her responsibility, too. She had switched to her side and now, it was rumored that the Steel Dragon was dead? If the Iron Dragon was dead, she didn’t know if she’d ever forgive herself. She had a bad feeling that if she didn’t lead this rescue herself, it wouldn’t be a rescue at all. Merely a long search with a depressing surprise at the end.

But she could tell by Stonequest’s aura that time was tight. She had to win this duel, and now more than ever. The future depended on it, but she also had to win it for those she’d lost—for Lumos, and Emerald, and God, she had to win it for Jim. She had to win it for Jonesy, and for all the people who had joined her fight only to lose their lives.

“Shall we?” the stone dragon prompted.

“Give me a minute,” she said, squared her shoulders, and faced her team. “I don’t know what Stonequest told you.”

“That you have new magic.”

“That you can glow like Lumos.”

“That your boobs have freckles.”

“Regardless,” she snapped, “I don’t want anyone to know about those new powers. Has anyone told anyone besides the people here? Keep in mind that your answer is probably the difference between my life and death.”

All their heads shook firmly in response. Kristen trusted everyone there enough to take them at their word. “That means no outsiders know, not yet. So I have two advantages. One, if Boneclaw thinks I’m dead, he’ll arrive expecting a victory lap, not an actual fight, and two, I have powers he doesn’t know about.”

“But you can make yourself glow,” Hernandez said. “Can’t you simply fuck him up?”

“Do people step on a trip-line for one of your bombs if they know where it is?” she asked in reply.

The woman grinned. “That’s why you’re the fucking boss, Red.”

“I don’t know who will be there. I know the duel itself is supposed to be private, but I also know that if rumors are flying around about me, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the location has been compromised. If that’s the case, I don’t want anyone bragging or giving hints about what I can do. I need Boneclaw to stay in the dark.”

“Are you sure about that?” Butters asked.

“Of course, I’m sure—oh, ha, ha,” Kristen said as she caught the joke. “If Butters is done with his stand-up act, let’s get a move on.”

Everyone nodded. It was finally time.

Stonequest, Kristen, and Heartsbane took their dragon forms and the humans mounted up. They took to the air and started their journey to a final showdown with Boneclaw while Amythist waved to them from her garden.

“Come back when you’re done! If you win, I can make you a cup of tea. If you don’t…well, I hear dragons make great garden fertilizer!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“So, what did Amythist tell you about duels before you left for the pixie world?” Stonequest asked as they flew toward the north side of Detroit.

“Uh…not much, honestly. Let’s say nothing at all to be safe.”

“All right. Well, we don’t have a ton of time,” he mumbled.

“Then get talking!”

“Right. Okay, Boneclaw was the dragon who was challenged, so he got to pick the venue. He originally wanted Ford Field, but I talked him out of that. I have been serving as your second. I hope that’s fine.”

“Of course. But I thought this battle was supposed to be private.”

“It is. And it’ll be covered so no one can see. He said he wanted it near Detroit for your convenience.”

“I thought you said everyone thinks I’m dead.”

“There have been rumors of that, yes. I think he wanted the location near Detroit so he could gloat.”

“And by gloat you mean level the city.”

Stonequest shrugged as he flew on. “That would be my guess, yes. Kristen, you can’t let him win.”

“I don’t plan to,” she replied. “But you got it moved from Ford Field?”

“Yes, to an open area of about the same size that’s north of the city. Boneclaw insisted it be covered, so we had to foot some of the bill to make a scaffolding. It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t want to be rude but how could you agree to something covered? I thought the arena couldn’t favor one of us.”

“It shouldn’t. It’s basically a huge tent held up by steel girders. The material’s not particularly substantial either. It’s enough to block viewers but not impervious to fire or anything.”

“But it will block the light,” Kristen said.

“Yes, but I insisted on lights being on the inside. Decimus Aurelius made Boneclaw agree. So you should be safe from his shadow powers.”

“That would be fucking lovely,” she said. “Are these duels normally held in private?”

“Yes. Council duels are generally held in remote areas beyond human view. The location for this one is very unusual. It’s too close to human homes. Ford Field would have been worse, of course, but this one is still surprisingly close to people.”

“He must have already planned his victory parade,” she said.

“One way or the other, it looks like people have already noticed.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, but he didn’t need to answer.

The dome looked like a giant caterpillar. It was more round than rectangular and appeared to be supported by air like a giant bounce house.

Although truly, the dome itself was lost in the crowd all around it. Dragons soared high above it while pixies flitted about between them. Humans were present too. They were much farther away than the dragons but they were all within sight of it. Grills were going and coolers were filled with beer. Like any good sports fan, they hoped for the best and prepared themselves for heartbreak. She was concerned that if she suffered a loss, it would be far more devastating than waiting for the next game. If she lost, it wasn’t the fans she worried about torching the city in frustration but the winning dragon’s henchmen.

Boneclaw was there too. He stood at the north side of the arena in his human form and surrounded by two dozen dragons. A few of them were Council members, but most looked like guards. She did not appreciate the show of force.

Kristen circled the dome and glided to a clearing where Decimus Aurelius gestured for her to land while he grinned broadly in his dragon form. She and her team settled in quick succession.

Aurelius greeted them warmly. “I’m glad I don’t follow the rumors.”

“Did you think I would miss this if I had a choice?” she retorted.

“I was concerned that choice had already been made for you. I’m glad to see I was wrong.”

“Enough of this. Aurelius is supposed to be an impartial judge, not a cheerleader for this rebel.” Boneclaw still wore Jim’s skull as a mask, the sick bastard.

“Are you all right, Boneclaw? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.

“I’m merely surprised you didn’t go to the Iron Dragon’s funeral after you sent her to her death. I thought your side was all about empathy and all that nonsense.”

She would have started the fight then—and tried to, in fact—but Stonequest and Heartsbane each caught her by a shoulder and managed to restrain her.

“You sick fuck,” she snapped.

The old dragon smiled from beneath his mask. “Such eloquence. I can see why so many humans look to you as a leader. Compared to most of them, you’re quite well-spoken.”

“Enough of this, please,” Aurelius said and swung his tail sharply in annoyance. “May I go over the rules or do the combatants wish to keep hurling insults?”

“The rules, please. I fear the Steel Dragon may not know them.”

Kristen sneered at Boneclaw but remained silent.

“Very well.” Aurelius cleared his throat. “Both parties will enter from opposite sides of the arena. Both parties will be naked. No outside weapons or items of any kind are allowed.”

“Will that be a problem?” Her opponent smirked as he removed his robe to reveal a frighteningly skinny and surprisingly muscled figure. He had the body of a skeleton with flank steaks for muscles. “I know you were raised by humans. Do you share their prudishness for the natural body?”

She scoffed and stripped. “I was more concerned about your old bony ass. This means you’ll have to take that off.” She pointed to Jim’s skull.

He scowled, removed the skull, and tossed it aside. It might well have broken on impact with the dirt, but a gust of wind buffered it before it landed.

“You almost dropped that. Be careful. I know you might be shaky with age, but try to control yourself.” Constance smiled sweetly at him.

His response was a stiff scowl.

“Normally, we don’t ask the combatants to remove their clothes until they are about to enter, but I see that won’t be a problem here,” Aurelius said dryly. “Anyway, as I was saying, the battle must be fought with only each person’s natural weapons and abilities. No weapons and no additional items. Nothing beyond what your human and dragon powers give you.”

“Can we skip to the part where you tell me how I beat him?” Kristen said.

Boneclaw growled.

Aurelius tried and failed to hide a smile. “Either dragon may yield at any time. If a dragon yields, they have lost and the duel is over, but do not forfeit lightly. If the winner deems the duel unconscionable for any reason, they may kill the loser.”

“What constitutes unconscionable?” she asked. She already knew that Boneclaw had killed all his previous opponents.

“Rest assured, Lady Steel, your actions are unconscionable. You flaunt your disgusting human upbringing and will no doubt fight like the crude simian you are.”

“Cool. I merely want to make sure no one will give a shit when I kill this old fucker.”

“Again, such eloquence.”

“As I was saying,” Aurelius interjected firmly to halt the exchange of insults. “Those are the rules. The arena is set up for Boneclaw and not the shadow powers he has kept secret for so long, so that should not be an issue.”

The two combatants glared at each other and neither betrayed their belief that any precautions to stop Boneclaw from using his abilities would fail.

Aurelius cleared his throat. “Now, before we begin, I must ask—will the parties set aside their arguments and find a peaceful resolution before they engage in this battle? This is your last chance to step aside. Technically, Lord Boneclaw may offer the stolen artifact, and if Lady Steel accepts, there is no need for bloodshed.”

“Why not surrender so I can beat your ass out here instead of where no one can see us?” Kristen asked.

“Because I look forward to wearing your skull as my mask. Will you please try to die in your human form so I can use that skull instead of your dragon one?”

“All right then. Lord Boneclaw, you are to enter from the north side. Lady Steel, from the south. Lady Steel, your second will accompany Lord Boneclaw as his second will accompany you to make sure you enter the arena abiding by the rules. Lord Boneclaw, we already know Sir Stonequest is Lady Steel’s second. Who will serve as yours?”

“Lady Bloodblaze, of course. I’m sure you’ve heard of her recent exploits.”

A woman with eyes the color of blood separated herself from the dragon guards. They split up and Boneclaw left with Stonequest while the rest of Kristen’s friends followed her and Lady Bloodblaze.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” Bloodblaze asked. She was so close that she could whisper.

“You’re the bitch who killed Katrina.”

“No, no, no! I simply took credit for her death so as to not interfere with this duel. I’m the bitch who watched her die and I’m the bitch who will erase every memory of you when you die.”

“What did you do with Amy?”

“Who?” The dragon looked confused.

“You dumb bitch. You killed Katrina and left my mage alive? That almost makes me hope Boneclaw does win today. It will piss Amy off enough to target all of you. I’ll bet she’ll let you watch while she defeats Boneclaw.”

Bloodblaze growled as they reached the entrance to the dome.

“You got this, Kristen!” Heartsbane yelled. “Pay no attention to Bloodblaze. She’s nothing but a toad anyway.”

“Am not!” the dragon retorted.

“We believe in you,” Butters said. “And we need you to spring for pizza when this is all over, so don’t die!”

“Indeed,” Beanpole said.

“Be careful, okay, Red?” Hernandez said.

“Thanks, you guys. I’ll be back soon.”

“On a gurney,” Bloodblaze said, but she didn’t do anything to Kristen as she entered the arena, ready for whatever the Masked One would try to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Kristen strode in through the entrance of the dome with her friends cheering her and Bloodblaze scowling.

She put all that aside. There was nothing to do but focus on the being across from her.

Boneclaw strode in, naked but acting as if he wore a fine suit and sported a crown on his head.

“Welcome!” he declared loudly. “I hope you like the setting.”

Quickly, she studied the dome. It was massive, big enough to enclose not only a football field but the stadium itself. The floor was a mess of dirt and stone and looked like it had been roughened during the construction. The dome was made of some type of fabric and supported by huge steel girders. Massive spotlights hung from the girders—six of them—and shone with more than enough light to keep any shadows at bay.

“I’m impressed you’re here to face me without any shadows,” she said.

“I’m impressed you made it at all. Although I should have realized that all the runts of your litter looked alike.”

Kristen was about to lunge at him right then, but Aurelius entered the arena. “Did I miss anything?” he asked but when he saw that they were still in their human forms, he smiled, “Ah, not yet. Very good.”

“I thought this would be private,” she said.

“All duels need a witness. I will serve as one.”

“Bloodblaze would have been more than willing—”

“Your second is not an appropriate choice,” Aurelius stated firmly.

“Of course.” Boneclaw bowed to him. Kristen didn’t think she’d ever seen a naked man command the respect of one as well dressed as Aurelius before.

“Both of you find the arena satisfactory?” he asked the combatants.

“Oh, yes. I can’t wait to crush Lady Steel against the girders. Tell me, would that make you long for your dead mother’s touch?” Boneclaw sneered.

“My mom’s not dead.”

“Yet,” he said as he transformed into his dragon shape. More spike and spine than flesh, he would present a formidable opponent, even without his shadow powers.

“Lady Steel, do you find the arena satisfactory?” Aurelius asked.

“Sure!” she shouted, but she was already changing shape and taking to the air. Boneclaw pumped his wings furiously and swooped with increasing speed around the enclosed space of the arena.

Kristen gave chase and tailed him as closely as she could. “Running already?”

Suddenly, he made a quick loop, spun abruptly, and raked his talons across her spine. “More like setting a trap.”

She swung the ax-blade on the tip of her tail at him as he swooped past. It drove him away but made no contact. His strike hadn’t done much to her. Her steel scales were strong, only one of the reasons she was such a threat to him.

The next time he tried to divebomb her, she was ready. She turned in mid-air to meet her attacker and they exchanged blows. Again, Boneclaw struck and again, his strikes rebounded off her steel scales without causing much damage. She had more difficulty landing a blow, however. Despite the lights and him being unable to change to shadow, he was still damned fast—too fast to hit, she acknowledged. By the time she lined up a good skull-cracker with her tail, he had disengaged.

He roared in frustration. “You understand that you would be nothing without me? You wouldn’t have even existed. It was I who convinced your father to give you life. I convinced him to share his genetic material.”

Kristen roared and surged toward him, temporarily disabling her steel skin so she could fly faster to catch up. She was about to collide with him when he unleashed a powerful blast of fire.

Quickly, she shifted to steel and dodged. The fire roared past and struck one of the lights behind her. The glass on the front of it fissured and cracked, and the light went out. The fabric behind it suffered no such damage from the fire.

“Good job ensuring the fabric was fireproof!” Boneclaw shouted at Aurelius, who gaped at the broken light.

“You can’t do that!” she said, still in pursuit.

“Oh, I most certainly can! Tell her, Aurelius. Tell her our ways!”

“Lord Boneclaw is correct. You agreed to the arena, which means that it is now part of the duel. But I must stress that breaking the lights was never part of the plan. There will be consequences.”

She could hear the same concern that a wrestling referee might have when someone did an unexpected thing during a match. It wasn’t that he wanted her to lose but rather that there was little he could do. If he stopped the duel, Boneclaw would win by default.

That meant she had to end it before her opponent could destroy all the lights. She raced after Boneclaw, caught up to him this time, and raked his back with her talons before he swooped away. But the momentum her strike created hurled him into another light. It broke in a shower of sparks.

“If there are consequences”—Boneclaw laughed—“they must now be doled out to both parties!”

Kristen streaked in pursuit as he swooped past another light. He slowed slightly before she reached him so when he struck her with his tail and missed, it almost looked like an accident when the third light shattered.

The three remaining were not enough to completely illuminate the arena. Where before, not even the stones on the floor had cast a shadow on the dirt around them, there were now large pools of darkness. The tent did too good a job of blocking out the sun.

She followed him to one of the pools of darkness and lunged but was too late.

The leg she had aimed at vanished into shadow, only to reappear behind her and shove her into an ungainly sprawl. It didn’t hurt as she was still made of steel, but goddamn, was it embarrassing.

“Boneclaw, enough of that!” Aurelius ordered brusquely.

“The rules are clear, Aurelius,” the shadow dragon roared. “I am allowed to use what powers I naturally possess. No more, no less. That means I can use my shadow powers since the Steel Bitch agreed to this arena.”

“But you can’t—”

“Furthermore,” he continued smugly, “we have both broken lights—an unprofessional duel if there has ever been one. Don’t worry, though. I’ll finish her off soon enough.”

“This is preposterous—” the Council witness tried to protest, but Kristen cut him off.

“Fine! He can have his shadow magic.” That might have been stupid but Boneclaw still didn’t know about her newest powers. If he thought he had the advantage, he might make a mistake. She could use her light powers right away, but she wanted to hold them in reserve. The longer he knew about them, the more he would prepare himself for them. She knew that if he had time to strategize, he would likely win, which meant she had to play his game.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t tease him and see what happened.

“I’ll let it fly because I intend to kill you, Boneclaw,” she said. “And when I do, I’ll tell the whole world your dirty little secret.”

“What secret?” he asked as he flew past the fourth light and punched it with a clawed hand. “You already told the world I was the Masked One and guess what? They did not care. Dragons are still loyal to me. My greatest secret has become my greatest strength.”

Only two lights were left and he now led her to one of them. She kept pace and scratched and clawed at his wings. They were one of the few parts of him he couldn’t simply make disappear into shadow because he’d fall from the sky. She managed to gash one and he plummeted…directly into the fifth light.

He laughed as sparks flew all around him.

There was only one light left and she knew that without it, they really would be in Boneclaw’s domain. She landed in front of it and put herself between him and the final source of illumination. The dome itself glowed with the faintest of red lights, enough to make her think that when it was lifted, not the countryside of Michigan would be revealed but hell itself.

“Tell me your secret, Steel Bitch. You interest me!” Boneclaw’s voice echoed as he approached.

Kristen exhaled a great blast of flame and the dragon pulled up and away. She lost sight of him as soon as her flames jetted out as he had vanished into shadow.

“You’re not a gifted dragon with powers granted to you by the universe itself. You’re simply a common—or, more likely, merely a shitty mage who found a way into another realm.”

The silence was deafening for a brief moment.

Then, Boneclaw materialized in the cone of light in front of her, already in mid-strike.

“You lie!” he said and lashed at her with his tail.

“You’re the master of deception, not me!” she retorted and blocked blow after blow but still falling short. He was amazing at avoiding her strikes. His blows suffered in strength because of it, but he was extremely difficult to hit. “You learned this way of fighting in another place—a place of magic. Admit it! Dragons only exist because people like you dared to dream themselves into monsters.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with those damnable pixies,” he shouted as he intensified his strikes. They were delivered at incredible speed, some now so vicious they punched through her steel scales and drew blood.

But his commitment to the attack cost him as well. Kristen was able to bite him in the chest with such ferocity that he had to use his shadow powers to escape her. He used the shadow she created from the light to vanish, reappeared just outside her grasp, and flew into the darkness.

She wondered if that had been her chance to beat him and if she had squandered it.

Boneclaw had gone into shadow. She could see nothing of his passage—no wingbeats pushing the cloth of the dome and no scrape of talons on the floor.

But she could feel him.

Calmly, she reached out with her senses—all her senses—like she had in the pixie world. She looked for him, yes, but she also smelled, listened, and used her dragon aura. Unhurried, she opened herself like a blossoming flower until she could feel the flow of magic itself.

And there he was. She could feel his shadow form and his use of dragon magic in the same way she could feel the light wisps and shadow creatures. He came in low, not flying exactly since his body was made of shadow, but gliding above the ground.

Kristen turned her back to him, both to make him more confident and because the front of dragons was where they were most vulnerable. This way, he couldn’t reach her throat, while she would look completely oblivious.

A split-second before he made impact with her, she moved slightly so his blow wasn’t as powerful as intended although she still acted like it was. She tumbled across the ground and thrashed like a fouled soccer player.

“The only thing I learned in that place,” Boneclaw roared, “was to fear the dark.”

With a snort of disdain, he smashed the final light and plunged the entire room into darkness.

He approached her and moved around her like a lion hunting a creature of the savannah not gifted with night vision. She could sense his every move, but she turned her head constantly so he would believe she was blind to his approach. Despite her quiet inner certainty, she hoped she was doing the right thing by holding her light power in reserve to catch him.

Kristen didn’t have to wait long.

Her adversary lunged and bulldozed into her. He knocked her over and rolled with her as he tried to savage her gut.

She couldn’t take hold of him, not like this, and merely struck at shadows. Finally, she activated her new powers and every scale she had ignited with light.

He screamed as the Steel Dragon—shining like silver—snatched him in her claws.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Boneclaw—forced into his physical form by the burst of light—stumbled and squirmed to get away from her. It was like watching an eel being taken from its cave in the ocean depths and then being dumped unceremoniously on a rocky beach. He screeched and crawled, his legs thrashing as his tail quivered and tried to propel him away from the light.

“You lying bitch,” he whined. “You lied about your powers.”

“Fair is fair,” Aurelius decreed from somewhere above. “You used your shadow powers despite the arena being made to inhibit them, so she can use these.”

Kristen said nothing and kept her scales glowing as she pursued her adversary. She pounced like a bobcat and drove into his chest. Her glowing claws cut wounds in his scales that hissed with smoke as the flesh beneath was cauterized by the intensity of her light.

He whipped at her head with his spiny tail. His spines punctured the side of her head, her neck, and her back, but she heard the telltale snap of his spines breaking on her steel armor. She could take this abuse better than he could.

She bit Boneclaw’s armpit and savaged the joint that kept his right arm connected to his body. He screamed in pain, howling and yowling like he had been reduced to his animal state.

“Admit that you’re merely a human with an overblown sense of your ego and I’ll let you live,” she snapped as she released his armpit and brought her tail up for a finishing blow.

He exhaled fire directly into her face.

Blinded, she stumbled back and he slipped away.

Her vision was back in an instant. She’d managed to evade the fire blast sufficiently that her steel scales had blocked most of the damage. But now, Boneclaw was free in the darkness.

Kristen could still sense him, however, a malevolent shadow who moved through the dark like a shark who had yet to put its fin above the surface of the water.

“I don’t care where you got these petty little flashlight powers of yours. I will still end you,” he raged from the darkness.

Still not ready to reveal the full extent of her powers, she used him speaking as an opportunity to attack. She blasted fire into the darkness, only it emerged not as fire but light. The beam of heat and light was as strong as the sun itself.

She caught Boneclaw in it and he screeched in pain before he dropped away. Unused to being able to blast a form of energy that moved as fast as light, she overcompensated in trying to track her target and lost him in the dark.

The shadow dragon must have sensed how devastating this attack could be and increased his pace as he moved through shadows. She shrugged and used him for target practice.

One solar blast after another shone out of her mouth and made temporary cones of light that started at her face and silhouetted her adversary against the fabric of the tent.

On the third strike, he plummeted and landed hard, wheezing in pain.

Kristen ran toward him, preparing herself for her final attack, but found she was unable to. She wasn’t used to calling on this kind of energy. Releasing so many of the blasts in a row had done a good job of depleting her energy reserves. Still, she could feel herself recharging. She merely needed to hold him at bay for a minute or so before she delivered the killing strike.

Boneclaw, sensing his opportunity, faded to shadow once again. She waited and made no effort to attack until he made his move.

His claw turned solid long before he wished it to, so she was able to not only sense it coming but see it as well. She clamped her jaws on his wrist and ensured that her teeth glowed with light.

He howled in pain and rained blows on her, trying to force her to let him go.

One particularly powerful punch in the nose forced her to release, but not before she caught his tail in one of her claws.

The shadow dragon tried to flee in the darkness but couldn’t. Her glowing claws pinned him in his material state.

“It looks like we finally have a fair fight,” Kristen growled.

Boneclaw responded with a roar of fury and stopped his attempts to flee. He lunged forward and drove into her, and both dragons tumbled across the dirt, thrusting stones this way and that with their enormous momentum.

She focused mostly on not letting him go. Whenever she grasped a new limb, she’d pummel him with her tail or another claw, but she was careful to not release him completely. She couldn’t let him vanish into the dark again.

He understood what she was doing and mostly focused on pulverizing whichever limb currently trapped him. But his desperation to escape had begun to take its toll. While he tried to pull free, she cut and sliced at him with her tail. Soon, his wounds stopped healing. His scales, which moments before had faded from bone-white to shadow, were now speckled with his blood. In a straight-up brawl, he could not beat the Steel Dragon. Her scales were simply too strong. That, coupled with her ability to deny him his shadow magic, essentially made the Masked One impotent against her.

And yet, he didn’t seem scared, frightened, or even that concerned. He fought fiercely, to be sure, but there was something about his demeanor that Kristen didn’t like. It was like watching her brother play a first-person shooter game using only a pistol while his opponents used rocket launchers. Yes, he was losing, but it was like he had yet to fully commit to the game.

But like the player using the rocket launcher, her best choice was to blow the bastard to pieces before he could enact whatever plot he was hatching. She battered his head back with a headbutt. Her steel horns cracked his bone ones and he was thrust back and struck his head on a boulder with enough force to break the stone and draw a messy spurt of blood from his head.

In response, Boneclaw laughed.

She decided she’d had quite enough of this.

Kristen pulled back and let the light energy build into a final blast. She still had his body pinned and would crisp him to nothingness at point-blank range.

“You are strong,” he wheezed. “You might have won if this was a fair fight.”

“If?” she had time to ask before he shouted, “Now!”

All around the arena, dozens of forms rose from the dirt, perhaps fifty in all. They were short, hulking, bearded people, covered in dirt and stone but reflecting the light that poured off her with stone teeth and metal piercings.

They were dwarves, she realized, and they must have been buried beneath the dirt and stone of the floor.

Still, she could defeat Boneclaw and readied her light blast to deliver the final blow.

She might have managed to do it if not for the weighted steel nets the dwarves fired at her. Three of them caught her in the face and she jerked and jolted with the impacts. Boneclaw thrashed beneath her. Between his strength and the nets, she lost her hold on the dragon.

Kristen pushed to her feet and clawed the nets off her face with enough time to intercept two more launched at her.

“This is against the rules, Lord Boneclaw. You know very well that this will void the duel!” Aurelius shouted from somewhere above. It was a lucky thing she had light powers. If not, it was possible Decimus Aurelius might not have seen the dwarves at all. As it was, this might very well cost her adversary the duel.

“Not true!” the dragon roared from the shadows. “You inspected the arena before we began and the Steel Dragon agreed to it. I gave no orders to these dwarves. I didn’t tell them to kill this blasphemous, traitorous bitch. They do so of their own accord.”

Despite the new threat closing in on her, she laughed. After calling, “Now,” to signal the dwarf attack, he thought he could claim they weren’t working for him? She supposed it might work if she failed to win, but it was clear to her he’d never intended to battle her fairly.

The dwarves reinforced Boneclaw’s point, though. They did not seem interested in the shadow dragon and their focus was almost entirely on her. They had exhausted their net cannons and now attacked her with a mixture of guns and hammers. She had no doubt that the guns were loaded with dragon bullets and the hammers strong enough to crush her bones beneath her steel skin.

“Come and fight me, Boneclaw, you coward!” she shouted before she vaulted skyward and took flight over the dwarves as gunshots rang out inside the dome.

Her adversary responded immediately. He barreled into her, embraced his material form, and dragged her to the ground with him. They collided with the surface and dislodged dirt and debris.

Kristen tried to twist to reach him where he clung to her back and whispered in her ear. “Aurelius might very well be able to deem this duel unlawful. But I don’t care. Rules are for lesser beings. I want you dead, Kristen Hall, Steel Bitch. I will rule this planet, and you are the only thing standing in my way.”

“You can’t…beat me.” She grunted as she spun and thrust Boneclaw into the ground.

“Not alone, no.” He coughed. “But we’ll let my Dragon Council work out what to do with the particulars of this match. Not to worry. I’m sure sweet Decimus Aurelius will give you an unnecessarily valiant defense. Posthumously, of course.”

“I’ve been shot by dragon bullets before,” she snapped. “Even if these dwarves shoot me, I’ll still have time enough to kill you.”

“Perhaps. Nothing in this world comes without risk,” he replied but didn’t let her go.

They tumbled and tussled and rolled over one another. While before, she had tried to prevent him from getting away, the tables were now turned. If he could keep her grounded long enough, the dwarves would get within range to take a point-blank shot at her. As it was, they could not yet shoot for fear of killing Boneclaw.

But that was changing fast. The dwarves closed in on the two dragons and Kristen—try as she might—could not land a killing blow. She outmatched him in close combat like this, but he was too wily to allow her a finishing strike. It was like trying to make an eel stand still—an impossibility.

As they struggled, the dwarves drew closer until they were surrounded. Those with hammers closed ranks to form a wall. She knew enough about dwarf physiology to know that if she ran into that, she would be rebuffed despite her size.

Kristen tried desperately to land a blow on Boneclaw but missed every time. He dodged and rolled, turned lethal blows into bone-crushing ones, and bone-crushing ones into nothing but bruises.

And still, the dwarves closed in.

The first tentative gunshots rang out. Boneclaw, reacting to these, let her pin him to the ground. She did so before realizing what she had done—left her giant, glowing, dragon body exposed for every dwarf in the arena to fire upon without risk of hurting her adversary.

The dwarves, more than happy to take advantage of this temporary lapse in tactical combat, unloaded a hurricane of dragon bullets that would punch through her steel skin like it was nothing more than aluminum foil.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was impossible to dodge all the bullets in her dragon form, so Kristen changed into her human body. The dwarves, no more accustomed than anyone else to facing a dragon that willingly used their human body, continued to fire as she changed and shrank and became her regular old naked but steel-skinned self.

Boneclaw did not fall for the deception.

He lunged under the storm of bullets and turned into shadow as he prepared to surge into the tiny human female in front of him.

Never one to back down, she lit her fists with light and channeled every ounce of magic she had into her right arm before she threw the strongest punch she had ever landed.

As she unleashed the power, she felt her dragon energy—not only the energy she normally had in her human form but her full dragon energy—power the punch. It struck Boneclaw so hard that it cracked a tooth and catapulted him away.

She had him. If she could access her full strength in this body—the one she was more comfortable with—she knew she could win this.

Except she had momentarily forgotten the fifty armed dwarves who now raced toward her. Some of them continued to fire at her while their comrades rushed forward with hammers.

One of them swung early in his enthusiasm and hammered a massive crater into the ground. She swallowed. Dragon power or not, a couple of direct strikes from those hammers would do more than enough damage to make her easy pickings for Boneclaw.

So Kristen didn’t let the blows catch her. She remained in her human form and recalled all the hand-to-hand training she had ever done. All the bouts with Drew, Hernandez, and Jonesy, when he was still alive, clicked in with their learned responses. She thought about how dragons had trained her too. Emerald and Lumos had shown her ways to use her powers and even an enemy like Sebastian Shadowstorm had shown her secrets about how her body could be used to win a fight.

She brought all those lessons together now, every trick she had, to become the fastest blur she could. When she had an opportunity, she struck a dwarf and hurled them tumbling away, but it was never enough to knock them out. They were designed to fight dragons. She might be able to beat a few in a fight, but not fifty. Recognizing this, she focused mostly on dodging.

“That’s right, you little steel runt, run away. Run away like you did when you were born. Run away to whatever cursed mongrel species gave you those light powers,” Boneclaw raged.

Her fists still blazed with light as she dodged and moved past the dwarves. She knew they could see in the dark as well as any dragon, so plunging them all into darkness would give Boneclaw the greatest advantage. She couldn’t allow that. Not when she was so close to winning.

Except she wasn’t, she realized.

The dwarves had changed everything. She had been ready to fight Boneclaw one-on-one, and dammit, she thought she might have been able to beat him, but these odds were too stacked against her. Even though he wasn’t currently attacking, he was still winning.

And it still wasn’t enough for the conniving dragon.

A bright flash appeared behind her and daylight flooded the room. It was a gate like the ones Constance used. For a moment, she dared to hope but more dwarves poured through, looking surly and ready for a fight. It was Boneclaw’s second round of reinforcements. She was about to beg for the lives of her team in exchange for her own when Amy burst out of the portal, riding her skateboard.

“Amy! Where have you been?” Kristen said, almost breathless with excitement.

“Is that important right now? Me and my buddies are here to help with the rabble. Why are you naked?”

“You would know the answer to that if you had been here,” she replied and turned her attention to Boneclaw again.

Amy’s dwarves wasted no time and raced into the arena. Armed with pickaxes and shovels, they proved to be a more than formidable force against the hammer-wielding dwarves.

She supported them by blocking bullets with her magic shielding, by doing tricks over stupefied dwarves, and by generally turning the sacred and honorable duel into a real brawl.

“This is unconscionable. She can’t use her mage,” Boneclaw roared.

“I told her not to do this,” Kristen replied, unable to help her laughter.

“We’ll sort it all out when this is over.” Aurelius chuckled. “Proceed!”

Taking the cue, she vaulted upward and changed into her dragon body. Boneclaw shrieked as the light that poured from her fell on his shadowed form. He tried to run but she pursued, and the glow of her dragon energy preceded her so he was unable to vanish into shadow.

He realized that the time to run was over, turned in midair, and drove into her. Any grace he had displayed earlier was abandoned in favor of raw power.

The two dragons fell from the top of the tent and ripped and gouged each other as they plummeted. Boneclaw—no longer trying to play cunning—slashed a gash across her belly while she ripped his bony scales loose from his sides and spilled his blood with each wound.

Although the impact with the ground hurt her and she heard it crack one of his ribs, neither dragon so much as slowed their attack. They were all teeth and claw and striking tail. There was no thought, only training honed into the sharpness of instinct.

Kristen swung her tail and brought it down on Boneclaw’s spine. She felt his scales and flesh part and the blade on the tip only stopped when she encountered one of his ribs. The shadow dragon convulsed in pain, but he didn’t release her or cease his attacks. Instead, he bit her shoulder where her wing was attached like he was trying to bite down on a piece of leather to stop the pain.

She shrieked and tried to push him off, but his teeth only clamped tighter. In response, she savaged his back with her tail, but her strikes lacked focus. Still, she managed to add a smattering of smaller wounds to the massive gash down her opponent’s back.

The sound of breaking bone was followed by an intense increase in pain, more than she had even thought possible, and Boneclaw released her wing.

He had ripped it off. The bastard had ripped her entire goddamn wing off.

Her blood flowed like water. She lacked the healing energy to heal the wound but he was suffering too. The gash on his back was not healing. In time, he would die from the wound, but she would die first if she couldn’t stop the bleeding.

So, once again, she changed into a human.

Boneclaw laughed, the pitch and timbre of it like something out of nightmare before he tried to gobble the tiny woman in front of him.

Kristen caught his top jaw with her steel fists and threw him back.

Enraged, he tried to melt into shadow but she made her entire steel body glow and his powers refused to manifest.

He lunged at her and she met him blow for blow. When he struck with a claw, she parried with a punch. He lashed with his tail and she kicked its pointed tip away. She could feel power in her—power that had always been there yet had never been hers to command. Dragon powers were merely an extension of her belief in herself. And right now, she believed that she needed to defeat Boneclaw. She believed that more than she had ever believed anything in her life. Everyone she knew and loved counted on her winning. She wouldn’t let them down, no matter the cost.

The shadow dragon intensified his strikes and moved faster than the human eye could perceive. She could see him, however, and blocked blow after blow, meeting each strike with a steely defense.

Enraged, Boneclaw leaned back and inhaled a great breath of air. If he could not pulverize her, he would incinerate her.

He exhaled a blast of fire so hot it made the rocks strewn about the room melt like wax.

It would have melted her too but she called on this new font of strength, this well of power she had always felt but only learned how to access in the pixie realm. The wall of fire seemed to move in slow motion as it engulfed her, but she had sensed Amy’s shield magic many times.

She called upon the enveloping, protective force the mage had wrapped around her in countless gunfights.

It didn’t quite work as she planned, but it worked far beyond her expectations.

Kristen wrapped herself in a glowing shield of radiant white energy that turned Boneclaw’s fire into nothing but smoke.

He stumbled back as she approached him, his eyes wide with terror. She moved almost languidly. With this amount of power coursing through her, she could see every twitch he made. She could read every emotion that flickered across his aura. When he roared and struck, she knew what he intended to do. It was revealed plainly in his musculature.

So when he opened his maw wide and swallowed her, plunging the arena into darkness, she didn’t panic.

Instead, she let his teeth break upon her steel skin and the inside of his mouth blister from the light energy radiating from her.

When he forced her down his throat—as foolish as that was—she was ready. She could see his heart pulsing through the muscles of his neck and could sense exactly where it was. It was a magical engine, the source of all his power. She punched through the lining of the dragon’s throat and placed a hand on Boneclaw’s heart.

Like the rest of him, there was nothing but darkness there. When the glowing tips of her fingers touched it, the surface blistered and turned to ash. The shadow dragon screamed—the sound coming from all around her—as he tried to claw out the meal that would prove to be his last.

Kristen tried to pull her hand back from his heart. She had hoped to drive out the dark energy that had taken root there and rotted this dragon from the inside, but her level of control was below novice.

His heart was already dead. The light from her fingertip worked across its surface and charred it like an overcooked steak. No longer pulsing with magic energy, the organ collapsed on itself. It shriveled until it was nothing more than a blackened lump of coal, no bigger than a peach pit.

Tired, triumphant, and thoroughly grossed out from being inside a dragon while she killed it, she punched a hole in the body around her to escape.

Light flooded the arena when she stepped from the corpse. In it, she saw that Amy and her dwarves had rounded up those working for Boneclaw.

Now that she could see them all in the light, it was obvious that this second group of dwarves that had come with Amy was quite different than the first. They wore bright colors and had piercings in a rainbow of hues, unlike the dark, gray-clad dwarves with jagged piercings and stone teeth who had first attacked her.

“Oh, dear God, Kristen!” Amy flipped her skateboard in front of her and streaked closer.

Kristen smiled at her. Why was Amy so worried? Before she could think anything more, she collapsed.

Her eyes fluttered open to see the young mage standing above her, mending a massive gash that ran from her neck to her shoulder. It was the wound Boneclaw had made in her dragon form, too dire to completely vanish in her human body. Amy closed the wound and began setting bones and closing puncture wounds that had been inflicted all over her body. The girl’s left nostril started to bleed, then the other, but she did not stop in her duty to the Steel Dragon and Kristen didn’t caution her.

She hurt like fuck. If Amy didn’t help her, she’d die.

But the healing magic did its work and a few minutes later, she was able to rise from the blood-stained soil, albeit unsteadily.

Still covered in blood and wounds, she left the arena victorious.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kristen walked from the arena and into the bright sun of the afternoon. She held her head high, although her body was worn and injured.

Bloodblaze—Boneclaw’s second—saw her first. She expected the dragon to fly into a rage but instead, she only stared slack-jawed until Decimus Aurelius flew over her head. This seemed to shake her from whatever thoughts had seized her, and she turned and strode away.

Trying not to stumble and thus limping, she approached her friends. “It’s over,” she told them. “Boneclaw is dead.”

They cheered and whooped, but the rest of the Dragon Council merely stared in stunned silence.

“But…no one beats Boneclaw,” Skywing, a dragon Councilor said.

“No one!” Ironclaw shouted, although he did not sound angry but jubilant.

Then Amy came from the arena on her skateboard. Behind her came the brightly colored dwarves leading those who had helped Boneclaw, tied and gagged and with their toys taken from them.

“But…but this is against the rules!” Ironclaw sputtered.

“Cheat!” Bloodblaze declared.

“No rules were broken!” Decimus Aurelius declared from the sky. “Boneclaw somehow convinced a group of dwarves to hide under the arena. They tried to interrupt the duel, and might very well have changed the outcome had this mage and her cohort of dwarves not arrived.”

“They’re not my dwarves,” Amy said with a sheepish smile, “and that’s not quite what happened.”

“Do tell,” Bloodblaze demanded angrily like a cat luring you in to pet her before she struck.

“I tracked Boneclaw to Canada.”

“To cheat, no doubt,” Bloodblaze hissed.

“Perhaps, but he had beat me to it. I found him recruiting dwarves in Canada. He buried me under a mountain and left me for dead, but these dwarves rescued me. I told them what I had seen and they volunteered to help even the fight if it got out of hand.”

“We sensed the dwarves burst out through the vibrations underground,” one of the dwarves added helpfully.

“We weren’t far from here, and we hoped Boneclaw would obey the rules, but when his dwarves joined that fight, we couldn’t sit back.”

“Indeed not,” Aurelius said. “Boneclaw actively recruiting anyone of any species to help in a duel is against our rules and traditions. These actions might have disqualified him, but given that Kristen has defeated him already, I will simply rule that this duel is legal and its effects valid and binding. Do any of my fellow Councilors feel differently?”

“No, no of course not!” Skywing assured him. “Boneclaw tried to cheat and got what was coming to him.”

“It’s a great dishonor for the old bloke to use dwarves in a duel of this caliber,” Ironclaw said.

The other Councilors expressed their agreement as well. Kristen was glad. She had been worried that they had all been in the old shadow dragon’s pocket, but they looked more relieved than anything that he was gone.

All of them except Bloodblaze. She and Aurelius held each other’s gaze. Neither blinked nor turned away, she in human form and he a dragon.

“If—if—what the mage says is true, I suppose Boneclaw did break our traditions,” she murmured finally.

“If?” Skywing asked incredulously. “You can read that it’s the truth as plain as day on the auras of the mage and all the dwarves, those on both sides.”

Bloodblaze turned and studied the dwarves and seemed to sniff their funky, earthy aroma even though she did not move any closer to them. “I suppose.”

“That makes it unanimous, then.” Aurelius beamed. “I declare Kristen the winner!”

Cheers rang out, not only from her friends but from dragons in the air all around them and the onlooking humans, far enough away that they would not have been able to hear had Aurelius not used his magic to make his voice boom and echo across the field surrounding the arena.

“Let us move to a safer place to decide who will be the next Council Leader now that Boneclaw is dead,” Bloodblaze said venomously.

Aurelius smiled like he was holding a winning lottery ticket in his pocket and talking to friends who were in fear of foreclosure on their home. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Well, of course it is, old chap!” Ironclaw protested. “We need a leader now more than ever. A united front and the ability to make quick decisions are of the utmost importance.”

He shook his head. “But we already have a new Council Leader.” He glanced at Kristen.

The Council stood dumbly for a moment, not quite registering or perhaps not wanting to register what had happened. It was Stonequest who broke the silence. He gasped, his eyes wide, and hurried to Kristen, where he changed to his human shape and knelt before her.

Skywing seemed to understand next, for she smiled and clasped her hands together in delight. Some of the other Council members nodded as if they too understood what the hell was going on.

Kristen decided to ask exactly that. “What the hell is going on?”

“Boneclaw was the duly elected head of the Council. You saw the scales cast. He won. The only reason he hadn’t taken the mantle yet was this pending duel. But now that duel has transpired, and Kristen Hall, the Steel Dragon of the Motor City, won. That means she now owns everything Boneclaw once did. All his property and all his titles.”

“You don’t mean—” She gasped.

“That includes,” Aurelius continued, “the title of leader of the Global Dragon Council.”

“But surely this has happened before,” she said and tried not to stammer. “If I will have to spend all my time defending myself in duels—”

“You defeated one of the most powerful dragons in history. Boneclaw has never lost a duel ever. That is unheard of. Everyone on this Council has lost numerous duels but not him. News of your success is no doubt already traveling via electronic mail and cell phones. I don’t think there will be much of a line to challenge you for the role,” he replied.

“Even if there was, it’s not like you’d lose!” Hernandez shouted and her whole team cheered.

Kristen was stunned. Her team raced forward and lifted her onto their shoulders—embarrassing the shit out of the other dragons present in the process—but she couldn’t help but think about how much her life would change.

But it had already changed so much. She had expected to be a police officer and hoped to maybe help a few people in that role. Her desire had been to help fix corruption in a broken system. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought it would mean rising to become an investigator whose job was to police corrupt dragons. But even that hadn’t been enough. She had expanded beyond her role to root out the corrupt, racist forces on the Dragon Council itself. She knew this new role as leader of the dragon world would change her life, but would it change her life more than all those other things already had?

She had lost so many people and had almost lost her family too many times to count. All of them sacrificed so much to make this day possible. What better way to honor their memory, bring all the races of Earth together, and stop the war permanently than by taking Shimmerclaw’s old post and using that power to bring peace?

“I accept,” she finally managed to say, which was in turn drowned out by even more cheering from her friends. Apparently, Butters had expected her to win, as he was shaking cans of beers and cracking them open to spray everyone in celebratory foam.

“And for my first role as Council Leader, I will throw the biggest pizza party Detroit has ever seen!”

The party didn’t quite spend the million-dollar budget Kristen set aside for it, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

The entire city of Detroit was shut down except for bus drivers, the people who operated the People Mover, and the new train system. Those who had to work were given a ten-thousand-dollar bonus for the evening. It was the first night in the history of the city where every single public servant was on the clock at the same time.

She had her people hire musicians, carnival rides, a banging fireworks display that was run by Hernandez, and a thousand other things to do.

Buddy’s Pizza was told to start baking pizzas at six am on the day of the party and to not stop. They outdid themselves, spending the two days prior making unbaked pies that were then sent to every kitchen of every restaurant in the city.

The streets of Detroit ran red with pizza sauce. The gutters ran with spilled beer.

Although she didn't get to see much of all that. It was for the people she served, the people who deserved a little more than a paid federal holiday now and then.

Her time was spent in Buddy’s Pizza at the table in the back, where she had first discovered that she had been accepted to the Detroit Special Weapons And Tactics team.

When she entered, it was to more raucous cheers and spilled beer. She had told everyone to go enjoy the festivities but instead, it looked like they’d all crammed themselves in there to wait for her.

Kristen moved to the back, shaking hands, high-fiving, or receiving hugs every step of the way.

The mages Eric and Constance were at a table by the door, levitating parmesan cheese onto each other’s pizza. Both were still a wreck, but Eric had thankfully survived the battle that had almost taken his life. They had viewed Katrina as a daughter of sorts, and her loss at the hands of Boneclaw still weighed on them, even after Amy had gone on a mission to recover her body.

A little deeper in was a large gathering of dwarves, including Alp and the Canadian prime minister. They were outraged that there wasn’t pineapple on everyone’s pizza.

The pixies were there too, although they chose not to eat the delicious, pan-fried pizza. For some reason, the concept of eating cheese was simply too disgusting for them, so they contented themselves—as they had for centuries—with flitting and darting around and filling the party with multicolored sparks.

Beyond them sat the dragons. Only Heartsbane, Stonequest, and Timeflash were left of the original team. They drank pitchers of beer like they were pints of water while they swapped stories about Lumos and Emerald that would have embarrassed the shit out of them if they were still alive but now seemed oddly respectful.

In the back room, Kristen was greeted by hugs from Amy and Larry, who both saw themselves as her personal mages and considered themselves family, her adopted uncle and sister, respectively.

She hugged them both and thanked them for coming. Amy laughed and Larry started in on a shaggy dog story about how he had nowhere else to be. She realized halfway through that both mages were extremely drunk and politely excused herself by making a ball of light and tricking them into arguing over which of them made it.

At the far end was the loudest damn table in the whole place. Crammed in tightly were Butters, Beanpole, Keith, and Drew. As Kristen said hello, Hernandez burst in and sat too. Her face and hands were black with soot.

“If Kristen asks you, tell her I was here this whole fucking time,” the woman said.

“I’ll be sure to tell her,” she said, which earned riotous laughter from everyone else at the table.

“How does it feel to be the boss of the whole world?” Keith asked.

“It probably doesn’t feel too great given that she still has to repeat herself to get you to listen!” Butters quipped, which made Beanpole squirt beer out his nose.

“We’re proud of you, Kristen, even if you never did learn how to be a team player.” Drew laughed.

“I did too learn! I always had Butters cover me.”

“You never made that easy,” the sniper replied to more laughter.

She chuckled at the knuckleheads—her best friends in the whole damn world—and moved on.

The Washington family sat near her family’s table. As macabre as it had been, she had given Jim’s mother his skull. It had been a weird, horrible moment forced on them by Boneclaw, but Mrs. Washington had accepted the velvet-lined box with gratitude. She and her husband were both still a mess. Her makeup had tear-streaks and her husband stared at a photo on the wall as if he expected it to talk. She said her hellos and thanked them for Jim’s service. It was hard, but they were all better for it. They began to eat, at least.

Kristen doubled back to her old SWAT team and told them to invite the Washingtons to their table. They grumbled and complained but did as she said, and before she had stepped away, she could already hear them regaling Jim’s parents with tales of bravery and foolishness his folks had never heard. His mom stopped crying and looked at the cops in shock, while his dad laughed about the antics of the Wonderkid. Jim had never told his parents his most embarrassing stories. His friends and coworkers remedied that situation now and she told herself she’d check in on all them later.

But for now, she went and sat at the table in the back corner between her mom and brother and looked at her dad across a tray of pizza.

“Oh, look who finally decided to show up!” Frank Hall quipped. “You know the cheese is getting all hard and I don’t like it when it’s hard.”

“Like we haven’t all seen you eat cold pizza out of the fridge.”

“Don’t talk about that in public, Marty!” he fumed.

“Glad you could make it, boss,” Brian said with a wink.

“For tonight, it’s Kristen. With everything that’s happening, I don’t think I’ll get to do these meals for much longer. So tonight, if it’s possible, can I simply be your sister and your daughter?”

“Sweetie, you’ll always be our daughter.” Her mom began to cry and wiped her eyes with the checkered tablecloth.

“Whatever you say, Kissy-Krissy,” Brian said, and made the smooching sounds she had loved when she was all of three years old.

She succeeded in not blushing. Being able to control magic had its perks.

“And we’re damn proud of you!” Frank boasted to the whole room. “I was a beat cop for thirty years! Thirty goddamn years!” He stood now and had apparently been drinking without eating, never a good combo. “I never thought either o’ my kids would be dumb enough to be a cop, especially not the smart one. No offense, Brian.”

“None taken until you called me out!” his son said, aghast that his dad had said that in front of his coworkers.

Frank continued, “I thought she might rise to be a detective, maybe a chief when I was done and gone. Never did I dream she’d become not only a dragon cop but the goddamn president of all the dragons in the world!”

“I’m not president, Dad.”

“What you are is an inspiration to all of us, Kristen. You truly are. And I would appreciate it if everyone here in this restaurant would raise their glass in a toast.”

Her mom and brother—despite their embarrassment—raised their glasses with pride. Kristen’s friends shut the hell up and raised their glasses too, as did Amy and Larry, although they used their magic to do so.

The voices in the next room died down and Kristen knew the dragons and mages were also saluting her. A door slammed open and someone yelled into the night, “Cheers for the Steel Dragon!” She only heard it because of her dragon powers.

Although she wouldn’t learn about it until the next morning, the toast spread far wider than the restaurant and the street outside. Drone footage—Brian was, of course, still maintaining a perimeter for security—would later reveal that in that moment, the news of a toast to the Steel Dragon spread like wildfire and every man, woman, and child raised their beer, water, or whatever else was handy to the sky in silent thanks to the woman who had risked her life repeatedly to save them all.

And that’s when the party started.

The End

DRAGON'S DAUGHTER SERIES

If you loved Steel Dragon, you might also enjoy Never A Dragon, the first book in the new Dragon’s Daughter Series, available now from Kevin and Michael.

Dragons used to rule the world; those days are over. But humans, mages, and dragons have just begun learning to co-exist without conflict.

Kylara Diamantine has never met another dragon. Raised by her mother apart from the rest of their society without any idea why, she's always been curious about the rest of their species. She wants to get out there, to meet other dragons, to explore! To stretch her wings. Literally.

Be careful what you wish for, they say. They're right.

After a devastating magical attack on their home leaves Ky's mother missing, she's placed at a special school for her protection. A school for dragons - but this year, for the first time, mages will be attending alongside their scaley fellow students to learn more about magic and draconic powers.

The attacker who stole away Kylara's mother isn't finished yet and turns up the heat on the school. Ky's dragon powers keep growing in mysterious ways, but will even that be enough to save her?

Ky is a stranger in a place she doesn't know, under attack and desperate to find her missing mother. She'll need all her courage and strength to survive the tests ahead of her.

Grab your copy today!

KEVIN’S AUTHOR NOTES

And we’re done, at long last. Kristen Hall’s epic journey is finally complete. After about a million words of adventure, she’s reached the pinnacle of success. Saved the world from a horrific war and put a stop to the dragon behind all of it.

Thank you so much for following along with her tale! I hope you’ve enjoyed every step of the journey. If you loved this book, please leave a review!

I can’t tell you how fun it’s been working with Michael on these books. Steel Dragon has been a game changer for me in a number of ways. It’s the first time I’ve collaborated on a project with someone else. This series was also a return to urban fantasy for me, since it’s been years since I wrote the Blackwell Magic books (my other urban fantasy series). I’ve now got buckets of additional fantasy story ideas, a number of which I plan on tackling over the next few years. Hey, it’s a fun genre to write in!

Now, this might be the end of Kristen’s primary tale, but we’re definitely not done with the Steel Dragon universe (or the “Children of Tiamat”, as Michael and I have begun calling this world we’ve created together). Next up will be a new series, set about a year after the events of this book. The series will be called “Dragon’s Daughter”. The first novel (“Never A Dragon”) should be out this autumn, and we’ll follow that launch with more books as soon as we can have them ready for you.

Dragon’s Daughter will bring back some of our old favorites from this series, so you’ll get to see our heroes in a new light as they adapt to new roles. Kristen makes a comeback, as do Amy and Amethyst. We’ll probably see a few more old friends return in these books, and possibly some old foes — but I don’t want to spoil any surprises, so I’ll keep the rest of that to myself for now.

While I’ve been working with Michael on this, I’ve also been plugging away at my solo writing as well. Inspired by Steel Dragon, I’ve gone back in and cleaned up/revamped the Blackwell Magic saga, re-releasing each volume as I get it up to my current writing standards. I’ve got books one through four done and book five will be out really soon, followed closely by number six. That’s as far as I got before, but I’ve also got most of the long-awaited seventh book done, so it will launch shortly after the re-release of the sixth book.

What’s next for me? Well, my science fiction fans will probably hunt me down if I don’t get the next Starship Satori book done, so that’s definitely on my to-do list. I’ve started a Patreon for a new science fiction LitRPG book I’m writing, releasing two chapters a week. And I’ve got another really cool idea for an urban fantasy series I definitely want to write. Oh, and I also came up with another cool science fiction idea that will probably get done next year.

In short, the life of a writer is never boring. I’ve pretty much always got more stories I want to work on than there are hours in a day to get them all done. But that’s OK! At least I’ll never have to worry about running out of ideas, right?

If you’d like to drop me a line, I can be reached at author@kevinomclaughlin.com if you’d like to drop me a letter. I can’t always reply to every email I get, but I absolutely do read them all and I try to get back to as many people as possible.

Thanks again for reading these tales. I’ll see you over in Dragon’s Daughter soon!

Written August 25, 2020

MICHAEL’S AUTHOR NOTES

WOOHOO!

It is both bittersweet and joyous that we come to the end of our stories and wrap up this series. We could not have done it without you, the reader, and I could NOT have accomplished it without the amazing Kevin McLaughlin.

I’ve mentioned before how Kevin and I challenged each other (and still do, more on that in a minute), but I feel like Kevin is a brother from another mother.

(I just realized one might say a sister from another mister for the opposite. Strange places my mind goes in the middle of these Author Notes.)

As we were drawing to a conclusion, Kevin and I spoke about what was next. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if Kevin WANTED a next. Why?

Well, I can be annoying sometimes. Just ask my wife if you don’t believe me. (Actually, please don’t. Let’s not provide her any opportunities to share ways an author-husband might frustrate a non-author spouse.)

(Editor’s note: Oh, I feel ya there, big guy! Or rather, I feel The Author’s Wife.)

When you collaborate on projects, you are trying to agree on where the story goes. What’s more important: character, plot, tension, humor, or world-building (this is a big one)?

Followed with the big one for our fiction stories… “Are we going to kill off the parents?”

No, seriously, this is a big question when creating the backstory for our character and the interactions. Having a character with parents is a bit of a challenge. One not only deals with the protagonist’s friends and enemies, but you also bring family dynamics into the story, and the difficulty (for a lot of authors including yours truly) just went up.

Somehow, I have meandered into areas I hadn’t intended, and I need to wrap up these Author Notes. Suffice it to say, Kevin was happy to do another set with me (whew!), and he has mentioned the series title and the book title.

We have a name, we have a plan, we have a due date for the words to be finished. What we don’t have is a cover, but take a look at our Coming Soon cover image.

It has a dragon. That’s all that is needed, am I right?

Have a fantastic week.

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

August 25, 2020

BOOKS BY KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

Realms of Power and Fury

Discovering Power (Book 1)

Finding Honor (Book 2)

Field of Valor (Book 3)

Tomb of Malevolent Evil

Roll For Initiative (Book 1)

Cast of the Die (Book 2)

Natural Twenty (Book 3)

Steel Dragon Series

(with Michael Anderle)

Steel Dragon 1

Steel Dragon 2

Steel Dragon 3

Steel Dragon 4

Steel Dragon 5

Dragon’s Daughter

(with Michael Anderle)

Never A Dragon (Book 1)

Dead Dragon New tricks (Book 2)

Thicker Than Blood (Book 3)

Dragon Fire and Pixie Dust (Book 4)

The Cult of Tiamat (Book 5)

The Sum of All Magic (Book 6)

The Dragonclaw Sword

(with Michael Anderle)

Clawing for Survival

Clawing for Escape

Clawing for Honor

Clawing for Vengeance

Clawing for Battle

Clawing for Victory

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Book 10 - Clad in Steel

Book 11 - Brave New Worlds (2019)

Book 12 - Warrior’s Marque (2020)

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ANDERLE

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www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/

CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS

Connect with Kevin McLaughlin

Website: http://kevinomclaughlin.com/

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