Excavating the ruined temple of the Iblis—one of the Djinn—they had uncovered a symbol in an ancient scroll in which the Iblis’s sigil intertwined with the glyph for dream. A similar symbol had been uncovered in scrolls at the Ithuriel’s temple, and Magpie’s folk had come to believe the seven fire elementals had withdrawn deep into the earth to sleep and dream. But though they had searched, they had never yet found the symbols carved in stone. Magpie stared at the inner door. They had never found a Djinn’s dreaming place or any sign of a Djinn. Until now.

“Mags!” said Pup at her elbow. “Listen—Maniac and Mingus!”

Indeed, crows could be heard squawking frantically on the other side of the engraved door, but Magpie barely heard them. She could think only of what else might be behind that door. She darted forward and strained against it. Swig joined her and together they pushed it open. Maniac and Mingus fluttered out, croaking and cawing. Strong, stoic Mingus said only, “Thanks, Mags, fine to see ye,” but Maniac had worked himself into one of his rages.

“Where’s that dastard codger?” he fumed. “He shut us up in the dark to die! Let me at ’im!”

“Neh,” said Magpie, grabbing his wing tip. “You don’t understand what’s happened—”

“Don’t I? We came a-hunting that wind and the old prune trapped us here!”

“Maniac!” she said sharply. “Show some respect to the guardian of a Djinn!”

“Guardian? That gristle?” He paused then, realizing what Magpie had said, and repeated, “Djinn?”

“Aye, now hush,” said Magpie, turning toward the inner chamber. With a sickening feeling she saw it was utterly dark. A fire elemental’s cave devoid of fire? She swept past the crows and flared her spelled light. Its orange glow fell over the eight sacred pillars that graced all Djinns’ temples, and Magpie knew she was right about this place. On the ground she spotted a small circle of blackened stones. She flew to it and hovered above it. Inside it was nothing but ash.

“I outlived my master,” the old faerie had said. Magpie stared at the pit of ash. A Djinn had been dreaming here.

A Djinn was dead.

Her mind revolted. That old faerie was blind, he couldn’t know what had happened, but Magpie could, if she dared. Slowly she stretched out her hand, drew the glyphs in her mind, and ever so gently touched a fingertip to the ashes.

The force of the Vritra’s last memory seemed to scour her hollow. She crumpled over, clutching her arms round herself, choking for air that didn’t come. She could feel the Djinn’s mind screaming inside her as he was unmade. Smoldering flame giving way to a curl of dying smoke. Darkness, and the desperate dying wail of a second creature—a wind—as it was forced to use its own great power to snuff out its creator and spend its own life in the process.

There came a dry crust of a laugh at the very end and a terrible voice that whispered, “The fire that burns its bellows can only fall to ash. What poetry in a traitor’s death!” Then the Vritra knew no more, and Magpie was released from the memory to collapse sobbing to the ground.