The Dragon, eyes red, roared in response; Kaylin instinctively reached up to cover her ears, not that it helped. But she remembered that sometimes Dragons spoke their native tongue when interacting with ancient things. This altar was that. She closed the eye that Hope’s wing covered as a demi-mask. She could see light, and perhaps a subtle hint of movement at its base.

But through Hope’s wing she could see something like mist or fog, something attenuated and dispersed struggling to take shape, to don form. She was certain that this was what Mrs. Erickson herself saw, and given Sanabalis’s eye color, the Dragon was aware of it as well.

It was to Mrs. Erickson that Kaylin turned, and to Mrs. Erickson that she ran. Teela had drawn sword—which was not part of the Hawk’s official uniform, but she’d worry about that later—and Sanabalis had stepped outside of the radius Teela’s protective circle traced. Kaylin could see the barrier through Hope’s wing.

Even though the physical distance was a warning, Kaylin was surprised when Sanabalis, new Arkon of the sole remaining dragon flight, began to shift in place, his scholarly appearance spreading into a shape that was far, far larger. She looked away, as she often did when Dragons shed their human appearance; there was something disturbing about the way the body transformed, because each element of the transformation was visible; it looked, on the outside, like some form of hideous magical torture.

When Sanabalis roared, the cavern shook—or at least the parts of it beneath Kaylin’s moving feet. She sprinted toward Teela and Mrs. Erickson, skidding to a stop beside the older woman. When she had asked Sanabalis to personally assess the old woman for magical potential, this was not what she’d expected.

Mrs. Erickson was pale; clearly this wasn’t what she’d expected, either. But while she glanced at Sanabalis in full Draconic glory, her eyes were drawn, once again, to the moving, writhing light she had called a ghost. Her expression was not one of awe, and she surprised Kaylin because, in the growing brightness, she could see the trails of tears nestling in the folds of Mrs. Erickson’s lined face.

Mrs. Erickson took a step forward and faltered—Teela still gripped her shoulder.

“Tell her,” Mrs. Erickson told Kaylin, “that I’m not in danger.”

“If the altar itself is not a danger,” Teela said, in a voice meant to carry even over a Dragon’s roar, “the Dragon may be. The cavern is large enough to accommodate a Dragon in this form—but it is not so large that the Dragon can move freely as danger necessitates. Here, you will be as safe as it is possible to be where a Dragon is raging.”