Heart thudding, struggling for every breath, she looked over her shoulder and saw them. Three days ago, they had been only a shadow on the horizon. Now she could see their eyes blazing, their fangs glinting red in the dawn, their claws stretching out toward her. Creatures of rot. Creatures of scales, of slime, of disease, of leather and of mummified flesh. Demons. Beasts of the underground. The unholy army her father had summoned to kill weredragons, to kill her kind.

Issari turned her eyes back forward and blinked away tears. The wilderness of the north spread before her: hills topped with patches of snow, plains of frosted grass, and forests leading to distant mountains.

My kind, she thought, her scales clinking.

She was eighteen years old, and she had never known of her magic, had never shifted into a dragon, until only days ago. All her life, weredragons—the cursed, diseased ones who could shift into reptiles—had been people to pity, to protect from her father's wrath.

And now I'm one of them.

She didn't know how she had become a dragon after all these years. Had praying to the Draco constellation given her this magic? Had she inherited it from her parents and only seen it manifest now? She had lost her baby teeth late, bled late, grown to her adult height late; had she simply discovered her magic late too?

"Catch the reptile!" rose a shriek from the southern horizon; it rolled across the plains like thunder. "Break her spine! Tear off her wings! Pull every tooth from her mouth, and snap her limbs, and drag out her entrails, and make her beg for death!" The demons jeered, their voices rising into a single cry, a sound like shattering metal, whistling steam, and collapsing mountains. "Slay all weredragons!"

Issari growled and flew harder.

No, she thought. No, I am no weredragon. Weredragons are monsters. She howled and spat fire across the sky. I am Vir Requis.

She picked up speed and streamed across the world.

"Make the sky rain the blood of dragons!" rose a screech.

"We will feast upon dragon flesh!" bellowed a deep voice.

"We will crack their bones and suck sweet marrow!"

Issari ground her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and kept flying.

The memories of the past few days filled her, hazy and thick like dreams in the dawn. For so long there had been pain, water, sky—a flight over the sea, three dusks and dawns, sometimes sleeping in the water, her wings stretched out to help her float, mostly flying, mostly hurting, seeking the northern coast. Then there had been this—snow, cold winds, dark clouds, the hinterlands of the barbarian north, a new world, a world of dragons.

"You're here somewhere, Requiem," Issari whispered. "My sister. My brother. My friends. The dragons of Requiem."

Did they live in peace now, building their kingdom in the north?