"Dragons of Requiem, fight them!" Jeid was crying above. Sphinxes mobbed him. Poisonous smoke enveloped him. Dozens of dragons and sphinxes flew above.

Bryn could barely breathe.

I must climb out! she thought. I must join them!

She looked behind her at the Widejaws biting into her feet, ripping off her flesh.

If I climb out, I'm too weak to blow fire, maybe too weak to shift into a dragon. The Widejaws will emerge. They'll become sphinxes—hundreds of them. They'll kill the others. They—

The jaws tightened, hitting her bone, and she screamed.

Climb!

"Flee, Jeid!" she tried to cry out. "They're going to slay me, to fly out, to overwhelm you, you have to flee."

But her words were only a whisper; she was too weak for anything louder.

Her fingers released the rim of the hole.

She slid down, and another Widejaw grabbed her, and teeth tore into her thighs, eating their way up, eating her alive.

Bryn closed her eyes.

"I love you, Requiem. I love you, Jeid."

With her last sparks of strength, she summoned her magic.

Still inside the tunnel, the sky hidden behind smoke and flame, Bryn became a dragon.

Wings burst out from her back. Her body grew, slamming against the tunnel walls. Her jaws rose toward the exit, puffing out smoke, trying to call out, to blow fire. Her tail lashed out from her back, slamming into the Widejaws.

As she kept growing, the pain cut through her like a thousand arrows.

The tunnel was too narrow for a dragon. The walls pressed against her, cracking her scales. She felt her ribs snap, driving into her organs.

She lashed her claws.

She swung her tail.

Keep shifting.

She slammed her head from side to side, banging the stone walls. Her tail thrashed. She dug madly. Chips of rock and clumps of soil fell. Below her, the Widejaws screamed. Around her, the walls crumbled.

Stones rained.

Dust flew.

The burrow collapsed.

The pain was too much. Bryn lost her magic and tumbled down, a human again, falling into endless darkness, into blood, into a sea of enemies, teeth, eyes, reaching fingers, pain that flowed into warmth and numbness.

Above her, the tunnel crumbled. The walls cracked and caved inward, and stones rained, and the mountain shook, and Bryn could no longer see the sky.

She closed her eyes. She smiled.

Farewell, Requiem.

As the mountain shook and closed in, burying her and the hundreds of Widejaws beneath her, Bryn smiled, for she had saved her king, her people, her kingdom. And then she saw them above—the halls of Requiem, woven of starlight, calling her home.

ISSARI

 
ISSARI

She glided upon the wind, a hundred dragons flying behind her, myriads of people walking below.

"A flock of them on the horizon." Flying at her side, Tanin narrowed his eyes and pointed his claws. "Looks like . . . maybe twenty. No more."

Issari nodded. "We fly out. We take them down."