"All in Tur Kal who can become dragons, fly with me! Your magic is a blessing, not a curse. Fly and fight with us, with the dragons of Requiem!"

And like in Goshar, here too they rose.

One by one. Hesitant but soon flying high. Metallic dragons. Green and blue and red dragons. Old clattering beasts and young supple dragons with eager eyes. A hundred or more rose from the city, joining her in the sky, and their fire lit the night.

When dawn finally rose upon Tur Kal, a thousand nephilim lay dead and stinking upon its streets, slashed with claws and charred with dragonfire. Buildings lay toppled, walls fallen, domes caved in. Holes peppered the ancient pyramids.

Among the fallen half-demons lay thousands of dead men, women, and children—the people of Tur Kal and two dozen Vir Requis.

Issari and Tanin glided above the devastation, two single dragons in the dawn.

"We've lost so many," Tanin whispered.

Issari nodded. "And we gained more."

The hundred dragons she had led here—risen from Eteer and Goshar—stood upon the walls below, bright in the sunrise, sentinels of scales. A hundred new dragons, children of Tur Kal, stood among them.

New dragons of Requiem. Our nation grows.

She turned to look north of the walls. The outcasts of Goshar and Eteer sprawled across the hills, gathered around smoldering campfires. These men, women, and children had no dragon magic, yet they too were her people. These too were nations she led, nations she had to protect.

She looked back at the city. A palace rose from the ruins upon a hill, built of limestone, its columns soaring—as tall as the columns of Requiem. A stairway stretched toward the palace gates, lined with statues shaped as jackals and falcons, crystals inlaid into their eyes. The corpses of nephilim lay strewn across those stairs, giants fallen from the sky, their black blood splattered. Soldiers of Tur Kal—so small compared to the massive size the nephilim had grown to—were racing about and pointing at the two dragons above.

"Come, Tanin," Issari said. "Here stands the Palace of Tur Kal, the home of its queen. We will speak with her."

The two dragons glided down and landed atop the staircase. The columns soared before them, their limestone engraved with scenes of soldiers, birds, and racing hinds. An archway rose ahead, leading into a hall, and the stench of dead nephilim wafted from the staircase behind her.

Issari and Tanin resumed human form: a woman clad in white robes, her black braid hanging across her shoulder; and a man in bronze armor, a fur cloak wrapped around him, his cheeks covered with thick stubble, his eyes dark, his frame tall.

The palace guards stood before them, their skin tanned deep bronze, their heads bald, their beards thin and pointed and wrapped with golden rings. They wore breastplates and sandals, and they carried curved blades.