He didn’t let her finish her sentence. He grabbed her with his tentacle, and he shoved her onto her back, and he mated with her here in the nursery as their children squealed around them. He screamed as he released himself into her, seeking relief from his magic, from the pain inside him, the pain of betrayal, of his children flying against him, of the disease that would not leave him, of Requiem that still stood in the north. He screamed and Angel howled and the overflowing desire nearly blinded Raem. Yet when he was spent, and his seed was planted, he found the curse still aching.

I need to shift. I need to become a dragon. I need to fly.

He shoved Angel away and left the chamber.

He walked through the Abyss, traveling through tunnels where skinned creatures screamed on the walls, hanging from meat hooks, where mountains of quivering bodies rose from chasms, where great birds dug their beaks into screaming meals, where all the nightmares of existence twisted and screeched and worshiped him. He was King of the Underworld, but he would have no peace—no peace while the dragon clawed inside him.

"I will find no peace," he said into the darkness, "while dragons live."

He stepped down a tunnel and entered a great chasm, a hall larger than all of Eteer. His new army mustered here, thousands of humanoid insects with hard shells like armor, with red eyes, with serrated claws, with venom that dripped from coiling tongues. An army to crawl over the world, to crush every city, to slay every living being.

"You will destroy all life!" he cried. "You will turn the world aboveground into more of the Abyss!"

They roared with approval, their cries echoing, and Raem gnashed his teeth so powerfully they cracked. Soon all dragons would die. Soon even the starlight would vanish from the sky. And then, finally, he would find peace, an end to the eternal torture that coiled inside him like a parasite.

ISSARI

 
ISSARI

The dragons of the south flew.

A thousand beasts of scales, claws, fangs, and fire, they dived across the sky. Their tails streamed like banners. Their wings stretched wide. Metallic dragons of silver, gold, copper, bronze. Colorful dragons with scales of green, blue, red, lavender. Small dragons, barely more than children. Old beasts, their fangs long fallen, their wings perforated with holes. All flew this day. The dragons had risen from the city-states of the south—from the ruins of Eteer, from the inferno at Goshar, from the devastation of Tur Kal, from the civilizations that sprawled between sea and desert. For years, they had hidden, ashamed, the outcasts of thirteen cities. Now they flew united. Now they were no longer afraid; they were dragons of Requiem.