“To preserve our rightful ownership and ensure a smooth transition, my generation of dragons was forced to live on. Slowly we turned to ghosts, and now we haunt the cavelands while we wait for the proper human rulers to take back the power, and for our dragons to return—physically and mentally. Whenever that happens, we can go peacefully, leaving our bones to be buried alongside the bones of our ancestors. But until it does, we are cursed to the cavelands to wait.”

“Cursed,” said Dev as he crossed the covered courtyard to a different tower and peered inside. “Like the rest of the dragons are now.”

“They are being controlled by the Revinir, which is indeed a curse,” Astrid said. She walked over to the corner of the palace to peer into the turret that Dev was climbing up.

“At least the dragons are here in this land again,” said Dev, hooking his arm outside a window halfway up to the onion bulb. “Isn’t that a good thing? If we can break the Revinir’s curse on them, they can help Drock and me fight to take back our land.” He paused, then added, “Unless they think we’re the enemy when they wake up. I imagine they won’t know where they are if the mind control is broken. Like what happened to me.”

Astrid was silent for a moment. Then she sighed. “Time will tell, I suppose. That’s really all we have.”

Discovery and Longing

Someone has been here recently,” Astrid called out. She returned to the main turret and sampled the air inside the window now, rather than outside it as she’d done before. “Someone almost… familiar. I’ve been trying, but I can’t quite… Hmm.”

Dev came over from the turret he’d given up on, careful not to trip on the uneven floor. A few stubborn trees had grown inside the courtyard where they ought not be, pushing up between the loose pavers. As he strolled, Dev turned again to the images he’d seen and asked abruptly, “Who is the gray man?”

“What’s that, my boy?” Astrid sniffed again, her face pressed against a window whose glass had been broken out long ago.

“The gray man. All bent over, with a long beard. I have his image in my mind, and I think he lives… lived… here.”

“Ahhh,” said Astrid. “That would be Ashguard Suresh. He was the black-eyed ruler who owned this palace, and the leader of the Suresh line of people. He was a good friend to the dragons, though a bit harsh to the humans around him, especially after the attack stripped him of his family. He survived the usurpers through wits alone, but few others did. Once they left, he hid here for many years after the attack.”

“So he became a curmudgeon after everyone else was killed? He wasn’t always that way?” Somehow this felt important for Dev to know.

“That is how I remember him,” agreed Astrid. “Very kind in his youth. And always good to us dragons. Treated us like royalty in all things, especially when it came to making decisions about our land.” She pulled her snout out of the window. “You should go back up in this one and explore. Someone was here, but they’re not here now.”