In moments all of Fort Weyr was awake, dragons soaring from their weyrs down to the foggy Weyr Bowl, their cries deafening, wave after wave of sound that beat through Fiona’s chest and reverberated with her heartbeat. Talenth was beside her, reaching for her protectively, grabbing her with her talons, jostling Cisca and K’lior aside as she placed her rider firmly on her back and launched herself into the sky with one blaring scream.

Fiona had only an instant to marvel at Talenth’s behavior before she was struck again from the inside out as though she were being blown open by a force not her own—and then, suddenly, she knew. She felt Rineth and Melirth beside her, T’mar’s Zirenth, felt all the bronzes, all the browns, all the blues, all the greens of Fort Weyr.

Felt them as though they were inside her and she screamed. She screamed with pain, she screamed with awe, and she screamed with power. In desperation, she spread the power to Cisca and then K’lior, and the two stood below her on the queens’ ledge transfixed. The power grew even more and she felt it—thankfully—shift from her.

No longer the sole focus, Fiona found that she could still breathe, that her chest was heaving, her ears were smarting from all the sounds, her eyes were cried out, and her panic was still overwhelming.

The power had gone to Benden. To one person. How could one person hold such power? She felt an echo, the slightest of contacts—was this the person who had brought her back in time to Igen? The sensation felt similar … but not quite the same.

The power was searching, searching, seeking frantically—and not finding. Its desperation grew, and Fiona found herself gasping again as more power surged up through her from the dragons and riders of Fort Weyr to join with Cisca before flowing to Benden … and still failing to find what it sought.

Finally, a lone dragon was found, clasped, recovered. And even as the power triumphed, it felt something that caused it to pause.

And then Fiona was herself once more, gasping and crying out in relief as Talenth stopped bugling, as the dragons settled, as the power faded, and she felt only like someone who had been burned from the inside out.

The pain and suffering, the loss of all those Telgar dragons, felt like a hole inside her, tugging at her with a desperate urgency.

“We need to go,” Fiona whispered to herself. “We need to go to Telgar.”

Talenth rumbled in assent but, exhausted, could only glide back to the ground near their weyr.

“Telgar is no more,” Cisca said. She helped Fiona down from her dragon and wrapped comforting arms around the younger woman. Fiona let herself fall into the embrace and could only make the smallest of sounds when K’lior joined them and the three, Weyrleaders all, silently commiserated over their pain.