He was, too. He passed back, took Ariosto, fed him some potentia, and they were in the air.

Really tired, boss.

Five miles.

Sure. But I bet you want to go back, too.

Gabriel was looking down at another dragon. And another.

He flew along, too stunned to think. They passed a fourth dragon.

And a fifth.

And by the fifth dragon he saw something amid the ash. They weren’t very high; he was saving Ariosto as best he could.

But he had no time, and he was filled with a different foreboding.

The skeletons of the dragons were . . .

He was struggling to think of what could kill six dragons.

Seven.

They descended toward the second portal. It, too, was the bone white of most of the other gates, but it was different, at a distance, less shapely, the dome lower.

Closer, and it became clear . . .

. . . that the dome had been destroyed.

Gabriel landed and entered to confirm what he suspected. His heart was too tired to race. He felt almost nothing.

The pedestal was blackened, and the jewels, all three of them, were gone, leaving sockets like wounds or abscesses. We can’t get out, he thought, and then he realized that, if Tancreda was correct, his only hope was that the gate behind him was still open. He thought he’d left it open, and he had left the key in it.

It was an irrational fear. He knew he’d left it open. But he all but fled the broken chamber.

The moment he mounted Ariosto, the monster’s love calmed him.

He took some breaths. The red sun was terrible.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

On it, boss.

They flew back. Gabriel tried not to look down at the line of skeletons, but it was like a boil, and he kept worrying it, looking down, feeling the dread and the sense of skewed scale, and looking down again.

He saw the glare, the wink of light on something metal, by the great skeleton of the dragon, and he could not resist.

I want to see that.

Ariosto coughed. Very hungry, boss. We might have to walk, and I don’t really want to walk on all this dead stuff.

Gabriel hesitated.

Oh, fine, Ariosto said.

He landed. Water?

Gabriel handed over his canteen after taking a single pull. He held it until the eagle beak grabbed it, tilted it back, and the purple tongue moved, and then the canteen was crushed.

Oops. Better than nothing, though.

Gabriel walked across the ash, his flying boots leaving clear tracks. The dragon’s skull was huge, like a building.

But under it were the skulls of men.

He knew what he was looking for a moment after the skulls registered, and he reached in among the skulls and the bones. It was a single ornament: bigger than the head of a man, and hollow, made of pure gold.