We made our way down from the mountain with packs heavier than pride and lighter than sense.
Vaelen had given us supplies, travel cloaks, tents, and enough mundane gear to let us pass among normal people without drawing immediate suspicion. It was kind of him. Practical, too. After Othalyss’s lair, after Varkesh’s corpse, after the taboo magic that had knitted my vessel back together into something stronger and stranger, concealment was no longer optional.
I was half-dragon now.
Not by birth, but by theft.
There are worse ways to survive. I know because I have used most of them.
The changes were subtle enough beneath armor and cloth if no one looked too closely. A little too much density in the body. A little too much force in each movement. Faint scale along places where skin should have stayed skin. The sort of details mortals missed unless they were trained, frightened, or unlucky.
So we hid.
We walked.
And within three nights, I began to deeply regret which companions had remained with me.
Without Seraphine and Ilyon there to act as moral restraint, practical chaperones, and occasional threats of divine judgment, Mira and Darian became fucking impossible.
The first night, I ignored it.
The second night, I moved my bedroll farther from camp.
The third night, I considered sleeping in a tree.
By the fourth, I sat beside the embers with my jaw clenched while Mira’s laughter drifted from their tent, followed by Darian’s low voice, then a sound that made me stare into the fire as if I could burn my own hearing out through force of will.
“Do you two ever rest?” I snapped the next morning.
Mira emerged from the tent looking radiant, which felt personally insulting. Her hair was a mess, her shirt was on backward, and she had the gall to stretch like she had slept better than any creature alive.
“Good morning to you too,” she said.
Darian followed her out with the calm, satisfied expression of a man determined to get punched by fate and possibly me.
I pointed at him. “Not one word.”
He raised both hands. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were breathing smugly.”
Mira snorted. “Breathing smugly?”
“He knows what he did.”
Darian looked down at her, mouth twitching. “Apparently I breathe with attitude.”
“You breathe loudly,” I muttered. “Among other things.”
Mira’s grin went sharp. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were we interrupting your brooding?”
“You interrupted the entire forest.”
“Good,” she said, entirely too pleased with herself. “Then at least something interesting happened out here.”
Darian cleared his throat. “We can try to be quieter.”
I stared at him.
Mira looked at him too, offended down to the bone. “We absolutely cannot.”
“Mira.”
“What? I’m not making promises I don’t intend to keep.”
“Gods spare me,” I said, dragging a hand down my face.
Darian gave me a look of exaggerated sympathy. “Perhaps you should invest in wax for your ears.”
“Perhaps I should invest in separate campsites.”
Mira patted my shoulder as she passed. “Don’t be jealous, Lendys. Someday someone might scream your name too.”
At the time, I had no answer.
Now, with Maire in my life and my name on her lips in far softer, far more dangerous ways, I understand more than I care to admit. Desire can make exhaustion irrelevant. Love can make the body act like sleep is a suggestion invented by cowards. If Maire could endure it, I would keep her beneath me until dawn forgot to rise.
She cannot yet.
But soon.
Gods, soon.
Back then, all I had was irritation, no sleep, and two companions who seemed more energized after each night than before. Like their lovemaking was a ritual of restoration instead of a reckless waste of strength.
The worst part?
It probably was.
During those weeks, the world changed around us.
Rumors came down the roads before armies did. Villagers spoke of dragon flights scattering in every direction, metallic and chromatic alike vanishing toward mountains, coasts, ruins, and deep forest. Green, black, emerald—entire lines breaking old territory.
Then came the name.
Tiamat.
Appearing in Faerûn for the first time in that age, dragging cults and dragons and desperate fools behind her like a storm of teeth.
We heard more from metallic dragons hiding among mortals, though most were too frightened to say much plainly. A cult had formed around her. Emerald dragons, amongst all the chromatic dragons. Worshipping her as the “Mother of Dragons.”
I nearly laughed the first time I heard it.
Mother of Dragons.
What a grand little lie.
Tiamat was no mother to dragonkind. She was an abomination shaped by Asgaroth’s shadow and her own bottomless hunger. Mortals had once thought I was Asgaroth’s son, which was impossible. Asgaroth and I came into being in the same ancient breath, called by something older and stronger than either of us understood.
But mortals love lineage. They love titles. They love putting gods into family trees because it makes the infinite feel less liable to swallow them whole.
Tiamat appearing worried us.
Not enough to turn us aside.
The trail led us north and west, toward Nashkel.
The lead came from Othalyss’s recovered routes: coded references to shipments, names erased too carefully, and a repeated mark that matched whispers already spreading through the roads south of the Cloud Peaks.
By the time we reached the settlement, I had not slept properly in days.
Not because of danger.
Because Mira kept yelling Darian’s name at night like she was trying to guide lost ships to harbor.
Again and again.
So when Nashkel’s roofs came into view, smoke rising from chimneys beneath a pale morning sky, I was in a spectacular mood.
Which is to say, murderous.
Mira glanced at me as we approached the road into town. “You look awful.”
“You sound surprised.”
“You’re usually awful with better posture.”
Darian, wisely, said nothing.
I looked at him anyway. “You. Silence.”
He blinked. “I didn’t speak.”
“I can hear the thought forming.”
Mira laughed. “Gods, you’re sensitive when you’re tired.”
“I am sensitive when deprived of sleep by two inconsiderate dragons pretending their tent is a brothel with canvas walls.”
Darian’s ears actually reddened.
Mira looked delighted. “Pretending?”
I walked faster.
Nashkel should have felt ordinary. A mining settlement. Hard-working mortals, muddy roads, wagons creaking under ore and produce, the scent of smoke, animals, sweat, and bread. Instead, something rancid sat beneath it all. Not physical rot. Spiritual pressure. That particular wrongness that comes when faith has been bent into a leash.
We found the church by noon.
Newly raised. Too clean. Too bright. Painted in colors that tried to pass as sacred while hiding the poison underneath. The locals moved around it with soft eyes and slackened faces, speaking of the Mother’s mercy, the Mother’s hunger, the Mother’s promised ascension.
The Mother.
I wanted to burn it before we entered.
For once, restraint served a purpose.
Inside, the “bishop” of Tiamat’s new faith preached to a gathered crowd while semi-transformed mortals stood along the walls in hooded robes. Their bodies had been twisted in stages—fingers lengthened into claws, jaws slightly distended, patches of scale erupting through skin not made to hold them. Dark magic hummed through their throats, generating whispers beneath the sermon. Persuasion. Suggestion. Devotion manufactured in the gaps between thought.
Mira heard it first.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Her face changed.
“Oh, fuck no.”
Darian’s sword was already in his hand.
The church burned before the hour ended.
We dragged the surviving evidence into the street for the town to see: the altered mortals, the ritual tools, the prayer-script written in blood and emerald pigment, the charmwork woven beneath the floor. Some locals wept when the magic broke. Others vomited. A few reached for us like we had saved them.
I did not feel like a savior.
We found the map in the bishop’s private chamber.
Not hidden well. Arrogance has a smell, and that room reeked of it. Seravain’s location was marked clearly, tucked inside a devotional ledger as if no one would dare open holy records. A mansion in the middle of a lake not far from the settlement. Accessible by a single stone bridge. Guarded, most likely. Prepared, certainly.
Still, it was something.
We left Nashkel before the ash had cooled.
Mira and Darian bickered for most of the march.
Not about the church.
About Tamara.
“That cult was copying her rites,” Mira said, walking with her arms folded and irritation in every step. “Don’t make that face. You saw it too.”
Darian’s jaw tightened. “They were corrupting the shape of them.”
“That’s still copying.”
“There is a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.”
“Explain it, then.”
Darian opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Mira gave him a look. “That’s what I thought.”
“It was different,” he said eventually, though conviction had already fled the sentence.
The silence that followed spoke louder than he did.
Because she was right.
The soft words. The healing imagery. The posture of mercy used to make obedience look holy. It was Tamara’s shadow, twisted into something sharp and diseased.
I hated it.
I hated that the resemblance existed at all.
By dusk, we reached the lake.
Seravain’s lair was not a lair in any traditional sense. No cavern mouth. No buried laboratory. No ruined temple waiting.
It was a mansion.
Elegant. Pale. Reflected in blue water like a beautiful lie. The building sat alone at the lake’s center, surrounded by stillness, its windows dark and symmetrical. A long stone bridge stretched from shore to gate, narrow enough to make an approaching army foolish and a retreating one dead.
At the entrance stood a high iron gate flanked by half-dragon guards.
Good.
I had been wanting to test the new body against something other than Mira and Darian politely holding back.
They did not greet us as guests.
That was their first mistake.
The nearest guard lowered a spear and barked, “State your purpose.”
I drew Judgment.
“My purpose is older than your bloodline.”
He frowned.
Then I moved.
The new vessel answered beautifully.
Too beautifully.
I crossed the distance in a blink, faster than I expected, faster than they could follow. Judgment opened the first guard from shoulder to hip. I pivoted before the body fell, drove my elbow into the second one’s throat, and cut through the third’s knee with a clean, almost casual stroke.
Strength flooded through me, dense and immediate. Not the fragile, cracking strain of the earlier vessel. This body could take the pressure. It could hold more of me.
That should have concerned me.
Instead, it thrilled me.
The remaining guards charged. I met them at the gate, each strike sharper than the last—ruthless, precise, almost elegant. One lost a hand. Another lost his head. A third tried to retreat, and I pinned him through the chest to the ironwork before pulling holy power down the length of the blade.
Then I thrust Judgment forward.
Light detonated.
The gate disintegrated.
So did the reinforcements rushing toward us from the inner grounds.
For a moment, pieces of iron and ash drifted through the air like black snow.
Behind me, Mira whistled. “Well, shit. So is this the part where Darian and I sit on our asses for the hunt?”
Darian gave a low chuckle.
I looked over my shoulder, unable to stop the smirk. “Yes, Mira. Try not to strain yourself.”
“How generous of you.”
“I do what I can.”
I sheathed Judgment across my back and sprinted through the hole I had made.
The mansion’s front hall was waiting.
A dozen half-dragons stood inside, arranged in a protective formation around a smaller figure at the center.
A girl.
Or something wearing the presentation of one.
She was lean and young-looking, dressed in plain clothes that would have made her seem harmless anywhere else. Black hair cut blunt at her jaw. Sharp green eyes. A soft smile placed too carefully on her face, like she had learned the expression from watching kind people and misunderstood the purpose.
Emerald scales marked her throat.
Thessara.
I should have paid attention to the thought that came first.
This is wrong.
Instead, all I felt was a terrible pleasure, like stretching after being forced to sit still for too long.
The half-dragons attacked.
I slaughtered them.
There is no kinder word for it.
Judgment moved through them with radiant hunger, and every body that opened beneath my blade fed something in me I should have starved. I cut one down across the spine, drove another through the ribs, shattered a third’s jaw with the pommel before taking its head. Blood sprayed across my armor, hot and acidic, hissing where it touched metal.
Darian noticed.
“Lendys,” he called, warning threaded through my name.
I ignored him.
Mira and Darian joined the fight, but by then there was little left for them to do. I had become motion. Verdict. Release.
When the last half-dragon fell, only Thessara remained.
She dropped to her knees at my feet.
The false smile was gone.
“Please,” she whispered. “I can change. I swear I can change.”
I looked down at her.
Her hands shook.
Her eyes were wet.
Maybe she believed it.
Maybe she was lying.
Maybe some buried fragment of a person remained inside the thing Seravain had shaped her into.
I knelt, wrapped my hand around her throat, and crushed it.
She gasped once.
Tried to curse me with what little breath remained.
The sound filled me with joy.
That was when I should have known.
Not suspected. Known.
Something in me had gone terribly, exquisitely wrong.
But I did not stop.
I stood and walked deeper into the mansion, telling Mira and Darian to follow as if they had any choice. Room by room, hall by hall, I cleared Seravain’s beautiful house of everything that lived within it. Mortals. Non-mortals. Dragons. Experiments. Priests. Failed vessels crawling in locked rooms. Devotees begging in the language of mercy.
I answered all of them the same way.
By the time I found Seravain, the acid in the blood had eaten through portions of my armor, leaving me in scorched leathers and ruined straps. Judgment burned clean in my hand.
She was in a high chamber overlooking the lake.
Black hair unbound. Green eyes bright with fury. Emerald scales gleaming beneath ceremonial robes patterned after healing vestments. She looked less like a monster than a saint dragged through a nightmare and taught to enjoy it.
I pinned her to the wall with Judgment through her chest.
She screamed.
“You’ll pay for this,” she spat.
I leaned closer.
“Because of my mistake,” I said, “you had ten years.”
Her face stilled.
“I gave your family a warning written in three dead branches of your bloodline. Ten years to run. Ten years to change. Ten years to stop turning mortals into offerings for your mother’s ambition.”
Her breathing hitched.
I saw it then.
Fear.
Real fear.
And I liked it.
“Apparently,” I said softly, “that wasn’t enough.”
Mira left when I started taking Seravain apart.
Darian stayed longer.
Not much longer.
When I kept her alive just enough to speak her final piece, even he turned away. Whatever Seravain said, I no longer remember clearly. Prayers. Threats. Tiamat’s name. Tamara’s, perhaps. Something about mercy. Something about blessing.
It did not matter.
Her penance was to know she had failed.
Then I separated her head from her body.
I carried it back to Nashkel on foot.
Not in a bag.
In my hand.
At the edge of town, I took a spear from Seravain’s estate and planted it in the ground. Her head went on top of it, black hair tangled around the shaft, green eyes open to the settlement she had poisoned.
People gathered slowly.
Whispers spread.
Fear stirred, but not enough.
I raised my voice so every soul in the square could hear me.
“My one and only warning to any of you still following this bitch’s cult: leave or die.”
That should have been the end of it.
It wasn’t.
A stone struck my shoulder.
Small. Meaningless.
Then another hit my chest.
Then food. Mud. A broken cup. More stones.
Insults followed. Grief too. Rage. Confusion. Mortals freed from one spell only to clutch at the shape it had left behind because emptiness frightened them more than chains.
I stood there and let them hit me.
Again.
Again.
Again.
And beneath every impact, a realization bloomed colder than anger.
They did not know fear.
Not enough.
Mira saw it before Darian did.
Her voice came from behind me, low and final.
“They are judged,” she said. “Unworthy.”
She did not sound pleased. That was what I remember most. Not approval. Recognition. As if she had heard the sentence fall before I spoke it and knew none of them would be able to catch it in time.
Darian did not argue.
That should have stopped me.
It didn’t.
They shifted together, bronze forms rising into the air over Nashkel, wings beating hard enough to send dust and loose thatch swirling through the street. They left the settlement behind because they knew what was coming.
Because they knew me.
I opened my mouth.
Holy fire poured out.
It did not choose gently. Roofs, streets, shrines, hidden rooms, guilty hands, innocent doorways—everything vanished beneath the same white judgment until Nashkel stopped being a town and became an answer I could not take back.
The fire was pure and radiant and merciless, rolling through the streets and buildings, swallowing cries before they became screams. Stone blackened. Wood vanished. Flesh became shadows pressed into the ground.
When it ended, Nashkel was silent.
I should have been tired.
I should have been horrified.
Some fragment of me should have looked at what I had done and recoiled.
Instead, power sang through the stolen vessel like a hymn.
I stood among the ashes, breathing easily, stronger than I had felt in years.
And for the first time since my descent, I felt like a god again, unbound.
That was the most dangerous part.
Not the fire I created.
Not the dead around me.
Not the ruins smoking because of me.
The dangerous part was how much I had missed it.