“Run! Don’t look back!”

  Gunther’s lungs were shredding. The air tasted of burnt earth and panic. Each footfall on the broken, rocky ground was a gamble, her boots skidding on loose scree. To her left, Jacob ran with the grim determination of a soldier, one hand clamped to the weeping gash on his temple. To her right, Sihar’s staff whirled, her breath coming in ragged, spell-chanting gasps.

  The tree line was a jagged wall of shadow two hundred yards ahead. It might as well have been two hundred miles.

  A roar tore the sky behind them. It wasn’t a sound of pain anymore. It was a promise. Gunther risked a glance over her shoulder.

  Ignis had righted himself. One wing hung at a sickening angle, but the other beat the air, kicking up a storm of dirt and debris. The dragon’s head, a battering ram of smoking scale and fury, swung toward them. Its good eye, a molten pit of hatred, fixed on their fleeing forms. Its chest began to glow, a forge-bellows inhale of terrible light.

  “Down!” Sihar screamed, skidding to a halt and planting her staff into the earth.

  Gunther and Jacob threw themselves flat behind a low outcrop of rock. Not a second later, the world turned white and screamed.

  A river of incandescent fire, thicker than a castle tower, cascaded over their heads. The heat was an immediate, physical weight. Gunther’s leathers smoked. The rock shielding them cracked like glass, and the air she tried to breathe scalded her throat. The fire wasn’t a steady stream; it was a whip-crack of annihilation that lashed the ground, searing a trench of molten stone into the earth ten feet to their left.

  The blast ceased. The after-image of the flame was burned into Gunther’s vision. The smell of ozone and cooked rock was overwhelming.

  “Shield won’t hold another!” Sihar croaked. She was on her knees, her staff vibrating in her hands, its tip glowing a faint, fading blue. A shimmering hemispherical barrier, now cracked and spider-webbed with fractures, dissolved into motes of light.

  Ignis landed with a ground-shaking thud fifty yards behind them. The impact sent a tremor through the earth. It limped forward, its wounded leg dragging, but each step covered ten feet. Its head snaked low, jaws parting to reveal rows of dagger-teeth dripping with acidic saliva that sizzled on the scorched ground.

  “Go! To the forest!” Jacob shoved Gunther forward, drawing his short sword a pathetic toothpick against the mountain of scale and rage bearing down on them.

  They ran. The last hundred yards was a flat, open stretch of burned grass and ash. No cover.

  The dragon inhaled again, the sound a deep, grating rumble.

  Gunther’s legs burned. Her vision tunneled on the dark promise of the trees. Seventy yards. Sixty.

  A shadow detached itself from the tree line.

  Then another. And another.

  Figures emerged from the forest’s edge. Not villagers. Not refugees. They moved with a predator’s grace, clad in dark, polished leather and muted grey cloaks. They carried no banners, bore no house sigils. In their hands were heavy, compact crossbows, the bolts tipped with something that gleamed dully under the hellish light.

  One of them, a man with a severe face and close-cropped grey hair, raised his hand.

  The crossbows leveled as one, not at the dragon, but at Gunther, Jacob, and Sihar.

  “Cultists,” Jacob spat, not breaking stride.

  The man’s hand swept down.

  Thwump-thwump-thwump.

  A volley of bolts cut through the air. They weren’t aimed to kill. They slammed into the ground in a tight, staggered line just ahead of the fleeing trio, kicking up fountains of dirt. A warning. A herding.

  Ignis bellowed, its attention momentarily split between its prey and the new arrivals. It hesitated, a low, suspicious growl vibrating in its throat.

  “Into the trees, now!” the grey-haired man shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos like a knife. “Or the next volley finds your spines!”

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  They had no choice. The dragon was at their backs, the cultists at the forest’s edge. Gunther veered toward the gap between two of the bolt impacts, Jacob and Sihar a step behind.

  They crashed into the forest’s undergrowth. The world went from searing brightness to damp, green gloom. The air was suddenly cool and thick with the smell of pine and rotting leaves.

  “Move! Keep moving!” the man commanded. A dozen cultists formed up around them, not as escorts, but as guards, crossbows now pointed outward into the woods. They moved with eerie silence, their boots making no sound on the thick carpet of needles.

  Behind them, through a break in the trees, Gunther saw Ignis roar in frustration. It unleashed another blast of fire, but this one was unfocused, raking across the forest’s edge. Ancient pines exploded into torches, their resinous sap popping and crackling. The cultists didn’t flinch. One of them, a bald man with a scar across his lips, made a sharp, intricate gesture with his free hand. The wall of flame at the tree line intensified for a moment, then bent, as if hitting an invisible deflector, shielding their retreat.

  “Mages,” Sihar whispered, her eyes wide. “They have battle-mages of their own.”

  “Of course they do,” Jacob muttered, his sword still in hand. “They’re paying for the dragons, aren’t they?”

  They were pushed deeper into the forest. After ten minutes of hard, silent travel, they reached a small clearing where a shallow stream burbled over mossy stones. A makeshift camp was evident: bedrolls tucked under rocky overhangs, cold fire pits, packs of supplies. This was a forward operating post.

  The grey-haired man turned to face them. His eyes were the colour of flint. “Search them. Gently. They are guests, for the moment.”

  Two cultists stepped forward. Gunther stiffened as deft hands patted her down, relieving her of her belt knife and the small pouch of herbs she carried. Jacob surrendered his sword with a glare. Sihar clutched her staff until the man spoke again.

  “The staff, Master Mage. You may keep it. A show of goodwill. I am Vane.”

  “Goodwill?” Gunther found her voice, hoarse from smoke and running. “You shot at us.”

  “We redirected you. The alternative was letting Ignis cook you on the open field. An inefficient waste of resources. You three have been a significant thorn.” Vane looked them over. “The mason’s son with a talent for sabotage. The disgraced guardsman with a conscience. And the washed-up academy mage who thinks she’s a hero. You’ve cost us three juvenile drakes and annoyed a prime adult. I am not impressed.”

  “Why not just kill us, then?” Jacob asked, his body coiled tight.

  Vane smiled, a thin, humourless stretching of lips. “Because you are a symbol. The ‘brave villagers fighting back.’ My employers believe symbols are more useful broken than buried. A lesson needs to be taught to any other… ambitious commoners.”

  “Your employers want us dead,” Gunther said.

  “They want the problem of you dead. There is a difference.” He gestured, and a cultist brought forward a waterskin. Vane took it and offered it to Gunther. “Drink. You’ll need your strength.”

  Gunther stared at it, then at him. She was parched. She took the skin and drank. The water was clean and cold.

  “You’re taking us prisoner,” Sihar stated.

  “We are escorting you to a more secure location. Where we can have a civil discussion about the future.”

  “The future where you and your rich friends get to wallow in gold without the bother of feeding anyone?” Jacob snapped.

  Vane’s composure didn’t crack. “The future where the natural order is restored. Strength culls weakness. It is the oldest law. The kingdoms have forgotten it, softened by wizard-philosophers and their nonsense about ‘collective care.’ It made the world… drab. Stagnant. We are simply applying a corrective. The dragons are a tool. A magnificent, cleansing fire.”

  Outside the clearing, the distant roar of Ignis echoed again, followed by the sound of more trees falling. Vane listened, an appraising look on his face.

  “He’s not leaving,” Gunther said.

  “He is wounded and angry. He’ll burn this forest to the roots to find you. A magnificent creature, but not particularly bright.” He turned to his bald mage. “Gareth. Prepare the diversion. Let’s give the beast a target to chase.”

  Gareth nodded. He moved to the centre of the clearing, drawing a complex pattern in the air with his fingers. Light trailed from his fingertips, etching a runic circle in the dirt. He placed a small, scaled object in the centre a fragment of dragon eggshell, Gunther realized.

  “A resonance lure,” Sihar breathed, understanding dawning. “He’s going to mimic our magical signature, make the dragon think we’re somewhere else.”

  “Precisely,” Vane said. “We’ll send the echo north, into the deep wilds. Ignis will follow. It will keep him occupied for days.”

  Gareth began to chant, a low, guttural sound. The runes in the dirt glowed a sickly yellow. The air above the eggshell fragment shimmered, and a faint, ghostly echo of Sihar’s earlier shield spell pulsed outward, visible only as a heat-haze distortion. It shot away through the trees, heading north.

  Minutes later, they heard Ignis’s roar shift, growing fainter, moving away, following the false trail.

  The clearing was silent save for the stream.

  “See?” Vane said. “Efficiency. Now, we move. We have a long journey to the Sentinel Peaks.”

  “The dragon roosts,” Jacob said, his face pale.

  “Our headquarters. Where you will understand the scale of what you are futilely opposing. And where you will make a choice.” Vane’s flinty eyes settled on Gunther. “Your village is ash. Your family is dead. Your fight is over. You can die as a forgotten symbol of failed resistance, or you can accept the new reality. Even a mason’s son can find a place in a cleaner world. As an example.”

  Gunther said nothing. The cold water sat in her gut like a stone. She looked at Jacob’s set jaw, at Sihar’s exhausted, resigned face. She looked at the cultists, their efficient cruelty, their absolute certainty.

  The forest around them was a cage of shadows. The dragon’s rage was a fading echo in the north. Their run was over. Now came the march.