Chapter 7
HAILEY
I would never get used to the feeling of the wind gliding over my wings.
I mean, I’ve flown before in my own realm, but none of that prepared me for what it meant to be a dragon in Ayrathys.
There’s no resistance, no pushback from gravity, no rational expectation of “up” or “down.” Instead, the body launches, and the world simply rearranges to meet it.
The landscape below us was a fractured patchwork of valleys and ridges, each more improbable than the last. Vegetation, if it could even be called that, shimmered gold at the base and lapsed into blue-green haze higher up.
Floating islands drifted in slow, stately orbits, many of them larger than my Philly neighborhood.
Some had waterfalls that just vanished into the clouds below.
Others were forested, some stony, some deserts.
But it was the clouds that got me. In Ayrathys, the clouds don’t passively waft.
They swarmed, forming living bands and ribbons that twisted and braided around the peaks and islands.
Solenne steered us through one such corridor, the cloud walls pulsing with electric blue, and the sensation was like diving through a living artery.
Every hair on my body stood at attention, including some I didn’t know I had.
“You will want to keep your mouth closed in the next section,” Corvus advised. “The wind can dehydrate the tongue. The sodium content is high.”
I closed my mouth. Jax didn't, and immediately began coughing, the dragon equivalent of choking on seawater. Flint cackled and repeated the performance, earning a scolding from Solenne, who suggested that if we didn’t behave, she’d assign us both to rear guard duty for the remainder of the journey.
Then she winked at me, telling me she was teasing Flint.
Adalinda remained silent through all of it, which set off a low-frequency alarm in the back of my mind. She was all business, gaze never straying from the black slash of mountain visible ahead.
We covered distance fast, so fast that if I’d blinked, I’d have missed the transition from valley to highland, then from highland to what can only be described as a volcanic ruin.
The gold-green faded, replaced by a landscape of charred stone and mineral veins that glowed orange and white beneath a sheet of perpetual dusk.
“There it is,” Corvus announced, and a second later, the full mass of Tharneval’s ridge came into view.
It wasn't a gentle mountain. The entire formation had been wrenched from the earth in a spasm of geological violence, then left to fester in the open air.
The surface was slick with obsidian, cut through with striations of white-hot slag.
Dozens of smoke vents punctured the upper third, each releasing plumes of ash and steam into the bruise-colored sky.
Even from a mile out, I could feel the heat, which crept up my scales and prickled the membranes of my wings.
“We approach the forge. All wings to full span, and brace for thermal updrafts.”
Corvus dove, Solenne tight on his right, and the rest of us peeled off to match.
The closer we got, the more the air shimmered, turning every wingbeat into an exercise in balance and endurance.
My muscles burned, my heart slammed against my ribs, and every inch of skin felt sunburned, even though the twin suns were now occluded by a haze of smoke.
We landed on a wide ledge just below the highest vent, each of us fighting to keep our footing on the glassy black stone.
Corvus folded his wings with military efficiency.
Solenne did the same, but with a subtle grace.
Jax and I landed more or less in sync, but Flint, who’d insisted on flying solo the last two miles, wobbled the landing, skidded on the obsidian, and ended up upside down, feet pedaling the air.
He rolled to his feet, shook the dust off, and immediately resumed his commentary. “The whole place smells like burned breadsticks. Is there food? Is there a dragon that is food?”
Solenne put a talon on his head, gently. “There is no eating the forgemaster, little one. Even if he smells delicious.”
Adalinda touched down last, wings shivering, her scales reflecting the deep red of the forgemaster’s home. She didn’t speak, but her presence was enough to set every other dragon into a more formal posture, heads lowered, wings slightly flared. I mimicked the pose, hoping I got the nuances right.
Corvus led the way into the dragon-sized cavern.
Flint was at my side, and Jax stayed close behind me.
The heat ramped up immediately, drying my throat and burning the edges of my nostrils.
The tunnel was perfectly circular, as if bored out by a god with a diamond bit, with veins of glowing metal running through it like lightning trapped in stone.
We emerged into the main chamber, and I nearly lost my grip on reality.
The space was vast, stadium-sized, but every inch was alive.
Molten rivers ran through channels in the floor, sparks arced overhead in violet sprays, and the ceiling was so high I had to crane my neck to look at it.
And it was studded with pendants of crystal and steel, each one glowing with internal fire.
At the center, hunched over an anvil the size of a minivan, was the forgemaster.
He was the largest dragon I’d ever seen, even by Ayrathys standards.
His scales were pale gold, but time and heat had burned away their luster at the edges, giving him a halo of almost ivory.
His forelimbs were massive, each talon thick as a baseball bat, and his wings, furled tight, looked pitted and torn in places, battle-worn from centuries of work.
He moved with a slowness that radiated intent.
When he struck the anvil, the whole chamber vibrated, and the sound tunneled into the marrow of my bones.
He paused as we entered, lifted his head, and turned to face Adalinda.
The recognition was immediate. He inclined his head, a gesture so deep and humble it bordered on ritual.
“Queen Adalinda,” he intoned, his voice slow and measured, every word heavy as a church bell. “You have come at last.”
Adalinda stepped forward, her own voice trembling with emotion. “Tharneval. My lost child.”
For a second, no one moved. Then Tharneval did, rising to his full height, dwarfing even Corvus.
He took two deliberate steps, then bowed his head so that their foreheads touched, scales scraping scales in a sound like porcelain and thunder.
Jax and I hung back, giving them space, but the moment felt electric.
History was being made right in front of us.
Even Flint went silent, the gravity of the reunion sinking into his bones.
Tharneval’s eyes flickered gold to white and back again as he studied us for a few moments. “The metals here change with every visitor. Even now, they pulse in time with your hearts.”
Tharneval pressed on, his story emerging as a stream of images and sensations.
“I was born on the other side, long before the portals, when the world still called to dragons by their oldest names. My gift was for shaping, for making the hidden truths in metal visible to the eye. When you needed a blade that could do what had never been done, you came to me, Queen, and I obeyed.”
A vision filled the space between him and us.
Tharneval was smaller and more vibrant, and he was hunched over an anvil, fire in both lungs and heart.
Adalinda at his side, her eyes young but already tired by the burdens of her office.
The first dagger, hammered from ore that wasn't of earth or sky, but some halfway point between. The second, forged while the memory of the first still rang in the smith’s bones.
Each blade inscribed with a different longing, the first for freedom, the second for mercy.
“It is the way of all things forged to cut both ways,” Tharneval said.
“The day I finished the second blade, I nicked my own scale with the tip, just a glancing touch. That was enough. The pain was brief, and I remember Adalinda’s voice calling for me, and then nothing except the river of sky and the unending weight of Ayrathys.
Here, alone for so many decades, I built my forge anew.
I worked the metal of this world, learning its rules and its silence. ”
He looked directly at Adalinda then, and his projection was gentle, apologetic. “You must know, Queen, I did not mean to abandon you.”
The answer was a shockwave. “And you must know, my son, I mourned you as lost. I built a tomb for you, and all the while, I cursed the sky for taking you so soon.”
The word “son” detonated through the group like a flare. I looked at Flint, who was trembling with the effort not to burst out with questions, and at Jax, who had taken two steps back and was pretending to study the pattern of the molten rivers.
“I have lost many children to war and age and foolishness,” Adalinda projected, the words a tangled knot of pride and sorrow. “But yours was the wound that never closed.”
Tharneval dipped his head, letting the moment burn away the centuries. When he lifted it again, his pride was unmistakable. “You did not give up the search. The world remembers those who mourn. Even in exile, I felt it.”
They stood like that, locked in silent exchange, and in that pause, I felt the raw ache of eternity. To be dragon, it seemed, was to survive one’s children and live on, a monument to grief as much as to glory.
It was Solenne who finally broke the spell, her thought-speech threaded with apology. “Forgemaster, we have come to ask for new work. Vaelog has returned. The courts believe nothing of this world’s common steel will end him.”
Tharneval’s focus shifted instantly. “Vaelog was always more hunger than mind. He will come for the Queen. He will come for all of us.”