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Addler came up Memorial Hill in a hooded cloak of plum clasped with a silver serpent brooch. Buckled boots of black landed before Farath’s Monument. The mage tugged the arcane bindings of the enslaved dragon, and the dragon lurched toward him, dragging its feet, hissing, spitting.

The mage knelt. He blew the dust off the bronze plaque. He identified the glyphs whose place in the sequence accorded with the sequence of numbers he’d memorized in Scrome and tried sounding them out; words he did not know and never would know spilled off his tongue. The hill rattled. The monument fissured open. Hurricane winds geysered from the rift, raging into the skies, changing the gloomy silver to stormy grey.

Light pulsed like an alchemical explosion. The power of the Storm roared through him, channeling into him vigor, vitality. He screamed like wild. Thunderclouds thickened and brute winds howled.

When he brought his sleeve from his eyes, looming over the annihilated monument was Farath the Storm Dragon.

Svelte wings sprang full, crowning him beneath heavy rainfall. Monumental. As though not a day had passed since he died in The Effort to Disorder. But when his eyes flashed open, he stood the size of a horse; time had whiplashed fifty-two years forward. He briefly considered the mage then his surroundings and himself.

A memory of Lexic’s armies marching across corpse-blanketed plains and heavy artillery clacking him out of consciousness returned. The mental wound blazed on a crimson anvil. A distraught roar pierced the buffeting winds.

Surely Lexic had won. Surely Farath had died. But why bring him back?

The rain stopped and clouds lightened. He did not feel so well as when it had been raining.

He bowed his dripping muzzle to the mage solemnly, lifted it then said, “Tell, mage. What is the year? What do you know of Lexic, and why have I been returned to a world and a body so bleak?”

And the mage said: “Twenty-four of the eight-and-thirtieth [cycle]. I have resurrected you because I have read of you, Farath. Farath the Unwieldy. Farath, with Wings Like a Hurricane.”

A reactive flare of wings whipped a soft gale that sent the mage reeling backward. Below the dragon’s eyes, the dark blotches deepened. “ ‘Unwieldy,’ ” he said. “Is this what your history book says of me?”

“It’s that I’ve read, O Great One. But I read between the lines. I think it an honor to see you flesh and scale.”

A grimly grin forced Farath’s cheeks up. He harrumphed. “Enough of that. Who’s this dragon next to you?”

“Kaffy. Ignorant feral. Can’t speak.” When Farath’s eyes narrowed to challenging slits, the mage hastened: “I bring him as a tribute, O Great One, since you’re not with all your strength.”

(Growled Farath, “Is that so?” and wheeled to see his horse-sized posterior . . . and scowled agreeably.)

“Listen, O Great One. I’ve toiled the months away in Scrome researching Ley Connectivity Applied to Draconic Creatures, and the theories I’ve accumulated suggest that dragons reborn by chakra transmutation—as you’ve been—possess a power unlike any other. Hence Kaffy here: that we might see the truth, or lack thereof, in these theories.”

“Power?” The eyes of Farath blazed phoenix-bright. “Quit slithering around the underbrush. What power is this? You haven’t answered my question about Lexic either, though you’ve got me good and curious here.”

“You’ll receive your answers,” the mage assured, “but first, do not disregard my tribute! He is yours now. Do with him what you please.”

The mage snapped his fingers. The arcane bindings on the enslaved dragon shattered then dissipated like dry ice. Both dragons’ eyes gleamed. Like a loaded metal coil, suddenly Kaffy sprang at Addler—the instant Farath assaulted Kaffy. He piledrived the glyphed white haunches to the pavement, whu-wu-WHUUMP. Feral snarls! Hissing! Cycling on top, Farath punched his shoulder blades to the ground. And spittle flew from the feral’s gnashing jaws.

Hot lines smeared down the Storm’s snout. In his eyes, a nice huge supper reflected. Monstrous jaws steamed open and snarfed the larger dragon’s face, savage growls flying, skulls flailing, wings flapping bizarrely.

Dragon. Prey.

Sugary-sour flavor overwhelmed his tastebuds. Farath recoiled, but couldn’t keep from grinning. He couldn’t have gotten a sweeter zap of power licking the end of a battery cable. Potent, succulent magic pinched points of his spine webbing, toes, and wing joints with the euphoria of dominance. Kaffy’s magic didn’t rival the power that Farath once had, but he’d never possessed arcane power before.

I want it, he thought. I’ll become big and powerful—bigger than I was before . . . As Farath gulped, peristalsis thrust his prey’s head under now rippling, bulging pectorals.

His prey’s claws lashed at the air, but couldn’t find their mark. White hindpaws kicked and kicked and kicked with the suffocating apex predator’s desperation.

Blood slashed across Farath’s haunches. He made an annoyed noise in his throat, a wave of nausea sending him to his rear. He felt the struggling in his throat intensify, accruing both sweeps of pleasure and pain.

Kaffy had begun lurching his neck up the length of the esophagus, but one of his neck barbs hooked into the flesh. He writhed, and writhed.

Farath gagged, his belly reflexes going berserk. Gulping with the sharp point in his throat was like swallowing a dagger. He slammed his neck one way, loosening the barb.

Stupefied from the kickback, the feral slackened.

After that, the prey of Farath hardly struggled. Farath’s throat grew big and swollen as the underside of a full snake, shaped by his weakly rapping, wriggling dragon meal. The storm dragon continued to devour, his quivering dome gut dropping between his ankles. A dragon-song of pleasure rumbled from his throat, starting at a low octave, ascending with his accumulating arcane power. He kept on till the wobbling, bloating gut heaved his feet off the ground. The end of Kaffy’s tail slipped through his lips with a terminating slurp.

Delighted, Farath couldn’t help but beat his wings. The mage threw up an arcane shield to protect himself from the hurricane curls of wind, and it absorbed the first few. But on the fourth, the shield shattered like an ice sheet on a lake. Addler flipped horizontal, pitched far across the hill. On a foot, knee, and hand he landed. Any man wholly man would have fallen on their back with their bones fractured and/or jutting out abnormally. But he rose easily, blood- and dirt-less his skin and clothing. An unsettlingly broad smirk crossed his face.

Already Farath’s sense of sight, smell and hearing were being magnified by his digesting prey. Distant mountainsides sharpened, tree patterns and roads becoming distinguished. The bookish smell of his prey, the leathery acid smell of the mage twitched his nostrils. The softer gurgles of his gut rang to his ears, his spectrum of wavelengths broadening. “Hm, do try to squirm!” he told the larger dragon and rubbed his paws upon his warbling front.

Kaffy tried. He heaved left. And moaning out, Farath rubbed that side and grumbled a belch. This euphoria transcended his last: for he grew to the size of a large elephant while his prey shrank to a large horse.

(Farath’s feet fell flat.)

Kaffy tried harder. He budged right. And moaning out, Farath rubbed that side, and grumbled a loud belch. This euphoria transcended his last: for he grew to the size of a dragon larger than Kaffy had ever been while Kaffy shrank to a large hound.

Kaffy tried his hardest. But he couldn’t heave or budge left or right. And moaning out, Farath rubbed both sides. This euphoria transcended his last: for he grew to the size of a one-story tavern, while his prey shriveled to a young crocodile, to a baby komodo, to a winged gecko, to—not even fat—but to matter chiseled straight into toned torso, abdomen and limb muscles, and power.

As his body sculpted the excess away from him, Farath buffed up modestly and swelled up a size. His belly shrank to a flat, bulgeless curve. He belched monstrously, a sound like this:

BRRAAAHAAAWwWWWAaALLLURUAAARRRRRRRRRrRRrRrRrRrRRRrrRRP.

The acidic stench of rotten meat fumed from his filthy maw. The dragon grumbled; it was the grumble of a dragon whose trademark grumpiness had been beaten by gratification.

The glyphs that had run across Kaffy’s tail—forget what they meant—they were his now. And he’d added the length of Kaffy’s horns to his own four: thick, sinuous spires. The sheen of his scales glittered with health unseen on him since The Effort to Disorder.

The Storm strode to the mage then dipped his head, a gesture of thanks. He looked like to pull away, but the mage laid a hand between his nostrils. Farath snorted, his innate grimace twisting into a look of sardonic appreciation. “That answers the Power Question. I can absorb the powers of dragons—and perhaps humans,” casting a sneer. Jokingly? “But how about Lexic, now? Let’s have it, before I take that hand.”

The mage snatched back his hand and sheathed it in his cloak. “As I was saying before, O Farath, I’ve read of you. A formidable asset for the Freerangers back in The Effort. Would that their ranks included you now, Lexic would be fallen tomorrow.”

Pictures of humans and dragons—dead now—leafed across the dragon’s mind’s eye in grave detail. Partnered. Against the establishment. Unsettling to him was the crawling sensation not all of them came from his own past. “The Freerangers live?”

“Their chapter ended before mine began, O Farath. Few survived. And after the Effort, the Freerangers was a maimed thing. Fodder for the crows.”

“Drop the ‘O.’ Just ‘Farath’ will do.”

“Point being, Farath, I want to team with you. To crumble Lexic. To do with these magic rulers once and for all: that mages might be free and privacy restored! No omniscient eye to watch or to detain the ones the Order deems ‘Unwieldy!’ ”

Fool, Farath thought, for he’d fought in the war, and knew their strength had been wicked, and knew it’d be only more wicked now. If for fifty years Lexic has multiplied its power, then I’ve no desire to oppose them. Yet, nor did he wish to oppose Addler.

For Kaffy’s mental fragments had shared frightening impressions of the mage. They urged caution. Still, if I’m right with how he plans to use me, our interests won’t conflict so much.

“Mage.”

“Addler.”

“You want me because I can get bigger, Addler. Because I can get stronger. Well? Have you more dragons for me?”

Smiling sharp teeth, Addler stroked the dragon’s spike beard. “I have Lexic dragons for you.”

* * *

Paris Hub. A city centered by a roofed colosseum called a Lexeum. Stationed there were Lexic officials and dragons; for there, Farath and Addler were flight-bound. But the discharge of unsafe quantities of magical energy from Memorial Hill had alerted Lexic trackers of their coming, and Lexic enforcers had been dispatched to intercept them. So instead of finding, the plum hooded mage and storm dragon were found, by three dragons and three rider mages rounding them three-hundred meters above society.

Oh boy. Hot meals deliver themselves in the future. Farath did not smile, but his heart pounded with anticipation.

One of the three dragons amplified his voice with his mage’s magic. A lightning dragon called Rendalli. “Good evening, travelers. Are you aware your arcane energy exertion surpassed the safe limit at three-hundred-fifth [degree of the sun, as of a circle] Shine today?”

Addler spat. “Would that you weren’t aware, that one’s for your roof. Fuck you. Fuck your brood-father, you spineless arakadd.”

The kindly mask of features the Lightning wore on routine stops fell away. He nodded at the other Lexic, and they nodded back. He rivaled the Storm in size, and his companions dwarfed even that. They didn’t bother saying the travelers their rights, but slowly tightened their triangle.

The potential energy Farath had been stockpiling in his wings joints went kinetic.

Breath croaked out of Rendalli as grey forepaws docked his deflating chest.

Farath harpooned him toward the city, meteorite-like.

Four wings cycloned. Distress sounded from the Lightning, his companions now twenty, thirty, forty meters above. He smote his hindpaws against his captor’s underbelly again and again but the paws on his chest wouldn’t leave, as though they’d been stapled on.

The Lightning’s mage stayed on upside-down with a dragonback bond spell. Swinging but trying to lift her torso, she conjured discs of magic in her hands and focused on Farath long enough to lob them his way. They cruised past Rendalli and needled the storm’s flanks, but you may as well have launched tacks into a cake of gelatin. Farath’s body absorbed the shock of each arcane strike, literally; and he grew half a foot each time, and growled, his voice deepening a hint. The Kaffy half of him craved, begged for more, and his body tingled uneasily with magic-junky desire.

He tried to swallow the Lightning’s head but the huge momentum of falling wouldn’t let him, with the Lightning lurching away each time. Frustration. Blinding need peaked with a sky-rending roar! Imbalanced emotions melted the fixed form of his body, and grey mists seeped from him and cut away at his opacity. I’ll have the both of you before this fall is through. His body became gooey.

As the dragons twisted, ribbons of goo slung themselves round the lightning dragon and Lexic mage. Light filtered through Farath’s translucent stomach. It yawned cavernous and maw-like and then swallowed over the Rendalli’s warm middle. The Lightning lunged and jerked and hissed. But he only threw his fore- and hindlegs farther, fodder for the devouring sludge.

As the meal fed himself to him, Farath snorted with joy, and his destabilized body only worked more arduously to consume, to assimilate him. Suddenly Farath felt chains of lightning cage him, electrocuting him, rattling his frame with sparks and smoke. Rubberlike, Farath absorbed the shock, and grew another inch, and another and another. His voice deepening slightly, “Delicious!” he said, scales whining from being like to burst from the enlarging body they clothed. His dragon prey shrank punily. Submissive bestial sounds bubbled into murmurs as gooey tendrils latched across Rendalli’s muzzle in B.D.S.M fashion then pulled it underneath the frothing surface of the oozing gullet. Silver sludge spumed and slurped. A muzzle disappeared. Plunging convulsions of the silver gut brought weakly-twitching wings into the chambers inside, gurgling with stinging enzymes.

Bubwbwbwbblubl . . .

Fearing he’d shrink and turn to food too, the mage called his dragonback bond spell off. His legs began to slip from his seat, and weightlessness welcomed him.

But svelte wings flapped low, met and retrieved him. Like a rubberband they snapped and squeezed him into the stomach, and it bounced and gurgled and spewed a short fount.

Both meals inside of him, Farath fixed his eyes on the largely dilating city. Rooftops beamed over him. He straightened, cleaving cleanly across a cobblestone street, and gracefully landing, galloped to a stop.

Nyeagh! and whoop! whoop! cried the human citizens, and climbed over each other for the alleys and the inns and wherever the fuck else they could to get from the dragon.

The dragon stood in a venue ringed around the Lexeum, bent over and huffing real hard. Processing his dinner. The Lightning who’d protected Paris Hub for nigh a decade visibly struggled inside his bubbledome of an abdomen. Ofttimes, the belly’d blimp out from a burst of electricity, and Farath’d screw his eyes and let up a spore-cloud of sparks in a belch. His stomach sponged the last of his meal away, and his skull became level with the bottoms of balconies, twenty feet high. He groaned and paced about the cleared-out section of the venue, adjusting to his new size, looking round and sniffing, sounds and smells more crisp. Little forks of electricity knifed out from his body now and then, and charged the air. He was pondering crushing something when wingbeats fanned from the sky.

Up Farath looked. The fire dragon and the frost dragon swooped down all axe-like, crossing him with breaths of flame and ice. Addler began to shout the shield spell, but a sudden thrash of the Storm’s wings dazed him. They perished the elements.

A double quartet of feet thumped the cobblestone behind Farath. Around he turned.

An obelisk of frost breath homing in on him, Farath with his evolved reflexes met it with a ray of ribbon-streaming lightning breath. It drove the frost breath back like a screw. The Frost’s attack fizzled with an icy burst to the face, flinging him against the Lexeum. He swooned, jaw cracking to the cobblestone.

Seamlessly, the Storm spun and mirrored a jet of dragon’s breath with an arcane beam. But the flames burned through his magic, guttering forward. Lithely, Farath flapped out of dodge. And the hurricane force of his wings extinguished the flames and struck the Fire against the Lexum. Stone buckled; the dragon spun and planked at the Frost’s side, THOOM.

Farath strode forward, gnashing electric pitchforks from his jaws. Weak! Both of them!

But the consciousness of Rendalli laid warning on his own. For Rendalli was wise with numbers and knew the capabilities of two pairs of enforcers.

Too late.

From under the dragons somersaulted the mages, spreading themselves apart. And they each raised a ruby-embedded glove and they shot from each palm a rope of arcane chains. The ropes uncoiled and zipped forward snake-quick, coiling together as a collar round the Storm’s neck. A rasp smoked from his mouth; feeling his will bent, he fell at once and prostrated. And each of the Lexic mages they raised a sapphire-embedded glove and they shot from each palm a vortex, sucking dual streams of magic from Farath’s chest. The sapphires winked brighter and brighter. And groaning, the dragon was brought low and he began to shrink, his head falling below the balconies.

The Lexic mages focused so much on draining the dragon dry, they forgot of Addler. There he was behind Farath’s neck inspecting the collar from every which angle. Then after a time he sank his teeth into it, putting some zing into his neck, tearing the collar to shreds and swallowing. His pupils stayed torn between orbs and snake-like slits. Soon the collar split at the front, and two ribbons swooshed to the back with a hissing slurp. And the Lexic mages, they turned a stark white, looking as though Lyzandre had ordered them relieved of duty.

“Now Farath.” Addler clapped his shoulder.

Farath got up and wrenched backward; the motion would’ve broken the necks of the Lexic mages would that their dragonback recoil spells hadn’t been up. They met the cobblestone hard on their jaws, and Farath dragged them across it with a slurp of the ropes and, gulp by gulp, he reversed his shrinkage with throbs of growth. Growling louder, he swelled beyond his previous maximum size, his shadow drawing across the balconies.

The mages tried to pull free. But tails may well as play tug-of-war with their owners. They gave up then tried to end the streams, but Farath did it forward with a noisy schlrrrrrk. Snapping off the mages’ palms the streams went, and down the dragon’s sealing lips. The mages lay limp, stringless puppets.

Then palming to their feet, they ran down the streets. Farath watched. No use of them now. Now that he’d tasted their power, he knew its crisp, sweet-sour flavor, could smell its presence in the atmosphere. When they left, however, they took none of that flavor with them, and so they were as much use as the civilians.

Farath’s neck had giraffed above the balconies, and he stood at twenty-five foot. Looking down on the fire and frost dragons who’d begun to stir, then at Addler, he said, “Mage, how strong is your magic?”

“Strong enough to rival yours, O Farath. Mind, I’ve been acquainted with magic for beyond a decade, and you for but a few hours.”

Farath feigned transparency to that. “. . . You can bind the Fire while I take the Frost, then?”

Hearing Fire, the fire dragon sprang in a flurry of flame. “RWuuUUUORRGHH!”

Addler spat the binding spell by heart, his fingers jumping at the Fire. The creature froze midleap, startling Farath’s fangs apart. However, when the Fire did not move (just hung there, a suspended, 3-D figure), the Storm sheathed them.

He got no time to gawk; behind the Fire, the Frost opened his jaws. Farath flexed his own at the ready, but what greeted him, instead of the anticipated frostbolt, were fingers of ice. They spread across the ground in greater count than piano keys then sprang up, creating a piked wall seven of the Frost’s wingspans wide. Farath sprinted forward, put his paws on the pikes and peered over the top. But a sweeping breath sealed the top blue-white, forming a frozen tunnel against the Lexeum. A little piqued, Farath hurried over and peered through the tunnel’s right end. The Frost was sprinting the other way on silent feet. Farath harrumphed then chased after him, his feet flying in a flurry.

Silent-footed. Strategian. Winfaf was both of these. As soon as he heard Farath’s feet tear toward the other side, he struck a U-turn. He sprang out the end he’d been bound for before; and his feet left the cobblestone, and in a flash his wings were steering round the colosseum’s circumference.

Addler thought, If I get too far, my bindings will break. He leapt off Farath’s back. He hit the top of the tunnel on two feet, but it was slippery, and the soles of his boots erected. He exclaimed, and was slammed down, and went sliding across the roof. Blast! With his free hand (the one that wasn’t targeting the Fire), he conjured an arcane bumper three meters up. A jolt of inertia shot up his joints. “Rascal,” he blurted, the Storm’s footsteps fading behind him. “He’s making the other way, Farath!”

His hearing heightened from absorbing his previous meals, Farath’s ears winked. He froze so fast, so stiff, you’d’a thought the Frost blasted him from behind. Turning Addler’s way, he saw a tail slip around the top of the Lexeum. Quick as a cloudburst, he tore across the venue after him. Mowing past screaming citizens and upsetting food stands, his giant feet drummed like thunder, thoow-th-tho-thww-thoowrm-thoo-thouw.

He bowled a sharp left, a curveball refusing the gutter lane. People wheeled out of the way of his giant footpads, stuntmanning and whooping. Plant pots toppled and clattered; soils puddled. A musician pumping an accordion freaked at the sight of a colossal underbelly shadowing across his head; forepaws quaked him to the curb; and he curled with a protective embrace of the accordion, shivering and whimpering.

Winfaf’s wings folded, and he padded down at the Lexeum’s western entrance. He galloped through the colosseum arches, down the dark and tiled hall of stained glass sunbeams and into a room of hexagonal mirrored walls. He struck to a stop on a padded circle symbol centering the room—an ‘S’ with a diagonal drawn through it—then stood tall and projected his voice with a tone of need; and the double dozen figures of the lower council appeared in the mirrors.

Twelve dragons. Twelve mages.

Winfaf took a deep inhale, preparing to speak formally. “Block purple . . . I repeat, block purple. Extractor assistance required at Paris Hub, approximate threat nine . . . no, n-no, ten.”

Chhwhaahwakchshrrrrsh! Chasing the Frost, Farath had crushed a giant glass photo of dead Freerangers two rows of humans had been hauling off to the history museum. The colosseum shook as he tore under the mess of arches and down the hall. When the Frost turned toward him, the lower council vanished. The Frost took a long breath then eructed as hard as he could, erecting a wall of ice that sealed the door.

After he had had time to consider it, Winfaf’s face went white as snow. I’m trapped in a refrigerator. What did you keep in refrigerators?

He turned to call for help from the council, but he had lost the focus to do it. He backed against the farthest mirror.

Thumps. Chips of ice scattering at the door. Thin veins seeping across the ice wall, thickening, crackling.

The rumble of a deep inhale made the reflections of Winfaf waver.

An obelisk of electricity rammed through the ice wall. The frost dragon ducked. Behind him glass sundered. The smell of burning wires pervaded the room. Winfaf saw the Storm dragon enter with a darkened silhouette and a loose maw with grey billowing from it.

“You’ve been fleeing long enough, haven’t you?” Rather than wait for reply, Farath sprang.

Chwhwhwhwwwtwwnk! Glass rang as they traded places. The Frost scurried for the door. This time, it wasn’t a wall of ice which plugged it; it was a film of arcane magic.

Glowing at the eyes, Farath closed in. “No more running. I tire of games, little one.” The dragon’s eyes blinked back to normal the same instant his jaws blinked over the prey’s tail. Parsley. He wrung the begging, floor-clawing Frost back by the tail and swallowed. As he quickened on the trunk of the tail, his prey’s hindpaw stamped his face repeatedly. The blows didn’t daze him so much as did the mouthwatering taste. Mouth full of deliciously minty meat, Farath lurched and lurched at the neck. He calmed his primal respiration, focusing on devouring. Diffusing the snake bulge of his jampacked gullet to his highmetabolism stomach. His throat sounded the content of a cannibalizing dragon: with the thrill of an apex predator—a close relation—clawing the ground for dear life, kicking the back of your high-capacity throat with it snapping back like fleshy rubber each time. Would that I had added dragons to the menu sooner. It felt like a train slowly pulling into a station: the Frost pushing through his pleasurably aching sphincter, tail then hind and hindlegs . . .

Tears froze on the frost dragon’s face flushing blue. He tore streaks through the floor and snapped his canines at the air—fighting to live another thousand years—but the predator’s hot breath only slid farther up his shoulders.

Winfaf saw Lexic marching down the hall: enforcers flourishing batons, come to deal with the intruder. With drowning lunges, he reached for them—thinking in his delirium that they’d pull him free. They aimed their batons two-handed and from the baton-heads sent blasts at the film. But what came were but flashes in a pan.

What greeted them when their supervisor roared “CEASE!” and the smoke had cleared, was the sight of the Frost trickling into the storm dragon’s closing maw.

Sprawling happily on his middle, Farath gave a mountainous gulp. The reverb chilled the bones of the of the enforcers, despite the film’s soundproof quality. The dragon strode up to the film and butted his head against it as a buffer, huffing to every breathtaking kick against the walls of his wobbling midriff. Each hit revved the engine of his body, igniting it with the sheer power of the Cold. “Oof, keep going—you only grow weaker, smaller, and I stronger and bigger.” His taster fell from his mouth; and he let out a grrUraaaoorowwaRRrurrwp bouncing eerily off the rupturing mirrors, and again stole size from his belly.

Might be I’ll turn you into a popsicle, you gluttonous oaf. Winfaf fastened his mind on his birth-home, then cried the name of the North: ever-changing, unwritable, unrecordable.

Cold winds ciphered through the smallest cracks and crevices of the colosseum. Frost crystallized mirrors. Spiderweb veins crawled across the cold glaze. The room plunged beneath refrigerator temperature, garnering layer upon layer of cyan. Below thirty—twenty—ten—zero. Ridged barriers of ice crusted over the mirrors. Winfaf knew, It’s a freezer now . . . You can eat what comes from the fridge, but not from a freezer. Not until it thaws, anyway. Too bad you won’t last that long . . .

Farath huffed clouds of dense fog, sparks and magic. Marks of stress pinched the bridge of his snout. The maturing cold spread through his body and troubled him. The drop of heat slowed his rate of digestion. A chill glaze laddered up his limbs and neck. I could take down the film and let the warm air vent in, but he shunned the idea. The Lexic would vent in too, and he didn’t want that. He wanted this room to himself; to prove he could overcome the cold. He would absorb it, absorb it all. “That was a foul mistake, dragon . . .” He gritted his teeth and willed his stomach to work harder; to burn away the Frost. He felt the cold blazing in his belly, the name of the North bending to his will, changing form with him. “. . . Fighting a FROST dragon with frost.”

A terrible laugh rang trembled the stomach, the stomach tightening on Winfaf every second. The rebounding cacophony hit his heart like an icepick. He was thawing, cracking. The pick was hacking and hacking and chips of ice flying. He . . . he tried the name of the North, but nobody was home, nobody would answer, ever again . . . The terrible laugh grew stronger, stomach juices rising and multiplying. The North was supplying his captor . . . Winfaf’s last word was no word; when the North left him, he had nothing.

Farath roared! The avalanching echo broke the neat lines of the officials outside the door. “I am the Frost. I know the name of the North.” The icy chill of the North spread through his bloodstream: the same exhilaration he experienced on rainy days. The dragon grew till his head clonked under the roof, and his splayed wings brushed the mirrors on the limits of the room. Muscles groaned, and got bigger. His abdominals chiseled into hard, lean packs. Thick below-zero mists wafted around his frame, stomach shrinking as though it’d never carried the Frost at all.

The puny room cramped the ends of his wings. Resolving to ease his discomfort, he puffed out his chest then rammed through an ice-encrusted wall of mirrors.

Chunks, shards and shrapnel of glittering ice and glass exploded across the flowered venue of the city. Out from the wreck stepped Farath, Farath a towering two-and-a-half stories tall. The great serpent looked upon all the scrambling, screaming little humans, and he craned his head to see a pair of humans turning from a balcony to flee into their apartment, but, before they could, dipped his nose and munched them up. Their little legs shot through his lips. When Farath gulped, you could see them dissolving already on their way to the stomach. But he’d already lost his focus on them, and now turned to the citizens blatantly pissing him off.

“STOP.”

The single word purged the energy from the streets. A power word soaked in arcane magic, traced with a voice both heavy and hinting of his Lexic prey. And they heard that; and being that you obeyed Lexic without resistance, else be persecuted, the humans . . . stopped. Even the Lexic rushing out of the colosseum to avenge the museum photo he’d crushed halted with domino effect, fearing to do otherwise.

Thunder boomed beneath the dark grey clouds, Farath’s voice: “I am Farath the dragon of Storm, Arcane, Lightning and Frost. You cannot fight me. My scales will shrug away sword and arrow, and my body will sponge up any power you send it. Here I stand before you—a god. Either you’ll break your oaths with Lexic and you’ll worship me, or I’ll crush you if you’re weak, add you to me if you’re strong.”

And fear and despair sickened all men and women; and they could not fight it. So they bowed to him; and saying his name they threw their hands up in fealty; and exalting him with the chant reserved normally for the upper council, they threw up their valuables. Glittering rings and wrist-dials and earrings and wallets and purses and books and many things a dragon did not even desire fell at his feet. Along with Lexic enforcers, who kissed his tavern-gutting talons.

Addler broke through the crowd and came to Farath. The dragon, too engaged in this image of divinity to humble himself, said nothing, but waited for him to speak.

“Farath, is this what I’ve come to see—you mongering fear—when all this time I was waiting on you? I had the Fire bound, but he beat me finally and flew off.”

And Farath, with himself in the eyes of men and women, answered with the dark blotches under his eyes deepening: “You should have said you weren’t powerful enough to restrain the Fire. I’d have taken him first.”

And you’d still have had the Frost to come back to, you mathless halfwit. Addler started to say so, but the Storm shut him down:

“Excuses, Addler?”

Addler’s cloak might have simmered. The hood on his head flared like a cobra’s. “Not at all, O Farath, dragon of Storm, Arcane, Lightning and Frost. Excuse me. I forgot to whom I speak.” He turned and fled through the crowd, a ghostly figure.

With an air of transparency, Farath stepped forward and after Addler; and the citizens exclaimed and cleared for him a pathway.

* * *

Flaunting their combined power, they had secured a chamber of towering bookshelves in the Lexum to sleep in for the night. Farath allowed the human to sleep on a roll-out mattress beside his belly.

He felt less reason for keeping the mage round: for he feared the mage’s retaliation, should they part ways, no longer. But Addler had resurrected him, and for that he was grateful; and they had planned to pursue the Fire tomorrow, and for that Farath was forgiving. Besides, he was drawn to some great power hidden within the mage, though he knew not what. So he kept him round.

In the delta stage of sleep that night, the dragon had a nightmarish memory. Not a memory of his—but wait. It was.

Two months, twelve days back. Addler entering Scrome. He shouldn’t be here, Farath thinks—but no. Farath isn’t Farath. Farath is Kaffuron, Master Librarian of Scrome Archives: the dragon who will later be known as Kaffy, Ignorant Feral.

Addler aims the claw-shaped Extractor at Kaffuron’s chest orb. Farath—Kaffuron—pain rockets through them both. Kaffuron curls over the floor, twitching, hissing, spitting.

He tries to speak, but his language is gone.

Farath awoke in a dragon’s closest thing to sweat, knowing Addler needed to die. Take it from him before he takes yours, Farath. Take it all.

It was still night. Only a few library lamps of milky white light dotted the room’s darkness. But Farath shifted slowly, and could smell the breathing his acid breath, and hear it soundly, and see the highlight of his plum hooded cloak. Did he feel the mage go still? Eat him. Eat him Farath. Farath, listen to me . . . Okay. Farath shrugged the roaming feelings of the other dragons away; he had decided. But to remove the clothing first, Farath brought a thumb and claw over the mage’s hood and pulled it down.

Stubby silver horns.

Farath looked like he had no idea what he had just walked into.

Addler’s body began to shiver. No.

No, Farath, pull the hood back up—quick—

—a twisted sort of warbling sound, no, chuckling.

Addler rolled over beaming a sharp, half-moon smile; and his eyes—they held them all. Kaffuron. Rendalli. Winfaf. And the Fire.

Addler flung the cloak off. Before Farath he lay, a silver-horned, draconic-satyr-looking sort of man with a plum silk shirt, chocolate linen pants, and a slender, thorn-ended tail of albino. The thorned end of the tail pulsed with arcane magic, sparked with lightning, misted with cold, and blazed with flame.

“I appreciate you sharing all your meals with me, and letting me have the last one all for myself, O Farath. But I really must be having the rest of them, now . . .”

Snakelike, Addler sprang, and fell on Farath; and with the sound of snapping desks and shattering bulbs of breaking lamps, the dragon fell on his spine, the plum hooded mage pinning him down.