With grim determination, Tharoc forced himself to take another step into the vast, open plains. Every stride brought him further from the only home he had ever known. The familiar snow-capped mountains lay several miles behind him, but he never turned to gaze upon them. He didn't have to. He knew he couldn't go back.

It had been only hours since the high council had declared him 'Krutak,' or 'outcast' in the common tongue. The wizened, ancient dragons had tolerated little debate on the matter. Shortly after the council's decision, Tharoc had been led to the lower caverns, where he had been ceremoniously bathed in dragon fire. His scales, once gleaming silver, now bore a dull metallic green; he was tarnished beyond recognition. Nevertheless, as painful as the ritual had been, his greatest anguish had come when he had faced his mother.

Though her face was scraped and bruised from the attack, Shaela’s tears had only been for him. Hers had been the sole voice of protest at the high council’s court, while the anger and grief of the clutch mothers had won the ancients’ favor. He had been permitted to meet with his mother for only a brief moment, just long enough for her to press his father’s sword into his hands and to clasp Gilean’s pendant about his neck. His final words to her had been a solemn oath to redeem himself.

He was a murderer. Not by choice, but a murderer nonetheless. The young hatchlings, his clutchmates, his privilege and responsibility, now lay dead by his own doing. It had been terrible accident, some would say, but he bore full responsibility for their deaths. In his desperate attempt to free them during the attack, he had instead killed them along with their attackers.

Now he bore a debt that he knew not how to pay. He only knew that he had to find a way to atone for his crime.

A single tear fell from his blind eyes as he pressed forward toward the unknown.