Death was breathing quietly in the dark.


    malignity, and it settled into his scales.  He would molt next cycle, he knew; and it wasn’t soon enough.


    gone.


    Please forgive me.


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    When he felt himself skip a thought, that was when Adwyn ceased waiting.  It had gotten late, hadn’t it?  The adviser would finish this now, before exhaustion became intolerable.


    inspiring temperments in himself, as some he knew were.  He didn’t consider it a virtue.


    effective king, someone like him?  He found it vaguely annoying.


    was Rhyfel the elder, that Gwymr/Frina’s beacon of justice and comaraderie was the murderous, thieving bandit who’d roamed the cliffs, who’d stolen the Berwem outpost from the Dyfnderi protectorate, who’d conspired to dethrone Dwylla.  Adwyn would have listened to his reasons???—??but if the scarlet drake did not even find him worth telling?


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    The pits were unlike a web.


    Who taketh to the highest skies, or In memoriam, or Walk fain in the gaze of Dyfns.  The numbers he found were as early as gyra 547, and as late as 651.


    ceiling had collapsed, too.


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    With the other dragon gone, and the hungry tiredness only looking worse, Adwyn had to think deep about navigating the pits.


    did one smell?  Linen.  Ancient embalment.  Something... fungal.  An unwashed dragon???—??the moltling, he thought.  Should he follow them?


    going somewhere instead of wandering.


    do something about them?  These are my pits.”


    * * *