“What is this ‘monster?’”


    first conversation with something a bit more social.”


    my name, but you shall not need to remember it.  Suffice it to call me the blind wiver.  Everyone does.”


    you are the hatch’s mother, no?  Who is?”


    my faer.  This isn’t Gwymr/Frina.”  A sigh.  “But if the little one thinks you’re worth helping, there must be something.”


    helping you.  This is me allowing you to proceed.”  She reached into her silken robes, retrieved an irregular length of metal.  “You shall need this key to enter the labs, and only through there shall you reach the hallowed chamber.”


    owned.  You purportedly have a mission.  Focus on that, and ignore any shiny thing you think might not be missed.  It will.”


    shall be coming with you.”  The moltling sulked out from the shadows.


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    Adwyn was fledging immensely tired after an evening of dragons smugly denying him answers.  Once, twice was chance, thrice and he started paying attention.  Why would a dragon deny him answers?  Not seeing a reason to give them to him?  And why not that?  Because Adwyn wasn’t on their side, he wasn’t their friend, they wouldn’t open up to him.


    allies.  And yet, in some capacity, there was a hesitation, some axis along which they did not fully align with him.


    hot!”


    my way, so we go the hot way.  It is longer.”


    snap, and then the now familiar crackling of magical electricity.  It coursed and pulsed through the iron grout of the walls and blue knots of shock danced at intersections.


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    His claws scored the granite where he stood.  In truth, those feet resembled more sea stars or gnarled knotted roots, and every foot a different species.  One leg upheld like a pillar, another bent like a tentacle or whip, one like a foreleg, and another couldn’t be seen but at this angle ought to have been.  There were too many tails???—??three?  Seven?  Five and a half?  Irregardless, Adwyn had seen the wriggling of an agitated archon spider.  The wings weren’t wings, and Adwyn didn’t like to look too long at the trunk.  Was it too long or too short?  The scales???—??if they were scales???—??of the things didn’t like the light.  Adwyn glimpsed perhaps they wanted to be white, but they bubbled and stretched, and blood or pus always seemed to be a possibility away on every scute.  Adwyn forgot the tails, and decided there were six limbs.  He wished it would stay that way, but the tendency of the flesh seemed to be exploring every possibility.  A scale became a tendril became a horn became a decaying thing falling off; elsewhere the line of thought was picked up, turning to roots or grasping bony things or things that flapped.  Never in places that made sense.  The neck emerged after several false starts and it wasn’t properly long.  You could call what was on the end a head???—??you had to.  It didn’t have the only eyes, the only mouths, the only flaring nostrils or curling horns, but it was a convention.  The eyes there were there, crowned uncontested the face, and they were the right shape, yet clouded.  The mouth sat closed rather than groaning or screaming like other infected, and Adwyn wondered if coherrent speech rested there.  When the cracked, twitching lips parted, many tongues flicked out in rhythmless cacophony.  There were exactly nine frills, evenly distributed on each side.  Overall, one supposed it fit many definitions of a draconid.  One’s mind refused to squint when faced with such an ontological threat???—??but if one did, one could see the resemblance.  And yet, the entirety of the creature was flickering unintelligibly in Adwyn’s mind just as much the dithering sections of skin???—??was it once a wraith?  An ugly outgrowth of the vitriolic pools?  Two infected dragons who’d lain too close together?  Was it a dragon at all, at all?  Had it once been a dragon?  Adwyn stared long, and in all his study at the universities and monasteries and libraries of two nations, he couldn’t weave together the proper words to render such a creature in entirety???—??and it was for the best, for no dragon truly wanted that.


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    In a place called the pits, one expected to fall for longer.  The orange drake landed sharp on his back, hard rocks poking into him.  Beneath the atrium and its granite blocks, the fire clay had washed away and left a cavern.  The glowing mushrooms reclaimed it, while the shining flows of glass were sated above.  Down here things were slimier and full of insectiod chittering, and an explanation at once gleamed when Adwyn turned his head right.


    It was a cowardly act.  But he had proven himself one to flee many times down in the pits.  He was honorbound to serve Gwymr/Frina.  But what was Gwymr/Frina?  The true nature of the capitol of the land of glass and secrets forever seemed to swirl and shift under him.  Increasingly he could not separate the conspiritorial rot that writhed here from the beauty worth preserving.  He owed it to Mlaen, his only friend.  Was he truly serving her best by remaining here?  Did she need him?  There was already the treasurer, the high guard, and that ridges’ adviser.  Did the Frinan administration truly need another murderer?


    dry.


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    Striding forward, orange feet made quick work out of the cavern below the atrium.  The tunnels sought out like tendrils, in many directions, but going left and climbing, he returned to corridors with cyclopean blocks and unfaltering pillars.  He was sure he’d walked past the length of the atrium, so wherever he was, it lay behind the atrium.


    somewhere, smelling assortedly of vitriol, saltpeter, lards and oils, glazeward and respira, and every manner of dried plant one could find in the cliffs.  He knew also, from the master high alchemist who dwelt in the Geunantic palace, the smell of aqua regia, alkahest and aver.


    meaning that would tie it all together.


    too violent.


    stopped.  It rolled away from the snout strike and raked him with a wing.  The sword was not let go of.


    leashed or restrained.


    burned.


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    At longest last, Adwyn had reached the door in the depths of the pits.  Ahead, a iron portal (the archaic word felt appropriate) filled the corridor.  Its frame panted with endless geometrics and that gleaming Pteryxian script.


    spidersilk robes.


    We’re waiting till the time is right.


    For a new faer.


    You fucked up, Adwyn.


    * * *