Cass found herself in her campground. The wind whipped wildly through the trees, and the fire pit glowed with welcome at her side. Behind her stood her tent, open but empty. Around her towered redwoods, their tall branches piercing a star-filled sky.

  Somewhere far behind her, she could hear the rush of waterfalls. Had there always been waterfalls at this campsite? She didn’t think so, but there was something right about it.

  Unlike the sharp divide before her.

  Three steps forward, and her campground ended. Soft, pine-needled soil gave way to black glass. The stars did not grace the black expanse above it. There was nothing out that way. Nothing but a dragon standing defiant, even amid his injuries.

  “Who are you?” the dragon growled. It was the same dragon. Dusty brown scales and matted mane. But he seemed even more injured here. His body was covered in open wounds, many dripping with blue Focus, like blood. Chunks of flesh had been torn off. Scales peeled. His wings broken. “How dare you taunt me with a partnership when you already hold one.”

  “Partnership?” Cass repeated. This was her soul well. The place she’d built when she’d fought Salos that time. Why was the dragon here?

  Why was she here? Context clues suggested this was how Dragon Knights formed their contracts with their dragons. But shouldn’t it be more complicated than simply touching the dragon?

  Wait! “You’re talking!”

  The dragon glared at her from over the boundary. “Naturally.”

  “I was told feral dragons can’t do that,” Cass said.

  His glare deepened. “They can’t.”

  Except he clearly was. How did she break the news to him? Or was there some other complexity here? Cass Identified him again.

  Dragon Soul

  Lvl 38

  [A dragon’s soul is a fragile thing. Incomplete. Broken by a curse long ago.]

  “Are you here to taunt me?” he asked. “Is this a new form of torture those wretched Crescent cultists have devised?” He shook his head. “No. They would never sacrifice the sanctity of one of their member by fracturing their soul enough to do this.”

  He was muttering to himself more than Cass.

  “Wait!” Cass interrupted. It almost sounded like he knew what was going on. “I’m not with them. They kidnapped me.”

  “That I do find more believable,” he muttered.

  “Do you know what they want with us?” Cass asked. It seemed like a long shot, but she’d take anyone else’s speculation over endlessly looping through her thoughts on the subject.

  “Us?” He shook his head. “I don’t know your story, but they are a group of fanatics. A sect of Fortitude’s followers. Of all the gods, Fortitude hates demons most. So, the Order has made it their mission to eradicate them in her name.”

  “Demons,” Cass repeated. “What does that have to do with you?”

  The dragon squinted at her. “You don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?” Cass crossed her arms over her chest.

  A dry chuckle resonated from his throat. “That dragons are born demons?”

  Cass frowned. That didn’t square with what she knew about demons. Or dragons. “I was told demons are hungry things that do everything in their power to eat other souls?”

  Alyx and Salos had pretty much agreed on that point. The dragon nodded as well.

  “And I’ve never heard anyone say anything of the sort about dragons,” Cass continued. Rather, they were revered. The Grand Duchess and her dragon ruled the city with awe and might. The dragons were the duchy’s strength.

  “No?” he snorted. “Surely you know the fate of feral dragons?”

  Cass nodded. “Without a knight, you go crazy?” Was that it?

  “Dragons only have half a soul,” he said.

  Cass frowned again. His soul was battered and beaten, with chunks missing and cuts oozing, but it was still a far cry from missing half. Then again, the stuff in soul wells were more about visualization and feeling than anything else. Perhaps he visualized his half a soul as an entire dragon?

  “You don’t look convinced,” he said. “I promise it’s not a difficult concept.”

  It wasn’t. But also, “How does one measure a soul?”

  “What?”

  “You said you are born with only half a soul,” Cass said. “That’s all dragons? Always?”

  “Since the first was cursed during the last age, yes.”

  “But how can you tell that you only have half a soul? I’ve only got half the limbs of a spider or an octopus, but that doesn’t mean I’ve only got half a body.”

  “What?”

  Cass shrugged. “How do you know that your soul isn’t exactly how it’s supposed to be?”

  “Because it isn’t,” he snarled.

  Cass stepped back. She’d clearly crossed some limit of his patience on the subject. “Sorry.”

  That hadn’t answered her question, but moving on was probably more fruitful. “Let’s get back to the whole, Order of the Copper Crescent, demon hunters thing for a minute?”

  He grumbled. “There isn’t much more to say about it. They are a vile group that makes our cursed lives all the harder, trying to kill as many of us as they can wherever and whenever they can. Us and our knights.”

  “And any other demons they can find?” Cass asked, thinking of herself and Salos.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The dragon snorted. “There are no other demons.”

  Cass wasn’t so sure of that. Obviously, there was Salos. But there were also the demonic constructs made with his soul. Maybe they wouldn’t be counted the same? Where did such things fall on the Crescent’s priority list? Another thing she left alone for now.

  “So, to be clear, dragons are demons. This Order hunts demons. You’re a dragon and, therefore, a demon?”

  He looked unimpressed with her.

  Cass continued to the main point, “Then why haven’t they killed you yet?”

  Or, more importantly, her?

  He chuckled. “A demonic soul chomps at the bit to chase demonic souls.”

  Not a straight answer, but his meaning was clear enough. “They use you to find other demons?”

  “They tear away pieces of me to fuel their spells for finding demons, yes.”

  She knew what damage to the soul felt like. An ache that you couldn’t heal. Pain entirely sourceless yet all-consuming. Daggers of ice into flesh you did not possess. Lightning down nerves you didn’t know you had.

  To do this intentionally to any creature. To do it repeatedly.

  The wind whipped around her, gusting into a gale. Cold. Restless. Furious.

  To know that she didn’t have the strength to stop it.

  The campfire burst to life, doubling in size. Indignant.

  “Who are you anyway?” the dragon asked. “Not a member of the Order, obviously.”

  Cass shook her head. “Just another victim like you.”

  He snorted. “You don’t look like a dragon. What could they possibly want with you?”

  Wasn’t that the question. A question that had only one answer, as unpleasant as it was to admit. “I might be a demon, too.”

  He laughed. “You? A demon? You don’t look broken.”

  “Well, how would you know?” Cass shot back. It should be reassuring to hear him disagree, but it just felt dismissive instead. As if all her fears were wasted energy and she was dumb for worrying. “You don’t look like half a soul.”

  “You just don’t know how to see.” He snorted. “If anything, you look… Hm. Well. I’ll admit I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “What?” Cass crossed her arms over her chest, a scowl on her lips.

  “You understand a halfling, despite their name, is not actually half a human?” the dragon said.

  “Sure,” Cass said. If anything, that might have been a better example than her earlier comment about spiders and limbs.

  “And a giant is not double a human?”

  “Sure?”

  “Your soul is a bit like a giant. Far larger than it has any right to be, even for a spirit.”

  “What does that mean?” Cass asked.

  “It means, at a glance, your soul looks like a demon’s. All the damage you’ve done to it doesn’t help. But it looks to me like all the damage has been healed over. Mostly on your own.”

  “Mostly?” Cass repeated.

  “You let your bond fix some of it by my eyes,” the dragon said.

  “What, exactly, does that mean?” Cass asked.

  “What are the teaching Dragon Knights these days?” he muttered.

  “I’m not a Knight.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “But you hold a bond?”

  “Not to a dragon.”

  “But it’s the same kind of bond,” he repeated.

  Cass shrugged.

  He squinted into the distance, past Cass. Toward the sound of the waterfall behind her. “Another spirit? No. That. That is a demon, isn’t it?”

  Cass shrugged again.

  The dragon backed up a step. “Shadows take me. You are bound to a demon?”

  “Hey! You were just saying you were a demon. What makes a non-dragon demon worse?” Cass crossed her arms again, glaring at the giant lizard.

  “A dragon cannot help their situation. We are tragic victims of a war we did not ask for. We have been cursed and blessed in turn. Blessed with the Knight bond which stabilizes the half soul. Blessed so that our demonic System skills are sealed. We hunger for souls but cannot claim them.

  “That, on the other hand,” he glared past Cass again, “Was torn in two. Intentionally. Nothing stops it from clawing into a soul and devouring them live. Nothing stops it from Sundering healthy souls, cracking open their soul wells like eggs, and slurping up the being within. Nothing can stabilize them. They are slaves to the madness and the hunger.”

  “Okay, but how do you know any of that?” Cass asked. This was nothing she hadn’t already heard before. The specifics about dragons were new, but the fear around the ‘madness’ of demons was well-tread ground. Even Salos had warned her about it.

  Well, she hadn’t seen it yet. Not in the senseless madness that everyone was warning her it would be. So far, she and Salos had only ever been a danger to the things possessing Salos’s soul cores and themselves. There were no wild rampages through the innocent or uninvolved.

  Worse, besides Salos, everyone telling her this seemed to believe in demons the same way a medieval peasant might have believed in unicorns. Somebody, at some point, had seen something similar. They existed, in so far as rhinoceroses existed. But every other detail was hopelessly wrong and no one talking about them was truly convinced they were real.

  This dragon wasn’t any different.

  “Well?” Cass prodded.

  The dragon grunted. “Why would I doubt the words of my goddess?”

  “A goddess told you directly this was how this all worked?” Cass asked. She supposed that was possible. Maybe Alacrity (she assumed it was Alacrity they were talking about anyway) made time to tell all the dragons about their condition. There seemed to be comparatively few of them. It was possible in a world with direct divine intervention.

  “No. Not to me. Not directly,” the dragon said. “But Alacrity’s priests are well informed on our situation. There is much passed down among our family as well.”

  Cass nodded slowly. That made more sense. And also meant that they were working off of worse than third-hand information.

  Was it possible it was right? Yeah. Maybe.

  Maybe she—or perhaps just Salos—would explode in hunger for souls and they would level the city alone.

  But then again, “My demon and I have the same kind of bond as a dragon and their knight. You just said so. Now I even have Alacrity’s blessing, just the same. Shouldn’t that be all the safeguards we need?”

  “If forming this kind of bond with just any demon was possible, do you think we would fear them as we do?”

  “But I do seem to have one,” Cass prodded.

  The dragon continued to glower.

  “So, in summary, I’m not a demon. My demon is probably well contained by the same safeguards dragon demons have. The Copper Crescent is holding you to harvest ingredients for their creepy magic. They’ve kidnapped me because I’m bound to a demon, and they probably don’t care about the difference. That about sum everything up?”

  The dragon sighed. “Why are you here again? Why did you try to bond with me?”

  Cass shrugged. “Didn’t mean to. I just patted you because you seemed sad and hurt, then ended up here. The company has got to be nice, though, right?”

  “Sure.” He slumped to the floor, settling in a sad lump, the energy leaking from him.

  “So, while I’ve got you, we should talk about next steps,” Cass continued.

  “Next steps?” the dragon repeated.

  “Well, I’m in the process of breaking out. I had no interest in what those Crescent guys were up to, and now that I know their plans for me are either murder or ingredient harvesting, I find my interest dropping further still.

  “Obviously, you’re coming with me now that I know what your deal is.”

  The dragon blinked at her. “What?”

  Cass just stared back. “You don’t want to stay here getting your soul sliced up for parts, do you?”

  “No, but I am not in control of my body. I barely feel it or the passage of time.”

  That was probably for the best, all things considered, but it was decidedly inconvenient now.

  “If anything, I should ask you to kill me and set me free that way,” the dragon continued. “Without a Knight, I am far too dangerous to everyone.”

  “Nope,” Cass said. “I’m not here for that.”

  “Even if it would end my suffering?”

  Cass shrugged. “If we really, really can’t find a way to get you out of this, then maybe I’ll think about it. A mercy killing is probably better for you than an eternity of torture. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I refuse to believe those are our only options. So let’s set that aside for much later, ‘kay?”

  He blinked again. “But how do you expect to escape, much less with me?”

  “Well, that’s what we need to talk about, silly.”