I sat behind my desk with my clasped hands in front of me. On the other side sat Etin, who wore an air of uncertainty around him.

It felt wrong to send him out on his own, given his relative youth and inexperience, but the more I thought about it, the more reasonable of a decision my brain believed it to be. Looking in hindsight, I inwardly cringed at how I’d nearly taken Etin into the dungeon—unlike myself and the Heroes, he did not have a connection to the System, and despite the enhancements I’d laid on him, he didn’t have Winnie’s experience with battle.

After the decision that he and Al’vathazen would leave for the Continent was made, it became immediately obvious that we couldn’t send them into the wolves’ den unprepared. As such, the old dragoness excused herself and her son so that she could give him some last-minute arrangements, so I took the opportunity to return to the ship with Etin so that I could prepare the young undead as best as I could.

“The most important thing to remember is that you can’t show any fear,” I said, tapping my fingers on the desk to punctuate the last words. “You’ll be going into the wolf’s den, so you’ll get torn apart if you do.”

A vague sense of confusion reached me before Etin’s words. “I thought violence wasn’t allowed in court?”

I blinked. “Ah, you misunderstand. You are right, of course—the trial itself should be a peaceful affair, for the most part. Honor duels can happen, but they are rare and… antiquated. It’s not them I’m warning you about.”

“Who, then?”

“Jenna, of course,” I explained, to Etin’s mounting confusion. “While she has a proven track record of winning seemingly impossible battles, she is just as harsh with her own team as she is with the opposition. I have a certain… rapport with her, so I’m not afraid to deal with her, but you don’t, so you need to know who you’re dealing with.”

I could see that Etin remained unconvinced. “In essence, she’ll be coaching you on what to say and how to present yourself before allowing you to testify—and her definition of acceptable is, perhaps, slightly skewed.”

Skewed wasn’t exactly the right word—insanely high was a more accurate description, but I hoped the letter of introduction I gave him would hopefully temper the old half-ogre’s expectations. She did always have a soft spot for children.

“As for the trial itself,” I continued, abandoning the first line of advice, “I’ve prepared some evidence for you to bring forth.”

On that note, I rose from my seat and walked up to the small mountain of boxes I kept in my office. When I’d left the continent, I’d brought most of my research with me, in case someone had any designs on my tower without me there to protect it. After some shuffling, I had a number of tomes and papers arrayed on the desk.

“This here is the final draft of the paper,” I said, pushing forward the thinnest book. It was about a notebook about as thick as my thumb. If he opened it, Etin would have seen pages upon pages of small writing, with many words and lines scratched out and tiny corrections crammed on the edges—corrections which were themselves scratched out and further corrected.

Etin glanced at the leather cover, but did not otherwise touch the book.

Next came a pile of parchment and notebooks— it was significantly larger than the final draft. “This is, well, everything else that didn’t make it into the paper. Raw data, discarded hypotheses, failed experiments and so on. Everything I thought pertinent to the case.”

I waited a moment for Etin to say something. The moment turned into two and the silence stretched. He did not seem to mind.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Etin asked after a while.

“Just give them to Jenna. She’ll make the most use of them. You just have to answer all her questions, and then she’ll ask you some of those same questions before the judge.” I gave him a tight smile. “It won’t be too difficult. She might be scary at first, but she’s not a bad person.”

Etin did not seem to have any more questions, so I stacked all the papers and books together and began to cover them with a sheet of wrapping paper.

Etin regarded the bundle with some concern. “Al’vathazen will be flying the both of us back, no?” The words came accompanied by a hint of wonder.

“That is the plan, yes. Why?”

“And it’ll be mostly ocean?”

I nodded, curious where this line of questioning was leading.

“What if I drop it?” His eyes were fixed on the bundle.

A pang of horror at the prospect shot through me. That was a good question, and not one I had considered. With a thought, I layered a thin Force enchantment on the package, one that would keep the water from seeping through, and another one of Matter to maintain its integrity. This would keep it from being damaged, at least, but it did nothing to protect it from being lost.

If only I’d taken the time to learn how to make pocket dimensions. My skill with Dimension was decent enough now that I could craft such a spell, with some effort, but that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t know how.

Deep in thought as I was, pondering how to perhaps convince Miranavisr to create a pocket dimension, I only barely noticed Etin coming up with his own solution. He lifted the package off the desk—then set it back down once he realized he needed both hands for what he was about to do.

With some effort, he removed his standard-issue guardsman armor—it had long rusted in place, and he hadn’t seen the need to remove it until now—revealing his ribcage. His empty ribcage.

Ah.

The package fit inside snugly, and with the armor back on, there was little chance of it escaping its enclosure.

For once, Etin looked quite pleased with himself, a smug sense of satisfaction radiating from the young skeleton.

I nodded sagely, pretending I had not missed the obvious solution. “That will do.”

~*~

“Will Al’vathazen be safe, do you think?” I asked the dragon matriarch as we watched the unlikely pair make their final preparations. Strapped to the younger dragon’s body were a number of pouches and bags—it crossed my mind that I could have asked Al’vathazen to carry the documents, though a part of me believed he wouldn’t have agreed, regardless. Dragons were said to be proud and aloof, after all.

Watching Al’vathazen argue with Etin over how the dragon would be carrying the skeleton was, however, causing the image I’d had of dragons to steadily crumble.

“Why would he not?” Miranavisr asked. “Have you humans already forgotten to fear my kind?” There was a wisp of amusement in her voice.

“Quite the opposite, I fear—which can be a problem in itself. Humans do not easily tolerate that which they fear, and there are so much more of them.”

That was a lesson I’d learned at great cost, and not one I’d be forgetting soon.

Miranavisr puffed out a laugh, though it sounded closer to thunder to my ears. “They’ll only react if they know, and Vathaz will know to keep himself hidden once he reaches the continent.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Can he? He doesn’t look particularly… apt for hiding.”

The dragoness snorted. “He’s as big as a house—that’s what you’re trying to say, is it not?”

I grimaced. “Not exactly in those words, but…” Actually, that was the exact description I’d have used, but I was wary of letting Miranavisr know how well she was reading me. She may have been forthcoming about her geas, but she’d given me little reason to trust her so far.

“Dragons have walked among humans—with your kind none the wiser—for as long as we have existed.”

“Truly? Your son seemed to consider mingling with humans to be beneath your kind.”

Miranavisr sighed, a smile spreading on her lips. “He’s always had a flair for the theatrical, my little Vathaz. You shouldn’t mind him too much.”

I smiled. “Does that mean he’s not thousands of years old, as he claimed?”

“He really said that? Truly, that must be Guth’s influence rubbing off on him.” Her smile grew wider, casually showing off her fangs. “But no—he is very much a child. This trip will be good for him, as it will for your own scion.”

“I hope so.”

After a few minutes of squabbling, it looked as if Etin and Al’vathazen settled on a final configuration. To Etin’s apparent disappointment, he would not be riding on top of the dragon, as the Heroes had likely convinced him he should. Instead, Al’vathazen picked him up with a claw.

It was, in my opinion, a much more comfortable way to ride, anyway. He wouldn’t have to deal with the wind trying to blow him away, as he’d be safely secured in Al’vathazen’s claws.

Etin gave me a wave, then turned to do the same to the Heroes who’d assembled themselves nearby. At the same time, Al’vathazen greeted his mother with his free wing. He then unfurled his wings, gave them a tentative flap as if to check if they were still working. A cheer went out from the Heroes’ side, and then—

They were off.

Beside me, Miranavisr let out a deep breath. “Another one leaves the nest,” she murmured softly. “I can only hope he’ll return home safely.”

“You seemed confident in his chances just a minute ago.”

“It is a mother’s prerogative to worry about her children.”

We watched them for another minute as they disappeared into the horizon.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, giving the dragoness a respectful nod, “I have a dungeon expedition to get back to.”

“Leaving so soon?”

“As long as everyone is in agreement, there is no reason to delay. Thank you, again, for your guidance.”

A flicker of a grimace appeared on her face. “I regret that I couldn’t be of more help.”

“It is what it is. Now, if there isn’t anything else…?”

She nodded, and I left her as she continued to stare into the setting sun.

Sarah, Shiro, Alexis, Cam, and David were engaged in some gentle ribbing when I walked up to them.

Sarah noted my approach. “We’re going now, then?”

“Unless there are any objections?”

“Nah,” David said. “We’ve talked it out already. It’s not like we’ll get any advantage by sitting on our thumbs.”

It took another hour to arrive back at the dungeon’s entrance, by which time the dark had fallen. The two monoliths that flanked it glowed with an eerie teal that ended abruptly as it approached the maw.

On the way, I’d found the body of a little bird. A young chick that had fallen out of a tree. I couldn’t tell what kind of bird it had been in life, but I decided it would be a canary in death. Its small body required little magic to animate. Another weave of Mind would allow me to see through its eyes, at least at a short enough range.

Under my instruction, the dead bird flew into the dungeon’s waiting maw. Through its eyes I could see nothing but darkness, but I could feel it moving further inside. It advanced a few feet, and then—

Nothing.

It was an oddly jarring shift between seeing pitch darkness and seeing nothing, despite the fact that they looked the same on a surface level.

It took a few moments for me to realize that the bird’s surroundings hadn’t actually disappeared—I could still feel the spells I’d tied to it, but they were far away, and try as I might I could not point out the direction. My canary wasn’t surrounded by darkness—it had simply and abruptly gone beyond the spell’s ability to transmit images.

As far as I was concerned, though, the experiment was a success. The test subject was still alive, and the dungeon simply did not exist inside the volcano.

“We won’t be immediately annihilated, at the very least,” I said, sharing the results of my experiment with the rest of the group.

“Well, I guess that’s as good a silver lining as any,” Sarah said. “Let’s go?”

“Let’s go,” I confirmed.

With resolute steps, we entered the dungeon.