Thea watched Liangfeng from her seat just behind Zag’s shoulders. Liangfeng was currently doing halfhearted pirouettes just behind Zag’s horns. She had not stopped moving since the flight began and had traversed the length of his neck just freely singing and dancing almost aimlessly.

Thea was amazed at whatever technique was used to aid the flight. She felt very little wind, something she was eternally grateful for since her hair was wavy and tended to tangle easily in strong winds and the ground below was going by like a blur at an impossible rate.

Liangfeng cartwheeled down the dragon’s neck back to Thea’s position, somehow doing so without tangling herself in her extremely long storm cloud colored hair.

“What are you doing?” Thea asked her when she finished the last cartwheel.

“I’ve only felt this full of life one other time in my life, for most of it I couldn’t even go outside,” Liangfeng answered. She came over and sat down in front of Thea. “I have no intention of being put back in shackles that are not of my own making.”

“What do you mean by ‘not of your own making’?” Thea found her curiosity peaked by this one line.

“We all shackle ourselves with responsibilities, even this guy,” She patted Zag’s back. “It is the way we bring a better life to ourselves and our children and their children. Right now and stretching back for millennia in the past The Covenant has been shackled by the fear of extinction and parents after parents have shackled their children with the responsibility of continuing the species, at the cost of their freedom, their lives and sometimes their sanity. Even you would have faced this sooner rather than later and been pulled from the field.”

Thea pondered silently for a moment, “Wouldn't the responsibility I have towards my people be one I inherited from my parents as well?”

“Would that lovely man serving as your second come chase you down and bring you back if you ran away?”

“I don’t know,” Thea replied honestly.

“You would choose to return though since you’ve already taken it upon yourself for your people to have a better life,” Liangfeng said smugly. “Although I imagine some of your views on what that life should be, have been affected by your interactions of late.”

“I fully intend to withdraw from The Covenant if I can take and keep the throne,” Thea confided. “If it has progressed to the point where your brother would kill an entire legion just to assassinate me I don't even want to imagine how bad things are at the capital.”

“Quite bad,” Liangfeng answered. “My goals are similar to yours in a way, I want to remove Agios from power through proving his dogma wrong or at the very least take the Celestial Domains away from my brother and father and break away.”

“You want the dragon to help you, or should I say dragons?”

“I did, although Chouyan made me realize something I did not consider in my own selfishness,” Liangfeng sighed.

“What is that?” Thea asked. Her head tilted in a questioning posture.

“What if the dragon has been shackled with responsibilities by others as well?” Liangfeng posed the question rhetorically. “We may be entangled in something that makes what we’ve been through seem like petty squabbles.”

“If there is something, I think we got involved the moment those humans started manipulating Covenant politics,” Thea responded with a grimace of disgust.

“Yes, you are right, but I don't think our involvement is going to be able to stop with the completion of our own goals,” Liangfeng halfheartedly smiled.

“It doesn’t matter,” Thea said and caressed the two eggs one with each hand. “I already owe him everything.”

“Oh?” Liangfeng giggled at her.

Thea glared at Liangfeng in turn.

“There is one thing I have been suspecting more and more as I’ve gone through my life, an ultimate irony one could even say,” Liangfeng suddenly said.

“What would that be?” Thea asked still glaring.

“I wonder if I had not been tricked into bearing the responsibilities of dealing with this incident by Jann, starting from when I was very young,” Liangfeng smirked at the thought. “It would be just like him to shackle someone with a responsibility by stoking their desire to be free of those kinds of shackles.”

“Do you think the gods are malicious?” Thea asked.

“I don't know,” Liangfeng responded. “What I do know is they are not imprisoned against their will, at least Jann is not, no matter what Agios may say. Perhaps we can get an explanation when we reach our destination.”

**

“You’re doing it again,” Aisling warned.

“I’m sorry,” Chouyan timidly apologized as she loosened her grip on Aisling’s shoulder.

“Do you have to be standing like that to do whatever it is you’re doing?” Aisling asked after sighing.

“No,” Chouyan answered with a questioning look on her face.

“Then sit down and let me turn around,” Aisling instructed.

Choyan hesitated in a brief moment of confusion before doing as she was instructed. Aisling shifted around to face her and repositioned herself a few times until she was able to get comfortable.

“Talk to me about something,” she told Chouyan.

“Some…” Choyan tilted her head, a few strands of her coal-black hair shifted to rest over her shoulder, “Like what?”

“Anything, the history of qilins, The Covenant or even some story you know,” Aisling urged her on. “It will help with your anxiety.”

“I see,” Chouyan looked doubtful and paused for a moment to think. “Qilins were created by Jann, the God of Wind as guardians of places he deemed holy.

To this day we really don’t understand what was holy about them, our god and creator just said ‘Guard this!’ so we did.

There was a lot of conflict between the gods and their creations, we wondered more and more what we were fighting over.

Then one day a celestial serpent named Agios Ba came to us and asked us that same question. He asked us if that’s what we really wanted to do and if we even had to obey since we were given free will just like all the other beings.

Eventually, he was able to convince us and the others, even the dragons, that the state of the world was untenable and as long as the gods were left free we would be stuck in this endless cycle of killing each other over their petty squabbles.”

“I’ve wondered for a while now,” Aisling interrupted. “Why did they only imprison them?”

“I don’t actually know,” Chouyan answered, “There are a lot of things in the histories that Lady Liangfeng has taught me to question, it could be that they can't be killed or it could be some other reason Agios Ba only knows”

“I see,” Aisling indicated for her to proceed.

“That was the beginning of the war against the gods, it went on for quite some time, nobody really knows how long since we didn't really have a concept of a calendar until much later.

During the war, we were supposedly cursed by the gods in retaliation, and we lost the ability to understand beings of a different race at the same time the first encounters with humankind happened and soon we discovered our ability to transform.

The leadership under Agios Ba, once we found our ability to communicate restored through our human-forms, ordered us to not procreate with other races using our human-forms.

This order caused the divide between him and Sharmelammusarratum and the dragons, what few of them there were, refused to agree to the treaty, so to speak, that became The Covenant.

The qilins throughout this went from guarding the holy places to guarding the celestials, including Agios Ba, it seemed to be in our nature and set our place in the world created by The Covenant.

With our ability to communicate restored we reorganized our fight against the gods, and they soon surrendered and were imprisoned.

Qilins were among the first beings in The Covenant to realize the usefulness of the human-form in building things. As the humans advanced we even traded with and learned from each other in that respect.

The first half-blood was actually from a qilin although Agios Ba shortly after decreed that was a sin second only to having a child with a being of a different non-human race. It has proven too difficult to enforce over time, however.

Time went on pretty peacefully for a time until, for some reason, the leaders declared war on what is now called the Forgotten Kingdom, and we bore the brunt of Zaganursarrum’s wrath when his children died fighting for that kingdom.”

Chouyan glanced in Zag’s direction and frowned when she saw Liangfeng dancing around on his back and neck.

“We don’t really like to talk about that time, we aren’t really a match for a dragon and the celestials wouldn't join in until near the end of the conflict,” Chouyan continued. “After it was over, instead of being ordered to pursue him, the order came down to never interfere with Zaganursarrum again. That made the ‘kidnapping’ of Liangfeng a very confusing event since contradictory orders were coming down from the celestials

Really all I could say to summarize is we were there, doing the grunt work.”

Almost on cue a deafening roar issued forth from Zag’s mouth and was soon joined by one from Bron. The two dragons slowly started to descend in circles so everyone could tend to the business they had built up during the day, eat and sleep for a while.

“Chouyan, you should look up,” Aisling told her and pointed after the whimpering Chouyan uncovered her tortured ears.

Chouyan looked up into the star-lit night sky and her jaw dropped.

“Are you still nervous about flying?” Aisling asked.

Chouyan was too stunned to answer.