It was dark inside the museum. By the time his eyes adjusted, Venn was gone. He slithered across the cramped foyer, claws echoing awkwardly in the void, and found his admission had already been paid. “Your friend said to meet him in the ceramics exhibit if you hadn’t already caught up with him,” chirped the assistant. “Last archway on the left.”

But the instructions were not needed. Guff passed into the first gallery and came upon the bulk of his enormous partner across the passage. He was studying a picture glued to a corkboard next to a line of crude spears. It was a watercolour, broad strokes of blues and greys and browns, depicting the squat wooden keeps of the old city from the air. In the foreground, two long, dark silhouettes approached across the lake on a bridge of ice. Fountains of flame zigzagged across the sky in all directions as beasts descended upon the intruders beneath.

Below the picture was the inscription The Exiles Attack. Above, in much larger letters, was the title of the whole display: The Origins of War.

“Not bad for a modern impression,” Venn said nonchalantly. “But if I recall, we got there before the dragons reached us. If it happened like that, our bones would be at rest on the lakebed now rather than creaking through this horrible little attraction.”

Guff recoiled against the far wall. His stomach roiled somewhere beneath him. “How can you be so cruel?” he gasped. “Why would you do this to me?” Across the gallery, a tiny levin boy stood watching the two leviathans with open fascination. His mother took his paw and hurried him off into the next room.

Venn showed the tips of his teeth. “Us. Whatever is haunting you now... well, I was right there by your side. All this happened, you’re still here, and that’s that. So pull yourself together. It’s your hatchingday!”

The bright sarcasm in Venn’s voice wounded Guff more than those spears ever could. He had been looking forward to this trip. Now it could only be that his friend had sought out the place most likely to cause him misery, and he was enjoying it. “Just... show me whatever we’ve come to see and then we get out of here.”

They passed through the other exhibits much too slowly. Venn didn’t understand, or didn’t remember, Guff thought as he bumbled through the vile things on show. He tried not to see, but even so, the banner of the Phantoms of the Hunt glowed green above him, an actor proclaimed that infamous ‘call of blood’ speech to the disenchanted burrow who whispered legends of the exiles’ capture. And another voice seemed to join it, low and deadly in his soul.

No, we kill and kill until there’s none left.

Venn was there, and Venn did the same things when the thrill of the hunt came upon him, but he had always been more cautious. The wild energy of those dark days, and those that followed, came from Guff alone.

Then they passed the story of the first uprising and into the second. It was less painful, for the dragons had always been known to possess secret motives of their own, and blame for the forsaking of their oaths and their rebellion could rest only with themselves. Now they were gone, cast out into lands unknown, and the union had been peaceful ever since. It made the cases of teeth and charred arrows at least bearable.

But Venn still did not stop. Onwards they went, down the almost-black corridor filled with the jumbled accounts of disembodied skern and levin emanating from plinths of portraits and medals, and into the last room on the left.

It was like the others. Huge oak cabinets divided the space into a dozen slender corridors, all deserted. This time, the banner hung across the centre of the room, dotted with damp plaster from last week’s storms. Relics: The Treasures of the Dragons.

The cabinets were filled with urns and models and ceremonial plates, spotlighted from all angles. Centuries ago, they were the trove of myth, fired by the breath of the lords of the sky, coveted in grand lairs atop the highest mountains and cushioned by the clouds themselves. Now, they sat next to neat little labels bearing handy cataloguing numbers and the names of the kindly donors who had gathered them to this forgotten hoard.

Venn consulted a list on the nearest wall and stamped on. Some of the age seemed to drain from his limbs with every step he took. Guff followed behind. The gaps between the cabinets were barely large enough for one reptile, let alone two side by side.

“Every year for a century I’ve received something like what I have shown you today,” Venn murmured. His voice was no longer solemn; a spark of excitement was causing it to waver now. “I’ve dedicated so much time and expense to a response. I’ve studied, I’ve searched, I’ve waited and listened. And finally, I have found.” He heaved his bulk through a junction, rattling the panes of glass. The elderly guard-levin in the corner frowned and went back to his newspaper.

“What are you talking about?”

Venn paused but did not look round. “It is not mere regards. It is a reminder.”

Guff froze too. Venn had spoken in Old Skernish. The guard had put down his paper.

Venn whirled his head. His monocle gleamed in the spotlights. “We’ve got a promise to keep. Or had you forgotten? No, we’re skern. We remember and we honour our promises. Look!” His neck twisted again and indicated a small ceramic disc between two plates. The label said Ceremonial Tablet. Guff knew better.

“The Season.” Guff was not aware he had spoken in that long-forgotten language too. But talk of honour and promises... it stirred something in his spines. His tail swished against the threadbare carpet.

Venn nodded, enthralled by the artifact. It was plain, unadorned, and unassuming. It had power no-one else in the world could ever dream of. Except one.

“He said we were destined to die in Jiharu. That’s probably true, though not in the way we feared. We failed, and for the best, but we received our help all the same. Surely we do not have long left. These years have been a difficult hunt, but we come to the final stages at last. The ambush is set. It is time for the charge.”

Guff reached out and rested a claw uneasily on Venn’s foreleg. He was quivering slightly, a tense throb he had not felt for a long time. Despite the guilt dredged up by this rotting museum, something deep within felt refreshed. But that did not change the fact that his old friend was speaking gibberish. “So it was here all along. Right under our maws! What of it?”

Venn’s gaze settled on his friend. He flashed his teeth. “What matters is that I’ve got a clean record and an expensive lawyer. Old reptiles can slip in their final years. I’ll be fine. But if I’ve burdened myself with this all these moons, then it falls to you to finish it.”

He edged closer to the cabinet. “Can you still act on instinct... hunter?”

He brought a heavy foreleg down on the cabinet. Shards of glass, splinters of oak and jagged edges of pottery burst into the air and rained down on their backs. The explosion was deafening. It was followed by two more as Venn crunched through the case like plywood. Then, he thrashed across the walkway and upended the opposite cabinet in a mighty heave of his snout.

Guff jumped back, frightened half to death. Through the erupting dust, he saw the guard-levin leap from his chair and lunge for a button built into the wall. A reedy squawking added its weak voice to the cacophony. “Bloodlust!” screamed the guard for all he was worth. “We’ve got bloodlust. Two individuals! Call the police. Police!” He started forward for the doorway, hugging the wall.

Guff looked down at the nearest display. Most of the collection was smashed to smithereens, but Venn had been careful to avoid the Season. There it sat amid the carnage, timeless, waiting for a master. He hesitated.

Venn stopped in his destruction and rounded on his friend. “See you soon, brother. Do not fail us.” Then he was gone, barrelling through the cabinets towards the door. He bowed his legs and leapt clean over the final case, straight into the path of the guard-levin. The volunteer looked up, whiskers trembling, greying paws held up in front of his face for mercy. “Please!” he squealed.

Venn opened his maw and roared. It was the primal scream of a thousand ancestors before them, and in its thunder was a call to strength, to the glory of the hunt.

Something awakened fully inside of Guff. The despair, the penance, the rent or the dining club on Tuesday - none of it mattered now. He reached out and clasped the disc gently in his teeth. He found the fire escape without thinking, without even realising he had looked for a path. There was a dull protest from his joints, but it was buried now. Hurts meant nothing in a time like this.

The little levin had fallen down before Venn in a dead faint. Guff had meant to catch his friend’s eye, but his burrow-mate was too busy smashing his way through the displays to see. It would be a while before the police discovered something had been stolen. If at all.

He thudded through the iron door and into fresh air. It was a beautiful day, and the sun beckoned from behind the prehistoric spines beyond the fields. A crowd was gathering on the village green, and sirens were wailing, but a row of trees leading away to the river would give him plenty of cover.

He was breathless, but he plunged on through the scrub nonetheless. He had the Season, the key to something he didn’t understand, and he had a target, a creature who could be anywhere in the wilds beyond the union, hiding from his brethren of fire, or imprisoned, or worse. He had no direction, and no-one to aid him, and a failing three hundred year old body to drag along the way.

But he had his honour, his purpose, and the skills of the hunt.

And he was free.