“We should turn back,” Dan said flatly.

  “We absolutely must press on!” Ooble rejected excitedly.

  “It’s a dragon!”

  “Exactly! And I am dragonkin! I can speak with him!” He paused. “Or her. Why does your language not have a gender-neutral singular pronoun?”

  “We just use the gender-neutral plural pronoun in those cases,” Maeryn told him tiredly.

  “Ah. Clarity.” He turned back to the alchemist, ready to continue his argument. “I can speak with them!”

  “Just because you can speak with something doesn’t make it automatically friendly,” Terrance pointed out pragmatically.

  “But just because something’s scary doesn’t make it automatically an enemy,” Ernesto countered with an edge in his voice. “Not unless you treat it like one from the start.”

  Everyone paused at that, considering Ernesto’s history growing up as a necromancer in a time where all attuned to necro were supposed to be killed on sight. Terrance and Dan looked particularly abashed.

  “Okay, let’s just calm down for a minute,” Frankie said firmly, stepping forward to stand between everyone, hands raised in peace. “Before any of us start freaking out-”

  “More than we already are, anyway,” Peter muttered, earning a raised eyebrow from his girlfriend.

  “-we should look at what we know. And Captain Maeryn gets final decision as always.”

  The others shuffled in place, but seemed to generally accept the advice. “I’ll begin,” Dan stated after a few seconds of no one speaking. “Here’s my perspective. We are in a desolate, frozen landscape that is only going to get colder and harder to get through the further we progress. The dragon is somewhere ahead of us, and according to Maeryn, they are the origin of this storm. This tells me that whatever their motivation, they want to be left alone, and they are perfectly willing to ensure this by killing anything that gets too close.”

  He shook his head. “When something that strong wants to be left alone, you leave it alone. It’s not just respect, it’s survival.”

  Ooble’s nostrils flared. “I understand your perspective. My counter-argument is this: dragons originate from a time before the Mist. I cannot believe that they would ally with the Mad Prince, considering the Mist is deadly and mutative. If we look at this storm as a means of killing the Mistwarped and the Undead, then their actions are those of a potential ally, not of isolation. A dragon ally would be a mighty boon, not simply in power, but in knowledge.”

  He gestured out towards the Glacial Expanse. “Dragons were not known for their communities, but they are ageless beings. They might know where the other dragons are. Or perhaps they would be willing to barter for more information on holy magic. The possibilities are endless.”

  Ooble shook his long, scaly head. “For these reasons, I maintain that we must not squander this opportunity. We are already here. We are already as prepared as possible. If we are to save this world, we must take risks, no?”

  “Okay, crazy idea,” Terrance suggested. “What if we just send the dragon a Wind Whisper? A little message, right to their ear, asking for a peaceful meeting? Could we just hunker down here and see if they lower the storm enough to visit? And if they don’t, we could take as a sign that they’re not interested in talking?”

  “I don’t think we could be sure they’d ever get the message,” Maeryn rejected, shaking her head. “Listen to the wind howl. It’s just gonna get louder the further we go. How would a dragon hear anything over it?”

  “If the dragon’s been casting this storm for years on end, I’d be surprised if they could hear anything at all. Hearing damage is one hundred percent a thing,” Peter interjected.

  Ooble blinked slowly. “I had not considered that. It would be difficult to communicate with a deaf dragon.”

  “Does Draconic have a sign language variant?” Ernesto asked him curiously.

  “I do not understand. What is sign language?”

  “Sometimes humans lose their ability to hear, or are born without it,” Dan informed him. “They twist their hands and fingers into different shapes—or signs for short—and move them across their body in order to rapidly convey concepts.”

  “While I actually know sign language,” Terrance continued, garnering a startled look from Maeryn, “it’s not universally taught. Is there something like that for dragons?”

  “Not that I know of.” Ooble’s lips curled slightly in displeasure. “The deaf dragonkin in my culture are able to live with recognizable gestures and the written form of Draconic. I would greatly appreciate being introduced to a sign language teacher at some point in the future.”

  “Returning to the here and now,” Maeryn cut in, “dealing with our possibly-deaf dragon who may or may not be friendly. If we can’t send a message, then our only options are pressing forward or retreat. Anyone have any more arguments for or against that haven’t been brought up?”

  Everyone glanced at each other, but nobody seemed to have anything to add. Maeryn raised one hand to her eyes, rubbing them as she tried to come to a decision. Aligned with ice as she was, the pros and cons came easily.

  She cast her mind across the paths the future could take. The best outcome was if they pushed forward, and the dragon was friendly. The worst was if they pushed forward, and the dragon tried to eat them. Everything else was along the spectrum between.

  “The problem,” she said slowly, “is that we are nearly certain that the drow civilization had a mana well, same as the dwarves. And we absolutely must reach there, to ensure that it has not been infected by a necromantic enchantment. Because otherwise, the Mist will never end.”

  She took a deep breath, straightening and bracing herself for the decision she had to make. “We press on. When we get close enough to the dragon, we work together to write a large message in Draconic on a sheet of ice, then use ice magic to get it to the dragon while we stay out of sight. If they’re friendly, we stay and talk. If they’re not, we go around.”

  There was a beat as her orders were digested, and she struggled not to fidget or bite her lip. She’d done her best to project confidence, as this truly was the best plan she could think of, but… she was putting them all in extreme danger.

  Maybe she should’ve had them turn back. Spend a week or two hammering out an alternative plan. No, no, they didn’t have time for that kind of hesitancy. Mana depletion was still a problem. If they took too long, everyone died anyway. Abyss. Why was she constantly being given hard decisions?

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Ernesto finally said.

  “Probably the best move we can make,” Terrance agreed.

  Ooble scratched his scaly neck thoughtfully. “I do like how it balances survival against opportunity.”

  “I don’t like how dangerous it is…” Dan sighed. “But you’re right, Ooble. We need to take risks. Good call, Maeryn.”

  “We’ll need to inspect the Ice Resistance enchantments on the SPATTs from here on out,” Frankie muttered, with Peter fervently nodding. “As long as we refresh them every morning, though, I think we’ll make it through.”

  Veronica, who had been silent for the entire decision-making process, sighed heavily. “Let’s hope we don’t all freeze to death getting there.” She gave Maeryn a wan smile. “By the time we reach the drow ruins, we’ll all be masters at Warm Self.”

  “Very possibly,” she agreed quietly, trying to keep her discomfort to herself. After a moment, she shook her head. “Right then. We’ll maintain camp here today. Dan, Terrance, figure out those Wind Resistance enchantments. Frankie, Peter, SPATT maintenance. Veronica, Ernesto, you’re on cooking duty. Ooble? I need you to start teaching me Draconic so we can actually get that message to the dragon when the time comes.”

  “Yes, Captain!”

  The day passed slowly. Dan worked on experimental Wind Resistance prototypes. Terrance was relieved to find out that Maeryn was right; he didn’t need to completely relive the memories of being trapped on Cloudreach to use void magic. He chose to spend the rest of his day practicing remaining in that affinity for longer stretches, so he could switch to it at a moment’s notice. Barrier magic was nothing to sneeze at, after all.

  Ernesto, after doing his part to cook and making a quick patrol around their enclosure to purify the local Mist, retreated to his tent to meditate on holy magic. He was still banging his head against using Restoration to heal, but he was stubbornly sticking to it.

  Veronica, Frankie and Peter finished their tasks pretty easily before coming to join Maeryn in her new Draconic lessons. And that was when everyone discovered that Ooble had a patience problem for people who struggled to learn new languages. Because Draconic was not coming easily to Maeryn. At all. In either spoken or written form. After the third time she got tongue-tied trying to say “renthisj”—which apparently translated to “speak”—Ooble had to walk away to cool his temper.

  Maeryn might have felt a little better about the situation, if Peter hadn’t surprised them all with his apparent aptitude shortly after Ooble returned. Somehow, he saw some kind of pattern in the scratches and claw marks of written Draconic, and he started picking it up alarmingly fast. As it was, Maeryn just felt kind of stupid. Like she was somehow the slow kid in the classroom. She’d remained ice-aligned during her impromptu Draconic lessons, hoping that the extra clarity and emotional suppression would let her learn it more quickly, but whatever learning boost it provided clearly wasn’t enough to make up for her complete lack of talent.

  It certainly didn’t help that she kept getting slow, rhythmic pulses of mana resonance as the ice dragon kept up the storm that shrieked with blistering winds and whirling snow, held at bay only by a circle of Ice Walls. She grimaced. It was still way below freezing, but the lack of wind chill made it a lot more bearable. She definitely wasn’t looking forward to getting back out there.

  Maeryn sighed, getting up and walking away as Ooble devoted all of his attention to the rapt Peter. There was no point in sticking around for this. She’d just have to trust Ooble and Peter to etch whatever message they needed into the ice when the time came. It was too bad, though. She’d actually really wanted to learn Draconic, just because she wanted to be able to talk to the dragonkin back in Skonelk. They’d been very kind to her in her short time there, and… she just wanted to say thank you, and not have to rely on a translator.

  She shook her head. She could try again another time. Maybe Peter would have tips after he figured things out. But that left Maeryn without an apparent task for the day. So. What to do now?

  She mentally reviewed her to-do list, which was surprisingly short for once. She needed to finish attuning to water, but she was still missing something. She just didn’t know what yet. She’d already sent her Wind Whisper to Jacob for the day, too. Which left…

  She blinked, and perked up. “Hold on. I never did work with Terrance to see if we could figure out what went wrong with summoning his parents’ spirits.” Maeryn looked both ways, checking to see if anyone needed her at that moment, then shrugged and stalked over to the guys’ tent.

  Inside, Terrance slowly raised his eyes to gaze at her with simultaneously intense and hollow eyes. A shudder of revulsion ripped through Maeryn’s body as she looked at him. Even though she knew he was okay, even though she knew that this was just a remembered mindset and not the true Terrance, seeing him this way was just wrong on so many levels.

  How could anyone have seen him like this and not rushed to help him? How could anyone have lacked the empathy to see how close to the edge he was? How could anyone have seen either of them and been so inhuman as to let them suffer?

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  …She closed her eyes and breathed. This wasn’t about her. She wasn’t going to make this about her. Even if she and Terrance had had surprisingly similar traumas. Now wasn’t the time. Maeryn forced herself to open her eyes and look at Terrance as he was now. If he was going to keep using void magic for them all, she owed him that.

  “Do you need something, Maeryn?”

  Another shiver rippled down her spine at how utterly empty his voice was. Maeryn swallowed. “I thought now might be a good time for us to try summoning your parents again. See if we can figure out what went wrong last time.”

  Terrance’s head tilted a few degrees. Just enough to convey thoughtfulness, no more. His lips didn’t twitch in the slightest. His eyes didn’t even blink. “Yes, that’s a good idea.” He looked around slowly. “No one else around. Here’s as good a place as any. Nice and private.” He met her gaze, and blinked exactly once, his expression otherwise completely still. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Maeryn inhaled a slow, shuddering breath, and swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She closed her eyes, and released her grip on ice, allowing her current—hopefully temporary—default affinity for necro to come to the fore. Mist filled her insides, and Maeryn felt her mindset shift slightly away from cold planning, towards ruthless action. It was a subtle change, but definitely there.

  She sat in front of Terrance, and focused on the Spirit concept, channeling necro mana throughout herself in order to see the spiritual tethers attached to her friend. “Think of your parents,” she ordered quietly. “Their names. What they looked like. The sound of their voices. Your favorite memories of them.”

  Terrance said nothing, didn’t even move to acknowledge her. But he didn’t need to; Maeryn could see two threads in particular flare to life, bright and eager. They practically leapt into her hand as she reached for them.

  Her eyes burned ethereal azure as she took in everything the threads had to say. “Your parents are already summoned,” she stated with dull surprise. “I think last time failed because the necromancer you used couldn’t break their existing summoned forms.”

  “Can you?” Terrance asked simply, his hollow eyes staring into her soul.

  Maeryn’s eyes narrowed. “Watch me.” She grit her teeth and called to mind everything she knew about the Spirit concept. And after all this time with Ernesto? After all her personal experience with ghosts, wraiths, and her own soul? She knew it quite well. There was a reason, after all, that her default affinity right now was necromancy.

  Maeryn channeled necro mana through the threads, and cast the spells she needed. “Banish Spirit. Summon Spirit.”

  Mist rushed out of her, coalescing between Terrance and herself into two translucent forms hovering in midair. And like a curse had suddenly been lifted, the rogue’s unnatural stillness melted, becoming human once more as Maeryn’s wind affinity pinged at her in sudden mana resonance. Terrance leapt to his feet, eyes suddenly wet as bittersweet joy tore across his face. “Mom! Dad!”

  “Son…” The man still looked to be in his late twenties, dressed in noble finery, with an exquisitely cared for moustache and well-groomed hair. But any lingering ideas of him being some distant, neglectful parent vanished in an instant as he immediately descended to the floor and visibly had to hold himself back from pulling Terrance into a deadly hug—wraiths would inflict necromantic cold on anything they touched. “Oh, my boy… My beautiful, wonderful son… I’m so sorry.”

  He was joined a heartbeat later by his wife, who wore a simple but flattering dress, with a beautiful necklace and earrings. It was impossible to tell what color her hair used to be, with the Mist’s blue tones coloring everything, but Maeryn’s eyes caught on the almost transparent tears that evaporated in seconds after leaving her face.

  Terrance’s chest heaved with emotion, and nobody said anything for a long minute. Maeryn took a small step away, ready to give them some privacy, but he instantly tracked her movement. “No. Stay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The rogue nodded firmly. “I’m sure.” He looked back at his parents. “Mom, Dad, this is Maeryn d’Vert. My best friend.” His lips twitched into a smirk. “You could call her my partner in crime, except we don’t actually do much crime.”

  “Not since we left Zephyria, anyway,” Maeryn muttered. She nodded at the spirits. “Lord Nightshade, Lady Nightshade. It’s nice to meet you in person.”

  “Please, call us Tobias and Ava,” Terrance’s father invited. “I daresay I had enough of the nobility business while I was alive.”

  Maeryn smiled. “Alright. We have many questions, but they can wait.” She glanced sidelong at Terrance. “You have some catching up to do.”

  “So we do,” Tobias agreed softly. “Unfortunately, we had been bound in that place since shortly after our murder, which greatly limited our ability to check on you, Terrance. But that story can wait. Tell us of your life.”

  “We’re all ears,” Ava whispered, reaching forward… and then lowering her hand guiltily, no doubt remembering the effects of her touch.

  Terrance began speaking, and Maeryn listened in with half an ear. She already knew how the story went. It took almost an hour to get through everything, with her friend finally ending with, “... and now we’re here in the Glacial Expanse, heading towards the remains of the drow civilization. To find more about holy magic, and to cleanse the mana well if it’s tainted. Though now there’s apparently an ice dragon in the way, so that’s fun.”

  “You’ve lived a hard life,” his father murmured. “But a good life, too. I’m glad you found real companions.”

  “You sound happy,” Ava observed with a bittersweet smile.

  “I am happy,” he agreed. “Sure, there are some annoyances in my life. The whole ‘needing to get a fiance’ thing, for one. But I have friends. Real friends. And I’ve made a real difference in the world. I’m out here doing something important. I’m rebuilding our family name. And I get to be me while I’m doing it.” Terrance smiled, brighter and more sincerely than Maeryn had ever seen. “I couldn’t possibly ask for more.”

  “I’m glad,” Terrance’s mother said softly, holding a hand to her heart. She turned to Maeryn. “It sounds like you’ve done a wonderful job, taking care of my boy. Stay good to him, please.”

  “Of course,” Maeryn confirmed with a nod.

  “Now then.” Tobias drew himself up. “Our side of the tale is much shorter. We were killed in our sleep. We never saw the killer. But we soon found ourselves summoned by a necromancer on a private airship. We were never told much of anything, save that we had been summoned purely as a preventative measure. To ensure King Duncan was never able to draw me to his side.”

  “But why?” Terrance asked.

  “And how did they keep you there?” Maeryn added.

  “The how was relatively simple.” the deceased Lord sighed. “We were summoned in jail cells with fire enchantments.”

  Maeryn’s eyes sharpened as she connected the dots. “Purification,” she declared. “They locked you up with Purification enchantments. They dissolved your form if you tried to cross them.”

  “And then they’d just summon us again,” Tobias agreed. “And since we didn’t want to contribute to the mana crisis, we ultimately decided that there was nothing for us to do but to sit and wait.”

  “But you also asked why,” Ava continued, looking at her son. “Which is far more interesting. You mentioned mana inversion earlier. Maeryn, Terrance, you already know about the Nightingales. Have you ever considered how no Nightingale was ever caught?”

  The two teenagers looked at each other, dumbfounded. “I, ah, never thought about it,” Maeryn admitted.

  “I thought they were just that good?” Terrance offered.

  His mother pressed a finger to her nose and leaned in conspiratorially. “The answer is the inverted wind element. Our family has kept the knowledge of how to attune as a family secret for generations.”

  Tobias nodded gravely. “When I would go out as a Nightingale, I would do so with void magic. All the little wind-based traps and alarms people would set up were utterly worthless against me.” He paused. “Also quite useful at cutting through locks, and preventing being spied upon.”

  “Which is how Captain Erina is keeping her airship, the one we were trapped on, hidden,” his wife finished darkly. “She bound us to ensure that we could never tell anyone the secrets of void magic. And, specifically, its weakness.”

  At the unexpected name, Maeryn fell over, then scrambled back up to look Ava in the eyes. “Captain Erina’s the one who kept you? She has my parents there too!”

  Terrance nodded at her seriously. “Okay. I was ready to let whoever kept you go until later, since we’re busy saving the world and all. But now it’s both personal and urgent. What’s the weakness?”

  “Void magic is fragile against anything reasonably dense,” his father explained. “And if you can break the stillness in even the tiniest way, the whole construct shatters. Even a skipping stone can take it down.”

  “So if you want to find her ship,” Ava told them darkly, “You need to cast your wind magic during a storm. The heavier, the better. Hailstorms work best, but a good heavy rainstorm would do.”

  “You should also know how to attune to the void, for your own sake,” Tobias muttered.

  “We, ah, already figured that out,” Maeryn admitted sheepishly. “Just yesterday, in fact.”

  The two ghosts stared at her, dumbstruck. She nudged Terrance meaningfully. “You might want to show them. Just for a second, though.”

  He took a deep breath, and then his face went painfully blank as his eyes flickered with purple mana. “Barrier,” he commanded, conjuring a translucent violet shield in front of his hand.

  Tobias coughed. “Well. I guess the blood does tell, doesn’t it?”

  “Quite impressive of our son to figure it out on his own,” Ava commented, clearly faster at catching her bearings.

  “Yes. Quite so.”

  A flicker of competitive spirit rose within Maeryn, suggesting she attune to void then and there just to see what kind of reactions the ghosts would have. She quashed it; that was a stupid idea. It was only afterwards that she realized that she’d just felt the tiniest ember of her old fire magic, and relief surged through her. It really was just in recovery. She was healing.

  Depths beneath, she was grateful.

  “Hold on, how were you going to teach me void magic?” Terrance asked slowly, looking simultaneously confused and suspicious. “It’s not exactly something that takes fond memories of play and exploration.”

  “Oh, it’s part of the tradition of taking up the Nightingale mantle,” Tobias told him understandingly. “After we were certain your wind magic was strong enough, we would tell you what the requirements were to attune to void, spend some time teaching you about the concepts. Then would come the hard part: the mindset.”

  “You’d need to be incarcerated for the duration, and you’d know it. So we’d agree on the start date, with everyone understanding that you’d need to stay there until you attuned,” Ava finished gently.

  “That… doesn’t sound so bad,” Terrance muttered.

  His father shrugged. “Because it’s not. You just need to feel trapped, like time is moving on without you. As soon as you get stir-crazy and desperate to get out because your relationships are deteriorating, it’s usually enough to attune. And even if you didn’t, you’d be let out after a month, and we’d try again another time.”

  Maeryn and Terrance exchanged a wistful glance. That sounded so much less traumatizing than what had actually happened to them.

  “Do you have any more questions for them?” she asked the rogue directly.

  “Lots,” Terrance said with a sigh. “But only one that could be important and useful in the short term. Mom. Dad. Where is the Nightingale Library? I practically tore Zephyr apart trying to find it.”

  His father actually smirked at him. “In the mountain neighboring Mount Peace. Our ancestors thought it clever that everyone would just think we were visiting our dead.”

  “Not sure why you need it, though,” Ava said, cocking her head with a puzzled frown. “It’s an archive, but nearly all of the books that predate the Mist are written in languages we’ve been unable to decipher.”

  Her husband chuckled. “She’d know. The moment she learned about the library she made an excuse to be gone for a month and tried to read literally every book there was.”

  Terrance snorted. “Bookish type?”

  “And proud of it,” his mother sniffed.

  “Those ancient texts are probably Elven and Dwarven,” Maeryn mused aloud. “Lucky us we have Ooble. Who knows, we might learn a thing or two about the Mad Prince.”

  Ava’s head whipped around to stare at her. “You have a translator?” she whispered.

  Tobias palmed his face. “Oh no, here we go.”

  In an instant, the wraith of Terrance’s mother was right up in Maeryn’s face. “I insist you summon me back whenever you visit the library,” she half-pleaded half-demanded. “I will pay you anything.”

  “Love? We’re dead, remember?” Tobias reminded her gently. “Anything we have is already Terrance’s.”

  “I will find a ghostly currency! And if there’s not one I’ll make one!”

  Maeryn had to bite her tongue not to laugh as Terrance’s father gently wrangled his wife into pouting submission.

  Terrance shook his head with a sigh of exasperated affection, one echoed by his father. “Right. That answers that. Anything else I have is just questions about your life. Things I should know about my parents.”

  “You can ask us anything,” Ava assured him with a smile, though the effect was somewhat ruined by her visibly grinding her heel into her husband’s foot. She was clearly still salty about having her fun ruined.

  “And I want to,” he told her. “One day, when this is all over, I’m going to have Maeryn summon you again and get your whole life stories out of you. Your best friends’ names, your comfort foods, your first date, all of it. But…” He slumped and looked away. “We need to keep moving. We can’t lose focus.”

  Tobias wrapped an arm around his wife’s ghostly waist. “We understand, son. Go do what you must. But know that we will always love you.”

  The rogue wiped at his eyes. “Love you too,” he choked out. He took one more moment to stare at them, visibly trying to catch everything about that instant, before he gave Maeryn a nod.

  She let go of the spell, and the ghosts winked out, the Mist wisping away into the air and vanishing.

  Terrance closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. Maeryn didn’t say anything, merely moving to his side and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He leaned in, staying similarly silent as he pulled himself together again.

  They stood there for a time, before Terrance finally gently pulled away. “Okay. We have answers now. And what we’re doing after we wrap up with the drow,” he muttered.

  “Wind scrying magic while in a storm,” Maeryn confirmed. “We find Erina, rescue everyone, and figure it out from there.”

  “Right.” Terrance looked towards the exit of the tent. “That kind of weather isn’t global, though. Gonna be tricky to make sure we’re in the right area. And I’m not looking forward to being strapped on an airship’s wing trying to cast wind magic while it’s literally hailing on my head.”

  Maeryn narrowed her eyes, listening to the snowstorm rage and howl above them. “It might be easier than you think, if we can get this ice dragon on our side.”