CHAPTER

33

Quarrah stood rooted in place at the sight of Raekon Dorrel. She’d glimpsed the transformed man from a distance, Ardor Benn struggling to keep up as the duo crossed the Pale Tors. But standing face-to-face with him as a Glassmind was downright shocking.

“Raek…” Quarrah recognized his face only if she blocked out the glowing red eyes. He smiled at her, probably hoping it would ease the shock of his appearance. Then he reached out with one sky-blue hand and pressed a metal Ashlit into her palm.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You overpaid me on a delivery of liquid Grit seven cycles, one week, and two days ago,” he answered.

Seven cycles ago? “What, so becoming a Glassmind suddenly made you honest?”

“Not at all,” he replied. “I just didn’t realize the error until the hike up. And it’s bad form to take advantage of a repeat customer.”

She passed the Ashlit back to Raek. “Consider it a tip.” The least she could do for the risks he’d taken to hide liquid Grit for her around the city.

“Quarrah!” Ard’s voice was winded as he crested the landing behind his overgrown partner. “Thank the Homeland you’re all right.” He looked at the dragon, whose long body was still spilling out of the cave mouth in her days-old attempt to escape. “Everything go all right here?”

“Fine,” she answered. “Running low on Stasis Grit, so it’s a blazing good thing you got here when you did. By my calculations we wouldn’t have made it through the night.”

“But how are you?” Ard said. “Nearly a week alone in the Pale Tors would take a toll on anyone.”

But waiting with a purpose was something Quarrah Khai excelled at. “You know I don’t mind the silence.”

“Ha,” Ard said. “Something I can’t seem to offer.”

She hadn’t meant for that to be a jab at him, but it had been rather peaceful. Tajis and Basgid had even taken the night shifts, so she felt plenty rested.

“Any change in Motherwatch?” Ard asked, stepping closer to where her head rested, still as a statue without the natural breathing of slumber.

“She’s Moonsick,” answered Raek, squinting his glowing eyes at the beast. “I can see the energy coming off her.”

“That’s what Tajis said, too,” replied Quarrah. But Raek’s Glassmind eyes had to be superior, even to those of a Trothian. After all, the latter was a corrupt descendant of the former, having lost the most powerful Glassmind traits.

“The question is how Moonsick?” Quarrah turned to Ard. “The Bloodeye I kept in Stasis seemed to progress slower than normal. And your entire hypothesis was based on Grotenisk, but he lived in Beripent peacefully for three years before he snapped.”

Quarrah felt like it was a rare opportunity for her to point out something that Ard hadn’t already thought of—or at least claimed to have thought of. But this was one of those moments. She could see it on his face.

“What are you saying?” Ard quietly asked.

“It takes a person between five and seven days to reach the final phase of Moonsickness, right?” she checked. “Well, what if it takes cycles, or even years, for a dragon to get there?”

Ard pondered it for a moment before shaking his head. “It doesn’t really matter how Moonsick she is, as long as it’s started. In fact, the last thing we want is for Motherwatch to be too sick and past the point of transformation. I say we detonate the Grit immediately.”

“You found more?” Quarrah asked.

Ard glanced at Raek. “He salvaged enough pulverized dragon tooth from the mess in the Be’Igoth to concoct a couple of vials. And we convinced San to stay behind and get the place looking shipshape. Between us, I think the kid’s had his fill of dragons.”

Quarrah glanced back at the hourglass under the canopy. “That Stasis Grit is going to wear off in about six minutes. We should probably hit her with the Transformation before she wakes up.”

“On the contrary,” Ard said, his tone leaning toward the annoying side. “Just because the Moon rays penetrate a Stasis cloud doesn’t mean the Transformation will.”

“Oh, you want to wake her up?” Quarrah said. “Like last time? She’s not even chained down anymore.”

“Not that those chains did much,” Ard admitted.

“Even if this does work,” continued Quarrah, “you’ll be transforming her into something potentially even more powerful. How do we know she’ll be on our side?”

“Flames, Quarrah. You’ve had too much time to sit and worry out here.” Ard pulled something from his pocket. It was a glass Grit vial tucked into a hardened leather sleeve to keep it safe.

“Maybe there are some unknowns,” he said, “but the idea is solid, and that’s what I’m good for.” Reaching out, he handed the vial to Raek. “I’ll leave the actual procedure up to our Grit expert.”

“I see that nothing has changed between us,” Raek said flatly. It was strange to hear him talk, his new voice both familiar and yet foreign.

Raek slipped the vial from the sleeve and dashed it against the rocks between his bare feet. What was he doing? Had that been an accident? But as quickly as the detonation could form, it was sucked into his outstretched hand.

“I suggest you both stand back.” Raek stepped up to the still dragon’s nose.

Quarrah didn’t need to be told twice. She retreated, sheltering under the canvas awning next to their dwindling supply of Stasis Grit. But Ardor Benn… The man remained at Raek’s elbow like an annoying tagalong child.

The big Glassmind reached out his pale blue hand, fingertips touching the hazy detonation that surrounded Motherwatch’s muzzle. He absorbed the Stasis Grit in a single draw and the dragon’s eyes popped open. Quarrah gasped. She’d been expecting the clear glassiness of those emerald orbs, but now they looked coated in a milky substance, raw pink edging in from the sides.

The creature raised her head slowly, nostrils flaring with twin trails of vapor. She didn’t make a sound, but opened her mouth as if drawing a massive breath. Raek reacted with a new detonation from his sparking fingertips. The cloud instantly enclosed the dragon’s head, and Motherwatch went still. It wasn’t the same kind of stillness induced by the Stasis Grit that Quarrah had been using all week. This seemed to freeze the dragon in place, sickly eyes wide and mouth half open.

Then without warning, her scaly face ripped right down the middle, a split forming from the tip of her nose to the first spine on her elegant neck. Quarrah flinched at the dry tearing sound, but nothing happened.

Silent seconds passed, Quarrah not daring to breathe. “Come on,” she heard Ard mutter.

Anticipation.

Quarrah Khai usually thrived on it. That moment when she heard footsteps idly drawing toward her hiding place. That first glimpse of a locked box begging to be opened. But in that moment, with the fate of the world hanging in the silence, Quarrah realized she had never truly experienced anticipation at all.

Something burst out of Motherwatch’s torn face, streaming straight up into the afternoon sky. Quarrah staggered in surprise, eyes turning upward only to find that she’d lost it in the sun. Then there was a dark blur—something coming down with as much speed as it had gone up. It landed on the stone platform between Ard and Quarrah, breaking rocks with the force of arrival.

It was a woman, easily standing the height of a Glassmind. She was unclothed, but her entire body was covered in shimmering green scales. Not the rough, separable scales of a dragon, but something smooth and interconnected unlike anything Quarrah had ever seen. Her hands were somehow graceful and bestial at the same time, each of her fingers ending in an inch-long talon of deepest black.

From between her shoulder blades, a pair of wings extended, spanning at least twenty feet in breathtaking plumage. The feathers looked to be dipped in liquid gold, but they rustled in the breeze with the delicacy of a gosling’s down.

Her face was at once both human and dragon, the blend striking Quarrah as more beautiful than frightful. Her hair was a weave of gold and blue, flowing freely as it spilled nearly to her waist. But those eyes…

They glowed with the same terrifying red light as the Glassminds.

She opened her mouth to speak and the words rolled out in a language so beautiful that Quarrah found herself transfixed, wishing it would go on forever. The creature’s voice was melancholy and indescribably rich. As her sentence ended, the unknown words hung over the cave’s opening like the final notes of a song.

Quarrah expected Ardor Benn to impose some sort of overwrought introduction, but another voice beat him to it. From somewhere behind the woman, Raek replied in the same flowing language.

Her huge wings folded along her back and she turned to find Raek standing near the cave’s mouth. They exchanged a few more sentences before she stretched out her taloned hand. Her palm was facing up and she stared at it as if studying something there. Suddenly, sparks sizzled across her talons and a small orb of hazy Grit appeared. It hung suspended, the strange woman gazing into it.

“She doesn’t speak our languages,” Raek explained, stepping toward Quarrah and Ard.

“And you?” Ard sputtered. “Since when did you learn to speak… Dragon God?”

“It came with the upgrade to Glassmind,” he answered.

“Then why doesn’t she know Landerian?” Ard asked. “I mean, if she is what we think she is…”

“I am one of the Drothans,” said the winged woman, the ball of Grit drawing back into her hand. She turned to Ard. “When the mind of a simple toogsa like yourself evolves to perfection, it learns the True Speech, while still retaining a perfect remembrance of its former language. In my previous form, I had no method of verbal communication, beyond rudimentary needs.”

Ard stared at her unblinking. “Quick learner,” he finally squeaked out.

“The Sphere has been complete.” She lowered her taloned hand. “Great knowledge can be found within time and space. Perhaps even the answer to existence itself.”

“I didn’t know existence was a question,” said Ard. Was he seriously bantering with a goddess?

“Sooner or later it becomes a question for everyone,” she said. “Even you, Ardor Benn.”

“I knew it,” Ard whispered, taking an anxious step forward. “You know me.”

“I recognize your scent from my son’s shell. You were with the egg at the time of fertilization. But that would have been over two hundred years ago. How are you still alive?”

“I was a Paladin Visitant,” Ard explained. “I hid myself in a cloud of Visitant Grit, and Grotenisk never knew that the egg and I were there. It probably helped that he was blind from the Moonsickness, but nobody actually knew that handy fact.”

The woman nodded. “He was the only dragon to grow Moonsick. But in our degenerate form, we did not understand that he was thus one step closer to transforming back into what we once were.”

“Well, his condition certainly helped,” continued Ard. “Old Grotenisk basically blasted fire across the entire city. He almost couldn’t miss torching that egg.”

“And you returned to the present day after the fertilization?” she said.

He nodded. “The egg and I came back as soon as the Visitant cloud burned out.”

“That would have been the moment I sensed its fertilization,” she said. “You must have stayed by the egg until I came to retrieve it at the palace.”

Ard cast a glance at Quarrah. Hadn’t that been the decision that had driven them apart?

“More or less,” Ard replied. “And I suppose I should thank you for eating King Pethredote that night.”

“He drenched himself in a potent scent that triggered a primal response within my beastly form,” she said.

“The real question is, how did he taste?” asked Ard.

The dragon woman seemed to find no amusement in his statement. “I am not a monster,” she said. “I find no delight in having done all I did in my lesser form.”

“I’m sorry.” Ard took an earnest step toward her, formulating a delicate question in his mind. “You could have killed me that night. I would have been completely helpless against you.” He paused. “So… why didn’t you?”

“I am not a monster,” she said again. “I knew what you had done for that egg. And though I could not voice my gratitude, I expressed it in another way.”

Ard cleared his throat. “You mean… by not eating me?”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Perhaps the highest level of respect in the wild animal kingdom of Pekal.”

“Thank you…” They’d been referring to her as Vethrey, but Ard wasn’t sure if he should call her that now. “We don’t even know your name.”

Suddenly, a detonation appeared in her hand. At once, Ard saw sparks falling like rain through a forest of blossoming fruit trees. His senses were filled with the rich aroma of damp soil after a storm and he felt a lazy sleepiness overtake him. Then, just when he thought he might drift off to sleep, the sparks began to kiss the soft pink blossoms with the chime of a distant bell, the pale petals instantly transforming into wisps of multicolored light.

It was over as quickly as it had started.

Ard pawed over his own body, making sure he was still intact and actually present.

“Where was that place?” Quarrah whispered, proving that she’d just experienced the same vision.

The dragon woman smiled. “It is my true name.”

“You are…” Ard stammered. “How exactly do you say that?”

“You don’t,” she answered. “The Drothans communicate on a higher level.”

“How should we address you, then?” asked Ard.

“You call him Raekon Dorrel?” She pointed at their companion. “The same as before his transformation?”

“That’s right,” answered Raek.

“Then you may call me as you did before mine,” she responded.

“Motherwatch,” Ard said.

She rustled her feathers in obvious distaste. “Actually, maybe we could think of something better.”

“Yeah,” replied Ard. “That wasn’t my idea. You actually got named by a teenage girl.”

“Vethrey,” Quarrah blurted out.

“Isn’t that just a translation of the same name?” Ard asked. Although he had to admit it sounded grander in Trothian.

“Vethrey is a Trothian word,” said the woman. “And I see its derivation from the True Speech—Evetherey.”

“And what does that mean?” asked Quarrah.

“One who saves.”

“Evetherey it is, then.” Ard made a sweeping bow, dropping to one knee before her. “We are humbled to be at your service.”

Her glowing eyes dimmed as she gazed across the Pale Tors. “I have awakened, as it were, from a deep slumber. The world is not what it once was, and the race of the Drothans is no more.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Ard said. “Or we could say that you’re just the first to transform. If we hurry to Pekal, we might—”

“The dragons are dead,” she said. “All of them.”

A detonation flickered in her hand, and Ard felt his heart sink. He saw the mighty corpses of the dragons strewn across the island, the mountainside stained with their black blood. Just when the despair threatened to overtake him, it ended.

“Sparks.” Ard gasped. “How do you do that?”

“Garifus was successful, then?” whispered Quarrah.

“The one you speak of calls himself Centrum,” said Evetherey. “He has set things into motion that cannot be undone.”

“But the Sphere…” Ard said. “We can change things. We already have.”

“Your understanding of the Sphere is sorely limited,” she said.

“Then help us understand.”

Another detonation appeared in Evetherey’s hand, instantly accompanied by a flood of knowledge and understanding directly into Ard’s mind.

The Glassminds suddenly seemed weak, compared to what the dragon goddess could do with Spherical Time. The former could reach sideways through time to draw emotions and thoughts from alternate timelines.

But the Drothans could draw life.

“Is there anything you can do for him?” Quarrah had asked Gloristar as young Shad Agaul lay dying on the throne.

“Not until the Sphere is complete. For now, there is an order to life and a time for death.”

Evetherey’s new vision made Gloristar’s words as clear as thin glass. There were an infinite number of Shad Agauls scattered through alternate timelines. They were immaterial. Mere shadows. But a Drothan could scour those shadow timelines to find a version of Shad Agaul that was basically indistinguishable from the one they’d known—same look, same experiences, same memories. Perhaps the only difference might be the size of the mole on the boy’s cheek.

The Glassminds could see this boy, imposing his thoughts and emotions onto people in the real world, but the Drothans could actually bring this replica boy into the Material time. Bring him into reality as a near-identical replacement of the one who was killed.

“Garifus knew about this,” Ard whispered. “He knew what a Drothan could do with the Sphere, and he tempted Gloristar to use it to save the prince.”

“It was not a lie,” she said, the detonation in her hand snuffing out. “The Sphere could have saved the boy—a version of him, at least. But Centrum wouldn’t have been able to bring anyone into the Material Time. A Drothan would have to detonate the Visitant Grit in order to draw a replica person from a shadow timeline. Nor would Centrum have been willing to accept the price.”

“Price?” Quarrah asked.

“The Final Era of Utmost Perfection,” said Evetherey. “It is supposed to be a time when humankind has struck the balance to live in peaceful harmony with the gods.”

Ard shook his head. “You really think such an era could exist? There will always be someone who won’t follow the rules.” He shared a subtle glance with Raek.

“That is the sole purpose of the Glassminds,” she said. “If such a rabble-rouser is creating trouble, he should swiftly be transformed into an Othian.”

“Oh, good,” Ard muttered sarcastically. “Give the troublemakers more power.”

“Once evolved,” continued Evetherey, “the gods could see the true intent of their glass minds. If there was evil therein, the individual could be sent into the Sphere in exchange for a more compliant version of themselves from an alternate timeline.”

“So the price to bring someone out of the Sphere is the life of a Glassmind,” Quarrah summarized.

Would the gods just keep shuffling people around until they had their perfect civilization? Ardor Benn shuddered. Was that any better than what Garifus was doing? “Doesn’t sound like Perfection to me.”

“It is the very purpose of existence,” explained Evetherey. “The gods intended to create Spherical Time to usher in the Final Era of Utmost Perfection. Garifus initiated it prematurely, likely to assure his existence as an Othian. Now time cannot be changed or reset. It can be nudged toward this end, but if anything in the linear past were to change what has happened, all of time and space would collapse upon itself. It would literally be the end of everything.”

People kept saying that, but what did it really mean? Something would surely live on. And in the end, Ard couldn’t decide which was preferable—Garifus’s utopia, or utter nonexistence. There had to be a third option. Why wasn’t Ard seeing it?

“I can see Centrum’s mind,” said Evetherey. “He is honest in his beliefs.”

“Sparks,” Ard swore. “Can he see yours?”

Evetherey turned to him, eyes flaring in indignation. “I am their god! My mind is not open to the perusal of my inferiors.”

“Great.” Ard clapped his hands together. “Then they don’t know you’re here?”

“To their knowledge, they have slain the last of the dragons.” Her voice was soft. “Even my son…”

“Cochorin,” whispered Ard.

“Cochorin?” Evetherey questioned.

“Your son,” said Ard. “The new bull. The girl that named you called him Cochorin.”

The dragon goddess smiled. “A Trothian word meaning Big Hope. I had not seen him for many centuries.”

“Your son?” Ard clarified. “You’d seen him before?”

“When one of my kind dies, we are not gone forever,” explained Evetherey. “Eventually, we are born again. Born of our ancestors who are our progeny.”

“Bet that makes for a tumbleweed of a family tree,” Raek muttered.

“There are a fixed number of Drothans.” She pressed on, ignoring the interruption. “Before we brought your kind into existence, all of the gods existed together and Time was Spherical.”

Without warning, Evetherey ignited another detonation in her hand. Ard was suddenly far above the world, but it wasn’t covered in nearly as much water as the one they lived on. Like before, he understood exactly what he was seeing. Evetherey’s rich voice resonated clearly in his mind.

“We drew our power from the Red Moon, but it was not always so potent. When we founded this world, the orbit of our moon was in perfect alignment with the planet.”

Ard saw the world spinning, the Red Moon always hanging on the far side of their world, never cycling past.

“We lived far below,” Evetherey’s narration continued, “on what you now know as the bed of the InterIsland Waters.”

“We heard a little about this.” Ard spoke aloud, pleased to discover that it didn’t disrupt the vision. “We discovered a spire of red glass down there. It told us the history of the Glassminds.”

“The Othians have no history other than this one,” said Evetherey.

Then it unfolded before Ard’s eyes. It was complex and involved, yet he seemed to perceive it all in the space of a few moments.

The gods—the Drothans—ruled over mankind in benevolence, using powers drawn from the Red Moon to ease the lives of the mortals. Humans could bring raw materials before the Drothans, who could alter them with a simple exhalation. The gods breathed power into the materials, which could then be ground to powder and detonated as Grit.

That’s certainly a lot more hygienic than the way we’ve been doing it, Ard thought.

The gods knew that the Moon’s rays would be too intense for mortal life-forms, so they imposed boundaries. Half of the planet was available to their subjects, but some people wanted more. Eventually, a portion of the humans ignored the rules and broke past the perimeter where the gods stood watch. Those humans exposed themselves to the red rays, but the Moon’s distance meant that the sickness didn’t set in for many weeks. Before the madness took them, they were able to kill one of the Drothans and transform themselves with their teeth.

“Hold on,” Ard interrupted again. “I thought the Transformation Grit was derived from the teeth of a dragon.”

“Gods and dragons…” Evetherey’s speech resumed in his mind. “The two words have always been synonymous.”

Ard’s vision continued. He saw the changed Glassminds wage war against the gods, demanding that all humankind undergo the process and join their collective mind. It was just like Garifus. Did power always do this to people?

The gods lamented all this death and devised a plan to save the humans while sparing the rebellious Othians. With unfathomably Compounded detonations of Grit—Drift, Gather, Void, Weight—they pulled great amounts of soil and rock together, piling them miles high during the night to create five towers of safety for the surviving humans.

Pekal and the Greater Chain.

Before sunrise, the Drothans lifted the humans to the tops of the towers in long clouds of Drift Grit. With concentrated detonations of Heat Grit, the gods melted the great caps of ice that bookended the planet, drowning the world in a mighty flood.

This wasn’t a merciless execution, and a way was prepared for the Othians to live forever in massive pockets of air on the seabed. The gods used Barrier Grit, Prolonged to such an extent that the detonation would hold back the water for centuries.

And while the Othians could have easily absorbed the detonation, they must have realized that the rush of water through the collapsing Barrier could have crushed their glass skulls. So they waited below, their enhanced forms needing no light to see, and no food or water to sustain them. Their race could bear no offspring, but they could live forever in the depths.

But far above, Ard saw that something had changed. With a sudden rearrangement of so much mass, the planet was thrown from its regular orbit. In turn, the Moon was sent into a counterorbit, no longer hidden safely on the dark side.

That first Moon Passing took everyone by surprise. And the Moon’s proximity gave it a much more potent effect on the unsuspecting humans. Many fell sick, reaching the brink of violent insanity within a short week. The gods absorbed as much of the Moon rays as possible, but their efforts were sorely insufficient. There simply weren’t enough Drothans to make an effective shield. Something had to be done before the next Passing.

“We altered ourselves.” Evetherey’s voice rang into Ard’s mind. “With a detonation of Visitant Grit, we accessed the Sphere, scouring alternate timelines until we found a version of ourselves that was more effective in absorbing the dangerous Moon rays.”

A new vision flashed before Ard’s eyes, and he understood what Evetherey was talking about. He saw the dragons—alternate versions of the Drothans, trading elegant feathers for leathery wings, smooth glistening flesh for coarse scales. Keen minds for bestial instincts. They lumbered on four legs, and instead of their gentle breath that imbued materials with power, they breathed fire and vaporous heat. Their ability to spontaneously create Grit was lost, the process degenerating to the point that the dragons were required to ingest source materials. The dragons would dither away in this depraved existence, only vaguely aware that they had once been something greater.

Ard saw the Drothans enter the Sphere, exchanging themselves for these new creatures in a selfless sacrifice. In so doing, Spherical Time collapsed, the Material Time becoming wholly linear, unless reset with a detonation of Visitant Grit.

But there were three who were afraid to make the sacrifice.

The god-brothers, afraid to give up their power. Afraid to change. Afraid that time would make the humans forget that these hulking beasts were once their gods, who had sacrificed themselves to shield the world from the dangerous Moon. The god-brothers were afraid that the humans would treat them like a base resource, mining their bodies for valuable materials until they drove the dragons to extinction.

They weren’t wrong, Ard thought. He knew the disposition of the common citizen toward the dragons. The beasts, and their powerful by-products, existed solely for the taking.

Ard saw the god-brothers meet in secret, forming a pact to control the dragon population by destroying the other male Drothans. In time, the three would die. But as each one met death he would be reincarnated, vowing to ignore the other males and find only his brother’s egg so he could bring him back to life with fertilizing fire.

They entered the Sphere with the others, but they exchanged themselves for another version—one with just enough intelligence to hold on to the memory of their pact.

Ard drew in a slow breath. Evetherey was showing them the Bull Dragon Patriarchy. The same three males, being born over and over again to manipulate the dragon population, making sure it was an insufficient number to provide total coverage against the Moon rays. It was an attempt to create a safe space, making Pekal impossible for human colonization.

“The Bull Patriarchy was evil.” Quarrah’s voice cut through Ard’s vision.

“Were they?” replied Evetherey. “The rest of the Drothans had faith that humans would understand and respect what we were doing for them. Instead, you baited and tracked us. You harvested our bodies for your monetary system and built your throne atop our bones.”

“You’re right,” Ard said. “We didn’t understand. Humankind forgot what you were. They replaced you with a meaningless torch. But you’re back now. We can make everyone understand the truth.”

Evetherey lowered her hand, extinguishing the Visitant cloud she had been using to create the visions.

“In my experience, no one can be made to understand the truth,” she said. “Even the Othians, with whom we could share thoughts, rebelled against us. Time alone on the seabed did not soften their hearts. Once the potency of the Barrier Grit had decayed enough, the Othians pressed through. They swam up from the depths, full of vengeance against their gods. But when they could not find us, they began a great slaughter of your people. Yet even the mighty Othians could not withstand the new proximity to the Moon. Over the course of a single generation, they devolved into the race you know as Trothians.”

“So altitude created the Trothian race?” said Raek.

Evetherey nodded. “And in a sense, the dragons. From Pekal, we oversaw everything without understanding. The god-brothers’ pact, though its true purpose had been forgotten with their bestial degeneration, had been engrained into the three male dragons and they upheld it instinctually.” She turned to Ard with a half smile. “Until Cochorin.”

“He wasn’t one of the three god-brothers?” Ard asked.

“No,” said the majestic woman. “As a result, he was sworn to no pact. From the moment he reached fertility, he strove to restore the dragon population to full capacity so even Pekal would be free of Moonsickness during the Passings. The Patriarchy would never have allowed him to hatch, but the dragon who fertilized my son’s egg did not do so knowingly.”

“Because Grotenisk never realized I was there.” Ard grinned. That whole event had turned out to be even more clever than he’d intended.

“Why did it take Grotenisk so long?” Quarrah asked. “The history books state that he hatched in Beripent, but it took three years before he got Moonsick enough to raze the city.”

“Maturity,” Evetherey answered. “Our young dragons do not need the Moon rays until they reach an age of fertility—usually around three years.”

“Ha!” Ard clapped his hands. “That’s why Hedge specified that we steal a mature dragon from Pekal. If we’d taken one of the hatchlings, the Moonsickness wouldn’t have taken and we wouldn’t have been able to transform it.”

“Makes sense,” said Raek. “But we’re just learning that now. I’ve already communicated all the information to Hedge in the past.”

“It’s all right,” Ard replied. “You can go back into the Sphere and tell him what we need. An update, of sorts.”

“You must cease in your efforts to manipulate the past,” commanded Evetherey. “You have taken too many risks already. Should anything jeopardize the creation of the Othians—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ard cut her off. “All of time and space will collapse on itself and existence will come to an abrupt end. But aren’t we safe to go back in time and give Hedge one more little nudge? I mean, hasn’t it happened already? After all, the information about an adult sow was what brought you back. It would have been easier to steal a hatchling.”

Evetherey sighed like a weary mother talking to a disobedient child. “I suppose I could allow it.”

“How very nice of you,” Raek replied. “Pretty sure Ard was going to make me do it either way.”

“You do not understand,” she said. “Now that I have accessed the Sphere, the Othians can only use it with my permission.”

“Wait,” Quarrah cut in. “You mean, Garifus and the other Glassminds can no longer access Spherical Time?”

“Only if I allow them to,” Evetherey said. “The Othians exist only to serve the Drothans.”

“Except when they revolt and start slaughtering everyone,” Raek pointed out.

“There were never meant to be so many Othians,” said Evetherey. “Centrum, like the Othians of old, has gone against the true purpose of the transformation.”

“To be a token for exchanging life,” Ard clarified. “To make sure that only the best versions of people are living in the Final Era of Utmost Perfection.”

“Precisely.”

“So now that the Glassminds have gone off their rocker again,” said Raek, “how do we stop them?”

Evetherey looked wistfully up at the sky, the breeze playing in her silky white hair. “We don’t.”

“Wait… what?” Ard cried. “You’re the most powerful being ever to exist. There has to be something you can do.”

“There is but one of me,” she said. “With the other dragons gone, the Moonsickness is coming.”

The Great Egress, Ard thought again. It was prophesied in Wayfarist Voyage. Did that make it truly inevitable?

“You mentioned that the dragon version of yourself was better at absorbing the Moon rays.” Quarrah pointed toward the corpse in the cave’s mouth. “But can you do it as a Drothan?”

“To some extent.”

“How many people could you shield?” Quarrah asked.

Evetherey tilted her head in thought. “It is not the number of people so much as the geographical space. If I was elevated to a certain height, I would be able to hold a shield over approximately one square mile of terrain.”

“About the size of the Char,” Ard mused. “I guess it’s time to find out how many people we can squeeze into a square mile.”

“The rest of the world—millions of people—will either be Moonsick, or transformed into a unified force of Othians,” said Evetherey. “To what end would we shelter a relative few?”

“To keep humanity alive,” Ard stated.

“We will pose little threat to such a mass of enemies,” she said.

“Clearly, you don’t know us very well,” said Ard. “Standing right here we have a legendary ruse artist, a master thief, a cracked Glassmind, and a dragon goddess. And we’ve got a college dropout holding down the fort at Tofar’s Salts.”

“We’ll find a densely populated area and make it defensible,” Raek backed him up.

“We have just over three weeks before the Moon Passing,” said Evetherey.

Ardor Benn cracked his knuckles. “Then we’d better get started.”

In generations, the stories of our exploits will become legend. Then scripture, I’ll wager.