like a common woodsman—or outlaw, more likely. You don't own this place, so bugger off."
Kyrie instantly regretted those words. The man took a step forward, and Kyrie suddenly realized how tall and powerful he was. He was perhaps forty years older than Kyrie, but all muscle and grit. A scar ran along his cheek, and another scar peeked from under his collar. In some ways, this ragged man, with his furs and arrows, seemed even more dangerous than Dies Irae with all his armor and griffins.
"If you don't shut your mouth," the man growled, "I'll punch the teeth out of it."
Then Kyrie realized why the man looked familiar. He looked liked Dies Irae, cold and hard and dangerous. Only Irae is blond and golden like the sun, Kyrie thought, and this man is dark as midnight. They had the same brow. The same strong, straight nose. The same... aura, an aura of pride and power.
Kyrie's heart leaped.
"Benedictus," he whispered. "It's you." His fingers trembled, and he took fast breaths. "You're Dies Irae's brother. Benedictus the Black." His head spun, and words spilled from his mouth. "You can help me! You can fly with me against Dies Irae, steal his Griffin Heart, and defeat him."
The man stared at Kyrie as one would stare at the village idiot. He spat again. "What's wrong with you, kid? I don't know no Irae. Don't know no Benedictus. My name's Rex Tremendae. Now get out of my forest, or I'll stick one of these arrows in your throat."
GLORIAE
Gloriae cut the sky.
She lashed her riding crop, and her griffin shrieked, flapped her wings, and drove forward. The wind howled, biting Gloriae's face and streaming her samite cape.
"Fly, Aquila," Gloriae called to her griffin over the wind's roar. Her riding crop flew too. "Fly hard."
As Aquila flew, Gloriae narrowed her eyes and scanned the lands below. Hills, copses of trees, and farmlands stretched into the horizons. Hearth smoke plumed from a distant village, and a fortress rose upon a mountain.
"Where are you, Kyrie?" Gloriae whispered, willing her eyes to see through every tree, into every barn, down every road. He was down there somewhere. He would travel north, travel to Hostias Forest where they whispered that Benedictus still roared. He would stay off the roads, sneak into barns for food, and sooner or later she would find him.
"You cannot hide for long," she spoke into the wind, and her lips pulled back from her teeth. Men often called her smile a wolf's grin, and Gloriae felt like a wolf, a huntress, a creature that lunges and kills and digs its fangs into flesh. "I will find you, Kyrie Eleison, and I will not take you alive. No, Kyrie. My father wants to capture you, to parade you as a freak, but not I." She caressed the hilt of Per Ignem, her sword of northern steel, which hung at her side. "I will make you taste my steel."
When Gloriae remembered the last time she saw Kyrie, she snarled. She had nearly drowned that day, but she had pulled herself from the roaring water, had survived, and now she hunted again.
Soon she flew over the village. If you could call it that, Gloriae thought. It was merely a scattering of cottages around a square. It was a wretched place, the houses built of mud and cow dung, the roofs mere thatch that no doubt crawled with bugs. Gloriae wrinkled her nose; she imagined that she could smell the place's stench even in the sky.
She turned her head to see the three griffins she led. Lord Molok flew alongside two riders of lower rank, men whose names Gloriae hadn't bothered to learn.
"The village below," she called to them and pointed. "We seek the weredragon there."
They nodded. Gloriae tugged the reins, and her griffin began to descend. The cold air lashed her, and Gloriae pulled down the visor of her helm. Peasants scurried below, fleeing into homes and closing the doors. Gloriae smiled her wolf's grin. Did they think their huts of mud and dung could stop her, Gloriae the Gilded, a maiden of the blade?
She landed her griffin in the village square, sending pigs and chickens fleeing. Gloriae snorted. Pigs and chickens? Truly this was a backwater; just the sort of place a weredragon would hide, cowering in the filth of beasts and the hovels of commoners. Gloriae drew Per Ignem, and its blade caught the light. She craved to dig this blade into Kyrie, to let weredragon blood wash