the iceberg, snow gusting around them, and flew between its palaces. All but one were abandoned now, their towers still, silent, and glistening. The two dragons, one green and one bronze, flew between the steeples of ice, kissed with snow. They glided toward the tallest palace, the place Amberus ruled, the place where they'd hidden for eleven years.
They landed outside its gateway, and Memoria's breath died.
Blood stained the ice at her feet.
Memoria growled.
Grunts sounded inside the Ice Palace. A screech echoed. Wind blew, carrying the stench of bodies.
"Mimics," she said.
Terra grumbled and fire crackled between his teeth. "Looks like we're still in for some fighting today."
Memoria kindled flame in her maw and ran into the palace.
The front hall, a towering chamber that dwarfed even two dragons, was splashed with blood. Bodies of icelings lay strewn across its floor, torn apart. Mimics leaned over them, feasting.
Memoria screamed and ran forward.
"Get off them!" she cried.
They raised their bloody faces from their feast, glared, and hissed. Their curse hit her with a thud, like air from a bellows. Memoria gasped and faltered. She felt their magic crash into her own, wrestle it, shove it, try to claim it.
"No!" she cried and gritted her teeth. If she became human now, she could not defeat them all. Not with only her sword. Her scales began to melt off. Her wings began to fold into her body. Her fangs retracted into her gums.
Around her neck, Adoria's fist began to uncurl.
Memoria shook her head wildly, struggling to cling to her magic. The mimics began racing toward her, drooling and hissing, brandishing swords.
Adoria's Hand opened.
It felt like a wave crashing forward. The power shoved back the mimics' curse, and Memoria's magic refilled her. She was fully dragon. She was fang and claw and fire.
Her jet of flames blazed across the hall, spinning and crackling, and crashed into the mimics. They burned and squealed and fell. Terra shot flames beside her. A few mimics reached them. The dragons lashed their tails and claws, sending them flying. Adoria's Hands rose on the chains, holding back the mimics' curse. The flames filled the chamber, and the walls wept.
It only took moments, and the mimics across the hall lay burned. Memoria ran from iceling to iceling, but they were all dead, their innards eaten.
Screeches rose from other chambers across the palace. Memoria raced between the rooms, shooting flames, burning mimics, lashing them with her tail, clawing them open. Iceling bodies filled every chamber.
"They're all dead," she whispered. "All dead."
Kyrie! she had called. Kyrie, do you hear!
Lanburg Fields stretched around her, drenched in blood, piled with bodies. She was rummaging through them again, searching for her brother, weeping over his body.
Kyrie!
Terra ran up behind her, flames dancing between his teeth.
"A hundred mimics are streaming into Whale Hall. Come, Memoria."
They ran across the ice, flapping their wings to steady themselves, and burst into Whale Hall. Mimics ran toward them, bloated and rotten, hideous creations that were part men, part beasts. Terra and Memoria blew their fire. The hall blazed. Water streamed down the walls. Mimics screamed.
Finally the flames died. The mimics lay twitching and burned. And among them....
Memoria ran forward, tears on her cheeks.
No.... Stars, no.
But it was him. Amberus, kindly old Amberus with the long white beard, the elder iceling who had become a father to her. He lay in the corner, his belly split open, his entrails consumed. Mimic drool covered him. He had tried to shield his followers; the bodies of iceling children lay in the corner behind Amberus. Young Gif, whom Memoria would sculpt with. His sisters. So many others.
"All dead," she whispered.
She turned to Terra. Her throat was so tight, she could barely speak.
"They came here searching for us," she said. "It's our fault."
Terra stared at the bodies with dark eyes. His claws shook, and he dug them into the ice floor. "We will avenge them. We will kill the man who sent them here." He looked up at her. "We will kill Dies Irae."
She shook her head. "I don't care about Irae." Tears welled up in her eyes. "I just want to save whoever I still can. Agnus Dei. And Kyrie. My Kyrie."
They pulled the bodies outside, and placed them on the ice, and prayed for them, and wept for them, and let the sun and moon shine upon them.
"The last of the icelings," Memoria whispered. "The end of a race. A people extinguished, but forever in my memory, forever in my soul."
She had never prayed to the