had called, and here griffin shrieks and fire had drowned its words. "—your mother!"
Gloriae closed her eyes, the wind stinging her face, the smoke stinging her nostrils. A tremble took her, and she had to lean against Aquila. A dream came unbidden to her mind, but not a dream as those which invaded her sleep; it filled her like a spell. She was a child. She walked between pillars in a birch forest, and the leaves were golden like her hair, gliding around her, scuttling against marble tiles. She held her mother's hand and wore no armor, only silk.
"Mother!" she spoke in her dream, and she saw her mother's eyes gaze down upon her, lavender eyes, loving, and Gloriae played with her mother's hair and laughed.
Gloriae opened her eyes and stared back at the burned forest. She trembled and clutched Per Ignem's hilt.
"A memory," she mumbled. "A memory, no more."
She knew not its place, nor its time. Her mother had died when Gloriae was only three. Gloriae had thought that no memories of the woman remained, but here this vision had come to her, and Gloriae knew it to be from those first three, joyous years of her life.
She looked at her bloodied lance and tossed it down in disgust.
"Gloriae!" the weredragon had spoken. How dared it speak her name? What kind of devil spoke with such a soft, beautiful voice? Only the greatest evil would mask its true nature with such a voice, Gloriae knew. And what did it mean?
"I—" Shrieks and fire. "—your mother!"
"The weredragons killed my mother," Gloriae whispered, jaw clenched, staring at the hut's embers. "I know the story. My father told me. They kidnapped her, tortured her, and ate her." She screamed, drew Per Ignem, and stabbed the ashes. "How dared one speak of my mother?"
Then Gloriae knew. With trembling fury, fury more white and burning than the embers, she knew the answer. That silvery dragon, that Lacrimosa as the others called it, had been the one. It had killed Gloriae's mother. It had taunted her mother with that soft voice, had ripped into her with claws.
"'I killed your mother,' it tried to say." Gloriae spoke in icy hatred, and Aquila cawed and retreated several steps, wincing as if expecting a blow. "Come, Aquila. We fly."
Aquila was wounded, but Gloriae drove her hard that day. If the griffin whimpered or slowed, Gloriae whipped her with her riding crop, and dug her spurs into her sides, and drove her onward. Today was important. Today she would fly faster than ever. They flew over the burning forest, and over lakes, and over more trees and farmlands. They flew until night, and slept in a field, and flew again with dawn.
For three days Gloriae flew upon her griffin, eyes narrowed, clutching her lance, the wind streaming her hair.
On the fourth morning, Gloriae saw the place she had sought. It lay ahead in the distance, a great stretch of ash and rubble, a patch of death upon the land. Once this land had been called Requiem, she knew—the evil land of the Vir Requis. Today it was a mere stain upon her beautiful empire of Osanna.
Lashing her crop, Gloriae directed her griffin to fly over the desolation. Aquila whimpered, but Gloriae drove her on with crop and spur. This was a strange land, a silent land. No birds chirped here, nor did any leaf sprout. Ash, rubble, smashed columns, and skeletons littered the ground.
"We will build a palace here, a great temple to your glory, and to the glory of the Sun God," the gaunt Lord Molok had once told Dies Irae.
But Gloriae's father had only shaken his head. "No. Forever shall the lands of the weredragons lay barren and ugly; that will be their legacy."
That legacy now stretched below Gloriae, and she imagined that she could still smell the blood and fire from Requiem's destruction ten years ago. A force seemed to guide her, like those whispers of her dream. She had never been to these lands, but somehow she knew what she sought. Somehow she knew where to fly. Gloriae flew north over the burned lands, scanning the ruins below, until she found the place she knew would be there.
She landed by toppled, shattered columns.
They were carved of marble, and must have risen a hundred feet tall in the days when Requiem still stood. The columns lay smashed now, each segment no longer than several feet. Their capitals had once been shaped as dragons; hammers, maces, and