with fire and pain. "Return the Griffin Heart, brother. Return the amulet that you stole. These beasts are not yours to tame. This throne is not yours to—"
Dies Irae pulled a crossbow from his saddle and shot. The quarrel hit Benedictus in the shoulder.
Pain flowed through him, the pain of ilbane, not old leaves like the guards had used, but the pure juice of the plant. It coated the dart, spreading fire through him. Benedictus howled. The city spun below. The statues and temples and streets all blurred. More griffins lurked there, but Benedictus could barely see them. Tears filled his eyes.
With all his will, he flapped his wings and lunged at his brother. "It ends tonight, Irae. Tonight you—"
Dies Irae fired his crossbow again. A quarrel hit Benedictus's chest. He howled, blood in his eyes, blood in his mouth.
"Oh dear, brother," Dies Irae said. He raised his visor, and through squinting eyes, Benedictus saw that he was smiling. "Oh dear indeed. All these years you've hidden, Benedictus. All these years you've dreamed of revenge. Only to fail like this... an old man, tired, Lacrimosa now my slave and—"
"You will not say her name!" Benedictus said. He did not know how he still flew. He'd never taken so much ilbane, had never felt such agony, but Lacrimosa's name on Dies Irae's tongue tore him with more anguish than the poison.
Somehow, impossibly, he flew against his brother. He bit and he clawed.
Dies Irae shot a third time.
The quarrel hit Benedictus's neck.
He tried to scream. He tried to blow fire. He tried to bite, to claw, to kill his brother. But he could not even flap his wings. He could not even breathe.
I'm sorry, Lacrimosa, he thought, tears falling, before darkness spread across his eyes. I'm so sorry.
Benedictus the Black, King of Requiem, closed his eyes and fell from the sky.
DIES IRAE
Dies Irae stood, arms crossed, and watched his brother wake up.
Of course, his arms were not crossed, not really. You could not cross your arms if you had only one. That groggy, bloody man below him—no, not a man, a creature—had bitten off his left arm. Now he had but an iron mace, a freak thing, a deformity. It was a deadly deformity, to be sure, and one that he enjoyed flaunting, intimidating with, killing with... but a deformity nonetheless.
"You crippled me, Benedictus," he said softly, so softly the sound did not carry past his griffin-head visor. "You made me what I am."
Knocked into human form, Benedictus groaned on the cobblestones. Blood covered him, and his eyes blinked feebly, struggling to stay open. Red lines stretched across his chest, lines of infection from the ilbane. Dies Irae spat at him.
"You turned me into this. Yes, Benedictus. You and our father. You drove me into shame, into pain and rage. I am a year your senior. I was to be Requiem's heir, even without the dragon curse. But you stole my place. You sweet-talked Father into casting me aside. You forced me to become this man, Benedictus. To kill Father, to raze Requiem. You have suffered for it, brother. Today I end your suffering."
Benedictus struggled to rise, but chains held him down. Dies Irae wanted to spit on him again, but his mouth had gone dry. It only curled bitterly. "Today I show you final mercy. I will not torture you, Benedictus. I have tortured you for many years, but you're still my brother. Despite all you've done, all your sins, you're still my brother. I will kill you painlessly. I give you that last gift."
Finally Benedictus managed to focus his gaze and speak. "I go to the halls of my ancestors, of the spirits of Requiem. When you die—and all men must die, Dies Irae, even those who style themselves deities—may the Sun God burn your soul in eternal fire."
Dies Irae kicked him in the stomach, and Benedictus doubled over. Dies Irae kicked him again in the back, driving his steel-tipped boot into him. "You die tonight, weredragon."
He kicked Benedictus a third time, then turned and marched across the courtyard. His boots sloshed through Benedictus's blood, which had fallen from the sky. Fitting, he thought. His boots were made of a weredragon child; let them now walk upon the blood of the Weredragon King.
Walls and towers rose around him, the fortifications of Confutatis. Griffins manned their battlements. Soldiers stood at attention and saluted as he walked by. Dies Irae ignored them. He walked past his hosts, past the courtyards and forts,