her down. Agnus Dei kicked, and her leg hit Gloriae's breastplate. Gloriae saw nothing but white light. She flew, breath knocked out of her, and crashed against a smashed column. Armor covered her, but this blow still ached. For a moment, Gloriae could not breathe, and tears streamed down her cheeks as she struggled to her feet. Shakily, she raised her crossbow.
Agnus Dei was lumbering toward her, snarling, limping, unable to fly. She blew fire.
Gloriae ducked, rolled, and raised her shield. The flames burned around her shield, and Gloriae squinted. When the fire died, she aimed her crossbow and fired again.
The bolt hit Agnus Dei's shoulder, and the dragon screamed. She fell upon the ruins, cracking a fallen statue of an old king.
"Yes," Gloriae said, smiling through her snarl. "The ilbane on my quarrels is strong and thick. It burns, doesn't it? I finish you now." She stepped toward the dragon, the wind blasting her, Per Ignem raised.
Agnus Dei struggled to rise, but could not. She glared at Gloriae, and her eyes seemed so human—brown, pained eyes—that Gloriae faltered.
"Gloriae...," Agnus Dei spoke, blood seeping down her sides, squinting in pain. There was something about that voice, those eyes.... Gloriae shook her head. Finish her! cried a voice inside her. Bring down your sword, chop off her head, kill the beast!
"Requiem," Agnus Dei whispered at Gloriae's feet. "May our wings forever find your sky."
Those words! Gloriae knew them! But how could she? Tears filled her eyes, and her arm trembled. Her sword wavered. Gloriae could not breathe. Standing over the wounded Agnus Dei, she tore off her helmet, shook her hair loose, and took deep, desperate breaths.
Agnus Dei, staring up from the ground, gasped. Those eyes—those brown, almost human eyes—widened. "I... I know you, Gloriae. I've seen you before, I...."
Gloriae trembled. She walked between columns, the birches rustling, holding her mother's hand. She heard old songs on harps, and played with a girl her age, a girl with brown eyes, and—
"No!" Gloriae screamed, a scream so loud, that Agnus Dei started. "I do not know you, lizard! I— I know only your evil. You cast spells upon me. You cast evil magic. I will not let you invade my mind. I will not!" Her eyes swam with tears.
She could no longer bear to look into those brown eyes. She saw lies and dreams within them, trees that still rustled, and songs that still played, and smiles from... what? A different life? A different world?
No! Spells. Lies! Black magic of beasts.
Gloriae fled, boots kicking up ash, leaving the creature there. The weredragons were more dangerous and evil than she had imagined.
"Aquila!" she cried. The griffin still lived, through she was wounded, maybe badly. Gloriae climbed onto the saddle and urged the beast up. "Fly, Aquila. Fly far from here. This land is cursed."
The wind streamed her hair, stung her eyes, and blew the tears off her cheeks. Clutching her wounds, Gloriae flew, trembling, vowing to never more return to the ruins of Requiem.
LACRIMOSA
Lacrimosa walked along the beach, her shoulder bandaged, tears on her cheeks.
She walked alone. She needed to be alone. She needed to think, to breathe, to shed her tears in silence and solitude. She had left her husband behind with the boy; the two tended to a campfire she could just see in the distance, its smoke unfurling. It was dangerous to light a fire, to cast smoke into the sky like a dragon's tail, but Lacrimosa had lived her life in danger. She had been running for ten years, hiding in forests, in snowy mountaintops, in caves and along beaches of ruins such as this one.
Old bricks lay in the sand around her feet, and Lacrimosa saw the ruins of a fort toppled across a hill ahead. Its scattered bricks and broken walls had settled years ago, and the water had smoothed them, and covered them with moss. Gulls picked between the stones, and crabs scuttled along toppled battlements. What fort was this? Lacrimosa did not know. She had once known the names of many forts, but in the past ten years, memories of the old world had fled her. She could no longer remember Osanna's castles, those castles the Vir Requis had once fought and died against. She could no longer remember a time when the men of Osanna lived alongside her race, would visit their courts, would treat with them. Sometimes Lacrimosa could barely remember Requiem, the autumn leaves that scuttled along mosaic floors, the columns that