ℝ𝕚𝕕𝕖 𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟 [Becboc║Ryees]

[Becboc]

The kiss was like the one before… but it was also different. Different in a way that meant it was more.

There was a brief pause before their lips met but when they did, they moved slowly, sensually. The sensation was as exploratory as it was meaningful and Ivy's own body began to react, small stars exploding in her lower belly. That was new, she considered, as she arched a little more into Gaelyn's chest, as she felt his own reaction already pressing against her back.

A hint of a whimper left her lips when she felt his hand traversing the curve of her waist, until it landed on the flat plain of her stomach… and brought them closer.

Ivy's eyes fluttered when they broke apart briefly, dotting over the features of the man her heart now beat for. She hadn't expected it, hadn't even thought it was possible but… she wanted it. God knows, she wanted it more than she could put into words.

The moment that Gaelyn leaned in for a second kiss, Ivy met him; water tinkled when she broke the surface to bring her hand up and around to the back of his neck where her fingers met his hair and clutched gently, stroking, comforting. Affectionate… like one might hold a lover.

The riders' mouths continued to move but they did so slowly, as if they were experimenting with how deeply they could feel each kiss and Ivy… fuck, she felt them. Not only between her legs but in her chest, her ears, her blood. Every part of her felt like it was reacting to Gaelyn, tuning into him, and everything that would follow, she knew would be born of an instinct that had not existed before.

No, this was not just a tryst on a lab bench or in a dorm room. This was something that she already knew she would be thinking about for days, months, perhaps even years later. And while that might have usually terrified her? Right now she was too lost to it to care.

Ivy's hips shifted a little when their lips parted and their tongues met, to finally meet the stirring still present against her lower back. The movement was more purposeful this time, a glide of skin along skin so that Gaelyn could feel the curve of her, the soft bumps of her spine and the divot of her behind. She did so slowly, once, twice, until her cheeks flushed with her own wanton neediness.

 

[Ryees]

“Let’s do this right, this time,” Gaelyn murmured, low against her ear. It was not a command, not a tease, but something softer. A promise, a vow shaped in breath and heat.

His hand on her chest moved first, brushing up gently, reverently, until it cupped her with a tenderness that made her breath stutter. The pad of his thumb swept in slow, purposeful circles, each pass a whisper of want, but never rushed. Not when he had all the time in the world for her.

His other hand slipped beneath the surface with careful intention, finding the place where she needed him most. He didn’t ask permission—not because he assumed, but because her body had already given it, arching into him, trembling slightly when his fingers parted her.

And still, Gaelyn moved only for her. Slow, seeking, learning her with touch alone studying how her hips twitched at certain angles, drinking in how her breath hitched when his fingertips dragged across her just right. All the while, his mouth left the kiss behind and began to trail downward across her cheek, her jaw, and her throat, until he reached the slope of her neck and pressed his lips there. Kisses so light they felt like memory, heat blooming under every one.

He could feel her pulse fluttering beneath his mouth, feel her hands tighten around him in rhythm with the soft, deliberate motion of his fingers.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered against her skin, not as a boast, but as a truth. And then he kissed her there again, deeper this time, as though he could draw her pleasure into himself and hold it, treasure it, never let it go.

 

[Becboc]

"Let's do this right, this time."
​

If those words didn't catch her breath then Gaelyn's hand moving to her chest certainly did. She fit neatly against his palm, a handful small enough to feel snug but curved enough to be present. Ivy gasped softly when his thumb swept out against her already hardened peak, her body reacting to every touch, every caress of his breath in ways that she hadn't known herself to before. Everything suddenly felt heightened, hotter, like time was moving too slowly, like her senses had been electrified and turned up to a level that ended just before painful.

Gaelyn wanted to do it right this time, which was confirmation that he knew this was different too. It was a reassurance Ivy hadn't realised she’d needed, as she so often didn't, but Gaelyn? He had known that she did, he knew that it was not only her body that was delicate and that it spoke volumes that she was opening herself up like this, giving up her emotional virginity, finally to someone that she trusted to receive it.

Ivy parted her thighs slightly when she felt his touch grow near but nothing could have prepared her for the way she jolted into him, how she already trembled as he explored her until he found the place he knew they both wanted. A moan gushed past her lips this time, her toes curling against the base of the tub. How she was already so close to breaking point was a mystery to her, and perhaps when she looked back on this moment, she would realise that it was mostly down to how incredibly attentive Gaelyn truly was. He reacted to every twitch she gave him, every shudder, every pant as though he were catching nuggets of gold and weaving them into a pattern made just for her. A pattern that only he knew how to undo.

Her hips moved with him and she tilted her head to give him better access to her cheek, her jaw, her neck, his lips trailing a line of burning pleasure in their wake. Ivy clung to him like he was oxygen; needy, breathy and so completely at his mercy. She had never let herself go like this. She was always the one to pleasure, not be pleasured, always the one to give and give and give but never receive. That didn't mean she wasn't happy to do so, but nobody had ever cared enough to ask. Not until now, here. Him.

It was the next words however, that hit her with a force she couldn’t quite recover from.

"I've got you."
​

There was a moment afterwards, in which Ivy seemed to freeze ever so briefly. Her chest constricted, her belly even more so and she felt as though she couldn't quite catch her breath. Gaelyn was everywhere, upon her, within her; but then he leaned down to capture her mouth again and Ivy melted.

Each moan grew that little bit louder, that little bit more intense, that little bit faster. Her hand on his neck gripped tighter and their kisses grew breathless until Ivy had to part them to suck in air.

"G-Gaelyn..." She gasped his name against his lips before she kissed her way from his mouth, until her face buried into his neck, almost as though she was trying to hide herself when her body gave out one last push… and then shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

By the end of it, Ivy’s ears were ringing, her chest rising and falling too quickly. It was raw, and vulnerable and... he had guided her through all of it and caught her when she fell. Her skin was still hot in the crook of his neck, her breath heated across his pulse and she wasn't ready to emerge just yet as she tried to gather herself, to comprehend the explosion that had ripped through her body... and her heart.

I've got you. The words echoed around her mind but she didn’t move, couldn’t move. As if she were afraid that this was all some kind of perfect, beautiful dream.

​

 

[Ryees]

Gaelyn held her close as her body trembled through the aftershocks, her breath still hot against his neck. He let her by unrushed, his arms remaining steady around her, hands splayed across her stomach and hip to feel every flutter, every catch in her breath. The soft hush of the water lapping around them was the only sound between them for a time, the world distilled down to the closeness of skin, steam, and the echo of her heartbeat against his chest.

Then, gently, he shifted. Gaelyn slid his hand beneath her thighs and drew her up slowly, carefully adjusting his posture as he guided her into his lap, her back still to him. Her knees parted enough to settle herself into his thighs, the water cresting high between them before settling again. Ivy let out a small, surprised sound when she felt him there, firm and ready, and then Gaelyn let her body sink down, guided by the firm, deliberate steadiness of his hands.

The moment he slid inside her, a deep groan escaped his throat. She fit around him like nothing ever had, hot, tight, and enveloping, and the intimacy of her back pressed to his chest only heightened it. Her breath hitched as she settled fully, their bodies joined in the quiet aftermath of her release. The bond between them rippled mental notes like an orchestra running through their tuning exercises, discordant for only a moment before settling into a smooth, even tone.

He stayed still at first, one hand at her waist, the other rising to ghost along the underside of her breast, feeling the racing thrum beneath her skin. He kissed her shoulder once, then again, slower the second time. Then he began to move, rocking her gently, rhythmically on his lap. Not thrusting. Not yet. Just rocking.

“Let me take care of you," he murmured into the crook of her neck, his voice a low, heated thread. His palm spread over her stomach, holding her to him, guiding the rhythm. His other hand roamed upward to cup her breast again, thumb circling the already-sensitive peak as he deepened the slow grind of their hips. Every pass built something more—heat, yes, but intimacy too. Their bond pulsed with it.

His heart clenched and swelled when she shifted against him, when she gave herself over to the moment without armor. “I’ve got you,” he whispered again, softer this time, the words reverent against her damp skin, as if saying them made it more true. As if pulsing inside of her, surrounded by the heat of a bath that was rapidly becoming dwarfed by the heat of their bond, could massage away the experiences of the last day. And for the moment, it was working.

 

[Becboc]

Ivy was warm, soft and so incredibly pliant.

Gaelyn shifted her as easily as he might mould putty, and he slipped inside of her once she was upon his lap like a swimmer gliding through still waters.

Another gasp fell from her lips once he was fully seated, allowing her to adjust around the intrusion that fit her so perfectly, it was a wonder they weren't made just for each other. Ivy was still reeling from the way he'd brought her to the edge but this… feeling her walls clench around him, pulling him in tighter as he gently rocked her upon his lap… this was closer to heaven than she ever thought she would be.

Gaelyn was a rock beneath her, a calming, steady presence in the face of her erratic mind and heart. She felt his groan of satisfaction in her bones, his lips brushing her shoulder, once, twice, feeling her overheated skin. He wanted to take care of her and she? She wanted to let him so much it hurt.

His hand found her breast again, his fingers tickling around the pink plushness of her already sensitive bud. Ivy hummed with satisfaction and pushed herself into his touch, grazing his length in the process as they found a gentle, deepening rhythm. The water around them sloshed lightly with it, their bond pulsed with it and their bodies trembled in anticipation of it.

Still, she cupped the back of his neck as they moved, her nose pressing into his cheek when he told her again what she needed to hear, when he sensed any hint of uncertainty. And this time? This time Ivy sighed into him, emotion and desire entwining within her until she felt her heart stutter again, stutter and then swell to create a space that had not existed before.

"I know," she breathed softly into his ear, in the only way she could currently manage. "I know."

Ivy didn't hesitate in finding his mouth again then, so that she could kiss him slowly, passionately, deeply and when she pulled back again, it was just enough for their noses to brush, for her lashes to fan against the tops of her too pink cheeks. They were so incredibly, impossibly close.

"I don't know what I did to deserve you." The confession was soft but heartfelt, a whisper of truth in the quiet of the day that had taken so much from them. It only felt right then, that they should take something back, something that they could keep and cherish and treasure, through everything that was to come afterwards.

Ivy didn't say anything more than those words, didn't feel like she needed to. Instead, she remained in their closeness, as she lifted her body so carefully she was barely moving, until when she felt his tip teasing the inside of her entrance again… and only then did she sink. Just as gently. Just as slowly, so she could show Gaelyn that he had her… but she had him, too. So that she could show him through actions, rather than words, that she was open - her body and her heart were open; just for him.

 

[Ryees]

Gaelyn didn’t answer right away. He just held her tighter, as though trying to wrap both arms around the ache she carried. The silence wasn’t hesitation, but reverence. That kind of truth, spoken aloud, didn’t need to be rushed.

His lips brushed the curve between her shoulder blades as he breathed her in. Then, quietly, like it wasn’t meant for the world, just for her, whispered, “You never had to deserve... just ask.”

His hands found her hips. Not demanding or possessive, simply honest and tender in their grip, steady in their guidance. He tilted her forward slightly, angling her on his lap, and then pulled her slowly, deeply down onto him. The water rippled outward from where their bodies met.

She fit around him like memory, like gravity. The first roll of her hips was cautious, trembling, but when she moved again, he moved with her. He didn’t chase rhythm so much as follow where her body led, each glide slow and reverent, like a prayer said beneath breath. The heat of her back against his chest, the soft gasps, the way she clutched his thigh for balance—every part of her presence stole more of him.

He leaned forward just enough to press another kiss to the nape of her neck. His voice followed, low and raw, like the edge of a flame. “I’ve got you.”

And then he was moving in earnest, each thrust a drawn-out ache of need and worship, rocking her steadily on his lap. The sounds of the room narrowed to breath and water, and the muffled groan that left his throat when he buried himself fully, shuddered once... and spilled inside her with a final, aching release.

He held there, unmoving, his cheek against her shoulder, arms around her like armor, as if he somehow could keep her safe from the world, even now.

 

[Becboc]

When Gaelyn fell, Ivy followed not long after. She was still so incredibly sensitive from her first, that her second barrelled through her like his groaned release did, with a force that saw her crying out into the room and panting in the aftermath, unable to do anything other than lean against her partner in the aftermath, as he did into her.

Exhausted. Spent. Satisfied. Content.

Despite everything that had happened today, right now Ivy felt a kind of inner peace, a quietening of her usually incredibly loud and busy mind. She might have thought something was wrong if she didn't feel like she was glowing, warm and safe with Gaelyn wrapped around her, holding her, grounding her while her erratic heart settled.

There was something so incredibly intimate to feel him finish within her, to bond them in a different way. He had gifted her with something tonight, something that she still couldn't quite understand but for now… it was enough for her to quietly accept it, and savour the man who was the first to ever truly see her. The first who had ever truly wanted to.

When their breaths began to slow, the heat between them settling to warmth, Ivy finally moved. She lifted herself carefully so that Gaelyn slipped from her and twisted so she came to sit once more in his lap, facing forwards this time, her supple thighs either side of him. Her eyes were soft as they met his and for a moment, a genuine, albeit shy smile hinted at the corners of her mouth. An acknowledgement of what had just happened, of the unexpected intensity. Icy was rarely bashful but right now her cheeks were rosy, her eyes coy. But that didn't stop her from leaning in again and kissing Gaelyn again, once, twice; soft and slow in their afterglow, a hint of her now very real vulnerability after everything they had just shared.

Ivy didn't speak though, despite herself. Instead, she came to let her forehead rest against his with a gentle exhale, her eyes closing as she breathed Gaelyn in, as she let her feelings flow through her with no restraint. She didn't know what this meant, didn’t know how she’d feel in the morning, but right now it didn't matter. Right now, Ivy simply wanted to let them be in these last lingering moments and dream about all that was and all that could have been.

 

[Ryees]

 

The quiet that followed was comfortable, companionable, and, in a way that Gaelyn was bound to analyze later but refused to analyze now, romantic.

When Ivy leaned into him, her forehead resting against his, Gaelyn simply breathed her in, one arm slung low around her back, the other cradling her thigh as though to keep her from drifting anywhere but here. The bathwater had long since cooled, but neither of them seemed to mind until the first tremor of a shiver passed through her shoulders. Only then did he ease her off his lap with a soft kiss to the tip of her nose.

They rose together, unhurried. Ivy fetched a cloth while Gaelyn filled a basin from the second pail Berthier's boy had left by the door. Another warming rune and they retreated to the cozy depths of the water, together. The washing was gentle, reverent. Hands traced soap along limbs and collarbones with a focused, intent affection, like touching to memorize. Gaelyn washed her hair last, combing fingers through the ends while murmuring something inaudible under his breath. Ivy returned the care in kind, drawing the cloth across his chest with tender swipes, her thumbs pressing briefly into the muscles of his shoulder.

By the time they collapsed onto one of the twin beds, it was instinct that pulled them into one another again. Gaelyn curled against her back, one arm slung across her waist, their legs tangled beneath the covers, Kisa tucked into the curve of their knees like a punctuation mark sealing the sentence.

The quiet that followed wasn't heavy, or aching. It was just… quiet. Blissfully. Sleep came fast.​

---

Morning broke to activity in the common room that Gaelyn was far too exhausted to wake to. His body was healing, any surplus energy generated by the sleep funneling into the damaged parts of his body to push along the process of being less achy and miserable for the next week.

In the wake of Lohia Kaarm's destruction, the surviving occupants had fled the grounds and scattered out into the surrounding lands like dye diffusing into water. Word did not often travel fast in Ra'Aleei, but when it did, it was impossible to stop, spreading like wildfire in dry grass the whole continent over. It would be only days until the majority of the world knew of Lohia Kaarm's fall. It was a handful of the survivors of that fall that now trickled into the common room of the Bothered Boar, all dusted up in soot and blood stains, that would be one of the sparks to set that wildfire alight.

 

[Becboc]

Activity in the common room was not enough to wake Gaelyn, but Ivy found herself shifting from the depths of her slumber. Her brow furrowed slightly as she tried to figure out what she could hear, or even where she was, before a gentle weight across her waist brought everything back to her with startling clarity.

It was clear that both she and Gaelyn had fallen into a dead sleep; neither of them had moved from their original positions. He still curled around her and she still cuddled onto his arm, their legs tangled as if any kind of contact was never enough. There was certainly a lightness to Ivy's chest as she finally and gently turned under Gaelyn's arm so as not to disturb the sleep that he so clearly needed, one that hadn't been there before. Her head came to rest on the pillow next to his and once the sleep had cleared from her eyes, she simply... watched him for a little while, as he remained peaceful and unburdened in whichever dream that soothed him.

Ivy had never seen him look so charmingly boyish before; his lips were slightly parted, his hair mussed and dark lashes fanned his cheekbones. Her heart twisted at the sight, the memory of what had passed between them the night before and instinctively she brought up her knuckles to brush against his face. Delicately, adoringly. It was a small extension of their time together, but as so often was the case with Ivy, the more she thought, the more she considered... the more the shadows that had last night been chased away, once more began to circle, like the intrinsic part of her that they were, that they had always been. Except these were the kinds of shadows that Ivy had little control over.

Feeling like this? Like she had last night? How could she have allowed herself to give in to her feelings, when their lives were still so very much on the line? Nearly losing Gaelyn at Kaarm had almost destroyed her, but now? After he had given her a piece of himself, after he had whispered everything she had needed to hear into her ear over and over, after he had run his fingers through her strands of brown-silver hair and held her until she fell asleep?

Now, the thought of losing him...

Ivy couldn't bear it. Her chest tightened to an extent that it suddenly felt difficult to breathe and while the last thing she wanted to do was move from this bed, from him... she knew that she had to. Before it was too late.

---

If Ivy's rune was good for something, it was slipping away without being noticed. Kisa had raised her head at her rider's shuffling, but a gentle shush was all their baby had needed to dip back onto the sheets again, content with sleeping with Gaelyn for a little while longer. Ivy didn't plan on going far; she simply... wanted to see what the noise from beneath them was about and... give herself some space away from thinking, from thinking about last night and how unfairly incredible it had felt, how she wanted to do it all again, over and over.

Her body ached as she merged back into real life and left the room to descend the stairs, wearing her grimy white under-shirt and leather bottoms. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail and it swished as she entered the common room, only to be met with.... faces. Voices.

Students. Grief.

Her body paused by the doorway, taking in the huddles of bodies, their battered states, the blood on their once pristine uniforms. Her heart began to thud for an entirely different reason now as she moved into the room, dark eyes scanning for some kind of familiarity. A table of fruits, cheeses and bread stood on one side of the gathering with a small crowd around it, and Berthier was busy behind the bar as Ivy approached. His smile when he spotted her was warm.

"So, a bear, huh?" He raised his eyebrows but Ivy remained blank, which only made him chuckle. She couldn't help but wonder how he remained so jovial in the face of... all of this.

"Looks like you're not the only ones who made it."

Ivy still didn't speak as she looked around again, seemingly a little shellshocked, a little relieved and more than a little overwhelmed.

"Breakfast food's over there if yer hungry."

This time, she at least managed a nod and turned once again toward the table of food. She hadn't realised how hungry she was, couldn't remember the last time she'd properly eaten, but it was when she made to move towards it, with intent to collect and return to the room to share with Gaelyn, that Ivy finally spotted her.

"Tess... Tessa?" Her voice was a whisper, the ringing in her ears growing louder as her heart... gods, her heart soared with something that closely resembled relief and then dropped just as deeply with a dawning realisation.

Tessa was here. She was... alive. And Ivy could already see the smile on Gaelyn's face when he was reunited with the girl that he...

Ivy was moving before she could finish the thought. This was good, this was... this was how it should be. Tessa was... alive.

"Tessa!" She called out properly this time, making to push her way across the room. "Tessa!" As soon as Tessa turned to see who was trying to get her attention, Ivy was upon her, because despite everything, despite her very complicated feelings towards this woman, she was relieved that at least someone they knew had made it. Seeing another familiar face allowed for a small glimmer of hope that their might well be more to come.

"You... You made it." She was almost breathless by the time that she yanked Tessa into a hug and then pulled back to look at her, gently holding her by the top of her arms. "Are you okay? You're not hurt? Gaelyn, he's..." The more perceptible might notice the catch in her voice when she said his name, but Ivy forced through it with words, too many word. "H-He's upstairs. He was still asleep but I..." She shook her head then at her very pointless blabbering. "Never mind, come on. Our room's this way." Then before Tessa could answer, before she could question or protest, Ivy was pulling her by the hand towards the stairs.

"He's going to be so happy to see you."

 

[Ryees]

Tessa had been in the south wing when the alarms sounded. Runes bloomed red along the arched ceilings, throwing angular shadows across every stone, and by the time she snatched her casting gloves off the hook beside her desk, the ground beneath Lohia Kaarm was already trembling. She didn't run—Tessa never ran—but her strides were long and purposeful, slapping sharply through hall after hall of burning glyphs and fleeing students.

She was supposed to coordinate evacuations. That had been her job in every drill. But drills didn't prepare you for the way a building screamed when the dragons outside collided with it, nor for the hollow, echoing sound of one of the first-year Riders—Alarie, a boy she'd tested herself—being thrown from a rooftop. He landed with a grotesque crunch only paces away, his bond-mate keening somewhere overhead.

She didn't think. Her hair rippled back in a wave of psionic energy as she dove down into her mind and out again, hurling her awareness toward the silver blur circling overhead. It was an instinctive call, wordless and sharp: Come to me. She didn't know the dragon's name, but he answered anyway.

His landing was violent, shattering part of the garden wall, but Tessa scrambled towards him without pause. Alarie's cloak, half-snagged on a fence post, was still intact. She grabbed it on the run and flung it around her shoulders as she vaulted onto the silver's spine. The clasps clicked shut, and with a whispered command, the embedded runes activated. Metal scales flared outward from her back and along her shoulders, forming a linked lattice that anchored itself into the grooves of Mercury's scales. The cloak did not quite fit her, but within seconds, the net had sealed her into a loose but functional cockpit, pressure-tight enough to ride the sky. She had no time to test it. The silver dragon roared, coiled, and launched skyward.

They didn't speak during the flight. Not in words. His name came to her eventually: Mercury. Not in introduction, but in acceptance. Not hers. Not yet. But for now, close enough.

They flew through the night, breaking only once to drink from a stream. The cloak had not sealed quite right, and her hair still whipped around her face inside the hood, matting in the wind-stained tears and dried blood. By the time the ridgelines softened into the rise of Arborough's forests, Tessa was half-frozen, her sleeves stained with soot and someone else's blood. She slid from Mercury's back just before sunrise, her boots hitting the packed dirt behind the Bothered Boar with a finality that made her knees tremble.

She hadn't expected warmth. But when the innkeeper, a portly man with eyebrows like startled cats, handed her water and pointed her toward a table of bread, she nodded her thanks and folded in among the others like a spent ghost.

That was where Ivy found her. The reunion was a blur: her name, a hug, Ivy's hands on her arms, and a flash of urgency in her voice when she said, "he's upstairs." Tessa barely had time to nod before she was being pulled by the wrist, up the stairs, through the narrow hallway of rooms where too many doors were already ajar. It was unlike her to be so easily dragged, but a the hellish night before had her uncharacteristically disheveled.

Tessa wasn't sure what she'd expected, seeing Gaelyn again. But the lump rising in her throat told her what she hadn't been ready for: how deeply she'd feared she wouldn't.

---

He was fighting again.

The ruined stone corridors of Lohia Kaarm twisted around him in smoke and blood. Screams echoed down the halls, some human, some not. His blade was already red. His arm ached from the repetition. Forward, he told himself. Keep moving. There were students to protect. Ivy. Tessa. Kisa.

He pivoted through the southern stairwell, caught an enemy mid-cast. His sword slid cleanly between ribs, and the man dropped like a sack of grain, only...

Only it wasn't a man.

It was Ivy.

Her lips parted in shock, eyes wide, blood spilling down her tunic. Her mouth moved as if to say his name.

Gaelyn recoiled.

Another soldier surged in from the left. Gaelyn struck before he could think, knocking the weapon aside and plunging his blade up beneath the jaw. The body jerked, and crumpled, and this time, it was Tessa.

Tessa, looking up at him in confusion, as if she didn't understand why he'd done it.

He stumbled backward, hand shaking, heart pounding. "No—no, that's not—"

They kept coming.

A tall figure in black armor rushed him in the archery court. Gaelyn met them with a roar, knocked them off balance, and drove his heel into their throat, followed by his sword. They fell.

And it was Aeenmae.

Not the memory of her from years ago—sick, fragile, dying slowly in her bed—but here, whole, strong. Dead at his feet.

"No," he whispered, spinning in place, eyes wild. "No, nononononono—"

Another soldier. Another strike.

Ivy.

Another.

Tessa.

Another.

Aeenmae.

Gaelyn's breath came ragged, frantic, and still the bodies kept coming, and still they kept wearing the faces of the people he would die to protect.

He screamed.

---

He woke with a jolt, the sound caught in his throat, chest heaving beneath the damp weight of the sheets. The room was quiet, morning-lit. The dream still clung to him like a second skin. He felt half-dead.

Then the door creaked open. In stepped Ivy. And behind her, Tessa.

Alive.

Real.

The breath that left him was half-laugh, half-sob, and wholly exhausted. For a moment he couldn't speak, couldn't move, the weight of the dream clinging to him like wet clothes, and he must have looked ghostly with how both of them froze in the doorway.

But then Tessa screamed—his name, he thought, or just a sound resembling it—and before Ivy could stop her, she leapt.

"Tess—aphuagh!"

He barely managed to brace himself as Tessa launched across the room and flung herself into him like a boulder hurled by a trebuchet. Her arms locked around his neck, squeezing so tightly he choked on a laugh and a wince both. She buried her face into his shoulder and didn't let go. Any semblance of cool, calm, collected Tessa may as well have kept running and leapt out the second-story window.

Gaelyn's eyes widened as he remembered, with a sharp and specific horror, that he was very naked under the sheet. Gods help him, he was glad he'd tugged it up around his hips when he stirred.

Still, he didn't pull away. He just let out a rough, weary exhale and tilted his forehead into hers as she clung to him like she could fuse them back into one piece.

"You made it," he murmured, voice still rough with sleep and dream-smoke. "Both of you…"

His gaze shifted past her, finding Ivy in the doorway. Their eyes met, and though he didn't move, didn't speak, something passed between them in the silence. Gratitude. Relief. Knowing. And under them, something more complicated that Gaelyn would have been able to place if he had been able to breathe.

And then, more quietly, to the woman half-strangling him in his lap: "Tess. I'm glad you're here. But if you keep squeezing me like that, I might need another healer."

It seemed just then to occur to her exactly what she had done, and Tessa finally released him. She crawled haphazardly backwards off the bed, smoothing her rumpled shirt and tossing her head to set her hair away from her face and back down behind her shoulders, not that it was in the mood to obey for how frazzled it was after a night of being whipped about by dragon flight. "I'm glad to see you both alive," she managed finally, taking a centering breath as she moved to fall into one of the pair of chairs pulled up to the small round table in the room's corner. "How did you end up here? How did you make it out?"

 

[Becboc]

Ivy knew something was wrong almost straight away. Gaelyn didn't look quite... right. Pale, his skin shining, sleep and fear encircling his eyes in shadows. Her chest constricted at the sight, but before she could do anything, say anything, Tessa was upon him.

The rider left in the doorway started slightly in surprise, and any tightening of her heart loosened only to let it drop down to her toes at the sight of his childhood love, wrapped into his lap in a position not wholly dissimilar to how they had spent their time the evening before. In the end, she had to look away however briefly, to allow herself to force an element of happiness onto her features. There was one within her, somewhere; happiness for him and for Tessa that they should find each other again. It was just buried right now, beneath so many other complicated feelings.

Eventually, once the scene had calmed, she moved further into the room and sat down on the other bed, realising she should probably crumple it up a little, make it look like it had actually been used.

"Because of Gaelyn mostly. And Kisa." Her voice was soft when she answered Tessa's questions, but she didn't look in Gaelyn's direction. "He got us up to the rampart, but then we got separated." Flashes of that moment buzzed behind her eyes but she pushed through, despite the nausea coiling in her stomach.

"We joined up again on the other side of the forest. Whatever rune Kisa has meant she could fly us, which is how we ended up here." In a bedroom together, having mind-blowing, intimate sex in the tub on the other side of the room.

Ivy dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap and as if sensing her discomfort, Kisa lifted her head, then her body, stretched a little like a cat might and scurried across to the opposite bed and up onto her rider's shoulder.

"What about you, Tessa?" Ivy interjected quickly, before anything else could be said.

Tessa's hand flexed open and closed on the table as she thought back on the previous night. She still hadn't slept, and it all still felt very fresh. "Fought my way out, same as you, I reckon. One of the initiates was thrown from the rampart, I saw him go. Landed three feet from me." She swallowed hard. "I called out to his dragon, grabbed his cloak—" she picked at the cowl of the too-big cloak on her shoulders "—and ran for it. I saw others doing the same, I got here around the same time."

Gaelyn perked at that. "So there's more then?"

Tessa nodded, somewhere between solemn and grim and relieved. "About ten, give or take. Here, at least. We all went different directions. I'm guessing that Cairnvale, Magister's Peak, maybe Allalhar, are all looking the same right now. Like refugee camps."

"Did you…" Ivy tried, but stopped when her voice cracked slightly. When she was sure it wouldn't betray her again, she continued. "Did you see anyone else?"

She knew she wouldn't have to specify anyone else they knew, especially when her face said it all.

Tessa nodded. "A few. Your cohort," she said, glancing to Gaelyn, "was already outside when the attack came. They were alive last I saw them. Tadala, Magni, and I think all of their squad. The first minutes of the attack, evacuation protocols were still being followed, the chaos hadn't broken out quite yet. As many got out as died, I think... Maybe less." She paused, her jaw clenching. "Probably less.

Another shared silence of understanding passed between them and Ivy's thoughts flicked to Dale. She hadn't had enough time to process what he'd done, their years of friendship that were now in the dirt. It hurt. It really fucking hurt.

She didn't speak on it though. Couldn't. Instead she simply nodded. "Do you know any more about what caused all of this?" Ivy asked quietly. "Who was responsible?" And then finally she glanced at Gaelyn, albeit briefly, because they had both seen who could be.

Tessa shook her head. "That woman in the armor seems to be their leader. But we know nothing about her. Did you see her? Did you see her fight?"

Gaelyn had started to not, but faltered. "We saw her, but she didn't fight. She just watched us. She even beheaded one of her people when they tossed me off the wall."

Tessa looked, first and foremost, insulted, then bewildered. It all manifested in a short, bitter, bark of a laugh. "Well fuckin' lovely to be you, then. She certainly didn't give anyone else that luxury. She breaks runes, Gael."

His eyebrows threatened to disappear into his hairline. "Is she insane?"

"She doesn't die, somehow. Just she gets right in your face as you're trying to cast and attacks your hands, your patterns. She doesn't care about the backlash."

Gaelyn stared, dumbfounded. One of the core tenets of the world was that once a rune was started, it must be finished. When their patterns were disrupted in the middle of drawing, a charged rune would emit terrible backlash to the area, and with some more powerful runes, the fallout could be catastrophic. It was always safer to let an enemy finish casting, and draw your own counter spell, because at last then the outcome would be predictable and measured. Broken tubes meant chaos. They meant destruction, raw and unfiltered. Which meant...

"It must be her personal rune," Gaelyn concluded grimly. "She must have something that protects her."

"Her mirrored armour," Ivy interrupted quietly. "Maybe she can reflect…" She spoke mostly to herself as she considered Tessa's new information, trying to sift through theories and conclusions.

"She had two dragons as well. Or at least, I assume they were both hers."

The moment that followed was dominated by a thick silence as the three Riders tried to contemplate a dozen different angles between them. Finally, it was Gaelyn that broke the silence. "So what's next...?"

"We should gather supplies," Ivy answered quickly, too quickly. "Medicine, food. Maybe speak to some of the others? See if they know anything?" Beyond that though… she was kind of at a loss.

Gaelyn's lips twisted uncomfortably. "So... that's it? Lohia Kaarm is gone? We just move on with our lives, become merchants or bakers or—"

"As if you could bake," Tessa shot in, earning a bashful smirk from Gaelyn that suggested some past blunder. "Speaking with the others is the most important, if we're going to take back the school."

Gaelyn opened his mouth to say something, closed it with a click, then tilted his chin sharply. "Pardon?"

Tessa folded her arms tight under her bosom. "I don't reckon we're going to just take it lying down, ne?" she said back almost accusingly. "We gather what faculty and Riders we can, we enlist any military forces from Ra'Aleei that would have Lohia Kaarm's interests at heart, and we siege the school right back from them. That knight had a large force, but it was not a proper army."

Gaelyn shifted uncomfortably under the sheets. "No but half of them had two dragons at their call... How could we...?" He trailed off.

Tessa, though, picked right back up. "You two know better than any," she offered with a meaningful and smart glance at Ivy, "that dragon bonds are less definite than we had ever thought. We have to learn what happened with you three." At being included in mention, Kisa's head tilted up from where she had been listening to the conversation. Some part of the tilt of her head seemed to agree with the sentiment.

"I've never really been the strategist," Gaelyn admitted, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, "that wasn't really... waht I was trained to do."

"You handle the swordy bits," Tessa answered smoothly, a sidelong wink at Ivy mixing with a cheeky grin. "We'll handle the brainy bits."

Ivy tried to smile back, she really did, but the expression never quite reached her eyes.

This was good, this is what she'd wanted. They had a plan and Tessa and Gaelyn were reunited and…

"Alright, it's settled then," she stood up abruptly. "Let's go and get some breakfast and talk to the others. See who wants to join our merry band."

And then she turned and started towards the door, a little like she couldn't get out of there quick enough.

Tessa quietly noticed the urgency with which Ivy jumped up, and gracefully rose to follow her. "I left Mercury on the outskirts of town, I hadn't known how things would pan out here. I'll fetch him while you two sort out some breakfast for us." She gave a cursory bow of her head to each of them then slipped out ahead of Ivy, boots clicking down the stairs.

Tessa's exit stalled Ivy, who watched the other girl leave and close the door behind her. For a few moments she stood looking at it, trying very much not to look at the very naked Gaelyn who still sat behind her.

Eventually though, she relinquished to self inflicted pressure and turned, not quite meeting his gaze.

"Um. Do you want some privacy to change? I can meet you downstairs…?"

Gaelyn was already up and out from under the covers the moment the door closed behind Tessa. "I, er—ship sort of sailed on that one, ne?" he quipped back, unrolling his emergency pack and pulling out the tightly-compressed roll of shirts and breeches. The clothes that he had worn last night had been given a quick rinse and wash in the tub, now hanging draped over the edge of the copper; he was of half a mind to just leave them, as torn up as they were, but the material would be useful down the line.

He slipped on the dark pants and tossed the shirt over his head—a simple white affair with silver-cast aglets on its ties that looked too clean relative to the state of their lives—and strode to the door. "We'll just head down together," he added, haphazardly tugging on a boot with his one good arm.

Ivy made a very pointed display of looking everywhere but at Gaelyn, including up at the ceiling. Her heart thudded in a way that wasn't fair, perhaps even more so once he was changed and she did look at him, because damn it all why did he look so good?

"Er, no it's okay. I'm ready now, I'll just… go." So that's exactly what she proceeded to do.

"I, er—okay," he chirped, awkwardly pulling his boot laces tight with one hand.

A minute long than expected passed before Gaelyn trotted down the stairs behind Ivy, holding his left shoulder delicately as his eyes scanned the common room for her.

She headed straight for the table of food, mostly in the hope of distraction. As soon as she realised that Gaelyn was hot on her heels though, she started to grab at items and thrust them into his hands before he could say anything; apples, buns, cheese. A whole loaf of bread.

"Here, take this and that and… maybe one of those for later. Oh and this."

Gaelyn snatched up a wooden tray from the table to start balancing the pile, but after the bread, he held up a hand. "There's who knows how many survivors coming in here," he said, pushing back on a whole brick of cheese as Ivy tried to hoist it onto the board. "We'll buy supplies from a grocer for the road; let's just take what the three of us are going to eat, for now."

Ivy paused with the brick of cheese in her hand, looking up at Gaelyn as though she might bonk it on his head for interrupting her. But then her expression began to soften, just a fraction and her lips twitched at the corners. Because this was ridiculous. She was ridiculous and she needed to get a grip.

So, she took a breath and forced a bit of what she was good at back into her lungs.

"… this is what I was going to eat." She clarified and then without warning, she slid the cheese onto the tray and proceeded to pull it from Gaelyn's hands, "You can get your own tray for anything you want," before she turned on her heel and stalked off towards a spare table.

Gaelyn watched her walk away, rooted to the spot and searching for words that would not come. With a huff, he snatched up a slice of salted pork and a ramekin of fig jam, following after her. The outskirts of the village were not far, but far enough that they would have some time before Tessa returned. When he sat with her, he studied her for a moment before, asking, carefully, "How are you holding up?"

Ivy was already tucking in before Gaelyn sat down with her and for the most part, she ignored the way she could feel his eyes on her. His question, when it came, was met only with a shrug and words that were a little sharper than intended.

"I'm fine." It was an effort not to grimace at herself so she added instead, a little more softly. "You?"

"I'm scared as hell," he replied back to her, snatching up one of the buns on her blade and punching his thumbs into it to pry it in half. "Who knows what comes next for us? Are they going to keep looking for us? You and I got singled out during that attack," he reminded, "so something isn't right about this. Something feels off."

She hadn't been expecting the vulnerability and she paused with a slice of apple hovering by her mouth before resuming. Gaelyn was right, of course. It was terrifying and they were still none the wiser as to why. That was much more important right now than what had happened last night; it was perhaps the reminder that Ivy had needed to refocus herself. To stop displacing her anxiety.

"I know," she eventually let out an exhale. "I guess we just have to take one day at a time until we know more." Then she added, and she meant it, for the most part. "At least we're a four now, instead of a three. That's one better than an hour ago."

Gaelyn appreciated the real response from her, but her last words echoed in a way that gave him pause. "I don't think she's going to travel with us," he said finally, flatly. "I think she's going to try and go off and do her own thing."

"What?!" Ivy blurted before she could stop herself. "Why?! That's… that's crazy, we have to stick together! She could get killed out there on her own." She'd stopped eating altogether now, her words earnest and perhaps a little panicked. "You can't let her, Gaelyn. You can't."

"I agree, but you also can't stop her. Once she has her mind set, she's locked. We'll see what she says when she gets back." He lined the roll with jam, set one of the pork slices inside, then set it aside on a small wooden plate opposite him. Reaching for a second roll, he continued. "Either way, we need to find out what is to be our fates. No one knows about our situation and I think it's best we keep it that way."

She sat back, exasperated. "Well we have to try at least." Her eyes followed Gaelyn's hands for a moment but when he spoke again she looked up at him, properly this time. Our fates rattled through her mind.

"Tessa knows," Ivy countered, "which is why she needs to stay with us. She could help us get to the bottom of… everything."

 

[Ryees]

Tessa returned through the inn’s front door, wind-tousled and quick-stepping with a brisk gust of sunlight trailing at her heels. Her eyes scanned the room and locked on Gaelyn as she made her way over. “Mercury’s in the dragon stables,” she reported, brushing back a stray curl. “He’s keeping the others calm. They’re all gathered out there.”

She moved to the table without another word and picked up the roll Gaelyn had set aside as if it had been understood to be for her and half-unwrapped it with a bite, a pause, and a faint, familiar smile.

Gaelyn let the silence settle before leaning forward, elbows braced on the table. “So you're going to come with us right?” he posed, as if already knowing the answer. "Better not to travel alone, if you can avoid it."

She shook her head, lifting one hand to poise her fingertips to cover her lips as she chewed. "Chan't," she said, through the roll, "fh'not fhafe."

He seemed puzzled by her answer more than anything and he took advantage of her full mouth to try and press the issue. "What? How you figure, what—" He didn’t get any further as the world went cold.

Not in temperature, not truly, but something reached across the air like invisible claws dragging over bare skin. A psychic dragnet, wide and vast, scraped its way across every active mind in range. Every trained psion felt it: the wrongness, the pressure, the searching. Untrained minds wouldn't even register it, but Gaelyn jolted like someone had called his true name in a dead language.

Their eyes snapped to each other instantly, every Kaarm Rider recognizing the same thing in the silence between breaths: someone was looking, and they were using a powerful, wide-range sweep to do it. Kisa stirred from her place beneath the table, head lifting sharply, frills fluttering with tension. A low, warning sound echoed from outside, the kind of sound dragons made when their instincts flared before their Riders could catch up.

Tessa stood first, her half-eaten roll forgotten. “That wasn’t local.”

“No,” Gaelyn muttered. “And it wasn’t
gentle.” He nodded slowly, a weight settling on his shoulders like armor he hadn’t chosen. “All the more reason—”

“No.” Tessa cut him off with quiet, unflinching resolve. “That’s exactly why I can’t come with you.”

Gaelyn blinked. “Tess—”

“You’re the target, Gael," she spat like it should have been obvious, "you and Ivy! Not us. If I’m with you, every survivor here is in more danger. Every dragon, every student." Her finger jammed into the table with each line. "If you go now, away from us, you buy us time to scatter. To live.”

“But—”

“I’ll find you again.” Her tone softened, even as her jaw stayed clenched. “You know me. I don’t leave debts unpaid.” Her gaze jumped to Ivy with a startling intensity. "And the two of you are safer together than with me," she added cryptically, a light of confidence and approval dancing in her eyes.

Meanwhile, the room had changed. Tension buzzed behind every wall. The Riders in the inn were shifting, restless. Outside, the dragons stirred, quiet at first, then louder.

Kisa’s head snapped up, and then, with no hesitation, her small body rippled like water pierced by a stone, age skipping forward, doubling in size twice until she stood shoulder height to them, her silver scales glowing like bottled moonlight.

Gaelyn stood, the chair scraping against the stone behind him. He looked at Tessa one more time, but she only shook her head.

“Go,” she ordered. “Now.” With a final push, she pulled the cloak off her shoulders and shoved it into his arms, the same shove he needed to get his feet moving.

And this time, he didn’t argue. He turned, already moving, toward the window, toward Kisa, pulling Ivy by the hand as of her grip was the only thing he could count on. Toward the open sky that was calling them into the next chase. As the chasers approached in inn's door he swung the cloak about his shoulders.

The first fist hit the inn’s door like a war drum and Gaelyn didn't wait for the second. "Kisa!" he barked, pointing towards the glass.

She surged with him, coiling tight as a spring, and then, without hesitation, she launched forward and punched clean through the front bay window. The wood and glass exploded outward into the square beyond, framing the silver arc of her body like a comet breaking free of its prison. The chasers outside reeled, startled by the sudden eruption but only for a moment.

That moment’s hesitation was all Gaelyn needed. He vaulted the shattered frame and landed low on Kisa’s back just behind the ridge of her spine, a burst of his wrist rune flaring to share its energy through the bond.

"Make it loud," he muttered. "Make it messy."

And so she did. Her breath stole the energy rippling through the rune Gaelyn had traced on his glove, and the symbol never had a chance to materialize. Gaelyn had sent a dual-rune of press and water through the bond, jammed into the base of Kisa's throat as her fire sparked along her teeth. Instead of a cone of flame, Kisa spit a pressurized stream of water that was already well past its capacity to hold heat that hit the pavement a span in front of the inn's door, right under the feet of the gathered chasers. When the stream's integrity broke, that superheated water erupted in a steam explosion that wiped away flesh from bone as a cloth cleared grease. Vaporized corpses fell to the cobblestone, more bone than tissue, earning them one more moment of reprieve for the shock they had caused.

Kisa reared, silver frills flaring wide like a banner of war, and took off with a crack of pressure that left splinters and silence in her wake. She moved, serpentine and impossible, cutting through air as if it parted just for her. The chase was on.

Behind them, the inn surged into chaos. A dozen chasers leapt into action, most on dragons of thin, narrow build, yellow-scaled and fast, lightning-aspected. Yellows were known for speed beyond any other dragon type, faster even than wind-aspected whites or fiery reds. On a straightaway, nothing outpaced them. But they weren’t made for turns. Not like Kisa.

Gaelyn took them high first, baiting them towards the mountains that loomed over Arborough like a dutiful teacher watching for cheating, letting the yellow-bonded Riders, five in all, close the distance. And then, just as they thought they had a line on him, he dove.

Kisa folded into a tight arc, tucking and twisting down towards the canyon floor, where the mountain ravines carved a tangled mess of narrow corridors and blind turns. Stone walls whipped past in flashes of lichen and frost. Kisa barely banked, her body anticipating the curvature of the space as if she had flown through it only minutes before and memorized its path. She wove, darting around corners at breakneck speeds, her body undulating in time with the terrain.

Gaelyn held on tight, braced against her shoulder ridge, the wind screaming past his ears and the hiss of pursuit crackling close behind. He didn't need to look to know they’d split the pack. Maybe half of them, maybe more, had followed. That was good. That was very good.

Let them follow. Let them chase. Because the faster they ran, the further they drew the Mirror's gaze from the ones they left behind.

 

[Becboc]

Ivy stayed quiet throughout Gaelyn's attempts to convince Tessa to stay with them, which were short-lived in the face of something much, much more urgent.

Her face paled as she felt something akin to claws rake across her mind and she knew, she knew from looking around the room that the other students had felt it too. Something was looking, searching the survivors - and she and Gaelyn had a pretty good idea of what that something was trying to find.

As did Tessa.

The woman couldn't be convinced, and Ivy... Ivy saw her point. She and Gaelyn were walking targets and whoever was with them became a target too. That didn't mean however, that the thought of them separating comforted her; if anything it filled her with dread, but this wasn't about her and how she felt. This was about so much more than any of them, no matter how directly she and Gaelyn were involved.

Although that didn't make the longing in his eyes when Tessa pushed them to leave any easier to stomach.

It was for this reason that Ivy was the first to her feet, already looking to where Kisa seemed to shift and ripple in front of them, merging once more into her larger size. She hadn't expected Gaelyn's hand to find her own, or the tug of her in a different direction but she held back and followed, glancing at Tessa as she past.

"Good luck."

The first fist smacked against the door of the inn and Ivy whipped towards it, the fingers of her free hand drawing motion into rune power. Chairs flew towards the commotion, knocking themselves against the handle, the wood a pile of legs cushions, creating a net of weight that would at least give those within a little time to find an alternative exit. Those within including themselves.

Gaelyn and Kisa already had that covered though.

The newly grown newborn hurled through the window like something released from a catapult, and moments later her riders were leaping after her. They knew the plan, didn't need to articulate it when everything that they did need was communicated through their thoughts and an open mental doorway.

Gaelyn vaulted first, followed by Ivy who landed further towards Kisa's neck. Her hands wrapped once more into the dragon's horns, her thighs pressing tight into the scales, her body ducking slightly to keep out of the spray of the heated water that Gaelyn channelled from just beside where she was sat.

The impact was immediate and devastating, as bodies melted under the explosion of pressured heat, choking screams ricocheting through the streets of the town.

It was all they needed for Kisa to take the opportunity to launch them skyward only a moment later, to guide the chasers away from what was left of the soul of the school they loved.

Gaelyn and Kisa in the sky together were a force to be reckoned with as they sped towards the clouds at a dizzying speed. For the most part, it was all Ivy could do to cling on for her life, as her breath was ripped from her lungs, the velocity of the sky making it near impossible for her to even open her eyes. When she had mounted Kisa that first time, their movements had been a different story, this... this was lethal. They were a lethal. A weapon forged of sky and motion and shadow. She might have felt somewhat euphoric if it hadn't been for Kisa dropping just as they neared the clouds, in towards the mountains.

It was here, that Ivy finally found her feet.

Trees and frost covered rocks sped by them as Kisa rippled through gaps and corners as if she had lived in this kind of environment her whole life. She was a stream of pearlescent power and agility and Ivy knew that she could trust her enough to lessen her grip just a little, to sit up straighter and to dare a glance over her shoulder to take stock of what they were dealing with.

There was nothing at first... until she saw it, winding a corner straight after them. Flashes of yellow. One, two. Three. They had lost two to the mountains but the chase, nor the fight, were over yet.

When Kisa began to climb again, Ivy knew it was for her benefit, to gift her rider vision of the landscape below. The mountains were rocky, jagged and there were walls and walls upon snow and ice around them. But there... up ahead was what she needed to put her plan into motion. A slither of a gap between two mountain walls, the world beyond framed by treacherous, cliffs of knives and blankets of white. Ivy truly didn't know if they would even fit through it, but Kisa... Kisa did because she was heading straight for it.

Behind them, the three yellows and their riders emerged into the open air space and now that they had a straight path they were gaining, closer and closer. Kisa pushed forwards, and Ivy lifted her hand to her side, flexing her fingers as she battled to keep them stable against the wind.

Come on, come on.

Her focus froze upon the gap they flew towards, even when yellow began at the corners of her vision, even as Kisa began their descent again towards the opening.

"Come on..." The words were whipped from her, as Wind was seared into the space beside her, closely followed by a second rune as the walls drew closer, just as the yellows began to fallback in concern for the space, just as...

"Brace!" Ivy screamed the word no sooner than her her fingers finished Push, and with the same hand that was glowing at the fingertips, she hurled it towards the wall of the mountain just before Kisa twisted into the impossible space.

A screeching of ice and rocks followed in their wake as Ivy punctured the force of the wind around them into the surface of grey, like an invisible sword made of air. She gritted her teeth to keep her hand in place, dragging and dragging and dragging to loose as many rocks as was physically possible. It was only when she had to whip back to Kisa's horn for balance did she dare to look back again, to see that the yellows had made the gap, that they were still hot on their tail until...

The mountain itself began to fall.

There was a pause just before, where all that could be heard was the buzzing of wind in their ears and the whoosh of the tunnel on either side of them. For a split second, Ivy feared that her plan hadn't worked... until a rumbling, somewhere deep within the mountain began to tremble, shaking free stones and snow, like a mighty dragon itself was awakening from a hundred year slumber somewhere deep below.

Kisa twisted again when she heard it too, turning them back upright, which is when the first boulder finally juddered from its home and fell... straight into the back of the penultimate yellow, cutting off the path of the very last. The shriek that followed pierced through the sky, echoing from every surface until the mountain responded in kind and finally shed itself of the snow and cliffside that Ivy had dislodged.

More and more chunks of rock began to crash, following a path that drew closer and closer to the two dragons that were left. Snow and ice filled the air, making visibility near impossible, except for the slither of light that Kisa pushed towards, that was drawing ever nearer. Ivy closed her eyes, her heart pounding in her ears, because if this went wrong, if they didn't make it...

Well, she couldn't blame herself when she was dead, she supposed.

The towns on the other side of the mountains may have looked towards the crashing of snow high above like it was any other day. The resting giants often shed the colder weather, usually when the ice began to melt and unsettled enough that movement was unavoidable. To them, this was simply another one of those times but to Ivy, Gaelyn and Kisa? It was a near death experience that surely none of them could forget, as they burst through the opening between the two walls, followed by sheets of frozen air and water... but nothing else. Nothing other than the mountain itself, coughing out what it had gifted life, while swallowing its payment in return; a debt repaid.

 

[Ryees]

 

The world was still again.

Not silent in the way of the ears, with Kisa's breath coming heavy beneath them, stirring the air with gusts of furnace-warm wind as she glided lower, but still in the way the world sits quietly after a storm. The mad rush of wind through their hair had dulled into a rustling calm. Below them, the mountains continued to stretch, but the sound of pursuit had vanished, swallowed by the avalanche Ivy had conjured. For a sweet, fleeting moment, Gaelyn believed they had done it.

He had sealed the cloak into Kisa's scales but left the hood open and free to feel the wind, his body rising and falling with her steady rhythm. Ivy was just ahead of him, half-turned, wind-tousled and flushed, and he could feel the relief bleeding from her posture, same as his own.

And then something pierced the sky. Not wind. Not magic. Not even the residual buzz of adrenaline. A lance of thought—not like the wide-net psionic sweeps from before, but a spike, precise and personal—punched through the air and slammed against his mental walls. It was sharp, burning with focused intent, like a finger jabbing through cloth in search of a weak seam. His mind reacted before he could consciously name it; the lockdown sequence was automatic now. A lattice of trained countermeasures slammed down around his surface thoughts, old Rider training surfacing in jagged muscle memory.

But Ivy had no such protection. He felt it, a half-second after the strike landed. Her whole posture went taut, one hand lifting from Kisa's horn to clutch at her head. Her shoulders hunched, legs squeezing the dragon's sides as if trying to ground herself, and then her other hand came up, fast, like she was drawing a weapon or a rune without aim.

"Ivy—"

She didn't hear him. Or she wasn't there to hear. A tremor passed through her body and she let out a noise that didn't belong in the waking world. Kisa faltered slightly in her flight, a ripple of concern passing through the bond. Gaelyn reached forward, shifting carefully so he could grab Ivy's arm, but her head snapped up and the look in her eyes stopped him cold.

She wasn't seeing him. She was seeing something else. Her gaze skated over him like he wasn't even there, pupils blown wide with fear and rage. And then she struck. Not with hesitation, not with calculation, but with the kind of wild, desperate violence reserved for battlefield chaos. Her hand slashed a shape into the air and a gust of sharpened wind peeled across Gaelyn's shoulder hard enough to slice fabric.

He recoiled, twisted low. "Ivy!" But she was already moving again, drawing another rune, her face contorted with pure terror he hadn't seen since the fall.

Kisa, he thought hard, stay steady. The silver dragon rumbled low in acknowledgment, altering her trajectory only slightly as Gaelyn opened the cloak to twist behind Ivy and catch her wrist. She struggled hard, brute strength backed by psionically-fueled panic. Another rune flared in her free hand, and this time he recognized the start of a kinetic. Not for flight, but for attack.

Gaelyn acted against all instinct and grabbed her hand the moment the rune started to trace, jerking her fingertip away from the floating pattern. The energy was small, only the length of her fingertip, but all the same the explosion from the rune was enough to throw his arm back and unseat him from Kisa's back. She twisted underneath them, correcting his posture, and simultaneously throwing Ivy off hers. With a psychic spear manifesting in the back of his mind, he threw his weight into her shoulders and pinned her against Kisa's back. A twitch of his head saw the cloak lace around them, encapsulating both of them in a too-small dome that still let the wind whistle noisily through the gaps. With her body held down, he let the lance fire and punched into her mind.

She screamed. Not aloud—her body did nothing. But in the space between them, in that shared bond Riders could choose to open, her mind screamed as if being peeled apart. Gaelyn closed his eyes and pressed in further. He was only a step above average, psychically. Most Riders weren't terribly strong, but what they did have was attunement: training in how to identify the mind of their bondmate across distances. He used that, traced it like a lifeline, and pulled the edge of his own mind across the surface of hers, looking for the crack that had let the invader in.

And then he saw what he hadn't meant to. He hadn't even made full contact, but brushing across her mental surface now was like dragging fingers through mist, and her thoughts rose up like specters through the fog.

A tall woman with a mouth made for disapproval. Not screaming, but worse. Cold. Silent. Ivy as a child, shoulders hunched in apology for an error she hadn't even understood. The weight of expectation like a collarbone snapped under pressure.

Gaelyn himself—bloodied, broken, sliding from Kisa's back. Kisa falling beside him, her body crushed beneath debris. Ivy alone. Always alone. Her heart pounding with grief that hadn't yet happened, but that lived inside her like prophecy.

No home. No bond. Kisa's nest left empty and cold. Gaelyn's presence gone—not dead, just distant, like he had moved on. Like they all had. Ivy adrift, watching the world reshape itself into something she could never belong to again.

The emotions weren't clean or clear. They came layered, staggered, and splintered, and hey poured into Gaelyn's awareness with a weight that could have knocked him loose from Kisa's back. This was what she was feeling, now. This was what someone had dragged up from her to twist against her. It wasn't just manipulation, it was an invasion.

Gaelyn clenched his jaw. "Ivy." He didn't shout it, didn't scream it: He meant it.

His will surged forward, not like the invasive force of the attacker, but like the clasp of a hand over a shaking one. He braced his mind like armor and poured every ounce of memory he had into the tether.

You are here..........

......................You are on Kisa

..........You are with me........

...................................This is not real.......

This is not real This is not real This is not real Thisisnotrealthisisnotreal
thisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotreal
thisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotrealthisisnotreal

He pulled back just before his own defenses could buckle, severing the contact a second before the invader might notice. Ivy collapsed forward, her body curling over Kisa's spine, hands gripping hard onto the horn. She was gasping. He reached for her again, this time, gently, both in hand and in mind. Her mind was open and her body was wracked with tension, but she was disconnected from the attacker's tether. With her mind still at hand, Gaelyn wreathed a layer of defense over her outer shell, separating her from the outside world and any further interference. "You're back. You're alright. Ivy, it's over."

But it wasn't. Not really. They had just been marked. And someone powerful, someone who knew how to reach into the marrow of a person and bend it, was hunting them. The skies no longer felt safe.​

 

[Becboc]

Ivy was not prepared for the blow that landed.

One minute, she was glancing back at Gaelyn to make sure he was safe, unharmed but the next?

The world seemed to warp around her, colour draining from her vision and the pain... a sharp, stabbing pain pushed against her right temple until she had no choice but to lift her hand in an attempt to stop the ringing growing louder and louder and louder and louder and--

The sky fell away quickly and all at once... or did she fall from it? It was impossible to tell, but everything continued to shift until there were trees growing tall and vast surrounding her, and the air became deathly still. One of her hands remained curled upon the hilt of a dagger by her side but she couldn't move it, couldn't draw it even when she began to panic. Mist started to pour between the wooden trunks, surrounding the branches and the world in a blanket of shadow; it didn't matter which way Ivy turned, there was nothing and nobody and she was alone, she was always so alone--

"But you don't have to be." The voice curled from somewhere behind her and Ivy whipped towards it, her hand raising to draw her rune, her other still stuck to her weapon.

"We have made it so you don't have to be... Ivy." That voice. She... she knew that voice. The low, rasping gravel of it prickling along her spine with a familiarity she struggled to place. It curled around her name and another blow hit her left temple this time, with a crunch that sent her sprawling and groaning in pain on the ground beneath her.

"Who..." She tried to speak but her throat was closing, tried to get up but her body, her mind wouldn't let her.

And that's when she finally stepped from the mist.

Ivy's eyes widened in terror as she used her free hand to try and drag herself forwards, but it was no use. "Get... get away from me!"

She tried to draw again, only for the stranger to pierce her hand through the shape, in front of her one minute and gone the next. Each time the rune backfired and the force smashed into her until she was coughing and spluttering onto the twigs and leaves now crushed by her body.

"You could make all of this go away, you know," the stranger continued from somewhere behind where Ivy now lay. "With acceptance, Ivy. Just a little acceptance. Because if you don't?" She paused. "You're going to lose... everything."

That final word was whispered into her ear and suddenly, the mist retracted, quickly - too quickly, and in its wake? It left a body. No, *two* bodies. One human and the other...

Ivy screamed. Grief and pain exploded from her lungs as she tried, she tried so damn hard to drag herself towards where Gaelyn and Kisa now lay, bloody and unmoving. "No... nononono..." But she couldn't get to them, couldn't reach them; it was trying to move through treacle, like she had been captured by the weight of her own fears. But still she tried, she tried until she was red in the face and shaking with the exertion of it, until... a second blow ripped through her head and she screamed again, the pain unbearable, like there was something peeling away layer after layer of her thoughts, her memories, her being.

"No," Ivy sobbed, curling into herself and clutching at her head again with that one free hand. "Please..."

But then--

"Ivy."

Her eyes flew open again and she whimpered, trying to look at the body before her, trying to... "Gaelyn?"

She lifted her head, just a fraction, and when her eyes finally met the bloody patch before her, she realised that the bodies were gone.

"Gaelyn?" She spoke his name a second time in a whisper, but one that did not leave her lips. It drifted elsewhere, towards a thread of warmth curling through her chest, a sensation, a reminder - a familiarity.

You are here..........

Here, in the forest, on the ground with--

......................You are on Kisa

Kisa? But Kisa--

You are with me........

With... you?

This is not real.......

This... this wasn't real. Yet the pain, her anguish... the stranger. Ivy gulped and squeezed her eyes shut tighter, tighter, trying to listen, trying to think, trying to breathe...

This is not real This is not real This is not real Thisisnotrealthisisnotreal

"This is not real, this is not real, this is not real, please don't let this be--"

Ivy collapsed forwards suddenly, gasping as she woke as if from a dream, a nightmare. She gulped for air, again and again and again, her body shuddering until her eyes flew open and open wide. Kisa beneath her, the sky above, and Gaelyn... She twisted, panic and terror still fresh upon her pale features, but she needed to see him, to feel him, to...

"Gaelyn?" His name choked from her lips because he hadn't seen, he couldn't know... "I... I wasn't here, I was... She was..." But she couldn't finish her sentence, not when her chest still heaved so heavily, not when she trembled violently enough that both Gaelyn and Kisa could feel the tremors beneath the dome of the cloak that protected her.

"I thought that you were... that you both... and I-I... I couldn't..."

Ivy shook her head and sobbed again, turning back to forwards and clutching her hand to her mouth to try and stop herself but she... she just couldn't. She couldn't shake that image of those two bodies from her mind, the terror that had gripped her heart and the very real suggestion that the only way to prevent it, was to join the very thing that they ran from.

"I-I'm sorry... I... I'm so... s-sorry."

 

[Ryees]

 

Kisa kept low, her body rippling like quicksilver over the mountaintops. Wind howled past, but inside the shroud Gaelyn had tightened around them, all had gone quiet when he pulled closed the cowl. Ivy remained huddled in his arms beneath the cloak, her breathing still sharp and uneven. He kept one arm firm around her, the other gripping the slender ridge of Kisa's back. There wasn't room for anything else right now—no talking, no planning, just get clear. He gave a soft nudge with his heels, and the silver dragon obeyed without question.

At her adult size, Kisa wasn't large, certainly no towering beast to blot out the sky. She was lithe, barely twice Gaelyn's height at the shoulder, and every motion she made was tight and efficient. Where yellow dragons cut lightning lines across the air, she spun between trees and cliffsides like a dancer on glass. Her body curled like a ribbon through narrow valleys, her breath steaming the air, her focus absolute. She had always been built for this. And now, with the cloak anchored and Ivy safe between them, Gaelyn gave her a final, quiet thought.

Find cover. Take us down.

She twisted through a sharp, narrowing crevice, her tail brushing snow-dusted rock, and then angled toward a swath of pine-choked woodland. It was remote here, south of the old mining roads, the kind of terrain they hadn't even flown over in their orientation flights at Lohia Kaarm. A tucked-away fold of forestland that smelled like moss and bark, where even the birds gave space. It was cold, but with the trees to cut the wind, it was nothing that a fire would not solve.

Kisa slowed her descent, threading between two frostbitten trees, and landed with a thump that barely stirred the underbrush. She tucked her limbs close, lowered her neck, and let Gaelyn dismount first, still holding Ivy with a measured grip. He freed the cloak and climbed down carefully, and only when he felt pine needles underfoot did he look down at her again.

She hadn't spoken, and her hands were still trembling. "Easy now," he murmured, guiding her down and helping her sit with her back against a thick-barked tree. "You're safe. We're away." Kisa circled once, curling herself like a silver comma around the clearing, her presence a quiet reassurance. Gaelyn knelt beside Ivy and took a slow breath.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. They were supposed to be Riders. Students from one of the most prestigious academies in the world. Taught by the best, bonded to creatures older than nations. They were supposed to have time—years—to train, to learn, and to grow. Instead they were fugitives in the trees, hearts thundering, hunted by something that had learned their names and didn't care how young they were.

"Ivy," he said softly, drawing her eyes to his, "we're going to have to work on your mind defense. I know that's not what you want to hear right now. I know you're tired. But what just happened, what they just did, they'll try again." He paused, just long enough to let the weight settle. "We'll start after you've rested, I'll teach you everything I can. Because next time, we don't get to be surprised." He reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. Not as an indulgence, but as a moment of grounding. A reminder she was still here.

He stood, glancing toward Kisa. The dragon blinked at him slowly, her breath silvering in the shade. They were all still here. But for how long, he didn't know.

"Let's get a camp set up, at least," he said, somewhat to himself. The vocalization was more for the focus, to state a task out loud so that everyone was on the same page. Gaelyn's demeanor had shifted, now, to something more purposeful, more military, as the training he had never properly had to use started to come to light. He walked a circuit around the break in the trees they were to sleep in, gathering what was fallen and dead and finding what was hanging and loose, first, dropping it in the middle of the clearing. He unfurled his modest pack and pulled the small hand hatchet from within, taking a few minutes to hack off two low-hanging branches the thickness of his forearm and return with them. Separating those into foot-long chunks, he built a stacked box out of parallel slats, and tucked the kindling into the center of the box.

His pack did contain a flint and steel, but a quick glance at Kisa sufficed in its place. She ducked her head down to the base of the fire and burped out a small gout of flame that immediately dried out the outer bark with its caustic heat, then a second that immediately started the kindling smoldering. Gaelyn bent low next to her, blowing gently into the base of the fire for only a few seconds before the first candle flame lapped the air above the tinder. Crouched low together over the fire pit, Gaelyn shared a glance with Kisa, and he almost thought he could see her mirror his appreciative grin in the dancing flame light.​

 

[Becboc]

The bark of the tree was rough against her back, the ground cold beneath her legs, but that wasn't why she was still trembling. Ivy's mind remained dazed from the intrusion and her body twitched as though every sound, every movement could be another threat come to turn the vision into fate. Mentally, she was absolutely exhausted, bruised and aching; it felt as though someone had reached their hand into her mind and scrambled her thoughts, her feelings, bringing so many unwanted things to her surface... which in a way, was exactly what the stranger had done.

When Gaelyn crouched before her, Ivy started slightly but she met his eyes, darting between each one and quickly shaking her head when he tried to offer what their next steps should be. Even simply the thought of diving back towards that headspace, into her own mind was enough to curl nausea into her stomach; she couldn't do it, not when it was so raw, not when she felt like this. Her internal protests were short-lived however, at the suggestion that what had happened earlier? It could happen again, if she didn't prepare; if they didn't prepare.

Ivy paled further with the consideration, but knowing she wouldn't have to think of it until she was rested at least, was enough for now, enough for her to exhale in a moment of relief. She watched Gaelyn brush the strand of silver-brown from her cheek and leaned into his touch, just slightly - needing it to ground her as it was intended. It was another reminder that he was still here, that they were okay. A reminder to stay with him in this moment.

When he rose from her once more, Ivy huddled further down into her leathers and quietly sat and watched as Gaelyn began to set up their camp. She knew she should help, she knew she should move and work with him but she couldn't, not when her eyes grew heavier, her breaths deeper - she so desperately needed to rest but she fought against it, creases of concentration etching into her forehead. She didn't want to close her eyes, didn't want to see what waited for her in the darkness, didn't want to lose herself, not again...

"It was her," she eventually managed to croak out, haunted eyes illuminated by the now crackling fire. She didn't want to talk about it either, didn't want to relive it but she also couldn't forget, not one detail of what had happened when it could all be so incredibly important. "The... the woman with the mirrored uniform. She..." Ivy shook her head, "She was there and she... she knew my name. She t-told me that if I didn't... join her then you... a-and Kisa..." Her voice cracked again and she shivered, continuing in hardly above a whisper.

"She showed me what would happen, Gaelyn. To both of you."

 

[Ryees]

 

The fire started to crackle between them, a living thing that filled the silence with motion and warmth. Sparks curled upward into the night as he crouched low, elbows on his knees, gaze fixed not on Ivy but on the heart of the flame. She showed me what would happen, Gaelyn. The words repeated in his head with a cold clarity, sharper than the mountain wind.

His jaw tightened, then relaxed. "That wasn't her," he said at last, voice low. "Not really." He didn't explain further. Ivy knew it as well as he did. Whatever that was had crawled through her fears, put on her nightmares like a second skin, and known where to strike. And it had almost worked.

Gaelyn stood slowly and crossed the clearing. His pack lay just past Kisa's curled flank, tucked against a tree root. He rummaged through it a moment, came up with a small stick of charcoal, a flat-edged carving knife, and a scrap of cloth. Returning to the fire, he sat beside Ivy, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to be there if her hands started shaking again.

Gaelyn thankfully wasn't a novice when it came to this. As a graduate of Lohia Kaarm's military branch, his training had included both physical and psionic combat. He wasn't as naturally adept at mental warfare as Tessa or Nitani, whose politics curriculum had drilled deep into the art, but he'd held his own in classroom duels, field scenarios, and all the gray-matter drills between. He knew how to shield, how to strike, and how to anchor someone else when the walls started crumbling. It wasn't his specialty, but it was part of his foundation, enough to teach. Enough, hopefully, to prepare Ivy for the next time.

He reached for the stick of charcoal and turned the cloth over to the blank side. "I'll teach you what they taught me. And what I figured out on my own after. It won't make you invincible—" he hesitated, then glanced at her "—but it'll give you something. And something is better than what we had today." The firelight danced in her eyes. She didn't flinch from him anymore. That was something too.

Gaelyn began to sketch in charcoal, a set of concentric rings, slowly thickening from the center outward. "This is you," he said simply, pointing at the innermost point. "Your core. The part no one else gets to see unless you let them. The part they were trying to dig for, the Self." It was basic knowledge, but starting at the beginning was how he had learned, and how he taught. He drew the next outer ring darker. "This is what's on the surface. What you're projecting. What you're thinking about. If you're not trained, this is what rotates upward on its own, whatever's loudest inside you." In between those, he drew a series of faint lines, messy and overlapping. "This is everything else. Memories, background thoughts, songs stuck in your head, everything that floats around in your mind but doesn't anchor down anywhere." He tapped the outermost ring once with his thumb. "Today, the outside layer was fear. That's not your fault, it's just… how we work."

Gaelyn set the cloth between them and looked at her directly. "If you can hold something else in your thoughts, just one thing, you can keep that on the surface instead. It'll make them work harder. Force them to dig. And if they're digging, they're slower and sloppier. It gives you time to fight back." He paused, the firelight tracing the scar just above his left brow. "When I was training, they told us to picture a strong image. Something you can hold even when your heart's trying to claw its way out of your ribs, even when you're also forced to fight back with a sword." His hand hovered over the rings. "For me, it's a forge, one from back home. I grew up around metal, was a smith. Hammer and flame... the sound of it, the smell. I can picture every inch of it when I need to. I feed everything into the forge fire, and it all burns, so nothing can make its way in."

He took a breath, turned toward her again. "You don't have to tell me what yours is. But you need to find one. And you need to practice holding it, keeping it so sharp in your mind that it cuts through everything else."

Kisa stirred behind them, her silver eyes gleaming like moonlight reflected in still water. She did not have the words to speak, but her steady presence circled the clearing like a protective current, humming low against Gaelyn's ribs. He offered a faint smile, more shadow than warmth, but real. "We do this a little at a time. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to make it harder for them next time."​

 

[Becboc]

Ivy was aware of mental warfare, just like all Kaarm students were but her speciality had never allowed her to delve into the art as thoroughly as Gaelyn, or as deeply like Tessa. The basics she understood but how to attack, defend; anything beyond knowing what existed, she was not at all well versed in and that much had showed.

This realisation however, did not sting perhaps as much as it might have done once. If she had become a rider, then she would have known what to do when she felt that wave through her head. That's where her thoughts went to so naturally, to failure, rejection. But there was something about the way Gaelyn explained, the way he spoke to her.

His voice was calm amongst the storm; it wasn't her fault that this had happened, but they could prepare better for next time.

She watched him draw the rings to demonstrate and slowly, ever so slowly, her hands began to tremble less and her eyes stopped darting towards every snap of the fire, or rustle of leaves from the trees around them. Kisa's gentle huffing helped to muffle the sound of the forest and Ivy tried to let that fill her mind alongside Gaelyn's low timbre, allowed the sound of familiarity to chase away the remnants of her trauma.

Her eyes flickered to the cloth when he looked at her directly, until he began to describe the anvil and she found herself once more staring at his features in the firelight, the scar that was illuminated, the way he focused in concentration.

"I didn't know y-you were a smith," she offered with a barely there hint of a smile before she listened and began to drift into her own thoughts, her own passages of safety… only to find them rather lapse in her own mind. School was the one place she had felt safe in so many ways but now it was gone, the memories, the images of it nothing but ash and death. No, it was too soon to use that as her anchor - Ivy needed something else.

Kisa shifted then and caught her attention, which saw Ivy's shoulders drooping a little more, the tension slowly ebbing away from her body. She didn't speak for a while after Gaelyn had finished, but rather she watched the dancing fire and thought, thought long and hard until her head started to ache again.

"Okay," she breathed eventually, flexing her steadying fingers slightly and holding them towards the flames. "I'll have something, f-for tomorrow and I'll… I'll be ready. I promise."

She lifted her gaze again then towards where Gaelyn was beside her, pulling her knees up to hug them tightly into her chest, almost as if trying to make herself as small as possible. She felt… better but the lingering vulnerability remained and Ivy knew it would do for some time. Their enemy knew her greatest weaknesses, her fears and while she and Gaelyn had taken steps forwards in this battle, they had taken several back, too.

All that Gaelyn had told her continued to rattle around her mind amidst the last couple of hours and eventually, Ivy felt her eyes growing heavier. She needed to sleep, her mind and body ached for the sweet dip into unconsciousness that would allow her to switch off from it all, but she was afraid; afraid to let her guard down, to leave herself open even just a little. So she remained for now, her chin rested on her knees, and only spoke again when she felt like she could.

"Will you… sit with me here a while?" She asked Gaelyn softly. "I know there's things to do and prepare but I… I feel better, when you're close. Safer."

 

[Ryees]

 

The fire had settled into a quiet rhythm, crackling low and steady, as if even it knew not to speak too loudly.

When Ivy asked him to stay, he simply nodded once, the motion slow, and shifted closer until his shoulder brushed gently against hers. A beat passed, then another, and he angled just enough to draw her in. No pressure, no command, but presence—the steady kind, the kind that said he wasn't going anywhere. He adjusted the cloak, drawing it around them both again. Not tight, not smothering, but enough to dull the wind and dampen the edges of the night. The ambient hush that followed was nearly perfect with no birds, no distant hoofbeats, no sharp crunch of pine needles underfoot. Just breath. Warmth. Stillness.

Kisa stirred behind them, a low, soft chuff stirring the needles on the ground. Then stillness again. Her tail flicked slightly, curling in closer around the perimeter of their little camp.

Gaelyn let the quiet stretch. He thought of what he might say, mulling words around in his head, but decided against it, feeling there was nothing left that needed to be said. Not right now. Not after what she'd endured, and not with how hard she was still trying to stay upright, be brave, and fold in on herself again.

When he finally did speak, it was barely above a murmur, just enough to find her through the hush. "I'll keep watch."

He stayed seated beside her, unmoving, a steady line at her back as she tucked in tighter. His hand came to rest lightly on the edge of his knee, within easy reach if she needed to find it. The fire popped once, scattering a few sparks skyward, but the shroud dulled even that.

A tickle at the back of his mind would have sent a shiver down his spine had he not felt it coming.

Delicate.

He blinked. The idea came with surprising clarity, for all its wordlessness. As sure as he had not heard anything akin to a human syllable, he had heard the word as clear as day. She's not trained for a life like this, he sent back.

Learn. Smart. Weak, but Strong. Learner.

She'll learn in time, yes. She's as smart as you say, she'll learn quickly.

No time. Learn. Teacher.

I will, yes. Tomorrow.

Sunrise?

Yes, after sunrise.

Good. Love?

The word hit Gaelyn like a sack of potatoes to the sternum, and it took a great deal of restraint not to twist around in his seat to balk at Kisa. Love? What do you mean?

Love. You, her?

He heard it as a question this time, realizing it had been a question the first time as well. Tonality was unclear in the mental space even between common tongue speakers, but from human to dragon, even more was lost in translation. We're in this together, he answered with great care, the reason for which he could not quite place. We're the only family we have, now.

Family. Yes. Us, family. Good.

Something about that answer seemed to satisfy the young-made-large pearl, as she curled her head around and dropped it atop her front talons, letting her eyes flutter closed. Watch. Yours.

Tch, yeah. Offered that one up myself. He kept those thoughts to himself, this time, letting them bounce around his own mind without extending them through the bond. It was not the only thought bouncing around in his head as he took his post, one arm draped across Ivy's shoulders. Night fell around them slowly, but Gaelyn did not. He held the silence, and the line.​

 

[Becboc]

Gaelyn's closer presence immediately set Ivy at ease in a way that nothing else ever had. He was gentle, open, ensuring not to smother her if she still needed some space; but that only made her want more of him. No sooner than his shoulder pressed into her own was she shuffling closer, allowing her head to dip down onto him while he wrapped them in his cape to fend off a little more of the cold night breeze.

Ivy knew, that while she was here with Gaelyn and Kisa, the former keeping watch? She knew, despite her fears, that she was safer than she could ever be anywhere else. They wouldn't let anything happen to her because they cared. It wasn't a feeling that she was used to, but it was one she was clinging to by the very tips of her fingers, one that her grip refused to let go of no matter what tried to shake her from it. This was what she imagined home to feel like, in a way that Ivy hadn't experienced before.

"Thank you." Her voice when it came was small, almost as small as she felt curled into Gaelyn's side, as though close wasn't close enough. His warmth, the steady rise and fall of his breaths; Ivy focused on everything that he was in that moment and didn't hesitate in finding the hand that rested on his knee and curling her delicate fingers between his. As she finally settled, a long, slow exhale flowed from her nose in the wake of her eyes beginning to close, now that the world around them was still. Peaceful. Now that she was right where she needed to be; where she belonged.

Ivy didn't sleep for long but she slept enough in a dreamless space that opened no room for nightmares. When she woke again a couple of hours later, she groaned softly at the stiffness in her neck, her head lifting carefully from where she had still been leant against Gaelyn. The sky above them was just beginning to lighten to a dull, powder blue and the fire in front of them remained, gifting warmth and light and comfort.

"Mm," Ivy mumbled again as she lifted a hand to rub at her eyes and then dipped her head again into the crook of Gaelyn's neck, letting her warmth breaths huff over his skin. "You're still here." It was a simple observation, not a question or any hint of an expectation of something different. He had told her he would keep watch and he had - but now? Now Ivy wanted to do the same for him.

She had been in no state for anything before she had rested, but the few hours of sleep that she had been afforded helped to repair at least some of the damage. She didn't feel… healed, per say, but better. Definitely a little better and more like herself than the quaking shell of earlier.

"You need to get some sleep too." Her words lingered in the space that followed, while she continued to try and wake herself up. Only once her eyes finally remained open without being forced, did she tilt her head to look up at Gaelyn from his shoulder, her dark, sleep gaze roaming over his jawline.

"Kisa and I will be okay. Why don't you get your head down for a few hours before sunrise?" Then she added in a tone that was lighter than her voice had been since the attack.

"If you're lucky, there might even be some breakfast waiting for you when you wake up."

 

[Ryees]

The edge of night was beginning to soften by the time Ivy stirred. Gaelyn hadn’t moved much, keeping his stirring to a minimum to keep her from waking. The fire kept low heat rolling through the clearing, and Kisa’s curled bulk made a windbreak just wide enough to keep the worst of the cold off. The shroud still lay over them, dulled now to a passive hum along the edges of his awareness. It muted the noise and the feel of the world, and gave Ivy room to breathe easy.

She shifted before he did, her breath ghosting warm against his neck, her words trailing after with a kind of quiet certainty that settled beneath his ribs. He tipped his head slightly to the side so hers had a better place to rest, the way one adjusted a sword in its sheath—not out of necessity, but out of care. She was right. He was still here. Her fingers were still laced with his. The fire cracked. The dawn yawned overhead.

"I told you I would be." His voice was low, hoarse from disuse, but steady. When she turned her face up to his, eyes still soft from sleep, he looked down at her and let the silence stretch. For once, it wasn’t a soldier’s silence, or a Rider’s. Just a man who’d been awake too long, grateful for the company that hadn't left.

"You sure you’re ready for that?" he asked, one brow tilting, not as a challenge, but a check-in. Her tone had changed, lighter now, like sunlight beginning to creep through leaves, and while he didn’t want to smother it with doubt, she had been through more than most in the last day. He’d be damned if he left her alone again before she was truly ready.

Kisa gave a low, huffing exhale in the background, not unlike a sigh, and shifted just slightly to draw closer to Ivy’s back. It seemed the silver dragon was offering her vote. Gaelyn gave a faint, tired smile, and finally, slowly, began to shift his weight. His joints protested the motion—he was no stranger to sleeping rough, but sitting still after adrenaline faded always made things ache worse than expected. He stretched his legs out long in front of the fire and leaned back just a little, not flat, not gone, but relaxed and something approaching comfortable.

"I’ll take you up on the breakfast," he murmured, "but only if you promise not to burn the woods down in the mean." There was the ghost of a smirk there, just barely. It faded into something softer as he let his eyes close. Not all the way, not yet, but enough.

"If anything changes…" he added, just loud enough for her to hear, but trailed off. She would know what he meant.

 

[Becboc]

"I can make no such promise."

Ivy watched as Gaelyn stretched out and she stayed put until she heard his breathing deepen. She knew she had to do this, that it was important that he rest too, but she couldn't help the way her chest skittered just a little at the realisation she was now alone and—

Kisa huffed again from behind Ivy and ruffled her body slightly as if answering that thought.

Well, not alone exactly.

"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?" Ivy looked over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. She had whispered the question so as not to disturb Gaelyn, but she knew Kisa heard her from the way she cracked an eye, as if to demonstrate that she was sleeping… but with one eye open.

Ivy couldn't help the small twitch of the corners of her mouth as she shook her head and finally, slowly uncurled from where she had been resting. Kisa was right of course, if anything did happen while Gaelyn was out, she was there, and while that was true when Ivy's mind had been attacked, this time they were so much more alert to the possibility. This time at least, they knew what their enemy could do and they would recognise the signs if something like that happened again. Granted, Ivy didn't yet know how to defend herself, but that would come. At sunrise, that would come.

The colour of the sky changed slowly over the next couple of hours and Ivy took it upon herself to begin scouring the area for foods that were safe to eat. Mushrooms, berries; all Kaarm students were taught the basics of how to survive in isolation like this and although Ivy's memory was still a little hazy, her time in the archives certainly helped her to recognise which plants were safe and which were not. If she really wanted to she could hunt but if she was being honest with herself? Killing something cute and furry did not appeal to her mental state right now and so she focused on the plants for the time being. She didn't venture far, was warned by Kisa when she did, and at some point during the sky turning from powder blue to baby pink, she found a moment to drape a blanket over Gaelyn that she had pilfered from his pack.

By the time that he was stirring again, Ivy was cooking as promised. She was using branches to roast mushrooms on their fire, and she'd crushed up some Lingonberries to make what she would argue was sour jam, for them to eat with the bread she'd stuffed in Gaelyn's pack at breakfast when he hadn't been looking the previous morning. It wasn't perfect, but it was something and as she slowly rotated the stick in her hand, she glanced over at where Kisa still lay, in the same position she hadn't moved from all night.

"You need to eat too, you know," Ivy considered, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her forearm when smoke puffed up into them.

"Once Gaelyn wakes up, why don't you go hunting? We'll be okay here for a little while, just… stay as close as your dinner will let you, okay?"

 

[Ryees]

 

Gaelyn’s eyelids felt crusted with sleep when he stirred, the scent of something sharp and savory tugging him back to waking. He blinked against the early morning light, its pale blush brushing over the treetops in long streaks of pink and gold. The fire crackled low beside him, and he caught the subtle sound of something turning over the embers.

Ivy, cross-legged by the flames, was rotating a branch over the fire, skewered with mushrooms that had blistered open and were beginning to crisp at the edges. Her other hand rested near a shallow dish made of carved bark, smeared with something red. Jam? He squinted. It looked like crushed lingonberries, the tart scent tangling with the smoke.

He didn’t speak right away. It was enough to watch her for a moment, awake, steady, and focused. A fragile sort of peace hovered between them, and he didn't want to disturb it.

Then Kisa crashed through the trees.

Well... "Crash" was too dramatic. She was quiet by dragon standards, but even at her modest adult size, Kisa wasn’t exactly subtle when excited. She came trotting in from the eastern edge of the clearing, her head held proudly aloft and her silver eyes gleaming like polished coin.

Draped over her back, slung awkwardly behind her shoulders with a few crimson streaks trailing down her flanks, was a deer.

Not a massive one—closer to a yearling—but still a full-bodied, long-limbed creature that had very clearly been plucked from the world, dispatched with efficiency, and presented with all the smug satisfaction of a housecat bringing home a dead bird. Gaelyn sat up fully now, the blanket Ivy had tucked over him sliding from his shoulders. Kisa stopped just short of the fire, puffed out a slow plume of steam from her nostrils, and let the deer flop off her back onto the ground in front of them with a solid thwump.

I got you this, her expression seemed to say, tail curling proudly behind her. Gaelyn blinked. “Well,” he rasped after a moment, rubbing sleep from the corner of one eye, “I can’t say I wasn’t expecting something from her this morning.”

Kisa gave a low chuff and padded over to the fire, arching her long neck to bump her head lightly against Gaelyn’s arm before settling beside him with a satisfied huff. The deer remained exactly where she’d dropped it, awkwardly half-flopped against a tree root like it had simply given up mid-leap. Gaelyn gave Ivy a sidelong look, amusement flickering at the corner of his mouth. “I suppose this is her version of breakfast in bed.” He ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake off the last remnants of sleep. “We’ll have to dress it soon, if we’re going to smoke any of the meat. Otherwise the bears’ll thank us too.”

He didn’t say what else it meant. That she’d gone hunting at all, that she felt comfortable enough to range while Ivy stayed behind. That meant her instincts were calming. That the three of them had a little time, maybe even a whole morning, before the world caught up with them again.

Kisa blinked slowly, her head resting now on her forearms, clearly pleased with herself. "Good girl," Gaelyn murmured, and reached up to rub just behind her jaw. "Thanks for the gift."

Gaelyn rose, joints stiff and spine popping slightly from the cold, and crossed to where the deer lay cooling. It had bled clean, mostly. Kisa must've struck just right, either a puncture to the heart or a quick twist of the neck. Efficient and clean, as she always was. He crouched beside the carcass and unhooked the small field knife from his belt, thumb brushing over the back of the blade before he set to work.

The process was familiar, steadying. He drew the legs up and started from the belly, making a careful incision from sternum to tailbone. The hide peeled away with practiced pulls. Steam rose as he worked, and the clearing filled with the coppery tang of meat and morning.

"I think we head south," he said quietly, not looking up at first. "Back toward the river we crossed." He glanced over at Ivy then, just to make sure she was listening but not overwhelmed. "It's narrow there, and the terrain makes it hard for anyone to follow by air. There was a ranger outpost nearby too, long abandoned, but if it hasn't been stripped for kindling, it'll have a proper smoke pit. Maybe even a cot or two." He flipped the deer onto its side and began to cut out the loins, sectioning meat with short, deliberate strokes. "If we're lucky, we can smoke enough to carry us a few days past that. If not, at least we'll have shelter to sleep in while we try."

Kisa made a contented snort from beside the fire, the tip of her tail curling and uncurling slowly over her forepaws. She didn't look hungry—she rarely did—but her work wasn't about need. It was about care, her version of planning ahead.

Gaelyn set aside the choice cuts in a strip of waxed cloth from his pack and began carefully slicing the rest of the meat thin, prepping it to cure. The sun had crested higher by now, filtering down through the treetops in mottled beams. One of them caught the edge of Ivy's profile as she watched him, and for a moment, just one, he let the weight of everything else fall away. She was alive. Awake. And soon, eating. That was enough for now.

He tossed a glance over his shoulder and said, "If you're up for it, I could use help threading the bark twine through the drying racks. Once the sun's higher, we'll hang the meat upwind..." A pause, then, with the smallest upward curve at the corner of his mouth, "...unless you'd rather keep watch for our proud huntress in case she brings home a bear next time."

Kisa snorted again, louder this time, and Gaelyn chuckled under his breath as he returned to his work.​

 

[Becboc]

The bond already told Ivy that it was Kisa who she could hear trotting through the trees, which is why she didn't immediately turn to look her way; that and so engrossed was she in tending the vegetables over their fire. It was only when she heard the telling thump of something hitting the ground did she straighten and turn, prepared to ask their dragon how her hunt went, when instead she was provided with an answer before she even had a chance to speak.

Amber eyes widened as they met the now very dead deer on the floor in front of Kisa's feet and Ivy's mouth hung open in shock as she took an instinctive step backwards. "Kisa," she breathed, "What the--"

"Well, I can't say I wasn't expecting something from her this morning."

Gaelyn's sleep mottled voice cut her off before she could finish, but Ivy's gaze didn't leave the body, as though she couldn't quite register what it was she was looking at - that their baby dragon had killed and fetched an actual once living animal to bring back and present to them like gift. She might have stopped to consider how cute Kisa looked with pride whipping her tail along the ground, if she hadn't been so momentarily freaked out by the whole thing.

Ivy had always been a little squeamish; she knew how to hunt, of course, had practiced and learned like the rest of her cohort, but she had been the student always purposefully making noises so the rabbits or the birds got away before anyone caught up with them. Or at least, that was until Professor Burrill has caught her and she had been made to finish off an already half dead pheasant with her blade as punishment, which of course had made her aversion to dead animals a whole lot worse. Ivy wasn't naive enough, of course, to know that death was necessary and especially in their current situation but that didn't mean she enjoyed being up close and personal to it.

Only when Kisa got up and padded her way over to where Gaelyn was now rising did Ivy blink, as if suddenly reentering her body and realising for the first time that Gaelyn was no way near as bothered by this whole ordeal as she was.

"I suppose this is her version of breakfast in bed We'll have to dress it soon, if we're going to smoke any of the meat. Otherwise the bears'll thank us too."

"Gaelyn," she breathed again, then paused as if to let the gravity of the situation sink in. "There's a... it's a... There's a... dead animal!"

Ivy said the words slowly, her tone increasing by a couple of octaves, like she was struggling to understand why he wasn't losing his mind too. "It's on the floor and i-it's..." The words shuddered out of her, but her fellow rider only thanked Kisa for her gift, before he was moving towards the carcass and settling himself beside it. No sooner than he reached out a hand towards the deer's hind legs and prepared his knife, did Ivy turn abruptly, so her back was to whatever he was about to do.

"You're not actually going to...?" But then the first sound of slicing skin filled the air. "Alright, okay. You're going to cut up the deer. That's good, that's... okay." Ivy nodded her head, trying to convince herself. "We can use it for food and supplies and... You do that while I... I'll stay over here, far away, by the fire... watching the mushrooms..." Finally forcing herself to move then, the small brunette perched herself down again with her back still to Gaelyn and Kisa, reaching out to turn over her makeshift skewers that were still happily sizzling away above the flames. "... and trying to get my head around how grown up our baby dragon is. Her first hunt and she brings us back a deer."

That last part she uttered more to herself than to anyone else, before Ivy grew silent again while Gaelyn began to piece together some semblance of a plan he thought they should follow. For the most part she didn't interrupt, didn't speak, but rather tried to focus on his words and what they meant. Her panic over the deer aside, she knew that they needed to consider what the next few days could bring, where they would shelter, where they would hide.

"If we're lucky, we can smoke enough to carry us a few days past that. If not, at least we'll have shelter to sleep in while we try."

And eventually, slowly, she nodded her head in agreement without turning around. Not yet. Not when she could still hear strips of meat being sliced away with a knife.

"If you're up for it, I could use help threading the bark twine through the drying racks. Once the sun's higher, we'll hang the meat upwind..."

"Mm, I'll pass on keeping watch. If Kisa does fancy bringing back a bear next time, I'll let you borrow one of my daggers while I scale the nearest tree." Kisa's snort however, made Ivy smile this time, as did the very real division of labour that she had decided upon whether Gaelyn liked it or not. "I'll help you with the threading though, if you take care of the hanging."

After that declaration, she did manage a brief glance over her shoulder this time with a wistful, wry smile before she turned back to the fire and finally lifted the mushrooms from the heat, now that they were charred and crispy looking. She set the skewers on the side of the bowl with the jam, and retrieved one of her said daggers to start slicing the loaf of bread that sat on a rock beside her knee.

A brief, companionable silence lifted between them as they worked, the forest slowly beginning to wake around them. Birds began to chirp and rustling foliage skittered now and again on the periphery of their little camp, like a creature who had left its burrow, only to find trespassers on its land. Ivy was the one who moved again first in the end, bowl and rock plate in hand. "Alright, breakfast's up," she declared, carrying the goods over to a large, moss covered tree trunk that sat between two other trees; one that was large enough for them both to sit on. "We should eat before we do anything else, keep our energy up while we can." And then she added, a little more warily as she balanced the bowl of jam and mushrooms atop her knees.

"Especially if you still think we should train, after... after yesterday."