Even an hour later, the rain still hadn't shown any signs of letting up. Arthur was starting to look nervously around at the clouds overhead.

«Should be done any minute now,» he muttered to himself.

«You said that half an hour ago,» I pointed out, butting into his private conversation with himself. «Didn't you say that you got powerful storms out here?»

He jumped at the interruption. «Well, yeah,» he said with a noncommittal shrug. «Powerful. Not long. They bunch up, dump rain and wind on you for a couple hours at most, and then go away. But this one's been going on since last night.»

Rosalie finally got to her feet, fetching the water jugs we'd left out and putting our supplies away. "It's unusual, but not something to worry about," she said. "However, if we want to make Wrightsmouth tonight, we need to set out as soon as we can."

"Right!" agreed Grace. She poked at my nose with the butt of her spear. "You ready, Belfry?"

I grumbled and got to my feet, stretching my back as I did. I was feeling more energised after eating, and although the cuts and gashes I'd taken during the fight with the toarbecs hadn't fully healed, they weren't continually hurting anymore.

«Ready enough,» I said.

Rosalie and Grace climbed on, and Arthur and I set off into the air. I could see the road that Rosalie had mentioned before more clearly now from up here. The landscape as a whole had suddenly changed. The borders of the moor were now right by us. To the southwest, I could see the edge of a thin forest full of bright green trees and exposed patches of reddish dirt wherever the grasses faded away. To the north, where we were going, there was a vast, much, much denser forest that spread out to the limits of my vision to the east and west. Pretty soon, we crossed over the edge and into that northern forest.

"This is the eastern limits of the Witchweald," said Rosalie. "The forests turn to swamps here, which are a very hostile environment for travellers having to stay the night. We should try and pass quickly."

Soon, the moor was fully behind us, and all that we could see below was the swamp, broken up here and there by marshy fields and ponds without any tree cover. Clouds rose up from below to meet the veil of rain, seemingly wafting right off the trees. As the hours passed, the fog became denser, until even the tree canopy below wasn't visible as anything more than islands of tall trees amidst the sea of mist.

Another hour passed, and still we flew over the misty swamp. Somewhere beyond the weather, the sun was beginning to set, and light was leaving the sky around us. «Are we still going in the right direction?» I called out.

«We've been flying in a straight line,» Arthur said, his silhouette visible in the fog somewhere over to my right. «We'll be fine.»

I sensed Grace's breathing pick up in pace. "No, no, no," she mumbled. "We've got to land! We can't keep flying like this, we're lost!"

«Grace, calm down,» I said. Why did she suddenly get so scared? Nothing had changed in hours. «We're fine. Like Arthur said, we've been going straight as an arrow.»

"No, we haven't!" said Grace. "You can't go in straight lines when you're moving blind like this, we'll just end up going in circles."

That sounded like superstition, but it did prod my mind into thinking about that idea. Every minor adjustment of my wings, every twitch in my tail; was all that really enough to send us in circles?

"It's worth the risk not to stay the night in the weald," said Rosalie. "Especially if the fog stays until morning. If that were so, we may be grounded for even longer if you are afraid of flying in fog."

"If we land, we might be able to find a road and walk the rest of the way to Wrightsmouth," Grace argued. "We wouldn't get lost that way."

"The sun is on its way down. Soon, it will be too dark even to walk the road!"

"We have lanterns, we can make it! And if we keep flying, we'll just end up spending the night in the forest anyway, because we are not getting to Wrightsmouth like this!"

«Hey, does it look like that cloud is falling to any of you?» interrupted Arthur.

I tilted my head back toward the sky. He was right. A huge mass of cloud was descending from the sky, falling quickly towards us. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, then in a split second as the cloud reached us, the air itself sank around me. There was a sudden blast of air from above, rushing down against my back with the force of an explosion, pelting my wings with rain that felt like a thousand tiny bullets slicing through the air.

«Ghk—!» I grunted as I tried desperately to stay airborne. The wind hurtling down from above kept pushing my wings off-kilter, and my tail drooped down, dragging me towards the ground. Worse, the air that normally billowed beneath my wings, buoying me up as we soared, had vanished. No matter how much I beat my wings down, it didn't feel like I was even pushing against any air at all, and we fell towards the canopy like a dropped stone.

In a panic, I made the last-second decision to cut through the rope holding the mattress on with my claws. It flew away free just before I collided with the trees. I pulled my wings in to avoid tearing them, but I still got tangled up in a mess of branches, vines, and drooping moss. Twigs scratched against my scales and battered my bones, but the trees broke my fall more than I had expected. I tumbled through the forest canopy until the fins on my tail caught on something, and I hung suspended upside-down for a brief moment before the tree limb that held me gave way with a snap, and I plunged into a pool of stagnant water on the forest floor.

I thrashed and splashed in the water, struggling to right myself. Thankfully it wasn't terribly deep, so I wasn't in any danger of drowning before I managed to roll over and stand up, shaking the scummy water from my head and back like a dog. The falling air was already gone by the time I blinked the water out my eyes and scanned my surroundings.

It was indeed a swamp that we had landed in, and it was just as unpleasant as I would have guessed it to be. The pool of water I was standing in actually seemed to consume most of the forest floor, with islands of land scattered about as the only relatively dry spots. Though, everywhere was soaking wet. Even the air was laden with moisture that coalesced as vapour in the canopy overhead and cascaded down, filling the swamp with fog. The trees grew right out of the water, not seeming to care that it was covered in thick patches of greenish-brown scum, nor that it was itself an off-putting red colour. On virtually every exposed surface, leafy and feathery mosses clung, covered in droplets of water harvested from the air.

I looked up, trying to find where the mattress had fallen. The trees were dense with broad, soggy leafage, but I could still see it. It had fallen into a layer only ten or so feet up, but the center of the mattress had been impaled and torn nearly in half by one of the limbs I had broken. I felt a pit form in my stomach at the sight.

«Grace!» I called, pairing the mental cry with a physical plaintive whine. «Where are you!?»

I saw the spear head poke out from over the edge of the top half of the mattress first, then Grace's head. She gave an affirmative wave, and a little bit of my fear dissolved. "Up here!" she yelled.

«Is Juniper with you?» I asked.

Grace glanced at the lower section of the mattress. "She is," she said. "She looks scared to death, but she doesn't look hurt." A branch cracked and the torn mattress jolted. Grace jumped, clambering onto a thicker tree limb for stability. "Belfry, your saddle is done for."

«I can see,» I said. «You'll have to cut Juniper's bit loose. We can tie it shut, and I can carry it the rest of the way like a backpack.»

Grace glanced at the threads holding the mattress together. "Are you sure?"

«It's the best option we've got,» I said.

I sloshed through the water to stand underneath Juniper's section, and Grace did as asked. She sawed through the remaining threads in bunches, until the last one snapped and the mattress fell. I reared up on my hind legs to catch it and leaned against the tree while I cradled it in one arm and used the other to unfold the loose pieces of threadbare cloth. Juniper was inside, panting fast and shallow but unharmed. She was lying on her back in the bundle, clearly not in the most comfortable position, but she didn't seem to mind that part all that much. The last of my fear melted away, and I scratched her neck as best I could without actually cutting her.

«It's okay, girl, it's okay,» I said in a hushed tone. «You're safe now. No more falling, you made it.»

Grace climbed down a few layers of branches before splashing down into the water beside me almost at the same time as the other half of the mattress. She bent to grab the cut rope that had fallen loose, but left the rest of it there to rot in the water.

"I'll get the rope," she said. "You just keep her calm."

I nodded and kept lightly scratching Juniper's side. Her panting finally slowed down and she leaned against my hand. More than anything else, she just looked tired now. So heartbreakingly tired.

«Bel! Grace!» Arthur's voice suddenly echoed out of the woods. I glanced to the right, and could see him stomping through the water with Rosalie still on his back, his blue hide easily standing out among the dark forest.

«We're here!» I called back, directing my voice only towards those two in the hopes of avoiding waking up the swamp.

Arthur's head snapped over and he bounded towards us, every heavy step splashing loudly in the water and sending small tidal waves rippling through it. So much for trying to keep the silence.

«Saints in heaven, I'm glad you two are alive!» said Arthur. Sticks and leaves were stuck to his scales inside patches of mud, but otherwise he looked just as unharmed as me. Rosalie had a few surface scratches and tears in her nice jacket, but was also mostly uninjured.

«Keep it down,» I whispered.

Arthur brought his wings over his mouth, as though he were actually using it to speak. «Sorry,» he whispered back.

Grace finished the rope, having untied the previous knot and made a new one. I looped the rope around my neck and settled what was now essentially just a large burlap bag between my shoulders. I folded my wings and brought them forward so that they brushed up against the sides, hoping that would help to keep Juniper as stable and comfortable as possible while we walked.

Grace leered at Rosalie as she climbed back onto my back, this time sitting without a saddle. "Great plan," she said. "I'm so glad we kept flying."

Rosalie huffed and looked away. "It's not as if I could have predicted there would be such an intense downdraft," she said. "We shouldn't linger on what choices we should have made, anyway. We should focus on making it through the night." She sniffed and turned around to gesture towards Grace. "You said you had lanterns, yes? We can do as you suggested, and walk until we find the road. There is a road that traverses the weald, albeit a dangerous one."

Grace tapped her fingers together. "Okay, the problem with that is…I lost my backpack in the fall. I had the lanterns packed in there."

«Along with all of our food and water,» I realised.

"Yep," said Grace. "So unless one of you wants to try hunting at night, we aren't going to be having any more food, probably until we get to the academy."

"I still have one jug of rainwater," said Rosalie. "But the food is lost. It may be wise for us to craft a makeshift fishing pole to leave out overnight, in case we are able to catch anything. Minnows in the morning would be better than empty stomachs."

«First we should find a spot to camp, though,» I said. There was a muted chorus of agreement from the others. I gestured in a random direction with my wing. «Might as well just…walk until we find land that's at least a little drier than this.»

So we walked into the foggy swamp. Muck clung to my feet every time I took a step in the foul water, and I could feel curtains of moss catching on my wings. Thankfully, we did come upon a dry patch. It wasn't entirely dry—nowhere was—but it was above the water line and the soil was only wet, not turned into sludge. A loose ring of trees bordered the island in the swamp, their leafy branches providing a minimal amount of protection from the rain.

Grace slid to the ground. "This'll do," she said.

We didn't have much of a camp to set up. No bedrolls, no tents. All that we could really do was cut loose some of the surrounding trees' limbs and arrange them in a rough circle at the centre of the island. Arthur lit the fire once it was made, blowing a steady stream of iridescent flames over the limbs until they dried out and caught, which saved me from having to learn how to breathe fire for another night. Grace, Arthur, and I all laid down beside the fire while Rosalie collected sticks and dead, dry vines, trying to make her fishing idea work. I set Juniper's little pack down at my side, opened towards the fire so she could stay warm.

I listened to the cinders crack. Even as darkness fell, the swamp held itself at a consistent, low level of noise. Insects of some kind constantly chirped and droned in the distance, and small birds let out warbling cries. Every now and then, I'd hear a buzzing around the camp as mosquitoes and less familiar flying bugs were drawn to the light of the fire. I slapped them away with my tail.

The air of the swamp was choked with heavy smells, too. A mix of the scents of must, mildew, and foetid, rotten plant matter permeated everything, refusing even to be cleared away by the breeze or the rain. Trace hints of rotting meat wormed their way into the foul bouquet, enough to make my stomach turn. I could even taste the pungent air whenever I opened my mouth. Experimentally, I flicked out my forked tongue to see if I could make any use of it like snakes did, and I immediately regretted it. I had to rub my tongue against the roof of my mouth to cleanse the taste, and that only seemed to make the smell worse.

"Eugh!" Rosalie cried from behind us. I looked back to see her drop her fishing rod on the ground. Insects had crawled out of the water and up the line: a handful of long, thin, red centipedes. They swarmed over the rod for a moment before scattering and burrowing into piles of rotting leaf litter.

Rosalie marched back over to the fire, jamming her hands in her jacket pockets and abandoning her fishing rod where it lay. "The waters are too foul even to search for fish," she muttered. "The weald wasn't this rotten the last time I travelled here."

«Does it have something to do with the red water?» I asked, watching ripples propagate across the water's surface as scattered raindrops broke through the canopy. It wasn't quite blood-red, but was a dark brownish-maroon, far outside the normal spectrum that I'd expect from water, even swamp water. «I assume that's not normal. I've never seen red water before.»

"I haven't either," said Rosalie. "We can only speculate. The pests are certainly an indication of decay, however. Vermin like centipedes and worms proliferate in stagnant water, and the swamp is normally very stagnant. Perhaps they have been driven to activity by the rain stirring the pools. I'm uncertain."

"Could be worse," Grace said with a dark chuckle. "Seems like none of us got any leeches on us. They do live around here."

My skin crawled at that notion, and I slowly rubbed my hands over my scales just in case. I doubted that leeches would be able to get through my hide, but the thought was horrifying enough for me to check anyway.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Arthur slid over onto his side, looking almost like a giant cat with wings. «So…what about the Witchweald makes it so dangerous?» he asked. «Apart from the leeches.»

"The logical answer is the same for this area as it is for many other swamps," said Rosalie. "Quicksand, venomous snakes and insects, toxic plants, disease ridden air and water, and large monsters that can be aggressive. Of course, there's rumours about witches and cultists that call these woods home, hence the name. But that is hearsay. I've never heard any credible stories about that."

Arthur looked around at the perimeter of the camp, his brow firmly, pensively furrowed. «What does it mean if you see little lights out in the swamp?» he asked.

Rosalie narrowed her eyes, scanning the forest. "Did you?"

«No,» said Arthur. His voice cracked. It was an obvious lie.

"I would say that it's marsh gas," said Rosalie. "Swamp waters create gases that bubble up to the surface, and sometimes they ignite. It could also be a lumenwood tree. They have luminescent buds. I haven't seen any yet, but they're normally common around here. I wouldn't worry."

"Or it's witchfire," said Grace. Her eyes were haunted and her voice hollow as she stared into the campfire.

"Witchfire!" Rosalie scoffed. "Witchfire isn't real."

"Yes it is," said Grace. "I've seen it before."

I tapped a claw against one of the stones encircling the fire. «Uh, hold on, what is "witchfire"?» I asked.

"Nothing at all," said Rosalie, "I have yet to hear two stories about it that don't make wholly different claims. Ask five people what witchfire is, and you will hear seven answers."

"I think it's pretty clear," said Grace. "It's lost souls. People who died in the woods, leading the rest of us to the place where they met their fate."

"Rubbish," said Rosalie. "No human spirit remains in this world after death, that is entirely superstition conjured up by provincial priests to threaten young children with. A hundred people or more would swear up and down that they are in fact lanterns held by goblins, not ghosts, and a hundred more will tell you that they are flames conjured by warlocks or trickster spirits to repel or lure travellers. In reality, they are nothing more than electricity, flammable gasses, and mundane glowing trees and fungi."

Grace hugged her knees to her chest with a hmph. "Just don't go following them. You'll drown, or end up in a monster's lair."

"That, we can agree on," said Rosalie. "At the very least, you may become lost, and being lost in this swamp would be very perilous."

Arthur kept his eyes fixed on the pressing darkness at the edge of the firelight. «Right,» he muttered. He laid fully down on his side. «We should probably get some sleep.»

"Agreed," said Grace. She let out a long breath, setting her spear down at her side and getting to her knees. "You guys go ahead. I'll take first watch."

"Thank you," Rosalie said, as she laid her satchel down as a pillow. "Sleep well. Try not to get claimed by witches in the night." She gave a wry smirk before shutting her eyes.

I nodded and laid down myself, curled up with my tail wrapping around Juni's bed to touch the tip of my nose. It was almost too loud to go to sleep out here, what with the hissing of the fire as raindrops fell onto it, the patter they made on the standing water around us, and the continuous droning of insects. I focussed my attention on the shadows dancing on the trees, watching as my mind twisted them into little figures acting out a chaotic play while my eyelids grew heavy.

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I woke with a start to the sound of a scream. I jolted up, looking around frantically at what might be wrong. Despite the noise, the other three were all still asleep somehow, curled up where they had lain before I closed my eyes. Grace sat cross-legged by the cold, dark ashes of the fire pit, her head bowed forward as she slept. She must have fallen asleep before waking anyone else up for watch. I considered scolding her when she woke, but figured the neck ache she'd surely have in the morning would be more than punishment enough.

I checked Juniper's bed; yep, she was still there, only just woken. So what had made that—?

My internal question was interrupted by another scream. This time, I stopped to scan the edges of camp, swivelling my ears forward to pinpoint the sound. It was coming from my left, and above us. I tilted my head back. The rain had finally faded into a continuous but light drizzle that filled the morning air with mist, and the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky into a shade of pale grey-blue. That meant I had enough light to see the culprit. It was a bird, small and round, with beady black eyes and a mouth that stretched far too wide as it opened it again to let out its screaming call.

I sighed and sat back down. The sound was still viscerally unnerving, but it was a relief knowing it was nothing dangerous. I glanced around the swamp, killing time while waiting on the others. We should still have one person up, even if it was almost dawn, and I wasn't getting back to sleep anyway.

I marvelled at the mosses hanging from the trees. They were thick and spongy, dripping with water they had collected from the night and the morning fog, and intensely green despite the pervasive brown and ruddy red that formed most of the swamp's palette. They smelled nice too, a dense, herbal smell that reminded me of herbal poultices I'd smelled in the window of the new apothecary's in Vandermaine.

I couldn't recall whether the moss was medicinal in its own right or if it was a vehicle for some other tonic, but I decided I'd take the opportunity to gather some anyway, just in case. The biggest clump near to me clung to the branch of a bent tree that leaned out over the water. It wasn't that far out, no risk to reach for it. I crept up to the tree and climbed out, holding onto the sturdy base of the limb with one hand while flexing my wings and tail to keep balance.

As I held up a finger to use my claw like a makeshift knife, I happened to glance out over the water. This standing pool ran for seemingly ever, interconnected with all the other waterways like a vast system of canals through the swamp. Leaf litter, broken twigs and limbs, clumps of lily pads, and pond scum covered its surface. Here and there, I could see a swimming snake, a swarm of gnats or mosquitoes buzzing, or more of those strange red centipedes.

But when I blinked, a new figure had emerged from the water. It was small, only a tiny hump above the water's surface, lit from behind by the sunrise so all I could make out was a dark silhouette. At first, I thought it was a rock. But then it opened its eyes. They were wide and fuzzy at the edges, like they shed a light that diffused in the fog. They were a sickly, greyish hue of blue-green. And they stared. Stared right at me for the half minute it took for me to register exactly what I was looking at, and then they and the figure behind them sunk into the water with a small ripple.

I blinked, and the ripples were gone. The shock finally cleared and my mind kicked my body into motion. I snatched the rest of the moss from the branch, not caring anymore to be delicate, and ran back towards camp.

«Wake up!» I shouted. Thankfully, my "dragonspeech" had enough of the effect of real sound to stir everyone else to life. Arthur groggily raised his head and blinked his eyes, while the other two shot up nearly as fast as I had earlier, immediately reaching for their weapons and looking around.

"Belfry, what are you doing…?" Grace groaned as she grimaced and massaged her neck.

«Something's wrong,» I said. «I saw a…thing in the water. We need to go.»

"What kind of 'thing'?" Grace questioned. Rosalie, meanwhile, did not hesitate. She got to her feet in a flash and shoved her satchel onto Arthur's back while he was still clearing the nonexistent sleep-sand from his eyes, and he protested with a startled squawk.

«I don't know!» I said. I hoisted Juniper's bed onto my back and fastened the rope into a knot with shaking fingers. «Doesn't matter what it was, it didn't seem nice!"

Grace's eyes flicked over my shoulder and suddenly went wide. She snatched up her spear and pack and jumped onto my back, not even waiting for me to kneel down. I grunted at the sudden weight before looking to see what she had seen.

The creature, whatever it was, had surfaced again, this time right next to the water's edge, so near to land that it couldn't possibly have fit its entire body under the surface unless it had gone completely flat. This close, I could see its wiry hair that stuck out from its head like broken reeds, but it was still only a silhouette past its horrible eyes.

"Ready!" called Rosalie, and Arthur leaped into the air without another word.

"Go, go, go!" said Grace, kicking her heel into my side like she was spurring a horse.

I didn't take kindly to the gesture, but now wasn't the time for that. As I raised my wings to follow after Arthur, the creature raised one gangly, all-too long humanoid arm above the water. It was longer than I was tall as a human, tipped with a hand that had at least eight fingers, all covered in sharp claws, articulated with an extra joint, like a spider's leg. It pressed the hand against the ground, beginning to raise its frightful, shadowy body from the water.

I was in the air before it could fully rise, and I didn't look back as I flew out over the water, and then up through a hole in the canopy. My wings banged against the trees and I stumbled, but I didn't fall, and soon we were surrounded by the sky.

I almost lost Arthur and Rosalie in the mist, but I could see their shadow ahead and moved to keep up with it. They hadn't bothered to keep hovering over our abandoned campsite and set off in a direction. The position of the sun indicated it was northwest, the way we needed to go, but the sky was becoming increasingly obscured by the fog.

«What was that thing?» I asked with a shudder.

"Nock," said Grace. She breathed hard as she came down from panic. "A kind of water spirit. I think. I've never faced one before."

"I think you're correct," concurred Rosalie. Even she was breathless. "Saint's blood, that was close." She looked back at the forest, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I've never heard of a nock acting so brazen towards a group before. The weald was never terribly safe, but something is wrong with it."

Grace held her thumbs up with a weary smile. "Well, we made it out alive!" she said. "And now we're on our way to the academy. It can't be too much farther. We're almost to the gulf."

Her optimism was potent, but optimism wouldn't dispel the fog that only grew thicker as the day went on. The wind was silent and slow, letting the mist reach its cold fingers up into the sky as the rainclouds stagnated, drowning out the sunlight and filling the air with grey. Pretty soon, Arthur and Rosalie were back to silhouettes, even though we couldn't have been more than fifty feet apart.

«Are we…sure we're going…the right way?» said Arthur, even his dragonspeech having to work around his panting as the air became more and more cut with water droplets.

I twisted around to get an opinion from Grace, but she was lost in her own thoughts. She'd taken her map out and pinned it to one of my spines and sat poring over it. It wasn't like I could do much better. I didn't even know how high up we were. The fog was obscuring the ground. I thought I heard sloshing water somewhere below, so we might have made it over the gulf, but I couldn't be sure anymore.

«Grace?» I poked at her. «Any ideas?»

She huffed in miserable frustration. "No? I…I don't know."

"Should we find a place to land?" asked Rosalie. "You were the one who suggested we do so yesterday, when the rain blocked out our sight."

"No!" cried Grace. "We…I mean…argh!" She growled and ran a hand down her face. "We're so close! We can't turn back now!"

Arthur's wings shivered, sending him curving to the right. I had to fly up next to him and gently tap his wing with my tail to get him pointed in the right direction again. Or, whatever direction it was we were headed.

«This is stupid!» he shouted. «I feel like I'm going to crash into a rock!»

«I think we're over the sea,» I said. «There aren't any rocks.»

«That's even worse! What if we get blown north? We'll freeze to death, and that's if we find some icy spit to land on before we get so cold we drop into the water!»

«Arthur!» I shouted. I slowed to fly by his side and look him in the eye. «Arthur, breathe. It's summer. We won't freeze that quick. If the worst comes to worst, we'll land wherever we can find a place and wait for the weather to blow over.»

«We said that last night, and it's still here!» Arthur shook his head plaintively. «I don't think this storm will ever end.»

I tilted my head back around again. «Grace?»

She shook her head too. "Hold on," she muttered. "I'm…I'm thinking…." She traced an imaginary line over the map with her finger. "We must have been southwest of Wrightsmouth last night, so if we went north over the gulf, we have to be between here and here…."

She trailed off, and I let her finish those thoughts in her head, turning to face forward again. Not that it mattered, much. It was like being in a dream. The grey half-light felt more like we were flying through oblivion than pure darkness would have. At least there were still sounds.

«I'm diving down,» I announced, and angled my wings downward into a slow, shallow incline.

"What? Why?" questioned Grace, looking up from her map.

«We might be able to find a layer where the fog is clear,» I explained.

"That's so dangerous," she objected. "If you fall into the water, I don't think you'll be able to lift off again. We'd have to swim however far it is to shore!"

«It's better than just sitting here and waiting for our destination to come to us!» I said. Grace grit her teeth and held tightly to my spines as we dipped down. Arthur wordlessly began to lower himself through the fog at my side, though we soon split as it seemed he wasn't willing to go near as low as me.

The wind picked up as we got lower and lower until it became a blustery gale. We broke through the floor of the fog where the wind was strong enough to blow it away, but were met by something just as bad. The sea was churning and roiling, filling the air with white spume as the waves crashed into each other. Salt in the water stung my eyes, and I had to keep them half closed to continue on. The air caught on Grace's map, and I felt a faint pressure as I heard paper rip and the map was torn away, blowing into the sea. Grace made a cursory attempt to grab it, but it was already gone.

"I don't think this is helping," she said, shielding her face from the spray. "We're just as blind down here as up there!"

I agreed, and beyond that, the sea itself below us was beginning to make me nervous. In between the spots of pale foam, I could see the deep, dark expanse that lay beneath. Trying to consider the great volume of water that I was flying over right then made my mind feel like it was teetering and unsteady, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had never seen the sea. And there, in the depths, it seemed so…calm, compared to the violence that raged on its surface.

In one of those islands of tranquility amid roiling waters, I caught a flicker of light. Not from something below, but from something above: a reflection on the water's surface. When I looked up, it wasn't there, but then I glanced back down and I could see it again, clear as day. A series of luminous orbs hung in the air, a few hundred feet away, shining like ball of deep scarlet flames.

And then, when I turned my eyes upward once more, they were there, obscured by the mist above us, but still shining clearly. Each one in the chain vanished as I drew near, leaving the next to continue beckoning me onward. From my back, Grace gasped.

"Witchfire!" she breathed. "Turn back, now! We're going to die!" She pulled my spines to the side like she was trying to guide my flight, but I stubbornly kept going.

«No!» I said. «I…think it wants us to follow.»

"Yes, so it can kill us!" argued Grace, her voice growing more panicked.

«It's the only lead we have!»

"Well, it's a rotten one!" screamed Grace.

«I'm not just going to wait for my wings to give out!» I roared. I took a deep breath, then, more calmly, tried again. «Grace! We're low on options. I'd rather deal with whatever is at the end of this trail than spend another night in that damned swamp.»

Grace bit her lip. "What if it's not something you can fight off? What if you're just sailing us into a cliff, where we'll break all our bones and then drown?"

«Then we'll fly slow and keep our eyes open,» said Arthur as he finally dropped down beside us. Rosalie clung to his back, staring forward with resolve. «It sounds like this stuff picks out people who aren't wary, right? Then let's just stay wary.»

Grace didn't answer, too nervous even to give a sarcastic comment to Arthur, like I could feel she wanted to. She just clenched her hand on my spine and wrapped her other arm as far around my chest as it would go. I wished I could do something to comfort her, but the best I was in a position to give was a mental hum to try and give her something stable to anchor her mind to.

The ghostly flames gradually took us upward, away from the water. I glanced down at the sea one last time before we were enveloped in the fog once again, and I could have sworn that I saw the reflection of a moon, reddish like it had been eclipsed by the planet. But it was the middle of the day; I must have been imagining things.

The wind died back down as we entered the fog bank. Though the mist made the flames even more indistinct at this distance, I could still just make out the nearest one each time the chain fled farther away. The air grew colder as we kept flying, and the sound of the sea grew louder. Then, suddenly, the chain sharply swerved upwards, taking us at a steep incline that Arthur and I struggled to meet. As we climbed, I felt my talons brush against a small stony ridge covered in grass, and I looked down to see the face of a cliff receding below us as we rose.

Grace saw it too. "See? See?" she said, pointing down at the land. "I told you it was just going to lead us somewhere we'd crash and die!"

«We didn't crash,» I said, keeping my voice level despite the moment of panic that brushing the ground had hit me with. «And we're still alive.»

Ahead, the chain of flames abruptly petered out. As the last one disappeared in a blink, Grace threw up her hands. "Great! Now we're even more lost! So much for guiding us."

«Wait,» I said, «do you hear that?» We levelled out in flight, picking our speed back up, and I began to hear something ahead. Something like…a giant bird? Great rushes of air were sounding from the mist. Was it a roc? Couldn't be, we'd have heard those things call from miles away.

A shadow loomed out of the mist. It had great, broad wings, and a long tail trailing behind it. I could just make out the shape of a figure sitting on its back as it wheeled around, swooping down then rising up to fly up beside us. As it drew nearer, I could see that its wings were covered in pale green scales. It had a long neck and a crest of blue-black feathers at the back of its narrow head. It glanced over at me with its yellow slit-pupil eyes and let out a series of low growls, clicks, and barks. It was a dragon. And on its back, astride a large padded saddle, sat a man, in a deep burgundy coat covered with a dark metal breastplate and spaulders. He wore a dense fur cap with metal plates on top of the ear flaps and crystal-clear goggles.

"Hail!" the man shouted. "What are your signs?"

"Signs?" Grace repeated under her breath.

"Are you with the corps?" the man continued.

The appearance of a dragon and rider had already seeded hope in my heart, but that comment made it blossom. «No,» I said. «We…we've had something of an emergency. We're seeking the aid of the Dragoon Corps. Are we close?»

The man and dragon both tilted their heads, seemingly surprised but not totally bewildered by my speech. "You are," said the man. "If it's aid you seek, follow closely behind us. We will escort you to the fortress."

The dragon flapped its wings hard, picking up the pace as it sped ahead. I looked back to see Grace grinning in speechless, perplexed glee as I fell in line behind the dragon, with Arthur just behind me.

It must have been several minutes more of flying, but it only felt like a few moments. The mist began to die as we climbed higher and higher, the ground rising up to match our climb as we went into a mountain chain. The land became blocky and stony, with patches of grass and low trees clinging to flat land where they could find purchase.

Then, like we were bursting out from the sea, we breached the bank of fog and rose into the dim sunlight. In front of us laid a tall and steep ridge in the mountains' spine, and nestled into a hollow at the top was a castle. A low, curved parapet ran around its perimeter, encircling a much higher set of curtain walls topped with battlements. Behind the walls stood a high, rectangular grey stone brick keep with tall, pinnacled spires extending from its sides, a handful of smaller ancillary buildings hugging the inner wall with some towers of their own, and a series of four large, raised courtyards interspersed with areas of plant life that surrounded the keep.

The dragon leading us angled downwards toward a great, circular stone platform just outside the dramatic gatehouse. Grace's arms wrapped around my neck.

"It's the academy. We're here," she whispered, on the verge of tears happiness. "We made it. We really made it all the way here, Belfry!" A burst of relieved laughter escaped from her.

I was tempted to join her. Though, as happy as I was to see the journey's end, I couldn't help but feel like our arrival was more of a beginning than it was a conclusion.

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