The walk to the infirmary was far too long. I had too much time to think. Too much time to come up with worst-case scenarios, and then to wallow in fear over them. I would have preferred if Grace or Cynthia were scolding me the whole way rather than staying silent. At least then, I would have had some sound and thoughts to anchor myself to.

Instead, all I had was Grace's mental presence. I couldn't directly tell what she was thinking, but I could still feel her mind hovering near mine, providing stability where she could. I knew that it was her that shook me out of that state. What would have happened if she hadn't come? That was another thing I didn't want to think about, but I couldn't stop myself.

The medical wing of the keep was in the rear corner, close to the mountain cliffs and relatively near to the entrance of Cynthia's tower. I could smell it before I saw it. Scents of medicinal herbs, acrid chemicals, and cloyingly sweet blood wafted through the air. The great double-doors, large enough for three dragons to enter abreast, hung open, letting me see the hall inside. A series of ten beds were arranged in two rows against opposite walls, all with accompanying side-tables and racks for quickblood jars. A workstation to the right was partly enclosed by a curtain, but it hung wide enough that I could see a number of pieces of medical equipment and substances, including a large glass jar filled with water and giant black worms that I didn't recognise, but which gave me a shiver.

Only two beds were occupied: one by a young woman in uniform with no visible injuries that I assumed was only ill, and another by Ingo. Yura and Leo stood by the bed where Ingo laid, his blood soaking into the thin cloth covering that already bore a number of rusty brown stains. Two others were beside him, one kneeling to inspect his wounds and the other making notes in a small book as they rattled off specific names for Ingo's injuries. They were both dressed in long white coats with small cowls over their heads and shoulders and thick, heavy black gloves on their hands. Their outfits were as stained as the bed sheets, although none of the blood looked fresh, at least.

Grace and Cynthia escorted me to a bed that was on the opposite end of the hall from Ingo. Laying down wasn't much better than standing, what with the shooting pains in my back that flared up whenever I touched something, but at least it didn't take as much energy. I watched the other bed as the inspecting doctor stood up and straightened their coat.

"Nothing severe," they said in a cold, gravelly voice. "Only moderate blood loss and surface wounds, though he is very lucky that the slash across his neck missed his artery by less than an inch, else this would be a far more serious case."

I pinched my thumb in between my claws at that.

"As it stands, Jean, give him a transfusion of blood tonic, and he should be healed in only a couple hours." They turned around to face me, revealing their cool, dark brown face and short salt-and-pepper beard. He looked like an older man, maybe in his fifties, with the deep creases in his face indicating stress well beyond even his years.

"Linus," said Cynthia. "There's another patient for you."

The doctor, Linus, briefly gave me a pensive glance before giving his attention back to Cynthia. "Sir. I'm guessing that this is the other perpetrator of the fight?"

"She is," confirmed Cynthia.

"Right then." Linus knelt down beside me and pushed his face right up next to me. I shut my eyes and kept them shut as soon as I felt his fingers on my face. I squeezed my thumb harder to try and distract myself from the discomfort.

«I can feel you getting upset, Belfry,» I heard Grace's voice say in my ear. «He's just looking at your injuries.»

«I know,» I said back, realising right after attempting to respond that I hadn't actually spoken like this in human form yet, and I just hoped it worked the same way as when I was a dragon. «I really don't want to be touched right now, is all. I'll live.»

I could feel trepidation in Grace's head, but she didn't say anything more for right then. I listened to Linus describe all my injuries—a number of shallow cuts across my face, deep bruises on my torso, and a broken rib, just like I had suspected—while his assistant wrote them all down. Eventually, he stood back up.

"Also not terribly severe," he said. "The worst is a broken rib, which is imminently mendable with proper blood tonic treatment." He paused, openly staring at my hands. "I have only inspected one ersatz thus far, but I understand that this is the third we have taken in. Is the transformation of the hands expected, or is this a new development?"

"A new development," Grace said weakly. "Belfry, can you change your arms back?"

"I tried," I said. My voice was still shaky and fragile from the tears I'd shed on the way here. To be sure, I tried to bring myself back to that sea in my mind, but even now that things had calmed down, still nothing happened. When I pictured myself out on that boat over the waves, the body that I tried to pull up got stuck at the water's surface, like it had hit an invisible wall. I couldn't lift them up any more; all I could do was let them float on top of the choppy water, not submerged, but not emerged either. What tears remained in me came again to my eyes.

"I tried," I repeated. "I can't. It won't…it isn't working."

"Hey, hey," said Grace. She held a hand out like she wanted to put it on my shoulder, but hesitated and dropped it before she did. "You can try again later, once you've had some rest. It'll be fine."

"No, it won't!" I practically screamed, making everyone else in the infirmary jump. I held my hands up near my face. They trembled no matter how still I tried to keep them. "What if this is…is how it goes? More and more of me is just going to get stuck like this until I can't turn human anymore!" I scraped a claw along my scales. "Not that I'm all that human now, anyway…."

"Then we'll handle it as it happens," said Grace. She knelt down at my side. "It can't be any worse than when we thought you couldn't turn human at all, right?"

She was wrong. It was much worse. I could watch my humanity draining away in real time. Rather than being executed by a bullet to the head, I was dying from a thousand slow-bleeding cuts. It was only, what, half a week since I'd been first transformed? At this rate, I would be stuck as a dragon permanently in a few month's time.

And then what? Would I be feral until someone put me out of my misery? Would I just start killing people for the fun of it? Would I recognise Grace at all, still? That moment when she tackled me replayed in my mind. When I hadn't been able to recall who she was, when in my thoughts I had called her an "it". I felt viciously sick.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Grace whispered.

I weighed my response for a long time. I couldn't tell her everything. I couldn't stand to see her face if she knew that I had briefly become a genuine monster in my mind.

"I fell unconscious," I said, barely scraping the truth. "Then when I woke up I was on the ground, and you were on top of me. And my hands…there was blood…." I sniffled and tried desperately to wipe the now-dry blood off of my claws. "I didn't mean to do anything like that. Me and Ingo got into a fight, but I don't think either of us were trying to kill the other. I think the dragon took over, or something."

At least that last part felt true enough. Grace's face was screwed up with worry when she looked up to Cynthia and Linus for answers. Neither of them seemed confident enough to give any.

"What is this?" I asked in desperation. "Do you know? Will it happen again?"

"We don't have that information right now," Cynthia said slowly. "Griffin has had no outbursts like this, and we have only known about you and Arthur for a single day. We are firmly in uncharted waters."

I sank into the bed. "Okay," I muttered.

Cynthia's lips pressed into a thin line. "I'm sorry. I'm hoping that Linus here will be able to find out more soon." She sighed. "While I can't blame you for what happened after you lost control, I am disappointed that you got into a fight outside of sparring sessions so soon after your joining. Leo and I will need to discuss an adequate punishment for you and Ingo over the coming weeks. We'll let you hear it once you are healed."

She put a hand on Grace's shoulder. "Grace. Ninth Flight. We should leave them to their rest. Allow the physicians to do their work."

Grace gave me another anxious look. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I kind of want to stay here with her."

Cynthia shook her head. "Under normal circumstances, it would be discouraged but allowed. Right now, however, I must order you to leave her care to our physicians until we know how safe she is to be around. This outburst is an immediate and dangerous problem that we need to know all we can about before we allow people to take such risks."

I felt a twinge of irritation that I was being talked about like I wasn't there, but right then was certainly not the time to entertain that impulse.

Grace looked briefly like she shared my annoyance and wanted to retort, before she hung her head and simply nodded. "I see," she muttered. She followed Cynthia as she led her, Yura, and Leo out of the room, giving me only a tiny wave that I barely mustered up the will to return as she walked through the door.

I watched Linus as he and his assistant left my side for the workstation, returning a few moments later with a couple tiny, stoppered glass bottles filled with red, watery liquid, and a syringe in Linus's hand that was loaded with something with a cloudier, more rosy-white substance. The assistant went to tend to Ingo while Linus himself stooped down by my bed.

"Drink," he ordered, handing me the bottle.

I gave it a dubious glance as I held it in my hand. The glass was slippery in my claws, like some of the smooth ceramics I had held in dragon form. Despite the fairly cool ambient temperature of the keep and its grounds, the glass also felt distinctly warm.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is it quickblood?" It looked a lot like the quickblood that had filled the jars on racks during the initiation ritual, and back at the monastery's hospice, but surely a few ounces of quickblood weren't all it took to cure my wounds?

"It is blood tonic," said Linus. "Composed of quickblood, tincture of culsine, and steeped with marigold and snakestongue. It's a common medicinal treatment; have you not had it before?"

"No," I said. "I've mostly learned to treat myself."

Linus's brow furrowed. "You should avoid that if possible," he said. "Treatment is best carried out by an expert. Now, drink."

I pulled the stopper out with my teeth and tilted the bottle back, downing the tonic in a few quick gulps. It tasted shockingly good. It was a mixture of bitter, fiery alcohol, sweet-like-sugar quickblood, and herbal flavours that were vaguely minty. If someone had sold it to me as a fanciful cordial, I would have expected them to charge at least six shillings a glass.

The warmth that I had felt on the bottle seemed to emanate from the tonic as I drank it, and as soon as it was all gone, that warmth began to flood out through my body, concentrating in places where I'd received gashes. My wounds didn't knit together quite fast enough for me to feel it immediately, but I could tell that they were healing already.

"That's good," I said. "Minty." My speech came out just off-kilter enough for me to realise that the tonic had gotten to my head. I wasn't fully drunk, but I was at the same state I'd be in a pint deep at the pub. The alcohol in those things must be strong.

"Careful about that," Linus said as he stuck the syringe into my side where my broken rib was. Because of the tonic, I hardly felt the stab, only a faint pressure as whatever medicine inside was injected. "Tonic isn't made to be used for recreation. You can give yourself alcohol poisoning very easily that way, or get yourself blood drunk. Either that, or end up spending half of every year's pay on bottles."

He withdrew the syringe, having successfully made half my entire torso numb with the concoction. "Alright, that should be enough for you to stabilise and begin to heal. I will need to keep you here for some hours to ensure the healing does not go wrong, but afterwards you will be free to return to your room."

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He went to the back to retrieve a small wooden stool, which he pulled over to the bedside and sat down, pulling out a small notepad and an ink pen. "In addition, because of the nature of the event, I am going to need to ask you some questions, which I need you to answer with honesty and forthrightness so that we can do our best to ensure that something like this does not happen again. I'm sure you would prefer that. It seems to have been quite traumatic for you."

My mind started picking through the memories again, and I just nodded.

He flipped through several pages of his notebook until he landed on one he liked. "First: Describe the event in your own words, if you would."

I narrowed my eyes, a little annoyed at having to repeat myself. "I already said. I fell unconscious after the fight, and then when I woke up, Ingo was bleeding and Grace was pinning me on the ground. I don't remember anything else."

Linus stared at me as I spoke. He blinked, squinting at my face for a moment before he stood and drew forward a curtain that was attached to the ceiling beside the bed, putting a divider between us and the other patients.

"These block sound quite well," he said. "If there is something that you do not wish the others to know, you may say it to me, and I will keep it confidential. But it is imperative that you tell me the truth, and the whole truth. I don't want this to happen to you again."

I bit my lip. "How did you know…?"

"Many patients attempt to keep things to themselves," said Linus, "out of a fear that they will be judged by what ills they suffer. I'm well-used to needing to convince patients to tell me what they know. Information is the most important part of medicine."

If I had the energy, I would have been more stubborn about it, but I had already tacitly admitted to lying, and he was right that I didn't want this to happen again, and if he could help with that, he ought to know. As much as all of this hurt to say.

"How do I know that you won't tell Cynthia? Or Leo?" I asked.

Linus raised one hand. "I am an alumnus of the Candlewood Academy of Yorving, and a master of the Fellowship of Apothecaries and Surgeons. I have taken the Votum Medicinae, and am sworn to tell secrets that patients wish kept only to other physicians. Though she is my superior here at the fortress, Commander Cynthia is not a physician, and will not hear any details that you don't wish her to hear."

I took a moment to process that set of proper nouns. I might have tangentially heard of a "Votum Medicinae" before, and it sounded real enough. I was suddenly deeply intrigued by this man, and what kinds of information he might have access to about physic. An idea that gave me some small hope about all of this business with the dragoons formed in the back corner of my mind, but I put it on hold for now.

I had to trust him. I wanted to trust him, but the words took a long time to come out. "I was…" I started, taking a long pause before tapping my temples and just forcing myself to talk. "I was angry. Ingo insulted my sister earlier, and I felt really angry since then, and then when we were fighting, he insulted me. Really badly." I hissed at the reminder of that barb he had spat. "And then there was this…this explosion of rage in my head. And it was like I turned into a different person. The only thought I could think was that I wanted to hurt someone. And then when Grace tackled me…I didn't recognise her. I didn't see her as a person until she did something with our bond that shocked me back to myself."

It was all raw and honest, forced out fast enough that I didn't have time to reconsider or stop. Linus scribbled in his notebook furiously as I spoke. When he finally stopped, he looked up again, his face filled with the same blank sternness as it had been since I first saw it. "Have you had trouble controlling your anger before, or is this a recent development?"

"Recent," I said. "I mean, I've gotten really, really angry before, sure, but it almost felt like I was possessed. Or, like I said, like I had turned into someone else. Someone other than me."

"I see…. And on that note, would you say that you are of one mind? Or when these unwanted emotions present themselves, does it feel like it comes from another presence, outside your own mind?"

"I…don't know," I said honestly. "I've been kind of thinking of 'me' and 'the dragon' as two different things. But the emotions come to me so naturally that I just…I can't tell."

Linus looked up from his writing, one eyebrow raised. "Has 'the dragon' ever spoken to you directly before?"

"No."

"Hmm." Linus went back to scribbling. "You conceptualise the state similarly to Griffin Fairchild. Though, your flight-mate seems to have a more positive relationship with 'the dragon'."

"Your arms," he continued, "do they now have a similar appearance to your draconic form, or have they changed in some other way?"

"The first," I confirmed. "And I can't change them back."

Linus finished a line, tapped the book with his pen, and set it down on his lap. "All of that is most interesting," he said. "I can see one of two possible causes for your affliction. Would you like me to share?"

"Yes," I said, trying not to blurt it out too desperately. "Please."

"Very well. First, and I believe the most likely option, is that you may be struggling with a dragon's mindset. How familiar are you with legends and stories involving dragons?"

"Not very," I said. I was less than pleased about the idea of having a mindset of any kind forced on me, but I had to wonder whether the second option was worse. "I've heard some off-hand, and my sister used to read a ton of knight-and-dragons stories when we were younger. I always thought it was weird that dragons could randomly burn down villages in one story, and then be friends with the knights in another. I guess that they must not have been very accurate. The dragons I've seen here seem like they're relatively nice."

Linus leaned back and crossed his arms. "They are, in fact, both depictions that stem from truth. Those of us who regularly interact and mingle with dragons are aware that dragons have, for lack of a better term, 'instinctual urges' that push them towards violent or otherwise harmful acts. They are similar to unwanted or intrusive thoughts that a human might experience, like when you are standing at a high place and have a brief idea to hurl yourself off the edge. Like those thoughts, most dragons can ignore them, though some dragons choose not to, and they become half-feral mimicries of exactly the kinds of villainous dragons you find in novels and old ballads. It is possible that for some reason, maybe because you are unused to these instincts as a former human or because you are simply more susceptible to them than others, that you are struggling with them more than a true dragon would."

Dread again tied my stomach into knots. "Are you sure that's possible?" I asked.

"As sure as is reasonable, given the circumstances," said Linus.

"Am I going to lose my mind, then?" I whispered, hardly wanting to ask in case the answer was something I wouldn't want to hear.

Linus held up his hands. "That isn't something I can assure you of," he said. "That would come down to whether or not you have the mental fortitude to resist these urges. I can recommend you some exercises to improve your willpower, but you may need to rely on your partner to keep you stable, if it comes down to it. The best that I can tell you is that, if you do completely lose control, it most likely is not something that you can never come back from, though it will be difficult and depend on the efforts of your partner and flight-mates."

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment as he took a deep breath. "I hesitate to tell you the second option out of fear of causing you undue stress, but I believe that you should be informed of all risks."

"It can't be much worse than what you've already told me," I grumbled.

Linus couldn't hold back a brief, cold laugh. "Sir, there are uncountable things worse than that," he said. "Now. I and others familiar with alchemy and occultic magic have had some time to analyse the samples of blood that you provided us yesterday. While we have yet to make any headway into how your condition might have been caused, we have been able to determine that the vis of your blood carries a signature that has many of the same markers as the blood of those who have been transformed by the Scourge of the Fiend."

I recoiled. "The…what?"

"The Scourge of the Fiend," Linus repeated. "I understand that you are from the southeastern mountains, and I don't believe there have been any reports of the Scourge in that region, so I would not be surprised if you don't know of it."

"I definitely don't."

"Very well. I will explain what I can, then." He stood, giving himself more space to talk with his hands. "We have been investigating a plague that has infected central parts of the Vale. It isn't certain whether it is a true disease or an infectious curse, but whatever its nature, those who are infected by it are transfigured into monsters—fiends—and are consumed by bloodlust. I had hoped that the generally draconic nature of many of the infected's mutations was a coincidence, but with the similarity of vis we have discovered…I do not think that it is."

I recalled those bandits. If those things were what he was talking about, had I somehow gotten infected by them? Had Grace?

"Is there a cure?" I asked tentatively.

Linus pursed his lips and shook his head. "Not at the moment. Infusions of quickblood seem to prevent the Scourge from advancing, but they do not reverse any damage that has already been done. However, I seriously doubt that the outburst is related to the Scourge, even if your condition as a whole is. If it were, I would have expected you to transform entirely into a fiend from such an event, and then you would still be a ravening monster right now. You wouldn't have come back, in short. That you did leads me to believe that this is something that can be solved with willpower. And, in that case, I am going to suggest that you seek advice from another dragon. You do have a true dragon in your flight, correct?"

"Correct."

"See if they can offer you any advice on controlling your instincts," said Linus. "If not, then inform me, and I will get you into contact with one of the senior dragon knights here. I'm certain that they will be able to provide you with some guidance. I am also going to recommend that you come back here every day, so that we can observe any and all changes on this front, so that we can perhaps offer some proactive aid to Sir Coslett and Sir Fairchild in case they are also susceptible to outbursts or instinctive urges."

"I can do that," I said. "Whatever it takes for this not to happen again."

"Very good." Linus pulled the curtain back, opening my little area around the bed to the room again. "Get some rest, now. You have broken bones to mend."

────────────────────────────────────────

It was dusk by the time I finally got dismissed to eat and return to my bunk. Ingo was long gone from the infirmary by then, and the refectory was quiet when I went to have dinner alone. I guessed everyone else must have already eaten for the evening. By then, the constant pressing fears about what might happen to me had settled into a dull roar of anxiety in the back of my mind, which was ignorable enough that for the first time in the last several days, I was okay with the silence.

I had stopped by the library on my way to the refectory—which I was disappointed to find out was little more than a tiny box of a room with two bookshelves and a notebook where you wrote your name and which book you had taken—and picked up a general textbook on field medicine. I figured that if I was going to take some time out of every day to go and visit Linus, I might as well try and pick up on some of his techniques. Someone on our team had to be at least basically proficient in medicine. Might as well have been me. I did feel a twinge of irony that me going with Grace to join the dragoons was what it had taken to get me to start studying medicine like I had wanted to as a child. But those dreams had been laid to rest a long time ago. I assured myself that the only reason I was doing this was because I had to.

With some food in my system, I felt completely fine, if a little tired and carrying a headache that felt like a moderate hangover, by the time I went to return to our room. Everyone but Ingo and Brand were there already, and they all looked up from what seemed to be an ongoing five-way game with the second board game we were provided, the one with the wooden pieces. They were all crowded around a pentagonal board covered in an array of game pieces demarcated with five colours of painted dots on their tops, which formed an incomprehensible mosaic that was impossible for me to interpret winners and losers from.

Grace immediately jumped to her feet, leaving the game table and running over to me. She threw her arms wide and pulled me into a tight hug.

"Glad my rib's not broken still," I muttered.

Grace pulled back. "Oh, saints, I'm so sorry, I forgot," she said.

"It's fine," I assured her. "Like I said, it's not broken anymore. They mended it."

"Good," said Grace. "That's good. I'm glad." Her happiness morphed into cautious optimism. "Are you feeling any better? About…you know, today?"

I looked down at my hands for what must have been the hundredth time in the last couple hours. Still stuck. "A bit," I said. "I don't think I'm getting my hands back until we find a real cure, though."

Grace took my hands in hers. I flinched, afraid my claws might scratch her, but she held steady. "I'm sorry," she murmured.

"It's fine," I said again. "I'm alive still. I'm sure I'll manage."

"Did they figure out what happened?" Griffin asked. They had returned to human form since the fight earlier, and were listening intently to our conversation.

"They've got some ideas," I said. "I'm supposed to go back and talk to the medical officers every day so they can figure the rest of it out."

Griffin scratched the back of their hand. "Well, when they do, I'm sure you'll tell us." They glanced down at the table. "Most of us are done training for the day. Do you want to join our game of Myrmidon? Rosalie said that it makes you smarter."

"I did not say that," Rosalie corrected. "I said that it teaches you tactics."

"Close enough," Arthur said with a grin.

I rubbed the side of my head. "No, I don't think so," I said. "I think the tonic they gave me to heal also gave me a headache. I want to lie down." I took a step towards the beds, then stopped. "Unless you need me for something."

"Oh, no, by all means, rest," said Yura. "I'm certain you need it."

"Yeah," I said. "Thanks."

I dragged myself over to my bunk and laid down. I knew I'd probably fall asleep just lying there as tired as I was, and figured that it was as good a time to start the night's rest as any.

As I closed my eyes, I heard Grace's voice in my ear. «Hey,» she spoke through our connection. «Do you want me to keep the others from talking about all this for a while? I don't want to stress you out, and I figure you and the doctors have things covered enough in terms of actually fixing it, so….»

«I don't have much to tell them other than what they must already know,» I responded. «It's fine. I'll be fine.»

Grace paused. «It's okay if you're not fine sometimes, you know. I'm here for you.»

I considered telling her about how she had snapped me out of the "state" I had been in, but tossed that idea to the side for now. She didn't need to feel any more responsible for me. She already blamed herself for me being an ersatz dragon in the first place, I didn't need her beating herself up in case she wasn't there to keep me from having another break too.

«Yeah,» I said limply, my mental voice on the verge of breaking. «You, too.»

«I can feel that you're getting sleepy,» said Grace. «So I'll leave you to that. Good night. We've got an early morning tomorrow.»

«Good night,» I echoed.

Despite my tiredness, it took a while for sleep to claim me amid the sounds of idle chatter from the common room. I heard the moment Ingo and Brand returned from the forceful shutting of the door, but neither of them spoke a word before climbing into bed themselves. I was glad. I didn't know if or when I would be able to talk to him again without it becoming another fight.

That night, I dreamed I was underwater again. I was filled with sorrow and guilt, and the scales that had sprouted on my hands only reminded me of just how guilty I should feel. I laid on my side for a long time, unable to cry, just staring down at the sandy bottom with deep, deep melancholy dragging itself through my mind.

I watched the eyes that circled me from the dark beyond my aquatic prison. I could hardly be bothered to acknowledge them, but eventually, I just whispered under my breath, "I hate you."

There was a rumble of assent from the sea around me as the beast continued to stalk my little island of light in the darkness. At least we understood each other.

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