I let the wind carry me high above the world. The previous night had been lonely. Having someone sleep nearby was just a part of my daily routine these days. My connection with Cassia was still present, so I could feel distant echoes of her emotions.

  There had been a brief flare of negative feelings after the group had left. Resisting the urge to burst out of hiding and destroy whatever was bothering Cassia was difficult. Thankfully it had faded before my instincts overcame me.

  The air of the Inner Continent was strange to me. Just like the forests on this side of the Cloudshear Mountains, it lacked a wild edge. Gusts of wind rolled in ordered rows and columns that didn’t deviate from their course, except on rare occasions. Climbing to a high altitude here reminded me of walking up a set of stairs.

  I planned to linger at a high enough altitude that someone watching from the ground wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between me and a bird. Whenever Cassia called for me, I’d drop down from the sky like a lightning bolt. Beneath me, I could see the wide expanse of the Mirror Lake stretching out towards the horizon. The city of Osteriath itself squatted at its center.

  More people lived in this one settlement than the whole Barony of Reimse. The thought was sobering. While I might have been able to fight my way through a band of brigands, I wouldn’t be able to do the same with Osteriath. A death by a thousand cuts was still death. If I made a mistake, the uncountable thousands of people living in the city would more than easily bring my end.

  That didn’t even take into account the Wizards. Though my skill with magic was still largely untrained, I could feel an intense amount of power rising from the city beneath me. The majority of this power was concentrated in stone spires which rose far above the surrounding buildings. When I looked through my Vitae attuned eyelids, the top of each spire was blinding. Miniature invisible suns hovered in the air above them.

  The sight made me curious about why Mortimer would bother to kidnap Magnus. With this much power collected into one place, what would any individual Wizard need with a child, even one that had some latent magical ability? Edith had been hesitant to speak too deeply on the subject, but she’d indicated that Magnus would be in great danger if he wasn’t rescued.

  Everything I’d heard about Wizards, before and after our journey started, made them sound just like the Bastard Bird from my time in the Cursed Forest. Greedy and repulsive creatures that feasted on the hard work of others rather than create something on their own. Sir Kenneth had described what Mortimer was capable of, to the best of his ability. The Wizard had been able to fend off my sibling Third, albeit with help from T’laanga. He had also made a notable contribution to my own victory in the ensuing battle.

  The staff Mortimer wielded, the amulet he’d sacrificed to protect against Third’s dragonsbreath, the flying carpet he used to soar over the countryside, and the prismatic mirror he’d used to escape me all sounded like highly valuable artifacts. Using them had to come with some kind of cost.

  The Consequences of carelessly using magic had been pounded into my head lately, through T’laanga’s death and my sibling Sixth’s residence in my mind. Both were a direct result of my actions. ‘So what is it about Magnus that made him valuable enough to potentially throw away so many prized items?’

  It had been close to a week and a half since Magnus had become Mortimer’s apprentice.

  In that time he’d seen a great deal of interesting magic being performed. Mortimer called himself a ‘generalist’. That meant a Wizard who did not stick rigidly to one field of study. Instead, he seemed to collect hobbies and research material like a magpie. Cleaning up the mess Magnus had made when he summoned his staff turned out to be educational rather than a haphazard punishment.

  Mortimer occupied the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth floors of the Tower of Baedain. Magnus had learned that one Wizard having exclusive access to three whole floors was ‘extravagant’ and ‘nepotism’. There were other Wizards that passed through Mortimer’s floors via the stairs on a regular basis, which were the source of these claims. Almost all of them tried to stop in and pass on their ‘wisdom’ to Magnus, only to scurry away when Mortimer showed his face.

  “Ignore the guttersnipes my lad,” Mortimer had reassured his Apprentice. “They’re just jealous because they’re Talentless hacks. Half of them shouldn’t have ever made it past Apprentice.”

  The distinction between a Wizard and an Apprentice was still somewhat hazy in Magnus’s mind. Wizards like Mortimer were obvious, with great flowing beards, rune covered staves, and suspiciously intelligent familiars. Many of those who passed by the stairs had one or more of these traits, but rarely all three. An Apprentice was someone who a Wizard had taken under their direct tutelage. They didn’t need to be male, but nearly all of the ‘Lady Wizards’ and ‘Female Apprentices’ that he’d met seemed to be visitors from other Towers.

  He’d even asked Mortimer about this at one point. The only thing he’d been told was “The Tower Mistress doesn’t like them.”

  Magnus’s teacher could expand on many topics for hours on end without hardly taking a breath. With the exceptions, you couldn’t get him to open up with a crowbar.

  Speaking of which, Magnus had learned to wield a crowbar with methodical efficiency. One of the primary tasks of an Apprentice seemed to be opening up stubborn boxes and other containers for their Teacher. Nearly every day, Howard the Bard would bring in a collection of ancient and dusty boxes for Magnus to open. Most seemed to have complex padlocks or other strange methods keeping them shut.

  The most excited Magnus had ever seen Mortimer was when he’d opened up a simple clay urn. It had been kept shut by a series of tattered paper strips that were glued to its surface. Faint remnants of old writing could be seen on them, but they weren’t in a language Magnus knew how to read. Mortimer professed that he didn’t know what they said either, but was curious to know what was inside.

  Despite the apparent ease, opening the urn had been maddeningly difficult. Magnus had tried for nearly an hour to pry it open with his hands, his trusty crowbar, and finally by hooking the edge of the lid on the edge of a table before he dropped his body weight onto it. All he’d gotten for his efforts was an interesting set of bruises.

  After taking a break, Magnus had come back to the urn with a small knife. When he concentrated really hard on the strips of paper, a strange sensation of unease had settled over him. Mortimer called that feeling ‘uninformed nerves’. If there wasn’t any logical reason to be scared of something, then he ought to ignore the feeling.

  “A Wizard doesn’t believe in superstition,” Mortimer had said. “A man of intellect believes only in cause and effect. Intent and Consequences. Those who fear the unknown are fools.”

  Mortimer wondered why Howard tended to try and run away when he opened the boxes. The man seemed fairly intelligent, if cowardly. He was also very unlucky. More often than not something bad happened to him when he tried to leave the Tower.

  When Magnus brought the knife’s edge to the paper strips, he focused on his frustration with being unable to open it. Mortimer rarely instructed the boy on what ‘Intent’ actually was, but he’d vaguely alluded to it being tied to what Magnus Wanted To Do. It sounded vaguely like the scolding of someone Magnus knew, but whenever he thought about it too hard his head hurt. Instead, he focused that pain into the knife.

  It glowed red, then yellow, then finally white hot in his hands, but it didn’t burn him. Magnus wondered if it could possibly be an enchanted knife. In either case, he’d pressed the edge to the paper strips and watched them burn away as he cut them. He’d been sure that he could hear something like a woman screaming in the distance when he did it, but ignored it in favor of getting the urn open.

  When he’d opened the lid at long last, something like a puff of black smoke escaped from inside the urn. It rose up into the air and fled out of a window at high speed. Archibald the Raven flew out after it. A moment later, Mortimer shook his shoulder.

  “Lad, you still in there?” he’d asked, his voice tinged with unusual concern. When Magnus had looked up at the old man, he saw that the entire room was full of ‘proper’ Wizards. He didn’t understand why all of their staves were pointing in his direction.

  “Yes Mister Mortimer?” Magnus asked curiously. “Did you see? I finally got the stupid urn open!”

  “Yes lad, I can see you did.” Mortimer stood up straight and clapped his hands. “Nothing the Apprentice of a Real Wizard can’t handle, right Boys?” The old man stared down his colleagues, who slowly lowered their staves back to the floor. “But that’s probably enough ‘opening boxes’ for now. Good work.”

  Magnus set the urn down and walked away. The knife that he’d used had melted all the way down to the hilt. He’d need to fetch a replacement to work on his Crook later. Mortimer had promised to teach him his first Rune if he successfully opened the urn.

  He didn’t notice when Mortimer shoved the opened urn inside of a locked and heavily warded safe.

  ‘So this is what you’ve been up to? Flying in circles?’

  I tilted my head as I looked around at my surroundings. It took me a second to remember that Sixth was inside my head and not in the ‘real’ world. Swapping back and forth between the Dream and the waking world could get confusing if I wasn’t careful.

  ‘I’m waiting for a signal to go pick My People up from the city below us.’

  ‘... You let them go into a place like that? You’re nuts! I can smell the magic stink from all the way up here. If you go anywhere near that place you’ll get both of us killed!’

  ‘Please, try to be helpful if you’re going to distract me. Plus, how can you ‘smell’ anything? You don’t have your own body to smell with.’

  ‘Going into the specifics would take us the rest of the day. To simplify it, imagine that I get an ‘echo’ of whatever you sense, even when I’m asleep. When I’m awake like this, I can focus on things you might not pay attention to.’

  ‘For example, you need to pull in your magic and fly into that cloud over there. Something’s looking for us.’

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I immediately tried to draw my magic back into myself. It was like clenching a muscle. The flow of magic that naturally cycled in and out of my body slowed to a crawl. My wings turned to an angle and changed my course as per Sixth’s recommendation. The plumes of water vapor enveloped me a couple of moments later.

  ‘Do you know who or what this ‘something’ is? I didn’t feel anything.’

  ‘No crap. You’re too busy listening for that human you chose to bond with. I could hear you tugging at that connection even when I was deep asleep. It may not sound like it to you, but each time you focus on the bond, it’s deafeningly loud to anyone else listening.’

  ‘So there’s something down in the city that can detect and use my bond with Cassia, to track us down?’

  ‘At least you learn quickly.’ I felt a vague sensation of mixed annoyance and satisfaction from Sixth. ‘Yeah. The whole reason I woke up was to tell you to knock it off. I’m not completely sure, but I think another dragon is down in that city.’

  ‘One of our siblings? You’re sure it’s not a Wizard? At least one of them knows that there’s dragons around. Why would they be in a city full of Wizards? Could they have been captured?’

  ‘Quit pumping your metaphoric wings there ‘Sangy’. One question at a time.’ Sixth sent me a pulse of weariness and the sensation of a mild headache. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s one of Us. First made it sound like there weren’t too many other dragons around, one of the few times he stopped being condescending to the rest of us long enough to say something useful.’

  ‘The only thing I know about ‘Wizards’ is what you know. This was way more subtle than what I’m sensing from the towers down there. None of our siblings bothered to tell me their future plans before they ate me. My best guess is that this place is stuffed to the gills with magic. If one of us was clever enough to sneak our way in and stay hidden, it would be like an unending feast to feed on.’

  I kept my actual wings pumping the air to stay inside of the cloud. While there was no sign of someone looking for me, I trusted Sixth’s judgment. They had no reason to lie to me about something which would place us both in danger.

  ‘So there’s pretty decent odds that one of our siblings is either eating every scrap of magic they can get their claws on… or they've been trapped by one of the Wizards here like Magnus.’

  ‘I’m going to favor option one personally. While I doubt First would ever risk his precious white scales… Second or Fourth might like this kind of place.’

  ‘Tell me something about the two of them. Were they like Third?’

  ‘Well, I only knew them for a few days before they attacked… Second acted a lot like First, like she was better than the rest of us. She was constantly trying to whisper ‘secrets’ to each of us. She constantly baited Third into attacking Fourth.’

  ‘Fourth was a sneaky little freak, always skulking around in the shadows. He’d always run away and complain to First whenever Third bullied him. I couldn’t tell you why First didn’t try to eat him instead of me. Someone slimy like him would just love to hide in that lake down there and snatch people from the water.’

  ‘Whichever one of them it is, I don’t think we can afford to leave them alone, if they’re searching for me. They’ve not tried to hunt me down like Third, but there’s a good chance that they’ll attack while I’m distracted when I’m trying to escape with my people.’

  ‘I know you’re not going to listen, but seeking them out is a really bad idea.’

  ‘The problem is that you’re right, but I have to do it anyway.’

  Sixth gave a deep sigh from inside of me. She tried to be brave, but I could tell that she was more than a little nervous about confronting one of our siblings.

  ‘Well, if you’re going to do something this stupid, send me over some of your spare magic. I’ve been working on something while I’ve been sleeping that might help us if we get into another big fight.’

  ‘Maybe all that flying in circles was good for you. I don’t think I could have pulled off that dive.’

  Sixth tried to quell her panic, but I could feel her anxiety over the stunt I’d just pulled. Dropping from close to my maximum sustainable altitude down to ground level had not been our first choice. Careful probing over the course of the day had revealed that the person searching for us was located in one of the less busy sections of the city.

  The people of Osteriath moved like a swarm of ants from my sky high point of view. Each had their own individual motivations and goals, but from up high they blended together into a hive mind. Resources and money went into the city, empty purses and magic knick-nacks came out.

  However, Osteriath had busy places and empty ones like any forest. The region with a thousand brightly colored tents was comparable to a watering hole, where all the people of the city congregated at some point during their day. Wizard towers with their invisible suns reminded me of immense pine trees full of greedy birds.

  Sixth had narrowed down the location of the person tracking us to a ‘void’ between the busier regions of the city. It was in the middle of a collection of spires. Perhaps another had once stood on that spot, but it was currently empty save for a set of ruins. The city dwellers avoided the location, sometimes going significantly out of their way to not walk through it.

  We’d had to dive from so high to avoid the protections around the Wizard towers. Our first approach had to be aborted when we almost collided with an invisible wall mid-air. More careful examination revealed a startling number and variety of such defences hovering out in the open air between the towers. Almost all of them were directed out from each tower and towards one of its neighbors. Some pointed directly upwards, but I suspected that whatever the ‘invisible suns’ were, were interfering with them in some way.

  Diving straight down into the open space had been our only option, in the end.

  ‘Who leaves magic lying around that shoots lightning at anyone that gets within a hundred meters of it?’ Sixth didn't bother to answer the rhetorical question.

  Above and behind us, two of the towers had started firing magic back and forth at each other. I’d flown a little too close to one of them and had triggered a trap. It missed me by the barest margin and instead struck the defenses of another tower. No one seemed to notice my presence down in the ‘empty’ zone.

  It was deep into the night. Each time one of the towers’ defenses triggered, it temporarily lit up the darkness with a prismatic shimmer. While each trap wasn’t nearly as powerful as the magic Third and I had unleashed on each other, there were enough layered together that I feared for my life if I needed to fight through them.

  ‘At least we can agree on that. These humans are incredibly wasteful. Even you know better restraint with your magic.’

  ‘Can you get a sense for where our sibling is now that we’re down here? All I can see is old human buildings. The towers keep blinding me every time one of the traps goes off if I look around using Vitae.’

  ‘Flare your bond for just a second and let’s see what happens.’

  I’d been carefully restraining my connection with Cassia for most of the day. While it made me uncomfortable to cut her off from me, I was sure that she’d still be able to signal me if she tried hard enough. There was simply too much risk of my sibling finding me before I found them otherwise. I opened up the connection and pushed on it hard for just a moment.

  The feedback I got from the split second of connection was… confusing. My Cassia seemed to be happy, a lot happier than she’d felt in a long time. But the feelings were muddled and inconsistent. Unease was buried underneath her feelings of joy. Maybe she was out having fun with other humans? We’d need to speak about why she wasted time with frivolity once we met back up.

  ‘Yeah, that definitely got a reaction.’ Sixth drew my attention to a broad pile of broken stonework near the middle of the ruins. ‘There’s a disconnect over there. It’s subtle, but see how the ambient magic floating around moves around that spot rather than through it?’

  While it took some effort to squint through the flashes of magic expelled between the Wizard towers, I was able to detect what Sixth told me about. The effect was like a shallow flat stone placed in the middle of a flowing stream. There was barely a ripple, but it showed more clearly when an expulsion of magic from the nearby towers crashed into it from an inconsistent angle.

  ‘So they’ve burrowed under the ground like a rabbit? Interesting. I suppose that explains why the humans haven’t found them yet. Cassia and Edith both hate going underground if they can help it. Visk is the only one who actually likes sleeping in my Den.’

  ‘Quit thinking about your mates and start looking for an entrance. It’ll be well hidden.’

  ‘They’re not my mates… I think. It’s not like anyone ever bothers to explain anything to me.’ I didn’t keep wasting time, even as I conversed with Sixth. My body crept through the ruins, taking care to not disturb the rubble or make a sound. ‘All of them seem to expect me to know what they want without ever saying it.’

  ‘Welcome to Females… and whatever the elf is. I keep forgetting that you didn’t get access to our Mother’s Dream. But seriously. We all got explicitly told to not bother with any of that until after we crystallize. It’s just a waste of time beforehand.’

  ‘Crystallize?’ I was pretty sure that I’d detected a hidden entrance into the ground. It was behind a toppled stone pillar that rested at an angle against a broad foundation block. With great care, I wrapped my front feet around it and tried to quietly leverage it out of the way. ‘What do you mean a waste of time?’

  ‘It’s when we finish accumulating enough magic to sleep for a couple of decades and finish- SANGUINE STOP!’

  Sixth’s warning was too late. When the pillar was moved out of the way, a long spiral of script was revealed where it had been carved into the stone beneath it. A flash of arcane energy blinded me. I remembered the prismatic shimmer of the magic mirror used by the Wizard Mortimer, but was helpless to prevent the spell from sucking me away to another location.

  The stone pillar dropped to the ground. Silence descended on the empty ruins as the battle between the Wizard towers was finally called off. Darkness descended on the Ruined Tower of Aeltiyn once more.