“Boss, I’m gonna be honest with you. I know we had a ‘big feelings’ moment just now, but that’s scary as hell.”

  Despite the sarcasm, I was inclined to agree with Visk. The place that we’d exited the underground labyrinth beneath Osteriath was foreboding. I’d seen at least one grimmer locale in my time, but the Dusk Quarter came as a close second.

  Osteriath had existed on the island for a long time. At various periods in history those ruling it would shift their focus in a different direction based on who was in charge and who the city’s ruling class was aligned with. This resulted in the newest and most prestigious regions of the city moving around a fair amount.

  The Dusk Quarter was on a part of the island which was furthest away from any point the ruling class deemed important. It was a collection of shanty towns and ancient ruins of other older shanty towns that had come before. A high wall separated it from the rest of the city. During times of war, it was a common policy to burn the Dusk Quarter to the ground to prevent enemies from sheltering inside of it.

  In the depths of night, the Dusk Quarter looked like a mix between an old battleground and a rats nest of rotting shacks. One or two of these shacks were currently on fire due to collateral damage from the prior battle between the two Wizard Towers. No one seemed to be in any hurry to put the fires out.

  Buried somewhere in that depressing landscape was the Alchemist’s house. I thought I could see its location up on a hill far away in the tangle. This was because it was on a small hill with no other buildings close to it. That looked like the kind of setting a half mad Alchemist would stay in. No one else would dare to get too close.

  “Scary or not, we need to get over to that hill and get the potions. My patience with this city had already run thin. If we can’t recover Cassia and the knight soon, I’m going to decide that burning this whole place down is a better option.”

  “You’re… kidding, right Boss?”

  “Yes Visk, I’m joking. That would be far too risky, as enticing as the idea is. Now, I had an idea that I would like to try with you.”

  “What do you need Boss?” Visk was currently sitting on my back to get a better view of our surroundings. I was crouched against the ground in the ruins of a building a hundred meters from the wall blocking off the rest of the City from the Dusk Quarter. The aqueduct maintenance stairway we’d exited from was a few meters away under a pile of stone rubble.

  “You told me before that Dark Elves have innate magic which you use to hide and sneak around. Is it possible for you to share that magic with someone else?”

  “Well…” Visk reached up and rubbed the tip of one ear with their fingertips. They remained silent for a moment before continuing. “I guess that since you’ve… already seen so much that I’m fully a traitor to my people now. Showing you a little more isn’t going to change anything.”

  A feeling of unease rose within me, to hear that I’d placed Visk into that kind of position. On the other hand, the things I’d seen Visk’s people act in their memories did not predispose me to like them. It was a horrific society built on pain and fear. The Dok’aellen were both victims and willing perpetrators of their own suffering.

  “So, you’ve probably already guessed that I use magic to suppress my scent, Boss. It doesn’t take a lot of power to keep it running. For anything more complicated, I can probably go for an hour or two before I start wearing myself out. I’m not too big on magic theory or stuff, but what I’m doing is suppressing my spirit to be as small as possible.”

  “Small stuff fits through tight places without bumping into things. It takes some… mental kick-flippery, but Dok that are really good at it can imagine everything about themselves as small. We call this skill Chon-hota.”

  “What comes after that is… even more tricky.”

  “If you walk through a room that has a bunch of dust in it, you’ll leave footprints behind. When a bunch of Dok want to hide themselves together at the same time, the mental image we’re taught is to step inside the footprints of the person in front of you. If you step in the same place as the person before you, it only looks like one person has walked through a room. One set of footprints.”

  “There’s a lot of pressure when you’re the leader. If you mess up, everyone messes up.”

  “We call that skill Aek Padchon. Together with Chon-hota, they are the two skills that all Dok must master before we can take the trials to become a Hunter.”

  “So how do you share the magic, when you want to use Aek Padchon?” I carefully stretched my wings and moved my tail around. Crouching down on rocky ground was uncomfortable at the best of times. I was still sore from fighting my restraints earlier.

  “Well, the leader of the Hunting Party takes the first step. As in, they literally walk across the ground to set the pace. Then, the others follow in the footsteps. The leader pushes their magic into the ground from their feet and the people behind them reinforce it with their own. I was never in the front, so I only saw a bit from the back.”

  “Why do you want to know this Boss?”

  “Because flying over to that hill isn’t an option, Visk. There’s a lot of magic in the air after two of the Wizard towers started fighting each other earlier. I can sense them watching the skies for anomalies. We’ll need to sneak along the ground… and I am not made for stealth.”

  “Wait, you’re going with me?! That’s nuts Boss!”

  “After what happened the last time we separated, I’m not letting you out of my sight Visk. I won’t risk you getting hurt because I wasn’t around to protect you again.”

  The elf’s ears couldn’t seem to decide whether to droop to their shoulders or shoot into the air. Their fingers wavered between grabbing those same ears or tugging at their clothing. I could detect a similar mix from their scent, which drifted from gentle petrichor to a tang of fear.

  “But I’ve… I’ve never led anyone in the Walk Boss… what if I mess up?”

  I raised my head to where Visk was sitting on my back. As gently as I could, my snout bumped into the tip of their right ear. The elf gave a small ‘eep’ and promptly covered their ears to protect them from my touch, but their scent shifted firmly into a warm earthen loam. “Then I’ll be right there to make sure nothing bad happens,” I rumbled softly.

  Visk took several breaths to calm themself. I could hear them whispering to themselves under their breath, but chose not to listen too closely. Visk’s private thoughts should be their own, until they were ready to share.

  “Okay, so,” Visk said once they’d calmed down. “Let me down and we’ll give it a go.” I shifted my weight to bring the elf a little closer to the ground. When they slid off of my back, their feet made no sound upon touching the ground.

  They stepped away from me by a couple of meters, looking for something only they could see on the ground. Visk paced back and forth in front of me several times. Each time they set down their foot I noted that they were making precision adjustments to how their foot landed.

  The magic was incredibly subtle, when I switched to my Vitae eyelids. Visk’s technique put me in the mind that they were slowly immersing themself into their surroundings. It was like watching a stone slowly sink into a stream. There were similarities to the magic that Second used, but instead of deflecting the world’s Vitae around them, Visk was enmeshing themself into the existing currents.

  By the time Visk was ready, I could hardly see a difference between the flow of magic around them and Visk’s own body. If I’d not been actively watching the process, they’d have been nearly invisible to my Vitae aligned gaze.

  When I swapped back to normal eyesight, Visk was swaying gently back and forth on the balls of their feet. Their motions were almost like a dance. I could see that the light in their moonlit eyes was dimmed to the point that they were a dull grey color.

  Visk nodded to me and carefully turned and started walking away from me. I followed with slow and methodic footsteps. Walking in Visk’s tracks took considerable effort, since they only had two legs to my four and their stride was considerably shorter. To an observer, it must have looked rather strange to watch a dragon effectively tip-toeing after an elf.

  The magic itself came easier than I had expected. Perhaps it was a residual effect of experiencing Visk’s memories, but I was able to follow the path that they laid in front of me without difficulty. I already had some training in stealth from stalking nervous prey through winter woodlands. Remembering what it had been like to be ‘small and quiet’ as a hatchling proved to be an effective means of matching Visk’s intent.

  Proof of the Aek Padchon’s effectiveness did not take long to show itself. As we passed into the closest set of shanty buildings, a drunkard stumbled out of an alleyway. He looked like a generally scruffy human male, dressed in heavily stained and poorly maintained clothing. The stench of alcohol and vomit followed him like a dirty cloud.

  The drunk almost ran right into Visk, but the elf didn’t hesitate in their step. They walked right through the man, going so far as to step between his ankles as he shuffled past. No part of their bodies touched each other. My passage was more fraught due to my size.

  The days when I could sit in my Cassia’s lap were long gone. After the infusion of Vitae I’d gotten from Third’s demise, my body had swelled to nearly eight feet in height at the shoulder. My growth in height and bulk had slowed down considerably afterwards, as I’d directed more of my focus into skill with flying and general agility. Even so, I loomed over the top of most humans these days. If I stretched my neck, I could see over the roof of the small shacks in the Dusk Quarter.

  In spite of this, the drunkard didn’t blink twice when he looked vaguely in my direction. I don’t know what he saw, but he didn’t react like he’d seen a dragon. My body had to twist and curl around him to not knock him to the ground in order to follow Visk’s footsteps.

  Once I was clear of the drunk, I sped up a bit to catch up with Visk. They had drifted down the street while my focus was elsewhere.

  By the time we reached the bottom of the Hill where the Alchemist’s house squatted, Visk was showing signs of exhaustion. Their steady gait from the start of the walk had grown wobbly. A couple of close shaves while passing through more heavily populated sections of the Dusk Quarter had proved to be taxing on their constitution.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The amount of squalor and human suffering I’d seen during the stealthy stroll was sobering. While I’d not been able to get an accurate count of how many people lived in the Dusk Quarter, they vastly outnumbered the small settlements I was familiar with from the Barony. From bits and pieces my companions had said, city life was considered glamorous by the people living in rural villages. In reality, the people here would have been far better off living on even the poorest farm.

  A hundred small glimpses of people’s lives without hope for tomorrow could be seen just by walking down the trash littered roads of this place. Be it a hungry child wandering around in the dark with no caretaker, or a elderly man who had been stabbed over a threadbare blanket, everyone who lived here was mired in suffering.

  I was desperately glad that I’d not brought my Cassia here. She’d endured far too much misery already.

  Visk seemed to ignore the plight of the people living here, but I now understood that they’d seen far worse in their own life. At least here, there were no Dareen to execute your loved ones for the smallest transgression.

  I gently nudged the elf to get their attention. They swayed on their feet, but rather than a dance, it was exhaustion. The magic unravelled in front of me and I felt my presence in the environment grow to its normal size. With as much care as I could manage, I scooped Visk up in one of my front feet and ducked into an alleyway. They did not resist my grasp and hung between my claws limply.

  Down the alleyway, I saw that one of the buildings had a large hole in its wall. A hole-ridden cloth covered the opening. When I poked my head inside, I could see that no one was in the hovel. The scent of its prior occupants was stale. They might still be in the area, but the undertones of moldy bread and hair lice from the person living here were several days old.

  I pushed my body through the cloth and used my wings to keep it lifted away from my scales. The tendency for cloth to catch on the edges of my scales was irritating, as it meant I couldn’t easily create a comfortable nest for my companions to rest in alongside me. I was looking forward to making another attempt at that, but right now I needed to focus on Visk.

  Once my entire body was in the rickety building, I tried to set Visk down on their feet. Their arms sluggishly reached out towards me instead. This surprised me, but I gently drew them closer to my torso. The elf’s slender arms wrapped around my neck at the base where it met the joints of my shoulders. Their fingertips were far from meeting each other behind my neck as they clung to me.

  This was one of the first times I could remember Visk approaching me for affection without provocation, so I let them hold onto me without comment. True to their earlier words, the elf had used up nearly all of their magic to reach this point. Even their scent was barely masked. As I lowered my head to rest my snout against their back, I could detect subtle undertones to their scent that were new to me.

  “Sniffing people when they hug you is weird, Boss,” Visk grumbled against my scales. They pressed their face into me, in spite of their words. “... You smell like fire, with a little bit of blood, and the air after lightning hits. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head gently against Visk. Oddly enough, I’d never thought about how I couldn’t easily detect my own scent. The only time I’d ever recognized it was when my Cassia started to smell more like me, after my gemstone was embedded in her chest. Maybe it had something to do with my magic.

  “Boss, did I do good?”

  “Yes, you did excellent my Visk.” The elf stiffened up against me but held on tight all the same. Their heartbeat was fast, like a small bird racing through the trees. Both ears flicked against my torso gently from how far they shot upwards.

  “That’s not fair Boss. You said we’d talk about it first. Ambushing me when I’m burnt out is cheating.”

  “I said we’d talk about what we would be to each other, when I knew more and you weren’t suffering. I also said that I wanted you to be happy, and praising you for working so hard makes you happy. I’d be a fool to say anything else.”

  Visk balled up one of their hands and gently reached back to bop me on the snout, but it didn’t have any weight behind it. My claws carefully tightened on Visk’s body in response. This made their ears tap against my scales again. I didn’t understand why they enjoyed it, only that they did.

  “Boss, I hate to ask this, but do you know a way to pass some of your magic to me? I can feel it burning inside of you like a big furnace against my face, so I know you’ve got some to spare. Dragging you across town like that wrung me out like a dishcloth.”

  “I’m not entirely sure how to share magic. With my Cassia and Edith, it seems to be done through a focus made from one of my scales. That wasn’t my intention when I made either item, however. Both times, I was gripped with a strong feeling of wanting to protect them. I’m not sure that’s something I want to force.”

  “Yeah, no. Definitely don’t Boss. That’s some Big Important Sorcerer Stuff,” Visk responded intensely. “Messing with that kind of thing can go really bad.”

  Visk’s turned and grabbed my horns with their slender hands. The elf pulled themself up to sit just behind where my horns sprouted out of my head. They were the only person I knew aside from a child or a goblin who was light enough to not be burdensome in that position.

  It did mean that I needed to keep my head low to the ground so that I didn’t bump Visk into the ceiling. I wanted to encourage their newfound confidence in interacting with me, so I didn’t complain for now.

  “If you were an elf, we’d be able to use spells similar to the Aek Padchon,” Visk explained with a contemplative tone. “All elves have magic that’s done in groups. The Jang and Yodd both have a lot of spells that help them do their jobs together. It can be pretty powerful too, which keeps Wizards and other magic users from messing with us too much.”

  “I was able to match your magic while we walked pretty well. Do you think I could do the same with the other spells you mentioned?”

  Visk squirmed on top of my neck and gripped one of my horns in either hand. Their feet kicked back and forth in the air. “I’m… I’m not sure Boss… It… kinda involves… Me being in charge?”

  “Weren’t you in charge when you led me over here? You did fine.”

  “W-well… yeah, but…” I could tell that Visk’s present nervousness wasn’t entirely their meek persona. Their heartbeat could be felt where their legs pressed against my neck. It was fluttering with anxiety. “You only got to see a little bit of it before… Hierarchy is everything to Dok Boss. From who got fed first to where we slept. So with our magic…”

  “The person who casts the spell is placing themself above the others in the hierarchy?”

  Visk gave a small sigh of relief when I seemed to understand and wasn’t upset. “Mhm. Someone like the Dareen could… just wave their hand at one of us and we’d drop dead, if they wanted. The hierarchy was absolute. You’d… be giving me some power like that, Boss. I can’t ask you to do that.”

  I fell silent for a little while. When I answered, I’d made up my mind. “Tell me how to do the spell, Visk. I trust you.”

  I’d meant what I said when I’d told Visk that I wanted to be equals. If that meant temporarily making myself vulnerable to them, then so be it. Visk’s legs clamped down on either side of my neck as they froze up from my words, but it was a gentle pressure unlike when my Cassia pulled me around.

  “Are… are you sure Boss? I don’t have a great track record, when it comes to people trusting me.”

  “If you are not comfortable with it, Visk, then I won’t force you. I’d like you to be recovered before we explore the Alchemist’s house. If you think you can handle it without using your people’s magic to recharge your magic, then that’s fine.”

  Visk dithered back and forth for a moment before they made their own decision.

  “If you trust me boss… then lay down on all fours and close your eyes.”

  I did as Visk asked and settled down on the dirty floor of the hovel. A quick bath in the aqueduct would be necessary to get some of the Dusk Quarter’s grime off of me later. For now, I closed my eyes as Visk directed.

  While I laid down, Visk shifted their resting position on the top of my neck. The spined fin along my spine fell flat to accommodate the elf’s slender body laying across it. Their ankles hooked together over my fin to keep their legs from dangling. Slender arms looped gently around my neck to resume our earlier embrace. Visk’s head settled to rest between my horns, off to one side of the armored ridge that ran from just before my eye ridges to the back of my head.

  “The Jang sing their hymns in the orchards and the Yodd bellow their war chants in formation. The Dok must whisper to each other in the Dark.” Visk spoke so softly that I could only hear them by the soft vibrations of their lips against my scales. “Our magic is from the dila gaena, the song in our heart. When you step in my footsteps, you place yourself into my tael, my rhythm.”

  “Your tael is overwhelming to me, Sanguine. I can feel myself getting swallowed up in it every time you pick me up in your claws, or even when you look me in the eyes. I have spent my whole life trying to hide in other people’s shadows just to survive, to play an accompaniment to someone else’s song. But you can throw me off key with just a word…”

  “... For just a little while, let me take the lead. When I sing, listen to the feeling it inspires, rather than the words. Follow in my footsteps and trust me to bring you to where we want to go. When you understand the melody, join it. Repeat it back to me a beat after mine starts…”

  “... I know it will be difficult for you, even though you have set your mind to it. My dila gaena is not a pleasant sound to hear. So I beg you, Sanguine, do not try to change my tael. I do not know what will happen if you do, but it will surely have dire Consequences.”

  Visk was silent for several moments after they stopped speaking. Then, they started to hum against my head.

  The music took a little while to gain cohesion in my mind. I initially didn't understand what Visk had meant about it being difficult to hear. It was a somber sound to be sure and came from a place deep in the elf’s chest. I could feel it from where their slim torso pressed against my neck and their lips on my head.

  Only as the tune looped around to the beginning did I start to understand Visk’s words. It was a cycle, where each repetition dipped lower. Each time the song started over it became darker. Visk had called this a song from their heart. It was as deeply personal to them as they could go. While it might have been only a part of their story, it coalesced an impression I’d built from many interactions we’d had and things Visk themself had hinted at.

  Visk saw their life as a downward spiral. The song only ever grew darker. They were entirely correct when they’d told me that hearing it would be difficult for me. My instinct was just as they’d expected. I wanted to change that tune to something happier.

  Fighting down that instinct took long enough that Visk had to fully start their song over from the beginning, at the lightest part of the melody. They seemed to understand that I was struggling to do as they’d asked. Their slender fingers rubbed at the soft scales beneath my jaw soothingly.

  After another couple of cycles, I managed to calm myself down enough to repeat Visk’s melody back to them. It radiated up through my chest and down my throat, vibrating along their whole body where they were laying on top of my neck. When the sound from inside of me reached Visk, I felt an unexpected pressure resisting the flow. I was sure that I was matching their tune. My intent had been wrangled into letting Visk take the lead, rather than change what I heard.

  Something inside of Visk shifted before I could figure out what was wrong. The pressure resisting me popped like it was a soap bubble. Magic flowed into Visk far faster than I had intended. I became aware of how much they could hold an instant after the resistance stopped and immediately cut off my accompaniment to their music.

  Visk gasped on top of my head. Their own song cut off with a sudden choking sound. I wanted to check on them, but couldn’t see Visk since they were still latched onto the top of my head. After several moments they regained the ability to breathe and collapsed against my head.

  “Visk, are you alright?” I asked them, nervously kneading the ground with my claws.

  “Y-yeah Bossss,” they drawled listlessly. “I… probably messed up really bad though.”

  “What do you mean-” I started to ask, but as I sniffed at the air I detected an immediate difference. The sharp undercurrent to Visk’s scent had changed. It was still present, but reminded me of the lands of the Barony. In retrospect, I realized that the ‘ancient wilderness’ they’d smelled of before was the World Tree from their memories. “Visk, what did you do?”

  “I… uhm… I might’ve picked a side… between you and… and the Dareen, Boss.”

  “... Godsdamnit.”