In all their lives, both Nessalir and Iarius had only ever tread the soil of nations younger than the ruin they now approached. The old stones were covered in the grime and filth of ages incalculable, and green moss grew and shriveled to brown upon its walls and ramparts. The doors, once mighty, were half rotted and half petrified with the passage of so many years, and they hung from the archway which marked the old fort's entrance.

  Within that courtyard beyond, Nessalir could see a pile of rubble that might once have been a fountain, and dead vines and grass as tall as man's thigh where dirt paths had once been. She could smell the must of dirt and the faint stench of decay, and she heard from within no signs of life.

  It was a dead place, where only savage, choking weeds grew and thrived. It was a place untouched by humanity for centuries going on to millennia, and it held within itself a timeless foreboding which seemed to insist that it remain untouched for centuries more.

  "It looks as though nothing has lived here for centuries," said Iarius.

  Nessalir nodded, her golden eyes scanning the broken doors and the courtyard they guarded for any semblance of creatures great or small. "Not even animals have made their homes here, it seems," she said. "I can see no animal trails, hear no buzzing insects. Whatever resides within these halls, its presence is enough to drive away all which otherwise might preside here. Even the snowfall itself seems to have shunned this courtyard."

  So saying, she stepped forward and pushed her way past the doors.

  "Are you certain about this?" asked Iarius, hurrying behind her.

  Something crunched in the grass beneath her boots, and Nessalir paused to examine. They were bones; old and tiny. Brittle things, which splintered beneath the weight of the drakkowar woman.

  Quickly, she began to search the tall grass around her, and she found more bones strewn about the earth. They came in a myriad of shapes, such that she was certain that they had come from all manner of beasts.

  "We were wrong," she said. "There has been life here. And yet, the ruins remain undisturbed by their passage." She frowned as she tried to understand this.

  "Nessalir!" gasped Iarius. She turned to him, and saw that he was staring wide-eyed at the fountain in the center of the courtyard.

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  That fountain, much like the rest of the ruin, was covered in plant growth. And yet, closer now, Nessalir could see something strange in the plants which grew upon it. She watched as violet flowers bloomed upon the vines which wrapped round the old stonework, only to then, mere seconds later, wilt and fall away. Stranger still was the red rose above those flowers, the petals of which were folding in on themselves. Before her stunned eyes, the rose shrank and wrapped itself in green, retreating back into the form of a bud before sinking once more back into the greenery which had produced it.

  Abruptly, the flowers all froze. The violet petals remained in whatever state of decay they had reached, and the rose was nowhere to be seen.

  Seconds passed, and Nessalir and Iarius watched with their breaths caught, waiting for the flowers to begin their strange dance once more, but all in the courtyard remained still.

  "What could cause something like that?" asked Iarius.

  "Sorcery?" Nessalir asked. "Or something more powerful still." Now she felt something rare and unwelcome enter her heart: fear; not for another, but for herself. From deep within her, a long-dormant instinct reared its head, and she felt at once a mad and desperate desire to flee this place and never return.

  But her dragon's blood surged within her veins, and Nessalir pushed that terror away. Whatever danger lurked within this old fortress, she would confront it, and if she could not best it today, she would learn from the ordeal, and return to best it tomorrow or the day after. Thus had Nessalir always lived her life, ever since she was a young girl first learning the art of combat in the now-lost kingdom of Lorveg.

  She was a warrior, to her very core, but Iarius, she knew, was not. "If you wish to change your mind and remain outside," she told him, "now would be the time to turn back."

  The scholar's face was pale, and she could tell from the wild look in his eyes that he had experienced the same strange terror that she had. But though he had no dragon's blood with which to counteract this terror, still he fought against it.

  He swallowed, and he said: "I will follow you."

  Nessalir was glad to hear it, though she did not think on why. The idea of descending into these ruins alone seemed more than she could bear. "The entrance is just there. Let us find the master of the halls and put an end to it."

  Iarius nodded, and he hurried after the half-dragon woman as she began to stride across the courtyard.

  As she walked, she saw things through the grass which she could not explain. There was a fox, who laid down upon the dirt and closed its eyes. Its skin and fur rotted away, its corpse stripped bare until it was a pile of bones swallowed up by the earth. There was a bird, who alighted upon the ground and began to shrink, until an egg built itself around it and encased the creature before vanishing into the air. There was a tree, sprouting from the soil and growing so large that its branches covered the whole of the courtyard in shade, but Nessalir blinked her eyes, and the tree was gone as though it were never there.

  She reached the door that led into the fortress proper, and she pushed it open. Nessalir and Iarius stood now at the threshold, and from deep within the dark halls below, they heard the disturbing howls of something not of this world.