If she'd left to send another sliver, I was determined to figure out who she was sending them to. It wasn't that I didn't trust her, exactly, but she hadn't told anyone what she was actually doing, and that was suspicious enough for me to follow her. Moonhawk wasn't around either, but I figured she was just out hunting like BlueIsle and Flametongue. Though, she might have been with Clarisa.

As it was already dark, I would need to transform into something that could see in the dark. After my flying fiasco a couple of days ago, I decided to choose the black wolf instead of an owl.

I strode into the trees and out of sight of the others. "Wenf Vlenka Telmar."

Halfway through the transformation, I realized that Leera was standing behind me. [What are you doing?]

[I'm going hunting. When you leave, I'll leave.]

[Okay.] I finished my transformation. It always took me a minute to get used to new animal forms with exceptional senses, and this time was no different. There were a million smells and sounds all around me, from Leera's smoky scent to the sound of twigs snapping several hundred yards away.

The faint instincts I gained with the wolf's body found these smells and sounds fascinating. The breaking twigs were so loud and frequent that they could only be caused by a biped stumbling through the forest. That was probably Clarisa.

[I've got my eye on you, so don't do anything stupid.] Leera took off as I headed towards the twig sounds.

I continued towards the sound of someone crunching to the undergrowth. As I grew closer, I noticed a smell that accompanied the sounds. It stuck out in the woods, clean and without fur, feathers, or scales. I followed the scent, sure that it belonged to Clarisa.

Sure enough, she came into view several seconds later. I stayed back far enough that I'd have time to duck behind the tree if she looked around. She kept on walking for a while, then suddenly stopped. Afraid that she'd noticed me following her, I ducked behind the nearest tree. I peeked out from behind it and saw her looking around before taking out a slender whistle made of ivory. It was a sliver call.

With one whistle that would've been out of the range my normal biped hearing, Clarisa summoned another strange, black sliver from the woods. It darted into view faster than I could blink before hovering in front of her. What was even stranger than its color was the fact that I couldn't smell it. I was downwind of Clarisa and the sliver, but while I could smell her, the sliver might as well not have been there.

The sliver opened its thin, fish-like snout to relay a message to Clarisa in a monotone voice. "If they cannot be dissuaded from going on the mission, then proper measures must be taken. I sent this sliver with extra ileski leaves and a mass shock stick. Use them at your discretion, but remember your limits."

Clarisa scowled and reached into the sliver's egg pouch to take out a small, leather bag and a silvery-gray rod the length of her hand. As soon as she'd taken out these items, the sliver looked like it was ready to leave.

"Wait," Clarisa said. "I have a message."

The sliver hovered, silent except for its buzzing wings. Then it squeaked softly, and Clarissa began to speak again.

"Callah, Ella's friends aren't the problem. She is. She's the one who told them they could come, even after I said it was a bad idea. She listens to her dragon more than me. What should I do? End message."

The sliver shot off, disappearing from view again.

What Clarisa had said was true, but I had no reason to listen to her. Why should I after she'd treated me and my friends like dirt? I bared my fangs but didn't move from my hiding spot. At least she wasn't really doing anything suspicious, just talking to Callah.

And it sounded like she was planning to use the mass shock stick to knock out my friends and the ileski leaves to wipe their memories of what they knew about our mission. Ileski leaves would help with a cinem magic ceremony, and they would take some of the danger out of having an amateur mind magic user cast memory spells on my friends.

After the spell was done, we would leave, and they would never remember that they had met up with us. Honestly, it would be a relief to know that they weren't coming with us to Ferentis, both because of the danger they would be in and the danger they could pose for me since I was a half-blood. There was the problem of needing a translator, but Clarisa knew a few words in Ferish, right? We would use her skills to hire a translator in Ferentis if we had to.

When I arrived back at camp, Tawny and Kuertis were by the fire cooking something, and the dragons were still nowhere to be seen. I joined Tawny and Kuertis at the fire for dinner, then we all went to bed.

The next morning, Leera was pacing outside my tent, grumbling to herself. [Carts, yokes—what next? If I wasn't on a mission...]

[What happened?] I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. [Have you been awake all night?]

[That's not important. I flew over a mine when I was hunting. They had dragons hauling salt around like common pack mules.] She clicked her teeth as she paced, spitting sparks.

[They must be unbonded dragons.] Good thing it hadn't been something worse. From the sound of her grumbling, I'd thought it was something terrible.

[How can you be so calm?] She stopped pacing to glare at me.

[I don't know really why you're so upset. They're working, like you. It's just a different type of working.]

She didn't say anything for a very long minute, staring at me with her teeth half-bared. ['Just working?' They're slaves, like all the rest of us.]

I crossed my arms. [You think you're a slave?]

She seemed to consider this for a second. [Whether I am or not, the dragons in that mine and the ones your friends ride certainly are. Your entire species is been enslaving mine for centuries, forcing us to work like dumb animals.]

It stung that she might think she was my slave. I'd been a good rider, hadn't I? I mean, sure, we argued a lot, but so did any friends with big personalities. [Everyone works for someone else, Leera. It's how the world works.]

[Your kind is paid for their work.]

I could tell she meant bipeds in general, not my particular species. [So is yours. The dragons in that mine are given food and a safe place to live every day.]

[We can hunt for food, and we don't melt in the rain. My kind shouldn't serve yours.] Her claws gouged the dirt, and I could sense that she was holding herself back.

That could be a dangerous sign, but I didn't care. She was being ridiculous. Didn't she know her own history? [Dragons were dying out before we came to this continent. You lived alone and either got killed by shadow wolves or fought each other to the death. You need us to keep you from going savage.]

[Savage?] she bellowed, smoke leaking out of her nostrils.

[Yes, savage!] That much I was sure of. I'd seen how the dragons at the stables fought before they were bonded, and if it wasn't for the stable hands who got in the middle of their fights, they would all kill each other. A species couldn't survive like that.

Leera's eyes went red—blood frenzy. I'd gone too far. She roared, destroying any chance of our argument going unheard, and opened her mouth wide. Fire spewed from her gullet. It eclipsed my vision, hit me in the chest, and slammed me against the nearest tree. Everything went dark.