For a long time, everyone just remained frozen.
Vaguely, Rudra was aware of Tish taking shallow breaths. As for Nayan, she had stopped breathing entirely.
Rudra touched his face. His hand found something rubbery and wet. It stank of something rotten and sweet. Rudra looked at the piece of meat, then back at the place where the creature had been standing just a few seconds ago.
The grass was gone. In its place: a wet, dark smear radiating out from a scorched center, studded with things Rudra's mind refused to name individually—only registered as *parts*, *not-whole*, wrong angles and wrong colors against the pale dirt. Steam rose faintly off it, curling into the cold air, carrying that same rotten-sweet smell that clung to his own hand.
"What....."
Rudra looked at the Benevian Prince, standing wide-eyed. The front of his face, neck, and shiny armour were now stained with dark red that matched his hair colour—making it somehow worse. "What just...."
Tish hadn't so much as blinked at the wound on Rudra's neck. She had knelt beside him with steady hands, murmuring instructions like she'd done it a hundred times before. But now she looked pale—her eyes fixed on the smear where the creature used to be.
"Transforming into a dragon..." she said, her voice shaking so much Rudra wondered if it would break like fragile glass. "...it was too much for the shapeshifter."
She stated something so obvious, yet it made a few Benevian soldiers look at each other nervously.
Mamon slowly turned to look at Rudra—not just his head, his entire body, like a stiff doll. "Has this ever...."
"No," Rudra cut in, too fast. "None of them has ever gotten this close."
They fell quiet again for several minutes. Not just them, but the entire forest stood silent, holding its breath. The mist had started crawling back into the land as the heat of the battle in the sky slowly dissipated.
"What do they want?" Tish asked.
"Revenge," answered Rudra. He finally moved, standing up with a grunt, hands on his knees. "I killed their king last year."
"So you're the problem," mused the Benevian Prince. He paused, then added, "Who am I kidding? You have always been the problem."
Nayan laughed. It was a sound so strange in the suffocating quiet of the forest that even Rudra felt a little nervous. "You know why he's always been the problem?" She sneered at the Prince. "Because he was the only one who said no when they wanted to replace the human race. You think you're fucked because—"
"Language, Nayan," Rudra tried to scold, but he felt a little warmth in the center of his chest that he couldn't quite put off.
Nayan narrowed her eyes and doubled down. "You fuckers think you're fucked because of him?" She scoffed. "Without him you'd be begging to be this level of fucked. This—" she gestured broadly at the smoking ground, the blood, Mamon's ruined cape, "—this is the good outcome. This is Tuesday. You'd be extinct-fucked. Turned-into-cattle-fucked. There'd be a farm somewhere with a sign that says 'Free-Range Humans, Handle With Care'-fucked—"
"Nayan!" Rudra scolded, louder, though a small, treacherous part of him wanted to know where that sign metaphor had been hiding all this time.
Mamon opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, clearly weighing whether continuing this conversation was worth it, then decided, evidently, that it was not.
"Anyway," Nayan grumbled, "with Rudra, it's still a good fuck."
Someone amidst the group of soldiers made a choking noise.
Tish stared at Rudra as if Nayan's "intense choice of words" was somehow *his* fault. He gave her a shrug and turned to Nayan. "We need a plan, Nayan," he said. "We cannot argue and waste time."
"Like what plan?" Nayan asked back.
"I'll fly you back to Partha," Rudra said calmly. "You need safety."
"The Capital was literally crawling with shapeshifters last year!" Nayan threw her hands in the air. "I am safer with you! Where else can be a place safer than by a living, breathing, healing fire dragon the size of a small city?"
Rudra opened his mouth. Closed it.
Most people had always seen him as a problem, an unwanted presence.
You are a problem.
Death follows you everywhere you go.
"But they're after you because of me!" Rudra tried to reason. "Because I killed Suba, Marich wants to kill you."
Nayan grinned. "I guess I am your problem now."
Something cracked inside Rudra. Not loudly, not dramatically. But it was a major shift, like tectonic plates moving to build a new country.
He blinked fast. He hoped it was dark enough that nobody would notice his eyes turning glassy.
"You are an idiot," the words came out raspy, soft—he hated that—"and you lost the goat."
Nayan's smile froze. She looked around. "But I thought you had it!"
"How can I have it when I was jumping on the shapeshifter?" demanded Rudra.
"Stop it!" Tish said. "Both of you! I swear I'll break your bones and heal them at the wrong angles."
Even Mamon seemed terrified of the threat, even though it wasn't directed at him. She exhaled. "What is the plan now?" she asked. "And don't give me stupid answers like sniffing every man, woman, and animal in the entirety of Benevia to spot shapeshifters!"
Rudra paused.
*Damn, she was right.*
"Your Highness," Nayan called, her playful demeanor shifting to something serious, "the creature mimicked His Majesty the Dragon King's voice, and also your mother's voice. And it recited the exact words as you remember them. His Majesty the Dragon King isn't dead, and your mother—she died a while back. How did that thing do that?"
Rudra couldn't answer. He didn't know the answer. Or tried to think he didn't. But he did.
There were two answers to that. Both were equally disturbing.
He could see the wheels turning in Nayan's head as she locked her eyes with his. They were thinking the same thing.
"The shapeshifters were evolving," Nayan said, "or—"
"Somehow they found a body part. A piece of my father," Rudra muttered. "And as for my mother..."
He didn't want to think about it. He wanted to believe his mother had gone to the moon. Not become preserved "food" for an inhumane creature, using her body even a decade later as psychological warfare against him.
"Was... your mother buried?" The question came from Tish. Rudra couldn't look at her, for some reason.
"I don't know," he said.
"What is the usual ritua—"
"Death isn't usual in my family, Saintess!" snapped Rudra. "I said I don't know."
She didn't press further. She changed the conversation to something far more concerning.
"He recited my voice too," Tish said quietly. "What was that about? That... the thing that..."
Rudra felt the words echo in his head even as Tish struggled to say them aloud—not because her memory was good, but probably because it was strange hearing her own voice coming out of someone else's mouth.
"The thing they made—raised and cared for—ultimately killed them."
Those were the exact words Tish had spoken that day, sitting amidst the shells of Alakan corpses.
"The thing they loved killed them."
Down to every—
"Just like you, Rudra."
Single word.
"The thing that you love will kill you."
"Why did that thing say it?" Tish pressed, and Rudra flinched. "What was that—"
"It's something you predicted before," Rudra finished. He tried to sound casual, but his tone came out guarded. "He shouldn't have known that. I've no idea how he knew that."
"Did I predict that in your dream?" she pressed further.
Rudra nodded. "Back when we were in Alaka—"
"I've been to Alaka?" Tish's voice rose. Rudra watched the Benevian Prince come to stand behind her. "Is that where I die?" She sounded awfully cheerful.
Rudra narrowed his eyes. "It's where you die, too."
"Oh really?" She asked— the way someone sounds when they're asking about a ghost story rather than a diagnosis. Her lack of concern for her probable demise was equally irritating and concerning.
"Where is it?" Tish pressed. "This place, Alaka?"
Rudra had to consciously restrain his urge to grab Tish by the throat and shake her like a salt-shaker.
"You think that's where the Sword of Mamon is," he said flatly. Not a question.
"No," Tish answered, her face screaming yes, yes, yes.
Rudra turned away fully from Tish, lest he do something like smiting the beloved daughter of Rāva out of existence. "Anyway," he said, looking at Nayan, "about the plan. We are going to Amber Grove. It's a safe place for you. I'll drop you there and figure out this whole shapeshifter mess myself."
Nayan protested immediately. "But Shia—"
"Will be with you. I'll make a detour and pick her up from Partha," Rudra finished. Nayan still wasn't convinced. "But she will—"
"Be convinced by me. I'll do all the talking. Let's go."
"Wait!"
Rudra turned to look at one of the soldiers standing a few feet away, still with his spear pointed at him. "What about Mirek?"
"Who?"
"Him!" The guard gestured at the circle of blood and smoke. "He is alive, right? Since the Dragon King is also alive, and the Saintess is alive... he must be alive."
"I'll help you," Rudra said. Rudra didn't answer the soldier directly. He just looked at the scorch mark on the grass — at how little it had taken to erase a body entirely — and thought about how many more of these fires he'd be walking toward before this was over.
"But be prepared to receive his corpse. The shapeshifters don't play by the rules they used to."