For a moment we stood in silence, measuring each other up and down, until finally he moved. He stepped toward me and to the side, as though he was a cat circling something of interest. His voice carried over easily.

“Sixty-nine dead before you, burned to ash by their own power. So why not you? Is your power weaker?”

I had heard the comments before. My draconic blood was just as strong as theirs had been. I spoke carefully, my voice dry and raw.

“I must be bled of my power regularly to reduce its strength. If it reaches full power, I will burn out.”

The he-drow stopped in his tracks.

“They drugged you to sleep for the journey?”

I nodded numbly. “Yes.”

He motioned to the side of the arena and my eyes followed his gesture to where a table with water barrels sat.

“Drink,” he said. “I cannot have an ill eziot.”

I moved toward the water. Was he my handler, then? I grabbed up a large stone cup and poured icy cold water into it, then took several great swallows. I felt as though I had gone without water for days. How long of a journey had it been? Had I slept the whole time?

The he-drow approached and stood not far behind me, watching me drink, until I turned around and set the cup down.

“I am Kiran,” the he-drow said. “Your handler. You will be called Ryndor.”

A name, even if it was just the seventieth. It was more than having a whole sentence as a name. I moved back into the arena and Kiran looked me over from head to toe.

“Your training notes are impressive,” he finally said. “And I hear your flames are purple. Unusual. Most eziots can produce magic, but not all can burn as brightly as the dragons do.”

I felt something close to pride rise in my chest. I had trained hard for this day to come and now it was finally here.

“What is it you want, Ryndor?” Kiran asked. “To make your family proud? To serve the Commander?”

I spoke carefully. “I want war glory…Handler,” I said.

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “As do I. What do you say? Shall we give them something to talk about?”

I could not stop the smile that came over my face. “We shall give them more than just conversation material, Handler. We shall become legend.”

Kiran nodded. “Come, then. We should try melding. We will not have a full training session today, but I want to start the bond at the very least. While your power is still sleepy from the drugged journey here.”

I agreed and we moved together into the center of the training arena.

Kiran reached for a dual harness hanging from a nearby rack. It was made up of two interlocking leather-and-metal frames, etched with silver runes that caught the faelight. One half was sized for him, the other smaller for me. He slipped his half on first, buckling the straps with practiced speed. Then he helped me into mine. The leather harness settled against my worn fabric tunic and the metal plates pressed firmly over my sternum and the base of my throat. When the final clasp locked, the two halves clicked into one continuous circuit.

The first surge hit like a blade driven between the ribs.

Pain flared white-hot through both of us. I felt Kiran’s body jerk at the same instant mine did, his breath punched out in a sharp hiss that matched my own. Memories that were not mine slammed into the back of my skull: the cold precision of drow training yards, the taste of blood after a failed spell, the weight of a family who demanded ambition and success, the quiet, grinding determination that had kept him on this path. At the same moment I knew he was drowning in mine; the endless nights of being bled, the purple fire that always wanted more, the hollow ache of a name that had never been mine until now.

We staggered. The harness pulled us closer, forcing our shoulders together, our hands nearly touching.

“Focus,” Kiran gritted out through his teeth. His voice was strained, but steady. “Don’t fight the current. Ride it.”

I tried. The first attempt at joining our will went sideways; a burst of uncontrolled heat scorched the sand between our boots. The second attempt sent a jagged arc of violet light cracking against the far wall. We both cursed. Missteps piled up. Our breathing fell out of rhythm. The shared pain spiked whenever one of us pulled too hard or held back too much.

Then, somehow, the edge dulled.

The memories stopped crashing and began to settle, layering over one another like sediment. I saw the path that had brought him here. I saw endless nights studying spellwork and melding with an eziot. He saw the long road that had brought me here. The training grounds, the nights of pure exhaustion. We were no longer two separate minds colliding. We were two halves of a single unit. I opened my eyes and saw Kiran looking back at me, a haughty grin spreading across his face and I knew what he was thinking. No one melded this quickly with a new eziot, yet here we were. Melded almost completely.

Power rose from the deep well inside me, raw, purple, and hungry. Kiran shaped it with the precision of a lifetime’s training, weaving the spell-forms I had never been taught. There was no need for words. The thought formed between us as one: Release.

A controlled spray of violet fire erupted from all four of our hands, bright enough to paint the entire arena in shifting shades of amethyst and black. It roared outward in a disciplined arc, scorched a clean line across the sand, then guttered out the instant we willed it to stop. No backlash. No uncontrolled surge. Just power, shared and exact.

We stood there breathing hard, still joined by the harness, the echo of each other’s minds still thrumming in the backs of our skulls.

Kiran was the first to move. He unfastened the clasps with careful fingers and stepped back, though the residual bond lingered like a second pulse.

He gestured toward the passage that led back toward the main fortress and laughed slightly as he moved to return the harness to its hook.

“The Captain wants you field-ready before the Karon push. That means we work. Every morning before the camp wakes. I need you to take direction without hesitation, to keep your fire precise and controlled, to never put a soldier at risk because you lost focus.”

He hung the harness up and moved to leave, then paused at the passage entrance.

“You’ll be housed in the slave quarters with the other draconic sorcerers,” he said. “Meals three times daily. Training here every morning.”

I could not help but smile as I moved back towards the courtyard and the eziot quarters. I had never felt this kind of power and precision with any of the handlers who had trained me. I was dangerous and I loved it.

I walked back the way I had come. The passage opened into the main fortress yard. Evening was settling in. The faelight lanterns cast longer shadows. Soldiers moved with less urgency. Some were eating. Some were heading toward barracks.

I stood alone in the yard, orienting myself toward the slave quarters. My perception catalogued the space with trained precision: the guard stations at regular intervals, the supply yards stacked high with weapons, the water troughs, the other draconic sorcerers moving through their evening routines. The sky overhead was impenetrable darkness but high above I knew there was the ceiling to this Underdark imprisonment of my kind. One day, we would escape and return to the sunlit lands where we belonged, and our vengeance would be world-ending.

I noticed that several of the other sorcerers glanced at me as I crossed the yard toward the quarters. I was one of the new ones and therefore a point of curiosity, but I did not care. My handler and I were to become the best of all of them.

I woke in darkness as the wagon lurched beneath me, and I surfaced from sleep, disoriented. There was a dull ache in my body, as though I had been lying in the same position for hours. My wrists carried the cold weight of chains and the air tasted of dust and animal sweat.

My eyes adjusted slowly. There was very little light. Just a faint glow of a lantern hanging from the wagon’s frame, swinging with the motion, casting shadows that moved like living things across the close stone walls of what must have been a tunnel. The wagon creaked and groaned as the beasts pulled it forward and the sound echoed back the footfalls and the strain of the beasts.

I was not alone. There were five other bodies in there with me, some sleeping, some awake and staring at nothing in particular. There was a girl across from me, younger maybe, with a bruise shadowing her left shoulder. An older boy, or maybe a young man, was sitting very still with his chin level and his hands relaxed in his lap in a painfully calm manner. There were others but they still slept on the floor of the wagon where I had awoken.

The wagon lurched again, and I heard a widening of the sound, an opening up of space before us. The tunnel was ending.

Light began to seep in ahead, green, pink, and blue, growing brighter as the beasts continued forward.

I had been raised by the Sit’aire family since the day I was born, seventy-eight years ago. I had spent all of those years in near isolation, training and being conditioned for what I assumed was going to come next. I had been bred, like others, to be a draconic war sorcerer, or, as my trainers called me, an eziot. All I could guess was that I had been contracted out to a military faction and that is where they were taking me. Something like excitement stirred in the pit of my stomach. I had dreamed of war glory since before I could remember. It was said that the queen herself would honor great eziots for their prowess in combat.

The tunnel opened before me like a mouth opening wide for a yawn. Light flooded in, dim though it was. It came from glow crystals and mushrooms that scattered throughout the entirety of the Underdark. The light felt harsh after the darkness of the passage, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. When at last I could see what I was looking at, I straightened sharply.

A great fortress sprawled across the cavern floor like something carved directly from the Underdark stone. Black fortress walls rose in stacked, deliberate rows. Towers nearly reached the ceiling of the Underdark, visible only because of the mushrooms that had decided to grow there. Banner-poles jutted out of the ground on either side of the gate. The silver spider on a deep blue background. The banner of the queen.

Guard towers marked the perimeter, and I could see soldiers stationed in them, watching as we arrived at the gate.

The smell of forge-smoke, sharp and acrid, reached my nose as the gate opened and we moved inside to a courtyard.

Soldiers moved in coordinated patterns across the yard, perhaps doing drills. On a daise at the far end of the courtyard where we were heading stood a tall woman in gleaming silver armor. Probably the commander of the fortress.

Smithies hammered somewhere in the distance, an endless, rhythmic sound. Supply yards were stacked with weapons and provisions.

The scorch marks on the fortress walls were old, layered, evidence of years of testing or battle or both.

One of the other slaves in the wagon, the older boy with the level chin, turned his head slightly and watched the fortress with a dull expression. “They call it Kethrall,” he said in a low voice to the girl and myself. “They say its goal is to hold the Karon Mountains from the betrayers.”

Over the wall of the fortress, I could see a great mountain range that reached upwards and locked with the ceiling of the Underdark. I had heard stories of this mountain range. It was said to be the only edge of the Underdark that could lead to freedom from this imprisonment my kind had been doomed to all of those years ago.

The wagon continued forward, deeper into the fortress yard and soldiers began to gather as we approached. Men and women in the colors of camp command, moving to intercept the wagon before it came to a full stop. One of them, a guard with a ledger in hand and a bored expression, stepped forward and spoke to whoever was driving.

I could not hear the words clearly over the creak of the wagon and the sound of the beasts, but the exchange was brief and efficient. The guard checked something on his ledger, nodded, and stepped back.

The wagon lurched to a halt and for a moment there was stillness. I realized just how much my body aches were coming from the rough ride.

Then the commanding she-drow spoke, sharp and authoritative, barking an order I could not quite make out.

The tailgate of the wagon began to lower. The older boy with the level chin stood without being told. Several others, now awake and equally as confused as me, followed.

I stood, chains chiming softly as I moved, and followed the older boy down from the wagon bed with the others.

My feet touched packed dirt. It was warmer than I expected, the ground holding the heat of the faelight lanterns, the forges, the press of bodies and movement. Around me, the other slaves were being herded into a rough line by guards who did not speak and only gestured with practiced efficiency. Point left, point right, organize the newly arrived into something approximating order.

The guard with the ledger began calling out names. Only some of the slaves got called. The others were waved toward one of the low black buildings, clearly being sorted into whatever housing existed for them. The girl with the bruise got called first, pointed toward the eastern barracks. The older boy next to me did not get called at all. He was simply waved through with a group of others, gone before I could fully register that he was leaving.

My turn came. The guard looked at his ledger, looked at me, and instead of calling a name or waving me toward a building, he simply pointed at another soldier. “Follow him.”

I stumbled over the chain dangling from my wrists and followed the soldier across the courtyard towards an open archway. I could see the commanding she-drow had come down from her daise and she stopped by the archway, watching our approach.

We came to a halt in front of her and she looked me over critically. “The Sit’Aire family, yes?” she questioned. “What do they call you?”

I nearly choked on my dry tongue before I could speak, unable to look away from the finger bones braided into her hair and realizing how dehydrated I was. How long had I been in that wagon? I spoke nervously. “They call me T’Ryndor eziot Sit’Aire,” I said, then added nervously, “Madame.” It was a general term of respect for a higher up, as I did not know for certain she was the commander and I could not afford to make a mistake.

She seemed pleased by my answer. “The Sit’Aire family really went through sixty-nine others before you were the first to survive? I expect great things from you and your handler. Do me justice in there.”

She walked off and the guard motioned me to continue following him.

The archway took us away from the main yard, through a narrower passage between two of the black barracks buildings. Faelight lanterns cast moving shadows as I walked, the chain at my wrists hanging heavy and cold. I could still hear the sounds of the fortress behind me but they were becoming distant, muffled.

The passage opened onto a smaller yard, walled off from the main compound. This space was different. Deliberate. The ground was packed dirt scorched black in places, and the walls bore old burn marks layered over older burn marks, evidence of repeated use, repeated violence, and repeated training. It reminded me of my own training ground back home.

The guard who escorted me stopped at the entrance to the yard and pointed inward, then turned and walked away without a word, leaving me alone in this space.

There were anchor rings set into the stone at intervals. Restraint posts. Many eziots had trained here, I could see.

I stepped slowly into the middle of the training arena and looked around. So this was it. The warfront at last. I was to find war glory afterall.

As I turned slowly to look around the arena, I felt eyes on me and turned sharply. At the far end of the arena, a he-drow had stepped from the shadows and was standing there, watching me in silence. His white hair nearly glowed with the light of the fae torches, glow crystals, and mushrooms but he was distant enough that I could not make out any facial features.

I swallowed dryly and stared back, neither one of us making a move.