---

---

No chains held Aviur to the room, instead a kind of lifelessness clung to his body. If the Imperial had the energy to escape he lacked the will for such an attempt. “Aviur may I have an audience with you? I wish to talk.”

“Talk?” Aviur's eyes half opened observed the dragon before him.

“Yes, just talk is all. Surely you wouldn’t mind someone to talk to?”

The dark figure seemed to forget to breath for a time before, his faded wings shuttered with a chill despite the unpleasant warmth of the room. “Talk.”

“Lets see, shall I start with the good news or bad?” Embla’s eyes light up with the chance to interact. Aviur remained silent, an expression of mild annoyance flickered before him.

“Aw well, perhaps I had just better reach the point of my visit. I recently transferred from a Nature clan, I was to be assigned to you when I heard the unfortunate news that you were being transferred back to the Southern Icefields. Biran I believe? Is here to get you.”

Aviur’s eyes closed once more, easing his body over he shifted from one side to another resting once more among a pile of hides. Embla chanced to notice a number of scales fall from the Imperial as he shifted, pale in color they broke as they fell upon the floor.

“You attacked your mate? May I ask why?”

“She was not my mate. I awoke to this world, to hunger and pain. I drank for the first time and craved things only the mortals long for. I was tired, alone, and weak. She saw what I had been and took advantage of my status.”

“I see. Were you not alone before? I knew drakes did not need food, drink or rest but no company as well?”

“We were one, connected by the flame that bore us. We could never be alone.”

“Kyros still lives, is he not company?”

“Kyros, like myself, has been reduced to mere mortals. He is a ridgeback and I an Imperial. Our drake race is lost to memory and time.”

“They said you wished to return to the ice? Why?”

“I wish to join my brothers and sisters, in whatever may lie beyond this.”

Embla fell silent for a time considering his options. “Thank you for your time, I will be back later. Rest until then.”

“Well?” Rhum had been waiting down the corridor, her eyes worried. It was a look that unnerved him, she was a strong Guardian who flinched at little, the expression was unnatural.

“He seems to be wishing for death. Hard to blame him after all he has been through.”

“Would you recommend his return to the ice?”

“No.” Embla observed the Guardian. “I have a plan. Give me time.”

“How much time?”

“Time.”

---

The flow of volcanic rock that had seeped and oozed it's way down the red rock landscape gave Charcoal Canyon it's name. While the rock along the canyon's passage is now cooled and brimming with new life the warm springs found at the base of the canyon hint at a not so long ago past still alive and well under the earth.

Aviur had taken to this location. Residing in the warmest of the hot pools, their water bubbling up from deep springs that dare to reach to near active lava streams. Thus Embla had taken to the rocks along the shore where he would dip a leg or tail. The water boiled around the red and black faded creature. Embla had never seen him more at home.

Sleep must have taken Embla, for he awoke to the uncanny watch of a golden eye looming just above the water. As the water bubbled up it tended to push the imperial's body to an edge of the pool. The near dead look of this chilled Embla to the core.

"You shutter?" Aviur lifted his muzzle just above the water to speak.

"It is nothing."

"You ask for my trust, yet you keep your thoughts. Such insolence would have been rewarded with death in my time."

Embla considered him, considered how to explain death to a creature that could never die.
"There is something about your scales, and eyes. You said you awoke in the catacombs?"

"I did."

Embla was about to drop the topic until he noticed Aviur's watch. The old drake was rarely engaged in conversation, but for a moment Embla had his attention. "Kiaran has spoken in-depth about the terror of being trapped in your body while it is ruled by another mind. If drakes do not die, nor become dragons then.. how did you become." He gestured. "This?"

"Kiaran's possession disturbs you?"

"Well, clearly. I can't imagine what it would be like to be trapped in my body, warring for control."

"Then don't imagine it."

Embla let out a noise of frustration."A little late for that."

"You worry I am likewise fighting another mind?"

"Well.. you said Drakes are not dragons. How did you become an Imperial, one who clearly had parents."

"Drakes are not dragons."

"Drakes are not gods either, so tell me, what are drakes?"

Embla had lost Aviur's attention once more. He felt foolish for having asked, it was a question that had no answer. The drakes were the first, there is no more to it.

"You can rest to know the mind in this body passed long before the ice set me free. I don't know who he was, or how he died. Imperials can linger, he must have lingered just enough to allow me a new form. He has never spoken, nor thought."

It was a thought that made Embla's whiskers kink. Aviur was alive, but in many ways he was also not. The kind of un-dead plague thrived upon.

A soft chuckle rose from the water. "Your eyes betray you."

---