Beryl coughed dryly and shifted above Lily, a trickle of dirt sliding down onto her partially-buried paw. "Time to go," he rasped.

"Past time if you sound like that," Lily agreed, finding her own voice similarly raw and dry. They had been mostly safe from the plumes of dark smoke drifting up all around them, save for when the wind blew, but it was getting worse by the moment. There was a difference between breathing fire and inhaling the crud that it burned, and they'd had enough of the latter.

"You are rested?" he asked.

"More than when we stopped," she said. She didn't feel rested at all, having not slept a wink, but she would make do. "And we need to find water soon."

"Yes, definitely," he rumbled hoarsely. His bulk lifted up from over her as he clambered out of their hole, and he groaned loudly. "Stupid scrape."

Lily didn't think the long, albeit shallow gash along his back leg counted as a scrape, but she held her tongue, opting instead to clamber out of the hole-

She had not seen the forest since going down into the hole some time ago, and now she beheld a very different landscape, one that momentarily demanded all of her attention to understand.

The ground was black with ash. The trees stood branchless, smoldering in some places without bark, blackened and scorched but still standing, towering high without the vast majority of their limbs. The foreboding grey sky loomed large between the few spindly branches that remained, revealed in its entirety.

"The fire is still going over there," Beryl said, looking back the way they had come. "We want to go away from it-"

A Deathgripper screeched viciously, and Lily looked up out of instinct, seeing it high above, rapidly circling down toward them.

"But not just yet!" Beryl yelped, bolting for the flickering flames. Lily followed, her limbs cramping up as she forced them back into motion. They both dove through the outer edge of the greedy flames, and after a few moments of running through the fires, Lily felt her camouflage activating, useless though it was.

"There's no cover out there," Beryl panted, looking back at the curtain of flames that obscured them from where they had been. The Deathgripper might even now be landing where they had sheltered, or its rider could be telling all the others where they were.

"Trap," Lily barked, holding back a cough. The heat wasn't getting to her, not yet, but the smoke was. She kept her head low to the ground, where the air was clearer. "No more cover." That was what the fire was for, and she knew for sure now that it had been set intentionally. Grimmel had decided that if they were going to hide, they would do it in a burned wasteland instead of a massive forest.

"So we go back, get ahead of the fire, go away from it," Beryl rumbled, leaping over the charred remnant of what seemed to be a bush, deeper into the flaming forest. "Out of it."

Lily nodded and followed along; it made sense that the best move was to avoid Grimmel's trickery, and she could only hope just getting away from it on paw would be enough. The Deathgripper hadn't come in after them, maybe to preserve its much more flammable master, but the charred aftermath of the fire wouldn't afford them the same protection. But they couldn't hide within the fire forever, even assuming it didn't die out the moment the next cold-season storm hit.

The flames had spread a long distance in the time they had spent hunkered down, and if it wasn't for the occasional refuge of clean air between trees too sodden to catch at all, Lily thought she might have coughed out her insides before they reached the end. She and Beryl stopped at every place that was even remotely unburned, but never for long. Before, they had raced their hunters, both Deathgripper and No-scaled-not-prey, but now they raced the fire itself.

Until they were running no longer. Lily stopped short when the forest began to grow sparse in front of her, flickering flames giving way to the same desolate, ash-covered wasteland they had left behind.

"This makes no sense," Beryl rumbled, pacing parallel to the dead, already-burned stretch of land, just far enough within the flames to not be easily seen from above. "We came from here, the fire came back the other way… How did it burn out here first?"

Shapes prowling the strip of wasteland answered the question for him, in Lily's opinion. The No-scaled-not-prey were walking through the open area, looking inward, always inward. At the fire burning itself out over time… and anything that might lurk within. Deathgrippers would be above, ready to pounce the moment there was a target available. The No-scaled-not-prey had created a killing ground.

"Find a way… not guarded…" she hissed. He nodded, his expression grim, and began their seemingly endless run once more, this time along the fringes of the fire, pulling in, away from the edge so as to not be seen as anything more than a dark shape and a dark blur moving through the heavy smoke and dancing flames.

What they saw was not encouraging at all. No-scaled-not-prey dotted the ashy perimeter of the fire, all looking inward, spaced out just enough that there were no openings between them, no obvious places to sneak through. When the smoke blew over them, which it often did, they covered their mouths, but their gazes never wavered.

The line was not solely composed of No-scaled-not-prey, either. There was the occasional Deathgripper stalking along the ashy strip, bearing a rider that didn't bother watching the flames. Lily shrank back as one such Deathgripper stared in her direction. She was a blurry form speckled with ash, not obviously a dragon but also not invisible.

But the Deathgripper saw nothing, and continued stalking down the line. Lily guessed that it was much easier for her and Beryl to see out of the fire than it was for their enemies to see in, for all the good that did. Seeing was not so useful when there was nothing helpful to see.

It was hard to tell directions, with the sky a blank, featureless surface, but Lily could tell they were turning inward as they continued down the border between flames and ash, always turning the same way. A hollow, worried feeling had already made itself right at home in her chest, and it only grew worse as they continued onward. If she knew vaguely where her enemies were and could draw lines they could not cross, she would pounce on the obvious way to trap them, and it stood to reason Grimmel had done the same.

"We're probably surrounded," Beryl growled, voicing the same conclusion she was reaching. "Went the wrong way, shouldn't have run back into the fire…"

"Didn't know," Lily coughed. They hadn't known that the flames were a trap, not then, and it was still strange that Grimmel could have directed them so well. Fire did not neatly go where it was told-

Unless there was nowhere else to go. She had burned a place so as to stop it from burning later, nothing said the enemy could not do the same with their Deathgrippers. She should have seen it coming, somehow.

An irregularity in the ashland up ahead caught her eye, and she slowed as they came close enough to see it. A collection of cubes of shiny stone had been piled up, three high and three wide, in the middle of the ashy, barren field, and there were things inside them, visible through the bars that made up the sides.

"Cages… those animals were from them." Beryl stopped entirely, standing atop a shrub that had already burned to a crisp and was no longer on fire, and leaned forward to peer through the flames hiding them from the enemy. "Look at them all…"

Lily's stomach rumbled as she took in the bleating, panicked prey animals languishing in the cages. Some were big and some small, and all were terrified. They seemed normal, meaning Grimmel hadn't done anything to them yet. None were shrieking nonstop, or running in circles, or calm, they were all just huddled as far from the distant fires as possible.

But that was not the only interesting thing; she turned her attention to the No-scaled-not-prey around the cages. There were seven of them, all armed with long claws that reflected the light of the fires. Some were giving the prey grass, others water…

The water was a bigger temptation than the prey, and Lily resisted the urge to rush out there and take the brown water-containing thing from the No-scaled-not-prey.

"One good shot could knock all of those cages down," Beryl observed. "It's weird that they stacked them up at all."

"Unless it's meant to lure us in," Lily said. It was tempting her, though she wasn't so stupid as to fall for it. Stacking the cages up made them more visible from a distance, and maybe they were meant to be knocked over, to make a massive ruckus if anyone tried to dislodge one.

"Definitely a trick," she said, sure of her assessment. "But also a distraction." They couldn't just run past, and they couldn't get the food being dangled in front of them, safe in the cages as it was, but they could attract attention by knocking the cages over. That was something they might be able to work with… Though it wasn't nearly enough.

A No-scaled-not-prey walked up to one of the lower cages, chattered with its companions for a few moments, then fiddled with the front until it opened. There was a multitude of little furry creatures inside, things that probably fit into Beryl's 'too small to be worth eating' category, and the No-scaled-not-prey took three, picking them up and sticking them in a little sack.

"I've never seen those before," Beryl murmured. "They look like fat squirrels."

"I'm more interested in where they're being taken," Lily replied. When the No-scaled-not-prey left the cages and began walking in the same direction she and Beryl had been going, they followed from the flames.

"If it weren't for the fire," Beryl huffed as they walked, "eventually burning out… I would say we could hide here… forever. They can't see us."

"Only because we're being careful and they can wait," Lily said, leaning to the side as a flaming branch fell from above. She was glad it hadn't landed on her back. "They just need to see us when we come out." They probably weren't even trying too hard to spot her or Beryl at the moment; it would do no good if they didn't come out.

The No-scaled-not-prey they were following stopped at one of the roaming Deathgrippers and barked something at the rider-

The rider with white fur that Lily thought she might recognize. "That could be Grimmel," she growled.

"Could be?" Beryl asked.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "How often do No-scaled-not-prey have white fur?"

"It's probably him." Beryl inhaled deeply and stifled a cough. "I could kill him. Fire, one shot."

"It wouldn't…" Lily trailed off as she thought about it. It wouldn't do them much good right now, because she had seen that Grimmel's pack could easily replace him and would keep up the hunt as revenge. But Grimmel himself wanted dark wings dead with an unusual fervor, and for Beryl personally, getting rid of him would be a good thing…

"Not yet," she concluded. "Let me think." Grimmel was out in the open, clearly visible atop his Deathgripper mount, and was an easy target. Surely he would know that. If he was at all clever, he would have some sort of plan… Unless he didn't think he would be a target.

Which he wouldn't; what reason would he have to assume he would be attacked first? There were dozens of No-scaled-not-preys around, and the Deathgripper he was riding was obviously the bigger threat. If she didn't know who he was, she wouldn't consider him worth killing specifically, and he didn't know that she knew, or that she was capable of knowing. He thought she was an animal to be slaughtered, he wouldn't be expecting an assassination attempt.

"What are you thinking?" Beryl rasped.

"He would not know to protect himself in particular," Lily said shortly, wishing her throat wasn't so dry. "He might be as vulnerable as he looks."

"But he double-crossed Ember," Beryl said.

Lily growled at herself. He had done that, and that threw all of her clever reasoning off the cliff. Even if he assumed Ember was unique, he would be wary of a No-scaled-not-prey with a dark wing body trying to get revenge. Unless he was an idiot, there was definitely more to this.

Another Deathgripper dropped down near Grimmel, and the No-scaled-not-prey on top of it threw a brown lump about its own size off the saddle. Lily wasn't close enough to see what it was, and it hit the ground between the dragons, hiding it from sight. Whatever it was, Grimmel was interested enough to leap out of his saddle and presumably examine it… or step on it… or something else they couldn't see.

"Let's keep going," she murmured. "If you get a chance, blow him to pieces, but we shouldn't plan around it-" her throat caught and she coughed, hard.

A gunky mess of ash flew out of her mouth and hit a burning weed, extinguishing it instantly. It was black and red, streaked with blood.

"We need to get out of this smoke," Beryl said worriedly. "That's not good."

"Doesn't look good," Lily agreed. She was surprised; her throat was raw and scratchy, but she hadn't thought she was bleeding.

"But we're not… going without a plan." She forced herself to keep moving. They hadn't made it all the way around their shrinking safe space yet, and she needed to know what they were working with. They needed some sort of plan to get out of this trap alive.

Beryl huffed and followed along behind her, clearly worried but unable to think of a better option. Lily sympathized; she couldn't think of anything better either. She didn't know how they were going to break the trap and get away. She had no fire, and no matter how fast she ran, the No-scaled-not-prey could put her to sleep long before she got anywhere. They couldn't stay in the fire, and they couldn't leave without getting caught.

O-O-O-O-O

Lily didn't know how long it had taken them to circle back around to the stack of cages. She didn't know how fast the fire was burning. But she did know that the cages were further away than they had been before. Either they had been moved, or the flames were eating their way inward, and one of those possibilities seemed a lot more likely.

The situation wasn't only getting worse on the outside; her chest felt wrong, and both she and Beryl were coughing up ash every so often. Ash and blood, in her case, lending urgency to their plight, as if things weren't already urgent enough.

But there was nothing else to use. The only two things of note were the cages and where Grimmel had been, and he might not even be there anymore. They were stuck inside a circle of flames, one that was burning itself away with every passing moment. They had to get out. Now.

"I don't have a plan," Lily rasped. "Can't think… of anything."

"Time isn't on our side," Beryl said. "I'll blast the cages, you run the other way. I'll follow, cover you."

It wasn't a plan that would get them out unscathed. It was, at best, a diversion and then making a break for it.

"Got it," Lily coughed. They didn't have any other choice.

They were already at the edge of the fires; there was no need to get into position. Lily looked out at the ashy expanse between her and the other side, the other burning forest. Grimmel hadn't stopped the fire from spreading, it was burning away uninhibited outside of the trap. Even if they made it, they wouldn't be safe… just out of the woods, which now that she thought about it was probably the worst possible metaphor she could have used-

Beryl coughed out a shot, an explosion sent the stacked cages flying, No-scaled-not-prey began yelling, and Lily ran for it, leaping through the flames and out into the open, facing away from the distraction Beryl had just created. If they were lucky all eyes would be on the cages.

She leaped out onto the ash, slalomed through three burnt-out tree husks still standing tall, and coughed as the cloud of ash she had just stirred up was brought back to her by the wind. A No-scaled-not-prey was in front of her, she hadn't seen it behind the trees, but she was already too close and it wasn't pulling its claw out fast enough. She smacked it into the tree with her tail as she passed, hopefully stopping it from attacking from behind.

Less than half a dozen heartbeats had passed. She was maybe a tenth of the way across. All the commotion was still centered around the cages; no Deathgrippers were flying down toward her, but several were circling above the cages, waiting.

She glanced back and saw Beryl slinking along. He was a mottled grey now, coated in the same ash that covered her, and his eyes were narrow, constantly flicking back and forth as he ran.

Nobody had seen them yet, aside from the No-scaled-not-prey she had hopefully dealt with. The ash covering them might have made them harder to notice, or their distraction was working better than expected, but whatever the reason, if they could just remain unnoticed for a little while longer-

The roar that split the air, one of alarm and surprise, was no surprise to Lily, but that didn't stop it from making her heart race even faster. Beryl had caught up to her, though he was limping heavily, and they ran side by side.

The first Deathgripper slammed down in front of them; Lily lurched to the side, while Beryl lunged forward, leaping high and striking at its rider. The Deathgripper reared back, and Beryl rolled off, continuing to run. Three more had landed in the time it took them to get around that one, and two of those three immediately let loose with their peculiar fire, aiming right in front of her-

Lily leaped through the fire before she could think about why the Deathgrippers had thought it would stop her.

The Deathgrippers' flames were hot, far hotter than the fire she and Beryl had lurked in, and she shrieked as the bottom of her paws, and her back, and every other sensitive part of her was scorched. She hit the ground at a bad angle, rolled, and shrieked again as her weight smashed her back into the ash. The pain, the situation she was in, was familiar, it had happened before.

She didn't flail her wings or stop, she kept them tucked in and rolled all the way back to her paws, the momentum of her leap carrying through. Then she forced herself up and kept running.

"Go!" Beryl barked from somewhere behind her. She was in too much pain to argue; she was the weak link, if she got to safety then he wouldn't have to worry about her. The smoldering edge of the forest was close.

Not that she expected to make it; there were more than those three Deathgrippers under Grimmel's control, and she was out in the open. But none came down after her, and she could hear Beryl fighting behind-

Lily ran heedlessly into the flames that marked the outside of Grimmel's trap, everywhere she had been burned aching all the more fiercely in the heat, then turned around.

Beryl was still running; seven Deathgrippers were trying and failing to keep up with him. He leaped between burnt-out trees, Deathgrippers crashing into them right behind him. If he stopped he couldn't possibly win, but he wasn't fighting, he was running, barreling through the streams of fire that had hurt Lily, raking his claws through anything living that got in his way, turning to avoid two new Deathgrippers smashing down right in front of him-

Lily gasped as he avoided another series of close calls, then doubled over hacking as her throat convulsed, spewing ash, blood, and the contents of her stomach all over the ground. Her throat felt like it was being ripped apart, and she couldn't stop coughing for what felt like an eternity. When it was over, she felt lightheaded and far worse than before.

But her plight wasn't as important as the one she hadn't been able to keep track of in her agony, and when she looked up, the agony in her throat and everywhere else seemed much less important.

Beryl was down, splayed out on the ground with two Deathgrippers pinning him down, one on his tail and one on his shoulders, pushing his head into the ash. He was struggling, he was alive, but he was trapped. The Deathgrippers seemed to be waiting for the order to rip his head off, and Lily didn't know No-scaled-not-prey well enough to tell what the ones on their backs were thinking.

Whatever they were thinking, someone was an idiot. There were no Deathgrippers looking for her, no No-scaled-not-prey watching her side of the fires. She had fled, they had let her go in favor of catching Beryl, and now they weren't expecting her to come back. But she would.

Somehow. Even though she could barely breathe, had burned and aching paws, and no idea how to free Beryl. She didn't even have her fire-

She knew that wasn't entirely true even as she thought it. She had used up all of her fire burning the ground to protect their hiding place, but that had been a while ago now. One shot had come back in the intervening time, maybe two if she made them so small they were all but harmless. If she could even bear to fire with her throat already torn up by the ash and the constant coughing.

It was something. Maybe something she could use. She just had to figure out how two useless shots or one meaningful one could be enough to free Beryl.

And she was going to have to figure it out fast, because a Deathgripper was flying in, and the rider on top of it had a distinctive topping of white fur. They landed hard for no apparent reason, the Deathgripper bowing down low to let Grimmel off. He all but leaped off, a flat, half-circle of wood in his hand.

He held it like a claw, and Lily suspected it was one, somehow. He approached Beryl, said something to the riders atop the Deathgrippers, and pointed the thing at Beryl's head.

Lily inhaled and spit a tiny, useless blast at him. It impacted the wooden thing in his hand and exploded in a lackluster ball of fire-

Which had him reeling back and howling, falling on his spindly rear in the ash. One of the Deathgrippers atop Beryl startled, and Beryl reared up. The rider atop the other Deathgripper raised something to its face, which Lily knew was bad, so she used her other shot on it.

Then, a plan coming to her half-formed in an instant, she leaped out into the open, flared her wings as wide as she could, and barked at them, before leaping back into the flames. Beryl was moving, ripping into the Deathgripper that had just lost its rider, freeing himself, Grimmel was still howling, and the other Deathgrippers were coming down toward her.

She ran, and they followed. Two leaped into the flames, and one leaped back out again, the rider screeching at the top of its puny lungs. The other didn't, and Lily ducked between two mostly-intact trees to avoid the snapping maw full of teeth right on her tail.

Beryl was roaring somewhere in the ashland, and it didn't sound like he had been caught again, but Lily had her own problems now. She turned and ran deeper into the flames, away from the ashes in an attempt to draw more of the Deathgrippers after her. If any were following from outside the flames, they had to come in or lose her. The one that had jumped in after her was still hot on her tail, crashing through trees where it couldn't fit.

She hoped, in the small part of her mind that wasn't solely dedicated to keeping her alive, that hurting their alpha meant the Deathgrippers would care more about chasing her now. They had customs about avenging each other, and Grimmel's obsession with dark wings was peculiar to him; she might have actually gotten their attention away from Beryl by blasting him, even though she hadn't killed him.

But whatever the motivation, none of that mattered if she died here and now, drawing them away. There was still only the one behind her, and she was only keeping ahead by leading it through as many trees as possible; it had the bulk to smash through, but that took time she could spend widening the gap.

The Deathgripper roared angrily at her as she threw herself past another set of large, unburned pine trees, and she chanced a look back.

It was mad, several wooden shards sticking out of its face, and the No-scaled-not-prey in its saddle was slumped over, unresponsive and flopping around limply with every movement; either unconscious or dead, which would explain why it wasn't bothered by the flames.

The Deathgripper lunged while she was still looking back at it, and she yanked her tail up and out of the way just before its talons pinned her. An abrupt turn brought her a heartbeat's breathing room, though now she was going the wrong way, and she saw white in the distance, between the trees. Not the white of her kind or a disguised Deathgripper, the white of snow and by extension unburned forest.

A plume of flame lanced over her head and fell over the already burning trees in front of her, so she turned again, diving out of the path of the falling flame. Her heart felt as if it was about to explode out of her chest, and everything hurt, and she didn't know where Beryl was or if he was even still alive.

None of those things could be fixed until she had gotten rid of the Deathgripper on her tail. She ran toward the as of yet unburned forest, fleeing the flames and the Deathgripper, thinking that unburned trees and snow would provide her with more cover. An ear-shattering roar came from close behind, and she leaped to the side. Talons dug into the ground where she had been, and she darted away again.

The snow was a welcome chill on her burnt paws, and the wind blew clean air in her face as if to welcome her. She angled for the largest pile of snow in sight, hoping it would slow the ungainly Deathgripper down more than it did her-

And an idea occurred to her, one that promised an end to the chase if it worked. It also promised death or capture if it didn't work, but at this point she was willing to take a chance. She ran through the snowdrift instead of leaping over it, plowing into the head-high pile.

The cold was a shock to her already belabored body, a welcome one for once. Less so was the enraged roar behind her, though she was glad her solitary pursuer was so loud and obvious.

Lily burst out of the snowdrift; the Deathgripper crashed through it and the trees around it, snapping its teeth near her tail, it was so close. When her paws hit the mud at the edge of the snow, she clenched her claws and kicked back.

The Deathgripper scorched her behind with a small wave of flame, one that ended far too quickly to hurt, and let out a maddened roar. Lily leaped to the side, caught a glimpse of its eyes blinking furiously to clear out the mud she had kicked in its face-

And dove into the biggest snowdrift within reach. She landed hard, pulled her wings in, swung her tail around to bury it too, and held perfectly still as the snow crumbled in on top of her. The pile had formed in a small depression in the ground, and was slightly higher than her body when she pressed herself to the ground.

Her face was buried in the same numbing cold as the rest of her, and she held her breath. It wasn't a perfect hiding place, not even close, her wings were probably visible as a different texture of white.

The Deathgripper let out yet another roar - really, it had been roaring almost non-stop since the start of their short chase - and stomped off, the distinct beat of its paws hitting the ground fading quickly. More roars, these angry and confused, came from further away.

Lily slowly let out her breath, scarcely able to believe her plan had worked. That either of her last two plans had worked, really; saving Beryl was far more luck than cleverness. The Deathgripper pinning him might not have reared back and given him an opening, or Grimmel might not have been hurt by her weak blast, or she might have missed because she was so tired and her throat hurt-

She shuddered and wrenched her mind away from that terrible line of thought. It had been a risky, desperate play, and it had worked, just as hiding in a pile of snow had worked. She wasn't going to rely on such tactics in the future, they weren't good plans, but they had been sufficient. This time.

The cold felt good on her body, after so long in the fire or crammed in a hole surrounded by fire, and there might still be enemies around, so Lily lay still in the snow for as long as she could bear, letting her thoughts slip away for just a little while. The fire crackling nearby, slowly growing louder as it advanced, was enough to keep her awake and alert, but she tried not to think about anything else.

For a little while. Then she stood, shook herself off, and forced herself to think about what to do next.

"No Beryl," she murmured, pacing around her hiding place just in case she needed to dive back in. "Need to get away. Need to find him."

It was snowing, dark ash-colored flakes of ice peppering the world around her. The grey sky above was growing dimmer, heralding the end of the day. She took a mouthful of clean snow and held it until it melted to quench her immediate thirst, all the while thinking about what would be best.

"Parallel to the shore," she huffed quietly. She knew the general path her fledglings had taken, and the path she and Beryl had intended to follow. He knew it. They had no other points of reference, so if he was looking for her, he had to look for her there. But it was a path, not a single place.

"He can track," she muttered. She couldn't do that, but he could. And he knew she knew that. So… He would stay back, and she would go to the path and keep moving forward. He moved faster than she did, so he would catch up.

That was a plan that only worked if they were both smart enough to anticipate the other's thought process, but she was confident he would think of it. Whether he was alive to act on it, on the other paw…

Grimmel wouldn't take a dark wing prisoner, he had been ready to kill Beryl then and there. So trying to find him with Grimmel's pack of hunters was a fool's errand; he wouldn't be there. She had to return to their intended path and keep going, it was the only way he would find her, and if he didn't find her, he was dead, which he wasn't. She had to believe that.

But even as she pushed that worry aside, a new one came to mind, one far more urgent for her immediate situation. She had no idea where she was going.

Lily looked up and saw what she already knew she would, a cloudy sky that gave no hints as to where the moon was. An ashy snowflake landed on her nose as if to taunt her, dark and ominous.

She and Beryl had been on the right track right up until the fire came into play. Then they had run, hidden, turned around, and walked in a few big circles before making a break for it. Then she had run from a Deathgripper, making a thousand last-moment turns and switching directions often, just to keep ahead of it.

She had no idea which way led to the shore, and she couldn't fly to check. If Beryl were with her, he could, but he wasn't… So she was lost.

But on the bright side, she knew where she didn't want to be. She put her tail to the slowly spreading fire and walked away. Whether it was the right direction or not, she didn't know. But it was away from Grimmel and his traps.

O-O-O-O-O

There was something ironic, Lily decided some time later, about escaping a trap of fire and ash only to walk into a blizzard.

The wind howled through the trees around her, and snow fell like rain, heavy and fast. Every step left a paw-deep impression, and it was only snowing faster. The world was a mottled white and gray, the latter from the still-burning fires far behind her, smoke carried on the wind to follow her and pollute the snow.

Lily put one paw in front of the other. Then she did it again, as she had for the last… however long she had been walking. It was harder without Beryl, much harder. She had nobody to pace herself with, no one to talk to, nothing to look forward to except maybe him catching up to her at some point. She couldn't find him, he had to find her, so that was not much motivation to keep moving.

To make matters worse, all was silent except for the wind in the trees and the patter of snow on snow. If there were Deathgrippers out there, they were silent, but Lily thought it more likely they had given up for the night… or given up entirely. If they had killed Beryl, there would be no more reason to hunt, not for Grimmel…

Such dark thoughts kept her company as she walked, but they weren't enough. Her eyes were heavy, and every time the wind blew, she stumbled, her tired wings catching the edge of the gust and pulling her this way and that. Everything hurt in a variety of new and interesting ways, but the edge of it all was taken off by the cold assault of snow on her body, chilling her even as it numbed her to the worst of her pain.

She didn't know where she was going, or who would find her, or what she would do then. She didn't know much of anything, except that she had to keep moving. Rest was for when her body gave out despite her best efforts, not before… and there was nothing else. If she stopped, she could freeze to death in the night, her body buried under the snow.

It was a cold, quiet fate that threatened her now, one of absence. She had nothing and nobody to keep her warm, and the weather would kill her if she stopped moving. That was all; there was no clever way out, not when she was so exhausted in body and mind. It wasn't fair… but losing Beryl hadn't been fair, either. Nothing was fair, not in real life. In stories told to fledglings, maybe.

And it was not as if she hadn't known the weather would be a danger; she and Beryl and Ember had given her fledglings lectures about how to avoid the very fate approaching her. There were ways to stay warm… if one had fire, and time, and people to help. Not if one was dead on their paws, dull from constant danger, and out of energy to do anything but walk.

The trees creaked and swayed dramatically. Lily knew there was something wrong with that, but she wasn't sure what.

A terrible smell wafted to her nose, something akin to the worst of the plants Pyre liked to eat, and she realized the wind had stopped, and that the trees were moving anyway.

Small, furtive shapes dropped down around her. One poked her in the neck-

O-O-O-O-O

Lily's first thought upon waking was that she had done something particularly clever.

She eyed the densely-packed snow wall rising up in front of her face, and with some difficulty twisted her head to see that it slanted up to become a roof just over her wings. The same could be said for the walls around the rest of her body; they all became the roof.

It was warm inside the little snow cave, except for the head-sized hole near her left ear, through which trees, a lot of snow, and the grey sky could be seen.

It all reminded her of the technique Beryl and Ember had shared for keeping warm in a snowstorm, but smaller. She must have adapted it and somehow made this little place to keep herself alive… Though there were problems with that idea, the most obvious one being that she remembered doing no such thing.

The other obvious issue was that her theory didn't explain the terrible smell. She resorted to breathing through her mouth to avoid it, but that didn't help her understand what was polluting the air with its stench. It wasn't anything on her; the fresh breeze from the hole by her head was just as strongly tainted.

And then there was the thing she did remember. The odd little creatures who had… put her to sleep.

Lily growled, angered by the very idea, and impulsively flung her wings out. The snow cave gave way, collapsing inward-

She muffled a shriek as the slush crashed onto her back, and shook frantically, throwing it off with a speed born of desperation. The empty, quiet forest around her echoed with her angry growls as she shook the last of it off. Angry at herself, but also at whatever had put her in the snow cave, though she knew the latter was irrational.

Not that it mattered, seeing as she was alone. She remembered things in the trees from the night before, but a close examination now yielded nothing except drooping, snow-laden branches. The ground around her was no help; a fresh blanket of newly-fallen snow had covered any tracks that might have been left behind. She was standing in an unremarkable patch of the immense forest, one with nothing unique about it except the smell.

Lacking any other clues, she put her nose to the snow and tried to follow the smell, like Beryl had taught her. Either it was nothing, or it would lead her to the creatures she was half-sure had saved her life, so following it couldn't hurt. At worst, those weird little dragons didn't exist, so she wouldn't find them.

"At best," she huffed, trying not to let the stench turn her already mostly-empty stomach, "I'll find them, they'll give me food, and lead me to Beryl." She didn't expect that, though. Her life never gave her the best possible option. She either got the worst, or had to manipulate her way into something better.

Her nose led her to a tree. There was a sticky, sap-like substance on it that reeked of dung and stinky wild roots and rotten fish all mixed together… and that was as far as the trail went. There were more streaks of the viscous liquid on other trees, but it was far too overwhelming for her to find any trails leading to whatever had put it there.

"Great," she complained bitterly. "I can be followed anywhere by smell alone, but the things I want to follow can't."

"I mean, it is convenient," Beryl said dryly from behind her.

Lily spun around and saw him walking toward her. "But," he continued, a relieved purr building under his outwardly casual words, "you can follow whatever makes this smell once you get better at telling scents apart. That's what I was doing-"

Lily cut him off with a joyous bark and rushed to him, smacking her forehead into his side. He was warm and alive and here, when she thought they would have to find each other or never see each other again.

"That's what I was doing," he said softly, draping a wing over her even as he turned to nuzzle her neck in return. "I figured you'd investigate such a strange thing out in the middle of nowhere. Or try and find our path and expect me to catch up, but I don't know where the shore is and I haven't flown up to check."

Lily let out a relieved laugh. "Yeah, that was the plan," she said happily, sidling up against him under his wing and nuzzling under his neck. "I knew you would think of it too."

"I'm glad I found you here," Beryl rumbled, hooking his tail around hers. "Following you would have been annoying. And you seem way more rested than I feel right now, so I guess you found a nice cave or something to wait out the storm?" He yawned widely, right by her ear. "I could really use a warm cave right now…"

"Well… no, I didn't find shelter," she admitted, pulling away to look him in the eye. "The last thing I remember is small creatures dropping out of the trees and putting me to sleep. Then I woke up in a nice little snow cave here, and they're nowhere to be seen."

"So…" Beryl looked around. "Is there still a nice snow cave? Because I was walking all night." His voice was light, but Lily could hear the deeply-rooted exhaustion in his voice. He was on his last legs, so to speak, where she had been the night before.

"I think we can make you one," she said, holding back the urge to leap around like a happy fledgling. Maybe later. It seemed like they might have time for such wastes of energy; they seemed to have got away in the blizzard, and there was still no sign of pursuit starting up again-

"Hey…" She left Beryl to go paw at one of the trees. "This can be tracked…" The sap-like liquid was clearly visible, and some of it came off on her paws.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"But it doesn't smell like us," she finished. "And it's strong." She had been thinking about using Pyre's favorite snack to disguise their scent, but this was better.

"Yes," Beryl said slowly, a deep purr of approval rumbling in his chest. "It is."