Lily did not consider herself well-traveled, not by a long shot. The majority of her relatively short life had been spent in one place, always within a day's flight of where she had hatched. Her kind lived for upwards of a hundred and fifty season-cycles, and she had experienced less than a tenth of that lower estimate. Only a tenth of that had been spent travelling.

Compared to Beryl, or anyone not from her pack, she was pretty sure her knowledge of the world would come up wanting. She knew less than the average dragon.

Maybe it was her total lack of prior experience that made exploring and finding new places such a cathartic activity. Maybe she was just making up for lost time. But whatever her reasons were deep down, she found herself enjoying the journey despite the less than enjoyable reasons she had for travelling in the first place.

The course Considera had set for them was a simple one. In essence, she had pointed them in a direction and told them to seek out the cold. Lily hadn't thought to ask what they were supposed to do if they came to a branching of paths without any indication of which was colder, but so far, there were no choices to be had. The red crystal tunnel continued forward for a while, then let out into yet another cave, this one large and with many stalactites. Clammy water dripped everywhere, but it had a sulfurous stench to it, and the only living things were the strange plants hanging like spiderwebs between the stalagmites.

One particular sort of moss, or whatever it was, looked exactly like snot. Lily tried not to think about what else might occasionally be dripping onto her back. Better if she assumed it was just unclean water, nothing more.

"I'm tired, but I do not want to stop here," Beryl rumbled from behind her. "I notice the Fear-monger did not mention whether there would be food or clean water along this path."

"Then we should hope we can tough it out," Lily replied, twitching her tail to shake off the droplets that had fallen onto it. Some of them were slimy, but she still refused to think about it. "Definitely no stopping here, though, you're right." The stalagmites were so closely packed that they had to twist and slip between them at times. She didn't think there was enough flat ground to do anything but stand awkwardly.

"I still am not sure I trust them," Beryl added a moment later, voice pensive. "What did they do to get your trust, again?"

"Do you truly not remember, or are you asking for clarification?" she asked worriedly.

"I remember panicking and not being able to control myself," he said. "And then her pushing on my chest. Then you. I remember you two talking… It is not very clear, but I do remember it. Why did you trust them?"

"Because I had no choice, and Considera was quite obviously a healer in the way she talked and how she explained what she was doing." Lily had just told him about this, back in the last cave. She didn't need any more proof that he was getting worse, she had quite enough already.

"Oh… I think I understand." He growled unhappily. "Forgetting things is frustrating. I almost wish I did not know…"

"Well, you might not soon enough," she said quietly. She really hoped they would find the guardian before it got too bad. He had been growing worse slowly while they travelled up the river, but now… she could only hope he stuck to that steady, gradual decay, and not anything faster. For all she knew, seeing Considera and the others had kicked his decline into a faster pace.

She didn't know enough to predict how this journey was going to go. Only that it would get worse before they found the person to make it better again. She was clinging to that hope, that light at the end of the tunnel; Considera had said the guardian could fix it completely. She would have mentioned if Beryl was losing his memories permanently, so that meant he was not. It was all temporary.

Assuming they made it to the guardian. If he forgot who she was and flew off on his own while she was asleep, she might never find him again, and he wouldn't know where to go for very long.

"You could do some things to try and slow it down," she found herself saying, thinking aloud. "Talking about the things you don't want to forget now… Then you would have to lose both your memories of those things, and your memories of telling me about them. Right?"

"That makes some sense," Beryl agreed. "So… Follow Lily. I need to follow Lily." He spoke loudly to himself in a way that made her heart twist in sympathy.

"The most important thing," she confirmed, despite her misgivings. "You need to follow me because I know what is going on and where to go to get you help." If he forgot everything else, he needed to remember that one thing. So long as he stayed with her, she could get him to help.

They walked onward, through the sulfurous dripping cave, her leading the way. She was pretty sure she would always be leading the way from now on.

O-O-O-O-O

The cave of stalagmites and undrinkable water gave way to one with billowing plumes of foul-smelling air and puddles. That, in turn, led past a pool of water that smelled safe enough to drink from, though there was nothing to eat. They stopped there, slept, and moved on.

Featureless tunnels dominated their journey for a long while, long enough that the hunger pangs in her stomach became normal, and her head swam with dizziness. The time to sleep again came and went without either of them making any mention of stopping; sleep would waste valuable time they could spend walking or flying, as the various tunnels and intermittent bare caves permitted.

Hunger and exhaustion were simple, slow-moving dangers walking beside them, and there was nothing either of them could do to stave them off, save for pushing forward. Silence reigned between them, simply because their mouths were dry and talking was useless.

Lily was not worried, per se, she did not think Considera had lied to them, but she was anxious. Anxious to find water, to find food… To get any sort of hint that they had not missed something. A single mistake or wrong turn could doom them, but she was still fairly certain they had not been offered a single choice of paths yet. Always forward, always through caves and tunnels with no alternative exits and no interesting features. Even the crystals were dull and boring, pale reds and oranges that only made her head hurt worse.

As always seemed to be the case, the first sign that their time of deprivation was over was the faraway sound of rushing water. Lily had hated their time on the long, dangerous river passage, but she would happily go back for a second round now, after not eating or drinking for so long.

She broke into a stilted, tired lope forward. Beryl did the same, panting hoarsely behind her. The sound grew louder and louder, and with it came an echoing undertone she didn't remember from the last river. Up ahead, the tunnel terminated in open air, with a watery haze beyond, like mist.

Lily didn't stop to look when they reached the opening, she flung herself into the air and let her wings do the work, her mouth wide open to catch all of the mist and at least wet her tongue. Her eyes were also wide, taking in the wonderful scene she had leaped into.

For all that she had seen many large caverns, this was the first time she was seeing a truly massive tunnel. It stretched on into the distance in two directions, but even the width of the tunnel was huge, so wide it took her a good hundred wingbeats to even get halfway out.

It was long, it was wide, and it was deep. Looking down, the craggy sloped walls converged far below in a shallow, quick-moving river. There were no rocks, no turbulent rapids… It was nothing like the other river they had seen, clear and with bountiful fish visibly even from high above, backlit by crystals in the ground.

All of that stretched on in two directions, but in front of her, directly across from the tunnel they had left, was a single waterfall, dropping from the high ceiling down into the depths, churning the water in that one place. It was from there that the hanging mist originated, and as she glided toward it, she saw a fish falling from above, from wherever the water came from.

Beryl flew down below her and snatched the falling fish, backwinging to avoid flying right into the waterfall. Seeing him eat reminded her of her own ravenous hunger, and she wasted no time stooping into a dive, her fire building in the back of her throat as she eyed a plentiful school of fish ripe for the taking.

She descended, she fired, and she filled her claws and mouth with as much fish as she possibly could, swallowing even as she flew back up. She passed Beryl on the way as he dropped down for himself.

The water, she determined as she flew and ate ravenously, was fresh. She had gotten a good mouthful in the process of catching her fish, and there was none of the salty coating fish from the ocean always had. That at least ruled out the waterfall coming from the sea above, though that wasn't really a possibility she had considered until now.

Beryl flew by again, fish clutched in his front paws, and landed on one of the many, many water-slicked ledges along the sloped walls of the massive tunnel. Lily joined him there.

For a short time, they still did not speak, more concerned with filling their stomachs.

"That," Beryl eventually remarked, rolling onto his side, "was not enjoyable."

"No, it..." She swallowed the last of her fish and decided not to go back for more. "It definitely was not." So long as she assumed he was talking about the trip to this place, not the relief they had finally found here.

"But we're here," he continued. "So… Which way do we go?"

Lily walked out to the end of the ledge and looked to her left. The tunnel extended as far as she could see. To her right… it did exactly the same thing. She didn't feel a cold wind coming from one side, or any other indication of which way they were meant to travel. Considera had never mentioned this place specifically.

"We'll figure something out in the morning," she decided, holding in a yawn. They had walked what would be through the night if there was a night; this was a problem to approach with a clear head.

O-O-O-O-O

Lily woke to Beryl nudging at her shoulder quite insistently. She blinked groggily and looked up at him. "Wha'?" she mumbled.

"I thought you would want to see," he said quietly, flicking his ears toward the rest of the tunnel.

Lily rose and turned to see what he was talking about. She could hear an odd buzzing…

A dozen rock-shaped lumps were floating through the tunnel. Not on the river. They were floating in the air.

She blinked a few times to clear her vision, sure she was seeing things. But no, there were still lumpy rocks – or were they lumps of rocky scales – flying by in a rough line. Each one had a quick-moving blur on top.

"You have never seen any of these before, but they are common where I come from," Beryl explained. "They do not glide, their wings are tiny and flap extremely fast to make up for it. They eat rocks and spit them back out as molten lava and fire."

The sense of wonder Lily felt at the seemingly impossible floating rocks disappeared in a flash of embarrassment, but she was still amazed. "That is… not what I imagined." Pyre had told her about rock-eating dragons, but no matter what he said, the image in her head had always been that of a light wing with rock bulges eating rocks. Not… this. Not massive lumps with stubby legs, no neck, and huge jaws buzzing along from left to right, following the water.

She watched them for a little while, her mind still fuzzy and slow from being woken up in the middle of a wonderfully deep sleep… Then she remembered the problem they had put off until morning. "Beryl!" she hissed. "Can we ask them where they are coming from and where they are going?"

"I don't see why not," he said. "Come on!" He leaped off the ledge.

She took a moment to flex her wings – she was not nearly so cavalier with her flight safety, not when she knew exactly what she was risking – then joined him, pumping her wings a little harder than normal to catch up with him.

The rock-eaters weren't alarmed in the slightest by their appearance; as best Lily could tell, they barely noticed her or Beryl. The one leading the ramshackle line peeled off to fly toward them, but other than that, nothing changed.

"Have not seen any of your kind in a long while," the rock-eater rumbled. His voice was deep, so deep it sounded painful. "Dark wing, dark wing with a rebellious streak."

"She is a light wing," Beryl snorted, "but if that was a joke, it was a good one." He reached the rock-eater and began circling him in lazy loops that at first seemed to Lily to be vaguely insulting. Then she realized that the rock-eater probably wouldn't enjoy trying to keep up with them, even if they slowed their glides as much as possible. He seemed pretty content, hovering there.

She joined Beryl in his circling, eyeing the blurs that passed for wings as they went. She didn't see how that could possibly work for more than a few heartbeats; her own wings ached just thinking about moving that fast while holding up so much weight.

"It was a joke, yes," the rock-eater said. "But true. Have not seen either of your kinds in a long, long time. Like your isolation, your privacy. Not a surprise you turn up around here."

"Where are you coming from?" Lily asked. "And where are you going? You are the first people we have met that are travelling down here." The Fear-mongers, the tiny dragon and its companions in the dead end, the dragons fighting over the cavern her former pack had settled in… They had met people who lived in this part of the underground world, but never anyone moving from one place to another.

"We are off to visit a secluded pack of all those who prefer the finer foods," the rock-eater said happily. "They have a supply of obsidian and limestone, and some of my newest fledglings have never tasted either. You could come along, if you wanted."

"I've tried rocks on occasion," Beryl said dryly. "Some of them aren't that bad, but my body just isn't made to appreciate them coming out the other end."

The rock-eater burst into what was either a growl or a very deep laugh. Given Beryl was laughing along with him, Lily assumed the latter.

"That is a problem we do not have," the rock-eater chuckled. "Very well. Where are you two off to?"

"We're looking for the territory of a guardian," Lily said. "We were told we would find it if we went to where it was cold, but we are having trouble figuring out which direction is colder from here."

"You want to go the way we came from," the rock-eater answered. "The cold territories are a long way from here, but it is easy to find them. Just keep going upstream until you feel the chill, then follow it. Careful, though. Those territories are empty for a reason. Few can survive there for long."

"Thanks for the clarification," Beryl hummed. "Good luck for the rest of your journey."

"Luck, nothing," the rock-eater rumbled. "This is the safest passage this side of the volcanic regions. So long as you stick to the main path, that is. Nasty things lurk where nobody decent feels like living."

"Yes, I know from personal experience," Beryl said dryly.

"Then you know," the rock-eater huffed, buzzing back to the line.

"He was rude," Lily remarked as they flew back to their ledge. "But now we know where to go." And now she could say she had seen a rock-eater with her own eyes. They did not live up to Pyre's descriptions, in some ways, but in others they were as mysterious and unbelievable as he had said they would be. She still did not understand how they kept themselves in the air.

"He was herding a half-dozen fledglings on a long trip, I suspect he is sleep-deprived and cranky," Beryl said diplomatically. "And yes, now we know where to go. Want to go now, or sleep some more first?"

"Sleep," she declared. The amazement was wearing off, leaving her feeling weary. Weary enough that she almost felt she could sleep on her own…

Something to test out later, when she was not about to set out on a long flight in the morning. She and Beryl had settled into a habit of him putting her out for so long that she could have been cured of her inability to sleep on her own moon-cycles ago and she wouldn't know. There was no rush.

And not just because there was something tender and intimate about trusting him with that… Given she could not in good conscience do anything in that direction until he was cured, she would take what she could get.

O-O-O-O-O

In many ways, the wide river passage Lily found herself flying through the next day, and for many days after that, was the opposite of the river tunnel they had navigated prior to encountering the Fear-mongers. Both were long, both had rivers at the bottom, but everything else was completely different.

Where the first river had been fast, deep, and dangerous, this one was placid, shallow in most places, and hosted some of the fattest fish Lily had ever seen. The first river had run through a somewhat cramped tunnel with few places to rest and little margin for error for flying. This tunnel, on the other paw, was wide, deep, and afforded more than enough space, even when other dragons passed them, flying the other way.

Such encounters were not rare, either, a stark contrast to the completely empty river passage they had traveled through for days on end without ever encountering another person. Lily learned the looks of many different kinds of dragon she only knew from Pyre's stories.

She was also learning the names Beryl used, though those were not nearly as sensible.

"Why?" she demanded, confused beyond reason. "What is that meant to mean?" She leaned to the side to fly right next to him, as opposed to a few winglengths away.

"Nadder?" Beryl asked, rolling the nonsensical growl around in his chest before letting it out. It was like no word Lily had ever heard. "I think it is a way of saying snake, but I am not sure."

She glanced back at the chirpy, spry dragon they had passed. Two long, bird-like legs, a beak, bright colors… "They look nothing like snakes. We look more like snakes than they do!"

"Which is why he did not modify our word for snake in making up a word for their name," Beryl guessed. "I think. He only came up with the No-scaled-not-prey names for them so that Thaw would not be confused… It is easier to equate one word to one word when translating back and forth."

"That sounds like a poorly thought-out excuse for ensuring he had easy words for all of the stupid names No-scaled-not-prey come up with," Lily said firmly. She respected Ember, but not so much that she wouldn't call out transparent stupidity when she heard it. "There is no real difference between 'spine-tail' and 'nonsensical word meaning spine-tail without sounding like spine or tail', and if there were, his word would cause more confusion, not less."

"It may have also had something to do with him lessening the contradictions between his different sets of memory," Beryl conceded. "Because he knows both languages as he was taught… I don't quite remember."

She glanced over at him.

He shook his head. "Not because of my problem, not this time. I don't remember because he never explained. I never asked. I am mostly sure of that."

"Things you remember?" she prompted.

"Follow Lily, she knows what is happening and where we need to go," he recited. "Lily is the light wing with grey eyes. A light wing is a dark wing with white scales."

"Very thorough," she observed. As always, a little shiver worked its way down her spine as she imagined a scenario in which those words were all he had to go with. To be so far gone he needed to tell himself what she looked like…

But that day was not today, and if she had her way, it would never come. "Tell me more of these terrible names," she requested.

"Well, for one thing, Nadder is not the full name," Beryl purred. "It is actually 'Deadly Nadder'."

"But…" She wanted to go find Ember and smack him upside the head. On second thought, it wasn't even his stupidity; she needed to find the No-scaled-not-prey who had thought of that.

"Oh, yes," she muttered, "I know just what I'll do. See that bright, fire-breathing creature with two legs and wings? I will call it a snake. Specifically, I will call it a deadly snake, even though plenty of real snakes are deadly. That makes total sense and is definitely the best name for them."

"Nobody said the average No-scaled-not-prey is good at naming things," Beryl chided. "Don't mock it, he or she probably just blurted out the first thing that sounded good without really thinking about it."

"I will accept it as an honest mistake if it is a fluke," Lily graciously allowed. "What do they call the two-headed gas-breathers?"

Beryl groaned and shook his head wildly. "That is not a good example," he complained. "Sometimes lightning strikes twice."

"Okay… How about the rock-eaters?" She eyed an approaching group of specks in the distance; it was too far to tell what they were, but that made three encounters in a single day, a new record. This specific tunnel was like a thermal, drawing everything with wings to it for the ease of travel. Not that she minded; there was a general atmosphere of peace and goodwill that had not existed anywhere else she had found below the ground.

"Maybe another example?" Beryl requested innocently.

"So those have horribly stupid names too," Lily mused. "Why don't you give me a name that is not ridiculous."

"They call my kind Night Furies," Beryl said quickly. "That was one of the first terms Ember started using, since it did not need a new word. Everyone in my family uses it now, on occasion."

"So, one out of dozens," she laughed. "And ours?"

"Light Furies, I would assume," he said. "And they call the ones who wield electricity Skrill. I have no idea what it means." The word itself was a deep growling rumble, one reminiscent of thunder. It was one of Ember's better new words, in Lily's opinion.

"I was told those chase storms," she recalled. It had been a stormy day when Pyre told her of them. She remembered the smell of rain, of sitting with him and watching lightning flash above the mountains. He had spoken of powerful nomads who would not be tied down to any one place, following their place of power and living wherever it went. He had never met one up close, but he said he had seen a few from afar, flying in the depths of storms too dangerous for him to venture out into even if he wanted to.

The memory brought a warm feeling to her chest, along with a hint of sadness. Only a hint, though. It was a vast improvement over how she had once suffered when thinking of him; time did not heal wounds when they were left to fester, but now that she had brought hers out into the open, they were finally fading. Much like her back, ignoring the problem and living with it did not make things any better, it just postponed the healing.

"You're chasing some storms yourself," Beryl said. He had drifted to fly over her, and when she looked up she saw him looking down at her. "Where did your thoughts take you?"

"Old stories and faraway places," she said vaguely. "Do you think we will see any down here? There are no storms to follow…"

"I have never met one, so I would like to, but I don't think so," he said.

O-O-O-O-O

Days passed, spent in flight and fishing and talking to new dragons. Beryl grew more and more forgetful, mostly about the past, but sometimes about things that had happened recently. The shallow river continued ever onward, occasionally letting out into larger caves, but always coming back to the same deep canyon of a tunnel.

One day, perhaps a moon-cycle into the latest leg of their journey, Lily woke to a pleasant warmth all over her. She purred sleepily and flexed her tail around the one lying on top of her. Beryl's weight was almost stifling, but not quite. Not when it was him.

She didn't remember falling asleep under him, though. More importantly, he wasn't supposed to be sleeping on top of her; that was the sort of thing they did when they were together!

Her eyes shot open, and she beheld his peaceful, sleeping self splayed out across her. Were they back in the forest, on their own, she wouldn't be bothered by it at all. But now, without any warning… They had gone to sleep separately. She had promised herself that she would not move to win him back with his faulty memory.

He stirred, woken by her movements, and yawned loudly. Something stirred between them as he gazed down at her.

This was an issue. Lily tried to ignore his… interest… even though it was pressing against her lower back. She squirmed out from under him, letting him fall to the ground in a tangle of limbs with a yelp.

"Morning," he mumbled, apparently unbothered by her unspoken rejection. If he even noticed it; maybe he had just woken up like that.

And crawled on top of her in his sleep. That was entirely reasonable.

"How are you today?" she asked carefully. Her stomach growled at her, but she chose to ignore it.

"I am great…" he glanced around, looking over the wide ledge they had claimed for the night, the massive tunnel beyond it, and the river below. "I think. I do not remember coming here."

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asked anxiously.

"We were coming down into this hidden world, but we were walking through a tunnel. And the rest of your pack was with us." He was so innocent as he said it, so oblivious to the horrible implications.

"Nothing past that?" she asked.

"No, nothing," he admitted, his eyes widening. "What have I missed? How did I miss it?"

"You were bitten by a hostile dragon whose venom is making you lose your memory," she summarized. In the back of her mind, she wondered if bone-numbing horror was enough to remove the visual signs of his interest in her. "It was getting worse up until now, but this is the first time it has removed such a large chunk of time. We are going to a guardian who will be able to fix it."

"I… oh." He looked back out at the massive tunnel, and then at her. "But if we are here…"

"Like I said, you have missed a lot," she said. She resisted the urge to flaunt her ability to fly; showing off would be in incredibly poor taste. A lot of things were in incredibly poor taste when done with someone losing their memories.

Such as letting his lack of knowledge affect how he thought of her. "And you should know," she said reluctantly, meeting his worried gaze, "that we have taken… something of a step back. So maybe do not sleep all over me or… anything like that."

Beryl's tail drooped dramatically, falling flat against the ground. His ears fell in unison, too, and the overall effect was like he had shrunk a little bit in profile. "Did I do something?"

"No, it's… Can we just say it is complicated and leave it for when you remember everything?" she asked. "I do not want to do something that will be seen as manipulative and wrong in hindsight."

"I trust you." He nodded decisively. "I trust you. If that means not asking questions or wondering what has happened, then… I can deal with it. I might just forget again, anyway."

Lily nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and leaped off the ledge. She heard a surprised gasp from him, and then a second set of wings cutting the air behind her, and growled at herself. So much for not showing off…

So much for handling this with grace. She didn't know what to do – to tell him nothing and let his trust keep him there, or to explain it all? Neither path felt good to her; on one she would take him through a bumpy flight of highs and lows, experienced second-paw. On the other, she would all but abuse his trust, especially since said trust was unshaken by what he could not remember.

There was no good answer, no easy solution, and it was a question she might have to respond to over and over again.

If she ever met that one specific Fear-monger again, she would kill him slowly, painfully, with all the viciousness she would have decried as excessive in another. This venom, this curse of forgetfulness, was a horrific thing, and growing more so by the day.

But for now, she had to decide. She fired on the river, blasting a fat carp clean out of the water, and seized it with her jaws, biting so hard that she lost the back half.

She would tell him everything. And if he forgot, she would do it again, and again, however often it was needed. At least with that choice, she did not feel as if she was abusing his trust.

O-O-O-O-O

There were barks of horror, disbelieving growls… a few sad whines. She told him, he listened, he reacted. The first time, it was a fresh experience.

The second time, not so much. By the third, she was numb to it all. He forgot a little more with every new onset of confusion; it was not limited to occurring while he slept, and the times when he grew confused while flying, only to freak out upon seeing her in the air, were the worst.

As they flew forward, his mind stumbled back. First he was on the guardian's island. Then they were in the forest. That lasted for a while, a full moon-cycle of their journey through the endless tunnel.

The times he thought they were in the forest, or that they had been just a moment ago, were bad. But they were also easy compared to what came after. She had no choice but to see how he felt about her, how he acted around her, at every stage of their past. Back when she relied on him in the valley.

When they had just had a fight. When they were picking at each other.

When he didn't know her.

His short-term memory was completely ruined; any memories formed on a day of travelling were gone by the next onslaught. His mantra of 'follow Lily, she knows where to go to fix me' died a quiet death of uselessness. He followed her because she knew how to make him follow, what words to say and what ideas to hit upon. It was still him, but the Beryl she knew disappeared more and more with every passing day.

She woke one morning, still stressed and tired, and set about waking him. He flailed at her, his eyes wide, and barely listened long enough to be convinced to stay on the ledge.

She invoked his brother's name, then his Sire's, speaking of memories and a problem with his own. She demonstrated knowledge he had previously given her that she could not possibly have learned from another, then convinced him to follow.

It was a morning like any other; he never lasted through the night without forgetting, now. The words were slightly different this time, tailored to his exact reactions, but she barely thought as she played through the motions. It was better, less terrible, if she didn't think about it. So long as she could get him to fly in the right direction, she had succeeded.

They flew. They passed other dragons. Each time, she asked of the cold territories. Always the answers were the same; either they didn't know, or it was up ahead. Always ahead, and never with any accurate estimate of how far, because no two kinds of dragon travelled at the same rate.

Some days were better than others; Beryl was still sharp, within the boundaries of what he could remember. Better, even, because what had happened season-cycles ago was clearer and clearer for him as he went back in his own mind. Always clearest right before he forgot it entirely, a cruel twist of the sickness twisting his mind.

That he was remembering things better gave her hope that the memories were not simply being destroyed, like a rock crushed under one's paw. A devouring sickness would not polish its food before eating it…

Or maybe that was a bad comparison, she totally would clean her food off before she ate it. Whatever her metaphor, she didn't think his memories were gone for good. Considera had not said so, going to someone to help him implied restoration, not just halting the progress of the illness.

Though it might very well count as him being 'helped' if it was stopped now. At least he would still know who he was; as best she could tell, he had lost two or three season-cycles as of now, with a little more being added to the count every day. He wasn't the same, but he could function.

Lily flew hard, pushing herself and pushing Beryl in the process. The harder she flew, the faster they moved, and the less of himself Beryl would lose before they found the guardian. He followed behind, always following except on the bad days when he barely believed her. Then, she followed him, hoping desperately that he would 'reset' before he decided to flee from her, or hide, or do something else she couldn't predict. But for now, he was on her tail.

Not too close; he kept his distance. He didn't know her, except as the light wing he had met that morning who spoke of his deepest thoughts and told him he needed to follow. There was no closeness at all. He was more comfortable with the complete strangers they met on the way; at least they were nothing more than they claimed to be, obvious to him and forthright in their intentions. She was a mystery he either knew he could not remember, or suspected was lying to him.

Three wide-winged dragons were coming toward them, gliding leisurely. Lily shook herself out of her self-imposed funk and mentally prepared for another encounter, another set of pleasantries and useless questions that would yield no answer. She did not know this type of dragon, and she couldn't ask Beryl. He always reacted to her ignorance with suspicion, and she was so tired of giving him her life story to appease his justified paranoia.

There was something ironic about going through her worst memories on a near-daily basis, while Beryl forgot all of his, one by one. If their positions were reversed, they would both have a much easier time. Relatively; she would not wish this on anyone she cared for in any way. Even some of her less brutal enemies did not deserve such a slow decline.

Not that she had many enemies she would consider moderate in any way. Claw was nothing of the sort, Grimmel was nearly as bad in his own way, the Twisted Corridor pack were monsters who tortured fledglings, the Fear-monger had done this to Beryl in the first place… Holly, Aven, Cara, maybe, but she didn't really consider them her enemies anymore. They were just the ones who had risen to replace her. Rivals, perhaps. Not enemies.

"Are we going to talk to them?" Beryl asked.

"Yes," Lily replied. "If they know where we are to go next, if it is close, we must find out." The large-winged dragons were getting closer, close enough to call out to. She held back, waiting until they were within easy talking distance to start a dialogue.

"Hail, fellow travellers," the one in the lead of the trio boomed, her voice sonorous and deep. She had to have ponderous lungs, to speak so loudly, and looking at the rest of her, Lily had no trouble believing it. "Where do you go?"

"We are seeking the cold territories, we must speak to their guardian as soon as possible," Lily roared back.

"You are in luck!" the broad-winged female said as they passed each other. "One of the closest paths is just behind us, we passed it this very cycle. Be careful about the cold, though, your kind look even more ill-suited to it than ours!"

"Thank you!" Beryl called back. Lily made no effort at a polite departure; she pushed herself harder still, leaning into an all-out race forward. Beryl kept up with her – he was still the better flier, though it was a difference of small details instead of a massive gap in skill – with relative ease.

She kept an eye on the walls of the tunnel, worrying about missing it, but when they happened across it later that same flight, it was not sight that clued her in to their ultimate goal. It was the cold, just as Considera had said. A chill filled the air, growing stronger as they moved forward. A cold wind brushed over her scales and stung at her eyes.

A gap came into view in the top of the tunnel, wide enough for a dozen light wings to fly up it in unison without flying into each other or fighting for space. The cold air flowed down from there, and frost had formed all around the edges.

Lily flew up into it without a second thought, slowing to maneuver but otherwise moving as fast as was feasible. The tunnel curved around itself like a fledgling trying to squirm out of a parent's disapproving grip, and the air was so cold the condensation all over her body froze and fell off of her. It was like flying into a snowstorm, but without the snow or the intermittent blusters, just a constant, head-on stream of dry, icy air.

When the tunnel constricted to a point where flight was no longer possible, she dropped to the ground without a pause – though the cold on her paws was exceedingly unpleasant – and broke into a run. They just had to get far enough in.

But 'far enough' was not a distance she could anticipate and measure. She ran until she could run no more, then slowed to a quick walk, but nobody spoke in her head. Nobody revealed their presence and told her the journey was over. They just had to keep going.

"This is dangerous," Beryl offered from behind her. They were walking over a sheet of ice, slick and opaque, and at a shallow upward angle. Lily had her claws out, though she hadn't noticed herself using them until she looked down and then back at him, and saw him digging deep rents in the ice as he followed.

"We only need to get far enough in to get the guardian's attention," she reminded him. If they were lucky, they could even do it before he was confused again.

"But what if far enough is too far to cover in a single stretch?" he asked. "We should find a place to hunker down and rest, then keep going afterward."

"We left our source of food behind," she reminded him, even as she doggedly pulled her way further up the slope. The ice stopped up ahead, where the tunnel leveled out and took a sharp turn.

"Still," he insisted.

She crested the hill, absently retracting her claws as she stared out into the abyss.

There were no crystals. There was snow, and water, and ice. Everywhere. And everywhere covered a much larger space than usual; the cave in front of her was large in every dimension, held up by scores of pillars so thick she suspected she could nest an entire light wing pack in each one, if they could bore their own caves. The cave was so oppressively massive that there was an actual snowstorm going on in the distance, visible clouds and falling snow.

It was amazing, it was demoralizing, and it was undoubtedly deadly to any who were not perfectly at home in the snow.

And the total lack of guardian intervention meant that they still weren't far enough into the territory to be noticed.

"We'll rest and then keep going," she conceded. 'Almost there' was not the same as 'done', and she wouldn't mess up here, at the beginning of the end.

O-O-O-O-O

Beryl helped her scrape together a cave of snow; he had once told her his family had a special technique for doing so, but he didn't offer to teach it to her now. Either he had forgotten, didn't think it was applicable, or didn't trust her enough to offer. Whatever the cause, they made a wind-break and settled down together, trust or the lack of put aside in the name of pure necessity.

It was the first time in moon-cycles that she had slept next to him of her own accord; the times he was confused and moved to sleep with or on her while she was already slumbering didn't count. He quickly dozed off, but she remained awake. Partially because she had not asked him to put her to sleep… and partially because she still could not sleep on her own.

Not that she wanted to. Not now, not when they were so close. She kept watch, her eyes open and alert as he snored by her side.

The wind whistled and howled through the rocky pillars. In the distance, the storm raged. The vast, bleak planes of ice and snow and the occasional trickle of liquid water passed for scenery, all of it dull under the near-total lack of light. If it weren't for the rare white crystal sticking out of the distant ceiling, she might even have had trouble seeing, despite her excellent night vision.

She had never seen a place so uninviting, so wild. So unforgiving. Some caves were more hospitable than others, some were cramped and others frightening, but this one was vast and actively dangerous in a way that could not be fought, could not be avoided. They had to endure, or perish, and not even the sun could come out to relieve the aching cold. Not down here.

Much of their travels had gone by in a blur, some of it intentionally ignored as she struggled to keep herself motivated and optimistic, but she knew she could not afford to be off her game for a heartbeat here. Not a day's flight from the safe, warm, hospitable tunnel and its river, death lurked in cold paws and wet slopes, and that was assuming nothing actively hostile with intelligence to back it up lurked here.

She was not so stupid as to make that assumption, so she kept watch for the more direct threats.

Whatever came, she would push forward. They were here, and now all that remained was to move forward until a great presence noticed them and deigned to help the one she loved.

Or, if that did not happen, until she found this 'great presence' and bit them on the nose and forced them to help. She had not come this far to be turned back by anything.

Author's Note: A fitting song for some of this chapter's themes would be 'Savior' by Rise Against. Very on-the-nose in some ways; the opening line is 'It kills me not to know this but I've all but just forgotten what the color of her eyes were and her scars or how she got them.' Which, given Beryl is literally forgetting about her, including those very things… And then the refrain, 'I just want to save you, while there's still something left to save…' I wouldn't say it's a perfect match, but having it come up on Pandora while writing this and noticing the lyrics halfway through was a weird experience.