(Publishing one chapter a week until the end of Part 5)

Chapter 123: The Woman and the Dragon

There was still a hint of woman inside the dragon, just as there had always been a hint of dragon inside the woman.

She did not always remember the woman she had been. As she surged through the wind with mingled magic and the beat of powerful wings, the joy of flight tamped her humanity down to barest sparks. As she descended upon minotaur herds with fire in her throat and hungry savagery in her jaws and claws, gluttonous violence subsumed any human instinct to search her surroundings.

But not even a dragon can live only in the ecstasy of flight or the contest of the hunt. When flight gave way to weary gliding, the woman would peek through the dragon's eyes. And the dragon would remember—there were other joys in the world. Discovery, Camaraderie. Love.

Love always troubled the dragon's wingbeats. A dragon knows many joys that a human cannot know. But Reis Duelar had loved well and been loved well in return, and when the dragon remembered that love, the woman inside could not help but awaken.

And in that awakening, there was always anguish.

The woman and the dragon had always been together. The woman had known that before she was a woman: she had known it even as a child of scant years, living her mundane life with the tall, laughing-voiced shadows of her parents on their little farm. That was all that remained of her parents now: shadows, sparks, and fleeting impressions, of neat-tilled fields framed by rolling hills, of shrieking with laughter as she fled her mother's tickling fingers, of sitting on her father's strong shoulders as soldiers in gleaming armor marched past their farm to the Ordallian battlefront.

Those were the memories she held close to her heart, like talismans against the nightmare. Of fire on the horizon, and the clashing of blades. Of shadows in blood-stained steel, crashing down upon her house like the tide. Of her father's screams, and her mother's.

And the beast that had always been in her—the feral yearning that had led her to leap to the roof of her parents' house, and left them wondering how she could possibly have gotten up there—had roared in anger and anguish at those screams, and that roar had turned to fire.

It had been years after that roar that she had started to understand that part of herself—years since the Haruten had found her, and years since she'd been brought to stately Igros and the squalid Duelar orphange. She had noticed how the odds seemed ever-so-slightly stacked in her favor: how the bullies who wanted to push her around could never quite manage to hurt her, how rocks cast her way spun off to the side. And always, she remembered that once she had roared, and that roar had been fire, and that when the Haruten had found her, she had been alone in the ashes of her home, surrounded by charred corpses.

Then she had heard of the Bishop Bremondt—a holy man who could wield the power of a dragon. She understood at last what she was supposed to be. And she had written him, and reached out to him, and told everyone she thought might believe her. Until one day, a handsome, dark-haired man had approached her. And when the shadows of wings appeared around him, she felt her heart brighten. She had often seen those shadows around herself, even when no one else could.

She was not alone in this world. There was another who shared this strange strength. There was another who could show her the way.

He taught her. He was not her only teacher: a Dragoner's magic was complex, and anyways a Dragoner meant to join the ranks of the Templars had to learn more than just her own arts. But for the first time in her life, her teacher knew things she had always wanted to learn. For the first time in her life, she did not resent the teaching, because the teacher had answers to questions she'd never even thought to ask.

The shadow of her parents seemed to unite in the person of Bishop Bremondt, and transform into something else. His intelligence and knowledge exceeded hers: his passion spoke to hers: his humor, his kindness, and his strength reassured and buoyed hers. She had clung to the idea of mastering the beast inside her, as answer to her grief and pain: in Bremondt, she found the hope that she might one day be more than that pain, that grief, that anger. She could loom as large as he did. She could be such a teacher, such a parent, to someone else.

Yet even then, lost in wonder that she might find another parent after all she had lost, she had a trace of doubt. Because when the Bishop spoke of their power, he spoke of it as a tool: a feral strength that had to be understood, but only so it could be properly restrained, properly channeled, to serve its master.

Reis would not have dreamed of contradicting him—he was her father and her teacher, he was a Dragoner of repute, he was a Bishop—but she could not suppress a prickle of unease when he spoke like this. She did not fully understand the beast inside her, and she wanted to understand it better...but it had never felt like a tool to be used. It had felt like...like part of her, somehow, a part of her that was somehow other. It did not always want as she wanted, it did not always feel as she felt, but its feelings, wants, and needs were somehow still hers. It tended to rage where she was scared, it tended to fear when she felt anger, it tended towards wariness when she felt joy, but those strange feelings always felt like part of her own heart, part of her own self.

She did not come to understand the dragon, until she met the boy.

She had just begun her lessons in Gariland. She attended the Magic Academy sporadically, auditing classes as her tutors thought useful: more often, she got private lessons with particular instructors, to help her refine one aspect or another of her future career among the Templars. Of her lessons in Gariland, there were perhaps none stranger than those she took from Bodan Daravon.

When lecturing, the Master Instructor of the Gariland Military Academy was one of the most boring men Reis had ever met (as diligent a student as she was, it was all Reis could do to stay awake during his lessons, and even then, she could only manage it as long as she'd slept the night before). But in practical matters, Daravon's lessons were nearly as good as Bremondt's. Beneath his crumbling manor was an enormous room of great white blocks, each inscribed with a complex array of magical runes. Each of these runes carried their own unique powers and effects, and Daravon commanded them ruthlessly, to make her use her power in ways she'd never dreamed. He would choke her fire, so she was forced to dodge and deflect his blows with naught but speed and skill: he would suppress her wings, so she had to rely on her legs: he would dull her draconic strength, and make her anticipate his attacks, to sharpen her mind.

And in the middle of one draining session, trying to breathe fire even through the barrier Daravon had called up to hold her back, a scrappy, scrawny, acne-ridden whelp had exploded into the training room, blunt swords in either hand. "I challenge you to a duel!" he bellowed, charging towards her.

Reis had laughed. Here she was, testing the limits of a strength that had shattered armies: here was a boy with blunt swords, who seemed to think he could match her. He was hardly the first pompous child she'd had to deal with, eager to win a scrap of glory by besting the closest thing to a dragon left in Ivalice.

But before she could humiliate him as he deserved, Daravon fell upon him like a whirlwind, shoved him into a rune that magnified gravity and then hammered him to the ground, before carrying the dazed child out of the room. He had returned, full of apologies for his ill-mannered son, and assurances that he would not bother her again.

In spite of those assurances, the boy was waiting for her outside the Daravon Estate, a training sword in either hand, and two laid out on the ground in front of him. "I challenge you-" he started.

"I heard you the first time," she said. She was tired from her training—arms, legs, and soul were rubbery with exhaustion, and even the dragon inside her seemed sleepy. But she had strength enough to show this brash child his place.

Within seconds, he was crumpled at her feet. She smiled down at him, brushing her sweat-damp hair off her neck. "Well?"

The boy had looked up at her, one eye already slitted by a swollen purple bruise, blood trickling from his nostrils. She waited for the tears. Instead, he sprang to his feet like a jack-in-box, flared out his blunt swords like wings, and spat, "Again."

It should have been easier this time. He was hurt, exhausted, smaller than she, weaker than she was. But somehow his training swords kept turning aside her blows, somehow his wild flailing came close to striking her, somehow his clumsy movements kept him a little ahead of her, and when she finally knocked him to the ground with a wild back-hand to the face she was breathing as hard as she had in her traineing with Daravon, and her heart was beating fast. "Well?" she growled.

Beowulf rolled to his feet, swaying unsteadily. His face was mottled with bruises, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth to match the crust beneath his nose. And again, he flared those swords out like wings. "Again."

Again. And again. And again. Each time, he was more hurt than the last. Each time, she couldn't believe he could stand, much less keep fighting. And each time, he not only fought her, but fought her well. He was learning from her, keeping ahead of her feral strength, dodging beneath her blows and starting to strike his own.

And for the first time she could remember, she had some insight into the relationship between the girl she seemed to most who looked at her, and the beast that lurked inside. Every time the boy rose again, the girl felt frustration. Every time the boy rose again, the beast felt exhilaration. And every time, Reis felt admiration.

Something in this boy—something in his challenge to her, and his refusal to yield—spoke to her. Girl and dragon had never felt more closely aligned.

Finally, the boy could stand no more (though not for lack of trying: he managed to rise on all fours for a moment, but his limbs trembled like a fawn's). When he pitched back to the ground, she caught him, and carried him up the hill. Her legs quivered underneath her, and her arms shook with the effort, and her face stung where his blows had caught her.

"You're tougher than most," Reis said, propping him up against a thick-trunked tree and sitting next to him.

Beowulf shook his head. "Not yet." His eyes were nearly swollen shut, but she could see his derision even in those bruises slits. "Not as tough as my father. Or Balbanes." He was quiet for a moment. "Or you."

"I said tougher than most," Reis pointed out. "You're comparing yourself to legends."

The boy snorted. "You calling yourself a legend?"

"I..." Reis started, and stopped herself. Was that what she wanted? "No, that's not...not quite right." Her brow furrowed. She had spent so long trying to understand herself better, and trying to use that understanding. What was it for? "This...this power...it...means something. And I want to...I want to use it, like Bremondt uses it. I want to..." Something fierce ignited in her: the screaming girl and the growling dragon both flashed with want. "I want to be strong enough to change the world."

The boy's slitted eyes managed to widen. "That's...that's amazing."

She never could quite remember who had kissed who first. She only knew that her hunger for that kiss her had felt as immense and all consuming as any magic she had ever cast...and that it had come from both the girl and the dragon.

Even now, as she stalked the rocky hills of the barren island where she made her erstwhile home, the dragon felt that old hunger. It snapped and growled, and cast its long-necked head about, looking for the thing it wanted. But it found no sight of the boy.

So hard to hold onto the old understandings. The girl had been clumsy with the dragon, but the dragon was often numb to the woman lost inside her. It had only its primal, powerful understanding of the world to guide it—a world full of prey to be hunted, lesser beasts to be dominated, equals to be challenged, and dangers to be confronted. The woman's more nuanced understandings felt like tattered threads hoping to serve as a leash, and jerk the dragon back from danger. It took time (and luck) for those threads to make sense to the dragon: to learn that sometimes, what seems to be prey might actually be a partner, and what seems a lesser beast is a terrible danger...and that sometimes, the only hope to survive is to run.

The dragon did not like this. Dragons do not run. But the woman inside her had been right often enough that the dragon could not neglect her threadbare warnings...or her threadbare hopes. There was danger in the world, more subtle and more complex than a dragon might understand. But there were also possibilities in the world, tantalizing to woman and dragon alike. The hope that they might be able to reclaim all that had been taken from them.

Taken from them! The thought filled the dragon with rage. A dragon took: she was not taken from. To come between a dragon and her treasure was to risk annihilation. But the strongest feelings lay at the intertwined roots of dragon and woman, and she could not deny her grief, her loss, or her pain. Something had been taken from her, but it was even worse than that. Someone she loved had done the taking.

The boy?

Memories like lightning, filling her from tail to wingtip to snout. Not the boy, no: not that boy who curled up in her arms, who kissed her fiercely in shadowed corners of old buildings, who made her feel more herself than she had ever felt before. And, like one road leading to another, the boy had led her to other friends: first to his own friends (Ramza Beoulve and Delita Heiral who shared his talent if not his spirit) and then to their sisters (Teta Heiral, quiet and brilliant and so strikingly dignified that she seemed more noble than any woman she had ever met, and Alma Beoulve, fierce and mischievous and so wonderfully human). Beowulf had shown her one kind of love, but they all showed her another. She had never known the joy of such friends, such siblings.

And it had all come crumbling down, when the Death Corps had come calling, and taken Teta.

She could not leave her friend in peril. She could not let so many people she loved march into danger alone. And when had gone to Bremondt, asking to join them, he had offered her a sad and weary smile, and answered, "It is not for Templars to take part in such worldly affairs...but it is not in noble souls like yours to let such tragedies go unanswered." He had placed his hand on hers, and she had looked with wonder at this man, who had given her so much more than she could possibly deserve, who seemed to have no limit to his kindness, his compassion, his generosity...

Who had done this to her. To woman and dragon both.

When the memory came (as it did more often these days, with Bremondt shadowing them in his great ship, pinning her with strange magics and stranger machines), she would snarl, and spit fire into the sky. She wanted to hurt him, for what he had done to her. But the woman inside her pulled her back from her rage. There was a dragon in him, too. And if dragons could feel fear, they felt it most when another dragon rose to challenge them.

The fear was bad. The hurt was worse. A dragon rarely feels afraid, but it never feels betrayed. And the pain in the woman was draconic in its breadth and depth.

Bremondt. Dear Bremondt, who had been like a fantasy to her as she scrapped her way through the orphanage, and who had somehow been better than her dreams when he finally appeared before her with her letter in his hand. Bremondt, who had taught her so much about herself, and the world. Bremondt, who had supported her as a Templar, and as a woman, and as a friend: who had even offered Beowulf a place in the Templar ranks.

Bremondt, who had tried to destroy her.

She remembered a place deep within the bowels of Goland: an ancient facility, surrounded by strong monsters. She remembered being the equal to those monsters: Beowulf leaping ahead to draw their ire and pierce their skin, weakening them for the destruction she and Bremondt could unleash upon them. She remembered stepping onto a metal platform.

And she remembered agony.

Magic had surrounded her, suffused her, violated her: it had caught both woman and dragon fast in chains that scraped against their shared soul. She had screamed, with her voice and with her heart, and she had raged, with human indignation and draconic fury, but this magic had been built to hold that rage. No, worse than that: it counted on it. It drank from her strength, drank from her fury, drank from her hurt. It drank in who she was, twisted her emotions and her thoughts and her very self, and then filled in the empty places it had made with her own twisted strength. She was losing herself, losing who she was, losing dragon and woman both, everything being pressed down into a new mold, a new shape.

And it was Bremondt who did this to her. Bremondt, who she loved. Bremondt, who she thought loved her. How could you love someone, and hurt them like this?

The dragon could not understand the magic at play here. The woman, lost in the dragon's depths, could offer only the thinnest of understandings. These days, no one quite understood what a Dragoner was—those people who were like them, be they dragons with humans at their heart or humans with dragons at theirs. But long ago, there had been other humans, who better understood what they were, and wanted to use them. They had built places like this, to experiment upon them and to make of them weapons. To bind Dragoners to serve them.

That was what Bremondt had done to her. He had tried to bind her. He had tried to break her.

And if it weren't for the boy (no, not a boy any longer, now he was long and lean and fierce, sadness and loss and pain had whetted his edge and made him even more magnificent than she had ever dreamed) he would have succeeded.

But in the depths of her pain, as dragon and woman were crushed down into this new shape, they had seen him charging towards them. Surrounded, outnumbered, and utterly fearless, with his swords in hand. His eyes seemed to burn in his face.

Even the dragon could appreciate this memory. There was a man with the heart of a dragon, even if he didn't have the soul of one.

Magic had detonated, fierce and bright and enormous. All the chains smothering her had suddenly become heat and light and fire inside her, orgasmic in its intensity and explosive in its strength. The woman was a shadow now, lost to the immensity of the transformation. The dragon was free, truly free, for the first time in her life.

But the man was in danger. The man she loved, be she woman or dragon.

She had plucked him from the shattered ground oh-so-carefully, as though he were a hatchling. And she had surged through the mine, shattering her way though barriers and doorways, making her frenzied, sinuous, agonized way back to the open sky.

With the last of her will, the woman laid the man to rest beneath a tree. Then she was lost, and the dragon was free: free to surge across the countryside, to feed on minotaur herds and free-ranging chocobos, to soar through wild skies and make her den among the crags of tall mountains.

It took a long time for the woman to find her voice again. It took a long time for the dragon to understand any part of the strange whispers from that other inside her. It took her a long time to remember that she had not always been a dragon like this. She had been something else, once upon a time. Before the pain. Before the change.

By the time the woman's voice had started to become clear, the hunt had already begun.

They found her in the frost—a pack of woman, armed with gleaming weapons, led by the man who had betrayed her. She had breathed fire, and he had smote her fire aside, with the shadow of his dragon looming around him. They had closed in with bursting magic and ropes and chains, and she had roared and girded herself to fight-

And the woman had spoken, clear and loud: RUN!

A dragon did not run. But she had begun to remember that she was not just a dragon. And there were questions she needed to answer.

The betrayer raised wavering magic to catch her fast, but she was already running. Dragon strength was not so easily held back, even by another dragon: she tore through his barrier, ripped through the ropes that had tried to bind her wings, and hurtled into the sky. And as she surged through the air, fleeing this unknown danger, she tried to hear the woman inside her, and understand.

It had taken much time to bridge the gap between them. In that time, they had nearly been caught twice more. The second time was much the same as the first: as she lay dozing by a pool in frostbitten woods, the snapping of nearby twigs startled her awake in time for an ambush. She had spotted the betrayer, shining with magic, and charged away from him, winning free before he could do much to hold her.

But the third time she was almost captured. A great shape of metal had emerged from the darkness on the edge of the desert, waded through her first breath of desperate fire and locked strong arms against her front leg. She had managed to take to the air before its human allies could close in around her, but she was unwieldy with its weight and strength, and the figures around her had pelted her with magic that left her weak and spinning. When she had flagged, the metal man had crashed against the earth, and its mighty grip had slackened: that gave her space to escape once more.

Each time, closer to taking her. Each time, closer to binding her, contorting her into some new and awful shape. She didn't remember much from her time as a dragon in a woman's body, but she remembered the feeling of those chains binding her very soul. She would not endure that again.

And so, prompted by the woman, she wound her north and east. It was harder to travel these days: there was not only the fear of her hunters, but of the great mass of men who roamed and fought across the land. She could feel the fury of their fighting in the distance, and she was forced to hide from the columns of reinforcements marching to join them and the straggling bands of refugees fleeing the fighting. She clung to coastlines, raked the horizon for signs of ships. And she did it all with only the dimmest understanding of what she was doing.

The woman's voice was weak, and it was hard to speak so the dragon could understand. It was tied up with the betrayer, and what he had done to them, and the work they had done with him before his betrayal. The magic he'd used to change them—the magic that had been meant to bind them—was only possible in certain places. The tunnels where they had been hurt were one such place, but there were others: islands, hidden in the sea. And the magic that had changed them once might well change them again.

It was a thin hope. The woman did not know if it was possible at all: the dragon did not know if it could use the woman's knowledge, even if it were possible. But the alternative was to keep being hunted by the betrayer and his coterie. A thin hope was better than no hope at all.

So she went soaring, through the spring heat of the day and the bitter cold of an ocean night. Islands speckled the horizon, and she alighted upon them only briefly. She drank sparingly from the small island pools, conscious of how easily she might drain them: she snapped birds from their roosts to ease the grumbling in her belly, and kept her eyes open for better prey.

But that was not the only thing she kept her eyes open for. These islands had known human habitation: there was the crumbling manor on an island to the east, and worn foundations hidden in the dense woods of the southern isles. But as she made her way north, she began to see more and grander ruins. What the dragon might have mistaken for a low mesa, the woman saw as a great, worn building, nursing secrets in its warrens. The dragon spied a distant pile of tumbled rocks: at the woman's bidding, she flew closer, and found a leaning watchtower.

A few days later, she found the betrayer.

It was the largest and most ornate island by far: its scrub-grass slopes were cut with old paths and worn steps, all oriented around a great stone building of many layers. The woman saw something in its layout to excite her: the dragon, listening closely, winged down to investigate. Almost too late, she heard the excited shouts: almost too late, she saw the flare of the betrayer's magic.

She flung herself away, a hair too slow: the edges of that magic caught her, sapped at her strength. She flagged in the air, barely managed to recover. Her mighty heart beat sluggishly, and her veins felt thick and clogged. Desperate wingbeats righted her course, but as she turned and fought to stay airborne, she glimpsed a mighty warship, surging towards her across the sea.

He was waiting for her. He was hunting her. He would never stop hunting her.

She found her way to rest that night, hidden in the dense woods of an island farther south. She had soothed the hunger in her belly a little, snagging sleeping birds from nests in the canopy above her. But there was still a gnawing emptiness in her guts, even greater than the hunger. Her threadbare hopes felt close to snapping: despair rose like a distant wave, threatening to swallow her whole.

How long had she been running now? Neither woman nor dragon could say for sure, but both knew it was too long by far. Neither woman nor dragon was meant to live like this. The betrayer had hurt them both: had abused their trust, and taken something from them they could not get back. To be so close, and to have him stand in their way again...!

She slept, at last, and her dragon dreams were thick with nightmare figures in nightmare pursuit. But when they awoke, the nightmare was upon them.

Something gripped their tail, and she sprang awake, spitting fire and roaring violence, trying to smash aside the creature that had seized her. She was not prepared for its terrible strength—a strength no mortal man should have. In the uneven darkness of the forest, she glimpsed the metal man, knotting strong rope about her tail with mindless dexterity.

She exploded away from it, ripped through the canopy of branches heedless of scratches and tears, but as soon as she could clear of the treeline she jerked like a fish on the line, and could not free herself. She roared, and flailed, and beat her wings, but she could not escape. She saw the betrayer's ship, closing in upon her: she saw another ship in the distance, pinning her between the two of them. The wave of despair came crashing down: she would not escape this trap. The long chase was over: her hopes were gone.

And then: she was free.

It was almost comical: the sudden lack of resistance made her overcorrect, and she flailed in the air, almost tumbled snout over tail to sink back to the earth. A great burst of red heat cut through the trees, leaving fire in its wake below her: she managed to right herself, rose high into the sky and exploded out an an angle to cut past both ships.

Behind her, she heard the sounds of frantic fighting. The dragon would not have looked back, but the sudden hope in the woman's heart made her turn her head, just for a moment. And when she caught a glimpse of him—of a man, long and lanky and sure, fighting with the metal figure—the dragon's great heart leapt with joy, and a wave of hope crashed against her despair.

She kept flying, because she had no other choice. She would not be caught again. But that hope strengthened her wings, and dulled her aches and pains. That hope was not threadbare, thin, or unsure: that hope was enormous, and bright, and certain. The woman and the dragon felt it, with all of their shared body, with all of their shared soul.

The boy with the heart of a dragon had found them.