Free Oathkeeper by J.F. Lewis

themselves, but that did not stop him from making them.

CHAPTER 6
    OLD DRAGON, NEW TRICKS
    Dawn broke over a dragon in flight. He roared to greet the light, birds and creatures below him fleeing in panic for miles. It felt good to be in the air despite the chill. A quarter of one black wing, as large as the mainsail on the AWS ( Aernese Warship ) Grudgebearer , cut through the clouds at a right angle before the dragon’s gargantuan head surfaced. Rapid evaporation, brought about by the immense wave of heat given off by his body, cleared the cloud cover more efficiently than the gale-force winds from Coal’s flight could have done on their own.
    The joints in his mighty wings now worked wondrously, smoothly, with a power and resilience he hadn’t felt in millennia. He was not as young as he used to be, but he felt vigorous. Renewed. His scales, once again the near black of his youth, began to glow. Stirred by flight and violent intent, an orange tinge worked outward from the dragon’s core, patches of sulfur igniting along his underbelly, burning off to expose the thick, dark armored plates beneath, outlined in flame.
    The Parliament of Ages stretched out beneath him. Acre after acre of unspoiled forest. Well, almost. Was that smoke to the distant southeast? He hoped so.
    How I long to burn it.
    But he was not there to end the life dance of this place. Not that any of his fellow dragons remained on this plane to hold him to such ancient treaties if he chose to break them, yet even so, the life secreted within the Outwork was all that remained of the once canorous and ebullient life song this dimension had birthed. In his mind’s eye, he recalled distant days soaring alongside star-quelling flights.
    To have been young enough to contain such heat! Casting his gaze northward Coal felt the draw of the Father’s Forge Mountains. His short visit had not been enough, but he’d promised his aid to the Aern and they would have it, even if it meant he might never again set claw on the . . . what was it the mortals called them now?
    â€œSri . . . Sri . . . something.” He sounded the words out trying to tease it from his tired synapses. Once, he would have recalled the desired information instantaneously. He still might have managed, if seeing the mountains again hadn’t brought back such vivid memories: flights of dragons dotting the mountains, wings spread and soaking in the heat of Jun’s new sun as the industrious god worked on the sky.
    â€œZauran! Sri’Zauran!” He roared in triumph. Elation faded as he considered the words. The Fanged People Mountains. Such nonsense. Father’s Forge was a much better name. Coal’s memory drifted further back to the sight of Jun in his glittering armor, mirrored helm blazing with light as he . . .
    Well, that was long ago. Maybe it was just as well they were named after the infamous new plague of reptiles. He would visit the mountains one last time, if he could, gaze up at a final dawn, and spread his wings accepting its heat. He would never again leave the mountains. Not yet, however. First he had promises to keep. And maybe this time he would succeed in keeping them. Spinning in a series of barrel rolls, he spat fire into the air and roared. “Kholster, but it is a wondrous gift to fly like this again!”
    Swearing by his friend’s name sent a chortle through the dragon. Swooping low, his body heat drawing wisps of smoke from the treetops below, Coal squinted, narrowing the focus of his blazing eyes to find the armor of his newly deified friend.
    Below, a single pass cut through the center of the forest, no smaller than when Kevari had burned it, leaving Coal to marvel at her work.
    Kevari? What had happened to Kevari? Had she died before or after the coming of the Junland Bridge? No , he thought, no, it had been Sulfur that disappeared beneath the waves at Junland Bridge. Kevari had died later, in