Maulkin shook his mane again. This time Shreever and Sessurea both opened their gills wide to his toxins and scalded his memories into themselves. Shreever looked down at the tumbled blocks of worked stone that littered the sea bottom, at the layered barnacles and sea grasses that were anchored to the Conqueror's Arch in an obscuring curtain. The black stone veined with silver peeped through only in small patches. The earth had shaken it down and the sea had swallowed it up. Once, lives ago, she had settled upon that arch, first flapping and then folding her massive wings back upon her shoulders. She had bugled to her mate of her joy in the morning's fresh rain, and a gleaming blue dragon had blared his reply. Once the Elderkind had greeted her arrival with scattered flowers and shouts of welcome. Once in this city under a bright blue sky…

It faded. It made no sense. The images wisped away like dreams upon awakening.

"Be strong," Maulkin exhorted them. "If we aren't fated to survive, then at least let us fight it to the end. Let it be fate that extinguishes us, not our own lack of heart. For the sake of our kind, let us be true to what we were." His ruff stood out full and venomous about his throat. Once more, he looked the visionary leader who had seized Shreever's loyalties so long ago. Her hearts swelled with love of him.

The world dimmed and she lifted her eyes to a great shadow moving overhead. "No, Maulkin," she trumpeted softly. "We are not destined to die, nor to forget. Look!"

A dark provider skimmed lazily along above them. As it swept over their heads, it cast forth food for them. The flesh sank slowly toward them, wafting down on the current. They were dead two-legs, one with chain still upon it. There would be no struggle for this meat. One needed only to accept it.