~

Reginald’s re-education continued as it had begun - with long lectures about Court Dorchadas and Rex’s obvious and very open contempt. Reginald had already learned to discount Rex’s opinion, so he dismissed Rex’s complaints of a “rotting stench” as pure fabrication.

These days, though, Bree hadn’t been allowed near the first cannon. Reginald saw them once a day for a brief check-up, and the rest of his interactions for the day were with Rex, and Rex alone. 

This went on until Reginald’s right arm spontaneously fell off in the middle of a lecture. 

Rex lowered his notes, his eyebrows slowly rising. Reginald watched the arm, for a moment not quite capable of comprehending what he was seeing. The fingers twitched when he tried to move them, the rotting and severed stump still connected to his body by threads of black smoke. 

“Gods almighty,” Rex said, throwing aside his folder. He rose to his feet and stalked away, to the communications tower at the back of the cannon deck. He took the mouthpiece from the console and spoke briefly into it, summoning Bree to the deck. 

Reginald bent double and picked up the arm. It had fallen right out of his sleeve. He held it on his lap for safekeeping, glancing around at the mention of Bree’s name. 

“Yes, that creature’s falling apart again,” Rex said dismissively. “Well, I don’t know why! You wouldn’t believe the smell, either. Yes, yes, take it up with the Commander if you think so...”

“Is Bree coming?” Reginald said. His voice sounded strange to his ears, wheezy and hollow. 

Rex ignored him and replaced the mouthpiece on the receiver. 

Reginald turned to keep Rex in his line of sight, and something crunched loudly in his neck. Reginald froze. And although his body remained still, the world began to tip. A strange disconnection groped through his body, snapping the weak threads of smoke, dragging him away until he was no longer in the body, but barely anchored to it, floating above, watching the orange and black guardian crumple like a broken toy. 

And then he had no way to see anything at all, since he had lost his form. But he felt, vaguely, the change in location. His anchor point shifting. The renewed pull of the hivemind, drawing him back. 

The connection strengthened again after an indeterminate stretch of time. Bree’s voice floated through the air. 

“At least let me reattach the arm!” 

“Silence.” Aiteal’s voice was always more tangible than other dragons’ voices. Her words resonated. ”You’ll do nothing to it without my permission,” she said.

“Now, listen here,” Rex said, his voice faint and flat after Aiteal’s. “You don’t get to decide what to do with the creature. It belongs to Commander Rezann.”

“No,” Aiteal said. “How is Rezann going to use the parasite if it doesn’t have a body? The creature is mine and I won’t give it up unless the Commander grants me an audience and hears my demands.”

“If that is what you want,” Rex said, sounding vaguely confused. “I’ve already summoned him.”

“Fine.”

Aiteal’s incorporeal talons closed around Reginald, momentarily jolting him back into the hivemind, flooding him with feedback from a hundred other bodies. And then he was back, settling into his own body, his eye blinking open. 

Bree leant over him. “Hello?” they said, shining a tiny light into Reginald’s eye. 

Reginald tried to draw a breath, but his lungs would not respond. Unable to speak, he simply blinked at Bree and tried to smile. His torn lip pulled strangely in a way he wasn’t used to. Parts of his mouth were bare to the air in a way that they definitely had not been before. 

He raised his remaining hand to feel the damage. 

“Don’t, Regie,” Bree said, quickly pushing Reginald’s hand back down by his side. “You’ll make things worse.”

“Is it awake?” Rex said, from somewhere in the distance. Reginald’s neck was completely immobile, he couldn’t turn to see. 

“Yeah,” Bree said. “That really did a number on his body. Looks like Aiteal stopped covering him with her powers, and she was the one sustaining him...”

“This is unacceptable,” Rex said. “She’s jeopardised our entire operation with this... this petty tantrum of hers...”

“Yes, sir,” Bree said. They moved away for a moment, then returned with a small hand mirror. Mouthing an I’m sorry, they held it out for Reginald’s examination. 

Over the past few weeks, his regular regeneratino sessions with Bree had resulted in him looking almost normal, like a slightly scarred and discoloured living person. All that progress had been undone, and then some. The colour had leached out of his skin again, leaving it mottled greenish brown. His eye was plain white, and the shade hole on the left side of his head had cracked and splintered at the edges, further tearing his lip. He didn’t look good. And in a way that was incredible to him, since he’d never really had an opinion on his appearance before. 

“I’m not allowed to intervene,” Bree said. “Wait until the Commander gets here, he’s away sorting things out in the Light Division.”

It was a long wait, days long. Reginald had, for most of his life, been imprisoned within the body of a living dragon. Leo had been nice and all, but Reginald’s periods of control had been fleeting. But since then he’d gotten so used to constant control that this sudden immobility was scary. He fidgeted with the edge of the examination table and tried to spot patterns on the cloth roof of the medical corps centre. 

His mind drifted, sometimes. He pictured the blue guardian Rezann had shown him, that time on the cannon deck. Sometimes he remembered things that he couldn’t have witnessed back in Clan Fuil Darach. A spade flying out of the darkness at his head; an expanse of bare speckly skin.

Bree came and went on their own duties, but they always had a nice word or two for Reginald when they passed by. 

Finally, Rezann returned. Loud yells sounded from outside the tent. Unable to help himself, Reginald attempted to sit up. His head almost parted company with his body; he quickly settled down again. 

Bree raced into the ward, smiling fiercely. “He’s back! He says he’ll take Aiteal’s formal complaint immediately.”

Reginald shrugged, with a little difficulty. On a nearby tabletop, his disembodied arm twitched weakly. 

“Have you never seen the Commander take a complaint before?” Bree said, their eyes shining. “Oh, it’s a sight to behold. He’s going to beat some obedience into her. It’ll teach her not to question our Commander, that’s certain."

Rex leant into the tent. “Prepare the creature for transport. It’s counts as a piece of evidence for this particular trial.”

Evidence? What did that mean? Reginald had to lie there, gushing smoke anxiously as Bree wheeled him out of the tent. Reginald could only stare at the sky, but he heard the voices of the army, crowds gathering to watch this ‘trial’, whatever that was. 

The bed rattled to a halt. Bree clipped a firm plaster brace around Reginald’s neck, allowing him to sit up for the first time in days. Smoke hung gloomily around the mattress, too dense to rise. 

He’d been brought to a large empty circular space in the centre of the army, the grass trampled by thousands of footsteps. Crowds ringed the area. Most of the dragons seemed to be staring at Reginald

The sky thundered. Aiteal landed in the circle and folded her wings. Fionnán touched down outside the circle, gesturing for the crowds to part to allow him space. The jeering from the army rose to deafening levels, making Reginald wish he could duck his head, or even turn away. So many were staring at him, and not only could he not speak, but his one remaining hand had no middle finger. He settled for snarling at the crowds instead, baring cracked and broken fangs. 

“Easy,” Bree said softly. “They’ll forget all about you when the Commander gets here.”

A roar swelled from the assembled ranks of soldiers. Aiteal wrapped her tail around her forelegs, her back to Reginald, her gaze set dead ahead. She refused to acknowledge him, but he felt the parasite residing in her reach out to him, as if searching for help. 

Commander Rezann arrived without fanfare. He just walked into the circle and faced Aiteal, and the crowd fell silent. Sure enough, attention shifted towards him, away from Reginald. 

“I’ll take your complaint now,” Rezann said, as if the crowd didn’t exist. He was bare to the waist, and he looked impossibly small in front of Aiteal’s ridgeback form. 

Aiteal pointed aggressively around at Reginald with one razor-sharp thumb scythe. “That creature belongs to me. I won’t have you imposing your designs on it without my consent. Until you treat me as your equal, I’ll cut it off from my support.”

“You’re one of my generals,” Rezann said, his emotionless eyes flickering across to Reginald briefly. “To suggest that I need your permission is laughable. If you feel you can be Commander, you can challenge me for it. Otherwise, you achieve nothing by this.”

Aiteal snarled, planting her forepaws in the churned earth. “Your general? I’m your equal. That was our agreement.”

“It’s not my problem that you’ve invented this role for yourself,” Rezann said flatly. “If you think you’re my equal, then challenge me.” 

Aiteal hesitated, her tail lashing. “I command an army, too, Rezann. Don’t forget that.”

“This is the best bit,” Bree whispered. “They think they can beat him. It’s awesome.” 

“I can take it from you,” Rezann said. He still didn’t sound remotely interested in Aiteal, or anything she was saying. It was as if he was disciplining another minor member of the cannon squad, or a janitor. 

“I dare you to try!” Aiteal spread her wings threateningly. Her spines quivered upright on her back with a sinister rattling sound. Reginald felt the tug as she summoned her disembodied shade spirits.

“Here it comes,” Bree said, their voice incandescent with glee. 

Aiteal drew herself up. Reginald flinched, his name fading, his connection to his body wavering again. 

Rezann held out a hand. With a supremely bored expression, he closed his fist on thin air, then pulled back. Aiteal crashed to the ground as if she’d been knocked by a hurricane. She struggled, gouging up tracks of earth, and Rezann approached. He drew back his other fist. 

She rose, wings spreading, but she was too slow. He punched her full in the snout. A crack echoed around the arena. Aiteal collapsed. 

The tug faded away. Rezann gathered energy and, without so much as changing his expression, ripped the control of the undead army out of Aiteal’s grasp. 

Air flooded into Reginald’s lungs. Fionnán gave a low snarl, his voice carrying over the exultant crowd, but he didn’t strike at Rezann. Perhaps he knew better. 

Aiteal rose and cringed away from the Commander, her eyes wide. 

“You can leave now,” Rezann said. “I don’t need your assistance any more.” 

~

It was hard to place a definition on ‘living’, but Reginald was almost certain that this was what ‘living’ was supposed to feel like. Perched thirty metres above the ground on top of one of the slowly-moving cannons, he could see clearly for leagues around.

He saw the faint, distant peaks of Dragonhome and the crystalline shards of the Starfall Isles. He saw thousands of soldiers from above, the advancing line of six cannons and the forty-eight guardians pulling them. There was so much to see. His still heart would have pounded had it been functional. 

Ever since choosing a name and pronouns for himself, he’d found it easier to tear himself away from the Shade hivemind, but he could never divorce from it entirely. The dim telepathic network still clutched at him, and a part of him was still an it. He was still compelled to follow the orders of Aiteal, relayed by Skydancer, but now he was actually aware that he was being controlled. 

That was something, at least. 

His memories of being a parasite were muddied now, but so different to this. With Leo he’d been caught under a dim canopy, surrounded by a few, familiar faces. Over here he was exposed beneath a swath of sky so large he’d wanted to hide from it, at first. And there were so many dragons! Living, mostly. The six-hundred strong undead horde seemed pitifully small beside the division soldiers. 

“Hey.”

He turned, leaning away from the railings of the aiming platform. The bandage around his neck made it impossible to simply glance around, but it no longer bothered him; he could hardly remember what it was like to have a functional neck anyway.

A living pearlcatcher stood a few paces away. They wore white rather than the army black, and they held a pair of metal cups. 

“Do you... do you drink water?” the pearlcatcher said, approaching the railings. They made the facial expression that Reginal recognised as a smile. “I saw you up there while I was getting something to drink, didn’t know you were one of them until I climbed all those steps. But I got you this, anyway.” They made the laughter sound. 

Reginald copied them - that was what you were supposed to do when someone laughed at you. The pearlcatcher’s smile died away. Perhaps laughing had been the wrong response. 

“Here,” they said, offering Reginald a metal cup. 

Reginald took it. A few of his fingers were broken, and one seemed to be missing entirely (unless three fingers was normal for a left hand - he wasn’t sure), but he had enough functioning digits to hold the cup. It was full of water. 

“Gods, you guys are creepy,” the pearlcatcher said. “Don’t you ever blink?” There was a lightness in their tone, though, quite different to the way the other soldiers tended to speak to the undead. 

“I don’t need to,” Reginald said. He dipped a finger into the water. The liquid texture made his mouth feel extra dry, for some reason. It made him think of the cold at night, a strong gale on his skin and in his hair. For a moment he could only stare, bewildered.

“I guess you don’t drink, either,” the pearlcatcher said. They leant against the railings and gazed out at the team of artillery guardians. The pace was slow to allow the rail workers to construct the tracks the cannons rolled on, and often the guardians had to stop to allow the rail workers to map out a particularly uneven patch of land. It would be weeks before those distant Dragonhome mountains were close enough to see properly. 

“I don’t need to,” Reginald said again. “Actually, it would probably fucking suck if I tried.” He traced a path down to his stomach. “Who knows what’s going on down here? I sure fuckin’ don’t. I’d probably spring a leak.” 

The pearlcatcher laughed again, moving closer. “I suppose you have a point - granted, I’m not used to dealing with reanimated corpses, but I could make an educated guess about what could happen if you tried to eat or drink.” They sipped from their cup with an enviable ease of movement. “I’m Bree, by the way, from the medical corps.”

“I’m...” Reginald hesitated. He hadn’t shared his name yet. To everyone else, he was an it. He forged on anyway. “I’m Reginald.”

Bree cast him a sideways look. “And is that the name of your body, or the parasite possessing it?”

“The body is dead,” Reginald said. “I’m not possessing anything - this fucker would be rotting in the ground if it wasn’t for me.”

“I suppose so,” Bree said. Their metal surroundings groaned and creaked as the cannon started on a broad curve in the track. “Though it looks like it never stopped rotting.”

Reginald turned his hands over, accidentally dropping the cup in the process. It dropped off the edge of the railings and sailed out of sight. Unconcerned, he indicated the stump of his missing finger.

“I’m pretty sure this didn’t smell as bad when we started marching.”

Bree laughed again. They sure did like to laugh a lot, Reginald thought warily, leaning away. 

“You all smell horrible, I’m sorry,” they said. “And if you are rotting, you’re doing it very slowly. Your general must have you in some suspended state, though maintaining it must cost her - unless the Shade part of you can keep the body from going off...”

“Uh...” Reginald just nodded. It seemed appropriate. 

“What’s under the bandage?” Bree said, pointing. 

Reginald touched off the thick bandage around his neck. It had been there for as long as he could remember, stained black in places by old blood. It had been pinned by a neat safety-pin when he’d first come to his senses and chosen his name, but now it was just roughly tied in place. He’d been too curious to find out what lay beneath and had unravelled the bandage himself, only to quickly and clumsily tie it up again when he’d realised his mistake.

“My severed neck,” Reginald said. He drew a finger across his throat. “That’s what killed this guy, I’m guessing. Head ripped off.”

Bree leant closer, their eyes wide. “And no one’s offered to fix it for you? Your head could just... fall off? That’s some oversight."

“We don’t matter enough for that,” Reginald said, shrugging. 

“You don’t?” Bree turned sideways against the railings, fully facing Reginald. “But Commander Rezann sees you all the time - only the most important dragons get to see him in person.”

“Rezann sees us?” Reginald said slowly.

“Yes, once every two days,” Bree said. “I see at least one undead dragon crossing the camp to his quarters, accompanied by your skydancer supervisor.”

“Oh,” Reginald said. Come to think of it, he did remember seeing something like that. Not in person, though - through the hivemind grid, he saw Skydancer approach and tell him to follow. If he concentrated, he could access the communal memories, see the dim pink of the interior of the Commander’s tent. Then... nothing. 

“I guess you’re too low-ranking for that?” Bree said.

“Do they come out, after?” Reginald said. “Out of his tent. Do they come out?” There was a sick stir in his chest, as if his heart was trying desperately to start beating again.

“I... actually, I don’t know,” Bree said. “I don’t remember seeing any of them come out, but I’m pretty busy, I might not have been around for it.”

That evening, when the cannons rolled to a halt and the camp began to settle, Reginald found himself among the undead horde at the base of the sixth cannon. The horde no longer dug in for the night - instead, the various undead dragons simply ceased to move for several hours, rousing again at dawn. 

Reginald couldn’t see well in the dark. He stood beside a comatose snapper and willed the distant army campfires to shed enough light to see by. The army camp buzzed with noise, but the horde stood in utter silence. 

Aiteal dropped from the sky, her wings thudding to a stop nearby. She was accompanied by Chancellor Rex, the living skydancer who acted as the camp administrator. He was recognisable only by his warm, living smell; his features lay in shadow. 

“This one,” he said, after a pause. “The Commander isn’t particularly hungry this evening.”

A smaller, bipedal corpse stepped forwards, driven by a command that rippled through the hive. Under Aiteal’s white eyes the undead dragon began to walk. The fragment of Shade within it didn’t kick up a fuss, following along in silence as Rex led it away, over the rails towards the centre of the camp. 

Aiteal settled down to sleep. Reginald remained where he stood, incapable of sleep, and watched the camp until the faint light of dawn reddened the side of the immense cannon. 

~

The forced march to the Starfall Isles took six days. The dead don’t transform, and only half of the army had wings. But corpses don’t tire, and a steady 24 hour march was enough to see the pink crystal spires breach the horizon after the sixth morning. 

The parasite walked with the rest of the bipedal troops. It moved in a daze, just another limb for the Shade to control, unaware of its surroundings. The lack of tactile feedback and the constant, rhythmic thud of feet drowned out everything, making the outside world recede into the vaguest impression of sunlight and dust. 

Desert turned to grass. The horde stopped as one, in silence. A faint crackle of magic roused the parasite. It tried to turn, but the thick bandage around its neck restricted its movements. It pawed at the bandage and felt the outline of the wound beneath. Its instincts told it that it should be breathless and its heart should have been pounding, but there was nothing. The body was as responsive as a lump of clay, where Leo had been so vibrant and bright and alive. 

Skydancer passed on the right. We are one, it said, a little admonishingly. There is no Leo here. 

The parasite couldn’t nod past the bandage. It broadcast its assent instead, clumsily, unused to telepathy. There was an entire psychic web stretched throughout the army, linking the bodies of the horde together. 

“Where are we?” the parasite said. It took a moment for it to find its tongue. An echo of taste flooded its mouth; dirt and sand, something old and dusty. It coughed weakly and felt something shift in its chest. 

With a frown, Skydancer turned away.

The rest of the horde pinned its many-eyed gaze on the parasite, silently warning it from further speech. It closed its dry mouth, then refused.

“No - I don’t understand,” the parasite rasped, more forcefully. “Tell me where we are!”

Skydancer approached, gazing down at the parasite. It spoke with words this time, though its voice was far smoother and less dead-sounding than the parasite’s. “We follow our mistress.”

We follow our mistress, the horde echoed. 

The parasite had to turn its whole body to scan its surroundings, its neck was so stiff. 

The horde had come to a halt on the crest of a hill. Far below, the land stretched away into a bewildering maze of tents and pavilions organised around the crystal spires. Everything was so neatly organised compared to what the parasite knew; these tents were arranged in strict grids. Trenches were dug into the ground around it. To the east, opposite the setting sun, was a line of enormous metal things, some kind of machinery. 

In the centre of the city-sized barracks was a larger structure, bigger and grander, and the banners that flew from it were purple and marked with moths. Noise rose from the barracks, a constant hum, and despite nightfall the roads between the tents were packed with dragons. 

The horde had begun digging itself in. The bodies would wait underground for Aiteal to call them.

The parasite’s first memory since the event involved clawing its way out of the dirt, surrounded by others doing so. It had no desire to go back underground. It wanted a bed, and the warmth of a fire - though it wasn’t sure if it could feel such things any more. The cold of the previous evenings had meant nothing to it, anyway. 

“Mistress,” Skydancer said suddenly, sweeping into a low bow. 

Aiteal approached from the west, the setting sun at her back. The parasite found that it could stare into the sunlight without suffering any harm, which was certainly preferable to staring at Aiteal anyway. It shrank back from her, the enormous power that menaced the air around her. 

“You haven’t had any trouble, I hope,” Aiteal said. Beside her was a second skydancer, but this one was alive. He held a clipboard and pen and seemed unwilling to approach the undead, half-hiding behind Aiteal. 

“No, mistress,” Skydancer said. It hesitated a moment. “I shielded the horde successfully, mistress. Could you... could you name me?” 

The parasite shifted closer, trying to be unobtrusive. So much for Skydancer’s we are one talk. It wanted its individuality as much as the parasite did. 

Aiteal gazed at Skydancer for a long time. Then she nodded. “Elliot,” she said, and the word rang in some distant part of the parasite’s body. 

Elliot bowed even lower, his feathers quivering with delight. “Thank you, mistress.” Already he seemed distinct, more alive than before (despite being literally a reanimated corpse), and his portion of the telepathic web seemed to fade. 

Aiteal gestured at the horde and addressed the living skydancer. “You see, they are all here. I have six hundred of them, of all breeds. This should be more than enough to sustain the Commander. But I refuse to let him have them if he can’t uphold his side of our bargain.”

“I see, well, that’s only to be expected,” the living skydancer said. “We’ll meet with him for our evening meal. Do the, er... does the horde need anything? Food of some kind?”

“No. They do not.” Aiteal turned to go.

The parasite frowned at her back, but its brief moment of cognizance seemed to be fading. It had to dig now, it had to return to the dirt...

Elliot watched Aiteal go, his longing suffusing the hivemind. As Aiteal left, Elliot dulled again. His thoughts turned outwards and he became Skydancer again. Nameless, part of the horde. 

Names are important, the parasite told itself. Skydancer had no power over its own name, but the parasite was different. The parasite hadn’t been in the horde longer than six days. 

It snatched a word from its borrowed memories. Something from Leo’s past, something to help it reconnect. It seized the first that came to mind. 

“Reginald,” it said. Its hands stopped scooping dirt and it sat back, at the edge of the hole it had unknowingly excavated. “What a fucking... what a name. Okay.” It shook its head, clearing it. What was it doing, digging like that? It wanted a bed. It wanted firelight. It wanted to find out what the fuck was going on in this strange landscape. 

it rose to its feet and strode down the hill. No one stopped it. No one even questioned it. Chanting the name like a spell under its breath, it descended into the edge of the encampment. 

There was Aiteal. She was still with the living skydancer, but now both were accompanied by a huge golden guardian, a dragon so big that he had to carefully pick his way over the tents. Reginald eyed the dragon warily - he was so big, and Reginald was so small. It didn’t know what kind of dragon it was now - a wildclaw, surely? But the lack of sickle claws told it otherwise. That hardly mattered any more, anyway, since it would never be able to shapeshift again. 

Workers and soldiers cast Reginald strange looks, but didn’t stop to question its presence. It trailed after Aiteal, close enough to hear what she said. She didn’t bother to lower her voice. 

“Yes, indeed. They are excellent labourers, though the older ones might need patching up before they get to work. I can restore their bodies to functionality.”

“Excellent,” the living skydancer said. “We’ll have them carrying our gear when we move, or pulling the cannons. The Commander will be pleased to hear of this - you see, his population of mages may suffice to sustain his body, but they are worthless when it comes to manual labour. We’d be killing two birds with one stone, taking on your undead.”

A sharp, shocking smell brought Reginald up short. It had just passed a long, open-sided pavilion that rang with the noise of plates and cutlery. The smell was... indescribable. Reginald ducked into the pavilion without hesitation, staring out at the food arranged on the long tables with greedy eyes.