They decide to try the remote manipulation spell that Dee bought at the gate to Vatramor. Sion and Nick huddle over the sheaf of papers, puzzling out the oddball guitar part implied by its leylines.

Reconstructing a spell is equal parts songwriting, geometry, historiography, and guesswork. The first time Nick managed it, he was addicted instantly. It’s captivating to chip away all the cruft and behold the masterpiece that hid in the marble. Witnessing an expert hand like Sion’s is a rare prize, he realizes. He’s learned two new spell-crafting techniques in as many minutes. Sion is a firm director, and he knows his value, but he’s surprisingly open to sonic experiments and Nick’s left-field proposals. The half orc finds himself craving those moments when Sion gives a little tilt of his head and prompts him to go on, Nicholas.

Dee and Anise occupy themselves with a sound-down jam; Anise tapping with her palms and Dee’s volume at a fraction of her usual roar. Between riffs they whisper between each other and giggle. Nick looks back. “What are you guys talking about?”

“About how big a nerd our boyfriend is,” Anise says.

Nick points his pen at her. “I’m gonna learn this spell and I’m gonna use it to hide all your shit when you’re not looking.”

“We’ll give this a try.” Sion ratchets a music stand downward to his petite height and rests the newly constructed tabulature on it. “Nicholas and I will take turns on the lead line versus the underlying chords. Anise, Diak’zinae, listen to the progression once and then in you come.”

“What do we play?” Dee asks.

“Your instruments,” Sion says.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a little stinker, Sion Benefice?”

“You’d be the first this week, packmistress.” Sion arpeggiates a minor 7th chord. “All right, Nicholas. G major. You take first lead. A-two, a-three, a-four…”

Nick Voraag and Sion Benefice launch into a blistering duet. Sion’s sound shines and glisters like a milky way; Nick’s burns and squalls like a forest fire.

Sion takes the chords and stretches them, his mouth pressed tightly together as he dances from one arpeggiated passage to the next. The ash elf’s tone would be harsh and brittle and downright unpleasant under the fingers of anyone but an absolute virtuoso. He makes it sound like the chimes of heaven. Nick unleashes his attack dog lead over and through the sunbeam tones, yanking on the leash during the lock-in and the breakdown. As they reach the end of the melody, Sion makes blood-red eye contact with Nick and mouths out the last three, four. Nick opens up with an air raid siren sustain in the closing measure, then drops into a crouching palm mute of the same chords.

Now it’s Sion’s turn to take lead. Though he stands stock-still as he plays, his fingers dance and twist with sinewy grace, pulling the line with them. What Nick played as a thunderstorm, Sion translates into a boreal wind blown from a razor peak, cold and cutting and mercilessly precise. “Do you have the progression?” he calls from the mountaintop.

Dee nods and dials the volume up on her bass. Nick’s misgivings, that Dee will take this expanded lineup of musicians and run her usual stampede over it, are laid to rest by her steady, pulsating root note. Anise shuts her eyes and nods her head, her slender wrists twitching with an air-drummed warmup before she pulls the ripcord and rolls her snare into pummeling action. Dee shifts over to match her, leashing her bass and swaying her hips to the kick drum. It’s a riot, seeing the dominant packmistress so attentive and obedient to Anise’s rhythm. Ani’s getting a kick out of it, too, puffing her chest out like an alpha as she performs a commanding switch-up and plastering a wry smile across Dee’s face.

Shoot, Nick’s forgotten to switch into the lead. He sticks to the chords for another go-around, the better to admire his girlfriends as they horse around. Sion gives him a look; he shrugs haplessly. And then, with the shock of a hose turned on him, he feels it. Already. Sion’s pulled him into the flow state. The weave is loosening; the threads unbind.

It’s the first time they’re casting this spell. It should not feel like this. The energy is immediate and brick-wall solid.

Dee twists round to face the guitarists, and her face glows with anticipation and excitement. She surely feels it, too. Nick spares a glance at Anise. The high elf’s mouth is ajar, her eyes full of incredulous wonder.

Nick braces. Sion’s going to use him as the vessel, he’s sure. He’s the one most used to magic, after all.

Then Sion does the impossible. No flickering lights. No spoken word. No vessel. It’s impossible. It’s not how magic works. He points at a sconced statuette, right hand tremolo-picking on an open string, and the fucking thing floats.

“What the shit!” Nick barely resists the urge to fling his guitar to the ground. “Benefice, how are you doing this?”

Sion’s playing falters. The statuette drops back into the sconce; its crooked staff chips.

Anise is wearing a thousand-yard stare. “I did magic.” Her voice is high and enthralled. “I did a spell.”

Dee’s beaming. “Yeah you did, baby girl.”

“Guys. Guys.” Nick’s mind is contorting. “This is not normal magic. This breaks all the rules. Magic needs power. Magic needs a vessel. This is—this breaks reality.”

Anise shakes her fugue state off. “Isn’t that what magic is for?”

“Nicholas is right,” Sion says. “There are certain immutabilities with the arcane arts. Or so I thought, once.” He turns to Dee. “May I take your mate from you for a while, packmistress? I’d like to permanently alter his paradigm.”

“Uh. Maybe.” Dee scratches her nose. “You want your paradigm permanently altered, Nicky?”

“I want to know what the hell is going on with this dude,” Nick says.

“Then you may follow me.” Sion opens the studio door. “And I’ll show you the secret of the Old World dragons.”

Quillbear enters an impromptu huddled conference. “This dude is so fucking ominous all the time,” Nick whispers.

“That’s just how he talks,” Anise says. “He’s nice.”

“I’ll take your word,” Dee says. “But if he sacrifices my mate to some kinda dragon god, I’mma bazooka his ass.”

Nick follows Sion from the practice room and further into the mountain. The ground beneath their feet develops into shallow stairwells; the lighting goes from electric lights to curious glass-bulbed gas lamps. The ceiling steadily lowers until there’s a bare inch above Nick’s head. His coiffe is dusting some of these doorways.

“As a condition of showing you this,” Sion says, “I swear you to secrecy. I’m under no illusions, you’re going to end up telling your lovers regardless, but swear them to secrecy as well.”

Nick absorbs a suspicious glance from a passing filter-masked Kamiyon. “If you’re swearing me to so much secrecy, why are you showing me this?”

Sion hesitates at a t-intersection, then leads them left. “Because your ambition and your inquisitive nature reminds me very much of one of my favorite people.”

Nick smirks. “Is it yourself?”

Sion holds up a willowy finger. “Further proof of my point. We are similar. I remember the deep frustration I felt while the answers I sought eluded me.” He bows himself past a pair of goblin guards with some quick Kyssaki. “Also, I’d like you to consider me a friend, so that the packmistress pays closer attention to my requests for additional pillows. I need one for my knees.”

Nick frowns. “Don’t you have, like, four?”

“The knee pillow has to be longer and less soft than the other pillows.”

“So you intend to keep traveling with us, even if your mistress doesn’t?”

“Someone needs to keep an eye on you,” Sion says. “Also, you have Mordsteel, and my waifu Neko-chan.”

Nick isn’t even going to ask.

The next door Sion takes him through is banded in iron. A dry, baking heat blows into their faces as it opens. Sion pulls a pair of work gloves from a peg by its inverse and slips them on. Nick follows suit.

A distant rushing roar sounds. Another metal door, and Nick understands the purpose of Sion’s gloves now. The surfaces here must be scalding. His thick winter clothes are sauteing him with sweat.

They emerge onto a catwalk hammered into the stone wall of a cavernous cylindrical chamber. The ceiling tapers into a darkened fissure. There is no floor, as far as Nick can tell. Just a drop into darkness. A billowing heat reaches them and fills Nick’s ears with the howl of wind. The catwalk ends at a balcony with an intricate crane assemblage hanging off its lip. Sion throws a lever on its console; with the clatter of chain link, it activates and winches something upward from the deep.

“This is some Silent Hill shit,” Nick says.

Sion nods. “It’s going to get weirder.”

From the dark emerges a cherry glow. A box hangs on the end of the chain. It radiates heat like an open kiln as it breaks the lip of the balcony. Sion takes hold of a handle on the crane and swings it inward. He lowers the box to the floor.

“Do you know what’s in there, Nicholas?”

“How would I know what’s in there, Sion?”

“My heart is in there.”

“That’s—Is that a metaphor?”

Sion shakes his head. “This is my heart. If you put your ear to my chest—that is not an invitation—you’d hear no beat.”

“Jesus Christ,” Nick says. “This is why dragons don’t have heartbeats. They don’t have hearts.”

“They do,” Sion says. “They just don’t keep them where you do. This is the secret to dragon magic. It’s how dragons—and I—may use seemingly inexhaustible energy. And how we may make ourselves our own vessels. We travel afield, but we leave our hearts here. Immersed in a thermal vent.”

“So you are drawing power. You’re drawing, like, volcanic power.”

“Indeed. As long as my heart dwells here, I can tap into the unending energy of the Old World itself.” Sion points to another ledge, across a rickety utility bridge. Nick sees a twinned balcony, another hanging chain. “Conna’s is over there.”

“How did you get your heart taken out and put in a box, man?”

“Magic, Nicholas. How do you think? The chest is etherwood. The same material my guitar is made from—the one that so shocked you when you played it unamplified. An extraordinarily rare element. Able to be enchanted and modified to keep my heart temperate and beating.”

Nick stares at the chest. You don’t know a goddamn thing about magic, he realizes. You thought you had a handle on it? You’re a medieval peasant looking at a supercomputer.

“I’d open the thing and show you the organ itself, but eh.” Sion waggles his palm back and forth. “I don’t love looking at it. It’s an existentially troublesome experience. Smaller than you might think.”

“That’s okay.” Nick feels unmoored, lighter-than-air. He feels as though the thermal winds could pluck him from his feet and carry him away.

“The dragons have forgotten more about magic than we will ever know,” Sion says. “Compared to their power, we’re squalling infants. Their secrets are guarded with the utmost jealousy. I am the first non-draconic apprentice a dragon bard has taken in recorded history. The things I’ve learned, and continue to learn. They’re groundbreaking. The bones of reality are laid bare before me.”

Sion’s hand rests on the vessel.

“So why,” he whispers, “am I so tempted to leave this world with Evan and Thekla and Kellax? What is this voice in me that whispers, turn from these mysteries; go play lead guitar with three horny idiots. Why, when my heart lies in this etherwood chest, in this place of unfathomable power, why do I feel the pull of Legendary upon it?” Sion straightens. His red eyes swivel and bore into Nick’s. “Tell that punk-rock polycule what I said and I will sorcerously disembowel you, Nicholas Voraag.”