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A small tug on his slumbering mind, light, nagging, insistent. It went ignored. What succeeded in waking him was the sudden fluctuation of magical energy at the vault seal. He tried to let himself drift back to slumber, but a familiar pull tugged his mind farther along toward full consciousness.

"Protect the heritage," it insisted, "Watch. Keep. Defend."

The seal held. The energy petered off and faded away. He let himself drift again. It was flare of residual magic, like atomic radiation, being released in a puff from the ground that had soaked up so very much of it during the war so long, long ago. Nothing more. Certainly nothing worth waking up fully and exerting the effort to go and check. He was always feeling so tired these days... Was it even day, or was it nighttime? Did the sun even rise and set anymore? It didn't matter. Not to him. Sleep... All he wanted to know was the blissful relief of sleep.

But the collar burned his scales, rebuking him for shirking his bound duty. The harder he tried to ignore the discomfort, the worse it got. The collar continued insisting, denying him any further rest. The discomfort evolved into pain, and the pain grew. Blearily, he sensed another flare of magic--no, not a flare. Too strong, too steady. Then it spent itself in a sudden discharge between two magical polarities, and he knew it for what it was. Rune magic. The seal held against the assault. Of course it did. It always did. And yet, the burning collar about his throat insisted that he be there, ready, waiting, prepared to defend at all cost should anything threaten the heritage given to his care.

He let a sigh of acquiescence trickle idly from his maw while he opened his eyes and pulled his feet underneath him. His stance quavered a little as he stood, forelegs trembling at the strain. Tired, so tired. He was young... he hadn't aged much at all, but his body was wearing so thin, and he knew it. He felt the strain all too keenly.

How long had his stomach been empty? How long since the last of the food had passed over his tongue? Water was so ineffectual for slaking hunger... and magic alone was an unwholesome sustenance.

Another surge. The seal groaned--not in a way as to be heard, but rather, he felt it resonating deep in the recesses of his mind. Wearily, he adjusted his wings against his flanks and stepped off of his bed, striding through the dimness of the cave. He didn't bother muttering the spells that would strengthen the lighting, even though he could scarcely see the floor in front of him, let alone the walls of the chamber he was in. This place, these tunnels, his charge and his home for so very long, he knew it well... perhaps better than even the ancients who had originally delved out the a vaults as hiding places for his kind from dangers only hollowly echoed in the oldest of tales.

The surge died. The seal still held, but somehow he knew that this breaker-in would not give up as countless others had. Somehow, he knew that the seal would give way, and he dared to let himself begin to hope. His pace quickened, taking him to the sealed entrance of his vault in the first run he remembered having for a long while.

Could it be? Could it really, truly be? Was the danger passed? Was he finally going be freed from this prison of safety? Had his kind at last returned to relieve him of his charge and reclaim the heritage they had sequestered here with him? He dared to hope, but the collar burned, nearly seething now. The runes marked in the leather began to glow softly with a low, urgent light. He blinked, dazed by the comparative brightness after hours of sleep and several minutes of cave-dark. The writ words of his soul-binding, tooled into the leather about his neck so long ago, ran through his mind as if in reminder, confusing him.

"Yours is our heritage, the life of our kind--the old life and new. Seek it out. Learn it. Know it. Keep it. Guard the heritage. Protect the heritage. Let no harm come to it. Ensure the continued thrum of our race through the ages..."

Another surge, and the words changed, only a select few sounding alarm in his thoughts over and over and over.

"Keep. Guard. Protect. Keep. Guard. Protect. Keep..."

Sitting down heavily, he snarled at the pressure exerted on his consciousness by the collar's invasion of his mind, fighting it, pushing it back.

No! No danger. They were returning. Everything would be fine now. Better. They would release him from his bind and he would at last be free of the oppressive weight on his soul. He had done well... he had watched over his charge and kept it safe. He had learned all of it that was given him, and knew it. He would be rewarded, surely, but all he desired was release. He wanted so dearly to leave this place.

There was one great, final surge accompanied by a voice shouting the name of the sigil whose magic had been invoked, and the seal shattered with a mighty, inward crash that rattled the bones of the earth down to the pits of hell without actually making any true sound at all.

Dust settled. Unbelievable silence fell. He blinked. The sunlight blazed through the tall, round opening as a great, white glare, but he knew it somehow as sunlight... vaguely, he recognized its warm caress on his scales. How long had it been since he'd seen the sun last? How many decades? Centuries?

Cool air rushed in as the last magics of the seal finally collapsed with a great sigh. He shrunk back, recoiling from the cold. How sharply it bit, how deeply it cut, how strange and bitter the contrast it had with the warm sunlight! Blinking again, his eyes began to adjust to the searing brightness. They gleamed pale silver in the daylight. The dazzling white outside was painful, but he refused to squint. Snow... Snow outside... or else quartzy foam, and snow made more sense. It was winter, then. So it was true what he had begun to suspect, how the climate would have--how it _had_changed.

A man stepped into the opening, and a fearful stone dropped into the suddenly opening pit in the dragon's gut. A man. Not dragons come to release him from his bonds, but a human come to kill and to take.

But, the man's weapon... it wasn't raised. Wasn't ready. Was he not expecting there to be a guardian? Or perhaps he meant no ill? Could things have changed so very much? It didn't seem impossible...

The man laid an arm across the threshold and leaned on it heavily, panting. A golden haired woman walked into view behind him, shouting something back over her shoulder as she did. It took the drake a moment to recognize the fact that she was speaking. It had been so long since he'd heard any voice but his own, and even his own he hadn't heard for a while. It took another several seconds for him to place the language.

Anglon? No... Once it had been, long, long before even the war and his sealing, before the mistake of emergence, but it had a different name, a more recent one, a name not of his native tongue. English. It was English. Damn. That one gave him trouble to speak, with so many rules and exceptions and pesky self-contradictions...

The man looked up and noticed him, but only stared blankly. He stared back. There was so much power in that man, so much vitality and heartfire that even among dragons his affinity would have been considered exceptionally strong. And the both of them--kin in power but only the drake knowing it--did nothing but stare. The woman made a fuss when she saw the dragon though.

"Dammit!" she yelled, a fierce light entering her eyes and a weapon flashing into each hand. "Bonddrake! Bonddrake! Dylan!"

The man roused as the dragon recoiled. The collar burned.

"Protect! Guard! Protect..."

Something flashed between himself and the man--either kinship or opposition flaring in invisible exchange between their eyes--and he sank low, crouching, preparing to outmaneuver the storm of steel and lead he knew was coming; dreading that he knew he hadn't the strength left in him to move swiftly enough. The man, though, stood up straight and, astoundingly, blessedly, turned and held his hands out to stop the woman.

"Wait! Hold up, Amber. Calm down a bit... just wait."

The woman--was her called-name Amber?--stopped and looked past the man so that she met the dragon's gaze. Her eyes were very blue in nature and color. Calm, serene, observant. Weapons were lowered, shoulders relaxing.

"Why isn't he attacking?" she asked, puzzled by the drake's inaction.

"Exactly. I passed the threshold after I broke the seal..." the man turned around and flicked his eyes over the dragon's form. "Not that he looks much in condition to be a threat, but I'm not sure he's interested in attacking us. He doesn't seem too eager in a fight."

"Kurag..." the drake tried, but shook his head, irritated, knowing they would not understand his own tongue. On top of that, his voice had come out as an underused croak. He tried again. "No."

It was a sandpapered rasp, like rusty hinges, but it was a little better. The two humans exchanged looks as three others joined them. Weapons raised, but the first man calmed them before they could get riled up, and the lot stood there peacefully upon the threshold.

"No," he repeated.

"What does he mean 'no'?" the seal-breaker said, looking to the elder of the two men who had just arrived, "Why does he know English?"

The drake looked at his forefeet, struggling to force the English words into sentences in his mind. To read, to hear, to understand was fairly easy... but seldom had he ever spoken the language, and never had he been required to do more than understand it... Using the words was a lot harder than knowing what they meant.

The collar burned him viciously, but he forced it into submission, suddenly emboldened against it. Why should he die? Why should he die if it might not be necessary? If they would steal or destroy, then he would fight or die, but otherwise...

He sighed. So long a time spent alone. To hear other voices was blessed. It cooled a part of his mind that he hadn't known was burning feverishly. Relief. Sweet, blissful. The sunlight was nice.

"I," he began, at last having enough of his thoughts arranged to begin speaking. His words were slow and halting, but his tone was smooth and certain of the meaning he wished to convey. "I am... weary. If you mean no ill, then I mean no ill. There is no food here. There is nothing but knowledge, my charge, books. Books and warmth."

He looked up and eyed the three men and two women carefully.

"It is cold outside. Deep winter. Long winter. There is warmth here... for... those who..." he folded in on himself a moment, searching for the right word. A strange, underused smile curved his maw. "...For friends."

The first man, the seal-breaker, the strong-mancer, stepped slowly forward.

"You're a bound guardian, the keeper of this vault, and you're offering us... hospitality?"

The drake's smile turned wry. "Such as it is. I said warmth, shelter; but there is no food here... Unless you eat books, but I doubt that you do, or that you would steal them. They are histories, folklores, legends, stories and tales and hatchlings schooling books... nothing of power or high magics or greater science."

He shifted and sat back down on his haunches. "I am weary. Thin. Very tired. If you seek shelter and mean no ill then I am glad of the company. I have been the only for very..." another pause as he sought better words. "...I have been alone very long."

The oldest man--who for some reason struck him as being very, very old--stepped around the rest and knelt, holding his right hand palm up before him in greeting and parley.

"Well met, friend," he said, "I am Daniel, called Dan. I have no secret names. What do we call you?"

The drake smiled softly. "You know much of my culture. I have not heard my called-name in such a length that I have forgotten it... But..."

He thought for a moment. Among human acquaintances, he ought to take a human name, but what language? German perhaps? Yes, German. There were few human books in his vault... so there were few human names he knew, but he liked the German ones best.

"Axel," he said. "You call me Axel."

"Well, Axel," Dan said cautiously, "I thank you for your offer. I hope you can understand our distrust. You see, the guardians of other vaults were far less friendly. This wouldn't have been the first time we'd had to..."

The man trailed, seeming to realize how much he'd said--and how much he'd nearly said. Axel marked fingers inching warily toward gunbelts, but he merely shrugged.

"Mine is only to protect and keep. If you mean no ill, then neither do I. Many other guardians went insane. I sensed the growing madness that dimmed the light of their souls... and I saw their soul lights go out and flee away when you or others extinguished them. You released them from their torments. It was a gift that you did. They rest now in the peace that was denied them."

He nodded thoughtfully, a small, distant part of him relieved at the increasing ease with which his English was coming. "If anything, I should thank you for releasing them. As for me, I've enough of my mind left to know better than to attack so pointlessly. As I said, I am a steward only of histories and heritage--of our culture. There is nothing here that I believe you would threaten."

His attention shifted to the landscape behind the humans. He couldn't see much, just snow and a few tree trunks... very great, wide tree trunks.

"The land has changed. How long since the first Shuddering Earth?"

"'Shuddering earth?' What are you..."

"The bombs. Your people, they used bombs that made the earth shudder for fear... they used the power of... tiny bits... particles... atoms? Nuclear? Yes, nuclear bombs, I think. The nuclear bombs, how long since those?"

The humans, oddly enough, looked with mild surprise to the old man, who shrugged and said, "I don't know the exact number of years. Four centuries or so, I believe, and somewhere in the middle of the fifth."

Axel nodded and sighed.

"More than four centuries. Fulderla*[1]*... how vague. It doesn't matter much I suppose. I remember the earth shaking, the searing brightness lighting the horizon, the poisoning of the earth and the air." A shudder rattled down his spine, shaking his thin body almost pathetically. "The land here was dying from the atom-poisoning when I was sealed. Four centuries... It feels like longer. The land cleansed itself very quickly though. I sensed the magic working, but I never thought it had done so much."

He was listlessly silent and thoughtful for a moment before seeming to jolt back to the present. "You are welcome here, and safe. There is a washroom and showers down this corridor, southward, both with warmed water. The entrance is marked; the sigil-mancer should be able to read it."

"Who, me?" the mage said, as if he didn't know of the power that surged ever through him, of the brightness of his heartfire. Axel had never seen a human whose soul shined with such light.

"Yes."

"Dylan... call me Dylan."

"And I'm Cara!" the other woman waved and called, smiling broadly, "And this guy's Ryan."

Axel turned tired, worn eyes on the one called Ryan and stared for a time before the growing weariness in his limbs bid him return to his resting place.

"There is foreign magic poisoning your blood, Ryan," he said simply. With an strange nod, he walked off to his left at a near limp and called back over his shoulder, "I'm very tired now. If you plan to kill me, please wait until I am good and asleep. Otherwise, I trust there's aught you will do amiss, and there are no traps set here, but please do reseal the vault. You've let in the cold, and fresh air is nice, but I like the warmth. Going south--this way--the first chamber to the left is large and warm and has blankets and such within it."

Facing forward again, Axel muttered a few terse words under his breath, and the crystals along the ceiling and walls lit up to cast a gentle blue glow. He nodded to the opening of the chamber he'd spoken of, but said no more. Let them figure it out on their own if they didn't understand. After fifty yards of corridor, he rounded the corner and let himself collapse onto his nest of blankets. So tired... so, so tired. His weary mind dropped quickly into sleep, and the freshened air, while colder, tasted sweet to him as he slumbered.

~~~

Axel next awoke to a very strange smell. It was pleasant, but it took him a long moment to place it, and even when he did, he dared not presume to hope. With some difficulty, he roused himself and followed the scent as he went to go check on his guests. He paused at that thought. After such a long time of solitude, he was jenalung, host, to jenaluun... guests. Even as he snorted at the difficulty he had with aligning his thoughts in English instead of his native tongue, he felt a smile on his muzzle. There was a strange warmth in part of his heart, a pleasant warmth. After a moment of allowing himself to mull over the thoughts and the unfamiliar warmth, Axel walked onward. Somehow, the drab bluish lighting seemed cheery on the smooth floor and gritty walls of his vault's tunnels.

He found them in the chamber he'd directed them to. It was a great, round, domed room near the entrance (which, he noted with considerable appreciation, they had put a ward over to keep away the cold and any prying eyes). An oddly smokeless fire had been lit at the center of the room. Within the flame was an edge of magic. The sigil-mancer was sitting cross-legged with a stack of books beside him, apparently enthralled as he read by the mingling light of fire, the crystals in the ceiling, and a crystal he had on a chain about his neck. The other two men were fairly near him, going over one of the very few pieces of literature the vault contained that were printed in English. Where the women were, he wasn't sure, not that he was terribly concerned about that. Over the fire, a sort of spit had been set up, though only a beverage pot hung from it.

A thick tension quickly draped itself on the air when they noticed that he'd entered, but the old man, Daniel, was swift to warm it away.

"Good morning, Axel," he said, nodding politely and gesturing to the pot over the fire, "Would you like some coffee?"

Axel's eyes widened, but Dan misinterpreted the expression.

"Don't worry, now. It's not books we're burning. That's a blazestone. No fuel required."

The dragon smiled and gave a light chuckle (the first true laugh he'd uttered in a while). "Worry none. If you had harmed any of the books, I would have known immediately. As for the coffee, yes, please. It's been a very long time..."

Daniel returned the smile and poured him a cup as he ambled over. Axel accepted the beverage gratefully and sighed after sipping it.

"Thank you. If you wish, there are kitchens here that you could use... There is no food, but there are stoves and cookwares and such, and everything should work still. I checked the stoves fairly recently... at least, I think it was recently. They left me with no way to mark the time, you know."

Another chuckle left his maw, this one awkward. He felt small next to the man. Standing up, his shoulder was as high as the man's chest... but the man was seated on the floor, so that wasn't very high after all. Had he really not grown at all since he'd been sealed? So he truly was magically locked into adolescence then. Another sip of the coffee banished such pessimism, and he sat himself beside the fire. Dylan looked up at him, blinking, as though he'd just pulled his mind from what he'd been reading.

"Is it alright," he asked, voice soft and dry sounding, "If I read these?"

Axel nodded. "So long as they go back where you found them."

"So," Daniel said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together for a moment, "I've never had the chance to ask about it, and I've been wondering for a while now... Axel, how exactly does this soul-binding thing work?"

He caught Axel's uncertain glance and added, "I mean, what was the thought behind it? I suppose I know all I really want to about the magical workings of it..."

Axel doubted that was the truth. In fact, he could see that there was great curiosity in the man's eyes, but it was just that: curiosity, honest and pure. Still, he was leery of explaining what little of such mechanisms he knew when he wasn't certain he trusted these humans just yet. They were obviously vault raiders, after all, whether they threatened his charge in particular or not. So he settled for answering the second question.

"Youth were bound to the vaults and sealed in. If the worst happened on the surface, our kind would live on underground as we'd done for millennia already. That was the idea, at least..."

The man with the poisoned blood, Ryan, set a plate of what was obviously food (by the vivid and heavenly smell) in front of Axel.

"Hardly a way to live," he said, smirking, "You look half-starved, and then starved the other half and half-over again... Twice starved and hungry."

Axel glanced down, surprised, at the plate. The smell... meat... venison it was, if memory served, and seasoned well. His mouth watered.

"Swa, swa," he said, slipping into his native tongue for a moment, "Yes... very. _Delunjenar thuluun! _ God bless you! Thank you."

Ryan nodded. "You're welcome. It seems right, us in your home, eating, that we ought to feed you too. I'm a bit curious too though... How exactly is that living on--as a race, I mean? How are you even alive?"

Axel swallowed the bite he was chewing before answering (and ilkned-torr! It was like heaven had alighted on his tongue! ...even though he was fairly certain he'd been wrong about it being venison). A strange, weak chuckle slipped from his chest, such that even he wasn't sure how to interpret it.

"I'm alive because the soul-binding holds my spirit in my body. The magic lends a little strength, enough to breathe and move and keep my heart beating."

He looked himself over. When had he grown so very frail and gaunt? Had the luster of his scales really faded to such a dull tone? They had been a rich, vivid orange color once, but now they were mostly grey with only faint hintings of a rusted ruddiness, more like an echo or a memory than actual color. Rusted... that was a good word, if rust could be dull and grey. Another slow sigh fell from his mouth to the floor.

"Hardly a way to live, I agree. I've thought that for quite some time now--hardly alive. I haven't grown much, you know. Hundreds of years, and I've only wasted away, still an adolescent. I've often wondered if I'll be a _scraelung_one day, just a tired, broken spirit bound to a pile of animate bones because everything else has faded to dust."

A smile piqued his muzzle and he took another sip of coffee.

"But that is a long, long way off yet. I'm sorry though, I've rambled. It's been a long while since I last had to converse politely. What was the first question?"

"How is that living on as a race, with you just fading like that and there only ever being the one of you? There's no... replenishing the earth, so to speak?"

Axel's smile died and his eyes dimmed.

"Just the one..." he murmured, running the words over his tongue with great softness and care, as if they were coated with pins. He shook his head roughly and gave a sad, sad half-smile that quickly faded to a frown.

"It isn't. There was supposed to be. There was another here with me, once. Please don't ask me about that. It is _shetrelkna..._very sad. Very difficult..."

He shook himself and moved on. "'Replenishing'--if I understand you right--was impossible anyhow, because the magic prevents growing as well as aging, and we were not yet matured--if I may put it delicately thus. Our kind was desperate. Bindings were so hasty and frantic, the magic so new, no one realized that we wouldn't grow and mature because we wouldn't age at all. There would be... no... no children... no offspring, only us. Only us. Only me... and then to just fade anyway..."

He trailed and folded inward for several minutes, searching himself with a quiet introspection. Heavy, sad. No one interrupted him, which was well, as he had quite forgotten their presence. The past--what was, what might have been, what could never be--the past occupied his thoughts, and lamentation filled his heart with a painfully heavy weight. Her name welled up in his throat, her secret name, the name she had entrusted him with the day before they were sealed together in the vault. He wanted desperately to release it, to cry it out over and over until it echoed distally through the tunnels in a mighty noise of lamentation, but he could not. So many times, he had groaned that name--so very many long stretches of his endless night of solitude he had filled the air with it... so many times he'd begged forgiveness, so many times he'd prayed for the impossibility of another chance. He knew that if he uttered that name again, his sorrow and guilt would tear his soul apart, and so he sat, silent, tears gleaming dully in the firelight as they ran down his muzzle and fell to the stony floor.

After a time, when the pressure of heavy memory became too great to bear, Axel began to sing, soft and listless and very slow, apparently unaware that he could be heard. He sang in English, but it was very old, strangely ancient in sound and accent. Yet, the meaning was sharp--crisp and present and very real. Poignant. His song carried profound and deep sadness in its sound and in its words and in its slow, somber rhythm. The melody's chords were simple, but very heavy.

"I, with ancient knowledge wizened, made weary by wisdom's long keeping:

The world I see with listless eyes, so long estranged I have forgotten wind and trees and sunlit glow;

Lost and tired, and long awaiting sweet release from soul-bound burden.

So much I've seen and much more known, yet no good therewith might I do.

I've not the will: that has passed with the ages--Ages passed unseen by me...

Ages I might not have borne unhelped upon my trembling shoulders.

Bound eternally shall I be, anon ground 'neath the lonely march of years.

My mind shall crack as my body fades, till finally soul's temple crumbles.

Fallen to ashes and dust of ashes, my soul-bind still shall hold,

My spirit left alone to watch, to watch and keep what is my charge.

Forever then shall last my torment, for my one failure--my one loss.

My grief and guilt, one and the same: that who was dearest I could not keep."

No one spoke, nothing moved. No breathing could manage to stir the heavy air, though breathe all did. Hopeless grief squeezed Axel's heart with cold, cruel talons. His head was hung low, lowering still further in shame and agony. The desire to die swelled in his chest, breaking the final strands of his will, and he laid down. Dimly remembering the humans, he shifted and rested his head on the floor. The collar scorched his neck as the idea crossed his thoughts, but he asked anyway. Physical pain could not touch his mind any longer. His voice was very small, small and frail and ancient. Dark with the weariness of centuries.

"Would you kill me if I asked it?"

No one answered him. He closed his eyes.

"Please... tell me if you would."

He heard Dan shift nearer to him.

"I'm sorry," the man murmured, "I'm sorry that we brought such hard griefs to your memory. I'm sorry for your shetrelknagala."

So much pity in those words... empathy. Without having to read his eyes, Axel knew the man had used the dragonish word for deep heartbreak because he'd known that there were no English words strong or deep enough. That understanding, that empathy, that effort of reaching out, rewove new threads in Axel's spirit, giving him enough will to lift his head and look at the old man. Those blue eyes were, indeed, very old. Like his own, he realized, Daniel's eyes were far older than his body, as though he too had been kept unnaturally back from aging. There was not the same weight of years seen behind them, but a great span of loss and separation, as though he were a long way out of his own time.

"You bear your own as well."

Dan gave a slow nod. "Yes, I do. The bombings did not discriminate who they took, or how slowly."

Axel sat up, feeling stronger in spirit for the strange kinship of troubles between the man Daniel and himself.

"Swa... Nor how suddenly."

He took a deep breath and released it in a long, slow puff. On the breath, he tongued the name that he had given to her, the loved-name known only and ever between she and he. That was enough release that he felt somewhat better, more rational, serene. Peaceful, if melancholic. His face relaxed, his eyes somber but strong, like weathered and timeworn stone that would stand at least a while longer. A new thought prodded his mind, a slow, inquisitive suggestion that he somehow knew came from somewhere else.

"Are there any of my kind outside of the vaults? Or have we dwindled away."

"There are some," Dylan said, "A number of settled groups and many that wander about."

"Is there still a war? Not that I mean to take part, but are our kinds still at odds?"

"So far as we've seen? Most have forgotten what happened," Dan answered, "and few have the zeal left in them for purposeless conflict. There is tension, but no war."

A mixture of confusion and personal hurt twisted Axel's expression.

"Have they forgotten the binded then? Why haven't they unsealed the vaults? Why haven't they released us? I thought... a few times, I thought I sensed them, their magic... but..."

There came no answer, only pitying stares.

"So they have forgotten then." He sighed. "They remain, but unfaithful. That explains why the support of the magic has lessened so much, if only my end holds the spell in place."

The land had healed, the war had passed, and still they had not come. The elders had not upheld their oath of remembrance. They had allowed dragonkind to forget the children in the vaults. Something akin to anger surged up within him--offence, bright indignation. He reached up abruptly with a forefoot and hooked a talon around his collar, muttering sharp, quick words of power that made the bind-runes glow again.

"I could be free now, if I chose. I could tear the binding away and it would fall into nothing."

The fire in his eyes died down as suddenly as it had flared though, and he sighed, looking with a wry smirk down at the plate of food before him and lowering his forefoot back to the floor.

"But I think that would be unwise. The magic is still what sustains me right now." Axel looked up again at Daniel. "The wish for death has passed... and I do not wish to suffer through a death by centuries of starvation packed into a single instant anyway."

A small, hopeful smile began to soften the hardened line of his mouth, slowly working it into a curve.

"You are travelers," he said, "seal-breakers, vault-seekers... were it not for the forgetfulness of my own race, I would have to even say that you are thieves... but my kind betrayed those they charged with guarding their past greatness, and therefore, I've no zeal for the charges of other guardians anymore, no conviction. I have a proposition for you."

"What would that be, my friend?" Daniel asked, shooting Ryan a glance that clearly told him to stifle his indignance. Stifle it he did, though Axel could understand it somewhat. He had rather flippantly just stated that they were thieves. It would, in fact, have worried him if such a statement hadn't caused them to feel that their honor had been slighted.

"Stay here a while," he said. "Give me time to regain natural strength until I can break my binding with little fear of collapsing myself. Then, when you're ready to move on, let me come with you."

He paused and took a sip of coffee. The drink was rather cold by now, but still quite pleasant as far as he was concerned.

"I have brothers and sisters in bondage that still live. I can see the lights of their souls glimmering from far off. Many of them have ceased to hope, and some are slipping into madness. When we were bound, the elders over our binding swore an oath that they wouldn't let our kind forget about those of us they had sealed away, and that when the war was over and the land had healed, if there was any of our kind that remained, they would return and release us. The only conditional part of the binding hinged on that oath. If they broke it, then it would be our choice whether to remain bound or to go free."

"So..." Dylan said, "You want to be like an ambassador on the behalf of any bonddrakes we find in the vaults we crack open? Let them know that they don't have to stay bound?"

Axel finished chewing a bite of meat and swallowed.

"Yes, exactly. I think that many of them would choose freedom if they knew they could have it. Their lives could be saved and regained that way."

The younger woman, Cara, abruptly sat down beside Dylan, startling him slightly.

"You look oppressed enough to have a right to revolt, I'd say."

Axel gave her a queer, uncertain look.

"Not revolt, really. There doesn't need to be violence."

"But what if they stopped adding the condition after they bound you?"

"That wouldn't matter much, as I was near the last to be bound. They also swore that all of the bindings would have the same conditions, except concerning the particular things being guarded and kept. The magic itself was established with that rule, so they couldn't have changed it anyway."

"Oh."

Axel glanced about the chamber, but only the four humans and book-lined walls met his sight. Where was the fifth?

"There was another woman... Amber, I believe. Where is she?"

"Oh!" Cara exclaimed, jumping to her feet, "She was there with me when I walked in. She went to go clean the gyrbear we bagged probably... I was going to help her with that, but I absolutely forgot."

She jogged across the chamber, headed for the vault's entrance. Just before she rounded the corner out of sight, she called, "That was a beautiful song by the way, Axel!"

The sounds of her boots hitting the stone floor echoed back, fading slightly before they stopped entirely. Faint conversation drifted in, but it was very quiet, and Axel doubted any of the humans could hear it. The remainder of them seemed to shift uncomfortably for a moment, except for Dylan, who returned to his reading with a brief, unintelligible murmuring. Axel laughed.

"That's right, I was singing in fairly modern English wasn't I! Such a hard, confusing language compared to old Anglon, I always thought. Durilna loved it though, the old and new. She thought it flowed with an exotic sort of poetry..."

His smile fell away as he realized that he'd said her name. The weight of a stone dropped into his gut. For several seconds, he stared into the eyes of each human in turn, seeking, sifting, reading them to the best of his ability. Then he sighed and hung his head. When he looked up again, there was a very taut smirk on his face, his brow knit and furrowed. Ryan and Daniel stared. Dylan looked slightly book-dazed, but he likewise stared. Only Daniel seemed to have any notion of just what had suddenly made Axel so uneasy, so the drake looked at him when he started to explain.

"That was the name... the name I gave her. The name I called her. We were close long before we were bound."

Strangely, wonderfully, the memory for once felt good to think on. Relaxing a little, he let a small smile rest itself again on his muzzle.

"She... she liked the way the new English sounded. I hated it. Too many rules with too many exceptions. Old English, Anglon, was more orderly... I liked that. But she..." Axel blinked, and a tear managed to escape and run down over his cheek. He missed her so dearly. "She never could stand such strict order. The newer English was like freedom to her."

He laughed and shook his head. "I'm sorry... I need to stop. There is a sacredness in such memories, and the sweetness of them is mingled with pain. Please... that name, her name, was given in sacred trust. It was between the two of us alone. It was secret, sacred... intimate. I wish I hadn't spoken it..."

"We'll respect it, Axel, and leave it unspoken and unused," Dylan said.

"Thank you."

He nodded gratefully before shifting his posture and deciding it was time to change the subject.

"What of yourselves? I've told much of my tale. What would you tell me of yours?"

He was pleased to find that the three had a wealth of stories that they were happy to tell. For a time, he was able to forget mourning the passing of the old world and lose himself in tales of the new. It was a strange world, sad, changed, healed but still hurting. A familiar restlessness settled in his bones, but this time it came with a sense of eagerness and anticipation. Maybe, perhaps, once he was finally free, this great, wide world would give him a chance to live, to breathe.

A strange foreboding found him as well though. There was much to be changed, he felt, and much that would surely stand against him. How much would he lose? How much could he gain?

Far, far away, he watched the soul-flames of other guardians flickering in their vaulted darkness. There had been no hope visible in those flames for a so very may years. He wondered if, perhaps, they too still looked from time to time at their compatriot's distant heart-fires. He hoped they did, and that perhaps they would see the hope slowly rising to life in his.

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[1]Dragonish exclamation, literally, "very vague," or "how vague"