Zoe Silvershield was a paladin.

She had sworn herself to the protection of the innocent. She had vowed to oppose injustice and oppression, to do kindness and mercy everywhere, to strengthen the weak and humble the proud. She had taken these oaths and never once failed in them. Her name was known wherever she passed, from the mountains to the sea, as true and faithful a paladin as there was.

She just didn't have a divine patron to swear those oaths to. Her natural talents had gone in other directions. Her sword arm and magic blessings were empowered by a demon that she had summoned and bound and pacted in what technically qualified as “demon-mongery”. She didn't tell anyone this because it was irrelevant.

She was a paladin! She served justice without faltering. Explaining the petty details would just distract people.

She arrived in the village of Selsea to find it in an uproar. This was not unusual. She went where the trouble was, guided by instinct and rumour and the hissing whisper of Melushabael’s voice in her mind. She arrived to uproar and left to celebration—usually well before the celebration had finished, slipping out into the night. Melushabael always urged her to partake, to eat and drink and rut as proffered, but Zoe found the gratitude discomforting. It was her calling, no less than theirs were theirs, and she moved on as soon as politeness and distraction allowed. There was always more trouble out there. The life of a paladin.

Selsea’s troubles had been heard far and wide, the news spread by travellers and traders and, as she got closer, refugees. A dragon had come to the village, demanding tributes in flesh and blood, and had taken them. Twice again it had returned, and taken more of the villagers with it. No one knew what the dragon had done with them; no one knew if it would return a fourth time, although plenty of the villagers had decided not to remain to find out. The neighbouring villages were terrified it would come for them next, and in general there was terror and panic of the sort that Zoe was long familiar with.

She was also familiar with the spasmodic, irrational joy that greeted her arrival, which made her even less comfortable. She knew she cut a fine figure walking down the high road to Selsea: a tall, heavily built woman in armour of gleaming silver, with white-gold trim. (She disliked the showiness of the armour, but her gear was Melushabael’s province and the demon loved showing off, and she couldn’t stop them.) Not good-looking as such: her nose was broken and set wrong, her lips were scarred and split, her curly black hair, which when she was young had been finely braided, was now cropped indifferently short. But her torn lips smiled, and she knew people looked at her and saw a hero, even before they saw a paladin.

She was a hero, a hero had come, that’s what the children were shouting as they rushed her on the last part of the road to the village, and she thought gods and spirits, there are still children here?. Not that it mattered to her resolution; slaying an evil dragon had been her duty since she first heard of it, but it was a firm confirmation that she was where she needed to be, right now. They took her gauntleted hands and she let them lead her into the village.

In the main square, villagers were gathering to greet her—far too few for the size of the village, but then, many had fled and more had been taken. They were all-but-vibrating with excitement at her appearance.

“Sir,” said an older man who was presumably the village headman, “we are so very grateful you have come, in answer to our pleas.”

“Zoe, please,” said Zoe, who was not a knight.

"Sir Zoe," said the headman, and Zoe stifled her wince while Melushabael laughed. "All we have is yours, while you await the Golden Wyrm."

That got Melushabael's attention. "Take their meat, and barley beer, and that hot villager to the side, there," they urged, and Zoe could feel for a moment the reflection of the demon's hungers in her belly and loins. She ignored it, and them, with the weary ease of long practice: no one else could hear the demon, of course. "All I need is bread and cheese, if you can spare it, and an hour or three in the village spring or bathhouse, for meditation and prayer."

"Of course!" said the headman, and there was a flurry of activity as the villagers went off to get, doubtless, the best they possessed—and Zoe hadn't even set eyes on the dragon yet, let alone slain it or rescued their lost compatriots. The headman led her to a small wooden shack by a stream that turned out to be, indeed, a two-room banya. She was at least able to carry some of the water into the bathpit herself, although the headman and the other villager who had followed insisted that they would do it for her. Then they left for her privacy and to heat the stones in the little fireplace beside the bathhouse.

Zoe, still in full armour, set down her sword and pack, and climbed into the bath. The riverwater was frigid, but she didn't mind it. "Ascetic maniac. You do the cold plunge after the sauna," said Melushabael, with what for them almost amounted to fondness.

"I don’t mind either way, and I need the bath,” replied Zoe. Then she spoke a word of unbinding and her armour and underclothes undid themselves and dropped into the water, leaving her naked in the bath.

Steel, even good steel, would rust and wear under treatment like this, worn for weeks at a time and then dumped into an adequately-clean bath with her. And before that, the ceaseless abrasion of the metal, never removed or adjusted, would tear first her clothes and then her flesh to ribbons. But the steel wasn't steel, or wasn't only steel anyway, and Melushabael sank around her in a dozen pieces. The inside of each piece was packed dense as a manuscript with sigils, a library of invocation binding the demon to the metal and to her. She sank into the water too, alone for once with her thoughts.

She did, in fact, meditate a little, although she did not pray—she knew of no god that would take her, and didn’t need their aid, as such, when she had Melushabael. She watched the plates drift slowly in the still water of the bath. The sigils were as familiar to her as her own name, and she checked them methodically. Melushabael's bindings and pacts were the most important thing she possessed (not that, as a mendicant paladin, she had much in the way of worldly goods). They were all intact, of course. She would have noticed if they weren't, and Melushabael would have noticed before that. Just the usual wear of strong imbued magic slowly running down: she summoned her own little trickle of inherent summoner magic, and set to reinforcing them. The bathwater glowed with reflected light.

"Is that your divine power?" came a voice from behind her.

Zoe turned. A young girl, probably not more than seven or eight, was holding a hot stone in a pair of beaten copper tongs. "Careful with that!" said Zoe, without thinking. The girl laughed at her and dumped it into the boiler in the back room. Steam started to fill the other room of the banya. "Yes," she said. "I'm blessing my armour in preparation for the struggle ahead."

The girl came back into the outer room to look. The writing lining the inside of the armour glowed brighter again as Zoe set her will back to it. She wasn't worried about the girl seeing it: if the girl had the native summoning talent to instinctively recognize the bindings, it was practically incumbent on her to take her on as an apprentice and train her to use her power responsibly and for good. But of course she just gawked at the magical light.

"Who's your patron, then?" asked the girl.

"Melushabael," said Zoe, who tried not to lie if she could help it, especially to children. "They're… minor and local. Probably not in the Selsea pantheon."

"No," said the girl, still looking at the glowing armour-plate. The light gradually faded again as Zoe finished. "What's it like being a paladin? I want to be one when I grow up."

Zoe's heart ached. Happy is the land that needs no heroes, she thought, as she usually did in this circumstance. And while most of the children who asked her about being a paladin would, like their parents before them, go on to live as farmers or potters or fisherfolk, Zoe knew that if the girl still wished to offer her strength when she was a woman, it would certainly still be needed.

"It is… hard," she said. "Travelling all the time, danger and death always close to you, and injury certain." She rubbed an old scar over her shoulder. "You are gifted strength and magic, but as a trust for others. It's not yours. There's nothing, really, that's yours—everything I have in the world is in this bathhouse right now, and I live off the kindness of strangers and the aid of my patron." She looked up at the girl, who was looking a little shocked. "And I help people. Every day, I can say I have put my shoulder to the wheel and made the world a better place. That is enough for me. It would have to be enough for you."

"I want to help people," said the girl, with the certainty of youth.

"Keep that in your heart, then. A god will call you, or a spirit, or another paladin will pass this way; or you will simply feel the need in your bones, and wander the earth and do good, and find a patron on your own." Or, more likely, none of those; but if she did keep that desire in her heart, then even if she stayed here as a villager she would do all that Zoe could expect or ask of her.

“I will,” said the girl. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” said Zoe, and meant it. “But I need to finish my prayers, and my bath. Could you leave and keep the others out for a while?”

“Of course,” said the girl, happy to have been given a task by her hero.

The back room was warm now, and the air was steamy. She climbed out, and enjoyed the warmth of the banya for a minute or two, then set to hauling Melushabael back out of the bath. The soaked clothing and armour went on easily—the pact meant that they were, metaphysically, supposed to be on her—and she spoke the words of binding and the armour was sealed and comfortable and dry around her again.

“What did I miss,” said Melushabael. “Aside from you finally having a nice bath and leaving me out of it.”

“You had a bath too.”

“I can’t feel anything when I’m not bound to your fucking mortal flesh! You know that perfectly well! So get out there and make it up to me by eating something rich and decadent!”

Zoe sat on one of the small wooden benches near the boiler and breathed in hot wet air. “And a girl came in. Wanted to be a paladin.”

“Oh, empty fucking throne, you gave her one of your awful speeches, didn’t you.”

“I wasn’t going to lie to her. And I won’t eat these people’s best food. I haven’t even done anything for them yet.”

“Right, the dragon.” The demon’s perpetually-acid voice was uncharacteristically sober. “Do you have a plan?”

"Find its lair, or meet it when it comes here, as the case may be. Get it to stop and return the villagers, if they're still alive, and slay it, if I have to."

"Zoe," said Melushabael. "It's a dragon."

"I know that," said Zoe. "But these people have nothing else but us. We have to try."

"I've never faced a dragon before. But I know they're more powerful than me."

"Well, we'll just have to hope it's not more powerful than us."

"Fuck," said Melushabael.

Zoe stretched and left the banya. Her armour was dry—unnaturally so, though the villagers likely wouldn't notice—but her hair and forehead were still sodden. Outside, the girl was waiting with a dry rag. She seemed surprised that Zoe had dressed and left without drying, but Zoe took the rag gratefully and mopped her face. The headman was also there, with a wooden tray with some torn bread and a soft greyish cheese. Zoe took that gratefully too, settled down at the foot of a tree near the bathhouse, and started eating it.

“This is pretty good,” said Melushabael. “I think I win: you didn’t tell them out loud not to bring you the good stuff.” She ignored them, as she usually did when they were simply taunting.

“Thank you,” she told the headman, through a mouthful of bread. She swallowed and raised her head. “I swear here, above the broad earth and beneath the wide sky, before you and before my patron, that I will protect this place and all in it from the Golden Wyrm. I further vow that if your friends and neighbours taken by the dragon still live, I will find them and rescue them.”

“As if you hadn’t decided to do all that already,” said Melushabael.

“It is important to them that they hear it,” she retorted, “especially now that I’m eating their best cheese.” And then, out loud: “Does the dragon come at night?”

“No,” said the headman, “every time it has come it has come at dawn.”

“That makes it straightforward then,” said Zoe. “I will spend the night here and wait for it if it comes tomorrow. If not, point me in the direction of its lair and I’ll find it during the day.”

“Of course,” said the headman. “Any bed you wish—”

“I’m fine spending the night here,” said Zoe, smiling and reclining against the tree.

“Fuck you. Fuck you,” said Melushabael.

“The dragon is coming,” hissed Melushabael, urgently.

Zoe was back to full alertness instantly—so quickly, in fact, that it hurt, being dragged out of sleep in a heartbeat rather than even a second or two of natural awakening. But Melushabael had done what she’d asked, had warned her of the dragon’s approach, and they couldn’t exactly wake her in a more natural manner. “Thank you,” she said, her head spinning, and started running to the village square.

She saw the dragon too, before she got there. At the moment, it was a spark of golden light in the distance, but growing rapidly. It was definitely coming towards Selsea. She reached the square just as the dragon did, landing with a grace that belied its enormous size.

It looked very little like the dragons she'd seen in heraldry or art. Its body was thick around, and short (proportionally: it was probably ten yards snout to tail). It had two wide pairs of wings, and three pairs of stumpy legs. Its face was flat and almost squashed-looking, like a spiky, horny reptilian bulldog. It had a dozen beady little golden eyes in two neat rows, each one glowing gold and dripping brightly-glowing golden liquid like tears down towards its jaws. Zoe stared at the liquid light for a moment before Melushabael, straining with exertion, managed to grind out "don't look in its eyes, idiot!"

Zoe tore her gaze away, stared at its clawed right frontmost foot instead. The dragon laughed, a joyful and good-humoured laugh that somehow twisted a knife of inadequacy and self-loathing in Zoe's brain. "Are you the one whom the village has brought to defend them, little summoner?"

"I am," she said. "I am the paladin Zoe Silvershield."

The dragon laughed again and Zoe's gut churned with disgust. "A paladin, then? What order took you and your demon pet in?"

"It’s trying to get in your head," said Melushabael, their voice still tight with effort.

Zoe understood that. It was just hard not to be drawn into arguing with it. Which was what it was trying to do, but— "You will take no more people from this village. You will return those you have stolen."

"Will I now, little summoner?" Stars and stones, its laugh.

"You will. I will make you leave," she said, with a confidence she did not feel.

To her surprise, and Melushabael's, the dragon chuckled and said "of course, Zoe Silvershield the paladin." The way it said her name was somehow even worse than its laughter. "Follow me, then, and I will return your missing villagers to you."

The dragon took off with one vast beat of its wings and headed north. Zoe sprinted after it. There was no time to speak to the villagers: the dragon was luring her away for gods knew what purpose, but if she was going to stop it she had to hunt it down and it wasn't like it could lose her in the cloudless sky and return to the village without her noticing. It was outpacing her, though.

"Speed and endurance," Zoe said, and the armoured greaves on her legs burned red-hot for a moment.

"You stay for a full day after we defeat the dragon," demanded Melushabael, as Zoe suddenly sprinted at double speed after the dragon. Blue light spilled from the armour’s joints at her knees and ankles.

"Yes," agreed Zoe.

"You eat every food they put in front of you and drink until you need me to hold you upright."

"Yes. Keep me in sight of the Golden Wyrm."

"I'm doing that," said Melushabael, with satisfaction. The paladin's killing pace had not flagged in the slightest.

It was, in fact, hours of running over rough moors north of Selsea. Despite her speed, the dragon gradually widened the distance between them, but every so often it would turn and watch her pursuit for a while. It was too far and too high to be more than a glittering speck, and its face was rigid with scale anyways, but she could feel its smirk on her as she laboured through creeks and over outcrops.

It was nearly evening by the time the dragon dipped suddenly towards a rise in the moor. She could have guessed that was its lair: it too was softly golden against the deep green of the moorland. She slowed a little. There was a flash of heat in her legs again and then the slightly numb feeling of Melushabael's endurance faded. The demon needed no time to recover—their magic was powerful with this pact and more so with every trade Zoe made with them—and of course Zoe felt exactly as rested as she had when she started running this morning.

As she approached the hillock she realized, with an unsettled feeling, that it was not, or not only, a mound: it was a barrow. At the front a megalithic arch framed a passage leading in: gold light shone from within, a watery, rippling light that itched to look at. Zoe wondered if the dragon had chosen this place as its lair simply for convenience, or out of deliberate spite for a sacred space. As she got closer still she realized it didn't matter: it had desecrated it either way. The pictographs on the lintel were shining brightly, and each and every one had a golden dragon inserted into it.

At the very entrance there were a man and a woman, both naked. They looked a little like the villagers of Selsea, but brimming with health and vitality. Both were tall and well-muscled, with clear skin and white teeth and flowing hair; it looked like neither of them had worked a day in their lives. Their hair and lips and nails and nipples and genitals were all stained a softly gleaming yellow. Both pairs of eyes were gold, and thick golden light ran down their cheeks like tears.

“Greetings to you, Zoe Silvershield,” said the man, and the woman smoothly continued “and your patron.”

“Release them, wyrm,” said Zoe.

“Release who?” asked the woman, smirking. “We are happy here, with our owner and master,” said the man, smirking.

Zoe put her hand on her sword, though of course she would not strike these two victims unless the dragon truly tried to force her hand, and even then as non-fatally as possible. “Out of my way, then.”

“Or what,” said the man. “You’ll strike us down?” said the woman. “Try to harm our master—” “—by destroying its property?”

The dragon was just taunting her again. She shoved her way past the two. As she passed they let their fingertips run over Zoe’s cheeks: they tingled. She ignored it.

The passage into the barrow was brightly lit: the awful light pouring out of the heart of the barrow outlined every stone in gold. (It seemed much too narrow for the dragon to have entered but, of course, dragons could do many things.) The light thickened around her, pooled in the cracks of the floor, congealed on the ceiling. Soon it was dripping silently on her: it left streaks on her pauldrons and tingled in her scalp.

"Ugh," she muttered. "Toughness and healing."

"Yes," said Melushabael. "A night in the softest bed the village can provide."

"Yes. Speed and strength in my sword arm." Her whole body was buzzing with Melushabael's magic: so much more pleasant than this loathsome light.

"Yes. You saw the way some of the villagers were looking at you: let one of them come to the bed with you."

"Yes." She knew Melushabael was better than this, or at least was made of more than just their hungers; but the pact had to be traded in kind. She was hopeful by now, after many years together, that they would have aided her against the Golden Wyrm without the pact; but it was the pact that gave them both this strength, and the pact needed to be this wretchedly transactional. She drew her sword and swung it, quick and fluid in the tight confines of the hall. Golden light swirled around its point.

There were side passages branching off now, and Zoe made the mistake of looking in one. Three villagers, or former-villagers, or their bodies, or what had been made of their bodies, were tangled together and moaning, but as she looked all three of them turned their heads and looked back at her. Even swimming in the golden light this deep in the barrow, their eyes were painfully bright sparks. “Come join us, Zoe,” said all three of them in perfect unison. “Your patron wants to feel our flesh.”

"For the love of fuck keep moving," said Melushabael. Their voice was strangled, and someone who knew them less well than Zoe might have mistakenly heard temptation where she knew there was only fear. Zoe kept moving.

There were more passages, each filled with thick liquid light, and the sharper lights of their inhabitants’ eyes watching her pass. She refused to look, and laughter followed her down the hall. Human laughter, but the cruel superiority of the dragon's laugh was somehow carried in them.

Every surface was slick with gold now, and it was condensing on her armour and head, and dripping down her collar onto her shoulders and torso. The sensation was unpleasant, even weakened a little by Melushabael's magic. Worse was the light still pouring brighter and brighter from the chamber at the end of the shaft. Her eyes ached just looking ahead. "Can you do anything for my eyes?" she asked, trying to shield them with an arm.

"No," said Melushabael. "Not anything that would help enough against this, anyways."

Then they were in the main chamber. The Golden Wyrm was there, curled tightly against the walls. Its eyes were unavoidable: the light swirled out of them like ink into water, staining the air, the stone, Zoe’s armour, Zoe’s flesh. It was like swimming in light, thick enough to slow movement, thick enough to drown in. The dragon’s gaze was light and the light was the dragon’s gaze. It was everywhere, inescapable.

“Welcome, Zoe Silvershield,” said the dragon.

“Release these people,” demanded Zoe. She raised her sword—her arm was still steady, despite everything, although she could hear Melushabael in her head panting with exertion. Even with their help she could feel the pressure of its power against her.

“They’re happy here, with me,” said the Golden Wyrm. Its face couldn’t smile mockingly, but Zoe could tell.

“If you will not release them,” said Zoe, “I will stop you and free them myself.” She walked towards the dragon’s head, sword out.

“So brave,” said the dragon, and laughed, and Zoe flinched but kept walking. “Such strength in you, little summoner.”

“Release them,” said Zoe, one last time, and drew back her sword to drive it through one of the beast’s awful eyes.

“NO,” said the Golden Wyrm, and Zoe was flung across the chamber into the dragon’s tail, which curled whip-fast around her cuirass and tightened until the metal crumpled. Melushabael screamed. “So strong, but what if I take that strength from you?” The chamber somehow seemed bigger, because the Golden Wyrm was not smaller, but it was somehow padding slowly across the room towards her. Zoe hacked at the tail wrapped around her, heedless of the proximity to her own body, but the scales turned the blade easily.

The dragon, now right in front of her, lifted her chin gently and painlessly with one talon to make her look at it. Its face was as clear as day, but also everything was blindingly gold. Zoe could see it perfectly, and nothing else. Melushabael, sounding like they were sobbing, said, “Zoe—I can’t—I—any longer—I’m sorry—”

Then the Golden Wyrm said a word and touched Zoe’s chest with one claw, and she could feel the bindings break and her pact shatter and she screamed “Melushabael!” even as the demon screamed “Zoe!” and then she could not hear or feel them at all anymore. The dragon’s tail loosened from around her and her armour dropped to the ground, broken and useless and steaming gold from its blank inner surfaces.

Zoe didn’t notice: the dragon’s light was pouring into her like a flood now, drowning her so much more thoroughly than when it had merely filled her mouth and nose and lungs. The Golden Wyrm was inside her, taking every part of her: her flesh, her voice, her past, her mind, her name, until there was nothing left of her but a naked shivering thing in a sea of gold that had once been her and was now the dragon’s.

"Mmmmmm, thank you, master," said Zoe Silvershield. Her eyes blazed bright as the sun.

“Don’t thank me yet,” said the dragon, with a laugh, and Zoe laughed too, happily, as the remnant inside her cringed. The dragon’s claw was still on her breast, and it spoke another word and the light filling her took possession of her flesh and began to change it. Her nose straightened, her scars glowed and then faded entirely; her hair grew out, braiding itself into dreadlocks like she hadn’t had since her youth, before she took up fighting and sheared it off. Each loc ended with a gold jewelry clip shaped, of course, like a gold dragon. Her underclothes burned away in golden flame.

Zoe smiled and dropped to her knees before her master. “Thank you, master,” she purred.

“My possessions should be perfect,” said the dragon, indulgently.

“It’s what you deserve,” agreed Zoe. “Is there some way I can thank you better? Return to Selsea and take all in your name?”

“Oh, we will be doing that, certainly.” said the dragon. “Your return as my possession will make them fear me even more than my previous visits, I’m sure. But I can enjoy my new toy in person, first.” Another word, and the dragon was in human shape before her. Zoe laughed again when she recognized it: it was like a composite of everyone she had ever had a crush on or lusted after in her entire life, except all at once, and better, hotter, more perfect, as befitted her owner.

She knelt there, amongst the wreckage of her armour and her cast-aside weapons, ready and eager to obey her master. “Of course,” she said, gleefully.

“But then,” said the dragon thoughtfully, its hand roughly grabbing Zoe’s hair but not yet shoving her head around, “there are other ways to use you, too. To extract power from you.”

“Yes,” hissed Zoe. “Use me. Extract me. Wring your property dry and cast the husk away.”

The dragon laughed again and so did Zoe, although she didn’t know what her owner thought was funny. “I think, my little summoner, you’re going to pact yourself to me.”

“Yes,” said Zoe again. Her magic was so much weaker than her master’s, but it was also different, and if she could help it become stronger in any way, she would do it immediately. The nameless remnant inside her shuddered. But then Zoe reached into herself to call out her magic, and as she did so touched the thing again.

That last fragment could feel her name again, and the thoughts and memories the dragon had taken from her, and could feel the other Zoe, the servile scarecrow puppet that the dragon had built out of her almost in passing, and she ripped it apart with the fury of desperation. She grabbed at her mind again, and her body, and her name. Zoe’s hands were numb but her sword was by her side where she knelt and she picked it up.

The Golden Wyrm was still talking, its voice smugly human-sounding: "And you, too, will have all the power your mortgaged summoner’s heart could desi—"

"I am a paladin!" shouted Zoe as she drove her sword up through its humaniform ribcage. It was a weak blow, unaugmented and shaky, and even on a real human it might not have been immediately fatal. But she rammed and twisted the blade anyways, and the Golden Wyrm was suddenly a dragon again, vast and snarling back at her.

"I will tear your soul apart before I devour your flesh," it spat, and even with her eyes closed its gaze was washing back into her.

"My strength is not my own," she ground out, as she had recited for the girl the evening before. "It... is in trust… for others..." She thought of the villagers frightened and fleeing at Selsea, and the villagers trapped as she had been in the dragon's obscene mockeries of themselves, and the vow she’d made to protect them all, and tried to let it guide her blade deeper, to the beast's heart. Something was wrapped around her chest now, crushing, and without her sight she couldn't tell if it was a tail or a claw or jaws.

"Your strength is mine," declared the Golden Wyrm, and it was, she could already feel her grip loosening on the hilt of her sword as the dragon seized control of her body again. She had nothing left. Nothing but—

She threw herself open, cast out wildly without preparation or care, like a child too ignorant to know what her power was, and offered up her whole being, its flesh and sensation and life, as a payment for strength again. It was no less than the dragon had tried to take from her, and then beyond that her offer was so feeble and unfocused that no potential patron would ever hear it anyways; but she knew there was a demon there waiting anxious and desperate to find her again.

Melushabael burst out of her still-dragon-beautified skin like a rabid animal tearing through brush. Their claws and fangs and spines lashed out in every direction, their mouth spat a tirade of demonic curses, their eyes blazed red as they watched draconic blood (golden, of course) spray everywhere. New weapons and armour emerged with each passing moment, the demon changing and growing as they drank down the power Zoe’s sacrifice had given them. The Golden Wyrm ripped and tore back with its own claws and jaws, but the new pact filled Melushabael with strength and their bubbling, twisting flesh closed instantly over each wound. They were practically inside the dragon’s bulky body now, rending and destroying. The dragon screamed, in rage and pain and fear, and then the golden light soaking the barrow flickered out, and there was no one remaining in the burial chamber but Melushabael, drenched in gore and laughing triumphantly.

The Golden Wyrm was gone, with nothing but a carcass left behind. Zoe Silvershield was gone, and had not left even that.

She awoke to softness and white light. She wondered for a moment if some generous deity had overlooked her transgressions and taken her soul on, and then wondered why she thought she didn't deserve it: her memory and her sense of self were both hazy and vague.

Then the girl from the banya shouted "She's awake! She's alive! She's awake!" and ran from the room, still shouting, and she remembered. She was Zoe Silvershield, and she was a paladin, and she had saved Selsea. She had sacrificed everything she had or was to do it, and she had done it. And she was still here.

She was alone in the room and in her head, no Golden Wyrm or false-Zoe or Melushabael with her. She threw the blanket off of her and saw her own warm-brown body again, whole but lined with old scars. Even her hair was unbraided and short once more.

"How am I here," she asked, aloud and confused. "I gave my whole self to Melushabael to defeat the dragon."

At the end of the bed, beside the door, all her worldly possessions were piled. Her sword was pitted and eroded and would likely snap if she ever tried to wield it again; she dismissed it with a glance. She could replace it. Her armour, though, her armour was still intact. Without the demon imbuing it, it looked much less presentable than it had on her first arrival: battered and mismatched old gear of the sort a sixteen-year-old paladin-hopeful might have been able to scrounge up, because that's what it had been, and clearly was again. The sigils were missing completely, snuffed out by the Golden Wyrm.

But something had been scored into the inside of the breastplate, where the bindings had once been. She climbed out of the bed to look. It was a message, in demonic (although the villagers were likely illiterate even in human scripts):

I will not take everything from you. I broke the new pact myself, once the wyrm was dead. When you are well again, resummon me and we will make a more fair one. —M

"No," protested Zoe, although they couldn't hear her. "I chose that, freely. And I would choose it again, to defeat the dragon. To save these people."

She started turning away when scratches gouged into the backplate beneath the breastplate caught her eye. She grabbed the other piece of armour.

I know it was your decision, you self-sacrificing idiot paladin. This was my decision. I will see you soon. —M

Zoe dropped it back on the heap with a clang, and smiled, and laughed. And when the villagers she had protected and the villagers she had rescued arrived, to thank her and laud her, she was still laughing.