The suns set slowly on Vaxivia. The hours of dusk found the skies awash in intense, burning shades of orange and red. Even the dust that was ever being kicked into the air glowed in the eerie light of evening on this strange and desolate planet.

On the outskirts of a ramshackle town, the crash of our space transport stranded us en route to our state-imposed exile to Fyrelord Ishtun's colony. Cast out from my home, my life, my identity, I, Karun, third son of the great King Patabu of Dragselia, brother of the new King Mulkaro, former Colonel in the United Colonial Armies, sat alone and watched the suns set on a foreign land.

I was forced to hide my true nature and keep my feet on the dry, dusty ground instead of reveling in the strength of my dragon body and taking to the air for fear that our enemies would find us.

I clutched at the heat of the necklace that had been placed on me at birth and that I had worn every moment since. Suspended inside the unassuming polished black rock was a single drop of lava from Dragselia's eternally burning core. But for my brothers, my core-stone was all I had left of the home I once knew, of the person I once was.

“Hallo!” Zaruv's deep voice, so familiar to me, broke through the haze of my thoughts.

“Hallo, batr. I was just waiting for darkness to continue scouting.” I turned as Zaruv, my elder brother, joined me at the rocky eastern edge of town. I had been scouting nearly every night. I could not shift to my dragon form and scout from the air, as I so longed to do, at least not so near this jumpy human settlement. However, as a Dragselian, I could use the speed with which my people were blessed to cover the land on foot. Alas, there was so much wilderness, and all of it seemed empty.

“A good thought, surely. However, you cannot be out tonight, batr. I am sorry. Jennifer Walker has planned a meal with neighbors and friends for us. If we are to be stuck here, we must blend in, make friends.” Zaruv, with his charming, easy smile and twinkling green eyes, seemed to have little trouble moving on from the lives we had known together as princes.

“We have no friends here,” I reminded him. “There are only the humans who would wet themselves to behold us in our dragon forms and the Infernians who hunt us, batr. It is useless to settle in. We have each other, Zaruv, and making more connections than that weakens us. This you know. We must find our ship and forget these . . . distractions.”

Zaruv's eyes flashed in a way that, in combination with his stature, large even for a Dragselian, would have made a lesser man quiver, but I knew better than to fear him.

“You dismiss our hosts so easily, Karun, but do not forget that without their generosity, we would have been left exposed in this new land.”

I steeled myself to Zaruv's tactics. My brother, second son to a king whose realm and riches he could never inherit thanks to the laws and traditions of our people, had at least inherited my father's skill of persuasion, not that he ever needed it with any Dragselian ladies.

“Jennifer is owed our gratitude, and it can be no hardship to spend an evening in her company. Our ship isn't going anywhere. It is somewhere out there, broken in the wilderness, where it will stay until we finally find it. Batr, you need a rest from so much scouting.”

“I forget myself. Forgive me. Jennifer deserves every debt of gratitude, surely. But I will rest when we have our ship and our weapons back. You forget that we did not crash—we were shot down, Zaruv. Even now, our enemies hunt. If they find our ship before us, it will be destroyed and we will be stranded on Vaxivia indefinitely.”

“I have not forgotten how we landed here, but you forget that we are not alone on this planet. As long as we assimilate with these humans, we are hidden from our enemies, whoever they may actually be.” Zaruv was nothing if not persistent.

“And by so doing, we endanger the humans, do we not?” Zaruv sighed and turned to face the still setting suns, looking much like our father, stirring emotions best left undisturbed.

I continued, “Zaruv, how long can we stay here, hiding? We need to keep our edge. We need to train. We cannot play pretend with these humans forever.” As soon as the words left my lips, I knew I had said too much.

Zaruv continued to stare quietly at the horizon, and I felt the weight of his responsibility toward myself and our younger brothers. More than that, I felt my own guilt for questioning him.

Still, it needed to be said. Every day he spent with Jennifer, the comely red-haired human who had captured his attention after she had stumbled upon our battered and unconscious bodies on her farm, was another day that our enemies had to sniff us out.

Jennifer Walker ran a clinic in town, the only one to provide service regardless of our inability to pay. A nurse practitioner, she was a natural caregiver and one of the most patient, determined, and compassionate people, human or otherwise, that I had met. Truthfully, her cooking was incredible, and even in my human form, I felt the dragon inside clawing in hunger.

Zaruv finally turned back to me. “You are right, Karun. We cannot hide forever, but neither can we act without logic. There is food to be eaten as well as a ship to be found. Come, eat with us, and tomorrow, I will join you scouting.”

“I thought you were to accompany Jennifer to the Tele-Station for supplies?”

Jennifer's clinic relied on medical supplies from a black-market Earth Federation supplier that had to be teleported at odd times to avoid arousing the attention of Federation authorities. As with most of Vaxivia's residents, Jennifer and her family had come to the planet as refugees from the political chaos that had consumed the Earth Federation.

“I will send Pavar with her. He has been aching to leave the confines of the compound anyway. Now, come. Let us join the others. Jennifer has made something called 'lasagna' and she has promised that it will leave even a dragon's bottomless belly full.”

He smiled, and I followed him back toward town in the growing darkness. The stars were finally visible, and before we stepped into the warmth of the housing unit, we both stopped to stare in the direction of Dragselia for just a moment, neither of us speaking but both sharing a longing for which there were no words.

* * *

“Jennifer, this is amazing!” My youngest brother, Pavar, attempted to say as he embarrassed himself by stuffing forkful after forkful into his mouth. We sat around the large steel table of Jennifer's home unit.

Generously, she had allowed us to bed in one of the buildings of her family's compound, and on nights away from her clinic, she dazzled us with newfound foods. With her parents having passed away some time ago, she claimed to be happy for the company.

“I will take whatever you just said to be a compliment, Pavar.” Jennifer laughed from her seat beside Zaruv.

“You should, for we have sampled the best this galaxy and others have to offer. There is little that compares with what we have been lucky enough to find here on Vaxiv.” Zaruv beamed down at her.

Indeed, I had never seen Zaruv so taken with a woman, human or Dragselian . . . and I had seen him with many. As a Prince in Dragselia, he'd had his pick of women, at least until our father had passed and it was clear that Mulkaro would ascend to the throne. We had all been cast-offs then, unwanted and shunned—the glorious tradition of our people.

“On behalf of Vaxivia, I am flattered.” Jennifer playfully curtsied as she got up to bring another pan to the table.

Pavar was not wrong. It was delicious. I inhaled the food that had been offered. There had been more gathered around the table when Zaruv and I had first arrived. Jennifer was beloved by the residents of the outpost, and she had hosted her friends for a dinner so that we might adjust to the town and its people more easily. Her kindness had in turn inspired the kindness of others, and I was forced to admit, at least to myself, that perhaps Zaruv had a point about seeking allies.

Of course, they didn't realize we were Dragselians but rather thought we had fled the latest political discord happening in the Earth Federation.

Jennifer's home was soothing and thoughtfully appointed. There were cushions and soft textures everywhere. Not the finest fixtures I had known, but the humble furnishings told a story of a place well-loved and cared for, a place that welcomed and comforted.

“Karun, you're pretty quiet over there. I'm sorry, I know you don't really enjoy big groups like we had tonight.” Jennifer looked at me with kind, remorseful eyes. Like her home, she was ever seeking to put her guests at ease, to bring comfort to those she tended.

“Karun is fine. It is just difficult for him to be without a purpose or a strategy to devise. He is still adjusting to life away from the whirl of Vahakun.” Zaruv was right. I missed the activity, the sense of belonging of Dragselia's capital.

“Maybe it is so hard to accept because it is so senseless,” grumbled Pavar.

Zaruv ignored our younger brother's addition. “I made many new contacts tonight. Chance Williams made mention of possible work for you, Ragal. I told him of your talents on a hovercraft and he has need of someone for parcel delivery from the Tele Station.”

Zaruv was right—we needed to figure something out. What little transport funds we still had on us following the crash when we were separated from our ship and the cache of currency inside it were drying up. Volunteering Ragal, the second youngest of our brethren, was surely taking things a step too far, though. Did Zaruv mean to keep us here forever?

“Oh! Zaruv, that's a great idea!” Jennifer joined in, her bright red curls fluttering about her face. “I've known Chance since we were both kids in primary lessons together.” Turning to Ragal, who sat quietly at my side, she added, “Ragal, if you don't mind the dust, it would be a great post for you. Chance is one of the most kindhearted men you'll meet here on Vaxivia and very accepting of new transplants.”

“Perhaps Ragal would prefer to use his aviation skills to assist me in seeking out our vessel, surely a more meaningful use of his time. Obviously, once we are back in the safety of the Dragselian united colonies, we will be well able to provide for ourselves. We can't stay here forever,” I said, trying to refocus my brothers on the real task before us.

“Oh. Yes, of course,” Jennifer replied flatly, quietly.

Zaruv narrowed his eyes at me in some kind of silent threat, but it bothered me little. I knew Jennifer and Zaruv were unsure where their situation was headed, and unlike some of the more archaic members of the Royal family, I had no qualms with their pairing.

Humans and Dragselians had been mixing since the first Dragselians began probing Earth for colonization thousands of years earlier. Their children were never able to return to Dragselia proper, but then, neither were we, so it made little difference. Still, it was an unspoken question of what would happen when we finally found the ship.

Jennifer got up abruptly to start clearing dishes and utensils from the table since Pavar was rapidly making his way through the final remnants of the meal. Zaruv followed quickly on her heels down the hall toward the kitchen, somehow struggling to keep up with his surprisingly fast mate.

“That was thoughtless, Karun,” Ragal finally decided to add.

“They needed to be reminded,” I replied.

Ragal got up and walked toward the door. “They are always aware. Just as it is hard for you—knowing your destiny, the certainty of our exile, and that nothing you do can change it—they must reconcile themselves to the uncertainty, the unknown.”

Ragal, with his straight dark hair flowing loose about his shoulders like a hood, disappeared into the darkness of the Vaxiverian night. He would find his way back to the building we rested in before morning, but Ragal craved privacy and seclusion, to be alone with his thoughts, more than any of the rest of us.

Pavar finally took a breath after finishing all traces of food. “Well, batr, shall we scout? I am weary of all this talk. Let's shift and find the ship already.” Pavar, young, handsome, and reckless, had always chafed at boundaries, but now in exile, he was suffocating beneath the restrictions imposed upon us by our circumstances and sought every opportunity to test his limits.

“No, Pavar, you know it is too dangerous for us to shift. It would incite a panic among the humans. Besides, Zaruv may not acknowledge it, but I sense the Infernians who shot us down are on our trail, even now, in our human forms.”

Pavar scoffed. “Let them find me. I would welcome the chance to tear into an Infernian demon.”

The rawness of our rejection and expulsion from our homeland had inspired in all of us a renewed hatred for Infernians. It was because of them that this tradition of casting off the younger brothers of a newly crowned king had begun. They were a line of rabid, treacherous monsters who looked nearly as horrifying as the atrocities of which they were capable.

“Surely, I would enjoy that battle as much as you, but a true dragon knows not to breathe fire at the sun,” I said, reminding Pavar of the old saying of our people, that not all battles are worth fighting.

“I cannot sit here any longer, idly doing nothing!” Pavar seethed.

“Well, to that end, Zaruv would have you escort Jennifer to the TeleStation tomorrow night in his stead. He and I shall scout together under cover of darkness. Surely, we will find our ship soon.”

“Then let me search with you. Surely, three are better than two. And what of Ragal? Why do we not search in force?”

“I have thought the same, but Zaruv feels it is best to divide our strength. Ragal is working on building a tracking device to aid in our efforts to locate the ship, and you are to be guarding the compound,” I reminded Pavar of his often forgotten post. It was easy to forget in a place of such desolation that there were threats ever looming. “Besides, Jennifer has risked much to help us. She has earned such small favors, has she not?”

Pavar was not easy to reason with when his conviction lay elsewhere, but thanks to Jennifer's kind nature and many culinary skills, Pavar could not argue. For the better, Pavar was a strong and skilled warrior in battle, but he was still in the heat of his youth where he believed himself invincible, and I did not trust his self-restraint when tempted with the possibility of taking to the skies.

“Fine, I will escort her, but if we come back before you've returned, I will find your trail and join your hunt.”

“I could hardly stop you if I wanted, little torch,” I said, wistfullty recalling Pavar's nickname from childhood.

Pavar's dragon form, a brilliant and shimmering red, matched the intensity with which he did everything, even from infancy. He, in turn, surprised me with a silent but fierce embrace before quickly leaving for his nightly patrol of the compound.

Alone, I returned to the small converted building we had been sleeping in, a few hundred paces from the main dwelling. Ragal and Pavar straggled in, one after another, to rest. Zaruv never returned, not that any of us expected him to.

I was happy that Zaruv might find some comfort or happiness here, but his absence, the growing detachment from our brotherly unit was felt.

* * *

Our scouting excursion proved fruitless. We had scoured so much of this wilderness and yet found not a trace of our ship, not even fragments. Jennifer had found us on the easternmost edges of her land, so we began our search to the east. I had covered much territory alone on previous excursions, so we made quick work before moving farther north.

It frustrated me, as did so much, but I dutifully swallowed my complaints. Returning with Zaruv and Ragal, who had followed our trail and joined us near the end of our search, we approached the compound eager to drum up food to both sate our hunger and tamp our disappointment.

As we walked in silence, something in the air changed, called to the dragon inside. Zaruv was the first to react.

Breaking into a sprint like I had never seen him run, he raced through the night, and Ragal and I fought to keep pace. The feeling was primal and familiar. Danger, battle—our enemies had found us. Armed with little more than a few daggers, we headed toward the fight, exhilarated more than we had been since landing in this rocky land. The pull to shift, to revel in the strength and might of the dragon, so long denied, was strong, heady, intoxicating.

Coming up to flank Zaruv before the clinic, where our senses were pulling us, we found Pavar fighting demons and humans alike with all the ferocity of a true Dragselian warrior. Jennifer was joining the fray where she could, but several humans were closing in around her as Zaruv charged at her attackers, letting out a guttural roar.

I lost sight of Zaruv as he tore through the mass of human attackers, but I felt his presence fighting beside us. Ragal and I joined Pavar for the real fight against the Infernian scum. There were three of them, the hideous Infernian demons, against the youngest of our group and a human woman. Not the fairest of fights, but given their notorious cowardice, it made sense.

I approached what appeared to be their leader and faced him.

“Dragselian trash!” He moved with nearly the speed of a Dragselian, but with none of the grace.

We sized one another up. He stood nearly as tall as myself, with gilded horns and wings and a thick mane of gold that threw his hideously mottled black and russet skin to harsh relief. His subordinates carried blasters, but he carried a long, curved blade of Infernian lava stone. Infernis was eternally erupting, and the lava stone burned even here. This was nothing to a Dragselian, of course. The heat was as inconsequential to a Dragselian as it was to an Infernian.

He charged, and with the pent-up fury of mutual hatred, we grappled, tearing at one another. I landed a blow to his torso and at the same time felt the flesh being scored off my other arm as he sank his demon claws into me.

Feeling the dragon inside rise up, I roared, and with it, I let loose a stream of dragon fire into the night air. Leaping with the instincts of the animal within me, I went for his throat and lashed, joyously feeling the wet heat of his blood. Just then, I was pulled back and landed hard against the cold stone of the clinic wall before feeling the blast of a stunner.

For just a moment, everything went white.

Pavar lay on the ground, wounded and only semiconscious. Panic rose in my throat like so much bile, and I leapt back up to my feet, trying to shield his body and facing this new enemy, but momentarily unable to focus from the jolt of the stunner and the fear seizing me, seeing my youngest brother clinging to life.

Sensing an attack to my right, I turned just in time to see a blade swing and nearly decapitate Pavar before a blast of light sent its owner flying backward toward the dwindling group of humans still fighting Zaruv.