My mind had awoken long before my body.

It is a unique kind of torture, to be awake in an unresponsive body. The first hundred years were painful enough. The second were excruciating, and I learned to let my mind be; to exist as little as possible.

I knew I had done this to myself. It had been my choice, all of ours, the members of the Council. For the sake of the world we protected, we would lock all the Ancients away, no exceptions. Not even for ourselves.

But that was supposed to have been it. We couldn't die, not easily, if at all, but it was to be the sleep of an eternity. A mass homicide/suicide, if you were negative. A selfless sacrifice if you were positive. Yet here I was, awake, or some semblance of it. Locked in an ice prison of my own making. Nothing to ease my boredom. No one to remind me that I was anything other than a blob of thoughts and emotions. Guilt for the choices I'd made conflicted with my continued certainty that it had been the right path. The only path.

But if it had been the right path, why was I awake?

Were others awake? Occasionally, the weight of the ice mountain shifted and groaned above me. Ice cracked and shattered, and I couldn't help but wonder: had someone escaped?

It didn't take long for any certainty to fade, leaving me only with the crushing weight of guilt and fear that far outweighed the mountain above me, and I detached—a life of only negative emotions is no life at all. I did my best to feel nothing. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes... 

It was a good thing no one could hear my screams. Not that I could make physical noise.

And then... a light. I slowly started to sense a presence... not all at once, and not clearly at first, but then I started seeing glimpses into his life, as though he were a dream within a dream. All my life was a dream... or a nightmare. His name was Simon.

And then all of a sudden, I could feel him as if he were with me, and I knew something was wrong. He was too far into my world, and the danger he was in dragged me from my antipathy, brought me back to myself. I had to warn him.

Wake up, Simon!

He wasn't listening to me. He was wandering through the mountain, I could feel his presence. His body was laying in bed, but his mind was here, where it shouldn't be. 

Wake up!

I growled in frustration, but he was still ignoring me.

Wake UP!

He finally paid attention, and I yanked at the ties that were binding him to his sleep. I followed him to his body, aware enough to control my attention, sitting on his metaphorical shoulder, watching as he and his pack scurried around, looking for some missing kids.

I could sense the creator of his unnatural sleep; the pack was tracking it. The power billowed in a purple black presence, a too-familiar sense; one I had not forgotten in the centuries of captivity, asleep or awake.

Sinsaya.

Sinsaya, my brother, my enemy. 

I was surprised when Simon looked down upon, not my brother, but a slip of a girl. I knew better than to trust her visage, though. My brother's evil aura loomed around her. Not as thick as his, perhaps, but she was young. She was a shifter, not an Ancient. That she had any aura at all was impressive.

She was impressive. While the pack Alpha tried to calm her with words, purple-black tendrils wisped over the grass of the glade, curling around the feet of the shifters, winding up their legs and sinking into their skin. The power drifted toward Simon, but I willed it away. One by one, the shifters fell. 

Simon crept forward, the young shifter's back turned to him now. He was moving slowly, almost awkwardly.

Wake up! he shouted, an echo of my command to him earlier. At first, I thought he was yelling at me, and I withdrew, but as he began to move more easily, I realized he was not aware of my presence, though I had been making things difficult for him. The cold holding me captive had begun to transfer to him.

I stayed close to his presence, but not so close as to cause him pain again.

He was good, but the path through the children was tight, and then the inevitable happened: the young shifter sensed him, and all hell broke loose. I had only moments to act, or I would lose my only connection to anything outside my mind.

This is the end, Simon thought.

Not if I can help it, I responded, shocking him. The world beyond us slowed as I sped up our perception of reality as much as I could, so that I could convey the information I needed in our limited time. Let me help you.

They say Death has a sense of humor. Simon's mental voice was surprisingly light hearted. I didn't realize he was in the false hope business as well.

I am not Death, I chided. I am Ryeth. I am a dragon.

Haven't had much luck with dragons. Simon's voice was distant, as if his mind was disengaging from his body in preparation for the pain to come.

There was only one reason I would be able to sense Simon so clearly: he was a conduit. Which meant that if he accepted my mark, I could inhabit his body, link our minds and bodies. It was irrevocable, but I could absorb the power this youngling was lashing out with. He could not. 

Will you let me protect you?

You're so cold...

He was drifting. Simon! Wake up!

He startled and turned his whole attention to me. Protect me?

I can save you, but you must accept my offer.

There was a moment of hesitation and then a mental shrug. Sure, crazy voice in my head. It's either say no and die or say yes and die. When the end result is the same, why not say yes to the crazy?

I didn't bother to argue with him. I threw my will and power into him, feeling the burning brand of dragon fire crawl over his skin. Before we had withdrawn from the world, I had never bound a conduit who wasn't fully aware of the benefits and consequences of accepting my mark. I had no idea how many years had passed since our self-imprisonment, but I had seen enough of Simon's world to know it was a completely different world than the one I had left.

The binding completed not one moment too soon, and as the powers of the children clashed into Simon's frail body, I sucked it up, whisking it away before they could damage him. It hurt, the pain of warmth after cold, and Simon and I screamed as one. Then his wolf's body fell on the young shifter with the purple black soul and I head butted her, right in the soft spot behind the ear where human bodies were so vulnerable. She collapsed, her cloud of power losing form instantly, dissipating like fog in the sun. 

I took a moment to gather myself. The power I had absorbed was bouncing around in my bones with a rattling force. I could feel my bones! I could feel my talons, my scales, my breath. I struggled to lift one talon. I managed, for a fraction of the second, before the cold collapsed my efforts once more. I was not free, but the power of the prison had weakened around me. 

I looked up with Simon's eyes, feeling the soft morning breeze on his skin, scenting the death and growth of the forest, the individual scents of the other shifters—and something burning, like me. 

The young phoenix screamed over the body of a severely injured man. His red, torn flesh contrasted sharply with his dark skin. At the sight, I could feel Simon's sudden realization that he wasn't dead yet, but he didn't push to take control back of his body, so I walked over to the injured man. The phoenix was sobbing with dry heaves, and to my astonishment, a tear fell from his nose and landed on the injured man's ravaged flesh. Immediately, the skin began to knit itself together. Slowly at first, then faster. The phoenix was too overwrought to notice. 

I could see the gold connection between them begin to strengthen; it had been so weak, I hadn't noticed it before. "Stop crying, Phoenix," I commanded. "Your mate has not left you."

The phoenix was young. He'd been... well, to put it bluntly, he'd been an experiment. One of many unsanctioned experiments created by lawless Ancients, and one of the few the Council had left alone. Most of the creatures created by the lawless had been dangerous, mindless, but the phoenix had been different. Young, careless, powerful, but he had a mind that could reason as well if not better than a human's, and he did not seek to cause harm for harm's sake. A leviathan had been his creator. The leviathan, Bodan, had intended to create a creature of the air who matched his power in the sea, but Bodan, while he had occasional visions of brilliance, had been an inept maker. Phoenix was the only creature of his I could count as a success, and I suspected that had only happened because he'd finally deigned to use a gifted shifter as his model. 

Bodan had been shocked at the end result and had been no more able to predict the phoenix's abilities than anyone else. It wasn't surprising to me that eons later, the phoenix was still discovering his gifts.

Once the shifter's body repaired, I saw the power of the phoenix's tear spread throughout every cell and every fiber of the man, binding him even more tightly to the phoenix. No longer was there a simple strand between their souls, there were a million strands from every element of their beings. The connection would ground the phoenix, keeping him from regenerating, and it would extend the man, keeping him from dying. I had never seen anything quite like it, but it echoed the connection between an Ancient and a bound conduit.

"I thought I had lost you," Phoenix whispered to his mate. "Just as I realized—and then you were gone!"

The man's voice was rough when he answered. "I'm not going anywhere. Except maybe home. If we can get there. Where is... everyone else?"

I felt the pack Alpha approach, and Simon named him: Asher. 

"Simon? What happened to you? You don't normally... glow."

I looked down at Simon's arm's.

"I am Ryeth." My voice sounded strange to my ears, coming from Simon's human mouth. "I am the Sapphire Dragon. Your brother is my conduit."

I explained what had happened between the shifter and the phoenix, and then felt the pack's seer approach. Simon had been quiet while I had been explaining things, but when I paused, he inserted, So... can I have my body back yet? Or was this the devil's deal? I agree to let you save me and you have use of my body from now to eternity.

Hardly. I knew it had been a bad idea to bind a conduit who didn't know what he was getting into, but what choice had I had?

"Where is the seer? He has many questions for me."

So... you talk to Caspar, and then I get my body back?

Then you get your body back, I agreed. We had much to speak of.