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“I…” Her eyes are a little glassy as she watches Szonja’s acrobatics, but a moment later there are two voices in my mind, not just one.

My mind fills with the image of a drab, brown-colored fortress carved out of what looks like sandstone cement, with red mountains all around.

Deep pockets of unexpected green and blue shimmer like misplaced jewels tucked into the embrace of the red mountains, that gradually fade to a slate gray in the higher reaches.

I see it! Fortiss’s thoughts are limned with excitement, and Miriam bursts out with laughter as well, the sound equally foreign coming from her mouth. I watch her, my own smile teasing at the corners of my mouth. What a somber place the First House must have been.

Those thoughts are chased out of my mind a moment later as Wrath streaks into view, his golden beak and the bright white plumage of his head and wings catching the sunlight as it suddenly flares over my shoulder.

Instinctively, I crane my neck to see the source of that light, but it’s blocked by Gent’s mighty form.

I turn back to peer at Nazar and his Divh, unwilling to miss even a moment of their splendor.

For all that Nazar claims that he never rode his Divh prior to last night, he holds his seat with far more skill than Fortiss does.

His knees lock tight under the feathers of Wrath’s neck, his body tilts forward, but not to clutch for balance, merely to see.

His gentle salute of hello flows through my mind and to Fortiss as well, but Miriam betrays no reaction to it.

I begin to ask her if she can hear, only to be distracted by a mighty chortling howl.

Far below us on the ridge, Marsh appears with Caleb grasped in his hands.

The impossibly ungainly Divh, with his falcon head, torso and arms of a man, and legs as thick and hairy as an ape’s is nowhere near as big as Gent…

but he’s still a giant, and Caleb is barely visible huddled against his body as Marsh rolls head over heels down the grassy slope for no apparent reason other than because he can.

The two eventually tumble to a stop, then burst apart, Caleb flinging his arm out wide in the dewy grass as he stares up at the brightening sky.

“I never want to go back!” he howls, his words both reverberating through the open air and in my mind.

Then the final member of our party arrives.

The shining sun catches Ayne in his full glory as he streaks into existence in this plane, his wings outstretched, his neck lengthened, his sinuous body slicing through the air with his long tail lashing out behind.

He shoots across the horizon, then spins back toward us like a streaking star.

Tennet is hunched over his neck with the same gritty resolve that Fortiss expressed, clearly holding on for dear life, but determined not to fall.

I won’t fall, he informs me stiffly, but it’s Fortiss who responds to him, appreciation and shared experience vibrating in his voice.

I’m with you, brother , he tells Tennet, and even from a distance, I can see Tennet whip around with surprise, finding Fortiss atop Szonja swooping toward him. Fortiss attempts a shaky wave for just a moment before dropping his hand to clutch his Divh’s neck again.

But we are together, I realize. We are here; we are in the Blessed Plane of the Divhs…

And I can see it more clearly than I ever have before.

With the sun rising fully, I gaze out over the long grassy slope and realize that it’s leading down to a wide body of water too placid for an ocean but too enormous to be any lake I have ever seen.

A rocky peak covered in trees stretches up in its center, and near it an eruption of stone forms an odd butte sticking up out of the water.

The peak and the rocky outcropping are so far away, it’s tough to pick out details, but it feels oddly comforting looking at them, like a painting I once saw long ago.

How broad is this lake? I ask in my mind, amused to see all three of the airborne Divhs dart off in separate directions, as if they plan to personally show their riders the scope of their world.

To my surprise, though, the answer doesn’t come from Fortiss’s excited shouting or Tennet’s gasping descriptions.

For you it would take several days to cross. For the winged ones, a day of heavy flight, and there are many places to stop and rest. But that’s if we needed exercise. I prefer to run, to leap and be done.

Slowly, as if I am in a dream that I do not want to wake from, I curl around and stare up at Gent, his mighty snout sniffing the air, his bright eyes fixed on the far horizon, and his fanged mouth curved into a fearsome, devastating smile.

His horns gleam in shiny onyx curves in the sunlight, his green scales practically glowing in the heat of the morning sun.

“Jump?” I ask him, and from Miriam’s jolt beside me, I realize I’ve asked the word aloud. She turns to stare at me with wide eyes then up at Gent, flinching back into his palm at the sight of his face in the full sunlight. I realized she’s never seen a Divh up close. Certainly not this close.

An image bursts through my mind of Gent galloping along a ridge that rises toward the open water.

He’s running-running-running, his pounding back legs churning, his hands and arms serving as forelegs.

Step-step-step leap—and then he’s soaring through the air.

Water flashes beneath him, then darkness, then water again and a shoreline, a distant shoreline, this one rockier.

He drops into the water like a stone, reveling with joy at its embrace, then eventually striking bottom and bounding out to stagger onto the shore.

“You can jump the entire lake ?” I ask aloud in disbelief, but no that’s not it, not exactly, as he goes through the process again in my mind. He begins the jump and then winks out, I think. Then he winks back into view, much like he enters our plane.

And here I thought their world was no more than a small island…when it’s easily fifty times larger than the Protectorate, sized to match the Divhs’ giant forms.

Larger, but…

“Wait…that can’t be possible, can it?” Miriam’s voice sounds strangled, and I glance back toward her, but she’s not looking at me anymore. Instead, her gaze is fixed on the tiny islands far out into the center of the lake.

She breathes out an unsteady breath. “Is that…is that the coliseum?”

Above us, Gent howls with delight