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Vendevorex had fallen. He’d been placed in the coffin as his body began to decay, but it was customary for a dragon to be cremated with his body exposed to the open sky.
    “You know,” Pet whispered, leaning closer, “perhaps you shouldn’t sleep alone tonight. You could stay with me.”
    Jandra rolled her eyes. “Are you trying to seduce me at a funeral? Have you no self control at all?”
    “I assure you, my self control is legendary,” he said, with the hint of a grin. “I was merely trying to comfort you. The fact that you interpreted this as seduction perhaps reveals something about your unspoken desires?”
    She would have slapped him, but it wasn’t the appropriate setting. At least one human at this ceremony should possess a sense of decorum.
    She looked back to the platform. Androkom was staring down into the coffin, looking confused. The earth-dragon pall-bearers were all shrugging, looking equally bewildered.
    Jandra ran to the platform, up the rough-hewn logs that served as a makeshift ramp.
    “Jandra,” Androkom said, looking spooked as she approached. “I’m sure there’s some logical explanation—”
    “What?” she asked, drawing near the coffin. She looked down into the long wooden box, expecting to find the worst.
    Save for a few blood-encrusted feather-scales, their sky-blue hue shining amid the shadows, the coffin was empty.

    Pet chased Jandra as she bounded up the stairs to the tower. She proved remarkably swift for someone wearing a long black dress more appropriate for mourning than running.
    “Jandra, wait!” he called out as she scrambled up the steps. Jandra had grown up in the palace and knew all its shadows. Pet worried that if he lost sight of her he wouldn’t find her again.
    “Leave me alone!” she shouted as she reached the top of the stairs.
    Pet followed her into a star-shaped room. The room was large, built on a scale to accommodate a sun-dragon. The chamber was empty save for a bed, a wardrobe, and a few other pieces of furniture sitting within one of the arms of the star. The human-sized furniture in the midst of the giant open space looked lonely. Jandra ran toward the bed, falling to her knees as she reached it. As the foot of the bed sat a heavy oak chest sealed with an iron lock. Jandra grabbed the lock with shaking hands.
    “What’s so urgent?” Pet asked as he drew closer. “If Ven was alive enough to get out of his coffin a week ago, he’s probably still alive now.”
    “He was dead!” she snapped as the lock clicked open. “We both saw him die!”
    “He was magic. He could cure the sick with his touch. He survived a gutting by Zanzeroth! Why is it so hard to believe he came back to life?”
    Jandra threw the lid of the chest open. She dug her hands into the carefully folded garments inside, tossing them wildly around the room. The light from the lantern by the bed glinted on something silver. Jandra lifted it from the chest—a skull cap. Pet had seen it before. It was the head gear Vendevorex had always worn.
    “Pet,” she said, “it’s too complicated to explain right now, but Vendevorex and I don’t control magic. Vendevorex didn’t believe in magic.”
    “He could set things on fire with his mind,” Pet said. “He could turn invisible! You turn invisible! How can you say it’s not magic?”
    “Vendevorex trained me my whole life and I never figured out how to do half the stuff he did,” Jandra said. “I can’t explain our powers to you in five minutes, or even five hours. Ven used to say that ‘magic’ would be acts that violated physical laws. We don’t have supernatural powers. What we have is possession of an advanced technology that looks like magic to those who don’t understand it. Vendevorex controlled that technology with this.” She held up the skull cap. It was beaten and bent in the aftermath of Vendevorex’s violent end. “If the skull cap had been gone, I might have believed he was still alive. Since it isn’t,