Master Sai opened the chest and gasped. "This is wyrmsblood," he whispered. He lifted the vial from the chest with his talon and swirled its contents. Nichal could feel the power of it even from where he stood a few meters away. They'd found the chest under a random tree in a deep bowl-shaped depression in the northwestern foothills. Nichal expected the chest and the wyrmsblood belonged to one of the many minotaurs that were lounging and conversing and brawling around the sides of the pit, and stealing their things was making Nichal very nervous, no matter how strong Master Sai said the Shadowed Voice was.

  "This is what gave me my power," Master Sai mused. "What I used to give myself the mental strength of the dragons." Master Sai's grip tightened. "And what corrupted my arm." Then he looked over at Nichal. "I have the blood of the dragons in my veins. Same as you. So why don't you have their power?"

  Nichal kept his eyes fixed on a pair of bulls that were glaring at them from the only easy way out of the pit. "The Great Ones made us weak," he said. He bared his fangs at the bulls.

  "I could make you strong," said Master Sai. Nichal gasped and spun to face the orc. He could be like the Great Ones? "Give you the power the dragons don't want you to have. You could shackle a pet of your own."

  At that, Nichal recoiled. "No," he said.

  Master Sai blinked. "No?" he asked.

  "I was a slave," Nichal responded. Why would he want to shackle anything? How could he possibly make something else a slave? "I will not make others slaves."

  "They're not sentient, Nichal," said Master Sai. "They're children of Syn."

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  "No," said Nichal, shaking his head.

  "Fine," said Master Sai with a sigh. "I can use it to augment my own abilities." He started to put the wyrmsblood into his pack.

  Nichal grabbed his arm. "No," he said.

  Master Sai yanked his arm from Nichal's grasp. "You do not get to give me orders," he said.

  Nichal nodded. He tried to find the words he needed. "Give me power of Great Ones," he said. But that wasn't right. That was what he told Master Sai he didn't want. But he didn't want shackles. He wanted a shield. "Teach me to stop them."

  Master Sai cocked an eyebrow at him. "You want to fight dragons?" he asked.

  Nichal shook his head. He tried to grab words from the air with his claws, but they did not come. But on reflection, he realized that what he wanted was simple. He did not need difficult words. He looked into Master Sai's eyes. "I want to never be a slave again," he said.

  The orc stared back at him, swirling the vial of wyrmsblood as he did. His eyes were on Nichal, but Nichal didn't think the orc could see him. He could almost feel Master Sai's thoughts evaluating and planning and preparing, even though the shackles binding them together were long gone. "It's hard for even me to resist a dragon," said Master Sai eventually. "But hard is better than impossible." He shook his head and put the wyrmsblood into his pack. "I have no idea how to modify this to be compatible with a wyrmkin's physical makeup and mana resonance. It took me years to make it not kill half the orcs I augmented."

  "Coatl-ome might," Nichal offered.

  Master Sai actually laughed. Nichal wasn't sure he'd heard the orc laugh for real before. "Right," he said. "Because Coatl-ome's going to help me. And not just help me, but help me give a slave the power of her kin."

  Nichal nodded. "We should ask her," he said.

  Master Sai looked up at him and sighed. "You are far too optimistic for someone who's spent their entire life inside a nightmare," he said. Then he shrugged. "But fine. We can ask."

  "Thank you, Master Sai," Nichal said. He glared at the minotaurs the entire climb out of the bowl, and they glared right back at him. But they did not attack him or Master Sai.