Gulvane walked the corridors of his mind, going deep into himself to remember who he was, and explore who he might become. The years of an elf were long, many more times longer than the span of an average mortal, and Gulvane was reaching another century, his third as a wizard, his seventh as an elf. In that time, he’d lived a lifetime in each of four different occupations.

  Walking down the timber-lined hallway, Gulvane traced a hand along the walls, stopping at each of the three doors that kept the memories and skills that had made up his past. The first door was an oaken gold and adorned by a simple spray of leaves and flowers. A small gray-furred creature peered out from beneath the blossoms, its vivid green eyes touched with blue and gold.

  Gulvane laid a finger on its forehead and let the bittersweet feeling it invoked touch him briefly. The second door was a glowing bronze, and adorned with a pair of crossed swords. The third door was the color of night, created from a single plank of ebon-wood. A crossbow adorned its centre, painted in a shade barely lighter than the surface that bore it.

  Forester, fighter…assassin. Was it any wonder he’d become a wizard?

  He walked past the gleaming darkness of the third door and stared at the heavy columns slowly forming in the blank space of wall beyond. Soon. His heart was restless, and soon he would embark on another era of his life.

  Gulvane sighed. He had enjoyed his time as a wizard. It had been peaceful compared to what he had been before. The trouble was that he had no idea what he wanted to become next…and he was getting old, his body heading toward the end of middle age. He stood contemplating the slowly growing pillars before retracing his steps, touching each door as he passed.

  Assassin, fighter, forester, he could return to any one of them by opening the door and stepping into the mind of who he’d been. Gulvane’s fingers lingered on the bright-eyed creature peering from the flowers, before he shook his head and walked on, focusing his thoughts outwards and slowly returning to consciousness.

  He woke to find a dragon standing over his bed.

  “You are most entertaining,” it said, “and I have always wanted an elf of my own.”

  “You look like a man,” Gulvane replied, “yet I know you are dragon. How is it I know that?”

  “You’re a wizard,” the dragon said, leaning forward, quick as lightning, and pinning Gulvane to the mattress by holding the blankets tight across his shoulders.

  He bent in closer, until their foreheads almost touched, and then the dragon inhaled, moving his nose a hair’s breadth above Gulvane’s skin, and taking in the elf’s scent. It was frighteningly intimate and terrifyingly predatory at the same time.

  “And you are so much more,” the dragon said, on the softest of breaths. “What is it I can smell? Blood and darkness, stealth and the silver shine of an adamantine dagger, the silence of a whisper bow. Deeper, and these mingle with the stench of death and battle, the mirrored arcs of twin blades, the lightning of a great sword—where did you store that, I wonder—and rage, such rage, fading to coldness.”

  The dragon moved, stooping over him, and inhaling the scent of Gulvane’s neck, his mouth close enough to the wizard’s throat that Gulvane’s heart sped its rhythm.

  “But you were warm once, a gentle man, fierce only in the protection of the forest and its creatures, shunning civilization and a wedding that would have seen you close to ruling. What made you run, I wonder?”

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  He leant closer, touching foreheads with the wizard and capturing Gulvane’s eyes with his own.

  “No,” Gulvane whispered, and the dragon paused.

  “No?”

  For a moment, Gulvane hoped the beast would show mercy, but, instead, he felt the mattress dip beneath its weight and it pinned him so that he was entirely paralyzed. Its human lips curved into a smile, and it bared its teeth.

  “No one says no to a dragon.”

  “Please.”

  “And we are not known for our mercy,” the creature added, touching foreheads again.

  Gulvane tried to divert it from the path to his past, but the beast was older, far older than he’d imagined. The sense of the life it had lived left him paralyzed, partly in terror, partly in awe. It wanted an elven wizard for a pet?

  In his mind, the dragon found the three doors and halted.

  “Forester, fighter, assassin.”

  It cocked its head and studied where the fourth door was almost fully formed.

  “My timing is impeccable,” it said, its satisfaction a tangible thing that sent a wave of happiness through Gulvane’s head.

  “But this is what I came here to find,” it added, and turned as Gulvane realized what it meant.

  In his mind, the elf dived around the dragon’s human bulk, and pressed himself against the door. The dragon gave him a look that might have been consternation, if it hadn’t contained so much amusement.

  “Step aside, Gulvane,” the dragon said. “I will not harm you.”

  Gulvane wanted to say that he was hurting already, and the dragon raised an eyebrow.

  “I did not say there would be no pain, only that you would not be harmed by it,” the beast explained, seizing him gently, but firmly by the shoulders and lifting him aside.

  Keeping one hand on Gulvane to hold him away, it placed the other on the door, its palm covering the furry face hidden in the carefully painted branch. For a long moment, Gulvane felt nothing, and then the door cracked open just a little and the dragon reached inside.

  The memory he drew out played before Gulvane’s eyes with a clarity he’d hoped to forget.

  He had returned from a long sojourn in the forest, bringing with him the rarest of flowers for propagation by the druids and study by the wizards. His heart had been full of joy, because he had time to court his bride-to-be. He’d loved her since his youth, adoring her from afar, until she’d deigned to notice him and gained her parents’ approval of the pledge.

  She was not expecting him for two nights more, so he’d sent the honey possum, the cutest and closest of his animal companions, to let her know he would be calling. She had not sent it back with a request that he wait until the next day, and he had bathed and dressed with a lightness of heart that vanished as soon as he stepped through the door to her private chambers.

  His bride knelt before an open portal of swirling darkness, her silver-gold hair held back from her face in an intricate knot, her warm brown eyes brimming with tears, and an ebon dagger held tightly in one fist. In front of her, on a small, hand-carved altar of rarest silver wood, she’d laid out the possum.

  It was stretched on its back, not moving, its bright green eyes wide with fear. Gulvane remembered moving then, but not fast enough. His bride had raised the knife with one hand, and pinned the creature with the other… and then she had opened it from throat to belly.

  It had been quick and clean, but the smell of blood had marred the night air, and the swirling dark portal had come alive as his companion died. Laughter had crept out of the night beyond the portal, and two dark hands had reached through lifting the creature from the altar, and taking it to another realm.

  Gulvane had not thought, as swirling tattoos of red and blue had grown on his fiancé’s face, had not thought as he drew his sword and took the noblewoman’s head from her shoulders, before thrusting the blade into the portal beyond her tumbling body. Something solid met the blade, and the thing on the other side had screamed.

  With a vicious snap, the portal had ripped closed, shearing the blade, until only a four-inch stump remained attached to the hilt. Gulvane had dropped it and fled. After two hundred and ten years of living amongst his own people, he had run blindly away, not daring their justice, not able to face the other creatures who had run at his side. The honey possum had been loved by them all.

  Somewhere in the forest dark, his bond with them had snapped, and all the skills he’d honed in that section of his life had been crammed behind the golden door. The honey possum, hidden in its nest of flowers and leaves had taken much longer to appear. Gulvane had been remade, but he had not known it, until a caravan guard found him collapsed at the side of the road.

  “Father.” Gulvane mouthed the first word he had spoken to a human, crashing back to wakefulness as the dragon pulled the oak door closed, and reached over to secure the bronze-wood door, as well.