William Oh stole a grimoire of ancient secrets from a dragon’s hoard, right under her watchful gaze. Jason SalazarMaribelle picked up Jer and Will followed her to her mother’s Domain. The others stayed behind and set up camp at the sap-spring falls.Their reasoning: If the mother dragon was going to pick a fight, Will might be able to escape by himself, but a full Party of Climbers armed to the teeth showing up on her doorstep might send the wrong message.It was a quick flight to an oversized clearing around a pair of earth hills. Will didn’t see any entrance to the den, but there was a ton of miasma flowing through and around it, so it had to be special somehow.Will didn’t realize that he’d entered a dragon’s domain at first. It crept up on his consciousness. Unlike Nora’s dome of swirling curses, the dividing line between the domain and the outside wasn’t so clear-cut. The miasma inside Mother’s domain felt like…stillness.Not calm and tranquil like a serene lake or an idyllic forest. It was an ominous stillness, as if all the animals in the forest had suddenly gone quiet. The kind a predator might have while waiting for a juicy prey to enter their range.Every strand of Miasma running through the trees or the earth, floating through the sky or under the wings of the birds…was operating on some strange intelligence that lived and breathed behind the realm of consciousness thought.Will was absolutely sure the surroundings would turn against him in an instant should he prove to be a threat.Crap. Mirabelle’s mom is scary. Although I am curious to see if Aspect would resist it, like it did with Nora.“Mother! Mother, wake up!”The nearby hill peeled an eye open.With a snort, a deep red dragon unfolded from beneath centuries of leaf-litter and detritus that had long since become soil, allowing grass and small trees to take root. (...)