Yes

I flit around the edges of feral rage, moth to flame, senses honed by thirst. I am surrounded by prey. Heartbeats. Breath. All of it elevated, wary. They follow but not too closely, they know what might happen. Quicker steps separate themselves from the herd and approach.

"Do you have a name, Watcher of the Dragon?"

He falters, continues. "Karl, my lord." I turn my head to him as slowly as I can. We lapse, while thirsty, into instant jolts of motion separated by unnatural stillness, it is unsettling to experience and more unsettling to watch. He is carrying a bundle of black cloth. I stop, set my passenger down gently. She mumbles and stirs, curling up tighter. Good. Sleeping, not comatose. I reach out for the cloth, he hands it off. It is a robe like his followers', cheap black wool so ill-cut it might as well be a sack with holes in it. I suppress a sneer and put it on. Folk are uncomfortable enough being confronted by a corpse, no need to make it worse by being naked.

I gather the woman up again. "A thousand years." An interesting metaphysical question presents itself, are these vocal cords rusty with misuse or are they being stretched for the first time? My voice still sounds like me, at least. Karl allows the silence to stretch, not sure if he's been asked a question, so I continue. "Why now?"

He hesitates. "I wasn't sure we could do it until recently, my lord. Your prison was well-hidden and the methods of revival we knew required an intact body." I nodded. The spirit is a reflection of the body as the body is the spirit; one should not be able to exist without the other. I didn't have the first idea how I'd been trapped as I was. It shouldn't have been possible to begin with, retrieving me from an impossible state spoke volumes to Karl's skill. Or perhaps blind luck. Either way a creature to be wary of.

The path forked. Hewn stone gave way to masonry, then to an open door that looked to be well-concealed when closed, guarded by a pair of Karl's Watchers. Still robed in black but armed, this time, five-foot spears suited for fighting in tunnels. They jumped at my approach, saw their master, fell in ahead of us without a word. The path trodden by twenty feet to get inside was clear to my nose.

Another turn, tunnels branching off in all directions. Truly a maze they'd built to contain me. I felt flattered. This passage ended in a room containing the tattered remnants of more Watchers. Two dead. One burned beyond recognition. Three more injured but standing, spears held firmly, holding one door. Not the one through which they'd come, by the smell of it.

They jumped, one came over to us and saluted, fist over heart. "Master." To Karl, not to me. "We'd almost given up hope. The Enemy is here in strength and we can't hold much longer." He studied me, frowning. Strange not to be the object of terror or worship. I liked him. Made a note of the face under the hood, hard-featured and made for glowering. "Is this him?"

"I am me, yes." I couldn't resist needling him.

Karl jumped in almost immediately, possibly fearing an incident. "This is Valdimir Daorkoth, the Dragon, your lord for whom you and your fathers and your fathers' fathers have watched! Show some respect!"

I didn't correct him. I did wave an airy hand in his direction and say "Peace. The Watcher obviously isn't at his best right now."

A horn blared from down the passage the other two guarded. A mountain horn from the sound of it, deep, rough, probably off of one of those big goats they grow up there. Behind the noise, though, an aura of menace surged down the passage, a burst of chill, stinking air that set the torches dancing and flickering, and a foul burst of dark magic that rattled my bones. An old, cold magic from another place, the sort of place meddlesome mages never come back from, if they're lucky. If you're not lucky something else might follow you back, wear your body like a costume, play the part of being you better than you could until it gets bored and starts skinning small children.

The kind of Enemy that deserves a capital E.

I whipped around and set my burden down again. No time for power games or fakery here. If someone's letting demons out someone needs to stop it. "I need another vessel now." I opened my senses, passing my eye about the room, analyzing auras. Pointed at a boy in the back with trembling hands. Not useful in a fight but his aura was strong. "You'll do."