Prideth falls asleep — Kylara realises she probably shouldn't have let her gorge — and Kylara goes to find Brekke to get numbweed for her arm, scratched when the fire lizard fled, only to find her involved with F'nor. Like in IV, defeating 20 members of a given monster species will reveal their dropped item, although the Book doesn't show the secret item drop that particular monster has when it is chosen by the player as a Traveller's Tablet boss, which may be an exclusive item not found in any other way; an example of such, is the Poison needle plus, which can only be found as a drop of a Hirsute hexer made as a Traveller's Tablet boss, or the Sacreder Armour, which comes from a boss Alarmour.

Before his adventure begins, Dai lives in peace as the lone human among monsters on Dermline Island. They soon plan to import grubs from Southern, and place them at Lemos Hold to protect the forests and test how long it takes for the grubs to spread, while Andemon convinces people to stop killing the grubs. What is odd, is from this point on, the plot follows Brekke and F’nor having a fulfilling and loving relationship, indeed one which has a major and profound effect on events later in the book.

Of course had these comments been tied to a not unreasonable hatred of Kylara given her previous behaviour towards F’nor I might have understood the remark, though McCaffrey does not make this clear so it just comes off as oddly vicious.

After talking with them about the fire lizards — and warning that she will not tolerate any shirking of duties because of them — Kylara leaves, and Brekke notes that fire lizards could be given to non-weyrfolk to Impress, giving them «a small taste of dragon». When the fire lizards project the images of the Red Star to all, Brekke cries out «Don't leave me alone! Speaking of Lessa, both she and F’lar were also far more pleasant to be around this time, mostly because F’lar tended to be focused entirely on getting all of Pern around a table to coordinate defence against thread and so far less the domineering figure he’d been previously.

Meanwhile, Robinton and Fandarel have arrived for the meeting, and talk with F'lar, Lessa and Lytol about the Threadfall variations. F'nor then looks through the distance-viewer and sees a familiar feature on the surface — a grey mass that resembles the shape of Nerat in reverse. F'lar explains his plans to spread the grubs to the Northern Continent, and requests F'nor to capture some Thread during an upcoming Fall so that they can test their abilities. In anger — especially since F'nor rejected her advances earlier — Kylara leaves; Canth witnesses her, but does not mention this to F'nor. F'lar next asks about Kylara's fire lizard being able to eat Thread; she states she did it when Thread began to fall, and also adds she was seen burrowing after Thread.