by Jack Wright
Of course, most would become suspicious of Eris at this point, of the possibility that she could have lied and in fact be working with the northern army. Caesia knew better - were this the case, it would have made no sense for Eris to choose to escort her to the Gate. It seemed to Caesia that something bigger was at play here.
“What do you think?” Eris inquired, interrupting Caesia’s thoughts.
“Well… I think we can certainly rule out an army from Norskar. The Kingdom has no motive and both they and the chiefdoms would have to have broken through the Gate only three hours ago. Both are impossible.”
“Yeah. I don’t know about the Kingdom, but the chiefdoms haven’t united for over a hundred years. Too much bad blood now.”
“Indeed. I’m not sure what else could be capable of such devastation, if not an army. We’ll need to investigate further. Come.” Caesia commanded, waving Eris along.
The two began walking once again, approaching down the ashen road towards the gates of the city.
Eris suddenly had a thought. “Maybe it was an army from… somewhere else?”
“Impossible.” Caesia bluntly rebuked. “The great houses of Verdenheld are far too reliant on each other to enter open war, they much prefer to undermine each other politically. Besides, none of them would be fool enough to attack House Severin - they would have to be suicidal. As for the Republic, they would never make such a move. It would jeopardize their precious trade.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. There isn’t an army in the world that could stand up against House Severin. Well, maybe except Veranopolis, but that’s a theory thus far untested.”
The gates of Jordenholm were collapsed, the portcullis melted and the surrounding wall a crumbling wreck. Caesia had heard that the fortifications of Jordenholm were blocky, slab-like structures of imposing height. The walls now were crumbled and misshapen, reduced dramatically in height and in some places, completely vaporized. Whatever had done this must have been extremely powerful, that was for sure.
Eris moved nimbly over the rubble in the gateway, while Caesia staggered and clambered behind. She wasn’t used to all this off-roading, having lived such a sheltered life back in Abenfurt. What particularly annoyed her was that her hands and trousers were getting filthy with ash and there were no servants around to clean it up.
She scrambled over the last of the rubble and jogged to catch up with Eris and as she did so, she continued to survey her surroundings. She had always liked the sounds of Jordenholm, having been told that the buildings were a beautiful mix of northern and southern architecture, due to its proximity to the Norskar Gate. Of course, she knew it would pale before the magnificent spires of Abenfurt, but she was nonetheless intrigued. Now she finally got to see that architecture, scorched and collapsed, largely beyond recognition.
Interestingly, all of the broken buildings’ foundations were perfectly intact, as if they had been struck from above. Strange, considering that there could not have been time for an army to set up and collapse its siege weapons.
“Alright, what’re we looking for here?” Eris asked, searching the barren hellscape.
“I don’t know…” Caesia sighed. “Maybe- Oh God!”
She leapt panickedly behind Eris, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her out in front of her.
“What?!” Eris gasped, reaching hurriedly for her sword.
“Over there!” Caesia hissed shakily.
Eris followed Caesia’s finger to a pair of green drakes, yanking hungrily at a corpse. They were quite common across the continent, tiny draconids reminiscent of their larger cousins. Their skin was glossy and scaly and the cute little wings on their arms were batting happily as they sunk their razor teeth into their prize.
Eris sighed and retracted her hand from the hilt of her sword. “It’s just a couple of drakes.” She smirked. “They’re not gonna hurt us.”
“Make them go.” Caesia insisted, refusing to shift from behind Eris.
“They only attack in a three to one-”
“Make. Them. Go.” Caesia demanded, shoving Eris towards them. “Now!”
Eris rolled her eyes and wandered begrudgingly over to the drakes. She slid her sword from her sheath and sprang aggressively into a sprint towards them.
“Get outta here!” She yelled, sending both of the drakes scrambling into the rubble of a nearby building. “Sorry! You can come back later…”
“Are they gone?” Caesia called fearfully from behind a snapped streetlight.
“They’re gone, yeah.” Eris smirked. This was the girl who was threatening her life earlier, now hiding like a coward from harmless drakes. “Why’re you so scared of a few drakes?”
Eris hoped she wasn’t about to intrude upon some kind of childhood trauma. Caesia’s reluctance to be there already made things awkward enough.
“Are you kidding?!” Caesia hissed. “They spit fire, they could kill me!”
Eris held back from grinning as to not earn another glare. “Right…”
Eris turned around to the body from which she had chased the drakes. Its flesh was melted from its bones. Its skin was dark like a burnt ham and its bones were black and scorched. The air was polluted with the choking stench of burnt flesh. Caesia approached and peered over her shoulder, wide eyed and short of breath.
She reeled away in horror, gagging at the sight and smell alike. “Oh God!” She blurted in disgust, immediately throwing up a bit in her mouth.
As Caesia coughed and sputtered behind her, Eris simply stood and looked at the man. She had seen her fair share of wounds in the village, but nothing like this. Yet, she seemed to feel far less revolted by this, it was almost like looking at one of her father’s infamous attempts at cooking.
“Caesia?” She called calmly.
Caesia had collapsed onto the ashen ground and sat facing away from the scene, snivelling and breathing erratically in a vain attempt to gather herself. That was a sight she was never going to unsee.
“Caesia… what do you make of this?”
Caesia shuddered as she dribbled a mouthful of vomit into the ash. “Please, I-I don’t want to think about it!” She urged, her voice shaky with fear.
Eris sat down in the ash beside her. “It’s okay, just take a minute to breath.” She whispered calmly, placing her hand gently on Caesia’s shoulder.
Caesia took a deep, hoarse breath and gathered herself, wiping a few tears from beneath her tortured eyes.
“Okay, okay… I’m ready.” She murmured with uncertainty.
Rather than looking back, she pictured the body in her mind. To melt the flesh from one’s body would require a very high temperature to be sustained over a fair amount of time. Considering that the victim was outside, it was unlikely that he died to any sort of house fire. Caesia considered the evidence. She had a conclusion in mind that she feared to confirm. Large scale demolition, pointless torching of farmland, melted flesh, people burnt to death outdoors, buildings shattered from above - it could mean only one terrifying thing.
“I think I know what did this.” Caesia muttered fearfully.
“You do?” Eris chirped eagerly.
“Yes. Do you know much about dragons, Eris?”
“Dragons?!” Eris could hardly fathom the idea, yet come to think of it, it did make a lot of sense. All except for one thing. “Dragons are extinct, they have been for hundreds of years!”
Caesia made an uneasy smirk. “Is that what they tell you up north? No, I would call it more of a… decimation. They were wiped out to a fraction after they aided the Oppressor in the Elarian War. The females were hunted down and killed, along with most of the males who tried to defend them. It was genocide, no matter how heroic a deed the stories make it out to be.”
As much as it was possible, Eris couldn’t believe it. The stories told to her about these legendary creatures were vastly different. They told of a group of legendary Nordic heroes who ventured into the mountains and brought down the bea
sts. It was a well known tale, yet could it really have been a lie?
“But… why now?”
“A good question.” Caesia sighed, racking her brain on what little she had learnt of the dragons. “It’s been more than four hundred years since the genocide and they choose only to attack now, it makes no sense.”
“Maybe they were gathering their strength?”
“They’ve no strength to gather. Something must have prompted them to attack, perhaps an act of provocation by Verdenheld?”
“How do you know all this anyway? You’re weirdly knowledgeable about this.”
“I like to read. A lot. There was normally little else to do, aside from practicing how to be ladylike.”
Eris giggled. “Seriously?”
“Yes, it was awful - I even had to practice walking. Take it from me Eris, be thankful you were raised in Norskar.” Caesia paused momentarily before scrambling up onto her feet. “But I digress, I believe we have a conclusion as to our culprit. You had best be off to Abenfurt, it's by far the closest city and if any of the houses will know how to deal with a dragon, it will be House Tarantis.”
Eris grinned cheekily. “Okay, I can go do that. Or…”
“Oh, for God’s-”
“We could go do it ourselves?”
Caesia silently glared at Eris and turned to walk off towards the gate.
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun!” Eris called after her.
“It will be suicide and I will have no part in it!” Caesia snapped, her back still turned.
“Alright, have it your way. I’m going.”
Caesia kept walking. She wasn’t going to be talked into this fool’s errand, not this time. She scrambled once again over the rubble in the gateway and stumbled back onto the road.
Eris watched as Caesia walked into the distance. She was going to do this and was quite confident that Caesia would come crawling back soon enough.
Caesia turned and looked back down the road, watching Eris as she headed off in the opposite direction. As bad as she felt for abandoning Eris to her inevitable death, it was better her than both of them. A shame, she thought, Eris had grown on her. Naive and overconfident as she was, she was good company and admirably optimistic. Caesia had never really had friends growing up, having been secluded by her parents, yet here she was abandoning probably the first person she may have considered a friend.
She took a breath and kept walking. She wasn’t about to guilt trip herself into being melted by a fire breathing monster, all because she had no friends. As she forged on, she was unable to take her mind off the subject. It was as if her heart was trying to manipulate her into turning back, while her brain tried to come up with reasons not to. Suddenly, her heart raised a point to which the brain had no answer - if Eris went and got killed by the dragon, who was going to warn Verdenheld? She couldn’t, not without her father’s men catching up - a fate arguably worse than death.
“Oh no…” She mumbled, her arms sagging in defeat.
Caesia came to the realisation that she had no choice but to turn back, a painful realisation indeed.
“Okay. If I keep going, thousands will die.” She muttered to herself. “If I turn back, I’ll likely die with them. But, in the unlikely event that we deal with the threat, then nobody will die.”
Caesia often had to say things out loud to convince herself that what she was doing made sense.
“Alternatively, I could turn back and try to convince Eris of the error of her ways…”
That seemed like the most logical choice here, but judging by the sheer degree of stubbornness Eris had displayed thus far, it seemed extremely unlikely.
“Alright, worst case scenario - everyone dies. Best case, we kill the dragon and nobody dies.”
Caesia had the same feeling she had felt when preparing to flee the college, that the idea was stupid and was going to get her killed. Yet here she was, alive and well. Perhaps this would be the death of her, or perhaps like her flight from the College, it could be the beginning of something new - for better or for worse.
Caesia looked over her shoulder as Eris slipped over a distant hilltop. With a deep sigh, she started back in that direction. She had a feeling that she would regret this completely.
Eris knelt down in the grass - it still felt so alien to her, as did everything here. This was crazy, it seemed almost like a dream - the perfect scenario in which she would become a hero. A great beast threatened the realm and it was up to one brave adventurer to put an end to its reign of terror! Truly storybook.
She ran her fingers along a blade of grass, picking up small black particles on her skin - ash. She had followed the trail up and over the hill, a trail she believed was left by the dragon as it left the city. It made sense, the trail was sparse but wide, so it must have been left by a large creature and the lack of footprints suggested that creature must have been airborne. It seemed to have headed off in a fairly straight line towards the mountains to the north-east that divided Norskar and Verdenheld. That was her destination.
As Eris rose from the ground, she heard the distant sound of footsteps on the hill behind her. She grinned, both amused and pleased with her little victory. “Well, well. Look who came crawling back.”
Caesia emerged from behind the hilltop, both exhausted from catching up and visibly irritated at herself for coming along. “Yes, yes, laugh it up.” She snapped. “I’ve decided to tag along on your absurd crusade of naivety, if only to convince you not to throw your life away.”
Eris made a condescending smirk. “Oh come on, you should know me better than that by now.”
“It’s always worth a try.” Caesia sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ve formulated some cunning plan in my absence?”
“Well, I’ve got a lead.”
Eris lifted up her finger and thrust it into Caesia’s face. Caesia glanced at Eris and her finger back and forth with a puzzled look, unable to understand what she was doing.
“What is this? Am I missing something here?”
“It’s ash! On my finger.” Eris exclaimed. Caesia did not seem impressed. “The dragon left a huge trail of it towards those mountains.”
“So that’s your plan? Go into the mountains and kill the dragon, just like that?”
Eris placed her hands on her hips defiantly. “Oh, so you have a far better one?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. After all, I’m far better versed in the stories of the dragons, considering everything you know about them is lies and conjecture.”
Eris screwed up her face annoyedly and dropped her hand in defeat. “Alright then, enthral me with your words of wisdom.”
“Okay, the stories say that Lord Falion Tarantis, leader of the expedition, had his diviners scry for information on their quarry. In doing so, they discovered what Lord Falion dubbed the ‘Valley of Fire’.”
“So if we find the valley, we find the dragon?”
“It’s our best lead. The issue is that it’s undocumented where and how Falion’s army entered the mountains. However, there may be an alternative way for us to reach the valley, a far more dangerous and likely life threatening method of entry.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Eris grinned confidently.
“I knew you would say that.” Caesia groaned.
“What? The more dangerous the adventure, the more legendary the deed, right?”
Caesia chose to ignore that question. “Anyway, the only foreseeable way into the mountains is through the Tomb of the Dragonslayer, a large complex built into a mountain as a burial tomb for Lord Falion and the thousands of so called ‘heroes’ of the genocide. It’s said that the tomb was to function as a passage into the valley. Of course, this is unconfirmed as nobody has had any reason to go to the valley and all the archaeologists are far too busy obsessing over all those Old Empire ruins and the like.”
“Okay… but I don’t see what’s so life threatening about that.”
“Well, aside from the possibility of being h
unted down by House Barethia for the heresy of ancestral desecration, the tomb is likely filled with traps to ward off any unwanted visitors.”
“What? Why would you put traps in a tomb?”
“Because unlike your people, we prefer to let our dead remain in peace rather than constantly harassing them with visits. Please, don’t take that the wrong way, I prefer not to hold any opinions on religious practices. I have little care for it.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. I’m not one of those hardliners who’d challenge you to combat over it.”
“I always assumed that was a stereotype.” Caesia chuckled.
Eris sniggered with her. “It happens more often than you’d think.”
“Alright.” Caesia sighed, gathering her thoughts again. “If you truly are so insistent on going ahead with this, we should get going. The tomb is just over halfway between here and Tryzantopol, so it’s going to be quite the walk.”
“Yeah, but first we should probably find somewhere to sleep.”
Caesia looked behind her to see the sun low in the sky. The day had gone by in a flash for her. It felt like just minutes ago when she was slipping out the gates of Abenfurt. As she came to realise how late it was getting, she realised just how exhausted she was, having spent almost all day running as hard as she could. Suddenly her legs went weak and her body as a whole felt faint and burnt out.
“Yeah… after the day I’ve had, I think I could use a lie down.” She sighed exhaustedly. “I don’t suppose you’ve-”
“Food?” Eris grinned as Caesia nodded in confirmation. She eagerly slung her backpack off her shoulders. “How does a few cupboards’ worth sound?”
