by Rosie Scott
Simply trekking across the cavern took a couple of minutes. This place was huge, and one would have had no idea it existed if not for the tunnel entrance. It was a curiosity how someone knew it was here to where they would have built the tunnel to get here. I pondered over whether we would come across someone here. Maybe some people had made a home in these caverns, safe from the biting chill of the outdoors. Maybe this was just a quick detour someone had made through the mountain, and the cavern had just been here to find.
We finally made it to the opening in the cavern wall, where it molded into a large hallway of sorts, with sides that were one hundred or so feet apart, and a ceiling that had to have been similarly sized, though stalactites dotted the otherwise smooth rock in various places. The hallway sloped downward so slightly that I didn't notice until I kicked something, and heard it begin to roll down away from me.
It was dark in this hallway, so much so that I couldn't quite see what it was that I had kicked. Theron had fashioned a torch earlier that he swooped down toward the ground, where the orange light of the flame flickered past a human skeleton.
“I thought that sounded like bone,” Nyx mused. Glancing up toward Theron, she asked, “How fucked are we?”
The ranger looked down the path, where it did nothing but slope downward even farther. “Perhaps they were waiting out a storm and starved,” he suggested.
“How stupid would someone have to be to allow themselves to starve? I'd weather the cold to get food,” Nyx argued.
“You don't know how many of them there were. Clearly enough to dig out a tunnel into this place,” the ranger replied. “Maybe someone left to get food. This person stayed.” Theron started to walk again, leaving the skeleton behind. Without much more thought, we followed him.
Up ahead, there was a slight orange glow at what appeared to be the end of the hallway, at long last. It looked like it opened up into another room, but at least this room had fire. Wherever there was warmth, we would be able to camp comfortably. And it was about time, too. If I'd been tired before entering this cave, I was much more tired now.
We walked farther and farther, ever closer to the orange glow. As soon as we were level enough with the next room to see into it, we were all taken aback.
There was gold. Millions and millions of coins in piles half the size of a grown human lined the walls on either side of us. Further in, the piles grew, becoming even larger than us, the gold pieces scattering out around the piles on the bottom. None of us said anything, for the moment. I think we were all speechless. Even as royalty, I'd seen nothing close to this amount of gold, at any point in my life. There were dozens of piles, all that had to have had thousands upon thousands of gold each.
Perhaps out of morbid curiosity, we kept walking. This was—oddly enough—the only room in the cavern thus far that was well lighted. Sconces lined the walls between the piles of gold, each holding a nicely sized flame. I walked toward one, eyeing it closely. Whoever had put these lights here knew some form of advanced alchemy, or something similar. The fire burned brightly, but it also had appeared to for quite some time. The flames licked outward from cloth that had been doused in some sort of black, thick sludge. Whatever it was, it was meant to provide long term light or heating.
The room opened up even farther as we passed pile after pile of gold, and that's when even more gold added itself to the mix in the form of golden furniture. Chests, statues, and even pure gold photo frames with the artwork still attached were stacked up between coin piles or leaning against them.
“Secret dwarven stash?” I wondered aloud, seeking answers.
“We are days away from Brognel at the quickest route,” Theron replied. “I would highly doubt it.”
Our findings became even more weird when shiny things of all types began to appear. There were weapons, many broken. Wagon wheels made of steel. Slabs of aluminum tile, as if for roofing. Even mirrors, most of them cracked and decrepit.
“Am I the only one who finds this weird?” Nyx asked, when still no one had said a thing.
“No,” Theron agreed, walking past another large gold pile, where the room opened up even farther. “It's definitely—”
The ranger stopped. I ran into his back, making him stumble forward a bit. The rest of the group stopped where they stood just behind me. Only Theron and I could see beyond the wall of the room where it opened up, as the others were still behind it. And what I did see made my blood run cold.
Ahead, in the open room, were more of what we passed. Gold piles and shiny objects littered the cavern before us, in no particular pattern. The hallway leading here had been organized compared to this, where shiny loot was simply tossed without any planning. What didn't look similar was the piles of skeletons, or the partially decomposed bodies of scavengers of all races that littered the room. Some corpses were partially buried in gold or loot. All around the cavern that held the loot were the markings of plenty of battles. Stalagmites and cavern walls alike were scarred with sword strikes that had missed their targets. Hundreds of arrows littered the ground in a variety of places, some arrowheads brown with old blood. Most frightening of all was the sweeping, bluish-white stains on the walls that cut across rock and treasure alike. Much of what was stained had been cracked as well, proving that strong water magic in the form of ice had been used here, time and time again. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure I knew the culprit.
One very large, reptilian white eye watched Theron and I without a blink from the floor of the cave. The scales surrounding the eye were a shimmering silver that appeared blue depending on the light. All I could see from here was its head, as massive piles of loot hid its body from view. Its head alone had to have been five feet long, and three of that was just its jaws, with long, sharp teeth that extended past its scaly lips. Two long, dark grayish-blue ribbed horns extended past its neck and out of view at the back of its skull.
This was my first time coming across such a creature, but just by its head I knew what it was, given the art drawn of legends and fables. As the rest of the body was hidden, I could not count its legs, so I did not know if it had two or four. But either way, we were dealing with either a wyvern or a dragon.
I froze in place, my eyes stuck on the creature. I was still leaning into Theron from where I'd run into him, because I was too afraid to move backward off of him. I felt his heart beating fast, even through his armor. He had never said whether or not he'd ever run across a creature this size, nor if he had ever beaten one. I knew for a fact that three of us in the group hadn't. I wasn't sure how to deal with such flying beasts.
It was only when Nyx spoke that anything changed. “...guys?”
The reptilian head lifted, and a snort was expelled through its nostrils in puffs of mist, the noise sounding like it was both inconvenienced and angry. The soft clicking of scales fanning out against each other in movement echoed off the rocky walls as it hefted its weight off of the ground on which it had been slumbering.
Theron unsheathed his swords. Even as I backed up off of him, I said, “You wish to fight it?”
Glancing back toward the uphill climb behind us, he asked, “Do you wish to outrun it?” He had a point. We had no hope of outrunning a creature of this size with the amount of walking we'd done to get here. We would be brutalized on the trip.
I supposed we would have to fight.
“What are we up against?” It was Cerin who asked, though Silas also looked concerned, his bow already out in his hands. From their positions, they still could not see it, though the vibrations of its footsteps meant that would soon change.
“Dragon,” I answered. I noted the necromancer's exasperated look. He looked fatigued. We all were. And now here we were, having to fight a dragon in its territory.
The creature chose that moment to walk past the wall, revealing itself in all its glory. In another situation, I would have found it to be a beautiful, magnificent being. Standing upright on two thick, muscular legs with claws that were sharp and curled f
rom overgrowth, it probably measured twenty feet tall. Given that its tail was long and curled in a half-circle behind it, it would have had to have been thirty feet long. Its silver-blue scales glimmered in the nearby fire light, and it spread its wings, curling its neck forward to roar. The result was a high-pitched, crackling scream like some mix of bird of prey and something downright demonic, and it shook the walls and burned my eardrums. I was sure the display of its size and its roar were meant to be intimidating.
They were.
“Wyvern,” Cerin stated, behind me. I glanced back to see him releasing necromantic energy from both palms. Hundreds of black tendrils slithered past my boots, making a sizzling noise as they went.
“What?” I asked, breathlessly.
“Two legs,” he said shortly, unsheathing his scythe, and running ahead.
Silas had already started shooting his arrows. The first few bounced harmlessly off of the wyvern's thick scales, so he began firing toward the soft spots of the creature. Between scales, through the wings. Nyx, Theron, and Cerin had the creature surrounded, engaging it with melee weapons. From around the corner ahead, dozens of skeletons and zombies came running and shambling, heeding Cerin's call, their hands all equipped with what weapons were closest. Almost humorously, some of the undead had chosen the broken weapons strewn across the floor, and were attempting to damage the wyvern with nothing but steel handles or half of a sword.
At least they were trying.
Creatius les fiers a nienda. Fire energy materialized over one palm. Sheel a mana. Life energy materialized over the other.
I hurried to the three friends engaged in melee. I could tell that the wyvern was angriest with Nyx, who had managed to stab the creature in the lower stomach, where its scales were weakest. So I directed my spells together toward her, allowing the two elements to mix before reaching the Alderi.
Zwip. Sssss. A magical shield encapsulated her, flames licking out from its energy. The wyvern hissed, the flames reflecting off of its white eyes with a glare. I had figured that the wyvern could use ice magic, given the evidence of it throughout its lair. I wanted to protect the others as much as I could from that.
The wyvern lifted its head. At first I thought it was to dodge Nyx's fire shield, but then I heard the rumbling. The scales on his throat rippled upward, and it curled its neck downward, stretching its jaws to the limits. As the ripple reached its head, the rumbling deepened, before it was released from the wyvern's mouth as a mist of pure ice.
Nyx was smart enough to know it had been preparing an attack, so she was in the midst of a somersault to the side to dodge it. Even still, the ending seconds of the spell hit its target, dimming the fire shield and weakening it. Nyx didn't let it faze her. As soon as she landed her dodge, she ducked back into melee range, striking in a flurry of moves so quick, her daggers were nothing more than blurs of silver.
Cerin was hacking away at the wyvern's side, just beneath its wing, over and over again with his scythe, and all while leeching energy from the creature with his left hand. He'd nicked a spot in the wyvern's hide where its scales were breaking from repeated trauma, pieces of the silver-blue falling off to the floor below. When the wyvern turned its head and snapped at him, I knew Cerin's methods were working. Repeating my first two spells, I gave Cerin a fire shield.
My energy reserves were running low. Both Cerin and I were pulling from the same sources. The exertion, the heat of the fire in the sconces. The necromancer was receiving an abundance of energy by leeching from the wyvern, but his spells would not utilize those reserves until all else had run out. So he was essentially taking energy from the environment just to recycle it into a form I could not utilize. I needed access to that energy, and knew Cerin had the ability to give it to me, as long as he knew the life spell. But to ask him now, in the midst of battle, would be to both inconvenience him when he was fighting so well, and to ask him to trust me with energy he had worked hard to get.
So I didn't ask. And I did all that I thought of to do, which was to use what little precious energy I had to distractedly give Theron the same fire shield as he fought behind the creature's wing. The wyvern spat ice at a handful of Cerin's skeletons, and they all collapsed to the ground in a pile of mismatched bones. Perhaps the creature had learned that using ice against my fire shields was moot.
Then, Silas did both a wonderful and terrible thing. He fired his bow when the wyvern had slowed its tantrum for even a millisecond, and the arrow pierced one of its large, white eyes. The animal screeched, jerking the back half of its body to the side, as if in the midst of a panic. Along with the body, its tail was swiped across the floor as fast and as sharp as a whip. I heard a crack, and then a gut-wrenching scream, and then I saw Theron get thrown against a nearby gold pile.
Next, came the blood. Lots and lots of blood.
I dodged the wyvern's next jerk of panic and hurried to Theron's side. He was screaming, and the wyvern was screaming, and it was all combining in my head to create a backdrop to my thoughts that was nothing short of awful. Two tanned hands held at his thigh. Blood pooled around his legs. I was uncertain as to what, exactly, had been injured, until I realized that the two bright buckles on his thick pant armor were actually both of his tibias, bright white and broken cleanly through, the bones sticking straight out of both body and armor.
I was too shocked to really say anything. Theron had tears of pain rolling down his face and his normally calm eyes were sharp with panic. I tried to focus on my healer's training, back at the Seran University. Any who knew life magic were required to go through it. It dealt with anatomy, and wound treatment, and what to do in emergency situations like this.
I needed access to his legs, and I needed them free of their armor. The bone was stuck so cleanly through even his armor, however. To pull his pants down past his ankles would be to risk further agitating the wound and the bones.
I glanced up, toward Theron's sides. One of his swords was lying just some feet away. The other must have been dropped closer to the wyvern. I grabbed the sword near him, trying my best to ignore the battle raging on behind me. I peeled the armor off the skin below his knee, just enough so I could begin cutting it off with his own sword. I removed the armor from both of his knees down, being careful not to snag the leather on his broken bone.
Next, I held up one of the pieces of loose armor, toward Theron's face. “Bite this,” I said in a rush, watching as the ranger immediately followed my directions and did so.
One leg at a time. One at a time. He already had both legs lying as flat as they could be. Putting both hands on his left leg, I took a breath and twisted, snapping the broken bone back into alignment. Theron's screams were muffled by the leather between his teeth, but it didn't stop me from nearly peeing myself from hearing his pain and fearing further hurting him.
Putting both palms to his wound, I said the spell to boost his immunity. The last thing I needed was to put him back together just for him to die of infection later.
Finally, I began to heal him. Because the wound was so deep, I laid my hands flat over his skin, so I could feel the spell working and ensure the bone did not reform incorrectly. Heat escaped my palms, sinking deep into his wound and going to work. I closed my eyes to focus, trying to ignore the clash of metal and scale that continued to ring out from behind me.
Eventually, I felt the slight tug beneath my palms as the bone began to reconnect, the marrow slowly building between the two broken halves. I swayed over Theron's leg, feeling light-headed. This was a deep wound, and it was taking all the energy I had to heal him. For the first time ever, I felt a spell begin to drain my life, and I gave it permission to do so, keeping my hands close to the mercenary's skin.
If it weren't for me, Theron wouldn't be in the middle of the Cel Mountains right now, and he wouldn't have gone this far into a cave that I had suggested. He had no personal quest for which he was here. I did, and he was here for me. Failing this man was not an option.
I frowned as
I felt another wave of intense fatigue, but I kept my eyes closed in focus, and continued to heal him anyway. The wound was reconnecting nerves and tissue beneath my palms. Theron's screams had faded, but he continued to breathe hard, his exhales echoing in the air between us.
I swayed over him again. A dull throbbing pumped through my head, heating me as if I had a fever.
Failing him is not an option.
Everything went black.
Thirteen
Someone was finger combing my hair, almost maternally. But I had never had a mother who would do that, so I laid there, letting it happen, because it felt nice. I was dreaming again, but that was fine. I would take pleasurable dreams if I could not have the reality.
“How does it feel?” Cerin.
“...better,” came the reply. Theron's voice. “I'm afraid to stand up. The bones were broken through. I can't really believe I'd be fully healed.”
“Shock is normal from both the break and the cure. Just lay there a moment.” I heard movement. Then, I felt one hand on my forehead, the other lying on my abdomen from through armor. There was a rush of heat, and a tingling sensation spread through my body, washing the fatigue from my bones. “She's breathing,” Cerin continued, after a moment. “Her organs are all working. She is just in slumber.”
Perhaps I wasn't dreaming, after all.
I opened my eyes, slowly recognizing my environment from when I'd left it consciously. Theron sat as he had, though both legs were fully healed. A pool of blood still sat below him, thickening with time, a reminder of how severe his wounds had been. Above me, Nyx's face came into view, and I realized she held my head on her lap, and was brushing my hair. Her face registered immense relief once my eyes met hers.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” she greeted, as if to downplay her worry.
Cerin was beside my hip, watching me closely. I knew he was ensuring my eyes were clear and that I was of mind, but it still gladdened me all the same to have the attention of such a man. Silas stood at my feet, also watching me intensely, both arms crossed before his chest.
