“You’re ridiculously chipper this morning, though. Did you find something while you were out?” Bjorn asks Ström now, lifting his eyebrows as we finally get to whatever secret Ström’s hiding.
“Maybe.” Ström grins anew. He’s smiling to beat the band as he enjoys baiting us. An intrigued sparkle reignites in his green eyes. I know he’s discovered something big, which is why he came back to find us this morning.
“What is it?” I lift my eyebrows as I braid my hair into a simple cable over my shoulder, wrapping and tucking in a piece of my hair so it stays put, since I haven’t found any elastic in this place.
“Well, after I ate this morning, I did some exploring. You know, to see if we can find anything useful down here, while we’re wiling away the hours recuperating.” Ström watches us with a more mysterious smile on his lips now, enigmatic.
“What did you find?” Bjorn prompts him as he scowls, my First Drake quite a lot more concise than my Second, who loves being verbose, especially if it irks Bjorn.
“The strangest thing.” Ström grins at Bjorn before looking at me. “I think to get the full effect, however, you should come see it.”
“You really can’t just tell us what you’ve found, can you?” Bjorn grumps with his hands on his hips now. Even he’s giving a little Bjorn-smile at Ström’s mystery, however, as the very last corners of his lips lift.
“I really can’t,” Ström grins wide now, jovial. Extending his arm to me like a high lord, which I always forget Ström is, being the chosen Jarl-Heir to the Eriksson Jarldom, he grins like a brigand. “Milady.”
“Milord,” I tease him back, though I take his proffered arm, winding mine through his. “Shall we go?”
“We shall.” Ström has a faux-lordly affect in his voice, as he cinches me to him with ourarms linked.
“You jokers are just two peas in a pod.” Bjorn grumps behind us, though there’s humor in it, as we turn and head towards the vaulted door.
Because despite our exhaustion, all of us are feeling light at our current safety and everything this place has provided for us. Despite the surreal mystery of these ancient halls, it’s a good feeling, as I head with Ström out through the massive doors of our underground room now.
Bjorn steps to my side as we egress into the quadrangle where we’ve found bedrooms. As fountains burble in the niches of the walls, this vaulted through-way devoured by luminous mosses, vines, and trees like the rest of the underground, Ström leads us to a side hall we’ve not explored yet.
We move through a towering stone vault, then into another hall with just as many doorways branching off it as the one we left. This ancient underground is a warren, and I concentrate now to memorize the twistings and turnings we go through in the fey halls, as we’re led onward by Ström.
Luminous moths waft everywhere, phosphorescent lizards darting down from the trees to snipe them up. A chill wind curls through the ancient space, however; I shiver in my leathers, until Bjorn hands around some of those magical torches, which he snagged before we left our room.
I’m glad he remembered them, as they ignite in our dragon’s colors and we continue on. Because this is an entire city down here, gone to ruin but partially preserved by ancient magic, like a dragonfly trapped in amber.
It’s a strange feeling, being in a place built for so many, abandoned except for us. I know it is abandoned; with the sixth sense of my inner dragons, I know there’s nothing down here but us, as I feel no other significant signature of life while we walk.
We move from hall to towering hall, perusing the ancient silver and gold runes glimmering on every archway and vault as we walk, done in a Blood Dragon language long-lost. As Ström at last ushers us in through atowering doorway with snarling dragons carved up the lintels and massive doors, we enter.
It’s a gargantuan space, with a domed ceiling like an observatory. Flanked by massivesilberskraeshelves that rise into the dome like a library, all the scrolls, vellums, and leather-bound tomes in those vaults are in a sorry state.
Once protected by our Ancestors’ magic, most of that magic has failed now, and the knowledge preserved here has paid the price. Several barriers over the towering stacks are gone, obliterated; there, everything has mildewed and gone to tattered dust.
Some stacks still stand, however, hale and pristine, as Bjorn and I raise our eyebrows now at this impressive library Ström has found. But the most impressive thing about it stands right in the center of the hall.
Before us, I’m amazed to see a massive silver stone taking up the entire center of the space. A gargantuan disc which towers five man-heights tall, it sits on its edge like a mirror.
My eyebrows lift as I notice it’s floating, suspended by nothing but flowing currents of air underneath and all around. It’s magic our people can’t even fathom anymore, as a deep respect fills me for our ancient Ancestors. Because they were capable of so much more than we are, united in their Blood and Bone Magic as their society was, long ago.
Neither side persecuted for it.
I’m startled, however, as we come before that shining silver stone and it swirls to life. As Aesa’s Truthstone upon my chest gives an answering swirl, I see the massive silver stone before me suddenly stabilize.
It’s then I realize I’m looking at a mirror, as that smooth silver surface now reflects my exact visage back at me, plus Ström and Bjorn beside me.
As deep currents of unknown magic swirl in the mirror-stone again, however, I see the image change. I now view the Black Dragon roaring through the skies—decimating a village in its ungodly wrath.
My good mood falls right down through the floor, as I’m confronted by our enemy and its mad destruction. Though I had been twisting indreams of it all night, I had thought those were only fever nightmares from my exhaustion, until now.
If I needed any reminder that we’re not on holiday here in this abandoned Blood Dragon city, this is it. As I watch the Dragon of All Souls do its worst now, spewing its diseased, burned black blood-trail as it roars its bone-shattering and blood-calling power from its massive, undead maw, I get a nasty wake up call.
Because we’re not recovering here for no reason; that undead behemoth nearly did to us what it’s doing to all those Blood Dragon innocents running now as they try to escape, or shifting fast as they fly up hard from the burning wreckage to battle it.
