Draka

I spent the rest of that day and all of the next one drifting in and out of sleep. It rained heavily during the first night. I woke briefly, enjoying the smell of my first rain here, but between the twin canopies of the tree and my wings I stayed comfortably dry and soon dozed off again. I dreamed, some good, some bad, but nothing that stayed with me. Birds and other scavengers came and picked the deer carcass clean, and I magnanimously let them. I was full beyond what should be possible, and what was left was more trouble than it was worth. It made several decent meals for the crows and foxes, though.

At one point a large boar passed right under the tree. If I hadn’t been exhausted from digesting my meal I could have just dropped on it from my perch. Easy peasy piggy squeezy. I should probably try to remember that for next time. The boar made me think of Lahnie. I wondered again how she was doing and decided that I should go check on Pine Hill in the next few days. I wondered if saving someone always made you feel responsible for them. The dragon disagreed, but since it had wanted to eat Lahnie it didn’t get a vote.

Some time before noon on the third day my stomach had settled enough that I figured I could make it back to the cave. I felt considerably less bloated and heavy, though it would probably be another day or two before I was fit to really do anything again. I still had no idea where everything went, but that was not really a concern at the time. What I did know was that I had eaten most of two medium sized animals in the last two weeks, which added up to several kilos of meat per day on average. I really hoped that was not representative of how much I was supposed to be choking down.

Getting airborne was hard. Not only harder than usual, but properly difficult. I needed some initial height to be able to flap my wings to full effect, and I was too damned fat and heavy to jump the way I had gotten used to. After a few failed attempts I resorted to wandering around, looking for something to jump off of. It took half an hour or so, but I found a large rock next to a gully that looked promising. Without being able to use my claws it was significantly harder to climb the rock than the tree I had slept in, but I made it. I got up, walked to the edge, and leapt.

Of course I miscalculated, and had to spread my wings wide to slow myself before I hit the ground. Right. After another arduous climb I stood at the top again, and this time I started beating my wings as hard as I could the instant I leapt. I was well and truly cranky at this point, but finally I was airborne.

This, I decided, was a mistake. Getting home was possibly the most exhausting thing I had ever done, in this body or my previous one, and I hated every second of it. I hated flying. That’s how damned bloated I was.

When I at long last landed on the ledge in front of my lair I kind of skidded to a halt, and lay there for a while. I wasn’t hurt or anything, just utterly exhausted. The sun and the mountain air felt nice. Very nice. In fact, it felt so nice that instead of dragging my gluttonous butt into the cave I turned around and dragged it to the edge. There I curled up, looking out over the forest, and went to sleep.

It rained again that night. I didn’t even wake up. I only knew because when I woke up in the morning I had my wings up over me, and I could smell the hot, wet stone around me. I stretched languidly. How many days had I slept away? Two and most of a third? I felt pretty good, though still very full. Three or four days seemed to be how long it took me to completely deal with a large meal. There was still the question of where it all went, but magic was probably involved considering that I could fly the way I did with wings that were way too small, pronounce everything in any language properly with a snout full of sharp teeth, and learn things and improve my body by collecting loot. That, or I had a black hole or a portal to another dimension in my gut.

No. If that was the case I wouldn’t have to deal with half-hour visits to the little dragon’s room. Or bush, as the case might be. If only.

I didn’t want to sleep another day away, though I easily could have. After a visit to the hoard I was again in the air, my destination, Pine Hill. I had no idea if I’d be able to find Lahnie, but even if I did I didn’t intend to talk to her. I just wanted to check on the place and make sure that everything looked okay.

I started at the lake, landing a little ways off just in case but finding no one there when I approached the campsite. I checked the tree where I’d found Guy but didn’t smell anything interesting. Oh well. It had only been a few days. I’d check again later.

I didn’t remember exactly where the village was, but that was fine. I knew how to find it. I found the stream I had been following when I first heard Lahnie and took a moment to wash myself, getting rid of the accumulated dust and the crusty deer blood that still lingered on my head and neck. I followed the burbling water upstream, staying in the shadows and sniffing the air for the scent of boar, which I thought I could recognize. After a while I could hear axes echoing in the distance, and I soon reached the road and the stone bridge that led to the village.

Pine Hill was a small place by my standards, though I had no idea of how it measured up with other villages in the forest. I walked in a large circle to get a sense of it. Two dozen or so houses crowded around the road and the smaller side paths that led off in different directions, with a few more cottages placed farther away. I guessed that maybe thirty or forty families lived there, working the forest and the small fields and pastures that had been cleared around the village. The pastures held a few shaggy cows, but mostly birds that looked like big turkeys. The birds sometimes hopped onto the fence surrounding their pasture but did not seem at all interested in fleeing into the forest, and I figured the fences were there to keep other things out.

A handful of the homes in the village doubled as workshops, and the preferred style seemed to be to have one wall that could be opened completely, with another wall and a door separating it from the rest of the house. I saw a few people moving around, but all of the workshops were busy with one or two people in each making wooden crafts. Curious, I crept closer, daring to go so far as to sit in some tall grass in the shadow of one of the houses. I saw stacks of wooden trays, plates and cups, little figurines that might have been religious, decorative, or toys for all I knew, and in one of the workshops I saw Lahnie. She was sitting patiently on a small wooden stool, her hands gripping the edges, rocking back as she watched an old man with rapt attention. The old man was carving a round piece of wood the size of a dinner plate. A section of a younger tree, perhaps. Using various tools, sometimes helped by a small hammer, he cut away small curls of wood while he talked in a low, cheerful voice. I couldn’t make out any words, but Lahnie would sometimes answer with a “Mmm-hm” or “Uh-huh,” completely fascinated by the process.

I wondered if he was a granddad, or just a kindly old man who’d offered to keep an eye on the girl. Maybe she’d be his apprentice? She seemed to be interested in what he was doing, but she was also a little kid, so who knew how long that would last.

Whatever the case may be, I was satisfied. The mood in the village was peaceful, Lahnie looked healthy and happy, and I didn’t smell the monster pig anywhere. I’d come back some other day when I had nothing to do. For now, I had fire to make!

Making fire was not going to happen. At least not with the shitty little pieces of rock I had available. That was the depressing conclusion I came to after hours of trying.

I had dragged a considerable amount of wood with me up the mountain. That wasn’t so bad. Finding mostly-dry wood had been easy, and I had picked two large pieces that I could grip in my hands and feet. Flying with them had been a little awkward, but not a huge deal. I knew that I needed various sizes of wood to start a fire besides the tinder in the box, so I’d used my claws to shave off the wet outer part of the dead branches and laid them to dry in the sun while I broke up the rest. That was a frustrating fucking job with no tools, but I managed. Then, working off some half remembered descriptions and my memories of, like, two YouTube videos, I got to work.

The first and only stumbling block that mattered was my hands. I had set everything up right, as far as I could tell, but I couldn’t hold the two pieces the way I needed to. The problem was my claws. Not directly. They weren’t in the way. My stealth advancement even let me pull them in completely. The problem was that I had retractable claws at all, and that apparently made my fingers too damned clumsy to do anything with the aforementioned shitty little pieces of rock. I was basically all thumbs with the last knuckle controlling the claw. I couldn’t hold the things in a way that I could strike a spark. I had tried. I had experimented with different ways of holding each piece, and looked at it from every angle. And I just couldn’t do it.

I really wanted this. I didn’t need fire. I wasn’t cold. I could see well in the dark. I didn’t even mind eating my food raw any more. I honestly didn’t know what the problem was.

“C’mon,” I muttered as I tried for about the millionth time to strike the things together. I smacked the flint into my finger instead, but I didn’t care at that point. It didn’t do any damage anyway.

“Come. On!” I was growling as I tried again and again. “Stupid, fucking…” I was pretty much smashing my fists together at that point. “Spark, you little shits! Make a goddamn spark!” I felt my eyes burning, I was so frustrated. “Why won’t you make a fucking… AH!”

With a scream I turned and hurled the things at the wall. The piece of fool’s gold sparked as it hit, and that really set me off.

“You think that’s funny?” I roared at the little piece of stone. I scrambled over to where it lay glinting in the sun and scooped it up.

“You think you’re fucking clever, you little shit?” I screamed at my own hand. I could see saliva speckle the dust on my hand. “Fuck! You!”

I hurled it off the ledge, found the flint and threw that into the void as well, and then kicked the little pile of tinder and splintered wood a few times for good measure, scattering it across the ledge. I was sobbing with rage at that point, ranting incoherently. When I finally calmed down, just a little bit, I fled into the cave, finding my way down to my hoard on autopilot. There, with my head resting on the most important thing in the world, I cried myself to sleep, and prayed, actually, literally prayed, that I would wake up in a hospital bed.

I felt a little better when I woke up. At least I didn’t feel so damned sorry for myself anymore. But I still wanted, so bad, to feel human. I wanted to go drink stupid sugary coffee drinks with my friends, and post climbing reels on Instagram just to show off, and teach some newbies how to grip and balance properly. I wanted to cuddle under a blanket with Andrea while bingeing Netflix, and I wanted to go to a club and get drunk and dance and maybe meet some cute guy and have meaningless, stupid sex just because it felt good.

I wanted to be able to just start talking to some stranger and at worst get a brush-off and a dirty look.

But I couldn’t, because I was a monster, and the only way I could have a conversation was when the other person was too scared to tell me to fuck off.

When I got back to the ledge it was morning. Again. Another day to fill, to keep my mind off how much of a mess everything was, but with nothing to do.

“Hunt!” the dragon suggested. Shut up, I thought back. I just ate a whole Bambi.

“Then lay waste this pathetic Pine Hill and take their treasures for your own!” the dragon insisted.

“No!” I said, out loud this time. “We’re not doing that!”

Oh shit, was I having a conversation with myself? Or my other half, or whatever? Was I that desperate? Literally talking to myself?

“Then at least fly, for the joy of it!” the dragon grumbled. “This wallowing is a disgrace to what we are.”

Great. I was listening to myself telling myself how pathetic I was. “You know what?” I told myself. “Fine!”

I took a few running strides and leapt off the ledge, as far out as I could, and allowed myself to plummet. I had a brief moment of stupidity where I considered just letting myself fall, but then I came back to my senses, opening my wings with a snap and turning my suicide dive into a soaring rise.

Stupid dragon. The damn thing had no right to be so right. I felt better already. All the things I missed were still there at the back of my mind, but as long as I focused on the rushing air and the stunning views I could keep a smile on my face. I might not be able to snap my fingers anymore, but at least I had this.

I decided to take a trip over to the mine. Unfortunately, it looked like someone had reoccupied the place while I spent several days gainfully occupied with digesting a year’s worth of meat. As I sat among the rocks overlooking the mining camp I could see horses posted and a handful of people walking between the buildings and the mine entrance. They all looked armed and armoured, so my guess was mercenaries sent to secure the mine now that the tricky job, killing the nest, was taken care of.

That was annoying. But I still wanted to get in there before anyone else got to the nest and the silver that might be there, so I’d have to try and find another entrance. There had been tunnels leading up from the chamber with the pond, after all. Unfortunately, that left me with approximately the whole local mountain range to search.

Since I had nothing to do and didn’t want to have too much time on my hands to think, I gave it a shot anyway. Mostly I flew around looking for caves. I did find a few shallow openings in the rock, but nothing deep. Every so often I’d land and take a sniff, hoping to scent either silver or a gremlin, but all I found were goats and a bear or two. Or that was all, until I smelled death.

The smell of death is unmistakable. There’s two chemicals, cadaverine and putrescine, and I learned that because I thought the words were funny. To a human they’re absolutely vomit inducing, but to me they were interesting. I followed the scent, wondering if I’d find another goat that had taken a spill or something like that. What I found was the bloated corpse of a man.

The poor bastard lay in the middle of a shallow rising valley leading further into the mountains. I had no idea how long he’d been lying there, but there were way more maggots than even the dragon wanted to deal with. I let him lie, not even wanting to check if he had anything valuable on him. When I looked around the area, though, I found unmistakable wheel tracks, and around them, lots and lots of hoof and boot prints. It had rained on me twice the last few days, and assuming that it had rained here as well a whole bunch of people must have come through here, with wagons. Or carts.

I looked down the valley, then I took off to confirm my suspicions. Yeah. You could definitely get here from the mine without much effort. I turned back and followed the tracks in the other direction. The valley narrowed to a point, but before that happened the tracks turned off towards the mountain side. There, hidden behind what looked like a rock slide, I found something. A rectangular trough, a couple of metres on a side, had been cut into the stone. It looked a bit like a small quarry, with straight sides and tool marks like you’d expect. Nothing remarkable. But at the back, there was a gate.

The rock wall was straight and slightly rough. To anyone else it would have looked like nothing more than a place where people had cut stone blocks; there wasn’t even so much as a crack in the rock. But I could see it. Bright lines of magical light ran straight and at right angles across the face of the stone. There was no decoration, nothing fancy. No riddle in flowing elvish script. Just lines, marking a huge rectangle split vertically in the middle. It was a gate. I had no doubt, especially since the dust was disturbed in two sweeping arcs from the centre out to the edges of the trough, and the tracks ended at the stone face.

Unfortunately I couldn’t see or think of any way of opening the thing. I ran a claw across the stone at the centre, and it skittered right over the glowing line. I didn’t feel anything, and nothing happened. Getting in on my own was not happening. But this… this was something interesting. Something to keep my mind busy.

Missing miners. Tracks leading here. Massive stone gates. This must be worth something.

I needed Herald and the others.