Draka

Some time after midnight I was in a valley in the mountains, standing in front of that first gate I had found near the mines. The flight had been faster than I was used to; my new Strength advancement clearly affected my whole body, including my wings.

The tracks and the marks on the ground that showed that the gate had swung open at some point were long gone, of course, and the flat, vertical stone surface sunken into the mountainside showed no sign of what it hid. But I could see the lines, the magical glow that didn’t cast any light around them and that, according to Herald, only I could see.

Well, I told myself, no time like the present! I had been fighting myself for a long minute, by then. Or perhaps it was more correct to say that I’d been fighting the dragon. It had put two and two together, and it was not happy about going into another of these tunnels when the last two times had resulted in it forcing us to flee in terror. I was pretty sure that it was embarrassed about the whole thing, but there was definitely anxiety as well. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t talking, and I had a job to do.

Going in there alone was probably a bad idea, but that was part of the fun. I put one hand on the gate and focused. When I’d done this with an audience I’d been self-conscious and trying to rush things, but with no one around I took my time. It came as no surprise that it was easier to focus my will and intent when I didn’t worry about anyone judging me, and soon enough I felt a pulse of something leave me and enter the gate. The doors slowly swung open and a soft gust of dry air blew against me, and I entered a familiar curving tunnel sloping downward into the darkness.

I considered leaving the doors open in case I needed to make a hasty exit, but decided against it. It would be worse if anyone knew that the gate had opened than if I needed to take a few seconds to open it before escaping. I repeated the process, willing the gate shut this time, and the doors sealed perfectly, leaving only a nearly smooth wall where the opening had been and plunging the tunnel into absolute darkness.

Of course, I could see perfectly. Not that there was anything to look at. As I wandered down the featureless tunnel I wondered how they’d dug the damn thing. I could only assume some kind of magic, because who would bother to cut such nicely square corners by hand? But that only raised the question of what kind of magic could do that and why you’d waste it on a tunnel if magic was as rare as I’d been led to believe. Were all these tunnels the work of one person with one talent that they were determined to put to use?

The gates I understood, at least. Secret doors that could only be opened by magic were pretty cool.

I could feel the dragon getting more and more unhappy as I got deeper, but it felt more like anticipation than actual fear. It still wasn’t saying anything, though.

When I was returning to the cave after leaving Herald I had tried talking to the dragon but, despite all her smugness when Herald gave me my money, she wouldn’t answer. Not that she often did, but ever since our scare in the heart of my mountain she had been even less talkative than normal. The only sound I’d had out of her was when she told me the options for my advancement, and after that, nothing. I didn’t like it, and I needed to find some way to bring her out.

In the tunnel, all I had was time.

Hey, I thought, are you listening?

The few times that I had communicated directly with the dragon I’d usually spoken out loud, but I knew that it could react to my thoughts.

I know that you’re in here, somewhere. Or everywhere. However that works.

I waited. Silence.

Come on. We both know that there are things that you know, that I don’t. You keep dropping hints, and it’s been invaluable, but it’s not enough, yeah? You’ve been freaking out and I need to know why.

I kept walking, waiting for any kind of reply. None came. Well, I had a plan for that. Putting the right tone into your voice to convey a certain feeling could be tricky. But in my head it was easy. I could put any feeling behind my words in my head, however nuanced I wanted it.

It was time to get petty.

What are you so scared of? I asked, channelling my inner mean girl.

There it was. Still no words, but a feeling, clear as anything. Indignation.

It’s okay, I teased, we all get a little scared sometimes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of!

I had found a button, and it was a big red one. The feeling of indignation flared. The dragon must have known what I was doing. We shared a brain, after all. But it couldn’t help itself.

Why don’t you just tell me why you’re so afraid? I focused my intent to make the thought as condescending as I possibly could.

“I am not afraid!” the dragon roared in my ears. “Dragons know no fear! We cause fear! We are fear!”

Then why did you make us run and hide like a frightened rabbit? Twice! I asked. That should get her going.

“We did not flee! Prey flees! We do not! That was…” In a first, she actually hesitated. “Those were cunning retreats!”

Then tell me why! What could be so dangerous, so threatening to a creature like us, that you would force us to retreat from an empty room?

She fell silent again. I hesitated to push; this was the longest exchange we had ever had, and I didn't want to poison it. But I had her off-balance, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to actually get something out of her.

And now you're afraid to even speak to me.

Her reaction was immediate. "I do not fear a voice in my head! You know that chamber as well as I do! I had to catch the scent to remember, but it is a place we know well. A place of pain and death. We must avoid it!"

That was more than I had expected, so much more! The dragon knew that place. She had been there, long enough to recognise something in the air that triggered her fear.

Something bad must have happened to her there.

And she thought that I was a voice in her head. That was interesting. I wondered how she rationalised that, considering I called all of the shots.

Well, most of them.

What about before? I asked, more gently this time. I could already feel resentment bleeding over into myself, and didn't want to push the proud creature too far. What about the valkin with the staff?

"Dragon bone. The bone and tooth of the big one. Old, but I could smell him. If they slew him and took his bones, they can slay us. We must avoid them until we are stronger. And we should not be in these tunnels!"

The big one? I asked, but there was no reply.

What about the pit in our treasure chamber? I tried, but, again, nothing.

The resentment still burned, and I left her to her sullen silence. I’d learned more than I’d hoped for, really. The dragon had memories of a time before I’d come here. She must have had a whole life, though it sounded like she had some trouble remembering it. The question of whether that was a result of having me suddenly crammed into her skull or something else would have to wait. I’d either need to wait her out, or find some better leverage.

There was, of course, a large circular chamber. Like the first of these places I had gone into, this one looked like it had once been a natural hollow in the stone, which had been expanded and smoothed out in places. The tunnel I had come from exited onto a wide floor, with a few other openings, irregularly spaced, leading away in different directions. There was no lower level here, no big wheel, and there were no lights, though there were depressions in the walls where one of those valkin light-balls would have been able to sit comfortably. Instead the ceiling vaulted high above me, spiky with stalactites, and it made me wonder how the air could be so dry if there had been enough water to create the things at one point.

There was also a wide, staired tunnel that led down from the chamber into depths unknown. Following my instincts, I descended.

There was a whole little complex of rooms down there. Rooms in different sizes, with or without furniture, everything you’d need to house up to a dozen people, if I’d guessed right and the wide, low slabs I found in two of the rooms were beds. More if they slept in shifts. The rooms were all empty now, but there were signs of them having been lived in recently, in the form of dried but recognisable vegetable scraps and animal bones on the floors.

The complex had one entrance and one exit. I’d come from the entrance; I left through the exit. It carried me deeper into the mountain, down, always down. It was nowhere near as long as the tunnel from the surface, though it was steeper, and my legs were soon burning from the effort of walking downhill for so long.

This time there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Ahead of me, I saw the tunnel level out and disappear, and as I got farther down and I could see more and more of it my sight grew slightly dimmer. Blinking my vision back to normal I was plunged into darkness, except for the faint, pale blue light ahead of me that I knew must come from one of those light-balls. Those things needed to be recharged every so often. That meant that where there was light, there were valkin.

I felt my excitement rising, that feeling of doing something I was absolutely not supposed to and being determined to get away with it. I held myself absolutely still. I listened, and sniffed the air slowly, trying to catch any sign of the creatures. I thought that I caught the faintest whiff, a dry, vaguely metallic scent, but it was hard to be sure. So I did the next most logical thing. I shifted into shadow, and moved forward.

I would have been invisible against the blackness of the tunnel, but I needn’t have worried. There was a valkin ahead of me, hard to see because of the light-ball next to it. It was probably supposed to be guarding this tunnel, but instead it was sitting with its back to the wall, fast asleep. When I got closer I heard that it was even snoring gently.

I considered killing it. That would make it much easier to get past, and I was sure that I could do it quietly. I’d simply sit on its legs, hold down its wrists, clamp my jaw down on its throat, and wait. Easy. But then, whoever came to relieve it would know that something came this way, and I didn’t want that.

The light was too bright to pass through as a shadow. I could have probably snuck by carefully without waking it, but I didn’t do that either. Instead, I decided to experiment.

The valkin was fast asleep. For how long I didn’t know, but the light-ball wasn’t that bright. Bright enough to make it hard to see, sure. Bright enough to prevent me from passing, certainly. But maybe I could do something about that.

With all the shadow of the mountain behind me, I focused. I gathered my will, and I defined and refined my intent until I could see clearly in my mind’s eye exactly what I wanted. As I reached the peak of my concentration, a dark light edged with gold left me, and the shadows around me and ahead of me pushed. I strained, and they strained with me, stretching forward toward the light. I moved with them, closer and closer to the border, and the pale light retreated from me until the shadow was climbing the walls, long, dark streamers reaching for the ball itself.

My head felt like someone had stuck the nozzle of a compressor through my skull and pushed the switch. I rushed by the sleeping valkin, releasing my focus once I was past the light-ball. I felt the light reclaim the small part of the tunnel and push me forward, but that was fine. I was tired, and I had a headache from straining so hard, but I’d done what I’d wanted to. I continued forward several metres – no, yards, I corrected myself. I had to get used to thinking in local measurements – before I shifted back, then relaxed. I was past. A thrill went down my spine, and I grinned to myself.

"I'm in," I whispered to myself, holding up an imaginary collar to whisper into an invisible mic.

The question I had to ask myself then was: Now what?

In the very short term it was easy. There was only one way to go, and I continued down the tunnel. Not far from the guard the tunnel was closed off by a wall of stone brick with a wooden gate. I couldn't smell any valkin. I did hear what sounded like distant voices, but nothing that sounded like it was right at the other side.

Holding my breath I slowly turned the simple wooden latch. It turned smoothly, and there was the barest scraping sound as I pushed the gate open far enough to stick my head in. Light spilled in from a ball set on the other side, but I had stuck to normal sight and it wasn't a problem. On the other side, only a few yards from the door, the tunnel opened into a small, empty room, with open doors set in each side wall towards the back.

I picked the left side simply because it felt more natural to lean right to peek around the corner, but that way led around a right turn to something like a dormitory where several valkin were lounging. I quickly counted five of the creatures, then pulled my head back before anyone spotted me. Right side it was.

I had more luck to the right. That way turned left, then led to a larger open hall, like the one where the valkin had met with the humans. I entered from one of the short sides, with doors in each of the walls. On a hunch I took the door to the right, and found a long, wide tunnel leading into the darkness. The dust on the ground was disturbed and I noted it as a possible escape route, then kept exploring.

I spent the rest of my time there moving from shadow to shadow, peeking through doors and sneaking through rooms, in one case using my ability to extend shadows to swiftly move through a room with two valkin having an animated conversation. Or possibly an argument. It was hard to tell.

On a side note, I figured out how they’d solved the problem of air down there. Many of the rooms had football-sized holes in one or more of their walls, which I had thought were unused places for light-balls. But when I shifted into the shadows and squeezed into one of them while needing to hide from a passing valkin, I realised that it was open at the back, connecting to a vertical shaft. When the valkin had left I shifted back and, sure enough, there was a weak breeze there if you looked for it.

I didn't know if I could climb to the top, but, hey! It was a good place to hide if nothing else.

My original goal was to figure out how many valkin there were, but that changed when I smelled people.

I found them in a storage room, sitting packed along the walls. I didn’t have time to count them, but there were at least twenty, men and women, young and old, and even a baby being held by a glassy eyed young woman. A small village, in short. Another community sleepwalking into slavery, no doubt waiting to be picked up by the same bastards, or at least someone from the same group, as before. And again there was nothing I could do. There were two regular guards, and I could have probably taken them, but there was also a small, thin valkin with another one of those damned staves.

I managed to suppress the panic this time. Even though I felt the dragon’s terror, this time I focused all my will on resisting the moment I saw that staff, and I only felt a wave of fear and nausea instead of the absolute terror of last time. But while I didn’t flee, there was also no way that I could go any closer. Remaining in place was hard enough, and I was fighting a losing battle. I would have to leave, but on my own terms.

I carefully but quickly made my way back to the empty hall near the entrance. I had good reason to think that the long, wide tunnel would lead me out of the mountain, and the reason was simple: the dust in the tunnel was disturbed by a large number of footprints, many of which looked like they had been made by boots. Valkin didn’t wear anything on their feet, but humans did, and all the bootprints pointed towards me.

If the humans hadn’t come in this way I would eat the firesteel that Herald had given me. I started walking.

Of course it couldn't be as easy as simply walking out. This tunnel was sealed off the same way as the one I’d entered through, only once I got through the door the guard was awake and alert. Unfortunately for it, it didn’t hear the door open and close behind it.

I couldn’t go past it. It would have noticed the light-ball dimming if I tried any shadow tricks, and there was literally no space in the tunnel to hide and try to lure it past me. I had to make it disappear.

There was a short distance between the door and the guard. I prowled forward silently, claws in and tail high, and the guard didn’t even realise that anything was wrong until I reached out and grabbed the butt of its spear, easily jerking it off-balance. The moment it turned my way I let loose with a full, concentrated spray of venom, then wrapped my free hand over its mouth and bore it down, pinning it with my weight. With my new Strength it was easy to hold it down while clamping its mouth shut, preventing it from screaming or even coughing. No blood, I told myself. That was important. No blood.

The valkin struggled, of course, but it was mostly blind, unable to breathe, and pinned down. All I had to do was to be patient.

A few days before, dragging a goat a few hundred yards – I was getting better already! – had been a struggle. Now I was strong, and dragging the body down the tunnel was easy.