Draka

Item two on the list was dealt with a lot faster than I would have liked.

The next night, after taking care of food – some slightly ripe goat, which improved a lot when I grilled it – and water, I went down into the depths of the cave system. Unfortunately it was nowhere near as exciting as I’d hoped. It was still gorgeous, it was just that it was exactly the same as I remembered it. No glowing ponds, no ancient murals or secret chambers, not even a gremlin. It was just a cavern, and I’d seen lots of beautiful caverns lately.

At least this one was mine.

Since that had taken all of an hour, thanks to me being able to move around down there with impunity in my shadow form, I moved on to item three. The reason I would have liked item two to take longer was that item three was the Trauma Pit.

The pit where I'd first woken up was maybe four yards wide, and fairly deep. There was a passage leading from it that I really, really should explore, especially now that the scholars had dug out a gate at the foot of my mountain. But I couldn't do it. Even thinking about going down was enough to give me vertigo. So I did the only reasonable thing: I put it off. I put the Pit out of my mind the best I could, and moved on to the next item on my list. Item four: getting rid of the other predators in my territory.

After a short nap in my nest, I went to look for the wolves and bears that I’d smelled around my mountain. It wasn't a rational need, and I knew it. But the idea of other predators in my territory was intolerable. It had been bugging me for weeks, and every time I smelled them it was like an itch that I couldn't scratch. Sooner or later, they had to go.

Of course, finding the damn things was impossible, no matter how I sniffed around. I could only assume that they could smell me at least as easily as I could them, and they were smart enough to stay out of my way. Relying on my nose wasn't going to cut it, and after hours of fruitless hunting I gave up, accepting that it was going to have to be a long-term project. It was starting to get light anyway, and I was getting tired.

Luckily I knew someone who was at least a competent hunter. Or so she said. I didn't expect Herald to lie to me, but she had her pride, and she might have exaggerated her prowess a little. I had no way of contacting her myself either way, and so I pretty much took the next few days off. I checked on the scholars' camp, but they were gone, and of course I visited the tree by the lake every day, but otherwise I just lived. I hunted, I flew, and I slept. Sometimes I practised reading, flipping through my bestiary. I could read some of the descriptions now, though I would still need help with the more complicated passages. If ever a writing system had needed reform, this was it.

That was my life for a few days, and it was good. There was no anger or anxiety. Nor was there any fear. The dragon remained silent, but I could feel her contentment, and it reassured me. I did have to dodge the occasional lone hunter or group of them, some of whom were looking for the ‘wyvern’, and I had a near miss with an arrow that came flying up at me from among the trees, but otherwise I remained happily unmolested.

After several days I found a note on the tree. “Job to the north,” it read, simple words in a careful hand, then in a quicker, hard to read scrawl to the side, “Should be fun!” The first hand was Herald's. The second I didn't know, but I'd bet my remaining horn that it was Tamor's.

I met the gang two nights later. They were packed for a longer outing, and had a mule with them, heavily packed but looking unconcerned. His name was Stalwart, and much like Windfall he was not a fan of murder-lizards. But Valmik kept him calm, and while he never really warmed to me he at least got used to having me around.

"What are you all doing, going out on a job?" I asked after the hellos and how-are-yous. "I thought you'd be living the good life for a few weeks!"

"Like any of us could sit still for more than a few days!" Tamor said cheerfully, to Herald’s and Valmik’s smiling agreement.

"You, if anyone, should know that one can never have enough silver," Makanna said. Her tone was serious but there was a glint in her eye when she said it. "And this opportunity was too good to pass up."

“So what are you doing?”

“Did Herald tell you about the Three-ers she and Val met?” Makanna asked me back.

“A little. Sounded like a bunch of arseholes, honestly.”

“They can be, yeah. The important thing here is that those three haven’t gotten back yet, and their congregation is worried. So they put out a job, and we took it.”

“I’m guessing they want their people back?”

“That’s right. Or proof that they’re dead.”

“And they’re paying well?”

“Right, again.”

“Three Dragons, minimum!” Tamor said happily.

Makanna gave her brother an annoyed look before turning back to me. “Like Tam said. Three Dragons if we can show that they’re dead. Minimal work. But if we can bring any of them back alive…”

“Then we get a share,” Herald said dreamily.

“A share of what, exactly?” I asked, looking between their greedy smiles.

“Much treasure is to be found in the northern ruins,” Valmik said. “The Three-ers were treasure hunters. Some old letters had been found, from previous expeditions long ago, and they thought they knew for certain where to find the villa of a very rich family.”

“And if you bring them back you get a share of the treasure?”

“Exactly,” Makanna said. “And even better: they gave us the location, as best they know, that the three were going to. If they’re dead, or if we don’t even find them, there may still be a whole treasure there, untouched!”

“And we want you to help us find it!” Herald picked up where Makanna stopped. Makanna gave her a sidelong glance that left no doubt about who exactly had insisted on bringing me along, though she didn’t look all that unhappy about it herself. “It is all dense forest up there, so finding ruins is a real slog. But if someone could get a dragon’s eye view, they would have a real advantage. And of course they would get an equal share of the spoils. Do you know anyone like that?”

I grinned. “You really know the way to a girl’s heart, don’t you?”

The gang stayed at the campsite overnight, of course. I returned to my cave to get my harness and the bigger sack, just in case. Who knew if there was any treasure to be found at all, but I wanted to be prepared. I also grabbed the light-ball, because it was too useful not to carry around.

I rejoined the others before dawn. Makanna had the last watch and greeted me as I approached out of the dark.

“Morning, Makanna,” I said softly, not wanting to disturb the others.

“Draka,” she said with a nod.

“What, no madam?”

“I think we’re past that,” she said, scratching at the dirt with a stick. “Not very lady-like to pull a man’s head off. But don’t worry. I think us commoners have more fun.”

“Maybe,” I said, then, after a short silence, “So how did you guys end up with this job? It sounds like every adventurer in Karakan should be fighting over it.”

“They would have been. But it was only offered to a few. The Three-ers are picky. They needed a group with a good reputation. It would be easy to betray them.”

“Kill the three missing ones and make off with the loot, you mean?”

“Just so. While we’re not the most famous group by a long shot, we do have a reputation for honour and reliability. Especially now, after freeing all those villagers. Which we have you to thank for.”

“Yeah, no worries.”

She gave me a small smile which didn’t reach her eyes. “Besides that, they’re superstitious. The fact that we are three siblings was apparently considered very auspicious.”

“But there’s four of you in the group.”

“True.”

“And I thought they didn’t approve of Tamor and Valmik.”

“Also true, for a lot of them. But they can be very pragmatic when it suits them. There’s also the fact that they refused to pay up front, which reduced the number of willing candidates to us and… one other group, I think.” She gave me another mouth-only smile. “Most groups can barely afford to outfit themselves for an expedition like this without an advance. But since we are heavy with silver at the moment, it was no trouble for us.”

I snorted. “You know what? I don’t think I mind the rich getting richer when it happens to people I like.”

This time her smile was genuine.

For all my flying I’d never gone more than a few dozen miles north of my cave. Perhaps it was because I’d been so focused on humans, and that was where the small specks of light in the night ended, along with all other signs of human habitation. And yet there was apparently a whole lost civilisation up there, abandoned and fallen to ruin after some cataclysmic disaster. As we travelled I tried to learn something about it, but it was so long ago that most of what was known was half myth and half legend.

“We do not know who the old Mallineans were for sure. We cannot even read the texts they left,” Herald told me sadly. “They left plenty of scrolls, but the few that do not crumble to dust as soon as you touch them are covered in writing that no one can read, completely different from our script. And even if we could read it, we do not know which language it might be in.” More brightly, she continued, “They left plenty of mosaics and murals, though! Mallinean art is extremely durable, and highly prized among the very richest all around the Sea of Sareya.”

“Paints beyond belief,” Valmik said wistfully. “Still vivid after centuries. The loss of their making is a tragedy.”

Tamor patted his shoulder. “Perhaps one day…” he said indulgently to his partner.

“We can but hope.”

“They spread around the sea, though.” Makanna picked up where Herald left off. “They weren’t the only people to fall during the Collapse, but their cities are found all over. Same architecture, same writing, same art. Their biggest city was here, though, on the northern part of Mallin.”

“That’s why you call them Mallinean?”

“You’d think so,” Makanna said. “But really it’s because Mallin is the only island where no other ruins have been found but theirs. Every city and major town on Mallin is built on top of a reclaimed ruin. Even then, taking back the island has been slow going. There’s a reason we passed the last village yesterday, and why the road is becoming so bad.”

“That reason being…”

Makanna gave me a secretive look, then laughed. “As much fun as it would be to tell you that ‘you’ll see when we get there’, I suppose that you deserve to be prepared. Goblins, valkin, the monstrous bears and boars and everything else that plagues the reclaimed lands, they all come from the north. It’s… background magic, or something. I don’t really know. But it turns animals into monsters, and it lets Nest Hearts form. And it’s a process that feeds itself. The more monsters there are, and the longer you leave the nests, the faster they’re created.”

“Wait, so the mountains are full of monster nests up there?”

“Oh, not just the mountains,” Tamor said happily. “The forests, too. Gremlin nests only show up in caves, but goblins, valkin, trolls, stuff like that? They can pop up anywhere!”

“Like Tam says,” Makanna went on, “you can find nests anywhere. And the north has more of them than the south ever did, for whatever reason.”

“One popular theory is that the Mallineans were cursed, and that is what caused the Collapse,” Herald added. “Another is that they had a truly massive enchantment that went wrong.”

“I can see the problem, though,” I said. “The more monsters you have, the more you get. And the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of all of them.”

“Just so,” Makanna said. “And this is also why we’re being paid three Dragons just to walk there and back. As I’m sure that you can guess, this is far from the first group of adventurers and treasure seekers to disappear in the north.”

“Aren’t you worried, though?”

All I got for a while were embarrassed smiles. Then Tamor said, “At the risk of sounding like we’re taking you for granted, we kind of assumed that you would want to come along. And between the five of us we should be able to handle anything we’re likely to face.”

“Especially after what Lalia told us about that bear you fought,” Makanna added.

“It’s not like I killed the thing.”

“But you survived long enough for Lalia to come to your aid, and with no lasting injuries. Even that is remarkable. And between the two of you you could have killed the thing in time, I’m sure.”

“Well, if you put it like that,” I said bashfully. This was high praise, coming from her. “Speaking of bears. When we get back…”

It took us five days to reach our destination, and they were good ones. We talked – though Makanna kind of kept her distance – laughed, hunted and gathered as we went. In the evenings we told stories and sang by the fire. I even pitched in, doing my best to quickly adapt half-remembered Brothers Grimm stories and movies to something that would make sense to the others. My attempts at singing went fine, I suppose, but translating songs so that they’d still work required a better lyricist than me. At least they liked Wayfaring Stranger. Score one for my dear old dad.

We first went by road. In the south it was good and solid, a proper paved affair, though covered with a layer of dirt, but as we got farther north that became more and more degraded until it was easier to go by paths. Finally we were breaking a trail through old growth forest, with me taking to the air every so often to confirm that we were heading the right way. Even with hunting, foraging, and the terrain going to hell the way it had, Valmik estimated that we’d covered more than eighty miles in those five days. That was pretty respectable, even if I could have done it in a couple of hours by air.

Monstrous creatures became more common once we left the human settlements behind, and what struck me most was the variety. I’d only seen a few changed creatures in my many weeks on Mallin: a boar, a couple of bears, possibly a squirrel, though I wasn’t sure what that thing had been. And I’d heard about a whole den of giant badgers from the others. Here I understood that anything could be changed. I sometimes shared the sky with some enormous bird, but those that saw me gave me a wide berth. The thing about enormous birds, though, is that even if you make a sparrow a yard long from beak to tail feathers it’s still a sparrow. It’s still a prey animal by nature, and so were most of the other giant birds I saw, except for the occasional hawk or crow or whatever they were. They were too clever to try me, either way.

The same went for animals on the ground. I saw overgrown mice and rabbits, but even a 100 lb bunny is going to run when it sees four humans and a dragon. A three tonne bear, on the other hand, goes wherever it wants. That might explain why I’d seen the creatures I had in the south. The ones that made it that far were the ones that just didn’t give a damn about humans, unless they presented themselves as a convenient snack.

Even the forest itself was monstrous in a way, noticeably wilder and more savage than in the south. Few people had tried logging or foraging here in several centuries, and the whole place was a maze of massive trees and grasping undergrowth. I asked how they expected to find the Three-ers, but it became clear pretty quickly that this was very much secondary; their goal was the villa and its supposed treasures. Herald always kept her eyes open, but she was very honest about the chances of finding any trace if they hadn’t passed close to the villa. And finding that was primarily my job, since I was the one with wings.

On the fourth night, as I ranged ahead, I found the overgrown ruins of a building complex, right where it should be. What had taken me minutes by air took hours to cover on foot, and it was well into the afternoon when we approached. Still, it was better than scouring the forest for days, which is what they would have had to do without me.

“Here,” Herald called from where she’d stopped ahead of us. She’d found some possible signs of people passing earlier, and now she was proven right. She’d found a camp.

It had been set up in a small clearing behind a hill, and it was a mess. It hadn’t just been abandoned, but torn apart. The two tents were trampled, the packs shredded and the gear strewn about. It didn’t take long to figure out that there was nothing edible and few things made of metal left.

“Well. Any bets on what did this?” Tamor asked as Valmik began to set up their own gear. Stalwart the mule looked nervous, and I could smell an earthy musk in the air.

“No need to wonder,” Herald said softly, coming down from the hill with a sour face. “Keep your voices down, and go up that hill and take a look. You can just barely see the remains of the walls from there. We will not be digging for treasure uncontested.”

“Way to build suspense,” Tamor said with a roll of his eyes, before jogging up the hill. It took him a little while to get back. Presumably his eyes weren’t as sharp as Herald’s.

“Well, shit,” he said emphatically as he returned. “That explains our missing Three-ers.”

“Not you, too,” Makanna groaned. “Just tell us!”

Tamor gave us a wan smile, and said, simply, “Trolls.”