Draka

“So,” Pot said, peering into the pit. “We’re going down there?”

“Yeah.” I felt a knot of dread in my gut. I’d somehow forgotten about this part. “We’re going down.”

“Looks pretty dark,” Rib said. “This cat’s eye potion needs some light to let us see. I don’t even see any glow slime down there.”

“Right! Wait here!” I said, and fled from the chamber.

How could I forget about the pit, and how it made us, me, whatever, feel? I’d stood on that ledge, and what I’d felt wasn’t just the little bit of human anxiety and the reflected fear from the dragon. This was the full, gut churning near panic that I had forced my dragon, my other half, to face. And I had to do it again, because there was no way I could back down in front of Rib and Pot.

I was still almost pathetically grateful to have an excuse to leave and scurry down to my nest to fetch my light-ball. Of course, now it would be explicit that I had at least some kind of stash here, if not my whole hoard, but I’d just have to trust them. And it wasn’t like anyone could get up here stealthily. Or so I hoped.

The trip to my nest was quick, but I took a moment with my hoard to gather myself. It had been a little while and, even if I didn’t have time for a nap, every minute I could spend there calmed and centred me. It was all too short. I dragged myself away, light-ball held in my mouth, and returned to the crack.

“One of you, get out here,” I called into the chamber, wiping the stone orb on my scales to get the saliva off. “I can’t carry anything when I shift.”

“Uh… right,” came an echoing call. It was Rib. “About that…”

“So, Rib bet me–” Pot called.

“I didn’t bet you, I challenged you!”

“–challenged me to climb down. And then when I managed it, I challenged her. And–”

“Yeah, so we’ll need a minute to get back up, is what we’re saying.”

Children. I was dealing with children. The fact that I might have done exactly the same thing less than half a year ago was irrelevant.

Alright, I said to myself. I’ll just have to find my stick. Or maybe try to roll the thing? Then I remembered a conversation with Herald, down in the depths. I’d tried it with a small stone, hadn’t I?

I looked at the light-ball. It was fairly large… but I’d once swallowed a whole goat’s leg, just choked it down. Surely…

I put it in my mouth. Really shoved it in there. My teeth went way back, but I had a fair space behind them before my actual throat where I lodged it. I closed my mouth, pressing my lips together when my jaw wouldn’t go all the way. It was not comfortable at all. Then I shifted, and to my relief the light-ball didn’t immediately smack onto the stone floor and roll away somewhere. I passed through the crack onto the ledge and continued down. The dread didn’t vanish completely, but somehow it was a lot easier in shadow form, and with two idiots waiting for me at the bottom.

As soon as I shifted back the dread returned. The two humans startled away from me, but relaxed when their brains caught up with their reflexes.

“Where’d you go?” Rib asked, then made a disgusted face as I opened my jaw wide, put my hand in, and dug out the light-ball. It scraped on my teeth a bit.

“Ugh,” I coughed, “you two had better appreciate this.” Then I charged the ball, and their faces lit up as it began to give off its warm glow.

“Oh, from the valkin, right?” Pot said. “Just like Mak has!” He took the thing, shook it, then wiped it on the seat of his pants.

“Yeah, same haul. How’d you manage the climb down?”

“Wasn’t that hard,” Pot said. “There’s some decent holds in the stone if you feel around carefully. Bit slick, though.”

The casual way that he said it didn’t make me bitter at all. I scowled at them, mentally.

“Let’s go.”

I wasn’t in a hurry because I was worried. I didn’t actually think that Mak would open the gate unless they absolutely had to get out. No, the reason was that the dread was creeping back in, and I had a feeling that if I didn’t move and keep moving then I might just flee back up onto the ledge. So I went, and the two cousins simply chose not to be left behind. We set a good running pace that I could maintain. They had not been inside these tunnels before, and didn’t want to stay longer than necessary, and I just wanted to get away from the pit. It rankled that it still affected me so much, but my dragon’s trauma was my own now, and it wasn’t like I could just ‘get over’ something like that.

As we descended, the cousins grew quiet. Maybe it was the monotony that did it, miles of featureless stone, always the same. For the longest time there was only the echo of our steps and their rhythmic breathing, but then Pot asked, in an uncharacteristically sober voice, “Do you think the horses made it?”

Rib’s voice was gentle and calming. “I’m sure they’re fine. They’re fast and they’re clever. They’ll come back, or return to Karakan, you’ll see.”

I didn’t tell them what I thought. I’d seen the other monster bear running down Windfall at a gallop, and he, as I understood it, was a fast horse. Best case, I figured all but one of the horses would be fine.

Pot seemed to have reached the same conclusion. “Poor things,” he said quietly, and remained silent for the rest of the run.

We soon reached what I thought of as the lift chamber, above the throne room. “Now what?” Rib asked, peering through the hole. “I am not, by all the hells large and small, dropping down there.”

“Now you get to ride the dragon again,” I said. “Don’t worry. We only need to land this time.”

“Great,” Pot said, his voice dry and flat. “I don’t suppose you could do it in two trips?”

“I’m honestly not sure I can get back up here,” I told them. “I’ll try, but I’m not risking one of you being left up here.”

“You can go on her back this time,” Rib consoled her cousin. That was fine with me. Rib looked a decent bit lighter anyway, which would be easier on my arms.

“Climb on,” I told Pot, then to Rib, “And you, stand by the edge.”

“I don’t like that at all,” she told me, but she did it. “Don’t even joke about pushing me right now.”

“Don’t tell me you have a problem with heights,” I said as Pot clambered onto my back. “You spend half your life up trees! Are you secure there, Pot?”

“Good as I’m gonna get.”

“Yeah,” Rib was saying, “but trees have branches, and the forest floor is soft. Kind of. It’s not a… what, hundred foot drop, onto bare stone. If I slip or you–”

I grabbed her and dropped.

Seconds later I was stretched out on the floor with Pot seated beside me, both laughing our tails off as Rib screamed, “Bitch! You crazy bitch! That wasn’t funny! That wasn’t fucking funny!”

“I never…” Pot wheezed, “I never heard you shriek like that before!”

“Not. Fucking. Funny!”

Rib forgave us quick enough. And she couldn’t deny that if I’d done the same thing to Pot she would have been the one laughing. Spirits somewhat raised, we made our way to the hub, where the small storage pile still sat untouched in the remains of the camp, and then on towards the gate.

I’d been right not to worry. Mak was the only one awake, and she was sitting with her back against the wall between us and the others. Her spear was next to her, pointed up the tunnel. For all that her posture looked relaxed, her face was concerned.

“How?” she whispered urgently. “How did you get in, and what are you doing in here? What happened?”

“Biggest damned bear you ever saw,” Rib answered for me.

“We may have lost the horses,” Pot said, getting glum again.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mak sounded genuinely sympathetic. “Was this yours and Lalia’s bear, Draka?”

“No. But I might have seen it before. It’s a female with cubs.”

“You couldn’t have tried to lead it away or something?”

“Damn thing nearly knocked down a tree to get to us,” Rib said. “Pretty sure it would have eaten us if Draka didn’t get us out.”

“And that damned thing had some advancements for sure,” Pot added. “We didn’t know it was there until it was right on top of us.”

“Might explain why the horses weren’t worried about the bear smell,” his cousin continued. “Maybe it’s got some kind of stealth that makes prey just… not notice it?”

“Can that happen?” I asked.

“Monsters certainly have advancements,” Herald said sleepily from behind Mak. She’d sat up, and Ardek and Kira were stirring as well. “They are not well understood, but it seems that they have as much variety as humans. Though whether they get to choose and if so how is completely unknown. An advancement like that does not sound impossible.”

Mak nodded. “We know that goblins get advancements based on their existing strengths, but that they don’t get a choice. There’s no reason to assume that a monstrous animal should be the same as a goblin, though.”

“Why not?” I asked. “They’re all monsters.”

“Yeaaaaah, but…” Rib said. “All goblins get advancements, right? But regular animals don’t get them. We’d know by now. Only animals that get turned into monsters or born as them get advancements. So they’re not the same.”

“And then there’s…” Pot gestured to me. “How about you?”

“I get choices,” I said. “Several, in fact.”

“Not just two or three?”

“Five.” And maybe none for my majors, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Damn,” Pot said softly. “That’s so unfair.”

“What is unfair is the rate at which she gets them,” Herald grumbled in Tekereteki. Then she looked quickly at Kira, who looked like she was barely awake, before turning an apologetic look at me.

I shrugged at her. Anyone who heard and understood could just be jealous.

“As interesting as this is, I should get back out. Do you all have enough water?” I asked.

“We should be comfortable for a few hours, if we’re careful,” Mak said. “Beyond that…” she shrugged. “We’ll live. Probably best if we sleep as much as we can.”

“Good,” I said. Then as almost an afterthought, I added, “How’s Kira been?”

“The woman likes to talk,” Mak said drily, “but she’s behaved. I don’t think she means us any harm, or that she’s going to try anything.”

If Mak said it, I believed it. And it wasn’t like I’d expected any trouble out of Kira. The woman could argue if she got riled up, but I didn’t think that she had much violence in her. She was a talker and a helper, not a fighter.

I left the humans there, to sleep or talk or whatever they wanted to do, and made my way back up the tunnel. I was not looking forward to the next part. Even thinking about going back up had me anxious, and I was glad not to have any humans with me. I was sure that they’d be able to tell, especially Mak or Kira, and I didn’t want anyone to see me in a moment of weakness. I had my pride, after all.

That anxiety grew into a jagged little lump of dread as I entered the throne room and looked at the ceiling high above me. I wasn’t worried about making it through the hole back up to the lift chamber. That should be fairly easy, really. But the whole idea sparked old memories, fuzzy and only half mine, of being trapped and confused, throwing myself against the bars of my cage as I was lifted up, up to that place that none of my siblings had ever returned from. I’m not sure that I had even had a concept of death, but I understood fear well enough, and the fear that I remembered had been all-consuming.

I shuddered, and found that I’d pressed myself low to the ground, flattening myself in an attempt to hide from… what? The past? It was embarrassing, and stupid besides. An obsolete instinct when I could much more effectively hide by shifting into the shadows.

Even with no one to see me my pride was terribly injured. Still, I stayed there, small and unmoving, staring at that rectangle in the ceiling and trying to will myself to act. Then, soft and gentle, I heard the little voice. Calming, soothing, telling me that no one could hurt me any more. That it might not seem like it, but what had happened had been long ago, and all those people were long dead and forgotten. Even the lift was dust. There was nothing to fear. The pit was just a pit, not a prison, and I could come and go as I pleased.

And, it reminded me, I had a foe outside. A bear that thought that it could just waltz around in my territory as it wished, eating my game, attacking my friends and killing their animals. That could not stand, could it, the voice asked. Surely I had to get out there so that I could keep an eye on the thing.

I knew exactly what the voice was doing, and it worked, damnit.

With a surge of will I launched myself upwards, not allowing myself to think as I clawed my way almost straight up towards the rectangle. I forced myself to focus entirely on the problem of getting through the opening, which mostly meant the right angle, and enough speed. I needed to come from below, I needed to go fast, and despite how high the ceiling looked I didn’t have much distance to work with.

I got my angle as right as I could. I worked my wings as hard as I could, building speed until the final moment before I shot into the opening, folding my wings at the very last moment so that I didn’t clip the tips.

When I entered the lift chamber and kept going I realised that I might have overdone it. My speed carried me upwards for another full second-and-a-half, but that was three times as long as I needed and I saw the ceiling approaching uncomfortably fast, forcing me to spread my wings to stop my climb. A moment of confused tumbling and half controlled manoeuvring later, and I was sitting on the floor of the chamber. I’d done it.

I looked at the tunnel that led to the pit, and a disgustingly fearful sound left my throat. But I couldn’t stop there. I had to press on. Even though I knew, theoretically, that there were other ways out, I had to do it. Not only because it had taken three days to find my way out last time, but because I simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of me surrendering to fear like that, not again. Sitting there, cowering before the darkness, mewling like a newly hatched whelp–

That’s right, the little voice said. You’re stronger than that. Be proud, dragon! Conquer your fear, and let’s go!

“Yes,” I hissed into the empty tunnel. “I am stronger than you. I am stronger than fear. I am a God and Mercies and Sorrows damned dragon!”

I took one step, and then another. They were slow and heavy, but I fought my way forward, building a momentum that was more moral than physical, until it became impossible to stop and I was running up the tunnel, screaming out my anger and my wounded pride.

I was a dragon, and I would not let fear rule me!