Chapter 4 - Frozen Sunset
It was a miracle that I wasn't crushed by any of the falling stone as the floor beneath me gave way. Perhaps as fortunately, I also landed on a pile of somewhat softer rubble, coming away with only a few new bruises added to my ever growing collection.
I was still dazed when Phina pulled me to my feet amidst the choking dust in what we could tell was definitely more room than cave.
"You okay?" she asked, seeming only marginally interested in the answer as she began to look around. "Wait here, I've got a few torches in my bag."
Shaking off my disorientation, I took a step forward and found that I'd landed in wet sand that surrounded a small pool of water with the remains of an almost completely disintegrated well around it.
I subjected a scooped handful of liquid to a smell test before tentatively taking a tiny taste with the tip of my tongue. Not convulsing in agony and tasting nothing more than slightly silty water, I breathed a sigh of relief and began working to clear the area to allow us to actually get usable water from this old well.
"Found water," I said.
Phina lit a torch, the fading beam of light from the dying sunlight above now drowned out in the brightly crackling fire. "Good. Keep doing what you're doing. I'm going to explore a little further in."
"Don't go too far, this place could be full of traps," I offered as I managed to dig out enough of the area around the spring to allow for a puddle to form. It wasn't going to be pure-filtered by reverse osmosis, but it was certainly better than dying of thirst under the desiccating desert sun or hiking back to the river again.
"Yeah, I'll shout if we need to avoid a giant boulder," she called out as she walked down the nearby hallway.
Once I was satisfied that I'd filled our water skins with the cleanest water I could manage, I moved to follow Phina, physically running into her only seconds after turning the corner.
"What the-? What's wrong?" I asked nervously as Phina seemed determined to back over me.
"I saw something move...and not a little something," she answered back in a shaky whisper. "I think it was saying to 'get out'."
Knowing full well that the line between bravery and stupidity was completely different where mamono were concerned, I stepped around Phina and grabbed the torch. "Well, we are here to find someone. Maybe it's her? Just stay back a bit...if it's a mamono, I can probably keep her distracted with my sublime flesh falchion, right?" I finished with a gesture toward my crotch.
"Worthless walloon, more like. Sure, that's great reasoning-and what if she latches on and decides to not let go forever?" Phina asked with a look bordering on disgust.
"Then you go first! I was trying to be nice!" I whispered back as loudly as I could.
In answer, Phina looked away and gently nudged me toward the other end of the tunnel. Rather than press the issue any further, I began moving forward.
The atmosphere down here was oppressive, though not from the heat or stagnant air. The air was actually quite cold, bordering on uncomfortable. It felt instead like there was a conscious presence all around us, like the feeling of someone literally breathing down our necks.
Advancing past several collapsed hallways, we made a final turn to see a slight glow ahead of us at the end of an unbroken corridor. Also ahead of us was drastically colder air that seemed to be originating from that same unnatural illumination.
I didn't see anything moving, or even any place where something could have been hiding except perhaps in the room ahead or beneath the copious piles of rubble strewn across the entire area.
"That's either who we're looking for or…" I began before trailing off. "Well, let's just hope that's her," I quickly added.
As we approached our destination, the hall became more and more cluttered with random debris. At one point, as the pair of us were forced to climb over the rubble that had been piled up, we finally realized that it wasn't just rocks and broken stone, but countless bones and ancient weapons that clogged the hallway.
I counted at least a few dozen skulls displaying varying degrees of inhumanity before I gave up the grim inventory. Whatever happened down here had ended a lot of lives.
The sudden realization made me lose my balance and tumble forward toward the strange light, losing the torch completely as I hit the ground. Looking up from the hard stone floor, now able to see only by the light of what now appeared to be a large crystal ahead of me, I saw a lone skeleton, still standing upright, as it guarded the entrance to the room in which there was a very large crystal, not unlike the ones I had seen used to imprison Meryl and Risa.
From the long tail and wing bones of the upright skeleton, along with my own personal experience having seen similar bones in motion, the skeleton standing before me was definitely a dragon. That thought came with a sudden turning in the pit of my stomach.
"Phina...this isn't who we were supposed to find, is it?" I asked as I rose to my feet.
"I'm not sensing any necromantic energy...wait," Phina said as she moved closer. "These bones are held together by frost. Shit, I thought it was just a fantasy trope but...this woman died on her feet, guarding this crystal it looks like. She's also holding some sort of small glass orb."
Phina looked lost in thought for a moment before she continued, "Medea lectured on and on about this damn crystal. I don't know if she invented it or just thought it was the best thing ever when she learned about it, but I think...I think the person we want is inside the crystal."
"Are you sure it isn't just magic ice? I think I can even see the cold rolling off of it."
"No, this is definitely what we're here for. Give me a minute," Phina said as she pulled a pile of scrolls from her bag and began making notes. "There are two enchantments at work here. There's the sealing crystal and...something else. I think I can figure it out…"
Phina continued to talk to herself as she puzzled through the complex runic structure of the crystal before us.
"Got it!" She suddenly exclaimed, making a mark in the air that caused a spectral projection to manifest.
In the air before our eyes, we saw the slow construction of a complex enchantment rune. Once the design completed, it started over, running in a magical holographic loop with no other obvious purpose.
"I've never seen a rune like that," I offered, likely unhelpfully.
"It's some kind of fortifying rune...or maybe some kind of permanence? I didn't get around to learning more than just very basics of rune structure, but the weird thing is that the enchantment isn't on the crystal itself. It's been projected onto whoever is inside just...going through this pattern since it was laid down," Phina said in a deeply puzzled tone.
I wasn't quite sure what she meant but the longer I stared at that rune, the more it felt like it was...whispering to me. It felt like, if I could just focus hard enough to hear it, I'd be able to learn its name.
"This rune must be-" I began, reaching out in my mind for the only name that it could possibly have.
Phina nearly shouted as she interrupted me. "Exactly! This rune, or some part of it, must have been generated by that ritual Durand has been after! If someone really is in here, this little light show has been playing out in their vision...or dreams or...whatever people see when they're in one of these crystals. And since there is still some demonic energy in this chamber, it should definitely have taken hold upon her by now."
That wasn't at all what I was thinking before Phina interrupted me. Something about seeing the rune made me want to imagine that there was a name for it. And wasn't that close to ten millennia ago?
"What does that mean?" I asked, a bit worried for the sanity of whoever was locked within, having had to potentially watch the same animated gif on repeat for ten thousand years.
"I hope it means that she'll be unstoppable with whatever power that ritual granted her. Also that she'll be our friend and teach me that rune!" Phina joked with a small laugh, frowning when I didn't share in her mirth. "Hey, complex runes are hard to learn! Anyway, I'm going to break this crystal stasis prison-be ready to...uh...you know."
"What, you want me to strip naked? Maybe we try talking first and see where that takes us, okay?"
Expecting some sort of complex ritual, Phina looked to me with a self confident smile and remarked. "Just so you know, I may only have learned three spells, but I'm pretty damn good at them. Here's the first one!"
I suddenly felt a sensation similar to the one I'd felt in Durand's ritual room as it seemed reality itself was being drawn to a singular point. Unlike that devastating magical backlash, this ended quickly and with much less pain.
For the span of a heartbeat, while the titanic pull of magic drew into that small central point, I felt my heart skip a beat at the vague notion that I'd forgotten something important. Just as quickly as the thought manifested, however, it was gone.
Phina's entire form was bathed in white as she appeared to shout a word, the sound itself becoming magic as it left her lips. And then, spare moments after she'd begun, the crystal shattered.
In the moment before the room went completely black again, I saw the definite form of a woman from within the crystal falling to her knees on the floor.
"Oh shit, I forgot about the torch," Phina cursed as she fumbled to get the fire going in the now utter blackness.
As the spark finally caught and the fire danced back to life, I found myself centimeters from being nose to nose with the not at all disoriented gaze of the woman we'd just freed.
Her skin was the pale of snow reflecting moonlight, contrasting with silver scales where the human-seeming flesh stopped causing her entire body to appear luminous in the flickering firelight. Her membranous finned ears moved slightly as they reacted to the slightest sounds and a pair of large horns sat triumphantly atop her head of long flowing icy blue hair. Behind her swung a long, powerful tail beneath a pair of wings that were folded tightly behind her.
She took a breath, her exhalation reminding me of a late spring cold snap as the icy breath tickled my short facial hair. The chill wasn't enough to stop me from being drawn deeply into the vaguely almond shaped spectacle of her slit reptilian eyes. Her powerful gaze was delivered by an amber-ringed dark red of the outer iris, erupting into a fiery sea of carnelian as one drew closer to the center. And there, tied around the pupil like a lasso, was a thin but utterly unmistakable ring of sparkling emerald.
This was a dragon, and the fierceness in her stare was making damn sure I knew it.
"Hey," I said simply, surprised that I was able to keep my voice from cracking as I made at least a passing attempt to give her a charming smile..
Before she could answer, an impossibly loud voice, seemingly amplified by magic, called out to us, sounding like it was coming from outside.
"This is the Ahmose Historical Preservation League! This and all ruins within proximity of the Lake of Glass are the sole property of Lord Ahmose! Leave anything you may have touched and come out now!" the voice boldly declared.
"Shit!" Phina called out, from behind some nearby rubble behind which she'd concealed herself. "We can't exactly leave her. What are we-?"
Looking back I saw that the glassy orb that the upright skeleton had been holding appeared to have vanished. There was really only one place it could have gone but I certainly didn't have the time to bitch at Phina about why she'd taken it. I probably would have looted it myself if I'd thought of it more quickly.
I shook my head and went to reach for my weapon. There was no way I'd let them take this girl if there was any chance she'd be an ally. That she was a person and not a thing probably rated on my list of reasons, but I wasn't going to be getting past my selfish need for allies until things started going right.
Before my hand could actually touch my blade, the dragon girl stood up and began striding toward the voice.
Holy shit.
She was a huge bitch. Only slightly shorter than Kaeli, this dragon girl compensated with far greater muscle tone and definition that damn near bordered on masculine. Despite myself, I couldn't help but notice her rather unimpressive breasts offset by the pleasing swell of her wide hips and large, beautifully firm posterior.
There was no doubt that she was still an attractive female. More than anything else though, watching her simply walk was enough to easily drag my jaw toward the core of the planet.
Each and every movement of her body, however natural it may have been for her to make, looked as though it had been the model for what could only be poorly recreated in humans and other beings. Her entire form flowed like water even while looking to have been perfectly carved from flawless ivory.
If I blinked, her form remained burned into my eyelids until they opened again. Was this perfection all a result of that ritual?
I was so mesmerized by the dragon girl's movements that I only had the presence of mind to remember where I was when she leapt up to the sands above with a single beat of her large scaly wings.
"Come on," I said to Phina, moving back toward our point of ingress into this broken castle with a single look back to the frozen draconic skeleton.
Phina was kind enough to help me back up to the surface where I caught the tail end of a one sided conversation.
"...is punishable by removal of Ahket status, exile, or death in serious cases. If you'll just accompany us back to Umbra, we can get this matter straightened out."
Taking a look around, I saw the two men we'd encountered before as well as six mamono. They were armed but didn't look to be hardened soldiers. The apparent leader of them, a goblin wearing a hilariously inspired Hollywood archaeologist costume, complete with a familiar fedora, was doing the speaking.
Behind her looked to be the muscle of their group. With a stone-scaled worm-like body that was truly massive, ending in a maw of jagged teeth, this looked to be one of the only true "monsters" I'd seen here. I would have been (more) terrified if I hadn't seen the inside of the great beast's maw.
With its sapient, prehensile, woman-shaped tongue, this great worm thankfully revealed its mamono nature. That didn't guarantee survival, but it felt like it at least made it more likely.
As Phina and I arrived back on the surface, the man we'd encountered earlier spoke up. "Those are the two we encountered. I don't know who this other one is."
If the dragon girl was listening, she didn't seem interested in the least as her eyes seemed to look all around, finally settling upon the dying light on the horizon.
"Look, we're actually sort of in a hurry," I said. "I'm actually sort of a personal friend of Ahmose and-"
"That is Lord Ahmose!" the goblin called out angrily. "I don't care how...attractive or...huh…"
Her voice trailed off a bit as her eyes seemed to focus on me in an entirely different way. When they did, all I could do was sigh, realizing that I'd probably never escape the fallout from the "goblin incident" with Sunslayer and her friends.
Shaking her head as though I'd been trying to enchant her with a sleep spell, the goblin continued, "Now we definitely have to take you all in. Anyone that would make such a claim about the Lord is potentially dangerous. We don't want any trouble so let's move."
Well, that's that. Even if I could handle six normal opponents, there was no way I'd be able to deal with that massive sandworm. Meeting with Ahmose would probably clear up any misunderstandings anyway, and if she truly was a Lord now, perhaps she'd be able to provide some assistance for my quest.
"Whoa! Where are you going?" the goblin suddenly demanded, drawing my eyes to the dragon girl as she bodily picked me up and began to walk in another direction entirely.
"You can't be addressing me" the dragon called back over her shoulder with a note of absolute certainty. "Wasting words on lesser beings is so tiring, but I understand the chain of command. Tell your 'lord' that the Bloodhorn dragon slayer and I will be withdrawing to the rear camp to join the rest of the Skyrender."
The goblin stood stunned with a look of astonishment for several seconds before she snapped back into the moment. "If you don't come with us, we will-!"
Then waving the goblin off as though shooing a fly, the dragon set me back on my feet and nudged my back twice, the second time much harder than the first. The look in her eyes was one of unwavering insistence as I began to walk in the direction she'd pushed me.
The dragon turned and made a wing assisted leap to land directly in front of the goblin. Her eyes narrowed as she spoke down, literally and figuratively, to the goblin, "Have you ever heard of the dragon game 'use the commander as a weapon to beat her soldiers to death'? I hold the clan record with eleven soldiers before my weapon fell apart. Whenever you're ready to start, just say the word."
Had she really just said that? This group didn't even look like they were thinking about getting violent and a few moments with Ahmose would easily clear up any confusion regarding our presence.
The goblin looked mortified, her mouth opening in shock. If this group ran back to Ahmose and told her that we'd threatened their lives, we might lose her as a potential ally entirely. With Phina looking ready to hide herself under the sand the moment a fight broke out, it was quickly made clear that I was going to have to do something.
"Dragon!" I called out. "These people aren't your enemies. Just come with us and we'll get this all sorted out."
The dragon girl didn't take her eyes off the goblin as she answered, "If they were enemies they would already be dead. Do what you wish. I am going to rejoin the Flight. Lord Akuma's forces will have been sorely pressed without my presence."
I had serious doubts that this was going to go well, but it was probably better to tear the bandage off quickly.
Keeping my voice as powerfully confident as I could, I replied, "You've been sealed in that crystal for thousands of years! Akuma has been gone for so long that history has nearly forgotten her existence. Your war is long over, dragon."
That certainly got the dragon's attention. She turned toward me with a look of almost amused anger that couldn't have been more chilling if I'd jumped through the ice of a frozen river while the group surrounding us began to back away slowly.
The dragon took several stalking steps toward me. "I thought it was a dragon slayer speaking, but all I see is a traitor trying to keep me from the fight." She then added after a moment of reflection, "Ah. This succubus has stolen your heart. I will free you from her grasp."
Phina suddenly took several steps back in fearful shock. "He's telling the truth! Wormtongue locked you in that crystal to protect you in exchange for the ritual to keep it out of Durand's hands. That lich betrayed your clan. I wouldn't even touch this filthy-!"
I stepped to interpose myself between Phina and the dragon as I spoke up, my voice now more forceful in my declaration, "No mamono owns me. The lich that sold out your clan has my family and we released you to seek your help in assaulting her castle. Whether you want to help or not is up to you, but-"
"Protect me?!" the dragon roared back, the air around us turning noticeably colder as she did so. "I am the Great and Mighty Ila, Winglord of the Skyrender Dragonflight, Chosen Champion and Blessed of Lord Akuma! The entire island is in more danger from my clan than we are from anything on it!"
True or not, this was quickly about to get out of hand. "Maybe you're right, but you can clearly see that your clan isn't here. They either had to flee or…" I hesitated before adding the more likely reality, "...or they died to defend you. I'm sure you saw that there were a lot of dragon bones below."
Ila snarled as she took to the air, hovering above us as she called down imperiously, "Save your pitiful lies for your bat-winged slut. I will turn the tide of the war myself if I must." She then cast a reproachful look at me and spat, "I pity the Bloodhorn that ever let herself fall to you."
I shouted back, even in my anger failing to come anywhere near her volume, "It was Antarylixi of the Bloodhorn clan! Call me a liar, a coward, or whatever you want, but dragon or no, I won't stand here and listen to you run at the mouth about things you could never hope to understand!" I gestured to the horizon and continued my tirade, "So go! Try to find this clan no one remembers. When you fail, find us in Umbra within the week for answers or fuck off to wherever."
She'd already begun flying to the north before I'd finished, but her anger at my words was palpable enough that I fully expected her to wing over in the air and dive for me with a mind for murder.
Even with her gone, the tension of the moment hadn't really lessened. Whoever this Historical Preservation League was, they certainly weren't expecting or prepared to handle an angry dragon when they came after us.
I might have tried to escape in the confusion, especially since I was pretty sure Phina had actually stolen something from those ruins. Fuck it.
"Dragons. Am I right?" I offered in an attempt to pull the teeth off the recent panic. "So...you said something about taking us to Umbra?"
Finding her voice again, the goblin commander of the bunch swallowed hard and nodded. "R-right." She then looked to a harpy that I hadn't even noticed behind me and nervously added, "Go ahead of us and report this to...I don't even know...The Wrath? I don't know who else would know how to deal with a dragon that delusional."
The harpy took to the skies with only a nod, vanishing into the growing dusk.
Turning back to me, the goblin couldn't hide a look of relief as she weakly commanded, "We'll camp here for the night. It shouldn't take us more than a few days to reach Umbra."
A million thoughts tussled with each other within my head to be spoken first. The winner of that internal struggle came out as a disappointed sigh.
I didn't want to lose Ila as a potential ally, but until she could at least accept reality, she was less than useless. Maybe I could have been a bit more delicate in how I'd thrown her beliefs into a furnace. I'd just have to find a way to make it up to her the next time I saw her.
That meant we'd be spending at least a week in "Umbra". Based on the name, I could only hope it wasn't a prison.