Chapter 28
Doors in Strange Places
No one expected Jorric and Perun to return quickly. Judging from the whispered conversations Charla heard around her, some dragons didn't expect them to return at all.
So when, a mere few hours after the scouts had left, a commotion of thundering paws came racing along the upper level, several dragons leapt to their feet and braced for attack. Charla was startled out of a stupor of dark thoughts that she'd fallen into some time ago, when the well of conversation between her, Lance and Chelcie had run dry. Before she could find her feet, Lance had braced himself in front of her like a living shield.
"Wait, wait!" Chelcie yelped suddenly, making several dragons—Lance included—jump. "It's them!"
Charla looked around Lance to see Jorric and Perun, their flanks heaving and their eyes wild, racing along the elevated corridor across the room. They leapt over the railing without even spreading their wings, and landed with audible thumps among the crowd. The whispers started immediately, drowning out the sound of their gasping breaths.
"Move aside, please," said Teslan loudly, sending the dragons in front of him stumbling back.
Charla slipped around Lance and crept closer, holding her breath. She caught a glimpse of Jorric through the thick of bodies. His chest was heaving and there was a raw kind of fear in his eyes that made her spine tingle.
"Give them some space, for goodness' sake," Teslan snapped, and everyone backed up a few steps.
Charla stepped back and bumped into someone, who turned out to be Lance. He lowered his head beside hers. "Have they said anything?"
"Not yet," she hissed back.
A shadow fell over them as Chelcie slunk in behind them and stopped beside Lance. She didn't speak, just watched the gasping scouts with a furrow in her brow.
"Teslan," Jorric choked out at that moment, "it's not good. The city..."
"Catch your breath first," Teslan ordered, and there was silence for a moment.
A few dragons shifted anxiously, but everyone stayed where they were, allowing the scouts a small space to recover. Charla shifted to get a better look. Both Jorric and Perun, apart from the fear in their eyes and their heaving exhausted bodies, looked unharmed. So what had made them race back to the dam like death itself was on their tails?
Finally, Jorric took a deep, shaky breath and raised his head. He was no longer panting, though his breathing was still laboured.
"There's apes everywhere out there, Teslan," he said, and now everyone pressed in a little to hear.
"We didn't get very far from the dam before we saw them," Perun added. "We searched up and down the canyon for a clear way to the city... There isn't one."
"It's hopeless," said Jorric, his eyes wide. "I've never seen so many apes in one place. You should've seen it... They've even got shelters up on the fields where the moles farm. And the siege weapons..."
Alarmed voices filled the air, rebounding off the stone walls of the small enclosed room. Charla winced as they echoed in her head.
"Siege weapons? Shelters?"
"But that makes it sound like Warfang is—!"
"That's ridiculous! The soldiers of Warfang would have—!"
"—can't be saying Warfang is—!"
"Enough!" Teslan roared, and several dragons broke off mid-sentence, leaving a strange, eerie silence among the crowd. He glared around at everyone. "There's no need for panic. Perun, Jorric, with all due respect, what exactly do you mean by 'siege weapons?' "
Jorric stared hard into Teslan's eyes, his jaw trembling. "Exactly what it sounds like. Warfang is under siege."
A hush fell over the room. A strange ringing had started in Charla's head.
Siege.
She knew that word. It was a bad word that didn't seem to fit with her image of Warfang, with everything she'd ever read and been told about the great dragon city.
Warfang is a dragon's safest haven in all the realms.
Warfang is under siege.
"I'm sorry, Teslan, but there's no safe way into the city."
Jorric's voice, thick with a dooming sense of finality, seemed to break the spell. The crowd around Charla broke into chaos. Their voices rose in a crescendo, all filled with fear and confusion, some with anger and denial. Some dragons pressed forward, demanding further explanation; others backed away from the crowd with terrified eyes. And at least a few stood where they were, rigid as statues, looking as confused and thunderstruck as Charla felt.
Teslan cried for order, but it wasn't until Chelcie stepped in and started snapping at the rowdiest dragons that the crowd started to quiet. One dragon, a deep red female, snapped back at Chelcie and it looked for a moment like they were about to fight, their lips drawn back over snarling teeth. Charla shrank back against Lance.
"QUIET!" Teslan roared, so loudly that his voice cracked and Charla jumped. A crackle of electricity danced around his muzzle, lighting up his eyes in a wild flash. "We are not wild animals! What help are you giving by acting like this?"
The voices quieted. Chelcie and the other dragoness snarled at each other a moment longer, then turned away with matching scowls. Jorric and Perun, wide-eyed like startled prey in the centre of the crowd, seemed to relax. Charla felt Lance loosen his stance behind her.
"There," said Teslan, glaring around at them all. "Calm yourselves. I know this is not the news any of us wanted to hear, but we are dragons—we can get through this. Provided we do not lose our heads and act like apes."
An abashed murmur rippled through the crowd. Teslan turned his eyes on Jorric and Perun.
"I would like a word with our brave scouts alone, if you please. I need to know everything you saw out there. The rest of you… Be calm. Reassure the wounded. Rest yourselves. We have travelled a long way and we have not given up yet—we will not give up now. Go on."
With a dismissive nod of his head, Teslan turned and beckoned for Jorric and Perun to follow him. As the three of them removed themselves to a far corner, the crowd steadily started to break apart. Chelcie turned back to Charla and Lance, her face tight with barely suppressed worry. Charla, realising her mouth had gone dry, swallowed a little painfully.
"Not exactly what we were hoping for, huh?" said Chelcie with a wry, humourless smile.
Charla didn't know what to say.
Fear hung like heavy fog within the walls of the dam. Charla couldn't stand it. It was worse than the few tense hours they'd had to wait for Jorric and Perun to return. At least then there'd been some small hint of hope in the worried voices of the dragons around her. Not now. Now the room was filled with anxious voices, with fear-driven arguments and apprehensive discussions of barely-thought-out plans.
Charla had kept one ear on the conversation between Teslan and the two scouts, but it had been hard to decipher their hushed words. Only when they started talking about what to do next did their voices begin to rise in argument.
Teslan wanted to stay put until they had a solid plan. Perun wanted to leave on his own and try to sneak into Warfang to get help. Jorric thought this was suicide. And everyone else in the room seemed to have their own ideas.
"There's no way we can get into Warfang like this! We can't just stay here—let's turn around and head for Pyreflight instead."
"Look at us! We'd never make it to Pyreflight in this condition."
"We've been lucky enough to avoid the Dark Army as it is. Travelling through open country towards Pyreflight is only tempting fate."
"We can't just stay here! We need to get into Warfang. Look, Sleecia's wounds are already infected; she needs medical attention."
"Faradin's too. He can't even walk anymore. He could die if we don't get help."
Charla squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block it out. It was hopeless. What could they do? They were trapped there, unable to leave, unable to get to Warfang, unable to turn back. The Dark Army was everywhere, and the longer they stayed there, the more likely they would be discovered. And then they would be cornered by the apes, with nowhere to run, just like those moles in the grain mill storeroom...
Something soft brushed across Charla's back. She jumped and opened her eyes, startled from her dark thoughts. Chelcie was looking down at her, a strange sort of smile on her face.
"Wanna come explore the dam?" she asked.
Charla stared at her, caught off guard by the suggestion. To her surprise, Lance got to his feet as well.
"Sounds good to me," he said. His gaze held hers for a long moment and a rush of relief swept through her.
"S-sure," she stammered, standing up.
Teslan's eyes followed them as they weaved through the arguing crowd towards the door, but he didn't rise to stop them like Charla thought he would. Chelcie seemed to be making an effort not to look at him; she held her head high, and there was a sense of defiance in the way she led them out of the room. Only when they were out in the corridor did her shoulders relax.
"That's a first," she muttered, shooting a look over her shoulder. "Thought he would try to stop us. Okay! Let's go this way."
Chelcie turned left with a flick of her tail and Charla hesitated to follow. That way led down to the grain mills—to where they'd found the moles. Surely Chelcie wasn't eager to go back there. Charla locked eyes with Lance, but he just shrugged and followed. She watched him for a second, shifting uneasily, until she couldn't stand the thought of being left alone and sprang after them.
Down the corridor they went in silence. Charla slunk to Lance's side and tried to press against him as inconspicuously as possible. She was grateful when he said nothing and just draped his wing over her back. As Chelcie started to lead them down the first flight of steps, dread crept into Charla's gut. Surely she wasn't taking them back there...
But just as Charla was trying to think of a way to suggest they turn around without sounding scared, Chelcie stopped. A thin strip of pale light glinted on her blue scales as she turned to face the great round door they'd passed earlier that morning. At once, Charla understood.
"We're going outside?"
"I thought it would be more interesting than skulking around in the dark in here," Chelcie said. She frowned at the door, tilting her head this way and that. "...If I can figure out how it opens."
Lance stepped forward, his wing slipping off Charla's back. "It doesn't look like an elemental door—the moles would need to open it, too. Let me see."
Chelcie edged to the side, and Charla crept up with Lance to get a better look at the door. Its majestically carved patterns twisted and swirled through the stonework, and she couldn't help but admire it as Lance ran his paw over its surface. She couldn't even see where it would open—there was no telltale split in the centre, only smooth carved stone.
"I bet there's some sort of weird puzzle to open it," Chelcie suggested, and there was a hint of excitement in her voice. "I hear moles like that sort of thing."
"Puzzle?" Charla echoed.
"You know, like a secret switch that only reveals itself when you do something. Or a bunch of stone buttons you have to press in the right order. Or a series of torches that need to be lit so—"
"Or," Lance cut in loudly, "you can press in the protruding brick to the side of the door."
And he did just that.
There was a loud clunk, a dull rumble, and the door trembled. A crack began to spread in the centre of the door—not a straight, up-and-down crack, but a winding split that weaved in and out of the carved patterns and had been nigh on invisible before. As the crack opened, light streamed through so white and blinding that Charla had to shield her eyes with a wing. The floor shuddered under her paws, the door groaned like a growling beast, and, with another hefty clunk, it fell silent.
Slowly, Charla lowered her wing. She squinted and blinked in the harsh midday sunlight, until the stars faded from her eyes and the world came dazzlingly into view. A feeling not unlike hope rose in her chest.
The door had opened out onto a huge balcony whose stone glinted white-gold in the light. Beyond it, Charla found herself gazing down a huge canyon that travelled on as far as her eyes could see. Its cliffs were lined with clusters of deep-green trees, vivid under a clear sky, and in the distance she saw a thin blue river that twisted and snaked down in its centre. As she stood in awed silence, there came the distant sound of lapping waves somewhere above her and the salty scent of the ocean.
"Well, that wasn't a very good puzzle," Chelcie muttered.
Lance snorted. "Would you put a complicated puzzle on a door you had to use all day?"
"I would if I was a mole."
"You would not."
"Look, look!" Charla ran towards the stone railing at the edge of the balcony and gaped with amazement at the canyon stretched out before her.
Sunlight glinted on the surface of the river, which formed a kind of shallow lake at the base of the dam. Charla craned her head to look. The water was shallow enough that she could see the foot of the dam had been carved as though to resemble the huge claws of a colossal dragon. Ledges and balconies jutted out from the dam's face, draped with a veritable carpet of vines that made the monolithic stone structure seem strangely alive.
"It's amazing." She edged along the line of the railing, trying to see everything she possibly could. There were metal gates embedded in the stonework, and she thought she could see another carved door but didn't have the right angle to get a better look. She whirled around as Lance and Chelcie stepped out onto the balcony, too. "The moles built all of this?"
"With some help," said Chelcie, smirking. "I bet dragons had to do all the heavy lifting."
"That's kind of a given," said Lance.
"C'mon, let's look around!" Charla all but bounced along the balcony towards the downward slope on the left, which led down to a lower section of the ledge.
"Hold up," Lance called after her, and she skidded to a halt. "Don't lose your head, alright? There might still be apes around. We're probably not as safe out here as we were inside." He paused. "Actually, now that I think of it, Teslan probably wouldn't have let us come out here in the first place."
"Well, he's not here, is he?" A mischievous sort of grin was spreading across Chelcie's face. "And all he said was that we couldn't leave the dam. He didn't say anything about going outside. I didn't think you were such a stickler for rules."
Lance rolled his eyes. "You'd find a loophole in anything, wouldn't you? And I didn't say we have to go back inside."
"You implied it."
"I didn't—"
"Can we go?" Charla cut in. " 'Cause I'm going."
Without waiting for a response, she scampered down the slope to the lower balcony, grinning to herself. Lance called after her, but she heard them both following a second later. There was a gap in the railing on this side, and a small wooden ladder that led down to a wider platform. Charla peered over the edge at the rows of wooden barrels and woven sacks piled around the edge of the platform. Maybe they were filled with flour, like the ones in the grain-mill room.
"Looks like where they collected the grains," Lance said as he came up behind her and peered over her shoulder. "Dragons probably bring them from the fields after harvesting. Then they can grind them up here."
"Let's go look," said Charla, and glided down to the platform without so much as a second of hesitation.
Lance sighed and followed, Chelcie on his tail.
The sacks and barrels were indeed filled with grain and wheat, which didn't hold Charla's interested for more than a few seconds. She led them on a merry search across the ledges and platforms of the dam's face after that, stopping only to inspect things like gates, doors, and some kind of wooden platform that travelled upwards when a wooden wheel was spun—an 'elevator,' according to Chelcie.
Here and there, they found signs of disturbance—burnt patches of ivy, torn bags of grain and splintered barrels, and even a few broken arrows. But there was no hint of recent ape activity. All was silent and still, save for the sounds of the ocean and distant bird calls.
Charla found herself boring of the dam soon enough. There was nothing to see but stone and grain. What she really wanted was to take flight, to stretch her wings and explore down the canyon, to dip her paws into the little river winding its way hopefully towards the sea. The sloping canyon walls and their forests of lush, vivid trees looked so untouched and peaceful in the midday sun that she had a hard time believing there were apes around—let alone that Warfang was under siege not so far away.
"Can we?" she begged Chelcie when she just couldn't hold it in any longer. "Just for a little bit?"
Chelcie's face twisted thoughtfully, undecidedly, but there was clear longing in her eyes as she gazed down the length of the gorge. Charla held her breath.
"Oh, what the heck," said Chelcie with a toss of her head and a feisty grin. "What Teslan doesn't know won't hurt him."
"You're kidding," Lance said flatly, but she and Charla were already spreading their wings. "Teslan specifically told us not to leave the dam."
"Who cares!" Chelcie sang, whirling her head around to face him. "He doesn't need to know! Don't be such a stick in the mud."
"There are apes around—have you forgotten that Warfang is under siege?" Lance shot back, his face settling into a scowl. "If we go out there, we could end up leading the Dark Army back to everyone in the dam. Think before you—"
"Oh please! There's not going to be any apes in the canyon. They're probably all at Warfang. We'll stay low, keep away from the top of the cliffs. Nothing's going to see us."
Lance opened his mouth to argue further, and Charla jumped in before she lost her chance.
"Please?" she wheedled, trying to look as wide-eyed and innocent as possible. "We won't go far. I just want to stretch my wings a bit."
He stared down at her, jaw set. Chelcie flicked her wings.
"You know, I'm the adult here," she said. "So what I say goes."
"Oh, fine!" Lance whipped his tail violently and Charla jumped when his tailspade clacked loudly against the ground. "Don't blame me if you bring a whole platoon of apes down on our heads. Charla, stay close—"
Charla didn't hear any more. She'd already leapt off the edge of the balcony and dived after Chelcie, and the roaring wind drowned out the rest of Lance's speech. She rocketed down, wings back, as a rush of vertigo gripped her by the gut and tears blurred her vision. Chelcie flared out her huge white wings and pulled up below her, but Charla kept going—down and down further, the blurred greens, browns and blues of the canyon floor filling her vision, rushing up to meet her—until her nerve failed her and she levelled out with a tremendous flap and shot forwards on the wind.
Life flowed through her veins. She was flying again. It felt wonderful.
She wanted to shout out in glee, but managed to bite it back; they were trying to be stealthy or something, right?
Rising in the air, Charla spiralled around to see where her friends were. Chelcie wasn't too far above her, looking gracefully serene as she glided forwards without beating her wings, but Lance was far back, his vivid green form stark against the white backdrop of the dam. He was probably glaring at her.
Grinning to herself, Charla wheeled around and dived towards the river. It wound its way through rock and trees, cutting a crevice in the gorge's spine and reflecting a perfect copy of the sky. Charla dipped low, reaching out a paw to skim the surface. The water was clear and slow-moving enough that she could faintly see the pebbles of the riverbed, smooth and round like stony eggs. She drifted lower, submerged her forepaws, and grinned as the icy waters burbled around her scales.
"Catching fish, Charla?" Chelcie yelled somewhere above her.
Charla laughed and looked around, spotting her spiralling down towards her. "What fish?"
"I dunno; any fish dumb enough to get caught! Look, there's one!"
"Where?!" Charla whipped her head around and scanned the clear, burbling waters, but all she saw beneath the surface were pebbles and her own distorted shadow. "I don't—"
A wave of ice-cold water crashed over her and she darted forwards with a squeal, spinning around. Chelcie howled with laughter as she rose up from the surface of the river, her paws and tail dripping.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she choked out between giggles. "That was mean. But it was so easy."
Charla shivered as she shook herself dry. She tried to glare at Chelcie but couldn't keep the grin off her face.
"I'll show you easy," she said, bracing herself to retaliate, but she didn't get a single splash off before Lance came swooping down towards them, hissing.
"What is wrong with you two? You could wake the dead with the amount of noise you're making." He glared up at the canyon walls, as though expecting apes to come leaping down at them from above. Evidently seeing nothing, he turned his glower on Chelcie. "Let's go back. You've had your fun."
"My fun?" she repeated, raising in eyebrow. "A short fly and a little splash? Go back if you want to, but I'm going to look around for a bit."
"Then we—"
"I want to look around, too!" Charla cut in. Lance glared at her, but she held her ground. "Just a little bit longer? I promise we won't make any more noise."
"You? Not making noise?" His glower seemed to falter and a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I'll believe it when I hear it. Or don't."
Charla stuck her tongue out, twisted around, and shot off after Chelcie, who was already rising away from the river.
"I didn't say yes!" Lance yelled after her, but she ignored him.
They flew for a short while through the canyon, always keeping lower than the top of the earthen walls. Charla kept her mouth shut the whole way, and Lance seemed to give up trying to persuade her to go back. As peaceful and impressive as the canyon was, it was the flight—the chance to stretch her wings—that Charla enjoyed more. She swooped, dived and spiralled, and even did a few flips, until she felt a little bit dizzy but very much alive. There was no way she was ready to go back to those dark and gloomy spaces within the dam; not yet, maybe not ever.
She drifted higher as she flew, wondering if she could get high enough to catch a glimpse of Warfang without going above the canyon. The trees that balanced on the rim of the canyon walls rustled in the breeze, but she could see nothing beyond them—just blue sky. She flapped and rose a little more.
"Hey," Lance called below her, not as loudly as he usually would have. "You're going too high."
Charla snorted and glared down at him. "I am not."
Even so, she drifted lower again and tried to quash the flood of disappointment. Would she ever get a glimpse of Warfang? At this rate...
She sighed and shot forwards with a few quick flaps, lazily scanning the rugged canyon walls for anything interesting. Maybe they should just go back. There was clearly nothing to see out there; at least, nothing within the canyon. She would have liked to catch a glimpse of Lake Solis—an artificial lake at the far end of the gorge that was Warfang's main source of water, according to Chelcie—but it was too far to go without someone back at the dam noticing their disappearance. They'd probably have to go back soon to avoid that anyway.
Still, at least she'd been able to stretch her wings.
She did a quick roll in the air to cheer herself up, and it was as she straightened up again that she saw something strange. On the left side of the gorge, roughly halfway up the wall, a lip of stone jutted out in a wide shelf. It was large enough that several dragons could have stood comfortably upon it, and there was an odd depression in the flat stretch of wall that faced it—like something large had been set back into the stone.
Charla frowned and sank towards it.
"Where are you going?" Lance called, a bite of impatience to his voice.
Charla didn't answer. She wasn't entirely sure herself yet. She alighted on the lip of the rugged shelf, stumbled a few steps forward, and stared.
A door—a gigantic, beautifully-crafted stone door, the like of which she'd never seen—was nestled deeply into the canyon wall, gazing out over the gorge. Strange spiky runes were engraved around its rim, and at its centre was a large carved circle in which the likeness of a dragon and a mole stood facing one another. More runes surrounded the edge of the circle, which was dyed in faded shades of dark green and bronze.
"You should come look at this..." Charla called distractedly, staring at the great door. She felt strange and small in its presence, like she was looking upon something impossibly grand without any of the respect it deserved. It towered above her, taller than the tallest dragon she'd seen. Even an ape as big as Gaul would have been dwarfed by it.
Lance landed heavily and approached with slow steps. As he came up behind her, Charla looked around for Chelcie and saw she'd flown a bit further ahead and had only just noticed they'd stopped. She was flying back towards them now, her brow furrowed.
"That's...not something you see every day," Lance said slowly, and Charla looked back up at the door.
"Where do you think it leads?" she whispered. She wasn't quite sure why she was whispering, but it somehow felt right in the presence of the colossal door.
Lance didn't respond. Instead he stepped closer to the door, his head craned to look at the carved circle in the middle. Charla shifted uneasily and jumped when Chelcie landed with a thump beside her.
"Found something?" she asked breathlessly. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the door. "Oh, wow. How did I miss that?"
"It's something, alright," Lance muttered. "The word here, around this circle... It's written in really old-fashioned Draconic Runes, but I'm pretty sure it says 'Warfang.' "
"Warfang?" Charla and Chelcie echoed together.
"That's what I said," Lance muttered.
Charla cocked her head. "But isn't Warfang over there somewhere?" She waved a paw lazily towards the canyon wall. "Why is there a door that says Warfang out here?"
At first, no one answered her. Then Chelcie spoke. "I can think of one reason."
Her voice trembled with such excitement that Charla had to stare at her. She was gazing starry-eyed at the door, like all her dreams had come true at once.
"What?"
"Two words," Chelcie breathed. "Old. Warfang."
Charla frowned. Lance glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. Ignoring them both, Chelcie stepped up to the door and ran her paw over a small part of its carved face.
"This is crazy," she whispered. "I can't believe we just stumbled upon the door to Old Warfang. Just...like that! It's been buried for ages!"
"I can't believe you're that sure of yourself," Lance muttered, flat-eyed. "Why would the door to Old Warfang be...well...not buried?"
"What's Old Warfang?" Charla cut in impatiently. Both Lance and Chelcie turned to stare at her.
"What do you mean what is it?" Chelcie said incredulously. "It's Old Warfang! The former city? The one that was buried a thousand years ago in some cataclysmic event that hardly anyone ever talks about? That Old Warfang?"
"Oh," said Charla, blankly. "That one."
She looked quizzically at Lance. He smirked and whispered, "I'll tell you about it later."
"The point is, I don't think anyone's been into the ruins since they were buried," Chelcie went on, her voice rising in excitement. "And we found the door!"
"So you say," Lance pointed out.
"Well, what else could it be?"
He didn't seem to have a response to that.
Charla thought about it for a moment and finally said, "But if the city was buried, why can we still see the door?"
"I don't know." Chelcie whipped her tail, looking agitated. "Maybe the citizens of Warfang uncovered it or something. Or maybe it wasn't completely buried and has just been uncovered by erosion."
"What's erosion?" Charla hissed to Lance, but he didn't seem to hear.
"Alright, whatever. It's the door to Old Warfang. Whatever makes you happy." He shook his head and glanced back the way they'd come, towards the dam, and his expression turned pensive. "Right now, we need to get back before anyone realises we're gone."
"But this door could be the answer to our problems!" Chelcie blurted out, like she just couldn't help herself.
Lance looked at her like she'd gone mad. Maybe she had, Charla thought. It was just a door. A pretty door, but still just a door.
"Think about it!" Chelcie insisted.
"I'm thinking you're losing your head," Lance muttered before she could say more. "Even if it is the door to Old Warfang, how is it supposed to help us?"
"Duh! We go through the old city into the new one!"
Silence. Charla shared a look with Lance and wondered if the stress was getting to her.
"You think I'm mad, don't you?" Chelcie rolled her eyes. "But if you just think about it, it makes sense. Look... Old Warfang was built at the edge of the canyon—that's why they dammed it in the first place. After it was buried, they built the new city right alongside it. Sooo..."
She rolled her paw at them, as though expecting them to finish the thought, but Charla could only stare blankly. It was a moment before Lance caught on.
"You think they're connected," he finished flatly.
"I mean, I'm pretty sure I've read that they are... Somewhere..." Chelcie trailed off thoughtfully and stared at the carved mole-and-dragon upon the door, as though they held the answers in their stony paws.
Charla stared too, into the hollow eyes of the carved dragon, and a feeling rose in her stomach—a feeling she had felt before, like something was pulling her onwards. The door itself seemed to be daring her, and the call of adventure began to whisper in her head. If Chelcie was right... If this door did lead into the underground ruins of a city that was connected to Warfang...
A tremor shivered down her spine. She wanted—she needed to see it.
"Listen," Chelcie insisted, "this could be it. This could be our way into Warfang! We go through the underground, pop out into the city, and the apes will be none-the-wiser! It's perfect!"
"There's no way it'll be that easy!" Lance exclaimed. "How do you know we'd even be able to get this door open? It's probably locked with all sorts of enchantments if it is the gate into Old Warfang. And you don't even know that it is!"
"But what if it is?" said Charla. Lance waved her aside.
"It's the best—no, the only chance we've got right now," Chelcie shot back, her eyes ablaze. "We might as well give it a shot. C'mon, we've gotta tell Teslan."
And she leapt off the edge of the stone shelf, spreading her wings.
"And tell him we left the dam when he specifically told us not to?!" Lance yelled after her, but she was already flying away, back towards the dam. He ground his teeth together. "Charla, come on."
He took a running leap off the ledge and took flight without another word. Charla hesitated, looked once more back at the magnificent door, and followed.
There was no way they could have caught up with Chelcie. Charged by excitement, she flew faster than Charla had seen anyone fly before and left them both in her wake.
By the time Charla and Lance got back to the dam and everyone in it, Chelcie had apparently already spilled the beans. Or at least tried to. Teslan was working himself into a panic, and as Charla raced into the room with Lance, she heard him demanding to know where 'the children' were.
She assumed that meant them.
Chelcie cowered before her uncle, her face twisted with equal parts desperation and annoyance.
"Look, they're right here!" she exclaimed as she caught sight of Charla. "They're fine, see? Jeez. Now if you would just listen—"
Brief relief flickered in Teslan's eyes as they swept over Charla and Lance, but it was swallowed all too quickly in the tide of his anger. He drew himself up, towering over Chelcie. "You deliberately disobeyed me! I told you not to leave the dam, and what did you do? You not only ignored my warning, you took these two—these children—with you!"
"I know, but listen! The door—"
"I will not hear another word about this ridiculous door, Chelcie!"
As Teslan raised his voice over hers, drowning her out with thunderous anger, Lance groaned. "Idiot dragoness. If she'd just waited for us..."
"How would that have helped?" Charla asked.
"I was going to give her an idea on how to tell Teslan about the door without mentioning that we left the dam..."
"Uh... How?"
Lance shrugged. "Say we saw it from outside the dam."
"Oh." Charla frowned. "But could we see it from the dam?"
He just shrugged again and she narrowed her eyes. "So...how would that have worked?"
"Would have been better than just blurting out that we ignored his orders," Lance muttered.
Charla sighed and looked back at Teslan. He seemed to have finished yelling himself hoarse at Chelcie—she'd only caught snatches of it; something about all the horrible things that could have happened to them in the canyon and how irresponsible she was for taking children with her. Now he just stared her down with deep disappointment in his eyes, his voice calmer but somehow all the more dreadful for it.
Everyone else had stopped to listen. A few dragons made an effort to pretend they couldn't hear the commotion, but most just stared unabashedly. Charla felt heat in her cheeks and wasn't sure if she was more embarrassed for herself or for Chelcie.
"I expected better from you, Chelcie," Teslan said. "You expect me to treat you like an adult, and yet you go off and do something like this—something that tells me very clearly you are still a child. And to take the children with you..."
"I know," Chelcie hissed, hunching her shoulders. "I get it."
"I should hope you do." He eyed her grimly for a long moment. "And I should hope you also understand why you're grounded."
"What?" she hissed. "Why? All I did was leave the dam for, like, less an half an hour! Nothing even happened!"
He glowered down at her, his jaw tight. "You disobeyed my orders. You put children in danger. I think that is reason enough. From now on, until we make it to Warfang or until I think you've learned your lesson, you are to be escorted everywhere you go by an older dragon. If you cannot act like a responsible adult, you will be treated as any child would. That, of course, goes for you two as well."
He shot his glare in Charla and Lance's direction, and Charla shrank back a little. Chelcie drew herself up. "That's not f—"
"No arguments!" Teslan exclaimed, so loudly that Chelcie and Charla both jumped. "...Or I will not listen to anything you have to say. And I know you wouldn't have told me any of this if you didn't think what you found out there was important."
Chelcie glared hard into his eyes, visibly grinding her teeth together. A long, tense moment later, she dropped her gaze. "...Fine."
"Good." Teslan's shoulders relaxed and the anger melted slowly from his face. "Now then... What's this about a door to Old Warfang?"
