Author's Note: My apologies for the week off; it wasn't strictly intended, but if any week was going to be beyond my ability to handle life and writing, it would have been that one... anyway, here's a chapter!
Lily growled quietly and flicked her tail against the ground, annoyed with herself. It was understandable that she couldn't sleep in more than fits and starts, her pack had been attacked not that long ago, and she was in a new environment, the closest it got to dark was a light twilight on the opposite side of the cave to the all-crystal wall. It was understandable to not be sleeping well, she wouldn't blame any of her people for having the same problem.
But she needed sleep, and not being able to get enough was frustrating. She stubbornly held her eyelids closed and refused to abandon the grassy spot she had chosen in the middle of the cavern. Even though she really wanted to. She might have been trying to sleep, but she had set almost half the pack to various tasks in the meantime, and checking up on those would be less frustrating…
No. She needed rest. Beryl and Ember were working on blocking the passageway, there was nothing she could contribute there. Root, Storm, and a few others were examining every nook and cranny of the cave, ensuring there were no hidden ways in or out. She couldn't do anything to speed that up; Root on his own could have done it, the others with him were mostly for protection, just in case. She would be of no use overseeing the various guards, not when they already knew what to do, and the scouts were long gone, double-checking where the paths they did know about led. Except for the one they had been attacked from.
Everyone else was trying to sleep, and she should be doing the same. No matter how little success she was having at that deceptively difficult task. She wanted someone to throw a wing over her head on the off chance that it was the ambient light bothering her, but that would mean getting up and waking Pina, or Crystal, or someone else who was getting their own well-needed rest. They probably wouldn't mind, but she would know she had given up… Seeking help was its own form of failure. No self-respecting alpha needed help sleeping. It would hurt her image.
O-O-O-O-O
Some time later - she had no idea how long she had intermittently dozed, just that it wasn't long enough to feel at all rested - the scouts returned. Or, she thought as she heeded the announcing roars and shook the lingering lethargy off herself, those who had traveled furthest were back. The others had come in at some point earlier, but they liked to wait until they could all give her their reports at once, so long as it wasn't urgent. Thus, not being woken until now was probably a good sign, since it meant nobody had seen anything worth waking her for…
Or they hadn't bothered coming to her. She squinted at the distant gathering of light wings by the ravine passage, trying to make out any errant glints. Cara wasn't present, and neither was Holly, but Aven was in the group. Not taking reports, just there talking, but that did not mean she was innocent.
"Aven, are you rested?" Lily called out as she approached, forcing her tone to neutrality lest she let slip a growl that betrayed her lack of trust.
Aven turned to look at her, a distant, unhappy expression crossing her face. "Yes, why?" she responded curtly. Lily was reminded that she had killed a No-scaled-not-prey right under Aven's paws, and that Aven wasn't happy about it, and that someone had needed to point that out to her… She didn't remember who had done so, though.
"I'll want to speak to you after this," Lily said vaguely, pushing the thought aside before she could waste time trying to recall who had told her. She would make it up to Aven soon, in a way that didn't give her sisters anything to use in their power grabs. Something subtle, if she could manage that, as tired as she was. But later. "First, let's hear what's outside."
"There are six paths out of this cave, alpha," Cedar barked eagerly, though he looked tired, his wings and tail drooping every so often before snapping back to attention when he noticed. "One leads to the underground lake you have already seen. The ledge goes on for longer than I could fly and be back in time, and leads nowhere but further out over the water."
"So we should guard that way, but it wouldn't be a short flight to reach us?" Lily asked. "Did you hear or see anything suspicious?"
Cedar shuddered dramatically. "Strange echoing sounds in the distance," he said. "And once, a massive grey shape broke the water in the distance. I was too far to see what it was, only that it was big."
"Thanks for inspiring my next moon-cycle of nightmares," one of the other scouts muttered. "I do not like big fish."
"Concerning, but not an immediate threat," Lily said firmly, hoping to quash any paranoia before it could get going; her pack had one lurking set of enemies already, they didn't need to be distracted by worries of an entirely different sort. "Thank you. Go get some rest, and all of you remember that fishing is only to be done close to the ledge, and in pairs."
"Yes, alpha," Cedar huffed, bowing his head and taking off.
"You," Lily said, gesturing with a wing at a female she couldn't remember the name of - which was a kick to the gut, bringing to mind the last female whose name she had learned too late.
"I went back the way we came," the female said chirpily, nodding as she spoke. "Still nothing there, still dark, still far too many ways for me to explore. Still a lot of little bugs. No change there."
"Good," Lily said, resolving to figure out a way to ask her name without making it obvious that she didn't know it. "That's good. What of the other paths?"
"Mine was a dead end," Clay offered. "It went a short way, turning and twisting every direction, then ended abruptly. Sort of like a boulder had been rolled into it, like Ember and Beryl were talking about before I left."
"Did it look intentionally blocked, or like something had caved in?" Lily asked. She didn't know which would be worse; that tunnel was directly opposite the one the attack had come from, so it being blocked by intelligent design might mean she had enemies on both sides. But if it had been blocked in a natural occurrence, that meant none of the tunnels they had come through had been at all safe; any of them could collapse at any time. So far, she'd been hoping there was something about this underground realm that stopped that from happening, not that they were just lucky. Luck tended to run out.
"I could not tell," Clay responded, clearing up nothing and making her feel she had gotten the worst of both possibilities, at least in terms of things to worry about. "There were no claw marks on this side, but I obviously could not see the other side, if there even is one now."
"Which would mean that, if someone did block it, they did it from the other side," Lily reasoned. "And I think we have an idea what they might have been blocking off…" Not that she was confident enough about that guess to act on it. "We're not going to try and excavate the tunnel, that's for sure. It can stay blocked." One less passage to worry about.
"That was what I was hoping," Clay agreed. "Now, if you do not need me for anything else…" He looked over at the cluster of parents and fledglings near the intermittent stream.
"Go," Lily said, waving her tail in that direction. "What of the other passages?" she asked the remaining two scouts.
"Mine leads to another dark cave," one of them said quickly. "I think it is a different one from the place we have already been, and there are no holes in the ceiling. Plenty of other tunnels out, though, and some pits in the middle that do not look like they have a bottom." He shuddered.
"I got a dead end like Clay," the other added. "But mine was definitely a cave-in, there was rubble everywhere and some of the stone cracked when I stood on it. I could hear running water near the end, and I got out before anything else could collapse."
"Okay, right," Lily muttered, resisting the urge to ask why he hadn't told her that very helpful information when she was trying to figure out whether Clay's potential cave-in was natural or not. Having a point of reference would have been great. "We'll have to see if Ember and Beryl can block that one off too, then. Or at least figure out where the water is." If it was running under the end of the tunnel, it might be better to keep the tunnel available as a secret supply of water in case something happened to their access to the underground lake, but if it was above the cave-in, blocking off the tunnel could be the only thing stopping their temporary home from being flooded…
She would get Root to look at it. "You two can go," she said, dismissing the remaining scouts. "Good work," she added as an afterthought, turning to Aven. "Thoughts?"
"We have traded No-scaled-not-prey for a whole host of other dangers we cannot talk to at all," Aven said neutrally, avoiding meeting her gaze. "I am not sure I like it down here."
That was a lot more honest than Lily had expected, but she went with it. "At least one is capable of speaking," she said. "What do you think of that?"
"I think that killing two of ours is not a good start to anything," Aven growled.
"Two?" Lily demanded, hoping that Aven was mistaken. She had only been told of one, there had only been one body, surely-
"You did not know?" Aven asked, her eyes wide as she finally met Lily's gaze. "One of the younger fledglings is missing, and has been since the attack. We do not know what happened to him, but…"
"Who?" Lily asked hoarsely.
"His name is Spruce, like the tree," Aven said sadly. "Or… was. If he was hiding in our cave, Root would have noticed him when he was checking everything over, and there were guards at all the other exits, so he did not leave any other way. The ones who attacked us did not sound like they were taking captives." She whined softly. "I do not think I want to be the one to negotiate with them, if you need someone to do it. I did no good last time, and last time the one I was trying to talk to had not killed a fledgling unprovoked."
Lily's nascent plan to put Aven in charge of inter-pack relations with the attackers - not that she expected a lot of actual negotiation, but one never knew - had just gone up in flames, and she didn't have the heart to try and salvage it. "If there's any negotiating to be done with those creatures," she snarled, "it will be over a mound of their corpses."
Aven snorted and looked away. "I do not like that, but I do not dislike it either. So long as we are not killing their young."
"There are lines that shouldn't be crossed," Lily assured her, sensing an opportunity. She considered walking over and putting a wing over Aven, or otherwise initiating contact, but the twinging in her back and pent-up anger would probably make her seem more frustrated than caring or apologetic. "It's been brought to my attention that killing a certain No-scaled-not-prey right in front of you was one of them."
Aven shrunk in on herself at that, looking haunted. "I do not want to talk about that," she muttered.
"Not even to hear why I did what I did, or why it was necessary?" Lily asked. She wouldn't offer an apology for her actions, she hadn't been wrong to do it, but she could apologize for Aven being the one to suffer the aftereffects. That was pure bad luck, not really anyone's fault, but she could take the blame in a way that Aven - or more likely, her sisters - couldn't use to their advantage.
"Maybe some other time," Aven said, looking up. "It looks like Root is coming to report, I have things to do…" She muttered a few more obvious excuses, and Lily nodded, letting her flee without any objection. She would have to come back around to Aven later.
Just as she would have to seek out Spruce's parents later and find out why they hadn't come to her, why she didn't know that one of her fledglings, this time an actual fledgling, had gone missing. She already suspected the answer, she had been trying to rest and Holly was so helpful whenever she wasn't watching, but she had to get it from them… and she had to reconsider sending scouts down that passageway despite the danger. If the fledgling was hiding just out of sight, too scared to come out…
The thump of a light wing landing heavily behind her was a welcome distraction, and as she spun around she tried to push her unhappiness away, to hide it behind the same neutral expression she used so often. Her continued tiredness didn't help.
"We have completed our inspection of the cavern, alpha!" Root barked seriously. The way he was staring a little too high and too far to the right diminished his attempt at seriousness somewhat, but Lily didn't mind that. Though she did wonder why he couldn't 'see' her well enough to know where to point his head.
"Anything except the passages we already knew about?" she asked. Storm was gliding in behind Root, having just broken off with a few light wings, and would be with them in moments, with plenty of time to give her own observations.
"You do not have to worry about the river," Root began, reminding Lily that she already had a secondary source of fresh water in the cavern. She didn't know why she hadn't remembered that; it was probably the exhaustion slowing her down. "I do not know where it comes from or where it goes, but the paths it takes are too small for anything to come through them."
"Any secret passages?" Lily asked.
"One," Root confirmed with a light tone of voice that implied he wasn't worried at all. "It-"
"Did Root tell you about the awesome thing we found yet?" Storm demanded, dropping down right beside Root. She hadn't made even the slightest sound of warning, but Root didn't even flinch. Lily suspected he had somehow heard her coming, even though he had been talking… or he was used to her and expected her to do things like that, hearing ahead or not.
"There is a whole cave system up there," Storm explained, rearing back on her hind legs to point her whole body at the downward bulge of the ceiling. "Big enough for lots of us to live in. I have claimed a section for my family."
"There is a way up on paw if you want to take a look at some point," Root added. "That was the secret passage I was going to tell you about. It starts in the wall and circles up to the caves."
"These caves are totally isolated from anywhere else?" Lily asked.
"There are no connections that go anywhere other than this cavern," Root confirmed. "I heard it clearly. Plenty of space and little chambers, though, and the rock sounds like it has been ground smooth by something. Not like those horrible tunnels we went through to get here, by something smaller."
"But still bigger than us," Storm snorted. "Gone now, though, leaving a lot of nice sleeping places behind. A dozen of which are mine."
"This cavern is under my authority, and I'm not about to agree to that," Lily said sternly. The one thing this cave currently lacked was privacy, and she was not about to let Storm lay claim to a massive collection of private places. Even if she personally didn't mind - which she definitely did, Storm had no right to do that - it would cause problems with her pack.
"I was the first one to set paw in there, so I get a say in who claims them," Storm said confidently.
"If we were using that method of determination, I am sure Root was the first to discover them," Lily shot back with an unimpressed stare. "It does not matter, though. Those caves will be allotted to mated pairs and those with children first, and then given out based on need. The needs of my pack come before any foolishly selfish claim you could make." She expected a bad reaction to that, but Storm wouldn't do anything violent, so it would be relegated to harsh words-
Storm snorted and shrugged her wings. "Worth a shot," she huffed. "How about I lay claim to three of the chambers, not a dozen? One for my children and me, one for Ember and Pearl and their children." She tilted her head hopefully and thumped Root with her tail. "Anything to add?"
"I do not feel like jumping into your haggling," Root said serenely. "Especially when you have no power to bargain with."
"I will show you power," Storm grumbled. "So?"
"I'm not making any decisions until I see these caves and take a count of those who need privacy the most," Lily huffed. That was yet another thing for her to do, and one that would not be quick if she had to walk all the way up there. "When I do, your family will be considered, and I will not let you trying to jump ahead and stake a claim negatively affect my decision."
"You are no fun at all," Storm huffed. "Fine. Other than that, we found nothing of any interest at all. Happy?"
"With Root's work, yes," Lily said, looking to Root. "Thank you, and thank you for putting up with your less than helpful assistant." She very carefully did not look at Storm, hoping she was judging the other female's mood correctly-
"I resent that remark," Storm snorted. "Come on, Root. I want to see if you can see underwater with the right roar."
"I already said I do not want to disturb any deep sea monsters by roaring at them," Root grumbled good-naturedly as he flared his wings. "And we already know I cannot."
"Never say never, we have not tried sticking your head in the water while you roar," Storm offered. She leaped into the air, and Root followed with an indignant noise that made Lily laugh despite herself. She could imagine Storm doing it, too, though in her imagination Root wouldn't just sit there and let his head be dunked, he'd put up a fight…
They reminded her of Beryl for some reason, and not just because Storm was related to him. She had the urge to go see Beryl, to do something with him. Luckily, she already had the perfect excuse.
O-O-O-O-O
Beryl, Ember, and Thaw, the latter looking much better, though still withdrawn, were busy pacing along the length of the all-crystal wall that made up the back of the cave, the wall that illuminated what Lily had mentally dubbed as the 'light' side of the cave. Unlike in the valley, the bright light spilling out from the many colorful rocks was unusual, so instead of a place named for how it was always dark, this was a place named for light…
She shook herself as they noticed her, trying to drive off the tired haze over her thoughts. It wasn't fair, she had tried to sleep, and now was time to be awake and do things.
All three of the males had their backs to her, staring up at the patchwork array of crystals. Ember leaped up onto an orange-red one that was sticking out from the rest, though there was barely room for him to stand on it, and noticed her in the process.
"How are things going?" she called out, closing the distance.
"We've got ideas," Beryl said, nodding in her direction. Calm, collected, respectful… exactly what she wanted when it came to keeping up appearances, but she wished she didn't need that.
"The stone of this cave is strong and brittle," Ember added from his perch. "Can't break it without shattering it, and that's not easy. We could make a pile of little pieces, but that wouldn't stop anyone looking to get through."
"But these crystals are good," Thaw said, dragging a paw down the flat side of a red crystal.
"We think they break neatly," Beryl corrected. "We were about to test it, Lily, so you might want to stand back. Thaw, you too."
Lily obligingly backed up a few dozen paces, then a few more when Thaw joined her and kept going without slowing in the slightest. She didn't know exactly what they were planning, but she was thankful the pack was resting on the other side of the cave. If they were going to break a piece of crystal off, it would probably be loud.
Beryl took a place down below the crystal Ember was perched on, looking up at where it jutted out from the others. He and Ember exchanged a few words too quiet for her to make out, and then a few more…
She looked over at Thaw. "How likely is this to work?" she asked curiously, more to give him a chance to speak than out of any certainty that he would have an answer. He was still a fledgling, after all, though Beryl had said Ember had taught him some things.
"Sire can break anything," Thaw said confidently. "The question is whether it will break in a useful way."
"Useful?" she prompted.
"Some things shatter, some things bend, and some break along lines or surfaces," Thaw murmured, his deep voice sounding preoccupied as he watched his brother and Sire. "If it breaks along a good surface, we can shove it into the tunnel and fill in the gaps around it. That way, it will block the way and let us see out so they cannot catch us unaware."
"That would be great," Lily hummed, imagining it. The crystals weren't easy to see through, but a thin shard of one set up in the right way might be. Even seeing movement and nothing more would be good enough to give warning, and it was not easy to break, so possibly a lot of warning.
Ember began dragging his claws along the intersection between his crystal and the rest, and Beryl's lithe and muscular form was reaching up to do the same from the bottom, though the crystal was thicker than both of them combined. They couldn't possibly be making any real progress on cutting the piece off. "What are they doing?" she asked.
"Telling it how they want it to break, along what surface," Thaw said without hesitation. "If there are several surfaces for it to break along, making it weak along the one we want will make it more likely to go that way. Like digging a ditch to direct water."
"I'm impressed," Lily said, looking over at him again. "How do you know all this?" She already knew, or at least suspected, the answer. It was Ember and No-scaled-not-prey things, No-scaled-not-prey knowledge.
"Sire," Thaw purred. "He is good at understanding things even for a No-scaled-not-prey. I do not have the paws for doing what he does, but I like it anyway…"
Lily was reminded of the brief moments earlier that day in which Thaw might not have had useful paws, but did have two heads, and what that apparently meant. If he killed a No-scaled-not-prey, he might have the paws he was lacking, among other things. It was odd that such a thing was now an option for him.
"It looks like they are ready to try and break it," Thaw hummed. Beryl and Ember were taking off, flying away from the crystal and doubling back. There wasn't room for a real diving shot, but they flew in fast, two bolts lancing out in unison. A duo of near-simultaneous impacts exploded into being, one on top of the crystal and one below it…
Nothing happened. Lily could hear a few startled roars from the distant pack. She would have felt bad about waking people if she wasn't more concerned with protecting them. When Beryl and Ember turned again for another run, she didn't object. If their fire alone wasn't enough, she would conscript a dozen others and see if mass shots could-
The next duo of shots didn't break it, but Ember and Beryl weren't stopping at one. Six bolts shot out in groups of two, slamming into the crystal again and again, and the crystal popped with a noise more akin to ice breaking than stone. Lily reflexively closed her eyes the moment she saw little shards shooting out from where the last blasts had hit.
She opened them again when the chunk of crystal, split into two irregular pieces, hit the ground. The pieces were each roughly the size of Beryl, longer than they were tall, and true to what Thaw had said, the points of breaking were strangely flat, angled planes.
"Success!" Beryl roared, dropping down to land on one of the chunks of crystal.
"We did it!" Thaw roared right back at him, running over to paw at crystals. Lily followed at a more sedate pace, though she was scarcely less excited. It had worked, and even she could see how to take the two chunks of crystal and block a tunnel with them. It was doable.
"Now for the boring part," Ember said as he returned to the ground. "Who wants to push a big rock all the way over to the tunnel?"
Beryl and Thaw looked at each other, then at Ember. "Why don't you go challenge Storm to a game of strength," Beryl suggested. "You against her. With these crystals."
"She is busy shoving Root's head underwater," Lily said.
"Okay, not her," Beryl said with a snort. "Lily, do you need help with anything?"
"Anything that will get you away from pushing a crystal?" Lily asked. "Well, someone needs to get around to digging a new waste pit…" She wasn't even joking, now that she thought about it. That did need to be done, and soon. As soon as she was done here, in fact. If she didn't quickly get one set up, her people would take the decision of where it should be out of her paws by designating a space, and that would be something everyone regretted if it happened to be in a bad spot.
"I really need to get that started," she huffed after a moment. "No joke. You three do what you need, recruit anyone who is willing to help." She was going to go recruit her own group of light wings for the waste pit project. She could spend time with Beryl later.
"I'll stick to pushing crystals," Beryl barked in mock horror, leaping off his perch to lean into the big chunk of orange rock and shove. "Thaw, help me!"
Lily left them to their work, her mind on waste and how much she didn't want to have anything to do with it.
O-O-O-O-O
"Purely voluntary," she clarified as most of the light wings listening to her recoiled in disgust. "And there will not be any waste in it yet. I am just asking for help digging a suitable pit." She didn't see why she had to clarify that, but people heard 'waste' and immediately thought they were being asked to deal with it, whether or not that was the case.
"And you are asking us… why?" a female asked. She had both wings out, covering two fledglings on either side.
Lily looked around the circle of Dams, fledglings, hatchlings, and the occasional Sire. "Everyone else is busy," she said. She left unsaid that everyone needed to pitch in, and that this was a task anyone could do, while scouting or guarding wasn't something all could partake in as the need arose. They could even bring their older children along; digging was fun for them.
"I, for one, feel like getting my paws dirty," Dew volunteered, standing up. Pina was a heartbeat behind her in volunteering, and then there was a small outbreak of purring and cheering from the fledglings who were awake enough to be listening…
By the time Lily had everything sorted out and the volunteers separated from the others, she had a sizable group ready to help and awaiting only a location to start digging.
A location she hadn't quite decided on yet. She wished she could fly, or at least survey their cave from above. Bereft of that advantage, she had to settle for turning in a slow circle and thinking hard about the necessary properties of a good waste pit.
It needed to be out of the way, very out of the way of any prevalent breezes blowing into the cave, and it needed to be somewhere easily accessible. The latter requirement didn't really apply in this case, as anywhere they could dig was a short walk or a shorter flight away from any other part of the cave. Keeping it out of the way, on the other paw, ruled out putting it anywhere away from the edges of the cave, and meant keeping it from the various paths in and out…
"We'll go this way," she decided, turning to face the far corner of the vaguely rectangular cave. It was out of the way, bordered on the crystal wall, and could host a good-sized waste pit without being obvious. The ground sloped down into said corner, which was good for a tiny shred of privacy… Not really, but there was no privacy to be found anywhere, so that wasn't a consideration either.
Her group of volunteers, oblivious to her thoughts and second-guesses, followed her over to the corner. She staked out a spot as close to the sloping stone and crystal walls as possible without directly abutting them, so as to avoid hitting stone before they got sufficiently deep. Then came the task of scratching out lines in the grass and dirt so the fledglings knew where to dig, and then they were off.
Lily had meant to sit back and let her people do the work, but she found herself enjoying the mildly difficult task of pawing out loose dirt and snapping weak grass roots. She moved around the excavation area, clearing out the top layer of soil wherever she went, and keeping an eye on the fledglings. All was well, they were making good progress-
"I found a rock," one of the fledglings announced. Crystal moved over to help, or maybe just to watch, and there was silence for a moment as everyone continued to dig.
"Lily," Crystal barked urgently. "Come look at this."
Lily looked up - along with half of those digging, and the rest were listening intently, no matter what Crystal had hoped to keep between just them - and made her way to Crystal, wondering what was the matter. She looked down into the chest-deep hole the fledgling had been digging on his own, and stuck a paw down, brushing dirt off of something.
Crystal had uncovered a skull. Old, elongated, and partially shattered, it was stuck in the dirt as if it had a right to be there. She pawed at it tentatively, rolling the largest pieces to the side and revealing a glint of what Lily assumed was the top of a spine.
"That's… disturbing…" Lily said slowly, eyeing the dirt-stained objects. The skull they had once formed was old and certainly not from anything like a light wing, far too narrow and pointy.
"Lily," another light wing called out from the other side of the dig site, "are you two looking at bones of some sort? Because I just found some of those."
That was the beginning of a very unnerving discovery; as they continued to dig, searching for answers now, more and more bones were unearthed. They looked to be the old remains of several unknown dragons, and, ominously enough, a single light or possibly dark wing. Not all of the skulls were broken like the first to be uncovered, but there were other injuries, other cracks, breaks, and scorches exhibited by the scores of bones unearthed.
"Maybe we should pick somewhere else," one of the diggers suggested quietly once a sixth skull was unearthed, implying there was even more beneath it. The dirt was deep where they stood, which Lily might otherwise have considered a good thing. Now she wondered what else it might hide.
"Definitely," Lily agreed. She had no desire to disturb that kind of thing just to put in a waste pit. There were plenty of other places for such a thing. They quickly hid the skeletons under the dirt they had removed, and moved on to another place. She would have to remember to warn the rest of the pack not to dig in that particular spot, though it was unlikely anyone would. It was one small patch of upturned dirt in a massive cave, pure luck they had stumbled across it in the first place.
"Over here," she said after a short moment of contemplation, leading her group of volunteers across the cave, to the other side. The spot she had chosen this time wasn't quite so good, a little too close to the dangerous tunnel for her comfort, but that was a temporary issue, and it was far from the site of the bones. The tunnel guards eyed her group curiously as they set to work.
"This is better," Pina remarked, digging into the top layer of soil in the new designated waste pit location. "We have bad luck, to dig right on... "
She trailed off, and Lily looked over to see her pawing at something hard jutting out not a paw's height from where the grass had been.
"Pina?" Lily was hoping this was not what she was guessing.
"Very bad luck, Lily," Pina growled, pulling up a thin and long bone from the ground, one that looked far fresher than the specimens they had unearthed on the other end of the cave. "Or this is not so uncommon in our new home."
O-O-O-O-O
In the end, Lily sent her digging crew back to the first waste pit site, reasoning that if they were going to disturb burial sites no matter where they dug, they might as well dig out the best location. And she had sent them, not led them, because while digging was probably more enjoyable than spreading the news of what they had found, it wasn't nearly as important.
"So pass along the word that digging might unearth some bones, but it's not a big deal," she said to Liona. "I don't think there'll be much digging anyway, but better forewarned than scared if a fledgling decides to show off the weird white rocks she or he found."
"I can tell people," Liona agreed, "but why me?"
Lily almost said that she had chosen Liona because if she wasn't worried, nobody else would be, but she caught herself just in time and yawned instead; she was tired, very tired. "Because you're someone I haven't asked to do something yet," she sighed. "Thanks for the help."
"Sure, you are welcome," Liona hummed. "Anything else?"
"No, just spread the word." Lily left her lying on a shallow ledge, and made her way through the spread-out crowd of light wings.
The cave was big, but most of her pack had elected to rest, eat, and otherwise hang around a small portion of it, near the middle and the ravine, avoiding the tunnels leading to danger and the ocean. Lily suspected the pack, as a whole, was motivated more by one person laying down there, and then their family sleeping near them, and some sort of chain reaction along those lines, more than any actual logic. Whatever the reason, her people were all pretty close together when they weren't doing something, and she found herself stepping over tails and other outstretched limbs despite the abundance of space the cave afforded.
Having informed Liona, she was momentarily out of important things to do. The work on the tunnel entrance was going, if slowly, but standing around watching Ember and Thaw packing sand around a hunk of crystal and flaming it wasn't all that productive. Them doing it was, but her supervising when she didn't know anything about blocking tunnels… no, not a good use of time.
She might have gone to comfort the parents of Spruce, if she knew who they were. Not knowing bothered her quite a bit, but not as much as asking someone would. What was worse, she couldn't see any obviously grieving parents around, so she couldn't just figure it out herself. Not quickly.
Which left her with asking someone in a way that didn't leave them thinking she was looking for names at all, while giving her what she needed. It was an obvious, simple thing for her to do, and she didn't know why she was spending so much time thinking about it…
She spotted a particular light wing ahead of her, and decided that she could kill two No-scaled-not-prey with one blast. "Honey!" she called out.
"Lily, I will be right with you!" Honey barked back, before turning back to the male she was talking to. She waved a wing at the crystal wall, and the male flew off.
"What do you need, alpha?" Honey asked quickly. Everything about her seemed harried, from the way she was moving to how she spoke. Her normal bubbly attitude was entirely flat and she sounded as tired as Lily felt.
"To know whether you have found any plants that aid sleep, and to check whether Spruce's parents have come to you for anything," Lily said quickly. If Honey could give her either of those, she would be happy.
"No plants of any kind," Honey sighed. "Not in this cave. Others, maybe, but we cannot go anywhere to find them. And I do not know who Spruce is."
"I'll tell the scouts to keep an eye out for plants," Lily promised. "Spruce is the fledgling who went missing during the attack." She would never admit it, but finding out that Honey hadn't known his name either made her feel slightly better.
"Oh, yes, his Dam came by," Honey sighed. "She was not in a good state of mind, and asking for things I could not give, like a plant to make her not worry. Copper talked to her, and then Holly came over and helped her calm down more. I think she is okay now, her friends have been keeping her company. But she insists on guarding the tunnel, just in case." She gestured with a wing toward the tunnel, and Lily winced. Watching the blockage of the last hope that her fledgling was alive couldn't be good for that female's state of mind.
"Thank you for helping with that," she said. "How have you been, since we came down here? Aside from the lack of plants."
Honey shook her head and pulled her tail in to avoid the light wing walking right behind her. "Stressful," she said. "And it will be even more so if more fighting breaks out before I have my paws in a pile of pain-killing plants."
"I know," Lily assured her. "I don't want it to come to that, though. That's what Ember and the others are working on."
"If they want to hurt us, they will find a way, blocked tunnel or not," Honey said quietly. The barking of an argument nearby nearly drowned her out. "But I would like to think that will work."
"I would like to think so too," Lily huffed.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily lay on her stomach, eyes closed, and dozed. She woke every time anyone came too close to her, the pure exhaustion she was feeling not enough to outweigh her paranoia, but between those interruptions, she got some actual, genuine rest. It seemed she just hadn't been tired enough before to counteract the stress of sleeping in a strange, bright place she knew wasn't totally safe.
"Lily, I was sent to tell you something!" a familiar voice barked, dragging her from her slumber. She reacted quickly, shoving down a flash of instinctive dislike and blinking her eyes open enough to see the male in front of her.
Cloud. She blinked again, surprised. She couldn't even remember the last time he had approached her in his usual fashion, though apparently it hadn't been long enough to let her dislike of him fade out of memory.
"And instead of telling me, you told me you were sent to tell me?" she grumbled, staggering to her paws. She would not converse with him while lying down, that was just asking for him to mistakenly think she was comfortable around him.
"I wanted to wake you first," he said irreverently. "The blockade is done! Ember sent me to get you to inspect it so he knows you are happy with it."
"Too many words for 'Ember wants you at the tunnel," Lily admonished him.
"I guess," Cloud said flippantly, turning tail on her and running back toward the tunnel entrance. She started after him, walking quickly until common sense caught up to irritation and slowed her down to a more reasonable pace. Really, she shouldn't even have been irritated in the first place; him leaving her alone was a good outcome.
"Wait, no," she muttered as she walked. "Not good." She had only tolerated him in the first place because he was attracted to power, and so long as he was going after her, she could take it as a sign that he saw no other rising sources of power. Him not going after her was a bad thing…
Though it wasn't like his lack of interest was the first warning sign of Holly's ambitions; she already knew about that. If he was interested in Holly now, he was useless as an oblivious danger detector. Meaning she could ignore him.
She felt good about not having to put up with him anymore, even though she already hadn't been for the last few moon-cycles. It was the principle of the thing, she supposed.
A crowd of light wings had grown up around the tunnel entrance, but the average light wing wasn't nearly tall enough to block Lily's view of the top part of the opening. Especially not when it had been widened, and a giant orange-red pair of crystals jammed inside.
The light wings nearest her moved aside to let her pass, and she nodded to them as she took advantage of their politeness. One had an angry, lost look on her face, making her easily identifiable as Spruce's Dam. Lily offered her in particular a sympathetic look, only to get a glare that she didn't let bother her.
"So?" Ember asked from his place right in front of the crystal. "It won't hold against a determined attack forever, but it'll stop them from coming back without warning."
Lily tried to stare through the murky orange depths, and could barely make out the tunnel behind. Movement, she supposed, would be more obvious. Exactly as she had hoped. The crystals themselves were pretty firmly wedged in the opening from what she could see, and the cracks had been filled with gravel and sand, and melted into a sort of glass...
"Would attacks on these fillings do better than striking the crystals directly?" she asked, knocking her paw against one of the hard, sludgy masses. It felt as solid as the crystal, but she knew glass was fragile.
"Yes, but only to give small openings," Ember explained. "Aside from gas attacks, those will be worthless. They are too small for even small dragons to get through."
"Gas?" someone called out.
"The two-headed ones make explosive gas, it's nothing to worry about so long as you don't let it explode inside you," Ember said dismissively. "And so long as they don't get creative with it, but I've never seen that happen."
"But you can imagine things to do with explosive gas, which is why you mention it," Lily guessed.
"I could, definitely," he said with a purr. "Filling the tunnel with a lot and lighting it to try and force the crystal out, or trying to pop open a filling without being noticed and setting something up… but nothing that helps them if there are light wings watching through the crystal."
"You've done great work," Lily declared with a confident purr. "Thank you for helping us protect ourselves." She didn't know about the rest of her pack, but she certainly felt much better with this blockade in place. Better, and more able to focus on the internal threats that menaced her pack, not just the external ones. And on just living here in this cave, instead of holding out and worrying. "And I hate to ask, but once you've rested… we could do with a few more blockades on some of the other passages."
