Chapter Twenty-four: Rex Igneous
Everything was black. Having fallen on his arm, the pain had returned full force as Callum raised himself up; Rayla was still in his arms. He looked up, seeing that the entrance had been sealed back up. He drew a rune and spoke. "Lux Perpetua". The area lite up.
It looked like they had fallen through a cave ceiling. The cavern was vast, and the air smelt strongly of earth. Before getting up, Callum shook Rayla awake. Her eyes opened slowly, and she moaned as she woke up.
"What happened?" she asked groggily.
"Those elves did a spell to make the ground open up and we fell in." Callum told her, and he explained what the elf had told him, about how they're old home was attacked by Viren, Claudia and Aaravos, about how they were determined that it would not happen again and that Amer somehow had something to do with this. At the end of this, Rayla looked downcast.
"They've got my swords, Callum." She said. Callum didn't need to be told what this meant; a Moonshadow elf's weapon was their lifeline, to the point where warriors would carefully chose the fate of the weapon should they fall in battle or on a mission. He got to his feet and helped Rayla up.
"Don't worry, we'll get them back." He promised. "But first we need to get out of here."
Tomin felt proud having disposed of the human and human lover. There was no way they'd live, and the human would wallow in its guilt, or what guilt it was capable of feeling, knowing that its fate was its own fault. He barely even cared that that Moonshadow elf had cost him his eye, she would parish along with him. Ideally a little after him so she could endure the loss of one so precious that it drives her to murder her own kind. That was what Amer had said had happened, why those two Moonshadow elves now traveled with him. That fool had come to them asking for recruits, but thankfully his people were loyal to him and not one soul had even considered it. Tomin was now leading the others back to the village. He felt true fear for the first time since that day when he turned a corner and found Aaravos and his dark mages standing before them.
"You." Tomin said, his one eye stretching in fear. A clattering got Claudia's attention and she was intrigued to see a pair of familiar-looking swords on the ground. Tomin had forgotten them; the Startouch elf, Aaravos…the Aaravos. His last thought was to get home to protect his -
Tomin and every one of his followers dropped to the ground in that moment, having not noticed the older dark mage performing some spell. He seemed to grow younger as he absorbed some of the life energy. Claudia took the swords from the ground, wondering what this meant. Was the Moonshadow elf dead? Did the Earthblood elf take her swords as some kind of trophy? Claudia tried to avoid the possibility that Callum had gotten caught up in the fight.
"What now?" Claudia asked, trying and failing to figure out how they retracted as a way to distract herself from the fearsome thought that Callum might have met his end.
"If we don't take care of their nest now, they'll just keep coming. Such things can get rather annoying." Aaravos said as if there weren't a cluster of freshly dead bodies in their wake. Viren didn't seem to mind so much but it made Claudia feel queasy for some reason. "Come. Let us take a little detour. Say hello to some locals."
Without the sun, it was impossible to keep track of time, so neither mage nor elf knew how long they'd been down there. Maybe less than an hour, it felt like. The massive cavern they came to was definitely out of place, being too…clean. The ground was packed down to a level plateau and the walls were perfectly rounded without so much as a ledge popping out. It was simply unnatural. The only thing of note on the wall was a huge tunnel leading to blackness.
"Whoa." Callum exclaimed, the single word coming back in an echo. Rayla laughed, this also returning in the form of an echo. This caused them both to laugh, the noise filling the huge room until a louder rumbling drowned it out, accompanied by shaking. When the shaking became too violent to stand, they fell and held onto each other for what little security it offered.
A loud moaning sound from came from the tunnel, like someone awoken from a deep, comfortable sleep, along with the sound of ground shifting, chased by a massive yawn. The tremors continued, now much smaller and in short bursts. Callum and Rayla rose to their feet, their eyes trained on the tunnel. The figure that emerged was immense.
It was unlike any other dragon either Callum and Rayla had ever seen. The stone-colored face and claws were plainly dragon, but the snout was flanked by spikes that passed the nose, possibly used for digging, their seemed to be slabs of thick rock going down his neck in place of a mane, and a closer look revealed his wings were bat-like and attached to his front legs. The to smaller beings were too amazed to bow.
The dragon took a deep inhale and looked at them with small, golden eyes. His voice was old and gravelly. "What's all the noise?"
"Rex Igneous." Rayla whispered. Callum looked surprised. Rayla had told him about Rex Igneous, but he never thought he'd live to see him with his own eyes.
Rex Igneous growled. "Why is it one can't have a mere century of uninterrupted sleep?" Before either could think to answer, Rex Igneous raised a paw and brought it down with such massive force that it created a shockwave powerful enough to send Callum and Rayla flying. Above the cratering of stones and rush of wind, they could hear the words; "As punishment for this disturbance, you will parish down here. Now no more intrusions."
Above ground, a sharp but brief tremor caused Viren and the others to pause in their travels for a moment.
"What was that?" Claudia asked after the tremor calmed down.
"Rex Igneous has awoken." Aaravos said. This made him uneasy; the old dragon wasn't friendly when woken up. Still, he and the humans carried on without a word.
"Rayla!" Callum called even before he got up. He hoisted himself up, his left arm in agony. At this rate, it would never heal. Noticing the light was dimming, he quickly recast the light spell, and the light returned full force.
"Callum." Her voice was quiet, though more from a daze then any injury. When they spotted each other, they stood and struggled to make the short ways to each other; the ground underfoot was now freshly upturned soil, not the most reliable surface. They practically collapsed into each other, both covered in dirt and small rocks. Callum fell onto his back in the soft soil, Rayla laying on top of him. They spent a few minutes laying there, letting themselves get their breath back.
"So that was Rex Igneous?" Callum asked.
"Oldest living thing in Xadia." Rayla confirmed, but paused, remembering Aaravos. "I think."
"I'm sensing a pattern. Dragons like their sleep, don't they?"
"The older ones do, at least." Rayla said, getting up. Callum followed and they brushed themselves off. As he looked himself over, a purple glow got his attention. He pulled the Key of Aaravos out of his bag, and he and Rayla were surprised to see the star rune glowing.
"The star rune?" Callum questioned. "What's it reacting to?"
"Is it…is it broken?" Rayla asked.
Callum pulled the cube to himself, seeing the star rune dim down and the sky, moon and sun runes light up. The moon rune remained when he held it close to Rayla, and when he held it away from them, the moon went dim and the star rune again lite up. Callum and Rayla exchanged a puzzled look.
"Well, it looked like now we at least have a direction to go in." Callum said and Rayla took his hand as they started down another tunnel of upturned earth, following the light.
Ezran, Amaya, Gren, Zephyr, and Lain watched the pseudo-sparring match. Pseudo because Soren was trying and failing hard to get the hang of Lain's weapon, which he had loaned the boy for this purpose. Lain was worried more about Tiadrin, even being early along as she was, although she insisted, she was fine with a simple sparring match.
Lain was the only one not laughing at Soren's failures. It seemed he was unable to hold two instructions in his mind at once, for whenever he remembered how to activate the whip, he forgot to keep his stance loose. Humans were too rigid in their battle stances, most kinds of elves preferred to remain relaxed so they could jump into the action needed at the last moment; a rigid stance made it difficult to leap away, grab a weapon or rush your foe. The only two sorts of elves that shared the humans' stubborn stances were the Sunfire elves and the Earthblood elves.
Still, in another sense, Soren's stubbornness was to be admired. That stubbornness was what caused him to keep getting up whenever he fell down. Really, he would have been a valuable asset to the Dragonguard; he would have surely been more loyal than the rest of the old guard had been. Some days it was hard to believe he was really the son of that cruel dark mage who had caused so much heartbreak. For her part, Tiadrin was simply knocking him down again and again, doing nothing to actually hurt them; it was a standard method for training small children.
Soren got up again and again without a word. He knew he'd get this eventually if he kept at it, that's how it had always worked before. Something he couldn't help, though, was the feeling of guilt he'd felt. Before his accident a few years ago, he had been so naïve, almost arrogant and had taken an almost childish delight in knocking Callum down and taunting him. He felt ashamed of his past actions, even if Callum had insisted that it was in the past. Tiadrin, thankfully, didn't seem so immature and even praised him for the rare clever move he made.
Soren was brushing himself off when he happened to look southward. He saw a plume of black smoke rising from the mountains in the distance. Seeing his distraction, the others looked to the mountain range. Odd. None of them had been told there were active volcanoes in that rang.
Underground, Callum and Rayla finally zeroed in on a spot; whatever was causing the star rune to glow was under the soft, loose earth.
"You think whatever this is was knocked free from the shockwave?" Callum asked as they knelt down and began digging, him holding the key with his left hand and digging with his right.
"Probably." Rayla replied.
In contrast to both of these calmer places, the mountin village of the rogue Earthblood elves was in chaos. No one had been expecting the Startouch elf and the dark mages to return in place of the band who had gone out last night. These elves being itching to fight, they came in a wave of aggression; though they were still no match for the three despite of the weapons they now wielded. Between Viren's combat skills and Aaravos and Claudia's magic, it wasn't instantaneous, but it was very one-sided.
Once the warriors were taken care of, the three split up to search the homes. Viren didn't even try to deny that, at this moment, he greatly preferred Aaravos to Harrow, who hadn't seemed to understand. Aaravos knew; this was war. It was foolish to let so-called innocent beings live, they would seek vengeance sooner or later. This place itself was proof enough of that. That was why even the smallest child couldn't be allowed to live.
As she heard the door being busted open by magic, Tobin's wife had just finished hiding her daughter in a kitchen cupboard, giving the child strict orders to keep silent. Before she could even close the door properly, the feeling of cold metal was piercing her back. Claudia wasn't sure if these were stabbing swords, but that hardly mattered. The mother fell and he daughter held her breath, tears running uncontrollably down her face.
Callum and Rayla didn't need to dig far, thankfully, before they finally saw something. It looked like a pinkish-purple gem, a large, smooth one. No it was…a dragon egg. It looked a great deal like Zym's egg had, with the same bright colors and the same aura of preciousness. Rayla carefully took the egg and lifted it out of the dirt. She could practically feel the heartbeat of the life within it.
At the same moment, Claudia was trashing the house looking for the little girl. The child's heart roared like a river in her ears, so loudly that she worried the human would hear it and find her. Fear unlike anything she'd ever experienced before griped her and she clinched her eyes, praying to Garlath to spare her. She'd be good. She would never lie again, she would do as she was told, she would do anything if she was just spared.
Claudia knelt down to open the cabinet and saw nothing. The child flinched when the door was slammed in frustration and the human got up and stalked away. Claudia knew that the leader of the rogues had a child, and if it wasn't here it must have been one of the kids being rounded up outside. Alone in the dark, the footsteps retreated until they were gone, but the little girl still didn't move. She didn't sob. She didn't make a sound.
"This…doesn't look like an earth dragon egg." Rayla observed in wonder.
"So, what's it doing down here, then?" Callum asked. She shrugged.
"I doesn't look like any dragon egg I've ever seen." She said. "Maybe Rex Igneous would know." Callum went pale.
Once again, Callum and Rayla found their way back to the strangely pristine room. The unstable ground wasn't the easiest to navigate, but should one of them trip and drop the egg, at least it was a soft surface. Callum held the strange egg in his hands as Rayla called; "Rex Igneous."
A low growl sounded and the massive head emerged from the darkness once more. "I thought I sent you away, pests." His voice was full of anger and impatience.
"We're sorry for the intrusions, but we need to get back to the surface." Callum said, raising the egg above his head so that the dragon would be sure to see it. "This egg can't stay down here."
The old archdragon's irritation fell from his face, his eyes stretching with wonder. "A star dragon egg?" Callum and Rayla exchanged amazed looks. "I can't even remember the last star dragon I've met, but how would one of their eggs get down here?"
"We don't know, mighty one." Rayla said. "But we have to get back up to the surface. The war is over but there is unrest among Xadians. If not for that, than for this egg. It must have been down here for centuries."
Rex Igneous breathed in and nearly blew Callum and Rayla down with the sharp exhale. "Very well, you may leave, under one condition."
"What's that?" Callum asked. Discontent reappeared on the archdragon's face.
"I am never, ever to see your faces again." Rex Igneous emerged fully from his cave, revealing his massive self, far bigger than any dragon any other living soul had seen.
He rose onto his hind legs, practically filling up the cavern, and punctured the ceiling with the pickaxe-like horns on either side of his face, allowing sunlight through. He than lowered himself for Callum and Rayla to board his massive snout, raised them back up and allowing them to crawl out of the holes, back onto the surface world. He willed the displaced dirt to collapse and compact – as was a perk of such powerful primal magic – sealing the holes and once again leaving the old thing to his solitude.
Callum and Rayla were covered in dirt, though they didn't have time to poke fun at this when they saw that they had emerged in the middle of utter devastation. It was the strange settlement that Callum had glimpsed a month before when scouting the mountains from above. Now it was littered with the dead, open doors leading to homes that had clearly been ransacked. The perpetrators had fled, it seemed; they were alone.
Callum and Rayla were silent as they entered the largest house, probably the leader's home. Upon entering the home, they were immediately greeted by the surprising but heavenly scent of food cooking. Unfortunately, they had things to do before they could fill their empty stomachs. They wandered around, looking for Rayla's swords, unaware that they had changed hands and were no longer in the village. Callum was searching a large bedroom that was, disturbingly, lined with many weapons.
"Callum!" Callum jumped at Rayla's sudden shout and came running from the kitchen. He was about to ask if she had found her swords but stopped short. In her arms was a small child, unconscious but still breating, and with a tearstained face.
Author's Notes: Rex Igneous is a cranky boy, isn't he? "Lux Perpetua" means "Lasting Light". And who was expecting a new egg? Also, I didn't pull that 'Claudia didn't see her' thing out of my butt, I do have an explanation for it. On a more serious note, I've noticed reviews are starting to really slow down. Ordinarily, this wouldn't bug me, but with the virus apparently getting worse, I'm starting to get worried about you guys. Is everyone okay? Review.