Chapter Five.

Questions and Answers

I woke in darkness, sulfur lingering on my tongue and stinging bothering my eyes. I blinked it away: my surroundings as dark when I closed my eyes as when I opened them. Illumination… this place needed light. I ignited the scales on my cheek and winced when dim rays strengthened to glowing beams cutting through the dark, hitting the walls of the room and refracting from blue stones set on the wall.

Opals framed stone etchwork in the masonry, depicting an armored Deepwing vanquishing a common cuttlefish with his fists, if that squid bulked up to the size of a Mudwing and its tentacles grew thicker than the width of his arm. One tentacle extended past the frame of the painting itself, melding with the stone of the room, itself etched with crosscutting lines.

Dirty gray, the rock reminded me of the basalt brought back from the Nightwings' island in oh eleven (some Seawings visited the place and Tsunami graciously finagled me a sample).

And then I remembered why I was here. The fall, that dragon, the new species, and being literally out of my depth as they paraded me in front of all those strange dignitaries on my way to a personage of some power.

I should have fought. I should have blinked away the paralysis, knocked the clearly injured Shady out of the way, and clawed my way back to the surface one foothold at a time, if it took me a year.

But I hadn't. Judging from how long I'd spent running around on the red carpet and in Pinnacle's office, I'd been in this lovely underwater volcano for at least six hours, and I could tack on however much longer I'd had repined on the ocean floor, dead as a doornail. By the time I'd woken up, Fin had probably missed me, started looking for me.

Fin would do anything, try anything to get me back… unless he thought it wasn't worth the risk to go after Webs's son. Tsunami didn't miss me, after all; there would be no consequences for losing track of the most disliked man in the kingdom.

He had even said he wanted to be out of here as quick as he could. My heart sank with dread -

And jumped back into my mouth when someone knocked on the door. I opened it quickly, not wanting to keep my captors waiting, although with my talon kept in front of my chest in case my caller greeted me with a spear to the throat.

It was only Shady – that guilty, conniving Shady, who I would continue to call by that name even after I learned his real one.

"G'morning," I flashed sloppily, "a nice morning it is, if it is morning. But you never know."

Did these dragons ever see the sun?

Shady rolled his eyes and tossed me a writing slate, subtly flipping the bird at me as he did, though he affected innocence when I knit my brows at him, and turned away down the halls, blazing away in blistering Deep Aquatic that he knew I couldn't understand, the scoundrel. Come to think of it… he reacted to my speech more than anybody else around here.

I stumbled over my feet catching up to him, cursing his bony grin – Shady looked and acted mischievous when not beholden to his superiors, which made him more unlikeable, if possible. Even with the entertainment and more than occasional frustration provided by this malcontent, however, I knew I was still in a bad spot – I didn't know where I was!

I'd lost track of my position somewhere in the corridors, so even though I knew there was a way back to the Ridge – and the warm, forgiving Bay of Diamonds – I had lost it, possibly forever. As much as this place interested me scientifically – and would've fascinated Cerulean – I needed to go back. These harsh waters just weren't for me.

I bet, I thought, I bet Shady knows more than he's letting on.

The flurry of nonsensical Aquatic we'd exchanged when we met would've convinced me otherwise, except then he'd had time to prepare for the encounter. I would have to take him by surprise – and judging from the increasingly fine furnishings passing by, I'd have to do it before we arrived at Pinnacle's.

If it didn't work, well, no harm done. If it did work – well, I didn't care about his feelings anyway.

So I waited until he was looking over his shoulder, and said "I'm in love with your sister."

Poor fellow ran into a wall, his eyes bulging. I laughed, and laughed and laughed, which isn't just shimmering lights, it's twisting right down to the gills, which closed to protect themselves, and I kept laughing even when he stood over my shaking frame, pissed.

"I know you know more than you think you're telling me," I said, cursing the horribly confusing sentence, "so drop the act."

He grumbled in Aquatic – something I still couldn't understand, blame the different frame and language drift – but nodded. 'Dropping the act' might mean screwing me over the next time I met anybody influential, but it was almost worth it to see the look on his face right before he slammed into that corner.

Maybe Deepwings could speak Aquatic… they just hadn't bothered to. The thought stayed with me like scale-ruff, growing on me even if I didn't want it – and somehow, I did. Shady had been doing a lot more spying on my kind than I thought: who was to say that the others hadn't done the same?

I got up, still smiling (though it was more of a facade by now), and kept following.

Wrapped up in my own ball of yarn as I was, I still noticed the presence of beefed-up security around Pinnacle's office? Throne room? Weekend holiday retreat? - compared to yesterday, which made me think. Pinnacle didn't have anything to worry about from me, he had his heavily-armed guards from before, and he had his allies inside the room to speak of as well – not to mention any hidden sentries that I might not have noticed.

Something had his fins up, like an angelfish who'd noticed a potential opponent. If it worked towards getting me out of here, good, but I just didn't know.

And I hated the feeling.

Without further ado, however, Shady let us in with cheeky smiles at the standing guards, who kept an eye on him almost as much as they kept two eyes on me. We opened the door and came through, and I noticed that Pinnacle had extra guests today – a decked, perhaps overdressed dragon wearing jewelry on arms, legs and feet, talking with Pinnacle in dim tones, while the other looked militaristic, wearing black plate as a gauntlet, but with no weapon otherwise.

Pinnacle looked up, saw Shady, and then looked back to his first guest, who I mentally labeled Bling. A rich benefactor? Pinnacle's actual boss? I couldn't tell, but he waved his talons around and started giving me a headache with the Aquatic-but-not-Aquatic. I didn't know if they were important, but time spent around the Dragonets of Destiny told me there were few such things as coincidences, and I put them away in my mind as an aside, noting their mannerisms in case they became useful.

At last, though, Pinnacle deigned to notice us. He had his translator with him, I noticed: he motioned that he should step forward – and I spoke.

"Cut the crap," I said – if I said that to Coral, I could bet on cooling my heels in a concrete cell the next morning. "I know you can understand me, you've just been watching me to see if I'll give anything away, and spying on the rest of my tribe, too. You're not getting much use out of me here – better if you send me back now to get on a good start with the kingdom, instead of it coming out that you abducted the friend of a Seawing prince."

Shock is worth nothing if you don't get anything out of it, so I decided to go for broke and play for keeps. If getting out of here meant telling a few lies, then I could do that at least, if not for the kingdom, than for myself. I didn't owe many Seawings, but if I could escape to tell Tsunami, and maybe Cerulean and Fin, then it would be worth it.

Pinnacle grit his teeth. If the Deepwings could mimic regular Aquatic, now would be the time to do so. Instead, he began dictating, his aide writing down his words in legible (if antiquated) script, all while his visitors stared at me with some shock, and in the case of the armored Deepwing (flag officer if I ever saw one), more than a bit of anger.

I stood with my back a little straighter, saying with posture 'get mad all you want'. At the same time, though, I knew these dragons might have the power to ruin me, since one of them might even be Pinnacle's boss.

The translator tossed me his slate.

You have insulted me in my own office, he wrote – uh-oh, and it is impolite for the guest to degrade the host, especially when you are out of your depth.

Shady rolled his eyes discreetly – for the first time since I'd met him, I wanted to do the same. But I kept looking at Pinnacle, as if I hadn't noticed.

"Forgive me," I said, "but no one was ever happy to be deceived, maliciously or otherwise. I'm the only Seawing you have down here, why else would I be paraded in front of important people, if dragons like me were a dime a dozen? You need to look good, and part of that is having me around – but if you keep me out of the loop, and refuse to let me go home, I'm not going to cooperate."

I passed back the slate and received it a few seconds later. That translator wrote fast.

Your legendary distempter is why we fought a war with you, wrote Pinnacle – wait, what? - and time has only made it worse. The Triarchy will not negotiate with a dragon obviously planning to double-cross us – we are not amused!

There had been a war? When, how? No one mentioned this to me during my tenure as a guard at the Palace, nobody. And if the waters around me could've gotten any deeper, they just had, and someone had dumped a bunch of starved sharks in here without bothering to add any feed.

"Well, if you're going to waste time by making me uncooperative, you'll have to abduct another Seawing, and see if he's any more happy with you than I am," I said. "He won't be."

You assume we need an in with your kingdom, dictated Pinnacle – we don't. If we make contact, it will be on our terms with our personnel; your presence is unnecessary.

He turned and faced the room guards behind me, speaking something clear to me despite the partial language barrier – "Guards, take him away."

I know the two dragons behind me would've grabbed me if they thought it necessary, but they didn't have to; I turned and walked out on my own terms – Shady turned to follow, except Pinnacle hissed and suddenly my captor decided it would be better to stay put. Clearly he had some 'splaining to do.

As for myself, I'd carefully finagled myself into a more tenuous position than I had when I woke up, somehow. I had a feeling I'd made Pinnacle mad, and I probably wouldn't get to be in his audience again, which was a problem since so far everyone had answered to him around here. Additionally, I'd angered or intrigued the only two dragons in the room who could've been his boss, and I wasn't sure which possibility was worse. If they were in charge, and they decided they didn't like me, then there wasn't much I could do that would keep me from cooling my heels not in a jail cell, but in the morgue.

"The Triarchy will not negotiate with a dragon obviously planning to double-cross us," he'd said, and then, "we are not amused!", perhaps as in the royal we Coral often used when someone (usually my boss) was getting on her nerves.

Who were the Triarchy? The name implied the number three… a three-year reign? Three princes?

Again, I hated not knowing anything. Fifteen minutes after they escorted me out the door, the guards let me wander around the sitting room, their eyes not glued to me because I was a threat, but because I was marginally more interesting to them than the well-furnished corridor. Eventually, they got bored of even that.

Shady slipped out of the room, leaving the black doors open behind him: his smile still plastered on his face, but his brows furrowed and drawn. Whatever dressing-down he had received, it had popped the flotation bubble on his buoyant spirits.

"Good to see you too," I said. "I'm always pleased to see someone having more fun than I am."

He grumble-grumbled on his way out. Should I follow him?

I needed options to get out: Pinnacle had slammed the door on me, but the fact remained that his guard – operative, maybe – still knew the way out. If I played my cards right, I could land a favor from him.

Maybe it should've bothered me more that I was planning to manipulate another dragon after he was down, but I didn't care about those finer points right now, moreso the facts like 'I'm stuck down here, possibly forever': about the same thing as if someone told me I was limited to one tunnel at Jade and couldn't leave it.

So I followed him.

"You unbelievable idiot," flashed Shady, not caring that the passing guards might eavesdrop on the conversation. "Your little speech pissed everyone off."

"Good," I said, "the sooner they toss me out of here, the better."

Shady turned so his body fully faced me, and we floated there in the corridor. The Deepwings did not deserve the suffix 'wing' at all – their wings were malformed, lanky protrusions, more like a bony fin than an organ of aerial locomotion. I doubted any of them could fly.

"You've convinced everyone that Seawings haven't changed in a thousand years. Stuck-up, arrogant surface-skimming pricks. Nice diplomacy," he said.

"Well excuse me for not wanting to take any more of your prestigious leader's glorious and blessed liquid crap. Maybe the reason you've been stuck down here for a millenium is because you think you know everything."

"We do!" he said, lights flashing brighter than ever. "You Seawings occupy a tiny fraction of the ocean floor – Deepwings occupy the rest. There's kingdoms from here clear across to the next continent."

Wait, there was another continent?

"Our tribe gets along just fine without you, always has," he went on. "I don't think we should have gone poking around your outposts at all, but that's not my call to make."

"Who makes the calls?"

"The Triarchy," he said, "and they don't like you, for reasons that should be self-evident."

"They're not," I said. "No one in the tribe has ever heard of Deepwings, or a Triarchy, or this war that Pinnacle mentioned. No one."

"You undisciplined cads!" cried Shady, "did your tribe already forget?"

"Well pardon me for not knowing the specifics of something that happened twenty generations ago," I said. "And I don't see a good reason for why a war that happened before our great-grandfathers were born is something your Triarchy needs to be upset about."

Shady fell silent for a while.

"Good point," he said. "It's not about what happened back then, not really. The Triarchy just wants to reclaim their beach-front property."

"They could buy it if they want it."

"Try pointing that out to Pinnacle. He counts every coin."

"And he's ready to fight a war over it?" I asked.

"It all depends on whether forcibly evicting the previous tenants would be cheaper."

So now I not only had to prevent a war, I had to stop it from being waged over the dumbest possible pretext. And my prior conduct was not helping with that.

"I need to get back to my kingdom and clear all this up," I said. "Our tribe just finished fighting a war – it would be tragic to start another one over a simple misunderstanding."

"They might not let you go," said Shady. "Remember that armored officer?"

I nodded.

"General Cuttlefish. Commander in chief of the armed forces, has connections to all the highest offices in the land. He reports directly to Reefer."

"Reefer?"

"One of the Triarchy," he said. "I'm not saying Cuttlefish is a bad guy, but every general wants to flex his military muscles."

"Believe me, I know."

"And you getting to the Kingdom before he does would ruin the surprise."

I had run into plenty of flag officers during the beginning of the war, and those dragons rarely missed a chance to show off. Things changed as the casualties piled up, but a fresh, unproven flag officer was always going to be reckless.

Oh, I saw where this was going.

"You have to help me," I said.

"No can do," he said. "Figure it out."

I thought back to the first time I had met Tsunami, just a few days before her mother chucked her into prison. I guess if I wanted to apply for the saving the world fund, spending a few days in confinement was par for the course.

'Hey, I know you, we've both spent time in prison' is an amazing pickup line that can't be beat.

"I mean…" began Shady.

"What?"

The guy looked up and down the corridor, making sure no one was looking.

"It wouldn't be my problem if a certain someone were to climb down a certain central ventilation shaft in the center of the fourth floor. It would also not be my problem if he were to go down to the central heating chamber and use the cold water intake to leave the mountain."

"I see. It would be a lot easier for him, seeing as the front door is probably guarded."

"He would have to be cautious," said Shady. "No one else goes that way because first they would have to climb down a shaft that's cramped for us, never mind a hypothetical Seawing. The water in the heat chamber is absolutely scalding. Then, when any brave adventurers reached the cold water vent, they would have to fight a strong current for over a mile."

Ouch. Swimming against the current I could do. Swimming down a cramped shaft against a current of water that had been superheated by oceanic lava – that might pose a bit of a problem.

"You said you wouldn't help me, then you help me," I said. "Why?"

"Invasions are a lot of scrollwork."

Ha.

"I never got your name," I said.

"Coryphus."

A pause.

"Can I just call you Shady?"

"Works for me," he said. "Now skedaddle, before my boss starts wondering what's taking me so long."

"Just say you've been hanging around a girl you like," I said. "I'm sure he'll understand."

"Oh please no," said Coryphus. "Females are horrifying."

"Shy?"

"No," said Coryphus. He felt at his throat. "Whatever you're thinking, the real deal is a whole lot worse."

Weird.

"Thanks for the advice," I said. "I'll go as soon as I can."

"You better eat, it's a long trip," said Coryphus. "May we meet again, in better circumstances."

"See ya," I said. And so we parted ways.

Surprisingly, no one stopped me when I got food from the kitchens, nor when I descended the shaft to the fourth floor. The mountain didn't have floors so much as it had a huge complex of runs and tunnels assigned names based on their height; the fourth floor was slightly above the base of the mountain, while the place I had been staying was a long ways above that – around four hundred yards, if my surveyor's instincts were correct. As usual, the place was dark as pitch, and there were hardly any guards or servants to be seen. They must all be guarding the main entrances.

"Center of the fourth floor, huh," I murmured to myself.

The lower levels were a rat's nest of corridors, low tunnels and massive, wide open chambers. The water had grown steadily warmer as I descended – I was used to the cold water above, so the heat felt stifling even though the water was no warmer than that in the beach waters off the Mudwing coast. I followed the warm draft until I reached a large chamber, its walls elaborately engraved with stonework.

I spotted rock crystals growing in dingy corners on the floor – they must have a full-time cleanup crew scraping off the scum from the hard mineral water.

"Ah, here we are."

Suddenly I saw why no one had bothered to guard this place. The hot water supply for the palace came up a series of narrow, square shafts, each one looking like it would be a squeeze for Coryphus, let alone myself. I peered down one of them, using the glow-scales on my head to shine a light.

The bottom was black as pitch. Still, there had to be a path to the outside down this chasm, the warm updraft proved that. I just had to get out without dying in the process.

"Never the easy way, always the hard way," I muttered. I took a step forward and clambered into the abyss.

So, remember when I said I would be back soon? Well. I lied. It's been more than a year since I hit a wall on chapter 5 and I've barely worked on it since. As has probably been said before by one or two of my friends when they thought I wasn't looking, there are lies, damned lies, and Avars.

But since you're reading this, you know I managed to pull through.

Pt35 – here is your cookie. (::) I know it's nearly a year old, but it's from Kwik Trip, and it has so much food coloring it literally can't go stale.

Manic: Clearly someone has read my profile and got cheeky, exuberant ideas. I forgot I had that one up. Here's your cookie back, (::) - did you want fries with that?

You know the rules. First reviewer gets a free cookie, any reviewers afterwards must volunteer their own baked goods.

6/12/22