Chapter 15
The sudden but inevitable betrayal
"Whath in 'he box?" Snarly asked.
"A few things we'll need," Malachite told him, opening it. "This is for you, Orchid. He seemed to know you were with me, one of the challenges of getting the hoard open will need a specific spell. He wanted to make sure you had it on hand." He handed me a scroll, and I unrolled it.
Looks like a Venus spell of some kind. "Okay. I can handle this."
"As for us getting there, we have this." He pulled out a small shell, which looked like it had once been the home to a snail. "I just say the command word and we'll be taken to the place. As obviously he doesn't want us knowing the exact location."
"Obviously." It's probably protected against teleportation in some way, as once I've seen the inside… Well, once someone with teleport magic has seen the inside, they could just go there. But it at least obscures the path, doesn't it? And I could always get teleport magic, were I a thief, given the cost of the spell would be a fraction of what I could pull out of the hoard. But we're not going straight there, I guess we still have to get in the hard way, meaning we can't go there directly. Just how many protections are there going to be on this place?
"Are we leaving at once?" Hanz asked.
"Might as well not delay," he agreed. "Alveindros isn't looking so good. We better get this done. Everyone join hands."
We did, leaving Malachite one hand free to hold the shell. "Lair," he intoned, because you have to be dramatic at moments like this. The world around us twisted and we found ourselves elsewhere in the mountains. We were looking around as Malachite tossed the shell but we all turned as a huge booming sound came to us from higher up the path we were on.
"Uh, whath 'hat noith?" Snarly asked. "Are we about to be cruthed by a landthide?"
"The sound is more reminiscent of a battering ram," Hanz told us.
"Wait, you don't think..." Malachite trailed off. He set the box down, carefully so there must still be something inside. "Oh that's just what we need." He took a few running steps and launched himself into the air.
"Think what?" Snarly yelled after him.
"That the entrance to the hoard is under attack, a rival dragon knew where it was the whole time and is trying to get to whatever this cure is before we do," I explained. "Thus insuring the death of the local dragon, thus opening up the other vaults so that dragon can have all the treasure and the town for themselves. Come on."
"Right."
We raced, at least the others did, I kept up as best I could, up the path towards the noise. It kept ringing out at intervals, and Malachite was circling and pointing. It was a faint hope he hadn't been seen, but I cast my invisibility spell on us as we got closer, at least hoping to take them by surprise. As we reached the door I could see five figures in blue robes directing a huge, flaming, dragon looking battering ram which, when slammed against the stone door in front of them made the sound we had been hearing all along. One of them was looking around and seemed to be urging the others to hurry.
"Isn't that Gerval, one of our guides?" Snarly's voice came from my right.
"Wait, he's had a name this whole time?" I asked.
"Who doesn't 'ave a name?"
"I guess he got spooked and didn't see a chance to take Malachite out on our trip down here. There's a lot of magic on those guys, they're prepared for a fight," I told the others, who I hoped were still nearby. I see now why he hurried away so fast, but the others did too. Are they hanging around somewhere, or where they just in a hurry to get back to their lives now that the job of bringing us here was done?
"I hesitate to mention it," Hanz asked, "I predict you will react negatively, but it must be asked. Can you target the battering ram with your fire spell?"
"No, it's a spell, not actually something burning."
"So we must do this the hard way."
"Do what this? You don't know if those people up there are doing this of their own free will. They could be under a spell. You can't just kill them!"
"However, we also cannot let them gain entrance to the vault. They must be stopped and I have few non-lethal means at my disposal."
"I suppose that's true enough. Fine. I'll make the first move against Gerbil or whatever his name is. Hopefully he's the spellcaster and that will make the others more vulnerable. But try not to kill them, okay? I'm looking at you, Snarly. Think of your soul."
"I'll try."
"Okay, here we go." I got close enough to see my target and gathered mana. Pushing it into the spell I gestured and he went flying, bouncing off the stone wall they were trying to break through. The others whirled, the battering ram going slack but not hitting the ground as Hanz lasered one. He ignored it and started casting, so I quickly cast my knockout spell which took him in the chest. He flew backwards and went still.
Malachite took all this as the signal to attack and screamed out of the sky with his sword out, cleaving into the traitor driag and slicing him in two.
No, no, no! Malachite what are you doing?
Snarly appeared behind another one, stabbing him in the back and causing him to cry out before he dropped. Another started casting a spell at him, I hastily suppressed it with my own magic. By that time Hanz had gotten his bow and arrow out and another one went down. Malachite whirled on the final man standing, slicing into him with a fury.
"NO!" I cried, again casting my knockout spell as I ran towards them. The magical beam hit him in the chest and he went down. I noticed that the battering ram spell was gone as I started healing the guy, closing up his wound.
"What are you doing?" Malachite asked me.
"They could be controlled by magic. Or blackmailed into doing this, you don't know. You can't just go around killing people. Even if they are trying to break into a vault owned by a rival dragon."
"You're right," he put his sword point down, "I just saw that traitorous driag and something snapped. Hey did you see me slice him in two? That was pretty cool huh?"
"Pretty messy," Hanz countered, appearing next to us. "We should secure these men before proceeding."
We cleaned up the remains of the driag as best we could, I sculpted a grave site for him in the stone and shoved him in with magic, then closed it up.
"Don't know why we would bury a traitor," Malachite grumbled.
"It's not our place to judge his soul," I reminded him. "I do this for our souls. Showing respect to the dead helps keep us from falling into darkness."
"You do seem to consider the state of your soul more than others," Hanz observed. "At least more than these others..." He indicated Malachite and Snarly.
"I'll be alive long after either Snarly or Malachite are gone," I told them. "You might outlive me, if you can keep getting parts or whatever, but most won't. That means I have that much more time to do good or ill in this world. The path through darkness may be long for some, but it would be much, much longer for me. I have to be careful."
"I see."
Meanwhile Snarly was tying the humans up, I had directed him to bind their hands tightly as well as their mouths.
"It will keep them from doing physical magic, at least. Now if they know Pluto spells they might be able to just phase through the ropes and escape, but we don't have time for anything else. We have to secure this place and bring back the… How are we getting back?"
"Oh right!" Malachite went and grabbed the box from where he dropped it, getting out the spell scroll and another shell. "This one is for the return trip."
"Fair enough. Let's get this over with."
We were now faced with a large stone door, unremarkable save for an engraved shape about halfway up.
"Looks like the paw of a dragon," Hanz announced, looking up at it from a few paces back.
"Do dragons 'ave paws?" Snarly asked.
"They don't have hands. Or flippers. Or tentacles. Or hooves. Or-"
"I get the point!"
"Wait, I have hands!" Malachite insisted, holding up his hands. "So why doesn't a dragon?"
"Perhaps this discussion can wait? Let us focus on this lock for now."
"Fine. I see blood up there, dried blood on the paw print." He looked at Hanz sideways as he said "paw." "You think only someone of his bloodline can enter because it requires some kind of blood test?"
"Then why not just bleed a little into a jar, send a trusted, local, agent here, have them smear the blood on their hand, and open it that way?" I asked.
"Perhaps the door itself somehow extracts the blood? It must be fresh?" Hanz put forward.
"I'll try that!" Malachite flapped up there and slapped his hand on the door. Nothing happened. "Nope, didn't work." He landed with a thump. "Maybe the spell?"
"Let me take a look." I unrolled the spell and looked it over. "No, says here it's for shrinking. Unless there's some mouse hole we actually have to go through and the paw print is a misdirection?" We looked the door over and the area to both sides but found nothing.
"So it has to be blood on the door?" Malachite asked. "But like you said that's sort of easy to defeat. I mean work around, if he wanted to send someone else here."
I could only shrug. He took one of Snarly's daggers and cut himself, again flying up and smacking the indentation. This seemed to do the trick, the doors could now be pushed open. They did that after I healed his hand up. But we didn't make it far into the hallway when we were stopped by another wall, this one that did seem to have a small hole at the base.
"Ah, shrink spell!" Malachite announced. "Go to it."
How good a spell caster is this dragon that they can shrink from dragon size to mouse size? I would have said the smallest a dragon could get was the size of a… raccoon? Hard to say how small this hole is in this light though. I guess they could be big enough to- What? "What are you..." Snarly, with no sort of warning whatsoever had thrown himself at the hole and was trying to wiggle through it. The other two shared a look and a shrug, they had no idea what he was doing either. It almost seemed like he would he stuck, but with one final wiggle his tail vanished and he was gone. We all bent over trying to look through.
"Are you dead?" Malachite called.
"I'm fine!" Snarly called back. "There doesn't seem to be any trapth or anything."
"That's good?"
"Wait, I wath wrong. There's all kinds of trapth! Yay!"
"Well don't move until we get through, honestly, what were you thinking?"
"Jes trying to help!"
"What is wrong with you?"
"Agreed, more help if he stayed out of trouble," Hanz grumbled. "Well?" they asked, looking at me.
"Yeah, going to skip the tedious process of trying to work this spell out," I announced. "Especially as we're on the clock as Snarly could be killed at any moment by traps." Not that it wouldn't be his own fault at this point but still. "I think I'll just try sculpting-"
"I disarmed the first trap!" Snarly called back to us.
"What did I just say?" Malachite yelled through. "Stop messing around, Snarly. You want to get killed?"
"I'll be fine! Ith no trouble."
"You don't know that!"
"Sure I do. Ith easy to disarm trapth. See, this one ith thimple too. I juth-"
There was a yip, a flash, an inrush of air, and silence.
"Snarly?" Malachite called. "Uh, you still okay there buddy?"
"..."
"Hello?"
"..."
"Well, he's dead. What were you saying Orchid?"
"Do you think he was disintegrated?" Hanz asked. "I would hate to think the little guy suffered overmuch."
"I've no idea. We'll have to get in there and see. But these are probably imbued items, magical traps don't really exist otherwise. It'll be gone by now that it's been triggered, unless someone really spent a lot of time and money making it permanent, so I have no idea what-"
"Shh. Do you hear something?" Malachite asked, cocking his head.
We all listened.
"Someone screaming?" Hanz decided. "It sounds like it's getting closer."
"You don't suppose..." Malachite mused, then his eyes got wide and he dashed outside.
"Suppose what?" I asked, a little annoyed. But he took off into the sky. A moment later he landed again, Snarly in his arms.
"Huh?" Hanz and I asked.
"I got put up intha sky!" Snarly announced. "Glad you heard me shouting."
"Yeah, have you learned your lesson?"
"Absolutely!" he promised. "Thankth for saving me."
"No problem. If we could get on with this?"
"I'll get back to work!" he announced, and sprinted back into the cave.
"What? No. Come back here you little freak!" Malachite raced after him but Snarly was already wiggling through the hole again.
"Something wrong with that boy," Hanz announced. "One too many blows to the head, no doubt." He tapped his head. "Perhaps I should perform a medical scan- if I can get him to sit still long enough."
"Come on, before he hurts himself." I headed into the cave again followed by the others and cast my stone sculpting spell on the wall itself. Then I simply enlarged the hole, shoving the rock to either side. When it was big enough I bowed them through.
Hanz went first, followed by Malachite, and I was about to head in when an ear splitting noise erupted inside the chamber.
Is he trying to get himself, or us, killed? Is he doing this on purpose for some reason? That can be the only explanation for this. He was near a tile on the floor, backing away with his ears covered, so I figured that was the source of the noise. I had to cast my suppression spell wordlessly, I couldn't hear myself over the noise, but got it off and there was silence again. Snarly jumped on the tile until it broke.
"Maybe leave someone else to take the lead?" Hanz suggested.
"What?" Snarly shouted. "Can't hear you yet!" He turned and took another step forward. Then jumped back as flames erupted into a wall of fire. I could see he was badly burned and he scrambled backwards away from the fire. He finally bumped into me and looked up at me with pleading eyes. "Ow!"
"You brought this on yourself," I told him. "I don't know what's up with you today but you need to snap out of it. This is the second time you've almost been killed in the last two minutes. Instead of us all looking the place over from a distance and coming up with a plan you just rushed in. That forced Malachite and now me to go out of our way to save you. Has it sunk in yet?"
"Yes!" he squeaked. "Please, it hurts!"
"Yes, I can imagine. You took a bunch of flames to the face." I raised my hands to start casting.
It took several castings to heal his body, face, and tail of all things, but finally he was back on his feet and I suppressed the fire as well, making it wink out. Hanz broke the tile this time, and we were now to the other side of the hallway. This appeared to be a door with another paw print on it, this time with a heart in the middle of it. Malachite got a horrified look on his face, stared at me with wide eyes, and was about to say something.
"This may mean the soul," Hanz decided, looking up at it.
"I don't know if I'm inside your heart but would you what did you say?" His head swiveled to look at Hanz.
"Yes, looking at it more closely this symbol often refers to the soul, or the essence of a person. That's why there's no blood on this one, the condition for opening it is more ethereal. Fascinating."
"So I just have to touch it?"
"Indeed. That may be why the dragon did not simply send a lackey out with some blood to retrieve the item when he knew he was ill. Why it can only be you. He knew that even if the agent with the blood got through all those traps, they would be stopped by this door in the end anyway."
"Okay, setting aside what you were saying," I told Malachite, "that's still wrong. You don't have a piece of that dragon's soul, you have your own. How is it, the magical lock I'm talking about now, going to go up the line and determine you're related?"
"You think hard about that, I'm just going to touch it."
"And hope it isn't another trap that just stops your heart," I muttered.
"What was that?" But he didn't wait, slapping the print on the door. There was the familiar click and the door could now be pushed open. We stood gaping at the treasure inside. I could only shake my head at the waste. Lots of gold coins in a mound on the floor, fine jewelry, candlesticks, artwork, all sort of just sitting around. In a vault. Not doing anything, not benefiting society or being used to fund research into magic or lost technology. Just collecting dust. Imagine having so much wealth you can just throw a bunch of it in a vault and ignore it. Lock it away so not only can you not look at it when you want, no one else can make use of it either. No wonder we have to keep mining gold and mines are running out all over the place it's just being hoarded like this. "Well, here we are," I said at last. "You know what you're looking for, presumably. Let's get it and get out of here. Snarly? Don't. Touch. Anything. Not a single coin, you hear me?"
"Why jes me?"
