The Clutch of Sharys: Chapter Six
Chapter 6: Be It Rubble or Riches
Sharys soon became obsessed with seeing them flourish, turning its attention away from its divine duties and instead turning a loving eye to its newest progeny.
Cara was only a few feet away from the gap, the darkness only extending a small distance down to what looked like a slope full of bones, when she heard the shuddering cry of a dragon's breath. Diving instinctively to the side, Cara tried to pull her arms and legs into a roll but was too slow to escape harm. The heat rippled around her leg, tearing through the treated leathers and scorching the skin beneath. Cara screamed in pain; her mouth closed as searing, heated pain began consuming her left side and leg. Breathing hard, she scrabbled desperately to find enough purchase on the ground to get to the opening below her.
When Cara’s hands had finally just found the edge of the gap, a great, noisy sucking sound began, and she whimpered as she forced her wounded leg to help push against the ground to launch her body over the edge. Her legs fell in, and Cara barely had enough time to duck her head down as a plume of stinging white dropped over the battlefield, raining down in a biting mist.
Cara tried to limp down the slope to the cave, but she wasn't fast enough to get there in time. A few steps down the treacherous slope, bones skittering beneath the soles of her boots, foggy air hit her, stinging the skin of her face to a bright angry red. Steam ate through the leather of her jacket like it was wet paper, and she had to swallow another scream as her legs gave out from underneath her.
She fell backward, skidding on bones as she slid into the cave, tumbling and falling into darkness through countless twists and turns, her shoulders and head smacking into several unfortunate outcroppings that scraped her face and bloodied her nose. Her arms fared little better, with one taking a deep gouge from what felt like a sharp stalagmite that sliced into her flesh as she fell past it.
Eventually, the bones slid to a stop as the cave's floor evened out, and Cara slid to a halting, stationary position on her back, gazing up at the cloudy red sky in a haze of pain. Ideally, she would have been about to lay there for a moment and process everything that had just happened, but something rattled nearby, startling her into painfully bolting upright.
Overhead, a shadow soared past the rosy moon, the drafts from its wings scattering bones into the hole in the ground above her head that served as the cave's ceiling. Biting her lip to stifle a cry of pain, Cara brought her scorched leg around in front of her, gently lifting the top of her burned pants to help ease the movement. Bracing herself for the sight, she examined the charred skin, which was a deep, angry red and loose and wrinkly in some parts. The air seemed to bite at the inflamed flesh, causing the pain radiating up her body to worsen the more she focused on the gruesome nature of the wound. Swallowing hard, Cara forced herself to look away from the sight and try to find a distraction in the surrounding cave, preferably in the form of a way out.
Besides the initial hole, which looked like a collapsed road upon closer inspection, a few smaller holes punctuated the rest of the cave, highlighting piles of large bones and a small, steaming yellow pool to her right. Further back, if Cara leaned slightly and squinted, she could have a somewhat smaller cave and something piled up within. Trying to keep herself realistic, Cara told herself that the lumps were just rubble from the hole leaking pale moonlight into the room. Instead, she turned to look up at the tunnel she had toppled so gracefully out of just moments before.
Taking a double glance, Cara had to look most of the way up the walls to see the large, gaping opening she had entered through. It was too high for her to reach, even if she wasn't so badly injured, which meant she would have to find another way to continue forward. Cara turned back around as light glinted at her out of the smaller cave, catching her eye with its different sheen. Where the light of the moon shone red over the disc, it reflected off the rubble, pale, silver, and clean like she was back home. Stumbling forward a few steps, Cara was forced to stop and shrug off her ruined jacket. The steam dragon's breath had already eaten through the sleeves’ fabric, leaving the material in a ragged, fast-degrading state.
Ripping off a few pieces of the remaining garment, Cara wrapped her leg and burned torso with the material, making walking slightly more manageable, though the pain still gnawed and nagged at her, threatening to overwhelm. She slowly made her way around the walls of the caves, nearly introducing her face to the rocks and bones underneath, when her hands went to find the next bit of wall and instead fell through the air.
Confused, Cara regained her balance and reached for the rock again, only to have her hand pass through once more. Comprehension dawned at her as Cara looked around the cave once again with fresh eyes. She was standing in a light dragon's lair, which meant that this was the back door, hidden by an illusion. Which meant… Cara looked back at the smaller cave, and the pile of what she had forced herself to believe were just rocks. The light glinted at her again, beckoning hope to blossom in her chest, and Cara felt her legs move, dashing across the distance towards the strange glint.
She climbed up onto the small shelf that led to the higher elevation of the back cave, ignoring the searing pain from her leg as she swung it up. The skin on her arms wasn't faring much better, constantly buzzing with a burning sensation. Her pain was momentarily forgotten when Cara stood up and looked at the pile, sitting in a messy, more natural stack on the ground. Large and shimmering, Cara's eyes took in vibrant yellows and emeralds, violet and cerulean, with different colored specks popping out at her from each one, yet none holding her eyes. The eggs were beautiful, but Cara felt as if something was missing, beginning a rapid count of what was in front of her. There were only eight that she could see, a small amount for a dragon clutch; usually, there were anywhere from ten to fourteen eggs.
Cara crept forward, keeping an eye and ear out for any returning residents, and began carefully shifting the eggs around. There was no particular order or pattern in the way they were stacked, and sure enough, after she moved a couple out of the way, Cara could see that odd light glinting at her, somewhat subdued in the manner of a sparkle as opposed to a beam. Pushing three more eggs aside revealed a vibrant sea green egg with creamy silver swirls emanating from the bottom like mist rising off a lake. Scattered around towards the top, much like the freckles that sorted Cara's face, brown-red flecks glittering a myriad of rust orange colors back at her when the light hit them. Something about how the egg shone kept bringing her eyes back towards it, and eventually, urgency made up her mind before the pain could shroud it once again.
Reaching out, Cara wrapped her arms around the egg, holding the prize gently as she pried it out of the pile. She sat down hard, bringing the egg to her chest and cradling its warmth in her sore arms. Ever since her skin had first made contact with the smooth shell, she had felt a pulsing acceptance blooming in her chest, and now as she held the egg in her arms, she could almost feel the life awakening within.
Retreating quickly from the cave, Cara cursed as the extra weight of the egg caused her to need the use of her injured leg, sending additional sharp, shooting pains up her back with every step that she took. As Cara lowered herself back down onto the ledge, she struggled to keep her eyes open as a dark, heavy cloud seemed to coax them shut, pain and fatigue pressing the lids down.
Everything hurt so much, but she couldn't give up now. She had two lives to fight for.
Gritting her teeth together, Cara forced herself to move, step by step across the cave, shuffling her way towards the intangible pile of rocks. Even breathing felt like burning right now, her lungs reaching for great, gasping breaths as she soldiered onwards. Cara gritted her teeth, refusing to give up when she had her egg in her grasp, and all she needed to do to achieve her dreams was to find a way out.
Smacking the stiff, singed end of her braid over her shoulder, Cara took a step through the rocks that weren't there, finding only darkness on the other side. Another step forward saw a small light in the distance, undulating and buttery yellow-white like that of a portal. Moving forward, Cara's foot found air as she tumbled forwards, sliding on her side down a slippery, hot slope that was quickly rushing her towards a steaming pit filled with yellow liquid and open to the night sky.
Seeing her only chance to avoid being boiled alive quickly approaching, Cara tossed her weight painfully to the side, rolling on a diagonal and hitting the edge of the tunnel with her shoulder, slowing to a stop and tearing the skin open. Blood flowed over her shoulder, warm and wet as it dripped down her arms, while Cara took many deep breaths, whimpering as she forced herself back up, pulling on a protruding rock to help. Gritting her teeth, Cara gingerly made her way down the remainder of the slope, making the small hop to the edge of the pit once she reached the bottom.
Wrinkling her nose at the sulphuric stench of rotten eggs that rose from the liquid as it lazily bubbled, Cara took a quick look around the area, seeing several tunnels that led out, bored in large holes in the surrounding walls. Her heart dropping at the disappointment of not finding a portal, Cara redistributed her grip on the egg, which felt like it was getting heavier by the second.
Cara wiped a sweaty, grime and blood-covered hand on the side of her shirt, carefully cleaning off what she could of the mess. Her skin was still raw, and steam stung, so she couldn't exactly get everything, but it was enough that she could grab the egg securely once more. She spotted a conspicuously smaller hole off her right and tried her luck in getting out that way. After making her painful journey over to the opening, Cara was dismayed to find out that the tunnel was just an old drainpipe, collapsed part of the way in.
Carefully bending down, Cara crawled into the drainpipe and carefully dragged her legs up, taking a moment to breathe amidst all the chaos of the Trial. Her priority was to examine her egg, make sure that the fall and subsequent filth-covered handling hadn't disfigured her prize. Bundling up the bottom of her shirt in her hand, Cara quickly wiped off the ovoid shell, marveling at how beautifully the green-blue changed depending upon how the light hit it and the way the silver so finely blended into the greens of the cerulean.
It was a pity that shell colorations didn't always denote the actual appearance of the dragon within, but it wasn't uncommon to have them share some colors, and Cara was secretly hoping that it would be the turquoise that took up most of the shell. She tapped a fingernail on the egg, listening to the hollow sound that resulted. After a few rounds of mindless tapping, Cara was shocked when a small scratch responded. Attempting to get another response, she continued poking at the egg as time passed, but Cara was too lost in a haze of pain and exhausted distraction to be sure of how much.
No more sounds came forth, and Cara wondered deliriously what kind of alignment her dragon would be. She hoped that her new partner would be one of the pure elemental alignments, dragons closely related in spiritual and magical purity to the first children of Sharys. Water had always been Cara's favorite of the elements, and well-trained water teams could unleash devastating attacks in shardcombat. Even if her dragon turned out to be a rank eight or nine creature, she could still find work helping to stave off natural disasters and range over the massive farmlands of Netis, sowing rain in her wake.
Cara smiled sadly, the daydream fading away as the pain, refusing to be ignored, ripped up her body once again in a reminder of its constant state of agony. A distant thudding forced Cara out of her reverie, the subsequent scraping of a body against the ground causing her to scuttle further back into the pipe as one of the most enormous dragons she had ever seen slowly eased its way down into the pit. Its pale scales were reminiscent of a color that would have once been called blue but now wandered more towards murky white, and several long, rippling scars covered its head, the disrupted scaled puckering with old tissue that had repaired the wounds. A pair of massive, golden horns of a king card-ranked dragon glinted in the red moonlight as the creature in question leaned down to its lower arm into the pit, resting a wounded, oozing hand in the pool.
Cara stayed there in the pipe, totally still, with her egg in her lap and her hands over her nose and mouth, but for a different reason this time. She did not want the faded dragon whose arms were the size of large houses to hear her panicked breathing and decide that a quick breath down the sewage pipe would shut her up. The dragon stilled suddenly as if it had sensed her pounding pulse, and it's great pointed head rose, a large blue eye slowly roving over the pit.
Every muscle inside Cara's body was taut with fear as she fought to stay quiet and as small as possible. "Keti was right." she thought as the creature continued to look around the pit, short, shuddering snarls escaping from its chest. She couldn't see any spark of intelligence or emotion in this creature's scarred eyes like she had experienced in every dragon she had met in her life. There was usually a sense of something, a personality, and understanding when she interacted with them, but she saw none of that here. The way Keti had described the Faded dragons as feral felt very fitting for the dragon in front of her, whose deep blue head was viciously snapping back and forth as it failed to find the source of whatever it had heard.
Growling a rumbling warning, the dragon went back to whatever it was doing in the pool, settling the mangled chunk of flesh on its forearm into the yellow liquid of the pool. A sizzling, popping sound came from the pit, and the dragon let out a long snarl that slowly faded into a soft hiss. From the noises that she was hearing, Cara guessed that whatever was in the pit had soothed the wound.
Trying to recall the lessons her mother had drilled into her and Keti when the lady felt well enough, Cara remembered hearing something about dragons possessing a natural healing factor, a gift left over to them from being made in the perfect image of the godbeasts. She tried to concentrate and remember what else she knew, but her mind spun in a blur of pain as her burned leg screamed underneath her. Cara forced herself to think through the pain, trying to recall what else she learned in her time at the aerie. The ability to restore one's body quickly was one of the things that were shared when dragon and rider first bonded, besides the power to use the elements of the world. Cara could still hear her mother telling them that this was why it was so important that children listen and stay safe because they could get hurt much easier without a way to restore their health quickly.
Silently watching now, Cara wondered how long it normally took for a dragon of such power to heal an arm, but her question was to go unanswered, for a ringing shriek tore through the skies, its tone sliding up and down. Lifting its thick neck in a smooth motion, sapphire scales glittering in the moonlight, the dragon in front of Cara bellowed a response, causing her hands to fly off her mouth and over her ears to try to alleviate the level of noise. The call continued, and Cara shut her eyes tight as she held her egg close with her knees, waiting for the sound to stop. As the screaming roar ended, massive wings sent thick gusts of sulfuric air into the pipe as the creature left the pool and Cara behind.
Cara had already begun crawling forward; her precious egg clutched to her chest before the dragon had entirely left. Once she was sure it was gone, Cara slid out of the pipe, her legs hobbling forwards around the side of the steaming pit, heading for the nearest tunnel that she could reach. Ahead of her, a large hole bored into the rock that looked accessible enough, and Cara tripped into it, scrabbling at the walls to help catch herself. Her hand found a rock that stuck out, but when she grabbed onto it to steady herself, Cara had to force herself not to immediately let go in revulsion. Something wet and sticky covered the parts of her hand that touched the wall, and Cara pulled it back, wiping whatever it was on the side of her pants, continuing onwards.
Trudging down the tunnel seemed to be slightly easier without having remains slipping around underfoot, though Cara had also reached a point of pain where all that she knew was to keep her arms clenched tightly around her egg and to keep her legs moving forward. Further in, blue light filled the tunnel, and Cara noted what must have been the gunk she touched earlier, glowing softly the further in she went. It was pretty, in the way that looking at snow is pretty before one remembers how bitterly cold and wet it is once touched.
Coming to a fork in the tunnels, Cara used what she could see in the dim light to try to guess which way to go. Her mind felt slow and fuzzy as she looked between the two, but a slight sense of warmth from one caused her to pick the other, not wanting to risk dragons. Several dark turns and twists later, Cara found herself half crawling up a steep tunnel floor, her body now having a hard time continuing to move from the agony it was experiencing. She could see shadows flickering up ahead, almost as if lit by candlelight, and continued to make her way forward, doggedly forcing her eyes to stay open.
The sound of dripping water soon teased Cara as she wandered out onto a small ledge overlooking what must have once been a small pool, now reduced to a trickling spring on the ground, its waters barely creating a small puddle around it. Hovering above it were the flickering yellow lights of a portal, small but still there and more than big enough for Cara to make use of.
Partway down the ledge, Cara froze as she heard a loud crack emanate from her arms and looked down in confused alarm as the thought that she had broken the egg hazily crossed her mind. Quickly dropping the last few inches and ignoring the burning scream of pain that her body sent out, Cara fell to her knees, turning the egg over in her hands and examining it in the light that the portal gave off. There, near the top, was a crack, a handful of smaller lines emanating outwards from the original fracture. As her fingers went to touch the opening carefully, another appeared slightly further down the shell. Cara quickly tried to stand up, falling on her first attempt because her legs refused to work.
With the help of the rock wall behind her, Cara stumbled upright, rushing forward into the portal with the prize that would surely make all of this worth it and whose life she was not eager to start by dying inside a tunnel underground.