We finally made it to the opening in the cavern wall, where it molded into a large hallway of sorts, with sides that were one hundred or so feet apart, and a ceiling that had to have been similarly sized, though stalactites dotted the otherwise smooth rock in various places. The hallway sloped downward so slightly that I didn't notice until I kicked something, and heard it begin to roll down away from me.
It was dark in this hallway, so much so that I couldn't quite see what it was that I had kicked. Theron had fashioned a torch earlier that he swooped down toward the ground, where the orange light of the flame flickered past a human skeleton.
“I thought that sounded like bone,” Nyx mused. Glancing up toward Theron, she asked, “How fucked are we?”
The ranger looked down the path, where it did nothing but slope downward even farther. “Perhaps they were waiting out a storm and starved,” he suggested.
“How stupid would someone have to be to allow themselves to starve? I'd weather the cold to get food,” Nyx argued.
“You don't know how many of them there were. Clearly enough to dig out a tunnel into this place,” the ranger replied. “Maybe someone left to get food. This person stayed.” Theron started to walk again, leaving the skeleton behind. Without much more thought, we followed him.
Up ahead, there was a slight orange glow at what appeared to be the end of the hallway, at long last. It looked like it opened up into another room, but at least this room had fire. Wherever there was warmth, we would be able to camp comfortably. And it was about time, too. If I'd been tired before entering this cave, I was much more tired now.
We walked farther and farther, ever closer to the orange glow. As soon as we were level enough with the next room to see into it, we were all taken aback.
There was gold. Millions and millions of coins in piles half the size of a grown human lined the walls on either side of us. Further in, the piles grew, becoming even larger than us, the gold pieces scattering out around the piles on the bottom. None of us said anything, for the moment. I think we were all speechless. Even as royalty, I'd seen nothing close to this amount of gold, at any point in my life. There were dozens of piles, all that had to have had thousands upon thousands of gold each.
Perhaps out of morbid curiosity, we kept walking. This was—oddly enough—the only room in the cavern thus far that was well lighted. Sconces lined the walls between the piles of gold, each holding a nicely sized flame. I walked toward one, eyeing it closely. Whoever had put these lights here knew some form of advanced alchemy, or something similar. The fire burned brightly, but it also had appeared to for quite some time. The flames licked outward from cloth that had been doused in some sort of black, thick sludge. Whatever it was, it was meant to provide long term light or heating.
The room opened up even farther as we passed pile after pile of gold, and that's when even more gold added itself to the mix in the form of golden furniture. Chests, statues, and even pure gold photo frames with the artwork still attached were stacked up between coin piles or leaning against them.
“Secret dwarven stash?” I wondered aloud, seeking answers.
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“We are days away from Brognel at the quickest route,” Theron replied. “I would highly doubt it.”
Our findings became even more weird when shiny things of all types began to appear. There were weapons, many broken. Wagon wheels made of steel. Slabs of aluminum tile, as if for roofing. Even mirrors, most of them cracked and decrepit.
“Am I the only one who finds this weird?” Nyx asked, when still no one had said a thing.
“No,” Theron agreed, walking past another large gold pile, where the room opened up even farther. “It's definitely—”
The ranger stopped. I ran into his back, making him stumble forward a bit. The rest of the group stopped where they stood just behind me. Only Theron and I could see beyond the wall of the room where it opened up, as the others were still behind it. And what I did see made my blood run cold.
Ahead, in the open room, were more of what we passed. Gold piles and shiny objects littered the cavern before us, in no particular pattern. The hallway leading here had been organized compared to this, where shiny loot was simply tossed without any planning. What didn't look similar was the piles of skeletons, or the partially decomposed bodies of scavengers of all races that littered the room. Some corpses were partially buried in gold or loot. All around the cavern that held the loot were the markings of plenty of battles. Stalagmites and cavern walls alike were scarred with sword strikes that had missed their targets. Hundreds of arrows littered the ground in a variety of places, some arrowheads brown with old blood. Most frightening of all was the sweeping, bluish-white stains on the walls that cut across rock and treasure alike. Much of what was stained had been cracked as well, proving that strong water magic in the form of ice had been used here, time and time again. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure I knew the culprit.
One very large, reptilian white eye watched Theron and I without a blink from the floor of the cave. The scales surrounding the eye were a shimmering silver that appeared blue depending on the light. All I could see from here was its head, as massive piles of loot hid its body from view. Its head alone had to have been five feet long, and three of that was just its jaws, with long, sharp teeth that extended past its scaly lips. Two long, dark grayish-blue ribbed horns extended past its neck and out of view at the back of its skull.
This was my first time coming across such a creature, but just by its head I knew what it was, given the art drawn of legends and fables. As the rest of the body was hidden, I could not count its legs, so I did not know if it had two or four. But either way, we were dealing with either a wyvern or a dragon.
I froze in place, my eyes stuck on the creature. I was still leaning into Theron from where I'd run into him, because I was too afraid to move backward off of him. I felt his heart beating fast, even through his armor. He had never said whether or not he'd ever run across a creature this size, nor if he had ever beaten one. I knew for a fact that three of us in the group hadn't. I wasn't sure how to deal with such flying beasts.
It was only when Nyx spoke that anything changed. “...guys?”
The reptilian head lifted, and a snort was expelled through its nostrils in puffs of mist, the noise sounding like it was both inconvenienced and angry. The soft clicking of scales fanning out against each other in movement echoed off the rocky walls as it hefted its weight off of the ground on which it had been slumbering.
Theron unsheathed his swords. Even as I backed up off of him, I said, “You wish to fight it?”
Glancing back toward the uphill climb behind us, he asked, “Do you wish to outrun it?” He had a point. We had no hope of outrunning a creature of this size with the amount of walking we'd done to get here. We would be brutalized on the trip.
I supposed we would have to fight.
“What are we up against?” It was Cerin who asked, though Silas also looked concerned, his bow already out in his hands. From their positions, they still could not see it, though the vibrations of its footsteps meant that would soon change.
“Dragon,” I answered. I noted the necromancer's exasperated look. He looked fatigued. We all were. And now here we were, having to fight a dragon in its territory.
The creature chose that moment to walk past the wall, revealing itself in all its glory. In another situation, I would have found it to be a beautiful, magnificent being. Standing upright on two thick, muscular legs with claws that were sharp and curled from overgrowth, it probably measured twenty feet tall. Given that its tail was long and curled in a half-circle behind it, it would have had to have been thirty feet long. Its silver-blue scales glimmered in the nearby fire light, and it spread its wings, curling its neck forward to roar. The result was a high-pitched, crackling scream like some mix of bird of prey and something downright demonic, and it shook the walls and burned my eardrums. I was sure the display of its size and its roar were meant to be intimidating.
They were.
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