23. The egg.
The egg.
HARLOW
T his is a terrible idea , I think, the familiar fear surging to the surface, threatening to send me into a mindless panic. Did Alduin’s rage teach me nothing?
And this time, Jayce isn’t here to protect me.
Jayce… I miss him more than I can express with words.
I miss our easy banter and his touch. For a week, I felt so…
alive. Was he furious when he discovered I’d been taken?
Or did he count his losses and add me to the list of missing dragoners?
Somehow, I can’t picture him giving up on me so easily. And Alara promised to come for me.
That is… if there’s something left of me, I think as I stare into the darkness without end in the cave.
We’ve been walking for a few minutes, our light not even reaching the rocky ceiling.
The claw marks are easier to see here, where the elements haven’t gotten at them.
There are also goats’ feces all over the floor.
Did the poor animals realize they were being led to their death? I think they did.
The air is uncomfortably hot, but not life-threatening; judging by the fact that one of the crew members took out his gloves to refill a liquid-fire lantern. I’m glad to have the dragonhide suit even if it’s difficult to walk in.
We come to a bend in the massive cave before it divides in two different directions. The scorched marks and gouges on the rocks clearly show which way the dragon went, so my expertise as a dragoner isn’t required.
As we go deeper into the earth, the heat becomes stifling even with our protective suits on.
Sweat drips over my eyelashes, and I do my best to blink it away.
The ground descends in a slope; the rock smoothed out by the dragon dragging her underbelly and claws over it for centuries.
I really hope it won’t end in a chasm. Dragons’ lairs come in many sizes and shapes, depending on the natural cave—or mine—they choose to inhabit.
We’re lucky, and Myrval’s lair is in a cavern, bigger even than the entrance behind the waterfall. Our feeble light still refuses to reach the walls and ceiling. It feels like standing in a starless night sky. But something glows red deep in the dark, two-hundred feet from our position.
“This is it,” I whisper in my helmet. “Her nest.” The others can’t hear me, so I point a shaky finger toward the glowing embers. From a distance, we can see the outline of an egg over the glow.
But where is the mother?
We’re all very aware that Myrval hasn’t left her lair in over a century, which means she must be somewhere in the giant cave, close enough to maintain the temperature of her nest.
The crew spreads out, some walking slowly toward the nest while others circumvent to the edge of the impossible cave, trying to reach the walls.
I stay ramrod-straight near the entrance of the cavern. I haven’t moved since we noticed the nest, fear gripping me. We shouldn’t be here. This is a place no human should ever set foot on—a nesting ground—and there is no fury like that of a dragon protecting her egg.
I watch, horrified, as two crew members use a long contraption to grab the egg from the embers.
My breath hitches as, for a heartbeat, I fear they might drop it on the rocky floor, breaking it.
Dragon eggshells are tough, made to withstand the mother’s clumsy movements around the nest, but I still fear for it.
But then the egg is in the bag, and I allow oxygen back into my lungs.
The cave is quiet, the dark unmoving. I dare a look above me, to the endless pitch black. Myrval is renowned for having onyx scales. Is she hiding above, watching us like the night itself?
I stumble to the side, feeling suddenly entirely too vulnerable in the open. I walk in the vague direction from where we came, eager to find a wall to lean on.
After what feels like a too-long trudge through nothingness, I finally reach a wall.
I drop a shaky hand on it. It’s paler than the ground, almost like limestone.
The water leaking from the ceiling must have dripped along the walls for centuries.
That’s how cave formations like stalactites are made.
I take slow breaths, trying to calm my racing heart. This isn’t the place or the time to have a panic attack. The crew members are making their way back to me with the egg. There’s still no sign of Myrval. With some luck, she went deeper into the earth, possibly near the underground river.
I stare at my gloved hand, trying to muster the courage to walk back to the tunnel without running. But then I frown, noticing the pattern of the pale rock.
It looks like… scales.
My eyes widen, icy fear slithering around my heart like a snake. I raise my liquid-fire lantern and take a step back.
Myrval’s scales are supposed to be black , I think numbly.
But what if decades spent in the true dark, away from sunlight, have leached the color out of them?
I can’t help it; I follow the shape of the scales toward what I know to be her head. If we’re lucky, she has her back to us.
We’re not lucky. I’m standing close to the end of her neck, and my eyes snag on the giant spikes—taller than Freddy—around her head, then the head itself, bigger than a horse-pulled carriage.
This is how I die , I think, my fear overflowing until there’s nothing left but a grim calmness as the glassy surface of an enormous milky eye reflects my liquid-fire light.
I freeze, holding my breath. A moment passes, but nothing happens. I move the lamp, but the vertical slit of her eye doesn’t move.
Is she dead?
No, her nostrils are churning a cloud of ashes with every slow breath.
She’s blind , I realize with shock. Myrval has stayed too long in the darkness, getting fed mountain goats by the Shanans. She became lazy with age and rotted in her lair.
I step back slowly, all too aware of my cumbersome suit. I hope they tanned the hide well enough to erase the smell of the dragon it came from.
She’s sleeping. Oh, gods . By sheer luck, we walked into the lair of a dragon of legend while she’s sleeping—I have a feeling that’s what she mainly does. We need to get the fuck out of here quietly.
But something hits me on the shoulder, and I gasp.
Two crew members have come to take me away, unaware of my dreadful discovery.
I gesture at the dragon in panic, but they ignore my quiet plea.
They drag me forcefully along the cavern, my feet sliding on the rocky ground.
My hand shakes as I raise my lamp, staring at Myrval’s head as her nostrils flare.
Her giant milky eye blinks.
We’re fucked.
I get to my feet and push my captors away. I take off running just as Myrval opens her mouth and chomps down. One man jumps away in time, but the other disappears between her teeth, his screams cut short.
By some miracle, I keep hold of my lamp. I would be dead without it, for the others are already running ahead with the egg, not caring who they leave behind.
Myrval’s roar is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard, and I cringe, ears ringing. It’s more violent than thunder, the noise echoing in the confines of her lair, and the mountain shakes around us.
I run with all I have, and when I stumble, I get to my feet again in less than a blink, my muscles fueled by adrenaline. When Alduin attacked us, my fear was incapacitating. But this fear… this fear gives me wings. I don’t want to die in the dark, my flesh turned into ashes amidst goats’ feces.
In front of me, the remaining four crew members are running too, the glow from their lamps escaping like fireflies in the night.
Fire reaches us—Myrval must have breathed fire into her lair, blindly—and I’ve never been more grateful for the dragonhide suit.
It gets painfully warm, but not enough to endanger our survival.
The flames die out, and for a moment I’m blind too, my retinas overloaded after the sudden flare, but I keep running.
When I finally make sense of what’s in front of me again, we have reached the waterfall.
The way back was incredibly fast compared to the way in, for obvious reasons.
Water hisses and evaporates as I walk under the waterfall, cooling my suit.
I want to take off my helmet and tilt my head toward the icy flow, but I don’t dare to stop.
And if Myrval is giving chase, I’d rather stay safe.
I reach the basket seconds after the crew.
They’re already raising it to the airship, abandoning me.
But the fear of the void below is nothing compared to the fear of being chased by a dragon, so I jump over the gap easily and hang on to the railing.
Two crew members have enough empathy in them to help me climb on.
The basket rises quickly, and we disappear into the airship’s underbelly. Lord Darrington is already waiting for us.
“Do you have it?” he asks.
A man offers him the smoking bag containing the egg. “Be careful, my lord. It’s still hot.”
Lord Darrington smiles triumphantly as he grabs the top of the bag, his arms bending under the weight of the giant egg. He leaves without uttering a thank you to the men and women who risked their lives—and the one who didn’t make it back—to retrieve it for him.
I take off my helmet at last and say, voice shaking, “You’re welcome, fucker.”
To my surprise, two of the crew members grumble in agreement. I wonder if they’re the ones who helped me out.
The airship surrounding us shakes as they fire up the propellers to take us as far away as possible from Myrval’s lair, and we hold on for dear life.
I wait, expectant, for the dragon to roar and come after us.
But after a minute, I join the others to take off my suit.
I’ve almost been cooked alive inside, and my skin feels raw—similar to a day spent under the blistering sun—but I’m alive.
My clothes are drenched in sweat. I’m immensely grateful to the dragon who provided the hide of my suit and the fire scroungers who brought it back.
Ten minutes later, as I reach the upper deck, the night is peaceful. Myrval hasn’t given chase, probably too blind to follow. We might be the luckiest thieves in Hargos.
Lord Darington is at the bow, shouting orders. I’m surprised he’s not already spoon-feeding Clarence the raw dragon egg.
“Where are we heading?” I ask.
He spares me an annoyed look, certainly regretting my survival. “Dragonest. To my lab. We can’t mess this up. The egg needs to be opened in a secure location to be preserved.”
“What if there’s already an embryo inside?”
Who knows how long Myrval has been hatching it?
Lord Darrington shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be the first time. As long as there is some of the yolk left, it should help Clarence.”
I feel sick imagining the embryo of a dragon, vulnerable, squirming inside a broken egg. It won’t survive.
What have we done? I think again.
It’s in the darkest hours of the night, when dusk is but a memory and dawn barely a promise, that Myrval catches up to us, just as the lights of Dragonest appear on the horizon.