Chapter 16
Krashe
I still could not get used to the sight of Naomi on that strange little cart thing.
I missed having her in my arms all the time, but I understood why she wanted to be on the strange contraption.
If I couldn’t decide where I wanted to go, it would drive me a little crazy too.
Now she was the fast one and I was forced to keep up, racing after her while she raced off to check out a strange plant, an interesting rock, or a spring.
It wasn’t hard to admit that that was nice too, to see her wonder at the pretty things she could discover on this barren piece of land.
It had always just been that to me, empty land inhabited only by the evil revenants that sought only destruction of anything alive.
But Naomi seemed to find beautiful things wherever we went, and she made me look at that strange building by the lake with new eyes too.
I could remember many good things about it now, I probably spent months inside those walls as a youngling.
Exploring them with my mother and my father.
I’d long condemned those memories as reckless proof of my mother’s bad judgment, a type of betrayal to the Clan.
Now that I had reexamined those memories as an adult, I realized that my parents had always gone into new places with care.
They had never just let me play wherever I liked, keeping me mostly in those upper hallways where the evidence of my drawings still remained.
In a place where I couldn’t just stumble across the old bones of the ancient dead, trigger dangerous machines, or be spotted by a wandering revenant.
They had also only ever visited this place during the warm season when the revenants always wandered further north for some reason.
If I’d discovered one of those carts Naomi was now using as a youngling, I could well imagine how much fun I’d have had with one. It was an odd shape for my mate to use, but it made a lot of sense if you imagined a full-grown Naga on it.
There was a seat, and a tray-like platform below it, which hovered just above the ground, skimming along the shrubbery.
A Naga could sit on it, and then have the rest of their long tail curled up on that tray.
Naomi’s legs dangled above the tray, unable to reach it with how short she was, which wasn’t quite comfortable so we’d stuck the backpack with supplies and the fur I’d tied around our precious boxes on it.
Now she could lay her legs on the soft furs I’d placed over the top, and have more furs wrapped around them so they stayed warm.
At least we were nearing Orshala mountain again and the temperatures were improving. At night I still held her close, curling her in my coils for warmth, but she no longer trembled with cold if she wasn’t wrapped up warm enough.
On the journey out to the lake and the building with the relics, I had been deeply worried about how to get Naomi around Orshala and to the Shaman.
It hadn’t seemed safe to take the long way round, through the mountain pass, which involved too much climbing to make it when I carried both Naomi and supplies.
The tunnels had seemed even worse, as we would be moving too slowly, but the strange cart changed that.
“Careful,” I murmured when I realized she was veering off from our course again to check out the oddly piled rocks to our left.
They were too square to be anything but the remains of some ancient building my ancestors had left behind and Naomi had seen it too.
Middle ground, I kept telling myself, that is what I had promised my mate.
But I still felt fear each time she wanted to investigate something that could possibly hold technology.
She threw a look over her shoulder, her long blonde hair shimmering like gold in the sunlight.
My breath caught in my chest, so beautiful, so bright.
Looking at that smile made me realize just how dark and gloomy my life had been before she arrived.
I couldn’t go back to that kind of darkness, living underground, fighting to keep my position, or squabbling with a rotten Queen.
And, I had to admit this, a Clan with convictions that were no longer my own.
I’d fervently believed the Queen was right when she first rose to power, but I’d only been a juvenile then, desperate to find a purpose after both my parents had left me.
It was easier to hate them for the things they did, and their differences compared to the Clan had made that a simple step.
But I’d already been changed by their teachings, I’d tinkered, I’d built things, and I’d been dissatisfied by any of the knowledge I had available to me, and the decline of it I saw among the Clan.
“It’s just some rocks, maybe there was a house here at one point,” Naomi said, breaking me out of my thoughts. Kiwi was perched on the highest rock, his wings spread to sun them, snout tilted up to the violet ball in the sky. “It’s getting warmer, you like that better too, don’t you?”
I approached slowly, searching the ground to make sure there were no hidden dangers.
Pointing an arm at the huge shape of Orshala’s flattened peak not far off, I said, “The fastest way is through the mountain. With that cart, you’ll keep up, won’t you?
” She narrowed her blue eyes at me and pursed her lips, which I knew meant I’d said something she found mildly offensive.
“Of course I’ll keep up. Don’t worry. And it’s a wheelchair, Krashe, not a cart.
” She laughed, her eyes twinkling on the last words, she wasn’t that upset.
I knew she called it a wheelchair, but it didn’t have any wheels so that made no sense.
It floated just above the ground in some magical fashion, making me uneasy because it reminded me a little too much of sky-ships.
“Tunnel entrance is right up there,” I deflected, pointing with my tail to a copse of trees not far off.
The trees only grew at the foot of the mountain here, where they were sheltered from the winds and the temperatures further north.
A tunnel ran from beneath those trees underground into the heart of the mountain, and entering there would save us a lot of time.
I just hoped that the cart could fit through the trapdoor-covered hole.
She abandoned the odd pile of rocks to head for the trees, her hovering little cart making no noise as it floated over the brush.
I hurried after her, followed by an anxious squeak from Kiwi.
The Sleara landed on my shoulder with a few flaps of his wings, his claws digging into the tough leather of my pauldron.
Already a favorite perch of his, the leather had seen some serious wear but I couldn’t be mad about it.
Better my armor than my shoulder, I figured.
I threw open the trapdoor once I located it and tossed a burning torch into the hole to see if any creatures had made a home down below.
“That is pretty deep, but I think this thing can do that. Just to be sure, maybe you should go first.” I grinned at her silly suggestion.
Of course I would go first, like I would let her down into a dark tunnel by herself if I wasn’t sure it was safe yet. What kind of mate would that make me?
The climb down was easy for me, the hole wasn’t even a Naga length deep and soon I was jamming our torch into a crevice in the wall.
Naomi’s little vehicle, laden with the pack and the precious spine repair boxes was heavier than it looked but it was pretty compact.
I was a big Naga and I knew that though made for my shape, it would be hard to fit all my coils onto it.
“Can I toss that pack down first? Just to be safe?” Naomi asked from above, her face in shadows with the sun behind her. My scales rattled at the word. Was this not safe? Was she worried the cart would fall? It could fly, couldn’t it?
She didn’t wait for an answer, furs and the backpack thudded down into the hole at my coils the next moment.
The only thing she’d safely kept on the tray beneath her seat was the stack of tightly wrapped boxes for her spine.
I watched anxiously as she used the strange symbols on the armrest of her seat to steer the whole thing down.
My heart rate shot through the ceiling when her descent was much faster than I expected.
“Woohoo!” she laughed, the cart jolting to a halt just above the tunnel floor.
It wobbled a little on the uneven terrain and my mate slid along the seat but then she righted herself.
I hurried to yank the backpack from beneath it all so she had more stable ground.
She was giggling, her face radiant, like she thought this was play.
“Ah come on Krashe, that was fun, and I am fine. Don’t scowl so much,” she laughed, poking a finger into the nearest coil of my tail to get me to look at her.
Her hair was haloed around her shoulders in a wild, windswept mess.
It had a tendency to do that because it was so fine and light, unlike my own thicker strands of dark red.
Everything about my mate was small and fine and soft.
Just thinking about the differences between our bodies made my blood heat.
“Oh boy, I know that look,” Naomi said with a throaty laugh that had my cock stir in its pouch.
Yes, that look. We were in no rush anyway.
There was nothing I could do for the Clan, even when I was right on the border of Bitter Storm’s territory.
This tunnel saw no use, but I fully intended to use it now.
I flung the coil that she’d poked into her lap, and then twirled my tail around her middle and lifted her right out of her seat.
She laughed when I pulled her closer, her hands landing on my coils, blunt little nails digging into my scales.
“Krashe, you crazy man. Right here? In this dank, smelly tunnel?”