Chapter 10 Carbella
CARBELLA
The winds caught beneath Quinthara’s wings, carrying them past Dagger’s Landing and closer to the rocky peaks of the Ram’s Head Range. Hardin leaned forward against her scaled neck, his breath catching as the familiar valley of his hometown emerged, Carbella.
The town should have shown signs of life, smoke rising from chimneys as the miners prepared for their descent into the caves. Instead, an unnatural mist clung to the stone streets like a burial shroud.
“Something feels off,” Hardin said, his words immediately torn away by the wind. He signaled for Quinthara to descend.
Hardin’s grip tightened on the saddle as they spiraled lower.
Through gaps in the mist, he could make out figures shuffling through the streets with mechanical precision.
A chill that had nothing to do with the mountain air settled in his stomach as he recognized his mother’s greying black hair among them.
She moved with a haunting rigidity, carrying water from the town well as if she were being pulled by invisible strings.
“Mother,” he breathed.
Quinthara banked sharply toward the town square, her shadow cutting through the unnatural fog.
An eerie silence hung over Carbella as Quinthara’s claws scraped against the cobblestones of the town square.
No children ran to marvel at the dragon.
No shouts of warning or welcome echoed between the buildings.
Only the rhythmic shuffling of feet and the creak of the well’s pulley disturbed the quiet.
Hardin slid from the saddle, his boots hitting the ground with a sound that seemed too loud in the unnatural stillness. His mother continued her mechanical path from the well, unseeing, even as he stepped directly into her path.
“Kaya,” he said again, this time loud enough to carry. “Mother, it’s Hardin. I’m home.”
Kaya paused, the water bucket swaying slightly in her grip. For a moment, recognition flickered across her brown eyes. She was clearly fighting whatever had intensified the curse over the town. Her lips parted, trembled, then pressed together in a tight line as she attempted to step around him.
“Hardin?” A weak voice came from behind him.
He turned to find his sister Marra standing in the doorway of their family house.
Her once-short, dark brown hair had grown long past her shoulders.
Though she was only in her early twenties, just three years older her than him , the dark rings around her brown eyes, swollen lips, and sunken features made her look much older.
Unlike the others, she moved with deliberate effort, each step a battle against invisible bonds.
“You shouldn’t, be here. You should not have come back.” Her words came out strained, as if speaking required immense concentration. “Thorgan, The Warlock King, he’s changed things.”
Quinthara’s low growl resonated through the square as more townspeople emerged from the buildings.
Their movements were synchronized, like pieces of a grotesque clockwork.
Hardin recognized every face. Mason Cole with his burn-scarred hands, old Widow Thenna who’d watched him on market days, young Pell who’d dreamed of becoming a shaman.
All of them trapped in this magical puppetry.
However, Hardin didn’t see any of them wearing the cursed amulets that had controlled Sasja and Venrick.
Governor Rodjex had one before I left. But something’s changed here. They couldn’t leave, but now, it’s like they’re under some kind of mind control.
Quinthara rumbled a throaty groan of concern. She sent him a warning , sensing a form of evil that put all dragons on edge. Not from her experience but from the collective pool that she shared with her ancestors, a history passed on to her.
Marra stumbled forward another step, fighting against the force that tried to pull her back into line with the others.
“The Governor draws power from us. He feeds it into whatever it was Thorgan found in the caves.” Her eyes darted to their mother, who had resumed her seemingly endless trek to and from the well.
“I’ve tried to break free. But I can only resist… ”
Hardin caught his sister as her knees buckled, the effort of speaking nearly too much.
As he held her, his gaze swept across the town square, taking in the runes he hadn’t noticed before.
Public carvings had not been evident in their town when he left to find help.
Subtle markings had been carved into the cobblestones, a script unfamiliar to him and his dragon.
As he helped Marra to a seated position on their townhouse steps, he noticed mud splashed on her skin just above her shirt collar. Then blinked, it wasn’t mud. “What is this?” he asked, pointing to the brown stains on her neck.
Marra’s expression scrunched as if she were smelling something rotten.
“Save your strength,” he told her softly.
Quinthara moved her head in close behind him, examining the stains. She again sent him the same on-edge sensation to be cautious.
“It’s not mud,” Hardin said, wiping his finger over the dark streak on her neck.
The stain was like ink set into her skin.
He pulled back her hair, seeing more streaks creeping up from under her sweater.
“This almost looks like the tattoos the Morsythians had when under Joc’s control, only much thinner and splotchy. ”
Anger flooded Hardin’s shared senses, emanating from Quinthara.
“Hardin. The dragon. You found help in Astral City?” Marra managed to ask.
“You could say that,” he said as he turned to Quinthara, who was studying the shambling townspeople.
A handful worked to carry water to sluice boxes at the edge of the square, while the majority trekked toward the caves at the edge of town. Within moments, Hardin realized they were working to haul buckets of rock out by hand, spread them in the sluice box and then return for more.
“Those caves were always considered sacred,” he said. “No one ever worked them. Why are they being forced to now?”
Quinthara pulled his attention to the runes carved into the cobblestones again.
“Whatever’s in those caves, whatever Thorgan found, has something to do with the runes,” he said, voicing her suggestion.
Marra’s fingers dug into his arm. “Be careful, brother. Thorgan has done something to Rodjex. He’s not what he seems. None of this is what it seems.”
Hardin studied the unfamiliar runes more closely, careful not to step directly on them.
They formed a pattern that didn’t look like a formation of letters or pictographs.
It was more like a naturally created geometric patterns, just like frost forming or the unique shape of a snowflake.
Dirt and rock being dumped into the sluice boxes drew his attention again.
“That’s odd,” he said, noticing several people picking through the washed rocks, placing them back into their buckets and returning them to the caves. “Why would they be bringing the ore back into the cave?”
Quinthara’s attention directed him to runes etched into the cave entrance.
“Those markings,” he said, remembering the philosophical discussions he’d had in his Dor Bishdo training with Sense Kalu.
“What if they aren’t forcing the curse onto the people.
What if they’re feeding into something else.
..” As he said it, they picked up on a faint trail of power waving through the earth.
It was like an invisible river, flowing toward the cave.
Quinthara’s unease forced Hardin to focus back on his sister and the dark stains on her skin.
They’re connected to the flow of magic?
Quinthara shared a vision, pulling him to her thoughts. Images presented themselves. Dragons forcing lesser magical creatures to work. Among the beings, Hardin recognized fire fae, their life energy forced into the dragon eggs.
No, that can’t be right. They’re forcing them to give their lives to hatchlings?
What she showed him next was a split of dragon kind. War broke out among them. Those against forcing creatures to give their life force to the eggs crossed the realms. A rectangular stone became the focus; a confusing image ended the sudden dump of information.
“Was that what caused the first dragons to come to Sataran? Their kind was using other’s life essence to hatch more dragons?” Hardin surmised.
Quinthara nodded.
“What about the stone at the end?”
When more insight didn’t materialize through their shared mental connection, he realized that she didn’t know. These images had been passed on to her from her ancestors; she had not experienced them.
“The amulets were crude compared to whatever this is,” he said, watching his mother make another mechanical trip to the well. “The magi found a way to bind people directly, without requiring physical tokens. Like they had with the Morsythians, using…”
The realization set in. He should have returned sooner. They moved toward the cave, Marra following as best she could.
One of the townspeople stumbled. Young Pell struggled to keep moving, clearly driven against his will.
His arms trembled under the weight of his rock-filled bucket.
Before the boy could fall, Hardin caught him, steadying both him and the bucket.
The contact sent a jolt through Hardin’s hands, like touching a frozen metal rail.
Through that brief connection, he felt the pull of the runes on him, feeding from his essence.
“The caves,” Marra whispered, still fighting against the curse to help him understand. “Thorgan goes there, at midnight. When only starlight… touches the peak… of Ram’s Head.”
Hardin’s gaze lifted to the mountain looming above them, its jagged summit already touched with evening light.
Quinthara’s growl deepened as more townspeople emerged from the mouth of the cave, their clothes stained with dust and dirt, their exposed skin marked the same as Marra’s.
“Whatever magic they’re using, it’s devouring the life out of our town, bit by bit.”