Chapter 32 #2
I guide my light closer, watching the flames lick at the metal. Even a glancing brush of this dragon-manipulated fire is enough to leave dark scorch marks, and I think I see the surface starting to warp a bit, too.
Briar reads the plan on my face before I can even fully formulate it myself. “If you melt a hole in this door, I don't think it's going to go unnoticed,” she says, flatly. “Especially if you set the room on fire in the process.”
“I've been practicing,” I counter. “I can be precise enough to not burn anything down.
Also, look at how dusty it is in here—clearly no one regularly visits this area, so we'll at least have some time before our deed is discovered.
Whatever might be hiding beneath this palace, I think they're trying to bury it…
maybe they've forgotten what's even under here themselves?
It will likely be weeks before they realize what we've done.”
Briar looks skeptical about this last part.
Honestly, I am too.
But my mind is already made up; I can't go another day without unraveling at least one of the mysteries surrounding the royal family.
And after a moment of enduring my wistful stare, Briar gives in as well. “Well…I suppose it's not the most reckless plan we've ever had.”
“Not even close to it,” I agree, placing my hand on the metal.
It feels oddly cold, even with the warm magic still twisting around my hand.
The cold bleeds up through my palm and into my arm, and without thinking, I allow the fire to respond with an alarmingly bright flare that makes Briar and me both stumble back.
“…But maybe wait outside, at a safe distance, just in case,” I tell her.
“Please don't incinerate yourself,” she replies. “I'm not even sure how I would handle that.”
“There's a broom in that room up above; you can use it to sweep up the ashes of me.”
“That's not funny,” she grumbles, and Sesca adds a short, indignant sound from somewhere outside, as if she overheard and doesn't approve of my morbid bit of humor, either.
“Just stand back and let me concentrate,” I say, turning back to the door.
I don’t waste any more time.
I burn out a thin, shallow line in the metal, and then continue to guide the fire over and over along this same channel, resulting in a slow, controlled melting that eventually eats through to the other side.
Once the flames have that other side to escape into, I risk feeding a little more energy into the spell.
Sweat beads on my face and arms as heat radiates more and more intensely off the metal, until finally the opening peels into something wide enough to step through.
I exhale a weary breath, closing my eyes and silently thanking Sesca for her help. I hear her wings fluttering in response—obviously preening and pleased with herself.
Briar cautiously makes her way back down the steps, studying the opening I’ve created. “That’s going to be a useful trick for us going forward, isn’t it?”
Together, we pass through the ruined door and into a pitch-black tunnel.
It’s low and narrow enough that we have to walk single-file in some places, and it smells ancient and forgotten about, as if the dirt and stone haven’t absorbed any fresh air in a long time.
I keep a flame cupped in my palm to light the way, throwing out just enough of a glow to see a few feet ahead.
I try not to think about how far I’m getting from Sesca; will I be able to channel her firelight if I go too far?
She can fly overhead and follow us, maybe, but we’re moving deeper, too; the tunnel is sloping gently downward, a subtle grade that I only notice because of the steadiness of it—it’s too even to be natural, too deliberate.
Someone obviously carved this route, and they spent a lot of time and effort planning it out.
The fire in my hand gutters suddenly, though there's no wind.
I stop, and Briar nearly collides with me.
Sesca's presence nudges against the edges of my mind, anxious and unsure. After taking a moment to collect myself, I send back a thought.
Still here, I tell her.
Not quite reassurance. I can’t manage that. But I reach out with enough confidence that her panic ebbs somewhat. More warmth pushes into me. More muted than before, but it’s able to rekindle the makeshift torch in my palm, to keep it burning as long as I stay focused.
We keep walking.
Minutes later, the tunnel ends at what looks like a wall of stone, at first—until we notice hinges, nearly rusted to nothing, and a seam. Whatever mechanism once controlled it appears broken; the door hangs, warped on its frame, permanently open by the width of a few fingers.
I work my hand into the gap and pull. It creaks entirely too loudly—like the wail of some undead monster as I pry open its coffin—and both Briar and I go very still, listening.
Nothing happens.
I pull it the rest of the way open.
The chamber beyond is enormous. Even with nothing more than the dim light in my palm, the size is obvious by the way our steps and breaths suddenly echo endlessly in every direction.
For a long moment, my mind simply refuses to take in the full vastness of it, too used to the cramped press of the tunnel.
I step further inside and raise my flame and it barely reaches the ceiling, which arches far above us.
The walls closest to me are roughly carved, pitted rock interrupted by occasional spans of weathered wood and fitted with countless shelves.
It’s too dark to clearly make out anything that might be resting on those shelves, but they’re full of… something.
Iron receptacles jut out from the walls at even intervals; I imagine they might have held torches at one point. The floor is stone as well, but smoother than the walls and engraved with so many lines that it takes me a minute to understand I'm looking at a deliberate pattern—a diagram, I think.
“Owyn.” Briar's voice is quiet and careful, which is how I know she's frightened; Briar is almost never quiet and careful. “Look at this.”
I move toward her, examining the iron vessel she stands before.
It looks like a larger version of the ones along the walls, except this one juts up from the floor and is held by two hands of carved marble.
There’s a flame symbol on the back of each hand, and shiny black stones at the bottom of the vessel itself.
On a whim, I flick a bit of my dragon-fire onto the stones—just a few embers.
That’s all it takes.
They catch almost instantly, purplish-gold flames shooting up so suddenly that I nearly trip as I’m backing away. The receptacles along the walls slowly light up as well, a circle of violet-tinged fire igniting bit by bit until we’re surrounded by it.
The space is still not particularly bright, but I can gage the true, massive span of it now.
And I can see the pattern on the floor more clearly.
Collectively, it looks like a massive representation of a dragon that stretches across the entire room.
Each part—from its wings to its tail to its glaring eyes—is rendered in a series of intricate, etched lines, like thousands of individual threads coming together to form what probably looks like a solid image from further away and higher up.
At the center of each woven part, there are raised, wide and flat slabs of grey stone. Dark channels have been cut into these slabs, radiating outward like veins from circular depressions in the center. The hollowed-out parts are darker than the rest of the slabs…stained, I think.
My chest tightens as I realize what I’m looking at: Altars.
And those dark stains are likely from blood.
Briar moves to stand beside me, neither of us speaking for a long moment.
Finally, she whispers, “What the hell have we just stumbled upon?”
I don’t answer because I don’t want to say it out loud. My mind races with possible explanations, each more horrific than the last. I want to vomit. I want to close my eyes. I want to run.
Instead, I make myself move methodically through the space, studying everything.
The stains; the massive cages along the back wall; the piles of bones and large skulls; the way the ceiling on the far side looks like it might open into a larger channel—presumably to allow for a creature as massive as a dragon to be pulled down here.
There are countless shelves full of glass jars that look to have been designed for a very specific purpose; they’re wide-mouthed and heavy, with grooves cut around their necks as though made to be held in a specific kind of frame, and symbols etched into the glass itself, each one unique.
A few still have what appear to be tiny, fading vapors of different colors in them.
Briar has gotten caught up in an area full of tables and shelves covered with books, one of which she’s reading with wide eyes.
She hands it to me as I approach. “I think this is a record book, maybe.”
“Looks like it,” I agree, flipping through the brittle pages.
Even though we can’t read much of the language it’s written in, there are charts, numbers and tally marks that tell a clear enough story.
The mundaneness of it makes it so much worse, somehow.
As though this is all normal—like they were merely counting and cataloging brainless livestock.
It’s wrong.
Even when I was desperate to hate dragons, to distance myself from them, I knew better than this. To reduce them to whatever has happened in this room…
I shake my head, flipping through more books at a frantic, desperate pace.
Within them, I find stomach-turning diagrams of blood-letting, wing-tearing, bone-crushing.
Instructions for burning broken pieces over divine flames, and what to do with the resulting ashes and smoke.
There are pages covered in messy notes, including drawings of various types of chains and collars and brands, and other tools that I don’t want to look too closely at.