ASHUELI RACED UP THE ladder leading to the top of the dungeon as if it were flat ground. Sabline leaped at a wall and dug in with her talons, beating her wings in addition as she ran straight up the stone, leaving Allory to fight a localised hurricane before she joined them up top. The Elf led the way with the lightness of a leaf and the speed of a peregrine falcon.
Sabline appeared even bigger out in the open. She was also angrier. Charging toward Hanzuk, she took aim with a razor-tipped talon before the Princess intervened, calling, “No need to gut the poor fish. He’s helpless.”
The Fae directed a filthy glare in the Elf’s direction. Cages much?
Ashueli found something interesting stuck to her left slipper and stooped to remove it.
“Fine, fine,” grumbled the Dragoness, making sure she stepped right over the quivering soldier.
Maximum bellicosity, but still limping? Maybe she’d inquire later when the Felidragon’s mood improved, Allory decided, eyeing those sabre fangs with a shiver. Perfectly matched the pent-up fury that impelled her every stride. One spark and Sabline would explode like a dry tree struck by lightning.
Hanzuk muttered behind the gag as if a sending a prayer to all the gods he knew that the nightmare about the nasty black Felidragon would end quickly.
Ash paused with a mocking chortle to bend and pat Hanzuk’s cheek. “This time, we’re breaking out.”
“Mmm?”
“Us. Out. Don’t cry for your mommy, it’s unbecoming in a male.”
“Mmm!” He fought the knots, but it appeared he would be going nowhere without help and plenty of it.
“Done painting our fingernails over there, Princess?” Sabline smirked.
“Alright, monster kitty, keep your fur on.”
“Kitty? You’ll regret –”
“Will I? Or will you?”
“This way!” Allory called brightly, streaking into the lead in the hope of averting bloodshed.
They charged through a guardroom full of peacefully snoozing soldiers and up the stairs beyond. Sabline did not even pause to sniff them, let alone threaten their entrails. Mildly disappointing. Here the Princess took over, leading them through a dusty, cobweb-choked side tunnel that shortly intersected with a second major access corridor serving the underground storage areas – the more high-profile ones, comprising the castle armouries and main treasury.
The treasury room stood locked and barred with five soldiers on guard, front and centre. Allory baulked at the sight of that twenty-foot-tall door, inlaid with golden friezes depicting battle scenes drawn from Human history, but her two companions did not. The Elf charged left and the Felidragon right. Wham! Blam! Gnarr! “Help me … ugh!” Smack! They paused, eyeing each other past the last soldier who was stuck in the middle.
“Oh, please beat up the poor man already,” Allory invited.
“Ladies first,” the Dragoness smirked.
“Guards!” screamed the man.
Ashueli launched a high kick to his chin. The snap of her knee lent the strike such power, the man lifted several inches off the ground, slammed against the door behind him and slumped to the floor, unconscious. Lucky not to be dead.
The Elf snarled, “What was that, Dragoness? Next time, just seize the spoils like your greedy kind are supposed to!”
“Listen here, pointy ears, you’re the shrinking violet who hesitated first.”
Pathetic. Before she could quite think the better of her words, Allory snapped, “Ladies, the door?”
Dual glares sizzled past her wings.
Someone had to keep order in these parts. Between them, her two companions managed to keep their claws and knives out of one another’s respective livers while they worked out – with not a few words of ungentle persuasion – how the complex door mechanism worked. Ashueli acted noticeably aggravated by each second’s delay. Shortly, Sabline bared her extraordinary canine fangs in a barbarous grin and flung open the massive doors, only to reveal a second barrier eight feet further inside, this time doors constructed of solid slate-grey granite.
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More delay.
Allory, however, put her ear to the crack between the two halves and heard the faint strains of foolish giggling inside. Suggids! Not a good sign.
Having repeated the toothy display, Sabline waited for the rumbling mechanism to draw the massive stone portals aside. Six feet thick, the tonnage of stone trembled the very foundations of Durhelm Castle as the doors drew apart, revealing Durc’s inner sanctum and private playground, the fabulously appointed treasure chamber said to be one of the greatest in all Spheris.
Impressive.
Grab the back of the throat, shiver the wings and set the heart palpitating kind of impressive. Riches that had to tease the most stoic, penurious heart with their scandalously abundant presence. Faerie did not hoard belongings as a rule. What use was gold in a jungle? Besides, all possessions were for communal use. For the very first time, Allory began to understand creatures who coveted such things. The artworks, weapons, golden suits of armour, jewels, chests piled thirty feet high, the mounds of bullion … it all shimmered with a light of its own, so intense that she felt her skin itch and her antennae tingle in response.
A gentle tinkling drew their eyes slightly leftward across the chamber to Yaarah, lounging in a vat of gold coins at least twenty feet across. He crooked his neck like an ingot which had unexpectedly sprouted whiskers to gape at her in disbelief, the coins he had been letting trickle between his furry digits bouncing unheeded upon his muzzle. A slow, silly smile curved his lips.
“Sparkles!” he hollered. “Oh principal delight of my pulsating heart, you came at last! Mrrr-hsst-rrr. Sparkles! Over here!”
“Sparkles?” the Princess chuckled wickedly. “Oh my. How it suits.”
Why did everyone think that?
“No time for that!” Allory howled in humiliation, driving her wings to shoot over to the Golden Purrmaine. He beamed at her and her flaming blush in quite the most idiotic fashion. She cried, “Yaarah. Yaarah! Are you alright?”
“Alright? I’m better than alright. I’m golden.”
Right. And about as much use as a brainless golden ingot if he stayed in this treasury much longer.
With a verbal eye roll, Allory smacked his right ear sharply. “Listen, Yaarah. We have to get out of here. Now.”
“Why? I love it here. Everything’s so pretty.” His eyes focussed and unfocussed strangely, more than illustrating that he was no longer seeing the world as he ought. He drawled, “You’re so pretty. And … sparkly.”
“Yaarah!”
“It’s in your wings and skin and your teeny-tiny, sweet little antennae, beautiful Sparkles.” His face screwed up, while Allory glanced at her arm in startlement. He was right. She did sparkle, all silver and sapphire glints … what the freaking suggids was her magic doing now? “Oh, you’re so, so beautiful and all grown up, I’m going to cry … I fear I must weep for such a glorious excess of joy …”
With that, he burst into tears.
“Oh, puh-leeese,” Ashueli groaned. “Men! Males, I mean.”
Allory took the chance to smack him again. “Yaarah, what’s the matter with you?”
He rolled about gaily in the coins, stirring up swirls of gold with his outspread talons. “Can’t you smell all these riches? The world’s never been more glorious, and it’s all the same colour as me, don’t you see? Whee-hee-hee!” he screamed suddenly. “Yay, I’m in paradise! Have I died? I must have. Where is everyone? I hear voices. Is this treasure speaking to me – well, fiery greetings, my dear bully – bullion … bar …”
Ash urged, “Hurry, I’m afraid the guards will hear the commotion this fool’s making.”
“Yaarah, please listen to me!”
Now she was the one who wanted to cry. This was all going wrong. It was her fault that she could not get this brain-frazzled golden reprobate to –
“Whaaa-HOO-MRR!!”
With an even wilder yell that sent Allory tumbling head over heels, the Felidragon shot fifteen feet into the air, almost crashing into a titanic lemon-yellow chandelier that hung in the centre of the treasure chamber, flooding it with light.
Sabline, who must have snuck up unseen, retracted her talon with a flourish. “Talon in the butt. Works every time.”
Ashueli gasped, “Tell me I didn’t hear that!”
Yaarah landed all wild-eyed and dishevelled, his fur sparking sporadically as he gawped vacuously at Sabline. Then, an utterly imbecilic grin pasted itself ever so slowly upon his muzzle. Half a grin. The other half of his mouth had no idea what it was doing.
He purred, “Hath the verimost night spoken sonnets of beauty to my soul?”
“You’re not unhandsome either, even when you’re making a blithering fool of yourself,” Sabline purred right back, just the right mix of flirtation and censure, Allory felt. “Come along now, handsome. We’re leaving.”
“First, mrrr-hrrr,” Yaarah announced grandly, “you may tickle the belly of the greatest Felidragon scholar who ever lived.”
The Sable Sabrefang went very, very still indeed.
The very air crackled with fury. Allory crackled too, only it was something in her ears reacting to an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Dipping in the throes of a painful wing-cramp, she bumped into a golden lampstand and knocked a crown flying. The loud clang echoed throughout the chamber.
Sabline did not move a muscle.
“I said, o paragon of mighty warrior-Dragoness incarnate, o possessor of the mightiest pair of haunches e’er seen beneath the admiring gaze of Middlesun itself –”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Don’t I dare what, hmm-prrr?” He grinned roguishly at her, turning over insouciantly upon his golden bed. Raising a gold coin to his lips, he smooched it extravagantly and purred, “I’m the richest Felidragon in all the realms and you, o splendour of savage sable, may – tickle – my –”
GRRARRRGGHH!!
The Dragoness’ right paw smote him so powerfully, the smaller golden Felidragon spun about in no less than three complete circles, spraying gold coins in all directions. Gold winked in the corner of her eye.
Allory began to duck, to throw up her hands, when a heavy weight pinged her temple just above her left ear. Coin! She distinctly sensed the world flicker. Normality began to return. Then, in a blink, everything changed.