It only takes three days of good weather to make it back to the Dragons’ Nest Isle. It has moved closer to The Light since our last trip. But Silv, looking at the clouds above our heads as we enter the caverns of the floating island, warns our return journey might be less serene. I don’t doubt her claims, even the clouds look ominous– grey and floating just above our heads, heavy with pent up rain.

Our approach was strange, no dragons patrolled the skies nearby, we hadn’t met any scouting parties. Faladel and Silv had planned to approach from below and try to sneak inside, but the lack of guards made that sort of thinking entirely unnecessary. Faladel helps Elen prep the boat for a fast takeoff, while Fin, Silv, and I spread out to scout the caverns. I remember the place we’ve landed. It’s where I originally woke up, and where Smay had killed the dragon that I had paralyzed. These caverns are near the floating island’s summit, and we slowly make our ways past the dull stone walls deeper into the maze of huge tunnels.

Almost as soon as we are out the main cavern, I see a large swath of grey stone splattered with something darker than the stone. The torchlight makes it look almost brown, but I suspect it’s actually red. Scratches and grooves on the floor indicate a fight of some sort. I grimace, what happened here? Why haven’t we come across any dragons? Fin and Silv don’t even notice the bloodstains or floor markings, continuing onwards down the tunnel until I call them back so I can spend more time studying this.

Three torches confirm what I suspected. A fight has happened here. Within the last twelve hours if I had to guess. I can’t tell who the dragon fought– I don’t think it was more than one of them, there aren’t that many claw marks on the stone and they all seem to have the same distance between the toes–but they seem to have lost and taken a lot of damage. I track the blood trail down the dark hallway, Fin and Silv following behind me. It isn’t long before we end up at the split, one hallway goes back up and to the left, the other down and to the right. My nausea returns as I look at the tunnel heading down, remembering vaguely the feeling of being chased before blacking out. But the nausea isn’t as strong as I remember. “Do you feel anything?” I ask Fin and Silv, trying to figure out if it’s just a ghost of a sensation, or if my memory was just hyper inflated. That does happen sometimes. Silv looks at me confused, but Fin nods.

“Something’s off about that tunnel. It’s annoying to look at.” He points at the one heading deeper into the island.

“Yes, exactly!” I turn back to him. “It was so annoying that I went down it to figure out what was causing my head to hurt so much from looking at it, but I think whatever spell was on it has weakened, because my head doesn’t hurt nearly as much now!” I frown. “Perhaps the dragon’s disappearance has caused the spell to weaken?”

“You think a spell caused…” Silv hesitates “Whatever ‘annoying’ effect that apparently is leaving me out?”

“You don’t feel anything?” I turn to stare at her. She in turn goes to the entrance to the tunnel and peers down it, torch held high above her short head.

“Nothing. Want me to go down there?” She offers, returning to me and Fin in the center of the intersection.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure your store of floatsones is down there.” I begin, remembering her interest in the glowing stone. Sure enough, her eyes widen and sparkle. “But I really wouldn’t like to split us up further right now. All this doesn’t feel right.” I finish, turning to follow the blood trail up the other path– the one that leads back to my cell and to Smay’s living quarters. It doesn’t take long before my sense of dread is heightened as we stumble upon our first dead dragon. It is a small purple– probably no more than a child–its golden eyes clouded over in death. A sword strike in the chest clearly is the cause. I grimace when the blood trail continues. I knew it was too small to cause the claw marks, almost all the dragons would be too small honestly. But I don’t want to think too hard on that.

The blood trail starts thinning soon after the corpse, the dragon apparently tried to staunch the bleeding. We have long since left the route to Smay’s living quarters, and I honestly don’t know where we are now. In one large cavern, I nearly lose the trail. The dragon had taken flight and circled many times to disguise the direction it was heading, fleeing from a slower pursuer. But I find where he exited eventually. However, when I look up, Silv and Fin– who had admittedly been silent for a while– were all the way across the cavern, looking down a different exit.

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“Guys, the trail goes this way!” I call out, and then wince, remembering that there still could be people here somewhere. But my voice bounces around the cavern with no other answer than Fin’s “You should really come see this Briareth.”

When I arrive at their exit– well, more like, entrance into a second catacomb –the first thing I see is Silv’s grimly smiling face. The next is a literal blood bath. The cave floor beyond, despite the hours that have passed since the slaughter, is still covered in undried blood. Dragon bodies lie haphazardly on what must have once been nests and beds, some seemingly dead in their sleep, others looking like they struggled for a bit before death.

Even though they weren’t nearly as smart or civilized as Smay, I still feel disgust well in me at this slaughterhouse. We might have planned to kill them in battle, but this somehow is completely different. These dragons were just napping when they were murdered. Fin looks similarly nauseated. His red eyes are bright, and he has pulled a handkerchief over his nose and mouth so the smell won’t tempt him.

“This amount of death…” He whispers. “Why?”

“It’s nothing they wouldn’t do to us.” Silv claims calmly, as she steps into the puddles of red on the floor. I remember her past, the story she had told us when we were heading to Outpost Seven, how over a hundred dragons had slaughtered her entire town, unprovoked.

“Perhaps.” I say, my pity for the dead creatures dropping a lot. “But I doubt any of our allies did this. The ability to kill all these dragons, and to get away with it, and they don’t use it during the war effort? It just doesn’t make sense!” Silv continues walking towards the nearest of the bodies, the on the floor covering her feet entirely. I’m not normally squeamish, but that takes a level of guts even I don’t have.

“I’ll fly you?” Fin offers, seeing my grimace as I look at the blood on the floor. I gladly take him up on his offer, feeling a need to inspect the dead dragons to get a fuller picture of what happened here.

Fin’s large, leathery black wings unfurl and we glide together above the red floor. There isn’t a dry spot, so we just land on one of the dragon corpses. It doesn’t take long to establish a pattern of death. Silv takes care of ones closer to the entryway to this sleeping area, and Fin and I cover the ones in the back of the chamber. All the wounds on the dragons were clearly made by a blade, and the dragons weren’t prepared for an attack. Either they knew and trusted their killer, or someone had managed to get the jump on over fifty dragons and kill almost all of them before the last few began to fight. Either option sounds ridiculous, but I’m constantly reminded of the mysterious figure in the strange glowing cavern. If it was him… Perhaps the first option isn’t so unlikely after all. But again, there is the question of why? I’m going to have to ask Faladel for help when we return to the ship, because I’ve got nothing.

In five minutes we’re following the trail of blood again. There is another cavern on our path, this one full of dead hatchlings and violently smashed eggs, and even Silv doesn’t have the stomach to try and explore that one. She might have taken an oath to kill all the dragons, but even that doesn’t make her immune to the horrible scene in there. I don’t think anyone could be.

Far up the tunnel heading into the very center of the Island, I hear a rumble, and then a roar, and I can feel the tremors of that roar in the ground, even this far away. Silv gasps, and then covers her mouth. Fin jumps ten feet in the air. My mouth drops open and I start sprinting down the tunnel. I recognize that voice! Relief swamps me as I realize that Smay isn’t dead. Although… I begin to slow as I realize something. “He’s certainly not happy.” I mutter, turning my headlong sprint into a steady walk.

“Why are you heading towards the dragon?!” Silv calls after me, short legs working hard to catch up. Fin glides behind her, never having come down from his jump.

“There’s a survivor!” I call back at her, “Don’t you want to see how they’re still alive? Learn what happened?”

“Yes,” She gasps, slowing as she catches up to me, “But you can’t just run headlong into these sorts of things Briareth! They sounded hostile!”

“That’s why I’m walking now.” I reply, “Besides, I think that dragon was Smay, it certainly sounded like him. I doubt he’d kill me now if he didn’t earlier.”

Fin swoops low overhead. “I don’t know, Briareth, he sounded pretty angry to me.”

I shake my head confident in my ability to survive and talk my way out of any situation with Smay in it.