It took her several minutes to set up the ladder, and then even more for her to be able to batter her way through the hatch. Unlike the hatch she almost fell through, this one wasn't rain-rotten, it was simply stuck.

She wondered, as the hatch finally broke free, how long it had been since anyone had been here.

Mostly though, she was glad it wasn't locked.

The smell that hit her as the hatch burst open was a mix of dust, damp and old straw. From the smell, she had expected to come up into a stable, but when she pushed herself up through the hole, it was nothing of the sort.

The room was square, windowless, and about four of her arm-spans across, and she came up in one corner of it. The walls were bare brick, and the floor was coated in a thin layer of thick straw, or maybe reeds from the lake.

Scrambling to get through, she knocked aside an old lantern which had been placed neatly beside the hole, but the wick was missing and it was dry of fuel.

As she swept her torch across the room, she worried a little about it stripping away all the breathable air. Added to that, she would have to replace it soon, she hadn't expected to take this long.

Staring around the room, she wondered what she was looking at. It was clear that she was either still underground, or under some sort of mound, the place was too well protected from the elements to be anything else.

There were marks on the floor, and gaps in the straw, indicating that the room had once contained heavy crates. She had seen similar marks in the wine cellar back home, before the shipments were broken up and put safely away.

Another sweep torch revealed a large bundle of reeds standing in one corner. She froze for a moment, thinking their upright shape was a human figure, before sense got the better of her. They were for packing materials, maybe?

As she walked over and inspected the bundle, she found that it was hiding three crates, each sized to hold twelve wine bottles.

She kicked away the reed bundle and wondered how they'd gotten the crates up through the hatch, it couldn't have been an easy job.

It also wasn't an easy job to get open one-handed, but she couldn't put the torch down without setting the floor alight.

After a few minutes of struggling, she gave up, and pushed it down through the hatch, wincing at the crash it made as it landed. In the distance, there was a surprised squawk.

If the box had been full of wine then she was going to be upset, but it hadn't been heavy enough for that. Even if it had been, being stored as it was may have already turned it to vinegar anyway.

Plus, why would you go to all the trouble of creating this whole room, this whole complex, to hide a few bottles of booze?

She climbed down the ladder, mulling it over.

It could be that they were brewing it themselves to avoid local taxes, but unless they were selling it for extortionate prices, that wasn't illegal enough that anyone would care. It was tradition, what else was there to do out here in the dark winter months, except drink and hook up?

More than tradition, it was a joke. There was a reason that many rural communities treated midsummer as a communal birthday.

Carefully stepping off the bottom of the ladder, she started to rummage through the splintered remains of the crate.

It had broke on contact with the floor, but there was no stink of spilt alcohol or crunch of broken glass. There were bits of reed everywhere though.

Upon closer inspection, she found that the crate had been filled with small leather pouches, all of which contained nothing more interesting than beach sand. Or maybe it was sand from the lakebed? Either way, it had a pretty shimmer to it in the torchlight, but was it really that valuable, to smuggle it away like this?

She sorted the pouches out awkwardly- almost burning herself several times- until halfway through, she found one with a different weight to all the others.

As she poured it out into her hand, she sighed in disappointment. First came the rush of sand, sieved through her fingers, and then finally, three small gold ingots. Their edges were rounded, but they were stamped with the official crown stamp, a note of their purity and their weight.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

They were heavy in her hand, glinting in the guttering torchlight.

She stared down, annoyed.

All this rigmarole to hide this? What a pisstake.

Sure, it was a lot of money, she couldn't deny that. Gold was an exceptionally valuable metal. It was non-corrosive to the extreme, rejecting magic, and that made it valuable for so many things. In its pure form, it was proffered that it might even be able to resist the magic of a dragon.

Not that it would do much else about the dragon, of course. It was resistant, but it was soft.

She had been taken to see the dragon once, when she was a child, and the memory of seeing it come into land was one she still held close to her heart.

Sighing, she poured out the other bags, but there were no more ingots.

Out of curiosity, she touched it with the end of her tongue. It was either from the beach, or it had been mixed with salt. Maybe that was why the forest was struggling to reclaim the lake? She had no idea.

Tucking the ingots into her pocket, she sighed, glanced at her flickering torch, and clambered back up the ladder. She could renew it with some of the reeds, it should last for now. If it went out, she knew the way out.

There were two more crates to go through, and she wasn't going to say no to free money, but she had hoped for more, had hoped for something magical. Things she had heard tales of as a child.

She had been so excited.

If not magical, then she at least wished for something interesting. Gold was so mundane. Sure, those three ingots would be enough to get her a small house in a good city, and she may well spend them that way someday, when travelling became too much, but it was so... So very boring.

She kicked the other two crates apart in much the same way she had the first, and poured the sacks out onto the floor one by one, stacking up the empties beside her.

There might have been more gold in the sand, little nuggets or dust, but she wasn't interested in spending her time in whatever extracting that would involve. Leave that to somebody else.

-

She found four more ingots and one piece of natural gold, the size of her thumbnail, hidden in the other crates.

She kept several of the pouches and two of the bags of sand, just in case there was some value to it. The pouches were well sewn, and she wondered if she could have sold them on, but she wasn't a trader, she was an explorer.

A final scouring of the room revealed nothing more of interest. The hinges on the hatch were iron, which was unusual but that was it. Kicking through the reeds on the floor, and tearing apart the bundle in the corner all revealed nothing, and with a sigh, she clambered down the ladder one last time, pulling the hatch shut as best she could.

As she was doing so, her torch finally guttered out, and she stood on the ladder for a moment in the darkness, listening to the silence.

Then she climbed down with careful, measured steps, and oriented herself back to where she knew the exit was.

She didn't have to walk for long in the dark, it was still midday outside, and she could see the sun shining down through the entrance.

It was only as she got there, that she realised she had left the ladder behind.

-

It took her a while to finally escape, but she managed it, even taking a moment to stick her head back up into the hidden room, searching for any specks of light she may have missed previously.

The bird was still waiting for her outside, agitated at how long she'd taken. Even in her bad mood, she managed to give it a smile and a few scritches.

She was touched to find out that it had, while she was away, collected a whole pile of vegetables for her, some still dirty with soil.

What a strange beast it was.

She took one last look behind her as walked away. She hadn't covered up the hole, it was a deathtrap, and she would rather it be left visible.

At least it wasn't mice. Bobbins, the name came back to her in a rush. He had left a mouse in her bed once, laid perfectly on the pillow.

"You better not do that." She cracked her neck at the bird, still grumpy, receiving a confused hoot in return.

She took one last look behind her, as she walked away. She hadn't covered up the hole, it was a deathtrap, and she would rather it be left visible.

If there were other secrets down there, it would not be her that found them. Let the next person, in either five or ten or a hundred years times, puzzle it out.

All things considered, she would have preferred to find a decent cooking pot.

-

She sat by the fire that night, spinning one of the ingots in her fingers, watching it glint in the firelight.

"What am I gonna do with myself, Birdie?"

The owl gave her a sleepy hoot, full of par-boiled vegetables.

She stared down at the ingot between her fingers. It was the sort of thing futures were built around. She knew whole noble houses whose entire liquid assets could be measured in less than she had in her backpack right now.

She could send it home. Pack it up and send it via dragon shipment. Keep it as a nest egg for when she was old, or as something amazing to show her grandchildren.

But despite its value, it was nothing more than metal. Boring, heavy, metal.

"How disappointing," she sighed, receiving another hoot in response, muffled by the fact the bird had tucked their head under their wing for the night, dozing by the fire.

She took a moment to inspect it, as much as she could in the fading light. It looked thin, in a way which indicated starvation rather than a natural litheness of form. She was pretty sure that it was a carnivore, and would need more than vegetables soon.

Its feathers were cleaner and it looked a little better groomed than yesterday, but it still had some hanging loose, and a few scratches and scars from where it had lost a fight at some point.

"You still look like shit," she sighed, "but hey, maybe it'll be better when we find your home."

She stared down at the piece of metal again, turning it over and over in her fingers. "Maybe if your owner was abusive or something, I'll buy you out," she laughed, "you're not too great at walking, and I'm pretty bad at flying, but I'm sure we could make it work."

"Hoot."

"You said it."