“An enchanted lockbox,” I said. “What do you all think that might be worth?”

The others said nothing as Mak reached out slowly, her hands trembling as she opened the lid. Silver glinted inside. Lots of silver, in little coins that were only barely tarnished by the centuries that must have passed since the box was last opened. Tamor reached out and buried his hand, lifting a palm full of the beautiful little discs.

“You beautiful lizard,” Mak said, coming around and putting her free hand on the back of my neck. She grinned at me. “You beautiful, reckless lizard!”

“I still mean what I said,” I whispered to her, and she grinned wider.

“There must be over a thousand of them,” Tamor whispered. “More than two thousand, even. Each of them a little larger than an Eagle.”

“There are five Old Mallinean silver coins to six Eagles by weight, as a rule,” Herald confirmed. She brushed the coins aside to reveal a grey-brown surface. “What’s this?” she said, carefully digging the item up and lifting it. It was something boxy, wrapped in fine leather.

With trembling hands Herald began to unwrap it. “If this is…” Her breath caught. Inside the package was a thick stack of perfectly preserved paper pages. Herald flipped a few. They were all covered in unfamiliar writing and vivid illustrations of landscapes and buildings.

“A whole… a whole book…” Herald’s voice trembled, and she thrust the thing away from her. “Someone take this! I will cry. I swear I will cry. This is…”

“That is our fortune,” Tamor finished for her, taking the treasure from his sister and wrapping it again. “The box, the coins… they’re nothing compared to this. A preserved Old Mallinean book. Almost unheard of. To the right buyer…”

“Thousands,” Mak said. “Thousands and thousands of Eagles. Enough to set us all up for life. Enough to make us a House! Even if we share it with the Three-ers!” She looked at us each in turn, then sighed. “Are we sharing it with the Three-ers?”

“I mean…” Tamor said slowly. “They gave us the location. But we did all the work.”

“All they did was fatten up the trolls a bit,” Herald scoffed, and the others all turned their heads to look at her with shock while I sniggered.

“What? They were real arses after they found out about Val and Tam. But I see why we might want to. It would look extremely bad.”

“Unfortunately so,” Valmik said. “Also, selling the book at the most advantageous price would be difficult without help. If the Three-ers had a stake, they would surely try to secure the best deal possible for us.”

“But we are splitting the coins ourselves, right?” Herald said, looking around the group.

“Oh, yeah.” – “For sure.” – “That goes without saying,” the group replied all at once, then all glanced at me.

“Gimme,” I said, and we were in agreement.

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We were all, needless to say, in a very good mood when we packed the next morning. All except poor Stalwart, who had to carry an extra hundred or so pounds of treasure. Befitting our triumphant mood we went slower on the return trip and took more rests, taking six days in total to cover the same distance. While we were excited to return and enjoy our spoils, there was also no need to rush. On the way north there had still been the hope and possibility of finding the Three-ers alive. Now, we could enjoy ourselves.

While three of the four humans were city-folk at heart, Herald being the exception, they still all enjoyed the outdoors, especially in each other’s company. While we still had to be alert for monsters, most of the time was spent messing around, pointing out interesting things, and talking about old memories and hopes for the future. It was a heartwarming thing to be a part of, and with every day that passed I felt more and more like a part of the group. Even Mak was warming to me, casually asking for help with little things, making conversation, and joking around. Tamor and Valmik, having noticed me using the short form of Mak’s name, insisted that I do the same for them. Apparently they both thought that I kept using their full names out of formality, rather than the reality of me feeling awkward using the short, familiar forms without them asking me to. In return there was a very short period of Tam calling me ‘Drak,’ but it mercifully didn’t catch on and he dropped it after less than a day, to everybody’s relief.

They say that money can’t buy happiness, but it sure brought me into the group. There was no discussion about whose credit it was that we’d found the treasure, and they were all free with their gratitude to the point that I asked them to stop out of pure embarrassment.

We had plenty of time to count out the coins on our way south, and by the time we separated I had just over five hundred of the slightly larger Old Mallinean coins in my harnessed bag, weighing in at something like fifteen pounds of only slightly tarnished silver. Together with my light-ball the bag was pretty much fully loaded, if not in volume then in weight, and Herald helped me check and double check the straps before I left.

“We will have much to do in the coming days,” Herald told me. “But if I cannot go to the lake myself I will have someone I trust bring a message to the tree. I will come see you as soon as I can, alright? I haven’t forgotten about those bears you were talking about.”

“See you then,” I said. She leaned forward and I stretched up, wrapping my neck around her shoulders in a hug. That still felt weird to do, but it was nice, so whatever. And that was the end of our adventure in northern Mallin. Two weeks of travelling, hanging out by the fire, fighting, almost dying, and finding treasure together. It had been, for the most part, awesome, but everything has to end sometime. I said my goodbyes to the others with smiles all around, and then we went our separate ways, with me flying back to my nest and them heading down the road to Karakan.

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The cave felt oddly empty after spending so long with my friends, but the feeling was quickly washed away as I reached my nest. I quickly took off my harness and undid the straps of the bag, then poured the contents onto my blankets. Five hundred is a lot of coins, and I watched them pour and roll, the clinks of metal on metal coming so quickly that it turned into a rustling sound, with the shattered clonk of the light-ball landing on top of the mat of silver signalling the end. I ran my hands over them, spreading them, feeling them, then threw myself on top of them with a squeal of glee. It wasn’t a catnip-like situation, but the mat of cool, smooth coins felt wonderful. I curled up with a happy rumble in my chest. Life was good.

I wasn’t disappointed to not have reached a threshold. I hadn’t expected to. This was a significant addition to my hoard and there was more to come once the others found a buyer for the book, and possibly the box. We hadn’t decided if we wanted to sell that yet, in part because it was so useful, and also because it was, quite frankly, beautiful. Val, especially, loved it. Despite not getting an advancement, though, I did hear the dragon, who’d been almost completely silent for the whole adventure. She spoke up as I was drifting off into a much needed nap.

“That was good, and enjoyable,” she purred. “It will bind the humans closer to us.”

Nothing like bleeding and getting rich together to really build team spirit, I agreed dreamily. You don’t mind us taking an equal share with the others?

“Their willing cooperation will be worth much more in time,” she said. “And once they are all ours, it will not matter.”

“What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is ours… “ I mumbled to myself, and then I was asleep.

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I didn’t go back to working on my list that night. I went hunting. My more varied diet on our adventure had made me realise that I was pretty tired of eating mountain goat for every meal, and for both that reason and as a test of my Strength I grabbed myself a small deer from the forest instead of a goat, flying the whole thing up to my ledge without too much effort.

It made me realise that I might already be at the point that I could bring Herald up there – Mak or Tam would be possible for sure – but I was sure as hell not going to risk her life on ‘mights’ and ‘probablys’. Still, it was good to know.

After eating the bits that would spoil the quickest and dousing the rest in venom, which I’d found to keep the bugs off, I went to check on the scholars’ camp. They weren’t there, but the camp looked different than the last time I’d seen it and more of the mountainside had been exposed. Though they hadn’t gotten the gate open as far as I could tell, finding something obviously man-made had clearly made them want to come back for more. If I was them I would have probably attacked the gate, trying to get inside, but maybe they honestly didn’t know what it was, or they were reluctant to damage it.

They were definitely doing something around the site. Thin wooden poles had been driven into the soil here and there, with numbers painted on them in narrow, careful strokes. Some of them were around the gate, and some along the mountain side. When I looked closer I could see that the wall was straight and might have been flat in places, marked on each edge by poles. I couldn’t see anything on the stone surfaces, but maybe the scholars had found something after all?

I was just going to have to wait until they came back so that I could listen in to their conversations. Unfortunately the two, a man and a woman, who I’d identified as the scholars of the group seemed just as excited by pieces of rock as they were by the gate, so knowing when it was worth listening was not entirely easy.

Whatever. They weren’t there, and there was little point in hanging around until they came back. Instead I went for a long, circuitous flight, taking me across the forest to the coast, south along the cliffs where I’d had my run-in with the fisherfolk and past Karakan. I skimmed low over the waves as I passed the city and the ships that lay at anchor there, a millions lights in the night. There were more ships in the harbour than before, and I wondered if that meant that the tensions in the south had gotten better, worse, or if it was completely unrelated. Maybe I should head far south one day and see for myself? Going north had made me want to see more of Mallin, and the idea of exploring further excited me. I didn’t even know how large it was!

South of the city I turned west, crossing the fields and pastures and the uncountable small farming communities that lay nestled among them. Even seen from hundreds of feet up high up the farmland extended to the southern horizon, a hundred miles at least, with villages and towns dotting the landscape and the coast. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Karakan, as large as the city was, produced enough food to not only support itself, but export it as well.

Fields gave way to rolling hills, and I kept heading east as they climbed into the mountains. Soon all I could see were rocky peaks and steep-sided valleys, but I still pushed on for almost an hour until the mountains dropped off and I could see another vast forest on the other side. The range must be forty or fifty miles wide where I’d crossed, and I couldn’t see anything even hinting at a human presence on the other side. No lights, no regular breaks in the trees indicating fields or roads. Nothing. It was another wilderness, another frontier, and I wondered what secrets of the Old Mallineans may be hidden there. If a single villa in a place that was already being explored by adventurers had netted us so much treasure, what might we – or I, on my own – find in a completely untouched place?

As I continued north along the western edge of the mountains, crossing peaks, valleys, and rivers, the possibilities ahead of me seemed endless. But I was in no hurry to plan any new adventures. I could take some time and enjoy what I had, and continue securing my mountain. It was truly my home now, no longer out of necessity, but because I felt happy there. It was convenient, comfortable, and above all, safe. Sure, there were some curious humans poking around, and some predators intruding, but those were minor things which I would deal with in the coming days or weeks. The only real problem was the Pit. It haunted me, and I needed to deal with it. But not immediately. There was no rush. I could afford to take some time to work up my nerve.

For the time being I had beautiful weather, and a clear sky full of stars that belonged to me and me alone. I spread my wings over an unexplored world, full of monsters to fight and treasure to claim, and grinned into the wind, screaming my joy to anyone who cared to hear. Then I turned, setting a course towards home, where I would rest and count my treasures, and look forward to what tomorrow would bring.