Everything was pitch-black down there, with only a column of light coming from the hole above. Kayden could have easily regressed time on himself, but the hole probably wasn’t that hard to get out of with normal methods, and they needed the cover anyway.

The roars continued outside for a while, then slowly died off.

“...That hurt,” Tham muttered. “At least my shoulder wounds didn’t reopen. Now what?”

“Yeah, this was unfortunate, but at least we’re safe from whatever roared out there. First off, I can’t see anything,” Kayden said. “You got flint and steel?”

“...I actually do,” Tham nodded. “I picked up some from the souvenir store back at the Wonderinn.”

“Great,” Kayden said. “You got any wood?”

“...Forgot about that,” Tham admitted. “No wood.”

“Weird coming from a carpenter, but it’s fine,” Kayden said, taking off his jacket. “We can burn my jacket. It’s cloth; it’ll light up.”

“Why are you wearing a jacket, man?” Tham asked. “It’s still summer here. It’s hot.”

To hide my scars, Kayden thought, but then forced out a grin. “For if we have to burn stuff.”

“All right then,” Tham said. “I can’t see anything down here, though, so throw your jacket at my voice and let’s hope you don’t miss. I’m sorry for sacrificing your jacket like this, but it’s for the greater good.”

Kayden did, and after several minutes of hearing try after try of steel hitting flint, sparks started to fly out onto the jacket, and the corner of it caught fire. Tham dropped it to the ground, blowing on it, and the fire grew. It wouldn’t last much, but it’d serve its purpose. As it did, the entire hole –now revealed to be a full cavern– lit up. Gems and precious stones covering the walls and ceiling started to glow orange, revealed by reflecting the firelight. They all had the orange hue, but each one was unique in its original color and shape. The gem-filled cavern continued downward in a tunnel that soon turned and got out of sight.

“...Whoa,” Tham muttered. “This was hidden below the layers of statues all along?!”

Kayden was speechless for a good while before managing to talk again. “I guess this is what the monster’s protecting. This is its treasure hoard. We’ve still got hours before the rendezvous with the Wonderinn. Wanna explore a little first?”

“Yes,” the Mimicker replied.

“This is not something you can just walk away from,” Tham agreed.

Astonished, they started walking down the gem tunnel, looking around and trying to take it all in. It was one of the most beautiful things Kayden had ever seen. And to think it was hidden just below the surface, away from the eyes of so many adventurers that had tried to brave what lay above…

The jacket fire died off, but the gems kept glowing. Kayden, Tham, and the Mimicker soon reached an opening in the tunnel, a massive cavern room with a tall mound of gems stacked in the middle. And they were whispering. Kayden couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clearly the center gems. They seemed slightly different than their wall and ceiling counterparts, but Kayden couldn’t quite pinpoint the difference.

“Whoa,” Tham gasped. “Here it is. The treasure. Now it’s just a thing of packing as much as possible into our backpacks and we’ll have half the quest done.” With that, he approached the nearest gem, and the gem screamed, startling Tham and making him stumble backward.

“Please don’t take me!” the gem pleaded. “I’ve got a family to take care of!”

Tham looked back at Kayden with a confused expression, unsure of what to do.

Oh, no, Kayden thought. They’re sentient. That would make the job much, much harder.

“Uhh,” Kayden started. “Let’s just…”

Then, the other gems started screaming as well, calling out.

Kayden started shushing them, approaching with a calming hand and trying to make them stop. They yelped as he did.

“What now?!” Tham asked, getting nervous.

A long and deep roar slashed through the cavern, and Kayden tensed, his heart beating fast.

“Hide,” Kayden said. With that, he dashed away into a spot behind a massive gemstone on the wall, trying to fit in as deeply as possible with the Mimicker on his back. Tham ran in the opposite direction, hiding behind a tall gemstone as well.

Kayden pursed his lips, trying to not even breathe too loud. Seconds later, a giant red figure rushed into the cavern, roaring in rage.

Its massive serpentine body was covered in red metallic scales, from which sprouted two front legs and two back ones, all topped by an imposing head of long horns and a thick snout, its open mouth sporting rows of teeth. A red dragon, like in the ancient tales. Except… it had no wings. Kayden was pretty sure all dragons on this side of the world had wings.

But this was not the time to question the dragon’s anatomy. It was crawling around the cavern, sniffing and searching. Kayden held his breath, terrified.

“Whomst dare disturb the slumber of the ancient gems?” it –he– hissed, looking around the cavern. “I can smell you, insignificant one.”

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Kayden tilted his head slightly, just enough to take a peek at where Tham hid. And his heart practically stopped. Tham was hiding behind a semi-transparent gem, and even though he wasn’t fully visible, the gem reflected the chestnut tones of his curly hair and clothes, contrasting sharply with the rest of the cavern. And as if on cue, the dragon seemed to notice too.

Without saying another word, the wingless dragon started to approach Tham, slowly opening its jaw wide. Kayden froze.

Fight, or run away. He wanted to scream. Not this again!

The dragon breathed in. And with that, Kayden rushed out of his hiding spot, unsheathing the Mimicker as he did and dashing toward the dragon. He ran over a stack of gems, gaining altitude, and then jumped over to the dragon, slashing down at his neck. But the dragon turned at a surprisingly fast speed, and roared at Kayden, spewing a column of fire in his direction.

Instants before it reached him, though, Kayden regressed time on himself, reappearing running on the floor as the column of fire burnt through where he had just been. He continued running, aiming at the dragon’s front left leg instead. The dragon kicked at him, but again before the attack hit, Kayden regressed time on himself by a fraction of a second, avoiding the hit and slashing at the dragon’s leg. It was a clean slash, but… it did nothing. The blade just bounced off the dragon’s scales, as if it had been nothing more than toy rubber.

Kayden progressed time on himself without missing a beat, appearing beyond his position and behind the dragon. He jumped over the dragon’s tail, running over it and getting atop the dragon itself. He grabbed hold of the dragon’s neck and pulled, trying to put pressure on its windpipe. But the scales were so thick the windpipe had to be way too deep for Kayden to reach it. The Mimicker transformed into a sort of strange reins for Kayden to hold onto, and he struggled with the dragon, who was trying hard to shake him off. The dragon tried to unsuccessfully slam Kayden onto walls, but as he had no wings, he couldn’t get high enough to squash him against the ceiling.

“Enough!” the dragon said in a breathless voice after several minutes of the strange wrestling. “Stop struggling!”

“Only if you do so first!” Kayden replied.

To his surprise, the dragon actually did. It stopped on its tracks, panting and breathing with difficulty.

“I’m too old for these sorts of things,” the dragon muttered.

Nearby, Tham walked slowly out of his hiding spot, terrified but curious.

“Don’t you want to kill us?” Kayden asked, confused.

“I don’t fight battles I can’t win,” the dragon replied. “The dead have no use for honor. And it’s clear neither of us is killing the other today. We’re evenly matched.”

A small silence followed as both caught their breath.

“You’re the monster of the legend?” Tham asked, approaching them tentatively.

“I am,” the dragon said. “As long as I keep killing incoming adventurers stealthily, they won’t send any real troops to hunt me down. This way I manage to keep the lives of these gems peaceful. It’s one thing for another. So let’s make a deal. Either you leave this place alive but with empty hands and promise to never tell the truth about what you saw here, or I kill the little one and you leave with empty hands and tell everyone what happened. The second option will end with me and the gems here dead or worse, and the little one dead as well.”

“We’ll leave,” Tham muttered. He looked at Kayden, who was already down from the dragon. “We can always find another quest. I… really don’t want to repeat the beowolves incident.” But Kayden’s eyes were full of determination.

“No,” he said, eyes narrowed. “We won’t leave here empty-handed, but we won’t die either. Look, dragon. If you kill Tham, I’ll continue fighting you until the end of time. I’m timeless. You’re not. You’ll die of exhaustion, and then I’ll take all your stupid gems and sell them to whoever asks for them first. So don’t lay even a single finger on him, or you’ll see how the one who will topple an empire can fight.”

“...What do you propose?” the dragon said.

“The world will never stop trying to industrialize places of worth,” Kayden said. “These gems will never be free if their secret gets out. So we’re going to take a few of the ones without sentience on the walls and say it’s all we found; there’s nothing more. Only monsters live here. It’s a wasteland, it’s not worth it to even come. We’ll have our gems, we’ll get paid, and you’ll be free.”

The dragon thought about it. “What’s the catch? It can’t be that perfect.”

“What you’ll have to do is this,” Kayden continued. “You’ll bury this place so as for it to be never found, then you’ll leave it forever. You’ll never kill again. You’re a dragon; you live for centuries. Get a life, man.”

“...Why are you worrying about me?” the dragon asked after a long while.

“I guess surviving death gives you a new perspective on life,” Kayden said. “One last thing: on February 29th, in four years’ time, head to a place called the Field of Memories. You may be surprised.”

The dragon seemed to want to say something else, but after too much hesitation, he just nodded its head and left the way he had come. With that, Kayden and Tham took as many gems as they could from the walls, without touching the sentient ones on the stack, and after one last glance at the beauty of the world below, left the cavern behind. Following the rising tunnel they eventually reached the surface, and walked over the long walk through the statue-filled surface to the other side of the valley. The dragon was nowhere to be seen. As they left the valley behind through the opening on the mountains, Tham spoke.

“Why did you help that dragon?” Tham asked Kayden. “I do think you could have killed him, or at least left him there to his own lonely life. After all, he's a bad guy. He’s killed a lot of adventurers.”

“I guess I’m practicing,” was all Kayden said.

– – –

About an hour later, as the Wandering Wonderinn reached the rendezvous point after surrounding the valley, Kayden and Tham walked back in. The Right-Hand Man greeted them, evidently surprised to see them alive and with their backpacks full of gems.

“Did you encounter the monster?” the Right-Hand Man asked with curiosity.

“Yes,” Kayden said. “There were way too many of them, so stealth was our only choice. We got the gems out, but at the end, we had to bury the valley through landslides. There’s no chance to return there anymore. At least we’ve got plenty of loot.”

The Right-Hand Man narrowed his eyes for a second, but then smiled. “I’m glad,” he said. “I always trusted you guys.” As he said so, a few men walked over to him, handing him some gold coins. The Right-Hand Man winked at Tham. “You’re turning out to be quite the source of profit. Keep it up.”

Right then, Chafter called out in a loud voice, announcing the next station.

“Next stop,” he said, “Unbadda. Airtronic mines.”

– – –

Haroken the dragon left the valley walking on his four legs. He missed his wings; it was shameful for a dragon to live without them. The gems had been the only ones to understand what he went through, his only friends for the last century or so. There, living among the statues, it made him feel part of history. Constant reminders of how people of power had risen and fallen. Just like himself.

Haroken felt like he knew the man who’d fought him from somewhere before. He’d been the leader of the Skyguard of old, hadn’t he? That man had failed so brutally. And yet he still fought and saved. Haroken had done terrible things. Could he save too?

He tried to extend his wings and fly away before remembering he had none. He’d probably never get used to that. But he forced himself to not think about it. Instead, step after step, he left the valley behind. He’d never forget the gems. But there was a world out there that needed to be explored.