Cooper flew them back to the library on the rocket boots. There, they parted ways. Cooper and Moon went to find their friends. (Allies? Harmoni wasn’t sure she could really call Cembra a friend.) She and Fleck headed for the Desert Crest’s office, near the center of the city.
Harmoni tried to swallow her fear as she moved closer. She had talked to Amier before. She did think this should be done. And clearly she was more willing to than Cooper. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was going into the lion’s den, like going and asking for help was doing something wrong. And her stomach twisted.
‘I could do it on my own,’ Fleck offered.
Harmoni shook her head. She said she was going help, and she was going prove herself right.
Besides, it was silly thing to be worried about.
They went into the entrance hall. It was crowded. A man and his dragon were talking to people, but multiple people were vying for their attention at once. There was some semblance of a line, but it seemed more like five people were trying to go at once, instead of the two they could manage.
Harmoni might feel bad for them, but Fleck wasn’t waiting around. He wove through the people, small size coming in handy, and started calling out to the dragon taking complaints. The dragons already talking to her had such minor complaints, and Fleck jumped up and down to get her attention.
Turns out, that might’ve been excessive. As soon as he mentioned the Dalton lab, not waiting for her full attention, the dragon swiveled towards him.
A second later, they were taken out of the entrance hall, through a door on the right, at the end of the hall.
The dragon practically pushed them into the room with her face. It was clearly Amier’s office. He sat at a desk, filling out papers. His rust colored dragon didn’t have much space, but he could lie against the back wall.
When the door closed, Amier lifted his head and gazed at her, just silently staring for so long, Harmoni thought she’d done something wrong.
“Well, what is it?” Amier asked. “I assume it must be urgent, for Wave to shove you through the door so fast.”
“I think the abandoned lab it still being used,” Harmoni said.
Behind them, Argone lifted his head off the ground, rather long neck swinging towards them. Amier also looked surprised. His ears even flapped a little. (Given how frilly they were, it reminded Harmoni of fish gills. She would not be saying that to him.) But he cleared his throat, and his expression cleared. He might’ve just been influenced by Argone.
“Care to run that by me again?”
“The Dalton labs, out in the desert? They’re still being used.”
She started to recount what she and Cooper had seen. Amier tapped his pen against the desk a few times, eyes narrowing and lips pursed. With a glare from Argone, he switched to taking notes.
“This is . . . dreadful,” he concluded, after she finished. "We have to send someone at once, and find out exactly what they’re doing in there.”
Argone, meanwhile, stood up and went through the wall. Literally. He pressed his head against the wall, and it spun like a giant revolving door. It looked like that wall took him outside.
Fleck was pretty sure humans had cartoons with stuff like that.
Harmoni . . . didn’t remember any cartoons.
‘You don’t remember anything,’ Fleck pointed out.
Harmoni ignored that. She didn’t have specific memories, but she was more familiar with some concepts than others.
“Come along,” Amier urged, unaware of the internal conversation.
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He was already at the door, and starting down the hall. Harmoni stumbled after him, grabbing the door before it could close.
“That was fast,” she couldn’t help but comment.
“Do you want to go to war with the dragons? I don’t. Personally. Now come on. I sent Argone to get some backup. You’re reporting it. You need to come with us.”
That was fine with Fleck. He wanted to get some answers anyway.
Sure enough, when they went outside, there were two people and two additional dragons waiting for them out there. One was a colbber, with a white dragon resting on top of her head, small enough it could be a hat. The other was a dwarf, standing in front of a dragon with bright red and orange scales, like metal that had just come out of magma, and was still glowing. Unlike the colbber’s, this was the biggest dragon Harmoni had ever seen.
He was up there in size in general. Without riders, dragons had plenty of space to grow out in the open desert. But most dragons slept or lay eggs in a cave, and that created a size limit.
“You two will be riding with me,” the dwarf said gruffly. “Sunset’s better at carrying multiple passengers than Argone.”
Harmoni, Fleck, and the colbber climbed on. They got a little help from the dwarf pulling them up. Then the group took to the sky, shooting across the sky into the desert.
It didn't take long for them to get there, not at a dragon's flight speed.
They lighted down. Amier pulled out a wand. The dwarf had an axe and the colbber. . .
Harmoni had no idea what she was holding, but presumably it was a weapon.
Argone slammed his head into the front door. The door clanged, but stayed in place, which was surprising. A dragon his size should have no trouble knocking a door down.
“Well you can’t expect a door designed to keep dragons in is going to work like that, can you?” Amier asked, presumably for everyone else’s sake, and not Argone’s. “Daradyn, you try.”
The dwarf, must be Daradyn, lifted his axe, and swung it at the door. It didn’t have much effect at first, but he kept swinging, and Harmoni realized there was a method to the madness. She could hear the difference in the clangs, where the door was weaker, and gave a bit more. It didn’t take too long before the door tilted diagonally across its frame, the first two hinges having given away as it was pushed in.
Daradyn grunted and wandered in, not even needing to duck. The other two riders, and the colbber’s dragon, climbed in after him. (Argone and Sunset would’ve had some trouble.)
Fleck paused. With the door open, the smell was horrid. Someone had clearly tried to clean it. He could smell bleach. He could smell enough cleaning solutions that a section further down the hall was poisoned. Luckily, it was probably a closed off section. And it hadn’t even worked.
Beneath that, Fleck could still smell blood, piss, and the goo that clung to you after you hatched out of an egg. It was coming from the opposite direction.
It was horrid, and he didn’t want to be here. Harmoni had hesitated too. But she had gone in after the group. And if Harmoni was braving it, so could he.
The hallway they were in had a railing. It was actually some kind of catwalk going around a lower level. At least this part was. To the right, where Fleck had smelled the cleaning solutions, the path turned into a hallway with doors on either end, all closed up. To the left? Well, it was dark on this side, with windows shut and not even the muggy yellow lights of the hall on.
Amier shot an orb of white light out of his wand, almost like a star, and it hovered over the center of the room.
There were cages down there. There were eggs in some of them, and baby dragons in others. Even the biggest cages weren’t big enough for some of them, scales smashed against the bars. Some of them looked waxy, lay very still, and were still covered in egg goop. Fleck was pretty sure their eggs had been forced open, instead of them breaking out on their own. And if it wasn’t that, some looked underfed, and some were injured. A few of them wailed at the bright light Amier had cast and. . .
Oh. He recognized one of those calls. That was the one he’d heard out in the desert, who’d disappeared without a trace.
A distressed noise escaped him, and he found himself backing up.
Harmoni clapped her hand over her mouth (and nose), eyes welling up a bit. This was horrid, and she knew this was worse for Fleck. It would’ve been awful for her no matter what, but she was connected to him, and this was his species. If she tried to think of this with humans or elves, she decided to stop thinking.
Amier swore. In Elvish. Possibly thinking she wouldn’t understand it, or possibly just forgetting Standard in the distressing moment.
“Anna, check the room only you can breathe in,” Amier ordered, pointing at the colbber. “Daradyn, escort the kids out of here.”
Wait. That meant her and Fleck.
“Hey!” Daradyn grabbed her free hand and pulled her towards the door, but Harmoni dug her heels in. “You wanted us to come!”
“And you’ll still be here. Outside. But there’s no need for you to see this.”
“A bit late for that, isn’t it?!” Harmoni snapped.
Fleck just . . . stood in the doorway. He genuinely didn’t want to be here anymore.
Amier glared at her for a moment. “Go outside. We have a lot to do you’d get in the way of. And someone could still be here, waiting to attack us. You’ll be safer outside. So go, would you?”
Harmoni was also cross at him now. Ask her to come to the place she discovered, and then try to dictate what she should or shouldn’t handle? But was it worth fighting? Or, more importantly, leaving Fleck in this situation? She turned around and marched herself out the door, moving sharp and fast enough she simply left Daradyn’s grip.