We follow Myrathellon into the wooden shrine at the edge of the village, watching her bow to each carved effigy that lines the steps up to the apparently sacred site. Around us we hear the continual murmurs of elves watching us nearby – sequestered in their huts or milling about by the side of the waterfall.

“Is everyone here a female?” Swiftrunner asks abruptly.

Our guide answers him without turning back, making one final bow to the entrance of the shrine door and making an odd sign with her left hand at the decapitated head of an antlered beast that is attached to the top of the roof.

“We are a union of maidens,” she says. “Pure. Natural. Born of this earth. Our society has always been thus.”

“But…” I murmur, gulping away my fear as we walk beneath the antlered head. “Don’t you need to…y’know..?”

She stops in her tracks and stares at me with disgust.

“Tsk,” she grunts. “Your perverted mind only continues to sully our home.”

“It’s a perfectly logical question!” I reply, more flustered, admittedly, than I probably should be.

“Hey, I only woke up in this world like a week ago! You can’t blame me for trying to figure out how stuff works.”

“Be keeping your nose out of business that do not concern you, dog, and you may find that the world answers your questions without the need for words.”

I cock my eyes at her as we clear the entrance of the shrine and darkness envelops us suddenly. Not even my [Lycan eye] can penetrate the haze that comes over us, and I feel Switfrunner’s paw fly to my own as the Elf girl says another cryptic phrase and, suddenly, the cloud of dark dissipates.

“We are here,” she says with an admiring sniff of the air. “The Sanctum of the Glenmaidens.”

The shrine is a mushroom coated edifice with a wooden dais at its center. Around the dais are arranged more robed elven women, chanting some evidently ancient prayer.

“Sisters,” Myrathellon whispers. “He is here.”

All of a sudden, the women cease their chant. Their shoulders sag as though they are weighed down by some great burden, and then they each rise and step away from the dais’ core.

As they step away, I catch glimpses of the markings on the walls of this place – of women running free and happy through forests. Of warriors with blades and bows striking down burly men and chasing them away towards ugly, ruined cities. Above each fresco, dark clouds gather in the sky, like they’re warning of something soon to come…

Something else catches my eyes, too - above, lining the walls, are a series of bulbous sapphire glow-globes that track us as we move, suspended by some invisible force in the air. And for some reason I can't shake the feeling that, behind them, there's a set of eyes watching me.

Myrathellon's sharp tongue brings me back to reality.

“Come,” she says. “It is time to meet Mistress Palka.”

I look to Swiftrunner who steps forward like a mute, afraid to even look in the direction of the women.

“What’s this all about?” I whisper to him as we follow our guide onto the cold bark of the dais.

The Elven women follow our every movement. Like they’re studying us.

“Our tribe never ventured this far to the East,” Swiftrunner murmurs back. “The Elves are an order draped in secrecy. It is said they dwell within only two strongholds that are hidden from the rest of this world. One lies at the Northernmost edges of Arwyll's frigid Northern Hemisphere. The other lies in the West, passed the Plains of Rowan."

Myrathellon's half indignant 'hmpf!' as she listens in to our conversation seems to suggest that we're in the latter stronghold.

"Few of our hunting squads ever reported seeing an Elf in the wilds," Swiftrunner continues with a slight shiver. "Those that did spoke of their fury in battle against any who dared to encroach upon the sacred borders lands."

"Your friend speaks true," Myrathellon grunts. "To our enemies we show no mercy, as you have been made well aware."

I look back at a few of the women and notice the wrinkles that frail their greying faces. Like marble statues they stand tall, each one actually slotted into a specific crevice of the walls.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Like they’ve been down here chanting away for centuries…

“It is said the Elves never age,” Swiftrunner says with a questioning look at Myrathellon.

She merely grunts as she traces one pale finger down the dais core, and we feel the thing start to shudder into life beneath our paws.

“We are eternal,” she says as the dais begins to spin. And though she flashes us a smile that would chill the bones of even the creepiest child, I can tell there’s some pride in those words.

The dais keeps spinning until the murals all around begin to blend into each other. I start to see the carved forms of the women actually running through their forests, shooting down the human men that try and chase them, or hunting the animals they tower above with glee.

And as I watch their forms spin around me, I get the sense, once again, that I’ve seen all this before…

“Wh-“ I begin, feeling the knot in my stomach tighten again as the room starts spinning out of control, and the carvings on the walls become nothing more than a kaleidoscope of blurred bronze. “Who is…Palka?”

And as the dais gives a sudden lurch and begins dropping down into the earth, Myrathellon’s voice comes out strong and clear:

“You should know, Lightborn. You have met her before.”

The dais thunders down into the bowels of the earth, pancaking both me and Swiftrunner while the Elven woman looks on unamused. Around us more murals fly by – elves worshipping around a mushroom that grows out of a shimmering pond. The pond, and the mushroom, get smaller as the dais dives down further, and I start to realize that this must be the story of the growth of this place.

Just before our little magic elevator thunders to a stop, the last image reflected no pool at all. Only a handful of elves cowering under the gaze of something big…something with eyes bigger than my whole body.

Barely repressing the urge to throw up, I shake myself off and look around at the realm of darkness our host has brought us to.

She looks down at me once, gives another unimpressed tut, and draws her sword.

“Okay!” I shout. “I’m sorry, alright? I – look – I’d never seen any before. I didn’t know it was your sister. I – It’s not like it would work out between us or anything! Too many barriers to cross. Yes, ma’am. Forbidden barriers. Besides, she was the one who was holding me!”

She just looks at me with utter, bored disdain, and then stabs her blade at the air in front of us.

I feel the hairs on my front paws go erect as the beam of piercing light emits from her blade’s tip and travels down a darkened hallway I didn’t even see in front of us. As it flies down the long passage, it lights row after row of torch sconces before finally settling on the indent of an old oaken door at the hallway’s end.

So it’s more than just an attack, I think.

The old rickety door creaks open, and the Elf warrior gives a final grunt of disgust.

“You will both proceed,” she says. “The Mistress has demanded only your presence, and no more.”

Something sticks in her voice. A sense of wounded ego, maybe?

At any rate, while Swiftrunner simply nods and trots on, I decide to take a moment to do – I don’t know – something that feels right for once.

That’s not impossible for me, right?

I stare up at the vexed Myrathellon, realizing too late that fluttering my little eyes probably isn’t going to cut it with her.

“Look,” I say. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to spook your sis. I didn’t mean to…y’know…unshackle your…well…yeah…anyway, sorry. I’m new at this Lightborn thing.”

When she says nothing at all I try to squeeze out a timid smile before giving up and following Swiftrunner down the lighted path towards – oh, who knows – destiny? That’s what a hero would say, right?

But as we clear the door, I hear the Elf girl’s final words come from behind.

“You,” she says quietly. “You’re really nothing like him at all, are you?”

And as I turn around, stunned by what sounds like genuine surprise in her voice, the door closes shut behind us.

“I am sure the Elves will forgive you your transgression, Little Brother,” Swiftrunner says beside me. “They oft say that curiosity kills cats. But not so with us!”

I give him a look that (I hope) communicates just how tired I am of – well, everything – before turning my attention to the chamber we’re now trapped in.

High ceilinged, covered in craggy stalactites dripping from the roof, this whole place could be a prehistoric site for all I know. And, looking into the rippling pool that dominates the chamber’s center, that’s probably not far off from the truth. Because if those murals are anything to be believed…

“This is where they started…” I murmur.

Swiftrunner turns to me abruptly.

“Little-Brother?”

I shake my head, coming out of whatever trance had just gripped me.

“Are you well?”

I can’t look at him. The tightness in my stomach is rising again. Only, this time, it doesn’t feel like it even belongs to me. The pain grows to the point where it could be at least a dozen stomachs all sizzling with fear, and I resist the urge to drop prone right here and now.

“Raziel?” Swiftrunner asks. “Razi-“

Somehow, I know it’s coming before we see it.

Because what the girl said was true. What I’ve been feeling in my heart was real.

I’ve felt it all before.

First – the sensation of raw, paralyzing fear that runs up my bones. Then a vibration that sends shockwaves through us both and causes a wave of ripples to hurtle through the pool. Next: a set of piercing, amber eyes, rising from its depths…

…attached to the head of a serpent, with a neck that stretches right up to the top of the chamber, with a tail that whips the radiant waters into a frenzy, and with a gargantuan body coated in sapphire scales that only just shows itself as the pool virtually disappears from our sight.

In its place now stands something that could sap the breath from even the laziest pooch. That could turn even the venerable mastiff running like a wimp back to kiss its master’s boots.

“By Lyca…” Swiftunner mutters through shaking teeth. “Is that…is that a dragon?”

The creature narrows its great amber eyes down at us, and a toothy smile breaks across its scaled face.

[Snoop]

Creature Identified: BRINE DRAGON

“You know what, Swifty?” I say through a gulp. “I think that’s exactly what it is…”