I’d never met my extended family.

My adoptive father had stayed away from going inland, and while I knew that he had a younger brother, that wasn’t something that my father liked to talk about. I’d tried to talk to my father about my mission a few times in the last week, but he’d always found some reason to change the subject or be somewhere else. There was a story there, but it was one that I knew for certain that my father didn’t want to visit.

“You’ll have to forgive me.” I glanced at my other two companions as I took the older man’s hand, neither of which had managed to recover from the announcement. At least I was just as in the dark as they seemed to be, though that didn’t feel like a good thing. “You seem to know more about me than I do about you.”

“Figures the fish lovin’…” Gaelun shook his head. “Bah, nevermind! We’ve got a job ta do and we best get started.” The gruff Dwarf kicked his mount and took off down the path the way we’d come. “Sooner you swimmers can git back to yer ship the happier I reckon you’ll be.”

I pulled my drake closer to Starna’s mount as the three of us followed after him. “Did you know this was who we were meeting?”

The brunette shook her head. “I talked to Fetter Hundo at the gate. We were supposed to meet the dig boss, but that was Shamon Corechaser.” She looked at our fast moving guide. “Maybe they sent Gaelun because they wanted to try to endear us to them? Have us see this as a family endeavor?”

“I doubt it.” I nodded back at Vin. “Probably has more to do with them deciding that they don’t want a Camadt in their city and hoping that we won’t take it out on our relative.” I sighed. “I didn’t know Garm had any family here. Not any this close anyway.”

“We’ll just have to see.” Starna pulled ahead to catch up with our guide, though his mount started speeding up. Somehow I doubted the large goat wanted to be anywhere near our large reptiles.

“Why are we going back down the mountain?” Vin yawned after he tried to accentuate his complaint. “There’s nothing down here but rocks! If we were going back down the mountain, why couldn’t you have met us there instead of making us ride all the way up here on these smelly, OW!”

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I chuckled as his mount had enough of his whining and nipped at my brother’s leg. The loose pants my brother was wearing would have easily been torn if the drake had really wanted to tear into him, as evidenced by the hole in his pants from their scuffle earlier. I was actually a little impressed that my brother was wearing a shirt and pants. With Camadt hide being as tough as dragon scales, but with short fur, most found clothes to be too hot for most occasions. While we were on the ship, he usually only wore a pair of shorts and nothing else.

Our guide either didn’t hear my brother’s complaining, which I doubted, or was choosing to ignore him. I wondered what bad blood there had to be between Garm and his family for us to receive this cold of a reception. It was something that I was going to have to ask my father about once we got back to the capital.

We didn’t have to ride for long before Gaelun stopped in front of a large round stone in the shape of a wheel that was easily ten feet in diameter. The cold Dwarf began rolling it to the side to reveal a cave.

And a pair of Dwarves.

The bearded guards were ready for a fight and already had their axes in their hands. Judging by the thick metal armor that both of them were wearing,this was probably the Dwarf equivalent of a town guard.

“Simmer down boys, these are the bookheads after that door.” Gaelun jerked his thumb in our direction. “Gotta git them through public access.”

It didn’t look like either of them were paying attention to our guide, instead they were focused completely on my brother. It wasn’t an uncommon sight. Most of the planet barely tolerated a Camadt, with a decent portion being openly hostile. I watched the guards hold their weapons tighter as we walked past them. While I would have expected this type of response if we had shown up unexpectedly, it felt like the guards weren’t expecting to see a Camadt. This mission was beginning to feel a lot less official the further into it we got and we were barely started.

There was a large stable to our right that had been carved out of the side of the tunnel. There were about a dozen mounts in the stalls, mostly Ibex, but there were a few drakes, a large wolf and a hog. While Starna and Vin were taking care of our mounts I looked over at the nervous guards.

“There are Dwarves that don’t ride goats?” I motioned at the other mounts.

“Nah.” The larger of the two guards spit on the wall of the tunnel. “A couple o’ Rangers came through here yesterday.” He looked in Vin’s direction. “Probably huntin’ big monsters down below.” His voice got lower as he chuckled. “Maybe they can get rid of the cat.”

I thought about correcting him, but the Dwarves hadn’t been very hospitable so far and getting into a fight would reflect poorly on Alessa. I forced a smile and waved at him. “Thanks for the info!” The words felt tainted as I said them.

I met up with Gaelun and the others and we started down the tunnel. This trip was getting less exciting by the minute.