If there’s one thing I know about elves, it’s that they’ll make bread out of absolutely anything. If you think you’ve found an ingredient elves won’t bake with, I’ll find you the recipe myself.
----------------------------------------
Dalin Larenok stood at the front of a group of the best and most powerful individuals Veor had to offer. Many were here because they wanted the money, some had been threatened, others had been ordered by royal decree by King Farshen himself.
None had any idea what was going on.
To be perfectly honest, Larenok himself didn't have much idea, but he knew that his sponsor was counting on him. Jair Welburne was the first person in years to be anything but a tedious waste of his time, and if he said to assemble the best and bring them to the appointed meeting place, that's what Larenok would do.
Welburne's attempts to recruit on the Ghost Moon had clearly not come to fruition — in fact, Larenok hadn't seen him since the moment he left. He could only hope that the boy had made it back safely and not gotten himself kidnapped or worse. The Ghost Moon was no place for children.
Larenok really shouldn't have let him go alone, but at the time he'd been so confident.
Well. Too late now.
Fortunately for the success of their mission, Larenok had taken the liberty of bringing in a few of his own ghostmoon contacts, based on his best guesses for what Welburne had in mind.
He'd also managed to arrange a brief audience with King Farshen, during which he'd arranged for Welburne's edict package to be signed and dispersed as well as setting up a proper appointment for flame-healing the day before Solaria.
Larenok desperately hoped that Welburne hadn't gotten himself killed. He'd burned a lot of his reputation and more than a few political favors to arrange all this. If it turned out to be for nothing, he'd be in an even worse position than he had been while working at that pointless academy.
Still, though, there was something about Welburne that just... clicked.
He couldn't put his finger on anything specific. By all logic, the kid should infuriate him. One of those who was handed opportunity on a silver platter, granted admission to a school he was nowhere near qualified for, falling behind and not even trying to keep up... taking everything he'd been given the chance to earn and treating it as only his due, as though other people wouldn't have killed for the opportunity he was squandering.
But even if Welburne was a typical brat of a child, he... it was hard to say, but he just seemed like more than that.
Welburne wasn't just a set of irritating traits, he had ambition and gumption. He was willing to take action, even action that seemed insane to those around him, and Larenok had to respect that.
Larenok sometimes wished he'd had that kind of courage at that age. Even if Welburne still needed some guidance to reach his full potential, at least he wasn't as vapidly pointless as the rest of the students.
If any of Larenok’s own children had displayed half as much ambition, he might have even considered them worth keeping around. He did briefly wonder if Welburne might have been one of his, which could explain the strange connectedness he felt to the boy, but his research on the matter had been inconclusive thus far.
None of which was relevant to the point at hand.
"This everyone?" He scanned the group, all grim-faced and armed to the utmost. "We're going to take a sandskimmer north from Teretho Oasis. When we arrive at the target location, be on your guard. We don't know the situation."
Nods of assent.
"Mages, keep alert for sandsharks. If anything gets close, send it running. I'll need three of you to help power the sandskimmer, who's best suited for external channeling?"
People shuffled about, calling out their qualifications or lack thereof. Larenok narrowed it down and pointed to three who nodded and took their positions.
The trip to the oasis was accomplished without issue. The trip to the draconis mountains took longer, but was interrupted only once as two of the mages united to drive away a hungry sandshark sniffing at their skiff.
They circled the mountain range as the sun began to set. Two mages set up illumination spells, one on the skimmer itself and the other a hovering orb above his head.
Larenok searched for any sign of Welburne and his darkmoon recruits, but saw nothing. He did see a large number of dragons flying about this way and that. Not all at once, but throughout the hours of approach he observed no fewer than seven dragons making at least thirty different flights. He'd never seen them so active.
That had to be a good sign. Unless they were too late.
They wouldn't be too late. Some part of him was simply convinced that Welburne was safe and unharmed. He didn't quite even register it as a question. It was deep certainty so central to his core that he wouldn't have been able to separate it from his awareness of his own survival.
Mount Ryenzo, he'd said. This was the part where he'd have to bring his best convincing skills to bear. Everyone was under the impression, from the partial information they'd been given, that they were here to hunt an upstart drakling who'd set his sights on the Teretho Oasis. But no one could have lived in Veor long and not recognized the name Ryenzo.
"There." Larenok pointed. "That cave on the far mountain, it leads inside."
The driver gave him a puzzled look. "That's Mount Ryenzo."
"Yes it is." Larenok smiled and gave him his best reassuring nod. "You won't be in any danger. Go on."
The sandskimmer slowly curved its path toward the foothills. Bare stone formed a deadly maze that loomed on either side of them as they came closer, but the driver knew his stuff. They slowed, but never lost momentum as he wound their way between ever-larger hills and spires toward the mountain itself.
By the time they arrived, night had fallen.
Larenok wanted desperately to set up a camp and not go inside, but this wasn't his job any more to manage.
"Kryr-Anarkin? Your turn."
Kryr-Anarkin, a leonis-reptile beastkin with a special sort of ocarina hung around his neck, was the go-to translator for emergency dragon encounters. He didn't live on Zelura permanently, but roamed through the moons and continents as opportunity arose.
Larenok considered his availability this particular Dark Night to have been pure providence. Praise Aelir and all that.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Announce that we are here and request audience with Ryenzo Draconis at her earliest convenience.”
The feline lizardkin nodded and raised his instrument to his lips. What followed was an echoing collection of shrieks, grunts, roars, and a lot of hissing.
Larenok whispered instructions to a few of the gathered fighters, and passed out sealed orders to several of the others.
A small green dragon only about five times as tall as the translator landed in the valley beyond with a crack like lightning. It leaned down and shrieked at the translator for several minutes, while the translator occasionally shrieked back. There was some roaring and hissing, but mainly shrieking this time.
Larenok wondered if there were any continents entirely free of dragons. They were more trouble than they were worth, really. Who thought it was a good idea to keep them around?
“Mercurios Atvexnir is offended at our procession and demands to know why we have come to slay his kin.”
“We’re looking for Ryenzo to talk. No need to mention slaying anything.”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
Kryr-Anarkin’s ears twitched. “We’ve come with a fully armed dragon-slaying raid party. It’s hard to pretend otherwise.”
“Just tell the creature we’re here to see Ryenzo. Does he really think a group like this would be enough to threaten her?”
Kryr-Anarkin’s tail bristled, but he gave a curt nod and turned back to growl at the dragon some more.
The dragon, for its part, appeared thoroughly bored with the proceedings.
“He wants to know if we are responsible for Ryenzo’s absence, or a part of the game she devised. Have we brought a clue for them?”
Larenok shook his head. “We haven’t seen her yet. How would we be responsible? What game? Also, what does he mean, absence?”
More growls and hissing. This went on for quite a while.
“The matriarch invited her entire family to the mountain last night for a special game she’d devised. She was very excited about sharing this activity with everyone, but did not divulge any of the details. However, when they arrived, there was neither a game nor a matriarch to be found. If it’s some kind of searching game, they don’t know what they’re supposed to be looking for.”
“So that’s why they’ve been flying about all over, trying to find some game of Ryenzo’s?”
“Or Ryenzo herself, yes.”
“Well, well, well.”
That was a bit of a conundrum. They’d gone all out to recruit this group of people, brought them together by any means—several of which were less than legal—and now the target of their visit was missing.
“Ask if there’s been any other visitors? We’re looking for a friend of ours as well.”
The dragon found this question utterly uninteresting. It responded in two quick snorted growls and needed to be prompted by Kryr-Anarkin before it would say anything further. It kept glancing up at the dark silhouette of the mountains against the sky, as though wishing it could be off flying still.
“No one has been seen approaching or entering the mountains for days.”
Larenok frowned. Where are you, Welburne? He could do a lot, but even he could only hold this group together for so long. Without a target, they were liable to demand their pay and go without doing anything more.
“Tell him we’d like to search inside the mountain anyway.”
Maybe they could at least salvage something from this pointless trip.
Whenever he finally deigned to show up, Welburne had some serious explaining to do.
----------------------------------------
Of all the places he had been and all the things he'd done in his long and storied career, exploring the inside of a dragon's volcano was not one Larenok had imagined he would be doing. Much less at the behest of a student.
However, now he was actually here doing it, he found the undertaking surprisingly enjoyable. He led the group – well, directed from the center; he wouldn't be walking in the forefront into a dragon’s lair—up the lower slopes of the mountain and into the gaping opening of the lowest accessible cavern.
Mount Ryenzo’s entrance hall was built to be grandiose on a draconic scale. Therefore, to a mere human, the entire thing looked overwhelmingly magnificent. The entire Mageblade Institute, all its walls and outbuildings included, could have fit within just this hall.
Each section of the wall was a raised panel depicting the great Ryenzo Draconis in postures of struggle, triumph, or achievement.
The first showed her as a much younger dragon, standing atop an erupting volcano with a larger and clearly male dragon lying dead at her feet as magma sprayed gloriously behind her. Beside it another panel showed her in flight, a dozen of her kin in tight formation behind her, as they flew toward a much less lovingly depicted flight of dragons in opposition.
After that followed many scenes of battle, nearly all against other dragons. Almost as many scenes of accumulated treasures, with no display of where she’d taken them from, just smug self-portraits holding up or sitting on or coiled around a gemstone or a statue or a pile of gold.
Only one panel showed a human city, and it was in the process of being melted into slag. The running humans were scaled down to less than the size of Larenok’s hand, as Ryenzo and two of her frequent allies stomped and burned and breathed out death.
Other pictures showed her coiled proudly around a collection of eggs so clearly and carefully rendered that each seemed to have its own personality despite being just a round lump of stone. Each egg’s hatching received its own panel between the more prominent scenes of war and conquest, carved with symbols around it that Larenok assumed must be draconic. Probably the creatures’ name, or something.
One of these draklings was shown struggling against the ocean, a great twisted vine coiled around its body so tightly it visibly dug into its hide as it clawed helplessly at the sand, its broken egg prominent in the foreground while Ryenzo stood in the distance, a clear expression of helpless fury on her face as she stood by.
Countless such scenes, from battle to birth, life to death. All worked on an almost unimaginable scale, but with such detail that even a tiny human like Larenok could find no flaws. The smallest of the depicted eggs was twice his height, and yet it was traced with carved veins so small and intricate he could hardly have fit his fingernail into them.
Larenok had never felt so small, nor been so in awe of what could be created.
Sure, people with stone shaping powers did magnificent things all the time, but even the best of those didn't come close to this. If he didn't know better, he'd say that the entire thing had been carved by hand over the course of thousands of years. The clarity and intricacy of the designs were such that he could not imagine them having taken any less than centuries.
He could have stood for a month just staring. If there were any way to tear these free of their carved wall homes and take them away with him, he would have done so without hesitation or regret.
And this was just the entry hall.
After a half hour of walking, they crossed through the hall and into the inner tunnels. Flame-melted obsidian formed massive twisting passages through the mountain's heart, slopes upward and down torn with gouges from claws and scraped by wings.
The places Ryenzo traversed regularly could be seen by the lack of dust accumulation and an absence of fallen stone. Some of the less traveled passages looked downright neglected, one had all but collapsed.
At this point, Larenok had fully lost track of what they were supposed to be looking for. His inclination toward avarice had fully taken over as soon as he’d recognized scenes of accumulating treasure from the entry hall.
Perhaps it was a good thing he’d brought so many allies after all.
They forged further and further in, and no one tried to stop them. Whether the other dragons were fully distracted by Ryenzo’s promised game, or simply assumed that Ryenzo’s presence and reputation would be sufficient to hold off any potential thieves, none of her relatives bothered to check in on the group of humans.
It was as though once they entered the tunnels, they were no longer their problem and fully Ryenzo’s jurisdiction.
A large part of Larenok hoped that Ryenzo never did show up. If they could say they had searched the entire place and found no sign of her, then he could write the whole affair off as some kind of excessive vanity project on Welburne's part and rest satisfied that he had done his job to the full.
When they found the first treasure room, any thoughts of slaying the dragon were replaced by calculation.
Larenok generally kept his soulspace about half full, which was a significant bit larger than the average normal person had access to, but still gave him enough space to hold any number of valuables should the opportunity arise.
Now that the opportunity had arisen, he found himself wishing for the first time that he had advanced his class further along its intended route. He'd always held out hope in the back of his mind that some special evolution would come along, some option he hadn't considered, that this wasn't a dead-end.
For the first time, he found himself running through the advancement requirements in his head, calculating how quickly he could get them accomplished.
Squire was a combat support class, intended to be a backup fighter if necessary, but primarily a supplier. The soulspace of the squire was significantly gentler on items than the average soulspace, to the point where it could even hold food for a day or two. Most people’s soulspace would be worse than nothing for any perishables, but Larenok's was a step above even the most carefully curated.
Since his class was never a point of pride for him, this information was shared with no one. He’d never shared how much he could actually store, and he liked it that way. If people thought you were already fully equipped, if they thought they knew your limits, that meant you had the advantage.
Any thought of keeping around his sentimental storage and emergency component stores fled the moment he saw just what kind of extravagant treasure was up for grabs here.
He had to hand it to Ryenzo, every single item here was too large to fit in a standard soulspace. She'd probably had problems with people stealing in the past, and ensured that everything she possessed was too large to be easily pilfered.
That, or she’d already been robbed enough times only the best was left.
The size wouldn’t prevent anyone from physically picking up and carrying off Ryenzo’s hoard by the chestload, but it would take them several trips to clear even a fraction of them.
Every sound, he whipped his head up and searched for any sign of the dragon. Every time, it was only wind rushing through the tunnels.
He didn’t trust the silence. There was no reason this should be as easy as it looked like it was going to be.
"Not to question our glorious leader," said a man in tones very much questioning, "but I was under the impression we’d come here to slay a dragon, not rob one? An enraged dragon, I have heard, is significantly more difficult to fight than one without any reason to hate you."
"This particular dragon seems to be hiding," Larenok said. "Perhaps we need to lure it out.”
“I did not sign up to fight an angry dragon," put in one woman, raising her hand and shoving her way toward his space in the center of the group. “Bad enough to be fighting in tunnels. I say we go outside and wait for it.”
“Go on, then,” said a younger man, barely glancing at the argument, eyes only for the piles of valuables. “More for us.”
With lines drawn, the arguing began. The group rapidly divided between those who thought robbing the dragon was a good idea, and those who found it decidedly stupid.
The latter group insisted on searching the rest of the mountain first at a minimum, while the former group paid no attention to such considerations and began helping themselves to whatever artistic creations of gold and jewels and magic they could carry.
Larenok, short of a few cursory attempts at uniting the group, left them to it. He’d heard terrible things about groups that split themselves up inside of dangerous places like dungeons, but there was only one Ryenzo. How dangerous could it be?
More importantly, just how many of these massive gems could he squeeze into his soulspace?
----------------------------------------