The mage light glowed soft and blue on the walls of the tunnel casting dancing shadows and creating multiple after images. It reflected dazzlingly off the shiny facets of the multi-colored stones that occasionally protruded from the walls of the narrow passageway. But even the vagrancy and unpredictability of such light could not find a way to reveal the face of the hooded figure, carefully and silently making its way in the otherwise total darkness. The staff that bore at it’s upper tip, the source of the glow seemed ever carefully placed, just behind and to the right of the unseen walker so as to insure no stray beam would reveal the features beneath the cloak. The air was damp and cool with the smell and stillness of long disuse. It seemed to silently complain as it was swept into unfamiliar places by the movement of the robe and dark wooden staff which strangely made no noise upon the cold stone floor in its passing. Only when the figure at last stopped before a massive stone door, did it pull back the hood, revealing the face of a beautiful raven haired young woman. Her face took on a strange look of concentration as she studied the runes and markings on the door, pausing to carefully run her fingers over the symbols as well as her eyes. She had walked without hesitation past an untold wealth in diamonds and precious gems without even seeming to notice them to reach this door. What lay on the other side must be valuable indeed. Looking only once backwards up the tunnel she again faced the door and a strange word formed on her lips. Though not spoken loudly, it seemed to explode from her throat with a silent crackling of power.
“Stenr risa!”
Nothing seemed to happen for several seconds as the first words spoken in this place in a thousand years hung like a promise in of spring in the chill winter’s air. Then came an almost inaudible crack and a grinding vibration that was felt more than heard as the great door slid upward into the ceiling. Those that had made it would be pleased that it had worked so well after so much time, she thought as she stepped gracefully through the opening and began descending the ornately carved steps that spiraled down into a greater darkness. It would be useless to try and hold the door behind her open with a spell, as well as a waste of magical power. It would close again in just three hours, not to open for another thousand years. She picked up her pace. If the legends were true, the stone would not be far. The test ahead was not of speed but of wit. For it is not easy to out riddle a dragon, even a sleeping one.
Up ahead the glow of her staff revealed the end of the great staircase and the beam began losing the walls as the cavern below opened up into a vast chamber. She dialed the light up to maximum, and though she held it somewhat behind her, her own eyes recoiled from the reflection of the sudden brilliance as the piercing white light that flew from the top of her staff. There at the bottom of the enormous circular room wrapped in the descending stair case on which she stood, lay the sleeping dragon, the guardian of the stone. She swallowed her fear as she had been trained to do as a child. Her feet and swirling robe made no discernible noise as she fairly flew down the wide steps of the staircase. She felt as if she was holding her breath, but of course she was not. The staircase was far too long and her pace too swift for that. The steady silent rise and fall of her chest, however, betrayed no unnecessary sound and had been calculated to meet the requirements of a hasty decent. Nonetheless, she arrived at the bottom of the stairs with a pounding in her chest and a feeling of lightheartedness she had not expected. Her nerves were shaken even more as she stepped over a pile of badly burned and clothing covering the dried and blackened bones of one of her predecessors. She wondered which one it was. She had learned all of their names, and studied all the techniques they intended to try to circumvent the dragon. Obviously their strategies had been flawed and they had failed. Coming back to herself she cleared her mind and tried to focus. She would only have one chance to get this right, or she too would end up yet another sad story and a permanent fixture of the floor of this cavern. She wondered if her clothing would be recognizable in a thousand years.
Finishing her silent journey across the floor and standing at last, directly in front of the dragons enormous snout, her feet seemed the last part of her to get the message and she almost stumbled as she came to a halt. She felt the hem of her robe swish softly against the floor and her heart almost stopped.
“It just won’t due to fall over your own feet now, Terenia” she thought to herself. “You’ve come to far!”
The beast did move, and slowly again, she began to breathe. The time had come.
“Slytha un Draum” she said as softly as she could, but loudly enough to ensure the spell would function. “Sleep and Dream please!” she though to herself, “Or I’m dead already”
Only a momentary twitch of the three foot wide eyelids conveyed the message that she would breathe yet a little longer as the simple spell took hold. She felt her knees buckle just a bit at the realization that her ridiculous fool-hardy plan had actually worked. Such a simple spell, often used on over tired children by desperate mothers with almost no craft of magic in them at all. Yet the utterance of any other words spoken aloud in this place would certainly have woken Maazmurn and his flame. She had been right! She dared not, however waste time, and she cursed herself silently for this indulgence. She turned her attention to the dragons outstretched front claws, fully twenty yards away. They were pressed together tighter than any vise and she knew that no force of magic could move them apart except the dragon himself. Between the dragon’s claws was her prize. This next bit would be the hard part.
She moved to stand in a new place, positioning herself on the far side of the prize, just inches from the glistening front black talons and looked back down the forearms at the sleeping head of the dragon. Maazmurn looked, she thought, strangely like a cat that had fallen asleep while playing with a recent catch. Head down and paws reflexively still together holding fast to some poor mouse that might still lay alive between them. Knowing full well, that should the cat wake hungry, his remaining minutes would end. She felt the heavy ticking of the passing of the seconds left to her before the great door up and behind her irrevocably closed and opened her mind to the dreamer.
She had practiced on lizards and alligators, as well as other animals, putting them to sleep with the simple spell then delving into their dreaming minds. Simple creatures with monochromatic dreams. A reptilian way of thought was what she had thought to prepare herself for, but nothing she had seen in their minds prepared her for the explosion of turbulent color and cacophony of sound in Maazmurn’s mind.
The wind howled ferociously and it took her many seconds to figure out why the scenery was moving past so quickly. He was flying! She could feel his glee and was almost caught up in the thrill of the moment as together as his mental stow-away they dipped and twirled. Suddenly they fell like a stone and she felt his claws tear into the flesh of a huge deer that desperately tried to dodge away from the outstretched talons and death from above. She forced herself to stay fully attentive as his jaws snapped through the beast’s backbone and blood coursed over his fangs and out of his jaws spilling onto the warm spring earth. She could not afford miss anything that would give her the chance to motivate him to unclench his real claws back in the cave.
Maazmurn devoured both halves of the buck in two large gulps then surprised her by saying,
“I really should thank you, unseen magician. I enjoyed that very much!”
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Stunned at how quickly she had been discovered, she knew it was useless to remain silent.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it Maazmurn.” she said trying to convey a tone of confidence rather than the terrified mental scream she found building inside her telepathic projection. Calmly she asked,
“What would you like to do next?”
“I don’t know” he replied. “ How much time do I have before I wake up, do you think?”
She was somewhat surprised at the question. She had thought that once the dragon became aware that he was dreaming, he would be able to wake up at will, but it seemed the sleep spell still held him. Not willing to give away too much, she cautiously answered.
“I really don’t know, I’ve never used this spell on anyone so magnificent and magical as you. It could be years!”
“Years, perhaps.” he replied. “However, I believe you must be working with a much shorter time-frame. That door at the top of this vault was made and set with a magic older and more powerful than mine. I would guess we only have slightly over a couple of hours at best” he finished, taking to the air again with an incredible lunging jump that gave the dragon the several seconds he needed to unfurl his wings, before crashing back to earth. The giant leathery flaps beat the air briskly as they gained altitude. Her mental image kept pace and she found herself flying alongside. They soon leveled off.
“It was a good idea, simplistically brilliant in fact, except for one thing” he said with a smile, the blood still staining his fangs from the deer kill a strange visual paradox to the calmness of his voice. “I haven’t dreamed in twenty thousand years.”
One of her teachers had believed that dragons might not be able to dream at all and did not sleep as other creatures. He had speculated that the vast amounts of time they could rest between wakings seemed to indicate more of a type of suspended animation, interrupted only with short periods of violence and death. Terenia and the other members of the order had hoped he was wrong. Now it seemed that she would pay for her mistake. This dragon had been woken out of immortal hibernation and straight into a brightly lit, colorful dream. It was if she had struck a match on the surface of its subconscious. No wonder it had spotted her immediately.
“It’s a pity” replied Terenia, “You have a very vivid dream life and you are interesting company”
The dragon did not answer that but suddenly banked hard left and picked up the pace, his wings becoming almost a blur as he drove himself fiercely toward a distant mountain peak, aglow with the golden red light of the suddenly setting sun. In this dream world, it seemed, the dragon could control the rate at which time passed. It was suddenly eerily dark and as the stars began twinkling with a cold distant light. There was no moon. The dragon gouted a huge plume of flame, briefly illuminating the dark waters of a lake over which they flew.
“Where are we now?” asked Terenia, the darkness of the night sky reminding her far too much of the darkened cavern and the glistening diamonds she had passed on her way to this meeting.
“This is the place I lived before I was forced to take the oath that binds me to guard the stone” he said gruffly as they landed in a large clearing surrounded by huge and ancient trees. “Here I will visit with she who was my wife. Step back out of sight into the trees invisible magician, I do not know if she will see or smell you in this dream, but this part of my dream, I will not share with you.”
Terenia complied, taking the opportunity to ease from the mental dream link and survey the chamber. The dragon had not opened his claws, even in the slightest, from around the prize she sought. Even with the killing of the deer and the flying, his grip was secure. Though, like a dog in its sleep she could see slight twitching and movements of his facial muscles and legs. She thought about easing away and making a run for the door, but was not sure if the sleep spell would last once she left the dragon’s side. So primitive was the sleep spell that it required almost constant proximity of the spell caster with the one on who it was cast. She didn’t think she would make it across the cavern, especially if the dragon was interrupted in the middle of his date. Of course, if she could just get her hand upon the stone he guarded, everything would be different. Time was almost half gone. She decided that she was going to have to take some chances. As gently as possible she peeked back into the dragon’s dream, coming slowly out from behind the ancient trees.
The two dragons lay entwined in sleep, but all around the ground was torn and slashed by savage markings of an active night. The sun was already up and Terina thought it felt like about 10:00 a.m. Her approach, quiet as it was caused the two of them to uncoil hastily and the slightly smaller female to almost instantly take flight.
“She goes to bear my young, alone” The dragon said with a great sadness. “But, for dream of the memory of this night, you again have my thanks” he said noticing the torn up earth and broken tree limbs and looking somewhat embarrassed.
Terenia felt herself starting to blush slightly, but decided to stick to business.
“Why did you give all this up? Your family and freedom to sit in a dark hole?” she asked with a tinge of anger creeping into her voice.
“I did this FOR them! To ensure the future of the whole dragon race. For my children. My arrangement with the dark lord dictated the terms. Promises were made, assurances given”
“Did you really think he would keep up his side of the bargain, you fool? Hissed Terenia.
“He promised he would protect the race of dragons from MEN!” roared back the dragon, his friendly demeanor vanishing like a ice chip in a blazing furnace. “This stone ensures that your magic and your technology will never prevail against the dragons in our place as rightful rulers of this world”
“He couldn’t do it!” she retorted. “It took a little longer but we developed a summoning charm several thousand years ago that pulled that stone you thought you were guarding right out between your fingers. We divided the stone into grains of sand and carried them to the far corners of the world, using its power to capture and enslave your kind. “Your children grind grain pulling the mill wheel with chains made with one grain of that stone. My own little daughter rides a young dragon as a plaything. It is unfortunate sometimes how children can be so cruel to animals. The only reason I have come into this dark pit is to show you mercy by giving you this last good dream and then killing you!”
“No!” The dragon roared, and even in the dreamworld Terenia could feel the blazing heat of its breath casting about as it tried to burn her unreachable phantom.
“When you wake, you will find everything I have said is true!” She replied calmly, severing the mental link and releasing the sleep spell in one mental yank.
The dragons yellow eyes snapped open and his head shot forward on his long serpentine neck toward the end of his claws,and that which he guarded. His eyes drawn toward the gleaming sparkling fire at the end of her staff. But just before he inhaled for the breath he would use to incinerate her on the spot, he could not resist the impulse to open his claws to see if the amulet she had boasted of as stolen was there. It was. It was also then that she struck, reaching in with her mind and drawing the stone to herself. Taking into herself the power it possessed to control all dragons. A single word exploded from her lips.
“Deyja!”
The dragon’s heart that had beat for twenty thousand years exploded in his chest. Valiantly he tried to aim his thrashing dying body so as to crush or maim the mage, who moved like a dancer under his flailing legs and tail until he finally shuddered to a complete stop. The lights of his yellow eyes went slowly dim, but the magician did not wait for them to go dark before fleeing hurriedly up the spiral steps and through the heavy stone door. Her breathing loud and ragged as she sucked in huge lungfuls of air as she climbed. Her feet banging out an accelerating crescendo as she ran loud and hard . Looking behind her only a few yards back as she sprinted up the tunnel she saw the door at last slam shut, sealing away the still cooling corpse of the dragon that had stood guard for these many years. Only then did she slow and allow her tortured lungs to catch up with her fleeing body. She leaned heavily against the wall, feeling the heavy toll of her sprint to freedom. The dragonstone pulsed with power as she felt through it's connection the way it began to seek out and subjugate the dragons nearby, forcing them into submission.
Later that day as she emerged from the cave in the side of the mountain she found several of the dragons already gathered. Everything was different as mankind's former rulers, groveled before her, heads bowed low in service as the power of the stone she now claimed and controlled was felt. They, that once ruled the land and the air would be, now, no longer rule by unchecked fang and claw. She could feel their burning anger as it fought against the power of the stone, but at least for now, its power over them was unchallengeable. It had been a thousand years since the stone had been used to control them, but it seemed more than up to the task. At least for now