It was in darkness that we awoke. I could barely see anything, but a faint light was there, then some grunting sounds, odd and strained. My heart skipped, was something upon us? My eyes came to know the dim light and I saw Brad sitting far off the campsite, his back to us. He was apparently brushing himself. I relaxed. Poor crolachans. Their fur required extensive attention. Daily they groomed each other, especially on the ships. The crolachan members of the crew would take care of the frowst and parasites in their coat. Here, with no kinmen around, he had to do as well as he could alone.
I dipped below the blanket of sleep again only to be awoken by Brad. It was time to rise. After a quick breakfast, we prepared to continue our trek on the almost even floor of the tunnel. I soon noticed the rising temperature, it was a dry heat, so our sweating was not in vain. My thick leather coat kept me more than warm and I opened it up to get some fresh air when I remembered my duty.
Without throwing a glance into my spellbook, I tried to remember the formulae necessary. Soon enough, a tiny sphere of mist formed at my staff’s tip. Cool air flowed out from this point and soon, all the other members of the group, save for Chrysita, had gathered close to me. We had been walking for quite a while when we came upon the first remarkable feature of this tunnel: a chamber.
It was roughly fifty feet high and seventy feet in diameter. Apart from our entrance it had two more openings: a tunnel straight ahead leading further down, and another ascending tunnel just above ours, forming a sort of vertical fork in the tunnel-system. It was roughly thirty feet to the ledge of this second tunnel. After we had arrived in the centre of the chamber to orient ourselves, the Professor joyfully declared “This will be the perfect place to take more measurements!”
The Professor, Anne-Liese and I got to our routine, while Brad tried his best to not complain about the excessive heat. He had it tougher than we did, thanks to his coat. In the northern sea’s breeze, he might have an advantage, but here it made him almost pitiable.
We were done in record time and I quickly took several deep gulps from my waterskin, only to realize it was already empty. “How much hotter will it get?” I could not resist asking and hoped I sounded not like a whining old lady.
“I do think very much so. I can hear the song of fire and stone; it is so close here it feels as if I could lay my ears to the walls and reach through.”
At this description I imagined stone so hot it would burn our soles and even soften until we sank in as on ice just not thick enough to carry our weight. I tried to guide my thoughts away by turning our eyes upwards to the ledge above us.
The Professor gauged the height he had to climb. “Up there we might find other chambers of the smaller flames that went extinct along Mount Proxilus.” He turned back to the descending tunnel. “Then down there might be the large central chamber.” He contemplated for a short while. “Let us ascend first, finding another way out might be beneficial.”
I breathed easily in knowing that the heat I had to hold at bay would experience even just slight relief. As easily as in the central shaft, Professor Scutolith summoned an entire flight of stairs with a single slap of his hand to the stone wall. With Chrysita again at the head, we ascended up the tunnel.
I did not get to enjoy any drop in heat before we turned the first and saw ourselves eye to eye with the most fateful of our encounters.
Crysita’s bright beam of light revealed ahead not a tunnel, but something that seemed more like a bubble-like pouch, where it fell upon a wall of shimmering coppery scales lying there in a depression just before us. The body itself was at least seven feet in height merely resting on the ground and rose and ebbed with a breath that spoke of calmness but awareness. We all froze in surprise, someone, I do not recall who, brought forth a “What in the wo...” before a massive, wedge-shaped head rose from behind the wall of scales and pointed our way. Scaly eyelids opened and revealed two eyes like incandescent rubies, staring at us.
We had stumbled into the lair of a dragon.
In my panic, I had dropped the cold spell from my mind, hot air was choking my body while the blood in my veins was frozen solid.
“Tunnelwyrm!” The Professor said in a hushed voice. “Slowly back away!” Then he began to do so and we followed. The dragon stood up. I counted at least six legs sprouting from its long, serpentine body but no wings like in the myths I had heard. As it stood up, I saw what it had coiled around: a clutch of eggs, three or four, with shells like speckled red sandstone, resting on what seemed powdered volcanic rock. The Dragon took a single step towards us and a pressure and strain ran through the walls around us as if the rock itself was trying to run away from a mother’s wrath. A hiss emanated from the dragon’s maw as it slowly came towards us.
We backed away slowly, trying to show that we mean no harm. The dragon seemed to eye us with something besides scorn. I could almost see the strike that was coming a moment before the head shot forwards towards the largest member of the group: Chrysita.
Like a pebble, the dragon picked up the construct of rock and crystal and squeezed it between its beak-like maw before dropping it carelessly and directing its gaze towards the fleshier members of the group.
“RUN!” The Professor bolted past us faster than any man I had ever seen. I took after him and so did the others.
We made it around the bend and began quickly hopping down the stone steps protruding from the wall, but just as I was about to reach the ground, the copper-plated body of the dragon flowed down from the ledge, awaiting us at the bottom, blocking the path we had come from. The maw opened, ready to swallow all four of us in a single scooping motion, but a huge, flying chunk of rock struck down onto the skull. With a loud THUD, the dragon's skull hit the cavern floor, coming to a short, confused rest. An assortment of boulders and crystals rolled over the rock, flinging splinters and chips in all directions, accompanied by the sound of breaking wood and glass. Chrysita had picked up after the group and come flying from the ledge, granting us a few more seconds of time to run. We bolted towards the still free, descending tunnel.
Chrysita too got up with a breath-taking quickness. She with her much longer legs was able to quickly catch up to us in the magma tunnel leading down further into the bowels of Mount Proxilus. Heat blew our way ever more intense and the only thing keeping us cool was the sweat of fear that pooled on our skin every time the dragon roared from behind as it was chasing us.
The wyrm’s many stomping feet created a rhythmic sort of rolling rumbling, constantly getting closer with worrying speed.Meanwhile, our shoes started to sizzle every time they hit the hard rock. The beast was only fifty feet behind us and gaining by the moment.
“We can’t shake it!” Brad screamed. He had been considerably in the front of us and would need not worry to escape while the beast was busy with the slower morsels of food. “Professor, do something!”
I threw a glance back. The longer we ran, the less time we had to act. I was searching for a formula. Maybe a wedge from the floor to make it trip? Can a creature with this many legs even trip? It was Anne-Liese who stopped in her tracks. She reached for a thin, long glass vial closed with a waxed cork and with a swift motion dashed it to the ground just a few feet in front of her.
Fizzling and spraying, yellowish smoke shot up into the air, then formed to thick clouds and swaths, carried upwards by ascending hot air. As the smoke enveloped the wyrm, hissing, roaring and coughing was heard. The wyrm had stopped.
Anne-Liese whirled around and ran back towards the group. “UNCLE! NOW!”
Professor Scutolith halted his steps and faced the beast. He eyed the ground for only a moment, then he rammed his staff into it. Like a chisel of gods, it split the stone, a tear running up the tunnel and opening up beneath the beast. A few of the wyrm's many legs slipped in and got stuck. The Professor turned back around and continued his run.
I allowed myself to waste my breath on a question worrying me greatly. “Where to? Our way back is blocked!”
“There might be a fork ahead!”
I decided to put my faith in the Professor and speed up my pace. We managed to gain more than a few hundred feet between us and the dragon before I heard a thundering roar of pain. I threw a look back and what I saw made my heart sink low. A red glow emanated from the crack in the floor, spilling forth and growing stronger by the moment, trickling down the tunnel.
“MAGMA!”
The Professor looked back now too and his reaction did not inspire any hope in me. A cracking sound shot down through the rock and up through my legs and spine into my neck grasping around my head with chilling tendrils. The small trickle turned into a spring of fire and heat.
The Professor stopped dead in his tracks and the rest of the group did too. “Run! Find a way back up through the other tunnels!” He put his staff to the ground, sombre, and concentrated. Brad and Anne-Liese were already following his instructions, but I could not, merely look in awe as this man stood in the face of a wall of molten rock shooting down towards him. “Run boy! The others will rely on your gift, I know you can get them back out!”
I wanted to say something, but the thundering of magma coming down towards us drowned out even the mere thought of words.
The Professor shot his hand forward and at this singular gesture – no incantation, no concentration, no calculations or glances into his spellbook – the magma stopped, mere feet away from us.
A standing current of magma was before the Professor, sending immeasurable heat our way. He looked back once again. “RUN BOY! MY FLUX WON’T LAST FOREVER!”
But I decided not to listen. Formulas already ran through my head faster than during any exam I had ever taken. I took my own flux powder and broadened my stance. Holding out my staff before me and focussing on the molten wall through the crystal ball, I once again summoned forth cold air, in a concentrated stream towards the wall.
Crackling steam rose from the magma where my stream of air hit the standing current. I pushed as much power as I could through my mind, my veins of power, dared not to spare a single fibre in my body. When my flux pouch had been emptied, I dared to look upon my work.
Uniform black stone like ice stood in the tunnel, still radiating heat yet frozen in its movement. My veins felt as if someone had pressed hot sand through them, but I was still alive, and so was the Professor.
“Clever, boy, now run!”
We hurried down the tunnel, seeing the light of the others’ light vials in the distance coming closer as they waited for us.
Before even properly arriving and without slowing down, the Professor yelled ahead. “Run, we must find a way out quickly!” But they did not heed. They waited for us on what seemed to be an even floor. They had reached another chamber.
The Professor and I arrived in it and beheld this much larger chamber. It was at least one hundred feet high at its apex, where the arcing walls met in a blunt point, and around three- or four-hundred feet wide.
“There are no exits here.” Anne-Liese informed us before I could look for any. “We are trapped.”
The darkness settled on my shoulders like a heavy mantle. I turned round to the tunnel. The heat rose to my head, only now did I notice just how soaked my clothes were. I thought about conjuring cool air again, but my mind gave up. My veins still felt sore from my desperate exertion, as if any further casting of spells would flood my body with arcane flame.
Exhausted, sore, thirsting for breath, I let myself fall to the ground in this seemingly endless pocket of darkness.
