NOVEL NEXT Chapter 20: twirled
Lily twirled her hair. "Well, yeah, but even though his power was unmatchable, Chao was still just one dragon. While he attacked the main keep, everyone else ran. Most of the elves escaped, only to be captured by orcs from the Blood Tribes over time. It was a few days before Chao started actually attacking the rest of the city and chasing everyone away. The good stuff was either taken by Chao for his hoard, taken by the elves who escaped, or is hidden in places no one ever found—neither Chao nor thieves over the years. I doubt I can find them."
"Wait," Leo said, abandoning his lazy tending of the fire and sitting up. "So, everyone who had a chance to leave took the cool magical stuff, right?"
Lily nodded.
"And Chao attacked the main keep by surprise, right? But nowhere else?"
Lily nodded again, but her eyes started to widen.
"The floor of the main keep was intact! Chao didn't destroy it!" Leo smacked his fist into his other palm.
"That's true!" Lily said, raising one hand to her mouth. "There might be equipment remaining in the basement of the grand keep, before the entrance to the undercity!"
"Exactly. I think the route there is actually the place where we can gear up—it's our best bet," Leo said. "Alright, it's been the craziest day ever—let's get some sleep, and tomorrow we can raid the keep."
"I don't mean to cause problems, but I'm hungry," Hugh said.
Leo was starved himself—he had last eaten over a day ago. And, if he was being honest, his 'campfire-seared deer' recipe left a lot to be desired in both the taste and calorie department. They needed a food source.
Leo thought for a moment. "Well, we also need experience, and there were two monster birds outside… feel like chicken, Hugh?"
Hugh bared his teeth in a grin.
***
Life is relative, Leo thought to himself as he woke. He stood and stretched, feeling full and rested for the first time in three days. Breakfast would be warmed monster-bird meat—surprisingly tasty cooked over a campfire by Lily—and his sleep had been on a cold stone floor, but warmth and security alone had been a huge improvement.
And Leo no longer had any wounds, which was itself a huge improvement. He sighed contentedly.
Hugh also stood and then did his cat stretch, his front legs out in front of him and his back low. "Things do look better with a belly full of meat."
"Men," Lily said with a smile as she stood and stirred the embers of their campfire. She speared a chunk of monster-bird with her dagger, then held it over to the fire. Once it had cooked, she passed it over to Leo.
Leo took it and bit in—it was extremely tough, but otherwise tasted like chicken to him. After over seventy hours with only a few chunks of burned deer and even after last night's monster-chicken feast, it was still a little slice of heaven. And it took far less food for Leo's new body to feel full than his old body, an advantage when he was involuntarily roughing it.
Hugh ate far more than the other two put together. After Lily had cut and warmed the chunks for the two of them, Hugh just grabbed the cooked carcass with his forelegs and started ripping huge chunks out of it. Leo noted that the dragon's dentation was similar to a dog's except that the teeth were a touch closer together and he saw molars in the back—an odd combination of teeth, but it meant that Hugh was probably technically omnivorous and could definitely chew.
Could—but didn't. He tore chunks off and swallowed them whole, devouring the entire bird in an orgy of pleased grunts and slurps in about the time it took Leo and Lily to eat their singular small pieces.
Just pushing the general vibe, Hugh let out a giant belch afterward. Leo laughed, feeling as content as he had on this world.
Even Lily smiled, although Leo suspected she wasn't as amused by the boyish behavior as Leo was.
"Alright," Leo said, slowly getting to his feet. "Let's go."
Hugh went over and dragged the giant pile of broken furniture away from the door, and the three of them walked out into the cold morning air and watery light of the palace courtyard. It was made even colder by Leo's lack of shirt, and Leo was suddenly conscious of the goosebumps all across his thin chest. Lily shivered in the shredded remains of her dress.
They crossed and entered the giant, shattered central keep.
Leo took a look around, since it was the first time he'd entered. The floor, up against the walls, was covered in random rubble, but the vast majority of the interior was entirely hollowed out. Leo caught a glint of silver from the rubble near the outside of the wall. He walked over as Lily and Hugh were looking around and picked a small silver coin out of the pile. One side had a tree and the other the picture of a feminine face etched into it.
"What've you got?" Hugh asked.
Leo held the coin up as Hugh and Lily walked over.
"A silver coin from the reign of Jynellae 'Mousemaster,'" Lily said in Middle Averian, and then switched to High Averian before continuing. "In the tone of teaching; Jynellae 'Mousemaster,' disgraceful, unworthy, ruled prior to the last king. Her reign was over three hundred years; peaceful, decadent, unwise. She bankrupted the kingdom with parties and gifts to her paramours, foolish frivolities."
Lily switched back to Middle Averian. "The Blood Tribes' first attacks occurred at the end of her reign, and she let numerous border forts and cities fall before she gave any money to defense—a defense then conducted by generals raised to the position from nobles she'd favored who had never been in so much as a skirmish. No one considered the attacks important until Kelethain fell."
Leo nodded, even though he didn't know what most of those names referred to—he got the gist.
But he also had more immediate concerns. "I see a glint of copper there. I think it's another coin."
Hugh pushed some of the rubble aside and pulled the coin out, held carefully between two claws. "Yeah."
"I know you said dragons abandoning their lairs doesn't happen, Hugh," Leo said. "Despite that, I think your dad quickly left with his hoard. This looks like a rush job."
"We should look for any coins or items he left!" Hugh said.
The three of them did a quick scan of the room. After about a quarter-hour, they had collected three gold, seven silver, and eleven copper coins, as well as a bronze knife inlaid with silver and a single bronze dragon scale the size of a tower shield.
Chao was a monster, Leo thought, surreptitiously moving his eyes between that huge scale and the two-inch ones on Hugh. If the size held standard, he would have been almost two hundred feet long! Creatures that large shouldn't even be a biological possibility.
They had also located the stairs down. The floor above the stairs bore a few claw marks, but it didn't look like much effort had been made.
Perhaps he didn't want to tear up his lair?
"Shall we?" Leo said, motioning to the stairs with a bow and a sweep.
Hugh, knowing what was expected, headed over first. When he got close to the stairs, he shivered. "It's cold here—very cold."
Leo followed, and then Lily.
A cold wind blew up the stairs as Leo got close, carrying with it a distinctive smell—a rank smell of dried blood and incense. Leo was immediately reminded of the ravine with the demon-harpies where he had first met Hugh.
Lily wrinkled her nose and asked with obvious distaste in her voice, "What is that?"
"Demon, I think," Leo said. "Hugh and I smelled it at a ravine north of here. The ravine had harpy-demons in it."
"That ravine was the Demon Scar," Hugh said. "That smell was at the Demon Scar."
"You guys were at the Demon Scar?" Lily asked, shivering herself.
Someone say 'Demon Scar' one more time, Leo thought to himself, but his attempt at humor didn't cheer him in the face of the cold and eldritch odor emanating from the stairs, which everyone was staring at like they were the gate to the hells.
Which, in this kooky world, they really might be. Leo shivered again, this time from fear.