Page 35 of Caveman Alien's Terror

I drop through the hole and land on the stone slab below. My head still pokes up above the floor that Astrid is standing on. “Come on.”

“Help me down?”

I grab her and lift her down through the hole to the next level. “I’ve seen this way of making a secure place before. Tengala the Crass had a lair like this. It was a deep lake that she had her slaves drain, then fill up with stone levels and mazes and such. Her lair was on the very bottom, protected by all kinds of traps. It took centuries to build. But it only took me a day to get through. When I finally got down to her, she first tried to flirt with me and offered to willingly let me ravish her. But I knew it was a trick, so I simply fought her and killed her. Not the greatest hoard, but it had one or two pieces that became favorites.”

“Do you think this was a lake?” Astrid asks, raising her torch. “”It feels too dry.”

“I do not,” I tell her. “This was just a small valley that they built up and filled in. But the thinking is the same. Perhaps there was some water at the very bottom.”

“Seen from up top, it just looks like a village,” Astrid ponders. “But it is really only the highest level of a structure that goes much deeper.”

I don’t reply. I’m starting to get hoarse from all the talking. I have never talked this much or told anyone about my hoard plunders or fights with other dragons. Somehow Astrid makes me let my guard down. It should not be possible, but I can’t deny that it’s the first time in my long life that I’ve spent this long in close company with a lesser creature without either scaring it away, killing it, or just dismissing it from my service.

It’s the weakness, of course. My gold-less existence is making me so weak that I’m not being vigilant, not on my guard for when Astrid will turn on me and try to murder me for… well, for what? I have no hoard.

I groan. Is that what I’m reduced to now? So hoard-less and pitiful that I’m not worth killing, even for her?

“Are you all right, Praxigor?” Astrid looks up at me.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I snap. “I want less talk and more searching!”

12

- Astrid-

His manner has changed again, from almost chummy to that old meanness. After the outcasts left, he started to seem almost normal. That didn’t last long.

“Sorry.” My voice sounds thin. “You just sounded like you were in pain.”

He ignores me.

Maybe he is in pain. Maybe the outcasts hurt him more than he said, or maybe he’s sick.

Or maybe he’s just a jerk, a jerk with powers like a superhero.

“Superjerk,” I mouth quietly. “Just need a lemon-colored cape with a big Balenciaga logo on it.”

My hand finds the hard outline of the dragon dagger in its hiding place. If he turns on me completely, I have ways to deal with that.

This level consists of many square cubicles made from wood, not unlike chicken cages but bigger. It confirms my suspicion that cavemen didn’t build this place. Someone much smaller in stature did, someone who enjoyed living in villages and in tiny cubicles stacked three deep.

I examine a piece of the wood that was splintered by the falling door slab. It’s old and discolored, but not rotting or dissolving. It’s not planks, but old saplings or branches where the bark has been scraped off.

“This place may not be as old as it looks,” I ponder as I drop the wood.

“We shall continue,” Praxigor says and goes over to the stairs leading down. “Until we find something worth hoarding.”

He’s illuminated from below, as if the stairs lead outside, to daylight.

He starts going down the stairs. “I actually am in some pain, since you ask.”

“Oh.” I quickly follow him. “Where?”

He descends to the next level before he replies. “All over, Astrid. I ache to leave this lamentable form and be myself again. Every part of me longs for it with an intensity that you can’t possibly comprehend. Every moment is agony, and sometimes I can’t keep it bottled up.”

Wow. I think that’s as close a thing to an apology I can expect from him.

I carefully put my hand on his bulging upper arm. “What can I do to help?”

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