Page 26 of Caveman Alien's Terror

Two gray-striped cavemen are sitting on one of the stones, while the two outcasts are guarding them, swords ready to hack.

“Chief,” Tarat’ex calls from the shadows. “I have your gold.”

Praxigor spins around and lets go of me. “Bring it here!”

Tarat’ex carries a leather sack, big and heavy. “We were right. They stripped their totem pole of it and brought it with them.”

The dragon snatches the sack out of his hands and turns to the light. “This feels light.” He upends the bag, and many pieces of a shiny metal clatter to the ground. They gleam warmly yellow in the light from the campfire.

Praxigor picks up a piece of metal from the heap and holds it up, between two fingers as if it were a dead fish.

Then he roars. “This isbrass!”

I have to clench my hands over my ears. His angry howl echoes from the stones and the trees around us, containing an undertone of a screech that I know in my bones is pure dragon. I’m sure they can hear it on the Mount in the Borok village.

One of the outcasts drops his sword in surprise, and the two Skrok men fall backwards off their rock, scramble to their feet, and run away.

Tarat’ex backs off from the furious dragon. “Are you sure, Chief? It looks like gold!”

“Itdoesn’tlook like gold,” Praxigor snarls. “It doesn’tsmelllike gold. It doesn’tfeellike gold.” He kicks a piece of the metal deep into the woods. “It doesn’tsoundlike gold. And it has none of the warmth of gold! Don’t you think I know gold when I see it? Don’tyou think I can see it with my eyes closed, knowing its heat and the blissful joy it carries?”

Tarat’ex takes a further step back. “Sorry, Chief. Of course you can. It’s just, I really thought it was gold.Wethought it was.”

“It’s worthless brass!” the dragon seethes. “Carelessly beaten into crude plates. It shouldn’t surprise me. It’s just the kind of useless thing these scruffy slayers would honor on their totem pole. Is there no gold on this planet atall?!How can it be thisgoldless?!” There’s so much despair and pain in his voice that I wince.

“There must be,” I say as soothingly as I can. I can’t forget how he said ‘my Astrid’, and I’m feeling pretty warm towards him despite his tying me up. I don’t want him this distressed. “Every planet has gold. Even Xren. We shall find it.”

9

- Praxigor-

“You sound very sure,” I growl, the sour disappointment eating me up. “And yet you admit never having seen gold anywhere in the jungle!”

“I haven’t looked for it,” Astrid says. “I never asked anyone if they had any. But maybe Cora does.”

I glare at Tarat’ex. “This was your idea, outcast.”

He backs off. “Chief, we were all sure it was gold. Right, Gulu’oz?”

“Even the Skrok themselves said so, when I went to their village many years ago,” Gulu’oz claims. “It is they who lied!”

“Search this camp!” I command. “Search it again!”

The men scramble to obey.

But I already know there’s no gold in this camp. I would have known it, I would have been called by its warmth and its lightin my mind. Gold is like nothing else. It soothes and makes me strong, it calls to me from a distance. If there’s enough of it.

“So unlike this pitiful form,” I fume, touching the point on my chest where the sword hit me. The ichor has dried, but the shame and the humiliation lingers. “What did you say, Astrid?”

Astrid’s head snaps up to look at me. “I said, maybe Cora has gold. I think she wore a bracelet.”

“Where is Cora?” I demand.

“I don’t know. She’s almost certainly dead.”

I stare down at her. “Where did she die?”

“I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that, please. It scares me.”

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