Page 53 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

She heard a rat make a yeeking noise and scuttle.

If she could only part the bars a little so they’d offer more room, like—

Wistala remembered sleeping between Auron and Jizara. Jizara always took the warm spot against Mother, and Auron would sleep to the outside, leaving her cramped in the middle. Sometimes they pressed so close, she could hardly breathe. When they did that, she turned on her back and used her short, strong saa legs to part them.

She wedged her hindquarters sideways, pressing her tail through the gap, and backed as far as she could between the bars. She pressed with her legs at the center of the bar, just as she used to do at the center of Auron’s back.

It bent!

With that achieved, she repositioned herself between the bars facing the other way. She bent that one, as well. Now she had enough space to really put her legs and back into it—

Craaak!

The sudden release of pressure shocked her into thinking she’d broken her back instead of the bar for a moment, but sure enough, the bottom join had broken free of the rest of the clawed-away masonry. With half its strength gone, she could get down on all fours under it.

Ten heartbeats later, it was done—she could get through.

“Done it done it done it!” she called up to Yari-Tab.

“I knew you would,” the feline called back, sounding half-awake.

With the bars out of the way, clawing earth seemed like pushing through nothing more than a pile of fallen leaves. She spun as she dug, all four limbs working once and tail helping shove out the loosened earth, and then she got through. Her nostrils filled with fresher-moving air.

And the smell of rats.

A smooth-sided tunnel yawned beneath, water and muck filling the bottom. Other arched-off tunnels branched off it, some dry, others trickling a bit of water and algae. A green lichen grew at the rim of the water, some weak cousin of the growth from the home cave. Or rather the stuff living in the lichen—Mother had told her that the lichen itself didn’t glow; rather, the light came from tiny creatures that thrived on its fuzzy surface.

“Come and have a look, sister,” Wistala said.

Her water-lids fluttered up and back down when she realized what she’d said.

Yari-Tab crept easily between dirt pile and a tangle of roots holding the earth that hadn’t fallen.

“Such scents! Such hunting! I’ll never suffer an empty belly again.” Her tail stood straight up as she looked out over the water-bottomed tunnel. Walkways big enough for a man stretched to either side of the main channel; other passages branched off everywhere.>“Can you fit down this, Talassat?”

Wistala looked down what appeared to be an overgrown hole. Brambles trailed over an overhanging pile of rubble.

Yari-Tab ventured in and turned so her eyes glittered from the darkness. Above it three ancient arches, all broken open at the top, hosted a tangle of spider-legged plants.

“It widens out a little way down. Can you smell the rats?”

Wistala stuck her head in, smelled the rat urine mixed with old leaves and wormcast. The gap yawned bigger than it looked; it was mostly closed off by roots and their attendant mosses and trapped leaves. She pushed her head down and through, catching bits of lichen and dry air-root in her scales.

She found they were on stairs, Yari-Tab already down and through another hole, a half-filled passageway.

She tracked by smell and sound—the cat’s footfalls were as silent as morning mist, but Wistala could hear her breath and sniffing.

“I wish I had my fire,” Wistala said.

“Fire?”

“Yes, dragons can spit fire. I don’t like not being able to see. A torf here and there makes all the difference.”

“That’s part of the fun, hunting by ear and nose. Though all this talking has sent the rats running.”

“Sorry. I like being underground—I just want to explore thoroughly so I can feel safe, and unless dragons live long out of the sun, their eyes can’t work on nothing.”

“It’s light you want? Want to see a bit of magic?”

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