Page 54 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“Y’see another gone,” Mamedi’s sister whispered. “Who’s next?”

“The Lavadome’s worth a few odds ’n sods droppin’. Like outside, underground.”

“Long way yet,” Enjor said, whipping back. “Little to eat until w’be reaching the river.”

Enjor hurried the party past another shaft plunging down—the source of the bad air—and they entered some naturally formed caves. The moss here was the natural variety, faint blue and green threads that vanished whenever the eye moved. White things with waving antennae slipped into cracks as they approached, and insects with bodies like glass froze against the striped cave walls.

The older bats grew tired and clung to the Copper as he walked, and only Enjor, tireless for all his bulk, and some of the first-year bats had energy to flit around.

A bat squeaked.

“What’s that?” the Copper asked.

“Boktemi found something,” Mamedi said.

A brighter patch lay ahead. The Copper smelled rot and metal on the air.

The source of the odor was two figures sitting back-to-back, dead for a day or two at most.

“Ahhh, that be more like it. There’s some juice there still, down in the lower quarters,” Mamedi said. She crawled off the Copper and began to scratch around at an outthrust leg. Tendrils of blue cave moss had found the bodies as well, and climbed toward wounds on the bodies.

The Copper examined the faces. These were no dwarves or men; they were thicker-skinned than either, pebbled like a dragon’s stomach and with thick ridges of horn making fearsome flanges at the skull and jawline. A row of spines, thin as straw, grew from their backbones.

They wore helms, though not in the dwarvish fashion. These helms were open, a series of reinforcing rods that capped the natural ridges on their skulls, and had a fearsome spike on the top. One’s spike still bore a bit of dried gristle.

“Are these—”

“Demen,” Enjor said. “Ech. The blood’s gone bad.”

“M’be calling the eyeballs,” Thernadad said.

“A’taking more than your fair share!” Mamedi protested.

“Says who?”

“Faaaaaa!”

She jumped up on one of the creature’s shoulders, bristling for a fight.

“Easy, now,” the Copper said. “I’m trying to read this.”

“Who be a’caring how they got here?” Enjor said, shoving a younger bat away from some slow-seeping fluid.

“Blast these thick skins,” another bat commented from the darkness. “Wish these were dwarves.”

The Copper tried to ignore the bats. The two demen bore grievous injuries, yet no dead lay around them. So they must have fought elsewhere before sitting down to succumb to their wounds. But why back-to-back? And why hadn’t their fellows carried them to safety?

He suspected that the answer to both questions was a lost battle. They were either on guard against the victorious dwarves—or whomever—or something deadlier lurked in the darkness.

Threats in these caverns or no, he needed his strength. He chewed down a mouthful or two of the rotting flesh and the metal tip of a scabbard, then crept off to sleep scales-out in a protective nook.

He woke and found two new brown-stained wounds on his tail.

The greedy bats had taken advantage of his sleep.

“Thernadad!” he roared.

The bat flapped over, and the Copper waved his tail in front of his upturned nose.

---