Page 53 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

Thernadad’s mother rode his back the whole way. The tunnel smelled decidedly dwarvish. It made the Copper nervous.

“Sir, I can fly a bit if y’be just generous enough to give me a small lap.”

“The last time your family left me light-headed. I need my wits.”

They took a crack and descended some rough rock to a cavern filled with a confusing array of smaller chambers. Enjor flew off to be sure of the path. The Copper sniffed out a discarded iron-soled boot and carried it in his mouth until they took a rest break, where he thoughtfully chewed it down. Tearing and devouring the mixture of leather and metal was most satisfying, even if the dwarf-foot smell could poison a cave slug.

“Oh, m’be perishing, sir. Perishing!” Thernadad’s mother lamented.

“Just a little, then,” the Copper said, feeling generous with a belly full of heel and hobnail. “But be quiet about it.”

She opened him up just under his bad sii. He couldn’t feel much of anything in that limb anyway.

Enjor flapped back, gasping. He shoved his mother out of the way and took a hearty drink of dragonblood.

“What’s all this?” the Copper said.

“Better and better still,” Thernadad’s mother said. “I feel a maiden bat again,” she called, flapping off into the cavern. “Up and at ’em, y’slugs. Darkness a’wasting!”

“Careful, Mum!” Enjor called. “Not that way!”

He flapped heavily into the air, shouting, and in a few moments his mother returned, flying in irregular loops. She didn’t so much land as nose into the cave floor.

“What’s the matter? Drunk on dragonblood?”

“Bad air,” Enjor said.

“Eeeeee, that’s a funny color moonlight,” the old white-flecked bat said. She rolled her eyes this way and that, coughed, and was still.

“Mum! Mum!” Thernadad said, flying down from the ceiling.

“She went down the wrong tunnel,” Enjor said. “Bad air.”

Thenadad landed next to her and head-butted her hard in the stomach. The body didn’t so much as twitch. “Mum!” He rounded on his brother. “Why didn’t you watch her?”

“Me only just made it out myself!”

Thernadad snapped at his brother’s ear.

“Stop it,” the Copper said. “She’s dead.”

The other bats crept across the ceiling, yeeking at one another in the shadows.

“That’s three lost. How many more?” Mamedi’s sister said. “This dragon’s not such a lucky strike after all.”

“No one asked you all to come,” Thernadad said. He made to fly up, but the Copper put a sii claw on his wing.

“Let’s keep moving.”

“Once a bat drops…” Enjor said, flapping back up to the ceiling. “M’lordship’s right.”

“And just be leaving her here?” Thernadad asked. “Bats should be living above the bones of their elders.”

“I’ll carry her, if you like,” the Copper said. He picked up the cooling little body and swallowed it whole.

“Awwwww, sir,” Thernadad said. “That was unkind.”

“She had enough meals from me. One in return seems just. You’d rather the rats and slugs got her?”

---