Pachi snorted below me and sent me a barrage of annoyance. As if one of the vardeen could get lost. While the sun still rises and the sea continues to…
I interrupted her self-righteous rebuke. I get it. You’re amazing. Nothing like a fox bird to navigate the skies. My teasing was enough to make me smile, but earned me a surprise that didn’t feel like a fair trade. Pachi suddenly folded her wings and plummeted a hundred feet before finally popping them open again.
My unrestrained scream echoed off the stone of the mountain below, and Pachi shook with laughter.
As I recovered, I noticed something new. A small lake sat cupped in the tip of a mountain, towers of steam rising off of its turquoise surface. I pointed it out, and Pachi flew closer.
In our horseplay, we had discovered a sky-high hot spring. I told Pachi to take us down, and she did so with pleasure.
We walked around the beautiful water and marveled at the sight. On one side of the lake, a small mound rose up, capped by a broken stone archway.
Pachi abandoned the ruins to my curiosity and, after testing the water with a paw, plunged into the hot spring shamelessly. You must come in, sister. The water is most refreshing! Pachi bobbed back up to the surface, paddling around happily. She was a sight to see. If you could ignore her size and the wings folded on her back, it was obvious that she swam just like a dog.
I thought about telling her but chose not to ruffle her feathers. She needed this reprieve. Instead, I walked up to the tall archway, admiring the images scored into its columns. They had defied time itself and, astonishingly, remained clear in their depictions.
Dwarves, stout and bearded, stood around a fire and an anvil. Elves with lean figures and leaves in their hair walked beside dragons. I studied the latter, sleek and long creatures whose scales almost seemed to shimmer in the pale stone they were carved in.
My mind drifted to Anwar and I realized that these might not be dragons. They certainly weren’t as large as what Judas had described. These were wyverns.
A thread of excitement ran through my body and I scanned around, reading more pictographs of what I could only describe as a gathering of many races. Orcs, men, even one image of an enfield, or, as Pachi would say, a vardeen warrior, with its wings spread wide and head bowed in respect to another wyvern.
I ran up on top of a wide dais that stood below the broken archway. Looking all around me, I saw that the ruins stood in the rough shape of a rectangle. Fragments of other columns lay about, the clean edges of cut stone all around. Their haphazard arrangement—and the shattering they had endured—made them harder to notice, but now that my eye had picked up on the distinctions, I realized I was standing in the midst of a vast ruin.
Pachi! I think I found something. We should fly again overhead and see if we can notice anything specific.
She dove in the water again and surged up with her head steaming in the mountain air. Certainly, but I would prefer a good deal of this first.
I relented, wanting her to enjoy herself for once, and even entertained the idea of joining her. But then a strained squeal of pain caught my attention.
I turned toward the source of the sound yet saw only a depression in the side of the mountain.
Another squeal confirmed my suspicions. Something was being attacked, and it was nearby. I froze, unsure of exactly where the scream had come from, but Pachi charged out of the water with steam coming off her body in waves.
The scream came from that direction, Pachi called to me mentally as she shook the water from her body. Come, let us see what is afoot. If it wasn’t for the urgency of the cry of pain, I’d have laughed again. Just like a dog.
I jumped up into the saddle and we ran across the top of the mountain and down its slope. The depression I’d seen earlier continued to fall away, and as we reached the base of a taller mountain that stretched above, I saw a cave.
At first, it seemed like little more than an overhang, but as we approached, the depth of the cave became obvious, a black maw glaring at us ominously.
Before I could ask Pachi if she was sure of the sound’s origin, another scream issued from the cave, filled with fright.
She plunged forward and we entered the cave, which was taller than it looked. In fact, after we had gone a few dozen feet, it opened up into a wide cavern. I gasped at the unexpected beauty of it. More of the turquoise water bubbled in shallow pools around the cavern, and it was lit with a blue glow that made the walls and ceiling glitter. As I looked closer, I noticed that the walls were covered in tiny crystals.
What is this place? I said to Pachi. It’s so beautiful.
She peered around in the low lighting, searching for trouble. It is, and yet something is in pain. Let me know if you see anything.
I dismounted and we crept forward, not wanting to rush into an ambush.
The cavern turned and wound its way down into the mountain, and yet as far as I could see, blue light filled the air, and steam from bubbling pools floated in clouds. Then, as we began to descend a path into a deeper chamber, another squeal pierced the air.
It sounded like a creature being wounded this time, and the noise was followed by a skittering of feet or maybe talons over rock. As I was about to ask Pachi what she thought it might be, the air shook with the guttural roar of something massive and angry.
We hunkered down, wincing from the intensity of the roar.
