"That's disturbing."
Rhyss finally found her voice. "How do you know about that? I've never heard about it."
"Well, I may or may not read my dad's top-secret case files when the fancy strikes me." Bel sounded far too nonchalant for admitting to a crime. "Which might be all the time. Every day. The creepy part? They never even caught them all! At least they didn't before my dad was taken off of the case. Got a nice shiny promotion out of it. Anyway, magic doesn't work that way, a power core isn't a replacement for life or a soul or whatever. A construct is not a person, it exists to take orders. So that's what the dragon was."
"So, who was giving orders to that dragon?" Rhyss's voice sounded terrible to her own ears. She must have breathed in too much hot air. It felt absolutely frigid on the stairs in comparison, even with Bel so close. The snipping had stopped and she just felt nice, even strokes of a comb. Of course Bel had a comb, she'd bragged about it the first chance she had to comb her hair. Rhyss remembered she'd been annoyed about it at the time, but for some reason she couldn't muster up any of that annoyance right then.
"Someone very much dead," Bel said. "Did you see how deteriorated that dragon was?"
"Not really, I was sort of busy noticing the 'aaah it's a dragon' part," Rhyss admitted, wrapping her arms around herself and temporarily ruining Bel's rhythm.
"Same, though it did seem… worse for the wear." Heln admitted. "I couldn't get a good read on the script, either, it was really… It wasn't good."
"Well, a power core that big… that's a lot of magic. We're talking big time script." Bel finished combing and began braiding. Her fingers brushed Rhyss's neck. She shivered. Bel's fingers were cold, but she didn't think it was because of that. "You okay with a DoVan clan bead or do you have a band of your own?"
That was right, her hair-tie, with its green gem, must have burned with her hair. The only reason she wasn't seriously burned herself was because of her cloak, though she had a feeling that she had pushed the scripts far past their limit. Her back still felt uncomfortably warm.
"Rhyss?"
"It's fine." She wasn't sure if she had a second band in her satchel. She didn't really want to check. The DoVan and the Quel beads weren't all that different in color, anyway. Their families must have been close at one point in history.
Bel was a little better with history than she was; maybe she knew.
"Anyway, as I was saying, that dragon has been down there for a very, very long time. Someone tried to seal it in, but the power core must have been pulling magic from the cavern, which is why the trees died. That's my best guess." Bel tied off her hair. "Tada. Pretty as a picture of something that wants to murder you. Better?"
The braid bumped against her hood when she stood up, but it was better. "Yeah. Thank you."
"Of course." Bel smiled at her. "Not bad, if I do say so myself. Maybe when we get back, I'll go for an exciting career in hair dressing."
"Or fortune telling," Heln suggested. "Let's go. We… I don't think we can go back, so we'd better hope this way leads out."
"Or not, since we unleashed an undead dragon." Rhyss stumbled over the words a bit, but she was fine. This was fine. It wasn't going to stop her from getting them all home if it was within her power. "What do we do now?"
"I thought you were our fearless leader." Bel patted the top of her head, gently. "We move forward and hope for the best. That might be all we can do."
"What if the dragon follows us?" Heln asked. "I don't think that wall will hold forever."
"I believe I just said that we were hoping for the best, so none of that negativity, mister." Bel actually shook a finger at him. "Besides, I'm sure you've noticed at some point, but these stairs? They're going up. Up is good. In fact, up is fantastic."
Rhyss couldn't really argue with that. Even if she wanted to, she was too exhausted to even think of a better plan.
*~*~*
The stairs continued, sometimes letting off at wide landings, other times they peeled away from the wall. Whatever was down in those spaces was too deep and dark for them to see. Bel sent a bubble down, but it didn't return and the light eventually was too far away for them to make it out.
Slowly, but surely, Rhyss felt her magic return and the tension of something missing slowly easing from her. Bel didn't say anything, spinning two bubbles to keep light around them. The stairs were in bad repair. The fourth time Heln stumbled, he finally just pulled his light stick out of his bag. The soft, warm glow pooled around their feet. It didn't help much, but he seemed to feel better with it out.
All three of them were tired and hurting. Heln and Bel were both limping and Rhyss was stumbling when she finally told them to stop.
"We're going up and that's what matters." She sat down at the next landing. Her legs felt like they were back with the dragon and had been lit on fire. Bel and Heln practically flopped onto the stone.
They hadn't even seen the odd tree root and Rhyss had to wonder just how far down they were, and what could possibly be above them. The stairs had switched back a few times. Not that it mattered; her sense of direction was shot.
"The dragon's power core isn't within my range, if that helps." Heln leaned against the wall. He was still covered in dust with only a bit of the red of his hair peeking out from
