The dragon footprints started to disappear into the darkness. It was hard for Vaeludar to track where the tracks were going. He was following the fading footprints from one entrance to another. The sounds of a snoring dragon he could hear in his ears were drawing closer. He couldn’t tell what they were going to find first: the sleeping dragon or the armor hand piece. There was no telling what could show up next.
They pressed deeper in the deep moist, dark cave. The air was getting wetting and less fresh. Every step was like taking a walk in the sea. The feeling of the air was getting drifter.
Vaeludar could feel his dragon scales on his legs beginning to loosen their tightness and began to become fragile to fall from his legs.
Then, the footprints began to disappear entirely from Vaeludar’s view. Within a few walking yards, the footprints were no more. Vaeludar was on his own to find the armor artifact in the cave.
In a few seconds, it was a break from everybody. Marina sat down, Galvin dropped to the ground, Flavius leaned against a column of a limestone going up high, and Wonomi sat near Galvin.
Vaeludar was at a loss of where he was going now. How could he find a small armor artifact in the biggest cave there ever was? It felt like it was going to take years just to find one piece of armor. He went to climb a high pillar of glowing crystals. He could see light and the golds’ light briefly behind him. The cave was just out of his dragon eyes to view of where to go. He dropped back down to rejoin his group members.
“Just look at this limestone,” said Flavius.
Vaeludar walked towards Flavius to see the black limestone and touched it. It felt a bit rough-like and ashy. Vaeludar rubbed his fingers together; they were black just like the stone.
Vaeludar ignited his hand on fire, to see what it was.
Burnt marks. The black burnt marks were in the shape of a dragon’s leg. The claws of the burnt, dragon leg-shape were pointing in a one-way direction.
“I have found the way. Follow me,” said Vaeludar, hastily.
Flavius, who was followed by a tiring Galvin, Marina, and Wonomi, followed the hybrid.
Vaeludar followed burning marks. Some of them were scraped onto the wall. Other showed signs of a battle. There were columns of limestone collapsed and piles of various cave minerals. Rocks plummeted from the cave’s ceiling long ago.
Vaeludar was seeing the burnt marks as ancient hieroglyphics. Each one was nicely painted into the rock. Each one was the same, pointing in one direction to another. From one direction to another in the dark cave, Vaeludar could see claw marks and other rock-piled cave junk.
Deeper they walked, the darker the cave became. The gold light behind them disappeared behind the surrounding columns of limestone. There was a faint of light appearing ahead of them. Ahead of them, a rounded hole appeared.
Vaeludar entered first.
His eyes were adjusted to the light from the darkness behind him. What he saw before was a cavern stretching back of dozens or a hundred miles. In the cavern, a sparkling lake laid around a line of stones that made a pathway. In the center was a large upside-down-coned hill. A straight beam of blue light shined at the very top peek.
Flavius, Marina, Galvin, and Wonomi followed behind him. Their eyes were blinded before adapting to the light.
“It must be up there,” said Vaeludar, pointing at the high point.
Everyone behind was staring at the endpoint where the armor artifact was being held.
“The sooner I can get that, the sooner we can get out of here,” said Vaeludar. He spread out his wings and began to fly.
FLOP!
Vaeludar fell to the ground and his wings couldn’t unleash the power of his dragon flight. He jumped again, flapping his wings harder and again he once again fell. He tried three more times before just flapping his wings while standing. He wasn’t moving from the ground.
“I… I can’t fly!” nagged Vaeludar. He even tried to breath out fire; he ended up coughing on some smoke.
“What’s wrong?” asked Marina.
“My wings aren’t taking flight, Marina,” answered Vaeludar. “I can’t fly. I can’t breathe fire. I don’t know what is wrong with my draconic abilities. I can’t even whip my tail strongly.” Vaeludar’s tail was weakly slivering.
“I must have wasted too much of my body energy when I rescued the White Knight and finding this place. No matter. I’ll just leap across this bridge of stones, walk up there, get the armor artifact, and we can be out of here. All of you stay here. I’m going alone from here. I shouldn’t be too long. Across, up the hill, down the hill, and back; it should be easy like counting to three.”
Vaeludar jumped down to the first stone lying in the water. He jumped over a few stones, using his wings to pole vault over a few stones about three stones after another three stones. In no time, he managed to get to the long hill on a flat rounded step.
From his eyes, the hill went up a hundred feet high. A very, very, very steep stairway was going up towards the beam of light. Vaeludar folded his wings and proceeded to walk up the stairs. Slowly and eminently, Vaeludar crunched his curved legs as far as he can curve them, which made it hard for him to move.
Vaeludar slumped his upper human body to the ground and crawled up the staircase. His crawling made him move like a lizard climbing up the wall. His
