The Journey, Book 2; Chapter 15 - Previous Chapter
Chapter 16; Whispers
As the dwarf king Althor is sequestered in endless clan meetings, where stonebeards argue the finer points of forge etiquette and barrel design, Nekonata roams the deep halls of Buradoth. His silent wolf companions pad beside him, fur a gentle whisper against the cold stone. Overhead, the oversized raven Loki glides like a shadow, occasionally squawking sharp commentary only Nekonata seems to understand.
Their guide, Donal, had been dragged into the debates, much to his dismay, leaving Nekonata and his strange family to their own devices in the subterranean city. Buradoth, with its glowing rune lanterns and corridors carved by generations of dwarves, hums with a stubborn kind of life. The scent of forge smoke and earth permeates everything.
As they round a corner near the kitchens, a sudden shift in the air catches Loki’s attention. He circles lower, croaking loudly, and Nekonata pauses. From the wide stone archways flows the warm aroma of something hearty, spices, roasted meat, and sweet herbs. Inside, Mirabella is at work, her sleeves rolled to the elbows, a smear of flour on her cheek. Pans clatter and stew bubbles as she hums an old tune, unaware, or perhaps unbothered, by her audience.
The wolves sniff the air, tails wagging.
Nekonata leans on the doorframe, arms folded, watching her work with quiet amusement. Loki hops down to a nearby beam, feathers puffed.
"Smells better than diplomacy," he mutters.
The clang of a pot and the rustle of dried herbs are interrupted when Mirabella glances up, and spots them.
She wipes her hands on a linen cloth, a warm smile spreading across her face. “My husband Donal is in the meetings, isn’t he?”
Nekonata, still leaning near the archway with his wolves flanking him and Loki perched just above, inclines his head with a respectful nod. “Yes. It’s strange not having him by our side, rabbiting on about this and that.”
Mirabella lets out a clear, genuine laugh, the kind that seems to warm the stone walls around her more than any oven fire could. “That sounds like him.”
She pauses for only a moment, then waves them in. “Well, you lot, look half-starved and wholly bored. Come in then, before the stew burns and the bread grows cold.”
The wolves trot in first, noses twitching at the aromas spilling from pots and pans. Loki flutters down to an exposed rafter and peers at a plate of cooling pastries. Nekonata follows, the tension of stone corridors lifting from his shoulders as the scent of home and hearth envelops him.
Mirabella hands him a bowl and begins ladling stew, her movements practiced and graceful. “There’s spiced root stew, crusty loaf with cheese, and something sweet cooling by the window, if your feathered friend doesn’t get to it first.”
Loki croaks in protest, clearly offended.
As the fire crackled and the scent of stew filled the cozy dwarven kitchen, Mirabella cast a warm glance toward the two wolves resting near the hearth. Their fur shimmered faintly in the firelight, eyes half-lidded but watchful.
“They’re beautiful,” she said softly, her voice full of quiet wonder. “What are their names?”
“Santaya and Kristolia,” Nekonata replied, setting his bowl down and giving the wolves a brief, fond look. “They’ve been with me a long time.”
Mirabella leaned in slightly, curiosity bright in her eyes. “How did you end up with wolves as companions?”
Nekonata’s expression grew more thoughtful, his voice gentling. “A brown bear killed their parents when they were just cubs. It tried to kill them too, but I was nearby. I stepped in.”
“You killed the bear?” she asked, her eyes wide.
He nodded. “Wasn’t much of a choice. They wouldn’t have survived otherwise. I didn’t expect anything in return, I was just trying to stop something senseless. But after that... They followed me. Haven’t left my side since.”
Mirabella looked from the wolves to Nekonata, her expression softening. “They chose you.”
“Aye,” he said. “Somewhere along the way, they stopped being animals I saved and started becoming family.”
The moment hung in the warm silence, broken only by Loki letting out a dry caw from the rafters above.
Mirabella looked up with a smirk. “And what about him? Also a rescue case?”
Nekonata sighed and gestured vaguely skyward. “Him? No. I’ve no idea where he came from. He just started following me one day. Hasn’t left since. He’s a cryptic pain in the arse raven who’s as mysterious as the night sky.”
Loki gave an indignant flap and croaked something unintelligible that might have been a curse, or a compliment.
Mirabella laughed, shaking her head. “You do attract the oddest company, Nekonata.”
He raised his bowl in a quiet toast. “Odd, yes. But loyal.”
The warmth of the kitchen wrapped around them like a comforting blanket. Mirabella laughed again, brushing flour from her hands as she set down a second loaf to cool. Loki clucked and preened on the rafters, eyeing the sweetrolls with theatrical innocence. Santaya and Kristolia dozed near the hearth, their ears occasionally twitching at some far-off sound in the stonework.
Nekonata sat back, relaxed, a rare smile ghosting across his face.
Then—
A whisper.
Faint. Distant. Like breath on cold glass.
Indecipherable.
Not words. Not quite. But full of something, urgency, maybe. A memory. A warning.
His eyes snapped up.
The bowl in his hand stilled. His spine straightened, every sense sharpening. Without a word, he stood.
Both Santaya and Kristolia sprang to their feet with a synchronized growl low in their throats, hackles rising as they turned toward the darkened hall beyond the kitchen.
Mirabella blinked, confused by the sudden shift in the room. “Nekonata? What is it?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes darted to the corners of the room, the shadows, the stone archways leading deeper into Buradoth’s ancient halls. He moved like a man listening for something just beyond reach.
“I heard something,” he said finally, his voice low and strained.
Mirabella paused, brows knitting. “Heard what?”
“A whisper,” he said. “I don’t know what it said… I couldn’t understand it. But it was there.”
Kristolia let out a soft whine, pawing the ground. Santaya growled again, facing the hallway that led toward the older, abandoned levels of the stronghold.
Loki fluttered down with an unusual stillness, landing silently near Nekonata’s shoulder. He cocked his head, eyes sharper than usual.
Mirabella frowned. “There’s no one else here. No sound. Just us.”
Nekonata nodded slowly, but didn’t relax. “I know. But something's watching. Or calling.”
Down they went, past bustling halls, through quieter tunnels, and into the echoing emptiness of the old levels, long abandoned. Dust hung thick in the air. Runes on the walls had faded, and doors sat broken, forgotten. The stones here were older, rougher, heavy with the weight of history.
Then, at the threshold of a great arched entrance carved with a long-worn dwarven script, Mirabella slowed.
She stood just shy of crossing the threshold, her hand brushing the stone frame, eyes wide and distant.
“I can’t go any further,” she said softly.
Nekonata turned, surprised by the shift in her tone. “Why?”
Her voice was barely more than a breath. “This place... it remembers things. Old things. It’s not meant for the living, not anymore.” Her eyes met his. “Even as a girl, we were warned not to come down here. Something sleeps beneath Buradoth. The elders say it was buried and bound long before our clan ever found this mountain.”
Santaya growled low in her throat, tail stiff, and Kristolia pressed close to Nekonata’s side. Loki was silent now, feathers sleek, staring into the dark ahead.
The whisper came again. Clearer this time. Still indecipherable, but closer.
Mirabella stepped back. “If you go on… you go alone.”
Nekonata looked once into the gloom, then back to her. “I understand.”
She hesitated, then reached into her satchel and pressed a small rune-etched stone into his hand. “A hearth-mark. If the halls close on you… this might help you find your way back.”
He nodded, closing his fingers around it.
And then, without another word, he turned and stepped beyond the archway, his wolves flanking him, and the raven silent above.
Behind him, the last light of the dwarven stronghold faded.
Nekonata stepped past the arched threshold, and the world behind him vanished.
Darkness swallowed everything.
The air was thick, damp, and heavy with the scent of moss, rusted metal, and time left to rot. The stone beneath his boots was uneven, worn by centuries of neglect. Santaya and Kristolia stayed close, their ears pinned back, every step cautious. Loki let out a low, uncharacteristically quiet caw, then fluttered to Nekonata’s shoulder, feathers ruffling uneasily.
There was no light here. Not a trace. Just ink-thick shadow pressing in on all sides.
Nekonata reached out, feeling his way along a cold, clammy wall. Water trickled somewhere in the distance. The silence was so complete, it rang in his ears.
His boot caught on something. Metal? Bone? He stumbled, cursed softly under his breath.
“This won’t do,” he muttered.
He raised his hand and whispered a phrase in the ancient language.
A soft hum responded.
A small orb of purple light bloomed from his palm and drifted upward, hovering just above his head. It pulsed gently, casting a dim purple glow around them. Stone walls emerged from the dark, wet and cracked, veins of quartz gleaming faintly. Rusted tools lay scattered across the floor, half-buried in dust.
Shadows danced in unnatural ways, stretching too long, too sharp.
The wolves tensed but didn’t growl. Loki was still.
Then—
The whisper returned.
Clearer now. Still in no known tongue. Still not a voice… but close. Like someone speaking from behind a thick veil, just beyond the veil of memory and sound.
Only Nekonata heard it.
His companions looked at him, sensing his shift in focus.
He stood still, listening.
The whisper wasn’t just calling anymore.
It was guiding.
Their footsteps echoed through the deep. The air was growing colder, heavier, as if the stone itself were watching. Nekonata’s were-light hovered faithfully overhead, casting that strange purple glow across long-forgotten walls and ancient mining shafts.
It became clear now, this was once a gem vein, rich with quartz and stone. Pickaxes rusted to their handles lay abandoned. Carts frozen mid-load. The bones of a great industry now lost to silence.
As the group passed through a narrow corridor, something beneath the dust caught Nekonata’s eye, a flicker, a glint just beyond the light’s reach.
He crouched slowly, brushing away centuries of settled stone-dust with a careful breath.
There, half-buried in the floor, lay a garnet, deep red and smooth as glass, the size of a child’s fist. Even dulled by time, it shimmered with unnatural clarity.
He picked it up, turning it in his fingers.
Then—
The whisper.
Closer. Stronger.
This time, understandable.
“Come and find me... I’m down here.”
Nekonata froze. The words pierced something deep inside him, something old, something instinctive. The voice was not male or female, not young or old. It was knowing.
Before he could second-guess, he slipped the garnet into his pocket and surged forward, guided now by the pull, the voice, and something else, a sense of belonging.
Santaya and Kristolia followed without hesitation, silent and alert. Loki took to the air again, gliding just ahead, his wings barely whispering in the stale air.
They passed through vast, echoing chambers, collapsed kitchens with shattered pots, rusted stoves overgrown with pale cave lichen. Old workshops lay in ruin, anvils split in half, scrolls turned to dust. Time itself had tried to bury what lay down here, but the voice had endured.
After what felt like hours, days, maybe, time slipping strangely in the dark, they emerged into a cavern so vast it swallowed their light whole.
An underground lake stretched before them, black as ink, still as death. The were-light flickered uncertainly, casting a purple shimmer across the water’s mirror-like surface.
But there, across the lake, on a low stone pedestal rising from a shelf of rock, pulsed a soft orange glow.
Nekonata stepped forward, breath caught in his throat.
The light was not fire. It was warmth. Life. Ancient and unspent.
A dragon egg.
Its shell shimmered with hues of copper, ember, and gold, veins of light dancing beneath its surface like lightning trapped beneath glass.
It pulsed, once, as if it sensed them.
Behind him, Santaya whimpered low, ears flat. Kristolia stared with ears forward. Loki circled once above, then perched silently near the edge of the lake.
And then—
The whisper again.
‘You’ve found me.’ The egg said in Neko’s mind, crystal clear.
The underground lake lapped gently at Nekonata’s boots as he stepped forward, the water cold and glassy, barely disturbed by his presence. The were-light bobbed above him, casting long, rippling shadows across the cavern walls. Each step toward the pedestal seemed to pull the world tighter, like the air itself was holding its breath.
He stepped on to the small island, reverently.
There, bathed in that soft, ember-orange glow, the dragon egg pulsed with life.
It was unlike anything he had ever seen, veins of golden light beneath its translucent shell, slow and steady, like a sleeping heartbeat. Warmth radiated from it, not heat, but a presence. Ancient. Patient.
Nekonata stared at it in awe, and whispered aloud:
“Who are you? How long have you been here?”
The answer didn’t come with sound, but within his mind. Clear. Gentle. Timeless.
‘My name is Amira. I’ve been here for five centuries… at least.’
His breath caught.
Five hundred years.
He slowly sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged before the egg like a student before an oracle, or a child before a fire on a winter’s night. His wolves sat silently behind him, as if they too understood the gravity of this moment. Loki, now utterly still, perched on a low stone nearby, his head tilted, black eyes gleaming with something unreadable.
Nekonata didn’t speak again. He just… listened.
The air around the egg pulsed with quiet energy. His thoughts slowed. The whisper of Amira faded for a time, but the warmth remained, like sitting beside a sleeping friend who might, at any moment, wake.
Time passed, or maybe it stood still.
Then—
Footsteps.
A clatter of boots. Armor. Panting breath.
From the far end of the cavern, through a tunnel barely wide enough for two, emerged King Althor, beard damp with sweat, followed by a wide-eyed, frantic Donal.
They stumbled to a halt as their eyes fell upon the scene:
Nekonata, soaked to the knees, sitting before a glowing dragon egg on a forgotten island in a lost, silent lake.
Donal gasped. “By the ancestors…”
King Althor’s eyes went wide with disbelief. He muttered something in Dwarvish—an old prayer, or maybe a curse.
Nekonata turned his head slowly toward them, eyes reflecting the orange glow.
“She’s called Amira,” he said quietly. “And she’s been waiting… a very long time.”
The king took a step forward, voice low with disbelief. “That’s… impossible. How long can Dragon eggs survive for?.”
Nekonata looked back at the egg, eyes narrowed with something between wonder and resolve.
“She didn’t just survive. She endured. And now she’s calling.”
Chapter 16; Whispers
As the dwarf king Althor is sequestered in endless clan meetings, where stonebeards argue the finer points of forge etiquette and barrel design, Nekonata roams the deep halls of Buradoth. His silent wolf companions pad beside him, fur a gentle whisper against the cold stone. Overhead, the oversized raven Loki glides like a shadow, occasionally squawking sharp commentary only Nekonata seems to understand.
Their guide, Donal, had been dragged into the debates, much to his dismay, leaving Nekonata and his strange family to their own devices in the subterranean city. Buradoth, with its glowing rune lanterns and corridors carved by generations of dwarves, hums with a stubborn kind of life. The scent of forge smoke and earth permeates everything.
As they round a corner near the kitchens, a sudden shift in the air catches Loki’s attention. He circles lower, croaking loudly, and Nekonata pauses. From the wide stone archways flows the warm aroma of something hearty, spices, roasted meat, and sweet herbs. Inside, Mirabella is at work, her sleeves rolled to the elbows, a smear of flour on her cheek. Pans clatter and stew bubbles as she hums an old tune, unaware, or perhaps unbothered, by her audience.
The wolves sniff the air, tails wagging.
Nekonata leans on the doorframe, arms folded, watching her work with quiet amusement. Loki hops down to a nearby beam, feathers puffed.
"Smells better than diplomacy," he mutters.
The clang of a pot and the rustle of dried herbs are interrupted when Mirabella glances up, and spots them.
She wipes her hands on a linen cloth, a warm smile spreading across her face. “My husband Donal is in the meetings, isn’t he?”
Nekonata, still leaning near the archway with his wolves flanking him and Loki perched just above, inclines his head with a respectful nod. “Yes. It’s strange not having him by our side, rabbiting on about this and that.”
Mirabella lets out a clear, genuine laugh, the kind that seems to warm the stone walls around her more than any oven fire could. “That sounds like him.”
She pauses for only a moment, then waves them in. “Well, you lot, look half-starved and wholly bored. Come in then, before the stew burns and the bread grows cold.”
The wolves trot in first, noses twitching at the aromas spilling from pots and pans. Loki flutters down to an exposed rafter and peers at a plate of cooling pastries. Nekonata follows, the tension of stone corridors lifting from his shoulders as the scent of home and hearth envelops him.
Mirabella hands him a bowl and begins ladling stew, her movements practiced and graceful. “There’s spiced root stew, crusty loaf with cheese, and something sweet cooling by the window, if your feathered friend doesn’t get to it first.”
Loki croaks in protest, clearly offended.
As the fire crackled and the scent of stew filled the cozy dwarven kitchen, Mirabella cast a warm glance toward the two wolves resting near the hearth. Their fur shimmered faintly in the firelight, eyes half-lidded but watchful.
“They’re beautiful,” she said softly, her voice full of quiet wonder. “What are their names?”
“Santaya and Kristolia,” Nekonata replied, setting his bowl down and giving the wolves a brief, fond look. “They’ve been with me a long time.”
Mirabella leaned in slightly, curiosity bright in her eyes. “How did you end up with wolves as companions?”
Nekonata’s expression grew more thoughtful, his voice gentling. “A brown bear killed their parents when they were just cubs. It tried to kill them too, but I was nearby. I stepped in.”
“You killed the bear?” she asked, her eyes wide.
He nodded. “Wasn’t much of a choice. They wouldn’t have survived otherwise. I didn’t expect anything in return, I was just trying to stop something senseless. But after that... They followed me. Haven’t left my side since.”
Mirabella looked from the wolves to Nekonata, her expression softening. “They chose you.”
“Aye,” he said. “Somewhere along the way, they stopped being animals I saved and started becoming family.”
The moment hung in the warm silence, broken only by Loki letting out a dry caw from the rafters above.
Mirabella looked up with a smirk. “And what about him? Also a rescue case?”
Nekonata sighed and gestured vaguely skyward. “Him? No. I’ve no idea where he came from. He just started following me one day. Hasn’t left since. He’s a cryptic pain in the arse raven who’s as mysterious as the night sky.”
Loki gave an indignant flap and croaked something unintelligible that might have been a curse, or a compliment.
Mirabella laughed, shaking her head. “You do attract the oddest company, Nekonata.”
He raised his bowl in a quiet toast. “Odd, yes. But loyal.”
The warmth of the kitchen wrapped around them like a comforting blanket. Mirabella laughed again, brushing flour from her hands as she set down a second loaf to cool. Loki clucked and preened on the rafters, eyeing the sweetrolls with theatrical innocence. Santaya and Kristolia dozed near the hearth, their ears occasionally twitching at some far-off sound in the stonework.
Nekonata sat back, relaxed, a rare smile ghosting across his face.
Then—
A whisper.
Faint. Distant. Like breath on cold glass.
Indecipherable.
Not words. Not quite. But full of something, urgency, maybe. A memory. A warning.
His eyes snapped up.
The bowl in his hand stilled. His spine straightened, every sense sharpening. Without a word, he stood.
Both Santaya and Kristolia sprang to their feet with a synchronized growl low in their throats, hackles rising as they turned toward the darkened hall beyond the kitchen.
Mirabella blinked, confused by the sudden shift in the room. “Nekonata? What is it?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes darted to the corners of the room, the shadows, the stone archways leading deeper into Buradoth’s ancient halls. He moved like a man listening for something just beyond reach.
“I heard something,” he said finally, his voice low and strained.
Mirabella paused, brows knitting. “Heard what?”
“A whisper,” he said. “I don’t know what it said… I couldn’t understand it. But it was there.”
Kristolia let out a soft whine, pawing the ground. Santaya growled again, facing the hallway that led toward the older, abandoned levels of the stronghold.
Loki fluttered down with an unusual stillness, landing silently near Nekonata’s shoulder. He cocked his head, eyes sharper than usual.
Mirabella frowned. “There’s no one else here. No sound. Just us.”
Nekonata nodded slowly, but didn’t relax. “I know. But something's watching. Or calling.”
Down they went, past bustling halls, through quieter tunnels, and into the echoing emptiness of the old levels, long abandoned. Dust hung thick in the air. Runes on the walls had faded, and doors sat broken, forgotten. The stones here were older, rougher, heavy with the weight of history.
Then, at the threshold of a great arched entrance carved with a long-worn dwarven script, Mirabella slowed.
She stood just shy of crossing the threshold, her hand brushing the stone frame, eyes wide and distant.
“I can’t go any further,” she said softly.
Nekonata turned, surprised by the shift in her tone. “Why?”
Her voice was barely more than a breath. “This place... it remembers things. Old things. It’s not meant for the living, not anymore.” Her eyes met his. “Even as a girl, we were warned not to come down here. Something sleeps beneath Buradoth. The elders say it was buried and bound long before our clan ever found this mountain.”
Santaya growled low in her throat, tail stiff, and Kristolia pressed close to Nekonata’s side. Loki was silent now, feathers sleek, staring into the dark ahead.
The whisper came again. Clearer this time. Still indecipherable, but closer.
Mirabella stepped back. “If you go on… you go alone.”
Nekonata looked once into the gloom, then back to her. “I understand.”
She hesitated, then reached into her satchel and pressed a small rune-etched stone into his hand. “A hearth-mark. If the halls close on you… this might help you find your way back.”
He nodded, closing his fingers around it.
And then, without another word, he turned and stepped beyond the archway, his wolves flanking him, and the raven silent above.
Behind him, the last light of the dwarven stronghold faded.
Nekonata stepped past the arched threshold, and the world behind him vanished.
Darkness swallowed everything.
The air was thick, damp, and heavy with the scent of moss, rusted metal, and time left to rot. The stone beneath his boots was uneven, worn by centuries of neglect. Santaya and Kristolia stayed close, their ears pinned back, every step cautious. Loki let out a low, uncharacteristically quiet caw, then fluttered to Nekonata’s shoulder, feathers ruffling uneasily.
There was no light here. Not a trace. Just ink-thick shadow pressing in on all sides.
Nekonata reached out, feeling his way along a cold, clammy wall. Water trickled somewhere in the distance. The silence was so complete, it rang in his ears.
His boot caught on something. Metal? Bone? He stumbled, cursed softly under his breath.
“This won’t do,” he muttered.
He raised his hand and whispered a phrase in the ancient language.
A soft hum responded.
A small orb of purple light bloomed from his palm and drifted upward, hovering just above his head. It pulsed gently, casting a dim purple glow around them. Stone walls emerged from the dark, wet and cracked, veins of quartz gleaming faintly. Rusted tools lay scattered across the floor, half-buried in dust.
Shadows danced in unnatural ways, stretching too long, too sharp.
The wolves tensed but didn’t growl. Loki was still.
Then—
The whisper returned.
Clearer now. Still in no known tongue. Still not a voice… but close. Like someone speaking from behind a thick veil, just beyond the veil of memory and sound.
Only Nekonata heard it.
His companions looked at him, sensing his shift in focus.
He stood still, listening.
The whisper wasn’t just calling anymore.
It was guiding.
Their footsteps echoed through the deep. The air was growing colder, heavier, as if the stone itself were watching. Nekonata’s were-light hovered faithfully overhead, casting that strange purple glow across long-forgotten walls and ancient mining shafts.
It became clear now, this was once a gem vein, rich with quartz and stone. Pickaxes rusted to their handles lay abandoned. Carts frozen mid-load. The bones of a great industry now lost to silence.
As the group passed through a narrow corridor, something beneath the dust caught Nekonata’s eye, a flicker, a glint just beyond the light’s reach.
He crouched slowly, brushing away centuries of settled stone-dust with a careful breath.
There, half-buried in the floor, lay a garnet, deep red and smooth as glass, the size of a child’s fist. Even dulled by time, it shimmered with unnatural clarity.
He picked it up, turning it in his fingers.
Then—
The whisper.
Closer. Stronger.
This time, understandable.
“Come and find me... I’m down here.”
Nekonata froze. The words pierced something deep inside him, something old, something instinctive. The voice was not male or female, not young or old. It was knowing.
Before he could second-guess, he slipped the garnet into his pocket and surged forward, guided now by the pull, the voice, and something else, a sense of belonging.
Santaya and Kristolia followed without hesitation, silent and alert. Loki took to the air again, gliding just ahead, his wings barely whispering in the stale air.
They passed through vast, echoing chambers, collapsed kitchens with shattered pots, rusted stoves overgrown with pale cave lichen. Old workshops lay in ruin, anvils split in half, scrolls turned to dust. Time itself had tried to bury what lay down here, but the voice had endured.
After what felt like hours, days, maybe, time slipping strangely in the dark, they emerged into a cavern so vast it swallowed their light whole.
An underground lake stretched before them, black as ink, still as death. The were-light flickered uncertainly, casting a purple shimmer across the water’s mirror-like surface.
But there, across the lake, on a low stone pedestal rising from a shelf of rock, pulsed a soft orange glow.
Nekonata stepped forward, breath caught in his throat.
The light was not fire. It was warmth. Life. Ancient and unspent.
A dragon egg.
Its shell shimmered with hues of copper, ember, and gold, veins of light dancing beneath its surface like lightning trapped beneath glass.
It pulsed, once, as if it sensed them.
Behind him, Santaya whimpered low, ears flat. Kristolia stared with ears forward. Loki circled once above, then perched silently near the edge of the lake.
And then—
The whisper again.
‘You’ve found me.’ The egg said in Neko’s mind, crystal clear.
The underground lake lapped gently at Nekonata’s boots as he stepped forward, the water cold and glassy, barely disturbed by his presence. The were-light bobbed above him, casting long, rippling shadows across the cavern walls. Each step toward the pedestal seemed to pull the world tighter, like the air itself was holding its breath.
He stepped on to the small island, reverently.
There, bathed in that soft, ember-orange glow, the dragon egg pulsed with life.
It was unlike anything he had ever seen, veins of golden light beneath its translucent shell, slow and steady, like a sleeping heartbeat. Warmth radiated from it, not heat, but a presence. Ancient. Patient.
Nekonata stared at it in awe, and whispered aloud:
“Who are you? How long have you been here?”
The answer didn’t come with sound, but within his mind. Clear. Gentle. Timeless.
‘My name is Amira. I’ve been here for five centuries… at least.’
His breath caught.
Five hundred years.
He slowly sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged before the egg like a student before an oracle, or a child before a fire on a winter’s night. His wolves sat silently behind him, as if they too understood the gravity of this moment. Loki, now utterly still, perched on a low stone nearby, his head tilted, black eyes gleaming with something unreadable.
Nekonata didn’t speak again. He just… listened.
The air around the egg pulsed with quiet energy. His thoughts slowed. The whisper of Amira faded for a time, but the warmth remained, like sitting beside a sleeping friend who might, at any moment, wake.
Time passed, or maybe it stood still.
Then—
Footsteps.
A clatter of boots. Armor. Panting breath.
From the far end of the cavern, through a tunnel barely wide enough for two, emerged King Althor, beard damp with sweat, followed by a wide-eyed, frantic Donal.
They stumbled to a halt as their eyes fell upon the scene:
Nekonata, soaked to the knees, sitting before a glowing dragon egg on a forgotten island in a lost, silent lake.
Donal gasped. “By the ancestors…”
King Althor’s eyes went wide with disbelief. He muttered something in Dwarvish—an old prayer, or maybe a curse.
Nekonata turned his head slowly toward them, eyes reflecting the orange glow.
“She’s called Amira,” he said quietly. “And she’s been waiting… a very long time.”
The king took a step forward, voice low with disbelief. “That’s… impossible. How long can Dragon eggs survive for?.”
Nekonata looked back at the egg, eyes narrowed with something between wonder and resolve.
“She didn’t just survive. She endured. And now she’s calling.”
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