The Journey, Book 3: Chapter 10 = Previous Chapter
Chapter 11, Sound
The ground rumbled. Stones and pebbles bounced as if trying to flee, carts wobbled, wheel nuts un-threaded and fell away, sending wagons crashing to the ground in splintering heaps. People staggered and dropped to their knees. The tremor stretched on far too long, as though the earth had forgotten how to be still.
Tara watched from Elqiana’s back, high in the sky. ‘Ground quake,’ the opal-white dragon muttered in her rider’s mind.
Tara winced as she saw a man dive and snatch a small child from the path of a collapsing cart. “This doesn’t seem normal, Elqi… There’ve been ground quakes before, but never this long. Or at least I don’t think they have.”
The rumbling deepened. Below, thatched roofs shook apart, collapsing inward like crushed nests. “It can’t be the Dwarves tunnelling, could it? They wouldn’t tunnel this far. I’m sure of it,” she said aloud, more to herself than anyone.
Elqiana flapped her great wings, circling slowly as they observed the chaos below. Tara reached her mind out, carefully brushing the minds beneath her, searching for the familiar mental texture of a Dwarven presence. Instead, she collided gently with the sharp awareness of Blacky, the shabby-furred were-cat.
‘Blacky…’ she called cautiously. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’
Blacky looked up from the balcony where he crouched, tail low. ‘It’s coming from inside the mines…’ he replied, the words brushing her thoughts like cold fingertips.
Tara’s stomach tightened. ‘What inside the mines?’
Blacky’s ears pinned back. ‘Not dwarves. Not a cave-in. Something waking.’
Elqiana’s wings shuddered as another pulse rippled through the sky. Pebbles on the ground actually leapt into the air before falling again. ‘This is no simple quake,’ the dragon murmured.
Tara swallowed. “You feel it too?”
‘A heartbeat,’ Elqiana answered. ‘Slow. Old. Angry.’
Below them another house gave way, collapsing into itself. Dust clouds billowed upward, the air thick with drifting straw and grit as townsfolk hauled children and the injured out of danger.
“Blacky, get away from the buildings,” Tara urged. “Find somewhere open.”
Blacky shot her an irritated look but obeyed, sprinting toward a clearing. ‘You should come down,’ he said as he ran. ‘Whatever is moving is rising, Tara.’
Rising.
The word struck her harder than the tremor.
Elqiana dipped into a lower circle. 'If something stirs beneath the mountains, the Dwarves should have sensed it. Yet their watch-stones are silent.'
“No messengers,” Tara said. “No warnings. Nothing.”
'Which meant the Dwarves didn’t know… or couldn’t warn them.'
The heartbeat in the ground strengthened. The tremor surged, sharper than before. The entrance to the mines split—stone tearing apart with a deafening crack. A fissure yawned wide, exhaling a wind so cold it seemed pulled from an age long buried.
Blacky flattened his ears. ‘I told you. Waking.’
A groan rose from the depths of the mines—resonant, full of slow fury. It rolled across the land like a creature stretching after unmeasured years of sleep.
Tara steadied herself and leaned into the wind. “Elqi… take us lower.”
Whatever was climbing toward the surface was no longer hiding.
And Tara had the bone-deep feeling that she was meant to witness what came next.
The air near the mine entrance seethed with dust and the raw, metallic tang of terror. Elqiana landed hard enough to crack the soil beneath her talons, folding her wings tight as miners poured from the darkness—shoving, scrambling, some crawling on hands and knees. Their faces were ash-pale, streaked with sweat and soot, their minds screaming so loudly Tara could feel the static of it against her thoughts.
Tara slid down the dragon’s foreleg in one practiced motion, boots hitting the trembling ground. Her sword was already free, the metal singing with the vibrations beneath her feet. She sprinted forward and snagged an older miner by the shoulder. “What is it? What’s happening?”
The man’s eyes were wild, pupils blown wide. His mind was a tangle—panic, pain, blind instinct. “Run, run for your life!” he gasped. He wrenched out of her grip and bolted, stumbling like his legs no longer belonged to him.
“So much for getting answers,” Tara muttered, brushing the dust off her cloak as she turned back toward the gaping wound of the mine.
'Be careful, little redhead,' Elqiana rumbled inside her mind. The dragon’s tone held none of its usual amused lilt. This was the warning-growl she used when storms approached or when strange magic coiled in the air.
Tara loosened her stance, blade angled low, breath slow and deliberate as she edged closer to the entrance. The temperature dropped with each step. A cold that didn’t belong above ground slid across her skin, raising goosebumps.
Behind a partially collapsed wall, Blacky’s dark silhouette crouched with predator stillness. His eyes glowed like twin coals in the dim light, fixed entirely on the tunnel mouth.
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” Tara murmured without looking back.
Blacky’s tail flicked once. “Satisfaction brought him back,” he answered dryly. “Besides, you humans panic so loudly I can’t hear myself think.”
A deep groan shuddered out of the mine—long, resonant, almost mournful. It was the sound of stone shifting unwillingly… but also something else. A presence. Heavy. Rising.
Dust billowed outward in a slow wave and the ground quivered beneath Tara’s boots. She took a breath that felt too sharp in her chest.
“Elqi,” she whispered, though the dragon was already lowering her head, eyes narrowed, pupils thin slits of opal fire. “It’s coming closer.”
Blacky pressed himself flatter to the stone. His whiskers trembled. “That,” he said softly, “is no beast I know.”
A shadow began to move deep within the tunnel—vast, deliberate, and utterly wrong in the way an eclipse feels wrong.
Tara tightened her grip on her sword.
The creature exploded out of the mine mouth in a shower of shattered stone and dust. Its stench hit first—rot, damp earth, and something sweetly corrupt that churned the stomach. Blacky gagged, fur bristling. Tara’s eyes watered as she looked up—
—and the thing looked down.
The troll’s face twisted into something like recognition or hunger; it was impossible to tell. Tara barely had time to tense before a tree-trunk leg swung out. The kick connected with her midsection like a battering ram. The world spun. Air punched out of her lungs. She felt the sky, then ground, then nothing but sickening motion.
Instinct snapped into place.
“Aero!” she gasped.
Wind wrapped around her like cautious hands, spiralling into a soft cradle that slowed her violent arc. She drifted downward, landing in a huff of displaced dust rather than a bone-breaking crash.
She staggered upright. “What the hell is that? It’s huge!”
'A mountain troll,' Elqiana answered, voice tight. 'But… not right. Its aura is twisted.'
Elqiana flared her wings wide, the opal membranes shimmering like storm-lit ice. Her talons carved trenches in the trembling earth as she loosed a roar that shook the air. The troll answered with a chest-thumping bellow, flecks of spittle flying, its stone club raised high.
Challenge met.
On all fours, Elqiana surged forward. Her great body hit the ground like a charging avalanche, maw gaping wide. She snapped at the troll’s torso; the troll brought its massive club down in a sweeping arc.
The stone weapon whooshed past Elqiana’s left flank—so close Tara felt the wind of it whip across her face. The impact cratered the earth where it landed, sending shards of rock flying.
Blacky hissed, darting behind a toppled beam. “Mountain troll, yes,” he muttered, “but what mountain troll comes out of a sealed mine smelling like a corpse on holiday?”
Elqiana twisted sharply, tail lashing out. The blow struck the troll’s ribs with a crack like splitting timber. The troll staggered but did not fall. It lifted its club again, eyes burning with a strange, unnatural light.
Tara tightened her grip on her sword, stepping back into the fray’s edge. Her ribs still ached from the kick, her breath shallow, but her mind burned steady and bright.
“Elqi—watch its right!” she called.
The dragon’s reply pulsed warm in her skull. I see it.
The troll lunged, swinging its club with murderous force.
Elqiana’s charge shook the earth as she lunged, jaws gaping wide. She met the troll’s swing head-on, teeth clamping around the massive stone club. Stone groaned under the pressure, dust billowing from the cracks forming beneath her bite.
The troll didn’t try to wrench the club free.
Instead, it dropped its grip entirely—and drove its massive fist straight into Elqiana’s face.
The impact sounded like a boulder slamming into a cliff side. Elqiana’s head snapped sideways under the force. Tara felt the blow echo through the bond—sharp, stunning, a bright burst of pain that struck her own cheek like she’d been backhanded by an angry spirit. Her hand flew to her face on instinct, breath catching.
Elqiana’s roar turned into a choking grunt as she released the club. She staggered backward, claws gouging deep tracks in the earth to keep herself from toppling. Her wings flared for balance, tail whipping dust into the air.
“Elqi!” Tara shouted, the ache still pulsing along her jaw. “Are you—”
'Fine,' the dragon growled, though her mind-voice carried a raw edge. 'It fights dirtier than most trolls.'
Blacky blinked from behind his half-collapsed hiding spot. “Dirtier? That thing just punched a dragon. That’s not ‘dirty,’ that’s suicidal.”
The troll retrieved its club with a deep rumbling grunt. Its eyes were wrong—glowing faintly, as though something old and foul had filled the creature like water filling a cracked jug. It thumped its chest once, grinning with too many broken teeth.
Elqiana lowered her head, nostrils flaring. It is tainted, she sent to Tara. 'No troll should be so fast… nor so bold.'
Tara clenched her sword. “Then we stay sharp.”
The monster advanced with lumbering confidence, its steps making the earth quiver. Elqiana steadied her footing, wings half-spread, a low warning rumble vibrating the stones beneath Tara’s boots.
The troll raised its club again, the air around it swirling with dust and the sour stink of decay.
Tara’s cheek still throbbed with the shared pain—but it sharpened her focus rather than dulled it.
Tara’s thoughts raced as the troll lumbered forward, swinging its cracked club in wild, brutal arcs. Her gaze swept the battlefield, landing on the broken ring of boulders scattered near the mine entrance. Rough stone. Heavy. Just within range.
A plan sparked—reckless, desperate, and exactly the sort Blacky complained about.
She flicked her eyes toward the were-cat. 'Blacky, I have an idea. I need your help with…'
Blacky’s ears twitched. Suspicion. Interest. A hint of resignation. This already sounds stupid, he muttered.
'If you hide behind those boulders, I can lift them with wind. I’ll throw the first one to get its attention. Then you jump on the second. Ride it. Drop onto its face. Blind it.'
Blacky stared at her so blankly it almost felt like a physical slap. 'I hate you, he said flatly. Truly. Deeply. Eternally.'
But he dashed off anyway, paws silent on the trembling earth. He skidded behind the nearest boulder and added, 'You owe me five chickens for this. And a hot bath.'
Tara nearly snorted. “Deal,” she said aloud, though she doubted he heard anything over the troll’s guttural snarling.
She raised both hands, inhaled the sharp, cold air around the mine, and pulled. Wind gathered at her palms, curling hard and tight. The first boulder shuddered, lifted, then lurched into the air. Tara thrust her arms forward and the stone shot across the clearing.
It collided with the troll’s shoulder in a satisfying crack. The troll grunted, stumbling to one side. A dark bruise blossomed across its grey, leathery flesh—but the boulder crumbled apart on impact.
Tara looked to Blacky. He answered with a crisp nod, already poised like a coiled spring atop the next boulder.
She summoned the wind again. Stronger this time. Sharper. The second boulder rose, heavy as guilt, with Blacky crouched on top.
'Hold on,' Tara warned, though Blacky’s mind was already a coiled snarl of commitment and regret.
Just throw it, he growled.
She launched it.
The boulder slammed into the troll’s chest with a deep, gut-shaking thud. Blacky leapt the moment before impact, claws fully unsheathed, sailing through the dust like a black arrow.
He landed square on the troll’s face.
“GAH—BY THE GODS—WHY DOES IT SMELL LIKE THIS?!” he gagged, retching audibly.
But he dug in anyway—claws finding the softest flesh they could. The troll howled, a sound that split the sky, flailing wildly. Blacky swung side to side like a rag stuck to a laundry line in a storm, but he held on, shredding the troll’s eyelids, gouging desperately for the eyes.
The beast panicked. Its arms windmilled. Elqiana darted closer, ready to strike.
Then the troll made a sound that was half rage, half desperation. Its huge hand shot up, faster than a creature its size had any right to move. Fingers closed around the flailing were-cat.
“No—!” Tara shouted.
The troll hurled Blacky like a stone from a catapult.
“BLACKY!” Tara’s voice cracked with a fear she didn’t have time to taste.
But Elqiana moved first.
The dragon swept in with a precision that belonged to creatures born for the sky. She angled her wing downward, the soft inner membrane forming a curved catch. Blacky hit the wing, skidded, yelped—then slid down the opal surface to the ground in a limp, groaning heap.
Tara exhaled a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
Elqiana snarled, lowering her head toward the troll again. Its eyes are injured, the dragon sent. Now it fights half-blind.
Blacky raised his head weakly, fur matted and reeking. “I’m… never doing that again,” he wheezed.
The troll bellowed, stumbling, blood streaking its ruined eye.
The tide of the fight had shifted—just enough for something fierce and final to emerge from Tara’s resolve. The battlefield trembled again, waiting for the next strike.
Blacky staggered upright, fur hanging in clumps, eyes watering, dignity in ruins. He glared at Tara with the full force of a creature who had just wrestled a troll’s face.
"Ten chickens… he growled into her thoughts, tail lashing. And a lifetime of hot baths. A lifetime. I stink. I smell like troll armpit stew. I hate this. I hate everything."
He sauntered away with as much pride as a wobbling, nauseated were-cat could manage.
Elqiana took her opening the moment Blacky was clear. The dragon lunged, snapping her jaws around the troll’s club-wielding arm. Her teeth sank deep into the rubbery flesh. The troll roared, swinging wildly, but Elqiana held firm—until her tongue accidentally brushed troll skin.
A full-body shudder ran through her. Gh—! The mental sound she made was indescribable, half revulsion and half 'why does this creature taste like fermented swamp?'
Tara didn’t waste a heartbeat.
She darted forward, sprinting along the battlefield toward Elqiana’s tail. The dragon felt her coming and didn’t need instruction—this was a maneuver they’d practiced once, laughed about twice, and sworn never to attempt unless absolutely necessary.
This qualified.
Tara stepped onto Elqiana’s tail and the dragon snapped it upward like the world’s most powerful slingshot.
Tara soared—an arc of red hair, steel, and reckless intent. Wind clawed at her cloak. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of White-Wind.
“Fajro,” she whispered.
The blade erupted in a plume of white fire—pure, searing, and hungry.
Gravity seized her.
She brought the flaming sword down with all the force of the fall, driving it straight into the troll’s skull. The white fire sizzled as it met flesh, and the sound—wet crackle, popping rot—was nearly worse than the stench that followed.
The stink hit Tara like a physical blow. It clawed at her throat, begging her to gag. She forced it down and pushed harder.
White-Wind cleaved through bone, then into sinew, sliding downward with gravity’s eager help. The blade carved a glowing line from skull to sternum—halfway down the troll’s chest—before catching.
The troll staggered, arms windmilling weakly, the fire burning deep inside the wound.
And then Elqiana struck.
The dragon lunged in a final, decisive wave of muscle and fury. She clamped her jaws around what remained of the troll’s head. With a wrenching twist and a roar that rattled the stones, she tore it clean from its shoulders.
The troll’s decapitated body shuddered—once, twice—then toppled backward in a thunderous crash that shook dust from the ruined mine.
Silence stretched.
Only the sound of Elqiana spitting troll bits in disgust broke it.
Tara slid down the troll’s collapsing torso, boots skidding on thick, charred hide. She landed in a heap, chest heaving, sword still burning faintly in her hand.
The battlefield stank, the air trembled… and something deeper in the mine still throbbed with that ancient, unsettling heartbeat.
Tara doubled over and finally vomited, her whole body trembling. Beside her, Elqiana shuddered as well, shaking off the lingering revulsion of troll blood. Slowly, the tremors faded, the ground settling into silence once more.
From behind shattered carts and broken fences, the villagers emerged one by one, inching closer to the fallen troll. Blood still poured in thick streams from its severed neck, pooling darkly beneath it. The village elder approached Tara and Elqiana, then bowed deeply.
“Troll Slayer, we thank you,” she said.
Tara glanced at Elqiana, who managed a dragon-ish grin full of teeth and mischief.
“My name is Tarasque,” Tara said politely, “and this is Elqiana.”
The elder turned to her people and raised her arms high. “Lady Tarasque and Elqiana the Great—Slayers of Trolls!”
The villagers erupted in cheers, but Tara barely heard them. Something pulsed beneath the earth—an unsettling echo deep within the mine. Elqiana felt it too; Tara could see the tension rippling across her scales.
“I’m going inside the mine,” Tara announced at last. “I need someone to guide me to where the ground-quake began.”
For a moment no one moved—until a young man stepped forward. Dust clung to his hair and clothes, his face streaked with dirt. But his eyes were steady.
“I’ll take you,” he said.
Tara nodded. Without another word, she and the young miner slipped into the dark mouth of the shaft.
“What’s your name?” she asked as they walked.
“William,” he replied simply, lifting his lantern and leading her deeper into the mine.
William’s lantern swung in a tired arc, sending long shadows crawling over the tunnel walls. Tara followed close behind, boots crunching over gravel and old timber splinters. The air grew heavier with every turn—a kind of subterranean hush that made each breath feel like it belonged to the mountain instead of to her.
They went left, then right, then down a shaft so steep she had to brace herself against a support beam slick with mineral dust. It was a labyrinth carved by stubborn hands and sheer necessity.
“How do you even keep track of all this?” she asked once the twisting became absurd, almost comical in its complexity.
William slowed, lifted the lantern higher, and tapped the wall with the back of his knuckles. “We leave marks,” he said. “Different colours. Different meanings.”
He stepped aside and let the lantern spill light over the stone. Faded strokes of ochre crossed a pale slash of chalk. A little farther on, a dot of blue pigment sat like a dropped berry.
“Ochre’s for safe paths. Chalk’s for new cuts—we test those daily. Blue…” He hesitated, rubbing dust from his cheeks. “Blue means ‘don’t’… unless you’ve got a very good reason.”
The miner swept the lantern down the passageway as they continued. He would point them out as they went—green for water nearby, red for structural danger. It was almost a language, and he spoke it with surprising confidence. Tara found herself liking the earnestness of it, the rough-practical poetry of colour in a maze of stone.
After what felt like half a lifetime, William raised a hand and stopped. The lantern’s glow spilled forward, catching on a crude, sprawling hole torn into the wall of the mineshaft. The rock edges were broken and bent inward, as though something enormous had shoved its way out instead of in. A sour smell pooled there—troll musk and damp earth.
“That’s where it came from,” William said quietly. His voice seemed to shrink in the stale air. “We heard the wall give… then the ground shook.”
Tara nodded. The unease she’d felt earlier tugged insistently at her spine now, a thread pulling her forward. “Wait here, please.”
William swallowed but nodded, clutching the lantern close.
Tara stepped up to the ragged breach, placed her palm against the rough stone, and drew on the faint shimmer of white energy in her chest. A soft were-light—moon-born and obedient—bloomed beside her and drifted into the opening like a curious moth. She climbed in after it, the glow following her deeper into the dark, where the tunnel beyond breathed cold air that did not belong to the mundane workings of any mine.
The stench hit her like a wall. Not the ordinary reek of a troll—damp fur, spoiled meat, and whatever else they dragged home—but something richer, fouler, layered like rot upon rot. Tara pinched her nose with one hand and held the were-light close with the other, its glow silvering the air and making every floating mote look like a drifting ghost.
She stepped carefully. Fish carcasses lay scattered across the floor like abandoned scales of some forgotten sea creature. Bones—some animal, some disturbingly large—crunched under her boots. The tunnel widened, breathing out a colder current that carried hints of moss and wet stone. The shift underfoot came gradually, the earth turning soft, spongy, and green-furred with moss that drank the were-light and shimmered faintly.
Tara eased around a bend and entered a cave that wasn’t part of the mine at all. It felt older. Wilder. A place carved not by pickaxes but by time and instinct.
In the corner, beneath a jagged shelf of rock, lay the remains of a fire: blackened logs, ash kicked in uneven patterns, the scent of old smoke clinging stubbornly to the air. Beside it was the troll’s hoard. Not gold—trolls never cared for glitter—but scavenged armour pieces, rusted shields, dented helms, broken swords. A graveyard of battles long forgotten.
On top of the heap sat something that didn’t belong.
A large, oval shape. Dark red, almost the colour of blood stone, smooth as river-worn granite. It pulsed—faintly, rhythmically—as though it breathed.
Tara’s heart gave a strange, quiet jolt. She knelt, one hand hovering over it but not quite daring to touch. Her mind reached outward in a familiar, practiced way, sending a picture through the bond she shared with Elqiana: the cave, the armour heap, and the pulsing red shape atop it.
Elqiana’s reaction struck like a spark in Tara’s mind. A sharp intake. A burst of recognition. Then a whisper that carried both awe and fear.
‘Little redhead… that’s a dragon egg…’
Chapter 11, Sound
The ground rumbled. Stones and pebbles bounced as if trying to flee, carts wobbled, wheel nuts un-threaded and fell away, sending wagons crashing to the ground in splintering heaps. People staggered and dropped to their knees. The tremor stretched on far too long, as though the earth had forgotten how to be still.
Tara watched from Elqiana’s back, high in the sky. ‘Ground quake,’ the opal-white dragon muttered in her rider’s mind.
Tara winced as she saw a man dive and snatch a small child from the path of a collapsing cart. “This doesn’t seem normal, Elqi… There’ve been ground quakes before, but never this long. Or at least I don’t think they have.”
The rumbling deepened. Below, thatched roofs shook apart, collapsing inward like crushed nests. “It can’t be the Dwarves tunnelling, could it? They wouldn’t tunnel this far. I’m sure of it,” she said aloud, more to herself than anyone.
Elqiana flapped her great wings, circling slowly as they observed the chaos below. Tara reached her mind out, carefully brushing the minds beneath her, searching for the familiar mental texture of a Dwarven presence. Instead, she collided gently with the sharp awareness of Blacky, the shabby-furred were-cat.
‘Blacky…’ she called cautiously. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’
Blacky looked up from the balcony where he crouched, tail low. ‘It’s coming from inside the mines…’ he replied, the words brushing her thoughts like cold fingertips.
Tara’s stomach tightened. ‘What inside the mines?’
Blacky’s ears pinned back. ‘Not dwarves. Not a cave-in. Something waking.’
Elqiana’s wings shuddered as another pulse rippled through the sky. Pebbles on the ground actually leapt into the air before falling again. ‘This is no simple quake,’ the dragon murmured.
Tara swallowed. “You feel it too?”
‘A heartbeat,’ Elqiana answered. ‘Slow. Old. Angry.’
Below them another house gave way, collapsing into itself. Dust clouds billowed upward, the air thick with drifting straw and grit as townsfolk hauled children and the injured out of danger.
“Blacky, get away from the buildings,” Tara urged. “Find somewhere open.”
Blacky shot her an irritated look but obeyed, sprinting toward a clearing. ‘You should come down,’ he said as he ran. ‘Whatever is moving is rising, Tara.’
Rising.
The word struck her harder than the tremor.
Elqiana dipped into a lower circle. 'If something stirs beneath the mountains, the Dwarves should have sensed it. Yet their watch-stones are silent.'
“No messengers,” Tara said. “No warnings. Nothing.”
'Which meant the Dwarves didn’t know… or couldn’t warn them.'
The heartbeat in the ground strengthened. The tremor surged, sharper than before. The entrance to the mines split—stone tearing apart with a deafening crack. A fissure yawned wide, exhaling a wind so cold it seemed pulled from an age long buried.
Blacky flattened his ears. ‘I told you. Waking.’
A groan rose from the depths of the mines—resonant, full of slow fury. It rolled across the land like a creature stretching after unmeasured years of sleep.
Tara steadied herself and leaned into the wind. “Elqi… take us lower.”
Whatever was climbing toward the surface was no longer hiding.
And Tara had the bone-deep feeling that she was meant to witness what came next.
The air near the mine entrance seethed with dust and the raw, metallic tang of terror. Elqiana landed hard enough to crack the soil beneath her talons, folding her wings tight as miners poured from the darkness—shoving, scrambling, some crawling on hands and knees. Their faces were ash-pale, streaked with sweat and soot, their minds screaming so loudly Tara could feel the static of it against her thoughts.
Tara slid down the dragon’s foreleg in one practiced motion, boots hitting the trembling ground. Her sword was already free, the metal singing with the vibrations beneath her feet. She sprinted forward and snagged an older miner by the shoulder. “What is it? What’s happening?”
The man’s eyes were wild, pupils blown wide. His mind was a tangle—panic, pain, blind instinct. “Run, run for your life!” he gasped. He wrenched out of her grip and bolted, stumbling like his legs no longer belonged to him.
“So much for getting answers,” Tara muttered, brushing the dust off her cloak as she turned back toward the gaping wound of the mine.
'Be careful, little redhead,' Elqiana rumbled inside her mind. The dragon’s tone held none of its usual amused lilt. This was the warning-growl she used when storms approached or when strange magic coiled in the air.
Tara loosened her stance, blade angled low, breath slow and deliberate as she edged closer to the entrance. The temperature dropped with each step. A cold that didn’t belong above ground slid across her skin, raising goosebumps.
Behind a partially collapsed wall, Blacky’s dark silhouette crouched with predator stillness. His eyes glowed like twin coals in the dim light, fixed entirely on the tunnel mouth.
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” Tara murmured without looking back.
Blacky’s tail flicked once. “Satisfaction brought him back,” he answered dryly. “Besides, you humans panic so loudly I can’t hear myself think.”
A deep groan shuddered out of the mine—long, resonant, almost mournful. It was the sound of stone shifting unwillingly… but also something else. A presence. Heavy. Rising.
Dust billowed outward in a slow wave and the ground quivered beneath Tara’s boots. She took a breath that felt too sharp in her chest.
“Elqi,” she whispered, though the dragon was already lowering her head, eyes narrowed, pupils thin slits of opal fire. “It’s coming closer.”
Blacky pressed himself flatter to the stone. His whiskers trembled. “That,” he said softly, “is no beast I know.”
A shadow began to move deep within the tunnel—vast, deliberate, and utterly wrong in the way an eclipse feels wrong.
Tara tightened her grip on her sword.
The creature exploded out of the mine mouth in a shower of shattered stone and dust. Its stench hit first—rot, damp earth, and something sweetly corrupt that churned the stomach. Blacky gagged, fur bristling. Tara’s eyes watered as she looked up—
—and the thing looked down.
The troll’s face twisted into something like recognition or hunger; it was impossible to tell. Tara barely had time to tense before a tree-trunk leg swung out. The kick connected with her midsection like a battering ram. The world spun. Air punched out of her lungs. She felt the sky, then ground, then nothing but sickening motion.
Instinct snapped into place.
“Aero!” she gasped.
Wind wrapped around her like cautious hands, spiralling into a soft cradle that slowed her violent arc. She drifted downward, landing in a huff of displaced dust rather than a bone-breaking crash.
She staggered upright. “What the hell is that? It’s huge!”
'A mountain troll,' Elqiana answered, voice tight. 'But… not right. Its aura is twisted.'
Elqiana flared her wings wide, the opal membranes shimmering like storm-lit ice. Her talons carved trenches in the trembling earth as she loosed a roar that shook the air. The troll answered with a chest-thumping bellow, flecks of spittle flying, its stone club raised high.
Challenge met.
On all fours, Elqiana surged forward. Her great body hit the ground like a charging avalanche, maw gaping wide. She snapped at the troll’s torso; the troll brought its massive club down in a sweeping arc.
The stone weapon whooshed past Elqiana’s left flank—so close Tara felt the wind of it whip across her face. The impact cratered the earth where it landed, sending shards of rock flying.
Blacky hissed, darting behind a toppled beam. “Mountain troll, yes,” he muttered, “but what mountain troll comes out of a sealed mine smelling like a corpse on holiday?”
Elqiana twisted sharply, tail lashing out. The blow struck the troll’s ribs with a crack like splitting timber. The troll staggered but did not fall. It lifted its club again, eyes burning with a strange, unnatural light.
Tara tightened her grip on her sword, stepping back into the fray’s edge. Her ribs still ached from the kick, her breath shallow, but her mind burned steady and bright.
“Elqi—watch its right!” she called.
The dragon’s reply pulsed warm in her skull. I see it.
The troll lunged, swinging its club with murderous force.
Elqiana’s charge shook the earth as she lunged, jaws gaping wide. She met the troll’s swing head-on, teeth clamping around the massive stone club. Stone groaned under the pressure, dust billowing from the cracks forming beneath her bite.
The troll didn’t try to wrench the club free.
Instead, it dropped its grip entirely—and drove its massive fist straight into Elqiana’s face.
The impact sounded like a boulder slamming into a cliff side. Elqiana’s head snapped sideways under the force. Tara felt the blow echo through the bond—sharp, stunning, a bright burst of pain that struck her own cheek like she’d been backhanded by an angry spirit. Her hand flew to her face on instinct, breath catching.
Elqiana’s roar turned into a choking grunt as she released the club. She staggered backward, claws gouging deep tracks in the earth to keep herself from toppling. Her wings flared for balance, tail whipping dust into the air.
“Elqi!” Tara shouted, the ache still pulsing along her jaw. “Are you—”
'Fine,' the dragon growled, though her mind-voice carried a raw edge. 'It fights dirtier than most trolls.'
Blacky blinked from behind his half-collapsed hiding spot. “Dirtier? That thing just punched a dragon. That’s not ‘dirty,’ that’s suicidal.”
The troll retrieved its club with a deep rumbling grunt. Its eyes were wrong—glowing faintly, as though something old and foul had filled the creature like water filling a cracked jug. It thumped its chest once, grinning with too many broken teeth.
Elqiana lowered her head, nostrils flaring. It is tainted, she sent to Tara. 'No troll should be so fast… nor so bold.'
Tara clenched her sword. “Then we stay sharp.”
The monster advanced with lumbering confidence, its steps making the earth quiver. Elqiana steadied her footing, wings half-spread, a low warning rumble vibrating the stones beneath Tara’s boots.
The troll raised its club again, the air around it swirling with dust and the sour stink of decay.
Tara’s cheek still throbbed with the shared pain—but it sharpened her focus rather than dulled it.
Tara’s thoughts raced as the troll lumbered forward, swinging its cracked club in wild, brutal arcs. Her gaze swept the battlefield, landing on the broken ring of boulders scattered near the mine entrance. Rough stone. Heavy. Just within range.
A plan sparked—reckless, desperate, and exactly the sort Blacky complained about.
She flicked her eyes toward the were-cat. 'Blacky, I have an idea. I need your help with…'
Blacky’s ears twitched. Suspicion. Interest. A hint of resignation. This already sounds stupid, he muttered.
'If you hide behind those boulders, I can lift them with wind. I’ll throw the first one to get its attention. Then you jump on the second. Ride it. Drop onto its face. Blind it.'
Blacky stared at her so blankly it almost felt like a physical slap. 'I hate you, he said flatly. Truly. Deeply. Eternally.'
But he dashed off anyway, paws silent on the trembling earth. He skidded behind the nearest boulder and added, 'You owe me five chickens for this. And a hot bath.'
Tara nearly snorted. “Deal,” she said aloud, though she doubted he heard anything over the troll’s guttural snarling.
She raised both hands, inhaled the sharp, cold air around the mine, and pulled. Wind gathered at her palms, curling hard and tight. The first boulder shuddered, lifted, then lurched into the air. Tara thrust her arms forward and the stone shot across the clearing.
It collided with the troll’s shoulder in a satisfying crack. The troll grunted, stumbling to one side. A dark bruise blossomed across its grey, leathery flesh—but the boulder crumbled apart on impact.
Tara looked to Blacky. He answered with a crisp nod, already poised like a coiled spring atop the next boulder.
She summoned the wind again. Stronger this time. Sharper. The second boulder rose, heavy as guilt, with Blacky crouched on top.
'Hold on,' Tara warned, though Blacky’s mind was already a coiled snarl of commitment and regret.
Just throw it, he growled.
She launched it.
The boulder slammed into the troll’s chest with a deep, gut-shaking thud. Blacky leapt the moment before impact, claws fully unsheathed, sailing through the dust like a black arrow.
He landed square on the troll’s face.
“GAH—BY THE GODS—WHY DOES IT SMELL LIKE THIS?!” he gagged, retching audibly.
But he dug in anyway—claws finding the softest flesh they could. The troll howled, a sound that split the sky, flailing wildly. Blacky swung side to side like a rag stuck to a laundry line in a storm, but he held on, shredding the troll’s eyelids, gouging desperately for the eyes.
The beast panicked. Its arms windmilled. Elqiana darted closer, ready to strike.
Then the troll made a sound that was half rage, half desperation. Its huge hand shot up, faster than a creature its size had any right to move. Fingers closed around the flailing were-cat.
“No—!” Tara shouted.
The troll hurled Blacky like a stone from a catapult.
“BLACKY!” Tara’s voice cracked with a fear she didn’t have time to taste.
But Elqiana moved first.
The dragon swept in with a precision that belonged to creatures born for the sky. She angled her wing downward, the soft inner membrane forming a curved catch. Blacky hit the wing, skidded, yelped—then slid down the opal surface to the ground in a limp, groaning heap.
Tara exhaled a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
Elqiana snarled, lowering her head toward the troll again. Its eyes are injured, the dragon sent. Now it fights half-blind.
Blacky raised his head weakly, fur matted and reeking. “I’m… never doing that again,” he wheezed.
The troll bellowed, stumbling, blood streaking its ruined eye.
The tide of the fight had shifted—just enough for something fierce and final to emerge from Tara’s resolve. The battlefield trembled again, waiting for the next strike.
Blacky staggered upright, fur hanging in clumps, eyes watering, dignity in ruins. He glared at Tara with the full force of a creature who had just wrestled a troll’s face.
"Ten chickens… he growled into her thoughts, tail lashing. And a lifetime of hot baths. A lifetime. I stink. I smell like troll armpit stew. I hate this. I hate everything."
He sauntered away with as much pride as a wobbling, nauseated were-cat could manage.
Elqiana took her opening the moment Blacky was clear. The dragon lunged, snapping her jaws around the troll’s club-wielding arm. Her teeth sank deep into the rubbery flesh. The troll roared, swinging wildly, but Elqiana held firm—until her tongue accidentally brushed troll skin.
A full-body shudder ran through her. Gh—! The mental sound she made was indescribable, half revulsion and half 'why does this creature taste like fermented swamp?'
Tara didn’t waste a heartbeat.
She darted forward, sprinting along the battlefield toward Elqiana’s tail. The dragon felt her coming and didn’t need instruction—this was a maneuver they’d practiced once, laughed about twice, and sworn never to attempt unless absolutely necessary.
This qualified.
Tara stepped onto Elqiana’s tail and the dragon snapped it upward like the world’s most powerful slingshot.
Tara soared—an arc of red hair, steel, and reckless intent. Wind clawed at her cloak. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of White-Wind.
“Fajro,” she whispered.
The blade erupted in a plume of white fire—pure, searing, and hungry.
Gravity seized her.
She brought the flaming sword down with all the force of the fall, driving it straight into the troll’s skull. The white fire sizzled as it met flesh, and the sound—wet crackle, popping rot—was nearly worse than the stench that followed.
The stink hit Tara like a physical blow. It clawed at her throat, begging her to gag. She forced it down and pushed harder.
White-Wind cleaved through bone, then into sinew, sliding downward with gravity’s eager help. The blade carved a glowing line from skull to sternum—halfway down the troll’s chest—before catching.
The troll staggered, arms windmilling weakly, the fire burning deep inside the wound.
And then Elqiana struck.
The dragon lunged in a final, decisive wave of muscle and fury. She clamped her jaws around what remained of the troll’s head. With a wrenching twist and a roar that rattled the stones, she tore it clean from its shoulders.
The troll’s decapitated body shuddered—once, twice—then toppled backward in a thunderous crash that shook dust from the ruined mine.
Silence stretched.
Only the sound of Elqiana spitting troll bits in disgust broke it.
Tara slid down the troll’s collapsing torso, boots skidding on thick, charred hide. She landed in a heap, chest heaving, sword still burning faintly in her hand.
The battlefield stank, the air trembled… and something deeper in the mine still throbbed with that ancient, unsettling heartbeat.
Tara doubled over and finally vomited, her whole body trembling. Beside her, Elqiana shuddered as well, shaking off the lingering revulsion of troll blood. Slowly, the tremors faded, the ground settling into silence once more.
From behind shattered carts and broken fences, the villagers emerged one by one, inching closer to the fallen troll. Blood still poured in thick streams from its severed neck, pooling darkly beneath it. The village elder approached Tara and Elqiana, then bowed deeply.
“Troll Slayer, we thank you,” she said.
Tara glanced at Elqiana, who managed a dragon-ish grin full of teeth and mischief.
“My name is Tarasque,” Tara said politely, “and this is Elqiana.”
The elder turned to her people and raised her arms high. “Lady Tarasque and Elqiana the Great—Slayers of Trolls!”
The villagers erupted in cheers, but Tara barely heard them. Something pulsed beneath the earth—an unsettling echo deep within the mine. Elqiana felt it too; Tara could see the tension rippling across her scales.
“I’m going inside the mine,” Tara announced at last. “I need someone to guide me to where the ground-quake began.”
For a moment no one moved—until a young man stepped forward. Dust clung to his hair and clothes, his face streaked with dirt. But his eyes were steady.
“I’ll take you,” he said.
Tara nodded. Without another word, she and the young miner slipped into the dark mouth of the shaft.
“What’s your name?” she asked as they walked.
“William,” he replied simply, lifting his lantern and leading her deeper into the mine.
William’s lantern swung in a tired arc, sending long shadows crawling over the tunnel walls. Tara followed close behind, boots crunching over gravel and old timber splinters. The air grew heavier with every turn—a kind of subterranean hush that made each breath feel like it belonged to the mountain instead of to her.
They went left, then right, then down a shaft so steep she had to brace herself against a support beam slick with mineral dust. It was a labyrinth carved by stubborn hands and sheer necessity.
“How do you even keep track of all this?” she asked once the twisting became absurd, almost comical in its complexity.
William slowed, lifted the lantern higher, and tapped the wall with the back of his knuckles. “We leave marks,” he said. “Different colours. Different meanings.”
He stepped aside and let the lantern spill light over the stone. Faded strokes of ochre crossed a pale slash of chalk. A little farther on, a dot of blue pigment sat like a dropped berry.
“Ochre’s for safe paths. Chalk’s for new cuts—we test those daily. Blue…” He hesitated, rubbing dust from his cheeks. “Blue means ‘don’t’… unless you’ve got a very good reason.”
The miner swept the lantern down the passageway as they continued. He would point them out as they went—green for water nearby, red for structural danger. It was almost a language, and he spoke it with surprising confidence. Tara found herself liking the earnestness of it, the rough-practical poetry of colour in a maze of stone.
After what felt like half a lifetime, William raised a hand and stopped. The lantern’s glow spilled forward, catching on a crude, sprawling hole torn into the wall of the mineshaft. The rock edges were broken and bent inward, as though something enormous had shoved its way out instead of in. A sour smell pooled there—troll musk and damp earth.
“That’s where it came from,” William said quietly. His voice seemed to shrink in the stale air. “We heard the wall give… then the ground shook.”
Tara nodded. The unease she’d felt earlier tugged insistently at her spine now, a thread pulling her forward. “Wait here, please.”
William swallowed but nodded, clutching the lantern close.
Tara stepped up to the ragged breach, placed her palm against the rough stone, and drew on the faint shimmer of white energy in her chest. A soft were-light—moon-born and obedient—bloomed beside her and drifted into the opening like a curious moth. She climbed in after it, the glow following her deeper into the dark, where the tunnel beyond breathed cold air that did not belong to the mundane workings of any mine.
The stench hit her like a wall. Not the ordinary reek of a troll—damp fur, spoiled meat, and whatever else they dragged home—but something richer, fouler, layered like rot upon rot. Tara pinched her nose with one hand and held the were-light close with the other, its glow silvering the air and making every floating mote look like a drifting ghost.
She stepped carefully. Fish carcasses lay scattered across the floor like abandoned scales of some forgotten sea creature. Bones—some animal, some disturbingly large—crunched under her boots. The tunnel widened, breathing out a colder current that carried hints of moss and wet stone. The shift underfoot came gradually, the earth turning soft, spongy, and green-furred with moss that drank the were-light and shimmered faintly.
Tara eased around a bend and entered a cave that wasn’t part of the mine at all. It felt older. Wilder. A place carved not by pickaxes but by time and instinct.
In the corner, beneath a jagged shelf of rock, lay the remains of a fire: blackened logs, ash kicked in uneven patterns, the scent of old smoke clinging stubbornly to the air. Beside it was the troll’s hoard. Not gold—trolls never cared for glitter—but scavenged armour pieces, rusted shields, dented helms, broken swords. A graveyard of battles long forgotten.
On top of the heap sat something that didn’t belong.
A large, oval shape. Dark red, almost the colour of blood stone, smooth as river-worn granite. It pulsed—faintly, rhythmically—as though it breathed.
Tara’s heart gave a strange, quiet jolt. She knelt, one hand hovering over it but not quite daring to touch. Her mind reached outward in a familiar, practiced way, sending a picture through the bond she shared with Elqiana: the cave, the armour heap, and the pulsing red shape atop it.
Elqiana’s reaction struck like a spark in Tara’s mind. A sharp intake. A burst of recognition. Then a whisper that carried both awe and fear.
‘Little redhead… that’s a dragon egg…’
