Wonderland Ch. 10

After healing the worst of the spells' damage, Thatcher turned his attention back to the wards, his eyes always drifting back to the mouth of the cave.

"She will be back," Mannat vowed as he finished his nest made up of ice and snow to form an igloo-like structure, albeit much larger than average. He wrestled his way into the nest and curled up his body for warmth, his lids closing over his ruby red eyes.

Thatcher adjusted the furs at his shoulders and threw up a shield over his frame to protect himself from the elements. He could only hope that his brother was right.

+ + + +

"Someone is approaching, my prince."

Thatcher opened his eyes and looked up into the face of the Raspan scout, not seeing him. The scout waited patiently until the gold had faded from Thatcher's eyes before repeating the news. Thatcher stood up stiffly from his perch on a fallen tree to follow the young Raspan back to the cave, his eyes wandering over the forest as he walked. Something had changed in the past hour. For some reason, the smell of ginger still cloyed within his nose.

Mannat shrugged out of his cave to follow, his large head lifting slightly to smell the air, testing the new scent as he walked.

A large crowd had gathered around the edge of the wards, the bodies giving wide berth as both Mannat and Thatcher stepped through. Kynan and his men were standing beside their large, growling mounts looking more than a little disappointed.

Curious to the reason behind their behavior, Thatcher lengthened his stride until he was at the front of the pack. Instantly his heart sunk into his stomach at the sight in front of him.

It was but a lone Drul. His human façade was delicate but radiated strength and power of someone who had been on the earth for a long while. He was the Drul responsible for the powerful wards that guarded this place.

Thatcher watched the Drul's eyes tighten at the sight of Mannat, but widen as Thatcher and the small Raspan scout came forward.

The Drul then approached slowly and carefully, his eyes glowing amber flecked with brown and dark red wine, like the colors of tree leaves in autumn. Thatcher felt the Drul's magic test his boundaries and with a slight smile, Thatcher responded in kind.

The Drul gasped as his human features were forced to give way to his Drul ones, revealing him for what he was. Drul's in general were made of earthen elements, like the Lunar. They reflected their source of power from these elements, making them wholly difficult to look at.

This Drul, however, was born of a human and a Drul. His human skin was the color of freshly tilled earth, his eyes the same as shedding leaves in fall. His hair was made of spider silk and ivy, the silk so bright it reflected the snow at their feet. His features were human, for the most part, though the plants that crawled over his skin and bloomed with springtime radiance gave away what he truly was.

The Drul in return stripped Thatcher of his human features, his eyes widening at what he saw.

"Abomination," he breathed, taking a step back.

"Thank you," Thatcher said dryly, easily dismissing the Drul's magic to return to his human form. "My name is Táxim-se. A few of my own men are using the Final Eden to recuperate – Bayothet told me that Fuyher killed and injured many of you."

"So you're here to help?" the Drul asked slowly, confusion marring his now-human features. "Do you know how hypocritical that is coming from a Raspan?"

Thatcher smiled wryly. "I do. But I'm doing this as a service to an old friend."

The Drul shook his head. "I can't drop these wards. Not even for 'friends.'"

Thatcher nodded, understanding the Drul's hesitation and tried a different tactic. "I sent a human into the cave but an hour ago. Is she the one who found you?"

The Drul crossed his arms, a wary look coming over his face. "I came out here because you've been annoying me for the past hour. I didn't see a human on my way out."

Thatcher felt ice lodge into his windpipe. Frantic beneath the calm surface he projected; his eyes darted to the mouth of the cave, the darkness of it laughing at him.

He had just sent Tempest to her death.

And there was nothing he could do to save her.

+ + + + + +

Warmth.

That's all I could feel.

It filled up my body and soul until I was practically giddy with it. The layers of fur, my Antarctic exploration designed coat, and the heat rock finally had me so warm I couldn't even function. I stripped them off ages ago to keep from sweating. It felt so nice to not walk like a penguin.

The path I had taken through the mountain was certainly windy. Turning my flashlight every which way, I could see openings for cave tunnels wherever I looked. Someone could certainly get lost down here if they weren't careful. Fortunately, I had remembered to mark each tunnel I took with a red clay pencil that had been in my pocket, rubbing a large red T at the beginning and ending of the route.

And I had marked at least ten tunnels now.

Trying to delay the panic that was bubbling up, I distracted myself by thinking of happy, upbeat pop songs that I didn't really like and humming along to the tune. I had tried making a lot of noise earlier as I walked to get the attention of Talon or even the Raspans Thatcher had sent, but so far the only thing that had greeted me was my own off-key echo.

I came to the end of my eleventh tunnel and fished for my clay marker to draw another T. Naturally, I dropped the freaking flashlight as I fumbled for the marker in my inside jacket pocket. I bent down to pick it up and froze as I came face-to-face with the largest golden clawed foot I had ever seen.

Slowly I stood up, angling the flashlight up higher and higher until I almost fell over backwards looking up.

In front of me was the largest dragon statue I had ever seen in my entire life. The entire thing was made out of gold – or at least something that looked a lot like it. The Western-styled dragon was hunched over on a black marble pedestal, its wings tucked neatly at its sides. It had large horns curling up off its forehead and its eyes flickered as my flashlight went over it, attesting to some jewel being placed there. The entire monument gleamed and up close it was obvious that despite the dust that had settled on it, the statue was in perfect condition. At the close vantage point I could also see that the person or persons who created this statue had taken a long time to do it – the detail of the dragon was immense. Its scales, claws, tail, and what I could see of the neck, chest and wings were detailed down to the wrinkles and folds of the skin. The membrane of the wings looked so realistic that I half-expected the dragon to take flight.

Out of curiosity, I turned my flashlight to the left and felt my jaw drop.

The entire time I had been walking and searching the mountain, I had been stumbling over debris, rocks, and slippery slopes where underground water had dripped from the ceiling above. The tunnels had ranged from extremely narrow to the width of a small house, from making me claustrophobic to being wide open rooms that took my breath away at their massiveness.

This tunnel, however, was nothing like the rest of the cave tunnels. For starters, it was made of pure gold. It soared high above my head and curved into a point, reminding me of a cathedral glass window. The floor was made of black marble with gold veins, like the pedestal the dragon rested on, and it wound out of my sight and to the right like a long black snake.

It was almost as though a palace had been carved into the mountain.

A sense of déjà vu washed over me as I took a step into the gilded tunnel and my heart was beating so fast and loud that I felt like it was echoing in the silence of the cave. I knew that I needed to turn back and search for Talon and the others, but I couldn't quell the curiosity in my gut. I didn't need any other excuse but that to keep going, so I did.

The tunnel, while extravagantly carved, was bare of much of anything. There weren't any windows – obviously – but the tunnel was without doors or paintings as well. Tapestries may have once hung here, but now all that was left were a few tattered pieces worn and frayed to almost nothing. Some were fuller in form than others, but all the ink had been washed out long ago.

The hall slowly curved to the right and I hesitated at the turn, my eyes drifting back to the gilded dragon that was keeping watch at the end of the tunnel. Up ahead the tunnel led to a pair of large black doors, also built in the towering cathedral style. I couldn't get lost in this place, but the idea of moving forward still frightened me.

The last time I had ventured into an unknown castle-of-sorts, I had met Talon and my life turned upside down.

If I kept going...what would I find here?

Well, my tiny voice prompted, there's only one way to answer that question.

Right. To go for it.

I approached the doors and stared in awe at the massive height. Each door had to weigh a ton, but there wasn't a door handle or anything to use for leverage to open them. The only way to identify the thick black marble slabs as even being doors was the long slit in the middle where ice cold air slowly wafted out of, causing the dust in the air to circulate faster and faster in little spirals.

Hesitantly, I pushed against the right door with one hand, expecting nothing to come of it.

Instead, writing in a language I certainly wasn't familiar with began to glow in brilliant gold across the marble, starting from the very top. I took a step back as the cracks around the doors hinted at a light source in the space beyond.

Okay, so maybe this wasn't a great idea.

The doors suddenly began to grind and moan as they opened to the inside, each inch that was revealed bringing more and more of the light into the tunnel behind me. I winced and covered my eyes as the light illuminated so bright that my eyes burned and sent hot tears down my face. I waited until I heard the doors grind to a halt before testing the strength of my eyes against the brilliance of the gold around me.

"Well," I muttered to myself as I stepped into the room, "you certainly don't need a flashlight to see in here."

The room in front of me was built in the same manner as the hall at my back. Everything was gold and black marble. The marble staircase not but five feet from me lead to a large open floor wrought entirely of fresco, depicting an insignia of seven dragons, each a different color, wound around a golden lyre.

I drug my eyes up from the floor and felt my heart catch in my throat.

Six dragon statues placed in a half-moon shape stared down at me from their imposing height. Each dragon was forged in a stone or metal that reflected the colors of the dragons on the floor. One was white, another was green, then blue, then red, gold, and the last was grey.

"But where's number seven?" I whispered to myself as I walked around the fresco. The black dragon was the only one among the statues missing.

The more I looked around the room, the more I began to realize that this place was a shrine. At the foot of each dragon was a large pile of treasure. Most of the treasure was the atypical piles of gold coins and jewel-encrusted cups and large chunks of precious gems themselves. The green dragon, for instance, had an entire trunk full of rubies. The rest of the treasure though ranged from finely made robes to colorful jars of mysterious substances floating around within them. The white dragon had an entire row of bound scrolls at its feet and piles of books rising from the floor.

As I passed over the insignia, fire from the torches lit around the room flickered to almost small specks of light before bursting again into bright beams of fire. That gave me pause. I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was there or if a door had been opened somewhere else in the shrine room, but the place was empty apart from me and the dragons.

With a shrug, I turned my eyes away from the walls and mounds of treasure and sighted in a narrower tunnel straight ahead another pair of large black doors.

In the center of the doors was an insignia of a lyre, engraved entirely in silver. The torches here burned with blue fire, and the treasure that lay scattered down the hall was not of jewels or precious treasure, but of bodies. Skeletons with mouths yawned open wide, forever frozen in a scream, warned me as I approached the tunnel. Their limbs were splayed awkwardly at strange angles, as though they had fallen from a great height. At closer inspection of one particular body, I realized that these just weren't any skeletons. They were human bodies.

And they were all female.

"O-Okay," I told myself, turning back around. "We're done playing Indiana Jones for the day..."

But a blast of ice cold air at my back stopped me dead in my tracks. The breath of air was strong enough to shift some of the skeletons on the floor, sending bones, dust, and ash across the tile to the center of the shrine room in front of me.

The grinding moan of the doors as they swung open on their own accord sent a chill down my spine. For the first time since I stumbled into the darkness of Final Eden, I let panic get the best of me.

With shaking hands I dropped my furs to the ground, swallowing dry spit. I ignored the litany of questions as to why I wasn't running like a bat out of Hell or screaming my head off as I flipped off the light switch to the flashlight.

Slowly I turned back to the doors, my pulse pounding hard and fast in my ears. The sound of a low hiss made my blood running cold, but I didn't stop moving until I was back where I had started. I lifted my eyes off the floor and took in the massive coiling black body that teased me out from the darkness of the now-open black marble doors.

A pair of glowing silver eyes evaluated me critically from the dark, narrowing slightly when I shifted in place as I fought to stay still. The smell of ginger and musk filled my nose as I breathed in short, frantic pants.

Stupid me had asked where the seventh dragon was.

Well...I was looking right at it and if I had my clues figured out correctly, I was going to be its next meal.

The only thing I could think about as I was stared down by the eyes of an animal ready to devour me whole was: Why is it always me?

+ + + +

"My prince, we must get to Annis," spoke up the scout at Thatcher's side. "She might be in grave danger."

Thatcher shot the scout a chilly glance that had the young male inclining his head slowly in submission. Thatcher waited until the male had taken a few steps away from him before speaking to the Drul once more.

"I understand your reluctance, Damien, to allow me access inside the Final Eden, but you must understand – the human girl that is within this mountain is very important to someone in your party. He will be more than livid to know that she is lost. As for me," Thatcher took steps into the wards, his eyes flickering gold as he towered over the Drul, "if anything has happened to her, I will kill you and that matter of the wards will be of little consequence to much of anyone."

He watched the Drul's fists clench and he smirked a little. The Drul's wards were strong, but Thatcher was stronger. He'd snap the Drul's neck if the little male even thought of using his magic against him.

"I can promise you on that," Thatcher finished quietly, locking eyes with the Drul. Tense seconds passed before the Drul made any move.

"You are speaking of the girl called Tempest, yes?" the Drul whispered, the power in his voice failing to make him menacing as he had probably hoped.

"I am," Thatcher told him, not moving back when Damien, the Drul, straightened up stiffly.

"How is it that you know her?" he demanded. "A-And how do you know who I am?"

Thatcher slipped into the Drul's defenses, which were surprisingly weak, and spoke to him slowly and carefully in his mind, "I have sworn to protect Tempest with my life and I am forever in her debt. And I know who you are because you, just like everyone else I meet, cannot block their minds from me. I know everything about you, Damien; it's as simple as that."

"T-Then why can't you break the wards?" Damien shot at him angrily, his voice thin with panic and anger.

Thatcher slipped further into Damien's mind and was greeted with the information he needed. In an instant, the pulsing throb of pain that had been attacking his body from the moment he stepped through the wards vanished. Mannat, now free of the wards, came to Thatcher's shoulder as Kynan's wolf began to circle the young Drul, its golden eyes glowing with barely-veiled hunger.

"You will lead these men to the cave tunnels where you and Bayothet are resting. If I sense any sort of foul play, any at all..." Thatcher smiled stonily, his eyes black with deathly promises. "Do I need to remind you of the consequences?"

Damien shook his head quickly, his amber eyes large with fear.

Thatcher pushed his beast back into the recesses of his mind and mentally shook off the anger and fear that pulsed within him. "I thought n-" But he was cut off before he could finish.

In that moment an image flashed in his mind's eye, the snapshot burning his retinas. Beneath Thatcher's feet he felt the earth tremble from the very deep. The taste of ginger filled his mouth until Thatcher almost gagged at its intensity. And through his blood bond with Tempest, he felt her panic.

Thatcher did not wait for Damien's permission to enter the cave – he just ran.

Down and down through the mountain Thatcher went, his eyes catching the large bloody T's that scoured the rock as he traced Tempest's scent into the belly of the mountain. Part of his mind told him that Tempest really was awful with directions while at the same time, he couldn't help but marvel at how she had gotten herself into this mess. She was always stumbling into trouble, always finding a way to cause mayhem. This, apparently, was another one of those times.

Thatcher swallowed hard as he greeted the large golden dragon at the entrance of a gilded hall, his dark eyes wandering over the large crack down the middle of the beast.

Magic, suppressed for years beyond Thatcher's knowledge, was awakening. And Tempest, his Tempest, was right in the middle of it all.

Thatcher raced down the tunnel, sliding across the marble tile as he ran towards the sounds of snarling and deep rumbling growls from the large room just ahead of him. Skidding to a halt just inside the doors, Thatcher felt his breath catch. Tempest was ensnared in the coils of a large black dragon, limp and unmoving, surrounded by six large beasts that were source of all the noise. For a moment, Thatcher's courage failed him.

Dragons aren't supposed to exist. They died out ages ago!

But yet...here were seven large beasts, awakening from their millennium or more of deep slumber, roaring and stretching their stiff limbs. At least, six of the dragons were trying to restore their bodies back to normal.

The seventh, the coal black, wasn't making a single sound.

Eyes, the color of liquid silver, were trained upon the tiny female trapped within its embrace. The dragon was legless and wingless, unlike any of the other dragons in the chamber. Its head was wedge-shaped and came to a sharp pointed snout that blew curls of bluish-grey smoke into the air from its nostrils. The head was adorned by a spiked bony plate and two thick grey horns sprouted from the area above each eye.

As Thatcher approached the black dragon, he noticed that a strange bluish glow was beginning to form under Tempest's skin, turning her pale complexion into that of ash. Tempest's head suddenly fell back against the dragon's coils and Thatcher felt like the world had been ripped out from under his feet.