Dragon Treasure by SJ Sanders
Chapter 9
Tania jerked, her arms and legs bracing against the narrow cavern walls as pebbles crumbled from the walls, pelting her in a powdery shower of sediment. Although the impact of larger fragments made her wince when they hit exposed skin, she gave little thought to them as the walls shook. The sound of falling rock somewhere deep within the cave echoed in a powerful roar of moving earth.
Fuck!
She let out a sharp, hissing sound of annoyance between her teeth. It would just figure that she would be hit with an aftershock by the time she dipped down into the caves. That was just how her luck ran. It couldn’t possibly have hit when she was safely above ground. Oh, of course not!
A final puff of gray powder fell over her head, coating her hair as everything stilled once more. Drawing in a slow breath, she grimaced at the cold, gritty feel of sediment trickling from her hair onto the nape of her neck. The tinge of icy moisture that accompanied it was just the icing on the cake, because why not? It wasn’t as if she weren’t miserable enough at that moment.
Brushing her hands off on the sides of her leggings, Tania struck forward once more, unwilling to be deterred or delayed by a little bit of earth shaking.
In and out, and then nothing but miles of sandy beaches and luxurious cocktails await.
Although the tunnels were stark silver with the absence of natural light entering them, they were well-formed without any inconvenient obstacles like enormous stalagmites rising up from the cavern floor, jagged stalactites trying to impale her from the ceiling, or frigid pools of water to be navigated. Instead, beautiful mineral deposits painted the walls all around her. Although she couldn’t differentiate their color, the swirling patterns in various shades of silver were captivating.
Earthquake aside, it was actually rather nice. She was tempted to take out her pocket torch to get a better look at some of it, but she silenced it. The insta-torch had limited fuel that she didn’t want to expend carelessly. Not when she needed it for when she made camp. Lips twisting with regret, Tania forced her eyes away and picked up her pace, navigating the dark, empty tunnel with relative ease.
The cavern was cool enough, but the bone deep cold was so gradual that it crept on her with an incredible insidiousness. One minute she was mildly sweating beneath her jacket from her brisk pace, and the next she was shivering, her breath puffing out from her lips.
Thinking it might just be her imagination, Tania’s steps slowed to a stop, and she paused to watch the pale silver mist escaping her with every breath.
Weird.
Her head turned as her eyes roamed the cavern walls. In the silvery light of her eyes, she couldn’t see anything different. Some areas seemed distorted or brighter, but the frustrating limits of the enchantment made her curse. Squinting against the shocking flare of the insta-torch, she pulled it from her belt and struck it.
Despite having her eyes nearly shut against the light, she couldn’t hold back the tiny cry of pain as the illumination stabbed like a dozen pins into her eyes.
“Fucking hell!” she hissed, jerking her head around, away from the torch.
Tears streamed from her eyes, but as she blinked them away, the brilliant patterns of the wall came into focus. Her breath caught at the sight of rubies jutting out from stony walls, glittering beautiful in the torch as she drew it closer. Intersections of different mineral and stone formations cut through, painting the walls in hues of umber, golds, and cream. The striations segmented the field of rubies into several large clusters. A vein of sapphires ran diagonal, almost intersecting that large cluster, and it too boasted several impressive stones.
She drew closer to a particularly large hexagonal ruby formation jutting out at the closest intersection point of the gemstone veins, her torch lighting it and the cluster around it into a bloody splash. Nearly the size of her palm, the stone alone had to be worth a fortune. And there wasn’t any damn way she was going to be able to pry it from the rock.
Moaning aloud at the injustice of it, Tania turned away, lifting her torch up as she walked forward following the path of the cluster trails. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. She was pretty sure that she wouldn’t get so lucky to find a sizeable stone. The sleeves of her coat winked in the light from tiny crystals that had fallen in the earthquake. She was practically encrusted with sparkling red and blue powder.
Eyebrows shooting up, she backtracked to where she had been standing and looked around, sweeping her torch low over the ground. If a few of the small rocks that had struck her were gems, then she would consider it well worth the pummeling. With the toe of her boot, she kicked around the litter of stones and grimaced.
“Of course not,” she muttered, kicking a few of the larger chunks out of her path.
Disappointment left a bitter taste in her mouth as she stalked forward, hunkering against the oppressive cold that gradually surrounded her once more. Focused on the fortune that she was leaving in the walls, she barely paid it any mind. She just hoped that the treasure proved to be of the size it was rumored so she wouldn’t be tempted to return with a pickax or something.
Surely it had to be. What sort of mage would leave the caves unharvested if they lacked their own personal fortunes?
None, she reasoned. Still, walking away from it was painful. She nearly extinguished the torch just to spare herself when, just beyond the gemstone cluster, a pale sheen on a dark stone bed caught her attention. Lifting the torch higher, a jagged crust of ice reflected back the rays, forcing Tania to squint against the sudden glare. Not just from the ice itself but from the blindingly white, long fingers of thick frost that crept around it.
“What in the world?” she mumbled.
Pulling off a glove, she gave it an experimental touch, just to make sure that she was actually seeing what she was seeing. Cold seeped into her hand, and she shivered, snatching it back away.
“Maybe it is glacial,” she observed quietly to herself, tugging her glove back on, her brow puckering.
Would a mage really build into a freaking glacial cave?
Her stomach plummeted, a sourness settling into it.
“Please, please, don’t let this be some kind of colossal fucking joke,” she said under her breath.
There were a few jokesters out there among mages. Not many, but it wasn’t so unheard of that she could dismiss the possibility. Flicking off her torch to spare fuel, she scowled at the yawning depths ahead of her.
There had been a mage she recalled hearing of not too long ago. He had put out false rumors and clues that took adventurers deep into the abyssal swamps where there was nothing but the darkness of the deep crevice, water, and all manner of plant and wildlife with a taste for flesh. She, thankfully, had not been involved in the party that went after that treasure, but an acquaintance who got roped into it had filled her in on the less than pleasant details once they managed to escape the pit.
A shiver crawled up over her back, and she tugged her coat tighter around herself, tucking her hands beneath her arms to preserve her warmth. She desperately hoped that she hadn’t just fallen into another such cleverly executed trap.
Another, more violent shiver stole over her, her nose burning with cold as she continued her descent. She was going deeper into the mountain, and other than the gradually increasing cold, there was absolutely nothing in the damned cave. She didn’t see any markers that were characteristic of mage caves, nor any cleverly disguised doorways that her enchanted eyes could ferret out. There was literally nothing except the progressively terrible cold.
“Fuck this shit,” she muttered, coming to a complete stop where the cavern abruptly narrowed.
The mouth of the tunnel shone in her vision where ice and frost heavily painted it. Clearly whatever was on the other side was going to be even colder and even more miserable. She’d been had.
Muttering a string of curses under her breath, she glared at the opening. She hoped the mage was having a good laugh over all of this from beyond the grave because she would hunt down the motherfucker she liberated the map from and kill him when she finally got out of here.
She rubbed her face wearily, wincing at the slight sting of her cold cheek against the cold material until the fabric began to warm where it was captured between two sources of body heat.
“Might as well go back,” she said, sighing.
She still had time before sunup. If luck was on her side, she could slip out long before anyone roused from sleep—natural or otherwise. That, of course, providing that the rest of the guards weren’t on alert.
Worst case scenario, she might spend her winter in a cell repenting for transgressing against the monastery. Unless that little scene she interrupted could be used in her favor. Turning away from the narrow gap, she tapped her chin thoughtfully. The high cleric wouldn’t want any of that getting out. Despite the fact that the nun had been eager, that was just shy of human sacrifice given that he didn’t know what dangers might have existed within the caverns. It was possible that she could spin things in a way which would allow her to not only walk away freely, but with a substantial amount of gold in her pocket.
Thenshe could beat the crap out of the map carrier.
Perfect!
She had only taken two steps away when she heard a low rumble through the passage behind her like the purr of an enormous cat. Beneath her tunic and coat, the tiny hairs on her arm prickled. A tiny voice of reason in the back of her mind urged her to just run, but something pulled her irresistibly, and she turned.
Her mouth dropped open.
An enormous ice blue eye stared at her from the other side of the gap. She could tell what color it was because it glowed just enough that its illumination terminated her enchanted sight. Darkness closed in on all sides of her, and then there was nothing but that pale blue eye that went silver and arctic white just around a vertical pupil that expanded and then slitted as the creature it belonged to let out another hair-raising purr.
“The dragon,” she choked out. “It’s fucking real!”
Spinning around, she shot forward, her feet hitting the unnaturally smooth floor of the cave. It was far worse than what she had expected. Everything was perfectly smoothed and untouched because a dragon used the cave systems…
The insane cleric had been right!
A loud grinding of stone rose up behind her, as another earthshaking roar let loose through the cave. This time she knew exactly what it was from, and the sound drowned out her own scream as a massive clawed hand snapped out around her.
Tania fell forward hard, her breasts hitting the floor with enough force that it expelled all the air from her lungs. Claws dug into the ground, caging her in for a heartbeat before with a ripping force, she was yanked back, screaming, in the mouth of the cavern beyond.