Chapter 10: Chapter Ten: Arguing Over Money Is the Cause of Most Divorces

            It took Hugh a bit longer to get it, but he did.

            A roar came from inside the keep. “The hoard isn’t here! My sire’s hoard is gone!”

Hugh came racing back across the last of the path until he reached Leo and then danced around him, his tail slapping the cracked marble path angrily. “Leo, where is it? Where’s the hoard?”

Before Leo could answer, Hugh turned to Lily, raising himself up and baring his teeth. “Did you trick me, elf? Did you know his hoard wasn’t here?”

“I didn’t know anything!” Lily said. “I had no idea the hoard was gone. I’m an honorable noble lady. I would never lie to you. You have to believe me.”

“You said you had divinations!” Hugh yelled, his fangs still bared.

“I said the ones in the castle had broken down! I told you that!”

She turned to Leo. “You heard me, right? You heard me when I said the divinations in throne room were gone? Tell Hugh I said it.”

Hugh thumped his tail on the ground. “Maybe you lied about it! You’re a scheming elf!”

Lily looked close to crying. “Then why did you believe me about the divinations in the first place, if you were just going to accuse me of horrible things, retched wyrm?!”

“Listen here you little—”

“Guys!” Leo shouted, pointing. Two birds had come to land on walls a slight distance away, each the size of an eagle, but twisted. One had two heads and the other three legs, and the claws on both were even larger than eagle talons—already large—normally were.

“I don’t think that we should be attracting the local corrupted beasts. Let’s move inside the keep, get a camp going, and discuss everything—like reasonable people. It’ll be hard for you two to do the reasonable person thing, but I believe in you. And it’ll be dark soon.”

“The main keep is wide open,” Hugh said, angling his head toward one of the other, smaller keeps in the interior. “You’re a dumb-dumb about certain things, Leo. Let’s go to one of the other keeps, one that isn’t an invitation to snack on us. By Merdrek’s Teeth, I don’t need that as well. This day has already been a giant pile of droppings.”

            Drama much?

Although Leo could understand. It had been rough when he’d thought he’d been losing his chance to make his mark on the world by providing unlimited fresh water just a couple of days ago… He could sympathize with Hugh.

            “The wyrm makes a good point,” Lily said, her brow furrowed. “Now that he’s not accusing me of stuff I didn’t do.”

            “Please be kind,” Leo said. “This was hard on Hugh, even if he’s being a bit accusatory. I know you think he had no right to the hoard, but he believed he did, and was sincere and open in the belief. And now the hoard has disappeared. If we go to the vault and it’s empty, I won’t be yanking your chain.”

            The three walked toward the smaller nearby keep Hugh had pointed out, away from the hollowed-out main building that had been Chao’s lair. They crossed a large section of dirt with carefully carved stones around it, one bedraggled-looking weed in the center. Leo suspected it had once been a garden.

            The birds followed them, but didn’t attack, moving from one ornamental fence to the next to keep pace with them.

            Lily, without breaking her stride, pondered for a moment. “You’re right, Leo,” she said, after a moment. “I apologize, Hugh. I do not accept the validity of your claim, but I accept the sincerity of your belief in your position, and I accept that your disappointment is real. It was unworthy of me to place my own concerns before your pain.”

            Hugh cocked his head to the side. “That was her being nice, right, Leo?”

            Leo laughed. “It was.”

            Hugh heaved a sigh as they walked. “Sorry for yelling at you and calling you names as well. It was beneath a dragon’s dignity. Ol’ Poct always said a dragon should either be polite or set people on fire, everything in between is just pointless.”

            Lily dipped her head. “Apology, however odd, accepted.”

            They reached the keep. It was mostly intact, but the ornate, wooden door had rotted almost entirely off the hinges, and Hugh easily busted in.

            The front room was obviously abandoned—a large, marble hall with smaller hallways leading off of it and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Old furniture that was falling apart was scattered around the room, most of it in a long barricade near the door, but there were no hangings or other adornments, and no dishes or utensils were anywhere to be found.

            “This will do,” Hugh said. “Someone pile some of the junk up a bit closer against the door to give us cover.”

“You, Kip—you’re the boy.”

“What?” Hugh asked.

“Just saying, Hugh, you’re our strong guy. You need to pile the junk.”

Hugh grabbed a piece of broken furniture in his mouth and threw it nearer the door.
            “By Merdrek’s Teeth, you guys are useless,” he said, then he grabbed another.

“We’ll build a campfire spot,” Leo said to him. “Leave the door unblocked till I get back with some of those iron hinges and garden stones.”

Leo sighed. “And then we can hash out how to move forward as a group.”

***

            “No!” Hugh said, smashing his tail down onto the marble floor of the building they were in.

            Leo examined the blaze of the pseudo-campfire he had built and fed another piece of dry, rotting furniture to it.

            “It’s not my fault!” Lily said hotly from where she stood, her hands still held primly in front of her. “I honored my agreement. You know that, right? That it’s not my fault there’s no hoard?”

            Hugh barred his teeth. “I’m not fighting my way through a bunch of corrupted monsters for nothing! I’m carrying this team. I should get something!”

            “Look, can we compromise?” Leo asked.

            “How?” Lily asked, narrowing her eyes at Leo. “I was already reasonable once. The last time we compromised, I gave up my claim to the treasure the dragon seized. That seems like it should be enough.”

            “I get it, but Hugh’s still got a point about the lack of treasure. We made a deal, but it rested on an inaccuracy. So we need to at least get him something, right?”

            “Continue please,” Lily said.

            At the same time, Hugh said, “Get to the point.”

            “So, first, what’s in the vault?” Leo asked. “We need to know so we can negotiate something.”

            “I don’t know what’s in the vault,” Lily said. “My sister knew, but she didn’t tell me.”

            “You’re going for a treasure and you don’t know what’s in it?” Hugh lashed his copper-scaled tail across a rotten wooden table, sending the pieces across the marble-tiled floor in a shower of splinters. “Brilliant.”

            “And you had a ledger of what was in your sire’s hoard?” Lily said, her brow furrowed and mouth pursed in obvious irritation.

            Hugh stopped his agitated movement. “Well, no, I just knew it was huge.”

            “Exactly,” Lily said, and flipped her hair back.

            “So, how about we do it this way?” Leo said, bringing the conversation back to the main point. “Lily, you can pull one item out of the vault before we split. Anything left, Hugh gets a third the value.”

            “That’s a terrible deal,” Lily said, throwing her hands in the air. Her abandonment of her poise told Leo how frustrated she was. “I already agreed to give up the whole hoard! Why should I give up more?”

            Leo waited—Lily knew the arguments.

“Fine, be that way,” Lily said, disgust in her voice. “If we also agree we don’t renegotiate again under any circumstances. Is that fair, dragon?”

            “Fair,” Hugh said. “If I’m so unfavored by the gods that this vault is empty as well, or has only a single object, so be it.”

            “Okay, that was distasteful, but it’s done now,” Lily said. “Back to the planning. We need weapons. I’d counted on Hugh getting his sire’s hoard to equip us for the undercity beneath the royal palace.”

            “You were going to take my hoard?”

            “Ask to borrow or rent it,” Lily said, and rolled her eyes. “Please don’t accuse me of trying to steal from you again. I would never do that.”

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            “Huh,” Hugh said.

            “Wait,” Leo interjected. “Why exactly do we need weapons? I thought we were just heading to the royal vault?”

            “We are,” Lily said. “But those magic rituals decayed as well. There are probably corrupted monsters down there now as well, and I wouldn’t count on traps not firing—they relied on magic that detected elves who belonged there. I’m not sure we qualify, and I know Hugh doesn’t. Odds are, you’ll have to fight.”

            “We’ll have to fight,” Leo said.

            “Yes.”

            “That’s a bit concerning, but okay,” Leo said.

            “The problem is, I have no idea now where to get weapons,” Lily said. “Non-magical weapons would have rusted or rotted, and magical weapons would have been taken during the exodus.”

            “I thought Chao attacked suddenly,” Leo said, tossing another rotted chunk into the fire. His stomach gurgled, but he ignored it for the moment. “How come people would have escaped with magical weapons?”

            Lily twirled her hair. “Well, yeah, but even though his power was unmatchable, Chao was still just one dragon. While he attacked the main keep, everyone else ran. Most of the elves escaped, only to be captured by orcs from the Blood Tribes over time. It was a few days before Chao started actually attacking the rest of the city and chasing everyone away. The good stuff was either taken by Chao for his hoard, taken by the elves who escaped, or is hidden in places no one ever found—neither Chao nor thieves over the years. I doubt I can find them.”

            “Wait,” Leo said, abandoning his lazy tending of the fire and sitting up. “So, everyone who had a chance to leave took the cool magical stuff, right?”

            Lily nodded.

            “And Chao attacked the main keep by surprise, right? But nowhere else?”

            Lily nodded again, but her eyes started to widen.

            “The floor of the main keep was intact! Chao didn’t destroy it!” Leo smacked his fist into his other palm.

            “That’s true!” Lily said, raising one hand to her mouth. “There might be equipment remaining in the basement of the grand keep, before the entrance to the undercity!”

            “Exactly. I think the route there is actually the place where we can gear up—it’s our best bet,” Leo said. “Alright, it’s been the craziest day ever—let’s get some sleep, and tomorrow we can raid the keep.”

            “I don’t mean to cause problems, but I’m hungry,” Hugh said.

            Leo was starved himself—he had last eaten over a day ago. And, if he was being honest, his ‘campfire-seared deer’ recipe left a lot to be desired in both the taste and calorie department. They needed a food source.

            Leo thought for a moment. “Well, we also need experience, and there were two monster birds outside… feel like chicken, Hugh?”

            Hugh bared his teeth in a grin.

***

            Life is relative, Leo thought to himself as he woke. He stood and stretched, feeling full and rested for the first time in three days. Breakfast would be warmed monster-bird meat—surprisingly tasty cooked over a campfire by Lily—and his sleep had been on a cold stone floor, but warmth and security alone had been a huge improvement.

            And Leo no longer had any wounds, which was itself a huge improvement. He sighed contentedly.

            Hugh also stood and then did his cat stretch, his front legs out in front of him and his back low. “Things do look better with a belly full of meat.”

            “Men,” Lily said with a smile as she stood and stirred the embers of their campfire. She speared a chunk of monster-bird with her dagger, then held it over to the fire. Once it had cooked, she passed it over to Leo.

            Leo took it and bit in—it was extremely tough, but otherwise tasted like chicken to him. After over seventy hours with only a few chunks of burned deer and even after last night’s monster-chicken feast, it was still a little slice of heaven. And it took far less food for Leo’s new body to feel full than his old body, an advantage when he was involuntarily roughing it.

            Hugh ate far more than the other two put together. After Lily had cut and warmed the chunks for the two of them, Hugh just grabbed the cooked carcass with his forelegs and started ripping huge chunks out of it. Leo noted that the dragon’s dentation was similar to a dog’s except that the teeth were a touch closer together and he saw molars in the back—an odd combination of teeth, but it meant that Hugh was probably technically omnivorous and could definitely chew.

            Could—but didn’t. He tore chunks off and swallowed them whole, devouring the entire bird in an orgy of pleased grunts and slurps in about the time it took Leo and Lily to eat their singular small pieces.

            Just pushing the general vibe, Hugh let out a giant belch afterward. Leo laughed, feeling as content as he had on this world.

            Even Lily smiled, although Leo suspected she wasn’t as amused by the boyish behavior as Leo was.

            “Alright,” Leo said, slowly getting to his feet. “Let’s go.”

            Hugh went over and dragged the giant pile of broken furniture away from the door, and the three of them walked out into the cold morning air and watery light of the palace courtyard. It was made even colder by Leo’s lack of shirt, and Leo was suddenly conscious of the goosebumps all across his thin chest. Lily shivered in the shredded remains of her dress.

            They crossed and entered the giant, shattered central keep.

            Leo took a look around, since it was the first time he’d entered. The floor, up against the walls, was covered in random rubble, but the vast majority of the interior was entirely hollowed out. Leo caught a glint of silver from the rubble near the outside of the wall. He walked over as Lily and Hugh were looking around and picked a small silver coin out of the pile. One side had a tree and the other the picture of a feminine face etched into it.

            “What’ve you got?” Hugh asked.

            Leo held the coin up as Hugh and Lily walked over.

            “A silver coin from the reign of Jynellae ‘Mousemaster,’” Lily said in Middle Averian, and then switched to High Averian before continuing. “In the tone of teaching; Jynellae ‘Mousemaster,’ disgraceful, unworthy, ruled prior to the last king. Her reign was over three hundred years; peaceful, decadent, unwise. She bankrupted the kingdom with parties and gifts to her paramours, foolish frivolities.”

            Lily switched back to Middle Averian. “The Blood Tribes’ first attacks occurred at the end of her reign, and she let numerous border forts and cities fall before she gave any money to defense—a defense then conducted by generals raised to the position from nobles she’d favored who had never been in so much as a skirmish. No one considered the attacks important until Kelethain fell.”

            Leo nodded, even though he didn’t know what most of those names referred to—he got the gist.

But he also had more immediate concerns. “I see a glint of copper there. I think it’s another coin.”

            Hugh pushed some of the rubble aside and pulled the coin out, held carefully between two claws. “Yeah.”

            “I know you said dragons abandoning their lairs doesn’t happen, Hugh,” Leo said. “Despite that, I think your dad quickly left with his hoard. This looks like a rush job.”

            “We should look for any coins or items he left!” Hugh said.

            The three of them did a quick scan of the room. After about a quarter-hour, they had collected three gold, seven silver, and eleven copper coins, as well as a bronze knife inlaid with silver and a single bronze dragon scale the size of a tower shield.

            Chao was a monster, Leo thought, surreptitiously moving his eyes between that huge scale and the two-inch ones on Hugh. If the size held standard, he would have been almost two hundred feet long! Creatures that large shouldn’t even be a biological possibility.

            They had also located the stairs down. The floor above the stairs bore a few claw marks, but it didn’t look like much effort had been made.

            Perhaps he didn’t want to tear up his lair?

            “Shall we?” Leo said, motioning to the stairs with a bow and a sweep.

            Hugh, knowing what was expected, headed over first. When he got close to the stairs, he shivered. “It’s cold here—very cold.”

            Leo followed, and then Lily.

            A cold wind blew up the stairs as Leo got close, carrying with it a distinctive smell—a rank smell of dried blood and incense. Leo was immediately reminded of the ravine with the demon-harpies where he had first met Hugh.

            Lily wrinkled her nose and asked with obvious distaste in her voice, “What is that?”

            “Demon, I think,” Leo said. “Hugh and I smelled it at a ravine north of here. The ravine had harpy-demons in it.”

            “That ravine was the Demon Scar,” Hugh said. “That smell was at the Demon Scar.”

            “You guys were at the Demon Scar?” Lily asked, shivering herself.

            Someone say ‘Demon Scar’ one more time, Leo thought to himself, but his attempt at humor didn’t cheer him in the face of the cold and eldritch odor emanating from the stairs, which everyone was staring at like they were the gate to the hells.

            Which, in this kooky world, they really might be. Leo shivered again, this time from fear.

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