Chapter 47: 7 – A Dragon Down There

They came right up to the very edge of the portal, humming as it was, and popping with slow but ever-expanding energy. It felt like the place where you’d find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Around the other side of it, to the east, the ground began to soften into the seemingly endless marshes that would eventually give way to the swamps Corbin knew so well. They picked their way around the portal, noting that it was only about two feet thick.

Corbin had come through the portal heading northwest, so directly south of the portal was a mystery. He half expected to see The Five’s castle over here, with its miserable population following Rico’s ‘Don’t be a douchebag’ rule. Or not following it, and getting strung up in front of the city and repeatedly killed.

South of the portal the rubble and ruins were even stranger than in the north. More frequent, also. The three of them strolled by several trees that had been parts of buildings before. They had strangely geometric trunks, and one of them clearly had a wood-faced person staring out what had once been a window. It creeped Corbin out a bit.

Beyond that, clumps of bushes grew up into what looked like a market stall, with one of the bushes looking like a person who’d been sitting behind the wares. Portions of grass framed what had once been buildings, such that Corbin could make out where the walls separated the space into rooms. Boulders gave them glimpses of buildings once again, and here and there were broken statues that had once been the people of Ullennai. One was made entirely of purple crystals, perfectly in the shape of a large man.

“Thassa man.”

“A very prickly man,” Corbin said.

“Ow much you reckon he’s worth, eh?”

“Prissy, don’t–”

But she’d disappeared. A scream emanated out of the earth, followed by an ‘oof!’ far below.

Corbin sniffed his way over to the hole, knowing she’d unwittingly found some cellar or sewer system that had been transformed whenever the town had exploded into the portal.

 

You’ve discovered a mid-level dungeon!

Gird your spelunking loins, you’re about to get down and dirty.

 

“You okay?” he called down.

“Eh… not really?”

“We’ll be right down!”

“That’s a negative!” she called up. “You lot stay right where ye are.”

Corbin closed his eyes, and for the first time in two days, saw colors. Not many, given that Prissy was underground. But right now she was backing away from something bathed in cool greenish light, bouncing off crystals here and there, and showing clearly that she was surrounded. Very surrounded, by dozens and dozens of hostile beings.

 

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Okay, but she was surrounded by draklings. In his mind’s eye, Prissy lashed out and stabbed one of them, only to take several cuts and scratches from several others. She leapt straight up with the old Sabaton of Springing, got one paw on the lip of the hole, only to have it crumble and leave her right back where she’d started. She then took falling damage, followed immediately by another few cuts and scratches from the draklings. They snarled and spit curses at her in their reptilian language while lunging in whenever her back was turned.

“I’ve seen these before,” he said. “Draklings. Prissy, get to safety, okay?”

“Roger that!” she said, and his limited knowledge of British English made that a weird double sentence. Did she mean screw that? Or did she mean she would comply?

A few moments later their shared senses ability vanished and he was left with the plain old grayscale he’d woken up to the day before.

“Sooo… draklings.”

Kyessy cursed, but he wasn’t so bothered by that, because she cursed everything: shitty second rate wizards, really effective and also evil wizards, a mad unknowable being of evil, and for some reason all druids. It was just her MO to begin swearing immediately.

On second thought… “I guess that means there’s a dragon down there.”

“If you mean a wyrm, then yes. Draklings are rarely found anywhere without a wyrm to attend to, and feed.”

The dragons here in this world had valets, chefs, attendants, and in a pinch those also doubled as snacks. These draklings were essentially kobolds, little bipedal reptiles who worshipped the dragons as gods, and occasionally offered themselves up as sacrifices whenever their gods didn’t have a steady supply of food.

Prissy was that food, at least in the eyes of the draklings, and the dragon.

The one they’d come across was sunning itself atop a magewood tree, this world’s cross between a redwood and a mangrove, with a root system big enough to have its own zip code, and leaves as big as bungalows. This cave system or dungeon had to be at least that big, to accommodate a dragon. Meaning this dragon had a huge cave system down there to call its home.

The danger level had risen exponentially. At level 11 and 14, they weren’t ready to tackle a dragon head on, especially without a healer or a tank.

The best they could hope for was another lazy dragon, which wouldn’t leap up and kill them the minute they got anywhere near it.

“How about the underground ones? Similar to the swamp one?”

“I’ve heard tell the subterranean dragons are eerily beautiful, but also ferocious and ambitious.”

“Well, Prissy’s down there with them now. How much danger is she in?”

Kyessy just shook her head slowly. “Best to veer wide around a wyrm whenever you come across one. And riling up the draklings is a bad first step.”

The ground beneath him began to crumble and fall down the hole Prissy had just discovered… and he would’ve slid in after her if Kyessy hadn’t grabbed him by the tail and yanked him back. It hurt, only 1 damage but still painful, and a large section of the ground just detached and plummeted down below. Another piece went after it, from off to their right.

“Uh… that’s not good.” Then, after a moment’s consideration, he said, “Actually that might be perfect. I have an idea. Follow me.”

He turned and dashed through the portal.

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