Even though they had numbered over twenty, each of them the bravest and truest knights their Holy Liege could find, the cursed Wyrm had ambushed them from the darkest recesses of its cave with a primary weapon of fire, immediately igniting their greater number in the first instants of the melee. Bruinn had not been in this unfortunate group, was left instead to be assailed with the cries and screams of the doomed being immolated inside their armor. The field of battle had fallen silent since then; as far as he knew, he was the only warrior who had survived.
Since the day of his beknighting, Bruinn had often had dreams similar to those experienced by all men who understand that each mission might be their last, and now it had seemed to come to pass in reality. In these dreams, he would bear some mortal wound -- that would never hurt as much as he estimated it should -- and then he would lie down and remain still, merely because he knew it was his duty as a knight to do so, to fall and die for his country and crown. He would never really be dead, but the skewed logic of his sleeping mind would already have accepted he was merely performing a dumbshow, fulfilling the expectation of his society and his class.
Perhaps this was why it had taken so long for him to realize that he was not dead after all, continuing to breathe and sweat and tremble on the floor of the hideous beast's cave. However, when he made attempts to rise, imagining himself courageously continuing the battle solo amid his fallen companions' bodies, he found he could not. He felt his muscles moving, tightening and relaxing inside the confines of his armor, but some magic kept him strangely still. This brought him some solace; apparently it was not for lack of courage that he now lay, face-down and still, on the floor of the cave. While it was a fortunate happenstance and likely had saved him from being finished off by the terrible Wyrm, this infirmity was created not by choice.
Since they had been children, he and his fellow knights-in-training had heard tales of the riches of the Wyrm's cave, of the vast hoard of purloined treasure it sat atop. Not even the king's wisest consuls understood why such creatures cared for shiny gold and jewels; the one thing they did understand was that not even the richest Wyrm could have any use for such wealth. Perhaps the answer lay in the way treasure glittered... but then why submerge it in the darkness of a cave? In any event, what the king had tasked them with retrieving this cursed day was not anything fashioned of precious metal, but most precious to the kingdom nonetheless.
When Bruinn and the others had finally breached the dimness at the end of their long overland journey and stepped over the cave's hellish threshold, swords drawn and shields raised, their bodies encased head to toe in weathered steel, they had found the rumors to be true. Their booted feet had stepped almost immediately on vast, undulating drifts of gold coins and objects that had formerly occupied every treasure store within a day's flappings of the accursed reptile's titanic wings. But as much as they endeavored to step lightly, the clinking of metal against metal, and the tiny landslides of gold that necessarily followed, had brought down a swift conflagration on them all.
Bruinn, as has been noted, was not dispatched by the first sweep of demonic flame, borne by the Wyrm which swooped upon them from deep within the cave, already emanating its sulfuric breath. It did, however, cause his sword to begin to lose shape and his shield to warp as the concentrated wave of heat passed no more than two arm lengths from his side. He dove away, as did all the others who were not squarely caught in the focus of the Wyrm's horrid breath, and escaped the first blinding scythe-sweep of death that filled the cave that day.
He landed face-down on the nearest low pile of golden treasure, his head pivoted instinctively away from the searing heat of the conflagration, so that the view from within his visor limited showing him only more useless riches sloping away from him into the distance, caught by unholy illumination. His sword had flown from his grasp, lying weakened nearby but tantalizingly out of reach.
In the first moment after the attack, Bruinn feared that he had been cooked alive inside of his own superheated armor, for the multiple washes of heat he felt over every inch of exposed flesh did not seem to diminish with time. At the very least, he thought, his relatively unprotected eyes would be boiled in their sockets. But the flames, and the light, eventually faded away. Long moments passed, in which he could actually feel the searching gaze of the huge animal passing over him, a presence like a thick and viscous fluid.
Then -- and he instinctively knew would have nightmares about this for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be -- he heard the vast nose of the cave's lizard-like denizen sniffing, huge huffs tinged with the smell of brimstone. It came from above him, first on one side, then the other, and he could sense the immense, ponderous weight of its head swinging back and forth through the air. He heard that broad head stop, dip, and then something awful crunched and buckled between its powerful jaws, teeth puncturing armor, cooked meat, and bone alike.
Lastly came a self-satisfied "hmph" -- the loudest, deepest sound he had ever heard that could still convey living emotion -- and the sound of massive scales sliding over metal, causing strewn golden goblets to ring and gemstone necklaces to grate and chatter like disembodied teeth.
Then it was over. Bruinn's teeth had rent tears in his lips during the ordeal, forcing his screams to stillness even as he bitterly, desperately wept for how easily his entire regiment, friends and fighters he had known since boyhood, could be so casually swept from God's Earth by such an uncaring force of blind nature. Eventually, the silent hitching of his ribs ceased, and Bruinn began to strategize, determining how he could most quietly get up, sneak into the deepest part of the Wyrm's lair, and plant the point of his forlornly sagging blade deep between the thing's slumbering eyes. He had no idea how many hours passed before he was ready. But his first attempt to rise from his supine position proved even such a simple task impossible, as has already been related. It was not that he had been so badly injured that his body could not move -- he was actually pressing upward against the backplate of his armor, his forearms pulling hard to retract his armbraces from their splayed position. But no part of his armor would move more than the slightest bit. It were as if he had become part of the ground, forever frozen. Or perhaps -- and the old fear began to seep back into him as he thought -- he had truly died, and this was what death was, forever staring at the patch of ground on which you perished, unable to move but forever trying, trapped inside your body as it decayed around you...
"Psst," he heard a voice from nearby, startling him. "Stop struggling. You're well stuck."
He knew the voice immediately. It was high, thin, frightened. It belonged to the Prince, the very treasure the King had sent his knights into this infernal fray to liberate.
"Your Highness," Bruinn breathed, his voice surprisingly strong despite his rising, clutching panic, "we have come to rescue you." Wincing at the woeful inaccuracy of his pronoun, he tried to rise again, hoping against hope that he might be able fulfill his charge. Unbidden images of himself striding back into town, the Prince seated behind him on one of the fallen knights' horses, all of which had been left well outside the cave and which he would leash to his own steed's bridle, flashed through his mind. But to enact such a triumphant return, he would first have to rise from the floor. He heard the weak creaking of his armor as he tried yet again.
Then the Prince was diving down next to him, planting his hands and knees, bending into his field of vision. The young man, with whom Sir Bruinn had before this moment never been in such close proximity, slid close to him on his stomach and hissed harshly, "I command you to lie still!"
Bruinn obeyed, at the same time realizing how young the Prince truly was, a frightened child in relatively unsinged raiment. He took a long, slow breath, preparing for the worst, and asked, "My Lord, why can I not rise?"
The Prince rose slightly to look Bruinn over, then brought his face down close to Bruinn's visor again. The young man's breath carried a weight that might have been by the initial stink of starvation, having been missing for almost a fortnight. "You're stuck," he repeated. "I shall attempt to get you out of this armor."
The knight's vitals filled with ice at the words, terrified at the thought of being unprotected while having to face down the Wyrm again, and alone. Before he could whisper a retort, the young man was fumbling at the buckles and straps along his side. "Halt!" Bruinn barked. "Will the beast not come back?
The Prince sat up a little, looked off into the dimness of the cave. When he looked back down, regret filled his eyes. "No, we have some time. She's... She's being fed."
Bruinn wondered which of his companions were comprising the meal, and shuddered, quietly rattling in his metal prison. He allowed the young royal to resume the attempt to free him, struggling to suppress the queasy mix of humiliation and dread that continually threatened to force a scream out of his throat. In a short time, he was beginning to feel additional room inside the armor, and arched his back against the rear protective plate, assisting in its removal.
All at once, he felt the cool cave air rushing inside his opened carapace, delighting the flesh that had grown accustomed to suffering from the residual heat of the thing's horrid flame-breath. As soon as the shell was off his back, he began shifting back and forth with renewed vigor, striving to free himself, although he could not get his arms or legs to budge more than a fraction of an inch from their previous fixed positions. Just as quickly, he felt the young prince's hand on his back.
"Shh, shh shh," he was told, "you cannot make so much noise!" And it was then that Bruinn realized he truly was; as he shifted his weight around on the pile of golden treasure he had been felled upon, the coins and cutlery beneath him were shifting around, whispering across each other, sometimes producing a high-pitched squeaking or clattering.
"Yet I must rise, your Highness," Bruinn stated, his voice flat and determined. "I am your only avenue of escape." And with this, Bruinn focused his exertion solely on his right arm, the one he could see, pooling his strength into the effort of lifting that one limb, slowly and steadily. And, after much striving, it began to move.
The Prince, sensing his resolve, rebuked him no more. As Bruinn felt the incredible weight of his arm shift, he began to understand why it was so difficult to do so; the heat of the Wyrm's breath had softened and partially melted the treasure pile so that parts of it bonded to his armor, coagulating its still-distinct shapes into large golden masses that adhered to him. He was presently lifting a sizeable volume of various precious metals along with his arm. When he finally was able to free his arm, it was surrounded by clumped masses of gleaming gold.
With the aid of the Prince, Bruinn found that his other limbs came free more easily. The leverage that could be gained with the use of one free limb beget a second freed one; and the second, a third; until the valiant knight was standing once again, resurrected, his arms and legs sparkling, tottering under the weight of new armor. He tried not to look at the bodies of his fallen comrades, elected instead to focus his attention fully on his King's son, who was gazing upon him more in fear than in relief.
"Come, my Prince!" Bruinn whispered to him. "My orders are to return you to your father." He extended one hand, a gauntlet now clumped with thickly solidifying chunks of gold.
The Prince, for his part, did not gratefully reach out and take it immediately. Instead, the young royal threw furtive looks over both shoulders, toward the gloom and distant grotesque sounds coming from the rear of the cave. "She'll be done eating soon," the young man's voice squeaked. "I can lead you out of here, but we must be quick. And silent."
In a flash, the Prince rushed past Bruinn and began tiptoeing at running speed across the length of the cave, nimbly stepping over the half-melted suits of armor that lay in his path, thick, nasty smoke still spilling out of their joints and visor holes. Sir Bruinn resisted the urge to call out, to grab at the Prince's clothing and haul him back, so they could work on the most likely plan to get them both out of the dragon's lair alive.
Unfortunately, the barefoot young man could move much more quickly than the knight, now laden with armor newly plated with gold. They did not head directly toward the mouth of the cave, but instead travelled crosswise, forming a path that Bruinn thought he understood; they repeatedly ducked behind piles of plunder that towered above their heads, most likely shielding their progress from the vast lizard that he could still hear munching somewhere back in the darkness.
Their path was so circuitous, and Bruinn so focused on his attempts to follow without losing sight of the ever-receding Prince, that by the time they reached a wide crack in the cave wall, Bruinn could not with confidence say where they were. The Prince was waiting just inside the gap, looking back with dubious but hopeful eyes. Bruinn was breathing heavily, having run so far under his new weight, but endeavored to do it as quietly as he could. He was thankful for even a brief respite, and braced himself against the cave wall as soon as he reached the Prince.
Bruinn was encouraged to find that, even as the stale, warm air of the Wyrm's cave heaved laboriously into and from his lungs, the prince hardly seemed winded. "What is this place?" the knight asked, wearily lifting his weighted hand to indicate the crack they had entered.
"It's a secret way," the prince whispered, "one that none but me know of."
Bruinn nodded his head, placing one hand on the young man's shoulder. "Excellent," he said. "I doubt we could exit through the cave mouth. The thing will be on guard for a second wave of attackers."
"She," the prince corrected. "The dragon is a she. And, is there?... a second wave of attackers, I mean?"
He forced himself to raise his heavy head, one side of his helmet laden with clotted gold. "I'm afraid not, my lord," he said gravely. The prince's countenance did not change as Bruinn reported, "I am the sole survivor of this damned sortie."
The prince considered this, and nodded. "Then there's no reason to linger," he said. "Come. We must push farther down this way." He began to back toward the rear of the narrow cave, disappearing into the murk. The way was narrow enough that Bruinn expected him to be stopped at any moment, having retreated as far as humanly possible, but the prince kept going, until he was entirely invisible to sight.
Steeling himself, Bruinn began the final push into daylight, which he already imagined he could start to glimpse the farther back in the narrow crack they progressed. It was only the continued recession of the Prince's dim outline that convinced Bruinn that they were not going to become irrevocably stuck in the passage.
He was surprised to find that, over the sound of his armor and remaining clothes scraping against the occasional protuberance or crag in the uneven stone, the prince was whispering again, leading him forward. "Not far now," the young man was saying, "continue to follow my voice."
Bruinn knew that there were scarcely any alternatives to this course of action, but courteously replied, "Of course, my lord."
A long moment of progress passed, and the Prince spoke again, sounding closer to Bruinn now. "My father wishes me back this desperately, does he? Enough to send his finest knights to rescue me?"
"Absolutely," Bruinn answered. "a dozen of us. I already regret the look that will be upon his face when I inform him that only I have returned." Then he added hastily, "But of course, such sorrow will be overshadowed when he sees you."
"I do not doubt it shall," the prince said, in an oddly flat tone. "Tell me, Sir Bruinn, was any inquiry made into the manner of my disappearance?"
Bruinn thought it an odd question, but considered it honestly. "I don't believe so, lord. We were called into the court and given our instructions, but not given any background to the incident itself."
A few moments of scraping along the passage followed, and the distant light seemed to grow marginally brighter. Bruinn found he had to twist and turn his body to navigate a few of the more narrow corners, but managed to keep pace with the ever-receding prince.
"I called her," the young man said finally.
"Who, lord?" was all Bruinn could think to say.
"The dragon," the Prince said. "I went up onto the roof with my father's old dragonstone, and summoned her."
Bruinn's brow furrowed in the dark. He knew that the King had been in possession such a thing, a sift-sized crystalline engine plucked from the breast of a dragon he had vanquished decades ago in his reign. It was known that such stones powered a Wyrm's fire when the creature was alive, but retained little power once removed, other than becoming a sort of beacon, detectable by other such creatures. "You... called this beast yourself?"
"Yes," the Prince said, continuing to back into the growing light. "Sir Knight, I have lived a very sheltered life. And I wanted to perhaps see one of the wonders this world has to offer."
"Sheltered?" Bruinn asked, becoming more puzzled with each step. "Protected, one might say instead. Protected from fearsome beasts such as the one that has kept you here in this cave for the past fortnight!" Against his better judgment, his voice began to rise in frustration.
"And I did regret it," the prince replied, his tone even as ever, "when I saw the huge thing come swooping down at me. But then I was being borne within her claws, and she was flying me away, rising dozens more feet into the air with each flap of her immense wings..." His voice drifted off, as if in pleasant reverie.
"My lord?" Bruinn asked, trying to pick up the pace of his pursuit. He meant to catch up to the Prince fully, to grab onto his collar and physically refuse to let the young heir go until the two of them were both safely returned to the royal court. But as much as he attempted to hurry his progress, the Prince continued to back away.
"For the first time in my life," the Prince continued, "the entire world lay out before me. And not like it is from within the stone arch of a high turret window, with more towers and walls blocking the way... but no longer behind barriers, all of it rushing by beneath us, green and present and alive. I was suddenly part of it all, and it was part of me. That's the gift that She gave to me that day -- She who you crudely call Wyrm, as if that word could diminish her power. Now I am out, and I really don't intend on going back."
Bruinn felt a freezing chill run through the marrow of his bones, stark contrast against his remaining armor, still resonant with the dragon's unholy heat. All he had done, and all his fallen comrades had sacrificed, were now in danger, and he realized he must choose his next tack carefully. "You intend to go out into the world, to leave your father's kingdom and wander for a time? Some future kings have done such things, spending years of their young adulthood venturing out, learning firsthand of the lands which he will one day rule."
The prince sighed, already exasperated. "No, Sir knight. What I am saying is that I intend to leave permanently. And I will rule the land one day, not just this one but many more. In this endeavor She will be my guide, companion... and leader of my armies."
Even with the turns the conversation had already taken, it took Bruinn an incredulous moment to realize which "she" the prince was referring to. "The... the beast?" he asked.
"Yes, if She is what you mean by the reductive term 'beast'!" the prince bleated. "To speak honestly, She has treated me with more kindness than most of the adults I have met in my life."
"How can that be?" Bruinn was fairly lunging forward now, trying to grasp the child -- and he no longer thought of the prince as anything more than a spoiled, naive child, to say such things -- but his gold-laced armor repeatedly clanged and sparked off the erratically-shaped walls of the ever-narrowing crevice. "My lord, you know not of what you speak! It -- She -- is a mere animal! A living, breathing machine of death!"
The prince stopped moving for once, giving Bruinn a tantalizing chance to close the gap between them. "May She blast you again for saying so! She could have slain me immediately, yes, but instead brought me to this cave of wondrous beauty. She has fed me with roast animals, protected me, taken me on the most incredible flights. I daresay I have seen more of this world in the past few days than thou hast in thy entire life, bondsman!" His language lapsed into the high speech of his father, now that he had become agitated. "The best nanny I have had in my eleven years, She has been! No ward to be sated and tolerated, I, to Her! Love, pure caring love is what She has given me, the kind of love my negligent royal parents could ne'er deign to!"
Bruinn's hand was almost upon the sleeve of the distracted, angered Prince, but at the last instant before he could touch him, the youth dropped back a few more feet. The light had continued to grow about them, and now Bruinn was aware of the specks of light his newly acquired gold was casting about the rough walls like sparkles off waves. His hand fell on the Prince's shoulder, and the knight's fingers were about to clamp down...
Suddenly, they were out. The walls of the crack fell away, and intense sunlight dazzled their eyes. the brightness came seemingly from everywhere at once, and Bruinn was forced to relinquish his grasp on the Prince, instinctively raising his hand to his eyes in order to shield them. It did little to diminish the glare, but the next few stumbling steps he took following the vague silhouette of the Prince told him precisely what he needed to know.
Bruinn was once again stepping through low drifts of piled gold treasure, the familiar sound of his feet kicking pieces of it aside brought ever more dread into his heart.
They were not outside, but instead within a chamber. The crack had not led them into the very heart of the demon's lair. There was a ragged hole in the ceiling where the fissure they had been following picked up again, zipping up and back out into the world, allowing in a bright sliver of the day's sunlight. This shaft fell fully upon the largest heap of gold that Bruinn had seen yet. And atop it lay the satiated, slumbering Wyrm that he had followed here. She was coiled like a cat, long graceful neck and tail wrapped tightly around the house-sized bulk of her body, orange-red scales gleaming almost as brightly as the treasure she slept on.
The prince continued to back toward the giant thing, spreading his arms out with pomposity. "Behold her grandeur! She is the true ruler, not my father, the weak little man who sits on his throne and proclaims himself so! Her power is beyond any kingdom's!"
Behind the young man, one ruby-red slitted eye the size of a hearth's mantel peeked open lazily, fell upon the pair of them, then shut again.
The prince continued to bellow, loving the way his voice grew older and stronger, echoing and deepening in the cavernous space. "She will share her secrets with I alone! And then I shall become the most high and powerful!" He reached into one of his pockets and produced what must have been the heartstone he had used to call her. Bruinn stopped, transfixed by its beauty, multifaceted and internally luminous, even in this comparatively blinding place. "I summoned her with this, this proof that She and I are kindred spirits! Proof that our destiny is to lay our shadows across this world together, a world that is ours by right! Together we shall--"
Quicker than a snake could strike, the dragon's neck extended and her jaws slammed shut sideways around the prince, removing him from the world entirely within an instant. Then, as slowly as if she had merely swatted a bothersome fly, the dragon turned returned her head to its former position, the tree-think muscles in her jaws shifting only a little as she worked her meal around, crushing it fully inside her mouth. Bruinn imagined he saw her scales bugle slightly along the length of her neck as she worked the bundle down, until it finally disappeared into her body. She gave out what might have been a twitch and a hiccup then -- no doubt settling the second heartstone into place, presumably alongside her own -- before lowering her head into the groove it had worn around the top of the treasure hoard.
That immense eye peeped open one more time, then closed just as slowly, dismissing him. Bruinn stood there for a long time, watching the body of scales slowly expand and contract, as the giant creature lightly dozed in the aftermath of her fine meal. Then, as quietly and respectfully as he could, Bruinn unfastened his gold-encrusted armor piece by piece, and set it down among the rest of the dragon's treasure. He then followed the crack in the wall back to the place his rescue team had first been attacked, and out to the bone-scattered field before the mouth of the cave.
The horses were still there, tethered a safe distance away. He set them free, and watched as, per their training, they trotted back toward the castle, every saddle marking a knight who had fallen this day. He watched his own horse disappear amid the tiny herd, and stood there until the clouds of dust in their wake had dissipated. Then he looked out across the land, and at the farthest mountains, never realizing until this day how much he wanted to learn what lay beyond them. He stood still, thinking again, for an even longer time, then turned, and walked back inside the cave.
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