The Scream
by Shannon Lee Martin
Copyright 2013 Shannon Lee Martin
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After days of waiting, the char-blackened entrance to the cave of the Steel Dragon appeared at last! We knew there was little time before it would close again, and though we didn't want to wait -- the gods only knew how long till it opened again -- we only seemed to be wasting time. We just sat there, staring at the damned thing, and no one had yet summoned enough courage to be the first to step inside. We had all heard the tales, most of them ghastly. Was it our thoughts of what we would gain that was making it so difficult to decide who would be the first to enter? No, it wasn't that. No one wanted to go inside because of the traps. Some of the stories involved nasty traps, and the door being charred black didn't help either.
My name is Stellin Vackheed, a mercenary from the Black Plains. I only embarked on this quest for the second half of a mighty fortune I was to receive after doing the job I was sent to do. I traveled here to the cave of the Steel Dragon with four others, and up to the point where the black door actually appeared, it had been an uneventful trip. A little rough, maybe, but I'd seen worse.
The man whom I met first on my journey was also the one who'd been giving very good, if not cowardly, reasons why he shouldn't be the first to enter. Some excuse about how he couldn't see that well, and would be better at guarding our rear against unknown dangers. His name was Jorid Blacksteed, a self-proclaimed knight from the land of the Divided Kingdoms, who, quite foolishly in my opinion, insisted on constantly wearing his finely crafted, full-plate gray-steel armor, even when he bedded down at night. Even when we traveled through the desert and he drank more than his fair share of our water supply. Lets just say that after walking downwind of him just once, no one in our party ever made that mistake again.
Well, I might as well describe my garb as well, while I'm at it. I wear lightweight golem-shell armor, brown cloth tunic and leggings, and short brown leather boots. My most prized possession is the black leather overcoat I took from my greatest enemy in battle, the great, and now deceased, warlord Thorin. I had to patch it after. . .but I digress.
Time dragged on. Our moment was passing.
I'm tired of this shit, I thought, and stepped forward from behind the others and shoved Jorid aside, who had been pointing into and babbling about the possible dangers of the Dragon's cave, for the umpteenth time. I took the torch from my pack and flicked the tiny switch which ignites it, and entered the cave -- fearless, confident, and lying to myself about my abundance of bravery. Brave I may be, but still. . .
I pushed open the door to the damp, warm cave, with Jesse, a lesser lord from the city of Tinimar, following close behind me.Tinimar is that little city that sits like long winding strips of bacon on the banks of the Frozen River. Gods I'm hungry. I need to stop thinking about bacon! Jesse was almost as bad as Jorid had been about his clothing, which was heavy, thick and furry, but he had stripped it off quickly enough back when we crossed that water-sucking desert. Jesse was the only one of our traveling companions whom -- over the course of our long journey -- I had come to consider a dear and worthy friend. I don't know what it was about him; maybe it was because our companions weren't much for talking. . .or civility, or maybe it was because they thought themselves our betters, and let us know it whenever it suited them. Whatever.
Making his way with us deeper down the narrow cavern behind Jesse came Ultin Jazyd, a man who claimed to have once been a king who had been forced by revolt and treachery from his throne, but his actions and odd behavior seemed to suggest otherwise. The only thing that could make his story true was the amulet he wore hidden beneath his mail -- at least I let him think it was hidden -- that must've been worth a small fortune. But of course, it could've been something he had stolen from some rich merchant or nobleman or the like, for all I cared.
Ultin traveled with a tall being -- male or female, I never could tell -- with no apparent name or history. This struck the rest of us, including Ultin, as being, well. . .strange. It wore a blood-red cloak that hung from its head and covered its whole body that dragged the ground, and wore a flat unadorned red mask a couple of shades lighter than the cloak, with thoroughly blackened slits where eyes should have been, with no other holes. It never spoke, so if it had a name, it was as unknown as everything else concerning it. So we dubbed it 'Blood,' for obvious reasons.
Lagging at the rear, more nervous than a man being deprived of a powerful substance addiction, was the cowardly 'knight' Jorid. Once he was through the entrance it disappeared, as if there had never been anything there but stone, but before we'd entered we knew that there would only be one way out, and the way we came in would not be it.
Jesse pulled a torch from under his white-furred coat, of a model a bit older than mine, and flicked it on. Apparently no one else owned one, or I'm sure that they would have been using them in the cave's eerie darkness. It was good that we could see well enough to make out the details of the cave's rocky floor and walls. The lighting was dim, but it sufficed.
After a short walk we came to a dead end at a stone wall. We searched for what seemed like hours for 'something,' a switch, a lever, anything to continue our advance -- until Blood moved from where it had stood all the time everyone else had been searching, to an unremarkable place in the cave's wall. It triggered a switch hidden amidst a dense array of stalagmites, and the wall they were clustered near seemed to dissolve as it disappeared, to show us a sight which inspired and awed me, causing me to smile with tears of glee.
Jesse and I put our torches away. We no longer needed their meager light in wake of the presence before us.
A short distance away from us lay the Steel Dragon, in all its ancient and magnificent splendor, gleaming and shining with its own inner light that spilled out to brightly fill the cavern's darkness. Its joint and segmental links were almost unnoticeable as they slid and heaved from what could have been the dragon's breathing (if it breathed), its squarish, solid blue eyes regarding us with wry amusement, smoke trickling from its mammoth nostrils. The Steel Dragon shined so beautifully that it looked more silver than it did the color of steel. Its size was so great I was at a loss to think of a word that could describe its enormity, suffice to say it was the size of a small mountain. I found myself unconsciously stroking the length of brown braid that fell over my shoulder, almost dumbfounded.
Ultin slid his thick fingers down his squat, pale squarish face, and then scratched an itch on his left cheek from stubble irritation. Blood simply stared as impassively at the Dragon as it did everything else (but for all I knew, Blood had its eyes closed). Jesse had a wide grin on his thick lips, and Jorid let out a feeble scream and turned and fled for the entrance, for the sake of his craven life.
"Jorid the knight," snorted Jesse in a deep, contemptuous monotone, and gestured with his ebony hand in the direction which Jorid had fled. None of us, besides Blood, could help but let out a small chuckle or something akin, my own release a smirk, and even the dragon seemed to be smiling. Blood only continued to stare stonily at the shining Steel Dragon.
"It's so fucking huge," said Ultin in his coarse voice, his attention now removed from Jorid. "Its head is at least as big as my whole palace!" Neither I nor Jesse commented on his statement. I had gotten the impression much earlier that Jesse didn't believe his story either.
I found myself letting my jaw hang open, and quickly shut my mouth and recomposed myself. It was I who was fated to be the first to speak to the dragon, who could have probably crushed me with even its smallest scale if it happened to fall from its beautifully crafted body. I turned to address it with the speech I'd memorized for my employers, my voice its usual smooth baritone, and free of any trace of fear.
"I come to y
ou, oh mighty Steel Dragon, who defends the world from the imposing forces of law and order, to tell you of a great nation, Illushitan, that infects our land with edicts and regulations, a nation which none of the Old Empires can vanquish with either sorcerous subterfuge or military might. They burn, hang and kill anything involving magic, be it the fair Sprite folk or Witches. And having no God or Gods of their own, they consider the worshiping, or even the mentioning, of Gods to be unclean, and vow to purge it and anything else unrealistic from the world. This nation threatens the very nature of our world, and I petition thee to do as you were created and destroy this foul abomination with all your glorious might." I bowed my head submissively at the dragon's massive toe. I'd said what I'd been paid to say, word for word, although I personally didn't believe, nor care, about a word of it.
In the distance we heard Jorid bellow a foul, horrid scream. Apparently, as the legends had said, once one enters into the cave of the Steel Dragon, there is only one way out. Only one man would have his wish fulfilled and live. It was the second of the legends to be proven true. First there had been the tale of the entrance. Did that imply that the other