When they all safely made it to the other side, another rumbling shook the cavern. This time louder and more aggressive than before. More of an angry roar.
The red dragon was close, everyone knew, silently exchanging looks.
Rui felt it in her bones, the presence of another dragon. Much more compellingly than Ere, whom she knew to be a dragon, but whose current human form belied his natural power.
Thisdragon—Merlin—was immensely powerful, Rui could tell. Even if he was imprisoned and possibly wounded or lame.
And he was angry.
There was a seething fury in the air, thick enough to cut. The fog itself grew hot and thick, the reddish glow sparking like fireworks, stinging her skin, even the places covered by clothes.
“Leave him to me,” Wolfe growled low, edging out slightly in front of Sorin and Rui.
“My blades hold magic. They are made to slay dragons.”
Rui did touch him then, putting her hand on his wrist to stay him.
“No, Wolfe. Let Sorin and I go first. He is not our enemy.”
Those beautiful citrine eyes met hers.
“You do not know that,” he argued fiercely, but added, “I’ll not engage to kill. I will aim to subdue if I can.”
“Give me the dagger,” Sorin said from his other side.
Wolfe didn’t waste time. The two men exchanged weapons. This way, both had defense against the powerful dragon, however inadequate it might seem.
Wordlessly, they shared a bracing look, as well as a silent agreement with Ere and Morgan, who nodded and fell a couple of steps back.
And together, Sorin, Wolfe and Rui advanced into the darkness, toward the throbbing red glow of Merlin’s inferno.
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
It was just as in his dreams.
The eerie mist that spread like ghostly fingers all around them, weaving and curling, living like smoke, but thicker and filled with sparks of fire.
Though they couldn’t see where their feet tread, he heard and felt the water they waded into, the mild but steadily progressing incline they went down into some sort of still stream.
Sometimes, when the fog curled away, not by the breeze of their movement or the flow of air in the cavern, but by its own will, Wolfe could see the glow of gems and precious metals at the bottom of the water. He felt them crunch beneath his boots as he put one foot in front of the other, approaching a massive flat rock that rose from the pool like an island.
On top of the island the mist swirled steadily, cloaking the being that lay upon it, curled up in a deceptively somnolent pose, its snout almost touching the spiked end of its tail, showing the right side of its face, the eyelid closed.
Deeply it breathed, seemingly asleep, though Wolfe could see even from a few yards away that its breathing was belabored. Every three breaths or so, the red dragon shuddered fitfully, and emitted that woeful, bone-shaking rumble.
As if it was sobbing in its dreams.
But dragons didn’t cry, did they? They were monsters, weren’t they?
As Wolfe looked upon the creature he’d hunted for most of his life, he wondered.
For, this dragon looked tired. Haggard. Its scales weren’t the burnished bright red in Wolfe’s dreams. They were faded and tarnished, like rusty metal. There were gray, sagging bags under the closed eye that faced them, as if, even though it seemed to sleep, it had notrestedfor a very long time.
Another shuddering rumble echoed through the mist-filled cavern as the dragon twitched with unease, a contortion of pain streaking across its profile.
When Wolfe looked upon the thing that made the roaring rumble that shook the cavern, he no longer heard it as aggression and bloodlust, but fury and pain.
And underneath it all, a soul-deep sorrow that made Wolfe’s own heart clench with empathy. The scar that cut across his face, over his left eye, the same one that the dragon must have lost, throbbed with memory.