Page 20 of Double Dragon

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that ran around the edge were wide enough to walk down, so I surmised that the dragons had spent some time here in human form as well, but I didn’t like the idea of walking all the way down the inside of a mountain. It seemed as though it would take forever.

I climbed back on Thomas’ back and we descended through the mountain to the depths that lay below with William close by us. The mountain was wide enough for a whole flock of dragons (that didn’t seem to be the right way to describe them, although I didn’t know the proper terminology) could fly as one. I was struck by the notion that coming into a place like this with no information was a challenge, it was as though it was a paper coated in invisible ink; there was meaning here, but I would have to work to figure out what that meaning was. I watched the slopes and the torches and I tried to figure out how the dragons had lived. Did they ever spread out across the island, or had they only lived in these rocky depths, keeping to the darkness aside from when they ventured out to fly freely in the air.

I was used to fantasy stories and fairytales where dragons often made their homes in caves. I wondered if there was a sliver of truth to this; if all the old stories had been influenced by the hidden truth of these real dragons, or if everything we knew had been made up by the fanciful imagination of writers over the years.

The thought struck me that if the dragons did live in caves there was a chance that some might still exist. We had only been on the island for a short while after all and may not have been privy to witnessing a dragon. The place was filled with ancient power and dragons were fabled to be long-lived creatures, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that there was a slumbering beast waiting for us. I swallowed my fear and held on tightly as we continued our descent.

It was telling how long it took us to descend through the mountain and land on the stony ground, showing the impressive height of the mountain. The stone did a good job of reflecting the warmth of the torches, and my skin prickled with sweat. The ground was chipped and strewn with rubble, and the air was stagnant and tinged with the smell of loneliness. It didn’t seem like anything had been down here for years.

I slid off Thomas’ back and looked around while he and William shifted back into human form. We were standing in a circular chamber. I craned my neck up, trying to see the top of the shaft through which we had entered, but I could only see a pinprick of light at the top, my only reminder that there was an outside world. There were huge gashes cut into the stone, perhaps indications of a fight, which would also explain why there was rubble on the floor. Splitting away from the main chamber were tunnels, with huge entrances that were made big enough for dragons to travel.

Thomas and William had reverent looks on their faces.

“Does any of this sound or look familiar to you?” I asked. They shook their heads.

“This is amazing,” Thomas breathed.

“To think that we’re standing here, that this place exists. Father was right,” William said. A somber mood came upon us all as we remembered why we were here, but it was mixed in with excitement. We had actually found the place where dragons existed. There was no denying it now. Our parents hadn’t been pursuing a fool’s errand. It was real, and we had succeeded where they had failed.

I gestured to the chambers; they split off into four directions, and Thomas chose one at random. William grabbed a torch off the wall and used this to light other torches as we walked along, making light blossom like the flowers in spring. As we walked further into the tunnel, the ground shifted from stone to dirt.

“This is clearly an old place, but it shows remarkable signs of engineering. It must have taken them a long time to hollow out this place and build these tunnels, and they must have run the risk of having the entire mountain collapse in on them,” I said.

“Why do you think they’d only have one entrance?” Thomas asked. I contemplated the idea for a few moments.

“Given that dragons are secretive, it might just be because they wanted to reduce the possibility of anyone sneaking into their lair, and perhaps there were only a small number of them, so they didn’t need many entrances. From the looks of it they would have spent most of their time here, so really the rest of the island is just a shell for their real home. That makes sense too, because if anyone came onto the island they’d have to be very fortunate to stumble along any evidence that dragons existed. Do you think that anyone else could be down here?”

“I mean, I don’t think so, but father was always skeptical about the stories we had been told. He always said there was a greater truth, so we might find one of our ancestors here!” His eyes gleamed with excitement and I was excited for him. I slipped my hand in his and smiled sweetly at him, squeezing it gently. William interrupted our special moment though.

“I don’t think you’re going to find anyone alive here,” he said, standing motionless in front of another chamber. The tunnel had curved round and Thomas and I were a few paces away from William, who strode forward. We joined him and gazed upon the sight that had so troubled him, that had led him to make such an ominous statement. Thomas let go of my hand and stepped forward. All I could do was gaze in abject horror. An unsettling feeling swam in my stomach.

The tunnel had led us to another mountain, and I assumed the others would as well. It seemed as the people who lived here had formed a network of chambers that were housed in these huge cones, while only one of them had an actual entrance. But while this led to privacy, it also lent the place the ambience of a tomb, not helped by the sight before them.

Given the size of the dragons, and the assumption that they spent the majority of their lives in this underground lair, I followed on from that to assume that this was a sleeping chamber, which made what I saw even more horrific. There were piles and piles of bones and skeletons of all shapes and sizes. I’d never seen so much death contained in one location before. This was always a risk for an archaeologist of course, having to deal with being in a place where people had died, but this seemed different somehow, and it must have been because many of the bones were charred and cracked. The ivory was blackened and a fetid stench made the air cloying and sticky. We stepped down and moved around the bones, wading through them. I picked some up, they were heavy, and I noticed that some of them were much smaller, and they could only have been the bones of young dragons.

“What could have done this?” I asked. The thought that so many dragons could be killed like this was unfathomable. They were so well-guarded and so powerful that it must have taken something immense to deal this much destruction.

“It had to be a dragon,” Thomas said tersely. He and William were tense, and his conclusion made sense. Given the accessibility of this place and the way the bones were charred the only explanation was that a dragon had killed so many of their brethren, but like so many times when I explored an ancient site, I was left with more questions than answers.

“Has there ever been anything said about a civil war between your people?” I asked.

“Nothing, but again, there’s a lot that has been lost to history; if people knew there had been a war here…” Thomas said.

“Dragons are used to keeping secrets. Do you think some have known about this? Do you think this is why our Uncle was so devoted to preventing anyone from finding this place?” William asked.

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Come, we must explore further and find out what happened here. I do not wish to look upon this death any longer,” Thomas said, and clipped his heels as he turned away. I couldn’t blame him. I imagined for him this was as traumatic as me seeing a mass grave, thinking about all the lives that had been thrown in together, all the people and souls that had been forgotten. William fell into step behind his brother and carried the torch with him. The light receded as they moved away, leaving the bones in darkness. I increased my pace to keep up with them, but as I was about to leave the chamber something else caught my eye. I bent down on my haunches and picked up the fractured remnants of a dragon egg. I turned the

thick shell around in my fingers. It had the texture of stone, and sorrow filled my heart. A life had been ended before it had even begun, was there anything sadder?

I pocketed the shell and ran up to Thomas and William before I was left in complete darkness, falling into step with them.

“Do you think it could have been for treasure? Was this place robbed?” I asked.

The brothers glanced at each other. “I suppose it’s possible,” Thomas said, “but I hope there’s some other clue around here that points to what’s going on.”

We walked back to the main chamber in silence, for there was much on our minds. We took another tunnel and this led to a chamber that was empty. We were puzzled at first but decided that there was little else we could do than turn back and hope that one of the other tunnels led us to something useful. The third tunnel was again empty, and by this point we were getting frustrated. It was becoming clear by now that we weren’t going to find an ancient dragon waiting to greet us, and so we felt more free at expressing our frustration. Thomas and William were less patient than I was however, for I had the experience of knowing that sometimes you had to wait a long time before you got what you wanted.

“Guys, please calm down. I know this is frustrating for you, but trust me, I’ve seen other sites like this. We still have one more chamber to explore, and if that doesn’t have anything specific then we’ll just have to piece together what we can from what we can see.”


Tags: Lilly Wilder Paranormal