The bone pillars were much taller than him and bent away as they reached upward. All of them connected to a vertical bone near the floor. Unsure what part of it Vidar was seeing, he turned left and walked along its length. Estimating its size in the dark while only seeing a small portion of the corpse at any given time was difficult, but the size had to be enormous judging by how long it took him to reach what he assumed was its tail.
A long, thinner set of interlocking bones ran down to the floor and then along it. Vidar followed, marveling at its length. At its tip, he made another set of discoveries. First, it was larger again at the end and a few thin bone spikes protruded from the base. Second, more runes were set into the floor here, squished tightly together with lines encircling the tail. Alvarn would have loved seeing this. Another unknown use for runes. Perhaps the rune scribe student would be able to make sense of it all and see some pattern they could exploit to make this new discovery immediately useful. With Vidar’s limited knowledge, all he managed was to make a rough sketch of what was before his eyes on a small piece of paper.
Two of these lines immediately piqued Vidar’s interest, the first one because it was broken. All appearances pointed to it being part of the network of runes encircling the long dead dragon. The second white line disappeared into the darkness, going away from everything.
“Interesting,” Vidar muttered.
Without giving it much thought, he brought out the ink again and repaired the broken line so each end touched. The skeleton behind him creaked. Vidar jumped into the air with a shriek, landing outside the circle.
The drain on his essence was gone.
Confused, he stepped back into the circle and found the drain to be much more severe. He stepped out again. Frowning, he moved backwards a few steps, still not feeling any drain whatsoever. This meant the circle of runes, whatever it was doing, when broken, was powerful enough to affect runes and himself all the way across the open floor, along the walls and into the tunnels above. What sort of people could craft such a thing? It boggled the mind.
Unable to stop himself, Vidar got down to his knees again and placed a hand on one of the runes, envisioning its circle in his mind. No matter how hard he tried, he could not do it. A stuttering shape briefly flickered around the rune but then disintegrated, like when blowing on a mound of dust.
After painting an ink circle around the rune on the floor, he tried again. Now, a circle did appear in his mind, but all was not right. The essence within churned and shimmered with a strange sort of glow.
“What is that?” Vidar murmured.
He wanted to take it inside himself, to make it part of him, but he did not dare. With no telling how it would affect him, the risk was far too great.
Vidar wished he could’ve brought the rune with him, but there was no getting it off the floor, so he, instead, grabbed hold of one of the dragon tail’s bone spikes. He pulled and pushed to no avail. Frustrated, he leaned back and kicked at it with the heel of his boot.
The low sound of bone cracking rang out through the darkness, but no visible marks appeared on the spike. He kicked again and again until it finally broke off. Vidar chased after as it thudded and bounced on the stone floor.
The pointed end was sharp and deadly. The spike might make a fine weapon, he figured, and realized its original purpose. With a tail like that, fire was not the only danger to be wary of in the company of a dragon.
Shoving his new souvenir into the bag he brought, Vidar strode around to the front of the skeletal dragon, skirting around a pair of thick back legs. Each of them was larger than he himself, much larger. Clawed feet again reminded him of what a fearsome beast rested before him. On a live monster such as this, those would be deadlier than any sword or spear. No matter how he positioned his legs and heaved with the strength of his back, there was no removing a claw. Even if he’d managed it, Vidar would not be able to carry something as large as that in his climb back up to the surface.
With the drain outside the circle gone, Vidar triggered a kenaz rune. The enormous skeleton before him came into much better view. Looking at the pattern of runes before him, he came to a sudden realization. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen runes connected to each other. The church. Down in those tunnels with the corpses. That room. That terrible room. When he’d hurried through that room to escape, it’d drained him of essence. At that time, he hadn’t understood what was happening to him. Now, he did. Upon reflection, the pale corpses in that cart took on an even more sinister meaning.
Vidar scratched his chin, looking down on the floor, muttering, “Draining essence.”
Runes for draining essence surrounded the dragon. He thought back to the strange essence within those runes, and it all clicked into place. It was a dragon’s essence he’d felt. That power. The strangeness. He was glad he hadn’t drawn it into himself. A dragon’s essence was liable to burn a man from the inside out, rather than simply making him puke his guts out.
This all meant someone long, long ago killed a dragon, hauled it underground, and set to extracting the essence from it. The purpose was unclear as of yet, but it had not deteriorated in the runes.
Pondering the runes, the lines, and the dead dragon, Vidar didn’t notice the glinting in the darkness at first. He blinked and furrowed his brow, unsure if it had been his imagination. But no, there it was again. Something shimmered in the skeleton, where its belly had once been.
In the light rune’s glow, he skirted the circle and found a separate line of runes going from the outer circle and into the skeleton. As he approached, the light rune flickered and went out. Cursing, Vidar went back for the lantern. Using that, it was much harder to see, but he thought he saw something stuck within. There it was again, a glint. A polished metal surface.
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A pommel, perhaps, with a haft encircling it. A spear’s haft.
“A weapon?” Vidar muttered.
The painted line headed toward the weapon, and then onto it. Vidar could reach in and grab it, but its placement, its design, and the way it was connected to the runes made him pause. The head of the spear wasn’t made of metal, he thought. No, it was a dull material, almost wood-like, but white. Vidar blinked, leaning in further.
“It’s bone,” he whispered. Even polished and smooth, there was no denying its resemblance to the skeletal mass around it. Runes covered the haft, which was made of some dark wood. A thin band of metal where the head of the spear connected with the haft was what’d caught his eye in the first place.
Vidar, against his better judgment, reached out, but something nagged at his vision. To his left, the light from his lantern showed another glimmer. This one warmer, more inviting. He pulled back and stepped away from the skeleton, holding his lantern before him. There was definitely something there that didn’t belong to the corpse.
At first, it looked like a broken-down pile of junk, but the glittering from within that pile held Vidar’s attention. The inviting glow made him forget about the spear and hurry over. Getting down to his knees, he found the wood to be the remnants of a small chest near the dragon’s bony neck. Ignoring the looming white bones towering over him, he sifted through wood so old it crumbled between his fingers. There it was. Treasure.
Vidar goggled and then found his eyes tearing up as he pulled coin after coin from the pile. Gold. These coins were gold. Glimmering in the lantern light, they were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Eighteen all in all. A piece of paper had been tucked in with them, but that fell apart as soon as he touched it.
The question of why a dragon’s corpse needed gold flashed before his mind but disappeared as quickly while he pocketed the finding of a lifetime. By chance, he glanced at the surface of one of the coins and saw they were very different from the pressed silver he was used to. Rather than the picture of the king, with his stern look of disappointment, the front only held a few interconnected lines, not a rune, and a number at the bottom. Vidar fished out a silver coin to compare, and the year the silver coin was minted was printed at the bottom, 1384. Fourteen years ago. More than thirteen hundred years after the fall of the angels. The number on the gold coin was 1653.
It made no sense. The supposedly ancient coin was minted after his own, present, silver coin. No, the number must mean something different. It didn’t matter. No one would care about anything other than the weight of the gold, and these coins were heavy with value. With these coins, he’d be set for years to come, even if he never crafted or rejuvenated another rune.
Vidar reached up toward the ceiling with the hand holding the gold coin, screaming, “YEEEES! BEHOLD MY RICHES, DRAGONS ALIVE AND DEAD! MAY YOU ALL ROT AWAY LIKE THIS BASTARD! I KNOW I DID RIGHT TO COME DOWN HERE!”
He kicked at the skeleton before him with enough force to hurt his toes, and he jumped back, wincing in pain. “Stupid bastard!”
The sound of stone grinding against stone rang out louder than ever, trembling through the massive hall. Vidar screamed and spun toward the source, away from the dragon’s corpse. For a brief, flickering second, he’d thought the dragon woke up from his kicking, and his heart was racing, his breathing quick and shallow as he stared into the darkness.
It’d been close. Perhaps in this very room. The source of the sound was before him. Vidar stood frozen for a long while but heard nothing more. Eventually, his panic settled down and curiosity replaced it. This was an opportunity to find whatever made that grinding noise so he didn’t have to walk around in the tunnels, wondering.
He glanced back to the spot of darkness where the spear rested inside the dragon’s corpse. A weapon. He’d need a weapon. There was one final task before he would allow himself to leave, however. The eyes. Two glimmering orbs in the darkness. He remembered them well. The gold coins would be a laughable pittance in comparison to those enormous gems. One of those, he might carry in his pack. The other he would have to return for.
From his position near its neck, the dragon’s skull blocked its skeletal face. Vidar slowly made his way around it. The many, many teeth in its maw still looked sharp after all these years, like they could tear him to pieces with a single crunch. He’d fit entirely in there too, in that huge maw.
When it returned, Vidar would stand between it and the city of Halmstadt. Not because he necessarily wanted to protect the city itself and its citizens. Well, he did, but not for altruistic reasons. If they were all burned, he would have no one to sell runes to. That was simply unacceptable. Also, the reward for slaying the menace over Halmstadt would be magnificent, he was sure.
Vidar saw himself standing before an enormous, adoring crowd who all cheered his name. That’d show his father, it’d show them all.
He grinned at the thought as he walked around the massive skull and finally got a glance at the gems he’d seen from so far away. All thoughts of crowds and rewards died away, and he swallowed hard at the sight. He’d been so sure he’d find something precious stuck in the skull’s sockets, and the treasure only served to make him more certain. Not gems, not gems at all.
Eyes peered down at him from up on high, impenetrable orbs of blackness sucking in the light. They were full of intelligence. Full of life.
Vidar shook his head violently to break out of his trance. The initial impression had been wrong, of course. This dragon lying before him was long dead, a mere shadow of its past self in this skeletal form. The eyes were not full of life. They were dark and dull.
Chuckling nervously, Vidar approached and clambered up the elongated jaw. For some reason, he felt he needed a better look. Everything else on this corpse had long since withered away, but not the eyes. Why?
He got close enough to touch them, each as large—larger, even—than his own head. Vidar reached out with a single finger and touched the left eye, holding his breath as if afraid the dragon would wake and devour him. Wet. It felt wet. Not unlike his own eye. The mystery momentarily allowed him to ignore the massive sense of disappointment after finding no enormous gemstones, but it soon came crashing back with a vengeance. His first thought was to break the eyeball with his fist. Rising anger made him pull back to strike, but something held him back. Looking into that eye, Vidar got the sense he should leave it be. Instead, he sighed and jumped down to move out of the circle of runes.
His legs were wobbly after standing inside the circle for too long, so he stepped out of it again to let the essence return a little. The painted line that broke off from the circle and disappeared into the darkness was a mystery he wanted solved before heading back up the long ladder. Vidar wanted to follow it, but he also needed to investigate whatever was making that noise. Deciding on the noise first, he stood and hurried forward to reach into the dragon’s skeletal chest cavity, grabbing the spear.
Essence drained from his hand immediately and his arm began to tingle. The dulling sensation and numbness meant he, at first, did not realize what was happening. The wood heated up as he lost feeling in his shoulder. His chest tingled, the sensation quickly moving to his heart. Vidar screamed in pain as the wooden haft grew hot enough to burn his hand as it crumbled to dust. Searing pain flooded up his arm, and he stumbled back, coughing and whimpering, barely able to breathe. The spear was gone. All that remained of it was the hideous, excruciating burns on his hand.
