The humans’ scent became easier to follow when I was away from the ashes of the logging camp. Each flap of my wings took me further than I could walk in minutes. Flying in these Redstone Hills would be exhilarating once I settled into a den. Unfortunately, I had to finish this hunt before I’d feel comfortable settling here.

  As I followed the trail further into the hills, the human’s presence became more obvious. Wherever they went, they fouled the landscape. A snapped branch here and a discarded bottle there added up as the miles rolled by beneath me. The ashes of old haphazard camp fires littered formerly untouched canyons and wooded glades.

  There was little rhyme or reason to this desecration. By their tracks, it looked like these humans had randomly wandered around the landscape without a course. Perhaps it was poor fortune that had led them to the logger’s camp. I was still uncertain.

  It took me several hours of flying to follow the trail to its end. The group I was tracking seemed to have gotten lost several times on their way back and doubled back on their own trail. It was possible that they were trying to evade capture. The carelessness with which they littered the landscape led me to believe otherwise.

  A wretched collection of shoddily fashioned shelters sat at the end of a wooded gorge. A thin stream ran through the center of it. Even from a distance I smelled how foul the water was once it left the camp. The humans living here didn’t even care to keep their drinking water clean. The only thing indicating that there was some intent behind their actions was a crude wooden stake wall that blocked off the entrance to the gorge.

  Unfortunately for them, wooden stakes didn’t do anything to keep a dragon out. I circled around the outside of the gorge from the air and landed on a stone outcrop hanging above. In the time it took to make my way to the bandit camp, the sun was approaching the horizon.

  I crouched low and flattened myself to the rock. My Edith may have been wrong about waiting to handle these brigands, but she was correct in that I needed to be patient. There were many humans in the camp. Individually they might be no more threatening to me than the goblins had been, but that was no guarantee that they were harmless.

  Briefly I thought about the littering and wandering trail leading back here. Careless did not equal harmless either. I could take a little time to at least observe their numbers.

  My head slid slowly across the stone. In the late evening sunlight, my scales vaguely resembled the red stone that these hills were named after. I kept my head tilted so that the sun didn’t reflect light off of my hide into the chasm beneath me. Slowly my half lidded eyes tracked back and forth across the camp.

  There were perhaps two dozen structures. Charitably, each could hold perhaps two human males lying close to each other. Some were larger than others, but none could have held more than three. Most of the structures were made out of cloth tarps and ramshackle wooden planks roped together.

  Even the Sorcerer T’laanga’s goat hut was a more accommodating place to live.

  I could see some humans moving around in the camp. Most were stumbling around awkwardly, like they had forgotten how to use their limbs. The sound of their speech was slurred and virtually incomprehensible to me. Now and again I caught a word in the language my companions used. Some were gathered around a tree stump, rolling what looked like a pair of cubes made from bone back and forth across its surface. The entire camp reeked of bad booze.

  None of them made any attempt to hide their presence or stand watch. They didn’t seem to believe anyone could be watching or be a threat to them. Even the Rotting Bear in the Cursed Forest had been a more adept hunter, hiding in the Dark Woods and striking when people were alone.

  Only one person in the group of bandits was acting with anything like discipline. It took me a while to get a good look at them. Most of the humans carousing beneath me tended to be heavily scarred, wearing rusted scraps of armor and hides. The one outlier hung at the edges of the ‘party’, keeping to the shadows.

  This lone human wore a cloak even though winter was over. The couple of times the cloak shifted for its wearer to move out of the way of a stumbling drunk, I caught a glimpse of dark leather and metal. For the most part the bandits seemed to ignore the cloaked figure’s presence. Every once in a while one of them would call out to it, only to be ignored in turn. I caught the name ‘Visk’ on one attempt.

  As the sun set past the horizon, I saw a new human emerge from the entrance to a cave I’d missed. The opening was right beneath me, going into the stone wall of the gorge. He walked out into the camp and began loudly talking over the others. While I wasn’t familiar with what humans might call a ‘uniform’, I knew from my Cassia’s story books that humans tended to announce who was in charge with bright colored clothing.

  The loud mouthed human definitely fit the description of ‘brightly colored’. Though their attire was stained with grime and bits of fluid, it still looked like someone had taken the colors of a rainbow and woven it into cloth. A wide brimmed hat with a bouncing feather sat on the human’s head, concealing their face from my point of view.

  I also noticed the twin swords hanging at his waist.

  He reminded me of one particular picture from my Cassia’s books. She had called the human in the picture a ‘fool’, or a ‘court jester’. I’d vaguely understood at the time that such a person’s purpose was to act like a buffoon for his betters’ amusement. From the tenor of his voice and the way he ‘danced’ around the camp, I would have guessed this man was a Fool.

  The way the other bandits shied away from him told another story. They reacted like predators that had a larger beast dropped into their midst. In spite of the man’s obvious mirth, the volume of the party dipped rather than rose.

  I noted that the one named Visk had disappeared into the shadows entirely.

  Eventually the colorful man snatched a bottle from one of his subordinate’s hands. The grizzled got halfway to standing from his seat in anger before his compatriots hauled him back to the ground. The bandit would likely have towered over the colorful man, but he remained seated and sulked after his compatriots headed off the initial burst of anger. Soon enough the Fool had forced his way into the dice game and the general noise level in the gorge started to climb upwards.

  Only a couple of fires had been lit in the camp. As the night closed in, the shadows in the gorge grew long. By my final estimate, there were around three dozen bandits in the camp. I decided that I would attack late into the night when most of the brigands would be asleep. From what little I knew about alcohol, it was likely that it would befuddle them even if they woke up.

  That just left the cave. I didn’t know if any more bandits would be hiding inside of it. Only the Fool had left it since I started watching. It remained a potentially dangerous unknown. Furthermore, I didn’t see any signs of the female human Cassia had asked me to save. None of the bandits’ crude hovels seemed likely to be hiding her. Her scent was buried under the smell of unwashed bodies, booze, and human refuse.

  Rescuing the female would be difficult once the fighting started. Anything could happen. I didn’t want to imagine my Cassia’s reaction if I accidentally set the captured woman on fire.

  After considering my options, I chose to sneak into the cave.

  I had learned to sneak in the depths of winter, when even the slightest footfall could give your position away with a crunch of snow. Climbing down a stone cliff face was certainly a change of pace, but not the most difficult thing I had ever done. The noise of the bandit’s revelry helped to cover any minor lapses I made. That said, I took my time and kept a close eye on the brigands. Just in case.

  The cave mouth sat as a nearly black hole in the wall of the gorge once I reached the ground. Once upon a time, a small tributary of the stream flowing nearby had come from this crevice. Now it was as dry as a bone. Even with my excellent night vision I couldn’t see too deep into it.

  I glanced one last time at the inebriated bandits and slipped into the earth.

  A few steps into the cave, I remembered that this was my first time being fully underground since I had hatched. The memory stirred a deep sense of unease in my gut. I had been ‘inside’ many times between my Cassia’s cabin and my Edith’s house. This crawling sensation of panic was entirely new to me.

  Carefully, I observed my surroundings. There was nothing especially remarkable about them. Stone carved by water and the passage of time rose on either side of me, arching up sharply to an irregular point. The cave was just wide enough that two of me could have stood abreast. I did need to duck my head a bit if I stood upright on all fours.

  Perhaps I had grown used to the sky since I gained full use of my wings. My amber eyes shone in the dark. No other reason came to mind that would cause the pounding of my heart in my chest. An irritated flick of my tail smacked its scaled tip into the stone wall, causing me to flinch at the noise.

  This was entirely unlike me. I was a ‘bloody’ Dragon, as my Cassia would say. Getting spooked by a simple hole in the ground was unbecoming of me. Pushing forward took a surprising amount of effort in spite of that. It was like my own body wanted to push me back outside.

  Bit by bit, I pushed onwards. I didn’t want to ever mention the difficulty I faced after the fact. How was it that simply walking through a cave could put me at more of a disadvantage than facing an unliving abomination or a human sorcerer? Whatever the case was, no one should ever find out about it. My pride wouldn’t allow it.

  The cave twisted and turned for a couple of minutes at a walking pace before it began to open up. The tunnel I had been walking through exited into a wide cavern. Overhead, I could see a faint trickle of moonlight. I had missed it earlier while flying, but one of the cracks in the side of the hill led down here.

  In the center of the cavern crouched a single stunted tree. It wasn’t of a kind I’d seen before. The only reason I didn’t think it was a bush was due to the peculiar reddish-yellow fruit that was growing on its branches. Only one fruit was left. The rest seemed to have been eaten by the Fool, based on how the rinds were carelessly left to rot on the floor.

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  A small series of side caves were gathered at the perimeter of the cavern. Some might have been tunnels leading deeper into the earth. Only one of them interested me at the moment. I could detect the scent of the human woman coming from a particular cave. There was something wrong with it. The only time I’d smelled something similar was…

  My claws launched me across the cavern. The stink of human distress filled my nostrils. Sparks flew when I landed, my body skidding across the floor. At the last moment I righted myself. The entrance to the cave was covered by a crude construction of wood and iron.

  Abandoning caution, I gripped the door frame between my front claws. The wood cracked and splintered in my grip. When I hauled back, it nearly disintegrated. My head smashed aside the remaining boards and I pushed my way inside.

  The interior of the alcove was small. With my bulk, there was barely any room to raise my head, let alone move around. The whole space stank of fear and pain. For a moment I didn’t recognize what I was looking at.

  Charred bones sticking up out of piles of ash flashed through my mind. I had not wanted my Cassia to look at them. Her heart was too kind.

  This was worse, so much worse, because the person she’d asked me to save was still alive.

  A hand that could not grip anything any more, weakly reached up. I did not know if it was to ward me off, or to welcome me. Without thinking, I gently lowered my head and pressed my snout into its palm. It was the only thing I could do.

  Cracked lips shuddered to draw the smallest breath. It was accompanied by a series of small pops that should not come from a living being’s chest. The skin touching my scales was as cold as ice. It had lost all of its rosy hues, her lifesblood spilled out onto the floor.

  “Please.”

  The voice was barely a whisper, easily lost in the darkness. I had heard the word many times, but never had I felt so much raw meaning wrapped up in one utterance. It was a desperate plea. Suffering that I could do nothing to change.

  There was no convenient motherly alchemist here. No magic potion to bring back the dead. In the cold and the dark, I could do nothing to take away the pain. Nothing to rewind the march of time.

  It could just as easily be my Cassia lying there, begging me to make the pain stop.

  I could see the embers of this girl’s life flickering there, just beneath her skin. In spite of her state, they lingered. Like the glimmers of sunset reflected through a broken glass. Nothing would be able to restore them, not even a miracle. Yet in spite of that, she was cursed to stubbornly cling to life.

  It was unbearable.

  Intolerable.

  My amber eyes settled on the single orb I could see in the darkness. Even caked with dried blood, it managed to lock onto my gaze. That orb was a delicate blue like the sky. After what felt like an eternity, that eye closed.

  As gently as I could, I drew in breath and breathed out. The embers of life flickered. When I pulled in the air again, they were snuffed out. The hand on my head slipped down and smacked limply onto the cold stone floor.

  ‘Unforgivable’, I thought silently. I didn’t know whether I meant myself or not.

  The self proclaimed ‘King of Thieves’ was having a rotten day.

  Howard Avery lamented about this to anyone close enough to listen and poured the contents of another dirty bottle down his throat. None of them would ever dare call him Howard. Even floating up to his eye balls in stolen hooch, ‘Captain’ Avery was not someone to be trifled with.

  Sometimes it was ‘King’ Avery, but today was clearly not one of those days.

  “And you bunch of ingrates set the harking place on fire! Again!” Captain Avery growled as he loomed over the stump. Carved bone dice lay forgotten on the rough wooden surface. “After I told you- Specifically told you mind, to bring back the woodsmen ALIVE!”

  The brigands sitting around the stump shifted uncomfortably. Those with any common sense had pulled back to a safe distance long ago. Only the fools remained. Some had the kind of crippling fondness for dice that made you run off with a bandit gang. Others had simply been too drunk to notice the danger before it was too late.

  “They had weapons Boss,” one of the stupider ones grumbled. “Big bloody axes-”

  “Of course they had axes you HARKING MORON!” Captain Avery screamed. The bottle flew from his hand and smashed into the fool’s face. The fool dropped to the ground, clawing in agony at the shards of glass embedded in his face. Captain Avery slowly stood from where he’d been sitting, his movements just a bit unsteady. “Their whole job is swing harking axes! Chop Chop CHOP! On trees!”

  The Captain stomped around those sitting by the stump. A whisper of steel rang out as he dragged one blade from its sheath. Those who had been about to stand stayed seated. One of Avery’s formerly polished boots slammed into the whimpering man’s side, knocking the wind out of him.

  “My trees! The trees for my harking castle!” the rant continued. “Which- You- Set- On- FIRE!” Each word was punctuated by another kick to the man’s ribs. Bandits watching from further back grimaced in second hand pain from the wet cracking sounds and groans of agony that ensued. None of them dared to tell the Captain to have mercy.

  “All you brought back was one harking girl and a moonshine still! Which you BROKE-” The last kick broke something inside the unlucky victim’s chest, which turned his groans of pain into gurgling gasps. “-on the way back! Absolutely unbelievable!”

  A jab downwards embedded Captain Avery’s blade in the man’s throat. The gurgling ended in a sucking wet choke. Once the noise had stopped, Avery yanked his blade back out. He wiped the blood off on his colorful striped trousers.

  “Does anyone else want to speak up!?” Captain Avery howled at his men. He pointed his sword at the circle of bandits gathered in the middle of the camp. The low firelight flickered across its wicked edge. “Anyone else have an issue with King Avery’s harking orders?”

  “I do.”

  Avery whipped around to face the one who would dare speak against him. All at once, every hair on his body stood on end. A primal fear unlike anything he’d ever felt erupted inside of him. What felt like cold ice water flooded his veins.

  Silence fell across the bandit camp as every eye turned towards the voice. It was deep, inhuman. Like a cracked reflection of a person speaking.

  Burning eyes stared back at Avery from the darkness. Just beyond the fire’s light, a shape loomed upwards. Its wicked horns curved upwards from the top of its head, catching traces of moonlight that filtered into the gorge. Behind it, massive bat wings unfurled in a monstrous cape.

  “D-demon…,” one of the bandits gasped in horror. Those burning orbs flicked towards him, nailing him to the ground with a glance. A foul stench began to leak from the man who had spoken, but everyone was too distracted to notice.

  Someone took a step backwards. Then another. It took Captain Avery a moment to realize his own feet were carrying him backwards and around the circle of bandits. Those who were less drunk were doing the same.

  “D-d- DEMON!” the bandit who’d soiled himself screamed. Claws like knives lashed out of the dark, catching him in the chest. Blood sprayed in a red mist across the man standing next to him.

  The screaming spread to others.

  Captain Avery did not stick around to see what happened next. He turned and tripped over the stump. Bottles and dice were scattered across the ground. Avery picked himself up quickly and kept running. He could hear the sounds of pain and fear coming from behind him and did not bother to look back.

  He’d kept a hold on his sword somehow. Not accidentally stabbing himself with it was close to a miracle. Avery liked to think he had someone looking out for him up above. Time and again he’d survived in spite of the odds.

  As his feet carried him out of the camp and into the dark, he told himself that this was actually a blessing in disguise. This band of idiots had only been weighing him down. The only reason that he’d bothered keeping them around was for muscle. Once he’d recruited some better help, he’d probably have gutted those fools anyway.

  Selling their lives so that he could escape was the least that they could do.

  He tried not to listen too hard as the screams of agony kept echoing through the night. Every now and again he heard the clash of steel or the thunk of a crossbow firing, but they quickly began to fade away. Once a voice called out for others in the darkness, only to be cut off by a short screech.

  Soon there was only the whisper of wind through the trees and the skitter of pebbles bouncing off of Avery’s boots. His own breath sounded like thunderous gusts to his ears. He didn’t know where he was going. At night, everything looked the same. It was Visk’s job to remember small details like mapping the terrain. Avery had always been the ‘big picture’ part of the arrangement.

  Avery finally came to a halt, pressing himself up against a tree. The rough bark dug into his skin through his attire. Bringing his breath under control took longer than he’d have liked. Gallivanting through the woods wasn’t his strong suit. A quick jog through a back alley to avoid the guards was much more his style.

  When he’d finally collected himself enough to think, he sheathed his blade. A quick inventory of what he had on his person told a depressing story. Both swords still hung at his waist, but the only other item on his belt was a small pouch he used to keep coins for gambling. It was empty. Avery remembered the coins he’d left on the stump and cursed.

  “My swords, the clothes on my back, and a pair of worn out boots,” Avery muttered to himself. “Not an auspicious start, but I’ve had worse…” He ran one hand through his curly blond hair. “Just had to lose my harking hat, didn’t I? It had a harking peacock feather in it too. …Ah well.”

  The honest and hard working bard ‘Howard’, no relation to the bandit captain Avery, patted himself down and took a deep breath. He’d take things slow, one step at a time. If he headed down from the hills, he’d eventually come to either a road or the nearest river. Both of those would lead to some place with people, eventually.

  ‘What was a handsome and talented bard doing up in the woods by himself?’ Well escaping bandits of course. A terrible band of ruffians set on pillaging the countryside and exploiting Gods-fearing folk. Truly a miracle that he’d managed to flee.

  ‘Where did you get those swords?’ ‘Howard’ had spent time juggling swords with a circus before he set out on his own as a bard. Grabbing a couple of blades to protect himself was only prudent.

  ‘How did you manage to escape?’ There was a monster that attacked- No.

  ‘Howard’ the Bard stopped and rubbed his chin. He’d been playing out the future conversation in his head as he’d walked. Coming out of the hills telling tales of a monster would make him look suspicious. Even if people believed him, they tended to ask lots of ‘important’ questions like ‘What did the monster look like?’ and ‘How did the monster not catch you?’

  “Could just say I slipped away when they all got drunk,” ‘Howard’ muttered to himself again. “Not like there were any survivors to identify me…”

  There was the one girl that his men had brought back from the logger’s camp. That could be a problem. She’d only ever seen him in the dark, but it was possible she’d recognize his voice.

  “Demon probably ate her like the rest of them,” Howard declared to the night. “Good riddance. She wasn’t that much fun anyways.”

  Putting one foot forward at a time, ‘Howard’ the bard slowly started making his way down from the Redstone Hills and into the night.