The back rooms of the church were compact and intended only to house one or two people at most. There was a small living area with a kitchen to prepare food, a hob to heat everything, and a table that dominated the floor with its size. The corridor through to the bedrooms was attached directly to the main living area. There were two even smaller rooms on either side for the priest or their guests to sleep in.
Sandra had done her best to try and ward away the cold without having to rely on burning wood. Various fabrics and rugs had been placed onto the stone floor to try and trap some of the latent heat. The singular glass window that looked out into the back yard was draped with a heavy red curtain. It was cosy through her efforts, and the same curtesy has been extended into the guest room where we were going to stay.
The three of us could just about sleep side to side without getting into each other's personal space. An old wood frame bed had been forced into the small room. Two of us would have to sleep on the floor using our bags. A huge pile of blankets and furs had been hoisted onto the bed for us to use. Sandra watched us settle in from the doorway, "Apologies – it can become very cold during the evenings."
I shivered from fear. Even colder than it was now?
"We will only be staying for as long as it takes us to kill this thing," I explained, "We'll leave you folks to your business once it's done with."
"It's okay, stay as long as you need to."
I was hoping that we didn't need to stay for long. A few days at most. If we were incapable of killing the drake – there wouldn't be much purpose in sticking around. I had a clear picture in my mind of what we were going to do. We needed to locate it, asses how strong it was and the threat it posed, and come up with a more solid plan to take care of it. I wasn't here for charity's sake, I was going to get my clock extended or they'd have to deal with it themselves.
I left Cali and Tahar to organize the sleeping quarters and tailed Sandra back through into the main room. "Do you know much about this dragon?" Sandra leaned up against the wall by the exit and pursed her lips.
"I haven't seen it with my own eyes – but the other people in the village have been discussing it for some time now. It started a few months ago. Everyone was going about their business when they heard a terrible screech from above. It landed right in the middle of the mining camp and started attacking everything in sight."
"And this hasn't happened before?"
"Not for as long as anyone living here can remember. Truthfully this is one of the settlements most at risk from a drake attack. They live further north from here, deep in the mountains. We thought that they'd never make the trip over them though."
"I take it that the miners can't get back to work."
Sandra nodded solemnly, "One man died during the initial assault, but then three more were killed when they tried to return the next day. It started guarding the area around the mine fiercely and without remorse."
That was extremely risky. It was no wonder that they ended up dead. Dragons weren't at the forefront of most scholarly research. Like many magical creatures, they were often relegated to the halls of myth and legend. Truth and fiction twisted together into nothing more than an artistic expression. I didn't have the time to extract whatever truths hid within, nor did I have the books I'd need to try.
From what Sandra had told me, the drake in question had laid a claim on an area of the village. It was acting to protect that area and come no further. I compared it to another, more normal animal in my mind. Perhaps it was protecting its habitat, or it had given birth recently and was trying to ward away potential threats. I couldn't be sure. Many of these fantastical monsters had behaviour that contravened rational patterns.
"I'm not going to get much out of the rest of you, am I?"
Sandra bowed again, "Please forgive them. Many hunters and warriors have come here already, some have tried and failed to fell the drake, others refused to depart without an extortionate payment in gold, and at least one of them was chased out of town after asking to sleep with a man's wife…"
That'd do it.
"It doesn't matter. They probably don't have any more insight on the situation than you do. Where did the attack happen?"
She strolled over to the small window and pointed to an outwards path winding up into the tree-covered hill beyond, "It's harder to find now that the path isn't being used regularly, but there are signs leading the way. The mining area is so large that you're guaranteed to run into it if you keep heading in that direction."
"If it's aggressive we're going to have to be careful…"
"I do believe that the sound of pick hitting rock was one of the causes – the sound it makes rattles the beast. It does make a terrible racket, sometimes you can hear it all the way over here."
Tahar and Cali remerged from the bedroom, with Tahar taking extra care to duck under the low arch of the doorway and avoid another head injury. They must have been feeding her well back home; sometimes I forgot just how tall she really was in comparison to everyone else. People didn't comment on it that much, they were familiar with the Stallin so someone on the opposite end of the height spectrum was nothing to be surprised about.
Cali nodded to me, "There is still time before the light dies away – we should endeavour to make the most of our remaining hours and try to located the drake with haste."
"I can track it," Tahar stated confidently, "Allow me to lead the way."
"Alright. We'll be back Sandra, but don't wait up for us."
"G-Good luck!" she yelled as we headed out through the back door.
I exhaled into the freezing air and shivered from head to toe. Tahar moved to the front and led us down a small set of steps at the bottom of the yard. On first viewing I believed it to be a gravesite, but there were no markers and no sign of disturbed soil. If there were people buried here there was no way to know who was placed where.
The worrying embrace of the trees returned as we headed down the path. They were tall and sucked up all of the sunlight coming down from above. Looking into the wilderness was difficult – it was almost as black as night deeper into the canopy. The terrain underfoot was tricky, and several spots were covered with invisible patches of ice. The unusually slippery dirt nearly made me trip over a few times. If we were going to pick a fight, we'd need to find a good location to do it in.
During the walk Tahar used her hunting skills. Much like the ability to inspect items, it was a form of magical perception that focused in on individual elements of a living creature. The ambient magic contained with a mortal body was enough to use it for a long period of time without rest. In this case, the intense magical energy of the dragon would make it easier to spot. It left residue wherever it went.
Though the residue that Tahar had spotted was not magical in nature.
"Wow. That's a lot of shit."
Drakes were big, really big – so it begged to reason that they'd leave a lot of excrement around the place. The fact that we were running into it now meant we were officially in dangerous territory and needed to keep our wits about us. The mound itself was almost unassuming in a way. It had frozen over thanks to the cold, leaving it looking like a pile of dirt more than anything else. Only on closer inspection did it become clear what it really was.
Tahar pulled out her dagger and stabbed into it, it was really frozen solid. She had to put some serious force between each blow to chip a piece away. Each time the tip of the bone knife hit it, I winced as a loud clunk shot through the valley. When it finally gave way, the inside was revealed to us. Tahar studied it for a moment, getting dangerously close to it. It stunk pretty bad even after being blanketed in snow.
"Hm. This shows that the drake is deficient."
Cali was holding her nose which gave her a nasal tone of voice; "Deficient?"
"I do not know much of these creatures, but this colouration and the…"
I offered a suggestion as she flailed her arms, "Consistency?"
"Consistency? It is not eating properly."
I smirked, "With any luck, it'll starve to death and we can pick through the spoils."
Tahar dusted off her knees and stood back up, "It is clear that this habitat is not entirely right for a drake. We can expect it to suffer from a lack of food. The battle will be easier that way."
That was one explanation as to why they didn't come down here and fry the villagers before. Some people would assign a profound reason as to why a dragon would move further south; I was not one of them. Strange things happened all the time - sometimes for no good reason. People would die suddenly from undiagnosed health conditions, or win millions of yen in the lottery, and sometimes wild animals would get lost and wander somewhere they weren't supposed to.
I needed to find it before it kicked the bucket. I'd be pissed off if we came all this way and missed our shot at claiming its soul before it departed this world. We continued on our way and came upon a beautiful frozen stream. That beauty was tempered by me sliding across it on my hands and knees like a baby deer. The signs became more frequent, and soon the shadow of the mountain loomed over us.
Looking up, the tip of the rocky spire disappeared beyond the fluffy white clouds. It was a stunning sight, one worthy of being turned into a screensaver. The best I could do was commit it to memory. This expanse was the drake's to play with. Sandra's information had offered me one key clue – the noise from the mining attracted it in the first place. Perhaps we could leverage that to create an ambush.
We headed off the beaten path and headed through the trees to follow the trail Tahar had caught. She came to a halt in front of us at the top of a small hill. As I approached her, I noticed what had caused her to take pause. The trees ended abruptly and dropped away into nothing. I slowed my pace and carefully clambered to the top. It was a good thing that she was keeping her eyes to the ground, because a sheer cliff face awaited us on the other side.
I couldn't quite believe my eyes. A gigantic quarry, hundreds of meters across by my own vague estimations. The pit plunged so deep so suddenly that fog had accumulated at the bottom and hidden it from view. The tiered layers revealing glimmering white marble between speckled stone. The equipment of the people who worked to create such a man-made scar had been left where they were discarded. Pickaxes, carts and tents. A large bonfire rested in the middle of it all to warm the men who were resting.
"There's no way they used picks to make this," I declared.
Cali's head perked up, "There's an extremely strong magical residue here, but it isn't the same as the drake we are seeking."
"Well, what is it?"
"A combination of movement and explosion. I can't put my finger on it just yet. It appears that the miners were using magic to displace large segments of the rock."
"It looks like Sandra hasn't been paying much attention to how they do this work then. No wonder the drake kept showing up and attacking if they were detonating it like this." That was a level of blind ignorance that I hadn't seen or heard for a long time.
"Do they have any mages amongst them?" Cali pondered.
"It doesn't really matter to us. Tahar, what's the deal?"
Tahar shook her head, "We will need to find a way around. I do not like our odds of leaping from here."
True – my knees would probably explode out of my body like a pair of bloody projectiles from the force. But the true size of the mine was such that it would take us nearly an hour to go around the whole thing! We were on the clock. We had to find some more information before the sun set.