Axel slowly picked his way through the rubble that was once Azor's castle. The secluded southwest corner of the island where the castle once stood was enclosed from the rest of the continent by tall mountains that gave way to rolling green hills, before flattening out to a beautiful grassy plain with few trees reaching down to the rocky beaches by the sea. The scene was pristine, but in the middle of it all, standing out painfully as the evidence of a past battle, lay the jumbled stones and broken walls of a castle destroyed by some calamity.
"What happened here?" Axel asked.
"I already told you," Cyil said, digging through a small pile of broken bricks. "I didn't think you'd forget already."
"Azor's castle didn't survive when reality shattered," Dracoa explained.
"It got all smashed up by rocks and stuff," Cyil added.
Dracoa sighed.
"What?" Cyil asked. "It was!"
"Why are we here, anyways?" Aavern asked. "Dracoa and I scouted out the whole place a few days ago."
"You did?" Axel turned to Dracoa.
"Yes," she replied. "There's a massive prison down there, much larger than Ezarik's."
"You want to check the cells for another of those symbol things, right?" Aavern asked. "I'm pretty sure we explored the whole place last time and didn't find anything."
"We didn't explore all of it."
"Well, I don't want to go back," Aavern shuddered. "There wasn't anything other than prison cells and bones."
"So we're trying to find another one of those big orb things?" Cyil asked. "Seems kinda pointless."
"One of Axel's memories got unlocked when he saw that other orb," Qassot explained. "It was about a black and purple one. If we can find it, he'll probably remember more."
"It's our best chance at finding a way to the Beyond," Dracoa added.
"Well you guys can go on," Aavern said. "I'm staying here. That place gives me the creeps."
"What do you think, Riselus?" Cyil asked, nosing his way through the rubble.
"I don't really care," Riselus grunted.
"Besides," Aavern continued, "you don't even need me. Dracoa knows her way around, and Cyil can provide light."
"Lighten up, will ya?" Cyil teased. "Anyone imprisoned down there is probably dead by now."
"I doubt it," Dracoa muttered.
Axel looked at Dracoa. "What do you mean?"
"The Dragon Queen only imprisoned wyverns and dragon criminals down there," Dracoa continued, "and some of them have magic that lets them survive without food."
"How exactly do you know this?" Axel asked.
"Some wizards had that kind of magic," Dracoa explained. "They would have taught it to others."
"That's not what I meant," Axel pressed.
The two were suddenly bowled over by Cyil and Aavern, who had begun tussling again. Axel quickly got out of the way of the two cat-sized fuzzballs locked in an all-out brawl.
"How often do they do this?" Axel asked.
"All the time," Qassot said. "It's best to ignore them."
Riselus rolled his eyes. The gem on his neck glowed green. Various pieces of rubble started moving through the air, slowly hemming Cyil and Aavern in and herding them towards the staircase into the dungeon.
"Let's go," Riselus said.
"That was smart," Qassot commented. Riselus closed his eyes and sighed.
Axel lit his hand on fire as they entered, and they began walking down a dim staircase lined with uneven gray brick. The light cast by Axel's white flame revealed little, and the light seemed gray and pale despite its brightness.
"And that's why we need Aavern," Dracoa explained. "Those gray bricks seem to suck in light."
The group walked down the staircase and emerged into a long hallway lined with prison cells and more of the gray bricks. Axel looked over at the ball of fuzz that was Aavern and Cyil fighting further down the hallway.
"It gets darker the deeper we go," Dracoa said. "Aavern's light isn't affected as much."
Riselus stomped up to the golden brown ball and kicked it. Aavern and Cyil both flew across the hallway and smashed into the bars of one of the prison cells.
"We need your light, Aavern," he grumbled.
"Why can't you use Cyil's fire?" Aavern asked.
"It doesn't do anything down there," Dracoa said, pointing at Axel's dying flame.
"Fine," Aavern pouted.
Aavern lit a small sphere of white light, which glowed considerably brighter than Axel's fire, and led the group down the hallway. He stopped in front of a staircase branching off of the main hallway, leading down into a deep darkness. The only light that Axel could see was the thin gray glow from the stones on the wall, but that light was barely bright enough to illuminate the path. Aavern carefully picked his way down the staircase, holding the bright ball of light high.
"So, which way are we going?" Aavern asked.
"This way," Dracoa said, moving to the left. "We haven't been there before."
"We've explored this entire place already," Aavern said.
"We missed one area."
"How do you know?"
Dracoa didn't respond.
Axel walked in front, with Dracoa and Aavern. The others trailed behind, slowly drinking in the ominous air. Axel noticed Aavern growing incredibly anxious as they passed numerous cells built into the walls, cells filled with chains and cufflinks, enchanted with some sort of magic that made them shimmer a ghostly gray. The cells were closed off with metal bars that seemed to have no way of being opened. The bars also shimmered with the same strange gray. The pitter-patter of Aavern's stubby legs and the steady clicking of Qassot's claws on stone resounded through the deathly still air.
Dracoa led the way down several hallways lined with prison cells arranged in a gridlike fashion. Several of the hallways were blocked with collapsed rubble, and the floors were strewn with scraps of cloth, metal, wood, bones, and other debris. Some hallways had massive holes in the floor where rubble broke through. The further they walked, the dimmer the gray stones' glow was, and the less Aavern's light ball illuminated the dungeon.
"So what other Elder Dragons were there?" Axel finally asked, breaking the silence. Aavern and Cyil flinched at the sudden noise. "You said there were seven, right?" Axel continued.
"Yes," Dracoa said. "There was the Dragon Queen, the Dark Dragon, the Phantom Dragon, the Storm Dragon, the Infernal Dragon, the Frigid Dragon, and the Thunder Dragon."
"They sound like villains from a movie," Axel muttered. He immediately winced. He didn't mean to say that out loud. What's a movie, anyways?
"What's a movie?" Dracoa asked, echoing his thoughts.
"I don't remember," Axel said.
"Must be some sort of legend from where Axel came from," Aavern said. "Like how we tell stories of the Call of the Beyond!"
"So the wizards call the stories of the Elder Dragons movies?" Dracoa asked.
Axel sighed. "That's definitely not what a movie is."
"Then what is it?" Aavern asked.
"So what does the Phantom Dragon do?" Axel asked.
"Hey, don't change the subject!" Aavern complained.
"He could turn invisible and could cast this really weird magic that moved through things."
"That sounds much less powerful than the Dark Dragon."
"Hey, hang on!" Aavern exclaimed. "I don't know about any of these! Can you start at the beginning and explain it all?"
"Fine," Dracoa sighed. "The Dragon Queen is basically all of us combined with Shadowfang, except she's a whole lot stronger."
Axel could see everyone shiver at the mere mention of Shadowfang's name.
"That's scary," Aavern said.
"The Dark Dragon can kill you by just moving close to you. He also looks super evil."
"That's even scarier," Aavern said.
"The Storm Dragon can control weather."
"That's pretty obvious," Cyil commented. This earned him a glare from Dracoa.
"The Frigid Dragon has ice magic and ice armor that blocks pretty much any attack you throw at her."
"So that's who we saw!" Qassot said suddenly. When Dracoa looked at her questioningly, she explained. "When we were exploring the air guardian's cave after the island shattered, we found a space under the place where the air gem was kept. There was a massive dragon covered in ice down there."
Dracoa grimaced. "You didn't do anything to it, did you?"
"No, thankfully."
"Uh," Aavern said. "Can you continue please? You didn't explain the last two dragons."
Dracoa sighed. "The Thunder Dragon has extremely strong lightning magic and can teleport, and the Infernal Dragon is like Cyil, but stronger."
There was a long silence. Axel could see the gears turning in Aavern's head.
"So," Aavern finally said. "They're all supposed to be as strong as Shadowfang, right?"
Wait, what's a gear?
"The Dragon Queen and the Dark Dragon are stronger."
"That's not very fair," Aavern complained. "They're all so powerful!"
"Now you know how I felt during those duels," Axel grumbled.
"Hey!" Cyil suddenly yelled from the back. He had fallen behind. "There's something down here!"
Dracoa snapped around. "What is it?"
"How should I know?" Cyil yelled. "I can't see!"
Dracoa, Aavern, and Axel made their way back to where Cyil and Qassot were: a partially collapsed cell whose door had been crushed by massive rocks. Riselus was in the middle of floating the rocks out of the way when they came up.
"Look," Cyil said, "there's a hole in the floor."
Axel peered through the bars of the cell into the dimly lit cell. There was a massive hole in the floor. He tried peering into it. He didn't see anything, even with Aavern's light.
"I don't see anything," Aavern said.
"Qassot could sense something down here," Cyil said.
Qassot nodded. "It feels as old as that Elder Dragon we saw in the air guardian's cave, but not as powerful."
Riselus finished moving the rock out of the way. Cyil immediately rolled across the floor and dropped into the hole.
"WHY WOULD YOU-" Qassot started.
"Wow, there's a lot of rocks down here," Cyil commented.
"You think?" Axel muttered before climbing down the hole. It was a short drop onto a pile of rubble in a cell. He stopped short.
"There's definitely someone down here," Axel muttered.
"Why do you think that?" Cyil asked. Qassot and Dracoa climbed down next.
Axel pointed at the metal bars which closed the cell off from the hallway. The bars had been bent and ripped apart by some violent force.
"Something broke out of this cell," Axel said. Something in his mind was clicking and whirring as he looked at the crumbling stone walls. Aavern raised his ball of light, illuminating the bars, which now had a massive hole forced through them, and the cell across the hallway. Axel's mind began to work again as he looked at the cells, which were in much worse condition than the ones on the upper floor.
"No," Dracoa corrected, looking at the odd angle at which the cell bars bent inwards. "Something broke into this cell."
Aavern increased the size of his light orb, lighting up the entire hallway and every cell in it. The bars on every single cell were broken in and bent apart. Axel gazed quietly at the cells, looking carefully at every detail in every stone. His mind began to slowly reconstruct the scene. Stones flickering in white flames. Bars of metal torn from the walls melted on the ground. Burning black shapes screamed as Axel swung his flaming sword through the hall, filled with a ferocious anger. His eyes caught the glimpse of people like Axel, men, women, children, thin and bony, wearing rags that hung limply off of their skin, clinging to the bars. They stared at Axel with hope shining in their eyes as he burned the dungeon to the ground.
Qassot drew her sword and swung at the bars of the cell they were in. Her sword stopped just short of the metal with a loud clang, as if blocked by an invisible wall. The noise snapped Axel out of his trance.
"What's that?" she asked.
"It looks like a protection spell," Dracoa said, "like the one in Ezarik's castle, except stronger."
Qassot looked at the mangled bars of the cell. "Then how did-"
Risleus landed on the pile of rubble behind them with a resounding crash. Cyil and Aavern jumped and scampered to hide behind Axel's legs.
"We should keep moving," Riselus grumbled. The group started picking their way through the jumble of rocks out through the bars of the cell. Aavern was the first one out into the hallway. Cyil quickly scampered out after him and began to jump into the various other cells.
"Wow, these cells don't have any bones!" Cyil exclaimed.
"We really haven't been here before," Aavern said. This earned him a severe look from Dracoa.
"Let's look around," Qassot said. "But keep an eye out for whatever might have broken these cell doors."
Axel walked over to Dracoa. "Hey, do you have a moment?" He asked quietly, gesturing for Dracoa to follow him.
"Sure," she said, trailing after Axel as he put a good deal of distance between them and the other gem keepers.
"You've been here before, haven't you?" he said.
Dracoa looked him straight in the eye for several seconds before lowering her gaze. "Yes."
Axel leaned towards her. "When were you last here?"
"About a thousand years ago," Dracoa said. "I snuck in when Azor wasn't looking."
Axel shook his head. This was unbelievable. His brain started shouting random information at him. Humans don't live much longer than 120 years. Axel shook his head again and looked at Dracoa with a blank expression. "Come up with a better excuse."
Dracoa flinched.
"Azor was alive back then," she argued. "Kovo's even older than even the Elder Dragons."
Axel sighed and rubbed the ridge of his nose. "That's not what I'm talking about."
"HEY LOOK, THERE'S A DRAGON IN THIS CELL!" Cyil suddenly yelled.
"Yeah," Qassot replied in a bored tone. "I'm right here. Stop messing around."
"Not you," Cyil retorted. "There's a big green one further in!"
Dracoa snapped up and shouted back. "WELL DON'T GO AND WAKE IT UP!"
"LOOK WHO'S TALKING!"
Axel looked over. Cyil had just jumped into a mangled cell a long way down the hallway. Axel ran over as quickly as he could, followed close behind by Dracoa.
There, just inside the mangled bars of the cell, a lanky green dragon almost twice as large as Qassot had collapsed.