Part 2
### Chapter 1: 1 I Think Ive Found The Flaw In Your Plan
The weeks of hiking through the desert and up the mountain almost seemed worth it in the moment he crested that great ridge and gazed down over paradise.
A vast valley spread out before him, green and cool. Forests were interrupted by meadows and the occasional cluster of distant smoke plumes that signified a village or small town, and even from this height the threads of roads were visible along with those of winding rivers. Stunning waterfalls fell from the surrounding peaks, one terminating in a crystalline lake at the base of a long ribbon of cliff. And this, he knew, was only this one valley. The entire rest of the continent was like this, all the way to the rocky northern coast: jagged peaks and ridges, interspersed with these forested vales in which idyllic little kingdoms huddled. Not large, prosperous or powerful kingdoms, due to the rocky terrain and scarce farmland—not to mention the dragon—but beautiful, and protected by their vast mountain walls.
It was also a much longer way down than he had come up. The vast plateau across which he had trekked was at a much higher elevation than the Evervales or his own homeland farther south. It was also less inhabited than either, being mostly desert, transitioning only into the relatively gentler savanna terrain this far north, where moisture in the air periodically crested these mountain ridges and drifted down.
Kaln just paused, breathing in and shamelessly admiring the view. It would be a sight worth seeing for anyone, even someone who hadn’t spent weeks trudging through parched flatland. Granted, he had benefited from the best possible guidance and his trip across the desert had been less arduous than it would have been for practically anyone else.
And now, after it all, here he was, almost at the end. The end of this damn fool adventure he should absolutely not be on, because nobody with a grain of sense in their head would be.
“Well,” he said aloud, voice scratchy from disuse and the dry air behind him, “I’m here.”
It really seemed like there should be some sort of invocation. Some ancient shadowy grimoire to open, or…a talisman, maybe? The kind with a mysteriously glowing gem. But no, all he had to do was…call. The call wasn’t always answered—which stood to reason, you couldn’t expect to have an enigmatic otherworldly being appear at your whim—but so far, every time the Entity had failed to answer him, Kaln had learned later there was good and specific reason, usually pertaining to keeping their relationship discreet. Actually, the uncanny thing had been a more reliable partner than several people with whom Kaln had worked in the Royal Archives.
At his extremely casual summons, it came.
His own shadow, already lengthened by the descending sun, stretched further, then spun in a complete revolution across the rocky ground, rotating like the hand of a clock. As if limbered by this exercise it finally detached completely, drifting across the ground unconnected to his feet. And then it separated from the ground itself, standing up.
“So you are!” the Entity replied with its customary good cheer. “And get a load of that vista! These are the moments, Kaln. You have to stop and smell the scenery while the iron is hot.”
Kaln studied th e Entity rather than the view , seeing nothing new, but it was familiar enough now that he was no longer thrown by the contrast between the creature’s eerie appearance and its peppy-bordering-on-silly demeanor. A shadow lifted off the ground was a translucent thing, so ephemeral he could easily have failed to notice it was there when he wasn’t looking right at it. In the ordinary course of things, the sun was never beaming directly on a shadow, much less straight through it.
“ But yeah, I get it,” the Entity continued when Kaln failed to respond. “ We haven’t come all this way and gone through all this trouble just to take in the sights. No stopping now, not when we’re almost at the end! Ooh, really almost, you brought us to exactly the right spot. Well done!”
“ You know the credit isn’t mine,” Kaln answered hoarsely , then cleared his throat twice and continued in a smoother tone. “ I’d never have made it across that desert alive if you hadn’t charted me a perfect course through oases and safe campsites. Makes sense your directions would end in the correct place, right?”
“Oh, you probably would’ve been okay. T he Hiiri are very hospitable to travelers, like I told you when you were so worried about that girl you met out there. But yes, I take your point. What matters is we’re here now! Last leg of the journey—the final step before all your hard work is rewarded! Are you as excited as I am, Kaln?”
“… mmmmmaybe? One some deep level, hidden under all the terror and fatigue and my general sense that I’m obviously a complete idiot for doing all this.”
“That’s the spirit!” The Entity ghosted right up to the sharp edge of the ridge and then over, extending one shadowy arm to point, and Kaln had to squint and focus to see it clearly in the vivid afternoon sunlight. “ Right down there you’ll see a staircase, carved into the mountainside. There, see? It’s half overgrown and there are place s where boulders have fallen on it, but the steps themselves are quite intact.”
“I see it,” Kaln said, peering below at the unmistakable shape of carved stairs ascending past them from a point hidden in the forest far below, only terminate against a jumble of rock below the peak rising up to their right. “That looks strangely…ominous. Stairs go somewhere. Why are these out in the middle of nowhere? Ruins wouldn’t be that intact, but structures that get used wouldn’t have overgrowth and rock all over them…”
“ Yeah, that’ll tend to happen if the stairs go someplace nobody wants to follow. You do remember where I told you this journey would lead, right?”
“Wait—those are stairs to the dragon’s lair? That’s…surprisingly convenient. Also I notice that they’re blocked by a rockfall.”
“Oh, yes, that little tumble took out a big chunk of the mountain’s face, changed the whole shape of the peak. But don’t worry! Once you climb that far, you’ll find a path through. Well, it’s more of a crevice, but it’s big enough for a person to squeeze past, and then you’re at your destination!”
“You mean we’re at our destination.”
“Ah, well.” It was hard to tell whether the shadow was turning around; the way its translucent shape shifted was reminiscent of someone moving to face him directly. “ That’s where the complicated part begins, Kaln old buddy.”
“I knew it.” Kaln folded his arms. “I knew this had to be leading somewhere lethally stupid.”
“Now, now, don’t be like that! You’ve read a story or two in your time—it was practically your job, wasn’t? The hero always confronts the final challenge alone.”
He almost didn’t know where to start objecting to that. “Life is not a story, I am definitely not any kind of hero, and is that really what you think a court scribe does all day?!”
“ Kaln, listen to me.” The Entity reached toward him, which was unnerving, but he forced himself not to shy back. The indistinct dimness in midair that was its arm—the arm of his own severed shadow, a reminder of why he refused to think too much about the implications of this—came to rest somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder. It didn’t feel like anything, obviously, but the intent of the gesture was plain. “ You’re ready for this. Think of all we’ve been through so far. You’ve escaped your enemies in Rhivkabat, no less than the Regent Guard on your tail. You have delved into the haunted ruins of the Moon less Tower, navigated the troll nests beneath the bottomless bridges of Khvel Ravine, and bargained with a devil of the Ravening Host. In just half a year you’ve been on adventures the likes of which most people can scarcely imagine. After all that, what’s a measly little dragon? You can do this.”
Kaln tried to shove the hand away. That failed, obviously; he couldn’t touch the Entity and just succeeded in some minor but undignified flailing.
“ And I had you there to help me do all of that! Not to mention guiding me along all the journeys between them. Don’t try to butter me up, we both know I had zero chance of surviving any of those…incredibly foolhardy escapades without your help!”
“And what help did I offer you, specifically?” the Entity countered. “The gift of invisibility to get through the tower and past the trolls, yes. And don’t worry, that I will bestow on you before you go further. It’ll get you past the dragon, no sweat. But the rest, the lion’s share of it? Nothing but detailed instructions for what to do, where to go, what to say. I charted you an exact path through the Moonless Tower, and through the troll warrens, and gave you the exact words to strike your deal with the devil. And you followed all those instructions perfectly. I didn’t once have to step in and rescue you!”
“But…you could have,” Kaln protested. “You were there.”
“And this is why I did it that way, li’l buddy. Now we know you can do it without me looking over your shoulder. Just one more time, Kaln. Then, finally, it’s over—everything you’ve suffered will be vindicated, everything you’ve done rewarded after this one last adventure. You’ve proved you can do it! And seriously, don’t worry. After all we’ve been through together, surely you can’t think I’d send you to face a dragon alone!”
“Okay, that’s a relief, but how does that square with—oh.” It took him a moment, but remembering the way the Entity generally acted, Kaln suddenly had a terrible hunch. He squinted suspiciously at the shadow. “You’re just setting up a bit , aren’t you.”
“I’m sending you to face seven dragons!”
“Yep, I’m out.”
Kaln turned his back and took two steps down the slope toward the savanna below before the shadow managed to get back in front of him, holding out both vaguely formed arms in a warding gesture.
“All right, all right, sorry, I couldn’t resist. I truly am sincere, Kaln. Yes, there are seven dragons in that lair, and that is why I can’t come with you. Dragons are a whole other thing compared to trolls; any of them might happen to detect me if I approach their home, but one of those seven in particular definitely will. But the gift of intangible invisibility I will grant you will work on them, attached to a mere human without my distinctive… essence to grab their senses.”
“Seven dragons.” Kaln folded his arms again, glaring. “Seven! Why are you only telling me this now? Never mind, don’t answer, we both know why. Because I’d never have come this far if you’d been honest from the beginning!”
“Kaln,” the Entity said in a more soothing tone, hands still upheld. “ Come on. Remember, you’ve come this far on the strength of my advanced knowledge and your court-trained ability to follow complex directions exactly. This is just more of the same! Remember what we rehearsed. What are you looking for, in there?”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Come on, Kaln.” The Entity shifted one hand as if to place it under his chin, and he instinctively jerked his head away. “You know what to do, I know you remember. What are you looking for?”
Kaln glared at it, but grudgingly repeated the instructions it had already drilled into him. “A Timekeeper artifact, resembling an archway made of grandfather clocks.”
“Where is this artifact?”
“You mean, where in the lair of the seven bloody dragons?”
“Yes. Specifically.”
He sighed. “It’s in the cavern straight across from the entrance. Up the steps and through the f arthe st door.”
“ And what are you going to do with this artifact?”
It was like a compulsion, at this point in his young life. The Entity hadn’t been wrong that his upbringing and training in the Royal Archives left him powerfully inclined to listen closely, absorb details instantly, and be able to not only parrot them back but follow precise and complex instructions after being told once.
“ Set all six clock faces to midnight, pull the hands till they point straight outward from the faces, then replace whatever is in the compartment in the arch’s capstone with the shadow crystal , and finally step through the gate.”
Just because he instinctively repeated directions on which he’d been trained didn’t mean he planned to go through with this absurd scheme, necessarily. Having satisfied that compulsion, he quickly continued before the Entity could chime in again.
“ But! That still doesn’t mean I’m willing to face down seven dragons for this! And even still, to this day, you haven’t told me what that will do.”
“Everything, Kaln,” the Entity said in a breathlessly passionate tone. “Everything. This final step will grant you the power to enact retribution on all who have wronged you. Upon Lady Haktria and all her noble friends, on the Lord Scribe and whoever else in the Archives you judge worthy of comeuppance. Upon the Regent himself if you decide he deserves it. That’s the thing: you will be the one who decides. Make those who thought they could toy with the powerless understand what that feels like.”
Kaln was not stupid enough that he couldn’t recognize the raw appeal to emotion that deliberately avoided answering his actual question. But that appeal was powerful. The Entity skillfully brought it all back up—the betrayal, the humiliation and pain he’d suffered, the loss of love and everything he’d spent his life working toward, all at the whims of those who were arbitrarily allowed to call themselves his betters. The thought of settling that score… This inscrutable being was dangling bait in front of him, yes, but it was bait he craved.
“ But,” he managed, “…dragons.”
“ Fortunately there’s a trick to it!” the Entity said brightly. “Dragons are like prison: you just gotta kill the biggest one, and you’re home free.”
Kaln stared at it. “Kill. You want me to kill a dragon. And…the biggest one?!”
“Only the biggest one, mind you,” the Entity cautioned, holding up one shadowy finger in his face. “ That’s the part that’s unlike prison. Be very careful not to take out any of the smaller ones.”
“You know, somehow I don’t see that being a problem.”
“ Oh, it could add significantly to your problems, Kaln. Dragons are, by any reasonable definition, people. They love; they grieve. What they are not like is humans; their social groups aren’t based on mutual affection or reliance, but strict power h ierarchies. If you kill one of the young ones, at least one of the older females will go completely berserk, because that’s what mothers do. Trust me, you don’t wanna meet a dragon in mama bear mode.”
“That’s the single most sensible thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Kill one of the older females,” the Entity continued blithely, “and there’s not a certainty of backlash, but a serious risk of it. If she was on friendly terms with one of the other consorts, they may take offense, and the dominant male will definitely be irate about you destroying his property. Also the dragonets might get mad, depending on how old they are and how ready to fly off on their own anyway. If they’re young enough to still be somewhat dependent, well…that’s their m u m you just killed, see? Most folks get snippy about that.”
“Right, don’t murder people’s m u ms, that’s good advice for life. But not really going to be an issue since we’re talking specifically about killing dragons.”
“The point is that these family units are top-down and based on authority more than affection; in a human family it’s a dynamic that would be considered toxic, but these are dragons and this is just what they do. They’re a lot less likely to be fond of whoever has power over them. The consorts will mostly be tolerant of the dominant male because his protection is useful to the m. They will be miffed about you breaking up their arrangement, but not heartbroken or vengeful. The deciding factor will be that dragons are so used to being top of the food chain, they’re hilariously conflict-averse with anything more powerful than them. Prove you can take out the strongest dragon and at worst they’ll politely ask you to leave.”
“See, I think I’ve found the flaw in your plan, there.”
“Now, Kaln, think back! When have I ever, once, sent you into danger without the capability to handle it?”
“Just now, when you told me to kill a dragon.”
“Sure, I see why you’re hesitant—”
“Do you?”
“—but that’s just you as you are now, Kaln. Once you have gone into that lair, found the Timekeeper artifact and performed the steps I have laid out?” The Entity took a step back from him, spreading both arms wide, like a priest of Ireh during the solstice ritual. “Then, you will absolutely be able to destroy a dragon. Easily. And then…whatever else you decide to.”
Kaln stared at it. Or…through it, mostly. Even under direct scrutiny, the Entity was too visually insubstantial to pin down. This was not the first time he felt that was extremely appropriate.
Now they came to it, the all-important question the Entity always evaded. The one Kaln had absolutely no excuse for not insisting on an answer to long before they came to this late stage of whatever game they were playing. He thought back to his previous adventures under this creature’s guidance. The incredible treasures he had retrieved from those unfathomably dangerous resting places… And the shadow crystal, the thing for which he had traded them. Traded to a devil the Entity had showed him how to contact, coached him in how to negotiate with.
He didn’t know what the shadow crystal was, either, much less what it did.
“How?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, trust me. When the time comes? You will know.”
“Trusting you is rather difficult when you refuse to give me straight answers.”
“I’ve led you to nothing but success, haven’t I?”
“So far. And I don’t know why. What is it you want, actually? What are you getting out of this?”
“Oh, Kaln.” The Entity drifted away from him and began shifting back and forth, as if it were pacing. “I’m not playing games with you because it amuses me. Well, okay, it does a little, but that’s not why. I truly wouldn’t mind telling you everything, if that wouldn’t ruin everything. I can say that no, I am not helping some parchment-pusher with legal trouble out of the pure goodness of my heart; I do indeed gain something from this. But I promise you, Kaln, that I get what I want by getting you what you want.”
It stopped, and floated across the ground, back toward him. Kaln reflexively retreated a step before he could stop himself.
“In the outcome I need, you will gain the power to avenge yourself against all who have wronged you, to prevent any from wronging you ever again, and you will use that power in exactly whatever way you desire. I win by helping you win, Kaln. The only way for me to fail here is by failing you.”
“This is absurd,” Kaln muttered, turning away to look back over the lush valley beyond the ridge. “What am I even doing here? I’m a colossal idiot to have let you lead me by the nose all the way out here. If I had an iota of sense in my head I’d…”
“What? Hike back across the desert? Alone?” The Entity shifted smoothly around in front of him again. “I’ve never once pushed you into anything or tried to deny you your free will, Kaln. Now, here, we at last come to a point where I have placed you in a somewhat coercive position. After all, you’re hell and gone from your home, at the ass-end of the wilderness; this is exactly where I could threaten to just dump you if I wanted to force your hand. But not to worry, I have an answer to that, too!”
His hackles had risen progressively while the Entity had outlined his currently vulnerable position, not least because all of that had occurred to him already.
“You’ve got an answer to everything, don’t you?”
“Oh, you’d better believe it! You could say it’s my thing.” The shadow undulated oddly; it took Kaln a moment to register the silhouette’s shifting as it sweeping a dramatic bow. “The Evervales are, indeed, the ass-end of civilization, but only in comparison to Rhivaak. These are scattered little kingdoms now, but this region used to be home to an empire no less grand than Rhivaak’s in its day. It only hasn’t re-formed, because, well… The big ol’ honking dragon that burned it down still lives right there, and he’s not the most amiable neighbor. But it’s not as if these people have regressed to complete savagery. If you want to quit this quest right now, you can just hike down that ridge, head in any direction until you reach a road, and follow that until it comes to a city. There, you’ll want to do two things: sell that shadow crystal to whatever consortium of priests or wizards exists there for enough of a fortune to set yourself up for years, and then present yourself at the king’s palace as a Rhivkabat-trained scribe to set yourself up for life. That trouble you had back home wasn’t the kind that the Regency cares enough about to chase beyond its borders; they’re certainly not going to exert diplomatic pressure on some remote Evervales backwater to have you hauled away. You’ve got the option, Kaln.”
“You would…let me keep the shadow crystal?” he asked, openly suspicious.
“Why wouldn’t I?” The Entity’s next shift was barely recognizable as a shrug. “It’s not as if it cost me anything. You did all the work! And I could just as easily get another one if I wanted. But there’s also the fact that the shadow crystal was necessary for your journey in particular, and if I have to go try again with somebody else it’ll be using a different method that probably won’t require one. Nah, that’s your own hard-earned booty, Kaln. If you’re not gonna use it, some magic-wielder will gladly take it off your hands.”
Kaln hesitated, his thoughts moving rapidly, but mostly around in circles. Before him, the Entity also waited, regarding him in its usual, complete inscrutability for a few mute seconds before it continued in a lower tone.
“But you won’t.”
Kaln raised his head, setting his features in a defiant expression.
“We both know why you’ve come this far, Kaln. Why you are still here, on this excursion that, yes, is an objectively bad idea. This is something only an idiot would do, ordinarily—and you are the furthest thing from an idiot. There is something else propelling you onward, something which has nothing to do with me. Something which is not about to let you go.”
“Well, yeah. Desperation. If you hadn’t stepped in I was due to get sentenced to life in a cell, and almost certainly a quiet knife across the throat as soon as I’d been forgotten by the court.”
“Oh, pshaw, Kaln. That’s just what you’ve been telling yourself—because you think of yourself as a rational man, and needed a rational excuse for what you were firmly convicted to do for entirely irrational reasons. I have just finished explaining to you why that no longer matters. If all you wanted was freedom? You have the means in your grasp, right at this moment. I swear to you I shall bear no grudge nor seek any recompense for what I have invested in you thus far. All of this I have done for my own reasons, at my own will, and you owe me nothing. If this is where we part ways, Kaln, we shall part as friends, and you may go do as you will with my blessing.”
The Entity drifted closer, and this time he didn’t back away.
“But. You. Won’t.”
As it spoke, the Entity rose both shadowy arms to the sides again. With each word, its form darkened as its voice deepened, till he could see it very clearly in the air before him despite the fading afternoon light.
“You haven’t come all this way on this mad expedition because your life was worthless, Kaln. It never was, and it isn’t now. You have come this far because you did not care if it ended. Not if it meant you had even the chance at the one thing which will give all this meaning:”
He knew it was coming. And yet, he hung on the Entity’s every word, dangling helplessly in the pause until it finally spoke with a soul-deep relish that resonated in every part of his mind.
“ Revenge.”
They stared at each other in silence, the man who had lost everything and the thing offering him a fistful of moonbeams and madness in recompense.
“ And that’s why you’re not going to quit now,” the Entity said with quiet, uncharacteristic assurance. “That’s why I chose you in the first place, Kaln. You won’t choose a peaceful, prosperous life—not while those who wronged you are living one of their own. You will do whatever it takes to bring them low. Even if it means creeping through the lair, tampering with the ancient artifact, and slaying the dragon. Even if there is just the chance, you will take it. Because in the end?”
The Entity shrugged, and Kaln hated himself more than a little for how firmly in its grip he was, waiting to hear it voice what he already knew deep in his own heart.
“ You would rather not live at all, knowing that they get to.”
He turned away from it again, staring now toward the peak of the mountain. It had broken off long ago, tumbling down the face into the valley and leaving an oddly flat, shorn-off crest rising above most of the nearby crags . The entrance was not visible from this position, but that was where they lay waiting, he knew. In their hidden lair, seven dragons and the machine that would…
Would what, even?
This was not just stupid, it was insane. In these last few moments he felt the Entity had finally, after all their time together, started to reveal some of the truth of itself, and that truth was the opposite of reassuring. It was sinister. The thing talked about vengeance they way most people did about their children or lovers.
And, damn his stupid eyes, it was right about him.
“So,” Kaln said quietly. “I guess I’ll need you to do the invisibility thing again.”
A shadow couldn’t smile, not in a way that could be seen, but somehow he knew that it was.
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### Chapter 2: 2 Theres No Way Its That Easy
At least the invisibility thing involved getting his shadow back, just in time for it to disappear again. Still, knowing it would be there once he was visible again was a comfort; for all that a shadow provided him no actual benefit, its absence felt wrong. Also, having it properly attached was evidence that the Entity had departed to…wherever it spent its time when not visiting Kaln. With that little matter settled, Kaln was free to concentrate on his next problem: climbing down a mountainside while unable to see his own limbs.
That was the shortest part of the climb, fortunately. It was an alarmingly steep slope from the ridge to the staircase. He managed not to actually fall off the mountain, but twice in picking his way down, lost his footing and went skidding down the loose scree. The first time he managed to grab a scraggly bush on his way past, and the second came to a stop through no credit to himself by slamming into a boulder. Bruised and somewhat abraded, Kaln finally made it onto the steps where he paused to catch his breath.
Well, it had only been about ten minutes. Ten frightening, intermittently painful minutes, but it was over. The rest of the climb might be physically up again, but it was metaphorically downhill. Now, though it was rubble-strewn and overgrown, he just had to walk up a staircase.
Immediately he realized why these obviously long-abandoned steps were in such good condition. All the signs were there: the subtle glossiness of the stone, the characteristic geometric patterns engraved into them. There were even patches of Timeglass set into the vertical faces of each step, inert now with the afternoon sunlight beaming directly onto them, but once dark fell each step would be helpfully illuminated. This was Timekeeper architecture. Unfathomably ancient, crafted using superior technology which had long since vanished, and likely to outlast the civilizations that existed here now.
It also made this ascent laughably easy, even in the dark, which would have made the neglected condition of this path extremely ominous if Kaln didn’t already know exactly the kind of horror he was walking blithely into.
Dragons. Why had he agreed to this? Vague promises of power? Of revenge?
Revenge, i t was definitely the revenge.
If he got eaten by a dragon, well… At least he wouldn’t be plagued with nightmares about Haktria anymore. And if not, if there was anything at all to the Entity’s promises? They’d see who had the nightmares.
He steeled himself, stood up, brushed off his clothes as best he could without being able to see them or his hands, and began picking his way carefully up.
Truly, this was without doubt the easiest leg of his entire journey. After hiking all around Rhivaak and then the great desert plateau he was in much better physical shape than at any point in his life prior. Walking up a staircase was nothing—even a staircase that wound all the way up a mountain, even without being able to see his own feet, even having to navigate around crawling overgrowth and fallen rocks. There was nothing to it but time.
The old Kaln of just a year ago would have been exhausted to the point of collapse, but now h e was barely out of breath when, half an hour later, he had ascended to a level that was actually higher in altitude than the ridge he’d so awkwardly stumbled down, where a titanic rockfall had buried most of the ancient steps.
From a distance it sure looked like the end of the line, but up close he could see what the Entity had referred to. There was a gap between two of the largest boulders, easily big enough for a person to slip into. He had to duck a few feet in, but then the passage opened up into a little roofless space amid the fallen stone, with another gap ahead. A smaller one, but Kaln was still able to squeeze in with no trouble. And just like that, he was home free. Ahead was nothing but more stairs—except now, he could see the destination.
He was pretty sure just at a glance from the rockfall, but as he ascended and more of it came into view, the conclusion was unmistakable. This was no mere cave at the peak of the mountain. Minutes later, Kaln warily crested the last step and came to a stop, taking in the spectacle of one of the most incredible things he’d ever seen.
The entire thing was a Timekeeper edifice.
Before him yawned a vast opening into the face of the mountain, easily four stories tall and less than half that wide—a sensible choice of residence for dragons, as they would have no trouble squeezing in and out. Like nearly all Timekeeper artifacts, everything was amazingly intact, from the glossy, decorative stonework of the great door’s setting, to the paved plaza before the doorway, which was set in an abstract mural of multicolored Timestone with inset pieces that looked like Timeglass. He could even see the doors themselves, retracted into the sides of the aperture and leaving visible only the thin (relatively; they looked half as thick as he was tall) lip of metal, the characteristic bronze-gold color of Timesteel. Like all examples of its kind, it wasn’t scratched or even rusted after eons of standing open to the elements like this. From within came the characteristic sounds of a fully intact Timekeeper ruin: distant, muffled ticking and hissing as ancient gears and pipes resolutely carried out their inscrutable work.
What an absolutely lucky find for the dragons. Well, for anyone, but an indestructible citadel built to a scale they could comfortably use must have been priceless. Why had the Timekeepers even built something this large atop a mountain? It was a pointless question; no one knew why they had done anything. Besides, they had been gone for so long there was no telling how the landscape had changed in the interim. Part of the mountain had fallen onto their staircase, just for starters.
Kaln drew a deep breath, glancing down at his lack of visible hands to reassure himself. He was invisible; it would be fine. Previous experience had taught him that the Entity’s protection eliminated sounds and smells. It was impossible to detect him.
Except by magic. For example, the kind of powerful magic wielded by dragons that the Entity itself was unwilling to go near. This was such a terrible idea.
All around him the light changed. The afternoon sun finally fell low enough that the Timeglass set into the huge door frame and the surrounding stonework began to glow softly in the increasing dimness.
Kaln began putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward because he was more afraid to run away now than he was of the ignominious death toward which he was probably heading, and the only other alternative was to dither about in the door of a dragon’s lair like an even bigger fool than the kind who’d go in there.
The mechanisms which controlled the doors were visible inside, an arrangement of gears and towering metal shafts whose purpose he only understood because they were visibly connected to the door frame. On both sides were spoked wheels of a reasonable size for a person to turn by hand. Kaln didn’t touch them, of course, but he knew they would function as smoothly as if freshly built, despite the intervening millennia without maintenance. The only Timekeeper artifacts he had previously seen up close were smaller gadgets of now-inscrutable purpose on display in Rhivkabat, but his work in the Royal Archives had enabled him to read up on all that was known of them. Everything the Timekeepers had made still worked, though nobody could figure out what most of it did.
He was now in a corridor which towered above him like a cathedral. Paradoxically, its huge dimensions made it seem shorter than it was; Kaln had a good fifty steps to traverse before reaching the main part of this ancient…facility. Fifty steps wasn’t much relative length for a hallway this wide and tall, though. Already it was a study of contrasts in here: the Timekeeper architecture was of course immaculate, but under a coating of evidence that this place was now a dragons’ lair. Animal bones were strewn about, most thankfully long since free of meat, and the flawless, decorative stonework was obscured by moss and mildew climbing the walls. It should be brighter in here thanks to the inset panels of glowing Timeglass, but they were also partially covered by both that and general dust, not to mention hanging cobwebs of truly incredible proportions.
Reaching the far end, Kaln crept very carefully into the main cavern, and had to pause again there just to take it all in.
His inner monologue was running out of synonyms for “big.” Actually, the Royal Palace in Rhivkabat was probably larger than this—in fact, its grandiose Serpent Hall, which he had been graced to visit several times, might be both bigger and more majestic in design than the huge open space into which he now emerged. But that was the beating heart of the continent’s greatest empire. For a dragon-infested ruin, this was…incredible. It was much like the access hall in that the flawless architecture of the Timekeepers, while perfectly intact, was intact under what looked like centuries of accumulated dragon refuse. More moss and mold, dust and cobwebs, and in this chamber a much deeper accumulation of old bones. They were piled higher than he was tall against the walls and up to three times that in some of the corners. It was likewise dim, the Timeglass similarly obscured by neglect and filth. This space was too large and too open to the elements outside to get properly musty, but the combination of damp and decomposition left an acrid smell hanging in the air, with a perhaps unsurprising undercurrent of smoke.
Oh, that was what those odd stains on the upper walls were, Kaln realized. Soot and smoke, accumulated over who knew how long.
The air resonated with the fairly soft but pervasive sound of ticking, and intermittent hissing of escaping steam. He could see, along the upper part of the grand chamber’s walls, exposed machinery; ancient gears and pistons and pipes of unfathomable purpose stolidly going about their eternal work. More, softer counterpoints came from the collection of Timekeeper gadgets which had been strewn about the floor of the main chamber, these priceless artifacts interspersed with gnawed bones. There was also the sound of water, both running and dripping, though he couldn’t see the source. Altogether the noise was relatively gentle, even soothing; Kaln much preferred it to an ominous silence.
And yet, even all of this he took in with a sweeping glance and a fragment of his attention, most of his focus going right to his first sight of a dragon.
The beast was asleep, thankfully. Along the left and right walls were four more towering doorways just like that of the access hall through which Kaln had stepped, two to a side, and the dragon was snoozing in the middle of one of these paths, half its body stretched out into the main area and the rest taking up space in the hallway. It had scales of pale blue and understated horns lining its skull. He froze like a rabbit, staring in petrified silence for a few moments and just watching the creature’s prone torso, what he could see of it, rising and falling slowly with its sleeping breath.
It wasn’t as large as some accounts he’d read of dragons, but still big enough to easily bite him in half.
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As his heart rate settled again, Kaln began picking his way across the floor. There was ample room to walk, but mostly down the middle through the open space where the dragons had apparently made paths through their own rubbish. Invisible or not, it felt awfully exposed to walk there, but he ultimately decided it was less risky than attempting to grope through the bones and old machinery; he’d never manage that without making some kind of noise.
Partway across the chamber he had another bad start as he discovered that, previously hidden from view by perspective and intervening junk, another of the doorways on the other side of the room had a sleeping dragon sprawled in it. This one looked to be about the same size as the blue, though its scales were black with red edges that gave it an almost iridescent look, and its horns were slightly larger. It was also deeply asleep, though, and without the shelter of the doorway to linger in, Kaln didn’t pause to stare this time. Instead he picked up his pace, pushing on to the stairs.
These occupied the entire width of the huge room, rising nearly two full stories to another level. Upon reaching the top of this he found…more of the same, really. There were side doors along the walls up here, too, but unlike the immense portals below these looked more reasonably person-sized. Also, they were all firmly shut, blocked by doors of distinctive golden-bronze Timesteel. A broad cleared path led the way to another door directly opposite the stairs, the same size as the towering entrance tunnels down below; to either side of this were strewn old bones and detritus.
Kaln counted his blessings as he crept carefully toward the central door. The bones were all large, from what he could see; aurochs, urgoats, and mammoths, probably. Nothing that looked human. Also, there were no signs of fewmets, and the unpleasant smell lacked the acrid tang of ammonia. Well, dragons were known to be highly intelligent creatures, and even if this group were slobs, even the simplest animals knew better than to defecate in their own nests.
Across the upper ledge and then down another vaulted tunnel, he finally reached his goal. There, he came as close as he had been in this entire adventure to abandoning it and turning around.
The huge chamber beyond was a true dragon’s hoard, though not as Kaln would have envisioned one based on the stories. Rather than piles of gold and miscellaneous riches carpeting the floor and drifting high in corners like the bones outside, this was laid out more like a museum. Orderly and spotlessly clean, well-lit thanks to the inset Timeglass panels being free of the dust, cobwebs, and creeping moss that obscured those in the central nexus. Display cases stood in neat rows and climbed the walls, containing treasures with neat labels behind glass, and a whole row of heavy vaults covered the rear of the room. Near the door there was even a huge map of the chamber with detailed notes describing the position of everything, pressed against the wall and also securely under glass. Kaln hardly noticed the unimaginable riches around him, barely registering the seeming peculiarity of their display.
He stood all but nose-to-nose with a dragon. A dragon at least twice the size of those he had seen below, though sleeping as soundly as they were—which was the only reason he did not instantly turn and flee, or possibly die of heart failure. This wasn’t just a dragon. The sheer size of it, those rare crimson scales…
In all these weeks, in all his conversations with the Entity… He’d never bothered to bring it up, when the shadowy being began talking about a dragon’s lair in the Evervales. He hadn’t wanted to sound foolish by stating the obvious, and besides, it hadn’t seemed entirely real to him until this moment. But no matter how many dragons were in this lair or who the other six were, there was only one name that mattered. The dragon. The destroyer of the old Valereld Empire, and the chief reason the Vales had remained a disordered patchwork of kingdoms for the six centuries since—the cause of cataclysmic destruction from the sky if any in the territory he had claimed began to grow toward a degree of power that might one day challenge him. The Beast of Blood himself.
Atraximos the Dread.
Right now, Kaln could take two steps, reach out one hand, and pat his nose.
He decided not to.
Standing there, invisible and silent, staring at the monster and feeling the hot wind of his slow, slumbering breath, Kaln found himself oddly preoccupied with the intrusive thought that it was weird the Dread’s lair was here, on the very southern edge of the Evervales. He was probably closer to Rhivaak than the northern reaches of the territory he claimed as his own. That had been another point of uncertainty that kept Kaln’s mouth shut about his target’s identity when the Entity had talked about him; he would have expected Atraximos to roost somewhere near the middle of the Vales. What kept him from flying south over the plateau to despoil the wealthy empire beyond?
But that was him thinking like a scribe, which he wasn’t anymore. He was an adventurer—well, a thief at least. And the admittedly foolish pawn of an otherworldly being of uncertain motivations. That being’s power remained in evidence, at least. Neither the senses of the great dragon nor the magical wards and protections he had to have laid over his hoard seemed to register the presence of an interloper. Kaln was truly invisible, in a way that went beyond the merely physical.
He could probably walk right up to Atraximos and saunter past him within arm’s length all the way around.
He decided not to do that, either. After this day’s work, Kaln might never again be able to insist he wasn’t an idiot, but that didn’t mean he was suicidally reckless.
Quietly, then, for his peace of mind if not for practical benefit. Kaln took a deeply cautious step into the hoard chamber, casting his eyes around the astonishingly neat display cases. Now the question was how to find his target…
His gaze strayed to his right, to the enormous chamber map with its precise notation.
There’s no way it’s that easy.
And indeed it wasn’t, not quite. It was too much to hope that Atraximos the Dread had, on top of being some kind of neat freak, labeled his hoard’s directory in modern Nourid or Vhii, or even Filvallin. The map’s notations were in Old Valeron, which he did not speak or read…exactly. However, the grammar was similar to modern Filvallin, which had descended from it, and the vocabulary likewise. It also used the same proto-Nourid script he’d needed to learn to parse the oldest Foundational Texts in the Royal Archives, which were still engraved on stone tablets for complex political reasons that he found very annoying. In fact, the specific reason Kaln had never troubled to study Valeron, either classical or liturgical, was because a court scribe of Rhivkabat knew enough to struggle through it anyway, and he didn’t encounter it often enough that being able to read it quickly was much of an asset.
Now, his education did not fail him. The words for “Timekeeper” and “artifact” were among those he had scrupulously prepared to recognize in any language with which he was even passingly familiar, which narrowed the search immediately. Unfortunately, according to the map, Atraximos had a rather impressive collection of those.
Kaln edged over to the far side of the map and carefully positioned himself such that he could see all of it peripherally while keeping the slumbering dragon fully in his direct field of view.
Priorities.
In the end, this additional study availed him little, aside from quickly memorizing “of unknown purpose” in Old Valeron. No great shock; most of the Timekeeper artifacts in any collection would be labeled thus. Luckily it didn’t end up mattering much, as by far the majority of Atraximos’s Timekeeper collection were neatly displayed together in one quadrant of the vast chamber. Even more luckily, that location was as far from the dragon himself as it was possible to get in here.
Kaln set off as eagerly and quietly as he could, skirting the edge of the room and finding his goal far more easily than he could have anticipated. The section of Timekeeper devices were immediately recognizable; though Timesteel could be mistaken for bronze at a casual glance, the style of workmanship and aesthetic touches were so standardized that anyone who’d seen a few would recognize the handiwork of the Timekeepers. That such a clearly powerful culture had been so unimaginative—or perhaps merely single-minded—was the least of the mysteries about them. In this part of the hoard, free-standing sculptures and mechanical devices (most inert, a few whirring inscrutably away) stood interspersed with display cases and racks of shelves upon which smaller artifacts were displayed. Kaln spotted his target from most of the way across the room and made a beeline toward it.
An archway made of grandfather clocks. Okay, not exactly, but now that the thing was in front of him, the description made sense. Upon a free-standing dais of Timestone roughly the height of an average stair step there stood two pillars, square in shape and inset with panels of luminous Timeglass, each topped by a cube slightly wider than themselves. From the cube sides facing each other there extended a single matching beam, from the center of which hung a trapezoidal Timeglass compartment—the “keystone” from Kaln’s instructions, no doubt. Each of the other six faces held a circular inset piece of glass, with the customary long and short hands of clock—all set to different times.
Kaln paused, looking nervously back at Atraximos and waiting for the beast’s enormous chest to rise and fall twice in the steady rhythm of sleep, before daring to direct his full attention to the artifact.
Of all the gadgets left behind by the Timekeepers, the most consistently comprehensible were their clocks. All these countless centuries later, every one still ticked gamely away, crafted of seemingly impervious materials that resisted all damage, decay, or attempts at tampering—just like everything they’d left, but while many contraptions of endlessly ticking Timesteel gears remained inscrutable, if you had a Timekeeper clock you would always know what time it was down to the precise second, synced perfectly to the very rotation of the world. Many would even adjust themselves if carried to a different latitude. It was thus ironic for Kaln to find himself confronted by six Timekeeper clock faces which were clearly not telling the time.
Those weren’t numbers on the edges of the faces, first of all. Timekeeper clocks never had numbers; that entire culture had seemingly never written anything down in any medium, not even the twelve hours a clock would count. This one did have symbols all around its perimeter, and for a moment Kaln was terribly excited to have discovered possibly the only Timekeeper artifact in existence with something written on it, but no; upon a moment’s inspection, he realized they were recognizable star constellations.
Timekeepers. Who knew why they had done anything?
He glanced compulsively at the sleeping dragon before reaching out to the “clock” faces.
Those rotated easily when touched; they were not moving under their own power and didn’t resist or react to being rearranged. None of them were pointing in a consistent direction. Whatever this thing was, it seemed the use of clocks as its control interface was just some kind of metaphor. Moving carefully around the contraption and sneaking peeks over at Atraximos with every other breath, Kaln delicately shifted the short and long hands of each of the six faces, one at a time, till all pointed straight up.
Midnight. They clicked satisfyingly into place at each hour position, leaving him confident in having positioned each correctly.
The dragon still slept. Kaln was still pursuing this damn fool errand.
In a second, equally tense and meticulous circuit around the dais, he pulled all twelve hands straight out on their convenient little hinges, so they all stood perpendicular to their clock faces. Then, grimacing, he got down to the last part.
The shadow crystal was exactly where it belonged, carefully wrapped up in scraps of leather and cloth in his belt pouch. He extracted the thing, as usual disliking the touch of it. Oh, it didn’t hurt him or really feel like much of anything other than a piece of smooth rock in his hand, but it looked so very wrong. Even more obviously out of place in reality than when the Entity borrowed his shadow. It had no visible aura, yet when Kaln looked at it he could tell, somehow, he was seeing in its faces the energy they put off rather than the faces themselves. It was of an indescribable color, too, somehow simultaneously gold and white and pink, but also…dark. He was obviously holding and staring at something alien to this reality, which his brain was not equipped to parse.
Uncomfortable.
The dragon’s snort reverberated through the room, making Kaln freeze like a rabbit. As the soft rasping of scales continued, he dared to peek over his shoulder at Atraximos, who was slowly, subtly beginning to move.
Could he sense the crystal? The Entity had said it didn’t dare enter here under any amount of magical stealth, because the dragons would detect its presence. What kind of senses did they have?!
Atraximos snorted again, finishing adjusting his position with his chin resting upon his crossed forelegs, resuming his deep, somnolent breathing.
Kaln barely dared to breathe himself, staring in petrified silence at the dragon for almost two full minutes. Or so he estimated. Ironically, he was not in the presence of an actual clock.
When he finally dared to move again, it was even more slowly than before. Reaching up, he found that the Timeglass panels of the hanging “keystone” were also on tiny hinges and held in place by neat little latches, crafted as meticulously at the handiwork of any master goldsmith into minuscule mechanisms that he knew would withstand a direct blow from the nearby dragon.
Opening the container, inserting the shadow crystal, and closing it felt like performing heart surgery. He didn’t even try to count the passing seconds as he moved with exacting slowness and the greatest silence he could manage, but then all at once, it was done.
All of the clock hands snapped back into place in unison, each pointing to midnight. With the softest whisper of air, a momentary obstruction seemed to form in the archway, like a panel of clouded glass, and then it was gone. The only visible difference was that the keystone compartment was glowing visibly now, clearly lit from within by something stronger than the normal passive luminescence of Timeglass.
This time, the dragon did not stir.
Kaln wiped sweaty palms on his pants, staring at the apparent nothingness right in front of his nose.
This…was it. The culmination, the point of this entire escapade. And he still had no idea what it was going to do. Proceeding any further would be profoundly foolish.
Not really any more foolish than having proceeded this far, though. He’d already made his decision, fool that he was.
Kaln took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, glanced for the umpteenth time to verify that the dragon was still asleep, and stepped forward into his destiny.
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