Rojuun (36 page)

The tunnel was as dark as the cave, so she
called her light and sent it ahead. Moisture dripped from the walls
and ceiling, creating little rivulets of water along the floor. The
reek of sstejj merged with wet rock. Three of the abominations were
moving about in the distance of the tunnel, illuminated by her
light.

Liselle had no idea where the long tunnel
led. She just hoped she would be able to find her way home or, at
the very least, find some plants to help guide her. Ideally, Vevin
would save her. Tears welled in her eyes again from fear and she
angrily brushed them with a sleeve.

One of the sstejj ahead caught her scent and
started sniffing the air with its gills. Liselle decided to try to
sneak by it. She didn’t know how many daggers she could create and
didn’t want to exhaust herself more than she already was. The
monster came near her and she slid to the wall of the cave.

The sstejj opened its mouth and casually
tried to bite her. Liselle dashed to the left. It followed her and
tried to take another bite. Liselle moved to the other wall of the
tunnel and hit it with a fireball. That was faster and took less
energy than the dagger because she didn’t have to concentrate so
hard to shape it. The monster screamed in agony as it turned to
bite at the pain in its side. When it fell to the ground, the other
two sstejj in the tunnel scurried toward it to begin feasting.
Liselle froze against the wall. From the cave came two more sstejj
attracted to the smell of burning flesh. Liselle took off down the
tunnel at a run, not caring if they felt the tremor of her steps.
She just wanted to get away as fast as possible.

She stopped after a ways and put her hands
on her knees, gasping for breath. The light had bobbed along next
to her, faithfully illuminating the way.

The tunnel was a dark stone Liselle hadn’t
seen before. Rocks covered the floor and there were occasional
patches of phosphorescent moss, but not enough to see by. It was
wide enough to fit a couple of wagons through and four times as
tall as she was. The slow moving air was warm, sticky and
unpleasant to breathe. Going back through the cave to try the other
tunnel wasn’t an option, so she began trudging down its length.

It seemed to continue forever, never going
up or down. Liselle wanted it to go up, but was happy that it
didn’t go down. She eventually stumbled to a stop and sat down on a
large rock for a moment.

Liselle had lost track of time and was too
tired to cry anymore. The feel of all the rock above her was heavy,
as though the sky was worlds away. Her stomach growled with hunger
and she realized she didn’t know when she had last eaten. Something
clattered back the way she came. She stood quickly and directed her
light that way. Nothing appeared.

After a few minutes of straining to see
anything, Liselle turned and continued walking, hoping to find a
way out. Her feet hurt and all of her muscles ached. She wanted
nothing more than to lie down and sleep, but was too afraid.

The next hour or so was a daze of darkness
relieved only by the small blue light floating above her head. Then
Liselle saw the tunnel widen in the distance. A slight breeze
cleaned the stale air she had been breathing.

Liselle’s mind cleared some and she gained a
second wind of strength. She began to jog toward the opening. After
a moment, she slowed back down to a walk, quickly winded. A soft
light was just ahead.

She reached the end of the tunnel and looked
into the new cave. There were patches of phosphorescent moss on the
ceiling far above and even a few plants here and there. Most of the
dim light came from fish and vegetation in a small lake to the
right of the tunnel. Two small streams fed the lake from different
directions.

Even though she was out of the tunnel and
its darkness, Liselle didn’t feel comfort. Sstejj milled around
like the ones in Krraa’s cave. The abominations seemed to have no
purpose or direction unless Krraa was directing them. Liselle
thought she could see three or four more large tunnels, but all of
them would require making way through a hundred sstejj.

She leaned against the wall of the tunnel
for a minute with more tears flowing down her cheeks. Liselle was
so tired of crying. Going forward was the only choice. She would
have to try to kill enough sstejj so they would go after each other
instead of her.

Liselle heard a noise down the tunnel she
had just come from. Looking back, she thought she saw light flare
far away. The tunnel had been almost completely straight its entire
length. A new sense of dread fell in the pit of her stomach. She
didn’t think Krraa could have survived, but she hadn’t seen a body.
Krraa had also talked about “them” when it referred to the hhorrj,
meaning that there was more than one. What if another had come to
the cave and was now hunting her. Another flash of light appeared.
At least she thought it did. It was far away and she couldn’t make
it out clearly. Liselle stayed frozen against the wall.

A sstejj appeared at the tunnel entrance,
sniffing the air. Liselle prayed that it would go away. Her prayers
were futile in this godforsaken place. The creature moved closer to
her while she stood paralyzed in fear.

When the beast was right next to her, she
felt the flower tugging in her hair. It was just enough to get her
to move. She hit the sstejj in the throat with a fireball, killing
it quickly. Then she ran into the cave, keeping to the left wall in
order to avoid being surrounded.

Nearby sstejj smelled their dying friend and
began heading toward it. Liselle walked along the cave wall, too
tired to run more than a few steps. There were rocks and pebbles
that she tried to step over. Her feet were sore and tired from
walking on so much stone and she wished for the soft grasses of the
valley.

When she stumbled and fell to her knees,
nearby sstejj turned to sniff the air. Liselle attempted to cast a
fireball into one as she got back to her feet. It flickered out the
first time but worked when she re-focused and tried again. They
were becoming harder to create and she was so
very
tired.

It worked for a moment, but others started
moving toward her. Liselle stopped to cast another fireball and
another before falling to her knees again. It took all of her
strength to stand up again and continue stumbling along. The next
tunnel seemed far away. After a few more steps, she stopped to
catch her breath. “Vevin,” she cried out weakly. It was all she
could think of. Liselle wanted Vevin to come, take her back to the
room, kiss her earlobe and lie down beside her.

She cast another fireball, killing one that
was getting too close. The next fireball she tried to cast
sputtered out. Liselle tried again, the flame flared and dissipated
instantly. Her blue light began to flicker and dim, making things
worse. She leaned against the wall of the cave and watched as the
sstejj moved toward her. “Vevin . . .” she whimpered pitifully.

A great roar rammed through the air from the
tunnel. Following that was the body of a dragon hurtling from the
entrance and into the horde of sstejj that stalked Liselle. Vevin’s
scales were lighter purple than Liselle had imagined. His
liquid-silver eyes glowed in the darkness, swirling in anger. She
could see the scar on his cheek. It traveled from the bottom of his
jaw all the way back to the top of his head, looking even worse in
his natural form.

A grateful smile cracked Liselle’s face for
the first time since being in the forsaken darkness of the
sstejj-infested depths. Vevin did not breathe great bursts of
lightning or cast terrible spells of destruction into the monsters
as Liselle expected. Instead, he began stomping them with all four
of his great, clawed feet. Liselle imagined that he was doing a
sstejj stomping dance. The dragon whipped his powerful tail about
to crush them while his enormous wings created gusts that knocked
them flat.

Liselle watched as he trampled the sstejj.
Vevin looked tired and worn. She felt sorrow for her poor dragon
friend. How long had he searched for her? How many of the
aberrations had he already destroyed?

She found one last reserve of strength from
somewhere deep inside. Liselle tossed a fireball at the one sstejj
who had gotten just a little too close. Then she blew softly toward
the dragon who would rescue her. A strengthening energy was in that
breath and it flowed toward Vevin.

When the breath reached Vevin, it filled him
with new energy. He inhaled deeply. Purple lightning shot in an
arc, killing all that remained. When he was done, he stood there
huffing. His eyes swirled rapidly. They were large and even more
beautiful than in his human form. Liselle took a few steps toward
him. “Vevin?”

Four purple lights appeared and moved to the
top of the cave, illuminating their surroundings. “Liselle! I
feared I would not be in time. I would never have forgiven myself.”
His voice as a dragon was deep and sonorous. He did not form the
words with his mouth, as would a human or Rojuun, but instead used
an innate form of magic to create them.

“Oh, Vevin! I was so frightened!” she said,
stumbling toward him while trying to avoid the fried bodies of
sstejj. The greasy, burning stench of the creatures combined with
the sharp smell of lightning made her stomach turn.

With four large steps, Vevin was next to
her, lowering his head. “Don’t be frightened anymore. I’ll keep you
safe now.”

“Oh, Vevin!” she exclaimed again. Liselle
threw her arms around his toothy snout and hugged it as best she
could.

“I’m going take you to safety,” he told her
soothingly. “I won’t allow you to be hurt. I simply will not allow
it,” he said in a firm tone that left no doubt that he would not,
in fact, allow it.

“Oh, Vevin,” she responded. There didn’t
seem to be anything else to say. She just held him by his
wonderful, scaly dragon snout.

He let her hold him for a few moments.
“Liselle?” he said quietly.

“Yes, Vevin?”

“I love you, Liselle,” he said even more
quietly, as though afraid of how she might answer.

Liselle straightened, releasing his snout.
She looked into his swirling eyes and said, “I love you too,
Vevin.” It was true. She had been falling steadily in love with him
since they had met. She hadn’t told him before because she didn’t
want to rush it and falling in love with a dragon seemed like an
unusual sort of thing, but at that point, it seemed foolish
not
to admit it.

Vevin did a shuffling, tired, happy, in-love
dance. Then he smiled a toothsome smile and leaned into her gently.
“Climb my leg to my neck and we’ll get back to safety.” He put his
front leg down next to her so she could climb it.

Liselle scrambled up his leg to the
shoulder. She swung her foot between two large spine ridges at the
base of his neck. When she was set, he turned, going back toward
the tunnel.

“No!” she cried out in fear.

Vevin stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to go back there,” she said
tearfully.

Vevin turned his head to look around the
cave at the other tunnels. “I don’t know how to get back through
those tunnels, nor do I know what dangers lay in them,” he said.
“There’s nothing left down this tunnel or in the cave beyond.” He
looked back at her with a silvery eye, his long neck twisted in a
half turn.

“Are you certain there’s nothing there,
Vevin?” she asked timidly. Liselle didn’t want to go back, but she
didn’t want to get lost either. She was just so tired, scared and
tired of being scared.

“I’m certain, dearest Liselle,” he reassured
her. When she didn’t protest further, he moved into the tunnel. It
wasn’t big enough for him to fly through, so he jogged, which was
faster than she would have imagined. He must have been running at
full speed when he came through the tunnel to save her.

She ducked down against him to hide her face
when they entered the cave with the room where she had been
imprisoned. The smell of burned sstejj remained, but Vevin moved
quickly into the other tunnel.

The new tunnel did angle up a bit, which
made her very happy. The way was illuminated by one purple light
Vevin had kept. Dragons could see in other ways without light,
meaning he was providing it for her comfort.

A short while later there was a small cave
with a hole in the top. Liselle saw the mangled bodies of more
sstejj before Vevin spread his wings. With a great leap of the legs
and thrust of wings, Vevin shot upwards toward it.

Liselle held on for dear life as her stomach
sank to her toes from the lift into the air. Two more flaps and
they were hurtling into the hole that quickly became too small to
spread his wings, so he tucked them in. Just as his momentum slowed
enough to go into free fall, the hole opened into a new tunnel.
Vevin spread his wings as much as he could and landed on the
edge.

Liselle’s heart beat rapidly at the wild
ride she just experienced. Vevin glanced back and saw an enormous
grin beneath her wide eyes. He jogged up the new tunnel, running
over occasional sstejj bodies he had killed in his search for
her.

There were more tunnels and shafts to travel
through. Each tunnel had increasingly more plants and
phosphorescent moss. A dawning realization came over Liselle that
she had been taken over a mile further into the depths of the
world. That was in addition to however deep Garrrn Cavern was. From
what the companions had been told, Garrrn Cavern was lower than
most Rojuun territories.

Vevin finally entered the cavern from which
Liselle had been taken. She was relieved to see the glow of plants
once more. The smell of slaughtered sstejj was still heavy. Vevin
spread his wings, rising into the air so that he wouldn’t have to
walk across anymore of the beasts. The cavern was more than large
enough to accommodate his size.