Chapter 9: Fire Lizard

The next morning, I awoke with a start at a sharp knocking coming from my closed shutter. My glamour had held through the night, but started to flicker before I remembered who was likely knocking.

Lorelei’s voice confirmed the knocker’s identity. “Hey Renna! We’re heading out soon!”

Stabilizing my human guise was difficult with how claustrophobic it felt, but I managed. My magical reserves felt about a third depleted, and I hoped I wouldn’t need to use serious magic. I’d need a good night’s rest or several to recover magically. Not that it’d do anything to that stupid lizard anyway. However, if worse came to worse, I’d go ahead and reveal myself if it meant saving the others. I doubted they’d kill someone who’d done nothing wrong. I hoped.

I carefully put on the clothes I’d been given yesterday. I desperately wished to wear something that didn’t look like masculine, poorly-sized hand me downs. Although I had to admit pants were nice sometimes.

Outside, the expedition members were waiting. Even Lorelei looked ready for battle in an armored robe, carrying an ornate looking staff. Salvador had bulked up his cloak with armor under it while Markus and Seyari wore the same getup as the day before. I felt distinctly vulnerable despite myself.

“You ready?” Lorelei asked. “Stay by Markus and me. Sey and Sal’ll be scouting ahead. Today, we’ll be taking down a demon.”

“Do you mean to look for it even if we don’t run into it?” Seyari asked.

“Of course! It’s a demon,” Lorelei replied as though it were the most obvious thing.

My gut twisted. “I-I’m ready.”

“Great! Don’t be nervous! Markus and I’ve killed dozens of demons, so you’re safe if you stick with us!” Lorelei beamed at me.

I might actually be screwed. Do I just stay out of any fighting no matter what? But Lorelei seemed so nice…

“Let’s go, Sunshine. We’re burning daylight.” Seyari’s tone was flat.

“Sure, sure,” Lorelei huffed. “But don’t you forget who the leader here is!”

The platinum blond shrugged and we departed from my rock.

Three years on this island and the explosion of sound and life in the jungle still threatened to overwhelm me. I could pick out most calls and sounds by now. Most of the time I wasn’t trying to be human, so I was more used to silence. I ate fruit and jerky on the way. Lorelei was adamant that I avoid durian.

Flanking either side of me were the bubbly woman and her big silent friend. Actually, calling him silent was unfair. He was talking plenty right now, but in Cavenish.

Around late morning, we entered the area I knew to be the fire lizard’s original territory. Ahead of us the jungle terminated in a black morass of rock. Clear blue sky belied the dark events to come, which my mind was unsuccessfully trying to be optimistic about.

Seyari and Salvador waited just at the edge of our cover and pointed up the mountain. The four expedition members talked amongst themselves before Lorelei turned to me.

“We need to move carefully from now on.” Her face was serious for once. “Sal and Sey sighted the thing further up the slope by a cave. We’ll stick to the dips in the rock, so stay low and quiet.”

Lorelei turned, but Seyari continued, “We’re aiming to ambush the demon. Salvador and I are going around behind it. You’ll be back with Lorelei when Markus goes in. Signal if you both get in trouble.”

I nodded. No more words were exchanged and I soon found myself crouched low against the undulating black rock. In places, green life was starting to cling to the evidence of the eruption that brought me into the world again. Seyari had used what might have been wind magic for her and Salvador while the other two and I approached from what I hoped was downwind.

Cresting a rise, not a hundred meters in front of me was the fire lizard. Flames gently licked along its spine while it sunned its red scales in a space of flat rock around the cave entrance. By luck or some other force, the lava flow had diverged around the cave formation and left a clearing of flat, burned earth.

I was surprised we had been able to get this close. Markus in particular, however, seemed disappointed with how far away we’d stopped. Nevertheless, Lorelei had signaled for us to stop.

Tension pervaded the scene. As if able to sense the impending conflict, the monster shifted and quickly rose to its feet. No sooner had it done so than two arrows fired into its neck from a crevice above the cave entrance.

Markus ran in. Slow. Suddenly, he seemed to glow with a soft, uncomfortable, light and sped up. The monster spat a gout of flame at the source of the arrows before the heavily armored man collided with the lizard’s front leg.

The beast stumbled. Two more arrows came from a different location. I could see the pair who fired them move; enhanced by magic of a different sort. I silently cursed my dulled senses in this form as I struggled to keep up with the combat.

Lorelei, who had moved ahead of me finished a complex incantation. A beam of intense bright light shot toward the beast and seared my vision in the process. I looked up, eyes stinging, and saw the lizard limping with a great smoking hole in its front shoulder.

Markus disappeared under another gout of fire, but a bright shield seemed to protect him. Holding a steel shield forward he slashed with the sword in his other hand at the injured leg, blade glowing that same burning light. I could barely follow his movements.

A roar sounded. The beast’s leg was severed just below the shoulder. The wound burned and blackened, smoking visibly.

Another duet of arrows, this time striking the lizard’s good side. The arrows seemed to hardly penetrate and, clearly aware of the greater threat, the lizard reared up to slash at Markus.

He moved to block, but the lizard feinted and closed its jaws around his sword arm. Bright light burned the monster’s smoking mouth. Another gout of fire at point blank and Markus’ shield flickered. The lizard bit down hard.

Shards of light shattered out from the broken shield of light. Metal and bone crunched. Markus screamed. Before the beast could wrench the limb, Lorelei fired another bright beam and it struck the outstretched neck.

Jaws let go with a gurgling roar, a hole smoking through the side of the thing’s neck. An arrow surrounded by whipping air slammed into the base of the lizard’s neck and its body spasmed.

“Markus!” Lorelei shouted.

She ran forward toward Markus. The armored man tossed his shield aside and picked up his fallen sword with his good hand. Somehow, the lizard tried to fight on, despite its body clearly no longer responding. Markus heaved up and drove his sword up through the thing’s skull. The light was feeble, but enough for the sword to slide home and, with a final shudder, the massive thing went limp.

I stood in awe. I’d heard of teams taking on the dangers of the wilds, fighting powerful monsters and even elementals and demons, but I’d certainly never seen one in action. The coordination was incredible. Aside from the last, the arrows were never meant to hurt it, rather to shift its attention. Had the lizard been just a bit slower to notice this, it would have died without even really putting up a fight.

I moved closer to the site of the kill. Lorelei had her hands over Markus’ ruined shoulder and arm and that same burning light, that I only now realized must be holy magic, was working to repair the damage. Even from here, she looked strained and drained. Markus was pale as a sheet and only now did I notice the pool of blood below him. The sight of his injury didn’t affect me as much as I thought it should. Granted, I’d seen myself in worse shape. Not to mention the significantly messier remains of my own kills.

Seyari and Salvador returned, but only the latter looked fit and ready. Although Seyari was unhurt, I’d spent enough time drained of mana in the past to know that feeling from her sweat-coated brow and tired silver eyes.

Lorelei was spent after setting Markus’ arm back into place. His armor was ruined and shoulder looked like an enormous bloody bruise. Seyari and Salvador confirmed the cave continued beyond the initial chamber. We’d explore deeper later. For now, we headed back across the island. The lizard corpse, being as large as it was, got to stay where it died.

The walk back was mostly void of conversation. Lorelei’s fatigue and Markus’ injury extinguished much of her enthusiasm. But not all of it.

“And that’s how you slay a demon, Renna.” She managed a thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “For a lesser demon, that was a dangerous one. Intelligent. You got lucky seeing it and surviving when you were alone.”

“I saw it and ran,” I lied.

Lorelei simply nodded in response. Conversation picked up again when we returned to my rock and had dinner. Much of what was said that night I wasn’t privy to. I managed to sleep through the night without my glamour and it was with grim determination that I applied it again in the morning.

***

Two days later I was staring at the cave entrance holding a lantern. The expedition group was around me. We’d be moving two abreast when possible: Salvador would guard the rear while Seyari led in the front with a second lantern. I was to hold the other lantern and stay in the middle with Markus and Lorelei. The large man wore set of lighter chain armor and his grievous injury had mostly healed.

The day of rest prior had been a back-and-forth tide of emotions. Maintaining the glamour was an undercurrent of discomfort beneath the awful feeling of lying to everyone. I wished I could just make friends and get home to find my sister.

Lorelei had slowly regained her bubbly nature and for reasons I could not fathom, Seyari seemed to hate me a little less. Salvador, well, I couldn’t get a read on him. Markus disliked me for being dead weight. I didn’t know whether or not he’d commented on his feelings to the others, but the way he looked at me wasn’t difficult to see. For my sake, I hoped his attitude was limited to the farce of my “participation” in this expedition.

We entered the cave. My nose was thankful the fire lizard liked to burn everything. The place was filled with charred bones and piles of burnt stuff I really didn’t want to learn more about. At the back of the initial chambers where the lizard, demon I guess, had made its lair the cave came to a narrow choke point. We filed through single file and into the passage beyond.

The tunnel was barely wide enough for two people my size to pass and, were I not glamoured, my horns would have scraped the ceiling constantly. Though my vision was impacted by my glamour, I could still see slightly beyond the shifting light of our lanterns. Twists and turns zigzagged downward, the passage a scar boring into the volcano.

Warmer and warmer, the temperature climbed. We passed side chambers which were cleared by the others and doubled back from several dead ends. At each fork, Salvador carved a mark into the rock. The others were feeling the heat as we went, panting and sweating. Even Salvador looked miserable. At the next fork where the tunnel was big enough to sit in a group, Lorelei called for a halt.

“I didn’t think we’d be going this deep!” Lorelei took a big swig of water from a flask. Her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. “It’s an oven down here!”

Markus said something in Cavenish to which Lorelei replied. Salvador also commented before Seyari leaned closer to me and translated.

“Markus said he’s surprised there is a cave this deep in an active volcano. He thinks it should have collapsed.” Seyari looked carefully at my face.

“I, uh, guess that’s a good point. Why are you translating this for me?” I asked warily.

“I want to ask if you know something,” Seyari said, then added, “because I agree that this cave feels wrong.”

“No,” I shook my head, thankful to be able to answer truthfully. “I just knew the cave was here, not what it was like.”

Seyari thought carefully, her face hard. She turned her steel-gray eyes back to me. “Okay, thanks.” I couldn’t get a read on what she was thinking.

The other three, mostly Lorelei and Markus, continued to banter for another minute during which the only thing passing between Seyari and myself was an awkward silence. I took a few gulps of water from the flask I’d been given. Finally, Lorelei gave the call to resume walking and we stood up.

As we did so, Seyari whispered to me, “Your heat tolerance is exceptional for a fire mage with a weak aura.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She knew something was up. Before I could think of a way to respond we were back in a single-file line walking again with Seyari leading and me stuck between Lorelei and Markus. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I wasn’t hot at all. I felt the shirt I’d been given. We’d been going at a brisk pace, but between my fitness and heat resistance (closer to an immunity), I’d hardly built up any kind of noticeable sweat.

Plus, I wasn’t feeling fatigued at all. In fact, I felt great down here. Er, mostly. Claustrophobia from both the glamour and the narrow passage was weighing on me. Outside of that, the heat was like a comfortable blanket and I had energy to spare. After all, I’d managed to go almost the whole time without a glamour last night. The last free night I’d get for maybe a month, I thought with no small amount of dread.

Those thoughts turned to worry. Seyari clearly knew something. She had to be planning something, right? But what? And if she really thought I was a demon, wouldn’t it be easy enough to ask Lorelei to watch me cast a spell and maybe expose myself? What was her game?

I nearly walked into Lorelei’s back when we stopped. I looked up from my feet and gasped. Ahead of us was a massive chamber wide enough that my currently limited vision couldn’t see to the other side; at least two hundred meters. In the center was what could only be described as a cathedral, made entirely of stone. The sharp angles and buttressed roof were entirely out of place with its surroundings.

“See something Renna?” Lorelei looked back and up at me.

“Oh, uh.” I tried to think quickly, and held my lantern up. “I think I see the edge of some kind of building. It’s massive.”

I only partially lied and I hoped it was believable. I didn’t know how far the others could see. Funny that I didn’t really recall how far a human could see beyond a lantern’s light.

“Really? You’ve got sharp vision! I can’t see anything but blackness out there.” Lorelei looked at me with an odd expression.

“Yeah, all that staring for ships paid off I guess,” I replied as nonchalantly as I could.

Seyari interrupted Lorelei’s reply, “We should be quiet in case there’s something out there. Though I guess it’s too late.”

“Let’s go then,” Lorelei conceded.

We made to move and Lorelei stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Leave the lantern here so we can find the exit.”

After my near heart attack subsided, I did as she asked. We moved into the room in a group. The cathedral soon came into view for everyone. As massive as it appeared in the room, it was less spacious in reality. The ostentatious and jagged architecture gave an illusion of immense size, though the cathedral still had to be around twenty meters tall at the peak of the roof, twice as wide, and three times as deep. The building looked off, somehow.

The whole structure seemed to have been made out of a single piece of stone. Magical construction. Such things existed of course, but were exceedingly expensive and still required knowledge of physics to make sure the whole structure didn’t come tumbling down.

Unless, of course, you maintained it with magic, but that was downright ludicrous. Or was it? What if that was why the cave hadn’t collapsed? I wished I could activate my aura sight without potentially outing myself as a demon.

Ahead of us, a set of stone double doors were shut tight. Looking up at the façade around the doors, I noticed another reason the building seemed so unusual. There were no windows. Really, that made a whole lot of sense. The building was in a giant underground cavern with no light. Of course, it wouldn’t need windows. But it also wouldn’t need aesthetics similar to buildings which did.

The structure was also missing iconography, except for a symbol above the door. A symbol which caught my breath in my throat and set my spine rigid. Carved into stone and larger around than a wagon wheel was the same starburst and vortex burned into my chest right above and between my breasts.

I’d tried to keep the symbol hidden from the expedition. No one had seemed to notice it and both the shirt I had and the one I’d gotten had relatively tight collars. Thankfully, it seemed no one looked toward me. They were, however, looking at the relief.

Lorelei seemed to recognize the symbol. “A Lost Era temple! No wonder they wanted us to find this place. And it seems undamaged even!”

“Um, what does that symbol mean?” I pointed toward the relief above the doors.

My curiosity had won out over my caution. Maybe there was a reason why I popped out of this particular volcano. Although that didn’t really explain why I ended up in the erupting volcano anyway. Maybe I was meant to come here instead and I missed the mark?

If this is tied to some deity or another and that’s true, I’d bet they had a good laugh at my expense. I’d want to have a word with them about putting me on this island so damn far away from home anyway. Maybe burn them a little too.

“Oh, that? It’s a symbol of their religion, or god, or something like that. No one’s quite sure,” Lorelei responded.

“Why isn’t it known?” I replied.

“We’ve seen this symbol at other sites; mostly ancient ones. Nothing seemed consistent between them, other than the symbol,” Lorelei was getting excited. “But now, we might finally get to know! See, we have this theory—”

“Lorelei, should you really be telling Renna all this?” Seyari cut off the rant before it could go any further.

Markus looked sternly at both Lorelei and myself. With all the pointing, there’s no way the context of the conversation wasn’t clear.

“Huh? Oh, I guess not. But I didn’t say anything she couldn’t find on her own later anyway,” Lorelei pouted. “Besides, if there’s anything dangerous in there, she ought to know. Her magic might not be useless this time!”

Seyari thought for a moment, “Fine. Not like it’s my call anyway.”

Markus gave a nod of assent after a quick quip from Lorelei. Salvador, who had been inspecting the doorway the whole time, turned back to us and gave what I assume was the okay to go inside because Lorelei practically vibrated with excitement. Said excitement had rubbed off on me as well. I ignored the slight to my magic and found myself smiling despite the situation.

I looked above the door and couldn’t help but place a hand over the matching mark that was hidden under my shirt. According to Lorelei this cathedral was from the Lost Era! I didn’t know much about the era. Truthfully no one claimed to know much, but ruins from that age have been found scattered all across Varra and seem too different to belong to a single culture. I was about to explore one such possibly untouched ancient structure for the first time! Abby would be proud.