A Scope of Treasure

Chapter 3

Aurelius slowed his horse, looking up at the mountains suspiciously. A cauldron of bats had just taken flight - in the afternoon. Granted, the sun was low in the sky and the shadows were long, but it wasn't anywhere near sunset. What had disturbed the creatures so much that they'd taken flight so early?

Curious, he directed his horse towards the distant mountain trail.

They had gone a fair distance up when he heard a large thump. Something that shifted the ground, causing vibrations. Carina nickered, and Aurelius attempted to soothe her as they went forward.

An ...avalanche? No, the noises are too periodic to be an avalanche. And the ground would shake for longer.

He looked up and around, but even with his glasses on, he couldn't see anything past the dense clusters of trees.

But as they traveled further upwards, the thumps got louder. And louder. Carina got more and more upset each time, stamping her feet and shaking her head from side to side.

"Carina, onward!" But she eventually refused to go any further, no matter how hard he tugged at the reins.

Aurelius groaned, then swung himself off his horse. "Fine. You stay here-" he tied her to a tree- "while I go and investigate that noise."

Putting a hand on the hilt of his sword, he continued up the mountain, boots crunching on the stray twigs below him.

Could be... a mountain lion, he thought. Or a bear, or-

Another thump. This one shook the ground so much he had to grab a tree in order to steady himself.

Fear suddenly roiled up his spine, and he drew his sword. Whatever had made that noise was entirely too big to be any regular animal.

He crept on, following the source of the sounds. You can do this, he told himself over and over again, gripping his sword tightly. Now he could hear some sort of scratching, and some odd, windy noise. Maybe it's not an animal. Maybe it's a human, or a team of humans, catapulting rocks or- or something against the mountainside-

Something long and black swept over the trees in an arc, and Aurelius's stomach turned. Was it a snake? Images of basilisks in all the stories he'd heard and books he'd read filled his mind, and his mouth felt dry.

Come on, he urged himself. Just go and look- even if you don't engage, you have to know. It's your kingdom - you have to see!

He stumbled forward several more steps, peered past the trees, and his heart stopped.

An enormous, winged dragon was rooting around in the dirt. Its frame was powerful, nearly three stories tall and close to twice as wide, if one counted the tails. Its horns and claws were a gleaming black. Scales the color of soot lined its entire body, save the insides of its veined wings - and there seemed to be an orange, almost golden glow coming from beneath them, like they were plates of magma rock floating over lava.

As Aurelius watched, the dragon flipped out a chunk of glittering white rock the size of a watermelon, examined it, then tossed it aside. The next one it dug out, twice as shiny as the first, was swept inside a nearby cave, using its tail. The impact of the rock landing nearly knocked Aurelius off his feet.

It was a living, breathing dragon. Digging in the dirt and tossing hunks of shiny rock into a cave.

How on earth had he never noticed a dragon in his kingdom?

A better question - what was he supposed to do now? He had no army with him, no better weapons than his sword - not even Carina was by his side. I could come back, stage an ambush... but the dragon might be gone by then. Or worse yet, it could go after his horse. His subjects. The castle. His sister.