The Son Of The Dragons

The Cave

Seven days of hard walking later...

"Man I can't wait for this to be over! All this walking is doing me in!" Zulah moaned as he sat down in the shade of a large boulder. Eren wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat down next to him. "I just hope this was worth it." He took out the map and studied it, then replaced it in its waterproof oilskin in his bag. "Looks like it'll take us about two more hours of walking until we're there, and then it's another day's walk to Struven." Zulah sighed. "Hopefully we can have some time to rest before we continue towards Struven. It has been days since I slept properly." Eren gave him a half-smile. "Let's hope so."

"This place is huge!" Zulah exclaimed, standing in front of their destination. He craned his neck backwards to get a better look at the entire thing. It was a cave, in the side of a cliff, but it was no ordinary cave. Zulah estimated that the dragon they met a few days earlier could easily fly in there, along with five more of his size, and still have room to spare. "Let's go in!" Zulah said excitedly.

His excitement was extinguished almost as soon as they entered the cave, because it was empty. It was completely, utterly, empty. He and Eren walked around the sides of the cave, trying to see if there was maybe a secret entrance or something, but they came up empty handed. "I can't believe all this was for nothing," Eren said as he sat down at the mouth of the cave. Zulah was pacing to and fro in front of him, looking like he was thinking deeply. Eren sighed and lay down, staring up at the roof of the cave. They stayed in that position for quite a while, pondering about what they had to do next. Finally, Eren sat up. "There's no point in waiting any more. I say we go to Struven and get this over with." He stood up and was walking out of the cave, when Zulah grabbed his arm.

"Wait..." Zulah said, a frown of concentration on his face. "Do you remember what the dragon told us?" he asked. Eren shrugged. "Yeah. He said that we should meet him here, in a week's time." Zulah shook his head. "No. He said that we should meet him here, in EXACTLY a week's time, at the same hour that he met us." Eren frowned. "What do you mean, exactly?" Zulah sighed. "I mean, we should wait three more hours, until late afternoon, because that was when the dragon first appeared. If nothing happens by tonight, then we'll know something went wrong, and we'll continue to Struven tomorrow then." Eren sighed. "Fine. We'll wait, but if nothing happens, we start towards Struven first thing in the morning." He sat down.

Zulah smiled at him. "Deal. Now I'll go look for food, you make camp for the night." Zulah grabbed his bow and arrow, and went off hunting. He looked at his quiver of arrows and counted them. Six. He had six arrows left. "I'll have to use them sparingly, otherwise I'll run out of arrows soon. When we get to striven, I'll have to get the blacksmith to make me more."

He returned two and a half hours later, sporting two large rabbits and a pheasant. "Looks like we'll be having rabbit haunch and pheasant breast for dinner." He grinned at Eren, put down his bow, and started cleaning his arrows. He had grown quite proficient in the time they were walking towards Struven, so now he could hit small target from up to forty meters away without much struggle. "So, any sign of anything happening yet?" he asked Eren, who was sitting with his back to him, his head on his knees, staring at the mouth of the cave. Eren shook his head, not saying anything. Zulah put down his arrows and walked over to Eren.

"Something wrong?" He asked. Eren looked up. His face was creased with worry. Zulah recoiled. "Dude, what's wrong?" He sat down next to Eren and waited for him to reply. Eren sighed. "I'm worried at what we'll find in there, if anything happens. I mean, doesn't it strike you as odd that a dragon came, carrying a message, and didn't even attack you at all?" Zulah chuckled. "That's not quite true, is it? I mean, he did disarm me when I tried to shoot him."
"That was out of self-defence. It's not the same thing."
"Yeah well, I still think we should wait."
"I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm saying that it strikes me as odd that a dragon would want to have anything to do with a human. I mean, have you ever heard of anyone that survived a one-on-one or two-on-one encounter with a dragon, apart from those three great Dragonwarriors?"

Zulah frowned. "Come to think of it, I haven't. But I have this strange feeling that we shouldn't be afraid, that something important will happen in there. I think..." What he thought would probably never be known, because at that moment, they both heard a strange rumbling sound, and then suddenly, a tinkling sound like glass shards tumbling over rocks. They looked at each other with eyes wide.

"Let's go!" Zulah exclaimed excitedly, and grabbed his gear. Eren was shortly behind him. They rushed into the cave, and what they saw, made them pause in wonder. Where previously there was only a rock wall, now they could see a long tunnel with a glowing greenish light at the end. The tunnel had a strange, flickering quality to it, as if it wasn't real. Where previously the floor of the cave ended, where the wall met the ceiling and the edges came together, the tunnel was shimmering green. They looked at each other, Zulah sweating in anticipation, Eren sweating with anxiety. Eren took a step backwards, and said, "Ladies first." He grinned, trying to make their situation a bit less frightening. Zulah shook his head and said, "No. We do this together." Eren nodded, and then, together, they stepped through where the wall was.