Dragons Rising ✔️

Ch 46: Metal Dragon

I stayed perfectly still, recognizing the smooth, round feeling of a shockstick poking into my back. "I was just looking. I'm new here. I didn't know it wasn't allowed."

It was a pitiful excuse, seeing as there was a sign hanging some ten feet from me, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"There's a sign." The voice seemed to be coming from a girl or maybe a very young boy.

"I can't read."

The shock stick was lowered. "Oh. I thought you were one of the robbers Papa told me about."

I slowly turned around to see a little talme girl holding an iron shockstick that seemed too large for her tiny hands.

"Why would I want to rob anything in here." I covered my mouth with a hand since I didn't have enough energy to hide my fangs with magic.

The little girl shrugged. "I don't know. We just shouldn't be in here." She headed out of the stall.

"Wait, what are you doing here? Do you work in the mines?"

She paused right before the stall door. "No, silly. I'm only ten. I just help my Papa in the garden."

"Then why are you in the stables?"

"Um... I wanted to see the new dragon."

Something told me she wasn't supposed to be here anymore than I was.

"Let me guess, your Papa didn't say you could go look at the new dragon, so you were sneaking around in the off-limits section so he wouldn't see you."

"I didn't- You're not going to tell anyone, are you?"

"I won't tell if you won't. We should probably get out of here before someone comes looking for you, though."

She smiled and turned to peek out the stall door. Apparently finding the way empty, she darted out. I quickly followed, and she led me to the end of the row of stalls. There was a walkway going perpendicular to the rows, and the girl looked down it.

"I thought we were going to leave?"

She peeked around the corner of the stall at the end of the row, then looked back at me. "I want to see the big metal dragon. There's still time." She ran across the walkway to the end of the next row of stalls.

I glanced into the walkway, saw that it was empty, and ran over to join her.

"Metal dragon? You mean, it's not a real dragon?"

She shrugged. "They said it was bronze. That's a metal, right?"

My heartbeat quickened. It couldn't be the katalni. He would never let himself be captured so easily. Unless... He really had let himself be captured for some reason.

"You said this dragon was big?" Gah, I really hoped it wasn't the katalni.

"They say it's a class 10, but Papa says that's not possible. He's a gardener, but he's really smart about dragons. He's coming down to look soon, so I have to go fast." She ran across the second walkway.

I followed closely after her, not bothering to check for workers. There seem to be hardly any in this place, though I heard faint conversation a ways away.

The little girl looked around the last stall in the third row and suddenly jerked back.

"They're way down there—the blue shirts and my Papa."

I checked the walkway myself and spotted seven talme men in blue shirts, along with one in gardener's overalls. They were all clustered around one stall near the front of the stable, talking avidly about its contents.