Chapter 16: The Hidden Kingdom
by inkadmin
The bramble scratched against their leather armour as the bandits crouched in the undergrowth, staring at the obsidian gate that marked the entrance to the dragon’s lair. Goblin patrols moved along the carved stone walls and ramparts outside of it, their crude spears glinting in the afternoon light. The entrance hummed with quiet menace, traps and wards woven into its very construction that were visible even to untrained eyes like theirs. Many of them, the defenders didn’t even bother to hide. Perhaps their purpose was as much to act as a visual deterrent to outsiders as anything else.
“This is bad. I really don’t like this,” one of the bandits whispered, his voice tight with fear. “Let’s just go. We’ll just run away.”
From the small stone he was standing on, the fairy turned to him, wings flaring with agitation. “Where the hell are we gonna run to, idiot? F.P. can get us anywhere. The fairy kingdom has more ways into it than your mother.”
“Settle down, both of you,” the third man hissed, his eyes never leaving the gate. “Let’s just get in, grab what we need, and get out. We’ll get her what she wants so she’ll get off our backs. Maybe we don’t need to go inside at all? Maybe it just lost a scale outside somewhere? That can happen, right?”
The others look around for a moment, foolishly hopeful that their luck would have panned out this way. But it didn’t. Solemnly, they all looked back toward the gate.
The fairy bandit pressed his face into his hands. “Fuck. I don’t want to think about what she’ll do if we mess this up.”
A skeletal hand shot from the soil and grabbed his ankle, daintily holding it with two pinching fingers.
The fairy shrieked, stumbling backward. More hands erupted from the soil around them, dozens of bony fingers clawing through dirt and dead leaves. The bandits scrambled to escape, panic overriding training. The elf made it three steps before skeletal grips locked around both ankles, sending him sprawling. The others were grasped more firmly than the fairy.
The elf tried to scramble and rise, turned to run, and collided directly into something solid. The elf fell backward onto the ground with a grunt of pain. Skeletal hands immediately seized him, dragging him down whilst he thrashed and screamed.
The dragon girl stood before him, completely unfazed by the impact. Barjuchne stared down at the captured bandits, her eyes glowing with vicious red light. Her lips pulled back from her fangs in a snarl that promised violence.
“If you think that’s bad. Wait until you find out what I’m going to do with you,” she growled. “Hello guys. It’s nice to see you again,” said the creature, clearly recognising them. She grinned, leaning down over them with her hands on her waist as she flashed a sharp, smug grin their way. “What’s the matter? Nothing to laugh about now this time?”
The captured fairy sat bound in crude rope, surrounded by goblins in the depths of the dungeon. Firelight cast dancing shadows across the walls. Rou-ya sat nearby, her expression thoughtful. Beside her, an older goblin woman drew slowly from a long, crude pipe, the smoke curling upward in lazy spirals. Rou-ya’s mother and the tribal elder.
“Yes, the little ones,” the elder said, answering Barjuchne’s question about fairies. Her voice carried the weight of years, each word measured and deliberate. “Many, many long years ago, when I was only so young that I still played games in the forests with my litter, my mother would tell me stories from her own childhood.”
She paused, taking another draw from her pipe. The other older goblins shifted uncomfortably, whilst the younger ones watched with curiosity unmarked by fear.
“She would tell us of the little ones,” the elder continued, studying the bound fairy with eyes that had seen decades pass. “They lived with us, she said, but not where we were.”
The dragon girl didn’t get it. Barjuchne’s tail lashed with impatience. “He won’t talk. What can you tell me? Where in the forest is this place?”
The old goblin woman smoked for a long moment, her gaze never leaving the captured fairy. Around her, the elder goblins recoiled slightly, some ancient instinct warning them away from the helpless prisoner that they were still nonetheless visibly afraid of. The younger generation seemed unimpressed, ignorant of whatever their elders remembered.
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“My mother told me never to listen to them, never to follow them,” the goblin elder said quietly. “She told me that they would try to trick us, to deceive us in order to bring us to where they lived.”
“The deep forest,” an older male goblin added from the edge of the gathering. The young goblins looked bored, but the elders murmured amongst themselves with voices that carried old warnings.
Barjuchne turned her glowing eyes towards him. “Where? I’ve seen every inch of my forest. I’ve never seen anything else there.”
The old woman exhaled smoke that hung in the still air. “The little ones left the deep forest. Unlike us, they went to live with humans and elves. They gave up their ancestral home.” Her tone carried judgement as she looked at the captured fairy. “But the doors are still there. Or should I say the pits?”
Rou-ya gasped, her golden eyes widening with sudden understanding.
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