34 – Pirak’sosh

From the depths below, a colossal rift split open.

A pinprick of orange light grew from the dark, small and distant, turning slowly inside the throat of the abyss. Then the fire bloomed. A spiraling globe of fire exploded upward, illuminating the cavernous jaws around it.

Teeth as big as siege towers flashed into view, curved and ancient, closing around the swirling conflagration without touching it.

“Shit,” Ashley said, her fingers digging into the frame of the tunnel mouth. “That’s going to flood the whole shaft.”

Simon’s head snapped around, the blood draining instantly from his face. “What?”

Ashley hooked an arm around his waist, wrenching him tight against her flank.

“No. No, I said I don’t want to fly any—” The rest of his protest died in his open mouth as the heat below surged upward.

Ashley’s wings snapped wide, catching the fierce thermal currents as she lunged off the collapsing precipice.

The broken ledge vanished beneath them. A wave of ascending pressure roared up the shaft, chasing their ascent as she cut across the open expanse toward the opposite escape tunnel.

Simon clung to her shoulder with a frantic grip, his other hand white-knuckled around his blade, his earlier objections dying somewhere in a strangled sound that might have been a prayer.

Paco was already over the edge when Ashley reached the lip of the platform.

The small dragon had thrown himself into the open shaft, wings beating in frantic, uneven strokes as his body dipped into a downward arc. Gomp still had both arms locked around his middle, dangling beneath him with his feet kicking uselessly in the air as Paco dragged them both toward the fire rising from below.

Ashley hit them from the flank at full tilt. Her left arm caught Paco around the neck, just below his scaly jaw, while her shoulder slammed into Gomp’s chest, sending the whole tangled group, Simon included, crashing backward into the safety of the adjoining tunnel.

Paco shrieked, twisting hard in her grip.

“Stay still!” Ashley snapped, tightening her hold just enough to keep him from breaking free, careful not to crush his throat. “Paco, calm down!”

The small dragon thrashed harder, claws scraping against the stone, his eyes still fixed on the shaft as if he had not heard a word.

“Paco!”

Then the fire arrived.

A column of blinding white-orange flame erupted straight up the shaft, incinerating the space they had occupied a heartbeat earlier. As it reached the mouth of their tunnel, it slammed into the low ceiling and spread forward, rolling down the passage toward them like a liquid tide.

Ashley threw her hand forward.

“[Light Shield].”

A curved barrier sprang into place across the opening just as the flames crashed against it. The impact drove her heels back across the bare bedrock, but the shield held, sealing the tunnel mouth while fire clawed and spilled over its surface.

The rock around the passage began to soften. Edges sagged. Thin orange veins spread through the stone as the heat chewed into it, turning the tunnel mouth molten around the shield.

White light trembled under the pressure, bending inward for one terrifying heartbeat before pushing back.

Behind her, Simon grunted as Gomp’s weight landed squarely on top of him.

“Air,” Simon rasped. “You’re heavy for someone so small.”

“Hey. Rude.” Gomp wheezed. “I watch my weight, you know.”

“Clearly not closely enough.”

Paco kept struggling against Ashley’s hold, his throat rattling as he strained toward the shield.

His eyes stayed fixed through the transparent barrier, locked on the inferno beyond it and whatever waited below.

Ashley loosened her grip for half a second, and Paco tore free.

He slammed straight into the [Light Shield] with a sharp crack of scales against magic, rebounded, then lunged again before Ashley could grab him.

“That lizard has been acting wild since we got here,” Gomp protested, pushing himself up from Simon’s chest with a disgruntled huff.

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The small dragon ignored the gnome entirely.

Paco’s claws raked against the translucent face of the shield, white sparks spitting beneath his talons as he assaulted the barrier with blind desperation. He snapped his jaws at the light, rammed the barrier with his shoulder, and struck repeatedly, attempting to shatter his way through to the inferno beyond.

He threw his weight against it a final time, the impact vibrating through the corridor as a hairline fracture webbed across the glowing surface right where his shoulder struck.

“The shield…” Simon moved at once, grabbing Paco by the base of the tail before the dragon could throw himself into it again. “Hey. Stop that. She put the shiny wall there for a reason.”

Paco dug his claws into the stone and pulled against him.

Ashley focused entirely on the pup. His unblinking glare lacked any trace of panic; his pupils remained wide, sharp, and utterly focused. He knew precisely what he was doing.