36 – Then Bring It to the Flame

“You said this was the other me’s plan. That this lance of rot and the ice cap were all part of a convoluted plan.” Ashley stared into Smulknefire’s flaming throat without flinching. “Then, I think, you are part of the plan too.”

Paco snarled in agreement, his talons tensing against the floor.

For the first time, a subtle hesitation flickered across the red dragon’s gaze.

Got you. The thought flashed through her before she could stop it, sharp and dangerous.

Not victory. Not even close. But the first crack was there.

The absolute certainty in his eyes wavered for a fraction of a second, a fracture in the wall of his composure, quickly buried beneath layers of ancient pride.

Yet, the steady fire in his throat did not die.

“You said you’ve been breathing fire into this Eternal Flame since the lance was driven into it,” Ashley said, her gaze narrowing as the internal logic of the trap clicked into place. “Trying to burn the corruption away. Trying to melt it out, or whatever you dragons do. But what if that’s exactly what the lance needs?”

The air in the passage trembled under the pressure of Smulknefire’s restrained breath.

The dragon had not moved, but something in the rigid set of his neck had shifted.

Ashley’s logic had landed somewhere it was not supposed to reach, and the affront of it, being told by this small creature that his own fire had been the instrument of its ruin, was at odds with the part of him that could not dismiss the math of it.

“What if it is feeding on your fire?” Ashley pressed, her voice echoing down into the dark chasm. “Pulling the corruption through itself, driving it deeper into the mountain, then bleeding it out through the ice cap into the whole country?”

The light in the dragon throat drew back.

It did not vanish completely, but the passage darkened all the same, the sudden loss of light settling over the ledge like a shroud. Only the molten cracks in the basalt remained, thin red lines pulsing under their feet.

A low sound moved through Smulknefire’s chest, too deep to be a growl.

“My fire has guarded this mountain since before your kind learned to name the sun,” Smulknefire said. “And you say I have fed the wound.”

His teeth pressed together with a grinding rasp.

“Choose your next lie carefully, little trickster.”

A sane person would have taken that as a warning.

Ashley did. Mostly.

She opened her inventory without looking away from the maw above her.

The azure bottle Vivi had given her appeared in her hand, its faint glow spilling between her fingers as she raised it toward the dragon.

The liquid inside still carried its soft inner light, blue light swirling slowly through the glass.

“I’m not here to trick you,” she said. “If I were her, I’d tell you to keep burning. Your fire is exactly what the lance wants. The stronger it burns, the more the lance drinks. The more it drinks, the deeper the rot goes.”

She pointed upward.

“And once it reaches the ice cap, the magic there breathes that corrupted heat back into the air, scattering the poison across the land. Your mountain keeps bleeding, your wife keeps dying, and everything goes exactly as she planned.”

For the first time, Smulknefire did not answer.

His amber gaze moved slowly, not with uncertainty, but with the cold precision of something vast and patient testing every word she had spoken, searching for the flaw that would let him dismiss it.

Ashley stepped past the edge of the ledge. Her wings snapped open at once, catching the rising current and holding her suspended between the dragon and the tunnel mouth.

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“I don’t know exactly what this does,” Ashley admitted, deciding that honesty had a better chance than another clever lie. “But the woman who made it knew the sickness was coming from this mountain before I did. She knew the other me, and she knew enough of her work to make this.”

The liquid swirled and glowed inside the glass.

Ashley glanced down at Paco.

“The woman who made this used your son’s fire to brew it. Your son’s fire is already in it.”

The air beneath her wings pulsed with each slow breath Smulknefire drew, rising and falling like heat over a furnace.

“I don’t know if it will dissolve it,” Ashley said. “But if that thing is feeding on your fire, then this might interrupt the cycle. Stop the feeding, slow the spread, buy us a chance to actually fix it.”

Paco released a low, firm syllable beside her.

Ashley did not understand the sound, but Smulknefire did.

The dragon’s gaze moved from the bottle to his son, then back to the swirling liquid. For a moment, the threat in him did not vanish, but it bent around something older and harder to ignore.

Blood.

“And if you lie,” the dragon said, “I will know. I will taste it in the first breath of flame. And before your trick has time to unfold, I will burn the lance, the ice, and every life clinging between the mountain and the sky.”