The heavy slam of the iron-banded door echoed in the suffocating darkness, plunging them back into near-absolute blackness. Flareon stumbled forward, catching himself against the cold stone wall, his breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps. The spear butt had left a deep, throbbing ache between his shoulder blades. He leaned heavily against the wall, the warlord's final words echoing sickeningly in his mind, chilling him more profoundly than the cavern's frigid air.
Seren landed more lightly, regaining her balance quickly despite the rough handling. Her first instinct was to move towards the corner where Tora huddled, whispering a few quick, reassuring words in Morphai. The child didn't respond, only drew herself into an even tighter ball. Satisfied Tora wasn't immediately harmed, Seren turned back, her silhouette barely visible against the memory of the cavern light.
"Are you alright?"
Her voice was low, steady despite the tremor Flareon could sense beneath it. The side of her face where the guard had struck her was likely already bruising.
Flareon didn't answer immediately. He pressed his forehead against the damp, frigid stone, trying to quell the storm of fury and helplessness raging within him. To be threatened like some lab specimen, to have his birthright, the very essence of his being, spoken of as something to be dissected... The indignity was a physical pain. He finally pushed himself upright, his fists clenched uselessly at his sides.
"Alright?"
He echoed bitterly, his voice raspy.
"I'm trapped in a frozen shithole, threatened by a scaled savage who probably uses his ancestors' bones for toothpicks, and my magic feels like wet sand. Define 'alright'."
He sucked in a breath, forcing a measure of control.
"What did you see, scholar? Your eyes were working overtime out there."
Seren nodded, moving closer, her voice barely above a whisper.
"The main cavern is large, crudely fortified. Natural rock formations supplemented with rough timber supports. At least three branching tunnels lead off from the area we saw, possibly more hidden. Guard patrols seem... inconsistent. Maybe five or six active guards visible in the main chamber, plus the two who escorted us and the warlord himself. More likely stationed deeper in or resting."
She paused, gathering her thoughts, her Farseer training asserting itself over the fear.
"Weapon racks near the western wall. Sleeping pallets scattered. The lighting... it's electric, surprisingly, but primitive. Flickering, suggesting an unreliable generator, possibly geothermal vents powering it, given the location. That might be exploitable under the right circumstances."
Flareon listened, picturing the layout, grudgingly impressed by her rapid assessment under duress. A sliver of hope, thin as ice, began to form. Maybe there was a way.
"And our cell?"
He prompted, glancing up towards the faint grey patch of the ventilation hole.
"Did you get a sense of where we are relative to... outside?"
Seren hesitated. The brief moment of near-optimism in her voice vanished, replaced by quiet gravity.
"Yes. I did."
She shifted her weight, the sound small in the darkness.
"Based on the route they took us, the echoes, the ambient sounds filtering through the stone... and what I glimpsed just before they threw us back in..."
She took a deep breath.
"Our cell backs onto a secondary cavern. It's difficult to be precise. But the critical point... the area directly outside that ventilation hole..."
Her voice dropped further, extinguishing the tiny spark of hope Flareon had felt.
"...it's a Pyremaw pen. I saw at least two of the beasts down there... Heard them. Smelled them."
Silence fell, thick and heavy. A Pyremaw pen. Directly outside their only potential escape route besides the heavily guarded door. The massive, fire-breathing beasts of war that the Dravokh rode. The sheer, suicidal impossibility of navigating that slammed down on Flareon with the force of a physical blow. All of Seren's meticulous observations, the guard patterns, the flickering lights, became instantly irrelevant in the face of that single, insurmountable obstacle.
He let out a harsh, humorless breath that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Of course."
He muttered, leaning his head back against the wall again.
"Of course, it is. Why expect anything less?"
The simmering rage cooled slightly, replaced by a grim, weary despair. They were well and truly caged.
He held up his hand, concentrating fiercely, pushing past the exhaustion and the cold despair. The tiny flame flickered back to life, casting its weak, struggling light onto their faces. It illuminated the stark reality in Seren's eyes, not defeat, perhaps, but a clear understanding of the immense difficulty ahead, and the tear tracks glistening on Tora's small, dirt-streaked face as she finally peeked out from her knees, drawn by the light.
"Alright, scholar."
Flareon said, his voice low and gravelly, the earlier sarcasm gone, replaced by something harder, colder.
"No easy way out. So we endure. We watch. We wait. And if that scaled bastard thinks he's going to study my fire..."
The flame in his hand pulsed slightly brighter, steadier, fueled now by a grim, bone-deep resolve.
"...he's going to learn exactly how hot it can burn."
The weak flame pulsed in Flareon's hand, a fragile defiance against the overwhelming darkness and cold. Grim resolve hardened his features, pushing back the edge of despair. Beside him, Seren stood silently for a moment, her Farseer mind processing the implications of the Pyremaw pen. Then, she turned towards the small, huddled figure in the corner.
She knelt carefully beside Tora, the meager light casting soft shadows on her face. She spoke softly, her voice gentle, reverting to the fluid syllables of the Morphai tongue.
Tora flinched slightly at being addressed but didn't pull away completely. She nodded almost imperceptibly against her knees.
Seren continued, keeping her voice calm and low.
She paused, letting the simple analogy sink in.
She gestured towards the faint grey patch of the ventilation hole high on the wall.
She met Tora's wide, tear-filled eyes.
Tora nodded again, a tiny movement.
Seren kept her tone encouraging, unthreatening.
Tora hesitated, her small form trembling. She glanced nervously from Seren's earnest face to Flareon, who watched silently, his expression unreadable in the flickering light, then back to the dark stone floor. The fear was still strong, but Seren's gentle persistence, the simple request for help, seemed to penetrate the fog of terror.
Slowly, tentatively, Tora pushed herself away from the wall. There was a faint, almost subsonic hum, and a subtle shifting distortion around her small form. It wasn't instantaneous; it looked like effort, like muscles straining unseen. Her clothes seemed to stretch and adjust with her. She grew, not explosively, but steadily, unfolding from her huddled position. Her height increased, inch by careful inch, until she stood significantly taller, perhaps reaching Seren's shoulder height, slender but stable. Her breathing was slightly labored from the effort, and her face was pale, but she held the form, looking up at Seren with wide, expectant eyes.
Tora whispered, her voice thin.
Seren praised her quickly, turning to the wall beneath the vent.
Using Tora's surprisingly solid shoulder as a step, Seren carefully hoisted herself up. The rock was cold and slightly damp beneath her hands. She reached the vent, her head now level with the small opening. The air coming through was colder, carrying a sharp, musky stench that confirmed her fears even before she looked.
She pressed her eye to the hole, peering into the dimness beyond. The vent opened onto a ledge overlooking a much larger cavern below, dimly lit by widely spaced, sputtering electric lamps. The floor was covered in dirty straw and something that looked disturbingly like old bones. And dominating the space were two massive, slumbering forms.
Their scales were the colour of cooling lava, vast chests rising and falling with slow, powerful breaths that stirred the straw around them. Even asleep, they radiated immense heat and menace. One shifted slightly, letting out a low, guttural rumble that vibrated through the stone. Pyremaws. Nesting, penned like monstrous cattle, directly below their only potential escape route.
Seren pulled back from the hole, her face grim. She carefully climbed down, steadying herself on Tora's shoulder again before dropping lightly to the floor.
Seren murmured in Morphai. Tora visibly relaxed, looking utterly exhausted by the effort. She huddled back against the wall, watching them.
Seren turned to Flareon, the weak flame reflecting the grim certainty in her eyes.
"You were right to be pessimistic."
She stated quietly, her voice devoid of its earlier, cautious optimism.
"It's exactly what I thought. A Pyremaw nesting pen. Two adults, maybe more further in. Directly below the vent. There's no way through there without waking them, and even if we did..."
She didn't need to finish the sentence. The image of facing even one awakened Pyremaw unarmed, in a confined space, was unthinkable.
Flareon nodded slowly, the tiny flame casting dancing shadows that seemed to deepen the lines of exhaustion and grim determination on his face. The confirmation didn't bring despair, only cemented the harsh reality. Their cage was secure. For now.
The tiny flame in Flareon's hand finally guttered and died, plunging the cell back into absolute, suffocating blackness. The oppressive cold seemed to intensify instantly, gnawing at their exposed skin, making teeth chatter uncontrollably. Sleep was impossible. Flareon leaned against the wall, conserving what little energy he had left, listening to Seren's steady breathing and Tora's occasional, soft whimper. The silence was broken only by those small sounds and the distant, monstrous rumbles of the Pyremaws shifting in their pen beyond the wall.
Hours crawled by in miserable darkness. Flareon drifted in a state between wakefulness and exhaustion, his mind replaying Zophos's threats, the impossible image of the violet-eyed creature, the burning Landliner.
Then, faintly at first, it returned. That bizarre, acrid stench, sharp and chemical, filtering down through the ventilation hole. Flareon tensed, recognizing it instantly. Seren gasped softly beside him. Even Tora stirred, letting out a low moan of fear.
Outside the heavy cell door, the sounds of the cavern changed abruptly. The lazy shuffle of a guard's boots stopped. A low, guttural exclamation, sharp with alarm, echoed down the corridor, followed by another. Harsher commands were barked, laced not with authority this time, but with undeniable panic. Heavy footfalls pounded on the stone floor, moving away from their section of the prison, fading rapidly into the distance. Within moments, the immediate area outside their cell fell utterly silent, save for the distant, panicked shouts echoing from deeper within the Dravokh complex.
The creature. It, or another like it, was nearby. And the Dravokh guards, superstitious and terrified, had abandoned their posts to investigate or flee.
Seren was already moving in the darkness, her hand finding Flareon's arm.
"Flareon! Now! This is our chance!"
Her whisper was urgent, sharp with adrenaline.
"The guards are gone!"
She turned towards the corner.
There was a rustle, a faint humming sound, and the sense of Tora growing beside them in the dark. Flareon could hear her shaky breathing, the sheer effort it took.
"The vent."
Seren whispered urgently to Flareon.
"Get ready. I need fire. Something you can move. Can you manage?"
Flareon gritted his teeth, pushing past the bone-deep exhaustion. He focused, drawing on the embers of hatred and the desperate need to escape. Sweat broke out on his cold skin. A spark flickered, died, then caught. A small, unsteady ball of flame, barely larger than his fist, wobbled into existence in his palm, casting flickering, desperate light. It felt like lifting solid rock.
"Barely."
He grunted, his voice strained.
"I don't need miracles, I need precision."
Seren shot back, already hoisting herself onto Tora's shoulder. Flareon could hear her scrambling upwards in the dark.
"Alright... I'm at the hole."
Her voice came from above.
Flareon held the fireball aloft, feeling the drain intensify.
"Direct me."
"Okay... out... gently... Good!"
Seren whispered urgently, her eye pressed to the stone.
"Now... move it slightly left... yes, that way. Forward... slowly... Stop!"
Flareon held the flame steady, his arm trembling, visualizing its position based solely on her commands.
"Down... Bring it down... Lower... Keep going... Stop! Now, right... fractionally right... Hold it..."
BOOM-WHUMP-BOOM-CRACK-BOOM!
A titanic wave of force slammed into the cell. Flareon hit the back wall hard. Air punched from his lungs. Ears screamed. Searing heat blasted through the stone. The stench hit like a physical blow, burnt meat gore chemical horror.
The wall beside them vanished. Replaced by a gaping hole. Dust choked the air. Beyond raged an inferno. Twisted metal glowed red hot. Mangled Pyremaw carcasses steamed amidst climbing flames. Chunks of flesh splattered the remaining wall.
Seren scrambled through the breach. Hauled Tora after her. She screamed back at Flareon voice raw over the roaring fire.
"GO! MOVE! NOW!"
Seren's voice, raw and desperate, cut through the roaring flames and the ringing in Flareon's ears.