Patches was out of sight by the time Jynn skidded around the corner. The archmage felt a surge of panic as he looked around the busy street for some sign of the dog, but a joyous bark from his left put him on the right course quickly. He sprinted down two more streets in pursuit of the happy yapping—practically a marathon by the standards of the typical sedentary wizard—and so his lungs burned and his eyes watered by the time he found Patches seated by a park bench, furiously nuzzling a familiar woman in orange robes. Jynn backpedaled to a halt far too late to avoid her.
“Oh. Hello,” said Laruna, still scratching the dog’s ears. She gave the archmage a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I thought you must be around if Patches was here.”
“Ah. Yes,” said Jynn. He glanced around the street, noticed her smile was faltering, and only then realized that he’d failed to return it. He yanked his lips into a manic grin and barked, “Hello!”
“It’s good to see you,” she said, some measure of cheer returning to her face.
Jynn searched for the right words. Feelings were rising unbidden from the back corners of his mind, and it took a significant degree of mental exertion to keep them boxed up and where they belonged. After too long a pause he settled on an emphatic, “Yes!”
“What brings you out this way?”
“Uh…” Jynn wasn’t sure what the best thing to say was, but he was certain the worst was anything close to “using ancient magics to research the forbidden demonic sorceries that my father—a liche, if you’ll recall—spent his life and unlife developing for the purpose of raising the dead.” What would she think of him if she knew he was dabbling in Detarr Ur’Mayan’s studies, or trying to leverage the magic of the Sten? He looked around the street again for some excuse before his eyes settled on Patches, still trying to nuzzle the solamancer’s knees into submission. “Just… walking the dog!” he said, and thrust the leash forward like a talisman.
Her face fell, and he wasn’t sure why she was disappointed. “I see,” she said. “Well, if you’re busy—”
“Oh, very!” blurted Jynn, reattaching Patches’ leash.
“Ah. Well, perhaps we could talk another time.” Laruna stood.
“Yes! Another time! I would like that!” Jynn’s inner self shrieked for him to reduce his use of exclamation marks, but he was too preoccupied with trying to control the maelstrom of unwelcome emotions raging through his mind.
“Good,” said the solamancer unhappily. With a nod and a final scratch of Patches’ ear, she turned and walked away.
Jynn watched the mage go, trying to organize his thoughts. It was some time before he shelved enough of his errant emotions to turn back. His stomach still roiled as he walked back to check on his sigils by the guild office, but he gritted his teeth and renewed his focus. The runes needed to be precise, the wizard reminded himself, if the universe was to show him what he needed.
“If there’s any one thing you need to know, it’s this: keep hold of the Eye of the Dragon,” barked the Tandosian instructor. “That gem’s all that’s keeping Brother Laylo alive right now. Or any of us, really.”
Most of the assembled Tandosians took a step away from the dragon-kin. Gorm remained in place, studying the beast and its Elven rider with curiosity. He often regarded claims about charms or crystals and magical protection with a healthy dose of skepticism, but he couldn’t think of any other reason for Brother Laylo to be comfortably reclining on the back of a Storm Drake while retaining all of his limbs.
“You lot may have heard that the gem lets you speak to dragon-kin or some such nonsense,” the instructor continued. “And maybe for your dragons of legend, it could work like that. But most drakes are dumber than a pile of rocks, and even if they could understand you, why do you think they’d care? When was the last time you worried what a chicken or pig was trying to tell you? Nobody listens to their breakfast.”
Regardless of its intelligence, the Storm Drake had developed an interest in the shouting woman by its side. Its reptilian eyes locked on her, and its brilliant blue dorsal crest rose up in unmistakable hostility.
The instructor didn’t pay the drake any mind. “What the gem does is allow Brother Laylo to exert his will on the beast. To feel as it feels, and to send his own thoughts back to it.”
A slight scowl appeared on Brother Laylo’s face, and the drake’s aggression paused. The creature looked confused for a moment, then conflicted, and finally its dorsal fin sank back down as it turned away sullenly.
“As long as the gem stays with Brother Laylo, we remain safe.” The instructor’s lips curled up in a wry smile. “Until, that is, we talk about the flame olive oil. Mounting your fuel on a Storm Drake is finicky business, which is why we usually use the Wind Drakes or Mountain Wyverns. But Stormies are faster and can go farther, so sometimes we have to use this fella here. The key to remember is that the lightning comes from their mouth or the underside of the wings, so the canister must be positioned—”
Gorm was genuinely curious as to how the Tandosians mounted volatile explosives onto the back of a reptilian thunderstorm without vaporizing half of their secret fortress, but at that moment a commotion broke out across the great cavern. Bruised and disoriented Tandosians were staggering through the tunnel Gorm had entered by, several of them nude and all shouting to raise an alarm.
“Time’s run out,” he muttered to himself, looking around. The other Tandosians were momentarily distracted by the ruckus, but soon enough they’d focus on finding the interlopers.
Unless, of course, there was a bigger distraction.
He hefted his axe and hurled it expertly. The Tandosian next to him saw the attack, and turned to accuse the Dwarf. “You—!” the surprised student gasped.
Gorm grinned and pointed as Brother’s Laylo’s headgear clattered on the floor alongside the Dwarf’s axe. Brother Laylo himself was clutching a small gash across his forehead, apparently unaware that the cut was at the spot formerly occupied by the enchanted gemstone. By the time the dazed Tandosian realized what he had lost, he was staring into the cobalt eyes of a Storm Drake, its dorsal crest extended to full height and crackling with energy.
Gorm punched the accusing acolyte in the gut and dove into the crowd, moments before Brother Laylo disappeared in a burst of brilliant blue electricity. Searing light cast scattering Tandosians in stark shadow. Silhouetted students fled for the doorway. Carters began frantically rolling the wagons of explosive barrels away from the chaos.
Amid the mayhem, Gorm caught the eye of the Tandosian instructor as she scrambled toward his fallen axe. Something like recognition lit up in her eyes, and she began to shout something.
“Mistake,” muttered Gorm under his breath.
The other Tandosians were too distracted to pay attention, but the drake was working to isolate a target in the milling chaos around him. It found one in the screaming instructor. Before the Tandosian could finish her sentence, the drake grabbed her in its powerful jaws and hefted the woman into the air with a whip of its tree-trunk neck.
Gorm took the opportunity to scoop up his axe and another prize. “Time to go!” he laughed, already sprinting for the exit.
“Just a moment longer,” murmured Kaitha. Her fingers danced across a long line of leather folios in the drawer of an oak filing cabinet. There were several such cabinets in the small office set above the great cavern, but she gravitated to the one with a heavy lock on it. The prone supervisor on the floor had unwillingly provided her with a key, and now the secrets of the Tandosians paraded beneath the ranger’s gaze.
Blue lightning crackled outside the window again, and the sounds of pandemonium escalated as one might expect. A beastly roar rose above the din. Gaist waved urgently toward the door.
“I know! I just need a little more time.” Kaitha pressed her lips into a thin line as she flipped through the pages. Most looked like mundane invoices and memorandums; documents that might have yielded clues with the sort of painstaking study that was made impossible by rampaging dragon-kin. None seemed relevant to her search, until—
A folio near the back of the drawer caught her eye. The first document had King Johan’s signature beneath a thick wax seal, and seemed to lay out the charter for a secret project. Beyond it were missives, maps of Andarun and Mount Wynspar, a receipt for a captive wyvern, and—critically—several invoices to an Imports, Exports & Stuff of Andarun for hundreds of barrels of flame olive oil.
“Success,” she breathed, just as the door burst open. A burly Human stood in the doorway, wearing a red and white tabard and a look of genuine shock upon seeing an Elf rifling through the paperwork while monsters ate his colleagues. His eyes fell upon the unconscious supervisor in the office, and then the rest of him fell backward over the railing, propelled by Gaist’s boot to the chest. The guard’s final shriek cut through the cacophony below, signaling that it was an appropriate time to be elsewhere.
With a nod of assent to the doppelganger, Kaitha shoved the entire folio labeled “Project Reawakening” into her satchel. Then she readied her bow, nocked an enchanted arrow from her Poor Man’s Quiver, and ran out onto the catwalks that hung above the caverns.
The arrow turned out to be unnecessary. Few workers were still up in the suspended walkways, and those that were remained entirely focused on the chaos below. Two more drakes had been loosed, and now the three dragon-kin stormed across the stone floor, driving gaggles of screaming Tandosian workers before them. Clerics, paladins, and knights of Tandos were gathering at the edge of the cavern, trying to formulate a plan while avoiding being fried by bolts of enchanted lightning. Only one figure within the pandemonium seemed unconcerned by the tumult, and he had already broken away from much of the action as he sprinted toward the wide mouth of the cavern.
Kaitha grinned and pointed. Gaist nodded in affirmation, and together the ranger and weaponsmaster sprinted along the walkway above Gorm. Kaitha vaulted over the railing of the catwalk onto a high outcropping of rocks, then skidded down the rough slope to a steep drop. Another leap took her onto a pile of crates, and then it was a few simple hops to the ground. A moment later, Gaist dropped to the floor beside her.
