Chapter 22 – Escaping the Dragon Vault Mountain…

Runt was simply spent.

It had been a grueling several weeks, enough that he was quite certain that there were parts of his face that he missed when he shaved but couldn’t quite muster the emotional wherewithal to care.   The night before left him bereft of anything more than functional energy and bones aching years before their time to do so.  The ground felt much colder than it should have several hundred feet underground and harder than the diamonds his grandmother proudly wore around her neck.

The battle with the silver dragon was one in epic futility.  The party had almost artistically prepared themselves for a battle that they were certain would bring the demise of at least one of them, if not all of them and in the end, such preparations was the first of many miscalculations that nearly cost them more than their lives.  It was like they were children throwing stones at an oncoming storm to stop it.

The great, massive dragon loomed out of the Pool of Dreams, its waters frozen and still underneath it.  It knew they were coming for it and it had waited as patiently as possible for them.  His eyes swirling voids of bickering madness and out from its mouth spewed such a calamity that even the strongest of wills fell to its cacophonous chatter.

The next few moments felt like some of the worst dreams that Runt ever had to live through.

His mind tumbled drunkenly over itself, the values of the world around him shifting and swirling in a psychotic cesspool of muck and backwater.  He felt his voice join in chorus with others, his words being gibberish and his mouth falling to answer to anything he attempting to relay to it.  Spittle and drool pooled and spackled around him as he felt his own mind do something so vulgar that he could only describe it as shitting its own bed.  Is this what happened to poor Meph, he wondered later.

He remembers vaguely swinging at Xana, his mind and heart certain with all great passion that she, she herself was behind this, that she lead them into a trap to die, mad and wild, with no one to ever find them.  The moment the spell broke and he recalled everything, his heart nearly broke at the idea that he ever rose his hand in anger at her, a sweet elf who did nothing more but protect him and capriciously devour tomes like a ravenous badger.  She told him over and over again that it wasn’t his fault, but guilt would linger some time in his heart, more so that he was helpless to stop it from happening.

The final futile moment had to be when he knew, he knew for certain that the great wyrm had regained its facilities and was coming to his senses, right when the ceiling shattered and the whole came crashing down around the majestic beast.  He howled in frustration; he nearly flew over to the boulders, weakly grasping at them to roll them away, his heart sank as he knew that one of the last great dragons was surely dead and with him, centuries of knowledge and a soul that had no interest in hurting anyone, no desire but to live and learn, proof that dragons could be the majestic creatures they were meant to be.  Dead.  Gone.

He quickly fled down the opening that was created when the Pool of Dreams, millennia of dragon ether, poured down into the mountain’s core.  He briefly wondered if they would wind up inside the dispenser that they used to distill the ether to open the portal but the party’s survival quickly overcame any unnecessary thoughts.

He felt his wobbly legs come into full contact as the flight spell that Jaithyn cast on him wore off.  He moved quickly, trudging through bit lit corridors and fishers that were created from the cracking of the mountain, adjoining rooms that had no earthy purpose to be connected.  

He had long enough to wonder what lay waiting for them in the mountain’s crypts when he was attacked by one of them.

Xana explained later that they were remnant spirits that were caught in the Ether from processed dragons that made up the Pool of Dreams.  Runt just found them to be remarkably obnoxious; an insult injury regarding how ready he was to be done, to be back home a in feather bed for one night – long enough for him to get restless the next morning for the next adventure.

After two remarkably frustrating combats, he knew that they needed to find a place to camp.  He hadn’t wanted to admit it but he was rapidly urning for sunlight, as cold as it would be where they would surface, he didn’t care.  He wanted to breathe fresh air and see the blinding, unforgiving sun again.  He kept wanting to press forward but the spell casters were understanding exhausted.

Gregor quickly found his voice among the weary and insisted that they double back and rest more.  Runt’s eyes narrowed into slits; he felt in his bones that if they kept going, they could avoid a possible cave in and be trapped; the rogue had no desire to make it this far only to be buried alive in some shrine for an extinct species.  Quickly the old tension between Runt and Gregor heated up again and he felt his blood begin to rise again.  Blowing the Law man off, Runt traveled down the passage, hoping to at least find a room that was larger, less filled with holes, and potentially more stable.

What he found was far from stable.

It was a monstrosity that looked like a nasty combination of both Xana and Meph’s expertise pressed into one rotting, decayed, flawed, yet still … animated corpse of dragon.  Metal buttressed missing sections of a cracking skeleton of a dragon, its eyes were shrunken pits of rage and filth, it’s frame literally creaked as it swiveled it’s deformed head towards Runt.  It felt like someone had thrown ice water around his ankles but yet they refused to move as it swore to him in draconic and charged his direction.  Hung around the abomination’s neck was a massive capped jar of greenish ichor, magical and holy symbols glowed with menacing, seething energy as the beast continued to shout at Runt, charging all the way.

Runt nearly threw himself to the ground as it came at him, its first attack was wild, much to Runt’s surprise.  It roared in anger, throwing its head back in a motion that Runt readily recognized as a dragon that was preparing to breathe its weaponized attack.  He caught enough of the dragon’s rant (and the rest was translated by Neala through Xana’s magical communication spell) to know that the monster in front of them was seeking the King of the West; and it dawned on Runt that he wore of his children’s scales for armor.  Quickly drawing the massive halbard like it was a standard, he did his best to state in Draconic that the King of the West was at rest and they were the ones who finally put him that way.

In hind sight, Runt realized that he had told the monster that banana umbrellas are lovely unless it rains. 

It breathed it’s toxic acid across the hallway threshold, Runt dropping the halbard as quickly as possible to dive out of the way.  He drew his spiked chain and swung wildly at it, hearing a loud clank when it hit the mottled hide of the fused experiment.  Roken sprang past him, throwing a series of small shuriken at the creature in rapid succession.  He sprang back out of the way as the dragon swung it’s claws, catching Runt clean in the chest with one of the claws.  He felt it cut through the scales, digging into his skin, the pain burned as Runt grunted against it and then the strangest thall ing happened, he couldn’t feel it anymore.

He looked down at his chest, thinking at first that it just scratched him.  He could clearly see blood pouring out of the wound and that’s when his spine shook; what if the blow dealt to him was necrotic?  In the process of withdrawing enough to pull his crossbow, he realized that he couldn’t feel anything around the area of the wound at all, that it felt like it was already dead.

He could be dying right there.

He looked up in time to notice that Xana and Jaithyn had kept specifically hitting the ichor filled vial around the dragon’s chest and he watched as chunks of the jar blew off, the sickening green substance was dripping out.  The dragon seemed almost for a second, the briefest moment, slow down.

Runt felt everyone pull back and he made up his mind, if he was going to die, it was going to be on his terms.  He fired a shot at the canister, missed, and reloaded a second one just as fast.  He could hear Gregor, Xana, and Thayna yell at him to withdraw.  No, not if he could save them from dying as well.  From the touch of the dragon’s diseased claw.  He fired another round, this time striking the jar and knocking a small section out.  Xana and Jaithyn fired their magic at it again, doing further damage, it roared in frustration and attempted to take another attack at Runt.

A final blow of magic nailed it straight in the jar’s center and whatever magic that held together finally gave out and the mechanical beast clawed at the air frantically as it squirmed and grasped the best it could at air that would never be anything other than a casual element to it now.  It collapsed entirely to the floor, Runt swung his spiked chain around his body, drawing his long sword as he went and lopped its head off for good measure.  

He felt the sickness begin to spread through his body, his worn out, tired body almost wept as he felt dark, lethal relief creep into his shell.  He hadn’t consciously recalled moving forward but he found himself halfway into the beast’s cave with Thayna suddenly standing before him, her arms held up in a defensive stance; determined to make sure Runt didn’t travel any further.

Begrudgingly, he allowed himself to be corralled back to the Law man, whom Runt was rapidly losing any respect that he had left for the man.  The cleric flashed one of his jovial smiles and at one point, Runt was immediately set at ease at the sight of the jolly man, his lit up face rolling the half-elf’s dark clouds away.  But this time it felt like a cheap imitation, a painted horizon.
Gregor laid his hands on Runt, while chanting to his God to heal Runt so that he might continue to be a warrior for the cause.  He felt his stomach churn onto itself, Gorhan’s cause.  Such frivolous folly.  Desires of a lofty, remote God who was willing to allow innocent creatures to do it’s bidding while it safety reclined, far from danger.  The larger man looked Runt over after healing him, telling him that he would need more work to be done in the morning if he wanted to live.  Runt barely could make eye contact as he nodded.

He vaguely remembers rolling out his sleeping roll before he was away from the tiresome, rough world, slipping away from it like a summer breeze.  From what he could recall later on, his dreams were devoid of meaning or purpose, nothing more than wandering the field he used to as a child out side of the McWac Barony, before the sun set and they were forced into the compound for their… protection.  But in his dreams, there was a sweet blonde girl that held his hand as they walked in the fields together and when he looked at her, she beamed softly at him, with a face that knew the ages and what was meant to come.

If only he knew.