General Fiction posted July 29, 2024 Chapters:  ...5 6 -7- 8... 


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Into the dragon's lair
A chapter in the book Ol' Silver and Red

Ol' Silver and Red, ch 7

by Wayne Fowler


In the last part Ohmie was rescued from the mountain. Ohmie and Blado devised a plan to rob Ol’ Silver and Red of his treasure.

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Chapter 7

    The climb up the mountain was laborious. And of course, Ohmie’s memory of the route was as diminished as his condition had been on his only other time in the area. That was when he was nearly delirious with exhaustion on his escape down the mountainside. They made several wrong turns but eventually found the crevice to the descending cave that led to the downward shaft. The climb took far longer than they’d hoped because the rope grew heavier the higher they climbed. Less than halfway up they decided they needed to tie one end to their waists and as the dangling rope became too heavy to trail behind, they would pull it up onto a coil on the ground and start over, climbing and pulling, climbing and pulling. But eventually, their strenuous method paid off with them at the crevice opening with every inch of their rope.

    Ohmie’s plan depended on either the dragon being asleep in his lair, or out flying around and not soaring down the tube, or in the narrow horizontal tunnel while they were in them. If he was asleep, they wanted him to stay asleep. If he was not asleep, they didn’t want to alert him. If he was gone, there would be no way to know that until they got to the lair. They certainly didn’t have supplies enough to monitor the mountain’s entry and exit until sighting the silver and red dragon. They would have to risk it.

    “Ohmie,” Blado began, “what if the dragon flies down here while we’re still in the shaft?”

    “We’re goners,” Ohmie replied, continuing his preparation for their descent.

    Blado pinched his lips, nodding reluctant understanding. He couldn’t help himself – “And what if he barges into the tunnel while we’re still in it?”

    “Still goners,” Ohmie said. “It’s pretty tight” Ohmie grinned to his friend who’d stopped his task to stare at Ohmie. Ohmie then added, “But hopefully, we’ll hear him while he’s flying down and we can race clear. First, we’re super quiet because he might be down there sleeping.”

    Comforted a tiny bit, Blado resumed his task.

    After knotting together their two long ropes, they looped one end around a boulder. They practiced snapping the rope off the rock with wrist flicks. It came off easily each time. Next, they lowered their backpacks down the shaft with the two connected ropes. They’d carried them up the mountainside and could carry them down the shaft, but the weight on their backs would make balancing very difficult, maybe even cause them to fall. It was safer and easier to lower the packs with the rope. Then Ohmie could lower Blado the same way. They left the rope in place in case they needed it to climb out quickly.

    The silver and red dragon was, indeed, asleep on his pile of jewels. At least they hoped he was asleep. It was impossible to tell for sure since he slept with his eyes open. He wasn’t snoring, or even breathing like a sleeping human breathed. The two couldn’t dare wake him. But their plan required taking certain calculated risks.
Ohmie immediately remembered the vile stench. Blado barely noticed it.

Stealthily, they crept up to the pile of jewelry forming the dragon’s nesting roost.  Blado had the more perilous task of tying an end of the catgut cord to the dragon’s ankle, or what he considered an ankle. The hardest part was to reach the dragon without disturbing the tinkly pile of necklaces and coins.  Blado had that job mostly because he was braver, insisting the job his, and because he was more accustomed to cautious movement around large animals, being a stable hand.

    Ohmie’s job was to confront the dragon, standing in front of his open eyes, ready to divert his attention from his ankle until Blado’s task completed. Ohmie’s danger was being torched by surprise, not knowing how quickly dragon flame ignited and flared. Neither was he sure whether he might die of flame or fright.

    The end of the cord that was tied to the dragon’s ankle had a possum kit’s bladder attached. The bladder contained a small amount of air, making it a balloon. Between the balloon and the ankle, Ohmie had gently scratched through the catgut sinew with his belt knife, a replacement for the one presumably still stuck between two of the dragon’s neck scales. He hoped that he hadn’t weakened the sinew too much.

    Ever so cautiously, Ohmie took the coil of catgut cord all the way to the pool of water’s edge, securely tying the other end to a stalagmite that was nearly grown into a pillar. Ohmie took care to make sure the cord would not hang up on anything along the way. A small candle provided enough light to lay the cord going out, and to check it coming back.  Blado was to remain perfectly still while Ohmie laid the cord.

    Once back, the two young men again risked their very lives. By the dim light of the dragon’s eyes, they inspected the jewels, making special note of anything of gold. Their hunch was tentatively verified; none of the gold had been exposed to serious heat. Ohmie and Blado hoped that that meant that dragons, at least this dragon, would not flame his own nest and risk destroying his hoard of gems and baubles.

    Ohmie had tied an empty wine bottle several feet from the end of the cord, and then gently looped it on a skinny catch of ceiling rock. The slightest tug of the cord should cause the bottle to fall to the floor and shatter. That was precisely what Ohmie did as he carefully edged around to Blado’s position on the backside of the pile of jewels. Their plan was to break the bottle, and as the dragon startled, to use the dragon’s own jewel-pile-disturbing motion to mask their warily burrowing under coins and gems and jewelry. Their hope was that the groggy dragon would not notice their movement or noise, more immediately concerned with the unnatural noise of human’s glass breakage.

    They were half right. The dragon was more mindful of the noise in the tunnel and had glided effortlessly off the mound in that direction. But then the dragon stopped. Something was different. Something caused him to consider his lair. Praying that the cord tied to the dragon’s ankle didn’t catch on anything, the young men held their breath and forced their bodies to be totally still. They both feared the dragon would hear the same pounding of their hearts that they could hear inside their heads. They both feared that the pounding within their chests may be pulsating the pile of jewels with each beat. They both feared that the nearly timeless dragon could outlast their held breath. They both feared they’d left some part of themselves uncovered.

    Presently the dragon quit his lair, likely satisfied naught amiss. Just as before, he traveled the tunnel toward the pool of water.

    This brought one more point of speculation on the part of intruders, Ohmie and Blado.  They hoped the dragon would exit the mountain altogether as long as he was up anyway. Surely, he would want to know what was happening outside since a human bottle had somehow made its way into the cave. Also, the rope they’d left in the shaft was hidden to the side, but careful inspection by dragon fire would certainly expose it, maybe even burn it to cinders.

    As quickly as the dragon left the lair, the two engaged another part of their plan. And that was to fill their pockets and mass their necks with as many coins, jewels, and necklace-type jewelry as they could quickly gather. They wanted to be on their rope and out of sight before the dragon returned, hoping to be out of the shaft before he zoomed back down it.

    They both knew they’d probably stretched their guesses and wishful speculations too far. Some part of their plan was bound to fail, and the more that did work out made the remaining parts more and more suspect.
 

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Image courtesy lyenochka and Flightrising.com

Ohmie: 19 y.o. Prince Waynard's nickname. He is mentoring Prince Shauconnery and Princess May after falsely declaring Waynard deceased. Ohmie is a Prince (but not heir to the throne) of neighboring Spewlunkia.
Prince Shauconnery: the youthful heir of King Herb in Calandria
Princess May: 16 y.o. firstborn of King Herb
King Herb: King of Calandria, the land within which Ol' Silver and Red has claimed for centuries.
Blado: friend of Prince Waynard (Ohmie) from the land of Spewlunkia
King Jear: King of Spewlunkia, Ohmie's father
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