The Dragons of the Mountain, Chapter 3: An unexpected Ally
As usual, thanks to :iconHildale: for his help with the translation... I hope you like it!
THE DRAGONS OF THE MOUNTAIN
Chapter 3 - An unexpected Ally
Blizzard regained consciousness because he was feeling cold. His mind was a chaotic tangle of explosions, deafening noises and flashes of light; but everything was ceased, and he perceived he was motionless and surrounded by an absolute silence. He opened his dim eyes: he saw only a uniform dark mass and a nebulous bluish light.
"Where am I?" he thought confusedly. He had a coughing fit and spat some water, that dripped from the sides of his mouth; he heard his gasps distorted by an echo. He blinked his eyes several times and managed to bring into focus a very low stone ceiling, on which the reflections of waves were dancing, in that mysterious luminescence.
With great effort, he lifted his head up. He was lying on his back on the bank of a narrow underground canal, immersed below his waist in clear and ice-cold water. Around him there were only polished rocks and softly dripping stalactites. Several luminous crystals were mounted on the walls and on the bottom of the canal, diffusing flashes of that ghostly luminescence.
Blizzard got up on his elbows. Now that he was recovering he started to feel the pain diffused in all his body, making him moan. The water had cleaned the blood on his hip, revealing two linear wounds.
Suddenly, his mind reconstructed the memory of his last minutes of consciousness: the battle against the Fieryclaw, the task Hazarkan had assigned to him, Niktohal's volte-face... the appearance of the mysterious individual and the final disaster...
"I fell in the river" summed up Blizzard to himself. "The earthquake opened a cleft and the current dragged me into it". He had no idea how much time had passed while he was senseless. Few minutes? Hours? He had no way of calculating it, considering where he was.
His heart leapt. "Not seeing me coming back, the others might have thought I was dead!" he exclaimed mentally. How had Hazarkan reacted, considering that he was the one who had assigned that task to him? But above all... How would Eileen have reacted, once she had learnt about that fact? Or she already knew?
"Maybe she is crying for me in this moment..." thought Blizzard shattered. Who knows how desperate she was, convinced of being left alone... No, he didn't have to surrender to those thoughts: he was alive! So he would have returned to his village.
"I have to get out of here. But how?" He stood up, grimacing in pain: he had aches in his muscles because of the prolonged cold. The irregular ceiling was so low that he could only walk on all fours. Then, though reluctantly, he glided into the crystalline water, which was instead very deep. The current was minimum, hardly perceptible: it wasn't a good auspice.
He swam along the canal, hoping that there was a gap connecting to the outside. But soon he came to a dead end: the passage was blocked by enormous boulders due to a collapse, which probably had happened after he had been dragged into there. He examined the fissures among the boulders and felt the water flowing, but he had to change his mind about trying to dig a tunnel because all boulders were huge and firmly set together; nevertheless, if he had moved them, he could cause a further and potentially fatal collapse.
"Let's forget about it, I can't pass through here". All he could do was follow the underground canal.
He swam for a long time through the winding tunnel; the mysterious fluorescent crystals provided a feeble lighting and sometimes they were scarce, but fortunately Blizzard had the very effective dragon sight.
A couple of times Blizzard had to submerge completely because the ceiling was getting lower and lower. At last he came out in a huge underground lake, inside a cavern of indefinite size due to the many dark corners. There were colossal formations of stalactites, stalagmites and other mineral concretions placed on irregular surfaces. The shiny calcareous surfaces were reflecting part of the bluish light, diffusing it in a more uniform way. The dragon was amazed at that sight: probably that place already existed for hundred of years, but judging from the dimensions of some stalactites it could even have been millions of years! It was in the bowels of the mountain, at unknown depth. Maybe he was the first to discover it.
He came near the slippery stone shore: it was wet and there were several puddles, as if the water level had decreased not much time before or due to the effect of a big wave. He came out of the water, then he looked around looking for a way.
Suddenly, he saw something bright red behind a rock formation, near the lake shore. Blizzard came closer, while the echo was amplifying his steps, and with great surprise he saw an unconscious Fieryclaw lying on his back.
Therefore Blizzard wasn't the only one the river's current had dragged inside that cavern. But was that one drowned?
Blizzard approached him slowly to look at him better. As he noticed the earring at the red dragon's pointed ear and the fang-shaped pendant, he immobilized in astonishment: that one was the hothead he was about to fight with just before the disaster. His orange wings were poking out distortedly from behind his back, his long mane was scattered around his head and his mouth was slightly open.
"At last, someone else has took his life. I'm almost sorry for him" thought Blizzard shaking his head. "Let's try to consider it as one less problem".
But then he noticed that the dragon's muscular chest was pulsating, slowly and weakly but constant.
"Oh, he's alive. Fantastic" he thought sarcastic. What should he have had to do of him? What would the others have done?
He imagined Hazarkan's peremptory voice: "Kill him while he's defenseless before he kills you!" What an idiotic question! Nobody else would have took more time to think about it. Sinking claws into his neck would have been enough to make him pass from sleep to death nearly instantly.
But Blizzard was different: the grief over the loss of his parents had instillated in him a hidden desire for revenge, but Eileen had covered it during the years with the will to save the others from sufferings like theirs. If he had killed that Fieryclaw, someone at his village would have mourned for him: he couldn't permit that.
While he was meditating on what to do, he got still closer to the body lying on the ground. Now that he had the opportunity to look at him better he noticed other minor details, like the small horn on the tip of his snout. But what aroused Blizzard's curiosity the most was his thick mane of hair: he had a strange wish to touch it, just to feel its consistency. Now that he was used to that look it didn't appear weird to him anymore, but on the contrary, he started to find it even attractive. He understood that, in spite of their outwardly great physical differences, the Fieryclaw were dragons as much as he and his companions were. Maybe that individual could turn out to be an unexpected source of information, precious if he had managed to report them to his village. But it was necessary to come out of that cavern, and in two it would have been easier: with this argumentation he would have tried to persuade the Fieryclaw, given that when he was conscious he looked not nearly reasonable.
"I hope this isn't wholly an illusion" he concluded ironically. He bent over on the red dragon with the intention of shaking him, but his hand was still halfway when that one opened his eyes, completely sky-blue and shining like sapphires.
Blizzard turned to stone like a thief catched in the act. The two looked in each other's eyes for some seconds, then the Fieryclaw gnashed his teeth and tried to hit Blizzard with a punch; Blizzard dodged it easily because the red dragon's movements were slow, and took a leap back.
"Wait! I'm not going to do you harm!" explained the young dragon, raising his hands as sign of good intentions. He had foreseen that reaction, so he had to take advantage of his temporary daze.
"You're not going to do harm to me? Well, instead I am. Wait till I get my hands on you..." he replied with his deep voice; he got up as fast as he could, a bit tottering.
"I saw you unconscious for a while now, if I wanted to kill you I could have done it safely. I'm talking seriously! I wanted to help you!" insisted Blizzard, keeping his distance.
"We are enemies. Why should you help me?" he replied scornful, his fists clenched. Their amplified voices were re-echoing in the cavern, mixing together.
"Take a look around!" said the turquoise dragon. "Do you see where we are? Inside an unknown cavern under the mountain, and the passage we entered from is blocked. Aren't you going to get out of here?"
He vacillated and his eyes darted all around. "All right. In that case I think I'll kill you now, then I'll look for another exit" he grumbled, moving forward while Blizzard was backing away.
"And if you need help?" insinuated Blizzard. "If you are in difficulty? We can help each other and come out of here safe and sound!"
"Interesting proposal. But it seems to me that you are a coward. Who can guarantee me that you won't betray me?"
"Nobody can guarantee you," admitted Blizzard sincerely, "but you have no other choice. I want to return to my village, that's certainly what you want as well. Why can't we forget our rivalry, for once? I swear this is all what I want".
Blizzard thought that the red dragon was finally abandoning his warlike intentions. "I was told not to trust people like you. You have destroyed our most sacred relic" he muttered, and stopped moving forward.
Blizzard seized the opportunity. "That's false! We have nothing to do with that matter!". He was surprised at his own words: the only person he had confided in was his sister.
The Fieryclaw was still showing his fangs. "You are lying to convince me to trust you".
"Not at all. If you permit me, I'll prove it" declared Blizzard fervently.
The red dragon's expression became skeptical. "And how?"
"Do you promise that you'll listen to me?"
"Ahem... Yes, I do".
"So we reached an agreement?"
"Okay! Okay!"
"Excellent" sighed Blizzard relieved. He was afraid it would have been harder to persuade him; but maybe his condition was worse than how he looked.
The Fieryclaw lowered his fists. "If I find out that you are making fun of me, I'll smash you to pieces" he grumbled, letting himself fall seated cross-legged; a wet wisp of hair slid on his forehead, giving him all at once a less threatening aspect. "I hurt my shoulder and I can hardly stand on my left leg" he confessed, looking at his hind legs. "Give me a minute".
Now that he looked he was taking a more reasonable attitude, Blizzard approached him. Cautiously.
"What about introducing ourselves? I'm Blizzard" he said, trying to sound friendly.
That one didn't answer immediately. "My name is Ashel" he murmured at last, without looking up.
"I had never met one like you before now" continued Blizzard encouraged.
"Neither had I," he replied, becoming abrupt, "in the sense that all what I did with people like you is only fighting. But now tell me what you have to, if you don't want me to do the same also with you".
"Calm down... Ashel" said Blizzard.
It seemed that being called by name by him had irritated Ashel, as if he had already regretted that innocent confidence. "How did we get to here? What the hell were those lightnings that made everything collapse?" he shouted exasperated; his furious voice echoed like the noise of an avalanche among the rows of stalactites, impressive.
"Let me finish" answered Blizzard hastily. "The responsible is someone I saw coming out from one of the canyon's alcoves, not far from where we were. You had your back turned to him, therefore you didn't notice him".
"What's the story here?" protested Ashel, gazing at him like if he was mad.
"I have no idea, but that is how the matter stands! He made odd gestures, then a flash of red light appeared around him and all those lightnings started..."
"Who was him?" protested the Fieryclaw enraged.
Despite the risk, Blizzard set down in front of him near the lake shore, to show him his goodwill.
"The fog was too thick and he was too far off, I was unable to see him clearly, but surely he wasn't a Moonfang. As far as I know, there's nobody among my people who can make lightnings appear from nothing".
"Not even among mine" added Ashel. "Scoundrel bastard... If I catch him I'm going to ruin him" he murmured, flexing convulsively his fingers, as if he was grabbing an invisible neck.
"We must find out what happened to the others who were at the river" pointed out Blizzard, interrupting him. The red dragon's reaction to his words was the proof that the Fieryclaw had no responsibility for that prodigious and destructive phenomenon either, at least for all he knew. But then, how could it have interfered with the talks? The possibilities were worrying.
Ashel frowned. "Are you sure you didn't hallucinate, by the way? Or that you aren't making it all up?" he asked, reducing his eyes to two sky-blue slits.
"Of course I'm sure! And now, let's try to get out of here. I must inform my chief" concluded Blizzard, getting up. He started to think that the mysterious individual could be involved in the misdeed which resumed hostilities between the two tribes. Unfortunately he had no proof to demonstrate it, and as long as he hadn't more clues it was better not to fling any accusation: somebody could misinterpret them. In the first place, he could get everything possible from Ashel, while they were forced to cooperate.
"Are you able to walk?" he asked then.
Ashel snorted soundly and got up, still a bit unsteady. Maybe he didn't trust Blizzard yet enough to tolerate caring questions from him.
"What's the plan?" he grumbled, flexing his muscles of arms and wings. His mane, still wet, was sticking on his neck and shoulders.
"Let's explore this place... we'll surely find a way out" answered Blizzard looking at the stalactites emerging from the darkness of the ceiling. They were in an underground canal, so it had to end up somewhere necessarily!
"This really is a plan! I like it" concluded Ashel, sneering.
Blizzard ignored him. He went towards a very high rock formation, thinking of flying on it to have a better view of that area.
"Listen, I'm going to take a look up there..." he said, turning to him. But he was just able to spot the red dragon running towards him like an hurricane before he knocked him down with a violent thrust. Blizzard fell on his back on the hard ground, screaming with pain when he ended up with all his weight on his already injured wings; Ashel was on him, nailing him on the ground with his body and blocking his arms with his ones. The tips of their snouts were so close that they were virtually touching.
"What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?" protested Blizzard, his eyes blurred with pain. He struggled to free himself, but the Fieryclaw was a lot heavier than him.
Ashel's sky blue eyes, half-closed, were staring at his prisoner's amber ones; some wisps of hair, due to the position, fell framing his snout. "You assured me that you won't betray me until we'll be out of here. How can you be sure that I won't betray you, instead? You haven't asked me a single word about" he whispered. His voice was as icy as the color of his eyes.
Blizzard stopped struggling and and got his breath back. "I suppose that... I can't be sure. But, if you were going to betray me, I don't think you would take the trouble to let me know" he answered slowly.
Ashel's jaw hardened. "You are clever, aren't you?" he replied.
"More than you, surely" thought Blizzard. "Well, let's say I'm okay" he said instead, given that he was in no condition to provoke him. "And now, if you don't mind, would you let me go?"
Ashel loosened his hold on Blizzard's arms. "Trying to scare you seems fun" he said with a strange smile.
"Especially for me" said Blizzard ironic. At last, the red dragon freed him from his hold.
While Blizzard was rubbing his wrists silently, the pain diminished enough to make him aware of another feeling: embarrassment. That unexpected initiative of the Fieryclaw, who he barely knew, had unsettled him in a way he was unable to understand.
He tried not to think about it. "So... I'm going to take a look" he annouced; Ashel nodded sneaky. Blizzard jumped and two flaps of his wings were enough to reach the top of the rock pillar. From up there, he had a good view of the cavern: one area was filled up by the lake, which the canal they came from was flowing into and, without doubt, the underground canal continued from; the rest was a forest of stalactites, stalagmites and calcareous columns which formed an intricated maze. There were many dark areas in that moltitude of spots of bluish luminescence that they would have to check.
"Let's try over there" suggested Blizzard after coming back down. Ashel assented, then they set off.
Blizzard didn't feel safe having the Fieryclaw proceeding behind him yet and from time to time he turned back trying to hide it with the pauses to look around. A sharp and throbbing pain, due to the grazes on his hip not yet healed, kept racking him. They walked along the lake shore, whose surface was smooth like crystal, until the path was interrupted and they were forced to go beyond by flying.
"There must be a passage over there" murmured Blizzard after they landed on the opposite side, a narrow shore between the lake and the vertical wall.
The red dragon overtook him impatiently: in fact there was a tunnel, but they can't see how much deep it was because the darkness was almost total.
"We need light" noticed Blizzard. The only source of lighting were the crystals, but they were firmly set in the rock.
"Easy!" answered Ashel, speaking for the first time after a while; he returned to the lake, dived in and picked up three luminous crystals from the bottom: the river itself, when it was still straming, had extracted them over the years and carried them up to there.
He re-emerged with the crystals in his hands, again dripping and with his mane soaking wet, and threw the biggest one to Blizzard. Thus they entered the tunnel and discovered that it was straight for a short stretch, then it turned upward.
A weak flame of hope lit up in Blizzard's heart; he saw the frenzy in the red dragon's eyes, sparkling in the feeble light, while they were proceeding side by side on the damp and slippery ground keeping the crystals straight before them.
What would the Fieryclaw have done if they were about to return outdoors? Would he go away before Blizzard could interrogate him? He would have let slip an opportunity that maybe nobody had had before now. He didn't know what to say; but it was probable that Ashel, who was yearning for abandoning that gloomy cavern, wouldn't even have listened to him.
The bluish light illuminated a dead end: the way was blocked by a landslide, impracticable.
The two stopped. "Oh, no! Another collapse... and this one looks like it happened a long time ago" noticed Blizzard after getting closer to observe better. It seemed the fate wasn't going to let them free so soon.
Ashel flung angrily one of the crystals he was holding to the ground, shattering it.
"Don't let it get to you" the turquoise dragon tried to calm him down. "We are inside a cavern, there are usually tunnels with no exit. Let's keep searching!"
Some tiny luminous fragments were lying on the ground around Ashel's paws; he looked he was considering whether destroy the other crystal as well, instead he growled: "Of course. Let's go" and turned back.
After returning back to the lake, they started following its perimeter.
"Ahem... How old are you, Ashel?" asked Blizzard to break the silence before it became too oppressive.
"I'm twenty" he answered gruff. The previous disappointment made him return surly and irascible.
Blizzard didn't let himself become discouraged. "We are almost the same age... and I'd say this has been the first battle for both of us. I can understand you are in a hurry, surely our chiefs are considering us to be missing or worst... but it's no use getting angry, and anger won't be helpful to you in this situation".
Ashel looked at him. "Do you know what makes me angry? First of all, my chief is probably thinking that I didn't survive even my first battle, in spite of being one of the best new fighters. I'd like to return to my village as soon as possible to prove that it's not so. Furthermore, among all what could happen to me, I found myself trapped with an... enemy, who what's more is giving me a lecture!"
"Enemy?" replied the turquoise dragon, tightening his hold on the crystal in his hands; but he kept his tone of voice calm not to annoy him even further. "I've already told you that we have nothing to do with your destroyed relic! We don't even know what it was!"
"But you know where it was. I've been told" he replied.
Blizzard thought quickly: Ashel's statement contradicted chief Xavor's one, but if the Fieryclaw had irrefutable proofs in his favor, by denying he would have irreparably risked his credibility. So he said: "That's true, but we haven't destroyed it. What would we have gotten out of it? And if I didn't want to show you my goodwill, I would have killed you while you were unconscious!"
His interlocutor was clenching his fists. "All this speeches are annoying me. We are collaborating... as you wanted, right? I'm in a hurry to go away, hence shut up and let's go".
Blizzard had now understood that Ashel preferred action to reasoning. It was plain that he could outclass Blizzard in terms of physical strenght, but with words he could easily be put with his back to the wall.
"All right" he concluded. "However I'm in a hurry as well because I have a younger sister, at home, who is hoping in my return, but I'm trying not to lose my temper".
From the Fieryclaw's silence he understood he said the right thing; that one confined himself to grumbling while they were climbing over some stair-like rock formations beyond a huge column.
They heard a feeble gurgling. They raised the crystals and finally discovered the lake's effluent canal recessing in a tunnel, whose walls were covered in luminous crystals.
"We'll be luckier this time" asserted Blizzard hopeful. They jumped off in the canal bed; the water was just as high as their knees and was streaming slowly and staedy.
"Even if it was true, that you haven't destroyed our relic, you still are our enemies" insisted Ashel after a while with in a voice. The lapping of their movements in the water and the echo made understanding his words harder.
It was the first time that Ashel took the initiative in a talk, and Blizzard didn't draw back: "Not to criticize some centuries of our story, but... in my opinion, if things are so, it's only because nobody has ever bothered to change them".
"And who are you to say that? If things have always been so, it means they must be so!" replied the red dragon sulky.
"Not necessarily! The more I think about it, the more I convince myself that ours is above all a matter of pride".
Ashel's steps became slower. "So what? What are you trying to insinuate?"
"I don't know how to say it..." he answered evasive. He hoped he would gain the Fieryclaw's trust with sincerity, but he seemed he wasn't desirous to bring his most consolidated ideals into question with an enemy. And now it was still too early to try.
"However," he said evading Ashel's question, "can you tell me about this relic of yours? Since it's destroyed there's no reason to keep it secret..."
"No" answered Ashel categoric.
"And why?"
"Whether you've destroyed it or not, you don't know what it is and you mustn't know it. I'm not saying anything to you Moonfang without my chief's opinion. Maybe we'll manage to recompose it..."
"Recompose it?" said Blizzard surprised. The Fieryclaw emitted a throat noise as if he had swallowed a swearword.
Blizzard resigned to give up, disappointed. "Okay, I understood. But now we are faced with a new situation, never seen before. If we cooperated, we could..."
"Shut up" grumbled Ashel, as if he didn't want to listen anything else. Blizzard obeyed, but he had again the impression that Ashel's reaction was a sign that his words had suceeded in instilling doubts in him.
They reached a new cavern, even if not as wide and spacious as the previous one. The lighting was very scarce and they had to pick up some other crystals in order to proceed. They followed the water course twisting among the subsidences in the rock; there were some ponds formed by small waterfalls.
"Look up there" whispered Blizzard beckoning Ashel with one hand. In front of them there was a pile of rubble, mounds of boulders and other natural debris. Above, a wide irregular crack in the ceiling.
Ashel's mood got better. "Let's fly to have a look" he decided, spreading his wings out.
"We'd better be careful. That place looks dangerous" he warned him, but Ashel was already mid-air.
The blast caused by their wings was enough to cause the collapse of another part of the unstable ceiling, but the damage didn't look severe. They went through the crack and entered a dark tunnel like the previous ones, but strangely lacking in stalactites and other signs of Karst activity. Few luminous crystals allowed visibility.
"Curious," said Blizzard settling on the opening's edge, "this tunnel... doesn't look of natural origin".
"What are you saying?" said Ashel confused, raising his crystals to see better.
"Well, it's clean and even. It reminds me of the underground tunnels in my village" he explained. That thought had already roused his imagination. But after all how could it be possible that they were arrived so far from the canyon?
"It might be... hey!" the red dragon stopped as they heard a rumbling noise pervading the air. The ground shook; the edges of the crack they entered from was collapsing, widening more and more.
"Perhaps we should have paid more attention" murmured Blizzard, moving away with his comrade.
"What are you worrying about? We can fly" replied Ashel smugly. A boom, then the tunnel a few steps before them suddenly caved in; a sort of chain reaction made the whole passage fall down progressively. Within a few seconds, the tunnel would have literally swallowed the two dragons up.
"Yes, it's definitely time to fly!" concluded Blizzard; they turned back in unison and made off in the opposite direction. They flew over the crack and run following the only possible way virtually blindly, without knowing where it could lead them to, while behind them everything was collapsing with frightful noise.
Blizzard noticed that the red dragon had difficulty in running and remembered his words about his injured hind leg; flying quickly was impossible, because there wasn't enough space to unfold their wings in that narrow tunnel. Nevertheless, Blizzard refused to abandon him and slowed down in order to help him in case he needed to.
They came upon a bottleneck caused by debris built up after a bend. "Hurry!" shouted Ashel while Blizzard was sliding into first; he was so agitated that he forgot to protest when the turquoise dragon helped him to pass in turn.
The running restarted, but for a short time.
"Isn't that a door?" exclaimed Blizzard bewildered, and he stopped. The way was blocked by a slab of smooth and pale stone, regular in shape, on which were engraved curvilinear patterns worn away by time. Along its contour, many crystals were set in a too regular disposition to be natural.
"I don't know and I don't give a damn. Let's open it!" grumbled Ashel rough-and-ready, leaning his hands on it and pushing with all his strenght.
The stale air in the tunnel was already filling up with dust. Blizzard tried to push together with the Fieryclaw but with no result.
Ashel took a step backward and held his elbows on his body, positioning himself sideways. "We must try to knock it down together" he decided. Blizzard nodded and hastened to do the same.
"Ready?" said the red dragon; "One... two... three!" They took a run-up and charged to the slab, making it tremble but without unlocking it.
"Let's try again" said Ashel with furious voice, taking a leap back immediately. "One... two... three!"
Blizzard charged again with all his weight; his effort combined with Ashel's finally succeeded in forcing the door. The stone slab fell down and the two dragons fell on it side by side because of the excessive dash, surrounded by a cloud of dust.
Blizzard's eyes, now used to the semidarkness, saw a humble rectangular room. It was empty, except for a large amount of dust and fragments of plaster fallen from the ceiling and the run-down walls. The usual fluorescent lighting sources were placed inside four niches in the corners.
"What's this place?" whispered Blizzard dusting himself off. Ashel didn't answer: he looked around cautious, his still wet hair all dusty.
In front of them there was only one open entrance, showing a moss-covered and damp stairway; having no alternative, they made their way towards it.
Blizzard was trembling with curiosity while he was wondering where they would have arrived; on the countrary, his comrade looked only interested in seeing the sky again.
The stairs were very steep and looked endless. In front of them, they saw a luminous square of a warmer and more diffused light than the crystals'. The turquoise dragon couldn't help but think again of what Ashel was going to do: he still didn't know what to believe of him.
The place they ended up in wasn't the outside but another cavern, not very large. In the vaulted ceiling there were fissures which blades of light were falling through, illuminating those that looked like the ruins of some rudimental buildings. The place was cluttered with moss-covered rubble and even short green shrubs growing on the soft ground.
"Maybe somebody used to live here one time. But it looks deserted for years" commented Blizzard. He was able to notice that the style of those buildings wasn't exactly the one of his village, but however it was vaguely similar.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm part of the squad responsable for the watch of the river, if my companions knew about such a thing they would surely have told me. Look over there, instead" murmured Ashel, leaning one hand on Blizzard's shoulder with energy and pointing at something ahead.
Part of the wall between two dwellings was collapsed, or better, it looked like if somebody had perforated it: from the crack was visible a patch of pinkish blue sky.
"Hey, we did it!" exulted Blizzard, feeling immediately ten times better: he would have met his sister again, his village... but he couldn't not to think about what they had just discovered there, in the bowels of the mountain.
"And yet, I'm sure we should explore this place..." he added looking back at the darker area, where the ground was going down indefinitely.
"I don't know, but I've had enough of collapsing tunnels" said Ashel, crossing his arms.
Blizzard sighed. "So have I. And there's no time, we have more urgent priorities". Regretfully, he ignored the ruins and followed his comrade.
The hole excavated in the rock was rather tight; Blizzard slid into it hardly, crawling on all fours and trying to keep his wings folded on his back. It was difficult, but finally he came out in the outdoors.
Judging from the Sun's position, it was late afternoon. The morning atmospheric disturbance was over and only a few grey clouds were dragged in the sky; the fog was cleared up. He was on a green plateau close to the mountain, with valleys and distant forests on the landscape. He was safe!
"Are you alright?" he heard Ashel's voice behind him. "What about helping me?"
Blizzard looked in the hole hidden among the rock roughnesses, a little apprehensive. He had difficulty in crawling through that way of escape and he was afraid that Ashel, who was much burlier and broad-shouldered, may not pass through there. Maybe Ashel wouldn't have been so charitable to him, but he decided to help him at any cost.
"Damn it... I can't pass" swore the dragon, who with his head and shoulders squeezed in the gap didn't have enough space to climb.
"Give me your hands" said Blizzard holding out his ones to him. "I'll pull you out".
He looked intensely at him, then murmured: "Thanks" and obeyed.
Blizzard took Ashel's hands and started to pull slowly, while the red dragon was trying to make his wings pass; finally he came out with only some scratches on his hips and abdomen.
Ashel's dusty and run down look, which Blizzard noticed now that they were in daylight again, was the reflection of his. The young dragon realized also how he was tired and hungry.
"In your opinion, where are we?" he asked after a while.
Ashel scanned the scenery carefully. "I think I've already seen that hill over there. We are more downstreams to where we've fought... not far from the river".
"In which territory?" inquired Blizzard doubtful.
"In mine" he answered grimly. "If you want to return to your village, it's quite a long trip. And obviously, beware of my companions... Most of them have probably come back home after the battle, but someone may still be in this vicinity".
Blizzard's morale vacillated a little: the way to safety was still long...
"You know," continued him, and his gaze became elusive, "a short time ago, while we were running away from that collapsing tunnel... I saw that you chose to risk not to abandon me. And now as well... without your help, I would be still trapped down there. You weren't even sure that I would have done it, if I had been in your place".
Aroused from his thoughts, Blizzard shrugged his shoulders. "That's true, I don't know if you would have done the same thing for me... but it doesn't matter. I just wanted to show you that not all Moonfang have prejudices about you" he murmured simply.
Now Ashel looked embarrassed. "I... I don't know. I'm confused, but I'd like to believe you. The most I can do for now is let you go... I won't tell my chief about you, and if we met again on the battlefield... I'll try to ignore you. You saved my life... I won't forget that".
"So..." replied Blizzard, feeling strangely embarrassed again, "will you consider what I've told you? There will never be peace between our people if anyone decides to make the first move".
"Yes... I'll think about it. As for us... I hope I'll never see you again. It will be better for us both" he added without looking at him, in a very low voice.
Blizzard knew the dragon was right. "Yes, I see. Farewell, Ashel" he sighed, and his embarrassment turned into a vague sense of sadness.
He looked at him for an instant. "Farewell... Blizzard". He turned back, unfolded his orange wings and in brief he disappeared northwards, in a dark and thick pinewood.