Revolting Rose

Chapter 1/Part 2 - That Which Dwelt Beneath

The ladder led Pagne into the corner of a cavern that could almost be described as homely. It was comfortably furnished with bookshelves, a leathery rug, and an assortment of overstuffed chairs. He usually did not care for furniture that had not been skilfully grown, but among the furnishings was a smartly buttoned sofa at the centre that even he could appreciate.

A bizarre device sat across from it, almost like it was watching the sofa. The thing was a box on four thin legs, with a glass front, and a metal clothes-hanger stuck in the top of it. The knobs and buttons suggested it might be an instrument of torture and was best left alone.

Pagne did just that and turned his attention to the bookshelves lining the walls. Some of the books were hard-covered or bound in stamped leather, but most of them were quite flimsy. Whoever frequented this place certainly seemed to enjoy the series titled Vogue. Before he could flip through one to see what the fuss was about, a sudden flump in the direction of the torture device scared the book right out of his hands.

Something—or rather, someone—seemed to have dropped onto the sofa from a hole in the ceiling. Pagne cautiously crossed the cavern to investigate the new arrival, and found that it was a fellow, lying front-side up and naked as a peeled parsnip. While the evidence suggested he may have been a Tyvern, having the typically slender body, two arms and two legs, long pointed ears and nose and no horns, something was not quite right about him.

Pagne turned the body over for further inspection. There were two long tears along his back and strands of wool hanging out of...

...strands of wool?

He pried open one of the gashes, and sure enough the fellow was all woolly on the inside. He took a step back and pondered. Perhaps a pair of wings might have fit where the wounds were, and if that was so, then this was surely the fiend he had been sent to find.

It was a bit disappointing. With no wings there really was nothing monstrous about the fellow. He did not even have tendrils, tentacles or even a tail that Pagne could boast to Zaech about. After flipping the fiend front side up again, Pagne sighed. The fiendish fellow was not ugly either. Instead, he had quite a pleasant face, with the sharpest nose Pagne had ever seen growing from his face like the root of a rather handsome parsnip.

The fiend's hair was a little different at least. While most of it was sleek and sky-black, there was a long, woolly stream sprung from the front, glistening in all shades of blue. Pagne recalled from some lessons with his father that pure Nonsense took the form of blue fibres, and dragons were supposed to be very nonsensical creatures. But that could not mean they were made of the stuff. He would not accept such... such nonsense.

As Pagne contemplated the story he would tell Zaech, he noticed a tube of paper smouldering between the fiend's lips. Hoping for a mysterious note, he unravelled it. Bits of dried leaf tumbled out, but there was not a single scribble on the paper.

Pagne knew he ought to be leaving the dungeon but as he made his way towards the ladder there came some spluttering, a few curses, and a wheeze. He turned around to see the piece of paper burst into flame. Smoke swirled around it until the fire was enclosed inside a shadowy guise. Then, to Pagne's astonishment, it scratched a freshly-formed ear with a freshly-formed paw. The fire and smoke had taken the shape of a rat.

Beside it, the fiend suddenly sparked to life, with a hand lashing out to latch onto a box marked Dragon's Breath Cigarettes on a small table beside the sofa. He took a new tube of paper out of it, then grabbed the fiery rodent and gave it a squeeze. There was a mildly perturbed squeak and a flash of fire that ignited the cigarette. The fiend placed the unburnt end between his lips, took a sharp breath, then stood up.