Dragon Sword

Chapter 4 - The search for Diane

We went to the place where I killed the slavers and recued Diane. Then we followed the road south almost till night-fall.

We talked along the way and I told her all about the goddess, my quest, and my old life. She was very fascinated with the subject and asked me a lot of questions (she obviously most questions were about earth). She was fascinated with my descriptions of earth's technology, our way of life, laws, but most of all with our lack of slavery. I answered all of her questions as best I could until finally she understood how I got here. She said that she should start praying to the Goddess Rose since it is her doing that made the two of us meeting possible in the first place.

When we stopped for the night, we were both tired and Diane was very sore from riding. I thought that odd until she explained "How often would you expect to see a slave riding a horse?"

So I set up the shelter while she stretched and started a fire. We sat together in front of the fire while our food cooked, and she kept wiggling her butt around trying to get the stiffness out. After eating, she could not stand it any longer and begged me to rub her sore legs and butt, and so we went to bed. It took a couple more hours until we were sufficiently tired go to sleep.

I awoke in the morning and I thought that she must have gotten up before me, but I didn't like the feeling that I had in the pit of my stomach. The sound of her moving should normally have been enough to wake me. With this new body, I wake up at the slightest sound, two nights ago a deer walked past us about two hundred yards away in the middle of the night, and I awoke with my sword in my hand, only to find out that it was a deer and that the deer didn't even come close to our shelter. Diane had been getting up early in the mornings to sew her new outfit, but that had never bothered me in the past as I knew that it was her and that we weren't in any danger. But now, I knew something was wrong, I couldn't sense her anywhere. It was as if she weren't even in our camp site.

I jumped up, threw on my kilt, boots and bracers, strapped on my scabbard, drew my sword and stepped from the shelter. The fire was out, both of the horses were there, sometime in the night, the horses had apparently pulled up their stakes (we tie them on twenty five foot long runs that are staked to the ground where they can reach both grass and water). In order for the horses to pull up the stakes they would have had to make enough racket to wake anyone, but I normally wake up at a whisper. When I saw that I began to get very worried, why the hell didn't I wake up at all of the noise last night and where was Diane?

I started searching the ground around the tent, soon I found her trail, it led farther east along the road. I followed it by foot for a little ways then went back to camp and rolled up the tent and sleeping mats. I packed the horses, put out what little was left of the fire, and led the horses down the road to the spot where I last saw her trail. I followed her trail for an hour, then her trail turned south off of the road. I took the horses into a little clearing in the woods, tethered them and went alone.

Her trail was harder to follow in the woods, the woods were not thick but the road was loose sand and on the road her feet left deep impressions, where in the woods the ground was hard and not much of a trail was left for me to follow.

I continued on as fast as I could when finally I came upon another clearing. It was ten times larger than the one where I had left the horses. At the opposite end of the clearing there was a large rock out cropping. I followed her trail at a jog now because of the open field and tall grass, she had left an easy trail to follow here.

I approached the rock and it must have been two hundred feet tall by one hundred and fifty feet wide. Diane's trail led right up to the shear face of the rock. She must have climbed upwards from here. I looked for hand holds in the rock and could find none.

I began to get frustrated and tried to pound my fists against the rock face. As my fist struck the rock, it passed right through the face of the cliff. I jumped back in surprise and approached the face of the cliff again. I extended out one of my hands, it touched rock. I then tried to hit it again and my hand passed through the rock again. I decided that if you touch the rock with enough force then you can enter. I stepped back, began to run and at the last moment, I jumped.

I felt an odd sensation as my body passed through the stone, then I was on the other side. Looking around, I could not see anything, it was complete darkness. I felt through my pack, I found the stub of a torch, and my flint. After a lot of effort (I'm still not used to this flint and steel crap), I finally had light.

I looked around the cavern, for it was truly a cavern of sorts. The place seemed to be a large room cut into the rock. The room was around two hundred feet across, circular, with a fifty foot ceiling. With my back to the entrance, there was a tunnel directly ahead of me. The tunnel was twenty five feet tall, by twenty feet wide, I could not see how long it was in my insufficient torch light.

I began to look around for Diane's trail, finally I saw foot prints in the dust on the floor. The foot prints went down to the tunnel, so I followed. Whatever made or used this tunnel must have been huge. It was obvious that the tunnel was man made, or made by something that didn't quite deserve to be called man.

I did not go much farther down the tunnel before it began to get warmer, much warmer. I also began to notice a stench starting. The heat and the smell were both getting closer as I advanced. I soon noticed that I had slowed my pace to just above a crawl. I decided that I slowed out of caution, then I saw a light ahead, it was a bright light, like that from a large fire. The stench was rapidly getting unbearable. I advanced anyway. I could not stop my search until I found out what had happened to Diane. I could not, and would not give up on her. I decided at that moment that I had truly come to love her and I would never stop my search until I found her.

I came to the corner and looked around it. The stench hit me like a wave that almost rendered me unconscious. It was the stench of hundreds of rotting men and animals. Then I saw what it was that was responsible for the smell. The tunnel ended in a room ten times as large as the room at the entrance to the cave. Standing near the middle of the room was Diane and sitting right in front of her, was a large Dragon!

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