In the pale blue and green light, Shēdo dragged herself along while using the cave wall for support. The left side of her body was still heavy, unresponsive, and didn’t want to work. Limey’s green witchfire stood out in sharp contrast to the glowing blue blood that covered every surface, and Shēdo as well.
At the end of a tunnel was a wide open cavernous expanse and in the center of that was a pillar made of rotting, bloated corpses that went from floor to ceiling. Protruding from the corpses were glowing blue orbs that pulsed with an unwholesome bluish light, an unnatural, unhealthy bioluminescence. In the middle of it all, lodged in what could only be described as shaped rotten meat, was a glowing gemstone that shimmered with every colour of the rainbow.
“Those are eggs, Shēdo,” Limey said to his blood-drenched companion as she stumbled along. “Eggs of the most evil creatures that have ever existed. They’re drawing upon the magic from the gemstone so they can incubate into future grotesque horrors. There has to be twenty or more… that’s an army of beholders and the seeing stone has to be quite powerful for so many eggs to have been laid.”
“An army of those?” Shēdo’s words were slow to come out as she stared at the blue eggs. Fighting just a few had almost been her undoing, even with Limey. A few more paralysis spells… she thought of the dried out husks she had found, and the rotten column of flesh before her festooned with eggs.
“Beholders feed on raw magic, emotions, and dreams,” Limey said to his companion, trying to explain the evil that Shēdo was witnessing. “First they take over the mind, strip away the self, and like a zombie, you will follow the eye tyrant into its lair. They’re incredibly dangerous and even pose a threat to immortal draconequus spawns… we’re a foodsource that will last forever and they will feed on us in perpetuity… I’ve heard stories, Shēdo, awful stories.”
The gore-coated diamond dog didn’t understand what Limey was saying, not all of it, but she did understand the threat posed by these creatures. A few had almost been her undoing, but all these eggs? So many would suffer and Shēdo was smart enough to figure out on her own that they would seek out other magical artifacts to feed on… like her sword, which was magical.
Limping over to the pillar of rotting meat, Shēdo stared down her muzzle, peering into a glowing blue egg and saw… a thing swimming around inside of the rubbery, mucus covered orb. She knew exactly what needed to be done, and with a disgusted grimace, she drove Limey’s tip into a slimy, rubbery egg that was the size of her head. Blue goo spurted out, along with a stench that was like a gangrenous wound, and glowing blue spores floated in the air like horrendous, diseased snowflakes.
“Gross!” Limey cried while he shuddered in Shēdo’s paw, quite a feat for an inanimate object.
Shēdo backed away a bit, and then stabbed another egg, then another, and then another. Like lanced boils, the eggs drained out, becoming shriveled, collapsing in upon themselves once opened and allowed to empty. Some of the eggs hissed when poked, and larval eyebeasts squirmed as they dribbled down the column of putrescent, rotten meat, dying, exposed, no longer sheltered in their eggs.
Taking no chances, Shēdo destroyed every egg, taking the time to turn each and every one into a ruined mess. She paused and looked into a bloated, somewhat rotten eye that had turned a milky bluish-white colour. It peered out at her from a mouth webbed over with a strange, almost scabby, stretchy material. There would be no unseeing this and Shēdo knew that what she had seen would haunt her for the rest of her days.
Lo, our heroine takes it upon herself to do an extreme act, killing the unborn young of an evil species with only the word of her trusty sword to guide her. In my own defense, I am telling the truth; these are creatures of the purest evil. They cannot be reasoned with, cannot be brokered with, they only exist to kill, to destroy, to consume life and magic. They are one of the few creatures that draconequus spawns truly fear, as beholder-kin have no sense of humour, no sense of fun. Even alicorns, for all of their self-righteousness, or silver and gold dragons can be made to laugh once and awhile. Eye tyrants share no such love of life or humour, all they know is the same hunger as the changelings, but driven to an extreme, unimaginable level.
“Too many big words,” Shēdo said as she slumped over, exhausted, in pain, and succumbing to the creeping paralysis that plagued her body. “Is this death? Is Shēdo dying?”
“Well, if your lungs stop working and the paralysis affects your heart, yes it is, and yes you are,” was Limey’s chipper reply to Shēdo’s inquiry. “Grab that gem, Shēdo, and let’s get out of here. I’m betting that big, arrogant prick of a dragon has some means to help you. Just because you are dying, that is no reason to give up.”
“Right.” Shēdo tried to nod, but found that she couldn’t. Her head just sagged against her neck. With a few swipes, she cut the gem free from the disgusting, stretchy, scabby webbing that held it in place, and it clattered to the floor. Sighing, she slid Limey into his sheath, then hunkered down to recover the gem.
It was warm in her paw and it made her diggy-diggy claws tingle. Hunkered down, she stood on three legs, wobbling on her left side as she held the gem up in her right front paw. At least she could still wag her tail, and she did so. She was a free dog now and could wag her tail at any time she felt like it.
“Hurry, Shēdo, don’t waste any more time!”
Blinking, crawling on her belly, Shēdo pulled herself out into the sunlight. As expected, Chromium was waiting for her. What Shēdo did not expect was that the dragon didn’t seem too concerned about his shiny gemstone. She found herself lifted, held by magic, which radiated from the dragon’s claws.
A warm tingle throbbed through her body, making it easier to breathe. The pressure in her girth eased and her tongue lolled out as she began panting for more air, suspended above the ground as Chromium lifted her to examine her. Close to his muzzle, Shēdo realised that she could be stuffed into the dragon’s nostril, and she felt very small.
“What did I tell you, Conifer?” Chromium said to his teeny, tiny pupil. “Puppy though she might be, she has a touch of destiny about her. Well, that and her sword, but the less said about that the better. Such an odd thing, a strange merging of draconequus spawn magic and alicorn magic… ah, but that is not a concern right now. This pup has been befouled.”
“Yuck!” Conifer said as he tilted his head back to look up.
“Conifer…”
“Yes?”
“Do not talk like a rube. Please use complete sentences. Thank you, Conifer.”
“Right!”
The dragon, not amused, let out a smokey sigh and grumbled, “Sexual maturity is not mental maturity.” The big beast then shuffled off, walking on two legs while using his tail for balance. Holding Shēdo up before him, he focused on her, and the big silver dragon looked worried. After a few steps, he was a big dragon, so his steps were very large, he plopped Shēdo down into a stone basin.
With a wave of his claw, he conjured warm water, Drenching Shēdo, and then lowered his head down to have a better look at her. With his magic, he pulled her sword away and laid it on the edge of the stone basin beside her, then began conjuring up necessities he needed. Soap, a stout scrubbing brush, and a large, ornate silver brush that had a mirror on the back.
“While you were in the cave, Conifer and I had a discussion,” Chromium said as he poured more warm water over Shēdo, completely drenching her. “He is willing to give you a chance, as his new owner, and he has given me his word that he will not hold the past against you. As a possession, he has a few reasonable demands, which I will leave the two of you to discuss.”
Resting her head against the edge of the stone basin, Shēdo looked up at the silver dragon, but did not reply. The water felt good, it was warm, but not too warm. Her left side was still unresponsive, but the crushing feeling on her girth was gone and she could breathe. She was too tired to argue, too sore, and while she did not feel comfortable with this arrangement at all, she was willing to give it a chance. Perhaps she might learn something. Maybe Minori might even approve of such action, had she too, listened to the dragon.
“If you can handle the foul beasts that lurked within the cave, I feel that you can keep Conifer safe. He is very valuable, I cannot stress this enough. He has my thoughts inside of his head, my thinking, my learning, my cogitations. He is a vessel filled with my ideas, and by extension, I am giving those ideas, those thoughts, I am giving that to you.”
Blinking, Shēdo had trouble understanding what was said, but it sounded important.
“More than that, I am fond of Conifer. I see no difference between him as a vessel for my learning, than say, something I might have helped to create by fertilizing an egg. I don’t see much of a difference in vessels, now that I am older, but in my foolish youth, I did believe for a time that dragon vessels hatched from eggs I had a part in making were vastly superiour. It took me a few thousand years, but I have since become more enlightened in my views.”
Wiggling one enormous claw, the dragon went to work getting rid of the soiled water and refilling the basin with fresh water, which became soiled right away. Looking annoyed, Chromium allowed Shēdo to soak for a bit before he changed the water again.
“When I was young, I was a foolish thing,” Chromium said to Shēdo in a soft voice that belied his size. “I was a silly hatchling that ate only gems, because they were sweet and delectable. It made my scales hard, sure, and kept my teeth sharp, but a dragon does not properly grow on gems alone. They remain small, tiny, and linger in this state until they learn to consume what is good for them.”
The dragon paused and scratched his chin with his other claws.
“I had to develop my palate, so to speak,” he continued and lazy curls of smoke rose from his mouth. “So it was with wisdom. I found the idea that mammals could be as smart as dragons quite unpalatable…” His words faded into another pause and he kept scratching his chin while looking down at Shēdo. “I had to learn to consume many bitter minerals, just as I had to learn to consume many bitter truths. I had to learn to stomach things that I had no taste for, just because they were good for me, and good for my development. When I learned to stomach what I didn’t much like, I grew as a dragon, both in physical stature and in wisdom.”
Waving his claws, he made the dirty water go away and filled the basin with warm, fresh water, conjured up from deep underground. This time, he levitated up a bottle of liquid soap and squirted some into the basin with Shēdo, then stirred the water with his claw, as if he was stirring a soapy dog soup.
“Not every dragon learns this lesson, and the ones that never develop a taste for bitter minerals or bitter truths, they do not grow much.” Blinking a few times, Chromium lowered his head a little closer to Shēdo. “Now, you have become one of my vessels, for I have imparted some of my trove into the confines of your mind. I have increased your worth, your value, and a little part of me, my thinking, my wisdom, it will live on through you. I have grown ever larger as a dragon because of this, because my thoughts, my thinking, they fill so many. Giving away my learning has not diminished me, but has made me greater. More dragons need to learn this truth before their greed consumes them.”
Humming to himself, Chromium went to work with the scrubbing brush and began to attack the filth that crusted over Shēdo’s fur. Shēdo, closing her eyes, lost herself in the moment, not accustomed to such kindness. The dragon had said a lot of words, and Shēdo supposed that they were there in her head somewhere, even if she didn’t understand them, she could reflect upon them later. She did have one question though, however.
“Shēdo want to know, what do seeing stone do?”