The cave was quite large. I imagined all these nagas were the product of the same clutch. They had probably been placed here by the same beings who had eliminated the dwarves who once lived here—a kind of macabre joke: fleeing extermination only to encounter extremely territorial, conscious animals. I had to offer them something better than what they had. But for a half-serpent being, it was difficult to offer anything superior to a huge cave where food periodically arrived.
None of them could attack me. One of the many abilities the elves had bequeathed me was to carry a base protection against all their chimeras. It was evident that these beings existed as a means of entertainment for twisted, senile minds who, in their long lives, found meaning only in seeking distraction. The poor things watched me, and the younger ones hissed. They were trying to show that my intrusion was not at all welcome. Inside the cave, I could see why they did not want me to pass: all their eggs were in the center of the chamber.
The countless shells comprising the garbage on the floor testified to the antiquity of their race. But for so many eggs, it was strange to see so few specimens. With a little effort, I could see inside—it still seemed an unfertilized egg. In fact, they seemed to be in a stasis field. This poor race became more complicated the more I learned about them.
Stone floors, thick walls, high ceilings—the finishes were those of prosperous dwarves. This place, despite being a refuge, had been carefully planned for years, built only with the best materials, even the arrangement of things. There were small armories hidden behind kitchen walls, bathrooms; I even found a compartment of knives in the drinking water source beneath the kitchen. But the nagas did not enter here. I saw them sliding in the courtyard, using the cave's hollows that with effort housed one or two of them. A strange situation, but it was a species I had only seen in books, where their languages and habitat were described. But there it said they had males—something I did not see here.
The dwarves did not have a library. I did not expect to find one. They were rigorous about records of their mines, their descendance, marriages, deaths. But no scribe wrote treatises on weapons or mines. Living so long, most dwarves learned from others and maintained specific techniques. So when I reached their library, I immediately saw that elven hands had been here. Thousands of dwarven treatises—their trade agreements, their history, their lives—were scattered on the floor. For someone trained by a dwarf, I knew this would cause fits of justifiable homicidal rage, from the humblest miner to my old weapons master, whose name to this day I could not pronounce. The dwarven tongue was a mix of idioms that my modified throat could not pronounce. In our mental communications, it was something like "Wise Man." But here, there were elven books, hidden among thousands of years of history. I had to find them.
The aromas of the place were not so penetrating. I suspected there were many vents on this mountain slope. Yet I had been smelling desperation for a while. It was not dialogue for most, but among many species, there were communication methods based on olfactory variations. I wanted to think in languages of intention, of meaning. If that was true, perhaps they wanted to communicate something to me. Could it be a trap in this place? I could not waste much time. I needed to communicate with them.
The mana-condensing stones were meant to be used in the keep. I brought the four we had managed to recover. If I connected them in parallel, they would recharge their magic quickly, but they would not last more than one night. In the throne room, I began tracing the runes. I did not want something that exhausted their magic before recharging, so I set them in a serial variation. While one was used, the rest recharged. They would not be used for truly complicated enchantments, so it should be fine. A few tracings for communication, runes to limit the area to the cavern, a few more to gradually increase their intelligence. A +2 per night would suffice for them to have intelligent communication in a couple of days. I placed these stones and injected them with magic. They filled surprisingly easily. Once they began amplifying the field of comprehension, I used my field within the library to extract everything written with elven words or dwarven keywords. In the end, three dwarven armory treatises and two very thin volumes of rare enchantments—even among previous kings, there were limits on what they would invoke—rested in my hands. These books did not have those limits.
Before facing the protection enchantments guarding these books, a voice interrupted. It was the nagas. They had a plea.
"Save our males. They are in stone. We are the same as always. They imprisoned us here. We need mates to be different. We are alone. We are hungry, but we are solitary... help!"
That explained why they were so few. Expanding my field, I felt more than saw the eggs of the males. The male chromosome was contained in some eggs in a petrified state, many meters into the stone. There was also a laboratory there, where the entrance to a mine was supposed to be—a mine I did not see anywhere. It was worth investigating. But not being able to help the dwarf who was coming... I only found some weapon methods. Without my strength, he would be very alone against the hordes of sacred knights.
I will help you, I told the nagas. But I need a favor. It is about a being who will come seeking help. You will give it to him.
I did not expect an answer. They were not yet intelligent enough to give one. I left my gifts in the forge and began opening a passage from where the spring flowed. When I had advanced about twenty meters, I closed the passage behind me. I did not want interruptions, and I was sure Chapatrueno did not want any to escape.