Chapter Eighteen: The Brave and the Bold
Vaelros came out of the trance with a small, shaky smile. The cavern around them breathed ash and old heat, and the dragon pit felt less like a pit and more like a buried city terraces and walkways carved into stone, dragon ribs like arches overhead. He hated dragon pits for their arrogance: everything here was built to make dragons larger, stronger, hungrier. He couldn't understand why anyone would keep such things in a pit, but the answer lived in the same place as the ruin's pride.
He kept chewing the redleaf, spitting the pulp into the dust as they moved. The searching spell hummed at the edge of his mind; most of the eggs they passed were cracked, dead, their shells powdered with ash. He pried ten of the better-preserved ones from stone and packed them into his bag until it grew heavy enough to drag at his shoulder. He set it down, muttered an enchantment, and watched the weight lift as the spell made the satchel feel feather-light. He did the same for Calen and Tharn's packs, fingers moving in quick, practiced sigils.
Ser Calen Waters watched him with amusement. "Finally, a spell that's actually useful," he said, the teasing in his voice bright enough to cut the gloom.
Vaelros shot him a look. "You know I can take that away," he said, smiling despite the ache in his temples.
The searching rune flared. Vaelros followed it, heart thudding. The glyph led them deeper, past collapsed forges and half-melted anvils, until the pentagram in the air pulsed with a clear, strong signal: one egg, whole and humming faintly with old power. It sat in a shallow alcove, cradled by carved stone and threaded with faint veins of magic that ran like roots into the ground.
He knelt and reached out. The egg answered him warm, patient, and oddly expectant. If he took it, it would bond. He could feel the promise of that bond like a thread tugging at his chest. But the egg was not alone: the veins of magic that fed it were anchored to the earth itself, to the old wards that kept this place sealed.
He turned to the others, voice low and steady. "All right—Brave and Bold. I'm going to try something experimental. It's going to take everything I've got. We'll have a second to get out. Focus on one thing—one place. Think of the ship. Think of the gangplank. Don't think of treasure. Don't think of coin. Just the ship."
Tharn's brow furrowed. "What are you about to do?"
Vaelros set his jaw and began the hand signs. Sparks gathered at his fingertips, tiny stars that crawled along his skin. The strain hit him like a physical weight; his vision narrowed, the world reduced to the pentagram of runes and the egg's slow pulse. He felt the old thread—older than any language he knew—coil around his mind. He drew on it, not gently. The cavern answered with a low groan. Stone trembled. Dust fell like rain.
He grabbed the egg with both hands. The moment his palms closed on the shell, the chamber convulsed. Runes flared along the floor and walls. The veins of magic that fed the egg screamed and began to unravel. A portal—raw and jagged—ripped open in the air, a wound of light and ash. Vaelros's voice was a command and a prayer at once.
"Now! Focus on the ship!"
Calen and Tharn didn't hesitate. They leapt toward the portal, faces set. Vaelros felt the world tilt as the spell tried to wrench them through. For a heartbeat everything was right—then it went wrong.
Instead of the harbor and the Ashen Gale, the portal spat them out into a vaulted chamber of melted stone and gilded ruin. They landed hard on a marble floor littered with coins and broken chests. Light from strange, luminescent stones painted the walls in sickly gold. Gargoyles—dragon-shaped, wrought from fused metal and glass—perched along the rafters. Their eyes flared, and from their open maws came a gout of flame that smelled of alchemy and old oil.
Vaelros scrambled to his feet, the egg still clutched to his chest. He felt the aftershock of the spell like a bruise across his ribs. He could already sense danger—hot, immediate, and mechanical. He slammed a quick barrier in front of them as the first jets of flame licked the floor. The barrier held, but the heat made the air shimmer.
Flames burst from the gargoyles again, this time aimed at the three of them. Vaelros clapped his hands together and sent a shockwave through the chamber—less a spell than a shove of force that knocked the nearest constructs off their perches and shattered a few fragile statues. The shockwave bought them a breath.
He let out a string of curses, more furious than coherent. "You greedy fools! Do you have any idea what that cost me? That was a lock I had to break with everything I had left. I redirected us somewhere safe—somewhere we could breathe—and you two think of coin. You think of treasure. We could have been trapped in a vault that never opens. We could have been—" He stopped, chest heaving, and the anger in his voice cracked into something rawer. "I'm not doing that again. Not with you two."
Calen, brushing dust from his sleeve, gave a sheepish grin that didn't reach his eyes. "Treasure is a habit," he said. "Old habits die hard."
Tharn, wiping soot from his beard, looked guilty and amused at once. "It was shiny," he admitted. "And heavy. I thought—"
"You thought with your pockets," Vaelros snapped, then forced himself to laugh, the sound brittle. "Fine. We live. We learn. We leave the shiny things for the next fools."
They moved as a unit, Vaelros still clutching the egg. The chamber was a ruin of melted doors and vaults, some open and spilling coin, others sealed and humming with residual wards. The gargoyles, now toppled or broken, left trails of alchemical residue that hissed where they hit the floor. The air tasted of metal and old fire.
Calen picked up a small, tarnished cup and held it up. "Well," he said, trying for levity, "we could each buy a house with this."
Vaelros shot him a look that was half amusement, half exasperation. "One house, maybe. If you don't spend it on ale."
Tharn grinned, hefting a heavy coin pouch. "I'll buy a bigger axe."
Vaelros felt the tension ease a fraction. The three of them—mage, bastard, wildling—moved through the ruin with the easy rhythm of people who had started to trust one another. He kept the egg close, feeling its faint heartbeat against his palm. It hummed with potential and danger in equal measure.
They found a narrow stair that led upward, away from the vault's center. Vaelros tested the air with a small charm and felt the faint tug of the world outside enough to guide them, not enough to open a full portal. He set the egg into a padded satchel and slung it over his shoulder.
"Next time," he said, voice low, "we focus on the ship first. Treasure second. Or never."
Calen saluted with the tarnished cup. "Aye, Captain Mage. Your orders are law."
Tharn clapped Vaelros on the back with a grin that was almost brotherly. "You did good, mage. You pulled us out."
Vaelros let the praise sit like a warm thing in his chest. He was exhausted—his nose bled again, his hands trembled—but the small, ridiculous smile returned. They had survived a gamble, and they had each other.
Outside the vault, the world smelled of ash and salt. The Ashen Gale was still out there, somewhere beyond the ruined streets and the smoking sea. Vaelros tightened the satchel strap and looked at his companions at the crooked grin on Calen's face, at Tharn's steady, watchful stance and felt, for the first time in a long while, that he might be able to keep what he'd taken safe.
They moved on, lighter in spirit though heavier in coin and consequence, the egg a quiet, dangerous promise against Vaelros's ribs. The cavern behind them settled into silence, and somewhere deep below, old magic watched and waited.
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Yep I'm back in the story I've been pulling it back the Naruto one might be coming back as well with me doing the new stories that I have I just have a lot of ideas that I've been wanting to do but but for those who doesn't remember this will be his dragon like in this chapter he can enchant the dragon egg before it actually trying to hatch it the dragon can grow faster because of this but it will probably reach the same same size as the the bronze Fury
This is how the dragon look like in the future