Prologue: Liz’s Unlikely Encounter

Prologue: Liz’s Unlikely Encounter

“The cave entrance is at the base of the mountain up ahead,” Blake said and pointed at what appeared to be a crack in the mountain wall.

“How deep is the cave?” I asked while tying my horse to a nearby tree.

Grant slung his great axe over his shoulder. “It takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to get to the end of the cave.”

“Let’s get going,” Julius said while taking the lead and walking towards the cave entrance.

I really didn’t want to take this quest with these people. Blake is a Scout and, while good at his job, his personality leaves much to be desired. Grant always looks angry. It makes it hard to get a read on him. Julius is the one I have the most trouble with. His personality is, for lack of a better word, wrong. He is always nice and helpful, but somehow that just feels like an act. I have felt his eyes on me a few times and I know there is something up with him. Luckily, we left early this morning and should be home well before dark. I absolutely don’t trust these guys enough to camp out with them.

“So the wyvern is at the end of this narrow cave?” I asked while watching Grant shift and duck to be able to move forward.

“The cave gets wider up ahead, and at the end is a massive area, almost like the mountain has been hollowed out. We don’t know how the wyvern got in there but my guess is that there is an opening for it to fly through,” said Blake.

The wyvern... the whole reason I took this quest was to find out what happened to my friend, Mira. She was persuaded to temporarily party with these three to investigate the increased monster activity around the mountain area. It was supposed to just be a scouting mission. But according to Julius, a wyvern ambushed them and grabbed Mira before they could react while they investigated this cave. She is reported as missing officially, but if a wyvern grabs a person instead of killing them... it’s usually to take food back to the nest. I don’t expect much, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t at least try to find her.

“Up ahead is where we saw the wyvern. We will do as we discussed. Lizette and Blake will get it to the ground. Then me and Grant will finish it off. Are you guys ready?”

“Ready.”

“Aye.”

“Let’s do this.”

“Wh... What the hell are you doing?!” I yelled at him, trying to focus through the pain.

“Retreating as you wanted. Cover our retreat,” He said as he bent down and picked up my staff before yelling something I didn’t hear to Blake.

I shot an [Icicle] towards the running Julius, but my accuracy was poor without my staff. It swished past him and I could see a smirk on his face as he turned back to look at me before running into the smoke from the smoke bombs Blake used.

“You bastard! You won’t get away with this!” I yelled while putting up another [Ice Barrier].

With those three obscured by smoke all the wyverns saw me as an easy target and focused on me, leaving me no room to even try and escape.

Is this how it ends? Without my staff, I’m lucky if this [Ice Barrier] will even block their attack, and even if it does, I will run out of mana before long, and then what? I can’t make a run for it with my wounded leg and a potion would take too long to heal me. I don’t have enough mana to kill all wyverns and no items I brought with me will be of any help. This is why I don’t party with people. Really didn’t expect the day to end like this.

Suddenly, a rumbling sound made all the wyverns momentarily back off with their assault.

An earthquake? Crushed rather than eaten? Don’t know if it’s better or worse.

Another rumble echoed in the cave and I could hear stones falling. I tried to locate where the rumbling came from, but the dim light made it hard to make out details in the cave. The sound of more stone falling echoed through the cave.

Is the entire cave coming down?

A massive rumble echoed through the cave, and what looked like a part of the cave started moving.

What is that?! It almost looks like a...

“A D-Dr-Dragon?!”