Rhyolite
“Six hundred years.”
It didn’t sound real when he thought about it. Even speaking it out loud didn’t help him to reconcile the number.
“I’ve been asleep longer than I’ve been awake.”
Finally giving in, he sat on the floor, his rough homespun trousers from another age doing little to prevent the cold from seeping through. The cold didn’t affect him negatively, but it was still cold, a feeling he’d never truly come to care for. Which was just perfect considering he’d woken up in the middle of winter. Some god somewhere was playing tricks on him. Maybe this was punishment for fleeing the destruction of the purple dragon over a millennia earlier.
What else was I supposed to do? I was young and weak, and he had hundreds of years on me. I was still in my first century! You can’t punish me for being too weak.
He knew that wasn’t actually the case. But the fact that he’d been buried under the mountain for so long irked him. That meant the bronze dragon had won. Anger surged through Rhyolite and he felt the mountain answer back. Outside snow tumbled down as yet another miniature avalanche hit the region, this time caused by his actions. He wondered if the bronze dragon was still in the area. There had been no evidence of it, but there were plenty of mountains, and he’d not had the opportunity to explore much before the helicopter had arrived.
“Helicopter.” He said the word out loud, his lips fumbling to work their way around the weird combination of syllables. “What else have I missed?” he wondered silently.
The room had finally stopped spinning, a feeling of weakness that he’d never experienced before. After all, why should he? Rhyolite was a dragon shifter, the most powerful of his kind, and now likely one of the longest-lived beings on the planet. He was sure that others had survived to this day, though how many of them had fallen asleep or were still awake he didn’t know. All he was positive of was that most of them had likely chosen to sleep, instead of being so rudely knocked out like he was.
“If I ever find that bronze dragon again,” he snarled, one hand reaching out to touch the ground as his anger grew once more, forging a grudge the likes of which he’d never held before.
Absently behind him the hole in the side of the mountain began to close as he manipulated the earth, once more concealing himself and his horde away from the sticky fingers of gorgeous human women in orange outfits. His eyes shot to the nearest pile, eyeing her stacking job. It appeared to be normal, without anything missing. He wouldn’t have put it past her to take something, though. No human could resist the splendors of his treasure, that was for certain.
Climbing to his feet, he proceeded to inspect each pile, ensuring that all the bricks were present, glowing faintly from the light he called forth from the very earth itself to provide illumination. With painstaking slowness he moved deep into his cave, into sections she hadn’t even touched, fingers dragging over the top of bricks with loving tenderness, a smile playing over his face as he remembered this adventure or that, and how he’d slowly managed to increase his collection.
It felt good to be awake again.
Again.
His mind was screaming at him, telling him that he’d only been in the fight of his life against the bronze dragon but the day before. Yet everything else made it clear he’d missed six or more centuries of living trapped in a pile of rock at the edge of his cave. Only a chance collapse of the mountainside thanks to an avalanche had exposed his cave and woke him up by rudely throwing him down the side of the mountain.
Rhyolite had suffered a lot of indignity in his life, but that had to be near the top of it. Thankfully nobody had been around to see it. That was the last thing he needed, for word to get around about how he’d slammed ass-first into a pile of rocks while sliding down the mountain. He could only imagine the jokes he would suffer. They would go on for decades.
“At least something is going my way. Too bad nothing else is.”
His cataloging of all his treasure had reached the last room. This was where he kept some chests full of coins, gems, and the like. Items that he’d yet to melt down into the easily transportable bars. There were supposed to be twelve of them. Rhyolite started counting in his head, but switched as he neared the end, his eyes confirming what his gut had already told him.
“Nine…ten…eleven. Eleven.” He spun left and right. “Where is the twelfth? There should be one more.”
He called upon more light, banishing the shadows from all but the deepest, darkest crevices as he inspected the entire chamber. But there was no doubt about it. One of his chests was missing. Thousands of pieces of gold and untold diamonds, rubies, and more. Gone!
The angry bellow shook his cave, small pebbles, rocks, and dust drifting down from the ceiling as he vented his rage, the acoustics of the chamber capturing his voice and hurling it back in a dozen different directions until it echoed.
Eyes normally a pleasing sky-blue snapped around to the main chamber, blazing with glacial cold as he examined where he’d found the human meddling with his stash. He wasn’t sure how she’d managed to sneak the chest out without him seeing, but he had been out of it while he coped with the vast length of time he’d been asleep.
Who knew what technology she and her other humans possessed now. Whatever it was, it was enough to steal it out from under his nose. Smart of her, he realized, to take it from the very back, where it would be the longest before Rhyolite noticed it was missing. He’d thought her clever, noting that along with her bravery as she’d stood up to him, unwilling to simply let herself be killed.
Killed, not eaten. Eww. The very fact that she’d entertained the idea that he might eat a human was enough to send his stomach churning. Factor in his missing treasure, and he was suffering from some severe heartburn.
“Heartburn. I must be getting old.”
Apparently the first millennia really caught up with you once you were on the wrong side of it. Belatedly Rhyolite realized he’d never been able to have a party to mark his first thousand years on earth. What a farce. Think of all the gold I missed out on as gifts!
He was getting distracted, his mind wandering. Giving it a firm shake, both to clear it and as a means of telling himself to get his head back in the game, Rhyolite came up with a game plan. It was quite simple.
Follow the human woman to the town. Find her. Get his treasure back. Burn everything.
A smile crept over his face as he reviewed the plan and gave it approval. First though, he would need to build up his energy. After so many centuries of sleep, he would need to hunt, to eat.
And that meant finding something tastier than human.